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The Silvercore Podcast explores the mindset and skills that build capable people. Host Travis Bader speaks with hunters, adventurers, soldiers, athletes, craftsmen, and founders about competence, integrity, and the pursuit of mastery, in the wild and in daily life. Hit follow and step into conversations that sharpen your edge.
Recently some friends and Silver Core Club
members have reached out to me about doing
a Live Silver Core Podcast Club event.
They asked my thoughts on this, and I'll
read you a text message that I sent.
It says, I want the Silver Core Podcast
live event to support the mission of
the Silver Core Club by helping people
deepen their connection with nature,
build confidence in the outdoors
and in life, and foster a sense of
community among like-minded individuals.
The podcast serves as a platform to
share inspiration, positivity, and real
world experiences centered on growth,
resilience, and personal development.
For the live event, I'd like it to be
revenue neutral, attract a strong and
diverse audience, and provide meaningful
value to attendees through engaging
content and opportunities for connection.
I also want the event to offer clear
benefits to any participating club
partners who align with our values.
While the format of the podcast can be
wide ranging, every episode is rooted
in themes of positivity, grit, and
growth, and I want the live experience
to reflect that same spirit in a way
that it's welcoming and impactful.
So here's my request to you.
Is that something that you
would be interested in attending
or even being involved with?
Let me know on social media, or you
can email me podcast@silvercore.ca.
Another really fun Silver Core Club thing
is the Outpost, and that's the Private
Silver Core podcast that comes out every
single week, and I'm seeing more and
more members taking advantage of that.
If you're not aware of the Outpost and
you're a Silver Core Club member, just log
into your portal and you're gonna have a
unique RSS feed that's specific for you.
You can download that, plug it into
most major podcast platforms, and every
single week, you're gonna be getting
short form key takeaways to deal with
the outdoors, with resilience, with all
the different things that the Silver Core
Podcast talks about, but in condensed
ways, as well as some behind the scenes
with some of our guests and myself.
Now, without further ado,
let's get on with this episode.
The last time we recorded together
for the Silver Core Podcast,
it was at his kitchen table.
Since then, he's launched the collective
with Chance Burs and cranked out hundreds
of episodes, one a day for a year.
Before that, he was a JTF two operator,
a world champion, 24 hour solo mountain
bike racer, and a high performance coach.
With over 15 years of experience,
his insights on wellness mindset
and pushing limits are hard earned.
And his podcast, the Collective, is a
veritable goldmine of practical wisdom.
Welcome back to the Silver
Corp podcast, Sean Taylor.
Thanks for having me, Travis.
It's always a pleasure to hang out with
you and have deeper conversations on any
subject that, uh, fascinates both of us.
And, um, it has been a little while
since we did one of these, but it
feels like we spend a fair bit of
time on the collective together.
So I appreciate you coming
over and supporting us on
our podcast, uh, chance Burs.
And I always love, uh, having you over
for your, uh, insight and, uh, the way
you view the world, uh, to some degree
is something that I've always treasured.
So, thanks for having me on.
We'll see what, where we go with this
one.
I really appreciate that,
and I love the collective.
There's gonna be links in the
description for anybody who hasn't
heard of the collective or, uh,
wants to learn more about it.
You'll see the website where
you can download it, where
you can watch it on YouTube.
Uh, it, it really is something special.
For this episode, I was really excited.
So it all started essentially
from an Instagram post.
Sean, you were just giving her
on your mountain bike and you
filmed yourself just flying up the
mountainside on your mountain bike.
And people are like, just looking at
you at amazement, like, holy crow,
you got the turbo water, or what?
And, and then you film yourself
afterwards and you're just kind of
talking to yourself through the process.
And what struck me was one of the people
who commented on that post, and he says,
serious question with all the new quote,
load management around performance.
Have you done anything differently
for recovery as you continue
to push hard as you've aged
asking for a friend Winky face?
And of, of course, to me, I am 46,
turning 47, and I've got a plethora of
injuries from not having properly taken
care of myself and my mindset's shifting.
And when I read through what you have
here, and I'll just kind of high note
it, you're saying, you know, top of the
list sleep, not just quantity, but more
correctly, quality, kneeling macros,
hydration supplementation, stress
management mindset, routines, being
comfortable in intensity, et cetera.
And you go on.
And so I thought, holy crow, I mean,
somebody with your background and
your both trial and error in your
research and seeing what works.
Anybody who's got just half of an
interest in wellness, physical,
mental, emotional, longevity is
gonna get a lot out of this podcast.
So, um, I am, I'm stoked.
I'm really excited to get
this conversation rolling.
Right on.
You know what, Mike, what is
interesting is that that video that
you're referring to is a video that.
You know, that's the kind of stuff
that I do on a regular basis.
The how hard I ride or how hard I
train or how hard I engage in life is
generally speaking, in a daily practice.
And I don't think too much about
it because I've just been doing
it for so long and, and I, quite
frankly, I'm reluctant to put up
videos that show me like deep,
deep, deep into the hurt locker.
Uh, because I don't think everyone
needs to see that on a regular basis.
But more importantly, I never, ever,
ever want anyone to misconstrue
or misunderstand the intent of why
I put any videos up on Instagram.
It's not to, uh, demonstrate how hard I
can go or how deep I can go, um, because
to some degree that makes me feel like,
um, uh, I'm flaring out or that I'm trying
to, I'm dressed to impress, as it were.
Um, and I don't care
for that, um, feeling.
Uh, I don't like to have anyone
misunderstand anything that I'm doing
on social media, so I don't put those
kind of videos up on a regular basis.
I. But after I put that video up and I
started getting the comments, I thought,
man, I should have been doing this sooner.
I should have illustrated to others how
freaking hard I train, or how deep I go,
or how much in the hurt locker, or I put
myself in willingly in order to experience
the growth that I like to see in my life.
And so the video was kind of like
almost a casual, um, effort to
just put something up on my feed.
But then when the comments started rolling
in, and I believe, uh, the comment came
in from Sergeant Hazzard, uh, and then
of course you jumped in on that comment
and said, uh, you know what you said?
I thought, man.
I should have done this ages ago
because look at the dialogue that is
going on now, uh, that I could have
addressed ages ago, because the reply
that I gave to him, I typed that out
in like 90 seconds with like mm-hmm.
Almost no thought.
And, and I hit send.
And it was just kinda, uh, classic
case of I'll just try to be a
little bit helpful in this moment.
Tap, tap, tap, and hit send.
And that was it.
And I never thought much more
about it until you hit me up.
And, and I realized that I have
been underserving in this area.
I certainly could have addressed
this a long time ago, uh, given a
lot more value, uh, in these matters.
And thanks for picking up on that
comment and engaging in this.
And now look at where we're at.
So that's well done on your behalf.
So thanks.
Well, I guess it's a fine line
between, you know, people will look
at social media posts and thinking
someone's being braggadocio or
they're, they're just showing off,
or are they leading by example?
Are they showing what they do on the
daily and providing a framework that
other people can look at and say,
Hey, that, that might work for me too.
And I think you have a framework
that could work for a lot of people.
Not everybody, not everyone's gonna
have the mindset or the, um, uh, the
ambition to follow such a framework,
but maybe they might modify it.
And, and when I talk about this
framework, so Craig Weller, Jonathan Pope.
W wrote a great book, building the Elite,
and it's just this bible of information.
And I was talking with Craig and
I'm like, okay, Craig, I don't
know if you heard this one before,
Sean, but I I brought you up.
I said, uh, so you, you work with a
lot of, uh, listen, be good or bad.
Well, we'll find out in a second.
Um, they said, you work with a lot of
high performance athletes, a lot of,
um, special forces, both individuals in
special forces or who are trained to be in
special forces to reach their peak optimal
physical, mental, emotional, uh, value.
And I said, well, you and I, we, we know
Sean, what advice would you give Sean if
looking at what he does, if you wanted
to make a few tweaks here or there?
And Craig's response was, I
wouldn't be able to make any advice.
I can't, I can't find any areas where
I'd be picking away at what Sean does.
So, so, um, for somebody who does it, some
Craig, but he, he, he could have,
he
could've done
better than that, I'm pretty sure.
Yeah, no, I, I ribbed him.
I said, look, you took the
easy way on that one for sure.
But, um, but you do, you've, you've
got a process that you put in place
and I'm sure it wasn't by accident.
And, uh, I thought maybe if,
if we approach it, I sent you
over just 'cause I was having a
little conversation with AI here.
I. And, um, figured if we kind of approach
it from, uh, five different points, if
we looked at sleep, the foundation of
wellness, stress management, the invisible
weight, uh, nutrition and macros.
Of course, I learned what
macros are now, so that's good.
It's more than just macaroni, um, hormonal
optimization, uh, routines and mindset.
So if we looked at sleep, 'cause
that was where you started, can you
tell me, uh, what you do for sleep,
what role it plays in, in your life?
Sure can.
So before I dive into any further material
that will, uh, engage in throughout the
pro this podcast, um, I just want to state
the, oh, I, I should state a few things.
Uh, first of all, I am not a medical
professional, so anything that I say,
if I make any recommendations or if
I have an any opinion on anything,
it's always worthwhile doing a cold
eye review on anything that you
hear, hear with someone else, with
your doctor, or with a naturopath or
whoever you get medical advice from.
Always check in with someone else who has
some form of professional designations.
The second thing is the, um, things
that I've learned throughout my
life are an n equals one experiment.
And so I've treated myself like the.
The lab rat as it were, where
I have deeply considered Sean.
And then through that process, learning
everything about me as much as I can.
Uh, I then try to apply it within anyone
that I've worked with in the past.
Uh, either as a high performance
coach with athletes or anyone
that I have any dealings with.
I try to pass on my n equals one to
them, but always with the provision
that this is your n equals one.
Now you need to pay attention,
much like I'm going to describe
throughout the rest of this podcast.
So there's a couple of things
to think about medical.
And, uh, uh, a professional
medical opinion.
And then of course, you are
your own and equals one.
The next thing I'd like to say is,
uh, because I, this, this podcast came
together in, in fairly short order
over a couple of days kind of thing.
Um, I, in preparing for the podcast, in
fact, I prepared more for this podcast
than I prepare for my own podcast.
So what's going on there?
But, uh, as I was preparing for
this podcast, I thought I would,
um, start capturing some of my
thoughts, my opinions, my ideas,
my processes, protocols, as it
were the n equals one of Sean.
Throughout my life, that has
taught me quite a lot in respect
to what works for others as well.
So, uh, as I just mentioned to you
before we went live or before we
started recording this show, what I
did do is I've got, um, a document
here that is about when you condense
it down into kind of like the size of
a standard issue book that you would
read, uh, this afternoon kind of thing.
It's about a 70 page book,
and so it's pretty solid.
There's a lot of information in there
that I feel would be extremely helpful
to, well, literally anyone who reads it.
And so, um, uh.
I, I, I need to segue into also,
currently I'm writing a book or co-writing
a book with my very good friend, a
friend of ours, of course, EB Levo.
And, uh, we're several chapters deep
into that, uh, process right now, and
things are going exceedingly well.
I'm really stoked about that book.
So what I've just described
is not that kind of a book.
It is not in competition to that book.
It is not really a book per se,
other than it's a really valuable
resource that I should probably make
available to the general public.
In fact, maybe as a general offer, I'll
throw this out there to your audience.
Uh, I'm sure Travis, you can find a way
to use this book as a resource, however
you feel, uh, maybe, uh, within your
inner circle or whatever the case is.
We can talk about that, uh,
once we're off the recording.
But I'd like to make that available to
you for your general purposes as well.
It sounds amazing.
That sounds amazing.
So with that in place, um, as I said, uh,
I created quite a bit of notes and each,
each of the topics that you had suggested
that we cover, I I dove down pretty
deeply into each of these pillars, if you
will, and the first pillar being sleep.
And so, um, as, as I said in my comment
on Instagram, I feel that sleep is
the most important thing a person
can focus on for their overall, not
just longevity, but their physical
performance, their mental performance,
their sense of ease with who they are.
As a human in this moment, a
lot of it is driven by sleep.
So with that in place, the importance of
sleep, I'll just throw some context out
there right now to establish how important
sleep is and how I learned this over
multi decades of not getting good sleep
and then getting good sleep and realizing
the delta between those two positions.
So of course, as a young man in
my first military career, a lot
of my career trajectory was,
um, driven by a lack of sleep.
The, uh, it was a fairly robust
pipeline that I was in, and that
pipeline required not a lot of sleep.
And I'm not talking about in
selection courses or in, uh, any
form of, uh, testing as it were.
This was just the day-to-day regular.
Tempo typically had you always
lacking sleep, now lacking
sleep, how much lacking sleep?
Um, that could be anywhere from,
uh, only getting five or six hours
a night all the way through to,
well, just no sleep for some days.
And if you got an hour or two
here over the period of three or
four days, then that was bonus.
That was gravy.
But back, back then, as a young
man, I simply accepted those terms
and conditions of that lifestyle.
And so there's, there's a cost to that.
Nothing is free in life.
And so that lack of sleep or poor amount
of sleep, or poor quality of sleep, which
I'll get into momentarily, really had a
impact on me, has an impact on everyone.
If you're not getting enough
quantity, that's a thing, but if
you're not getting enough quality,
that's a whole different thing.
So if you choose to go to bed at whatever
time and you think I'm gonna get seven
hours sleep, you wake up seven hours
later and think, oh, that was great.
I got seven hours sleep
off to have a great day.
That may not be the case
because those seven hours.
Are determined as to how you'll feel
the next day based on quality of sleep.
And so there are a number of sleep cycles
that ebb and flow throughout the night.
Uh, I'm not talking about now
a circadian rhythm per se.
I'm talking about the regular ebb
and flow as you move out of light
sleep to rem sleep, to deep sleep.
These various phases of sleep are
critical for you to be able to, uh,
consolidate memory, consolidate, thought,
remove, brain fog, uh, human growth
hormone release, and various hormonal
releases and et cetera, et cetera.
A bunch of science that actually
have in the, uh, small book
that, uh, I'm gonna send to you.
Uh, all of these things impact
us, uh, while we're sleeping.
And we don't, we don't realize how
much impact that is until we wake up in
the morning and we throw our leg over
the bed, step onto the floor, stand
up and think, oh, I feel a bit groggy.
Oh, I didn't sleep that well,
but I slept seven hours.
Why is, why am I dot, dot dot?
Why am I not 100%?
And so sleep as a whole is
quite a complex subject that.
Requires constant tweaking
in order to be optimized.
I'm not gonna get into the real deepness
of, uh, the details of the science,
but suffice to say that, um, it, it is
a process that is not well understood,
and more importantly it's not focused
on enough in the sense of optimizing it.
Yeah, I can see that.
I mean, when you're looking at optimizing
sleep, I've got a Garmin watch and I
was using it to help track my sleep.
I was told that it's not
really the most accurate.
I recently picked up this,
uh, aura ring to try and track
sleep a little bit better.
Oh, I see you halfway there too.
And it's, uh, it seems to be a heck of
a lot more accurate than what the, the
Garin Watch is doing, and I'm still
trying to make heads or tails outta
some of the information in there.
But it's funny, some nights like I'll
get four and a half hours of sleep and
it, but it says it's, I did well, I could
do better on length of time, but it says
all my other metrics I did really well.
So I've got efficient sleep in there.
And I was concerned because some
nights I get very little sleep.
Maybe I gotta be doing something.
I'm working hard to get more sleep.
My challenge has been a four
o'clock wake up, it seems.
And I remember about half a year ago,
year ago, I mentioned that to you and you
immediately you said, oh, that's liver.
I think that's what you said it was liver.
I'm like, what?
Hold on.
And then we didn't expand
too much more to that.
So, um, what does that mean when
you say someone's waking up in the
morning and you say That's liver.
What does that mean?
That's a great question.
So I'll, I'll back it up a
sec and talk about the a ring.
Uh, because I've been wearing mine
now for I think about eight years.
Hmm.
And so, um, this is my third ring.
This is the newest generation Aura ring.
And, um, and I was one of the
early adopters of Aura when
they first came on the scene.
And, uh, prior to the Aura
Ring, I had other devices.
I've been, um, considering data
as a, generally speaking, a
data scientist to some degree.
Um, I've been thinking about
this subject since, oh, I don't
know, maybe 25 years ago when I
bought my first co quote unquote
smartwatch, which was a Polar watch.
They were the very, very first
com public or uh, retail public
company that provided this.
Incredibly, uh, uh, useful at the time,
uh, algorithm called HRV, uh, heart rate
variability and Polar, uh, got the license
from another small company that I'd, I'd
started eyeballing on the side looking
for all the secret sauce, uh, tools,
tips, acts, tricks, um, back in the day.
And, uh, so I bought my first Polar.
And at the time, HRV was pretty much
misunderstood because the science was
so emerging or evolving that, uh, no one
really had a kind of a generalized opinion
as to whether it was even good or not.
And so I, I engaged with HRV way
back in the day, and like everything
I've done, and I've already
mentioned, n equals one experiment.
Um, I treat my life like an n equals one.
And so once I bought that polar, it
was less about what the internet said
HRV is, or what polar thought HRV was.
It was precisely for me what
it meant to me, not to them.
And so the, the tools that we
have, the AA ring or the polar.
Watch way back in the day.
They are useless.
In fact, they can be detrimental unless
you treat them as a tool to learn
about yourself at a deeper level by
almost just isolating yourself from
the rhetoric or the opinion or the,
um, what, what, um, aura will tell you.
It means you have to almost read between
the lines of what the data is presenting,
but really what's going on inside of you.
How, how you feel that relates to you,
how you think that relates to you, how you
see it relate to you as your day unfolds.
And so if I wake up in the morning
and, and I, uh, check my aura ring
using the app on my phone, it might
tell me that I got six hours of sleep.
And it might tell me that I got 45
minutes of deep sleep and an hour
and 12 minutes of ram and the rest
was light and I was interrupted in
my sleep pattern two times for five
minutes here and 10 minutes there.
I can take a look at that data and think,
huh, but then I set it to the side and
I reconsider what it actually means.
I try to synchronize up the data
with my feels as I stand up.
Am I clearheaded as I walk to the bathroom
to brush my teeth or whatever the case is?
I. How are things unfolding?
The moment that I wake up until the
moment that I come down, grab my glass
of water, pound that stare into the
sun as per the huberman and all of
the, the various sequences of events
that I'll talk about, of course, as
the podcast unfolds, I am constantly
checking the external world metrics
against my internal world understanding.
And my internal world understanding is
a database that I have refined daily
for fricking coming up on 60 years.
And so it isn't just
guesswork for me anymore.
When I see my aura data, I know what
it means, not, not what the ring
is telling me, but what I know it
means to Sean, his n equals one.
And so for you, relatively new to the, um,
the, the science data collection game, I
will say for you and anyone it, what you
need to do is establish that relationship
between the metrics of the world and the
internal feelings of your n equals one
life and synchronize those two so that
they generally kind of align themself
to some degree, if that makes sense.
It does make sense.
So I, I probably know the
answer to this question.
I. But given the fact that you've
been tracking these things for so long
through the Ora ring, do you keep some
sort of a spreadsheet or some sort of
matrix where you correlate how you feel
in the day with what the results of
the, these wearable devices give you?
I do.
So every, every metric that I track
is, uh, established within some sort of
software, uh, where I can discover the
deeper trending or the historical trending
of, um, a, a, a tool like the URA ring.
This ring in and of itself is
worthless unless you take the time
to understand how it applies to you
specifically as an n equals one.
Now, the, the trap or the trappings
of these kind of things is, um,
you, you'll buy a tool, whether it's
Aura or Garmin or whatever it is.
Whoop, it doesn't much matter what
the tool is for tracking your sleep.
It, it, it can't tell you who you are.
It can't describe precisely
what happened in the night.
What it, it can do is track things
like your body temperature, your
respiratory cycle, your, um, your
heart rate, whether it is in light
sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep.
It can tell you a bunch of things,
but then it will interpret.
Those things into, generally
speaking, sort of a simplistic,
uh, delivery of information.
Uh, something along the lines
of, wow, it looks like you didn't
sleep that well last night.
Try and sleep better tomorrow.
And so, um, these, these simplistic
sort of overviews are good for
someone who's initially getting
into the data tracking world.
But what you, what we all have
to do is dig deeper than that
or think deeper than that.
Not just accept the simple,
almost casual observance of the
software, but apply these software
observations to how you feel.
How it has impacted your life today
in context of what it told you
yesterday and what it told you a
week ago and what it told you a year
ago, and start forming a pattern.
So all these tools, any tool that you
use to metric your life, whether it is
counting pushups, however many pushups
you did today, if you put that in a
software or in a spreadsheet to kind
of evaluate what did you do today?
How did you feel today?
How can you do it better tomorrow?
These kind of things are only valuable
if you can gather data for a long
enough period of time that you can now
start forming a pattern, not just a
data pattern, but an in felt pattern.
So to me, and you've heard me say this,
uh, before Travis, that in my life I
like to pattern recognizer, pattern
recognition has allowed me to survive
and it has allowed me to thrive.
And so without pattern recognition,
um, I feel that there's a huge chunk
of improvement that a person is
giving away by not deeply considering
the long-term patterns of life.
I'm talking a year to two, to five to
10 years worth of pattern recognition.
How am I doing now?
Versus me 10 years ago.
These are the kind of patterns
that I'm talking about.
So I'm, as I look at patterns in my
life as they apply to, let's say, sleep
specifically, I know about 17 years ago,
I, so building my own business, uh, young
family stress associated with all of
those things, being ent, an entrepreneur.
And about 17 years ago, a great deal,
more stress plopped in my lap, and I
noticed it greatly affected how I slept.
And I would essentially not be sleeping,
and I would hear everything that's
happening around me, even when I did have
those, uh, rare times when I was sleeping.
And so I started wearing earplugs
to block it out, and I could still
hear everything that's going on.
My senses were a bit heightened,
my brain's going crazy.
So I would take, uh, gravel
or, uh, diamond ate and,
uh, to try and knock me out.
And yeah, it gives you a bit of a sleep,
but you don't feel great the next day.
I mean, sure you were sleeping,
but I, it didn't feel like I was
actually properly resting and I wasn't
tracking any of the stuff that these
wearables, uh, do at that point.
And then I started, okay, I
didn't like that because I
don't want to have some sort of.
A, uh, a drug that I have
to take in order to sleep.
And so I thought, well, melatonin,
that's supposed to be natural, right?
And now I'm seeing research on
melatonin that it's, uh, bad for you.
It's like a, it messes with your hormones.
So I, I came back, when I look at,
uh, these measurables establishing
a baseline and, and tracking where
these things are different, it comes
down to, um, for me, ensuring that
my external environment matches kind
of what my internal environment is.
And if I'm living in, quote unquote the
concrete jungle, if we can call latner the
concrete jungle, which if, which it feels
like it to me, but, uh, um, I, I don't
sleep nearly as well as I do if I am out
in the bush or if I've in a place where
there's, um, external matches a bit more.
So I've touched on a few things,
but, uh, more specifically, I guess,
um, what sort of patterns have you
recognized that lead to, uh, better,
more restful sleep and, um, when it
comes to, let's say supplements, uh,
are there things that a person can take,
like, I dunno, magnesium, I think, is
supposed to be good that will assist in
a, in a better, more regulated sleep.
Yeah.
So, you know, in order to answer this
question like yourself, you were given
context by stating that there was a
period of time when you weren't getting
much sleep and, and you felt the obvious
downside or the negatives to or sleep.
Hmm.
And so I think that's really important
that anyone who listens to this
takes a moment to think, okay, I feel
the way I feel right now based on
the kind of sleep that I'm getting.
How would I feel if my
sleep was way better?
And until you experience that
way better, this conversation is
almost like a neutral conversation.
It's almost inert.
It almost has no value until a person
takes the time to think about, I
could be 10 times the person I am
if I just dialed in my sleep more.
And so I know this to be true because
I'd stated earlier, the, in my first
career, the tempo was such that sleep
was a luxury to some degree, more so
than, um, you know, an obligated thing.
But as I continued on in my other
careers, um, I had lots of moments
where I still wasn't getting good
sleep because of my career demands.
But.
On top of that, I'd like to throw
this other layer that I was also
dealing with that was really
impacting my sleep detrimentally.
And that is I was having a lot of
nightmares and, uh, I didn't realize
the, and, and I was having nightmares
every night and, and I was getting
terrible sleep because of the, so I
was working super hard, getting to
bed super late because the work had
to be done then getting up super early
because the work was still there.
And then in the time that I was
in bed, my sleep was disrupted by,
I didn't have good sleep hygiene,
which we can talk about shortly.
And I was just dealing with nightmares.
And so the nightmares that
I had are a result of PTSD.
And um, and I had those for over 20
years until I mentioned to my family
doctor that I was having nightmares.
Um, uh, I, I just kind of
thought it was a normal thing.
I didn't talk to anyone about it.
And, uh, I just kind of put up with it.
And it's not like I had tons
of conversations with tons of
friends and saying, Hey, do you
have nightmares every night?
How many do you have?
And how, how bad is it?
And this just wasn't a conversation
that I'd ever had until Right.
I talked with my family doctor
and it was just a casual mention.
And so, uh, we found a way to sort
of reduce those levels of nightmares.
And then I started applying
way more sleep hygiene and way
more focus on quality of sleep.
And so.
The amount of sleep, as I said,
is one thing, but the quality of
sleep is a whole different thing.
And so these sleep hygiene protocols
are, you can Google sleep hygiene or
perhaps, um, in the, in the little
book that I just wrote about, uh,
this subject, you'll find out a lot
more about sleep hygiene protocols
and then supplementation for sleep.
So I'll start with sleep hygiene first.
Certainly one of the things that I
try to control, whether I'm in my own
house or whether I'm traveling, is
make the room as cold as possible.
If you can get your room to, um, like
kind of chilly, uh, that's good because
that promotes, um, for, I'm not gonna
get into the biological reasons, but
that promotes a deeper, faster, uh, way
of sleep, uh, slipping into your sleep,
um, noise, distractions, any noises
that are going on throughout the night.
If you're in the big city and you're
used to all of the train noises and bus
noises and taxi noises, that's okay.
You're used to it.
But that doesn't mean that your body
isn't recognizing those noises and
responding to them all the time.
And so you may feel like, well, I'm
just used to big city noises, but,
but as, as, as cavemen, we don't.
Uh, we can't just say, oh, that's
a taxi while we're sleeping.
What happens is we're momentarily
awake because of that taxi horn.
And so I wear earplugs every night, uh,
whether I'm in my own house or whether I'm
traveling and if I'm traveling overseas
in an area that I think is a bit dodgy.
I'll still wear my earplugs,
but I'll put other measures into
place to make sure that it's not
that much of a concern for me.
Same thing with an eye mask.
Every night I wear an eye mask, a blackout
eye mask, and in our master bedroom
we have, uh, blinds that pull down to
reduce the light as well to the degree.
Controlling light to the degree that
if I wasn't wearing an eye mask, a, a
little, uh, maybe a digital, uh, alarm
or a digital clock next to the bedside
table, it, it's oriented away from me.
So it's facing away from me because even
with your eyes closed while you're asleep,
light from these kind of a device can,
the short wave can penetrate through.
The eyelids still hit the receptors of
the eyes as you're sleeping and indicate
that there is it's time to wake up.
Those early signs of light will start to
pull you out of various sleep patterns.
And so controlling for noise, controlling
for temperature, controlling for light
is critical as far as I'm concerned.
Now, as part of the sleep hygiene
protocol, uh, when it comes to as bedtime
approaches, of course, you can start
reducing all forms of electronic devices.
And if you can't control your electronic
devices, then certainly you should
have a blue light filter in place,
like on your phone or on your laptop.
If you like to, uh, wind down with a
little bit of a movie or some YouTube
or some Netflix or whatever the case
is, you can reduce the light that
is blasting from your laptop or from
your TV or whatever the case is.
When, when I'm going to bed at night,
um, as I'm heading upstairs, I turn
all the lights off in the house and,
and it, this is just a little routine.
And, and believe it or not, all these
tiny little routines add up into a
pattern that helps you believe or helps
you understand, or literally puts you
in a place where you're ready for sleep.
I kill all the lights in the house,
and then from the main floor, I walk
upstairs through two flights of stairs
into the master bedroom in pitch black,
open the door, stealth in like a ninja,
stealth right up to my bedside table.
I put my earplugs in.
I put my night mask in, uh, on, and,
and I slide into bed, uh, as quietly
as I can, so as not to disturb my wife.
But all of that is stealth.
All of that is in the pitch black.
And so I appreciate the idea of
stealthing up the stairs silently and
flowing in a way that isn't janky or
jerky or disconnected from the moment.
And so that simple process of ninja
in my way up into bed is a way for me
to like become grounded and aware or
present in the moment as to what I'm
doing in the moment as I head to bed.
And so this, these tiny little
subroutines that I have in the way of
sleep hygiene are really important,
uh, little protocols that help, um,
sort of build out the infrastructure.
Of preparing to go to sleep or having
a good night's sleep as part of the
sleep hygiene protocol, I suppose
we could talk about supplementation.
And so supplementation isn't something
that you can, um, a a minute before
you go to bed, reach over, grab
a little pill, throw it down your
throat, and head off to bed, and bam,
you're having the best sleep ever.
These are things that you can do
throughout your day, but certainly
specific to sleep, I feel that
magnesium is extremely important.
There's a couple of forms
of magnesium that I use.
One is magnesium, three innate,
and one is magnesium bisg glycinate
or mag magnesium glycinate.
Um, the, the glycinate I can
use on a daily basis throughout
the day for whatever purposes.
And magnesium is a really useful
compound because there's over 300
biological processes that require,
uh, magnesium throughout your day.
Uh, so magnesium glycinate or
bis glycinate is something I
will use irrespective of sleep.
But then, uh, for my sleep I might use
magnesium three anate, which is, is.
You know, helps cross over
the blood brain barrier.
Uh, it's also more of a
cognitive, um, magnesium.
And so without getting into too many
details, I will say that magnesium,
those two forms are something that
I take, uh, almost every single day.
Um, in respect to melatonin, as
you mentioned, I'm not actually
that much of a fan of melatonin.
And if melatonin is used, it is an
acute or is it is used precisely
and temporarily to offset something
like jet lag as an example.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, and I would say use it as a cautionary
basis because it can, uh, interfere,
interact negatively with your, uh, endogen
or with your inbuilt hormonal system that
creates the melatonin for you mm-hmm.
Uh, throughout your life.
And so it's, it is something like a two
to three day melatonin at very small
doses, which the doses I put in the
handbook that I'm gonna send you, um,
this is something that is temporary.
And is only used as a quick fix for a
acute problem, as it were, something
like traveling across multiple
time zones into another country.
But it's nothing that
anyone should rely on.
Um, there's a, there's a number of other
things that you can use nutritionally.
Uh, certainly one of them is
try not to eat two to three
hours before you go to bed.
Now, there's a whole variety of
reasons for that, uh, to do with how
the gut brain, um, connection works
or the, the mind gut connection.
And of course, how if you've got a
big old steak in your belly, uh, that
you ate five minutes before you went
to bed, there's some blood shunting
there and there's some processes
that have to stay busy throughout
the night to work on them, et cetera.
Whereas those processes are better used
to help clear out some metabolic waste
and are better used to blah, blah, blah.
Things that I talk about in this
little book, um, these, these
choices that we make, um, I will
say this as kind of a universal
statement in respect to this topic.
The choices that we make throughout
our day should be driven by setting
us up for the best sleep ever.
And so at some point in the day,
we all have come to that point
where I wouldn't mind a snack.
It's 10 o'clock at night.
I wouldn't mind a bag of Miss Vicky's.
It's 11 o'clock at night.
I wouldn't mind a Twinkie, whatever.
These choices where we have those little
snacky moments where we have those moments
of, I wouldn't mind a bit of comfort.
I wouldn't mind a bit of calories.
I wouldn't mind a bit of,
I'm bored, I need to eat.
Mm-hmm.
These choices are, as far as I'm
concerned, the pivotal moments in
our day where we either capitulate
to, I'm bored, I want to eat, or
more correctly, we stand up strong
or fortify our position and realize,
no, that isn't gonna serve me well.
I'm gonna make the right choice
and I'm not going to eat that two
to three hours before I go to bed.
Because A, I know, physiologically
speaking, that's the right call.
But maybe most importantly of
all, mentally I know that I am
freaking optimizing to the max.
That sense of I'm doing everything
right, goes a long way to understanding
who you are throughout your life.
So these daily little giveaways
where I'm, I'm just gonna eat a
bag of chips 'cause I'm hungry.
These little giveaway moments
are the things that kind of
make us backslide mentally.
We know it's not right what we're doing,
but we'll still do it because to some
degree we're being lazy and it's that I.
Kind of not, not giving up to
the laziness of the moment.
It's being strong in understanding
that what's right for you is something
that is a little bit harder to do, a
little bit of discipline, a little bit
of adversity, if we can call it that.
Hmm.
Those are the right choices because
even if you go to bed feeling a little
bit of hunger and a little bit of
boredom, uh, good because you have
set yourself up over the long haul to
realize that you're better than that.
Mm-hmm.
It's funny, whenever I go to bed feeling
hungry, I don't wake up feeling hungry
and it's, it, it, it's weird how that
works, but I could, like, let's say
I'm out in the bush and I had very
little food and I've been pushing hard
and I'm like, man, I'm sure hungry.
I wake up the next day,
I'm like, I'm good.
I can go again.
So did I really need that extra food?
Was it really something
my body wanted it Sure.
The, the, uh, face mask is interesting.
I use the earplugs, use 'em
every day, have for years.
I could still hear
everything that's happening.
Uh, when the kids are young, I
could hear them making noise.
Even with the earplugs in,
it's, it's funny how your body
just adapts to these things.
Uh, face mask, I think
I'll give that a shot.
I, I got blacko blinds in the room.
But, um, uh, I think, I think
that makes a big difference.
'cause I, I will notice that
the second that the light's out,
I'm out in a tent, lights out.
It's time to get up, light goes down,
time to go to a time for me to go down.
So I, I gotta imagine that,
uh, it would play a big role.
Um,
it is interesting.
Uh, so if you, what we're talking about
is removing your sensory receptors.
So, you know, hearing's
gone, vision's gone.
Now you're embedding still.
So we're, we're removing our
sense senses, as it were.
And ultimately, what, what we are as
human beings is we're sensory organisms.
We understand the world around us through
our senses, and we, our consciousness, or
our mind, or our spirit then, you know,
interprets that and does what it does.
That's a whole different podcast.
But in respect to the census,
once you strip out the hearing
and the vision, what I've found.
Is as I'm laying there in bed, uh, even
when I'm asleep, if, if someone gets
up, like my son this morning had to
get up really early to go do, uh, work,
um, and to catch a bus to go to work.
I, I felt him moving in the house.
I didn't hear him.
I didn't see him, but I felt
him moving in the house.
I felt the vibration of
him moving in the house.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And so as he walked across the
floor, I could feel the almost
imperceptible motion of him moving.
And if not for that, stripping away of
the, I'll call them really loud sensory
inputs of vision and hearing, then
my sense of vibrational feeling would
be duller or wouldn't be as refined.
And so, uh, as I said earlier,
and I didn't want to get too deep
into it, um, because there's many
ways that you can be in a foreign
country and still wear earplugs
and an eye mask and still be okay.
Mm-hmm.
Um, there's a bunch of physical
things that you can do to sort
of control that environment.
But one of the things that I have
and at my available, uh, as one of my
tools that I've developed over years
is my sense of things when I'm asleep.
Is quite refined.
And so it's not that I can feel the
butterfly flapping through the air, you
know, 12 blocks away, but what I can
do is I can feel when someone walks up
to the door in a hotel and, and like
just pushes against the door handle.
It's hard to describe and
I don't always feel it.
It's not like it's magic, but it
is, it is a sensory tool that has
developed over decades based on
stripping out all of the other, uh,
extraneous, uh, stimulus as it were.
I, I know what you're talking about.
I, I feel it as well.
It's, um, and I think it, a lot of
it comes down to trusting your gut
feeling and then, and then checking
afterwards was my gut feeling correct?
And then you build that baseline of,
okay, uh, what I felt actually was
something and you, and you move forward.
I, I use that as a technique to,
uh, be present and to calm down.
Mm-hmm.
And I've used it, I've
talked about it before.
I use it with my kids, uh,
when they're growing up and
they're, something's happening.
They're completely overwhelmed and
they're feeling really activated.
I'm like, okay, just take a deep breath.
Right.
Just sit here for a moment.
Tell me what do you hear?
Well, I don't, I don't hear anything.
Okay.
Keep listening.
What do you hear?
Oh, I heard, I heard a car outside.
Okay, good.
Now keep listening.
Do you hear the fridge?
No.
Well listen until you do.
Oh, there it is.
I can hear the fridge.
And as they start minutely looking at
these little things, it calms them down.
And it's a trick that I use with myself.
And when I'm, and I don't know, it's
probably as old as anything, uh, but it
never sunk in to me to use it for sleep.
People talk about counting sheep as a
means to be able to, uh, fall asleep,
and that's an age old sort of thing
that they talk about in cartoons.
And everyone's, everyone's seen that one.
For me, I don't learn things normally.
It's like trying to hit the baseball.
I couldn't hit the damn baseball.
Keep your eye on the ball
while I'm watching it.
I'm keeping my, until somebody said,
watch that baseball until it impacts the
bat and leaves, oh, now I can hit it.
Right?
I thought I was doing it, but
somehow somebody says, or I learned.
Um, if you're having a hard
time falling asleep, uh,
concentrate on very minute things.
For example, if you're, uh, walking out
the front door, imagine yourself what
it feels like when you grip the handle,
if you're barefoot, what uh, what the
concrete feels like, what the stones
feel like, what the green of the wood
looks like, and try and concentrate
on these tiny, tiny little things.
And I found that to be a
useful tool for me anyways.
If I'm in a state where I just
can't fall asleep, that's what I
have to do to shut my brain down
and, and move into sleep state.
So I'm gonna jump into that, but I, I
wanna make sure that before I jump into
that, that proceeding it, the things
that will cause these kind of issues in
bed where someone is just laying there
and can't go to sleep or is just laying
there ruminating or is just laying
there and, you know, just fidgeting.
Before that happens, make sure that any
stimulants that you've got in your life.
As an example, if, if you drink coffee,
like I'm drinking world class coffee
right now, um, the half-life of caffeine
is five to six-ish hours, depending
on your own unique physiology, uh, how
you process caffeine as a molecule.
So if you're having caffeine later into
the day, well congratulations, you're
gonna have a disturbed sleep cycle.
Uh, for myself as an example,
my rule of thumb is I cut
coffee off from noon onwards.
I try not to drink coffee after
12 o'clock in the afternoon.
And my coffee consumption, which
I have limitless ability to, I,
I, if I need coffee, I'll just
go and roast some more coffee.
Mm-hmm.
And it's not for lack of coffee.
My issue is I love coffee.
I love the taste of coffee.
I'm less focused on the stimulant
aspect, the stimulant properties.
I'm more interested in the
beautiful notes of coffee.
And so I still.
Limit myself to just two
cups of coffee every day.
And by two cups, I mean two small
cups or one large, the collective mug.
So that's all I have for coffee in my day.
And if I was to drink coffee in the
afternoon, again, that half life of
caffeine molecule is problematic Also
from a stimulant basis, um, I'd like
to shift into, you know, it's not a
stimulant, but it is sometimes used to
help with sleep, and that is alcohol.
And alcohol is problematic, uh,
when it comes to sleep quality.
Um, as an example, uh, early on,
uh, when I was first got my earing,
I started analyzing all of the
aspects in my life as to the upside
downside in respect to the data.
And over a very short period of time,
it was easy to see that alcohol had an
extremely negative impact on sleep cycle.
And so bam, there goes alcohol.
And I don't touch alcohol at all
hardly ever anymore since then.
And so, uh, same for my wife.
Uh, she wasn't much of a drinker either.
Maybe a glass of wine from time
to time, but she was tracking her
sleep with the neural ring and bam.
Cut out alcohol completely because of the
downside or the negative impact on sleep.
Just sleep alone, nevermind
all the other factors.
That was enough to cut alcohol out of.
Uh.
Our lives.
And so stimulants or, or these substances
that we put into our bodies all have
impact and not all of them are upside.
So you have to consider these
kind of things, uh, for sure.
Further to that, since I'm talking about
stimulants, as it were, I'd mentioned
magnesium, we talked about melatonin, but
there's many other, uh, things that people
will use to help support their sleep.
And that may be altheine or, or sour
cherry juice or, um, there's a variety
of different things that I mentioned in
the book, but, um, certainly one of the
things that gets tossed around is, um,
herbal, uh, ergogenic such as ashwagandha.
And so, um, you know,
or, or reishi mushroom.
Now reishi as a whole, I'm, I'm kind
of positive on, but ashwagandha as
a whole, I'm not that positive on.
And the reason for that is because
ashwagandha is quite a unique, um, uh,
compound or is, is quite a unique impactor
because not everyone responds the same.
And so again, if, if you hear
me mention ashwagandha and you
think, oh, that, that might help
with my sleep, be cautious because
ashwagandha as the example can have.
Problematic, um, outcomes for individuals
who are on other medications or who
are, uh, have some sort of mental,
um, not instabilities, but have some
sort of mental struggles that, uh,
negatively interact with ashwagandha.
There's a whole list of things that
I mentioned just using ashwagandha as
the only example of how you've gotta be
careful with these kind of, almost, um,
almost safe feeling herbs that aren't
that safe depending on who you are.
So, as an n equals one experiment,
you have to pay attention to
how these things may impact you.
So if someone's casually
throwing out advice, like, yeah,
just take ashwagandha, bro.
That's the moment that you pause and
go and do some research or talk to a
naturopath or to a doctor, or to friends
who have experience in that area and, and,
and value those other opinions before you
start pounding ashwagandha carelessly.
I think what you're touching on here
will naturally segue into the next
one, which is stress management, the
invisible weight, because alcohol
like you, I, it doesn't have much.
Place in my life.
And I found that the day after drinking
alcohol two days after, three days
after, it was still affecting me as it
affected my outlook, my mood, my stress.
Like I'd find I'd be more irritable
than I would if I hadn't had any.
And that's even just a couple of drinks.
And I'm not gonna say no one
should ever have alcohol.
It's terrible.
I've, I've heard people say that I
do think there is something to be
said for a social aspect of going out
and, uh, perhaps letting loose with
friends that it, at certain times
that they might not otherwise be able
to experience that social aspect.
But by and large, I really don't
see positives to drinking alcohol.
And if you could find that
same social, uh, aspect without
the alcohol even better.
Um, but the idea that, um,
these different supplements like
ashwagandha, like you say, well,
it's is some natural occurring thing.
Well, so's so's hemlock.
So's nightshade, right?
There's a lot of things out there
that are naturally occurring that
really, really are bad for you.
But they're marketed.
I think ashwagandha is marketed as a, uh,
a stress management thing too, as well.
That's right.
Yeah.
What do you, what do you do to, uh,
anti, anti-anxiety to some degree, that's
a, it's a, it's a stress management,
uh, herb, or that's how it's marketed.
Right.
As, as all things are marketed,
all things are labeled.
Mm-hmm.
Alcohol is labeled, and so, you know,
I, I believe this to be true, that no
matter what's standing in front of you,
even you as an example, Trav, when,
and, and we've had lots of conversations
in the past on podcast, the moment
that I'm in this podcast today, I
kind of tear the label off of Travis.
Hmm.
Like, I don't, I don't care for
labels like this, so I'm, I'm not
reevaluating you as a person, I'm simply
observing you as the new person today
in front of me that is called Travis.
That is quite, probably not much
different than the last Travis I talked
to, but it's still a new Travis because
you've learned things since then.
You, you probably haven't
gotten any, any taller, because
that's probably not possible.
But the, the, the idea being
that when it comes to herbs like
ashwagandha, the moment that someone
raises that up in a conversation,
I'll look at the person differently.
I'll tear the label right off them
and think, Hmm, uh, what I thought
this person knew before they said
Ashwagandha is now different.
I'm viewing the person differently in
this moment because if they come across
as a, basically an ill educated layman
who's throwing out advice as if they're
a medical doctor, well, guess what?
I, I, I will categorize you in a
different way in that moment then
perhaps last time we talked, so.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, knowledge is power, as they
say, but knowledge is, is, um, also
a potent disruptor to some degree.
Um, if, if someone gets super excited
about their health journey, they're now
on their own personal crusade to become
the best version of themself, but this
is day two of that journey, and they
just walked into a naturopathic store and
picked up a bottle of ashwagandha and,
and the clerk says, Hey, good choice.
That's gonna solve your life's
problems when you walk out
the door with that bottle.
If you start regurgitating in your,
in your honeymoon phase of excitement
of now you're on your path to glory.
If you start talking about ashwagandha
as the holy grail of supplements to
anyone who will listen, you effectively
almost become like an ambassador for
the thing that you don't understand.
It's pretty typical for,
it happens in everything.
Uh, Brazilian jujitsu as an
example, as a new white belt.
If, if someone's been on the mats
for like a week or two weeks and
they, like BJJ, all of a sudden they
are the biggest proponent of BJJ.
They will tell anyone about the,
the upside of BJJ, but they don't
understand the downside yet.
Mm-hmm.
They don't understand
anything yet, really.
And so these, these labels that get put
in front of us that try to tear them off
and re-understand them for myself with
an n equals one sort of perspective.
I like that.
You know the saying, no man
enters the same river twice
because he is not the same net.
He's not the same man and
it's not the same river.
And I'm also reminded of, uh, do you
remember that old show with Patrick
McGuin called The Prisoner Magan?
McGuin
Mcgon?
Didn't he do, uh, what
other movie did he do?
Um, art movie, uh, series.
Back in the day.
That's right.
Um, the, oh my goodness,
it'll come to me anyway.
I know him from,
from, and I always remember as he's
driving in at the very beginning,
there's this sign, or as they go
into, um, wherever the colony is, I
think it's supposed to be Australia,
but wherever that colony is, that
they're all held prisoner on, they
have this sign there that says, uh,
questions are a burden unto others.
Answers are Aris under oneself.
And, uh, when you, when you
start looking at removing labels,
yeah, the more questions we ask,
we're burdening somebody else.
But the more, the more we accept
the answer is true, the less that
it opens our mind up to what other
possibilities there might be.
So I, I like that idea of
removing that label each time.
And I think that's really strong
advice for anyone looking at any
of these supplements to dig deep,
remove that label and say, why,
where, where's it coming from?
And is this gonna work
for me in my situation?
But I continue.
Wasn't he also in the
Saint way back in the day?
Wasn't he in that series as well?
The Saint, anyway, that's, he
may, I'll figure that out later.
Yeah.
The good old saint.
So the, uh, when it comes to stress
as an example, yes, of course there,
there's many biological processes.
There's the HPA axis, uh, the, the
hormonal interaction, uh, throughout our
day, throughout our sleep, throughout our
lives, uh, all of these things are well
understood from a science perspective.
But what they aren't well understood is
through the n equals one perspective.
And so you can, you can spend the rest
of today picking up a, um, a, a, a
biology book and better understanding
how humans work at a biological level.
But that doesn't mean that it directly
applies to you what it does mean.
It's, it's a loose
framework of how you work.
But now it's for you to understand
the details of the n equals
one experiment called you.
And so these general rules of thumb,
I'll call them these s science-based
rules of thumb of how the body works.
They've been established a long
time, but you have to understand
how you work with the science.
And so there's no escaping.
There's no ignoring, there's no
pretending that the HPA axis, uh,
won't have a downside if you don't
understand it and don't control for it.
And so, as an example, if you want
to, if you wanna leave your house
right now and start running and, and
not stop running for another four
and a half weeks, not eat, not sleep,
not drink, there's downside to that.
The HPA axis will get involved, your
hormonal panel will get involved.
Lots of things will get
involved at a biological level.
But how it impacts you Trav and
how it impacts me and how it
impacts any of the listeners is
unique to them, to us to, to me.
And so I understand how I work at
these biological levels because I
understand the broad science, but I also
understand the experimenting with Sean
aspect, the n equals one experiences.
And so, uh, I'm just gonna throw out
some terms right now that will help
with this subject of stress resilience.
So stress resilience is an example.
How you become resilient to
stress is you face stress and then
you learn how to manage stress.
Your body learns how to manage the
stress, your mind, your emotions.
You learn to deal with stress,
but it is not a. Free ride.
It is not a no cost aspect.
As you're learning to build your stress
resilience, there is cost to that.
And unless you're managing the
cost by applying some recovery
protocols and other things that will
get into the, you're, you're now
backsliding rather than growing.
And so, as an example, cortisol is a
problem for anyone who is deeply engaged
in stress, uh, resilience building or
is facing a lot of adversity on their
regular, in order to improve their
stress resilience, cortisol will start
slowly impacting your physiological
optimization to a degree where you may
not understand while you feel so bad.
But it is the hormones that your hormonal
panel, this hormonal soup within you that
is constantly running every millisecond of
your life to try to create homeostasis or
try to create a balance within your life.
Every, every aspect, every little
variable, every little impactor
that that hits you from all the 360
degree angles, they all have cost.
If you are out there driving hard
in whatever you're doing, whether
it's your work life or your personal
life or your hobby life, if you're
working really, really hard, pushing
the pace, there's a cost to that.
And so that cost will come in the sense
of your HPA axis, or to offset that
cost, you could improve your sleep.
So now here's the, here, here's
where we put things together.
So if your stressors in life are not
well managed or you can't manage them
and your sleep is terrible, now just
those two things alone have almost a
inflationary or have a double dip bad
sort of impact that both though both
things are were controllable by you,
you haven't controlled for them, and
now it's not just like twice as bad.
What it is is a bunch of things bad
because those two, stress and poor
sleep exacerbate themselves to a
degree where it should start to be
notable, but it doesn't become notable.
If you're not forming a
pattern, you just act.
Simply accept that every day
you wake up feeling worn out.
No energy, no spark in life.
You feel like drudgery day after
day life shouldn't feel that way.
And there's reasons why it shouldn't feel
that way, and they are all controllable.
Do you, do you meditate?
Do you have a process for, um, sort
of emotional, mental regulation
for, for stress management?
For sure.
Uh, so I maybe now's a good time to
separate the two worlds that I, uh,
I like to think of that I operate in.
There's the external world and
there's the internal world.
And I truly believe that our internal
worlds, my internal world that I
have is not just the foundation of
how to live a good life, but it is
literally my life, the internal world.
If I am a peace, if I'm stable, if
I'm functioning well internally, then
the external world is quite easy.
But if my internal world is not settled,
if I am not applying all of my inner work,
then my external world doesn't fall apart.
But it shows signs of
cracks, of fractures, of not
going as well as it should.
And so my inner world,
when it's good to go.
Assures me that the external
world is gonna be good to go.
And so how do I maintain a,
a, a, a good inner world?
Mm-hmm.
Well, first of all, I'm, I'm
literally doing it right now.
I am very present in this moment.
I, I don't know what I said a
second ago, and I don't know what,
I'll say a second from now because
I'm not concerned about that.
I am comfortable with podcasting enough
now after hundreds of them, that I just
simply slip into this moment that we're
sharing together, this conscious sharing
moment that I don't have to sweat the
details of what's gonna happen next.
'cause I'm so centered and grounded
right now, and I know that sounds like
maybe boastful or whatever, but I'm so
centered and grounded right now that I
feel very at peace inside, which reflects
externally to the world as I'm doing okay.
And it's all very manageable.
And I quite like my external world.
That's how I feel about things
when my inner world is good.
And so how do I get my inner world?
That good?
Well, I couldn't, when I first started
podcasting, and as you know, you,
you saw it yourself when, when people
started asking me to begin podcasting.
Oh my goodness.
I was so reluctant.
Mm-hmm.
And of course you were in my kitchen when,
uh, when you came out to Roslyn, and that
was one of the first sort of, I would
say, big podcasting moments that I had.
And I was sweating bullets.
I had no idea what I
was getting myself into.
And maybe, maybe externally it looked
okay, but internally I was in turmoil.
And, uh, I, I didn't know
how podcasting worked.
I didn't know what I was supposed
to even be doing in the moment.
I didn't know what I
was supposed to deliver.
There was a lot of, not just unknowns,
but there was a lot of personal doubts.
Like I, I, you know, how bad my
imposter syndrome is, but like, it was
warp factor three bad in that moment.
And so I just wasn't settled.
I wasn't grounded, I wasn't centered.
Hmm.
And so, though, I though, before
podcasting, I understood mindfulness.
And before podcasting,
I understood meditation.
And before podcasting, I understood
a lot of things academically, and I
was applying a lot of them in my life.
But podcasting as a. Um, we'll call
it a crucible, for lack of a better
term, has obligated me to refine
things several hundred podcasts later,
so that this, this moment that we're
in together right now just feels
like a normal extension of my life.
That is a normalization or a pattern
structure that I've created for me
to be able to offload all of the,
um, mechanics of things, offload all
of the details of things, and simply
trust myself to exist in this moment
peacefully and calmly, and let it unfold.
That's mindfulness to me now, and the
mindfulness that I understand today
is different than the mindfulness I
understood two years ago, as an example.
So yes, mindfulness is a huge
part of my life right now.
I said this to someone just the other
day, the I, I'm seeking a existence in
life where I only exist now, not, not
10 minutes ago, not 10 minutes from now.
Those things are inconsequential to me.
That's what I'm trying to seek is way
less about if this than that, and more
about the right now, of the moment,
man, it makes things way easier for me.
But that took a long, long,
long, long time, and I had
to baby step my way into it.
Like grabbing 10 seconds of mindfulness
here and 15 seconds of mindfulness
there over a period of years until now.
Uh, I don't always manage to do it,
be present all the time, but when
I'm in my flow state, like now,
this flow state is not only good for
me, but it is actually appealing.
Like it's, it's, it's
something that I really love.
I love the flow state.
Mm-hmm.
I, I love it on my mountain bike.
I love it on the bj j mats, but I love
it in these moments where I can simply
almost drop out of my ego existence
as, as weird as that may sound to some
listeners, and simply be with you in
this moment without sweating the details.
So mindfulness is very important to me.
Meditation is also important.
I do it every day.
Typically first thing in the morning,
uh, I'll get out of bed, drink my
water, stare at the sun, sit down in
my chair, take a moment and drop into
some meditation from, from an external
perspective, from the outside world.
Uh, an outside observer looking at me.
They might just see me chillaxing
in a chair and maybe doing whatever.
But what I am engaged in in that moment
is a deep practice called meditation.
Meditation is what I would define as the
functional structure or the discipline
of a framework, discipline of applying a
process to get closer to being mindful or
being present and grounded in the moment.
So again, meditation is not
necessarily mindfulness.
Meditation is the practice to
move you more towards mindfulness.
That's a loose framing of the subject.
So, to your point or your question,
a hundred percent meditation is
a part of my life, and it doesn't
require like statues and candles
and, and someone dinging bells.
It doesn't require any of that.
I can meditate.
I can go for a ride, uh, later today,
flow across the planet in a mindful
state, get off my bike, sit on a tree,
log and drop into some meditation out in
nature, or standing on a log on one leg.
I. Meditate.
The meditation is the formal structure
to get me back into the moment of being
mindfully present as I stand on the log.
And so those two things
play together well.
But ultimately I believe that
the, the overarching theme should
be seeking to be more mindful.
I hope that answers your question.
It does.
And one of the big takeaways that I see
in that, that I like how you, uh, touched
on how the internal affects the external.
So you have stress that's happening.
Is that an external stress
is at an internal stress?
Well, prob probably.
It might be both, but probably the
biggest portion of it's gonna be
an internal mindset or perspective.
And some people are really smart and they
can learn from other people's mistakes
or they can listen to a podcast like this
and they can just leapfrog ahead years
in their journey of becoming mindful
and being present and shifting their
perspective on what might be ailing
them or stressing them in the moment.
Other people like myself, not so much,
they have to learn through the school
of hard knocks, and they actually have
to go in and, um, experience things
over and over until you start figuring
a better way, a better way through it.
But the, um, and I've always
wondered, you know, people
say you manifest your destiny.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I get it right.
I've heard this a lot and
what a man thinks he will do.
Okay, sure.
Uh, but there is some sort
of secret sauce to that.
There is a reality to that, to what
you think and what's going on in
your head will actually manifest
itself physically around you.
And whether that's because you thought
of something you vibed, you got
on a frequency and things unfolded
in that fashion, or whether it's
because our brains are really good
at kind of piecing things together.
If afterwards you look at it and
you say, oh, it's because I vibed
that this ended up happening.
I think the end result of how you
feel and how your external world feels
around you, it's gonna be the same.
So doesn't matter how you want to
ascribe to that thought process.
Really addressing mindfulness,
uh, shifting that perspective.
Like, okay, I'm doing something
hard right now, but what's hard for
me today isn't gonna be the same
of what was hard for me yesterday.
What's hard for me
yesterday is no longer hard.
That's easy.
It's like that Homer Simpson quote
when Bart got caught out naked
and everyone's laughing at him.
He's like, this is the
worst day of my life.
He's like, Uhuh, it's the
worst day of your life so far.
Right?
Um, I, I like how you separate that.
'cause I, I think, uh, having
a perspective shift will really
help people When it comes down
to the stress management, what
is it that's stressing me?
What control can I have or is it that
I have no control and I shouldn't
be stressing about this thing,
the universal unfold as it should.
So,
you know, let me throw out an example.
Uh, we were talking about sleep
earlier and the rumination of, or
maybe someone's laying in bed, they
wanna go to sleep, they can't go to
sleep 'cause they're thinking so much
about going to sleep, whatever the case
is, half an hour later they're still
laying there staring at the ceiling.
Or if they've got an eye mask on, they've,
they're just laying there thinking about
the same thoughts over and over again.
I wish I could go to sleep,
uh, a thousand times.
And so, pattern interrupt the what,
whatever your routine is being,
whatever your pattern has been up
till now, if it isn't working for
you, gotta do it a different way.
And so, as you said, the idea
being what you ascribe to or what
you, what you believe to be right.
How the world works, how your
life works, how this all works.
If you believe the, that's how it's
works, but it isn't working for you, then
find a different way to make it work.
Mm-hmm.
And I would ask anyone right now to
just for the moment, put aside your
disbelief about what I'm gonna say.
I'm not suggesting that this is right or
wrong, I'm just saying put aside your,
your disbeliefs and just hear me out
and then maybe you can use it later.
Tonight or in your own life years from
now, when you lay down in bed, there
is one way to think about things.
And, and, and it's this, the, if, if we
all exist in a field of consciousness
that is in real time, so you can't
control the past or the future.
We simply all exist.
Now, as you climb into bed, you lay down
you, you can't shape the future and you
can't shape the past that's gone by.
You only have the moment
as you lay there in bed.
And if you kind of think of it
abstractly as you, you have personal
agency, but you have no control of
this moment, this moment that we're in,
it is simply the universe unfolding.
And if you accept that the
universe is unfolding and you
can't control the way the universe
unfolds, it's just gonna unfold.
It takes sort of the pressure off you
of thinking that you can control this
game all around you, which you can't.
You are simply a participant in a game
that you have certain personal agency in,
but you can't make the impossible happen.
What you can do is you can
give up to what's happening.
Mm-hmm.
You just simply have to accept that things
are going to unfold the way they unfold.
So with that in place, as you lay there
in bed, you know that you can't solve.
Tomorrow's problems as you lay there in
bed that night, you've just gotta simply
accept that you need some sleep so that
you can deal with the day tomorrow.
You can't deal with it now.
You'll be dealing with it tomorrow.
So give up tomorrow and simply be in
the moment that night and chillax,
because you can't control tomorrow.
Just let it unfold.
Let your sleep cycle initiate.
Don't keep asking yourself the same
questions or working on the same
problems that won't be solved that night.
They'll be solved tomorrow.
Don't worry about all the past
mistakes that you made throughout the
day or the day before they are gone.
Just simply accept that
you're existing right now.
The universe is unfolding.
You're a witness to
the universe unfolding.
And just be okay with that.
Now you find a way to just drop into
sleep and do better the following day.
That's your job.
Get some sleep, do better tomorrow.
I like that.
I, uh, had a, uh, so when I got married,
people are writing in the registry a bunch
of well wishes and, uh, different ideas.
And one person, a number of people, put
the tried and true, never go to bed angry.
And one person wrote in.
Don't be afraid to go to bed angry.
Sometimes things look
better in the light of day.
And sort of like with your, uh,
what problems are we gonna solve
right now in the dead of the night?
Maybe it's okay to, maybe we'll
just go to sleep right now.
Don't try and control this one.
It might look better tomorrow.
And you know, by the way, I'm going to,
I'm gonna throw a curve ball at you.
Just like you throw the curve ball
on, uh, the collective podcast from
time to time, you, you're a person
who likes to quote Viktor Frankl.
Yes.
And so, um, you know,
that's all about context.
So as you climb into bed with your tiny
little problem of your car has some
sort, has a flat tire that needs to be
changed tomorrow, you know, now you don't
get any sleep because you know you've
gotta change the flat tire tomorrow in
context of how big of life's problems
can be in context of Viktor Frankl's
problems in a concentration camp, like
our problems to some degree are minor.
When we contextualize them against.
Really, truly big problems.
And so these things as we climb into
bed can be exacerbated into, you
know, the car won't start, is now
the new Mount Everest of the night.
And you're trying to climb Mount
Everest in your mind when really
all it is is just a flat tire.
Mm-hmm.
And so how we build things up in our
lives, or more correctly, how we crush
them down into non-important factors,
that's kind of a secret sauce, as it were.
Well, what about, uh, nutrition?
We, uh, touched a little bit about
on it with, uh, not eating before
sleep, but, uh, nutrition for your
daily life, for longevity for, um,
uh, operating at your, your optimal.
How do you approach that?
Well, I'll give it in the simple terms.
You know, when we're talking about
macros, really what we're talking
about is protein, fats, and carbs.
And so first point of
importance is protein.
So I always try to hit my daily
protein intake, fats and carbs.
I can screw those up, but
I cannot screw up protein.
Mm-hmm.
Now, of course, I don't screw up
fats and carbs because I've been
at this game a long time and I
understand how important they are.
But first, in order of priority,
much like sleep within our
lives is super high priority.
Protein is super high priority.
Now, I'll talk about two things.
The amount of protein and
the timing of protein.
So the amount, generally speaking,
I try to get two grams to 2.5 grams
of protein per lean body mass.
So as an example, I weigh, um, I'll
do it in pounds for anyone in pounds.
So I weigh 170 pounds.
Right now, my lean body mass is
about 160 pounds, so I'm stripping
out any additional fat, as it were.
And the reason I say lean body mass,
it's important because if I had an extra
200 pounds of fat on me, that sort of
isn't, isn't really a great equation
to run your protein needs off of.
So lean body mass, now I've
got 160 grams of protein.
I need one gram of protein
per pound of lean body mass.
If it's in kilos, then it's two
to 2.5 grams per lean body mass.
Now that's an amount of grams
of protein I need each day.
That can shift depending on how
much output I have in a day.
So my bare minimum.
Is that if I go out and I do a really
destructive workout that really tears
up my muscles or really creates a
lot of hurt locker on me, then I'm
gonna increase my protein for that
day for a couple of days, by the way.
But generally speaking, my baseline
as suggested, I always hit it.
Now, timing with protein, I believe
you need to get about 30 grams
of protein per meal, per feeding.
And so let's say you only eat
three meals a day, now you're
at about 90 grams of protein.
Where does all that
other protein come from?
As an example, Sean needs about 160
grams of protein, 150 grams depending,
so I'm short on protein, so I'll have
to supplement throughout the day, either
through protein powder or supplement
through snacking that is protein driven.
And so there's many ways to do that.
I'm not gonna describe all the various
foods or the combinations of beans
and rice and all of that good stuff
that's for you to, uh, take into
consideration based on how you've.
Normally eat and what your budget is,
but I've found invariably that I have
to take on some form of protein powder.
Now, the protein part powder that I would
take on, I'm not gonna mention any brands,
but there's many ways to slice that down.
It could be whey protein isolate, it could
be whey concentrate, it could be caffeine,
it could be vegan protein powder.
There's many forms of it, and it's
quite a science to being specific
about which one works best when, but
forget about all of that for right now.
Just understand that nearly
every single person I talk to
doesn't get enough protein.
And I mean like line a hundred people
up against a wall and maybe only one of
them is getting enough protein that day.
And if you're running a
protein deficient life.
It is negatively impacting
your entire lifestyle.
And so protein is critical.
Next fats, there's many
forms of healthy fats.
In the book that I'm gonna send
you, it talks about how you can get
those from food sources such as like
avocados or olive oil or coconut
oil, or these various types of
things, nuts, seeds, and et cetera.
But, uh, you can also supplement
that with things like Omega-3
fish oil or et cetera, et cetera.
So you can get it from natural sources
or you can get it from supplementation.
Either way.
Fats are important, not just for
how your body works physiologically,
but for your freaking brain.
Uh, and again, that's
discussed in the book.
And then finally, the,
the last piece is carbs.
Carbs are important of course, as a, as an
athlete, as as a ultra endurance athlete.
Or someone who, who rides long
period of time or anyone who
has any sort of long term.
You know, when you go out hunting
Trav, uh, if you're out multi hours,
well that is a car preferential.
Uh, activity.
And so there's a number of reasons,
biologically or physiologically,
why carbs are important in
these kind of, uh, endeavors.
But again, that'll be discussed
in, in the little handout
that I'm gonna shoot your way.
Carbs are also important, um, to take
into account your hormonal profile.
So, as an example, when I was
coaching athletes, uh, around
the world for my male athletes, I
would have them do carb refeeds at
least once a week and buy refeed.
I mean, like really push their carb intake
that day in order to offset some of the,
excuse me, hormonal damage that may have
occurred through all of the stressors.
But for my female athletes, I would ask
them to do two refeeds per week simply
because of the specifics of the female
hormonal pattern, how important it is,
or how negatively impactful it can be.
If a female athlete who's pushing
really hard isn't getting enough carbs,
and so protein is, is non-negotiable.
You gotta, you gotta
hit your bare minimums.
Fats are something that you inject
throughout your day, and then carbs is
something that you use, like a lever or
a modulator all the way up to a 10, all
the way back to a three on a scale of
10, depending on how your day has gone,
what you are gonna do later that day.
And.
How to set yourself up
for the following day.
That may be like a big
hunt or a big effort.
And so carbs are modulated depending on
the day's needs and the days upcoming.
I hope that makes
sense.
It does make sense.
So, uh, I've, I've heard people talk
about cutting carbs out altogether because
they're trying to lose weight or some
ketogenic diet, and I've also heard people
say that protein shakes and these mixes
aren't really the best way to be able to
get protein into the body, like maybe I
think amino acids, I, from my layman's
perspective, and I have done very little,
uh, research on there, but do amino
acids somehow convert into a protein?
I, I've heard chatter about both of these.
Well, so, you know, I'll, I'll refer back
to generally what I said at the start, and
that is I'm an n equals one experimenter.
And so, um, you know, when I
started getting into ultra endurance
racing, like that was back in
2007, my wife will attest to this.
She came in one day and she said the
only thing I was missing was a white lab
coat because I had a variety of different
powders all over the kitchen counter.
And I was like on a scale, mixing
them into little capsules, my
own little specific boutique, uh,
supplementations that I was creating.
And based on my own curious mind
and my, um, my desire to better
understand context on my n equals one.
And so what I had done is I had purchased
a bunch of isolated amino acids where
I was, you know, of course your branch
chain amino acids are critical, but
then some of the other essential,
uh, aminos, I was taking amino acids,
isolating them, and combining two
or three aminos into a cap, and then
playing around with those to see if it
would improve my vision, imp improve my
hearing, improve my all kinds of things.
And so I played around with
supplementation and with food for so
long, the, I have dialed in Sean, but
for anyone who's listening to this right
now, you could do the exact same thing.
But what it does require is some curiosity
and it requires some intentionality as to.
Your n equals one experimentation.
These things were, you're dabbling
with this and dabbling with that
and not really paying attention to
its impact or its long-term sort
of pattern that's worthless to me.
These are little band-aids that you're
spending money on and never learn anything
from the moment that you take on anything.
Like, if you start playing around with,
uh, amino acids, they're expensive and
they should be treated like, um, oh, it's
time to start paying attention now and
developing the pattern on this stuff.
Hmm.
Stepping back from the specifics of that,
I'd say that in my opinion, this is just a
general opinion for any general listener.
Unless they have really specific needs
for certain amino acids, I'd stay
away from that particular trajectory.
You're better served to buy a high
quality, uh, whey protein isolate,
preferably something like a New Zealand
whey protein isolate because the New
Zealand, uh, cattle or milk is, doesn't
really have a lot of growth hormone
and it's, it's really clean grass.
It's really yada, yada yada.
So get yourself a high quality whey
protein isolate that has a really
good amino acid profile on any jug
of amino acid that you buy, or,
sorry, uh, protein that you buy.
You'll see an amino acid
profile on the label now.
Interesting side note, you can buy
really good, uh, protein, and then
that protein manufacturer can do
what is called amino acid spiking.
So they will insert aminos into the
jug in order to bump up the profile.
So it looks really appealing
to the, um, the purchaser.
And so like anything, when you're out
there at a, if you're buying a car, you
should never just walk onto a car lot and
say, I'll take the first car that I see.
What you should do is be in a, in whatever
store, looking at the supplementation
with your smartphone and just checking
out is this generally suited to my needs?
And how I've done it in the past is, um,
something that is certified for sports.
So as an a competitive athlete, I
never wanted any product in my body
that was spiked or was adulterated
with some trace elements of
steroids or whatever the case is.
I wanted super clean food that
was reliably certified so that
it wasn't negative to my body.
It didn't make me feel
like I was cheating.
Mm-hmm.
So there are ways that you can do that.
There are brands, there are standards here
in Canada and North America around the
world that meet a competitive athletes.
Needs to stay clean.
And if you are buying that kind of
a product, then generally speaking,
it's a high quality product.
It's where you start getting into
relabeled brands that may be coming
from other countries that aren't
quite as tight on, uh, standards that
you're ingesting things that quite
frankly you don't know anything about.
It's, uh, it's a good point you're
bringing on about, um, competitive
athletes needing to stay clean.
And there's a lot of,
uh, negative chatter.
In the past I've seen about, um,
testosterone replacement therapy
or testosterone supplementation.
Years ago I worked in a, uh, in a
gym and you could, you could see the
people who were abusing the, uh, the
steroids and the te testosterone.
But recently there's been a lot
of, um, I've, I've noticed a shift
in the way that's approached.
And even in your response in that
Instagram post you mentioned as you're
getting older, you had blood work
done and there's some TRT at a very
mild dose that you're looking at.
That's interesting to me, just from the
mindset shift of so much negativity,
always growing up, testosterone's bad.
You never want it to, this new way of
thinking of, well, hold on a second May.
Maybe it's not as bad as we're saying, and
maybe there's a way to be able to use it
in an effective format so people can live.
A, well, a well-rounded, fulfilling life.
So this is a great subject that we
should probably just take a few minutes
to dive into a little bit based on my
own personal experience, of course,
all of my research, uh, over the years
and having dealt with athletes who are
sensitive to these kind of subjects.
So my stance on, um, steroids or any
artificial or an endogenous aid or
anything that is, um, I'll, I'll call
it not natural, for lack of a better
term, um, I was never a fan of it.
Um, as a competitor, I always wanted
to be standing on a start line, looking
to my left and right, and knowing
that everyone's competing cleanly or
more correctly, I will say competing
on a level playing field, Hmm.
That's really important to me.
Fairness is a central tenant of my life.
Things have to be fair in order to
evaluate myself against someone else.
And so if I step up on a start line
and I'm clean and I'm stepping next
to someone who isn't clean, as long as
I feel like I'm, I'm doing it right.
Mm, it's now on them that they have to
deal with their own nonsense rather than
me have to worry about their nonsense.
So, as a competitive athlete, like
competing at world championship levels.
I always wanted to make sure
that I didn't feel like I was
cheating, for lack of a better term.
Mm-hmm.
However, I'm not competing anymore
in anything, uh, at a high level.
And so I switched to TRT
when I was 59 and a half.
Now, interestingly enough,
that number is important.
59 and a half, because right about the
time I was 56, 57, my family doctor
was telling me, Sean, you're your, your
testosterone levels are concerningly low.
And I just looked at her and I
said, Andrea, I wanna make it to 60.
I'd set this arbitrary number
in my head where I thought,
I'm just gonna make it to 60.
I'm gonna stay clean till I'm 60.
I just wanna earn it myself.
Mm-hmm.
I had this number that I'd put
in my head many, many years ago,
and at 59 and a half, my family
doctor finally said, that's it.
You know, you gotta get on it.
And I said, okay.
And so the moment that I did, I just
shook my silly head and thought, man,
I should have done this ages ago.
Not because all of a sudden I realized
that, uh, I turned into like Captain
America or anything like that.
What I was doing was gaining access
to the amount of testosterone that I
need for my lifestyle that supports my
needs, the way I like to live my life.
And so my levels were super low.
I. The moment that I jumped on TRTI am
now on, I don't mind giving my values for
anyone who's listening right now as sort
of context, I self-inject subcutaneously
twice a week and uh, I try to do one on
Tuesday and I try to do one on Saturday.
And so I self-inject 0.35 milliliters
of testosterone recipient eight, so
0.35 ml, so a total of 0.7 ml per week,
which if anyone knows anything about
anything, that's a really low dose.
Mm-hmm.
And so I wanted to use the various
very lowest dose I could in order to
feel the way I wanna feel and perform
the way I wanna perform and recover
the way I need to recover and sleep
the way I wanna sleep, and have the
libido that I want to have, have
the energy that I feel is important.
Certainly as a man, testosterone
is effectively fuel energy.
Mm. And so I wanted to have
all of the things that I wanted
that I had kind of forgotten.
That is normal.
Um, I wanted all of that
back, but I didn't want.
An extra milliliter of testosterone
that would make me feel like now
I'm taking advantage of the system.
Mm-hmm.
Now I'm into an area where I'm
focused on taking more testosterone
to have bigger muscles or et cetera.
Mm-hmm.
Like, I'm not interested in
the aesthetics of my body.
What I am interested in is
the performance of my body.
And it just so happens that my lifestyle,
uh, as, as some, some dudes who track
me on ig, friends of mine, people who
pay attention, they, they've said, dude,
you're looking like kind of jacked.
You've got some muscles.
You're doing that whole thing that's
got nothing to do with testosterone.
That's got everything to
do with every single day.
I'm freaking hammering on things.
And so mm-hmm.
What I do in this, in the shadows, in the
background that is out of sight of the
internet, is fricking pushing the pace.
Like I am pushing my body hard and
the resulting outcome is I've got
muscles, but it's not because I'm
in front of the mirror flexing.
I'm not, I'm not lifting or
I'm not functionally training
to be aesthetically pleasing.
My life is all about performance
rather than aesthetics.
And so the muscles that show up
are just a result of my lifestyle.
Um, not a result of all
the bicep curls that I do.
So when you started the, the TRT, how
long did it take to start noticing
positive results, uh, that week?
What really and what, what were the
positives and are there cons to it?
There
are, so the positives for me
were, bam, sleep was improved.
Uh, attitude.
My sense of, um, like my positive
drive, uh, positive outlook on life
was improved My sense of, um, being
a man, as crazy as that sounds Hmm.
Was improved.
My libido increased.
My wife is thankful for that.
And so just saying, I mean, it's
a, it would be wrong if I didn't
mention it because I mean, it
is thing for sure, for sure.
Yeah.
And so, um, within the first week, right
away I was like, oh, I had forgotten.
That's what Testone feels like.
'cause I had been so
medically, chronically low.
I. For, for so long that I'd forgotten
what like that little feels like.
Mm. Now when I do this, that could be
misconstrued as all of a sudden because
I'm taking a little bit of testosterone.
Now all of a sudden, I'm all agro.
I'm all voiding, raging out.
That is so not the case.
'cause again, the amount
that I'm taking is quite low.
It gives me enough drive that
my, my testosterone supports my
lifestyle that I've had all my life.
That sort of sense of aggressive
purpose, that drive that will to win,
that will to create an outcome that,
as you mentioned, Trav, that you know,
manifestation of the life that you
want while testosterone is actually a
manifestor of the life in front of you.
If I see something now that I wanna make
happen to some degree, and I mean a small
degree, like all things, the sleep, the
food, the this, the that, and the, the
TRT, all of these things are synergistic.
It's not just one thing
makes it all happen.
It is all things make it happen.
And TRT is just that extra little
nudge for me to target, lock
something and think, oh, that's done.
That's already done.
And that could be something
in the future weeks from now.
But I, I know that when I
target lock it, it's done.
So that had kind of started to
slip a little bit as I entered
into my fifties, late fifties.
And it's not that I wasn't producing
outcomes, it's that I didn't have
that same target lock on things.
And so I'll even go so far as to say
that to some degree TRT reduced some
brain fog that I had going a little
bit of, um, lack of clarity as it were.
So it did many things
within that first week.
Now looking back at it, I guess I've
been on almost like two years now.
Over that period of time, I have
better refined my understanding of it.
I, like I said, I've dialed in my
dosing so that it's the absolute
minimum that I, I want to use.
Uh, I haven't explored anything more.
I, I never entered into TRT as
an experi experiment to see how
much can I take per week versus
how little can I take per week.
I always started with low and slow
and as I low and slowed my way up,
I settled in at 0.7 ml per week.
And that works for me.
It works.
Hmm.
Physiologically, but perhaps
more importantly, Trav.
It works psychologically because
I, I know that like my performance
is to some degree natural.
My T levels are just out of the low
range now, and I feel like that's
what I deserve, and then my outcomes
are a result of my performances.
Why do you, why do you think they're low?
Just an age thing.
Declined genetic.
You put used it all up
when you were younger.
I used it all in my first career.
Uh, I think that, uh, there's
many things that, uh, impacted
my testosterone level for sure.
Age is a thing.
I mean, as, certainly as men,
uh, as we get older, these
things start, uh, dissipating.
But without a doubt, I've
been super hard on my body.
I've been super hard on my life.
Um, and even in my casual time
in my sports or in my hobbies,
not career wise, but just simply
sports or hobbies, like I go hard.
I mean, I did 30, 24 hour solo mountain
bike races at a world championship level
to, you know, I just, I had a hard hobby.
And that hard hobby is like, there's,
there's collateral damage, there's
cellular damage, there is long
lasting damage to all of these things.
I'm not just talking about free
radicals, I'm talking about like.
Just ironic injuries that you pick up
along the way that over a period of time
start impacting your hormonal profile.
And so there's many things in my life
that have, uh, diminished testosterone,
not least of which was sleep, of
which I was getting terrible sleep.
So all of these things add up over time.
And as a man in my fifties, I just found
myself at a point where I couldn't deny
the blood panels that I was getting
from my doctor, and I couldn't deny her
medical advice, and I couldn't deny the
research that supported the decision
that I chose to engage in with TRT.
So on that note, for TRT, it's super
important, I think, not just as an
athlete but as a human, that at least
once a year you're doing a full blood
panel and preferably a, a full blood
panel with a hormonal panel attached to
it so you can better understand your free
testosterone, your total testosterone,
your estrogen, your blah, blah, blah.
All of the things that are
important for you as a human
being to be optimally set up.
You again, like the aura ring.
If you don't have an aura ring, now
you're guessing as to what your sleep.
Quality and quantity was same
with when you wake up in the
morning and you're tired.
If someone says, if you take a blood panel
and hormonal panel, you'll have metrics.
Why wouldn't you do that?
That's creating a baseline
understanding of who you are today
versus who you were 37 years ago.
And so these things need to be tested
and, and, and patronized throughout life.
So w with the TRT, once you're on
it, you gotta stay on it because
your body stops producing its own
testosterone, from my understanding.
Similar.
So when I was late teens, early twenties,
I started getting a receding hairline
and I'm like, oh no, this is terrible.
I would, I thought it was supposed
to happen when I get really old.
And, and so I, I go to the doctor,
I'm like, what can I do about this?
I'm like, well, we could put you on this.
I forget what it was.
There's some expensive medication
and, but they, you can also buy
this other medication, which is
basically the same thing, but
it's marketed for something else.
You can cut 'em up into fours.
And I said, okay.
Um, but how long do I have to take it for?
Well, for the rest of your life.
Okay, well what happens
if I stop taking it?
Oh, well all the hair that you would've
lost up to that point will just fall out.
I'm like, I'm not taking this
stuff for me, it didn't make sense.
I'm gonna lose my hair.
I gotta suck it up and figure it out
now, uh, while I was young and, um,
because I just knew I'm gonna find
myself in my later years in a situation
where I'm not gonna have this stuff
and I'd have to deal with it then.
Is it similar with testosterone?
So you gotta keep taking it.
Uh, and if you stop taking it, is there
gonna be like a massive, um, issue?
So, um, I, my understanding is, and this
is based on research, based on Tonga,
lots of people, my my belief is that once
you're on it, that's it, you're on it.
Hmm.
Uh, certainly at my age anyway, over a
period of time, the testosterone that
I'm injecting, um, basically derails,
for lack of a better term, derails the
natural production within your body.
And, uh, effectively you're now reliant
on injecting testosterone, uh, every
week, which I accepted when I started
the process, I, I thought about it and
I was like, okay, well, you know, I
guess I'm gonna be self-injecting for
the rest of my life until, you know,
someone invents the nano robots that,
you know, get injected into my body,
and then they take care of everything.
Mm-hmm.
But until then, I'm
gonna be self-injecting.
Now it's a bummer.
Like, I don't like
sticking needles in myself.
It's, it's no bueno.
But I'll say this, the, the, the
option is either do it or don't.
And if I don't, then my
quality of life is diminished.
And so I want an optimal life,
particularly for anyone who's listening
right now, once you're in your sixties.
You can see the horizon when
you're in your thirties.
Yeah.
Don't see the horizon.
You don't see the, uh, light at
the end of the tunnel, as it were.
But in your sixties, you do, you,
you've had enough time to look
backwards and, and gain wisdom.
The clarity of wisdom, but you also
realize that you're now in a phase
of life where the end is approaching.
And so what, how, how much of a quality
of life do you want in that last phase?
Well, I want maximum quality.
I want to be always optimal.
I wanna be doing spinning back
kicks on a tree log after hammering
on my bike for four hours.
That's what I want to do.
'cause that pleases Sean.
And that is kind of critical to
this conversation over decades.
I've put myself in a position where
I'm used to performing and I'm not
talking about performing little things.
I'm talking about performing
big things for me.
And so these big things don't just,
they don't just appear magically.
They are things that I've
spent decades building up to.
Now that I'm in the position that I
am where I have certain expectations
of myself, but more importantly, I
love the life that I've created and
I love doing the things that I do.
If, if someone says to me, all
that stuff you love doing, I. We're
gonna take that all away from you
just because you're freaking old.
Or you can take two shots per week.
Where's the shots?
I'll take it.
Yeah.
Because I'm too deep into loving
life to not do something like that.
I mean, you're almost giving up the
opportunity to live, not just the
life you love, but maybe even deeper
love for the life that you don't even
understand yet until you take some TRT.
So all that to say that there
is upside downside to TRT.
It should be something discussed
with your medical doctor.
It should be something that
you do some self-research on.
Talk to some friends, and if you're
listening to me right now, understand
that it, it can be a significant
game changer if you fall within the
category of it's a good idea for you.
So
give
it some thought.
What about peptides?
I've heard people talk about them.
Are they?
Um mm-hmm.
I, I think in Canada, they're kind of
a gray sort of thing in the states.
They're, um, I, I think they're,
uh, regulated and accepted.
Um, I, it's just come on my radar
when I started researching all
of this stuff for the podcast.
Hmm.
So, um, you know, about seven-ish
years ago, I, I, I banged myself
up pretty good on the BJJ mats.
Uh, it was a, almost a chronic injury.
Uh, some muscle issues and
whatever, some tearing and, um, and
I wasn't sure how to address it.
And so I started looking at
peptides, which were kind of
a emerging trend at the time.
Uh, I learned about something called BPC
1 57, and, uh, for anyone who is new to
peptides, BPC 1 57 is fairly well known.
There's a number of different peptides
out there that can, um, create a, a number
of different responses within the body.
So I'm not gonna say I did self-inject
BPC 1 57 for a period of a couple of
months, because that may or may not
be appropriate, but I do understand
BPC 1 57 for a couple of months.
And what I will say is I found
that it didn't provide the, um,
outcomes that I was hoping for.
Um, and in context of something like, you
know, TRT as the example, I found TRT to
be a way more efficacious or, or a much
more, um, impactful modality or, or, uh.
Inject into my life.
So all of this kind of boils down
into the last one I have here,
which is routines and mindset, the
glue that holds it all together.
Um, can you talk a little bit
about your routine and the mindset
that you have that's been employed
throughout your life for the
special forces for elite performing
athlete to where you are right now?
Sure.
I, I think that it's important for me
to, first of all establish the, my life
Before, when, when I was in high school,
I was a skinny, underperforming kid.
I weighed 135 pounds.
Uh, before I joined the military,
I didn't think I amounted much.
And, uh, throughout my military career,
I, I learned that that was completely
untrue, that I could amount to anything
that I wanted to amount to, because the
process that the military taught me, or
what I learned in my military career was
it's for me to use the tools that I've
got, this body, this mind, this spirit.
It's for me to use it in
ways that produce outcomes.
And so the military
taught me how to do that.
And, and then once I left the military
tree, not as a skinny underperforming
kid anymore, I had certain expectations
of myself, we'll call them tier one
expectations, for lack of a better term.
I was introduced to the awareness.
That I am capable of nearly anything.
Now, that sounds a, like a bold
claim, and it sounds braggadocious,
and I would never have believed
it when I was in my twenties.
But as I moved into my thirties, I
started adopting that tier one mindset.
I came to the realization that if I
want it to happen, it's freaking done.
It's just whether it's
important enough to me.
If my why is strong enough, if,
if for the following reasons, dot,
dot, dot, I have to save the planet,
consider me saving the planet.
Hmm.
And so, um, I was taught how to do it.
I came to believe in how
I'm capable of doing it.
And then from that point on, it was
simply a matter of me learning how to
do it through supporting structures,
through better sleep, through better
nutrition, through better et cetera,
things that we've talked about.
And so, to some degree, um, all of
this stuff doesn't amount to anything.
NN none of the stuff that we've talked
about amounts to anything unless
you start believing in yourself.
Unless you create a why within
yourself, a reason for existence, a
reason for listening to this podcast.
If you're at this point in the podcast
where you're starting to think about
some of the things that we've been
saying, all of it is easily engageable.
Once you accept the idea that you're on
this planet for a purpose, you ain't just
here to exist, you're here for a reason.
And that reason is for you
to start understanding.
And also, it's important that
that understanding isn't fixed.
So what you think you're here for
listening to this podcast right now
is right now, but a year from now, you
can be a completely different person.
You can apply some of these things
that we've been talking about, and
you can be, again, comparative to now.
You could be twice the person that
you are and that twice the person
that you are will have new goals, new
ideas, new reasons for your existence.
And so that has been my
way over the decades.
It has been a daily refining process
that looks at life holistically or
synergistically as all of these various
elements that I can control are all
being controlled by me for a purpose.
And without a purpose, you
don't control anything.
You simply accept rather than control.
And so my why is strong, my
understanding of the things
that I appreciate are strong.
Why I'm here is strong.
And so that makes me want I. To control
all of the variables, to optimize all
of the variables so that when I do this,
it's freaking with velocity, it's with
intentionality, it's with intensity.
And if I was getting poor sleep or I
was eating poorly, or I was thinking
poorly, or if I didn't understand what box
breathing is, or if I didn't understand
what psychological or physiological
size are and all the little tips and
tricks and tools that I picked up along
the years, if I didn't have a strong
why, none of those things would matter.
I'd simply just be existing
in life and then I would die.
And that isn't enough for me.
And so to kind of conclude all
of that commentary, I'd say
that, as I said earlier, my inner
world drives the external world.
And the more peaceful you can be in your
inner world, the more you can understand
your reason for being in this world.
The sooner that you can ize your outcomes,
the the sooner you can like start shaping
the fabric of the world around you.
If you think that you're a prisoner
of the world, you just haven't
learned how to be the be the jail.
Yeah.
The orchestrator, the, yes.
That's right.
I love it.
Sean, is there anything that we haven't
talked about that we should talk about?
Yeah, there sure is, but I know that
we've gone long on this because, you know,
because of my way, uh, I, I probably dove
a little bit too deep into some things
and not deeply enough into other things.
And so there's quite a list of things
that I would love to talk about.
But I know this is
probably been a bit long.
So what I will say is, um, this
subject, longevity fitness in,
in your later phases of your life
or how to be a better performing
human being overall holistically,
is a massive subject that we have.
Covered some of it, but not
all of it, that's for sure.
I think it's probably best if we don't
dive into all the other things that I
have in mind, and I'll simply rely on
the crutch, as it were, of hopefully
the book that I'll deliver to you.
Like, uh, at the moment
this podcast is done.
You'll have it in your hot little
hands, then you can choose what
to do with it, uh, within your
own, uh, sphere of influence.
That sounds amazing.
So there's gonna be links to the
collective in the description here.
They'll have links where people
can find you on social media.
If people listen to this,
have questions, by all means,
throw it up into the comments.
And we still have one more
thing to record for the outpost.
Just a very short, kind of deeper, more
personal, a bit more intimate that's
not shared with the general public and
the outpost is something that's there
for the Silver Court Club members.
Sean, thank you very much for
being on the Silver Core Podcast.
I always appreciate hanging out with you.