John Wolf (Kettlebells, Mace Work and Mindset) - Episode 904

I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the Behind the Shield podcast that is Transcend. Now for many of you listening, you are probably working the same brutal shifts that I did for 14 years.

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If you want to hear more about 511, who they stand for and who works with them, listen to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with 511 regional director Will Ayres. Welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. As always my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome on the show strength and conditioning coach and the man behind the Wolfpack collective John Wolf.

So in this conversation we discuss a host of topics from John's early life, his journey into the world of strength and conditioning, finding kettlebell training, mace work, training the tactical athlete, the mindset side of coaching, his own mental health story, foundation training and so much more. Now before we get to this incredible conversation as I say every week please just take a moment. Go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating.

Every single 5 star rating truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for others to find and this is a free library of over 900 episodes now. So all I ask in return is that you help share these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single person on planet earth who needs to hear them. So with that being said I introduce to you coach John Wolf. Enjoy. Well John I want to start by saying this is a long time coming.

I had one on the show quite a few years ago now. You were kind of the next person that I had in my crosshairs and then we bumped into each other again at a foundation training seminar a while ago. So I want to say firstly welcome to the Behind the Shield podcast. Hey happy to be here James. Yeah it has been a long time coming and what a wonderful treat it was to just organically be at the same place at the same time. Absolutely.

I think we both have a huge amount of respect for what Dr. Goodman and the foundation's team provide the world in terms of a framework to work through. Fundamentally I think we all need to work on as humans that postural alignment and breathing is two primary platforms from which we perform and that self-regulation that comes with it. Man I got work that weekend. I got a lot of value out of it. Yeah it's not easy people like look at the picture.

Oh you just stand with your legs apart and you hold your hands out like just you wait. Just you wait and it's not supposed to be crushing but it's amazing how much pressure or stress you can put on in a good way on the human body merely by just changing the position. Yeah definitely.

You know I think that it really goes to you know the difference of what's perceived externally and what that internal experience intrinsic experience is you know and the amount of effort you put into to what you're practicing and it really it's one of those things where even if you get a workout and you understand like okay look this doesn't look too hard but the way you perform it can really change both the experience and the adaptive response right.

So yeah you could just stand there in a posture but that's not doing the work necessarily. You actually have to understand what you're trying to accomplish and put some effort towards that. Absolutely. Well I want to dive into that when we get to that point in the timeline but let's start the very beginning. So tell me where you were born and tell me a little bit about your family dynamic what your parents did how many siblings. All right yeah definitely. So I was born in Monterey California.

It's a pretty unique place in terms of being part of California but being a little bit on an island it's a peninsula and it actually has some deep history in terms of the history of California. Monterey was the first capital.

It has a deep military history which is what brought both sides of my family into the area and because of that military history is also the houses it's called the Defense Language Institute where most of the military historically has gone to learn foreign language and so growing up it was really interesting in high school that the little town I grew up in Marina which is if you could call a suburb of Monterey it's just the outskirts of Monterey.

You know you just say Monterey because nobody knows where Marina is you could drive through in blink of an eye in a fog bank really and it is documented as one of the most culturally diverse areas per capita in all of the United States actually the year I graduated 96 I believe there was an article that that stated as and some of those experiences that came from that cultural diversity really have shaped my perspective.

I myself am Mexican Japanese and English so I'm a product of that diversity in some way shape or form and I have siblings right that are all mixed in different ways or they all share one father so they they're Mexican and Filipino right and so again I that means I was in a variety of different households and and learning different cultural values most of my friends were kind of in those same situations where you you might have a father that was

in the military a mother that was brought in from a different country and then their parents the that the more ethnically diverse side of the family their their grandparents would come in and they didn't speak in English so I got to learn a lot of how to say hello goodbye thank you and eat a lot of really diverse ethnic foods which to be honest I have no complaints about. Was the Japanese side post World War II was that a military and civilian meeting?

Yeah actually post Vietnam War really I think most of the the people that settled in that area really came as a product that timeline oh looks like we dropped oh we're back so yeah my grandparents were both my grandfathers were both Vietnam War veterans and I think a lot of that a lot of that time that's where a lot of people were stationed in that area as part of what was called the Golden Triangle so when people were stationed there usually

you set your roots and you stayed there you know it's a really beautiful place I'd argue Monterey California is one of the most beautiful places in the world but but of course that's home so I might be a little biased.

What is your perspective of the way the the divisions have been driven into this country by both sides of the aisle and trying to you know really kind of underline the labels oh you're you know you're this you're that you're this color that color this gender whatever it is when you came from such an eclectic background and that was the United States to you?

You know I think that's a really great question you know growing up and growing up in California there's certain things that you you may have a bias around you know growing up in California even between then and now some of those terms have really changed what the meaning of the terms were or are and so growing up in California you think you're relatively liberal person but now as I've as I've removed myself from that environment I live in Texas now which

is a very conservative environment for the most part except for the time I lived in Austin which is you know a little blue island in a big red state right and so this has been really something that I've reflected on a lot you know what I realized in that environment I grew up in you think it's liberal to accept people of diverse backgrounds different beliefs right and and to learn to coexist in a meaningful way in this relatively little melting pot

and what I've reflected on since is that that might have been what I defined it as but in the current context really isn't the definition right now it's a seemingly competition based on who can who can prove they're more woke you know for the for the current terminology but realistically what I realized was in that environment it was a very traditional environment I wouldn't say it was necessarily conservative in the traditional definition but but the

values that were instilled on the family level you know basically everything stems from the smallest concentric circle you and your mate you and your mate and your children the household the the neighborhood the community that you subscribe to whether that's your spiritual beliefs or or just your your community at large if it's ethnic that you relate to and how those shared beliefs kind of echo throughout and so what I realized was man even though

I grew up in this place that would be predominantly defined as a liberal state I grew up around people with really traditional values and that was really a gift because I in as I've been removed from that I realized I yearn for that level of commitment to family values to bettering the family through generations and and and also people that have walked that that path they value hard work it's hard hard to get your family to the US and then the

value that you place in being there as as a unique opportunity relative to where you've come from otherwise you wouldn't have come and and so these are the things that that I find a pain in the lack of of that shared value system that that shared belief the lack of of you know the attitude of gratitude for being where we are and this taking for granted that everybody's do more rather than empowering the individual to be the master of their own

fate and working hard to to determine what what what they're do you know you have to do you deserve it or have you earned it and those are two very different things in terms of mindset I'd really I'd really like to believe I earned anything I've gotten in this life including the bumps and bruises that have come along the way absolutely no I think it's it's so sad because it is such a an eclectic beautiful country that was founded on immigration

and even the UK you know used to be obviously a lot more white European a few hundred years ago but then after some of the the good and horrible things that the British people did you know you know most of them were just trying to get on with their lives but some of the people under our flag and going into different nations now it's this this incredibly diverse you know beautiful tapestry of cultures from all over the world and that is England you

know or the UK and that is also you know the US and so you speak to people normal people and everyone has the same kind of experience like I never really thought about you know whatever it is transgender whatever you you pick a pick a hot topic at the moment like you know is it hurting someone no well then it's none of my business you know and the same with you know different races and cultures like yeah I've got some amazing friends that

are gay or you know Indian or whatever again the the thing is and you know COVID comes out and all of a sudden supposedly everyone hates Asians and now at the moment apparently anti-semitism is through the roof I haven't heard a single thing said towards the Jewish people personally with my own ears so this is you know this is I think why as a community we need to talk to each other and turn the damn TV off and we were just talking before

we hit record there's a big cell phone shut down at the moment yes where I live that's exactly what we need turn off all the devices turn off the screens and walk out your front door and look at your community are they at each other's throats are they stringing people up from trees are they or are they getting on are they neighbors is there you know some dickheads in your neighborhood of course but the most people kind and you know they come

from all backgrounds and walks of life but they all want to feed their kids and put a roof over their head then you know we have so much more in common and most of the differences should be celebrated and not be a threat yeah I think that's that's absolutely the truth I grew up in a place again that was so diverse there's just so much to learn so much that you don't know and you know I think one of the the states that we have in our youth that

is really a great gift and you're gifted this as a parent when when you get to observe it in your own children is is the true curiosity like curiosity without judgment right and judgment is conditioned right so we condition our children if if we have beliefs that that impose the our own fears our own beliefs upon a certain person or subset of the population that that's something that's learned more than anything else usually children they just

they want to know you know how come I look different than that person and it's a genuine curiosity is usually there's no attachment to it and and you know as humans as we get older we lose the awe that comes from observing things that we've never observed because we've seen it more than once you know the the the awe of everyday life is diminished as we experience it more and we have more years on this on this planet and and we lose that curiosity

and and I think that's one of the gifts being around children or having your own child where you get to look at the world through the lens of through their lens through that curiosity with all that curiosity and all that awe and you know you said it yourself if you go outside your front door you might have a pretty diverse neighborhood and in that neighborhood you feel safe so you don't you don't necessarily judge people the same way that the media is

conditioning people too or you know if you live in a really homogeneous environment then then you might have a lot of those concerns but really fear-based and it tends to be the national narrative the media's narrative that people find themselves influenced by you know and it's at some point in time you got to control your inputs right I hate to believe that any any buddy wearing a uniform and a shield that's there to to protect and serve

in any way shape or form wouldn't do their best to serve the person that in need in front of them no matter what what they look like and I don't think that's in the heart of of most people that that are served in that way you know and you know there's always that vocal minority or the like you said in every subset of our society there's going to be some people that that don't align to what we hope the values are and unfortunately they

get highlighted a lot more much you know the spotlight shine on them a lot more brightly in in the media than than all of the heroes whether they whether they wear a uniform or not you know whether they're a teacher whether they're a service member whether they're they're fighting fires both literally and and socially you know that are out there doing the hard work every day absolutely well obviously you ended up finding yourself in the strength

and conditioning world what were you playing and doing as a young child back then man you know when I was young I always kind of envisioned being a doctor which was funny you know I I'm relatively studious and really curious analytical so I've always continued to dive into being very interested in how the human body works I did a lot of different things though I've had very eclectic work history from from hospitality working in Monterey

there's a lot of hospitality hotels tourism real estate also high-end real estate which is something that's common out there finance work in mortgage and work with autistic children because I have experience with one of my younger siblings having a developmental disability have having comfort in that arena and being able to translate that into into a learning environment where other children needed needed the type of support and acceptance that comes

from from that familiarity and and that was really enriching ultimately I didn't stay in a lot of those things when when the big you know economic implosion happened in 2008 and everybody was at my desk crying because they're gonna lose their house and I didn't have a financial vehicle to solve the problem I didn't have any vehicle to solve the problem I just made the determination that you know I spent the last five years investing in myself

my physical practice you stuff kettlebells at my desk every office like try to convince everybody to take a break and do something physical in the middle of the office whether they're wearing just take your suit jacket off it's okay you know let's go ahead and get a little bit of movement in and inviting people over to my garage and having swing bells and do all kinds of different stuff that hey if I can't help people in in the

profession I'm in right now immediately you know I like to think I'm a highly empathic person so like I would go home and be really distraught at seeing these families at my desk you know father mother crying kids wondering what's going on and and I just determined I was like man if if the economy is not going to support me being able to do what I'm here to do help people realize in America dream protect those assets and in the immediate

timeline I'm not I realized there was a lack of alignment with what I felt purposeful doing and if I was going to do something to serve people in that immediate you know immediately hey if if I can offer something at scale that builds community gets people moving I can't necessarily change their financial reality or future but I can change the way that they perceive themselves right now and feel about their existence through good coaching and

and doing what's right for their the only vehicle they're going to have for their whole life you know within their body and within that influence their mental emotional spiritual well-being because that's I think that's where good coaching intersects with with good movement or good physical practices it shouldn't be just just what you do in the gym ideally you're instilling beliefs and providing support for people to transcend whatever limiting factor

there is across those planes you had a unique perspective on the crash when I when I moved to California from Florida so many of my friends were trying to convince me to buy property you got to get now there's this amazing mortgage you can get you just pay the interest and luckily coming from California from Florida the California prices were insane and I had that baseline to compare it so I'm not spending half a million dollars on an 800 square foot

1950s house it's not happening so you know through your lens you know so that we can take away lessons and hopefully it doesn't happen again as a consumer or obviously the the banks themselves what were the the things that led to that and what was the ripple effect of that that you saw in the position that you were in yeah the financial vehicles themselves were a big thing and conditioned consumers so the environment the environment that we're in influences our

beliefs and the way we show up and I think that people discount that we have in our society we have this belief that as an individual society that we're making all the choices irregardless of what's happening around us and I think this has already come up in our conversation people are very susceptible to condition to programming well if we if we don't control our inputs we're all susceptible to it because it frames our perspective of

the common existence right and so and we have very short memories as human beings but the financial vehicle that you probably were talking about was really prevalent at that time were loans that you weren't just even paying the interest you're paying less than the interest because it was banking on this this belief that California real estate was going to continue growing at like 12 percent 15 percent year over year which is unsustainable and then

people were getting upside down only more and more interest and then there were they were seeing those huge jumps 20 25 30 percent increase in value and then cashing out that value on the on the belief that it was going to perpetually be the existence they lived in and and people in the financial industry kind of fed into it you know they condition people to believe that that was that was a good strategy that they can they can live

well they have the cake and eat it too you know they can they can buy a nice car and still keep their house and then you know eventually maybe some of those people had to live in the cars they're nice cars that maybe they wouldn't even have their nice cars after that you know it's a really tough thing but but this is true whether we're talking about our assets in tangible form or the our personal assets we can't borrow against your assets

perpetually and not have it come due at some point in time you know if you if you're borrowing against your health if you're if you're not investing back into your personal well-being like I said physically mentally emotionally spiritually eventually you're going to be you're gonna be tapped out you're gonna be below below zero in terms of what you have access to in one or more of those those accounts and and you just you just got to put in every

day you know you can't you can't take out more than you're putting in it's just never going to work long term well you mentioned about having kettlebells in the office when were you first exposed to strength and conditioning and how did you find yourself in the world of kettlebells specifically man you know really strength and conditioning was part of my youth my parents put me in martial arts when I was four funny story the reason they put me in

martial arts because back to like my humanistic nature right like I was like oh I just want to hug everybody I don't I grew up in a rough area traditionally very like underprivileged area in Monterey and my father grew up in a rough time the this town seaside that I grew up in had had really big trouble during the like 60s a lot of places were really racially driven at that time and that's when my father grew up and he didn't fit in anywhere he's

basically said every every neighborhood he walked through was in a white neighborhood he had to fight his way out of the white neighborhood there's a black neighborhood had to fight his way out of black neighborhood was a Mexican neighborhood he's a white and Japanese dude you didn't fit in anywhere and and that was something that I found strength in but in his era of coming out through adolescence it was it was a big challenge and so when

I grew up in this in this neighborhood there's still really rough and so I might have a toy somebody else didn't have and I didn't come home with my toy my dad said well how come you don't have your toy I was like oh you know this guy I was four I didn't really have a lot of like this ownership understanding that like preserving my my integrity or boundaries I was like oh the kid you know it was like a conflict and the kid ended up with my toy

he's like well if you ever come home without your toy or without an ass whooping in the future you're gonna get the latter you know and so they wanted to put me in martial arts so I could learn to have the type of tools that they felt I needed to have to survive in this world as a man you know instilled in me in my youth but the martial arts studio was a very place a high value on conditioning and discipline and it had a really great code

of conduct bylaws that we all had to subscribe to as part of the core of our culture those things have driven who my identity as a human being and then the conditioning we had was brutal it was it was phenomenal though as a foundation for for me moving forward I always felt capable physically capable even if I was untrained or deconditioned for a long period of time just the my nervous system adapted to that reality in my youth and it's

carried me on at times even when I wasn't so disciplined fast forward to high school curls for the girls and remember anybody remember those like cement filled plastic weights that everybody had in the garage and man just busting it out and trying to emulate what my uncles were doing because I thought they were so cool in my early teens and some of those things were leaking some of that concrete obviously by those years and then you know I really

got distracted by the dream of the world you know partying and doing all these things working and I didn't find myself back to a level of commitment that I could be proud of until I actually found a darker time in life I was ended up being 130 pound meth addict at one point in time and I realized I needed to tap back into those things that supported me being my better better or best versions of myself and reflected back on my youth and martial

arts reflected on being physically capable and invested doubled down in that arena and those arenas and so really everything that's happened in my life as a result of and how I overcame that dark time was kind of the intermingling of those two things with a new lens looking for methodologies and frameworks that supported me adopting those early beliefs and applying them in the context of me as a sovereign adult and also looking at things

that extended both longevity and performance like the you know in the current paradigm you hear like Dr. Peter Tia talk about the difference between longevity and and so lifespan and health span you know if you live a long time of the last 20 years of your life you you cannot contribute that's not a good life but if you live a good life for even five or ten years less even but you're capable for everything up to the last year that's

pretty awesome you know and and optimizing for those two things for some reason that that experience that the dark time really shaped the perspective that I value that because I was far from capable of doing much other than just trying to get get out of my own way for a long time there.

So when you look back I think one of the misnomers about addiction is or someone tries a drug and there's this chemical hook and then they just can't shake it off and the reality is it's a way of filling a void because something that's happened to us prior to that addiction so you mentioned about having veterans in your family when you look back were there you know what were those elements now with this mature lens that you you know look introspectively

that contributed to the suffering that you feel with meth in your case. Again this is a good question this is a good question because it's absolutely the truth and there's the intersection of those two things you need something that makes you susceptible right.

Susceptible to finding some type of external escape or you know some way of for me you know I think that there's a lot of as a coach as I've evolved you know a lot of people use anger as a fuel like everybody watch water boys like tackling fuel you know like well mama doesn't know doesn't hurt her you know or whatever you know hey they know water sucks it really really sucks right.

So and people aren't people I would say as a coach a lot of times I want to transfer the energy that people find in anger improving the world wrong into something that's more loving right because it's something that's sustainable because even if you achieve great things off that off high octane fuel of anger right you're not doing it in a way you're going to love and accept the outcomes and celebrate yourself as a result but I think

there's something even more dangerous and this is this is to answer your question and that's apathy you know living in an apathetic state as a human being there you don't you don't even have enough care to be angry you know you might be angry but you also just lost a sense of humanity a sense of connection a sense of purpose that's even hard to tap into anger as a fuel and for me it was back to you'd said you know my my the veterans

of my family well one of one side of my family I was really a lot more close with than the other my my grandmother was kind of like my second mom I had experienced death in the family before that but nothing so proximal nothing that really changed my perspective and when she passed away it wasn't just that she passed but but I felt she was such a wonderful maternal energy not only to me and my family but to an extended community it was ridiculous

when she passed the the mortuary the funeral home just had people spilling out into the street to to say to to to pay respects and to tell stories about the impact she had on their lives and and it was just the way she left I felt was so unfair and it shook shook the foundation of what I thought were universal truths in my youth you know this is a really dangerous thing people grow up on Disney and all of these things that what what should

be you know we believe things are right and wrong we believe things should be a certain way and when they don't line up it really can shake your foundation of what life should be like or is like and and this this death really did that now fast forward a year to the date I was already kind of in a downward spiral but say uh the day before the anniversary of her death my grandfather went back into the hospital he had lung cancer diagnosed

20 years after he stopped smoking cigarettes in the military and and it really he he degenerated really quickly and so right after midnight my mom and I are in the room with them and that was that was that literally one year to the day after my grandmother passed during that time and during that window I wasn't the only person in my family that was self distracting my uncle he ended up with some legal problems I ended up seeing him and we

had problems he and I and and we ended up having a night where we talked all night and he let me know he he had tried to kill himself a couple times and yeah I pleaded with him let him know hey you know I love you it doesn't matter whether our you know rougher times have been but I need you your kids need you we love you and I also acknowledged at that time I couldn't remove you know the freedom he had to make choices you know and so and

nothing I could say would would change it and he let me know it was gonna happen so one day I answered the phone at work I hear my mom crying man I knew exactly what happened so I was really in this state right I just didn't care about much you know and even though I was trying to do good things and do right in many areas of life it just wasn't enough to fill that to fill the cup in terms of meaning of life and and you know I was apathetic I

didn't care and so yeah you know I fell into the trap I cared about performance I think this is something that a lot of people on the listeners podcast can relate to you're hurt and you just double down on saying like I show up I get my work done I show up I'm in pain it doesn't matter because I measure my value based on this objective thing you know my performance metrics my I was I still had two jobs I was making good money but I

was doing things to blow off steam and like burning it at both ends back to that withdrawing more than depositing in really core fundamental aspects of life even though I'm I didn't value it because I value making money working hard achieving in some type of meaningful but less meaningful way for what I needed at that time in life to feel purposeful and it was just like a way to externalize and validate myself because I didn't feel valid

and then and then I fell into the trap of using as an experiment and then I instead of like taking time off to recover I needed to perform so I used again that fed that cycle and before I knew it I was I was deep down a hole I didn't know how to get out of for quite a while sorry that was a long explanation no no but this is the right explanation this is what people need to hear this is you know this is behind the curtain and the irony is

a lot of people in in the professions are listening you know we see this we see you know the addiction and all and the violence and the suicides and all these things and so what's beautiful is when people have this courageous vulnerability like you have to tell their stories it debunks the myth that everyone else is fine and they're the only one struggling and also debunks the myth of you know well crack is a you know a poor black

problem or you know whatever it is I mean I've had numerous people that were addicted to meth on the show that were high performers just like you said you know they were in Wall Street or they were firefighters but behind the scenes they were they were drowning and that was the thing that was keeping them going yeah I mean it's it's it's painful when you realize how how common the human experience is sometimes because we could project value

on somebody because of what they've achieved and because even even though they're in pain they've been able to contribute meaningful things to our life through entertainment through laughter you know you talk about Robin Williams or you know associated with the brand on it twitch Steven Boss who is a dancer and he he committed suicide not too long ago I met him in person got to work with him and I I just love being around the guy I was like

man this guy's so humble he's so cool he's so he he he's an edifier you know he celebrated my skills in the time even though he's a he was a just a phenomenal mover and I was like man you know what I look forward to the next time I get to interact with this human being and then it never it never happened you know but I always enjoyed watching him perform I had the opportunity to connect with him in person and I never would have known you

know just I think a lot of people didn't really know about what my reality was at the time until until it was obvious yeah I remember twitch twitch did a duet I think it was on so you think you can dancing that was the show and it was with an Asian dancer if my memory serves me right and it was such a powerful dance you know and I love watching that I'm in the contemporary dance some of those are just incredible but yeah I mean he always

just seemed to exude happiness and he was I think a host on some of the television shows and I mean he was just like Robin Williams he was that is the last person I would expect that would do that but that is the problem we all wear a mask some of us are entertainers some of us are soldiers or firefighters some of us are coaches but when you realize that everyone is hurting and you create an environment for someone to drop that mask and say I'm

a human being I do this thing but that's not who I am that's I think I think it's happening I think it's beginning but debunking that myth again because if you look around in my profession I always say this you know if I pull up on a car crash I can't queen out and start screaming like oh my god there's so much blood you know you have to be in a certain kind of alpha mode if you want to use that expression but after the event you've lost

you know two children or whatever happened in that you have to then kick back in the other side you know the the yin and the problem is is a lot of us we just think that you know the the Schwarzenegger Rambo you know masculinity a lot of us were raised on is reality and it's not you talked about Disney same thing the reality is that every single human being feels the spectrum of emotions you cannot get around it or you don't and it's toxic

right like you're like I know that at times surviving not not to say that my experiences were like a lot of first responders but you can decondition your ability to feel and then it's a really slippery slope where it's you don't feel human anymore you you know like but it doesn't it doesn't absolve you of the pain because then you lack you lack so many of the things that do contribute to you living a meaningful existence as a human being right

and and relearning how to feel relearning how to communicate and express those things is is even scarier it's harder and you know I've gone through my version of that and I I've worked with a lot of people to try to bridge the gap you know try to try to and make it as safe as possible you know the gym is a relatively sterile environment but like you can you can start to get people to find their edges as you know physiological stress

emotional stress they're just all perceived as stress so like if we can find different thresholds and then condition different internal responses then the carryover can be really great because sometimes those softer skills and psychological tools and frameworks and you know you're building scaffolding for people to process sometimes in a very unrelated environment something that they can experience and trigger and then be able to process in

a way that's a lot healthier than the default mode which is what we find ourselves in a lot absolutely well I want to get to the coaching side and the emotional connection with a lot of these these athletes just before we do though what was the darkest place that you found yourself and what were the tools that you were able to use to navigate yourself out of that darkness yeah man there was a wake-up call so you know when everything is

dark you know you you can see if you see a sliver of light it's a it's a it could be really it could really really powerful but it also could be really triggering too right because it amplifies the current reality you're in and so at the time I didn't care much about a lot but I did find somebody I chose to see value in you know like a person that person ended up being my wife at one point in time and that didn't work out the way I

perceived it largely probably because I created this really unsustainable paradigm in the relationship because where I was and what I projected in that the early phase of the relationship and and that but it served a great purpose right it served a great purpose because it it opened my eyes just a sliver and and from that sliver shortly thereafter sometimes the universe really interesting how it starts to stack on messages if you

just listen you stay aware a really close friend of mine that grew up with he he saw me in that state we were kind of both involved in that that aspect of life to some degree meal I was just fell a lot deeper and he just he grabbed me and shook me because it was just a very transactional type of relationship at the time he's like hey where's my friend you know I mean you're the one that always was more emotionally tuned in and you know

he was really angry he had a lot a lot of childhood trauma and he's like I'm I'm the one who's supposed to be able to rely on you and he was crying and I was so empty I was such a shell I was so tired I had no emotional or physical energetic reserves and I just acknowledge it's like man I should feel something right now just as fundamentally as a human being I should feel something right now but I was devoid of emotion I knew what I should

feel and I had no capacity to feel it and I was like man I got my car drove home and just reflected on that mentally because I had no emotional response and I was like man this is this is the antithesis of any existence I've had up to this point or anything I valued up to this point in my life and it really shook me it really shook me when I had the opportunity to like process it shortly thereafter I went to my mom's house I called her I was

like hey you know is it okay if I come by now let her know I sat her down at the table I was like man you know mom I know you know I've been messed up I've tried to avoid being around you for for this last year and she had six brothers who all gone through different journeys with different either substances or violence or other problems so she obviously knew you know and I just let her know I was like you know one I know you know and you've

known two I really appreciate you not calling me out in a way that made me feel judged and the fact that you're still here emotionally present with me and not not doing that now and then three as well as you know I see what I've done and I'm and I don't want you to worry because obviously that's the third thing she's been worried sick through the whole process and you just say you don't have to worry because I'm gonna fix it and so ultimately

that that leads so that the answer that you asked after like what is the path out and you know it's hard because I feel I had an unfair advantage I always felt loved things were far from perfect and things were things were hard in a lot of different ways and my parents weren't together told you all my siblings were from a different father that relationship wasn't always easy on me between he and I he and my mom everything the life's imperfect

but in my heart or heart I'll heart of hearts I always knew I was loved I was celebrated in some way shape or form and I got to lean on that as a fundamental aspect of my identity and I you know it's hard as humans sometimes to remember you're loved because I think most of us we want to be loved by the world like back to Robin Williams or twitch and they were sometimes it's just the one person who shows up and lets you see you for who you

are and sometimes we don't even have that one person show up when we feel we need it and it has to be us and we have to find ways to validate our own existence but if we let if we let someone in oftentimes that one person shows up where when you need them and if you let that one person's perspective of you matter enough to like to validate you and give you a good reason to be here and do the work it can get you through I've seen it lots of times

not only with myself other people but at the same time even though even though I knew I was loved man I couldn't feel it I couldn't see it and I just had to be willing to accept that at a time where I didn't feel it so that was that was the path out man you know a lot of hard work a lot of slipping down it was a Sisyphean effort you know the rock kept rolling right back down the hill you know and eventually there's a breakthrough and

I'm really happy to be to survive that era of my life and then use it as fuel to serve other people yeah.

Well it's a powerful story before we hit record we were talking about the do not disturb function on our phones and that really is a great analogy for what you're talking about the inability to feel you are not feeling it but those calls and voicemails and texts they're still racking up you've just turned off the the stimulus so at some point you have to turn it back on and face all those I think it's kind of a good analogy like you said just because

we're not feeling doesn't mean that the body isn't experiencing all of the the impacts it's just been you know deafened at that point yeah and you know it's tough because some of those loving messages you don't feel you don't feel you're not willing to accept that is true you know but eventually you just have to realize like hey we all have value and we all have some way to contribute you know back to what we talked about earlier in the

podcast valuing your contribution to society rather than expecting society to serve you and you know thankfully the people on this podcast they've opted to be the people most people listening here they've opted to contribute in a meaningful way willing to sacrifice themselves man you know and even in that system even in that subset of society I think there's still less susceptibility to these these kind of pitfalls though you know but but that alone

that choice alone to me to be someone and for me to be any way shape or form to be able to serve people who serve in that capacity is an honor and so it no matter no matter what else has happened and no matter what other choices have been made fundamentally you making that choice as a career path is something that's constant in your life to me that that speaks volumes of the value of you as a human being and and and if there's

a way I can be of service then I would be happy to you know and well I think another thing that a lot of people listening have in common is simply that they don't accept that the way they feel that whether it's their physical side their emotional side that that's just the way it's going to be I think a lot of people are on here listening wanting to hear from all of these great minds because there's hope then I mean your story is a story

of hope and post-traumatic growth it's not you know you're not sitting here now still curled up in a ball relying on meth to fill the void you know you've come out of that so whether it's overcoming back injury with Eric Goodman or you know what we'll talk about today being the the the best version of yourself as a first responder or simply overcoming trauma I think a lot of people listening obviously are from you know the uniform professions

and the medical professions but I think the people listen because they there is hope and they know that there are solutions to their problems on here too which is what you're bringing here today yeah and sometimes the solutions are more simple than they seem right like as humans what I've really observed is in myself and everybody else oftentimes the simplest solution to make some level of measurable and meaningful meaningful products measurable

not an objective necessarily like we live in a subjective reality right like as human beings you know you said what I think I feel with my experience that's not always measurable I can I can I can chart it on a graph one to ten how do I feel or whatever the case is but but that's even kind of objectifying something in a way that it doesn't take into full account the reality internally and and some one of my students and I've been working

on some some projects together some retreats in the jungle to to disconnect from society to reconnect with ourselves and nature and and the framework you know that we were talking about is something we'll call elevate so it's it's an acronym ELVT and and essentially we're trying to elevate reality right our reality you know by elevating you or elevating me you know and all we want to do is elevate how we breathe move and feel which basically

you know if we do the first two the third is almost a foregone conclusion right so it's not complicated but there are a lot of different ways to tap in and there are a lot of ways to enhance like our our reality in the present moment but as humans we often because it can be simple as going outside and for a walk barefoot in some dirt you know or grass and that's grounding but for some reason we'll we'll make a million reasons why we don't

have the ability or time to do that you know a five-minute walk you know with some intentional breathing can be super impactful and yet we'll have all this resistance right so it's not it and and we always want to resist the thing that we know is going to give us the most direct path to feeling better and it's just why we need support we need we need community we try there is a great book by Stephen Pressfield called the war of art and I read it it kind

of helped me kind of write write this second book that I'm writing but that's what the whole book is about it's about resistance and he's specifically talking about writing but my god there are so many parallels and I've reached out to him hoping that I'll be able to get him on the podcast one day because then that resistance is everywhere and and the simple concept the greater the resistance you feel the more important that thing that

you're trying to do is and it's so true and a lot of people feel resistance to oh god I gotta cook I'm just gonna go you know to McDonald's so oh you know I don't I've got to walk the dog but you know what it'll be fine let's open the back door I think the reason why there's so much resistance is because they are really important things you know and he talks about you know the closer you get to finishing the book and I can attest

to this the harder it gets you know when you reframe it like if I'm feeling a lot of resistance that's my that's my sign that this is actually important that kind of reverse psychology is incredibly powerful if you know if this next to no resistance it probably isn't even a big deal but you know the reason why you feel so much resistance to that gym session getting your bag packed and walking through the door of across the gym or whatever it

is is because there's a lot of value to that and it will help but there's this weird universal element that the greater the benefit sometimes the greater the resistance until obviously you create that discipline yeah man shoot that it's it's a it's a bit of a mindfuck you know there's a paradigm shift that we need to take on you know pressure is a privilege and guess what most of the people as you said people that are listening to this podcast

they would see that as true in their professional lives they just don't necessarily apply it to their own benefit you know on a daily subjective basis how do I improve my perception of reality that I'm experiencing right now and there's just a lot of tools but they take they take practice and man feels there's I can only speak from experience there's a lot of resistance to doing what's right for me as a platform for being of greater service it's this we

all seem to buy into the need to do for do for others do for achievement in measurable ways that are outlined external of us and and have a hard time creating that internal framework without support absolutely so I had um Zahoran who became a good friend um all about kettlebells I had Greg Walsh on not too long ago from wolf brigade deep into the the mace side I know you know back from when I knew about you and I was watching all

your videos when you're back with on it um those are the two tools that we seem to see you using a lot so how did you come across kettlebells and maces and who were some of the mentors early in your career yeah man kettlebells were probably one of the earliest things that I actually I found Paul Sotswine's writings in muscle media 2000 was an EAS uh publication magazine a fitness publication and and I just loved his writing he was talking

about like really simplified frameworks for achieving you know outrageous strength levels and I started applying those in the context of this time instead of 2001 where I was trying to to rebuild myself and I saw a huge ROIs got all of his books I was reading them all back then there's a VHS tapes you didn't even have DVDs you don't even have DVDs anymore really everything's streaming I mean you could still buy a DVD I guess but who does that

anymore and then um and then at that same time I you know the internet was is mostly like chat rooms it was like archaic time for the internet so you can just like google something because google didn't really exist um and so Paul wrote a testimonial about this other mover another coach Scott Sonnen and so around that time that Paul was bringing kettlebells Scott was swinging clubs and doing all these uh mobility coordination drills some of ground

based standing a lot of them were like inspired through folklore folklore dance or cultural movement systems um and uh yeah man I went down that and I was like these are rabbit holes I can go down for a while I saw because kettlebell certified in 2003 it was like the golden era of kettlebells in terms of like a lot of the people that were contributing to the RKC in helping teach it they had moved on to have their own kettlebell systems you're

talking about like Mike Muller Steve Cotter uh Jeff Martone uh uh Steve Maxwell right they were all assisting at the certification it was it was brutal it was awesome like everybody took turns with what they were working on and put the whole crew through stuff outdoors in Minneapolis and it was it was great it was eye-opening and then I also went in that year to another certification uh that was a club swinging certification and mobility

certification uh called circular straight training and so it was kettlebells and clubs and all the mobility stuff were the foundation from which a lot of the other practices I adopted really sprung from.

So as you are coaching kind of circling around to what we talked about for a little bit before that um I think one of the real eye-opener is probably Julian Peneau from StrongFit I had him on several times and he really started tapping into the emotional release of some exercises and I even saw this with my my stepson my bonus boy he went through that kind of turbulent teenage time and would kind of give up halfway on a sled push and I'd kind of

get on him a little bit and then he'd get all angry you know push the sled and then burst into tears but again there's when you look at coaching let's say CrossFit you know you walk through a door here's your warm-up you know here's your strength portion here's your wad you know here's your cool down or accessory and then you leave again when I created um my own class at the gym which is a tactical athlete training class it was a lot more of

an intimate environment I got to literally you know write it however I want it literally would go on you know what's the weather that day how many people have I got so I would put it together literally on the fly but I started weaving in a sandbag carrier we got a parking garage like I think five stories high so they'd have to carry the sandbag there all the way up the stairs and then we'd drop them on the roof and then I would just talk

to them and this would be like once every three months and just check in on them and why are you even here what is your what is your why and it was amazing feeling stronger because I was subjected to domestic abuse or I've been going through a divorce or you know whatever and all of a sudden you realize as a coach or I realized that the doing part was just a small portion you know and as a great example of a weight loss program Johann

Hari talks about and very long story very short they're trying to get this woman this kind of ivy thing she's the rock star of the class loses all this weight and then falls off the wagon and then some astute person down the road starts doing psychological evaluations of these patients and she they figure out she started eating after her grandfather abused her sexually and so she didn't want to be slim she didn't want to attract the advances

of people so that was her kind of safe space was the obesity so I had a real kind of aha moment on understanding the person the why their emotional kind of you know spectrum as an absolute superpower on top of the fact that you're simply coaching you know barbells and all the things so you came out of you know your struggles you you enter the coaching world talk to me about you know your relationship as a coach with the emotional side of your

athletes that you coach this is exactly what you just said is is there's a lot to unpack if you're really going to help and I kind of alluded to this before you work with a lot of high achievers a lot of athletes particularly in combat sports or you know contact sports you know there's always there's a lot of dialogue internally where they went through a lot of struggles and they're trying to redefine who they are and prove prove to other people who

they are a lot of times or you have people who are moving away from from an optimal state of health because they there's psychological trauma and they're trying to preserve themselves in a way that isn't healthy and sustainable so you know it's always this this thing where what got you potentially to somewhere you value isn't going to get you to where you want to be from there you see this in in a lot of you know tactical athletes as you just

spoke to the the barrier to entry is being a fire breather and being able to push yourself beyond the capacity of the average bearer you know the average person but once you get to a certain level your knowledge experience and and your your strategic mind your ability to see things other people don't see put things into play that other people wouldn't have the wherewithal to do and still be able to perform maybe not you're not 25 anymore but

your value and the paradigms of your value is are different but also the strategies for you to extend the duration of your career your duration of service that's a big thing for longevity to me is is is longevity this is before Peter Atiyah talked about life span versus health span longevity can be defined as as a duration of life and it can be I found it an alternate that the duration of service so like how long are you serviceable like

as a tool to be durable and have longevity like how long is this going to be effective as a tool and to me I don't I don't I want my duration of service to extend as a function of the container of my duration of life and to for that to be the case we have to we have to start to unpack some of these other things and reframe our perception our soft skills our tools and so when we we look at you said this this emotional response to the physical

you get to a point where somebody's more receptive right because you break down some of the armor the barriers through through stressors and through shared suffering a lot of times we create team we create community you understand that people are there when you're having a hard time and they're offering a helping hand it kind of transcends some of these maybe limiting beliefs in a lot of ways but also even it even earlier some of the things that

I like to look at is is more than just work capacity multi-planar movement skills because there's a large argument that the human brain evolved not only to enhance our ability to communicate but because we're highly articulate as we move in new ways we unlock new neural pathways we create a state of neuroplasticity heightened state of receptivity and creativity this isn't something that we talked about it on it a lot with nootropics enhancing that

would cognitive support supplementation but that's why a lot of the movement skills I taught there were also they were taught to induce various levels of flow state and when somebody doesn't move a lot you don't need to move and do a lot of outrageous stuff to induce this state because it's relative to your current your current reality right physically and so that as you start to enhance and expand someone's movement practices and movement

capacity we can also interweave social emotional tools you know frameworks mental models that start to change the way that they perceive themselves they're also implanting matras and in like removing judgment and providing new perspective like even when you're talking about injury you know my the negative talk right like this my effing shoulder it always it always keeps me from doing what I want to do well hey hold on you know what told

your shoulder to do the thing that got it in here it wasn't your shoulder you're the tyrant that keeps on putting this shoulder in if every part of our body is part of a body you know we have other humans we're going up this five story climb with when somebody falls back we we work with them to get them to where they need to go you know like yeah they have to do the work but but you start to create support and you start to create

new ways to address the limiting factor of that person's performance we don't do that for ourselves a lot of time so just all these paradigm shifts that give people tools on how to reframe their experience to understand like hey we're a system we're a team we're a part all these parts are part of a whole and we only get there all as one or not at all you know and and and how to how to create an environment within ourselves to to like

recognize like hey this part of me needs more attention oh if i think about that physically then we start to start to process that same reality on other planes of existence that you know as a human the human existence like mentally i need some support that i'm not getting emotionally i need some support i'm not getting and instead of being mad about my inability to show up in those ways but maybe i need some support and some tools maybe

i need some information some and and ideally the coaching experience just as you said supports that in in tribe and community and i think that's where real good coaching transcends counting reps and assigning load you know because it's not just physical load it's the right the right mental stimulus right emotional service and challenging somebody when they need to be challenged supporting them when they need to be supported and i like to think

a good coach can be dr jekyll and mr hyde you know and in a group environment you might be both within the span of a couple seconds you know you have to recognize that this person needs to be yelled at because that's how they respond because that's where they're at like and they're like yeah all right fine and then this other person needs to be nurtured a little bit and given the appropriate assignment for where they are and this is largely it can

be different in tactical environments obviously you don't you don't do as much nurturing when life and death is in play in the group setting because everything has to function at a certain baseline but but in general pop man you'd be surprised how how little stimulus it takes for somebody to to reach the threshold and and how you might need to create new strategies to to get them through that so they don't leave and never come back so that so they

don't let resistance keep them from achieving the next level of their personal evolution while we're on this topic and you talk about tactical population as well fight the fire service especially listening I mean other professions too but we are so sleep deprived I mean basically 24 hours with no sleep every third day for 10 20 30 years I for the longest time you know there will be days where I come off shift and I go to my CrossFit gym and

I do some you know redline fire breathing workout and then one day I had Jeff Nichols on the show who's you know strength conditioning guru and also ex SEAL Team Six guy and so you know walks the walk on on both sides of that and he opened my eyes and was like look if you come off shift and you've got a high level of stress because you haven't slept what makes you think that adding more stress would be beneficial and I was like oh my god

that's so simple and yet I missed it for and I was you know coaching and an athlete all that for a long time when he when he said this and I remember you know a little little ways on was there was a CrossFit workout and there were snatches and I'd come off shift and I was tired and the complex movement of a smash a snatch of which are not super competent anyway was absolutely infuriating and I kind of remembered it dropped the barbell and just

did a one mile slow run while they finished off the the wad and I was like ah yeah that was kind of more of a visceral understanding of it then so talk to me about that you have a lot of you know alphas again and I use that term you know endearingly not not patronizingly that buy into the fact that you know you can sweat out stress you can burn off stress what have you seen as far as the the kind of the the variation of intensity based on what that

person has experienced you know a day two days prior yeah I think you know it's different from a you know general pop you do have a lot of variability you have your parent your business owner there's a lot of uncontrolled variables but the key is is there's this notion that is is preposterous to me that you can have a perfectly balanced day and achieve anything there's there's there's always sacrifice of short-term balance necessary and you're

just saying to yourself in the fire service 24-hour straight sleep deprivation high stress high alert you can you can adapt to that and you have to and you might need tools to upregulate yourself at a moment's notice or within two minutes time frame or whatever the say says like like sustain operational already right and there's a lot of ways to do that in that you know like hey I'm I'm on still let me get some like sort of like fire breathing

workout like breath of fire up regulations you know strategies some some movement training that's highly diverse but not intense so that you're not taxing the system you're just upregulating the nervous system so so that if you if you do get a call you're ready then you could do that at some type of cadence to keep yourself you know tuned in and tuned up but because you have no control over being in a state of high stress for a long period of time we

talk about in our education system that I could design for on it balance and harmony there was no balance for that day by design and external of your choice you had no choice in that matter so if we look instead of in one day it doesn't just start over the next day you have to look at in any training you know higher stress lower stress you have to have the opportunity to recover from these in these longer states of of they're not you

stress they're distress right and so so you need to have the the wave you talk about the yin energy the recovery energy in place and we have now so many new lifestyle norms that help with that you know sauna cold plunge breath work is a bigger more accepted practice in in especially high performance environments because you have you could have each of those protocols in ways that up regulate or down regulate you and just understanding how to

do those things but it's necessary and and you don't adapt better to more compounded stress right like eventually something something reaches the threshold of your adaptive response this is and your adaptive responses is not measurable but it's it's always it's always about what we talked about earlier how many deposits versus how many withdrawals and each person has a certain threshold different account balances different external factors that are

also contributing so you just have to have better understanding of where you're at and and you that run was probably the best thing you could have done that day because you still got you know you still got the energy out you needed to you probably you know you're still high stress you needed to move you probably have a hard time down regulating without some type of kind of some type of stimulus but what kind of stimulus and and and you got

the energy out you're able to reflect probably on the on the run of what what the state was you found yourself in when you're so frustrated like you're probably about to Hulk smash everything when you feel like how come I can't get this movement Hulk smash just turning green you know and and and you made a conscious decision to do what was better for you and thankfully you had a really great conversation that helped frame that you know you know we just been

so brainwashed to think we just could push through perpetually and that's back to what we're saying like when you're young you have extremely higher levels of adaptive reserves you haven't compounded the cost of these 24 hour shifts over one year much less five years ten years and fifteen years and and just what what got you in the door isn't gonna isn't gonna keep you there perpetually you know you hang your hat on that there's something

to be proud of getting in but then as you go through different phases of your career you're gonna have to develop different strategies to to to endure and to optimize your performance and your your serviceability to yourself into your community to your teams you know absolutely well while we're on that profession and doesn't actually doesn't have to be that profession specifically but while we're talking about a little bit more of the out the box from

what you would normally see in in a gym I have fallen in love with I mean kettlebells have always loved but now you know the mace work as well what as you started progressing in you know you were an early adapter adopter excuse me to some of this work but as you were interacting with people whose work was really revolving around the barbell maybe dumbbells what would the values that you were seeing that maces and kettlebells were bringing

that maybe were missing and creating imbalances in some of these gyms yeah you know a lot of times back to what I said when I got back into fitness the first was bodybuilding centric and there's nothing wrong with bodybuilding as part of a complete perspective of a performance enhancement you know performance optimization I think it serves a great purpose in many ways you can intentionally fill in the gaps because you're you're going away from compound

full body movements to something more targeted but a lot of times we I think it's ebb and flow we attack things from multiple angles I think that's one of the things we we really talked about with unconventional fitness it wasn't just using unconventional tools it was having an unconventional mindset and and that stemmed from like unconventional warfare right you know you could have militaristically a superior force but you can't account for

the creativity that you know like say how did the United States earn its its freedom right guerrilla warfare you know basically like everybody lined up in lines had a lot more firepower these little guys running around the trees picking people off they're not playing by the rules you know it was back to what I told you or my my martial arts history when I was young it was kind of a weird traditional mixed martial arts it was boxing judo jiu-jitsu

and karate so I I got exposed to all these things and in the dojo we we sparred with an amalgamation of all those skills they're still traditional in their presentation but we problem solve per opponent what worked best back to like you box a wrestler you wrestle a boxer and and now that's evolved into modern MMA which is a completely different like animal but but I was exposed to that when I was young so it's really about you do what works best

given the context of the situation give me your opponent and when we talk about unconventional fitness I like to attack things from multiple different fronts this is how we overcome a weakness that's that's patterned in our nervous system and our beliefs it's like we don't have to attack it from the same thing a mobility limitation and I know this is something you you recognize can be the greatest hindrance to your strength gains so hammering more reps

without having prerequisite movement skills it's not going to get you better outcomes if we I like to say strength is positionally dependent so if you don't have the capacity to get in the right position you're not going to be strong you're going to find ways around that instead of learning to develop the the attributes required to really move through that resistance to overcome that resistance and to make it now what was a weakness of

strength well unconventional tools provide feedback feedback that is more unique the nice thing about the kettlebell is when I don't let you put a kettlebell down for a whole workout you start to realize where your limitations are in terms of strength endurance postural endurance which is also something we talk about with dr eric goodman in foundation training postural endurance especially for a tactical athlete might be more important

than limit strength because it's when you get tired when what when the limiting factor the the least common denominator gets tired that's when the kinetic chain starts to break down it's not when you're in the positions of strength for two to three reps yeah that's really great to kind of knock down this wall awesome what happens after that you know and what happens when you don't get the rest and it's the end of your 24 hour shift you're

on your third call because it's just one of those crazy days you know and and that endured for the last several weeks it's just been that kind of season whatever gets tired first and checks out it's going to put a ridiculous amount of stress on the rest of the system well these feedback tools give you give you that benefit the kettlebell as I said if I if I put some parameters to really find where the limiting factor is and you know once you

get to that point of understanding then now we have something to to create a hypothesis around and like create a strategy to overcome specifically what that looks so you know what that limitation is if where that postural endurance is going to show up first second maces I can feed asymmetry so we want more symmetrical bodies more efficient they transfer load across midline really effectively but we were inherently asymmetrical so if I feed

your asymmetries you become intimately more aware I don't need to tell you a lot you feel a lot and it doesn't have to be heavy it's just a unique environment that I get to put you in assign the reps and you're like really okay coach when that mace head is on the left side I'm having a really tough time stabilizing it in space and controlling it it's starting to pull me around that's a great observation let's start to look at why why that is what

do you think what do you think is the limiting factor here you know we can problem solve for that and it brings people into the experience of the coaching experience the problem solving experience back to what I said like you want to give people the tools to be able to understand their body better because we weren't given owners manuals like our car when we bought it right we don't know when it changed oil and we were told we need to sleep x amount

you don't get we don't get that freedom we have to create solutions around it like you know we still want to live you know and so and perform so these tools they do a lot of they can do a lot but you need to be taught how to use the tool as a feedback you know if you got a toolkit you know and you have all the tools you ever want but you don't know how to use any of them you don't know what what each one is for then then you're

still at a loss and I think that's one of the things we did really well at the audit within the audit education system we try to teach how to use the tools as feedback mechanisms for us to learn where the inherent limitations of our movement skills were strength endurance and gamify it make it fun you know we all want to enjoy our experience and so gamification whether we like it or not we're all addicted to dopamine you know this whole cell phone

thing you're talking about do not disturb like I think there's probably part of my brain wondering if I got some Instagram likes while we've been on this call but but that's the common state of existence for a lot of us right so can we do all these things and have fun and create a deeply enriching environment and experience throughout the whole process you know it doesn't always need to be woo woo and feelings sometimes you just take the

opportunity for when those things surface to address them with each individual or the group as a whole when you find that they're receptive but sometimes it's just work and intelligently designed work elicits those opportunities what about the aging athlete I love the you know you were talking about that positional strength and I think you know that and muscular endurance obviously are big in this profession as I'm turning 50 next

month I've kind of had a realization I mean I got beat up pretty hard you know as a firefighter I did stunts to stunt man a martial artist my whole life so you know there's a lot of things that aren't in the same position that they should be as I turn 50 so I for me personally I've kind of let go of the idea of trying to be the fire breather of the gym or you know I've never going to be the strongest guy but I had a pretty good motor for a long

time and instead focus on addressing the imbalances obviously foundation training is one of several tools that I really lean into but as we start getting older what is what is the emphasis what is your perspective of the emphasis on addressing imbalances because to me my whole philosophy is if everything works the way it's supposed to I will be stronger I will be more efficient therefore I will be fitter as well I don't need to try and lift heavier

now to me I need to start unfucking some of the things I did for the last 30 years I love what you just said rule number one if you take one of my seminars you'll hear it if you ever show up for workshop or somewhere all right everybody rule number one and this is the most important rule yeah I already shook hands because I like get nervous so I always hug people and shake hands before I go up on in front everybody I'm like hey

who's who's the asshole is presenting today I hope he's I hope he's he's cool you know and they laugh at me because they know they're gonna be putting up with me for the next day or two and uh and then I get up on stage and say everybody I need you to abide by one rule above all else and that rule is you can't leave this door any more fucked up than how you came in right and and what does that mean means that you have to take some personal

responsibility for your journey here and that means that if you are put in a situation like if you follow the directions as prescribed or your interpretation and you're not having the experience that you should have like the discomfort is growing is bordering on potential pain and and you know you have the responsibility to either check out of doing it at that moment and ideally to provide me that that awareness so that I can be a meaningful like do my job

like I'm only like I can tell you what to do but until there's a problem to solve we're not all learning you know and so all of a sudden then I become a lot more important so I think having having somebody with some technical proficiency having a team of people like uh you know you have a lot of wear and tear you know at the advanced ages especially if you have had a hard charging career so you you you need to leverage the insights

of people you trust build a good team right and uh resources whether it's clinicians and coaches or whatever the case is doesn't mean you need to use them all the time you're not divulging your power to them there are resources for you to to tap into but the internal game we're playing is as you said it needs to be a different game it needs to be a different game how uh what what's the best james if i was to ask you what what's the best ability

what's the most important ability what would you say it is in all honesty my my most valuable ability now is to not be in pain that would be my best ability at 49 you said it right so if i can create a hierarchy of values in our current state they're going to be a different hierarchy of values than they were when we were 20 right and so if if and this is corny but no matter what age you are you see this in the nfl with with rookies they're just

starting the career the best ability is availability are you are you game ready right now or are you a detriment to the team if you put you on the field and and and our age like you said you have a bonus kid you have you have family you kind of show up for them that's back to what you're saying are you present are you available and and that means different things at different times in our lives but when we frame it because that's the ultimate

like ability is like can i tune in can i be present can i be my best when i need to be my best and and what are what are the things i need to do to create that reality you know in the in the areas of life i i exist in right now and um and yeah so then we gamify that you know uh do you have little kids are are you expecting to have grandkids do they where do where do they play on the ground hey how comfortable are you on the ground i'm scared

to be on the ground let's learn to play on the ground can you get up without using both hands can you do these things that's a predictive indicator of longevity you know what i mean like we start tying things to to paradigms that we wouldn't have considered before um and we play games mental games with how we frame what we value so that people can be motivated to achieve things that they wouldn't have been motivated to do when they're younger

it has to be a game everything we learn as a kid is is framed and the best learning is framed in in play and i think if we can make it a you know a rewarding experience to to like play again you know uh what am i that told you about the elevate uh framework that uh a student of mine were working they talked about you know play play-based learning and they're like looked at the definition of play and it was basically like plays is is looked

at as this arbitrary thing it's just it's just rewarding like no the best learning is is done through play because you don't you don't get burned out on it you don't you don't trivialize the experience because the experience itself is inherently rewarding so if we can if we can if we can do that and you're expanding on your physical capacities at a time where most often you're you're kind of cognitively focused on your physical decline you know and

and maybe that requires some shifts of what we measure is work capacity going to continue to go up at the age of 50 in those traditional linear lifts probably not and definitely not if we just keep pushing up against the wall of resistance that's there yeah but if all of a sudden we remove like we like we talk about the vehicle of our body in america we like uh sayings like there's no replacement for displacement it basically says like if

i just put a bigger engine in the car then it's a better car but then i'm snapping the axles i can't turn because the car's too heavy there are different ways in the modern era of building a performance vehicle that we look at optimizing the performance of that vehicle across many different metrics rather than just straight line performance and i think that that's what we need to do for older athletes like how can we increase the efficiency

with which you move and if we retest some of those other things after we remove attachment to them and they stayed the same but you have expanded the holistic range of adaptations that improve your quality of life in the here and now and you go back and you're like i'm just as strong as i was before well because we didn't put a bigger motor in but we took the you're driving around with the parking brake on you had this so you have a you had

a block behind your accelerator you know i mean like we reduced we were we put lighter wheels on your on your car and now it's a lot more efficient turning the wheels like there's just so many ways that we can improve performance across the spectrum of what actually is meaningful in life and there's different ways that we can frame and the value the way we value it so so that's that's the game i think that's the game and i love playing

that game i don't know if you could tell but but it all it all you know it's all contextualized it has to be something that that somebody buys into you know that's my purpose i just kind of shared i was 36 when i had my first kid hopefully they you know like my mom was 20 when she had me so there's this different different reality of when i'm going to be a grandparent relative to when she she became a grandparent even then i was the first one

so she was you know 56 you know people were in their 40s a lot of times when they became grandparents i'm probably going to be in my no 50 60 late 50 60 you know maybe and uh i still want to get on the ground play with my grandkids and if i could do that pain free and enjoy that process rather than like and then oh can someone help me up my my hip my back you know i'm going to be one happy grandpa and that's what i'm training for i have that

that foresight right now love it i love the the play element as well and even if you listen i had the guy from finland talking about their education system and there's a lot of play a lot of you know curiosity a lot of um looking at the holistic child rather than just standardized testing and memorization but uh when i look at crossfit what really drew me in if it was all barbells and warbles all day long i probably wouldn't have stuck with it very long but it

was the handstands and the rope climbs as a guy that got into it i did it about 16 years ago when i started um i couldn't it could barely do a pull-up but i mean that's beside the point i sure as hell couldn't do a muscle up or a you know legless rope climb all the things that you get to to advance in but you know i couldn't do a handstand so you know putting a pin one hole lower in a you know um in a globo gym machine isn't rewarding

and i mean arguably even you know a little bit more weight on a barbell i don't find that rewarding but walking on your hands in your 40s or climbing a rope when you couldn't even do a pull-up those are the things and that is play those are the parts of it that i really like i think that was one of the reasons play and community is why crossfit was so successful absolutely man they they've done they did that in a way that we hadn't

seen historically in a meaningful way you know there was group fitness and people gamified that and made it playful with dance and things like that and like choreography and music and production but but is different when you're expanding your skill set through your through your formal play your movement skill set you you feel like you're a highly more capable human not just a better dancer not to say that i don't value dancing i could definitely

improve my dancing skills and i'm pretty sure that would enhance my social skills or success at this point but but just you know i can move so i can learn to dance i just and i can shake i can shake it bro don't don't question it i just don't know how to do the structure dance so i can learn choreography and because i move because i can move right if you can move in more expensive ways you have more ways of play unlocked right i want to unlock

as many of those things or keep them open for as long as possible because it's no fun when you get a little older and you're like i can't do x y or z anymore because i bought into this paradigm that i don't think it has to be true and we're all going to get to a point where it's not wise to do certain things anymore but it doesn't have to happen any sooner than it than it has to happen absolutely well one more area i want to get to then we'll

touch on foundation training and then go to what you're doing now the class that i've coached for a long time is targeted at um tactical athletes and i do a little foundation training in there you know there's there's some kind of crossfit-esque style stuff and there's a lot of strongman so again julian pino's work and the reason was having done crossfit for so long and seeing some of the imbalances that kipping and some of these

things created um i realized that what we don't really do very well that is so important in the fire service is to push to drag to carry and to climb we just don't do those as much so for me personally the sleds you know handle the sandbags um you know kettlebells again were were really important movements that were missing within the crossfit gym itself what are some of the modalities or philosophies that you bring to the tactical

athletes that you train versus maybe some of the civilians you know it's really funny i i don't see that there's a different different set of modalities necessarily it's the uh dan john he has said something about fitness back in the day i really like i like i like simplification of things right so he says fitness is you know it's not that complicated it's kind of like mexican food you got the same ingredients it's just how you assemble

those ingredients to create a completely different outcome and so so its ratios its intensities it's how spicy you want it how much chili do i put in there you know you're a fire breather alright you know ghost pepper as it is you know it's a little pepper um and so you know people inherently need the same fundamental sets of attributes developed appropriate to where they are and they need they need uh you know a lot of what we do as coaches

manage safety and safety in terms of managing space you know different exercises require different amounts of space to be safe like you don't want a dog or a child to be in a certain place turn certain exercises um or load management and sophistication management like how how complex is the movement skill outside of that like you know some people just really like to be they have an affinity for something they they they attach value

to something they might identify with something there's always a path towards what they identify with most while you fill in the gaps with a whole bunch of other things that they probably don't know they need or want and and then as they adapt they they get to reframe their value proposition right like a lot of times people just want to look better naked and then they start to evolve through their movement practice all these different new new observations

about how their body's functioning how they feel and they're like i still want to look better naked but i really i'm just a happier human so i'm going to keep doing this for a whole bunch of different reasons now so uh nothing nothing that i i think is off the table or on the table specifically there are things variations of drills or skills that have inherently more risk but i love what you're talking about having a better perspective

from outside looking in uh strong man stuff uh round back lifting odd object lifting is is something you guys see is necessary and gym mechanics versus real world mechanics having the ability to oscillate between the two and create some resilience in in adaptability is is i think really important so that we don't get into this uh dogmatic perspective of this is the right way to do it because in life you're not just going to be able to

set everything up nothing's a perfect barbell height you know like you know you have to rotate pick up your kid you chase them into a street it and try to keep them from getting into danger the path of danger that things are highly dynamic so if we can bridge the gap between what we consider sterile and safe in the gym and what we can understand it likely going to be the the what's expected of real life when it matters most and bridge that

gap in anticipation for those moments so that people are problem solving and out of you know out of their their their developed abilities when those moments come then i think we're doing great what have you observed about fear and what i mean by that is the solution um that i found in in my class was if i brought someone in and said hey you can come do crossfit with me and they were let's say a firefighter that was in relatively good shape when they

first got hired and then they are one of the ones that just kind of you know found themselves getting um deconditioned over the next 10 years and you show them you know they come in and people are snatching and you know climbing ropes for example there's an element of fear like i don't want to look stupid i don't want to do this what was so good about the strong man stuff is like you just got to pick that up and you got to carry it over there or push

this from here to here so removing that fear for some of my um again less conditioned uh fellow first responders was a real kind of superpower to getting them involved you're not going to look stupid this is where this is where the growth begins but we're not here to humiliate you or anything what have you observed because i think there's this perception of police fire especially that we're all phenomenal athletes but behind the scenes there there's

there's a lot of fear of looking stupid whether it's our operational training or our fitness training yeah everybody has that man you know how many people have been hey you're awesome and or your gym's awesome and as soon as i get in better shape i'm going to come hang out with you i worked you can negate the whole point of of a good guide or coach like i want to get you there faster and easier more pain free and uh a big part of of in a in a group

dynamic where people are judging themselves relative to what other people have achieved already because they've gone through the process a lot of it's like good planned programming so like kettlebell swings for example right people are like okay it says swings on the board i have five levels of progression for a kettlebell swing and if you're doing any of them i call all the variations some form of swing and so but you're still doing a swing

and i'll have three different variations in that group going on at the same time you know i have more than that but just as an example right like progressions to get to a certain level of proficiency tech i get to manage that as the coach and then i get to reward the person to go from level one to level two maybe even in that first session right so they get an element of i think a lot of times they have an unreasonable expectation of themselves

and as a coach if we're not careful we can say oh you look you look like you're in shape back to where you said we have perceptions of of somebody before we assess so if we just start everybody at level one they can go to level one two three maybe in one class and then they're they're like one step away from the mean the average in the class maybe you know in terms of performance they're still just using a bunch of bandwidth to figure

out like where they're at mostly you know so as soon as they get comfortable they can progress really quickly but i need to create a framework that supports that early evolution because momentum once you build momentum in terms of development it's really hard to stop someone but if if they feel failure if they taste failure first because you set an arbitrary measure of what the baseline should be without any understanding of of like so some people

are really good at doing their job and really lousy movers in general they're amazing athletes that come in with pro sport contracts and they can't do some basic movement skill stuff so you just can't assume so if i as a coach i'm like all right cool this is how we're doing it all right everybody working i'm over here telling you what i want you to do boom boom boom dang that's good just do this one now do this one now all right cool now just

keep that going and everybody's working as you know the way the way they're supposed to be it's like a kid that learns to walk the kid that learns to walk is going to start running you know what i'm saying you ain't going to stop them because it's just going to be the natural evolution of that momentum carrying to the next step and it but if if they see everybody and they're more focused on everybody watching them fall every time

they stand up and use a prop they might stay on the ground they might not get up you know and i just want i just want that early success to be tasted and it is just like man you know it just i just can't you can't stop somebody once they build that momentum i i just call it to zero to 60 60 isn't fast it's not top speed is cruising but if i can get you from from stand still to highway speed cruising you're going to want to see what this you

want to see what this car can do you're going to find little opportunities windows to punch it you know absolutely well you've got all this background what was it that drew you into foundation training meeting dr eric goodman you know it's funny we've done all this this discovery in this conversation no matter how involved any of us are they're big gaps in our game based on a lack of perspective based on lack of experience and what i found is

i got really proficient you know through my career at moving external loads in very dynamic ways but something i didn't realize i learned to do that in a very specific way my primary solution to most physical problems was extension and extension at the cost of like posterior rib mobility and in that full breath on the back side so i have this like barrel chest and i use i use that extension mechanism to solve most problems historically since i was

in judo that's like okay you're going for a flight you know and and so it's just conditioned as a as a sound solution more often than not i've been working on that and then what i realized was like i learned to work on that but i wasn't working on it i was working on it from an external viewpoint like okay how do i open this stuff up and i i met eric and jesse as i came in awesome human beings and i started working with them like all right

this is this is the complementary skill set intrinsically working from the inside out like uncoupling aspects of my spine that i'm just naturally biased towards compression and needed not like some decompression from something pulling me outside of my body i needed to create that internal dynamic of creating space in my spine and and and mobilizing the ribs with every breath and i was like man this is just fundamentally the complement

to everything that we all if other people walk similar paths to me it's the opposite like on a color wheel you have the complementary color is not the color next to it is the color across it and so i just felt like for me it was the perfect complement to what what i've learned to value and put most of my energy in and i think that that's back to what we're saying you get to a certain level of the game that's where you find the most reward it's

like not to do the more things that look the same it's actually like find the thing that is probably the most opposite and the most challenging to to look to work through because it moves you completely out of your areas of strength absolutely i mean it totally saved my career and i i prophesize about foundation training all the time and when people find out it's literally going to be 10 or 15 minutes you know of work per day or whatever frequency

they're doing it's hard to explain it's like no you do it with something it's not it's not doesn't even take enough time to really do a foundation training class like it's you know a lot of people do it with pilates or yoga or you know whatever their thing is and i do it as a kind of cool down at the end of my class um when i teach and then the one i do most frequently is that 12 minute foundation training on youtube and it literally repaired

my back it put as you said that decompression internally and that strength around my spine so even though their herniation and ligament tears it created that that strength and i was dead lifting a few a few months later in a firefighter charity competition you know 225 for reps so i am here i am now about to turn 50 and my back is still solid as long as i keep doing it if i stop then i feel it but if i keep doing it it's absolutely incredible

sounds like you make those daily deposits we were talking about before you try to make withdrawals man so you look you're wise beyond your years james even though you're about to turn it's a lot of years to be wise beyond all right well then speaking of adversity you were you know with onyx for a long time you know rose to a high level within that company um you talked before about some challenges you had in your early life walk me through you know the the the change of environment

for you and some of the challenges you had recently and then where are we finding you now with your new project yeah man definitely uh you know at the same time i left on it in january of last year i also um found myself at the end of of a engagement right so the dissolution of my my family life is i knew it so i had a bonus child right uh at a stepson we weren't married but once you call someone your family your

family you know so he's still he's still in my heart he's still that's the same dynamic has not changed um and then and then of now four-year-old soon to be five-year-old um and and uh so huge change in in terms of living situation employment and identity i think a lot of our identities tied up in these things so i took this last year to really reflect on what it is i i want to do now that i'm growing up again you know and so uh a big

part of it is is i want to lead community i want to work with men so i started a local uh group of men that i'm working with in the san antonio area and we do you know whether it's one-on-one or small group coaching and then we go for hikes and we talk about being a father being a leader uh whether entrepreneurial and uh or just within the family or just believing yourself and i think self-leadership is a big recurring theme um planning on starting

a podcast so i'll follow in your footsteps probably pick your brain uh lessons from leading the pack and not and not necessarily just about leading from the front in an organization but again leading from the front within the various aspects of ourselves we need to create greater alignment because there are different parts of us that are pulling in different directions and it's true of all of us you know the sooner we get all the ducks in a

row a lot less resistance to make forward progress right we just have to define where we're going um in that same vein uh i have a website coachjohnwolf.com where all these things will start to live and are starting to live and i'm using uh kind of an advisory role uh for a coaching platform called sambal uh to to deliver all this stuff so i've been investing in helping them build out that infrastructure in a way that i think is going to serve my

community and hopefully other coaches benefit from that but at the same time i do deliver my online and hybrid type of coaching for those people who live local on that platform all of which can be uh accessed through just hit me up on coachjohnwolf.com uh you can see some of the other things i'm involved in i told you about a student uh that has created essentially the elevate framework which is basically this is the scientific

method applied to training so you hypothesize something e is explore uh you know and you're basically trying to like come to a point where like i think this is the way i need to move forward remember how we're talking about like at this age how do we how do we address like not doing the thing that we thought we value well we have to get more involved in this process and so e is explore l is load so you test the theory over and over and over and

you progressively load so this is just progressive overload in terms of training v is vanquish or verify you could use one or the other vanquish is kind of fun because it's kind of like the boss level of the video game back to gamification or verify you're verifying that that that process of loading that theory is going to net an outcome and the outcome is a test a test of your limit capacity and the way that you you decide the experiment and t is tune tune is

a tuning or like a tuning to a new reality where this you you know this new thing to be true is part of this new version of you and then in that tune state you start to formulate new hypotheses so you go back through the cycle this goes back to something called the like the ooda loop in terms of tactical superiority observe orient decide and act some of y'all might be familiar with that the faster you cycle through the more tactical superiority

you have the more likely you can get find yourself in a bad situation and create a more optimal outcome through faster cycling of this of this process so so we do events we have something called the adventure retreat we do out in the dominican republic to get people unplugged from the pressures and common beliefs of modernity the distractions and into the jungle plugged back into nature baby plug back into yourself and figure out what

that means you do a lot of self-discovery when you when you take the noise out and tune back into an environment that's more natural and and we do things that we we want to have people be just a little uncomfortable with some people are afraid of heights we go zip lining some people have you know some people have a hard time you know traversing terrain they haven't been in natural environments go for these nice hikes and even if you are

comfortable with a lot of those things sometimes you're uncomfortable in silence you're uncomfortable being unplugged you're uncomfortable and we just we foster environment and conversations that help people tune into those those realities and so it's a little bit of an adventure it's not what you do it's how you do it you know it's how you perceive it so we go on that adventure together that's the adventure tree all these things you can find through

me on IG that I would like to talk about these things coach John Wolf on Instagram and yeah one way or the other if there's any way I can be of service you know sign up for my email list on the website or or you know hit me up and see if there's something if there's something I do that interests you I'd love to have a conversation about it you know. Which jungle are you taking the people to?

This is in the Dominican Republic it's actually so Dominican Republic you think like Punta Cana or you know like the big touristy areas but this is on the Samana Peninsula which has largely been undeveloped so this area that we go to was just like a little village they didn't have electricity until 2011 barely got any Wi-Fi until a year and a half ago we're plugged in with the people that are developing the area and they're doing so very

consciously and matter of fact the working with some of these people are working with the government to create a better master plan of the area so it doesn't fall into the same traps things like Tulum or Punta Cana or even on the peninsula there's another beach town called Las Sarenas it's beautiful but there was no master plan so it just creates a chaotic reality and you know you can't stop progress from happening but if you get enough people

that kind of buy into a preservationist mindset of what makes this place special and it has a long history of spirituality in this valley they're actually finding archaeological findings of a culture that preceded the one that they thought started this area so that's the Taino people was what they thought were the first people's civilization in this area but they're finding like relics from an unnamed civilization and a lot of people there believe in the spiritual

like if you hear like vortexes like places where you kind of like easier to tune into the spiritual realm around the world this has a really profound energy whether you want to believe in vortexes or not it's just a place where it's really easy to tune in and hopefully it stays that way I really hope so as I feel it's a place I grew up in Monterey that's my heart's home I live in Texas this is my physical home but I found my soul's

home in this place of El Valle I think it's a very special place.

Well it sounds amazing well I want to thank you so much it's been such an amazing conversation you mentioned Dan John it was a similar kind of thing obviously we were going to talk about strength training and all the things the first half of the conversation was about post-traumatic stress and you know he had a father in World War II a brother in Vietnam you know there was all kinds of addiction and things and this is what's so beautiful you know you have

all these people and yes they do this thing they coach that you know this is their area of specialty but it's these human conversations so I want to thank you so much for your courageous vulnerability and being so generous and coming on the Behind the Shield podcast today. Thank you for having me James this is long overdue and I had an absolute blast you facilitated me sharing a lot more than I thought I was going to there's no shield anymore here you're behind the shield.