Good I groovers, Welcome to another installment of the View Project. Oh good a tiff, Hello Harps, how are you? I'll look I tell you what. I'm so excited because the government, just the state government just announced that we're sliding into lockdown for seven days starting tonight, which is ten hours from now. It's just gone two o'clock in the thriving metropolis of Melbourne. And if there's one thing I love, it's not being able to go to the gym for seven days.
Fuck.
I thought the only change for you. I thought the only change would be that you have to take your coffee home now and not sit at the Hampton's with it.
That's true, that's true. Don't tell people where I have coffee.
Seven am every morning, same seat, same seat.
Don't do that on the right ah your shitouse.
You know the best thing about that is I haven't even had coffee with you there, but I know that's where you sit because.
That is where I sit, because I like the best manage point. And if a bad guy's coming in, I need to sit where I can see everything, the layer of the land. I need to make sure that I'm in a position where I can defend myself. It's all about that and you never ever have you back to the front door TIF. Just in case you didn't know.
Speaking of needing to defend yourself, you might today.
I'll tell you what. I'm glad Steve is wearing a long sleeve top and a puffer jacket because I feel if he was in a singlet I'd be even more insecure than I currently am, which is significant. Good day, mate, how are you?
Oh? I'm wonderful. Now are you both? It's so wonderful to sit here and just listen to some banter.
That's what we do. We've both got a PhD in talking shit, so we don't like to take ourselves too seriously. I think there's a lot of I think there's enough seriousness going around. We need to intersperse it with a bit of bullshit. Mate. At times we'll get to the serious stuff, but we don't want to get there too quickly.
You know.
Yeah, where do we find you today? Now? I know that you're sitting in a gym slash training area slash garage. Looks like the best equipped bloody garage gym in the world. What state are you in? And I don't mean drunk? Course over.
I'm in New South Wales, so in the Hills area, just outside Sydney.
How long you been there?
A year and a half. I was living closer into the city and had had a few personal changes and found myself out this way.
And how like is it rural?
Is? Actually it's going through a massive development, Like Sydney is just houses on top of houses. So where I currently sit actually, you know, not so many years ago it was all farmland, right, and just the rate in which they're they're putting buildings on it, houses, train stations, shopping centers and ain't it. It's it's developing quickly.
What are you doing these days?
What am I doing? I'm outdoors down to a kind of grassroots training. I guess a lot of you know what it is that that I did for many years in the military, that GPP type training general physical preparedness, but implementing I guess a bit more structure in the
in the programming. So each morning we load up the full drive with a lot of the stuff in the gym here or in the garage and go and conduct it in a park, in a car park, you know, at a number of different locations, and we run five or so sessions a day, five to seven sessions a day seven days.
Awak, Wow, do you have a team or is it just you or what's the deal.
Yeah, there's there's a small team of us and just working at the moment on kind of growing that. And essentially it was born out of necessity. COVID kind of funny talking about that before, and you know, we all went through the depths of it last year. All of the work that I was doing, which was very profile based and a lot of corporate work and being in front of large groups and kind of that showcase kind of way of being evaporated gone within a week. And a lot of that was just due to travel and
marketing budgets and the like, just evaporating. And I found myself standing at a center link line and I thought this is pretty shit. And when they lifted the restrictions and we could start training some people again, you know, small groups, I was like, mate, I got some dumbbells and bumplep plates. I was thrown in the back of the start training people outdoors because no one else was
doing it. And we'd have ninety to one hundred and twenty people through the doors on a Saturday and Sunday, and then people just wanted more of it, so we just started adding days to the point now where we deliver training every day.
How many people do you get to a typical group? I know, that's like how long's a been a string because it varies, but Bullpark Bullpark.
Ballpark is we'd say fifteen. Yeah, you know that number will definitely fluctuate, but especially now as it's starting to get a bit cooler as well. You know, people get a little a little turned off by the cole barbels and the cooler weather and having to put too many layers on. But it's yeah, I love it. It's something I guess I've done my entire life kind of be immersed in nature and kind of heed the advice and strategize around how you best work with nature rather than
the sterile kind of fabricated indoor environments. And I think there's a lot to be learned from that immersion process and then the training that's delivered on top of that.
I mean, everyone who listens to me knows that I'm a massive fan of stepping into discomfort and the benefits and value and growth and learning and evolution that happens in the middle of suffering and pain and discomfort, and I'm in strategic discomfort, not silly, destructive. But it's funny how how many people want to work out, but they want to be comfortable, Like the whole point of working out,
the fucking point of working out, I reckon creative. Yeah, and you create a physiological sorry dude, to create a physiological response to adapt and it doesn't happen when you're fucking comfortable. This is the point, oh mate.
We get in our air conditioned cars or our heated cars to drive to an environment that's that's constructed in a way to in our mind deadlift and pr in a way or run on a treadmill or do whatever, when really you can pull on some shoes hopefully it put some clothes on before that, and step out your front door and and you know, feel your boots like this. It just perplexes me. But do you know what a lot of it comes down to is education. It's it's as much as you know, the industry, and you know,
with social media has grown to a particular point. What we see on social media, isn't it I believe a true representation of what happens on the ground, day in day out. Like people may get social media look really sexy and pretty, but if you go and train with those people or you immerse yourself in, you know what it is that they're doing. Mate, it's faffing around.
It's nonsense, yes, so much and so true. And the thing is that you know the thing that the thing that we the thing that we often avoid, which is and discomfort and inconvenience and all that shit. That is literally the stuff that makes us better. And I used to back in the day when you were fucking sticks. I used to When I started my PT right, I had a smallish PT studio. It was the only one
in Australia. It was fifteen hundred square feet and I had about five or six trainers working with me and it was all one on one and two on one. But we used to do some groups. But we couldn't do groups indoors because we didn't have the space. So I used to do a Saturday morning group and it started with three ladies that I trained, and a few other ladies went as can we join the group when it's actually it's actually a private three on one, and the ladies went well we don't mind. So then it
became a six, then a ten. Then I used to do every Saturday four years between. This is no bullshit, between thirty and one hundred people in this group. My gym was two hundred meters from the beach, and when new people would come, they would say, oh, what happens when it's raining, and I'd say, ask the group, and the group would go, we fucking train and your waterproof, right, because that was my answer, your waterproof? We train what you earlier? Yeah, I'm like, dude, But you know, here's
the funny thing. I ran programs for years and I have zero military credibility or background. I'm just a fucking nuffy. But my program was called commando training and before boot camps were things, and so I would train. The biggest group I trained was on an East of Friday morning and we gave all the money. I used to do East of Friday at seven am, and we'd give the money.
To the.
Royal Children's Hospital appealed down here in Melbourne, and I did one hundred and thirty five people on the beach at once by myself with the whistle right, and it was just fucking awesome. But the thing is when you've got all these people just smashing themselves in and out of the water in the sand, up and downstairs, up and down like and they're stinking and they're sweaty, and then they're ass crackers full of sand and it's fucking shitouse.
But it's joyful, you know, and people have there such a sense of achievement from getting out of that sterile environment and doing something that is just somewhere between uncomfortable and brutal, and it's awesome for us.
Oh yeah, Like it reinforces, you know, a belief within ourselves and collectively, and you know, it's not a false confidence, whereas there's so much false confidence getting around nowadays. It's yeah, it involves a hand a phone in your hand half the time, but it's the vibe as well. And that's that's something that I've been working hard on lately, is just trying to I guess reiterate, you know, like initiate
with the people that train with us. And it's it does it's just showing up and getting started, like the uncomfortableness of it. But once once you get past that, like you don't want to leave.
It's addictive, right, yeah, of course.
And you know, and one thing that I've really I enjoy is again those small so you've got the larger group,
but breaking down into smaller teams. And I guess that's the beauty of technology and the type of equipment that's available nowadays, Like look at the concept to rollers and skis and things like that, and you can you can have a team going for max distance on something like that, and as they come off a piece of equipment, they've got a few other exercises to do and it's team first, team who can cover the most distance in forty five minutes or something like that, And you know they're going
after it, not just for themselves, but you know, for the collective group. But that little bit of competition really helps to raise the bar and encourage people to give a little more than they may give if it's just for themselves. Yeah, I love it.
And when you get you know, when you work when you're hurt, you know, working when you're hurting, you know, you become a different person, Like your mind changes, your threshold changes, your perspective, you're thinking, your choices, your resilience, your physiology changes, like you literally become a different version of yourself. Because you do the thing that most people avoid,
you know. But the irony is if you said to most people, would you like to be mentally and physically and emotionally tougher and have more resilience and be fitter and stronger, and everyone says yes, but nobody wants to do what's required to produce that result, right, And.
That's and that's the action piece where it always falls over. But that's something that for years with corporates, I've dried to get across the line. They want you to come in and talk to them and stand in this this room that everyone's comfortable being in because they've been in there before, and sit in front of a whiteboard or you know, a present a presentation that gets stringed and
you know they're all pumped up for forty minutes. Forty five minutes they walk out of the room and started dump. It's all gone. And you know, if you from time to time you get them. I've done stuff on the Gold Coast where they actually want me to run a boot camp session for one hundred people, you know, on a Wednesday morning in mind you this is for like it conferences, and you get them on the beach and
you know, you'd break them into their teams. You give them a rope and a few sandbags and set like a bit of a mission, a mission profile, and give them an orders set and everything like that. So they've got all these they've got this process, this operating procedure to work from, and then those skills that we talk about, you know, trusting one another and teamwork and communication and listening.
As you were saying before, when you're immersed in the in the middle of hurting, you know, how good are you at being able to just put a bit of space around what it is that you're doing and be considerate of one another. Blink has come on for most people and they shut down and they internalize and they go to water. Yeah.
And also to be able to be in the middle of that and go, well, this sucks, but that's okay. Yes, this is temporary sucking.
That's That's one of the things they take from the military, and the Americans are very big on it, is suffering silence because it's like anything else, we all know that we're hurting, but once we start flapping our lips, we start to undermine ourselves, like, oh but that, and then the next person, ah, yeah, I'm like, and before you know, you're so distracted from the task at hand, and your arm, my elbow hurts, on my knee hurts. Shut up, man,
just like keep going. It's like that's not going to get you through it.
And you're wasting energy on bullshit, you know. And I'm not saying injury is a bullshit, but when you're constantly finding something, always finding something to complain about, you're channeling your attention and your focus and your energy into something that doesn't produce a good result. And the moment that you start complaining to people, you want attention and sympathy, you know. And some things just suck. And sometimes, look, there's a time when we've got to pull up because
that's what our body's really telling us. But sometimes you just got to do shit that's uncomfortable and painful because you know, that's where the growth happens. So and I also found it funny like when you're talking about, you know, we go to the gym, We drive to the gym in our air condition headed car and get in an air conditioned gym, and we drive twenty minutes to get there and run on a piece of revolving rubber When you could just fucking run out your front door.
I contemplated all of this stuff when I like, I do it all the time, but especially when I was on Survivor. I was starving because they didn't give us freaking anything. And then a fifty kilo woman wants to eat the same amount of food as me, you know, ninety kilo, while I was about nine a kilos after losing seven or so on the on the you know, through the through the weeks there it's a little bit of rice and a handful of beans if we didn't
burn the shit out of them. And and and you're contemplating, you know, all of that. You're thinking about morale and being able to sustain life and have a shelter and fire and and I'm thinking to myself, I've spent all these years building this identity to be the person that I am, and I'm sitting on this island in the middle of nowhere doing a TV show. Yes, I put myself there, but I had no real inclination or to want to train. It becomes about survival and smart about
what it is that I'm doing. You know, I need energy to collect firewood so that I don't freeze my ass off, you know, to go and gather and find some food if I like, and conserve energy for the challenges. And I'm not thinking of that just for myself, but also for the team. And then I thought, you know, when I go home, do I really what do I need? You know, like, really am I have? I just been bullshiting myself my whole life about you know, the what it is that I've been kind of doing and the
game that I've been playing. And I made a little commitment to myself when I got home to to just run daily, you know, regardless of where my head was at, pull those runners on and go for at least thirty minutes. And you know, over time, with that consistency and commitment, you find yourself doing more and more. And then Maddie Rodgers actually got me involved in a in a triathlon and I ended up doing a an iron Man distance triathlone.
So I ran my first marathon, you know, off the back of swimming near four k and cycling one hundred and eighty. But again a life living that way and having that mentality off the back of that, it doesn't take much. You just change the bearing on the compass, just a little bit and you go after it, you know, because you've got that foundation, you've got that capability. You've just got to, I guess, learn the ropes of the
specificity of what it is that you're going after. It's not that I was going to break any eight hour record and be up there with the pros, but just finishing something like that is a bloody challenge in itself.
Well, what's your weight at the moment, give or take ninety six? Yeah, you're definitely not fucking built for marathons and I.
Was ninety I was ninety one and a half ninety two kilos when I did that.
You're still about thirty kilos heavier than the elite guys. Yeah, you know what I mean, you're a fucking monster. You're like superhero competed. I mean, those guys are amazing and those girls are amazing. But yeah, you're a big unit that's definitely not built for ultra endurance. But that's a bloody great achievement, mate.
But that's a life of doing that. That's the military, you know. We we were encouraged and it was expected of us to be able to get to the fight. So we had to have what it takes, but then you know, have enough left in the tank to fight the fight.
And I reckon the objective with a lot of this stuff is really how uncomfortable can you get and be and perform in the middle of that? And how well can you be the calm the chaos and how well can you keep your shit together when everyone else doesn't.
And that's I've looked at. You know, you hear the words strength thrown around a lot. Strength can manifest itself in so many different ways. It's like, you know, we could talk about love all day and you know the different I guess the essences of it and strength than to be able to exude strength, you have to be calm, period. You have to be able to send yourself in and amongst all of that chaos and calm the mind and the thought process and the emotions that come of that,
and use you're smarts about how you're going to apply it. Now, I'm not talking and everyone's going to pull four hundred kilos off the floor in a dead lift. But you know, it's it's it's relative to the conditions, the environment and the task in hand.
And I think when you do discomfort in inverted commas you do one with one task or one activity or
one discipline. When you work against that resistance of pain and suffering a discomfort, whether it's physical, mental, emotional, it crosses over to other things because when you so you went you went in the jungle on Survivor or you know, and you were there for a period of time and it sucks and there's no food and it's fucking cold, and there's no you know, there's no anything, and it literally is about survival and you are just trying to get through this and not waste energy and not make
stupid decisions and not lose your shit and be value to the team. And then you go through that and then you come home and go, ah, maybe I've been
doing life or part of life wrong. You know. Sometimes it's these moments where we do something like so many times over the years I've trained someone who had never really done anything physically and they went from you know, lounges lizard to I ran a half, you know, I ran twenty one cased and then they're like the next thing, they're opening a business and they're fucking enrolling in UNI and then they're doing all this awesome shit because now not because of the running, but because of the way
that their mind and their emotional system and their confidence changed in the middle of doing something hard.
I couldn't agree with you anymore. It's it just helps us to believe in ourselves and who we are. And I think we're so constrained by by the status quo and who we think we should be, and we all want to belong. What's the same, you know, babies babies for attention, Babies cry for it, and the rest of us die for it. And you know we were rather we will do crazy, stupid things for attention, you know, even you know, mistaking a few breaths, you know, which
is vital. It's listening just then thinking of my brother who he works for garment and he's probably he's an absolute beast, you know. You everyone knows that, David Goggins and just some of the crazy ship that he does. You know, my brother is an Australian version of a forest gump. Wow, Like just the other week, you know, Well,
anyway it all started. He was working in the minds and rather than being a p said like most people who work in the mines, you know, because it's just mundane, he just started running and I was working with Garment at the time, back in twenty sixteen, and he came on a trip with us, and then he said to the guy Garment, put a post up and for every like you get, I'll run a kilometer. Anyway, Garman got a bit nervous and they stopped. They stopped the likes
that and pulled the post down at a thousand. So he ran a thousand k's in a month back in twenty sixteen. They documented it, and you know plenty of people do that. But he was working a nine to five job replacing suspension in semi trailers, and he pushed his daughter a normal pram that you walked the streets with not a running prem for nearly six hundred ks of that. And then, and I should see some of the video footage of just how cripple he was. He'd
run three times a day. He had to run thirty three point three k's a day to make it every day for a month. Anyway, not so long ago, he was training for an event call I think it's Last Man Standing. And the Australian record is every seven, every hour on the hour, you run seven kilometers until you
can't run anymore. In the Australian records about forty hours, forty two hours anyway, he in preparation for that, he started on a Sunday morning at six am and ran for twenty four hours on his own around the streets of his home, with no support, no one there cheering him on seven k's every hour on the hour, you know, justice and so that's on round one hundred and sixty k's.
But just and he goes, mate, I was falling asleep on my feet, the hallucinations I was having, like it was just he said, it was a trip, just some of the stuff that was happening to him. And you know, it's one thing to be in at an in an event where you know you're competing against other people. And as we were saying earlier, dig a little deeper you find that that that next year, that that extra mile. But I don't know what makes that bloke tick. And you know he's my brother, and he just it blows
me away what he what he achieves. And he's got this big ass bier like Forrest Gump and long hair.
It's just what's his first name, what's his first name?
Andrew? But he goes by Drew Willis or he's better known as the garment Man.
Shout out to Drew.
Yeah, if anyone's in that type of stuff, he is the most softly spoken, barely says anything kind of guy. But you wouldn't put yourself up against him and that type of stuff, you know. And he's not a small guy. He's an eighty five kilow guy and he plays six in that event you had to pull out because he had to work at Camping Caravan Canny Caravan Expo on Monday. That's buddy. Yeah, it's amazing. There's amazing people out there who don't do it for the accolades of anybody else.
They just do it to test themselves.
And it's amazing what people discover about themselves when they really really genuinely have a crack or when you know what else is amazing, And I've spoken about this abnauseum on this show. Is like when when shit goes sideways in someone's life and there's a catastrophe or there's something fucking terrible that happens, how adaptable and capable and amazing people can be in the middle of a catastrophe or after a catastrophe in terms of you know, what they can do if they have to do it.
Yeah, right, we rise to the occasion, and I think again a lot of the language and how how we
view ourselves in this current era of humanity, it's undermining. Yeah, like because as you just said, you know, like yeah, like some of the events that like look in christ churchmen, I had those those earthquakes a few years ago, and how quickly they all pulled together and got themselves through what was happening, you know, and time and time again, when nature just gives a swift kick in the ass, you know, we band together and we find a solution.
We come up with ways to get through it. You know, look at COVID, even not so long ago, you know, half an hour down the road from us here, we had the floods, you know, the water the water levels raised by twelve meters. Fuck like that's you know, people's homes got washed away, and you know, and just before COVID we had the fires. You know, people are still dealing with the consequences and the aftermath of all of that, you know, with everything else that's gone on.
Wow, So I want to jump around a little bit. Yeah, I'm not going to. I don't not if this sounds bad, I hate I don't you you'd probably be happy. I'm not that interested in the biggest loser, but people will want me to ask a fucking question or two. He didn't ask him about the biggest loser. Tell me one good thing and one thing that kind of not so good thing, whatever it is, out of the biggest loser.
Or maybe there's no bad things, but something you enjoyed and something that you look back and go, I'm not sure about that.
From where we are nowadays, in our understanding around you know, obesity and weight issues and the like, we know it's a lot of it's mental health. Yeah, it's the perception of self and use food and whatever else is it means to soothe and to cope. Yeah, we didn't know about all that well, you know five years ago, ten years ago, and it was all very people were like that because they lacked you know, whatever it might have been, and they were full of excuses, and they were just lazy.
You know, everything was based in laziness, and they're pathetic and apathet and all of this stuff and which you know isn't isn't so true? Like there's a lot of trauma that happens for people at very early ages. And again it's education, it's it's understanding and when the framework and the foundation isn't set when they're young, they don't
know any different. And then they find themselves on a television show because they put their hand up and said I need to turn my life around, and they ended up on my team especially. I felt sorry for them half the time, but I very much when I went into it at the start, had this line you're either in or you're out. There's there's no middle ground. Like you know, you got to you got to live up to the expectation. But that's how it was for me for many years in the army and my job I
took very seriously. I loved it, and it was all about building rapport and relationshi and ships because you wanted people to define that that intrinsic drive to do it for themselves, you know, not me just bark some orders and point of finger and when I turn my back they go and screw you. I'm not doing this any longer.
Because those tools they then put into their little bag when they leave the biggest lose and it's in the rear vision mirror and they can implement them, you know, into their lives moving forward, you know, forever, and you know some of the transformation stories and you know people that have that have done amazing things this day, and it helped them immensely. But then there's others that they just they needed far more help than what the show
could deliver. And a lot of that was was coming to terms with with things in their lives that yeah, a lot of the traumas and the upset that they carried and those burdens and just how food and how readily available it is. They're just that they can't deal with it.
I was banging on when I owned four gyms down here, and I spent my life talking to people about the psychology of eating and the psychology of getting in shape. And even though my first degree is exercise science, so i'm, you know, I would, you know, that's my area of real expertise. But I figured out quite young that getting in shape was whatever getting in shape means. That's a very sweeping, kind of blanket kind of description and statement.
But I realized that helping people change their body was largely not about their body, and especially when it came to food, you know, because we don't accidentally eat cake. We don't accidentally eat three pies. We don't accidentally have fucking five beers and go shit out it like this. This is all choices and byproducts. And you're right, you know, just saying to someone, hey, fucking eat less and jog more and have more fucking self control, that's not the answer.
And I've written a bunch of books. But the first book I wrote was nearly twenty years ago, mate, And interestingly, to my knowledge anyway, when no one was talking about the psychology of food and getting in shape, I wrote a book terrible fucking name, but I think it was a good conversation. The book's called Fatitude, which was basically a book about the psychology behind the physiology. Yeah, and it's almost like, the body's not the problem. The body
is the consequence. The body's the symptom. What's the problem is between my ears? And I'm the same, mate, like i've my audience. No, I'm a fucking idiot with food, like I've been. I was the fattest kid in my school and it took me until I was probably mid thirties, which was twenty years ago for me. And I owned gyms and I was writing for the Herald Sun, I was doing all this cool shit, but I still had my own bullshit with food. And it took me three and a half decades to be able to manage my mind,
to manage my body. And I think people really don't understand what a huge role managing our emotions and our mind and choices and behaviors and you know, thinking in general, what a huge role it plays, because we're so obsessed with the body that we actually missed the cause.
But that's but that's humanity in and of itself. We're so fixated on the materialism and the form of everything, we missed, we miss everything else. Now the Japanese have a word for everything else, and it's called marm. It's the space, the interval, or the gap between. And yeah, as you said, so the physiology and how it presents itself is exactly you know, what's going on, you know, internally.
And I saw it this morning when I took a group for training and as we were talking earlier, people banging on about injuries and I can't do this and I can't do that, and we're sitting down and I got them to do like a simple like seated splits position and to bend to one side to stretch out through the QL and mate. People couldn't even sit on the floor with their leaks like they had them sitting on like a yoga mat or an exercise mat. Some people could barely get their feet wider than with the mat.
And they're so posteriorly or you know, the hip so possibly rotated, but they're going into this caiphoonic position with the hip. And then and then you know, you're asking them to lunch, you're asking them to squat, you know, do all this other stuff. They're so their reductors are so bound up and tight, and then it's affecting all of that as external rotators and up into their back. It's and and again it's it's what's going on in he here. It's what they then deem and think is
most important. And we chase the form, we chase the output because humanity says, well, anything that you want is found in intensity and going hard. Well, you know, we know that that to be true to a degree, but you've got to be smart about how you do it. You know, efficiency of movement, efficacy of movement, you know, and otherwise it's not trying to drive your car with a bloody handbreak on, like you know, you're.
Just so trying to use fast and also on top of that, like look at us three right now, where the sit down generation? Right, There's never been a generation of fucking humans ever in the whole timeline of humanity who sit as much as we do. So we're in constant hip flexion and quite often with this forward head position, so our heads forward over our center of gravity. Our shoulders are forward and slumpy, like Tiff, who looks like a fucking question mark over there, get your shoulders back
to the boxing. And but yeah, so this forward shoulder position, this chai fotic back, this forward head position, you know, this constant hip flesh. And so our hip flexes get tight, our glutes get weak and stretched, and then we stand up. And just fucking standing up straight is a struggle for some people. Yeah, but you know it's our lifestyle.
Yeah, And like we're just hearing you say with Tiff, and I guess the specificity of a given sport. With boxing, it asks of you to hold your body in cert positions and not be so square, you know, because you to avoid being hit. It's easy to hit a freaking big target. And I look back to my military time, you know, and I'm six to two, you know, and you know I'm a biggish guy. But what what was required of us, you know, was with a lot of the drills that we did, we had a weapon system.
So we're kind of in that position and wear crouchs all the time.
Remember when I was.
Leaving the army and I was introduced a crossbit, you know, and they're talking about overhead squats and snatch and all that stuff. Mate, I've thought my shoulders were going to get torn off and my wrists and like I'd try and front squat and I'd almost cry because the pain that I'd get in my risk is my shoulders were just frozen in this position. And then my elbow extension from carrying a damn machine gun for years, like bent like that, like it just it's all that muscle memory again,
and then the calcification in the joint. And but again, I've just never been one to to allow others to define who I am. It's like, you know, doctors say, but don't do this, and don't just like men. You know, I'm human, I'm organic. I'm gonna I'm gonna give it a damn red hot go to, you know, to improve my mobility, and you know, the things I can do now at near on forty five that I wasn't capable of doing when I was twenty five. Yeah, good for you, dude.
How long were you in the military.
So I joined when I was eighteen and I left just before I was thirty, So yeah, it was around that ten year mart Yeah. Yeah.
What was the best part.
The best part, Gosh, there was lots of it, but it was the camaraderie. It was the matship and doing hardship with your mates, Like doing some real scary, funky
like like almost out of body experience stuff. You know, like sliding down the rope of a helicopter and a high rise building, you know where it's just you and your hands hold one and you've got thirty kilos a year, you know, just jumping out of aircraft with your boats and landing you know, way out in the ocean where you can't even see land doing parachuting at night, sliding down lift you know, steel cables twenty stories, you know, just stuff, doing shooting, shooting in rooms you know where
you're standing close to targets and the trust and that you have in your teammates too, you know, engaging you know, friend from foe and hostage terrorist type situations. It's just, you know, the level and degree of training. It's hard to kind of articulate because most people's references to stuff like that are movies.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, there's guys that do this stuff day and day out, and and and they've deployed those skills, you know, for real, you know, in countries far away.
Yeah, it's it's it's full on and that that you know, what you do a lot of, whether or not that set a lot, or carry a machine and a lot, or eat donuts a lot or whatever. That behavior is that you do a lot of, that becomes your default setting. That becomes your programming. That becomes your whether or not it's good or bad. That becomes your blueprint. I wanted to ask you a little bit about like I mean, I've only known you for forty five minutes. We could
have been brothers. I could have been your older brother, I feel like to me, yeah, mate, Well, the funny thing is I always have my head shaved. I've had it shaved for thirty years. And this is the first time I've grown it in ever because people thought I was bald. I'm like, no, motherfuckers, I just shaved that shit. It grows like fucking bamboo up there. So to me, you seem like a contrarian, and by that I mean,
and tell me how wrong or right I am. Contrarian in that you like, you're full on with what you do. You discipline, you're in control, You've got your shit together. You you have pretty clearly defined boundaries about who you are and what you're doing, what's okay and what's not okay. And you you're obviously because of your background with TV except you're comfortable doing this. But to me, you don't
seem like a natural extrovert. You seem you seem more like an introvert that has just been developed the skill to be able to do this stuff. You're not an introvert shy like you seem like to me a naturally more quiet, reserved, just get shit done kind of person and then beat my chest, look at me.
Oh one hundred percent, like I I think, yeah, and upbringing and just I think inherently being that way, like my constitution. But that's that's the mentality and the military as well. You know, you you might talk a little, and you know, you plan and you have your orders, groups and the like, and then you just you put it to practice. You go out and it's all about
the action piece. And that's you know, where you take the theory and you put it into practice, and half the time you prove that those theories just are a load of shit. And the reality of it is you've got to be You've got to have a lot of lateral thinking and be able to come up with contingency
plans a lot of the time. But I've always been that way, and that's why I find the social media side of things and kind of you know, the current era quite difficult to to play in that space in that game, because I would rather, you know, show my worth and you know, my capability in the middle of a workout or doing something hard or being of service you know, to my family or to my friends or you know, to people in need. And that's I think
that speaks volumes. And I guess I was quite fortunate when I left the military and the biggest loser opportunity presented at skull self. It scared the absolute shit out of me, but I saw the opportunity and I was like, yeah, I'm going to give it a crack. And I thought, if I fail, I'll just go back to the Army. But that immersion process and that constant butterflies and feeling sick in my guts want the puke every time I
was going to go on camera. The more you immerse yourself in it, like everything we've been talking about, you start to learn the roapes, You start to gain an understanding and some insights and how to work around things. And I found I've just got a lot better at talking because I was around people who could talk. And other than that, i'd still be like my nine year old son who says very little, Well.
You get conditioned to whatever you do. You know, you become you know, you become who you're around and what
you're doing to an extent in that you know. You sorry to repeat all these metaphors everybody, but I always say, whatever you start as you start as a white belt, whether or not that's martial arts or TV or academia or building a business or you know, we start as a white belt and then we train and we fall down, we get up, and we learn shit, and we progress and develop skill and resilience and awareness and competence, you know, and then you just get So you go from being
shipped in front of camera, not many skills, not much awareness, and lots of nerves and then over time you become confident and skillful and the physiological response tones down and you're the same person, but now you've got a different relationship with that thing with the camera, with that exposure.
Yeah. Yeah, I'd related to exercise all the time, and it's you know, like like learning complex skills, and you've got to You've got to hone the basics first because otherwise, you know, all that complexity, what does it base itself in?
You know, what are you're working from? And yeah, they actually those everything that you just spoke about have being some of the biggest struggles that I've had in my life is that that outward yeah, persona of who I am, and then also playing a role as well and living up to the expectation of what that character was. And over time I just learned really people just want you to be who you are, and you don't need to
be this one dimensional human being like people. People like to see the many facets of what makes another person tick, and you can be soft and gentle and loving and calm and at the same time an absolute weapon. And I think when you have you're conscious and aware of when to turn it on and not, you actually go through life with more rhythm and you can move with it. You're not you're not resistant because you're trying to be something that you're not at times when you don't need to be it.
That's that's so insightful. That's you. I don't know what I expected, but I didn't expect you. That didn't I didn't have low expectations. I try not to own think it, but you're very philosophical and insightful.
I like it.
And also, you know, there's this thing that, as you said, persona. It's a really good word because I think with a lot of people and me included at times, so all of us probably at times there's the persona and then there's the person you know. And quite often the persona is the role we play or the character or public
me or TV me, or me at the gym. You know, when I was running my shit and people are everywhere, and I step out on the floor and it's fucking wah wah wah, and there's I'm still me, but there's a fair bit of role playing in that and when you step away from there being the commando and you're just Steve, just the fucking bloke who's a bit complicated and a bit brilliant and good and bad days and gets fucked off and inspires people all in the same hour, right,
because you're just a fucking dude. You're not really special. None of us are special, right, You're just a bloke. Yeah, you know, you know what I mean, No one's fucking special. Or there's seven point eight billion of us that we're not that fucking unique.
But collectively we are. But that's the we don't work together enough. You know. Bruce Lipton, one of the best biologists in the world, talks to that piece. You know, everyone bangs on nowadays there's too many humans, you know, it's that's the problem with the world. Well, actually humanity in the world are two different things. Humanity is the issue with the world, and the world is actually going
to it's working its magic and sorting us out. But Bruce Lipton said, you know, talk to the piece where you know there's what seven point however many billion people just to make one human body. There's like seventy trillion cells, yes, you know, and and they need to work reasonably harmonious or harmoniously for us to function and be a human. And you know, we we have the capability. Were just we've got to get over this archaic way of thinking
and actually use our intelligence. But we you know, our state of being in this mindset, and a lot of it too, is the ego and the emotions that are born of the ego. A lot of anger and aggression and resentment and jealousy and all this other type of stuff constantly pulls us down and it undermines us.
In terms of your life. Now you've got to go soon, when you've got to go five or ten? All right, all right, I'm fucking loving it. I'm loving it. I okay, So for me, so I'm going to start. So for me, my issues are numerous. But in terms of me managing me, it's always been you go, bit of bullshit, a bit of self doubt, yeah, self loathing yep, a bit of overthinking,
a little bit of self sabotage. Like beautiful cocktail of emotions and behavior there, right, and and like feeling shit but kind of knowing well, I'm not shit but feeling shit at times. I've always had to bring myself fucking keep myself aligned because I can shoot myself in the foot or I can. You know, I always say to people, nobody's a harsher critic of me than me, So do your best right? What about you? How do you self manage?
How do you keep yourself mentally, emotionally, practically where you need to be to be your best person or your best self and to live your best life. Do you have any rituals or do you have any to read a lot? Do you meditate to your listener? Fucking Joe Rogan nineteen weeks.
So I growing up, I didn't think much of myself. Grew up with a stepfather who was just a hard ass. He used anger was his go to emotion with everything, and so I grew up as a young boy. You're seeking acceptance, you know, from you know, the parent kind of age group and my peers, because I didn't get a lot of that nurturing and that love. Like it was it was hard line and discipline. The military kind of brought more of that, and I didn't like myself
at all. And in my early to mid teens, I just started using exercise as a means to beat the freaking absolute crap out of myself, you know, rather than alcohol or drugs, I went to exercise. I'd get up early in the morning and go for runs and try and kill myself like like I would try and hurt myself like that, like with exercise. My eye used to ride a pushbike and do paper runs every day, and and the like, and that that was a very tumultuous
relationship with exercise. But the thing with exercise, you know, this whole talk, is it's freaking hard, and to sustain it you've got to keep answering your why otherwise and many people can't though, And for me, even in my military years, I still did my own training on top of it. So when I made the decision to leave the Army, I knew what I wanted to do because it had had such a profound effect on my life and help me kind of forge and carve a particular path.
And I thought, well, the things that I've learned to that point in time and from the Army, I can put that to good use and help others. And then the profile came and I found that very hard to deal with. But then I would talk to people and say, you know, what do I do? And they would just say if someone approaches you and has something nice to
say and congratulate and I'm like, job well done. Just say thank you, like, actually give them enough space and listen enough for them, regardless of what it is that they have to say, because that's their opinion, that's their perspective, and you may have had a profound effect on their life from a few words that you said. If they want to say something, just let them say it, and then just say thank you. And I was like, man, how easy can it be? But you get all hung
up on this stuff. And then and then in when I was thirty three, in two thousand and nine, I competed in the CrossFit Games in America and I finished fourth. I was still the highest ranked Aussie to finish at the Crossfieit Games. James h Adelaide finished fifth last year, behind me, So he's getting close. But you know, not many people know about that, you know, and that was the early days of CrossFit.
And that's an amazing outcome, Like I know what that means.
And then guy, yeah, and Guy said to me, oh, served with me, and you know, it was special Forces in the Army, and they're like, what's the difference between what we did in the army and what you did in CrossFit? And in the army it's about being the gray man. It's about just getting the job done. It's an endurance race. Crossfits just it's brutal, it's all out.
You're trying to win. And I des drawed myself in thes and for about a year after that, I didn't want to even think of exercise, like I just it made me want to be sick. But my relationship after that with myself and what I put myself through for all those years was I can't keep working through and operating from the thought processes and the emotions that I elictit to get the job done, because a lot of it was, as you were saying earlier, self loathing. There
was a lot of aggression. There was a lot of turning things back in on myself and using that as a fuel to get it. But it's very destructive. But through that immersion again and the experience, I started to read a lot more. I started to you know, I guess have my mind and eyes open to many different facets and ways of being, and again just rewinding to when I was. I didn't know how to express myself,
so I used physical action to express myself. And then I realized you reading a lot of philosophy, and then kind of into the Buddhism side of things and Zen Buddhism and teaching myself how to be still, to just sit and be and come home to myself and build a relationship with my mind and my body and the
essence of who I am. So nowadays I can get really fidgety and up tight and upset about things, and I can go and do a workout, but at the same time, I can be in that same place and I can go sit quietly out the back or even come into the carriage and turn the lights off and sit here with my legs quiet although as my leg's quite my legs cross quietly, and I might want to jump out of my skin. But after about fifteen minutes of just sitting with myself and just following my breathing,
everything just comes. It just kind of evaporates, and a lot of that those very strong, powerful emotions subside. And this is the other thing that I've learned is the Western mind teaches resistance trying to push away a lot and to resist and having something to actually resist when
there doesn't have to be. And emotional intelligence is actually recognizing an emotion coming up because it's been triggered from something, and not trying to resist that emotion, but calming that emotion, like your anger, like I don't need you right now, Everything's okay, I've got this, And then you calm that and you make space and room to engage with other emotions that are more uplifting for you and they're more beneficial to maybe what it is that you're trying to get done.
Listen to you, dude. You like the Deli Lama with fucking big shoulders.
But it's like I couldn't meditate five minutes when I first started, you know, sitting at it, like and the aches in my knees and just the discomfort and pain. And then I think I've in me. I've got a bit of a bit of OCD with stuff if I get if I fixed my mind on something like I'm like a pitbull that's been let off the leash. Yeah, I'm not going to be I'm not gonna to be distracted by what's left and right. I'm going after it and some of the stuff I read, especially in zen Buddhism,
about how disciplined they are and the expectation. I was like, mate, I might not be in Japan or in a zen a, in a Buddhist monastery or the like, but I can damn or practice it in the confines of my own home. And you know what I've learnt about myself, And I think getting to know yourself better, you know humanity better.
And and and a lot of the time, half the stuff that you irritates this and upsets this doesn't need to be We just just put some spate, just let it go, and just observe, because a lot of it, too is we're just carrying on like five year olds. It's no, we're just in bigger bodies. Like I watched my five year old son carry on. I think, oh, there you go, Steve. You know sometimes you act like
that and you're in your forties, you're big kid. But and then and then you smile, because as you said at the start of this, you know we do we take ship too seriously a lot of the time, and you know, we beat ourselves up when really we could just smile and go there you go. You just you're just being a goose again, just you know, wind it in and and just calm things down.
It's so interesting to hear the contrast between the highly trained Special Forces soldier, which is all you know, switched on, ready to go, ready to go, like be prepared, sympathetic, nervous system, fight for flight, blah blah, but also parasympathy being the calm in the chaos, through to the kind of the Eastern philosophical journey as well, you know, being the equanimity, you know, the calm in the chaos, and being where you become. You don't you're not the thought anymore.
You're not in the thought. You're actually outside the thought. You're the observer of your thinking. Where there's that disconnect between me and my thought. It's not the same anymore. Oh fuck, where did that thought come from? That's bullshit and being able to you know, and you go, well, if it's not my mind recognizing that thing that's coming from my mind, what is it? Who the fuck or what the fuck is the observer? Because it's also it's
not my body. Oh hang on. If I'm not my body and not my mind and not my thoughts and not my emotions. I fucking love that stuff.
Yeah. I wrote about that in two thousand and nine in the book No Excuses, And when I was training and training up for the cross with games and the like, and pushing myself to the point of having out of body experiences and like I used to, but I can do that again now. You know, meditating, and you talk to many people who are very practiced in those ways of being, and they do they go into different states
of reality and and things become altered. And it's much like you know, even sleeping, like the states of sleep and remembering dreams and not and the like, and you know, was I awake? Was I sleep like? It's it's that trying to distinguish, and I think sometimes we get a bit hung up on it, but the mind tries to grasp as well and understand when really it's just just be happy with a certain observation or awareness that it is, and don't try and make anything more of it. But
that's what where I'm at now too. In working out, like in that chaos of squad, pressed with a barbell or running my guts out, I can I can just find myself quite centered and calm, and there's this buffer, and I can observe how the mind starts to trying to attach itself to certain pain triggers that are going on.
And if you do, you go down this rabbit hole and you find yourself stopping when really, if you can bring it back to your breathing, bring it back to some fundamentals of like, all right, so what's the exercise that I'm doing and what what what techniques do I need to employ to ensure that I'm moving efficiently with
those movements? And I bring it back to that, and I just find I can just keep going rep after wreck and it's and even now with I might not be as strong in the sense of you know, one r M type work that I've been able to do over my years, but capacity wise and across a variety of skill sets, I'm a much better athlete human being than I've ever been.
Yeah, well, the thing is with fitness, I mean there's cognitive fitness, emotional fitness, you know, physiological fitness, of course, and even if we just look at the physical their strength and power and speed and muscular endurance and aerobic endurance and reaction time and spatial awareness, there's all that shit, right, you know, and yeah, being able to bench press whatever or deadlift whatever or clean whatever is good, But not if you can't run five hundred yards, you know, or
not if you can't do a chin up because one hundred and thirty kilos, or because you can't fucking touch your knees because you lower backs fucked and you've got the flexibility of a fucking cricket bat, you know. So it is so interesting mate, to hear you talk about all of that, and also, you know, to open that door beyond you know, the identity thing and the reality thing. It's like you were talking about the dream. You know. Here's the thing, right, your body doesn't know what's real
as in practically literally happening. It doesn't know the difference between that and the dream because your body, you know, if you're dreaming that you're being chased by the saber toothed tiger and in that dream you're there and that you're present, and you believe that, then so does your body. And then all of a sudden we have all of these physiological responses which are identical to if it was actually happening, because your body can't differentiate. That's how powerful
thought is. And so when we get people sitting around God bless them all day, some people who are really you know, focused on negativity. Well, the day is negative because you're telling yourself those stories of how shit and
horrible everything is, even if it isn't. But then that's reflected in your body's biochemistry and your heart rate and your blood pressure and your sympathetic nervous system and your stress home hormones, and you know, it's this whole integrin of mind, emotion, body and learning to self regulate, which is kind of where you've been and where you are.
Yeah, I love it.
I fucking love this.
How you can, yeah you can. You can articulate it in a way just with the differences and I guess you know, the facets of what it means to be human. And again we get so fixated on the form and that muscular skeletal system and the aesthetic of how it looks when you know, there's so many people that I know that don't look like athletes and they turn the inside out and a heartbeat.
And also think about how many people that you and I know that a walking around in this awesome rig that mentally and emotionally are falling apart. You know, and then you go. So it's good to have a great body and well done, and it's good to be strong and look fit and look amazing, and that's great. That is a really great achievement. But if the only thing you train is your body, you'd never train your mind, or you never look after your mental or emotional health.
You know, there are going to be some problems. We're going to wind up because I realized that you've got shit to do and you don't need to talk to me all day. But I don't say this every episode, but I really really enjoy chatting with you, like really good, so such a good conversation, and you're such an insightful human being. So I really appreciate you coming on to you project buddy.
I appreciate it.
Yeah, mate, you're a ripper. You're fucking great. You're good. You're real good. You probably know that, but I didn't, but now I do. You're real good, Tiff. What'd you think?
I thought he was real good?
I reckon to give him on your your podcast at some stage.
Well, little did he know I was going to hit him up for it. Well, let's now I think he's ready.
Yeah, primed him he's had a practice run with me.
Mate.
If people want to follow you, you connect with you. What's the deal? Buy your books? Fucking spoon you on the couch?
What is it? Just all the handles Commando Steve, So Commando Steve, website, dot com, Instagram, Kimando Steve, Facebook, Commando Steve. And you know the training we we kind of the banner we go under is get Commando fit perfect.
Well, we appreciate you stick around once I do the show sign off if you would just for a minute, tiff anything, no harps, Well done you, well done, Steve. Well done listeners. We love you, guts and we will see you next time.