Gunnar Peterson: It's Sexy to Try

Your buddies who come out of that relationship and don't use their abilities to improve themselves for the next go-round on the dating/marriage cycle, they're doing themselves and their current offspring or future offspring a massive disservice by not trying harder. Fuck, dude, try. I hate getting in that cold plunge every day. Yeah. Every day here.

I don't do... You do it every day? Uh, I haven't recently because, um, mine just burst. Um, I came, I came... I woke up in the morning and, uh, came downstairs, which I normally jump in, you know, jump in the morning, and, uh, I have a feeling one of my, one of my frigging cats did something, but, um, I had a, a air inflatable one, and the thing was leaking and, um, you know, it, it had, it had fallen down enough that the water was starting to come over the edge and it ended up being like half my day trying to make sure that, you know, whatever that is, 50 gallons of water didn't just- Yeah ... blast out over my entire, entire floor.

So, um- Yeah ... I, it's been probably three weeks since I've been in. But yeah, I usually try to do, um, four, four or five days a week, um, when I can, yeah. You're a better man than I am. I, I, y- I don't know.

I have one. I get in it, and then I just go to knees, and then I go to hips, and I go, "I'm good." It's something about when I get up in here, I just go, "Ah, do I need this?" And then I, I told mys- I convinced myself that the cold shower and the face in the shower and then if I stay in there for a minute, minute and a half, and, and there's something about being able to go gradually in that, that I've, I've just told me... But I will tell you this, I'm diligent with the sauna.

I can do... And, and I use red light, obviously Solbasium, that's a given. Uh, but I, but I do a combo of old-school sauna and red light, and I have no problem with heat, and I've... I joke with people, like, I, I don't know. I don't think you g- to me, to, to your point, I don't get used to that cold.

That's, that's why I do it. Um, I do it because I hate it, not be- not for the... I mean, I- Okay ... the health benefits are definitely there, inflammation- For sure ... reduction. Um, you know, I, being a non, uh, technical fitness biology, you know, I'm like a, a Monday morning quarterback, but for human optimization, I guess you'd call it. Um, I- You know, uh, uh, wait, let me jump in- Yeah ... just so you know this.

I, I have told my other trainers, "Hey, guys, I'm in the office. I'm doing a podcast." And I go, "Just if you have to walk out because it goes out to our parking, I'm fine, but whatever." I literally just had my coworker walk through with his pants down. That's the kind of professional environment I'm in.

I, I would last five minutes in corporate, just so you know. That's- I just, I, I'm like, okay, and, and you think I'm not gonna just out you on that, pal? So that's what, that's what I'm dealing with here. We... And the good news is that's perfectly acceptable for the show- ... so we're all, we're good.

Pants are optional. Pants are optional here. Just- He just walked through with his whole ass out smirking, and I'm like, "I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna take the hit for laughing. I'm gonna explain to you why. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna show you, but I'm gonna explain to you what I'm looking at here."

Yeah. Uh, well, yeah, to your point around the corporate thing, um, I know we don't know each other, but I'm the exact same way. I, I, uh, I cannot survive in the corporate environment for a whole bunch of reasons. Um- Did you do it? Have, have you?

Yeah. Yeah, I did it. Uh, me too. I got fired three times before I realized. It took me three, it took me three times to realize that it wasn't for me.

Um- Yeah. Same reasons firing, like, uh, like failure to comply kind of thing- No ... or was it something egregious? No, no, it's, um, the first two were I broke power law number one, um, never outshine the master, and the third one was just a complete lack- Well, that's, uh, 40, 48 laws of power? Or 40- Yeah, by Robert Greene. Yeah.

Yeah. And then, uh, wait, 50 Cent did one with him. Um- Yeah, he was the f- that was the 50th law, yeah. Yeah. What happened to 49?

I t- I think they skipped it to work for the title, but yeah, there, I'm sure there's a 49th in there somewhere, but, um- Yeah. I, I- All right. So you ou- you, you out, you outshone or outshowed the master. Fair. Yeah, it, it, um, which is a really interesting thing because I was young.

I was in my late 20s, and, and, and I think this speaks probably to a lot of people. I thought I was just doing a good job. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, in my mind, I'm just hard charging, tons of energy.

Crushing. I have fairly significant ADHD, um, and I know that my brain's on all the time, and I use that as a, as a advantage. You know, I, I've, I've learned how to control it and how to, how to focus it and, um, I just think I'm cranking along, and I wake up one day and get a phone call and it's like, "Yeah, you no longer work here." Uh, come to find out a year later- Wow ... so I, I'm the number two in the company, 47-person company. I'm the number two.

Uh, I get a call a year later, and, and I was shell-shocked. This was like, up until that point, this is like my dream job. I am running a media company. Uh, we're absolutely crushing it. We're putting on events, you know, whatever.

Um, I get a call from the CEO a year later, first time I talked to him since the day he fired me. And I said... You know, I pick up the phone. So- Did he fire you himself? Yeah.

Yeah. Well- Okay ... it was Slack, but yes. Uh, it was technically his fingers on the keyboard that, that let me go. So I said, "What do you want?" And he said, "Well, you know, how's it going?"

And I go, "What do you mean, how's it going? Go fuck yourself." Did your... Hang on, hang on. Did your whole tone and approach to him change now that he was no longer in the, uh, let's call it superior position?

Oh. Did you take on a d- did you appr- was your- Uh, response approach significantly different? Yeah, my posture- Yeah ... was go fuck yourself, basically. Oh, I love it. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah, that was my- Now we're talking ... that was my posture towards him. Um, you know, and he's like, "How you doing?" I go, "What do you mean how's it going?" I go, "Go f- go f- fuck you."

I go, "What do you mean how's it going?" I was like- Yeah, yeah ... I was like, "You fired me from my dream job a year ago and never told me why." And so then w- come to find out, I'll, I'll skip to the, I'll s- I'll skip to the good part. Um- No, this was the good part to me.

Yeah, so, so, so basically, um, he goes, "Well, I need, I need your signature on something." So like because I was the number two, we had a dual signature for, um, the payout on our, um, uh, we had a phantom equity plan in the company, and you needed two signatures for, you know, w- some sort of compliance or whatever, and I, I was the other signature. So now he wants to get paid on his phantom equity, and he can't get paid until he gets my signature. So once I found that out, I was like, "Look, I'll sign your document." I was like, "But you gotta tell me why you fired me."

And he goes- And there's a fee for this signature. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, um, and I s- he goes, um, he goes, "Well, you know, like..." And I could tell he's trying to figure out what to say because we're getting a lot of you knows, a lot of likes, a lot of ums, so he's, you know, I can tell he's grinding in his brain, and finally he just goes, "I thought you were coming for my job."

And I go, and this is legitimately what I said to him. I go, "You are the stupidest motherfucker I have ever met in my life." I go, "We had the best... Like, like I was out front media guy, event guy, write the blog post, do the podcast, you know, all that shit. You're the, you know, baby kisser, handshaker, politician guy behind the scenes with the board and the investors."

I go, "I didn't want your job." I go, "Do you think that I wanna have to kiss people's a... Like everything you know about me, you think that I wanted to walk around kissing people's ass, like shaking hands and going to all these back room secret fucking investor politics meetings?" 'Cause we were like, uh, involved with an association too. It doesn't matter. And I was like, "I don't wanna do any of that shit.

Like, what are you talking about?" Yeah, yeah. And he goes, "Oh, well, you know, that's the way it seemed." And I go, "Wow, you are a dumb motherfucker." And then we ended up yelling at each other for about an hour, like two, just two grown men just screaming at each other through the phone, and after about an hour we both kind of run out of steam and, um, and I just said, "How about this?

You stop being an asshole to me, and I'll stop being an asshole to you, and then we can just move on." And he said, "Sure." And you know, now we're- You know that, that's funny, uh, somebody said to me, "You always bring it back to you." I go, "I'm not bringing it back to me, but I'm trying to, uh, to draw a parallel to understand." I think going back even to when my dad, who's been retired for years, when he worked, he s- he taught me about there were some guys who were front men.

They are the guys who go into the meetings first, and back in the day, I don't want to, I don't want him to get in any trouble, you know, after the fact, but it was, uh, th- there's a certain look to those guys. Uh, there's a certain demeanor to them. Regardless of their, uh, their competence in business, they were the guys you wanted to go in first to sort of, um, set the tone, and then, you know, business guys come in and that. And, and I, I maintain, I've probably had... I mean, my brother once said, "You have a ton of turnover in your gym."

I'm like, "Really? I've had a gym for, you know, 25 plus years. I've had 10 trainers." You know, I don't s- I don't ever say under me, but like alongside me, and they, they come and go. As a rule, mo- most of them, let's say 8 of 10, um, by their own hand they leave, but the others because they're, they wanna strike out on their own.

No problem. Um, but some of them, I go, like the, the two I w- I, I'm thinking of right now, they were the best and, and, and again, just to give it a label but not to, not to create a hierarchy that's not there, they're like the best number two, right? Like I'm, I, I, I'm better front facing. I'm better to draw people in. I'm better to, to, uh, set the tone for a room when the, the client or the, or the, uh, potential client walks in.

I'm the right guy to say, "Here's what we do," the, and I show them the stuff, and I'm that, but the other trainer is as good as I am in the trenches doing the training work. And w- when they set out to do their own gym, I go, "Ah, that, that's... Don't do that. I love you. Do like you and I..."

"No, I just think it's my time, G." And I don't mind. I never want to hold anybody back, and if the big difference between being a trainer and a gym owner, you can, you can be a great trainer, fail miserably as a gym owner. You can be a great, uh, gym owner and fail miserably as a trainer. Two different skill sets.

But when these guys set out, I just go, "You... Look, dude, I love you. You're not that guy. Let me be that guy. Let me draw the business, and then I'll spread it around, and we'll all succeed."

So to your point, you didn't wanna be that guy. You're doing the other stuff. You're doing... You're in your lane, he's in his lane, and the two are marching along. I completely get it, so it's funny.

I see it in my business too. So I did a, uh, TED, TEDx talk in February. Um, it was called Stop Living a Life You Didn't Choose, and it was all about ego and how we, in my opinion, in my career thus far, I'll be 45 this year. You know, when I break down, what, what are the things that I've seen in my, my, in myself? What are the things that I've seen around me, people I've coached, people I've worked with?

Easily one of the top three, if not the reason, that I believe most careers derail is because of ego or some derivative of ego. And you know, you look at the story that I just told, it's ego. You look at the individual who can't understand that they are an incredible and indispensable number two, but they have to be number one. That's their ego talking. Without- But number two doesn't mean you're s- beneath me.

Number two means my thing has to come first. I, I had someone who worked with me once in the gym and, and they said to me, "You think your job is more important than mine." They did all the administrative. And I said, "No, no, no, I don't. I need everything you do.

But understand this, if you don't come in tomorrow, I still have business and work to do. If I don't come in tomorrow, you have nothing to do." That's not a ego play. That's not a power play. That's just understanding chicken and egg, right?

Which is driving the other, right? Like- Yeah ... and, and, and there's that great book, Ryan Holiday, uh, The Ego is, Ego is the Enemy. You know that book? But it's, there's some really good, uh, takeaways in that to your point of you gotta know, like, it, it, it... We don't have to be constantly measuring here.

Yeah. Like, let's just work. And it's funny you had to deal with that. Wow. That's funny.

So I guess it depends on how you measure success too. Like, if you measure success solely on your own income or how many likes you get on a Facebook post or some- something, right, then, then that's, then it is all about you. It's all about, you know, well, if, if he comes in the gym and everything stops when he walks in, then no one's noticing how many TPS reports I stamped and slid across the desk, right? Like, like, how do you measure success, I think. And if you, if you can get your organization to measure success by, uh, a metric that every individual contributes to in some way- Yeah ... um, there's actually this awesome scene.

I don't know if you saw the movie F1 with, uh, Brad Pitt. Of course I did. Oh. Yeah. I've watched that movie- My dude ...

I've watched this movie, like, 10 times now. It's, I, it's phenomenal in my opinion. I went with my wife. I said, "This is like a date night." And she goes, "Babe, this is not a date night at all.

This is you asking me to go to a movie with you that you wanna see." And I go- There's a little bit of making out in there, though. There's a little bit for the ladies. There's a little bit, uh, towards the end there. You get a little romance.

She... My wife would strongly disagree with you. Yeah. She, she, when I tried to play that off as date night, she's like, "No, no. Let's understand.

I'm going with you to the movies." And God, God bless her for doing that, you know. There, there's this scene in there where, um, it's the first race that Brad Pitt is by himself after, um, the rookie, the JP, uh, John Paul is his name in the movie, I don't remember what was the actor's name, um, he gets injured. And he says, you know, w- they're like, "What's our plan for today?" And he says, "You know, everybody, if everyone can find a 10th of a second," right?

You, you know, he's pointing around the room. He's pointing at the rear jack and at the, you know, the, the, the girl that changes the tire and the guy that measures the air pressure and the, you know. And he's like, "If everybody gets one-tenth, just finds one-tenth of a second today that they can get, find us, we go from last to first place. Everyone just needs to find a tenth." And, like, and when you think about it in that way, and this is so hard, I'm, I'm very interested in, in kind of how you do this in a, in a, in a, in the teams that you've worked with, and then you've obviously worked with some incredible celebrities and athletes- But, but, um- ... and you've seen this, right?

But finish that thought, and I'm gonna come back to three things, bang, bang, bang- Yeah ... and, and walk you through my connection to that. But I, I think about that and I'm like, if, if my, if my measuring success isn't, isn't how I feel about putting this tire on, it's did I get my 10th of a second or not, I don't care if I get my 10th of a second because I was good with the gun or because the wheel was positioned properly or the moon is in the sign of the Aquarius, right? I, the ego part of that goes away, and it's just, I need to find my 10th of a second to contribute, and I feel like a lot of that starts to melt because now we have this bigger goal, and I clearly understand how I contribute to it. But if at any point ego injects itself, that, it's like a, it's a, it's a wrench in the entire system, and now y- you're never finding that 10th of a second. I like that you used wrench to stick with the car mechanic analogy.

I, I agree. Yes, I see that, and I, and I get that, and suspending ego is tough for a lot of people. But when you work in a, in a team setting, I'll, I'll touch on that in a second. Hold that thought. I look at fitness like that, and I think it's not, uh...

What do we used to, we used to joke with, um... I wanna say it was Johnny G who created spinning, but it's like, one workout doesn't get you fit. One meal doesn't get you fat. My nutritionist, uh, Philip Goglia, says it all the time, "It's not, it's not the one meal, dude. It's not the one meal that, you know, got you to 280.

It, it just, like, it's not the one workout that got you down to 185. It's, it's not. It's the sum total." And, and I look at that with the recovery tools, right? Like, it's not, it's not your cold plunge.

It's not the sauna. It's, it's not the, the percussive device with the red light therapy on the end. But that helps. The cold plunge helps. The sauna helps.

The workout helps. The extra sleep helps. The temperature in the room when you're sleeping helps. Uh, the reduced EMF helps. It, like, it's all, those are all the tenths of a second.

If you keep it in that mindset, um, I think you're, you're gonna do nothing but win, right? It's, you're gonna do just... Y- you know, like, are, are bands the end-all be-all of training? No. But adding the bands for, for, um, an added eccentric to a movement that you've never used them on is gonna create a different stimuli that contributes to, uh, breaking through a plateau that you've been stuck in for X amount of time.

Uh, you can't quite recover. You feel like you're getting your sleep. You feel like you do this. You've done sauna. You've done cold plunge.

Then you add red light therapy. Bang, that's the one that takes you over. Or you've been getting y- your protein. You've been getting your creatine, and then you read, maybe you, because you're over, I just, uh, listened to a study this morning, because you're over age 40, you need more protein to be, uh, anabolic, so you bump it up One, two, three, 4% for every meal, and all of a sudden your body goes more anabolic because you are older and you did take, you did make that effort to add to that. It's all those little...

I'm gonna use it. I'm gonna put somewhere in the gym, uh, it's all about a 10th of a second. Yeah. Because it is, and those all add up to, to, to that character's line's point, right? If we all get a 10th of a second, if everything contributes to that, you're winning all day long.

I believe fully in that. Yeah. It, it's fun. So I do a lot of optimization stuff. Um, but partially I find it incredibly interesting and I love to test things, and partially because I absolutely fucking refuse to go quietly into the night.

Like, that's not happening. For sure. Um, and you know, my buddies were making fun of me because I started looking into, like, GLP-1s and peptides and different stuff like that, in addition to the fact that I, you know, I ground and I also have a, a, a sauna with red light and I do the cold plunges and I do ruck walks, and they're like, they're like, "Why do you do all this shit?" They're like, "Just, just go to..." And I'm like, "One, it keeps my brain active.

I find it interesting. It's like a hobby, right? Like, you guys sit on the couch and watch, you know, baseball or-" I drive here, I, I drive here at 4:30 in the morning going, "If I added the Nordic curl before the Zercher squat, I'll pre-exhaust the hamstring so that with the Zercher I'll really be able to smoke my quads because they won't be able to get help from the..." And I'm like, "Why am I a grown-ass man driving here in the dark thinking about pre-exhausting my hamstrings before I go..." It's, it's...

But then it's not insanity. It's like that's what, that's what we're doing. That's what all the great athletes do. How do you get 1% better? How do you get a little bit more, a little bit more?

Like, because, because what you did at 20, 21, 22, 23 probably is not gonna have the same yield at 34, 35, 36, and you're trying to get that one last contract. Like, that's a big deal. If, if one of your success metrics is financial, then that contract is a big indicator as to whether or not your, your methods, your choices are paying off, literally paying off. Well, look what everyone else does. Everyone else gets fat and lazy and slow and, oh, you know, "Oh, I'm too old," and they walk around and they're like this.

I had this moment. Uh, so I coach my son's, uh, Little League team. Um, and I coach him since he's seven. He's 12 this year. And two years ago, it n- not that I necessarily needed this awakening, but it was, I'm, I...

He was pitching and, and, um, I went out to, to just... He was at, whatever, it doesn't matter. I went to say something to him. He was on the mound. And I get out there for a sec, and then one of the kids needed, uh, one of the infielders came in and he needed to tie his spike, so now there's like a break, right?

So I'm standing on the mound, and I kind of just do this little spin, right, where I'm just kind of scanning the crowd, the other team, our team stands. You know, I just kind of, you know, just while I'm waiting for these kids to get their shit together. And, um, every adult male that I could see was- I know where you're going. I love this ... had a, had a belly and was, like, sloppy and was, like, out of shape, right? And I went, I just was like, "W- w- like, why?

Like, why allow yourself?" And then, you know, like, I got this buddy, and I leave... You know, this is, you probably hear this shit all the time based on what you do, but, like, I got this buddy, he's talking to me. Great guy. Wife's a good person, whatever.

And he's, like, bitching to me that he never gets laid anymore, right? And I looked at him and I just said, "Well, you think about losing your beer belly." And he didn't like that, but I said, "Look, man, like, I'm not trying to be a jerk to you because I love you. I do. I think you're amazing.

Like, you're a great guy, great dad, good friend." I'm like, "You got a big-ass beer belly. Like, get rid of that and I bet she bangs you more often. Like, just, just face value. Um, maybe there's other things too-" 100- But ...

100%. That's a good place to start. What do you- That's a good place to start. Well, so, so I say it a little different. I go, "Let's look at what you're bringing to the table.

Let's look at what you're bringing to the table. You're paying all the bills," assume, like, if it's that kind of relationship, right? "Y- you're, you're, you're funding, you're supporting the family, y- right? You're the provider, you're presiding, you're protecting, but look at the package that you're bringing to the table. What makes her go, 'Oh, I want a piece of that?'"

Yeah. Like, and, and people go, "Oh, my God, but they're married, they're in love. It has... You know, they love each other. They're connected on a soul level.

They, it's not always about the physical." I go, "It's not about the physical, but we are a visual society, right?" On, from your phones to billboards to the sides of buses, it's... I mean, yes, there are different advertising approaches now than there were 20 years ago, but y- you are hammered with attractive people, whether it's beautiful white teeth, long flowing hair, great looking bodies on the men and women's side. Y- you know, if that's always shoved in your face when your partner steps up and they just haven't been taking care of themselves, there's something about that.

And it's also the one thing in a way you can't buy. Yes, you can pay for help, right? You can pay for, like you said, the GLP-1 or plastic surgery or a trainer or this, but without showing up and doing the work, like, you're not gonna get the physique or the look that you want to bring to the dance. That comes back to you. That's a, that's an, that's a reflection on who he is as a person.

I'm not knocking your boy, but that's, like, dude, you don't k- Oh, he needs to get his shit together. He needs to get his shit together. That- You know what I think? Correct. You, so you said something in there.

You said protector, right? You said protector. Okay If I'm, and I'm not a female, and any of the ladies that are listening, if you disagree with this, jump in the comments, let me know. I'm interested. But if I'm a female, right?

And I do think that the vast majority of females, despite the nonsense that we see on social media, want a male who, if shit gets hectic, can, can, can, can keep them out of danger as much as possible, right? I do think that whether they are willing to verbalize it or not, it is a part of the equation. And when you wake up in the morning and you see the, your partner or your husband is hunched over, and they got a gut, and they look kind of sloppy, and they haven't worked out in six months, and they eat like shit- Yes ... and they're constantly complaining about their energy, and they're sleepy all the time. Like, are you saying to yourself like, "If someone comes and bangs on our door at 2:00 AM, that's the guy I want going down making sure my kids are safe?" Like- I don't wanna, I don't wanna bang him at 11:00 if somebody's banging on our door at 2:00.

That's what I'm saying. And like, I, I, I, you know, and maybe, maybe, you know, I'm the weird one or, you know, I don't know where you fall on this or whatever, but like partners- I'm right there with you. But nobody says this. Yeah. Nobody's gonna say what you're saying because it sounds so superficial, so antiquated, so dated.

We have ice here, right? To, to, to... We talked about the weather earlier. We are buried in ice. My wife hasn't left the house in three days.

She goes, "I can't drive on ice." And I go, "Okay, well, the roads are clear. I drove day one, day two, day three." I'm not reckless. I'm not, uh, cavalier with my life.

I'm taking care. I said, "Sweetheart, men and women created equal. Uh, come on. Come on." And you wanna show the kids that they can go out and conquer the world.

You make smart choices. Hey, you know what? I know if I take, if I go out of our, where we live on our street and I make a right, that's roads all the way to my gym. If I go left, I go over this one high hill that comes down. What if that's icy?

Hmm. Let me take the flat way. And I also know if I go to the left, there are two bridges I cross. There are signs there that I read all year long, "Bridges, ice before roads." I know what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna go right. Let's use our brain, let's use our reasoning, and let's make good choices. I go, "You can't just be trapped in the house. What if I'm not here, sweetheart? What if I'm on a trip?

What are you gonna do?" I'm not trying to be cavalier with it, I'm not trying to say, "Ah, you know, if, if they say stay off the roads," okay, but I want to go out and s- Like, how bad are the roads? I said, "Sweetheart, I have a truck. Let's, let's see what's out there. What if we need something?"

And we did need a couple of things. And I said, "You're fine for me to go get them? Then you're telling me now where the hierarchy is here. I'm that guy. I'm hunter, gatherer.

I have no problem with that. But when the weather circles back around, let's not forget who's in that role." Right? I have to be able to take care. So don't, don't begrudge me going to the gym early morning because that's what keeps me feeling competent to take care of this family.

You gotta let me, you gotta let me be the guy. And I know those are trad roles, and we're not supposed to speak in those terms, but I, I, I'm with you on that. Yeah. And, you know, if the women disagree, like you said, hit me in the comments and I'll walk you through why I see it that way. I'm not saying I'm right, but I'm right for me.

I don't think most women do disagree with you, and on this show, the one rule we have is we have to live in reality, um, which is why I guess I currently fall under the, under the heading of maybe a more conservative take on the world, strictly because we just need to operate in what, how the world actually works. And frankly, I love a strong female, and I actually seek them out in terms of, uh, the partners I've had in my life and, and it's, it's not about... I think where we get lost in here is i- in this discussion is like, you know, sexism and all. And it's not what it's about. It's like, it's like here's what I know how, how God created us.

God created men to be dispensable. He created women to be indispensable. They're the only ones that keep the species going. Our job as men is to take the arrows and the rocks and the gunshots to protect the women, not because they're weak, not because they're incapable, but because they're the ones that make new little humans, and we need them. And like, this is part of reality.

And our- Well, we, we- Hang on. We both make 'em. They need us to make 'em. Yeah, yeah. But in, in my experience, they do so much better at taking care of them in those early years from w- you know, if you're gonna get to the feeding, the whole thing.

My wife gravitates towards our babies way more than I do. I gravitate when they hit like that four-year point- Yeah ... and I'm like, "Babe, take a girls' weekend. I got 'em." Yeah. And then we're doing dad stuff from four on.

When our daughter, our, our youngest got leukemia a year and a half ago and went to the hospital, my wife did not leave the hospital. That's where that stopped. And she said, "I'm not leaving." And I said, "I get it." And I stayed there with her for a couple of days and then I said, "Sweetie, this is a really bad use of our time.

I think I need to go back to work, and I need to make sure that our son has as normal a life as we could expect him to have while his sister is going through this and his mother is going to be here. We have to think not just of her, but of him." And she agreed, and he and I ended up doing some real, bonding's the wrong term, but we did some stuff that you certainly wouldn't have known that his family was going through anything this, um, severe. We took, you know, travel soccer. That is, as anybody who knows, travel sports is unrelenting.

Like, they don't care. He and I were driving Kentucky, Alabama, Cincinnati, St. Louis. Like, we're driving together, and we're making the best of it. I- if he were an infant, I would be struggling with that.

That would be tough for me, whereas my wife Rocks that. The woman, my wife is great in that way, but at the same time, I'll do the dishes. Yeah. I'm not like... I'm not saying you're relegated to housework while I go out and, and, you know, kill saber-toothed tigers.

I'm fine sharing on both ends of that. You know, if she has an income-producing job, great. If not, I still maintain that her job as a household person and, and child, uh, caregiver is as important if not more important than my job, but I'm also fine to share that workload at home. Yeah. But she is better at certain things when they're little, to your, to your earlier point.

And I think, I think to tie it all the way back around, it is our job as men, whether our females need us in this role or not, to be physically prepared to defend as be- You know, we don't have to be jujitsu stars. You don't have to go do boxing, but just physically fit enough to put up some sort of defense in the event that someone comes to take your shit. Like- What I say, what I say to people in my world, uh, what, to what you said to your friend, I go, "Look, I'm not saying you have to be a bodybuilder. I'm saying you have to look like you take care of your body. You have to look like y- the same way y- you brush your teeth, you wash your face, you, you comb your hair, you get haircuts, you have to look like you're taking care of the machine that is taking care of you."

You don't have to... Right? It, it, it doesn't have to be like the car that's always got the fresh coat of wax on it and it's show ready, but you have to look like you care and you're taking care of it. Yeah. So I, I, I, I see what you said to your buddy, and I think it's awesome that you're that honest and direct to them.

I have a couple friends I've called and I'm like... And, and they get... They are overweight and, you know, they bitch and moan about certain things, and I go, "Dude, you're literally on the road to killing yourself." Yeah. Like, you're at the point now where you're about to get the diabetes phone call, where you're about to have the heart attack phone call.

Weight range, age range, stress level range, those things are coming unless you make active changes. "Oh, come on, dude. How can you say that to me?" Because this is my world. I see this every day.

When's the last time you saw an obese 80-year-old? You've never seen one. Yeah, exactly. Doesn't exist. Exa- You don't, you don't make it that long.

Yeah. So if you're gonna be obese- Great point ... you're basically saying, "I'm okay with my life being 10 to 15 years shorter than it would've been normally," because you just simply won't survive. You know, I... Look, I, I don't... I know some people are built differently.

They have bigger bones and wider sets and ca- And all that's fine, but none of it means that you need to, that just this, this... We've been sold this lie that you just kinda, like, limp into the second half of your life and take some pharmaceuticals and, like, manage the pain into when you ultimately everything goes black. Like, that, to me- It's wh- ... is completely fucking bananas, and I refuse to accept it. It's what you said, I won't go quietly. Don't go quietly.

And I say this to people, I go, "Look, don't shoot the messenger. We're all gonna die." Yeah. And there's zero, there are zero guarantees that my dumb ass coming here at 4:35 in the morning, working out, spending the time, making the right choices at the menu, blah, blah, blah. I, I could die today.

I could die tomorrow. It could be a heart attack. Somebody could break in here and shoot me. I, my car spins out, I wreck. There's a million different ways for that to go down.

But the things I can control, if they're not that difficult, people go, "You work out two hours a day. That's ridiculous." I go, "Is it? It's less than 10% of my week. It's less than 10% of my week.

How about that?" It's nothing. And, and, and I'm the psycho that enjoys it. I learned a long time ago, if I can convince myself, which now I don't have to do, it's just ingrained, to enjoy the process, all the rest is gravy. How you look, how you...

Uh, all that stuff, that's just cool. That just happens. My wife says, "Hey, sweetie, we're going to this ca- Uh, they do say you have to dress for this." I don't go, "Oh, fuck. What fits?"

Well, the... I know it all fits. I know everything. I could put anything I, anything I own, I can wear. Whether I like how it feels is one thing, but I know it all fits.

I'm not choosing between my fat boy clothes and my thin boy clothes, 'cause I've harnessed all that. And, and that's just another, uh, that's just another confidence feather, right? That just goes right in the cap. I'm like, I feel good going out. I don't spend 15 minutes going, "What am I gonna wear?

Oh, will this fit? Will this..." It's we're good. And, and those are little things that add up over the course of your 40s, 50s, and 60s where there's a lot, you reduce a lot of stress by, by reducing stress by training, I think. By taking care of yourself.

Agree. I, I, I, I couldn't, I couldn't agree more. Um, uh, it, it's the basis of my whole life. I'm a seven-day-a-week worker-outer. Um, all different types of working out.

Everything hot yoga to boxing to power lifting. My goal for 2026 is to finally hit 500 bills on the deadlift. Um, uh, my current PR is 465. Uh, you know, I, I... So I have...

You know, it, to me, it's like... It, you know, and then I got buddies go, "Oh, you're, you're too old to... What, why, what, what do you need to pull 500 pounds for?" So I can, can do it, because you can't. Because no...

Because how, how many 45-year-olds in the world can deadlift 500 pounds? That's why I wanna do it, for no other reason. By the way, by the way, why not? Why not? Yeah.

What, what, like, what else am I doing? Yeah. They're like, "Oh, you're gonna hurt your back." Watching the- I'm like- The Cowboys ... you could, I could hurt my back bending over to pick a fucking pencil up. I could hurt my back jogging.

I could hurt my back doing just about anything, but- Tying the shoes is one that happens all the time ... but you know what? It's a very common one. Guess why I'm not gonna hurt my back? Because I work out, and I stretch, and I take care of it, so I can bend over and tie my shoe without falling over. When I was in LA, I had a woman, an actor.

I loved her dearly. Trained with me for about 10 years, five days a week, and she said, "I, I, Gunnar, I just can't deadlift anymore. I, I'm not gonna do that." Um- Just it's gonna hurt my back. I, I feel it when we do it.

It hurts my back. I said, "Well, remember, some of what you're feeling in your back is muscle soreness. Think this way. If you felt that in your abs, would you say, 'I've hurt my abs,' or would you say, 'I trained my abs really hard and they're sore?'" Because you have erector spinae, right, the antagonistic muscle group to the, to the rectus abdominis, so your ab wall that gets sore from training it because, because you are in effect working it when you're doing deadlifts and, and other movements.

You're just sore there." She goes, "I just, I just... It's too risky for me. I can't." I said, "Fair enough, but if your back does hurt going forward at any point, what are we gonna blame?

Because now we're blaming the deadlifts, but if we take the deadlifts out of the equation, what are we gonna blame? The weakness?" I, I maintain more people hurt their back because they don't do deadlifts than people hurt their back because they do do deadlifts. And, uh, I don't need to... We don't need to belabor that.

It... That's just, that's what I would say to you. I'm not saying you have to go 1RM all the time on your deadlift, but, like, push yourself the same way you do on your pull-ups, the same way you do on your presses, the same way you do whatever, whatever movement you're doing, make sure you challenge yourself equally in, in the, on the post, on the posterior chain. Just be... I had a friend in college, he goes...

I said, "Dude, you gotta train the back." And then he goes, "I don't see that shit. I'm not li- I'm just lifting for this." And I, and I get it, and it was a, you know, a funny comment in the '80s from a teenager, but now it's just an irresponsible guy. You, you gotta train, train the muscles you don't see in the mirror essentially is what it comes down to.

And I know that it's not sexy, but it's sexy for other people. If you, if you look at those studies, uh, women look more at a man's glutes than they do his arms, and that's... Those polls are out there, and you're like, "As a dude, I'm not training that." And I go, "Okay," like up to you, but I think long term that's not a smart path. Yeah.

I, I... Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm with you there. It's, uh- And metabolically. Metabolically. The glute's the biggest muscle group in the body.

Like, that's, from a, from a, just from a body comp standpoint, right, just from a lean mass to fat mass ratio, you're doing yourself a service by training the big muscle group. Why are we not do- I don't understand it. Oh, funny. Yeah, it's funny that you see it and you get it in your mid-40s and your buddies are riding you about it. I think that's hysterical.

Yeah. You're on the, you're on the right side of history on this one, trust. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. Well, so okay.

So I would like, um... I kind- I would love to chat a little bit about, uh, if you don't mind, um, almost like rapid fire in, in a sense, uh, some, some general fitness, health, recovery-type activities or ideas and just get your feeling on them. And, and these are not in any particular order, but you brought up one, um, that, uh, before that I have m- mentally just have not been able to pull my head all the way around, and that's, uh, EMF grounding. Uh, I have a grounding sheet on my bed. Um, seemingly, uh, sleep score, that kind of stuff would say it has had a positive impact over time.

I do feel refreshed. I feel better. I don't know. Been using it for so long, I don't know that I can tell. But I can't, like, put my finger on, you know, this, this idea of our electrical charge and its impact on how we feel.

You know, there's no meter I can put on my grounding sheet to say it's working, you know what I mean? Like, like, i- you know, where does all this lie? 'Cause, um, this is one of the things that I get a lot of questions about from my friends. They're like, "Whoa, you got the... You walking around in bare feet again? Like, what's wrong?"

I'm like, "No," but, you know, h- what should we think about this, grounding, EMF, and its impact on- Well, the EMF, uh, when our daughter, you know, she's still, um, she's still coming out of that leukemia, which is no joke. And anybody out there who's going through that or has gone through that, my heart go... I'll make myself cry on this damn podcast. I c- I just feel for you, especially anybody with anything in that cancer realm, but especially, especially kids. Um, since then, our house has changed completely in terms of plastics are out.

We have the grounding sheet on the bed underneath, behind the thing. The phone's Wi-Fi is off at night. It can't be by your head. Everything. My wife has those little chips.

I have one right here on my laptop. I have one on the back of my phone. I have the little things wrapped around the AirPod. Like, she g- she goes crazy I still wear the AirPods. I'm like, "Babe, I just do it on the podcast.

Relax." Um, there is a lot of science behind that. You can think it's woo-woo, but, but I look at it like these are kind of easy fixes. Why wouldn't I, right? Uh, my wife goes out with the...

A- and, you know, I've been, "Oh, your wife's become a nut." Actually, she hasn't. She's a woman who's watched her child go through cancer, and she's chasing this down, and she's become that protector, um, to the nth degree on that level. She has that reader that holds them out. Our, our son plays soccer at a place where there are those giant transformer things, and she holds it out and she looks at me.

She goes, "Oh my God, look at the readout. We can't play here anymore." And she has the guy coming out to talk to the soccer people. Why are we on this field? What are we doing?

The, the, the reading is so high, it's dangerous for the kids. I, I, I understand the argument of the devil's in the dose, and if they're only out there once a week, is it that bad? So, so maybe, maybe not. I don't, I don't know enough to speak to that. But if it's easy to eliminate, why wouldn't we?

If it's a little thing like putting that sheet on your bed Um, I will say I sleep through the night more, like less waking up. You could say, "Well, that's your fluid levels." Maybe, maybe, maybe. But if putting that sheet on the bed gave my wife peace of mind, how about this from a health standpoint? That is a stress reducer in and of itself.

Yeah. If I can reduce stress, which is an indicator of health, that's an easy one to do. I-- So I'm all over that. We have a little bench outside and a little sign that says, "Feet down and ground," like a play on that TV show. Uh, and I go...

Look, i- in the spring, obviously not now, not a bad place to just sit and, and just take in five minutes, 10 minutes, just breathe. You know? I- I- if you can do it off your phone, great, or if you're just sitting there and, and you're catching up on the emails or texts you missed during your workout, fine. It's a little bit counterintuitive, but still the grounding, uh, I'm a fan. I have the, I have the little thing under my desk here my wife put called Grounding Well, and she has one under her desk.

She put it in here. I said, "Babe, I have one right outside the gym." She goes, "Yeah, but you'll sit at your desk with that." So the grounding is a real thing. The EMF, if you can reduce those frequencies any way, we have those little cards in front of the TVs at the house.

I just think that's an easy, like wired we are, pick your battles, right? I'm not gonna argue that with my wife. Have you felt a reduction in noise on the little cards or the pins on your phone? Like, have you seen or d- even anecdotally felt, uh, a reduction in your stress? Because there, there...

And guys, just so if you're wondering, um, there's a bunch of companies, if you're on Instagram, you probably see like Aires Tech. There's a, there's a body- Bodywell. Yes. That's the one my wife uses. Oh, that's what you use, Bodywell?

Okay, that's another big one. Yeah. And, um, the idea here is, and, and correct me where I'm wrong, there's some, uh, some components and some geometry in there which basically breaks up some of the negative electromagnetic force. It doesn't stop your phone from working. What it's doing is taking the full, and again, uh, correct me, it's taking the full frontal of this electromagnetism that we are exposed to all day, and it's dispersing it and, and minimizing it so it doesn't have as big an impact on us.

Yeah. So I'll tell you where the stress is reduced. I don't know if the stress is reduced directly by having the Bodywell chip on the phone or the AirPods or the laptop, but I know the stress is reduced in that my wife is not riding me about it. So that's a huge win. She's like, "Hey, babe, I put this on your computer.

I put this on your phone. Please know I'm doing it for the right reasons, and it doesn't change anything for me." I go, "No problem." And now we're in harmony there, and that in and of itself is a stress reducer, and I'll take that every day. So that's already a win.

I don't walk around thinking about the EMF. I'm not wired that way. She does because while I visit, while I went to the hospital every day for our daughter, my wife lived it, and she documented everything. And if she sees that as, uh, if she saw that up close and personal in a way that I didn't see it, I was more just staring at our daughter for two to six hours every day, and my wife was there for 24 hours every day, and she's seeing different things, I'm gonna defer to her on that. So, so yeah, I would say get the sheet for your bed.

Why, why wouldn't you? The sheet is a no-brainer. It's 79 bucks for the one that goes under your sheets, and then if you wanna get the actual sheets you sleep between, they're like... It's not e- the stuff isn't even expensive. I mean, that's the thing.

And I will say what I know for sure, just from the amount of research that I've done, is that our bodies are too acidic, and that has to do with the plastics and the, uh, preservatives in the food and the electromagnetic radiation that we face every day. And I know the detractors and the, and the skeptics on this kind of stuff will s- Our, this has been such a short per- this is the part that, that, where, where I see the pessimists, where I, I just cannot, I cannot even wrap my head around the pessimist viewpoint here because to your point, there's no harm. There's only upside, right? The, the harm, the most harm is if you go full hog the couple hundred dollars for all these devi- and, and a couple hundred dollars, as much as it is, for all these devices. So- And then the, then the argument of, "Yeah, but look at the people in the blue zones, or look at the people who live to 80, 90, 100 years old."

You're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but time out." The, the electromagnetic fields that we're being exposed to now, those people didn't have that. They were born before there were things like cell phones for sure, but like credit cards. Like they didn't travel the way we travel. They haven't been exposed to microwaves the way we have.

Like even if it's not on, that microwave is, you know, I still use it. My wife, absolutely not. She's air frying. Okay, but the air fryer's electric. Like how far are we gonna go?

Those people haven't been around this and exposed. My kids' screen time by age five is more than mine by age 50, period. Like they're exposed to different things, and with that, there are ben- there are, there are benefits and, and detractors as, as we said so- But we just don't know, Gunnar. That's the part that- Exactly ... that drives me nuts is like how can you have an opinion on? People be like, "Well, there's no studies."

And I'm like, we've only been exposed to daily cell phone in our face radiation 24/7 for a decade. 'Cause before that, the, the f- the phones didn't have the same level of radiation coming off them, and even if they were near you, or a- and, and but and even culturally, we didn't keep them on us all the time because they only did, they basically sent text messages and phone calls. That's all they did. So like this has been such a short period of time, there's no way for us to, there's no way for us to, to adequately understand the impact. What we do know downstream, and this is the part where I just do not see being a pessimist on this stuff, what we do know is our bodies are too acidic And we have more mental noise in terms-- like, if you look at actual brain scans, than ever before in history. So w-we don't know why necessarily, but we do know we have more mental noise and a, and a reduced ability to focus and more general state cortisol than ever before, and our bodies have too much, uh, too much acidity versus what they should be.

So we know those two things are true, but we can't directly tie them to some of this stuff. Why would you not wanna take any step possible to put yourself back into harmony? I, I don't understand why. That's the part that breaks me on this stuff. Agree.

I heard something, um, not long ago, it might have been Oprah's thing on The View where she said the GLP-1s turn down the food noise, and I've heard that term a few times in the last few months. Um, and I was talking to my dad about it and like, he's like, "What are you talking about, food noise?" And I thought, "Yeah, he's not..." My dad sleeps with... Like, his phone is downstairs.

And he goes, "It's in the charger." And I'm like, it's just a different thing. He didn't have food noise, right? My grandparents didn't have food noise because there wasn't the, the TV on all the time or things coming on your phone or Instagram or, or constant reminders or ads during podcasts. Like, food noise was...

That's gotta be a... I'd love to know when that term was coined or when it became, uh, such a, a, a part of our vernacular. It's just a, like, those are new things to us. Food noise is new. EMF is new.

But, but as are a lot of the devices that we take for granted and we adopted, like you said, a decade ago or less. Like, it wasn't that long ago that it was, like, a landline. Like, everybody was landlines. When I was in college, I know it seems like a million years ago, we had a landline at our house, and after that, I remember having a phone in my car. Like, it was, it was hard locked in my car, like, jack it out of the thing, right?

And then there was a portable one that had, like, no kind of battery, a couple hours maybe. Yeah. So these are all new things, and you have to assume with them and with those conveniences, there are potential downsides. So if somebody's identifying the downside and then there's a, and then there's a counter to that, why... I look at it like, maybe we're saying the same thing.

Why, why not? Why not do the preventative? Have you, um, have you taken a GLP-1? I'm not. I take nothing.

Honestly, that's funny. I, I have a... I work with Jim's Supplements, J-I-M. I literally take, I take their Alpha Jim, I take their greens, I take their protein powder, um, and I take creatine. That's literally all I take.

And I don't-- But it's not a, it's not a, uh, it's not a political position on my part. I have nothing against any of those things, and I think, I, I think, y-you know, I don't, I don't... I will drink alcohol, but I don't do drugs. I just, that's not me. And I've had people say, "But you know, if-- weed is so much better for you than alcohol."

I'm like, I, I'm from a different era. I could- I just grew up differently. To me, I, I, you know, I don't gamble, I don't drink coffee, but I will have an energy drink. Like, I'll drink a Zoa. That's just me.

Because somewhere in my brain, if I get on the other thing, I'll, I'll go, I'll go ham on it. Yeah. I just know myself. But you know yourself. If I got into coffee...

I know myself. If I got into it, same reason I don't do, same reason I don't do steroids. The peptide thing, very, very tempting. But I look at it, and, and I used to joke with this with, um, with a client of mine, an action hero in the movies, and I, and I used to say to him, he used to say, "You gotta get on stuff." And I'd say, "I know myself.

If I get on it, and I go down to six percent body fat, I'm gonna wanna go down to five, I'm gonna want a four." I, I just know, I, you know. And I can always, I do this scan in the mirror every day and I go, "What am I not doing right? Is, is my training on point? Is my food on point?

Is my hydration on point? Is my stress management on point? Uh, am I taking my supplements? Have I been diligent with my rest and recovery, my sleep, my red light, my sauna? Am I doing everything right?"

If I don't like what I see, there are always at least two things that I've done wrong, pilot error. If I correct that, the situation reverses, and until I lose the power to reverse the situation with what I'm doing, I'm not gonna take on something new. Like, the people who go to the supplement store and you buy five or eight things, I, I think that's a silly approach, 'cause how do you know what's doing what? Yeah. So I, this is, um...

So I'm a, a... I don't know what it is about me, but, like, when I, when I'm into something, I go all the way down. So, so I have to be very careful around what things I start to let rent space in my head because, and I'll tell you, this happened, like, with around COVID with politics. You know, I always, I always kinda tangentially followed what was going on, but, you know, kinda arm's length and then COVID things weren't adding up, like, with a lot of people, whatever, and I started diving in, and then I went all the way down into, like, you know, I'm reading books on hist-history of po- And I'm like, n- and I'm like this is nothing productive. I gotta come all the way out.

And now I try to stay out. It's hard, but whatever. But, like, with, with the optimization part, again, um, I, I was, uh, the CEO of a, of a, a seven-location fitness franchise for about a year. That's a different story. I'm, I'm not a fitness trained in any way though.

It's all just self-taught. Um, but with the, the supplements and stuff, um, what, what got me... So I do take, uh, I micro dose, um, um, you know, with a doctor, not, not self whatever, with a doctor, uh, uh, GLP-1 tirzepatide, uh, well, technically a GLP-2, um, or generation two, and then, um, tesamorelin, the peptide, um, and then, um, I have some- Uh, inflammation issues and I use, uh, uh, they only-- those are the three things. Nalt-naltrexene, naltrexone, something like that. Lightweight, anti-inflammatory.

But, um- No BPC-157? Not yet, no. Not yet. If I- If I, I, I, uh, the more I read, the more I listen, there... Oh, who's that guy?

There's a guy on Instagram, Dr. Trevor Bockmear. He's very compelling. He breaks it down, and it's almost like he's talking to you like you're an idiot, but I think it's-- I think he's not. I think he's just so passionate and so- Yeah ... knowledgeable.

And the way he says it, I mean, i-if a company were ever to do a, a pitch for it, like if it became something that they were advertising, they should use some of his analogies. Because when I-- the minute I come off his page, I think, "I gotta get on it. Here I go." Yeah. And, and then I talk myself off because I just know once I start, it's gonna be, "Well, I've taken that.

I should take TB 500. I should take that." I just know myself. So I pull back, and I don't, and I, and I haven't, but I'm not saying I won't. Yeah.

I'm not that guy. And I don't begrudge anybody who does, too. Whatever you need, go. I think it's smart. I think you're doing the right thing.

Until you're mentally ready... So what pushed me was I had a testosterone scare two years ago. Um, it was this month, uh, January of twenty twenty-four, I guess it was. Um, I'm used to New York winters. I'm used to the desolation, and you don't see the sun and, you know, the whole thing, uh, um, you know, vitamin D deficiency and all that kind of stuff and, you know, I've done it for forty-five years.

Except this was different. This was like, like every moment of my day, I was walking through molasses. It just-- There was nothing. No libido, no energy, no drive, nothing. I was just, I was just operating.

I was like a shell. So this goes on for a couple weeks. I gotta figure what's out, go to the doctors, get a test. My testosterone, um, is in the seventh percentile. I have like thirty free testosterones or whatever, right?

I can't remember the milliliters or milligrams, whatever it is. You know, all I know is you're supposed to have five hundred to seven hundred, and I had thirty. And it was bad. And, uh- Wow ... I did, I did not wanna go on synthetic testosterone or TRT.

I didn't wanna do that. So, uh, that's, that's what got me, that's what pushed me down this, uh, peptide, uh, path was, you know, and my doctor, uh, found this hormone optimization specialist and, and okay. So all that's fine. That was my situation. That's how I get in.

But I can tell you, and, and it's so-- I think you're doing the right thing personally, knowing yourself, because what I've found is now I, now I'm constantly searching for-- 'Cause, 'cause I feel amazing. Th-this, this low dose, very low dose, micro dose of, of, of tesamorelin and, uh, terzepatide, I feel- Where did your, where did your test levels net out? I'm at, uh, seven seventy now, be-between seven seventy and, you know, nine hundred, depending on, you know, whatever, um, and bounced back within three or four months, and now I feel like, I feel amazing. But the problem is, to your point, now I'm constantly looking for that next tweak. I've been looking at BPC-157, um, I've been looking at NAD+ injections, and I'm going like, in my brain, I'm like, "Just stop.

Just..." But I know now I'm in this like tinkerer phase, and I'm tinkering, tinkering, tinkering. But to your point, when you start stacking up all this stuff, I feel like, and, and maybe this is kind of the thing that I just wanna share with the audience, is that if you haven't done the primary work that we were discussing at the beginning of the show, right? Like having a workout routine, hydrating properly, getting decent sleep, right? Like eating right.

Like, if you don't have those things in place, you will never know if any of this exotic shit actually works. You just, you'll never know. Because it's b- because it becomes fairy dust, right? Like i-if you're, if you're sprinkling it... It's like I tell my son with the, with the one of your spices or sea salt or whatever.

I go, "If the food's good, just eat very little bit." Yeah. "If the food's garbage, put a little more on it. It's palatable and you'll be fine." I know myself, and I know how it would be, and I look at some people and I go, "You, you haven't prepared the food properly.

Like you haven't, you haven't done the base stuff. Like you think you're just gonna throw peptides at this nightmare of a lifestyle you have, and it's gonna spin it all around 'cause it's magic juice. It's not." It's not. And then, and then you're gonna be...

You, you're throwing good money after bad, that's one, and y-you're taking, you're dashing your own hopes, right? Like you're setting it up to be this success that it's just not going to be. I'm sorry. You gotta do... Yeah, we're saying, yeah, we're saying the same thing.

Yeah. So I keep doing the work. Like I told you at the beginning of this, I have no problem doing the work. I, I somehow, somewhere along the way convinced myself that the work was fun and cool, and I love it and it's fun and, and, and, and I stay engaged in that. I never tire of it.

I don't know if that makes me a simpleton or like a meathead, card-carrying member. I don't know. But I do like that. I do like, uh, in my head tallying macros quickly, and I'm probably way off. Not ten percent, I'm probably thirty percent off, you, you know, uh, ahead or behind, who knows?

But it's a little game I play, and if that's what keeps me engaged, why wouldn't I wanna stay engaged in my own development and my own improvement versus, uh, allowing myself to just slide down that hill that, you know, you said earlier, we're all sliding down. We're all, we're all gonna die. I get it, but I'm not going quietly. Yeah. I am, I am not just gonna go, "Well, it's inevitable that I become fat and weak, so fuck it.

I'm out today. I'll skip today." Uh, because I would be the fattest and the weakest within two weeks. I just- Yeah ... I know how- Yeah ...

I could let it go. If, if I let it go, the same way when I go all in, when I let it go, I'm letting it all go, right? I'm, I'm not cutting my hair. I'm not doing a- I'm not doing anything good for me. I'm just going hard the other way.

And people, that's ridiculous, that's a ridiculous approach. Maybe, but I know myself Well, you know, the, and, and, and, uh, I wanna be respectful of your time. I'll let you go, but I just think this is funny. So, um, uh, I got divorced about three years ago, and, um, you know, it was the right thing to do. We're actually still good friends.

We're great at co-parenting. We just weren't meant to be together romantically. Um, but when I got divorced, you know, I looked around and, and, you know, I went and got coffee or beers with a couple of my buddies who had already been divorced and, you know, just kinda getting the lay of the land, right? I, and we had been together for 16 years. We'd been married for more than 13 years, so, like, you know, and I, you know, never, never strayed, never cheated, you know.

So I, I'm walking out into the world as an individual human making my own decisions for the first time in a very long time. And, um, you know, I'm looking at my friends, and I'm looking at the way they live their life and, you know, and, and I saw two kind of bifurcations, and it was very clear. There were the guys that kept their shit together and actually in some cases improved their lives. They became more fit, more thoughtful, better at work, you know what I mean? Like, they used the, the space that they got to improve themselves.

And then there was another group that compl- became complete degenerate messes that, that could barely survive, could barely function, like, as if essentially their spouse had done it, were the, it was the only thing keeping them attached to the world. And I think all of us, to your point, we have this decision, right? You can either be the, be the guy or gal who, who says, "Fuck this entropy. I'm fighting this. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna fight this.

I'm gonna stay in shape. I'm gonna keep my shit together. I'm gonna not eat like a f- I'm gonna be a, be the best version of myself," or you can spin off the planet and, and just let life happen to you, and it's a choice. And I think- So look Yeah So... Ooh, look, I'm getting antsy.

I can feel it. Uh, y- I, I think, uh, I see those groups, and I, I think it's our responsibility as a species, and I've talked to my kids about this, I go, "I'm not smarter than you. I'm just older. I just have more experience." I said, "If I've, if I watch a movie when I'm 30, and I see that the guy in the red hat is gonna shoot the guy in the yellow hat, and I say to you before it happens, 'The guy in the red hat's gonna shoot that guy,' and then it happens, and you look at me like, 'Oh my gosh, I'm so smart,' I'm not smart.

I've seen the movie." So I say that to my kid all the time. A lot of things in life, you know, put your seatbelt on, don't do this, w- the little things, I go, "I've just seen the movie," right? So I, I've seen this movie when you come out of a relationship. Everybody plays a part in the breakup, right?

Whether it's cheating, why did so and so cheat? That doesn't mean you, you offload the bl- the blame, but it means what did you do, right? What did, what part did I play? How can I be better in my next go-round? Whether your next go-round is a, is a fling, whether your next go-round is a, a, it, it, is a shorter term version of the first go-round, hopefully as a species we evolve and get better, right?

And hopefully you as a spouse, as a partner, whether you, whether you spouse up again or not, or you just become a partner, hopefully you get better. So you go, "What can I do to improve?" So the guys who be, like you say, just let it all go, like, you're not, they're not helping themselves. They're not evolving, right? They're devolving actually.

I think we should all evolve, whether that means you do a complete 180 flip, you know, and you decide to drop all the weight and, and, and get your shit together, and you quit drinking, you quit smoking, you, you take on a second job, you become a, a, a, you, you earn double. Whatever it is, I don't think you have to do that. I don't think you have to reinvent. But I think- Although that would be the best way to get back at, if, if you're feeling those, those, um, negative feelings towards your for- former spouse, the best way to get back at them is not to send nasty text messages and emails and be an asshole. The best way to get back at them is to become a high-producing, high-performing, fit individual who takes care of the children and handles their fucking business.

Well, it- That's the best way But it's what you should've done before. Yes. And you can't blame them- Yeah ... for not having been that. Maybe it took whatever awakening, whether that was her dumping you, her cheating on you, your getting fired, whatever it was, y- that's what you should've done. So you go, "Okay, here," but like fitness, and I bring it back to that, it's never too late, right?

They, they've shown, um, actually two studies in, in 80-year-olds, in octogenarians as well as centenarians, like new muscle cell growth but muscle cell hypertrophy, the growth in size, in 80-year-olds and people at 100. So it's never too late to start. Don't, uh... And I just saw a study this morning that said if you're not, if you're not in shape by the time you're 35, there's a X% chance that you will never be in shape. And I was like, "Wow, that's super defeating."

I- That's also mental. I would love, that's, to me that's all mental That's psy- agree. That's psychological. Physiologically, we know you can. So to me, it's not, "Well, this is how I am.

I can't change. That's just me. That, you know, that's what I'm bringing to the table next time I have a partner." You're like, "No." Then you're gonna have a partner that's less than your original partner.

You have to try to be better. You have to elevate the species. Like I tell the kids, "You gotta be better. You're gonna be better than I am." I remember my, my now t- uh, 26-year-old, I said that to him once when he was about six in the bed.

I said, "Jack, you're gonna be so much better than I am And he goes, "I could never be better than you, Daddy." I said, "Sweet boy, I'm figuring my way through life. I'm just a dude. I'm just a trainer. I'm just a guy trying to contribute to the fitness landscape and help people find their way the way I found my way from a fat kid to this.

You are going to be better than I am." And I will maintain that all my kids, my older kids and my younger kids, are all on the path to eclipse me, which is as in, in my opinion, as it should be. They should be better than I am. They should be, they should be smarter. They should have more deductive reasoning.

They should have more the ability to, to be critical thinkers. Uh, they have to, and with that, they should be able to find their path in health and fitness, whether it's lifting weights and, and cardio, you know, meathead style the way I do, or whether it's through different classes or different protocols or through different, um ... The, the way I take my, my Alpha Gym and my protein shakes and, and I, I use my Solbasium red light therapy and I, I use my caffeine and all this the way I do all my little things, they're gonna find their way and, and I, and I would bet on all of them they will find an efficient, a more efficient way than I found, and they will find, um, a more productive way than I found because they've grown up differently than I am and they're processing and assessing information at a different rate, and I think that's my job, so I'm not gonna pull my shoulder out patting myself on the back, but I think they're good kids and that's, that's my job as a dad is to raise them to be those kids. So your buddies who come out of that relationship and don't use their abilities to improve themselves for the next go-round on the dating/marriage cycle, they're doing themselves and their current offspring or future offspring a massive disservice by not trying harder.

Fuck, dude, try. Yeah, try. It's only you out there. Try. It's, it's- I don't care if you fail because if you fail you're gonna fail upwards.

Uh, I, I, I wanna wrap, uh, be respectful of your time, and I'll leave you with this. I, I put on this conference in 2018. Had about 830 people in the room, and I did the kickoff, um, just kickoff note, and the message was simply: It's cool to fucking care. Like, I hate this idea in our society- I would've been like this in y- I would've been like this in your crowd ... that, that somehow, like, the, the, that really caring, like diving in, even to like nerdy shit, that somehow that's not cool, and I'm like, that day of like not going balls to the wall deep on ... It doesn't matter.

It could be Legos. It could be Star Wars. It could be accounting. It could be in investing. It could be startups.

It could be fitness. It could be relationship. It could be ... Doesn't fucking matter what you're into, but it is really cool and sexy to give a shit, to go f- I was just gonna say to you, the word I say to my little kids, 'cause they're just flirting with that word, I go, "Dude, it's sexy to try." And they go- Yeah ...

"Dad, you can't say that." I go, "No, no, no. It's sexy," which means it's, like people see that and they go- It's attractive ... "Ooh, I like that." It is.

I go, "People are drawn to people who try." I would rather watch you attempt to pull that 500 and fail than sit over a nice dinner and a couple of cocktails and listen to you talk about how you decided to step away from that attempt. And I'd be like, "Oh my God, this bozo." Yeah. Dude- But to watch you do it and fail, I'm high-fiving you all day long for that.

Yeah. Bro, I, Gun, I could talk to you all day, man. I don't e- I don't even- Me too ... I don't even know where we- We're ali- we're aligned. Well, dude, I know there's gonna be a lot of people from the audience that wanna go deeper into your world.

What are the best ways for them to do that? I'm on Instagram @gunnarfitness. That's probably it. Uh, I try to put ... People are like, "You know, you gotta get your, your," uh, what do they call it?

"Y- you gotta get your," uh ... What's the word it ... What's the Instagram thing that you ... Your engagement has to be higher. I go, "Listen, man, I post stuff that the people in my world like, and the people who don't, that's okay.

Sorry. Uh, m- maybe, you know, you're not for everybody. You're polarizing, and you're not polarizing because you try to be polarizing. If you do that, that's as fake as the next guy. You just do what you like," and to me, that's what social's about.

I, I sat with a, a good friend of mine, Jen Widerstrom, who's a trainer and, and we have a podcast together and, and we sat at a le- we sat at a Sorinex Summer Strong conference years ago, and the first three presenters at some point in their presentation bashed social media. And I looked at her, I said, "The next time I do a presentation, I'm gonna gas it up. I'm gonna talk about- ... why social is cool, and if you don't like it, here's the great thing: It's voluntary. You don't have to be on it. You don't have to have the app, and you don't have to go on the app, and you don't have to like, and you don't have to scroll, and you don't have to post."

So I think it ... Not that I think y- I don't think you use it as your one and only source of education and opinions. I, I joke about that guy has a degree from Instagram University. But, but I do think there are great things that come off of it, even if you just get to know somebody's sense of humor and you're like, "I never knew that. I never knew that he was funny like that," or, "I, oh, I never knew that sh- she goofed on herself that way."

Like, those are, uh, it's like, it's like we're all connecting on a different level, and I think if you look at the positive on that, it can be extremely positive. I don't think you have to always go to the negative. So I'm on Instagram @gunnarfitness, and, uh, and you're, Ryan, you're awesome for having me on and, and for, for talking about it and I, and I like the way you're coming at this. And dude, I am rooting for you when you pull that 500 all day long. I appreciate the hell out of you, man.

I, uh, this has been tremendous. Uh, guys, I'll have, um, Gunnar's, uh, LinkedIn or Instagram linked in the description. Whether you're watching on YouTube or wherever you're listening, scroll down. Uh, I appreciate you guys for listening. I love you for listening.

We're out of here. Peace.