1.Welcome and intro to Joe

Roman, in today's podcast, I talk with Joe D. Stefano. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this. How do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness, and our long changes? That is the question on this podcast, and give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch, and welcome to the Roman Podcast. roadman welcome back to another long form roadman podcast thank you for joining me I hope your week is going great today I have a really exciting guest his name is Joe DeStefano Joe is a coach he's 17 years in the game and he's coached everyone from top executives to professional athletes and celebrities, and you know, even everyday Jaws. Jaws whole gig is it's held its fitness event preparation and even building lifestyle programs to help you form and build new habits and routines. And I talk in the podcast so often about the power of routine. He's an expert on weight loss, nutrition, boil hacking, fasting and custom protocols to get to your goal. I'm super excited to welcome him to the podcast. Ladies and gentlemen, put your virtual hands together for Joe D. Stefano. Hey, it's an a pleasure to be here, brother. Oh, I'm excited about this chat. I feel like I should be paying you for all the cool advice I'm about to get off you in this podcast because I got to go deep picking your brain on this one. I'll send you an invoice. I'll do it, do it, do it. You're check will be in the mail like this. Amazon, although it are bills. And I want to dive in and talk a little bit about breeding because it is 9pm here in Ireland as we're starting the podcast. I've had a long day and I found myself at maybe 8.20. I was tired, I was yawning, I was slouchy, I was not in the mood for this podcast. And I found that just breath work was able to change my state completely and get me into, you know, I always think with podcasts, like I don't walk around like this all day, hey folks, Welcome to the Realmland podcast, where ourselves plus 20 or 30% when we're hosting a podcast. But to get yourself into that stage, I find bread work super, super important, but I am an absolute beginner when it comes to bread work. And you are achieved some sort of Jedi noise type status in bread work. So how did you find bread work as well as the best place to start? Yeah, man. Well, and you're absolutely right. Right. And I before we turned this thing on, on the, you know, I told you like somehow my microphone was just MIA and I was scrambling. I'm like calling to my wife like, Hey, like anyone see my microphone? Like, Hey, you guys know I do this for Olympic. You know, and it was like, what was I two minutes late for the show? And so literally why was I two minutes late for the show? Well, I was in here ready to go at 59, right? We're starting at three o'clock my time. I was in here at 259. I could have just popped on the zoom, but I emailed you And I said, hey, brother, I'll be on in two or three minutes because I was re-centering myself, getting myself into the zone, changing my state so that I can provide you and your listeners with the most value possible, right? So what I chose to do in that was just some like, you know, some four, seven, eight breaths. And basically, if you think about breathing, that would be what I would call like a triangle, right? So there's an inhale and exhale and a hold. Inhale, exhale, hold. And that's like the basic human breath. And we all have our triangle that works best for us. And some people it's one, one, two, and some people it's four, six, eight, and some people it's different. And sometimes if you're really looking to shift your state and calm yourself down because I was scrambling around my house trying to find this microphone, I'm going to extend the exhale and the exhale hold much longer than the inhale. But back to your question. I found breath work sitting on the beach in the Caribbean about 10 years ago. And the story there is, I'm not sure if you've consumed enough of my content to know, but I fractured my skull. I had a horrible concussion head injury. And this was like the third or fourth rather serious concussion I had, right? And it was sort of the, I would say the straw that broke the camel's back, but it would have been enough to break the camel's back if it was the only straw, right? This was a baseball injury, right? So some of my concussions were baseball. I took a couple of baseballs off the head and those were some of my concussions knocked my teeth out. This one was actually a basketball injury, just a freak accident where a permanent basketball hoop, like a professional basketball hoop fell down and landed literally on top of me and crushed me. Oh, that's painful. I mean, I would say it was painful if I was awake. Full KO. Yeah. Full KO, man. But here's the thing, right? So I make a full recovery medically, right? And one of the big issues with any time you get injured, especially with your audience that are cyclists, right? Like a cyclist gets hurt, falls off the bike, dislocates their shoulder or pops their AC joint or whatever the case may be, or maybe they hurt their leg in some random freak accident like I had. The doctor doesn't realize that a person's life that competes or uses their body as a major part of their enjoyment and health and happiness, their definitions of full recovery are often different. Right. 400% is a huge problem. And so, and Docs will just without even thinking, being like say to you like, hey, yeah, just take six months off this thing you love and maybe you'll be 100%. And so there's just this disconnect, right? And so that term full recovery for me was what I heard was I'm a million, I'm a million percent. I'm ready to go. Well, long story short, a couple of years went by and I started just having all sorts of very clear concussion related problems from emotional to physical. And the sort of conventional medical prognosis or diagnosis, the main one was called dystonia, which is kind of like a Parkinson's like condition that affects people that some people have bad luck.

2.Caribbean recovery and EFT

Some people get hit in the head too many times. It's just that kind of situation. But I was told that I was gonna, this was in my early 20s, I'm 36 now, but I was told I was gonna be Michael J. Fox by 30. And the dog was like, hey. That's gonna be hard to hear. Yeah, exactly. It just breaks you. Whatever spirit, whatever sort of groundedness, whatever optimism you have, when you hear that from a white coat with a sethoscope, like it's like, oh, like, dammit. So what I did then was I was kind of, I sat with that, got pretty upset, obviously, just emotionally kind of rocky. And then I hit the wall and I was like, hey, like, if that's true, what am I doing here? Like, what am I doing, sitting in Boston working at a job and caring about my education? Like, I'm moving, I'm out of here. So I actually went down to the Caribbean and I moved to a tiny island called St. John, which is like 80% national protected forest. and there's just two little kind of villages, one of them's Coral Bay, one of them's Cruz Bay. And long story short, as I started going to the beach every single morning, and I ended up picking up a 30-day Tony Robbins personal power program that I did every single morning, and every day had a journaling exercise. Amazing, I've done that as well, it's awesome. You've done that, yeah, it's awesome. And the other interesting thing that I stumbled onto on purpose and on accident were EFT, which is called Emotional Freedom Technique, which I can kind of dive into a little bit, and which is understated in my content, how much I talk about EFT. I just realized recently how big of a role it had in my recovery. And then the other thing I started getting into was swimming, snorkeling, and freediving. And so you can kind of see what I would do is I would do my journaling on the beach, and then I would do the emotional freedom technique, which involves tapping kind of on the acupuncture lines. I would start calming my breath down, start really meditating. And then I would go swim and see how deep I could dive and that's a long breath hold. And so it took me a while after I came home to realize exactly physiologically what I'd been doing just in that morning routine of doing my meditation, doing my program and then going for a swim. Because having spent a lot of time there researching routines and best practices of top performers, beauty athletes and entrepreneurs, you're hitting a lot of pretty cool, well research stuff there, right off the bus, not to use the poem on a bath after you got split open with a bath. Yeah, yeah, hey, man, I still come from a baseball family. So, um, so anyways, that was the story. And I kind of found breath. And then a few years went by and I started to kind of find myself anchored into that, started to get more into reading about physiologically because I was trained as an exercise scientist and physiologist and personal trainer and I was really into nutrition. But breath and by the way there's respiration and breath and we can talk about the difference. But a lot of the ins and outs of respiration wasn't really included in my undergrad degree and I didn't really understand it the way I do now and then very quickly you go into heart rate variability which I did a TEDx talk on five or six years ago. So very quickly, as I started to go down the rabbit hole, I started to learn exactly what I had been doing, started getting into heart variability and heart math. And here we are, you know, now it's... So I wanted to dive in a bit more into the Brett work, but before I circle back to that, concussion is very interesting because it's something that's super topical in cycling at the moment. And I spent a lot of time in North America, lived out in Canada on and off for the close to seven years. And, you know, Toronto's a hockey city. and concussion is just, it's everywhere. It's in the news all the time around there. But I actually have a funny concussion story myself. As funny as a concussion story can be. I'm not sure it quite beats your clean KO from the basketball hoop. But you be a TikTok viral star, by the way, if someone had a cup shirt on camera. Oh my gosh, yeah, I'd probably have a billion views or something, but. So I went out my, I was best man at a friend's wedding and we were going out for, he's not into pubs and nightclubs and that type stuff. So we had kind of an alternative stag plans. You wanted to go hiking into the mountains, like 10 of us and we were gonna spend a few days in the mountains, but I was the only one who had done a reconnaissance at his route. So morning of the stag, one of the guys calls down to me says, right, you wanna start drinking? We'll get ready to go hiking. I'm like, oh bro, it's 10 a.m. Like I'm gonna be two, three days drinking. I can't start 10 a.m. I'm like, I gotta go for a quick bike ride. So I went out for a bike ride And I was sprinting against an imaginary opponent in my head for a finish line that didn't exist. And my chain snapped on the bike and I went like straight over the bars at like maybe 65, 66 kilometers an hour, landed upside down on my head clean KO, like woke up with a crowd around me. And obviously I missed the stag that day. Well, fast forward like maybe one month to the wedding. And I've broken bones, you know, as an X pro side I've broken bones and bones have a very linear healing pathway and you can see progress each day. Okay, yesterday I could only move my arm a centimeter today. I can move it two centimetres. But I found with concussion the cuts, the bruises, the scars, they heal up but the damage is still there and it's not that you're looking for an outpouring a sympathy from other people but you just have certain restrictions. I was just, I was irritable. I was feeling pretty down for no reason. I was getting crazy headaches, like couldn't focus on stuff, real difficulty looking at screens, laptops, and in cycling we're only now starting to take concussions seriously up to like last season, the season before.

3.Concussions in endurance sports

Guys, we're having KO injuries and getting back on the bike and finishing races. Crazy. And it's growing everywhere because we're learning or the science is at least being more appreciated because I think that, you know, the interesting thing too is even subclinical hits to the head, things that don't knock you out, things that don't make you puke, things that aren't diagnosed as a concussion. There's still a massive increased prevalence of depression, anxiety, migraines, headaches, suicidal thoughts in the four, five, six months that follow. And so we're getting serious about it because it's a serious problem. athletically, you know, guys now on bikes or doesn't matter if you're in the NFL and you're running 40 yard dashes or you're on cycling, you're on a bike. Today's sports, we're going faster than we've ever gone. We're going harder than we've ever gone. We're going longer than we've ever gone. We're competing under higher levels of fatigue because of the demands of all the various, you know, influences on us, whether it's our sponsors or our families or our income or whatever. And so there's a lot of kind of reasons behind it. But yeah, you're absolutely right. And I'm just glad you didn't go out drinking after that concussion at the stag party. Because that's something, you know, I've got a buddy that was in the Navy seals, he still is. But back I saw him a little while ago, years ago, and I visited him and, you know, he took me out to some bar down in West Virginia, or not West Virginia Beach where they are. And we were out having some beers and he was drinking a lot more than than I was and then he lets out that he was knocked out that day in a drill. It's crazy. Dude, you can't be drinking the night you get knocked, but you know, those guys are just hardasses like who knows. But yeah, you know, it's somewhat normalized. We don't appreciate the ramifications and the good news I suppose is we're learning more just like in performance where we know more about electrolytes. We know more about hydration or carbohydrate replenishment. We know more about how to treat head injuries in the hours and days that follow as well. So fortunately for people that got a concussion today, there's more that you can kind of do about it. So when I listen to your story there, the kind of symbolism of the white coat and the stethoscope around the doctor's neck, that kind of painted a visual image for me and you mean you're roughly the same age. I think for our generation, the white coat and the stethoscope, that symbolized authority, worthiness, not second-guessing that opinion, even increasingly in a culture where we're having to start, criticize. I don't want to say criticizing but second-guessing what the media tells us, what a doctor tells us. The people that we assumed were trusted toward parties, the media can't be trusted to collate news independently and give me the pieces I need to know. And we're in a society now where that's not really possible anymore. And I heard of one of your recent podcasts, you were kind of open the Pandora's box. No one wants to talk about COVID on podcasts for fear of alienating the listener base that doesn't agree with our opinions. But it was literally just coming onto the podcast here. I've seen an Irish hockey player has just announced his retirement because he said he refuses to represent Ireland because we are, we've just added in this vaccine passport. So you can't dine indoors without showing your vaccine passport. So his argument is whether you're pro-vax, anti-vax, promask, anti-mask. There's never been a period in the history of the world where history has looked back favorably on people who have discriminated on anyone for any grounds. So he fails discrimination based on health is not mergers and not something he's comfortable representing the country anymore. That was a pretty big stand. We need more people like that, man. I think that this I just I, you know, I don't know how deep you want to go here, but I'll tell you the the passports and the sort of making enemies out of people that are hesitant to take any drug. I don't even take Advil. My kid doesn't, has never in his life, touched a single piece of food that wasn't biodynamic or organic, right? So when you look at some of the values that a contingent of the population carry and lead their life with mandating a particular intervention for a particular reason to me and creating a lot of finger pointing and blame towards those people that's not scientifically validated is very wrong, like you said. I just don't agree with it at all. But my bigger question is, why do we seemingly not want a control group? Like let people that want it. This is, I mean, no one's had this stuff running through their blood for more than a year, right? It's a brand new thing. Most vaccines or whatever that you're thinking about giving your kid with the schedule, like there's three million kids that had it last week. There's five billion kids that have ever had it in their life, right? So there's just this like, there's this, this hesitancy, I think is normal. But more importantly, this thing is new enough. I don't care what any media outlet says, it's new enough that we need a control group. So if 40, 50% of the population want to do it, like let's do it, but leave the control group alone. So at least we have accurate data in a year, in two years and five years as to what this thing is actually doing capable of. And if it's actually protective or not. Do you know what pains me about the whole, I don't want to get into great resets and speculate on people's motivation behind maintaining this new status quo. Amazon, Netflix are these companies massively benefiting. But as a society, I feel like we've missed a huge opportunity to prioritize and put at the very front of the global agenda, health, fitness, wellness, happiness, social connection. things that are time tested, you know, we referenced a blue light and red light and we'll get into some of our stuff and you know, I have a juvie and in the house and infrared saunas and stuff. But these are largely marketing gimmicks that have come along in the last few years. This body we're sitting in, it's, you know, it's since the dawn of time we've had the same body and we had a chance to put all the stuff that we know, sunlight, movement, hydration at the forefront of a global consciousness and we miss that opportunity as a society.

4.Fit versus healthy

I don't know if we were trying to be too politically correct and say, you know, if you are 250 pounds overweight, that's okay. It's not about fat shame and it's about educating and saying, it's not that okay. You're more of a risk to society at 250 pounds overweight and vaccinated than somebody unvaccinated. That's that optimum health. I mean, I agree with your brother and nothing pains me more than the miss boat that you mentioned because you know I'm a big I'm a big health advocate, you know, I was when I when I started when the wheels started coming off concussion wise and bodily function wise for me, I was at the peak of my sort of athletic I had just done a 70.3 Ironman that was not like a sanctioned Ironman event but the 70.3 distances I was training hard I was running hard I was cycling, I was lifting weights. And then suddenly walking in a straight line was more or less taken away from me, right? So that's kind of where when we look at some of the things that I share a lot about, like walking 10,000 steps a day, getting enough sun, getting your bare feet on the earth, I was put back all the way there, because I took basically 16 months off of all exercise and just focused on walking, getting sun and doing all this stuff. So it was when you were fit and not healthy And then you had to go to zero and build up your health before you could even attempt to get fit again. That was my experience. And I know that's the only way. I've worked with enough professional athletes to know you can be very fit and very unhealthy and very unhealthy emotionally in particular. Now you're absolutely right. I mean, when you look at the dollars, I can't even imagine the money that's been placed into the marketing. I mean every bus that goes by the bus station is branded all across the side the the energy investment to censor information that's contrary to the public belief the the massive marketing campaign that we're seeing right now if they put even 1% of that energy into Health and promoting better healthy lifestyle habits because we know it's something like I don't have the numbers in front of me I didn't know we were going down the COVID wagon here, but it's like Like the percentage of COVID deaths that had six or more comorbidities is up there. I don't want to say a specific number, but it's greater than 50% of total deaths. And so when we look at those comorbidities, those are things like obesity, weight, nutritional status, cardiovascular conditions, diabetes, all preventable things with proper nutrition. And the last thing I'll tack on, you know, we were sending out stimulus checks and giving billions of dollars to big pharma, it would have cost nothing to send every house in America or even the world a little packet each day. Take this packet. It's vitamin C, it's vitamin D, it's melatonin, it's zinc. It's all the things that are proven to increase your chances of avoiding this illness. I seen it some states you guys were giving out a free donut with the vaccine. I got a laugh out of that one. Free burgers, free burgers, free donuts. You know, and that's the thing, right? They want to completely separate the goal of this nonsense, as far as I can tell, is the goal is to basically separate health-created, it's almost like health created by positive habits and lifestyle habits and healthy things like exercise and food. they're trying to make that like an optional thing that doesn't stand up to the artificial human-made, bot lab created pharmaceutical version, right? Even though, I mean, there's people surviving COVID that are 112 years old that had Spanish flu way back 100 years ago, and there was no pharmaceutical intervention back then, but guess what? Their natural immunity was expanded. What it's almost like people want to give away or they want an else to get, you know, They have a busy career, they have a busy family and like, let's face it, staying in shape. Like I'm not a full-time athlete anymore, but I still like, if you looked at my routine and I'm sure if you looked at your routine, it's a huge focus of your day, living healthy, moving, eating healthy, all the different routines and training. You can't just take an injection. You can't just take a pill. You can't, there's no, you can't put the word just on front of this. There's no quick fix for it. These are consistent habits over long periods of time that forge healthy bodies. People don't like hard work. People don't like improvement because improvement brings up and resonates stories of times where they've previously tried and they've failed. They like new opportunities, like an opportunity switch. Oh, here's an injection. This is completely different. You've never tried this before. It's easy. Just take it and you're better. Right. That's crazy, man. And some of my coaching clients, I don't really hold any punches. And just before we got on, I got a text from a client who is morbidly obese. He's pushing 50 years old. His goal is obviously to lose weight. And he knows he sees through the media. He knows the nonsense, but he knows someone that got sick. And so he's texting me like, Hey, man, I'm, you know, I might just do this thing. And I just texted him straight up. You probably have a, your risk of heart attack is probably a hundred times greater than your risk of dying of COVID. It's a hard one though because it takes to the base from the base which, you know, you're a scientist and they like dealing in statistics, peer reviewed papers. It takes to the base from an object of one back to a subject of an emotional like you'll hear politicians, well do you want your granny to die? No, of course I don't want my granny to die, but let's have a look at the macro data on this. So manipulative man, there's so much manipulation and big thing and maybe this is a cool place to take the show is like one of the big issues that I see both in my family members and my coaching clients and my friends that are that are responding or raising questions around what they're hearing both on both sides of the fence There's a lack of vantage point a lack of perspective Right. So for example, my guy who is at a high has a lot of comorbidities, a lot of issues that could increase his risk of having a heart attack, which guess what?

5.Becoming hard to kill

More people die of heart attacks in the United States every single year than died of COVID. And that's even with a lot of the, you know, construction workers who fell off a roof and died of COVID when they hit the ground. Right. So there's a lot of that. We got to see them too. We got a few of them. So, so we don't even necessarily have accurate data. And there's still more people dying of heart attacks than COVID. And that's every year, year over year over year. So with him, you know, I was joking about, you know, hey, you know, you're putting a new security system in your house and you're having trouble sticking with your nutrition plan and your workout regimen. You're written and now you're thinking about getting the jab. It's like the security system, like you worried about a home invasion? Look at you. You know, you got like, you got like, you got to get moving, dude, you put that 10 grand that you're going to put in the security system into food, into more time with, with a coach that can, that can kick your butt seven days a week that can cook your meals for you. Like you're going to actually live longer statistically, right? So I think that perspective as to what is the a real threat and as the single individual, what are the biggest threats to me? And this is where maybe we come back to your point. Healthy, athletic, fit people that have healthy fasting glucose levels and high activity levels, don't die of this problem. It's a buddy text me last week, he's seen an Instagram story of me trying, or something, he's like, bro, what the hell are you trying it so hard for? And I was like, I want to be hard to kill. That's like, that's it. Like it's your security. Like I want to be ready. If someone texts me tomorrow, do you want to do an Ironman? Do you want to ride across Europe? Do you want to fight someone 12 rounds? I'm ready. I want to be a perpetual state of readiness. That's like my new goal. And that's a beautiful thing. And I spent a lot of years coaching personal trainers on just that. And there's a certain, I imagine you feel the same way. there's that level of fitness, that level of preparedness and readiness for anything. And then you also, if you actually signed up for an Ironman in three months, then you could of course target that readiness in a certain way. Fighters don't stay in fighting shape 12 months a year, but you don't wanna mess with them 365 days a year. Yeah, you gotta stay in striking distance in that fight. I was chatting to a client earlier, I'm behind the podcast, we have a cycling coaching company, we coach cyclists and triathletes, but I was talking to a client who spent two years getting ready for an event. And he's like, I don't know if I can keep this level of commitment after the event. And I was like, well, you don't need to. You can step back into what I call a striking distance. And it's a level of fitness that if you decide to pick an event that's eight weeks out, 12 weeks out, you can just ramp up back up again. It's just not letting yourself get back to that. If you think of fitness as peaks and troughs, you don't need to be able to peak, but you definitely don't want to be back down at that trough. Well, and here's the thing, right? I've worked a lot of professional athletes and people that make their livings off their bodies. And they see the stuff on Instagram and social media and they read the books on fasting and keto. And they want that. They want the, you know, they want to improve their race performance by going more fat-based or more keto or integrating intermittent fasting because now they want their cake and eat it too. They want to live a long time and perform at a high level. I've written about the fact that the only time that it's like safe to do that for most athletes to make a major shift is when you get hurt. because when you get hurt, now we can focus only on diet and you're not layering on because, you know, you can't change from a diesel to an unleaded gas engine overnight. You can't just cycle for 10 years and tomorrow start eating keto and expect you not to just have a horrible outcome. And so just like you're saying, that fighting shape where maybe you're doing more nasal breathing which is back where this started, you're doing more breath work, you're focusing on respiration, focusing on that basic physiological base, that health base, while maintaining a level of fitness that doesn't cause a lot of recovery or a lot of muscle damage. Now you can focus on health, invest some time there. You can change your diet up a little bit, see how that works. But when you layer in intense exercise, or you don't change your exercise approach at all, and you try to be at your absolute peak 365 days a year, you first of all are right at the edge of injury at all times, generally. And the other piece is there's no space, there's no willpower, there's no emotional real estate for any other things you want to change, even if it's adding 20 minutes in front of the red light every morning, because you're just exhausted and your willpower is drained. So I think there's this like yin and yang of health and fitness. And I think with all that's going on in the world, it's a good time to educate ourselves and really think about how do we want to approach this thing? I have a friend and he actually used to work with me and I chat to him about his morning routines and I love morning routines and I definitely want to get in and hear your one in a second but I chat to him and his morning routine lasts until about 2pm in the day now it's like he's transcribing Latin you know into his morning routine. It's gone off the chart. Like I feel like we're being pulled in so many different directions definitely if you're in this sort of bio hacking niche and your listeners and reading all the top waters in it. There's so many things you could be doing as part of a morning routine.

6.Type A men and Ironman

Have you sort of, how much have you experimented with it and how much have you got it dialed now? Yeah. Well, hey, so before I had a kid, I had a great morning routine. And it is always funny when you see like the 25-year-old Instagram influencer with no kids. And it's like... Morning routines are the most important piece of fitness. You got to get up and you've You got a journal for 20 minutes, then you got to stand outside in the sun for 20 minutes. You got to have your bear breed on the earth for 20 minutes. You got to make a 300 calorie coffee, then you got to meditate, then you got to do this, then you got to work out, then you got to do it. It's just like, dude, you know, I wake up and I'm in fast forward already. Right. Right. You know, so, you know, I think that here's the, here's the dance, man. One of the things that I try to get people to understand is I suppose I just posted on Instagram a little while ago, it's healthy till it's stressful. And I work with a lot of type A guys. Some of them are more into Ironman and cycling and some of them aren't. But they're all in that age bracket that I think listens to this show and that wanna really kind of make up for lost times. They've worked on Wall Street for the last 30 years. They made their money, but now they're sick as a dog or they don't have the energy to keep up with their kids or their younger wife or whatever, right? So there's this situation where these guys, because they're, you know, when you think about Ironman, right, like Ironman, when you look at the people, let's just look at the men that compete in Ironman. This is not a diverse group of men. Not right. This is like, you guys are all carbon copies of each other. You're all CEOs, you're all entrepreneurs, you're all type A, you all make $170,000 a year or more. Like, it's like you're, you're, you're not a diverse group. And so when that group, the reason they like Ironman, I hypothesize is because they know exactly how long the swim is, exactly how long the bike is, exactly how long the run is. They can take this much carbohydrate per hour, this much sodium per 45 minute, whatever they're like, coaches worked out for them. And they know they're gonna finish because they've done the math and they've trained and you've built them up and they did the whole thing. And that's why they like these events. But they take that attitude to the morning routine. And it's like this to-do list that's a mile long and looks insurmountable. But here's the thing, it's like if you do the thing with the right intention or the right energy it works in the wrong way. So when I look at my morning routine prior to kids, it was actually less healthy than it is now because I would get up and I would do this for 20 minutes and then I would do this for 20 minutes and then I would do this for 20 minutes. Now I wake up and it's like a fire alarm and my kids running around and I'm trying to like get on the podcast or, you know, we're across the world from each other. I just actually spent a year in Europe. So a lot of my contacts are over in Europe. It just doesn't work, but here's the thing. Every single morning, I walk my dog and my kid with my wife, right? When I do that walk, I don't wear shoes and I wear as little clothing as possible, right? You know, on the exact same, I was about to talk about using routines and integrating them into just stuff you have to do. I walk the talk every single morning, barefoot, and the neighbors look at me like a wacky. Right. And that's the thing, right? You know, I don't get it. I live in Texas, it's 100 degrees. Why you guys all clothed? You know, it's hot out here. So, so yeah, we walk. I walk on the grass next to the sidewalk. My wife pushes the stroller. I walk the dog. I'm getting Almost total body sun. I'm getting feet on the earth. I'm spending time with my wife Investing in our relationship, which is another key to health and happiness, you know, you gotta kind of have, you know I just hired a new coach myself and it was like, hey man, like I gotta work on family family, finance and fitness, I don't need you for, I don't need you for fitness, but I want to know like the other two, like I need, I need as much support. Those are my two goals, but family is number one. And so I was looking for somebody that could help me in all those areas or minimally had an interest in fitness, even though I'm not looking for that for help there. But anyway, so like spending time with our loved ones, being present with our kids, like these are massive values for me personally. And so look, I'm getting my son, I'm getting my grounding, I'm spending time with my kid, I'm laughing and joking with him, I'm talking to my wife about the day. And so that's a way to integrate a lot of these quote bio hacks without any energy investment, without any willpower investment and without victimizing ourselves. Because when we got kids and stuff and we're like, oh, must be nice to get son and get your feet on the earth every day, it's easy to say that, it's easy to put yourself in those shoes. But it's like, you just got to figure it out. You just got to figure out how to make it work. And if you can do more than one good thing with your time at the same time, then that's what it's all about. Well, it's got to be, I'm not sure if you've read the book, Tinking Fast and Slow. And it's this idea that we can change decision making from type one where it takes us a lot of willpower to do something. So that might be like, given up chocolate, given up cigarettes, like we're focusing all the time on that versus type two where it becomes an automated behavior. So the best example or the one that VC uses in the book is when we started out driving, at least here in Europe, we have manual transmission cars and there's a lot of focus goes into that.

7.Habits over willpower

Okay, so it's clutch, okay, gear one, clutch, shift down, gear two, check mirrors. You fast forward two years, you're listening to a podcast, you're smoking out the window, drinking a can of beer, texting on your phone and driving, you know what I mean? Like you can do 20 things at once because the behaviors become automators. But I find out what the morning routine is while I talk to clients and they have this like rigorous to-do list. almost beast like by 9.30 a.m. because they have these six things to get through. And you're like, it's too much willpower needed to get through that list. Whereas you look at your morning routine, it's something that's so sustainable. You could do that for the next 50 years without taking any willpower because it's an automated behavior. Right. 100% brother. And I'll say too, like my goal every morning is to do at least like 30 minutes on my bike in my garage, right? But here's the thing, if I'm running behind and I'm late and I'm late for whatever and I'm I've got more to do, I do even if I have to do five minutes, even if I have to do 10 minutes or one minute, I get my ass out there because I want to keep the the habit. I don't want to slip. I don't want to have days and days go by and I don't want to victimize myself. So there's this there's also this like acceptance of of or this commitment to do something even if you can't necessarily do it. Maybe you You can't get, maybe I can't walk two miles with my wife and kid, but hey, I'll walk 500 meters if that's all I have time for. But there's something powerful about that as well because the fact that you're getting your cycling kit on or your workout kit and you're doing a workout, it's keeping that momentum with it, but there's a mind shift as well that goes with that, I think. We use a lot of recovery gadgets in cycling. So when you come in from a cycle, you might use these big, we call them space boots, they're big compressed boots. I got to point out. I got to point out the tech boots. You got the Novotex, you know it's down. know what's going on. You should see my house, you dig it. So you talk about someone that wears Normatec boots, do the Normatec boots really help their recovery. You know, maybe you talk to some of the best writers and then sport scientists in the world, the jury's out. But I feel like the type of athlete who invests a Normatec boots, boxes off the time to use the Normatec boots, you're not sitting in the Normatec boot, eating Ben and Jerry's ice cream. You know, there's a mind shift that goes with using the Narmatech boots, where you're prioritizing your recovery. You're normally sitting there going, how's my hydration levels? What's my sleeping like tonight? It's getting into that performance mindset. Everything has to align, right? So you won't achieve any of your goals until everything is in alignment. A lot of guys understand this in the finance world. Like I wanna be a millionaire by 30 or 40 or whatever it is. And we just, everything is in alignment. Everything we do at work is in alignment with that goal. We hit our targets, et cetera. And you're absolutely right. I had a friend that, you know, we talk a lot about biohacking air travel. I used to live on a plane. You know, I traveled to 20-some odd different countries over the span of a couple of years. And one of my buddies was like, hey, you know, we got to take all the magnesium and we had to like do all the things to make sure we mitigate the radiation and the stress from travel and the circadian stuff. But what I also started doing, one of my good friends who actually cured cancer, his own cancer, put it into full remission, he was like, hey, just take all your socks and shoes off on the plane and make sure your feet are on the metal pieces of the chair in front of you to ground you while you're in the plane because there is so much radiation. And that is the Normatec boots. So the Normatec boots, maybe they work, maybe they don't. You can ask somebody that's smarter than me. But like you're doing something at every opportunity, you're doing something to support your objective. And so if I'm sitting on the plane and I'm even taking my damn socks off to put them on the metal in front of me. I don't know if it's actually grounding me effectively. I don't know if there's anything to this, but there's nothing else I could do in this particular moment to align with my objectives except this. So even if it doesn't work, I'm doing it. And you're not doing it in order to triple whiskey at the same time. Right, that's true too. That's true too. But that's the idea is like at any moment, are you doing something that's moving you closer and weaving you further away? And I think that's the piece of the puzzle. And to your point, you could stack habits with the normatec boots. Now you're incapacitated for 60 minutes or whoever long you're going to be hooked up to those things. Are you going to journal? Why don't you journal about the ride you just had? What did you do well? What did you want to learn next time? Could you have pushed harder at that part of the course or whatever is relevant to the person? Or maybe you're journaling about your personal goals? I love that idea of alignment. That's actually the first time I've heard that. It's brilliant. You got to, yeah, and stacking habits is a massively effective way to do it. So you're not wasting time in the norm of text. You're not like yelling at your wife, hey, can you bring me a drink? I can't move right now. You know, you're like, all right, I got my notebook. I do this in the, I've got a hyperbaric chamber upstairs. And I do that almost every single day. And this is something I do for my head, right? But if you go in my hyperbaric chamber, dude, I got half my books in that thing. I got journals in that thing. I got my heart math equipment in there. I've got noise canceling headphones. I've got eye masks.

8.Four quadrants of biohacking

It's like a spa in my chamber because once you're in, you're in. And there's no, there's no getting out for 90 minutes or something like that. So what's your favorite hacks that you're trying to sprinkle into a week? I don't even want to use hacks because it's come quite a geeky thing. But what's, you know, compared to our Joe listener who's thinking, oh, I just write the bike five days a week. And I've got a bit of disposable income. What are the sort of things you would recommend them to start up, Craig? Yeah, man. So well, here's the thing. It depends on every, it depends, right? So my guy who's got a lot of weight to lose that I'm worried he's going to have a cardiac event because he's so overweight and is not that healthy. And he doesn't have good thoughts running through his head or good food going into his mouth. Like for him, I'm like, get yourself a sauna because I need you to, you know, if you look at cardiovascular benefits of sitting in the sauna five days a week, right? They're pretty compelling. And it's like, okay, you got the dough, like infrared sauna. I use a sauna space sauna. I think they're the best. I like the, the, the radiant, the infrared red light. So it's almost like jubing and sawning at the same time, right, which is kind of, again, it's kind of like a stack. But if somebody is a competitive athlete, that's looking for an age. And again, if money's no object, I might push them in another direction. Now, everything is also predicated on the free medicine, though. So things like daily cold showers, things like walking out in the sun, getting enough sun, avoiding harmful foods like seed oils and excess sugar and all that crap. So there's a lot of stuff. I always tell people, I've kind of got four quadrants. right? And it's like free medicine. Then you got like gym memberships and stuff. And then you got like massages. And then you got like the expensive stuff for your home, right? So you got to do you got to check quadrant one, quadrant two, quadrant three, and then go into quadrant four, because a lot of guys that that are listening to this show, just like the jab, they don't want to get the sun, they don't want to do the the work, they don't want to necessarily do the recovery or the kettlebell swings or the or the change in diet. But they'll add the $7,000 sauna to their living room. And I just would say it's not that the sun is not going to be of benefit. But if you stack the sauna on a lifestyle that's based around free medicine and these healthy habits that have been around 2.6 million years, you're going to get better results from the sauna. So, well, I always talk to my clients and I say to them, like, you know, the coaching, it's relatively expensive. Like you can call them and you can cut a check. But I'm like, money is not solving your problem here. If money solves your problem, you know, heart disease, cancer, we just could have checked and it had disappeared and you wouldn't have to suffer for many of this stuff. I was like, you could have checked, that's the starting point. Like, also watching my video content, cutting the check and watching the video content, that's not going to get you there either. It's like every single person then that took a self development course would come out smarter when the reality is most people to take a self development course. They come out just as fucking dumb as they went in. Like, they come out with the same bigoted view as most of the time. So it's like the two missing elements from me are focus, you need to show up with focus, put your shit away, like actually watch what I'm saying to you take notes on it, and then execute it with energy. And it's those last two focus on executing with energy that make it possible, because without it's just it's bullshit, and you're going to get the same results. 100% brother, it's you know who the most likely person to buy a self help book is? Somebody that in the last 18 months has bought a self help book. That's actually right. So if any of them are, you know, I'm worked, right? But you actually hit the nail on the head, brother. It's like, it is the energy, the attitude, the intention you place behind it. And if you look at the last, I've read a lot of books. I've recommended a lot of books to my clients and the people that attend our live events and things like that. And I'm looking now at my library that I feature at every event, and sorry, there's a cleaning person that you might hear vacuuming. When I look, I'm starting to wonder if some of these guys have read their own book. So there's a difference, and that's maybe what we're seeing in the world today in terms of like this division of people. It's like, how could you have written that book and then feel that way, right? It doesn't make any sense. And so there's a difference between an academic, scholarly approach to communicate whatever the subject matter is, you know, whatever, maybe it's mindset or motivation, et cetera. And there's a difference between internalizing that living it with every cell in your entire body, right? And that is the difference. And I think there's even a lot of people writing those self-help books that aren't healthy, that aren't happy. We assume they have the perfect life. But you know what? It just isn't the case. And so we're going to be left on our lonesome. Ultimately, it's everything you've got inside of you, your energy, your attitude, your heart, that's going to determine, even if you never picked up another self-help book or another workout plan again. Joe, I want to finish up on heart rate variability because I know it's a topic you're extremely knowledgeable on you gave your TEDx talk on heart rate variability. Are you still using heart rate variability to use it with your clients? If so, what role does that play for yourself on them? Yeah. So, well, here's the thing, right? I look at trends a lot, right? So right now, like you can see maybe my tan line from my tracker, but I'm not wearing it, right? So I'm taking some time off.

9.Tracking HRV and sleep

When my wife was pregnant, I took, I had been wearing the ring for a long time and it was kind of my preferred sleep tracker, but my wife was pregnant. I I was like, what am I doing track of my sleep? Like, what am I gonna do? Wake up in the morning and be like, hey, honey, like I know you're pregnant and doing all that stuff, but I only got 45 minutes of REM last night. I couldn't possibly help you. You know, so there was this like selfishness that was associated with it. But I think like, you know, it's healthy till it's stressful. I like looking at trends, right? So I want someone to wear it for a week, get a good baseline, if they choose to wear it and they can wear it without getting crazy about it, then keep wearing it. But we might do another week in a month. And I just want to see trends over time. If you're, you know, a lot of guys, their HRV is pretty low because they're multitasking a lot. They're super focused in one area. They're not getting the, you know, maybe they're not, they're not the best relationship with their loved ones or whatever. You know, I think there's a lot of things. That's one of the biggest players in terms of your heart rate variability. It's your family life, right? It's not how much money you have in the bank. What's going to move the needle of heart rate variability is how you feel about your life. So do more emotions that run through your mind on a daily basis, gravitate towards you being full of gratitude and love, or do more of your emotions and thoughts and feelings, gravitate towards you being angry, anxious, in a rush, et cetera. And if it's the latter, your HRV is gonna be low. So gratitude and loving nurturing relationships are really the ticket to getting positive HRV. So I use it, but I also try to educate around it. And the last thing I'll tack on is I still think the gold standard, even though the watches and the rings are convenient, I still think the gold standard is the heart rate strap that all your listeners have with my friend Ben Greenfield app, which is called Nature Beat. And you just lie down for five minutes with that Bluetooth heart rate strap on and you do a morning five minute test. I think he has a three minute test, but I usually do have five. That's still the gold standard, right? Because otherwise, when you look at all the different devices, you can't compare one metric to another because one of them takes an average of the whole night, one of them takes the peak during the night, one of them decides it's the last hour of sleep. So every device is tracking this differently. So your HRV score is ultimately an opinion of whatever device you're using. Okay. Right? And so that's that. And... So I'll link that up down below for listeners if you're listening on Spotify or any other cool places Let me link. Let me take on one more thing. And this is the amazing piece. I know we're up against time here, but the other thing to think about, you're familiar with battling ropes? Yeah, use them a little bit messing around across fish. Okay, they're cool. So I don't have a better analogy yet, but when you look at actually what's happening at the heart, what we call HRV is actually the blood pressure wave. And I've got a podcast with Howard Martin on this. That's pretty good. Now, when we look at heart rate variability, it's the variation in time between beats. So one beat comes in, right? And then it's 0.96 seconds before the next beat. And then it's 0.98 seconds before the next beat and 0.95 seconds before the next beat. So there's these slight variances. So even if your heart rate is beating 60 times a minute, it's not necessarily a metronome. It's not necessarily exactly unless you got like a pacemaker like my dad had. then it's zero. So that variability is calculated and put through an algorithm. And then depending on the device, it spits out a number that's usually between 100, zero and 100, sometimes it's zero and a million. But the thing to consider is what HRV is actually is when the heart pumps, it's putting the information that it wants to communicate to your entire body subtly into the bloodstream. And so what I mean by that, it's almost like if you think about battling ropes and you've got the battling ropes and I want you to pretend the battling ropes was like an artery, right? So you're moving both at the same time maybe or maybe you're not. But you pretend it's one big tube, right? The interesting thing about the heart, we're getting focused on the time between beats. But what the time between beats actually is, is when I do the battling ropes, so I take this tube that I've got, and I do one quick heartbeat with it. And then the next time I do it a little asymmetrically with my hands. And the next time I do it a little slower. And the next time I do it whatever. So every time I'm beating this tube that's a little bit like using battling ropes in the gym, the pattern that I eject blood from the heart with is the information. So it is only coincidental that the time between beats is the thing we can easily measure. But what's actually happening is that difference in arm position of the battling rope, the difference in intensity is communicating an emotion. And that emotion is now being run through the entire body until it comes back, right? And so that's how we can actually change our state in a single heartbeat or in a single breath where, which is where this started, right? So when we sync our breath, but that's what's actually happening. I'll, I'll grab it there. It's a fascinating area and it seems like a lot of these were able to, whether it's Woopa or whatever one you're using. You were talking about how social family connection are one of the largest factors for effect in this, but it's nearly circling back to stuff that civilizations have known for hundreds of years. If you look at areas like the Blue Zones, where historically people live, they have the highest concentration of centurions, people living beyond 100. look at the commonalities in these zones, one of the big commonalities is social connection, family connection, slow dinners.

10.What Blue Zones really teach

You can even extend that to so much of what you've talked about today. Some might exposure, barefoot exposure, and even something like Granny would have said to me when I was a kid, like, don't spend much time around unhappy or unlucky people. It's all of this, and the data has just given expression to what these civilizations have known since they began. Yeah. Right. And the funny thing about the Blue Zones is too is like what they eat is the least important thing we should learn from the Blue Zones, right? And the other funny thing is they all eat a little bit differently. And the last piece of the puzzle is that we all need to consider as well as a lot of these Blue Zones are places where the lineage is rather clean. So like, you know, the Okinawans, right? There's a lot of respect for your elders. They spend a lot of time with multiple generations in the same room at the same time, at the same dinner same with Sardinia. Iceland is actually an understated blue zone as well and I suspect that's because they don't need a lot of the foods that marketing and convention likes to talk about with the blue zones. But the funny thing is, something to consider before we all jump on the Sardinian diet because they live a long time, there's no researcher evidence to suggest that if you take an Okinawan to Sardinia and drop him there, he's going to live to a hundred. That's interesting. So our genetic codes, our genetics are all unique. And sure, if you you're my wife and you're a hundred percent Icelandic, then whatever's going on in Iceland, you probably know is what you need. Right. It's probably the best bet for you nutritionally and social structure or whatever. But if you're like me and you're a total mutt and you got little bits of everything, then I better not start eating like a certain well, I started eating what actually probably worked for me because I'm mostly Sicilian, but like, let's pretend Okinawan. Let's pretend I got all about the Okinawan, you know, really high carb diet. There's no reason to believe based on my genetics that the Okinawan, even the societal structure would work for me because I'm not Okinawan. Yeah, I think it's been like, obviously just great tools, like 23 and me, where we can attract lineage and start playing around with that. But I think for me, when I looked at it, I was looking at commonalities across all them. Dietary preferences are very different across all the Blue Zones, but like the stuff like you really prioritize. And it wasn't stuff that you even explicitly mentioned, but so many times it's the tone of your voice when you speak about your wife, your family, and you know, there's such depth and passion and emotion there that you can just tell that's going to make you sleep better, it's going to make you happier, and it's going to ultimately make you live a bit longer. And I think, Thanks brother. And Joe, I think that's a nice place to leave it because I think we could end up chatting lace into the wee hours here in Ireland. It's getting laid over there, isn't it? Yeah. So, all right, it was a great time. Before I let you go, Joe, if people want to follow your journey, where's the best place to catch up with you? Yeah, I'm Coach Joe Di. That's the first two letters of my last name. And that's the Instagram Facebook slash Coach Joe Di. It's the Instagram Coach Joe Di. It's coachjodi.com. My business is called Runga R-U-N-G-A. The website is actually rungalife.com. And so is the Instagram. So rungolifeinstagramrungolife.com. We've got a really cool event in October here in Austin, Texas to multi-day recovery kind of event you could say. If anyone's interested, so give us a follow. And thanks so much for having me, Anthony. It was a ton of fun. Joe, really enjoyed it. Thanks for taking us on. All right, brother. OK, stop what you're doing. It's Anthony again. I want to talk to you for one second about the next step in the roadman journey. I'm laying down a challenge for you. It's called the 8-week challenge. So for 8 weeks, I'm challenging you to be the very best version of yourself. Whatever that is. For 8 weeks, I want to take you under my wing, and I want to personally build for you the customized training plan on our analytics platform. This plan is going to be laser focused on your goal, and I'm going to navigate around your life, your work, your social commitments. So don't worry about what your circumstances are right now. I remember after I took some time out of cycling, I went off and taught I was a really big businessman. I came back and I realized I wanted to get into cycling but I knew after a bit to try it on a loan it actually wasn't making me any fitter. I needed an entire system it needed a 360 overhaul. So for the first time ever I want to share with you this exact system I used to get back in shape. I'm talking stuff like I'm gonna give you my morning routines, the cold therapy I used, the cookbooks and recipes I used and even the motivational audio by listening to get back on track. So right now what I want you to do is pause this audio, go to www.roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week or check out the link in the bio, click that. So one more time at roadmancycling.com forward slash eight week. Chatty also.