PNTV: Spartan Fit! by Joe De Sena with John Durant (#330)

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we've got another great book, Spartan fit by Joe Decenna with John Durant. Spartan Fit Subtitle 30 Days Transform your mind, transform your body, commit to grit. Awesome book. Last year I profiled Spartan up by Joe decenna. Joe decenna is the founder of Spartan Race. Angela Duckworth, the leading researcher on the science of grit, describes him as a paragon of grit. I think that's the absolutely perfect way to describe Joe decenna. He is an endurance athlete legend who now has Spartan Race. He's committed to basically changing the world by helping people optimize via getting Spartan Fit and living a Spartan lifestyle. He described super inspiring. He partnered with John Durant who wrote the Paleo Manifesto to write this book. At the end of my interview with John last year, I think sometime he said he was finalizing this book. Couldn't wait to get it. Now that I've read it, I am fired up. I've signed up for my first Spartan race. Very excited. Going to do it with my right hand guy, Evan with Let's do this. And my four year old son Emerson, he'll be four at the time of the race, will be doing the kids version. Alexandra would do it, but very exciting news. First time I've shared it. She's pregnant. So we're very excited about that. We're having a girl and life is good. Philosopher's note. Bunch of my favorite big ideas. Let's look at five of them now. So Spartan Up. Spartan Fit, Spartan Race. Their tagline is you'll know at the finish line. You'll know at the finish line what it feels like to move through obstacles, which is our second big idea here and to see what you're capable of. Right. Well, guess what though, if you want to get to the finish line, the more important thing is get to the starting line. This is chapter number one of the book. You have a big vision of what you want to do. Whether that's a race like Spartan race or a marathon or whatever, or creating a business or relationship or a family or, or a piece of art or whatever. You've got your big vision of the finish line. The most important thing we can possibly do is get to the starting line. Get to the starting line. That's what this is all about. How do you get to the starting line in your life? One of the things he talks about in the seven pillars of Spartan training that we'll talk about is the importance of routines. You've got to get really, really good at showing up not just at the big race day event, but get to the starting line of your life every single day. This is a big part of what we talk about in these episodes, masterpiece days, etc. And in the note, I share the fact that on my big wall calendar. So I did a video with my huge wall calendar, right? Well, each day has its own little items that I'm going to crush, right? And one of the things I have at the bottom of every single day is 1 plus 10 plus 100 plus 1000 plus 10,000, which represents for me one of my basic core things, physical movement commitments. I'm going to do one sun salutation, 10 pull ups, 100 burpees, 1,000 meters of rowing and 10,000 steps. And I've now added 25 minutes of vigorous exercise, or if it's an active recovery day, whatever, mellow hike or whatever. Anyway, point for this is to get to the starting line. And it's almost silly, but one of my routines in stepping Back again, just. Joe decenna has a podcast. He's interviewed tons of people who have achieved extraordinary things and they all come back to the same idea that you need to start your days strong, create routines and rituals, whatever. Yours are mine. I wake up, go to bed early, wake up, do my 20 minutes of meditation, and then I do five minutes, super simple opening series, some stretching and yoga, et cetera, ending with one sun salutation. Then when I'm done with that, I cruise on over to my wall calendar, right? And I look at today and I've got other things that I'm going to do, right? But this is basically the first thing that I'm going to do today. I cross off that one and I put a big old smiley face right next to it. And it's the most simple thing. But I know that literally I say to myself, that was the hardest part of today. The rest of it is easy. I'm at the starting line. I've done what I've said is most important for me to have a great day. And, and I'm the kind of person that does that day in and day out. I can't remember the last time I missed it. I've never missed it since I put it on my calendar over, I don't know, year, year and a half ago or whatever. One plus 10 plus 100 plus 1,000 plus 10,000. Just get the ball rolling. What is your starting line? What's your race you're committed to? Again, whether it's a physical race or the metaphorical race, of your life? What's the big goal that's driving you? And then how are you going to discipline yourself to get to the starting line more and more consistently? Whatever it is figured out in Rocket. Which leads us to our second big idea, obstacle immunity. So for those of you who don't know, Spartan race is a set of challenging obstacles you got to run to and then get over or under or through or whatever, right? Obstacle racing. And Joe makes the point that the point isn't just to challenge people and to make them do burpees if they can't do it. It's it's to get them immune to obstacles, to cultivate what they call obstacle immunity. It doesn't matter what you throw at us, we can go through it. We will get through it. We have enough confidence, enough trust in ourselves that we can handle whatever life throws at us. Cultivating this obstacle immunity is the essence of being Spartan fit, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, et cetera. I just love that obstacle immunity reminds me of Nassim Taleb's antifragility, where whatever challenges us makes us stronger. It's Ryan Holiday's Obstacle is the way whatever's thrown into our path becomes the path. We accept it and then get stronger as a result. As the tools guys say, we say bring it on. Anytime we find ourselves stressed or challenged or facing an obstacle, we lean into it, knowing that our potential is on the other side. This is super inspiring. The way he describes it is great. Third big idea. You can do it. He shares all kinds of crazy stories and he has an awesome chapter on kind of ancient Sparta and the history of what we know of ancient Sparta. His conversations with Steven Pressfield, who we've covered in the War of Art, do the work, turning pro, etc. Right? But anyway, he goes through all this stuff that he's like, now that I've scared you, I want you to know you can do this. They have four different types of races, from the basic to the most advanced. And he says, you can do it, everyone. The point is to challenge people's limitations, but everyone's limitations are different and you can do it. You may or may not choose to do it, but you can do it. Then he shares some other stories in Spartan Up. I think at that time I had said that I was going to do 300 burpees because I learned that it was either 4 or 5 year old daughter had banged out 300 burpees in a row. At the time I didn't even know what a burpee was. Right. But I made it a game to get up to 300 burpees. I did one, then I added one every day up to 193. Then I kind of got bored with that. So I just banged out 300 the next day. Boom, done. Check the box. His four or five year old daughter had done it. I figured, you know, I can do it. Then he shares in this book the fact that his seven year old son ran the New York City Marathon, unofficially the youngest person to ever run the marathon. And then Joe shares a sweet story about how they stopped in the Bronx and you know, looked around there and they stopped wherever, right? Central park, etc. Did it in over five hours. Seven years old, New York City Marathon In Spartan up, we talked about the guy who. Swedish explorer who hopped on a bike, rode his bike from Sweden to the Himalayas, ascended Mount Everest with no Sherpa, no oxygen, came back down, summited, came back down, rode his bike back to Sweden and Joe says, look, that's really, really, really hard and rather crazy, but it's not impossible. So we need to really be careful about the things we tell us are impossible. Whether it's a Spartan race or again, the business or whatever other thing that you're fired up about, you can do it, know that you can do it. And whether you think you can or you think you can't, you are correct. The book has seven pillars to Spartan training, which I talk about a little bit more in the note, see if I can remember them. Endurance. First aspect, you got to be able to build your endurance, specifically running. Hello, hill training. New thing for me. I do a lot of hiking, but not a lot of running or hill work. And then strength, you got to be able to move heavy objects. He says, look, nature gave you a gym. It's called your body. A ton of the exercises, almost all the exercises in this involve, in this training, involve your own body weight. Do some amazing stuff with your own body. Hello, burpees. Then we have athleticism, actually being able to show up with skill and grace. His number one tip in that section, by the way, is posture, which is what we talked about in Eric Goodman's True to form, standing up with pride. Standing tall is the first form of moving into that athleticism. He walks us through how to go about doing that. More recovery. He says we need to train hard and we need to recover hard. Train intensely. Recover intensely. You obviously can't be going all the time. The fifth pillar of the Spartan training is nutrition. He has a super simple approach leaning on Michael Pollan's. Eat food, mostly plants, not too much. Says we don't need to complicate things. Let's keep it simple. First step, get rid of the toxic stuff. Then add Whole Foods, etc. And then the sixth thing is our mind. We've got to get our mind right again. If you don't think you can do it, there's no way you're going to get to the starting line. You won't even say you're capable of doing it. We got to get our minds right. He's got a ton of ways to consider doing that. Then the seventh pillar is the Spartan code. Really inspiring. Look at what Spartans in his community stand for. Then the fifth big idea here is the Olympic oath. See, there's a chapter about his commitment to making obstacle racing an Olympic sport. He creates and describes a very compelling set of reasons to do it. But what I was really inspired by was his personal commitment. And he doesn't know how many adventure races and endurance races. And he says, I've done some pretty crazy, basically impossible things. People have told me no, a ton of times I've faced death and I've faced all these challenges and I stood in there and I did it. And he says, I swear to you, the Spartan racer, obstacle racer or individual looking to cultivate this, that I'm going to spend the rest of my life, and I won't rest until we make obstacle racing an Olympic sport. And just this description that he had for how he's going to approach it, right? And this oath that he's making, swearing in blood that he is going to do this, period. He says that he finishes races, he starts. He never starts a race thinking he's not going to finish. He hasn't finished every single one he's done, but he's committed to finishing every one. And this is kind of the biggest challenge that he's faced, is making obstacle racing an Olympic sport, which, again, is interesting in its own right. But the fact that he's so willing to, so public, publicly commit to doing this, I found incredibly inspiring. And it begs the question, what are you committed to? What in your life are you willing to swear oath to those people in your lives you care most about? You are committed to doing this. This is how you become a paragon of grit. Angela Duckworth says, grit is all about passionate, intense passion plus intense perseverance. You got to be fired up about something, intrinsically interested in it. You got to practice it daily. You've got to be committed to something bigger than yourself, have purpose and you got to have hope, be willing to play in the long run. The four things, interest plus practice plus purpose plus hope. That's how we cultivate grit. But it starts with, what are you committed to? And Joe gives us a good hint. He says, what are you afraid to do? That's exactly where you should start. So think about that. What would you do if you weren't afraid? It's a good thing to consider doing. Feel into that. Perhaps make an oath to committing yourself to it. Developing Spartan toughness. The seven pillars we talked about. Starting with endurance, strength, athleticism, moving on to recovery, nutrition, your mind and that code. Then you can do it. Just believing you can do more than you think you can currently do is the starting point to the whole thing. Remember his 7 year old who ran the New York city marathon? His four or five year old who's banging out 300 burpees. His kids work out two hours every single morning, starting with a ton of stretching and then moving their bodies. They're committed. He's all in. How he's living itself is ridiculously inspiring. Then we've got that Swedish explorer Himalayas riding his bike. Back nuts. Obstacle immunity. Whatever challenges you're facing in your life, rub your hands together, get excited about them. See how they're going to make you stronger. That's what we want to cultivate. And then get to the starting line again and again and again. I've got my silly little thing. 1 10, 1 0, 0, cross it off, smiley face. That was the hardest thing I'm going to do. I started strong again today. Let's do that as we get Spartan fit. Looking forward to chatting with Joe and John. Appreciate you guys, great book and I hope you enjoyed. If you did, check out the book and sign up for a race. Have fun, have another awesome day. See you. Isn't it a bit odd that we went from math to science to history, but somehow missed the class on how to? For some wacky reason, optimal living 101 never made the schedule. Of course, it's too late to go back and change that and you're too busy to read full time to catch up yet. If you're like us, you're all about optimizing your life and actualizing your potential. So imagine this. Imagine having someone read the best books on optimal living and pulling out the big ideas that can truly change your life. You know those sections you asterisk and underline and mark all up. Then imagine that guy, me, connecting those ideas to other great books and helping you apply them to your life today. Well, that's what I do with something we call Philosopher's Notes where I break down each great book into a simple 6 page PDF, 20 minute MP3 and 10 minute Philosopher's Notes TV episode. Then imagine me taking the absolute best big ideas from those great books and sharing them with you in fun, inspiring, super practical optimal living 101 classes on stuff like purpose 101, confidence 101, business 101 meditation 101, that sort of thing. You've got a personal trainer? I'm kind of like your personal philosopher. Ancient wisdom plus Modern science plus common sense plus Virtue plus mastery plus fun. That's what our optimized membership program is all about. We'd love to have you join us. Check us out at BrianJohnson. Me join.