129. HPF - Flame On

Welcome to another episode of Real Dad Movement podcast. The point and purpose of these episodes, as always, is to have a point and purpose towards helping you win the second half in life by building a path of becoming the best father, husband, man and member of your community that you can be. We do this with various ways of connecting. Life is connection. And as you hear these words spoken time and time again, know that the driving force of connection in life is energy. Which means that how you turn up as a father, as a husband, as a valued member of society will always start and end with how you turn up as a man within yourself. First, this is why it's my mission, my purpose, our mission, our purpose through Real Dad Movement to inspire, motivate, educate, and guide you into thoughts, feelings, actions, and a change in your belief systems to rise up, cut the shit from your life, and live and leave a real legacy. When dads win, everyone wins. And when you win, I win. Let's get moving forward, mate, right here, right now. Mr. Ken Lavander. Thank you for joining us, sir.

You're most welcome, Al.

It's good to have you again. And this is another HPF special edition, as we do every single Tuesday. Make sure you tune in, put in your calendar, make a special note to follow through, whether it's our YouTube channel or it's our podcast on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, SoundCloud, we've got our own RDM podcast site and anchor as well. So many different ways that you can find us, but if you're listening or watching this, you're already here. Today's episode, flame On. It's funny, when we spoke about this title literally a few minutes ago, I was like, well, Ken, that's a. That's a great one. Because what we think of is Johnny Flame out of the Fantastic Four. That's what this episode's about, though, for so many of you men out there, you know, it's the reason why we pepper around all the messages driven through the term father or dad is because as we get older in life, there are layers that build our life in terms of hats, responsibilities, duty, obligations. And a large part of that is our children, because it creates a challenging disconnect or a challenging moment with the wife as an intimate couple, with yourself as an individual and your identity, and then obviously as a parent raising your children. Very important. But the hard part is when you don't recognize the patterns or the pitfalls. What you fall into is a state of chronic stress, which was spoken about in our previous episode and episodes, but inflammation and what that looks like you hear about I should have some blueberries that got antioxidants or have a glass of fucking red wine and that's good for my immune system and so on. And so you hear all these little buzz terms about, you know, antioxidants, oxidative stress, inflammation and anti inflammatories and all this stuff. But what we're going to dive into this episode today with, with Ken, our master and maestro, is really understanding what inflammation is. And even if we start at the surface level and week by week we peel back the layers, but physically, chemically and emotionally, what does that look like inflammation? Is it good? How much is it chronic? Are you suffering from chronic inflammation inside of your body? Oxidative stress, which means you'll run down lethargic, your emotions are shot to shit, you're triggered as fuck. Like all the other things that make you a man who is not on the level, not in control of the stress and chaos in life. But I'd love to throw it to you first, Ken, and just, just really touch on the point of inflammation, what it generally is. Inflammation, oxidative stress, and then some of the patterns that we see. People, not just men, you're not alone here, guys, but just people in general over the course of their life who enter a state of, you know, being chronically stressed and chronically inflamed.

Yeah, the good point is there, Al, what you're saying is that the different levels of inflammation, and that's where inflammation is good to a certain aspect, and that the chronic side of things is not good because it's long term generally, and it affects everyone's day in all parts of life. And again, with what we do with that chronic inflammation is how do we treat it? Is it systemic? Is it something that you've just generated through an exercise and you've hurt yourself, you've torn a muscle, you've rolled an ankle, whatever it. The different things and how we treat it is most important the inflammation. A lot of the stuff that people don't realize is the systemic inflammation that comes from the gut. And the gut being the first brain and obviously your brain inside your skull being the second brain, the communication, the pathways, and we just need to know what to do with that and what the detrimental effects are down the track. When it comes to chronic inflammation, what you'll realize is that when something.

Is.

Ongoing, the cascading event that affects your body through everything from your sleeping, through your everyday life. And one of the big things that I believe, or what I kind of live by is that when I'm talking to anyone and I'm having a consultation with anyone, what's it worth to them if I can alleviate and then potentially eliminate that inflammation within the body? And so people, you really can't put a price on that. And that's why when we talk about the inflammation, how deep does it does it stem into? And that's why when we talk about the onion theory, the superficial layer of inflammation, we can kind of get away with that with one day or one week. But when it comes to the real, that chronic, long term, constant inflammation, where people have it through biomechanics or through the chemical reaction through their gut microbiota, and then again with the emotional stuff, whether it be a relationship issue, whether it be a financial issue and things like that, and we need to kind of understand what we're dealing with and what approach do we take to be able to correctly get the right person to assess that inflammation and then knowing what protocols we need to put in place to then address that so that it's not ongoing and create all sorts of issues. And listen, at the end of the day when we talk about this chronic inflammation and that leads to obesity, it leads to terminal illnesses that sometimes are irreversible. And then one month, six months, one year, five years down the track, all of a sudden someone is presented with a terminal illness and they haven't addressed, they haven't been proactive when it comes to that inflammation. And then all of a sudden they go, well, shit, why did it happen to me? What's the problem? How do we fix this? Well then sometimes it might be too late. So that's why we need to understand whether it be chronic inflammation or whether like it'd be an acute inflammation. And we need to address it on a day to day basis. So that's really important that we, we get that assessed by a professional and then deal with it as, as it arises.

Yeah, absolutely, mate. I've just been making some notes here because there's some phenomenal stuff. I mean, for me and I love to get your expert advice on this and your experience with working with so many people. I just made a few notes here. So what identifying it and then how to address it and then what to do. So I'd love to get thoughts like how would people, like how do we start identifying before we get to the chronic? Like, is it the microbiome, is it their feelings, their emotions, is it their energy levels, they're lethargic, is it asleep? So I guess I'd Love to start on one, how would someone identify if this is something that is starting to head into that realm of being chronic? I guess. Two, what's caused that? You've touched on that a little bit like obesity, which is obviously a byproduct of, you know, shit health. Everything we talk about in our sites, for you guys, it's your nutrition, it's your exercise, it's creating space. But just a couple of key points on each, like what generally causes this, how would someone identify it? And then we'll move into how to alleviate and how to address it so we can help these guys start fixing themselves.

So the most important thing that I find is that when it comes to people being overweight and they've got quite a bit of adipose tissue. So this is why we have a look at people's weight and we look at, you know, the general. If they go to the doctor and you look at your bmi, you like your body mass index, it's not a very, very good indicator of, of whether you're overweight or not because of men, like muscle is 2.25 times heavier than fat, etc. But listen, let's be realistic. You can take a look in the mirror, get your shirt off when you brush your teeth in the morning, at nighttime, before you go to bed, you can, you look at yourself and you can tell whether you've gained a few extra kilos. Now where the problem is is that when we're looking at that, we think, hey, you know what it's happening over? Not so much over a day, a week or a month, but generally over 12 months. All of a sudden you've had to undo one notch in your belt. If it comes to a lady, they might have it to go up in half a dress size or something like that. Things aren't just fitting right. Where the issue is right now is that all disease generally is within that adipose tissue. All that toxicity lies within that adipose tissue. Here is because you're going through your day to day, week to week, month to month, and it's just that little layering effect and you don't realize that it's affecting your sleep that much. You just think, hey, shit, I've had a bad night because of whatever, the kids have kept me awake. But then all of a sudden, over a week you think, well, geez, that was a bad week, I had a shit week. Or my body's just not feeling right. But in most cases, most people don't know whether they're feeling optimal, average or Below average. Unless they've had some kind of bad food where you might find you get bloating of the gut, you get diarrhea. So those really simple things that are in front of you where all of a sudden, for some reason unexplained or whatever else, you don't realize what it is, and all of a sudden you've got this bloating in the gut, you think, oh, shit, I just ate too much, or whatever it is. But you might have had some bad food, or you might have had some wheat products, or you might be gluten sensitive or gluten. And you don't really know, or you haven't been diagnosed with that. And all of a sudden you keep getting this bloating and bloating. And then a perfect example for a lady, they'll go, well, you know what, it's around menstruating time and things like that. Hang on a minute. Like it's not. You're not menstruating 30 days of the month. Yeah. Like you really need to know that. If something's not right, how do you determine whether it's the food that you ate? It's the poor. Say it's the hydration, it's the water that you've just drank because of these chemicals within the water. Because of it's just been a big rain fall over the last kind of two or three weeks. And then they've had to put more chemicals within the water that we drink. Whatever it is, it's very, very hard to kind of pinpoint any one thing. So this is why when we start to fine tune the body, I start to create a history and sit down and do a consultation with the individual person to then go, okay, so how's your sleep going? What's your nutrition like? And we start to kind of get these algorithms or these mechanism that, you know what, this is not feeling right. Every time I eat spicy food, my gut just doesn't like it. Or every time I have bread, well, then I get this bloating effect. Or every time I have whatever it is, then there's some kind of issue that diarrhea or bloating of the gut or I feel lethargic, like, to give you an indicator, if I have something like I've got a cast iron stomach, I could literally almost eat anything. And honestly, whether it becomes spices, if milk's been left out overnight, I could drink mil. And you know what, most people, it might make their gut churn. I've accidentally drank a gut full of. Or you know like 200 mils of milk that's been off. Looked at the date, it's been two weeks off. And I'm like, shit, I know. And then like, then I'm fine with it. But you know what, within the next, say half an hour I might have diarrhea or something like that, get rid of it, and all of a sudden I'm fine again. It's very rare, it's very rare that there's something that I would eat that I'm not fine tuning. And I'm not knowing that whether it's actually optimal for me or it's not. Because I will feel a difference within my gut. I will feel a difference the next time I go to the toilet. All of these little things, we have to kind of fine tune ourselves and start to work out whether I actually feel right or not when I'm getting bloated or not. And that's why we start to kind of capture information like a food diary. We start to look at what you're consecutively eating, if you're drinking alcohol, how's your sleep going because of the night after you drink alcohol and things like that. So it really isn't a one kind of thing to fix or to work out what's going on. It really is starting to collect data over a day, over a week, over a month. And then we can start to really fine tune each and every individual person's kind of bio individuality to work out what's going on, what works for them and what doesn't work for them. Most people have leaky gut syndrome. Most people have some kind of underlying issue issue with metabolic syndrome as in insulin sensitive purely because of the poor quality of foods that we eat. And so this where it comes down to we have to not so much diagnose, but we have to kind of just gather information to then work out what the mechanisms are that are causing them the ongoing problems.

Yeah, you know, it's all. And it's all sequential. Like don't be so fucking lazy on yourself and understand that you know everything outside of you. You're looking at nitpicking, you're getting your knickers in a knot when it comes to either getting service from someone or, you know, someone cuts you off in a. And all these different things that trigger people on what they believe or perceive should be the standard, yet they don't even look inside of themselves, Ken, in their own health and wellbeing. This is the thing, guys, I need you to understand when I'm talking about being Lazy. It's not that hard. It's about being aware of yourself. This isn't a fitness program. We're not here to teach you how to do back squats. And there you go, mate. Let's get some calories burned. We're tracking the right numbers. The right numbers for you to win the second half in your life, which is critical because what you focus on will become your reality. So when we're looking at your 1 percenters the wrong way, you're fucking swollen on the inside all the time. All the time. Yet you're looking outside of yourself and demanding a standard. You can't even look inside of yourself to go, well, this is the most important thing, the vessel that I'm living life through. How do I actually nurture and invest in this so I can express experience and do what I want in my life? It cracks me up, man, like. And this isn't you guys listening to this. You know how passionate Ken and myself are. I'm not pointing the finger and saying you. I'm saying as a broad statement of a standard of health and wellbeing which equals performance, leadership and legacy in modern society. It's piss week. Like, it is not the standard it should be. What do we do? Lower the metrics, whether it's testosterone levels, bmi, all these other different moving parts. Well, it's too hard to hit that standard. Let's just lower it so it can meet some sort of quota. I don't know, like, I'm not here to blame or castrate anyone in any specific industry, but as a whole, the ownership must come down and the responsibility must come down to us, Ken, as individuals. You know, these 1 percenters of moving forward every single day, they're not that hard to track. And it's not, and this is what frustrates me about the industry as a whole. It's not one thing like you said, Ken, oh, I've got a gluten intolerance or no, I can't have wheat, or I can't have dairy, or, you know, I can't have this meat or this meat. Well, maybe it's where the meat came from. Maybe it's quality milk, or maybe it's the milk that you're having off the back of being fucking inflamed everywhere else inside of your lifestyle because of the shit that you're eating, the poor sleep that you're getting, the exercise you're not doing, and, and the well being, mentally, spiritually, whatever you want to call it, and creating space, taking time out and Stopping the world has put you in this triggered state where that glass of milk's put you over the edge. Like this is. People think, oh no, I can't, I'm lactose intolerant. It's like, well, hang on a minute, look at every other area of your life. Maybe, maybe that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Yeah, that's a big thing for me.

That is a classic example with what's going on. This is where it just doesn't shine through clearer, where people are so reactive rather than proactive. Like classic example now where I'm dealing with multiple amounts of people and they go, shit through my right shoulder and through my scapula and everything's really sore and I don't know what's going on. Like I'm getting headaches and whatever else. You don't think it's because you're using the mouse with your right hand and you're sitting and using technology for the next. You know, like every day for four or five hours. But the problem is they just think, ah, shit, I don't know what it is, I just can't work it out. And then all of a sudden it's like Pandora's box. They think that all of a sudden they've got a bit of a sore neck or a bit of a right shoulder, like any, like a discomfort in the right shoulder. They think, oh shit, it was the exercise that I did. You got me doing an exercise program, which my 10 year old could do with his eyes closed and with his arms wrapped behind his back. And yet they're looking for someone to blame because it's like you're dealing with a Pandora's box of all of these issues. Through everything else, through diet, through poor movement, through shit sleep, through everything, you could kind of cascade into there and also the alcohol and whatever else it is. And then all of a sudden they try and pick one thing and go, oh shit, it was the exercise. I didn't hang on a minute. Like your posture is shit. You're compromised with your breathing, you've got forward, your head's protruding forward, you're restricting your ability to breathe, to open up your chest to get more oxygen in. And you're looking for this one little thing that all of a sudden is the worst thing since sliced bread. Like, shit. You've got to take a reality check and go, okay, what are the other things that I'm creating or that I'm kind of compounding on top of each other? And everyone's looking for that One thing that the exercise or the one little thing that the straw that breaks the camel's back, really, in all honesty, like, it is really working on multiple things at any one time. And if you can't see that, well, then you need to get your bloody head out of the sand and start thinking about what. Whether you're taking control of your own life or not. It is so frustrating.

Yeah, it's interesting, mate. I was reading a. A book and it's talking about whether we have free will or not. And there's a guy, Libet, who did a test where they monitored a person and before the person was going to move their hand, there was a brain signal, said they're going to move their hand and they move it. So, like, well, technically, through neurons in the brain and how it all works, you don't have free will because it's already decided before you're physically aware that you're making that movement. And that's been debunked. But that was a pretty big thing back in the day. But I guess for me, it comes down to, you know, what you're sharing there about people taking ownership over their own life and really exploring that level of free thinking and free will inside of decisions they make every single day, which then can become the autonomy at the back of the brain. By putting in place the right habits and patterns that looks after and nourishes themselves and their health. It's important, it's imperative that we have this repetitious approach. All of our episodes, you guys will see, we're talking about breath work, we're talking about sleep, we're talking about nourishing and moving the body. We're talking about having the right environment, we're talking about creating space. And we will fucking rinse and repeat this till the end of time with different layers, different positions of perspectives to help crack through to you guys, to know that these things are vital to your life. This isn't a fitness program. This is about your life. And the vessel that we live life through, Ken, is the human body. So when we're looking at this, guys, and we're looking at you creating a level of free will because you don't think you can do it on your own. You need to immerse in the right environment and take repeatable actions that are going to start to build the right habits inside of your life. It moves away from the excuses of having, you know, a lactose intolerant or weed intolerance. I want to have bread. I feel like it's like okay, well, hang on a minute. How about every other area of your life? And yes, that may be true, but that's a byproduct of all the other areas of your life that you haven't got together. How about we collectively bring you back to understanding what you are, which is an organism. You and me are organisms, Ken. This is critical to understand. And when you're not looking after that, things as simple as breathing. People are worried about food, water. You don't breathe for several minutes, you're dead. It's keeping you alive. So what's the actual homeostasis inside of your connection, your technique and how you actually breathe? Like, just breathing breath work. We did it last night. We're tracking the numbers very carefully in one of our platinum coaching sessions. You put to us a nice little challenge, which, again, you know, we need to make this habit. 25 reps, that's all we need to do. 4 seconds in, 8 seconds out, laying down, sitting up, whatever. But I did it just before sleep main. Five minutes, 25 reps, mate. I could not believe the scores in our platinum guys going through the roof with their readiness scores and even the sleep. I only had six hours sleep last night and scored nearly an 80%, which is massive for me. Off the back of that sleep, having young kids, one simple thing, the breath work. I'm like, man, this is fucking crazy. Don't worry about. And then there's value to things like red light, journaling sleep, you know, getting into sleep with nice 432hz music, other bits and pieces. But this is a direct connection between myself being present and just thinking about my breathing. So I'm just actually at one with myself. It's not a shaved monk or Kumbaya around a campfire. This is legit shit that actually shifts your physiology and gives you. Mate, I feel on fire today. Six hours sleep. I'm absolutely charging from five minutes of breath work. And, you know, I mean, you've spoken about this for months to me, and I've done it before and I've noticed it before because I've tracked all my data now. But to consistently do that, I'm excited to see what will happen in a week's time because I'm getting leaner, my protein intake's good, my training's phenomenal. Everything I'm doing under your wing is helping me in the next phase of my life. Not necessarily try and make the CrossFit games to be a strong, fit, healthy human that can handle all areas of life. I'd love to Dive into that, mate. So you know, that's one area a few guys again, we're going to keep hitting you with some similar areas and similar things to go. Have you done this? Do this, hit this, try this. But what's your take and your approach now, Ken, as we move into this area of. All right, well prevention is one thing, but a lot of the guys may have, and maybe they don't know, but they've got some chronic inflammation going on and stress, physical, chemical, emotional. How do we start that? Breath work is one. I'm happy for you to take that and run with that too. But how do we start steering the ship back on course and on track for them, mate. What are some things you'd suggest?

Well, so that, yeah, so the underlying first and foremost is finding out where they spend most of their time in the day and also then in the night. So having a look at a snapshot of anyone's 24 hour period. So when we look at that, where are they spending? Like as far as with you hour, you might be doing four or five hours in front of the computer. So we know that your body goes through like 90 minute cycles. And so within that 90 minutes we want to be able to take a step back and just take out potentially best case scenario five minutes, but really worst case scenario, three minutes and just step back and do a bit of breathwork, get up and just move around a little, just get the body moving. What's important here is oxygen. Is life. The most important thing that our bodies need or anything for the human to live is oxygen. Like the thing is they generally say anywhere from three minutes the brain starts to die and every like all these other things, kind of all these, these things that the processes that go on within the body cells start to die off, etc, etc. But I mean like what I've mentioned before, once I took on some of the tummo breathing technique, I was able to push my breath hold out to 4 minutes and 50 seconds, which was amazing, but only with about four weeks of training. And but what you've got to realize there is that with that type of training I was very, very consistent. So you've got to really commit so that you can see the improvements. And what we spoke about as far as kind of in our discussion last night with the high performance fathers, let's just commit for seven days, let's have a look at what we can do. What's the biggest body hack that we could do to see the biggest improvements in life? You know what increase your body ability to uptake oxygen so that then you can enhance your quality of sleep, your deep sleep, your REM sleep, so that that in itself will improve your sleep, which will then create a whole other, I suppose, river of mechanisms, as in with your gut within your ability to operate the next day, through the next 12, 14, 16, 20 hours that your eyes are open, this is just absolutely vital. Like what I find truly amazing going back about 10 years ago, I met a gentleman who actually was designing and getting mild hyperbaric chambers designed. And the TGA approval here in Australia wouldn't approve it. So he's moved over to Dubai. And I'd spent a little bit of time in mild hyperbaric chambers. And a very good friend of mine, Pat Farmer, who did the pole to Pole Run, 10 months and 13 days, he ran more than two marathons a day. So just under 100 kilometers a day, and everyone rode him off and said no human being could do this. Like literally 10 months and 13 days was just truly amazing. And he was donated. What had been donated to him was one of these mild hyperbaric chambers, the recovery ability. So if you get in there and remember it's mild, you don't need medical supervision with this. And it increases oxygen saturation levels up to around 67 to 69%. The average human. Now, what they've looked at and when we're looking at oxygen saturation as far as kind of what we breathe, the quality of the air and everything else, and breathing in pesticides and whatnot, glyphosate and all the other issues that kind of affecting our body on a day to day basis, what they discovered, it was around about 45 to 49% of oxygen saturation. Once we got Pat inside of this mild hyperbaric chamber, and you were in there consecutively for three to five days, we were able to increase his oxygen saturation anywhere from 65 to 67% was truly amazing. So basically what that was telling it or what it was able to do for him. So if he'd ran basically two marathons in one day, and by the time you get to one week, your body starts to kind of break down, there's lots of different mechanisms. There's inflammation, there's not so much chronic inflammation, there's acute inflammation in there. And then what he discovered was from day one, how he felt after that two marathons to day seven, when he'd run 14 marathons, he felt as good on day seven as he did in day one, which was truly amazing. And not only that, Costa Zoo World Champion boxer. What they discovered, the intensity of the exercise, exercise that he worked out on day one through to day seven, he was able to produce the same amount of training, the same amount of recovery. Truly amazing. So just that increase of oxygen saturation. But let me tell you a story. What's real fun. They didn't have all of this scientific data to say, hey, listen, this is written in stone. This is where. And you know, nobody wanted to really kind of put it to paper to say that, you know what? Because there wasn't a scientific data or a paper written around it, they weren't going to approve it. They weren't going. I get there's things that they have to go through, but just that alone, when you've got people that are operating at optimal level and here they are feeling, and the documentation that they were recording, they were as good on day seven compared to what they were on day one was just truly amazing. And yet we talk about doing a bit of breathwork and how that can affect our body. The mechanisms and all the processes that go on just through doing a three to five minute breathwork is phenomenal. This is why, if you can record this data, even though there hasn't been a research paper written on that, how do you feel? Like I'm sitting there having a conversation with you. How do you feel if you get six hours of, of sleep and it's absolute quality of sleep because you've done five minutes of breathwork compared to you having eight hours of sleep, not doing any breath work and feeling like shit the next day. Like, this is so vital that we need to kind of do this stuff and repeat and again, repeat again and just to see how you feel. And then from there, that's enough information for me. When you say to me, hey, Ken, shit, I know I only got six hours sleep last night, but mate, I did the breath work and I feel absolutely on top of the world. I feel like I'm ready to run a marathon or get in and do that super hard workout. Like that information is absolutely gold. So without that, what do you do?

Yeah, it's incredible. It's so easy as well. Optimizing oxygen. So, first point, you guys listening to this or watching this? What does your day look like? Get crystal clear on what you're doing. Try and identify what's pulling you away, pulling you down physically, chemically, emotionally. There's the stress which is leading to you remaining in an inflamed state. Is it your actions, is it your habits, is it your environment? But then from there man going for the jugular, going for the kill. It's so fucking easy, Ken. Like, breathwork, optimize your oxygen levels, do some breath work and start improving from there because you're going to see it and you're going to feel the results immediately. This is the beautiful part. It's like, all right, do your breath work and in 12 months time, it's water the old bamboo tree for five years and in the fifth year it'll start sprouting out of the ground and you look like a crazy man. This breath work is an instant return on investment and it is so simple. Sorry, mate.

What's funny, mate? What's really interesting? Like, listen, I'm going back maybe 25 years when I was 25, just to spring chicken. It was quite interesting because a lot of people talk about meditation and whatever else. And when people were talking to me about meditation and breath work and stuff like that, I thought I'd need to wrap myself in cheesecloth, get myself a funny pair of high knee boots and be smoking a little bit of marijuana up in the Himalayas or at Nimbin and doing all these crazy things. But it's not about that. Like when we talk about meditation or we talk about breath work, it's not about sitting down and having to find like a quiet space or anything like that. It's not really about that. It is really about just finding that three to five minutes. And it's not thinking that, you know, in 1969, when they're at, what is it, Woodstock? And it's not that people kind of think about that or they get that picture in their head that I want you to do a bit of breathing, or they get that kind of snapshot. And that's the general conversation when I'm having people, what, you want me to meditate? Like, what are you going to give me next? What's the next mechanism you want me to start wearing? You know, driving a combi van and grabbing a surfboard and I go and then just laying back and just. That's the kind of. Kind of picture that a lot of people kind of paint when I talk to them about meditation. But that's not what it is really. It's completely the opposite. And the benefits are just listen. Because of the quality of life that generally most people that I consult with and whatever else, and when they want to make a big change, if they didn't do anything other than spend three to five minutes of breathing for the next seven to 28 days, I promise you there would be so many Mechanisms that you could not record that would have the biggest changes in life. And that's why we've got to be consistent, we've got to be consecutive. We've got to implement something and really have a red hot go at it. And then from then on, then we can implement something. The 1 percenters like what you've been talking about. Let's just implement one thing that can make the biggest change and the one thing that I know will make the biggest change in everything that goes on in your body. Body being, your mental well being, but also your physical well being. And also depending on the food that you're eating, it'll also affect your chemical wellbeing. Just through breathwork. Nothing will affect those three pillars more than a bit of breath work.

Very direct, very simple, everyone can do it. And an immediate result, like, what an amazing kickstart for you guys. You need to like all, all things. Podcasts with RDM them, implement action immediately, even if it's right now. As you're listening to this, just start working on that. Breathe in through your nose, four seconds out, even if you don't count. Start to build some sort of connection and relationship with how you breathe. Not making it something that, yeah, you don't think about, but you're fucking aware of how much it can help you. That's just as important, even if it is autonomous, because it's going to become part of your natural makeup and it can take time. I remember Ken talking about five and a half in, five and a half out. That's a good sweet spot. Takes time to develop that, but you can't develop that if you're not actively aware of it.

Of it.

Amazing, amazing starter.

What.

What would be a couple other things, you know, like that. That's awesome. First one, identify where you're at, what's going on. Second, breath work, immediate roi. And at the greatest level you could possibly think of, what would be, as we start to wind this episode up, when we're looking at helping guys understand that they're chronically inflamed and stressed, to remove that or at least alleviate a lot of that and get on the right track, what would be a couple other things that you would recommend, Ken? You know, just, just some nice little bits and pieces. Not that we want to overwhelm you guys. It could be, could be hydration, could be tracking protein like we do, could be steps, I don't know. But I'm open to your thoughts, mate, on how guys can start to, you know, do this on top of something. Which should be given in breath work. I don't know, mate. What are a couple other little things that you think might. Might help them get some good bang for their buck and on the path again?

Yeah, mate. The physical side of things is. Is where my expertise lies, especially on the physical side of things, of the body. Purely because the moment when you wake up in the morning, once you put your foot on the ground, do you feel any pain or discomfort? And that's what my ultimate goal is there is to alleviate that discomfort from the moment you put your foot on the ground. The problem is with most people is that as we start to age over, when we don't become so as much as physically active as we'd like to be, and because we're quite sedentary in what we do in most cases, because of technology and everything else, and at the rate of, you know, mobile phones and computers and laptops and all sorts of things, your iPads and whatnot, generally, I find because we move less, generally become a lot stiffer. Ladies. Ladies are quite supple and they just are very analytical and they move very, very well. They're nowhere near as stiff as guys. And so that's why us as men, we need to kind of move a little bit more. And as far as a bit of mobility, which is not really not the biggest thing that we need to kind of do every day. But you know what? That, as far as kind of the moment we get out of bed, we need to be thinking about, okay, how can we get into a deep squat or assisted squat where we can kind of open up the hips, we can mobilize the ankles a little bit, see whether we actually feel any discomfort when we put our knee into the maximum range. Our posture will start to be affected as soon as we start to get up and move. Like, how do we get in and out of bed? How do we get on and off the toilet? How do we get on and off a chair? The thing is, generally we don't move anywhere near through the range of motion that we need to at any time of the day. So if you could literally get out of bed, move around for two or three minutes and maybe hold onto the table, hold onto a chair, get into a position where you can hold onto and see if you can get into a deep squat and just hold that for anywhere from 5 to 10 to 30 seconds and see how long you can do that for. Because I promise you now, that's one of the fastest things that we're losing is our mobility. So that is Also so important for gaining quality of life and longevity.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more, mate. You know, it's critical that not only do you get your breath work sorted and start looking up to yourself as an organism and what's keeping you alive so you can thrive, but ultimately being able to carry yourself through the day, your nervous system, what grounds you? Whether it's your connection to gravity or your activities, like what you see said sitting down, everything you know, it's always on us. Like it's never ending. When you look at gravity and the role that plays in our life, what are you doing to look after your nervous system, to look after your alignment of your skeletal structure, your muscles, make sure things aren't, you know, either compensating or over expressing. Okay, cool. I've got, you know, massively active or shortened hip flexors because I'm always in the flex position. Like, what does that look like? I've got tight glutes. You don't have tight glutes. You've got glutes that don't even activate. Tight glutes will be if you have your leg up in the air. In the air, stiff as a ball and you're flexing your ass cheek all day. So people get the wrong terminology and make mistakes all the time too, which you probably have seen a lot, Ken, as have I. But establishing a relationship with standing up as a fucking man, that's what I love. You know, this isn't challenging your. You or your ego or even me having a dig or judge. It's like literally fucking stand up as a man. Express that energy, that posture, how you carry yourself. Look, I don't live as a stiff and have a completely perfect spine. When I swat down some of the best movers in the world. The world. The best movers in the world, gymnasts and Olympic lifters. When it comes to your own body, when it comes to moving, external object, fucking unmatched. Unmatched. Their flexibility, how they move through the fucking roof, it's incredible. They do things like Jefferson curls. They completely round their back and isolate every single disc in their spine. But it's because they have the, like. I'm not saying you need to live life as a stiff, but like Ken's explaining here, more often than not, the environment you're placing yourself in, whether it's your work, your family, family, the lounges that you slump into and sink into in the evening, and that coupled with the stress, coupled with the chronic inflammation because you're not active, not having good posture, your nervous System being either hyper stimulated or not stimulated at all, where it should be. This is leading to such a chronic effect down the road that like I said, you have big standards and all these other little nitpicky things. Yet the biggest investment in your life over the next 10 to 15 years as a man entering in the second half, which leads to breakdowns in relationships, in your own mental health, your wellbeing, your ability to perform comes down to you investing in the most valuable asset which is yourself. Breathing and posture, mate. I love them, Ken. Like they're two phenomenal ones which we can't overlook. Guys looking for the shiny object or the silver bullet. You cannot beat the fundamentals.

You know, you're right. So one of the things is, and I've got a bit of like, like a statistical population, like the statistics when it comes to posture and things like that. Like when a patient goes and sees a doctor, generally what happens is that the doctor will ask him what's causing him stress on a day to day basis in some instances. And because it's so systemic and there's so many different kind of mechanisms that's creating these issues. The, the easiest thing for a doctor to do is just give them some kind of, whether it be an antibiotic or recommend them to take an anti inflammatory and something like that. But the problem is, and this is where I find a major issue is that just treating a symptom, they're not looking for the root cause of what's going on here. And because if everything is overlapping, a panadol or an anti inflammatory is not going to cut it because that also causes gut issues and things like that. So not only have they already potentially got gut issues and then they're going to throw some kind of anti inflammatory and generally cause more systemic problems. So like 85% of people that generally go in and see a doctor, like I've got it here, don't understand their doctors. 85 out of 100 people that go and see their doctor do not understand their doctors. Like the thing is nearly 50% of patients don't know what to do next when they leave their doctor. They have no idea. They go in dumbfounded and they're hoping to get some answers and they walk out with no real answers. Like okay, I'm presented with a symptom, how can I look at trying to get to the root cause? So treating the symptom is just wrong. I get it, that the pain, like the chronic or the acute inflammation, I get it. But I mean what's causing that Ongoing issue. That's a major problem. 25 to 30% of patients are willing to commit to lifestyle changes, but they just have no journey, nothing, no idea on what to do. So like shit. So how do you expect anyone to really kind of understand what the next step is when 85% of them don't really understand their doctor? So that's where the problem lies. Like it's lack of information, lack of, of people giving the right direction, mapping out how we can go, listen, we're going to treat this little bit of the symptom to then try and work out what the root cause of the underlying problem is. And that's in the physical side of things. I deal with people looking at lower back problems and I promise you now 98% of them the problem isn't coming from the lower back, it's because of their feet. The issue with their feet, whether it be a flat foot, pronated supinated foot, and because of all of a sudden they've taken up some of walking, exercise, whatever impact type physical activity and then they end up with a lower back problem. But that's only the symptom. And so you go in and they start doing some kind of, oh, listen, here's some painkillers, here's some anti inflammatory. Well, hang on a minute. Like shit. You're only treating a symptom to not deal with the root cause. And that's where the problem lies. Like we need to start to really understand, like if this is something reoccurring, well then you know what, what, I need to take another step. I need to go the next level and I need to take control of what's going on with that underlying issue.

Yeah, I'm the same as you, mate. I'm all for, you know, relieving or alleviating some initial pain as long as it doesn't come with the chronic cost of yourself and you're actually finding the root cause of the problem. And that's the hard part. Let's just keep giving them some fucking pills or just keep doing this stretch or just keep, just keep training and change up. It's like, well, I don't know, like, does that mean you're just not going to do that movement for the rest of your life? I mean, look, I remember when you put pistol squats in my program, I'm like, fuck, I can't do these, can I? Got a bone on bone knee, no meniscus, no cartilage, I'm fucked. And I'm like, hang on a minute, why don't you just go down or box out or go down to a bench, hold the weight. So it actually helps you with your balance and it gives you a bit of resistance. Work on your mobility that Ken's given you. And mate, I did pistol squats and I felt good. So yes, I've created trauma and I take ownership over that through rugby league, pursuing professional sport. Just going under the knife, cutting me up, doc, make me better. So and go play. And yeah, they took out all my cartilage, my meniscus and, and that's put me in a predisposed position where I've got to be much more cautious, but I'm much more aware and intelligent for it. But this is the hard part, Ken, when people just start cutting themselves away and they just don't fucking get it, all of a sudden there are people falling down and falling apart in their 40s. It's like fuck bait. You've got 40 more years of this. Do you want to be that old nanite that's hunched over at a 90 degree fucking angle walking with a stick through the shops? It takes a 40 minutes just to go up the escalator. And this isn't judging or blaming it. What I'm saying is your quality of life mentally, purpose, meaning fulfillment, hinges so heavily around how much you're looking after yourself as an organism to alleviate chronic stress and inflammation that you're letting you're allowing to creep into your life. This is a very powerful episode, Ken. I've really enjoyed touching on two simple techniques, your breath work and working on posture and whatnot. I know we're developing a thoracic rotation challenge which is going to be all awesome that we're going to roll out to you guys just to get you on the path and helping you go that next step. The breath work is very, very simple. You should do this right after this episode. Absolutely. Start implementing it. Make it a challenge. 25 reps. That's it. 25 reps a day. Four in, eight out. But the big thing that I just want to touch on before when I was talking about free will and whatnot, whether you believe in the big whole 96% of dark matter universe and whatnot or not is irrelevant. The reason why everything that you guys are experiencing is happening right now is because your fucking consciousness and your consciousness is present to observe it. This isn't fluff or woo woo. This is quantum mechanics. Now when we're looking at this, you need to recognize that because you're observing reality and your consciousness is making that wave collapse and become part of your reality. You need to be cautious of what you're allowing subconsciously and consciously to be part of your life, which means how you're looking after your physical health and making choices and decisions on what you should be doing or shouldn't be doing. Doing which becomes a part of your reality. Just like Ken. Ken exists as a certain version inside of Al's reality, just like he does in yours, just like I do in yours, just like I do in myself. Just like Ken's got Ken in Ken's reality. So please understand, guys, this isn't going too far. Woo woo and whatnot. It is real. You know what you're perceiving, what you're focusing on is going to become your ultimate reality. Do you want to be someone who's falling apart, forming a in their 50s and 60s and you just become another bum with a big beer belly, just sitting around drinking beers, talking about the hero day days? Or do you want to stand up and be like some clients that I've worked with and Ken's worked with as well, that can move into their 70s and 80s in phenomenal shape and health? Well, you know what? When I'm in my 70s, Ken, and we've got multiple RDM ranches and we've got a global movement, I'm just warming up, mate. What can the next 10 years bring us? What's the next decade look like? Because before you know it, men, as you're listening to this, time will pass and it'll be 20, 30 and you're sitting on top of infinity just like I am. Just like Ken is in the only moment that exists in a crazy contradiction or dichotomy of life, which is the now we're filming this and recording this and we're rolling this out on the same day. It's 10th of August 2021. It's going to be the 10th of August 2022. Like that, like have you done 25 reps every single day over the next 365 days and completely revolutionize your life at something so simple in your breath. Work, work. Or have you just gone in, done it for a day? She'll be right, mate. And life just turns to shit again. This is what has led to my life turning around. And thank you, Ken. I'm blessed to have you in my journey because ultimately the punishment I put my body through in 15 years of elite sport left me with a big void in my life physically and mentally. Because mentally I was using the physical tools that I had to perform as leverage. To identify who I was in the world and my place of social validation. So when that was stripped from from me, I was a very lost man, very challenging but rejuvenating that inside of my life to now be a man entering, getting close to his 40s, now being in pinnacle shape and health and wellness, to now go and perform in what I need to do for my family, for my children, lead by example as well as build RDM and build our high performance father program with you. What a fucking breath of fresh air. What an amazing opportunity. Anything you wanted to add, Kenlock? Thank you for this session, mate. It's been awesome. But anything that you want to add as we wrap this up?

Not really, mate, just more so. In all honesty, it's about not worrying about the things that are affecting you in the past. It's really taking control and looking for the future. And that's what a lot of people do. They dwell on the past and worry about what if, what if, what if? That's bullshit. Don't worry about and don't talk to yourself about. I'll do this tomorrow. You need to start today. And today is what's most important. And that's why I find, listen, what we can't change or we don't worry about it, that's it, it's gone, it's history. Let's just look forward and then let's just see what we can implement into our lives now and then let's make it happen. Don't bullshit and talk about it. Let's make it happen right now.

Absolutely love it, mate. The truth always wins, men. And you have so much more fucking power than you think you do. So take control. Not over your kids or your misses or your work. Take control over your own shit. Get that organized first and see how much you can fly and move forward. Amazing, Ken. Thank you again, sir, for joining us. And I hope you guys got a lot out of this. Make sure you tune in for multiple episodes throughout the week, but every Tuesday. This should be your jam, your bread and butter that you tune into and then follow up with action immediately. But thanks again, Ken. Loved it, mate. Great episode.

Brilliant stuff. Thanks, mate.

1,000 minutes a day. It's a lot. When you waste it on your shit that doesn't serve you or move yourself or your family forward, you are bleeding the most valuable resource that you and I never get back. How much time do you think you have and how much quality do you think you've had? Don't be a fool like the masses thinking you'll cheat the system or get round to it one day or worse. Just accepting life and sinking back into a slumber of regret. This is your moment, your time. You're cut from a different cloth. You have the hunger and desire to be more and live more. Otherwise you wouldn't be here. So stand up. Find the golden nuggets. In this episode you just listened to and align immediate action with them and where you want to go. You are worthy. This is your life. You are the king. And this is your kingdom. Now go and claim it by showing, not telling, and be the real leader. You and I both know you were born to be.