142. HPF - Ken's Fundamentals In Health

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. Another episode here with our high Performance Father special edition. We've got the maestro, Mr. Ken Lavander. Thanks for joining us, mate.

Thank you. Thanks for being here.

Yes. Yeah, it's been a few weeks with Misty Kembi. You've been deep in the background, mate, building out some phenomenal stuff with us. And we're so excited to be rolling out our hpf rebuild, which is an incredible 16 week protocol on top of how we've upgraded every single program on the inside. But there's been high demand, mate. There's been riots on the street, people have been yelling and chanting and calling for Ken Lavander to do another episode. So here we are, he's back on.

Smiling, mate. And it's good to see you've got.

Some sleep too, by the looks of those eyes. Anyway, yeah, getting some more sleep. It's crazy, mate. You know, last night was four times. But generally, on average, Ken, with the three little ones and, you know, like, they've all had little bits of operations here and there where they're not sleeping, right. With adenoids and tonsils and ears that needed grommets and all that sort of stuff. So ear infections and teething, it's crazy, mate, because two nights ago and three nights ago I got sleep where I only woke once and that was just to go to the bathroom. And then I woke twice. And with those two, even though it was a little bit less in terms of volume, it wasn't a full eight hour block, mate. I woke up feeling amazing. You know what, it's really crazy Ken, I don't like. I enjoy coffee. I enjoy the taste and the flavor or not, but I actually didn't even feel like I needed coffee or anything. And it's. It's crazy because I look at that and I'm like, okay, parents have kids who have grown up or growing up, so they have sleep, but what's their excuse? Well, they have a shit night routine or a shit morning routine or poor physical health and poor chemical health, and then their emotional health is volatile, up and down all the time, which means that they get ridiculously shit sleep. And they don't need to. With me, with the kids, I actually feel like with all these variables that come into play with them and what I've done with you, it's helped me so much with the. Not just the volume of sleep and trying to track that down where I'm limiting how many times I'm waking up, I'm doing my breath, but the quality and the depth in that has really been a game changer for me, mate. So, yes, getting more sleep, feeling more energized, less coffee. Not that I live on it. Last year I was having up to eight a day. But look, I've heard stories of guys that have 12 to 20 shots. That's fucking crazy, man. I don't know. I couldn't imagine what that's doing for him. But feeling great, mate. Feeling charged and ready for an amazing final quarter of the year. Jesus. Been a big year, mate, and I can't believe it's been not far off. You're not that far off. 12 months. I mean, you and me been working here for about eight months now, and it's been incredible. But this is why I wanted to go into a session with you. And as soon as you mentioned the topic, I was like, mate, absolutely. Game on. And it's Ken's Fundamentals for Health. Because as men in the modern world with all the hats of fatherhood. I was going to say husbandry, but husbandry is an act, especially with breeding animals, with being a father, with being a husband, with being a man in the world, all the different hats we wear, mate. Like, there's a lot of chaos where what we need to do is strip it back to the key things that bring out that primal element of us. A, getting achievement, B, getting those runs on the board in what we need to do, and C, helping us through the vessel of life, which is the human body. And mate health has to be number one. It's not. This is a fitness program per se, but the health component or the energy component, mate. This leaves any other program I've seen for dead. Leaves are for dead. That's just one area. But Ken's fundamentals in health, I'd love to roll through step by step. What does that look like, Ken? And how do we apply each one? Let's get into it, mate.

Yeah, mate, thanks. And big thing is what you were saying about coffee and things like that. Like a lot of people, I suppose, are looking for those stimulants and whatever else. And if you're looking for a stimulant, you really don't know kind of what's underlying. If you're looking for something to give you stimulation, whether it be caffeine, whether it be alcohol, whether it be drugs, at the end of the day you've got to kind of ask yourself, what state of health are you in? And really nobody really knows. Unless you're monitoring stuff very closely or you're utilizing some kind of professional coach like ourselves, you kind of don't know what asks or what question to ask because you don't know what current state of health you are personally in. And so that's why to be able to use all these trackables or some kind of metric to work out what's going on and how you feel on a day to day basis and then roll that into a week and monthly basis. It's really about understanding what the fundamentals are. And that's why to be able to summarize what I truly believe in and what I kind of definitely follow for myself and try and educate people on doing not the same, but at least try and achieve something towards or in the same direction of what I do. This is kind of definitely that's most important for me to get this information out across to everyone that's listening to the podcast and especially to the people that we care most about around our family and friends and everyone else around us. So kind of my first thing is movement. Movement's got to be the number one thing no matter what we're doing. Because we move less than, we become more stressed, we become much tighter. Our physical ability to be able to breathe, sleep, our posture, all of these other things are compromised. So exercise just in movement as in walking is good enough for anyone to be able to then look at, okay, what have I been doing? How far have I been walking? Like everyone's got a phone nowadays, the easiest thing is to track how many steps they, they kind of do each on a day to day basis. And the general rule, in most cases, people talk about 10,000 steps a day. Well, if you sit behind an office or in an office chair behind a desk, all day, every day. The thing is, you've really got to allow a little bit of extra time when you wake up in the morning or over nighttime when you get home from work to allow that little bit of extra time to be able to go for a walk, to be able to move and whatever else. But then when we kind of step into, like, I suppose, exercise, the thing is, we've got to realize that is our body compromised as far as posture, as far as underlying health issues, injuries, whatever else. So when I roll this into one and we talk about movement, you just need to move. And that's what's most important. And that's kind of my number one pillar, is to get you to move. And then from there we talk about what's optimal. Well, then what is optimal for anyone that I believe to be where you ultimately want to be getting to is to be doing two to three full body workouts a week so that you can increase the tone of your muscle, maintain your muscle mass so that you're not atropying muscle. Because from the age of 30 to 75, if you're not actually exercising, as in by way of exercise, I mean push, pulling or tugging on something so that you're lying down, the mineralization within your bones so that you're maintaining muscle, you're not atrophiing, you're not losing that muscle, it's not wasting away. But you know what, you can be doing all the right things when it comes to your exercise as far as push, pulling and tugging and doing two full body workouts a week. But the trouble is, are you complementing that with nutrition? So that's really important also. So you can be doing all the right exercise, but if you're not supplementing that with the right nutrition, or at least kind of a suboptimal nutrition plan, well, then you're really compromising your health also. So again, we go back to movement. Then we talk about doing some kind of two to three full body workouts a week from there, then we start to look at cold therapy. So then what is truly amazing and kind of which is kind of leading the world and what's going on about increasing your immune system, et cetera, we talk about cold therapy. So just build yourself up. So when you get in the shower or bath once a day or twice a day, depending on what you do, obviously if you're exercising, you should be potentially having two baths or two showers or Whatever it is. And then you want to try and get in and kind of turn the, to tap on cold and at least one to three minutes, you want to work your way up to three minutes. So that increases your ability to deal with the cold so that you're actually putting your body under stress. So in that situation, in our current, I suppose, conditions, the climate, the environment that we live in, it's not often that our bodies are put in an uncomfortable situation. So what we're trying to do here is underline, is build or strengthen our immune system. And so that's where we talk about putting ourselves through a workout that increases our core temperature, our body heat, getting ourselves into an uncomfortable situation in some kind of workout that's appropriate and tailored for you. So now we're talking about heat control and then we talk about cold control within, getting into a shower or a cold shower or a cold bath, things like that. But you can start with like 30 seconds a day, even 10 seconds, the last 10 seconds you get out of the shower, just turn it off and try and maintain 10 seconds. And then eventually build that up for three minutes to having a bit of cold therapy. So those things are really important. And then again, we start to kind of look into say your third, potentially your fourth, your breath focus. So we start to talk about breathing techniques. And what's super important there is that people just think, shit, I know how to breathe. But the problem is I'm not going after to just teach you how to breathe. What the most important thing about breathing is is to start to tap into your posture, your biomechanics. The breath work that I teach and the breath work that I'm really kind of talking about here is just being able to slow your breathing down, to be able to control stress. So that when you're making decisions, whether it be family, whether it be relationship, whether it be monetary kind of decisions, if you can start to control your breath a little bit more, you'll make more executive decisions. You won't literally just jump the gun and start talking about or making decisions that it's not really kind of appropriate because of your worked up, your breath work's not that well, your posture's compromised. And so when you're sleeping at nighttime, if your posture's already compromised, what you're finding is that also your sleep is going to be compromised. Like what we spoke about with you Al at the start, like your sleeping's getting a whole lot better. And when you wake up and you hit the ground, like with a spring in your step, you feel a million dollars if you're getting eight hours of sleep, yet you wake up two, three, four times a night. What are you waking up? What's causing you to wake up? Like, I'll give you, like, a little bit of insight. Over the last week with myself, the temperature, the room temperature has been a little bit warmer. And my readiness score, when I look at my algorithms, they started to drop. Like, my average algorithm within my readiness score generally hovers around 1992, and, like, you know, it hovers within three. And then over the last week, about seven days ago, it started to drop in the high 80s, then it dropped into the mid-80s and then to the low 80s. And I'm thinking, shit, what's going on here? And my sleep's still there, but my deep sleep is nowhere near as much as I would normally get. Then all of a sudden, last night, I put the fan on, or I convinced my wife to put the fan on, and then all of a sudden she had a shit sleep. And guess what happened to my sleep? It went through the roof. My readiness score absolutely peaked. Unbelievable. Like, I'm back into my 94. My readiness, purely because my engine is running high all the time. I didn't eat anything two hours before I went to bed. So I didn't compromise within what I was eating. Like, I very rarely drink alcohol, and I didn't have any alcohol or anything else. I had a great day with training and everything else yesterday. I didn't change any of my diet. The only one change I made was purely by putting the fan on and my core temperature dropped. All of a sudden. My heart rate variability dropped by three beats per minute. It went from 53 to 40, like, to 50. And so all of a sudden now my readiness score has just changed just by changing the temperature within the room that I am sleeping. So those little body hacks, you don't know unless you are measuring this stuff. So that's why when I look at movement, I look at breath work, I look at my training, I at look, I look at my sleep. So these little things, as we dive a little bit further into them is amazing. Like, you just don't realize how good you feel until you wake up one morning and you go, you know what? Shit, I'm feeling average. I don't know really what it is that's causing me these issues. So then as we go down a little bit further and we talk about other things as far as my health hacks, I start to look about, am I getting outside? Am I getting natural light So I think about, how can that affect my body if I'm not getting any natural light because I'm indoors all day? Well, you need at least 60 minutes a day or thereabouts of natural light. Doesn't matter whether there's cloud cover or not. But guess how you absorb or you create vitamin D within your body through natural sunlight. Even if there's cloud cover, there's still sunlight coming through. And like, one of the biggest vitamins that our bodies are deficient of is vitamin D. So then if you've got vitamin D deficient, your body generally doesn't absorb calcium. And there's multiple, multiple other bio kind of processes that go on within your body that then causes a kind of a domino effect, a catastrophic effect. So then we talk about getting outside. So that's where we kind of look at that. So light is what's going to affect us. Then the next one, we talk about devices, technology, like we talk about, have you got a router in your bedroom? Because that's going to affect your sleep and then that's going to affect your emotional stuff. So when we talk about devices and technology, where's the WI fi, where's all the electromagnetic fields? Is your phone sitting beside your bed and have you got it on airplane mode? Because if you haven't, you've still got that streaming, that emf, that's going to affect your sleep also. So that's why when we talk about EMF stuff, we need to understand that the devices and technology that we're constantly getting exposed to that light again, even though we're getting outside, this reverts back to the blue light that we're constantly getting exposed to. So we look at that and how does that affect us as an individual person? Well, your circadian rhythms, you think about it, right, going back since evolution of mankind. As the sun comes up, we're up and we're moving about. As the sun goes down, the body releases different chemicals at different stages of the day through what it's called is our internal clock, our circadian rhythm. And so. But what happens now as the sun goes down, we've got this artificial light. We're on the computer, we're watching tv, we've got, you know, like all the hydrogen lights and everything else, the lights are beating down on us. So our circadian clocks, internal clocks, are completely thrown out. And so this is where it has a detrimental effect on how our bodies produce cortisol and melatonin and all of these kind of natural drugs that our body naturally releases when we should be kind of calming our system down, our 10th cranial nerve, our vagus nerve. It should be relaxing at nighttime. But guess what we're doing? The lights are getting turned on, we're watching tv. We've got these electromagnetic fields just beaming from us from every angle. And then we go to bed to sleep. Yet people don't realize they've got a TV in their bedroom and it's WI fi and all these smart TVs and your phone sitting beside your bed. So you're getting hit from every angle. So there's another health hack that I kind of look at, my Fundamentals of Health. Get rid of that technology. Yeah, just try it. Just try and turn everything off. If you can get rid of the stuff out of your room for one night and one hour before you go to bed, pick up a book and just read something. One hour before you go to bed. But make sure you don't eat anything, generally two hours before you go to bed, especially protein. So those things there. Now, my fundamentals of health. We look at water and we look at the quality of water and we talk about, how much water should I be drinking a day? Well, really, Al, for someone like you, six foot three, six foot four, you're a weapon. And your body, obviously, if you're talking, you're doing podcasts, you're doing everything, I've got no doubt that you would be losing three to four or five litres of water a day just through sitting there talking. So then what we've got to look at is that from the morning, if you step on kind of the scales and you look at the evening, you step on the scales. At the moment, we're not looking for a weight loss program, we're looking for a body fat reduction program. So in reality, you shouldn't be losing weight as such on the scales, you should be just reducing body fat. So that's where we have to look at the amount of water, and not only that, the quality of water that we're drinking, where's it all coming from? So that's the type of stuff that we look at from there. So there's multiple things in there. And when I go into the next one, and I'll just bring up the next one, and which can never be left out, is nutrition. Like, this doesn't have to be complicated. The one thing that I can honestly say, no matter who you are, even if something is not the perfect food for you, you cannot go wrong. 99.99 out of 100 or out of a thousand people you cannot go wrong if you're eating whole foods. It is very, very hard to eat whole foods and gain weight. It's not the whole foods that make you gain weight. Even if your macros are out of whack, it is very, very difficult to be able to eat whole foods and gain weight. That is absolute ridiculous with anyone that kind of would even insinuate that they're gaining weight because they're eating too much, potentially potato or sweet potato, these things, even though they're carbs and they're starchy carbs. I promise you, if you are not drinking shit like fluids, as in alcohol or drinks like, you know, say mochas with, or I don't know what drinks that they get from all these takeaway outlets and things like this that have got two sugars and artificial sweeteners and all this other stuff that's just wrecking your kind of your processes, which goes in for your gut health and everything else. When we look at kind of how many coffees that you may have a day out, like where you're saying that you had maybe 10 to 12 a year ago, your body, for you to have 10 to 12 a day, I think maybe that's a little bit extreme. But I have two coffees a day. But how does your body deal with it? Is it organic coffee? Are you mixing things with it? So where are you getting these stimulants from? And what are you mixing with potentially these stimulants? Because it's not really the black coffee that's making you gain weight. There are incredible amounts that benefits coffee. But the one thing I'd say about that as a stimulant, I can have a coffee being a stimulant at 9 o' clock at night and I can go to sleep, no problems at all. So that means that me, I can deal with a stimulant, but whereas maybe someone else, if they have one, at say two o' clock in the day, the caffeine will keep me awake. So it comes down to your mechanisms, your bio individuality when it comes to all the foods that we eat. And this is where we have to troubleshoot everything. But again, as we go, just to recap, we talk about movement, we talk about exercise, we talk about breath work, we talk about the light, we talk about water and we talk about nutrition. There's five just there. And then we can literally. But we won't now go right into the kind of deep, dark, deep dark depths of every one of these and pull them to pieces. But I mean, that's what we do at rbm. That's what we do with our whole programs here. That's how we kind of troubleshoot everyone's nutrition. But it takes a little time. We map the journey out what we are doing over not one day, but it is over a month, three months, six months, 12 months, and we get you into optimal health for you as an individual. That is what it is all about.

I don't need to say anything, Ken. That will do us. That is a good podcast episode, mate. Fucking game, set, match. We should call these ken's absolutes, the seven laws of, of being a jacked 50 plus year old. Like, like, Ken, movement. I love it, mate. And I'd love to just, you know, chip away at these one by one and just, just peel the layer back on each, but you've explained it incredibly well, mate. And number one, movement, cold therapy, breathing techniques, vitamin D, sunlight technology, water and nutrition, mate. Absolutely. Couldn't agree more. The body's a phenomenal thing, isn't it? Like in all its complexities, Ken, for those listening to this or watching it, they are fundamentals. Like it's so simple. So as complex as the body can be, if you square away some of these simple things, it's going to pay massive dividends. I mean, you're incredibly optimized, Ken. So something as simple as a fan that goes on at night, it completely changes the game to get you back up into that really high end winner's circle of optimizing your body and your health. But for some of these guys, man, they're so far fucking left on this, like so far out of whack. Just bringing these back to back to level, back to square one is going to pay huge dividends. And a lot of the times it costs hardly anything. Like, it's nothing. Like if we're looking at cold therapy, if we're looking at movement, you can do body weight exercises, get your steps up, go for walks. We're looking at breathing techniques, sunlight, technology. I mean that's. Technology costs you stuff, but to remove it and eliminate it, like you said, airplane mode, I didn't even think about that with my phone. I got a. It's really hard too, because of the chaos in life. For a lot of us, you know, the inconveniences cause us to not commit and create habits. Right. So I've got a clock now that I have in our bedroom, but it needs new batteries. But it's a certain type of battery. It's not just a double or aaa. I shouldn't have fucking got it. I bought it online. Didn't, didn't look into it properly. And it's like I'm not going to buy that special type of battery anymore. So what did I do? Started using my phone again as my alarm, putting it back next to my bed. So just something small like that because of the kids work, everything else, I haven't taken the time and made the time, this shit creeps back in. But mate, like none of this costs anything. Even nutrition. I look at nutrition, right, the cost of getting organic and eating well. I mean look, if you're going to get anything organic, at least start with your meat sources and your protein. You may not want to buy organic green beans for nine bucks a kilo instead of a dollar. Fair enough, whatever, that's fine. I mean, I'm sure we're all pissing money away. Well, I'm not. And a lot of us who do this in our HPF program and you're not, Ken. But when I say we're all, I say in general. A lot of people waste money where they know they can actually reinvest it in other things like good health, especially quality food. You know, I go to organic fruit and veg grocer. One of my mates owns a fruit and veg shop and mates quality, you know, and I'll walk past if I ever have to go to Coles or Woolies for some of the non perishables and bits and pieces and I'll look at their fruit and veg. I'm like, man, this looks colorless. It's probably tasteless. Who knows the process of storage, thawing, freeze, I don't know, like it's something where there just isn't a level of trust there when you see that and then you see the other side of things where it's. Where it's organic and quality and looked after and a short shelf life because it's come in mates, worlds apart. But these are great fundamentals, Ken. I mean movement, couple of whole body workouts a week. Like you guys listening to this, have a look at it. You know, a couple of whole body movements a week, whole body exercises and it's really going to pave the way for you mentally investing yourself, chemically adjusting and getting that nice release of endorphins. A good hit of dopamine, not through technology but through achievement of a workout. Better serotonin if you're more stabilized in your mood and balance throughout. Structure and order of the day. If you do it with your wife or your children, there's a level of connection. Oxytocin, the four happy hormones, right, they're great. But cold therapy, I mean what would you suggest there, Ken? You've got the water which you could add some. I mean look, these guys that could even buy a, buy a bag of ice at the survey next time you fill up your car and just do an ice bath once a week even if you're not near the beach. Right, but what would your thoughts be around cold therapy and breathing techniques as a great way for men to just I guess help them when it comes to pulling away stress? Is that something like out of these seven, I guess I'm looking at what would be, what would be some of your key go to's. If you've got guys who are, they're running hot or they're exhausted, they're stressed to the eyeballs. Like what would be out of those seven? They're all valuable but would there be one or two you would lean towards first mate to go, hey, do this takes fuck all time. It's going to straightaway create the biggest change.

Exactly that with what you're saying there. The thing is we all will have a shower. So now it's not taking any time out of our day. We don't even have to deviate to get to the ice out of the fridge or to the servo. We are in the shower. So guess what? It doesn't matter when you're having it. Work on. Now the challenge is over the next seven days you're going to have hopefully seven showers or baths. But choose a shower if that's the easiest way and just turn the shower onto cold. Turn the hot water tap off and stand there. Start with 10 seconds for the next seven days and then work your way up an extra 10 seconds each week from there on in. Listen, the idea is to get yourself up to three minutes. Really what we're trying to do here is we're creating stress on the body, like very, very low level stress so that the body automatically has to deal with an uncomfortable situation. You will automatically almost, which I can say you'll kind of breathe almost like hyperventilate when you talk about breathing. No time. Better now because we're coming into the summer. So just slowly, slowly. You don't have to just switch the hot tap off. Just slowly, slowly get that hot tap down, down, down. Work your way before you get out of the shower and just get it to like literally turn that hot tap off and then stand there. Whether you count the 10 seconds in your head or Whatever it is, just stand there and just try that for the next seven days. Then move it up to 20 seconds for the second week, move it up to 30 seconds. And once you're up to 30 seconds, I promise you after the end of week three, you'll be able to go from 30 seconds to 1 minute to 2 minutes to 3 minutes. And you know, just doing that a day is unbelievable. Like the research around cold therapy is just truly amazing with what's happening. Yeah. So that would be no trouble out of your day, no time. You don't have to deviate from anywhere in your car, anywhere you're already in the shower. So there's the most simple thing you can do. Now what's the next most important thing that I would be working on? Listen, I really can't emphasize enough to be honest with you. Is really nutrition movement. Listen, to prioritize things you really have to look at. Where is your most kind of compromising situation? Is it because of posture and you have discomfort or we need to move, but we need to breathe. Like breathing would be the second most important in reality. Or in reality breathing would be the most important because if you can't breathe and you go and you're going to hold your breath for that last 10 seconds when you're freezing your nuts off in the shower. So in reality, breathing should be the top of my number one, the second one made. It's really hard to juggle. But listen, we talk about the cold shower. It's not costing you anymore anything out of your time or your day or anything. So that's kind of number two. But I mean really, where do you go in the order of hierarchy? Shit, your nutrition has to be whole food like because we're already compromised with, with bloody GMO foods and foods that aren't grown in soil dense kind of, you know, situations. And so it's really hard to kind of do that. Like at the end of the day, all I can kind of say when it comes to things, it's about having what I would call it. When we talk about finances within your own body, as in an assets and a liability page, when it comes to your habits, is it an asset that you're eating just any food or is it a liability that you're not eating whole foods and you just really want to start to have a look at your own kind of financial situation being your health, am I doing something that's going to be a liability to my health or is it going to be an asset to my health? Really the breathing is Definitely going to be. If you don't do breathing or you don't look at that, I promise you now by the top. And if you're not walking or you're not moving, everything's going to be creating a liability. So at the end of the day, you've got an assets and liability column. Where are your habits? Are they more liabilities in your columns or there are more assets in your columns? And you need to look at that from day to week to month. And that's kind of how, again, I would look at it like you can go without water for a week. Literally, you know, three days, four days, you can go without food. Like, there's been people that have been able to monitor through science and whatever else, they go hundreds of days without food, water, you can get away with it because we've got quite a bit of storage, but nowhere near as much as food. But again, I come back to breath is number one. And where do we go with. With kind of, you know, if you've got a lot of stress in your life, Al, like, the thing is the breath work to calm the body, to help, like a bit of meditation, like, that has to be number one. So it just depends on you as the individual with what pillar we need to go after.

Yeah, yeah, it's fair point, mate. You know, when I look at this water, look, I've got nothing wrong if people want to have tap water. Good for you. I don't. I haven't had tap water for a long time. You know, our water's all I have, purified water. And this is the hard part, Ken, like you're saying before, where people will wake up, say, feeling exhausted, even though they've had eight hours, they just accept that as the norm, mate. You know, they don't. They don't remember. This is the hard part.

With the.

With the human body and mind, you don't remember what it felt like. You may remember in your twenties what it felt like when you played that game, or you're playing that sport, or you're just active, or you go out on the piss and back it up. Yeah, remember those things. You actually don't remember. Just that optimal level of functioning every day where you're like, well, it's normal to wake up and feel like shit. And then when I have my coffee, I get going. So it becomes a story. It becomes a story in the head going, now I've got to have this. This is what I need to do. And it's like, well, hang on a minute. This is the 1% in the wrong direction that you do every day. If you're having poor quality water every day, like liters. So giving yourself poor quality water every day, if you're not stopping the wall and just focusing on some good breathing every day, if you're not getting sunlight every day. These 1 percenters, mate, this is essential to life as human beings. Yes, of course. Nutrition, you know, adjusting variances of stress on the body heat. Cold therapy. Perfect. You know, it's crazy how far people can find themselves. Just like when you talk about losing 1% of muscle every year from 30 or I think maybe 35 onwards. Yeah. Like it's. It's crazy. Yet people find themselves in their mid-40s and then that's the breaking point. Or the whole midlife crisis thing, it's like, well, hang on, you made it through. You came out of high school, then you got away with it in your 20s. It crept up on you, though, and started to tax you in your 30s to the point where it became chronic. So in your 40s, you're fucking broken. As resilient as the body is, Ken, everything and everyone will eventually break down if they don't look after it. One thing, like I was just processing because I'm all about going for the low hanging fruit. Not to create shortcuts for anyone, but definitely the path of least resistance. That's what we take. Because the most resistance I find, or the hardest path is a realization when you're on your deathbed one day, Ken, filled with regrets. But I look at this right, there's so many ways, like you said, without extra time, you can knock this over, you're already in the shower, bang, hit some cold there. It'll be great for the body in terms of your water. Get quality water and make that a commitment. You pay money for water, so what? You're paying money for water anyway. Whether it's coming through your tap and your water meter, or whether you're getting it and through the tap and then it goes through a filtration process, or whether you're buying it a quality source that's bottled, so be it. But having quality water, you're drinking water anyway, breathing when you're laying in bed before you go to sleep. Like I do that, Ken, what you showed me, four seconds through the nose, eight seconds out. And sometimes I actually, I expand that. Sometimes I'll do eight seconds through the nose and I'll shoot for 20 out. So I only do two breaths a minute. And I can't tell you, mate, it's not That I feel like I'm going to pass out or faint, but I really slow down and I'm like, wow. Like I can feel it. I can feel everything just goes. It's, it's bizarre.

Like you can really feel just every kind of pulse from your heart as it pumps the blood through your system. Like it's just an amazing feeling.

Oh, yeah. Two breaths a minute. And it's crazy, but it almost pulls me down into that sleep and my latency is good. It's not too quick where I just collapse. You're going to go to sleep anyway and you're laying in bed. So if you're laying in bed, you're about to crash out. Just give yourself two more minutes, do 10 reps, 5 seconds in, 10 seconds out, bang. You know, there's a couple of minutes, but this is stuff that doesn't cost you time. You're already going to have a shower, use the cold, you're already going to drink water, use quality. You're already going to lay in bed before you go to sleep and breathe. Because you breathe every, every second. Well, control that breathing. That pulls you down. In a level of homeostasis, you have better quality. And then the other one I want to look at is okay, movement and vitamin D. Why don't you walk to a park, do five sets of 10 push ups, 10 squats, 10 sit ups and 10 thread the needles to open up your posterior chain and get your back firing. Do five sets of that and walk home. You've got your vitamin D, you've got your movement for the body. Stick to the perimeters or go to, you know, specialists, a butcher and a fruit and veg shop. But if you have to go to one of the super chains or the big supermarkets, stick to the perimeters as much as you can get. Whole foods, Fuck, mate. They really are fundamentals, aren't they, Ken? But they are all the difference. This is the problem. Everyone goes for the pills or the shakes or all the like. We've got our own supplements, but that's what it is. It's there and they're unbelievable quality. But it's there to supplement what you should already be dominating at in terms of looking after your body as a human. But a lot of that stuff that we look at now, Ken, it costs fuck all time and money, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah, and that's, that's the big thing there where exactly you hit the nail on the head. Everyone's looking for the, for the quick fix. This isn't about a quick fix. This is about a lifestyle change. This is about getting things that are absolutely fundamental happening every day in your life. And as we speak, it's not what you do in a day or a week or a month, it's what you do over a year, five years, 10 years. You're creating this longevity within your life. That's what it's all about. And again, like you just need to be able to focus on what's important to you and what are the biggest wins on the board you can get from day to day, week to week, month to month so that then you then start changing like your bad habits. You have to turn those bad habits, like I just can't emphasize enough about again and we spoke about this previous hour, is that people reward themselves or they call a reward at the end of the week, come weekend with a bad habit, as in alcohol, whatever else it is, and shit food and they call that a reward. I don't know what planet they're on when they talk about they're rewarding themselves with a gut full of alcohol, shit food, etc, etc, on a Friday, Saturday night. Like, you know what, like we've just got to really start looking at the fundamentals and making sure that not so much from day to day, but more so from week to week you're improving on your self wellness. That's really what it's about. And without documenting this stuff, it's a guessing game. It's trying to find a needle in a haystack and that's where people just get it so very, very wrong. And every time I give people program after program after program and run them through the same thing over and over again, they haven't even stuck to the fundamentals. They're looking to see what protein powder to buy, they're looking to see what sleep pill they can get. They're looking to see what kind of supplementation. Like yeah, if you're a high performer. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I will add that to your program. But you know what, if you can't even get the basics right, why the Christ are you asking me for anything else other than just get some sleep? Oh, that's too hard. If that's too hard, you reckon it's going to be a lot harder. Listen, I find if someone can't get a little bit of extra sleep, I reckon they're going to struggle to open up some kind of cap on a supplement bottle to give them an extra. Like that's where really you've got to ask yourself the question, can I really get an extra hours worth of sleep of a night. Could I really turn that tap on to cold for 10 seconds before I climb out of the shower? Or don't I have the balls to be able to do that? Do I have to get my balls out of my purse to be able to literally turn that hot tap off? Like seriously, we really need to start to think about if you're going to invest in your health. Don't ask what's next? What's next? Until you get the absolute bare ass basics right. Because you find in most cases when I re kind of, I suppose visit any information that I give anyone and I look at the most simplest things in life about are you drinking enough water? Are you actually just moving? Are you actually getting enough sleep? They go and they laugh it off. I'm just like how can you laugh this shit off when you're asking me for a $700, $200 wearable or protein or whatever else when you can't even get to sleep one hour beforehand or you can't even get two walks in a week or you can't do a 10 minute mobility drill when I'm trying to help you, which things cost you absolutely nothing, but for some reason you're asking me to. You know what? Fuck it. Maybe I should charge you like shit a $500 pill and then that'll kind of be a bacon and eggs in a pill. Like how far away is that? Like getting a bacon and egg roll in a pill and then all of a sudden you know, shit, you're gonna lose weight from that. Like this is the thing, it really isn't difficult to get the fundamentals right. But don't keep asking for more when you haven't got the basics in place. That's where it's really crazy.

I wonder where all that came from as well, mate. Is it something that existed 100 years ago when it was horse and cart and things were so much more simpler? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's the chaos of the modern world and just the speed and there's always something that wants to draw or steal your attention away, but you don't know if it has your best interest at heart, whether it be a product, a person or a place. And like you said, mate, it just creates absolute insanity and ultimately frustration, confusion and breakdown when people keep going for these different quick fixes and they don't master the basics you look at the most. I mean, you know what came to mind actually really funny too because I don't like, I think he's done, he did amazing Things, but, you know, it's not someone that I've got posts on my wall or anything. But when you kept talking about that, Ken, just then, all I could think of was someone like, well, all I could think of was Bruce Lee. I was like, man, this guy would have absolutely fucking dominated the basics, you know? And then I don't know why I thought of him. And then again, another person, Michael Jordan. Like, you look at the people who have had the most impact in the world, most successful, no matter how specific or no matter how. You know, I don't know if articulates the word, how fancy or fanciful it might be, whether it's, you know, being a ribbon dancer at the Olympics or being someone like Michael Jordan who could basically hit a basketball almost from anywhere and was just an absolute weapon, or whether it could be someone in business or just being an amazing family man. Anyone who's had huge impact in their lives and other people's lives, they've always mastered the fundamentals, Ken. They've always just dominated that. And they've found a way to continually engage, to continually sell themselves on this being the pathway, because they know it is instead of being distracted or interrupted to other things that pull them away. And, mate, that's myself in my life, Ken, just mastering the basics, the fundamentals. Even when I was a professional athlete, even when I was doing CrossFit, I didn't go and do all this sort of fancy handstand walking crazy shit. I got some dumbbells out, I got different bands out, did different destabilizing work, and I fucking built my shoulders. I'm like, all right, I'm 110 kilos. I'm gonna have to handstand walk. How do I work on it? I do handstand walks. What else I do? I do strict handstands. I get the kettlebells and I walk around with a kettlebell in the air, and I see how long I can do that for. And I just mastered the basic fundamentals of building stability inside my shoulder, not doing fucking twists and turns and trying to do backflips, all that sort of shit. And look, there's levels and layers to this. I'm just using that as one example. But, you know, when we're looking at life, Ken, you can't beat. Like, I know you have a great saying, and I believe in it as well. You can't out train a poor diet. But I look at this stuff, mate, there is no way around. There is no way around moving your body, creating a different stimulus with Things like cold therapy, breathing, sunlight, water, eliminating technology where it's becoming detrimental, and eating like you can't get away from, you can't get around them, man. Like that's. They are the essentials of life in the modern world, which is why you brought in, you know, technology. And I'll save for another episode. I'm fascinated with your thoughts on, on, you know, infrared and red light therapy. But we'll save that for another session because I think it's. That'll be an entirely different topic. But again, that's. That's another specific that we can bring into play. But these fundamentals, man, most of them cost nothing. And you know, huge, huge. The change, like yourself, someone as optimized as you can see the benefits of it. Imagine an everyday dad out there who, yeah, he goes and gets a sausage roll at the servo, he goes and drinks energy drinks or flavored water, like instead of just getting the good stuff, and has Red Bulls and drinks Coke or. No, no, I have Pepsi Max salads. Okay, okay, cool. Fucking. How much of that are you having? Yeah, and not moving the body. Night workers, shift workers hardly ever getting sunlight. Men who don't even realize how choked up they are. And they're not opening up and expanding their lungs and breathing. I mean, shit, mate, it's. It's pretty. It's pretty crucial stuff when it comes to living life through the human body. But amazing episode. Ken, what would you like to say, I guess as we wrap this up for the guys listening to this or watching this on YouTube? What. What would you like to say, mate, as a bit of a wrap on your Ken's Fundamentals in Health? I've really enjoyed this and I've actually got a couple of key takeaways that I'm gonna reintroduce. One, absolutely cold therapy and two, turning the phone on airplane mode and free finding that fucking those batteries for that clock again, mate. I guess I just buy it a new one, I think.

I suppose really the one thing I can't emphasize enough is that again, we all know that there's no stupid question. But before you ask the question, you've got to ask yourself, have you followed the fundamentals that you've already been given or that you've already been taught? Because we're all guilty of it, no doubt. I've been guilty of it. What's next? What's next? We talk about body hacking, we talk about red light therapy, which we're going to talk about in another episode, but we really need to just look at the absolute bare ass basics, what you've already been given, what you know. That's right. Don't go looking for something else. Don't go looking for the yo yo diet. Don't go looking for the quick fix. Just ask yourself that one question. Am I doing the absolute best when it comes to eating whole foods? Am I moving? Am I really, really helping myself or am I just bullshitting to myself and then just trying to find what's the next fad, what's the next thing that I can try and do to potentially give me that quick fix. And we all know, and I can promise you now, there is no way in the world right now that I can kind of find or what I've looked at in all the research and all the stuff that I do. And there's no quick fix when it comes to optimal health. There is just no quick fix. So, yeah, that's kind of what I would like to finish on.

Yeah, great point to finish on, mate. It's always there for all you guys listening or watching. It's always there. Whether it's a cliche, whether it's the opportunity of what you have access to. I mean, we all have access to amazing food, to amazing water, to sunlight, you know, and one thing that comes to mind is you get out what you put in. Like, you know, and I don't really like tying into old cliches and tags, but it's so fucking true, man. And you don't have to put in a huge amount. That's the crazy part, Ken. You know, you only get out what you put in and all that sort of stuff. When going gets tough, the tough get going. All that sort of shit's like, it's not bad. It's not that crazy, man. Like you don't have to do a huge amount of effort. Like we look at that right away. Like I said, walk to a park, do a training, do a movement that includes the whole body and then lay down and do some diaphragmatic breath work and then walk back home, get quality water in, have quality nutrition after that. I mean, you've already hit like five out of the seven in, in mate in an hour.

Yeah, right, like it hasn't cost you anything.

Yeah, have a cold shower after your training session, there's six. And get a fucking alarm clock. You've just hit seven. It's cost you no extra time other than spending an hour to hit six of those by walking to a park, doing a session, breathing, walking back, having a cold shower. And you should give yourself that time, when I say it costs you no extra time, you've got a thousand minutes a day. That gives you 7,000 minutes a week. If you're not giving yourself at least 1% a day, that's 10 minutes. Okay, I'm going to train once a week. Let's bank all that and give yourself 70. 70 minutes a week. You know, you have no excuse. And you and I both know, Cam, what I said, there is an extreme. Like you've got way more time than that. You've got way more than that. Like you can give yourself more than 10 minutes. You know, you should be giving yourself. If you've got a thousand minutes a day, you should give yourself 10%. 10%. Like it. It's 100 minutes, it's an hour and 40. I know there's some stuff with meal prep and there's training or if you're going to train. So it might eat a rule. Fair point. But so be it. You might train today, walk tomorrow. You might walk tomorrow and just go lay out in the sun and read a book the next day. There's always a way. You might go in the ocean. If you're near the beach the day after, pick your method. It's all there, but. Great episode, Ken. Great episode, mate. Really enjoyed it and I hope you guys got a lot of value out of it as well. I certainly did. Like I said, a couple of key points and I'll be applying them today for sure. And thank you, mate. Great to have you on again.

Thank you, mate. Good to see you.

Likewise. Cheers, man. Hope you enjoyed this.

Cheers, guys.

1,000 minutes a day, it's a lot. But when you're wasted on 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.