174. The Health Evolution Of Men

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Got the mad dog Ken Lavander Mad dog.

You're not wrong.

51 years of age and bricks for abs and just an absolute weapon. Welcome to a another podcast episode where we are going live. Going live. Those listening to this on our podcast platform, itunes, Spotify and several others. Well we're going live for you and your timeline, but we're going live in our free HPF community. Welcome men. Welcome Ken to another episode, mate. Happy New Year. This is our first one together for the year. How have you been, mate? What's going on, mate?

Absolutely brilliant as always. Yeah, just, just looking after myself and the family and just trying to just enjoy life as much as I do. Just getting out on the paddleboard, going swimming, doing whatever else we can and just try and stay in, staying active as we always do. Just, just living the dream. Alright?

Paddle boarding. I've heard that's not, not ideal for a 6 foot 4, 110 kilo man. Is that true mate? Or should I give it a crack? Will my in half or what?

Just need a bigger board, mate.

That's so.

I think the QE2 might work for you if you get on that.

Just, just get me a boat mate and I can paddleboard on the boat.

It is good fun. But for some reason mate, now that I'm living in the country most of my life or 32 years and then coming out to the, to the ocean. Ocean lifestyle. For some reason I'm not too sure the first two things I wanted to do was scuba dive and paddle board or at least try and surf. And I hate sharks, mate. For Some reason scares the out of me. So, yeah, so the bigger the board for me, the better.

Yeah. The only, the only close experience I had, mate, was swimming at Shelly Beach. It's known for there to be sharks at Shelly beach up here on the coast, but swimming in Shelly beach and just one guy was just waving arms out and waving and I just didn't take any notice. I thought, who's this fruit loop? And as I walked out, he's like, mate, we spotted a shark is about 20 meters away from you. He was just pottering around, there must have been some fish maybe. And it was, it was pretty crazy at that moment I just felt this. It's almost like the tingling on the spine, but just this rush of blood right through me, mate. And I was like, oh, I was 20 meters. I'm not saying it brushed my leg. 20 meters. 20 meters. But just that feeling of knowing that, I mean, you know, in 20 meters, mate, they can cover that in half a second. But it was pretty crazy. It was pretty crazy, mate. That feeling, that feeling of mortality, really. I was like, man, this, you don't know how big it is. They could have taken you, taking you under, you just. Yeah, so I'm there with you, mate. I understand they play a role in the, I guess the environment of the ocean, but yes, I am definitely they're up there, them and crocodiles, mate. But let's crack on into an amazing episode. The health evolution of man, of men. You know, I'd love to start with this episode, Ken, by doing a bit of a recap on the fundamentals of foundations. We've got Kosciusko coming up in less than two weeks. Fuck, I'm excited for that, man. That's going to be an amazing trip. I can't wait. It's going to be so epic. But what I wanted to dive into. And we can peel back a couple of little bits and pieces on what we will bring into Cosi. You know, that's going to be a special experience for those select men, but I'd love to dive into. We're talking about the health evolution of men. Not just going for the quick fix or the silver bullet, but building modern day intelligence. What's your self awareness like in terms of your breathing, your heart rate? Are you tracking things? Are you measuring things? What does this look like? It's not just buying fucking prep meals that you can buy 10 for 100 bucks and off you go and just microwave and eat. Like what are we doing to evolve ourselves? Which doesn't always necessarily require Technology. But first, starting with the most important practices, Ken. And then tying this into family. Like, we can have the best game plan in the world, can't we, mate? But if your wife's not on board, if you're not communicating with your family, with your children, they're not on the same page, you will implode. You will create your own roadblocks or have them created for you. But what does that look like, mate? Evolution of men. Like, where do we go to when helping these men, middle aged, moving in the second half, get their shit together, get the runs on the board, start winning, and then we'll start to tie that into relationships and whatnot.

Yeah. The big thing with me is just people need to be honest with themselves and an understanding that there's a lot going on. Let's kind of, you know, just bring it to the surface with COVID for that matter. And I think the big thing is for anyone is that they really need to look at their own foundation and kind of look at them, themselves, their immediate self, and go, okay, what can I change within myself to create a better life, to create a better lifestyle? And that's the biggest thing for me, is that I can give you all the silver bullets for exercise and nutrition. But if your emotional well being is not right because you've got so much going on in your life, well, then it's a real struggle for me to then try and give you any information about how we can exercise to lose weight or how we can eat better because. Or to lose weight or to gain muscle because you're so emotionally bogged down in, whether it be relationship or financial or the current situation you're in, if you're not willing to be honest and then to start to realize that, hey, something needs to change. And if you try and. Or if you're expecting a different result from doing the same thing over and over again, it's almost kind of insane or kind of, you know, the definition of insanity. And so that's why now it's where 2022. There's a lot of stuff that may be within or without out of our control, but let's just work on the things that are within our control. And so, you know, like I said again, like with, with COVID and everything else that's out of our control, it's inevitable that all of us are going to get Covid. So what can you do to arm yourself as far as your health and wellness to be able to combat that when it does happen, not if it happens, when it happens. And so there's nothing more important now to know that. Let's sort out our emotional wellbeing. And this is why what you've done, Al and all the coaches and myself and everything else is we're trying to give you the best information from every coach, not from one coach, because no one has all the answers. And it's really about experimenting with you as the individual to find out what works for you. And that's the key. The key point here is that whenever I design people a nutrition program, it's experimental only in the first two, four, six, eight weeks. Because your palate's different to mine. No two men are the same, no two people are the same. Your exercise, you've got issues with mobility, ankle, knee, hip, lower back. Your job environment's different. The way you sleep is different. Whether you've got sleep apnea or you have problems with your sleep, like all of these things are compounding. And so what we're trying to go after here is literally the lowest hanging fruit. But the things that you can implement at no cost other than a little bit of time. And so this is why what's important for all of us is to really sit back and reflect on what we've been doing in the past and what hasn't worked. And now you've got access to all these coaches to be able to guide you and to be able to create the journey with you. Not tell you what to do, but to be able to assist you along the way. And then obviously there's going to be. It's not the way the crow flies where you're just going to go and get results exactly the way you would think it would happen. It's really about troubleshooting several things so you can have the best equity exercise program and eating like shit and you're not going to change weight. And in vice versa, you can have the best nutrition program and you don't do any training. But here's the caveat. You can't out train a bad diet. So you can lose weight if you eat a great nutrition program without exercise. But I'll tell you what, if you want to enhance the benefits of weight loss, to tone your emotional wellbeing and every biological process that goes on in your body being physiological, chemical and emotional, everything's going to change. If you can just add a little bit of some of these things, it's going to change your world around in no time at all. And that's why we've got to go in at your level of ability, your level Of, I suppose, clarity, so that there's no fogginess when you're looking at emotional stuff and there's nothing else that sidetracking you. But what we're trying to do here is discuss about the lowest hanging fruit and how we're evolving from last year to this year and to just take it one step at a time. That's the key thing that we're going to kind of step out here today and hopefully everyone's listening in that we'll try and implement one, two or three of these things that we're going to share with you.

Couldn't agree more, mate. Like the step and process of evolution for all of us. Is that one step at a time cliche or not? Not that we hang on or hold onto cliches very often. It's imperative that we understand that it is a journey and it's not a journey that's divine or defined by one particular thing. Ken, like you said, with the multiple coaches, we have me being the alignment coach on the inside, helping men with their relationships, the communications, a skill set that includes everything that's so important to them directly outside of them, coupled with what you're doing with everything inside of themselves, physical, chemical and emotional health. Game on. Let's go out and play. Let's start moving. And one of the key points out of everything you've just shared in this episode so far, specificity, like, it's got to be specific for you. The patterns of the downfall, the patterns of the downturn in your life can be the same. Which is quite funny because I had on one of my ads, Ken, one of the fathers commented and said, you're a great salesman, very cliche. I said, what's cliche? What am I saying? That's cliche? And this guy, and it wasn't to have a stab at him, but this guy responded. He said, it's cliche that you say that fathers feel like they're in the pit, they're tired, they're run down. And he basically rattled off all the hard points, pain points and problems that I communicated in this ad. This ad seemed nearly 2 million views now, which is awesome. Hopefully it's been a patent interrupt and snapped a few dads out of being in the zone of not benefiting inside of themselves or being 100%. But the sad part was, Ken, what I was reading in his interpretation as cliches was really fucking sad because the cliches are actually all of the pain points and problems fathers have. Like, since when can we look at the common Patterns, painful pain and pitfalls that fathers have as being cliche. Like, that's. That's a really sad thing, mate. Like, it's that prevalent, it's that common. So many are going through it, so many continue to go through it. So many fall down in this area of life because life consumes them. That itemizing the problems that men and fathers go through has become a perspective from this guy anyway as being points of being cliche. That's pretty fucking sad, mate. Like, I'm not sure if that's connecting with you guys listening to this or watching this, but to rattle off and connect a lot of the hardships we go through as fathers as being a talking point of cliche, cliches that you're rattling off is pretty sad. You know, it's not. We all have 24 hours in a day. It's literally specific things that are tearing fathers apart because life is fucking eating them up, man. And they don't know how to evolve. They don't know how to change. The game has changed, gentlemen. Like Ken said with COVID viruses, poisons, illness, disease, death has been around since the dawn of time. And the default for life is death. The default for life is loss, Ken. If we don't breathe, we die. If our heart doesn't pump, we die. And I said this before, if photosynthesis doesn't happen, well, we all probably die. But trees die. That just doesn't happen. So the default for countering loss, which is the default for life, is action. And I love to go into that, Ken, to start with because this is really going to help you guys evolve as men. The game's change. Don't look for the quick fixes. Don't look for the really tasty protein powders with all the fucking fat burners and hydroxy cut shit. Don't look for that stuff. Whether you think they're a gimmick or not, they're a pure distraction tool from what's at the core fundamental of who you are as a human being to get the most out of yourself, which is just breathing properly to start with. What does that look like, though, Ken? I'd love to start with that point because you're amazing at that. And hopefully the guys who in your previous episode who couldn't do four minutes of breathing have fucked right off. I couldn't believe when you said that I could stop laughing. But hey, let's dive into that. Yeah? Well, what are we going to be doing? Cosi and breathwork. And I'd love to go over that again.

Yeah, so, so there's a few, little, several, there's a few things that we want to really make clear on, on anything we do in life. The number one element we need for survival is oxygen. And so when you think about evolution and where we're going with technology and where we were like at 51 years old and looking at what I used to do when I was like literally 5, 10, 15, 20 years old and living in the country, we were forever outside and moving all the time. But unfortunately what happens now is that we start working and depending on what we do for a living, whether we're sedentary, whether we're sitting, standing, whatever it is, it's going to have an impact on our everyday well being. And what I look at now, and it's just absolutely rampant in everyone and not just in adults, but in children also at a high school level is where they call the posture now, like technic, where they're constantly using devices, electronic devices, through iPads, iPhones, computers, et cetera. And through the jobs that we have now are much more sedentary in most cases, not labor intensive, unless you're a laborer and whatever else. And in most cases we didn't tend to not really become so physically active from a day to day basis. And then the people that actually are physically active, you'll find that they don't implement or very little implementation of any other exercise out of that. So when we go to Kosciusko, one of the biggest things that I want to get across and what we've spoken about previously is about breath work. And the big thing, the average person now and the statistics are out there and they've done all the research, the average person over a one minute cycle breathes anywhere from 17 to 18 breaths per minute right now. Okay, so if you think about that, that's like almost a situation where people are hyperventilating. Like, think about, you can just time your own breath, work and count your breath like, or better for this, look at someone else that you're close, you know, like in the immediate vicinity, without them listening onto this podcast, of course, and just have a look at how many times they take a breath. Now in reality, what, where the kind of normal cycle of breath should be is five seconds in and five seconds or five and a half seconds in and five and a half seconds out. So if you calculate that to be 11 seconds, well then you're looking at 5 and 0.3 or thereabouts breaths per minute. So then you look at what generally the population is doing now 17 to 18 breaths per minute. So you think about the biomechanics in yourself. If you're doing 17 to 18 breaths per minute, think about how shallow that breath is going to be. So when you take a really big deep breath now, as you're listening to this podcast, if you take a really big deep breath in through your nose for four seconds, a really, you know, like a quite an exerted type inhale and then breathe out for six seconds, just feel the biomechanical changes in through your lungs, like your chest and how it affects your posture. Now when you do a breath like that, being four seconds in and six seconds out, a 10 second cycle, there's six breaths within one minute. That's what we're aiming to try and get everyone back to. Now, you're not going to be able to achieve that overnight. When we breathe in the nighttime, when we go to sleep, our breath works compromised. But what we're trying to do is give you the baseline, the lowest hanging fruit to change every biological process that goes on within your body. If you want to improve your digestive situation, as in you want to lose weight, you want to improve your posture, you want to improve your sleep, you want to improve your emotional wellbeing, you want to improve everything about you, then breathwork is the most simple and most effective thing that you can implement four minutes a day right now. Now this is something that we do before we go to sleep. Over nighttime, if you have a postural imbalance and someone looks at your posture and your biomechanics are compromised and you struggle to lose weight, you have any whatsoever physiological, any underlying health problem, if you implement just four minutes a day of breath work, that will start improving your life automatically. That's the only thing, at no cost other than four minutes that we can implement right now, will have the biggest impact on the rest of your life right now. So that's how simple things can be. Now that's only one thing that we're going to go through at Kosciusko and we're going to teach you and implement that with you. So it's part of your daily routine. Now, of course, things change within our everyday life and things happen and whatever else. Like I implement that breath work, I'd say on an average, and I'll be honest, five minimum to six days a week, I do that pretty much. But then I have other breathwork techniques that if I'm not doing that style of breathing, I may do my Wim Hof style breathing, which is called the Tummo method, which I may do in the morning, which. Where you can hold your breath and it helps you allow your body to deal with stress, physical, emotional and a chemical stress. We're going to go through that at Kosciusko also and really fine tune that. So this is where everything that comes at no cost other than a little bit of time, is what we're going to implement right from the get go.

Yeah, I love it, mate. You know, this is about slowing down, controlling time. Being the master of time, Ken, and that improves the rhythm and cycle that we carry inside of ourselves. That was part of a podcast I did. Maybe the last time, maybe the one before. Even when it comes to conflicts, when talking with your wife, with connecting, how you actually being a master of time inside of yourself first, like this shallow breathing. You're right, mate. I always breathe. I always breathe better. When we do our podcast, kid. I don't know why, it must be a subconscious thing. Not that I'm a shallow breather either, but I can absolutely see that being the case. Almost like borderline hyperventilating, like breathing 18 to 25 times a minute. That's insane, man. That's savage. But what are we in today with technology and phones and all the other shit around just speeds up. Everything's fast, everything's instant. We're quick to point at millennials and kids today and talk about entitlement and instant gratification, yet we're the same ones who do this. Just like a perfect example, us live streaming this in instead of the back in the good old days where we'd have to do a recording on a cassette or something and we'd release them out at the back of a truck. Hey, listen to this episode. Literally, this is instantly going into a live stream for guys to watch and be part of and instantly consume. So it's not that it's all bad, but where are we allowing this, Ken, to subconsciously control us? Just like over the mainstream media and all the speed, the speed and volume of news, which we don't even take ownership and control in ourselves because we're reacting to life, to actually control our own speed and rhythm of how we operate. Same thing goes with connecting. Like there's a certain magnetism or electrical force in the world, Ken. I mean, that's pretty apparent, mate. Call it vibrations, frequencies, wavelengths, or whatever you want, but essentially every Friday we go and do athletics for Stella. Massive oval, beautiful grass. I'm not fucking wearing shoes. I'm not wearing thongs, mate. I'm walking around barefoot and enjoying that. Same with Roman. And we're playing and just that grounding in itself, which we're absolutely going to be doing at Cosi, that grounding, like literally physically grounding ourselves, is amazing for two reasons. One, it helps us reconnect and actually feel a sense of connection to life. Because I think a lot of us, especially through a rapid speed of the digital age, becoming almost like fucking robots, mate. You know, like it's all technology, it's all processes and speed of, you know, things that are artificial. It helps us get back to what's ingrained in our DNA. And secondly, I remember using the term, I think it was hammer toes. Most people's feet are fucked up because they got. They're always wearing shoes and their toes are so closed, like you should be seeing space. And mine were pretty good. You gave me some. Some little silicon toe spreaders and that's made them even better. But mate, you know, like just opening up the foot again to walk. I can't tell you how much that's actually helped my knee, you know, I've got a bone and bone knee. It's pretty fucked. But to have a good placement, like everything that we move from moves from a position where we're grounded. If I'm sitting here right now, my feet are still on the ground. They might not be, but all movement, that's productive and high power and capacity driven through our human body. Well, there's some sort of grounding, isn't there, Ken? It's our feet, it's what we're doing with that. So these are the things that, when we're talking about the health evolution of men, it's not that it's a devolution, but it's going back to the core essentials that helps us understand that we are organisms and that this is a part of our life. Breathing that ribcage, coming out, coming in, doing it five to maybe 10 times, maybe these guys will start in the lane for 10 to 12 times a minute. Can. It might be three seconds in, five seconds out, who knows? But essentially it's building layer upon layer to have control over the one thing we can have the most control over, which is ourselves, which then gives us the highest chance for success because we have the most influence over it. How do you see this sort of stuff tying in, Kent? We're talking about the evolution of health in men. How do you see this tying into emotional and chemical health? So I guess from there, because you've got physical, chemical and emotional health, the three amazing pillars that you have and you've brought into the tribe here, what does this convert into chemical and emotional. Let's look at those two. We're applying physical now. How does that convert to chemical and emotional wellbeing? And then we'll talk about how that transfers to our family.

So the chemical, the chemical wellbeing is about, about nutrition obviously and the things that we come in contact with. And there's so many different things as we've evolved and because of living such a past fast paced life. What's going to happen here is that food in reality is kind of not running out, but it's grown in a fast paced manner in hydroponics, in artificial light, in no soils, but in a hydroponic setup, etc. And then when we look at the chemical side of things now and we look at our body as its own chemistry, we have the ability, our bodies have the ability to become its own chemist, to be able to fight off viruses, bacteria and all these other things. But it can only fight this virus or these bacteria. No matter what we come in contact with is from the immune system, from the food that we eat, from the nutrients that we absorb. There's a saying out there, you are what you eat. That's not true at all. You are what you absorb and what you do with that. So as we get it into our mouth and it goes out down our GI tract and then it goes into our gut and the acids start to break that down and then it's absorbed into our like through the gastrointestinal tract and then some of it kind of, you know, like permeates through the intestinal wall, but also within the gut, then it pushes it out to our vital organs. Now if that's very low grade, non kind of rich soil grown in food, well then our now kind of energy, et cetera and everything else, hormone production and everything else doesn't have the mortar that that or the bricks to build this incredible amount of foundation within our whole structure. So when we look at the food that we eat and we look at our energy being compromised, we look at our connective tissue to be repaired, we look at our ability to sleep, to then our body for it to recover. Well then it doesn't have the building blocks within the foods that we eat because we're not having like literally mineral dense kind of rich foods that are grown in rich mineral dense soils because of they're over farmed or they haven't been farmed and they've been laced with pesticides and everything else or it's Been developed in a lab. Like margarine versus butter. Margarine comes from a lab and a chemist or a pharmacist, whatever else, have designed this margarine, which is full of chemicals and there's no kind of substance through through that. And so that when we choose to eat margarine instead of butter, well then like where's the sustenance? Where's the density of these building blocks going into our body? So it's like having a canoe. We've got one hole in the canoe and we, you know what, we stick our toe in the hole, we keep paddling and then all of a sudden we keep going with literally there's a second hole in the canoe and then we shove our other toe in that hole and then we block that up. And then all of a sudden we're not getting any magnesium from rich dense foods that we're eating. We're not adding any nuts or leafy green vegetables in our diet. And all of a sudden so then that's compromised within our immune system or our gastrointestinal tract and the mortar to go between the bricks. And then all of a sudden we think, fuck it, we won't drink much water, we'll grab a V and we'll throw in some fast acting sugar or some kind of stimulant. And so then everything to be hydrated and to be lubricated, well then our body becomes compromised because we've got nowhere near enough lubrication through water, etc. So then the body gets tighter and then all of a sudden there's another hole in the canoe. And all of a sudden we get to a stage where the food that we're eating is only about 20 or 30 or 40 or 50% or even 60% wholesome foods. And then you're expected to survive, working your business, looking after your family, entertaining your children, doing things with your partner. And you're expecting to do all of these things from literally 6am in the morning till 9, 10 at night, and to still be a family man, a father, a husband, a person that's live full of energy. And yet all of these things are being compromised. And then all of a sudden we talk to you about chemical reaction within the body and yet you've only been eating 60, maybe 70% of your nutrients are coming in from whole food. And you think about having a body that's kind of optimized and then all of a sudden over 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, 1, 3, 5, 10, 20 kilos have creeped on and you have no idea what's going on from a hormonal point of view, hence why I talk about blood panels, blood work. Because if all of a sudden 10 years down the track and in six months or 12 months you've lost four or five kilos and you now feel in the best shape of your life, what about the previous decade that you've been reasonably disrespectful to the wholesome food that you've eaten, through the stress that you've been under, through the lack of movement that you've done, through poor hydration and all of these things are compounding. And all of a sudden you've got so many holes in this canoe that you think you can repair it. Within three months or six months of me designing you some awesome nutrition program or some awesome exercise program, and you're expecting me to undo or to fix something that's taken you 10 or 15 or 20 years to create. And then all of a sudden you're looking for something for me to fix in six months, have a think about what you're asking for. This has got to be a lifestyle change. So that's just another one component that we're dealing with here. And guess what? If your emotional stuff's not right, all of these chemical changes that I'm creating in your nutrition and in your breath work and everything else not going to matter. So this is why it's not about taking hold of one thing and running with it and giving it your all in E either exercise and or nutrition. You've got to get your head right first. You've got to fix that emotional shit that's in your life. You've got to work out a strategy through working with the coaches, working with our, myself, anyone else for that matter. You've got to work out what your biggest issues are. You've got to jot them down. Hence why we do the journals. This is why this is the absolute most important stuff about the nutrition is, yes, absolutely a vital ingredient of this whole recipe that we're creating for you. But again, I can give you the best exercise program, but it's not going to mean jack shit to you if you don't sort out that emotional stuff. We are here to guide you step by step through the hard times, the tough times and the easy times. I'll design you the program that I believe is right for you, but then that is only experimental for me. Then to pull believers, to turn the dials over the next 2, 4, 6, 8, 12 weeks, 6 months and 12 months to then create the ultimate plan that will suit you and it is tailored for you. And that's what we're doing, and that's what we're going after.

Incredible share, Ken. And for those of you watching or listening, can you see why this is such a pinnacle thing to creating changes inside of your household and your relationships? Like, fuck. We talk about it all the time. Time and energy, two most valuable assets you never get back. Maybe it's time plus energy over communication. Maybe that equals connection. Maybe that's the formula. Who knows? I mean, that's not a bad one. There's just, you know, to shoot from the hip on. But that's absolutely imperative because you communicate to anything outside of you, including yourself. So outside and inside yourself to create depth and connection, which is important, which is significance. How can you have any of that if you haven't sorted your shit out and your time's all over the place and you're chaotic, you're a yes man saying yes to everyone, not having healthy boundaries, saying no to yourself. When you say yes to someone else, you're saying no to something else, to someone else. How can you have any of that in order if you don't have the gas tank, to be able to last the day, like with anything wholesome and moving you towards evolution and growth? When would you think the persistence is not the answer. Of course it is. I mean, that's madness. That's the one thing that is the answer when you're continually evolving through adapting, changing and building, which is evolution, seeking growth, which is evolution through being persistent. And this is the hard part, Ken. These men who have trouble with their relationships, they have trouble with their children, they have trouble, all of that. I was having a laugh last night with one of our members, Cam, and we're talking about our children, how it's crazy we look. And grandparents can help, and they can help the kids at night or put them back to bed, or do all the things that we don't have the patience to handle and we're frustrated with and we don't want to be able to handle. And why could a grandparent come in, do it, and then leave and do it so much better? Because maybe they've got a bit more energy because they haven't spent six weeks with the child not sleeping. Maybe they've got a bit of a better attitude and outlook because they've got more control themselves and they're not triggered. But this is what I was laughing with Cam about. I'm like, you need to adopt the mindset of A grandparent when it comes to raising your children. Because too often we're not looking after our health. We're not putting food in our mouth the way that we should be. And when we should be, we're not breathing the way that we should be, which sounds fucking crazy, but it's true. Why? It's. Breathing's automatic. It just happens. Well, yeah, that's right. Do you want the rest of your life to be autonomous? We're not doing any of these things, Cam. Which obviously leads us to being lethargic, run down, feeling more stressed, which means we're more triggered, which means we're more temperamental, which means we don't have the stability we should. So that becomes an outbreak in conflict, collision, arguments, all of these things when you go straight back. And that's why I love what we do with the coaches we have. This isn't primarily just about fitness per se. This is your evolution as a fucking man with the organism and the vessel of life. You're living through your human body, which is connected to and has inside of it the brain, which collectively becomes your mind or spirit or consciousness. To make decisions, to see things in a specific light, to adopt a specific set of actions that goes, hey, I don't really fucking like this spot. I want to be in this spot and do it. Because you can't just do it by thinking it. You can't just be a wizard with a wand and go make it happen. If you're 150 kilos, 180 kilos or 80 kilos, but you've got a 50 kilo frame and you've got this chronic state of inflammation all the time, you will fall apart, you will break down. Shit will hit the fan in your life at some stage, and maybe if it's not even physically through what's perceived to be health, I don't know. If you're 180 kilos, can you be the greatest father you can be?

Maybe.

I mean, the sheer mechanics. And Ken will back me up on this, and physiology says that you are restricted in your energetic output. What strikes me, though, Ken, and we're going to dive into this as well to get a couple of key points for you guys. What's fascinating, though, is the perspective on things, you know, with all these variables that comes into play, we go to the side of being the victim instead of the victor. And what I mean by that is variables like breathing frequently every day, nutrition frequently every day. And we look at these as hindrances or pitfalls or struggles. We can't push through because of the amount of variables and because of the different factors, you know, like you said that we can't control environment, your job changes, you're a truckee and you need to go to a different place. There's no food. What have I done about this? Have I meal prep? There are a lot of variables, but the hard part is we turn that into a liability instead of an asset. It's easy to train four days a week, isn't it, Ken? Like I said, you can't out train a poor diet. It's easy to do things a couple of times a week. But when you're eating and putting something in your mouth 21 to 28 times a week, when you're breathing 168 hours of the week, but at least consciously, you could be aware of that for 50 hours of the week. If you made yourself, you know, in a methodical process with post it notes and reminders and you had your breathing like. Because there's a lot of variables we turn into liability. It's absolutely an asset. Like, I want you guys to think about this. How much would your life change and improve if you just sourced a higher quality of nutrition, got the frequency right with your protein and your macronutrients, and made sure that you focused on breathing and slowing down everything, including time, including the cycle of how you're staying alive? Huge. Like, I look at that, Ken, I'm like, shit, man, I could have a hundred wins each week, just 100 wins on the board without, without even overly thinking, just getting the fundamentals right. But what do we, what are your thoughts on this? Like, how do we build this into a habit? Should the guys make it a. It's a nighttime thing. I do this breathing exercise. It's a morning thing, It's a lunchtime. I'm going to set an alarm on my phone. Like, I'd love for you to give a couple of. I don't like the word hacks, but give a couple of tactics, so to speak, on how to get the quality nutrition so they're fueling their body properly and how to bring some breath work. Because these are two key points. It's going to evolve. A lot of men who, like you said, Ken, have denied themselves this for decades.

Yeah, the big thing is people already have routine. Like, there's no two ways about it. Like, people have routine with or without children, no matter who they are, they already have a set routine in place. And I get it that where is their most interrupted routine? Is it in the morning or is it in the nighttime. So really, I suppose the best way to answer the question is if we go after the lowest hanging fruit, because that'll have the biggest impact in their life. And so if we can implement breath work and it comes down to you as the individual and depending on your personal situation, if you're not doing it first thing when you wake up because kids are jumping all over you and, and whatever else you're doing, well, then literally you've got to find literally five minutes before you go to work, or you've got to find five minutes within that middle of the day, depending on your situation, or you've got to find five minutes at the end of the day. So if you're driving home and you haven't found five minutes of your time, well, then you will be potentially driving home. You have to pull up somewhere, literally, whether it be a kilometre, 2 km, definitely not 200 meters, because the neighbors will know who you are. But definitely just keep yourself into a situation where you may drive into a parking bay or a parking lot where you literally just turn the car off and you spend, I say, five minutes because by the time you get in there and you literally either set your stopwatch or whatever else you do and you do that four minutes of breathwork, it allows you a little bit of flexibility either side because if no one wants to really watch their clock or anything like that, that just do a little bit extra because then at least then we're covering four minutes of breath work. Now the reason why I'm saying that that you need to pick that, that to find some time in your day is because every time I talk to any of the guys and everyone that's listening in here will know that, shit, they've got children. And if they've got more than one, there's always an early riser or you know, you've got to attend to the, to whichever one that wakes up first. And there's always someone that you're trying to sort out of a nighttime, unless your children are right old age where they're not annoying you. And then you literally have to put aside five minutes before you go to bed if you're not interrupted. And you know what, at the end of the day, in most cases, like I said kind of earlier on here, if I'm doing my breath work, I'm making sure I'm doing it no less than five days a week, absolutely no less than five days a week being one style of breath work, but also I'll implement the other style of breath work. So really it's a difficult situation as far as when, when we talk about body hacks or anything else, it's really no matter what time is going to suit you from your working week, if you have to do it first thing in the morning, if you're not interrupted or the middle of the day, or literally on your way to work, or just obviously on your way home from work or literally before you go to bed at nighttime, I'll tell you right now, if it's the breath work that you're trying to improve on and you want to see the biggest change in life and to sort out your sleep, you really need to do it before you go to bed. There's no better, better time to do that. Four second inhale in through your nose and six seconds out. There is no better time to do it literally before you go to sleep over nighttime. That's the God's honest truth, that is the best time to do it. And then once you do it, then you'll create that habit. And you know what, at the end of the day there's so much information out there, people say, oh, how long does it take to create a habit? From the latest information, anywhere from 17 days to 287 days. So hence why there's no 21 days to create a habit. And that habit, there has to be an emotional attachment. If you want to find that emotional attachment, then you've got to realize how much you want to improve in your health, in your life. And you know what, don't try and tell anyone else about this. You need to sort your own shit out first. Look after number one, that being you. And then once you've created the habit, then start telling your friends about it or tell your wife about it or your partner about it or whoever it is that you need to tell about it. Get that in your daily routine first. And then once you've done it, and I would say once you've been consistent for a week or a month, then start to share that with other people that are willing to kind of be a part of your wellness in your life, in your space.

Yeah, incredible point, mate. The whole habit forming thing, isn't it crazy? Like we could probably create our own thing here, Ken, the three E's, the three E's to form a habit faster. Not that we're here to cut corners by any means, but there's got to be an emotional attachment. Could not agree more. Environment plays a role in influencing you like that. 17 to 287. There's definitely a sweet spot of who's influencing me to make this a true belief system. What emotional attachment do I have to that to make sure it's a desire and something worthy of my time and energy to chase? And what energy am I putting into that? Am I investing energy and getting the frequency and runs on the board through that? But one of the key things from all of this is, and I wrote a note on this is what you said about routines, but actually just on that note, that nighttime breathing one year mate like I do six seconds in. Not that I'm trying to push it or become an experience extremist, But I do six seconds in, 12 seconds out. That just feels really nice for me. And that's three, three and a half breaths a minute. And my score, when I'm tracking my sleep and readiness scores, my readiness score is always. Sleep score is better too, but my readiness score is always 15 to 20% better. I cannot believe how much that little exercise for three to five minutes helps at a nighttime. It's insane.

And just talking about that Al, for some people, that's because we're using an OURA ring here. Okay? So that's one of our metrics that we're using with the OURA Ring. The OURA Ring tracks all sorts of things for us and it's basically the best metrics that we're using in obviously high performance fathers. Everyone, not everyone needs it. But listen, it is an incredible metric as far as the quality of sleep, the latency, how long it takes you to get to sleep, the REM sleep, which should be between literally 2am and 6am of a morning, and then your deep sleep between 10pm and 2am so the Oura ring measures all of these metrics and they're an incredible tool. It's an incredible tool to have because there's nothing better to be able to measure than your sleep because that's when you recover in life. That's one thing that you can't think that you're going to bank. It's. You definitely can't bank sleep and think that, you know what, on the weekend I'm going to do two lots of seven or eight or nine hours sleep because I'm only getting five hours from Monday to Friday. You cannot. Yeah. You cannot bank your sleep no matter what you do. It's the only thing that research has proven that you cannot make time up on. Once you've lost that sleep, there's no kind of coming back from that. So, yeah. So those metrics, that readiness score, depending on the quality of sleep that you're getting out, obviously is going to give you a readiness score on how well your body's recovered, what the quality of that sleep you've had, Whether it be 4, 6, 8, or 10 hours, whatever it is, or whether it be 3 hours, it's giving you the metrics, as in your heart rate variability. It's giving your core temperature, whether your heart rate is moving, there's too much fluctuation overnight. And so that if your body, if you haven't slept that well, then your body hasn't recovered that well, so then your performance the next day will definitely or possibly be compromised. And so then you do that again the next day. And so by looking at those metrics, when it looks at your readiness score, well, then it's going to give you a score from 1 to 100, or potentially about 50 to 100. The higher that score, the better the quality of the sleep that you're getting. So what's exciting about this is that if you think you're getting the right sleep, who knows, because you may be tossing and turning all night. And so that in itself, you have no idea on whether you're actually getting good quality sleep or not. So then that's where this metrics, this readiness score comes into play. You could wake up the next morning, think, hey, I feel on top of the world. And yet your readiness score is quite shit. Do that two or three days in a row and it'll bite you in the ass by the third day. It'll get you by the third day, no two ways about it, and you'll think, shit, why am I feeling low on energy? Why am I feeling quite lethargic? You know, all of these things from this metric that we use has a reason behind it, and that's why we use it.

Absolutely. The truth always wins. You'll hear me say that time and time again, man, don't cast off these fucking stories. The past changes. What do you mean? Now? The past is the past. That's right. It fucking changes. On your perspective of things, the story you tell yourself, how you feed yourself certain stories, you are literally recreating history inside of your head in the past, experiences you've had. We've all done it. We all do it. Whether we're lying or telling the truth. We recreate, we glorify, we manipulate, we adjust, we create different settings where maybe it wasn't quite there. And all of a sudden, when I busted my knee playing for the Dragons in. In the first. First grade trial match against the Bulldogs, it fell Apart. And I was like, what was happening there? What was the story? I fed myself. I was healthy, strong, and I ate well and I had massive legs. And why me? But did a 1 RM back swat that week, so my ligaments were maybe fatigued. And just create all these fucking stories. Some are true, some aren't. And you create snippets or take bits like a buffet out of what you carve out to be your history. When I look back then, I was like, man, I was staying up late at night as a kid, I was playing PlayStation, wasn't looking after my body, wasn't doing my mobility work. I needed to add tight hip flexors. My hip was tight, my ankle was tight, which means the knee mechanics are under a huge amount of stress to not only stabilize but mobilize. Of course it's going to snap. So when I look back at the real truth, I was buying shit quality chicken, wasn't getting free range meat just anywhere, wasn't going all butcher. So I look back, I'm like, I wasn't health conscious and I was an elite athlete. So when we track and follow the data and the trends, it's not just the data, it's like my zone. We're tracking the intensity so our dads don't blow out. We don't want them to stay in the red zone. We want some to be blue to green. We want some to be gray to blue on, some to be green to yellow, some to build in the yellow. We can get data and reports on that. It's tracking the right numbers and data and mastering that which is part of the emotional side, because you can create mastery with that emotional attachment on your improvements and how you're moving forward. That's a powerful thing, Cam, like what we're using with the Oura ring. Some of our guys have different things they use to track. No worries. How do we bring that into a weekly rhythm as well? This stuff is critical because you can go and get all the fucking gadgets, but if you don't have someone interpreting it, readjusting, realigning, how are you evolving your health as a man and being a man and what that looks like in the modern world? And that's what really hit me, Ken, as I've got here. You're right, mate. We all have routines, right? Just like habits. When people say, I want to cut a bad habit, okay, what are you going to put in its place? Well, nothing. Doesn't work that way. When you have a bad habit out, you replace it with something else. When you Have a good habit and you remove it because you're not in the right environment or building the right patterns. You replace that with a bad. There's always a routine. You're right, Ken. Whether people are aware of it or not, they are always in routines and different routines. The hard part is a lot of you guys right now. Be like. Like, I don't have time for that stuff or the breath work, or I don't have time to do stretching or mobility, or I don't have time to do meal prep. Because Sunday arvo is crazy. No, I always do it Monday, do it Saturday, do it Thursday, and freeze the food. Like, there's always a way. But here's the key thing. It's not about time. The problem is you don't protect your time. And I'm sure you see this a lot as well, Ken. We become yes men. We don't think we are because we're doing things for the greater good, for the family. But you become a yes man. And that's not about wearing pants in the household. You just become a yes man because you're saying no to yourself. So inadvertently, subconsciously, you're a fucking yes man. Because you keep saying no to yourself. That's what being a yes man means. Not saying yes to everyone. You just keep saying no to you. Which means you have to say yes to someone, right? You're using your time somehow, some way. Shape or form. Don't replace, just reposition. If some of you guys are struggling, one, protect your time. Two, if you try and get up early at 6 o' clock before everyone else wakes up and do a training session, and baby number two or three, or the little one wakes up and you've lost that. No worries. Have your daddy daughter time then, and reposition. When you're going to train, a lot of you guys just replace, oh, that's done. Can't do it anymore. Fuck that off. Don't replace. Reposition. Sometimes the repositioning might be on another day. Okay, it's Thursday. I can't do this. This has happened. You know, my wife needs my help here. Blah, blah, blah. Look, I really wanted to train today. It's been a tough week at work. I really need this outlet for me. I'm gonna. Friday. What are our plans? What can we do? Like, how can we.

How can we block?

Look, I've got a whiteboard. I'm not a sergeant. I'm not a drill sergeant. I get Corinne to fill it in. I get the kids to fill it in. I fill it in. We've got different color textas and we've got a different color texter for our family time. We've got a different color texter for honey and handsome time. It's fucking there, man. So I don't have to think on things I shouldn't have to think about, which means I can be more creative on things I could be more creative about. Honey and handsome time. What am I going to do with the kids? When can I train? Okay, shit's hit the fan here. I can't do this. Like tomorrow I've got a dentist appointment for myself and two of the kids. I'm like, oh, shit. I was going to do a training session Wednesday arvo. Okay, what can I do? Reposition. Because you've got a pretty crazy lifestyle, Ken. As do I. But at the same time, it's almost like a yin yang of complete serenity because we're controlling when we want to invest ourselves into the craziness and chaos and we still have the control and still to go, no, I can't. I got four missed calls today already and several messages and a few people contacted me. No, I'm doing a podcast with Ken. This is my priority for the day. This is my most important thing, as well as an exciting announcement that I'm going to create an event. But I'll post that. I'll post that shortly. I'll post that soon inside the group. But this is it. Instead of juggling all these different things, Ken, what are our priorities in family? Self and service are the most important thing. And then how do we make it a habit? You make it a priority. You make the time, you protect that time. And if you have to reposition, do it. Don't replace it, but reposition it. Because what Ken shared with you guys as we start to wrap this up is that breath work has been life changing for me. This is a man who represented Italy in five test matches with rugby league and played. Sorry, and did professional crossfit. That's where I met Ken in 2013. And I wish I adopted to work with you more closely then, mate. But this is life. And I see myself as more of an athlete than I was back then because of the awareness, the knowledge and implementing what the important things are like sleep, like breath, work, things you can't get back, things you need as leverage. Because when I'm getting better sleep and tracking my body and doing my breathing, I can turn up for my wife better. I can handle the chaos of the children better. I can create better decision making processes when I need to be fast and think on my feet, I have the ability and perspective to slow down and stop time so we can all think together. And that's a powerful asset, I guess. As we wrap this up, Ken, moving into that final piece. When a man collectively brings this to the table in his marriage, relationships, relationships to his children, with his work, his business, who he's bringing to the table is more important than a piece of paper or a document or a title or a hat. It's who he's bringing to the table. What do you see as the benefits, Ken, when it comes to marriage, relationships and everything else in between? When we've got a man who's stable enough to take time out for himself, reposition, not replace, when he's got important habits he needs to maintain, get his breathwork in and eating well and moving.

The big thing is that I find when I'm dealing with people on a daily basis, is that just them being really honest with themselves. Because when I look at different situations, I find that a lot of people are very quick to criticise other people and yet they're not really looking for what's going on in their own four walls, their own house. And they're very, very quick to judge and kind of make comments and recommend things for everyone else, but they really lose sight of what they need to do for themselves. And that's where I find a lot of the drama issues are around people that don't have optimal health or people that don't have a plan for what they're doing for their own wellness. And so this is why I just can't emphasise enough coming back from 2021. Listen, it hasn't been a difficult year for me. I'm sure it's been a difficult year for many people that we are talking to now and that listen in and hence why we offer the services we do. But what I find very difficult for anyone to do is to commit to their own self and well being, to understand that life is always about striving and working hard on, whether it be relationship or exercise or personal wellness, it's really a full time job. And what people need to realise is that because of the introduction of the. I suppose, what would I say, I suppose the luxuries that we have access to in every day life that we live now, you really should appreciate it because life really is a gift. And the only time you'll ever realize that life is a gift is if something severely affects your emotional wellbeing. Like you lose someone, like a loved one, very, very close by to you. And so that's why a lot of us don't put things, we don't categorize things on the important. There's no hierarchy of what we do every day. And so, yeah, we run a business or we go to work and we just go through the motions from the moment we wake up. It's that routine that we're not willing to change. But until that really severe emotional thing has an impact on us personally, immediately within our life, then all of a sudden we think, shit, we need to change, then, well, sometimes that's too late. And so this is why, if you're listening to what you and I have got to say, Al, and you're not willing to make these changes within your life at the level that we believe and from the conversations we have with you, if you don't think that you can implement one, two or three of these things that we're trying to implement on a day to day, week to week, month to month basis, well, then you really need to start to have a look at yourself. And when something happens to you personally, you've got to ask yourself the question, don't fucking blame someone else for your. I don't know, what would you say? Your wrongdoing or your ability not to implement or your ability not to take control? Because we are giving you the best of our ability, the best of our knowledge. When you think about, I've been in the industry for 25, 30 years and this is all I do. This is my passion, this is my legacy to help you and everyone else. This is what it's all about. No doubt. People know that when they talk to me. There's a passion that comes from me and I get goosebumps and my hair sticks up on the back of my neck and everything else. When I listen to great music, there's an attachment, you know, like I'm listening last night to instrumental music, taking away the lyrics because I really wanted to feel attached to that. And how does it make me feel? Like you've got to really ask yourself the question, am I in up to my neck hearing shit? How much change do I need to implement in my life now? And how is it that I can make these changes right now, not tomorrow or not next week? What do I need to do to change what I'm currently doing in my life? And stop kidding yourself and stop looking through these foggy glasses. You really need to be honest and upfront with yourself. If you're sucking down six or eight or 10 alcoholic beverages or 12 or 15 a week. Well, then you've got to ask yourself, are you still thinking straight when you have this? Can I change my nutritional situation now to be able to create a better version of yourself right now? Am I eating well? Am I actually spending time? But you know what? At the end of the day, if you're not eating well, at least then you can implement the breath work. And if you're not exercising, at least you can implement the breath work. And if you're not eating or exercising or doing the best at what you can do each day for yourself, am I implementing the breath work? And then once you implement that, then you need to ask yourself, what's the situation of my family environment? How can I sit down and improve that from now, today, not tomorrow, but what can I do today to change what I'm doing, to create change that's going to affect you personally first and then everyone else around you and you. Then what you need to do is find out how much shit's in your life and how can you start to eliminate that shit one step at a time? And that's really what you need to do. You've got to be honest and upfront, and you need to literally start creating a list of the crap you want to eliminate from your life right now and the things that we're coaching you on to start to implement literally from now. And that's kind of how I would kind of answer or at least go about answering that question. To be able to be honest and upfront with yourself right from the get go. And that's what we started with.

Yeah, I agree, Ken. That's a great way to wrap up the podcast, mate. You're seeking connection with your wife, with your children. The greatest connection you can have with your family, those that you love and care about starts with and can only ever be built off the connection you have with yourself. They're all just hats. I'm the greatest fucking father I can be to my children because the fatherhood hat goes on top of the greatest man I can be for myself. And I did this diagram with our Sunday charge up. Ken, imagine you've got a wine glass. Let's adapt it a little bit more. The wine glass circles of significance is one of our principles. Family, self and service. The one at the top is self. And what that is held up with is family and service. And it's almost like there's little holes in the self wine glass. But you're also pouring time and energy into that so it naturally overflows. Great. Awesome. And it fills into the other two. If you just pour in a family or you just pour in a service, that self cup becomes old, dusty, dry. There's nothing in it. You are fucked. You will break down. You're giving 100% of 30%, 20%, 10% of what you can give. Everyone loses. Don't be a martyr because it's not a happy ending for you as well as you think it'll play out at the time you're taking the focus off one of the greatest things that you can connect to in life which is yourself. And that starts with honesty. There's no such thing as. I'll try Ken. Just fucking do it. Just go and do it. Take care man. Hope you enjoyed this episode. And Ken, great to connect with you again mate. I'm pumped for cozy. I can't wait.

Me too mate.

I can't wait to to get down a couple of days early where you're just going to grill me and now I'm with some some army commander style shit and I'm just going to be cooked for the walk. I'll crawl up now. I'm looking forward to it mate. It's going to be amazing and I hope you guys enjoyed this. We'll definitely look at possibly doing a special episode once we're up there. Maybe you and I can. We'll see how we go. Take care man. Have an amazing day. Night Weekend. Comment below if you're watching the live on this. If you're not and you're listening to this, join our free group. Watch the video and comment Revelations takeaways how you can apply this to your life? How are you going to evolve yourself in 2022 as a man? And make sure you guys stay tuned for a pretty special announcement that we have coming your way. Cheers guys.

Awesome.

And that's a wrap.

I hope you enjoyed this episode and got some golden nuggets with possibly one or two aha moments as well. If you truly loved and enjoyed what you listened to, then I want to invite you to share this episode with someone who you know needs to hear this. It could be your brother, friends, colleagues.

Your uncle, even your wife.

If there's one thing I've learned, it's that none of us are alone in the hardships we face. But the solution to getting back on top winning can start with a gift from someone else. And that gift could be an episode like this. Because another man transformed is another family saved?

Which is exactly what we're all about.

Thriving and winning in life. There is no alternative. It's possible. It has been done. It can be done, so it should be done. I appreciate your support in spreading this message.

Cheers, mate.