Top Strategies for Peak Fitness with Justin Roethlingshoefer

When it comes to heart rate variability, I look at my trend over the last week and then I look at my trend over the last month. Once I see that there's a dip somewhere, I want to ask myself two questions. Did the dip come because of a poor sleep quality? And notice how I said sleep quality, not duration? And then if it did not come because of a poor sleep quality, did it come because of an extreme or hard workout? If the answer to both of those are no, that means that I'm having that drop or that dip because some type of mental, emotional or spiritual stressor that I have to take a deeper look into. Because your body does not know the difference between mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, real or perceived, positive, negative, past, present or future. Stressors has no clue the idea, no clue the difference.

A few months ago, my wife and I got a special invite to go down to Napa Valley and help a bunch of couples at this retreat. It was called the Couples Collective, run by this organization called Own It Now. While I was there, I got a chance to meet a beast of a man, my guest on today's show, whose name I have difficulty still pronouncing. Not his first name, which is Justin, his last name, which is Rothling Schoffer. Did I get that?

Justin nailed it.

Chauffer nailed it. All right. So anyways, Justin and I hit it off. We both have a background in strength conditioning. Justin's is actually far more impressive than mine. He's worked with Stanley cup champions, the NHL, super bowl champions, Olympians, tons of different Entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies. And, man, we wound up working out together and hanging out and chatting about all things physical and mental and spiritual. And a couple months later, Justin published a book that I just finished reading, the Power of Ownership. And so we've got a lot to talk about because his book was absolutely fantastic. And, Justin, I want to talk with you about the book, but also.

I wanted to fill you in on something that I started doing this morning. I'll let you guess if you want to. It has to do with the physical part of ownership.

I have no idea.

It's something you told me about and kind of sort of challenged me to, and I decided to sign up for a Spartan decafit.

Love that.

With my sons in Austin, Texas, in June. For people who don't know what the deka fit is, you've done the race. So you explain to people.

So the decafit has been so. Yancey Culp was the one that started it, and what he really wanted to do was make everybody available to have a start line. So think, when you think about marathons, triathlons, even the traditional spartan races, extremely grueling and a lot of times people don't even want to step in. And so what a decafit is, is it's 10 different strength or power based exercises. And in between each strength or power based exercise, you run a half a mile or pardon me, you run 500 meters. And so it's this unique combination of strength, power and aerobic fitness. Kind of what they call now your hybrid athlete. And anybody can do it. And so the coolest part about this is you've got these elite hybrid runners who are going to go and be in like your elite heats. And then you've got people who are stepping up to their very first start line who are looking at just losing some weight. You've got some people who are 2, 3, 400 pounds that are lining up to these start lines and going through and finishing something for the first time in their life. And it's just amazing to see the breakthrough that happens in these events. But 10 events, 500 meters in between and it's a red line push.

Yeah, it's like 20 events really. Each one even just in prepping for it and training and getting my rowing machine set up. And this morning I was banging out the. I think I did the 25 calories on the air bike, the burpee with the overhead press with the heavy. I use a sandbag and I did the 500 meter ski erg. And we're doing the June 8th event in Austin. So if anybody wants to join, I'll link to all this stuff if you go to the show notes@bengreenfieldlife.com Ownit O W N I T Justin's company. But Justin, haven't you done pretty well in these events?

Yeah, so it's pretty cool.

Humble brag, Chance man. Humble brag.

They've got three different opportunities. So you've got what they call the Deka Fit. They've got the Deka Mile and then they've got the Deka Strong. And so the Deka Fit has 500 meter runs in between. The Deca Mile has 200 meters between. So it's a total of one mile that you're running. And then the depka strong is just those 10 events. And so.

Last year I actually qualified for the world championships in two of the three in the elite heats and competed with the fittest in the world, which has been pretty cool. And I just love going out and pushing my body to see what it's actually capable of. Because Ben, as you were talking about, you go and you start doing your 500 meter row and then you transition to your 500 meter ski erg and then you transition to your box jump overs and then you transition to your weighted sit ups and then you're walking lunges and your burpees to overhead presses. It's like with that run in between, it just starts to really redline you and it's who can push through, who can get through the longest, and who's able to maintain that heart rate composure as long as possible.

Yeah. When I raced Spartan, which I did for about four years pretty seriously for the Reebok Spartan team, the main thing that I found that was most beneficial to focus on for these events is transitioning from running with good efficiency after gassing yourself out on an obstacle like the monkey bars or the sandbag carry or what have you. So I think the biggest, biggest thing about Spartan is you got to do something hard and then run, then do something hard again, then run. And so the style of training, it's actually, you got to come visit my house sometime because I've got an obstacle course built through the forest from back when I used to do Spartan racing. But as a part of that obstacle course, there's about a 500 meter trail that loops around my entire property. So it's perfect. My sons and I have everything set up in the garage. And so now we can do an exercise run the loop. Do an exercise run the loop. And I'm experiencing the same amount of lactic acid as I did back in the good old days. So. Hey, I gotta ask you though, what's your top time for the Deka fit? The one where you're running 500 meters in between each one?

Yeah, Deka Fit best for me is 30, 59.

Oh my gosh, that's smoking. Okay.

I set a goal for myself to do it in under 40 minutes. Now that I have to beat you, I'm at the carve. Gosh, nine minutes off of that. Jeez. Are you going to compete in Austin?

I will. Yeah. I'll be right there beside you.

Oh, my gosh. Okay. That'll be fun. We'll, we'll go out for barbecue. I'm going to bring you out for brisket the night before, the night before, as much all the leftovers the next morning. Yeah, yeah. All right, all right. I'm going to sabotage you. So how'd you get into the realm of human performance? Yeah.

So to be Honest with you, Ben. Growing up in Canada.

Hockey was the rite of passage. And so I was a hockey player, wanted to play in the NHL. That was my dream. And I just happened to be blessed with a little bit of talent and was playing at 12 years old with 14 and 15 year olds. And my dad said to me after in particular tough two week stretch, I wasn't playing well. And he said, son, talent will get you noticed, but consistency will get you paid. And that just, that one liner that he said just hit me so deeply because I was like, how can I become the most consistent version of myself? What does this look like? How do I operate differently than how I am right now? And I started to just get obsessed with the habits in which I could understand and the data in which ultimately would lead me down those behaviors. So I started to wear a heart rate monitor to train. I looked at pulse oximeters while I was sleeping. I got on every medical journal I possibly could, and that's what I was reading instead of comic books. And so all of a sudden this is, and you have to remember, this is back in 1999.

I came across this article that talked about heart rate variability. And I was like, heart rate variability, how to optimize recovery in high training times. And I was like, well, this might be something that helps me. And so I just started to obsess about HRV. And so for the last 26 years, heart rate variability has been something that I've studied very deeply and very in depthly. And by understanding the data and by helping to drive decisions, it's brought me down to the States on a hockey scholarship. It basically put my, my whole framework.

Of.

Schooling into place. Went and got my master's degree, went and did my postdoctoral research in heart rate variability and sleep, went, got my massage therapy license, all the things like I wanted to learn about the body. I was just obsessed in this space. And after stepping out of.

The NCAA and into the NHL as health and performance coach, it was that, that moment that I also realized we have all of this information, we have all of this data, but we're not actually using it. We all train the same, we all eat the same, we all recover the same, we all supplement the same. But yet the ownership team, the coaches, they were all wondering why we get sick around the same time or we wouldn't see the results that were any different than any in the league and there was no different trends in injury rates. And the moment that we started to use data to make decisions, to drive decisions, to determine how we Trained to determine how we recovered, to determine what we did day to day, to determine how we supplemented or how each player ate differently. We all of a sudden became the least injured team in the league, the least sick team in the league, and we started to perform better as a result. Well, fast forward about eight years, and after having run the health and performance for the best athletes in the world, I realized myself that I had failed to do that for me. And what I mean by that was I was still fit, I was still running all these races, I was still winning world championships. I was doing all of these things, but I had brain fog. I had fatigue that I had never had before. I wasn't sleeping. And it was. I, deep down, knew innately that something was wrong. I went to all the docs, I went to all the functional medicine specialists, I went to all the naturopaths. They all gave me their big tests that I needed to do. They all gave me their supplement protocol. They all gave me their magic potion that I was supposed to go off of. Everybody told me I was healthy, that they didn't know what was wrong, but I knew deep down that something wasn't right. I'll never forget, I was in Chicago, had just finished a workout, picked up a medicine ball and went to go put it back on a rack. It was at the hotel at the time. And my mind started to spin. The room started to turn and I fell. And the next thing I remember is I was laying face up on a bed.

Oh, wow.

And I said to the person in the room, it was my wife. And I said, I can't continue like this. There's something wrong. I went and I got a colonoscopy and an endoscopy, and they found four polyps, all pre cancerous in my colon. And they found an ulcer the size of a quarter, also precancerous in my stomach. And he said, justin, I'm so sorry. Had we not done this, you would not have seen your 35th birthday. And I was 32. And it was at that moment again that it hit me. And the Lord just spoke so deeply to me. He said, at what point are you going to stop serving the audience that you want to and start serving the audience that I've called you to? And I knew that the problem that we were solving for those NHL athletes was not an athlete problem, but rather a human problem. How do you take ownership of your health? How do you allow data to drive decisions? How do you get more versed on what's going on internally? So that you can ultimately take ownership and feel confident in the actions, the behaviors that you're stepping into to just have great health so you can have longevity. Just like my father told me when I was 12, and I was using that in the direction of athletic performance rather than just health as a whole.

Wow. Did you have an awareness of any type of genetic predisposition to cancer or anything like that?

Nothing. Nothing. And when I look back on it, Ben, even asking my parents.

As having it so young, 32, I said to my parents, I said, do you guys have any of this? Is this hereditary? Is there? When's the last time you guys have gone? I suggest you go. And my parents literally go, oh my gosh, they went right after nothing. And so the docs literally.

Had no idea where they had come from. And when I sat back and I got real honest with myself, and this is how I kind of, I say this often on platforms and even talk about it in my book is you either earn your health or you earn your illness. And for me, if I looked at how I was living over the course of those last eight years, it was high stress, high pressure, not very good sleep. I go out and I drink on a regular basis. I would not. I wasn't. Yes, I would train hard, Yes, I would push my body to the limits, but I wasn't recovering well. I wasn't focused on that because I was so focused on doing it for everybody else, which I think a lot of leaders, a lot of business owners can really relate to, is because you're trying to do something that you're on mission for. And so I want to help you own your health and have this mission without having to give up your health, because we can have it all. It just requires knowing and understanding what really matters and understanding your body in an in depth way.

When you said that the Lord spoke to you, you know, we had an interesting discussion in Napa Valley about the way that you sense or feel or hear that. What's that actually like when you, when you say something like, the Lord spoke to you? Yeah.

So it's a really great question. And.

I hear from him often. When I say often, I should say daily. But it comes from a very deep level of intention of being still and being silent. And I always start the first 30 minutes of my day is sitting in a sauna and I don't listen to music, don't listen to podcasts I don't listen to. I don't even read, don't journal. I literally just open and I say, lord, what do you want me to hear today? And then I become silent. And Erwin McManus says it really well. He goes, so many people interfere and conflict with hearing the voice of God is because they constantly think that it's going to be a Ben, this is the Lord talking to you. But instead, when we get on the frequency of the Lord, he just starts speaking through imagination, through creativity, through epiphanies, through connecting the dots, through our neurological system and having these, these mental breakthroughs. And so every single day as I'm quiet, I get these new ideas, I get these new found understandings, these epiphanies that, quite frankly, wouldn't hit before. And so on this particular day, coming out of the hospital, I'm laying in there after hearing this news, and I was like, what? Like, first off, I was like, why me? Like, why now? Like, I'm so healthy and how I live. And number one, it was to redirect my path and say, hey, you can do better. But number two, it was to take me, I firmly believe, to take me out of the arena in which I was playing, which was the National Hockey League, because if I was actually honest with myself, being there and continuing to stay there was more for my ego than it had to do about me serving other people. And it was. I found my worth in that, in the NHL logo on my chest. I found my identity in that rather than truly serving up to serve people in a bigger way. And so I think that was my wake up call and just the clarity that I had of, hey, it's time to serve the people that you were called to, not just the audience that you want to serve, the one that makes you feel good, the one that gives you this sense of comfort, the sense of meaning, the sense of pride. But put that to the side and what does it look like to actually help serve and make an impact on a much larger scale of people?

Yeah, I think that a lot of people who have a spiritual practice or a morning routine that involves some kind of connection to God wind up doing a lot of talking, a lot of jabbering, a lot of thank you for this. May I please have that help so and so. And don't actually consider the fact that a relationship is a two way street of communication. And carving out that time for the silence is such a neglected part, even for me on many busy weeks of a spiritual practice, because it's easy, I think it's easy to open your mouth and talk to God. It's harder to just sit down, especially in this era where there's so many distractions to actually listen. When you first started doing that practice of sitting for a half hour or when if you've recommended this to other people. I'm just curious what the feedback is. Did it just drive you as like a hard charging high achiever, kind of batshit crazy to just sit there.

So. So that's why I actually double it up with either sitting in my PEMF chair or 90% of the time sitting in the sauna is because I can get something done where I feel like I'm getting put into. Like I'm doing something for my body, doing something else that needs to be done as well. So doubling up with that helped me feel more relaxed while in the moment and allows me to be more present and actually hear because I've got this acronym that I utilize that allows me just to wake up to the sound of his voice, which is slow is smooth, but smooth is fast. Where the concept of slow is stillness, silence, surrender. Gives you the chance to listen so that you have the opportunity to be obedient and gain the wisdom for how to gain his will. And so stillness, silence, surrender, listen, obedience, wisdom for his will. And I just kept coming back to that is slow it down so that you can ultimately speed up. Slow it down for 30 minutes so you can ultimately speed up. And I keep coming back to that. And that's what's just allowed the consistency. And Ben, I'll be honest with you, the moments that I've been still and in that. In that sauna is the greatest moments that I've had in terms of breakthroughs. It's where I had the. It's where Elise and I came up with the idea for the couples Collective. It's where I had the breakthrough for how to actually put own it together in a business plan. It's where I got the download to write the book. The the Power of Ownership. It's my process I went through to write every single chapter. It's the. It's where I go when I have great anxiety to where all of a sudden the anxiety dissipates. It's. It's really unique when we start to sit back and think about it, the ways of the world are upside down and backwards to the ways of spiritual breakthrough that allow us to live life in an elevated space and live life differently than a lot of other people.

Yeah. That concept of a neurological trigger, meaning having something either pleasurable or meaningful that you associate with an activity that you might have friction to otherwise is really powerful. The president of my Company Caleb. He always saves his first morning cup of coffee for when he's going to read the Bible and do his devotions. And so he kind of savors that moment just a little bit more. When I wake up in the morning, I have the Bible in a Year app. That's the one that I use for my morning devotions. It's always a better experience, deeper, meaningful and longer. When I haul my tired ass out of bed and go all the way down to the basement and sit in my PEMF chair with the biocharger on because it sounds kind of selfish in a way. I don't think God minds if you're doing something for your body. Some people like to go on a walk, some people save it for their morning commute or their drive to work. But I'll stay with that morning practice for 25, 30 minutes. Whereas if I do it when I'm lying up in bed, it's 10 to 15 minutes. So I mean, it is a really good tip to associate something that you kind of might be doing anyways to make your body better with something that makes your spirit better. Particularly if it involves patience and sitting in the still, small silence.

You know, totally. There's. There's two concepts that we talk about often in creating longevity within a habit. Number one is to decrease limbic friction. So limbic friction is the. The difficulties or think about hard things that you have to overcome in order to make something happen. So I'll give a perfect example. If you're going to get into a cold plunge, what's the most likely way that you're going to do it? Number one, if you have to run the bathroom, get the ice, put the ice in, wait for the temperature to get down and then get in. Or if you have something that's just already pre chilled to the level in which you need obviously the second one, and so same thing with doing something like this in a spiritual practice is if there's a positive reward, something that is easy to do, something that is exciting, something you look forward to, the limbic friction of overcoming the fear or the boredom of being still in silence and is going to help you get into it much faster. And then the second thing you need to do is overcome context dependency. Meaning so many of us in order to do something, are reliant on a person, a place or a thing. But if we can ultimately eliminate the need of a person, place or thing, and we're just able to do it wherever we are and we have access to that, that's what allows us to step in really powerfully again. And so for me, within this construct of being silent, tying it to a PEMF mat, tying it to.

A sauna or a steam room or hot tub or something that is pleasurable, something that I enjoy, is super easy for me to do. And then because I have flexibility and fluidity in that whenever I'm traveling, whenever I'm on the road, whenever I'm just not in my typical setting, I can still find one of those four, five, six, seven things that give me that same feeling of pouring back into my body, but giving me that same time and space for the 30 minutes. Which is why if I look back over the last four years, there might be a handful of days that I've missed in the morning circumstantially, but it's, it's not. But, but it's been able to really be something that I've created a new habit, a new instinct with and been able to take ownership of.

You were in my mind because I was going to ask you what you do when you travel and it sounds like you don't necessarily limit yourself to the sauna. You have kind of like a menu of activities that you can pair up with that morning silence that you can generally hunt down even when you're traveling.

That's exactly it. So I've got some non negotiables. So my team knows that when I travel, my hotel has to either have a sauna, a hot tub.

A gym and within a mile walk to a grocery store, has to have all three of, or pardon me, all four of these. Reason being is because I want to maintain my nutritional access while I'm on the road. So I want to be able to have easy access to a grocery store. I can do a mile walk there and back, super easy. Number two, a gym so that I can have access to my, my daily workouts that don't take an impact while I travel because I travel often. And then either a hot tub or a sauna, one of the two, so that I can again get my morning quiet time in. And so if I'm able to hit those three things wherever I am, that becomes really, really simple and really easy. I travel with a small roll up red light and PEMF mat. So that makes it easy if I just want to roll it out of bed and lay down on it, that's super easy to get that done as well. But again, giving yourself options and choice is what allows for a higher level of success as well. You're not rigid and reliant on a person, place or thing, but making sure that again that you have ownership of that. And the coolest part about this now tracking heart rate variability is on days that.

I am consistent with this, and consistent meaning getting my quiet time in and getting into a sauna, preferably my HRV is 10% higher than when I don't do it in the sauna, a PEMF mat, it's about 5% higher. And if I just simply am quiet and in a state of quiet, it's about 2% higher. So again I'm able to track exactly what benefits my body gets me into those greater parasympathetic states, regulates out my nervous system a little bit better and prepares me for the day so I have capacity to serve people better. That's ultimately where where I love to love to lean in.

Well, you're a decafit world champion, so I feel like you should probably up the grocery store to about two miles instead of one. But besides that, that's actually pretty good tips for travel and some of the criteria for a hotel. I really like that I might have to adapt that with my executive assistant. So the HRV is interesting.

I've talked about it many times in podcasts and articles before. This idea of paying attention to not necessarily just your heart rate, but the delta between your heartbeats, that individual beat to beat variation that when high, can correlate to good nervous system management and overall recovery and even be a very good predictor of onset of injury and illness. I mean, even during COVID they were able to find the drops in HRV correlated to viral infection in athletes and executives, including myself. If you push through a low hrv, unless you're intentionally doing so to somehow dig yourself into a hole and then from a sports periodization standpoint, kind of super compensate and during recovery achieve levels of fitness higher than you would have been able to achieve if you hadn't dug yourself into a little bit of a low HRV hole. You generally want to really pay attention to that number and if it's low, adjust your training plan accordingly. I do that with all the clients who I work with. I think you do also. You pay attention to the HRV and kind of tweak the training plan accordingly depending on what you see. But for you yourself, Justin, what are you looking at? Like when you get up in the morning or when you're analyzing your data at the end of the week, what nitty gritty kind of parameters of HRV are you paying the most attention to?

Yeah, it's a really good question. So when it comes to heart rate variability, I look at my trend over the last week, and then I look at my trend over the last month. Those are the two things that I always want to identify with. And.

People are like, okay, well, yeah, obviously. But once I see that there's a dip somewhere, I want to, I want to ask myself two questions. Did the dip come because of a poor sleep quality? And notice how I said sleep quality, not duration? And then if it did not come because of a poor sleep quality, did it come because of an extreme or hard workout? If the answer to both of those are no, that means that I'm having that drop or that dip because some type of mental, emotional or spiritual stressor that I have to take a deeper look into. Because your body does not know the difference between mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, real or perceived, positive, negative, past, present or future. Stressors has no clue the idea, no clue the difference. And so the response is always the same. Increase in epinephrine, norepinephrine, adrenaline, cortisol. And if we look at kind of the co sequencing of health breakdown, we have chronic stress, which can be indicated by heart rate variability, leads to cellular deficiencies, vitamins, minerals and amino acids, which leads to symptoms.

Symptoms that we often consider normal. Headache, brain fog, inability to sleep, low energy levels, etc. Which lead to chronic illness. And chronic illness being the leading cause of death in the United States right now at 71% is ultimately something that is earned through operating that way. And that was something that I led myself to over the course of that story that I told you over the course of eight years in the NHL and that precancerous diagnosis. And so at that point, that is where I start looking every single day. Where are the stressors that I'm taking on? What does this look like? What is my week been like? How intentional have I been?

And here's the thing. I'm not looking for perfection. There's no such thing as perfection. There's a whole bunch of things that change in my week. There's a whole bunch of things that are less than optimal in my week. I don't live in a bubble. I'm an entrepreneur and somebody who travels and somebody who's got a family and just like you. But the thing here is, as we're leaning into this, there's things that happen in your life, things that happen in your days that you have to be so aware of that your body's having to deal with. And if you're not conscious of this, your body constantly is trying to adapt and it's like a car trying to turn over again and again and again and again. With old oil and low gas levels, it's only a certain point before it dies. And so being aware and what I'm looking at is where I have my drops in hrv. When I see those drops, ask myself two questions. Is it because of a low sleep quality? If it is great, focus more on getting a higher quality sleep. Is it because of a extreme or heavier than normal workout? If so, great. Let's make sure we focus a little bit on recovery and hydration and nutrition. If it's not, it's because of some type of mental, emotional or spiritual stressor. Did I have a big fight with Elise? Is there something going on in the business? Am I worried about something that I have to take back to God? What does this look like so that I can ultimately release that? Because the mental, emotional and spiritual stressors are sometimes are quite often subconscious and we are not fully at the forefront of our mind. And we have to develop a system in order to understand what those are so that we can ultimately get them off of our plate.

Yeah, I really like that analysis system. It's simple. It doesn't necessarily involve digging deep into like, you know, the sympathetic versus parasympathetic analysis. Some of these wearables, they'll go really deep as far as the information that they tell you, but it gets sometimes difficult to quantify consistently and with simplicity versus just doing what I think is the most important thing which you've just outlined is paying attention to patterns. Now, are you using a specific system or wearable with yourself and your clients for hrv?

Yeah, another really great question. So we're wearable agnostic, to be honest with you. We'll use any wearable device. Whoop and Aura are by far the two most accurate and then the easiest to go off of because they do a passive poll, which is really nice. And then I would even say I like Whoop the best simply because it gets that nighttime sleeping pull. So you can compare it during that last sleep cycle, which allows you again to make sure that there's no other type of stressor that could interfere or change an average reading or anything like that. What I will say about the wearable devices though, and the issue that comes up is that they give you all the algorithms, the sleep score, the readiness score, the recovery score, the regeneration score, the strain score. And I, and I tell all of our clients, I tell all the people on podcasts, I Talk about in my book, throw the algorithms out, get rid of them, because they simply aim to continue to confuse the consumer, the end user. Because what, like, Ben, what scientifically is a regeneration score? What scientifically is a recovery score? I have no idea. Neither do you. But if we can understand the concept of. Of what HRV means, we know that HRV is the language of our body that is communicating to us how we're adapting to stress and strain. The body doesn't know the difference. Mental, physical, spiritual, emotional strain. And so if we see it drop, by definition, we know, hey, there's something going on. How can I look into this more? How can I ask a better question about what my body's going through so it can empower me, equip me, and educate me on this vessel that I'm living in, to take greater ownership of the habits, the behaviors, and the lifestyle I'm living, to continue to push me forward with greater capacity? That's the question I always want to know.

Yeah, so I think the value of the algorithm, if you're looking like a strain score or a stress index or something like that, that goes beyond just whether or not your HRV is high or low, is it's pulling in sleep, body temperature, the previous day's exercise performance, heart rate, sometimes pulse oximetry. So are you saying that you don't even like that idea of just like, clumping all of that together to give somebody a basic score based on more than just hrv?

Yes, exactly. Because.

Think about this. I've seen it thousands of times now where somebody goes, I've got a red recovery score, but I feel great. I slept really well last night, and it's just because I had a really hard workout that was abnormally high. And so in their mind, immediately they're like, oh, well, today I'm not going to perform well, or today I should not work out, or today. Which actually doesn't mean any of those things. If you even look at the case of where HRV is or where their capacity actually is long term? And so this is why I love looking at the HRV trend more specifically and looking at the baseline numbers. And when you understand hrv, you realize that this literally becomes the. The best, most holistic metric to understand health in a holistic way as to how your body's handling stress. Because I've seen it so many times, Ben, and I encourage people out there, go, and I'll give you three scenarios. Go and train normally, and then go change your training status. So when I was training for The Miami Marathon, that happened back in November.

I had never really run long distance in about four or five years. And all of a sudden I did my first 13.8 mile training run in a long time. And the next day I had a recovery score of I think 12%. But my HRV stayed high. My HRV stayed in a really positive, in a really positive space, meaning that the next day, again, I did a normal training run. I encouraged somebody else to go and change up your alcohol consumption where maybe you have, maybe you aren't a drinker. I don't drink. And so if all of a sudden I had one or two glasses of wine on any given night, I would wake up the next day, my recovery score would be tanked. But even though my HRV level may drop slightly, it may not drop as heavy as what your recovery score indic. And then the second thing, or the third thing, pardon me, is go have a day where you're just mentally exhausted, meeting back to back to back to back to back, making heavy, heavy, heavy decisions all day long. And maybe you get in a couple heated discussions or heavy arguments throughout the day. The next day your HRV score will likely be plummeted. But your recovery score may not actually indicate that very much because it has a difficulty of picking that up because you slept well and these other things. But the next day you wake up and you feel like you are hungover and you've just been hit by a truck. Heart rate variability is the best, most holistic number that we can, that our body uses. And it's extremely sensitive, which is really what I love about it, because it's become such a powerful number to look at how our body's handling the stress and strain we're exposing it to. And it can give us so much valuable wisdom. Not just information, but wisdom to understand our bodies better, to make more educated and empowered decisions.

So you're just basically reducing noise and introducing clarity by cutting straight to the HRV data 100%.

And I think so often what happens is people that really don't understand the data, what do they do? They want to put more in there. They want to, to put more information in there. Because if you can't explain it, just confuse somebody. And at that point it's like, oh, well, I guess, I guess we have to take that knowledge. I guess we have to take that understanding, that wisdom side. And so, because HRV is so all encompassing and so indicative, if we can simplify it to a single number, not an algorithm, but a single number, and then understand what that number means to you versus what it means to me versus what it means to my wife versus what it means to your wife. Very different. And so that, again, increases the individuality, increases the personalization of it, and then the utilization of that number to make decisions on what habits or what lifestyle actions or what behaviors we put into place the next day. And it starts to create some real powerful behavior change. Because I'll give you another. I'll give you another perfect example. We've had thousands of clients come through and they come through, and we're talking about health behaviors, right? Everybody talks about how, oh, you need to exercise more, you need to focus more on portion sizes, you need to focus a little bit more on getting quality sleep. You need to make sure you're hydrated. None of that's sexy. None of that's like, oh, I want to sign up for that. That's what I want to do. I want to create that change.

But then all of a sudden, when you're able to equate a single number to something, it changes somebody's perspective immediately. This individual loved cigars, loved his wine. He's like, justin, I run three marathons a year. I'm healthy, I feel good. I run three marathons a year. I'm running, but I love my cigars and I love my red wine. And it's not impacting me negatively because my marathon times keep getting better. I said, well, what if we just put some data to it? What if we got rid of the emotion, what if we got rid of the opinions, what if we got rid of the feelings and we just went with data. Let's see what the data tells us. Well, this individual stayed on the same training regimen that he was operating with. And I said, I want you to do your. You do it your way for a month, and then we're going to do it my way for a month and we're going to see the difference. He goes, okay.

He did it his way. HRV average around 55.

Sleep quality score. When we think about sleep quality, REM and slow wave sleep are the quality sleep stages out of the four slow wave, REM sleep, light and wake cycles in our sleep quality. To talk about sleep quality, we want about 40 to 50% in REM and slow wave. That determines sleep quality versus quantity. His sleep quality was around 32%. And, and subjectively, he said he felt like a seven.

Seven and a half doing his runs. I said, okay, great, sounds good. Now we're going to do it my way. No red wine, no Cigars. Well, in that month, his HRV went from that average of around 55 to an average of almost 80.

His sleep quality went from that 32% to just shy of 45. And that seven and a half that he was talking about before he goes, bro, that seven and a half was not seven and a half. That was like a three and a half. Because right now I feel like a real seven and a half or eight. And so having a single metric to go off of and understand, man, I can do more, increases my capacity. And I see quantifiably in a single number, a single metric, as to the impact overnight of what happens when I have it versus when I don't. It opened up his eyes in a big, big way. And so that's the power that having data to make decisions can actually empower you in a bigger, bigger way.

Have you ever experimented with any of these vagal nerve stimulators that use typically an electrical signal or red light to tone the vagus nerve?

So I have.

And I don't know, it's inconclusive. I don't necessarily have an opinion one way or the other because when I was utilizing it, I've got so many, I would say, routines and behaviors set up like my sauna in the morning, my PEMF mat, my red light, um, my eight, sleep on my bed to control temperature, these types of things throughout the day. So I didn't notice a massive impact of the vagal nerve stimulator because, because I had so many behaviors that ultimately are constantly trying to regulate out nervous system throughout the day. And, and I'm, I'm conscious and aware of it. The other thing that I, that I, that I think about in that is it almost feels like a hack to me. And what I mean by a hack is.

Let'S. It's like we're trying to video game our bodies. And I don't like the concept of trying to video game our bodies is I'm just trying to get a better score. No, you're not just trying to get a better score. You're trying to live better. How do I help you live better so that you have a greater capacity to have the impact and do the things that you're wanting to do. And so if it was just about getting a better score, I'd be like, hey, you know what? Go get all your peptide therapy. Go get all your vagal nerve stimulators and all the toys and gadgets to do the things that give you the quick fixes rather than what's actually going to create longevity and actually help us by creating sustainable and long term habits that A decrease cellular dysfunction, B increase sleep quality, C increase HRV status, d increase vo2max, e regulate blood glucose. Like what does that actually look like long term? So that we're living better and we're optimizing the way we shift. And I bring up those five things specifically because there was a study done by Harvard about four years ago that looked at how do you change the trajectory of somebody's lifestyle? How do you optimize for longevity? And they looked at those five areas and those were kind of the five areas that came to conclusion if you put it into practical application was number one, people who live longer have higher average sleep quality. Number two, have a higher average HRV. Number three, have an HA, have a higher average VO2 max. Number four, have a decreased or minimized number of cellular deficiencies, vitamins, amino acids and minerals and then five, have a regulated blood glucose level.

Oh, interesting. I'm kind of surprised grip strength wasn't on there by the way.

I mean, I'm sure it was or it could be pulled into that number if we wanted to talk about.

Strength in numbers. But they were going off of more of like data that can be tested from a inner biological number.

Right. And by the way, what was the name of that study again?

It was a Harvard study looking at.

The biggest effects of longevity.

And lifespan.

If you find it, email it over to me, I'll put it in the show notes. I'd love to check it out for myself.

It was really, really powerful.

Yeah, I think the idea of the hacks makes sense. I think similar to chanting, humming, singing, gargling, meditation, breath work, yoga and even cold plunges, if the net effect of a vagal nerve stimulator is not just to increase HRV, but the impact on vagal tone has systemic benefits that allow for improved recovery or better sleep or even just lower perceived stress. I think there's something to be said for it. But yeah, I think if you're just hacking the HRV number without paying attention to the spillover effects into what you're actually looking for, then it could just become a distraction. So I think it kind of depends.

On the outcome totally. And I always ask myself this question whenever I'm leaning into something. The question's always, why? Why are we doing something? What's the reason? What's the deeper outcome? What's the goal that we're trying to get to? And if you look at the way the world positions everything, everything Looks like a physical adjustment, meaning it's a habit, an action, a behavior. If you want to decrease anxiety, meditate more. If you want to increase VO2 max, run more. If you aren't sleeping very well, take ABC supplement or institute ABC night routine. If you want to lose weight, eat less. Focus on macros, focus on portion sizes. It always is a physical thing. But what creates sustainability, and I talk about there, when we talk about the definition of performance, it's the capacity and desire to intentionally and consistently behave at a level equal in and according to your potential. It's not a desire issue in all of us to see these things change. It's a capacity issue. And making sure that we have intentional and consistent behaviors is ultimately what matters. And so even though we see the outcome or the thing that we have to do as a physical entity, if we only focus on the physical entity, what it starts to do is it starts to eat away at our emotional whole, basically meaning it makes us fearful. There's a lot of people out there that are fearful about stepping into a certain pattern. They're fearful about stepping into being quiet with themselves. They're fearful of stepping up to a start line. They're fearful about not being consistent enough. That fear leads to these thoughts and beliefs of I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, I'll never make it, I can't do something like this. I'm. I wasn't made for this. I'm not far enough along. Which only further separates you from your spiritual calling or what it is that you were ultimately created to do. Now if we flip it on its head and we say, hey, what is my identity in what I've been called to do? Meaning, what is God's view of me? When we get super clear on that, that ultimately renews our mind, going, no, I am exactly where I need to be. I'm doing exactly what I need to do. I am just in the place in which I'm supposed to be at, which then takes the fear and turns it into faithfulness, which takes.

The confusion and turns it into conviction, takes the anxiety and turns it into a sense of confidence. And it's only at that point that we can figure out, hey, what is the physical behavior that I need to step into to alleviate the issue in which I needed, in which I was struggling with, that's aligned with where it is that I'm trying to go. And that's what creates consistency, that's what creates sustainability, and that's what allows you to be doing something long term to actually get the compound results that we're looking for. Otherwise, you're just going to be going from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing, because it's actually not aligned with where it is that we're trying to go.

Yeah, that makes sense. I know that you delve a little bit more deeply into that idea in this book, the Power of Ownership, but I'm kind of curious. When you sent it to me and I was flipping through it, surely you're aware of Jocko Willink's book Extreme Ownership. How does your concept of ownership differ from that? Or is it the same?

No, very good question. And I love Jocko. I love what they're doing. I love the mission that they're on in the sense of leadership. The one thing that I talk about that often comes out in a lot of people who have wounds and have seen things, a lot of times in the military sense is people who are trying to lead, and there's still wounds inside that haven't been fully dove into unintentionally. Those people still often bleed all over everybody that they're trying to lead. And so when I think about what ownership means, ownership to me is the intersection point between responsibility and accountability, basically meaning, hey, I want to be responsible for my health. I want to be responsible for how I'm showing up, and I want to be held accountable for it by putting these systems into place. So often we think about ownership as this.

Extremism. You have to do this. If you don't do this, you're not a man. If you don't do this, you're not a woman. If you don't do this, you're not worth it. But it has nothing to do with being worth it. Just being alive means that you're worth it. And I think this concept of, I'll take care of you if you take care of me needs to be canceled and taken out of play instead, I'm going to take care of me for you if you take care of you for me. And when we think about that flip of intersecting accountability and responsibility for your health, it makes ownership sexy. It makes ownership something that you desire, not something to be fearful of, not something to walk away from, not something to go, oh, I can't live up to that. Oh, that seems like some level of toxic masculinity or some level of extremism that I just can't get on board with. No, ownership is what is required to be different. It's what's required to be set apart. It's what's required to ultimately get to where you want to go. We all have great things that we're called for, but we simply don't have the capacity to handle what is required in order to get there. And when we step into that level of ownership, when we do things that leave us uncomfortable, when we do things with people that ultimately help rise us up, change our perspectives, change our thought processes, start allowing our habits and behaviors to become aligned with where we want to go, it requires ownership and it's something that's approachable. It's something that's for everybody. It's something that gives you a new sense of.

A new sense of acceptance in that space, knowing that this was made exactly for you.

So coming full circle to that, let's say something like a deka fit. Maybe someone was listening to our introduction. Like I want to do one of those. What would be an example of using that style of ownership to tackle a race like that or commit to a race like that?

Yeah. So in that level it would be okay. I'm going to sign up for something like this. I'm going to step out of my comfort zone and I'm going to step up to that finish line or step up to that start line. Having gone through a state of preparation, I'm going to get a group of people together and I'm going to start doing a one mile run every single morning. Somebody that maybe isn't and I'm going off, somebody who's never done something like this, I'm going to start getting a couple people together. We're going to do a one mile run every single morning. Hey, I've signed up for the race. There's my accountability metric. Number two, I've taken the responsibility to put a group together that's going to again in turn hold me even further accountable to what I'm doing. And number three, I'm going to put a plan in place in order to get there on June 8th in Austin, Texas so that I can step up to that start line. And no matter where I finish, whether I finish first or whether I finish last, I'm crossing that finish line knowing that I am better for crossing it than having not done it.

So what would a sample workout look like for you for training for something like Deco or a sample week of training?

Yeah, so that's again really great question. So four days a week I strength train and strength training consists of a four day split, upper lower, both days. So think about it in terms of full body. But the way I do it, upper Lower Monday, Tuesday is a push on the first day, a pull on the second day and then the same is repeated on days three and four to conclude both Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, those strength days. I then go into heavy anaerobic work on usually the Airdyne bike which obviously we have to do the 25 Cal burn on the, during the deca fit. And I will do usually about five rounds of 25 cals to finish each day. So pushing over and above where you, you typically are.

Yeah, I'm assuming some kind of recovery in between each of those, right?

Correct. Yeah. So I'll do 25 Cal. I'll take about a minute and a half off back in 25cal and I'll do it five times. The thing, the reason I choose that is because that is my least favorite but also the thing that I theoretically struggle with the most. If I struggled with a 500 meter row the most and I would utilize that. But right now it's, it's, it's the row and or pardon me, it's the, it's the, the Airdyne bike. And then on Wednesday and Saturday I'm going to the track and focusing all on.

On runs. So I'm doing usually 800 meter repeats, sled push, sled pull with shuttle runs. Really just trying to mimic the same type of heart rate zone that I'm going to be at for the duration of.

The, for the decoration but making sure that I'm not again just doing the race over and over and again because I'm not actually going. Number one is you're going to be more likely to create some type of injury. Number two, I want to become a whole athlete. I want to be agile, I want to be able to move. I want to be able to be um, very holistic in, in how my body operates. I want to be mobile, I want to be fit at whether I'm running.

At a 4m 4 minute mile pace or whether I'm doing a 800 meter sprint repeat where I have to change it up a little bit. So that's kind of how I break my days down and what that, what that week looks like and Sunday and then is solely focused on mobility, work and pliability.

And then for all these other exercises like the burpee with the overhead press or the ski or you know those other movements, are you just sprinkling those into the strength days?

To be honest with you Ben, I don't know if I have ever done during the race. Yeah, I don't know if I've ever done those in a workout, to be honest with you, it's always I will do those movements. So like I will do a.

A barbell squat to press or I will do a.

Reverse lunge to single arm dumbbell press or I'll do. But you're getting some of the same.

Musculoskeletal systems as main exercise.

So something that mimics them but then again making sure. And if you go back to and look at like why I do things that just mimic them is I'm doing, I'm doing it with either more weight or I'm doing it in a greater fatigued state. So that when I get to race day that the race day doesn't feel simple. Because that would be a lie if anytime I get to the start line I always get jitters because I know what I'm about to go into. Yeah, but, but it's something that again allows for some super compensation. So when I get in there, that 50 pound ram that I'm doing a burpee to overhead press with doesn't feel like a 50 pounder, it feels more like 30 because I've built strength in that movement pattern that allows me to be more efficient.

Yeah, and you're coaching also, you're running these retreats, you're training pretty heavily and this is a good book that you just wrote. When are you writing? Where does the writing fit in?

I loved my writing process for this, to be honest with you. So the way that I wrote was every morning I would go out into my sauna and as I said, I would spend the first 30 minutes in quiet. And then what I would do is I would.

Speak everything that just came to me, all the downloads that came in and I would speak it literally right into.

A little words document and record it. Then I would get onto my bike and I would do half an hour of zone two work where I listened to the audio back and then I had a three hour block, first three hour block in my morning from about 7 to 10 where I would just go in and I would write. So I've now had the opportunity to speak it, I've had the opportunity to listen to it back and now I'm going to go write for the first three hours of my day. I would do that five days a week. Did it for about four months and that's how that book ultimately came to fruition.

Leading into the.

The editing process.

That's great. It's like neurological priming leading into an on ramp to a three hour deep work cycle. Consistently what'd you say four days a week?

Five.

Five days a week. And that was until the book was finished. I think a lot of people just step in front of the blank word document and try and figure out what to write. You're pretty intentional in terms of what you're doing leading up to the actual writing process.

Extremely, yeah. And.

That end level of intentionality came obviously with practice and experience. And.

I've said like from day one, I get my greatest downloads and my clearest thought processes during my sauna and quiet time. And so if I wanted to make sure that this book was most impactful, had the densest information, that was easy to read, that was clear, that was fun, that was entertaining, that would actually serve people, I had to make sure that it was done during that time. And the cool part about it was as I finished writing, Ben and I tell this story often. I finished writing, I got to the very end, it was about five days before the editorial deadline was up. And again I got this download from the Lord. He said, that is not the book I asked you to write. And I was like, nah, I'm just going to submit it anyways.

That's just my self sabotage and my self doubt coming. And I said to Elise, I said, I, this is what I heard. She goes, just sit on it. So I sat on it for a night. I woke up next day, still had that same feeling.

Went to bed the following night. I Woke up at 11:45 and I said, I've got to change it. And I sat down at my table, I printed it all out, I had sticky notes all over everything. I had things crossed out, I had certain papers rearranged, I had, it looked like a mad scientist in the kitchen. And.

52 hours later, I had changed some of the stories. I had made it a little bit more playful in nature. I had made it.

The stories, more relatable. Not so much about me and my story, but about you and how does this relate to you and what does this actually look like? And.

It was, it was just that God download. And so people have heard me say God download a lot this whole time. And I just want people to know and understand that I'm no different than anybody else. I'm no special. I'm no more special than anybody else. I don't have a special talent. It's just being willing to exercise it over and over and over and over and over again. And there's some days I go in the sauna and I don't hear much of anything, but when I do it over and over and over and over and over again. When you do it for five straight years, for 30 minutes a morning, you know what that voice sounds like. You know what that prompting sounds like. And so when all of a sudden you get to a key moment in submitting a book to a publisher.

And you need to have it deep and hard and known and loud, that's what happened. It's preparing for those moments, preparing for the game so that when the game time comes, you no longer have to prepare. You've already been preparing.

Yeah. And maybe your next book should be called the Power of persistence, Bob, but this book, the power of redeem your health, live life by design and break the relentless pursuit of normal. It's excellent. Justin, you're an inspiration. I'm going to link to everything you do in the show notes@bengreenfieldlife.com Ownit O W N I T. So if you're listening in, if you have questions, comments, feedback, or you just want to access the resources to get the book, go to BenGreenfieldLife.com OwnIt Justin, this flew by and I'm really looking forward to getting to hang out with my brother again sometime soon, hopefully in Austin, where I kick your butt in the death of it or at least die trying. But in the meantime, thanks so much for doing this, man.

It's so good. Ben, I'm going to have to come spend a couple of days with you out at the ranch and we'll train in preparation for Austin.

Yeah. All right. Gotta be careful what I wish for, but all right. Well, folks, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Justin signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an amazing week. Do you want free access to comprehensive Show Notes, my weekly roundup newsletter, cutting edge research and articles, top recommendations from me for everything that you need to hack your life and a whole lot more. Check out Ben Green greenfield life.com it's all there. BenGreenfieldLife.com See you over there. Most of you who listen don't subscribe like or rate this show. If you're one of those people who do, then huge thank you. But here's why it's important to subscribe like and or rate this show. If you do that, that means we get more eyeballs, we get higher rankings, and the bigger the Ben Greenfield Life show gets, the bigger and better the guests get and the better the content I'm able to deliver to you. So hit subscribe, leave a ranking, leave a review. If you got a little extra time, it means way more than you might think. Thank you so much.