Using Ancient Spartan Training Secrets to Train For Ultramarathons With James Pieratt

My name is Ben Greenfield and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life.

Podcast, the Spartans themselves had a very, very, very strong preference for game meat over cultivated meat, deer and wild born. They also ate a lot of wild hare and birds, you know, small to medium sized game. They also, you may have heard of this, were famous for their Spartan black soup. And this was soup that was made from pig's blood, vinegar and usually just some chunks of pork thrown in there also. The two things that stood out though were the blood soup and then of course, Greek mountain tea. I drink it myself now.

Fitness, nutrition, biohacking, longevity, life optimization, spirituality.

And a whole lot more.

Welcome to the Ben Greenfield Life Show.

Are you ready to hack your life? Let's do this.

Check this out. This book by James Purat. James, is that how you pronounce your last name? Pierat?

You're actually the first person in history to get that right, I believe.

Yeah, it's my long history of studying.

The written language and interviewing lots of.

People with funky last names. James Pierat, folks. If you don't know who he is, you should. So I discovered James I Believe on his Instagram channel. I don't follow that many people on Instagram and by not that many, I suppose probably a touch above 100. But anyways, James has this Instagram channel. It's Wild Hunt Conditioning. Wild Hunt Conditioning. And what attracted me to it is it's got all of these crazy, epic workout routines and physical fitness histories of everybody from US Presidents like Abraham Lincoln and George Washington to the Spartans, the ancient Indians, the Chinese warriors. And as a guy who's a little bit of a fitness junkie myself and who gets inspired by these tales of just crazy workouts and routines and mental and physical rigor, I just thought his Instagram channel was incredible. And then I found out he just wrote a book. It's called A History of Physical Fitness. A History of Physical Fitness. I think you probably should have adjusted the title, James and had it read something like A badass History of Physical Fitness or A History of Masochism. But anyways though, so I'll link to the book if you guys want to check it out and to James's channel at BenGreenfieldLife.com Fitness History. BenGreenfieldLife.com FitnessHistory is where I'll link to everything. But James himself is pretty incredible. He's a wilderness ultra marathon runner and a record breaking hybrid strength and endurance athlete. I'll let him explain to you what a hybrid athlete is. Pretty intense focus on functional fitness and so, yeah, from the secret training halls of ancient Sparta, to the Arctic strength building methods of the Inuit, to the underwater world of these aquatic superhuman tribes in the South Pacific, his book breaks it down. He studies this stuff. It's just fascinating. So I'm super excited. So I gotta ask you though, because a lot of people might not really be familiar with what a hybrid athlete it is. How do you describe that?

Your baseline description of a hybrid athlete in the modern traditional sense would be someone with a pretty reasonable grasp on both strength and endurance. Now this could be someone who just runs and is a bodybuilder and kind of divides time between the two or alternates blocks. But those are their main focuses, generally juggling strength and endurance. My personal focus on it is a little.

Full spectrum. Like, when I think of.

What I strive for in my personal training goals would be like, what's the perfect guy you'd want with you in a war band like 5000 years ago or a hunting party? Strength, endurance, technicality, cognitive development. A complete human being beyond that.

So it's like, preferably, can cook a backstrap okay. Also.

Oh, yeah, Preferably clutch skill. Um, so, yeah, for me, you know, it's my, my personal training. You know, maybe not to the extent that you have. As far as. As I've seen, you've done pretty much everything under the sun in terms of training. But I, I've dabbled. You know, my, My own training breakdown kind of has different elements of powerlifting, kettlebells, obviously, trail running. I don't do much street running just because it doesn't really appeal to me. And. And then for a long time it was. I didn't really have access to trails, so I got kind of burnt out on just running on flat cement in a smoggy city, you know.

But. And then, you know, martial arts, jiu jitsu, boxing, pretty much a little bit of everything, honestly. And then I like bow hunting. I actually cut. My dad's an Appalachian bear hunter. Yeah, so that's where I, my background would be. I'm, you know, son of a bear hunter. And then my mom's Japanese and she's descended from the Minamoto, which is like one of the early samurai families. So it's kind of where a lot of my interest in history comes from.

Yeah, that's a pretty good genetic makeup with the hybrid athlete approach. I think in the past I've seen some folks who probably fit in that category classify their proficiency at hybrid training by defining their deadlift strength and their mile time or their marathon Time. Do you track anything like that? Like how much can you deadlift and how fast can you run a marathon?

So the I remember a while back hearing there was that, I believe it was like a CrossFit thing that. Can you deadlift 500 and run like a sub 5 minute mile? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, I never intentionally leaned into any of that but I did like early on my first actual, my very first hybrid test was I, I just wanted to be able to deadlift over 500 and then go straight into a 50 mile run and it just finished. Nothing crazy like time wise or anything. And this was still pretty early. Like I'd been doing hybrid training like for maybe eight months or so when I attempted this and I ended up pulling £520 at Mark Smelly Bell's gym in Sacramento. Spotted by Andre. Oh yeah, spotted by Andre Milanship. Oh yeah, it's a great gym. Spotted by Andre Malantia of no less, you know, like one of the greatest powerlifters of all time. Guy that pulls over a thousand and then went out to Folsom Lake and the American River Trail kind of along there and ran a 50 miler and that was pretty interesting actually. Honestly, everything went pretty entirely smoothly up to like mile 38 but I was still a pretty new ultra runner and I just spent a little too much time in the chair and my legs just never came back. So the last 12 miles of the 50 mile run took the exact, almost the exact same time as the first.38. Yeah, dude, just dragging like limping, you know what I mean? But got it done and had had a blast and you know, so I never really looked back. And then the, I think next after that, one or two after that was the world record thing, the weighted running world record, which was a complete accident. I was like, I didn't set out to break a world record. I just wanted to see like, I was really experimenting with like completely unsupported non stop running. So it's like if I have everything on my back and like in theory I shouldn't have to stop moving like indefinitely. Right. So how long could I go for? And so the pack on my back ended up being about 35 pounds because you need you know, a lot more water and food and stuff, you know, plus a little emergency kit stuff in case, you know, in case something.

Watermelons, sweet potatoes.

Yeah, all the stuff, you know. Yeah, well you do, you do try to get the stuff, you know that gets you hydrated and calories in the same, you know, for the same Weight, you know, but. And then I went for. So ended up going for over 33 hours without stopping once, without breaking locomotion a single time or even stride. And in doing so broke the weighted running world record which had been like the guy had run 69 miles was like a 30 pound weighted vest in Australia like a year or two before this. And it's pretty niche record. So it wasn't, you know, I'm sure it'll be broken many, many more times in the years to come.

Is that how much weight you have to use? 30 pounds.

His what? His record was just like the specific record he set was 30 pounds for 69 miles. And then I went 35 for and ended up being like 116 miles, I think like that. So I broke it pretty considerably with slightly heavier weight.

And does the 35 pounds include the food and fuel that you're carrying?

Yeah, so we had like a variable. The weight would have varied between 32 and a half and 37 and a half pounds just based off the exact water volume that I was carrying. But we had it set up to where I could refill water without stopping by tying water bottles, hanging like disposable bottles from tree branches with a red ribbon wrapped around them so I could see them like in the dark and what I mean along the trail and I could just grab and switch out my bottles as we went. And so it was pretty, pretty efficient. Well, I. Pretty slick at the time. I've come to mature quite a bit in terms of running logistics and backcountry stuff now, but. And then I was also aided in that one by the fact that there was almost no inclines.

Yeah, just thinking about that as you're talking, you know, my, my mind goes to what I would select as fuel to get through something like that. I think if I had to choose, I'd probably go with something like keto bricks because those are like a thousand calories a bar. Ketones, just like some of those little liquid ketone shot bottles. And then I'd probably. Besides electrolytes, I'd probably throw in glycerol, like hyperhydrate.

Oh yeah, creatine.

I probably do. Yeah. Yeah, creatine would be an okay option, but yeah, I'd at least go glycerol, keto brix and ketones. I think that would cover most of my bases, assuming I had salt.

Yeah. So actually this is a perfect segue into. So I got back late last night from the Sonora desert and I guess this will be the official announcement for It I have successfully run an ultramarathon through the hottest desert on the planet, which is the Sonora Desert, which by now with satellite imagery we're able to measure surface temperatures the entire planet. And Sonora has measured as high as 177 degrees. And so it is officially. I mean, you could go, you know, there's the whole Death Valley air temperature thing from almost 100 years ago, but now we have pretty accurate readings. So Sonora now. So I got back late last night from right above the Mexican border, Southern California. It would be eastern south, Eastern California, right above the Mexico border and ran approximately 200 miles in about 87 and a half hours. And this was probably the biggest test of my life. But the fueling stuff specifically we had to get really dialed in with. And it might interest you what we went with. So speaking of like just, you know, on the move, fuel in my bladder, what I had is a product called Scratch Recovery.

For people who think he's talking about his physical bladder. The bladder is like the.

Yeah.

Oh, you know, like the camelback style device. Fluids in.

Yeah, yeah. I carry a 3 liter water water bladder camelback in my back, which is bigger than the two, you know, the traditional two liters that go out. But it's just, you know, gives me a little bit longer range at the expense of a little bit more weight just to, you know, when are, you know. Yeah, but so in that. Yeah, so Scratch Recovery. And that's. It's a car, you know, a glycogen. I'm sorry, just a carbohydrate composite carbohydrate, protein and electrolyte mix that uses milk powder as its base, you know, to provide, you know, and then they add in a little bit of dextrose, cane sugar. The one I was drinking was mostly horchata flavored, so they got some cinnamon stuff in there too.

Pretty precisely dialed in though, because I interviewed. That's a. Isn't that Alan Lim?

Yeah, yeah, no, Alan.

So Alan used to be our physiologist for Team Timex back when I raced triathlon. And yeah, his whole Scratch Labs cookbook and his supplements are very well designed. Like if you go try to mix milk powder and dextrose and salts on your own, the problem. And I interviewed Alan back in the day. I'll hunt it down and link to it in the show notes. But the osmolality has to be very precisely dialed in. I forget the percentage that he uses. But if you exceed it, you wind up drawing up way too much water into the gi tract and you get diarrhea and gastric upset. But they do a pretty good job with formulation at scratch. And then I believe with that milk powder you get the advantage of the. Some of the similar components as colostrum that help to seal up the lining of the leaky gut which I would imagine would be pretty helpful for gut permeability in hot weather like the Saharan desert.

Oh yeah, and he has a little probiotic strain, a lactobacillus strain thrown in that one too. As well. But yeah. So they actually went out to scratch a couple months ago and they did my personal electrolyte panel tested my sweat and found that I sweat sodium. Yeah, soup. I'm super salty. I'm like 880 like nanograms per milliliter, whatever, whatever the metric was. I'm like the normal person, I think is in the 380 range and I'm like 880. So I added additional. We talked about how much additional pink salt we should mix. I added creatine not just for the gut and brain health and muscle function, but also I recently saw some research that indicated like mega dosing creatine could really help offset some of the effects of sleep deprivation. And I had played with that during a 100 mile training run when my training peak going into this and felt really good. So I stuck with that and I felt amazing. It seemed, I mean I felt great all the way through. And I don't consume caffeine well, very little bit. I drink the only caffeine I got during this the entire 84 or I'm sorry, 87 and a half hours was Dr. Pepper. I drank Dr. Pepper pretty consistently during the daytime.

Yeah, my go to was a flat Coke when I used to race Ironman just grabbing it from aid stations. Creatine. That's true. It's a good tip. I mean obviously you gotta be careful because similar to too high an osmolality of fluid, the creatine can give you a little gastric upset if you exceed about two and a half grams in your dosing schedule. But yeah, for sleep deprivation it is true. 10 to 20 grams a day more than the 5 grams a lot of people will load with for strength and power. Has good effects on cognition and sleep deprivation. And then NAD is kind of like the second part of that stack if you want to upgrade a little more. Yeah, NAD and creatine are kind of like the go to. As a matter of fact I had to get up this morning at about 3am Just with some intensive work duties. I had to tackle. So I've been on creatine and NAD since about 3:30 this morning. Good to know. That's also interesting what you noted about Alan and your sweat sodium test because he came out to Timex and. And we did a similar analysis with the patches. I was very similar to you. I'm at like 3x the amount of electrolyte loss. And so when he tested me, I guess it was probably like eight years ago. I increased my daily salt intake to 6 grams and it was a game changer for sleep performance, for cramping, for recovery. And now from what I've seen, even though I don't know if they're as good as getting tested by a physiologist or out of scratch labs or whatever, you can buy the Gatorade patches on Amazon now and do your own at home sweat sodium analysis.

Doctor, I didn't even know that. That's pretty cool.

Yeah. Yeah. So folks could figure this out at home if they want to kind of dial it in. I don't know how good those patches are compared to the physiology lab measurements.

But you could use the old method we used in MMA and Jiu Jitsu and it's just compare your GI's after training and see whose is wider, you know?

Yeah, it'll tell you fluid. It won't tell you the salt composition, but at least tell your fluid loss, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Well, no, the more white crust on the ghee, the more salt it is, right?

Oh yeah. For the white crust, absolutely.

We used to. We used to joke around, but honestly, that's probably a pretty method like if you were to. You know what I mean?

Like, it is, it is. Except for the fact that that salt intake drives salt loss. So sometimes people will show no white crust, but then if they're using a bunch of electric lights, they'll show it. So you gotta control for that a little bit. But dude, man, you. You have done some crazy things. So, you know, I, I ate chicken and plate Scrabble last night and. You ran the Saharan desert yesterday, dude.

No, no, it was. I. So it was from Tuesday morning to Friday night of last week and then I. But still, chicken and Scrabble sounds. Me and my. Me and my wife were just talking about that. We were like, we, we kind of, you know, we're not like really big socializers. We're kind of introverted homebodies and we live up in the Sierra Nevada mountains. So we just talking about kind of, kind of getting back into some board games and she Gets more competitive than I do, though, ironically. So, you know.

It will go down, no doubt. But I like simple things. You know, I think it's important to keep your world small if you want to do big things.

Yeah, yeah. Well, speaking of big things, let's. Let's lead with the big stuff. In writing this book, you. Obviously, we don't have time to cover every last population and individual that you looked into, but I'm just curious for you as the author, who is your favorite in terms of the population or the individual?

So there's. There's, like, it's really hard to narrow it down, obviously, but you're always going to have those one or two cultures that maybe kind of speak to you a little bit more than anything else. And for me, it's pretty much the Spartans and then certain Native American warrior cultures, like the Apache and the Comanche. The Spartans, I think, particularly, I find them interesting because it's. I mean, you could argue there's. There's peak eras and, you know, clans within the Samurai era where, you know, maybe you can see something comparable. But for the most part, the Spartans are really the only time that we see, like, in human history. What is a culture completely devoted to, like, war and, you know, like, the physical perfection and war look like. And I mean, it's everything. Everything that they did for, you know, centuries was just dedicated to becoming physical apex predators on the battlefield. And in the Olympic Games, I mean, I think there was something like. There were entire. It'd be like 80 years that passed where no one won a Pancreatian gold medal except a Spartan. Like, that's just an instill of dominance.

The pancreation was like the ancient form of mma, right?

Yeah, it literally just. I mean, no, no holds barred mma, punching, kicking, you know, there were knockouts, apparently, that the ancient records say that submissions were more common than knockouts, but knockouts were pretty common. And the thing was, there were no time limits or weight classes. So you went until one guy literally physically could not go. Whether it was due to, you know, he was just too fatigued to defend himself, and he got pounded out or choked out, whatever. But, like, there were no rounds and no weight classes.

It sounds kind of like this football match that I took my family to in Italy. Yeah, the Kelsio. The Storico Kelsio. We went to it. It's basically. I think it's like 25, 30 guys on either side. And the only object of the game is to get the ball from one end of the field to the Other and throw it over the fence and pretty much anything is allowed. Punching, kicking, holding, dropping, wrestling, grappling, anything. And it was a spectacle, man.

Dude. Nar. There's not. There's a very small percentage of the population on earth that will ever see that with their own knives. That's awesome. That you got to.

Yeah. And of course, there's ambulances and people getting drug out on stretchers throughout the game. It took a good 45 minutes for the actual game to start due to riots and fights and, you know, the false starts. But once it got going, holy cow, it was incredible. I was just going to ask you a little bit about the way that the Spartans trained, if you've been able to dig into and find out what, like, an average training day would look like for a Spartan warrior.

So it's really interesting because what we have to understand contextually is that the Spartans, Spartans were enigmas and mysteries even in their own time. They spoke a different language than the other Greeks. They were from a different, like, wave of immigration. They were. They were from an older population on Greece that was there, the Dorian Greeks, as opposed to the later Messinian Greeks that, like, say, you know, most of the other ancient Greek city states were descended from. So Spartans, really, they were kind of ancient, mysterious, you know, in 500 B.C. and they didn't let people come into their country unless they were invited. Such as, you know, emissaries from other countries, you know, certain messengers. They were. They're extremely xenophobic in general or worse. But it was like, you know, they were very. They were very tribal, you know, clan, like in their own way. But they. Yeah, no, definitely, definitely no open borders and. But having said that, we know about my approach, like, generally, most people, when confronted with this question, would either avoid it or just kind of make some shit up. I. That wasn't good enough for me. Not even as, like, you know, as integrity as an author, but just my curiosity. So I started looking at, like, okay, let's start with what events that they won because they would compete against other Greeks, right? And if you're winning an event, it stands to reason, you know, so we started there. Then we started with. Then I went to some of the visitors and some of the people that would go, like, you know, particularly, like when the Athenians would be trying to court the Spartans to join a war against the Persians or against whoever, you know what I mean? They'd send messengers and they would, you know, they would see, sometimes the Spartans would even do like, a little psychological thing where they'd like arrange a training session in front of visiting dignitaries just to be like, yeah, this is what we, this is what our guys can do. You know what I mean? And, and so they knew that they were like, you know, wrestling, grappling were huge. I'm sure you're familiar, but many listeners might not know what a halter is, which is like a stone dull slash kettlebell kind of. They came in many different shapes, but they're kind of, it's kind of a unique hand weight carved from stone. And the Spartans were big on using these for like traditional say dumbbell kettlebell liftings. But their main thing they used them for was. Or a primary thing they used them for was jumping weights. They do like long jumps and high jumps carrying these dumbbells in their hands.

Oh yeah, yeah. So very cool. Plyometrics in short, short plyometrics were a big part of Spartan training.

And yeah, like weighted plyometrics, though.

Weighted plyometrics. And so part of this. And a lot of people like today will think like, oh, you shouldn't load your joints underweight. And I mean, maybe I'm biased as a weighted runner, you know what I mean? But like, it's just, it's like anything else. You apply a gradient of progression. Just like someone shouldn't deadlift 500 pounds, they've never dead or you know, 500 pounds, they've never been under a squat bar. Like, obviously that would be bad for your joints too. So if you're, you know, you're building up to doing this the right way then. And then of course there was a race in the Olympics by the ancient Olympics called the Hopla Mocus. And this was the. Basically a, it was generated, shifted a little bit, but generally it was like a 200 to 400 meter foot race and full armor carrying a shield. And the Spartans were dominant at this event. You know, like there's ancient records that are dominant year after year. And basically you're running in a breastplate and greaves with a solid Aspis shield or you know, an ancient like bronze covered oak shield on one arm. And I, I've never tried anything like this, but I cannot imagine how hard it would be to stabilize the asymmetry and weight from, you know what I mean, having one unburdened arm and one arm carrying like a 22 pound oak shield and the size of it, the awkwardness and then the actual armor. But the Spartans were savage at this. And apparently there's some rumor that this event was actually started with an ulterior motive in the Olympic Games and that was to get the ancient Greek hoplites very, very good at running across a 2 to 400 meter range, which is coincidentally the effective range of the Persian bow, which was the main weapon of the Persian armies that were their main threat at the time. And so basically the idea was like some clever guy was like, hey, let's like create an Olympic event. Let's make it really, really, you know, convenient for getting our guys to run across, you know, to neutralize Persia's biggest weapon in case it comes to a fight, which it did. And there are like, at the battle of Marathon, that was a big part of what happened. They basically the two armies, the Greek and the Persian army, stood and looked at each other across like a beach for like two days. You know, they line up, they just kind of mad dog each other and then, you know, be out there for hours. And then they'd go back to camp and no one was really willing to make the first move. And then on the third day, there was a Greek general who just like he, his omens, you know, either he woke up and ate his Wheaties or the omens were right, whatever it was. But he just, when the time was right, he just kind of, they were standing there, he just like gave his men the order, you know, like, raise shield. Then he just said at them, just two words at them, and the entire Greek army just rushed and they just sent me. It's just a dead sprint, you know, 400 meters across through the arrow fire. And they smashed into the Persians. You know, they took, you're going to take losses no matter what, but you're sprinting across that space. It's only time for the Persians to get off like, you know, a couple of volleys and then you got, you know, armored guys were bigger and stronger than you on, you know, spears and you have a wicker shield and a dagger and you know, your bow is now useless. And so yeah, that was a pretty cool story. And of course that's the origin of the marathon too.

You think that, that, that. I'm just curious what you think of that 300 Spartan workout that was going around for a while.

I don't even know if I've seen it, but I'm gonna guess that probably wasn't a huge, a hugely historically accurate representation of how they trained.

Yeah, it's like deadlifts and I forget the whole thing. I did it with my sons. I told my sons that we could watch the Spartan movie, which I think might be based on that. Battle you were just describing it was.

I love that movie.

And I took him in the garage. I said, you guys do this part and workout with me. If you can finish in an hour under. We'll go into the basement and watch the movie. So they did the whole workout and then we went into the basement and spent half of our time down there with their eyes covered or with a blanket pulled up over it. Because I kind of forgot how intense the violence and some of the other portrayal of graphic imagery gets in that movie. But I think the workout probably doesn't come close to what you just described. I want to come back to whether or not the Spartans actually did eat Wheaties, because I am curious what you found out about their diet. But I was just thinking as you were describing the bow, I think a lot of people hear that, or they hear you and me talking about the bow. Maybe they've shot a recurve or a compound with the cams on it, which obviously makes the draw pretty easy. But you have a section in the book. And again, I do want to come back to the Spartans, but you have a section in the book where you describe, I think it was the English longbowman and what it actually took to pull back a bow or what actual arm strength was required for someone who was an archer.

It was insane. Okay, so for starters, these guys were not like what you would call freak athletes in, like, mid medieval England. These guys are 5, 6 to 5, 8. You know, they're in that 135 to 165, like, not giant humans. But the thing is, they start at a very, very early age by drawing bows. And those bows get progressively larger and heavier and English like. So, for instance, the source of the English power, military power during this reign, they didn't have the powerful like. Like the huge arm armies of, you know, knights and French cavalry like the French did. They didn't, you know, like a lot of the mainland armies had big, you know, pike formations and stuff. England was, despite being a world power, they were just kind of a small backwater. And their main military asset was their longbowmen. They had. They shot bows that, you know, these average sized dudes were shooting bows that were six, six and a half feet long, made from yew wood, which is itself a pretty soft, very strong. Under compression, though, makes an excellent, excellent bow, especially if you, you know, use the sapwood on the. Anyway, long story short, if you construct it right, you can take take advantage of the natural properties of the tree and create a massive bow. They called this the medieval machine gun, because it was fired with such force and it could, you know, a skilled guy could just fire arrow after arrow after arrow. And so to support this, this military strength, the in laws for their upper peasant class, the yeomanry to basically every Sunday you had to teach your sons how to practice at any given opportunity. They had fairs with archery contests with massive prizes, purses, you know, heavily incentivized being good at the bow. And so these guys got really good at the bow and to the point that it actually changed their physiology. And now there's archaeologists when they're investigating medieval battle sites, it can pull skeletons out of the ground and look at a skeleton without any equipment at all and say, hey, that guy right there almost certainly was an English longbowman. The reason for this is because the bones in their arm, their shoulder formations and the muscle attachments are actually so much more robust and thick, not only than the average person, but then they're on one side versus the other. So it's like if you pull and the guy's right humerus bone is twice as thick, his shoulder is more robust. And you can tell all the muscle attachments were giant on that side.

Yeah, almost like if you were to dig up, you know, 100 years from now, NBA basketball player, you'd look at the tibial tuberosity and know that they, they were a jumper.

Yeah. Or an even an arm wrestler. You know, like that guy Devin, whatever. Like one of his arms is huge. You know what I mean? Like, and so it, but it's, it's amazing. Like, you know, bone like you said, bone density, like, it's just so, it's super, super cool.

It was like £150. I mean, without the cams.

Oh, some of them got up to 200. That's the thing too. That's the thing. And they have guys now that can pull like accurate reproductions of these bows. But the thing is these are like 250 pounds. Some of them are actual strong men that they have there.

So it's just, I mean, and for anybody listening in, I mean, if you walk up to the cable machine, if you have the gym next time, just put the stack on at least 150 and try a single arm row and tell me how that goes.

Yeah, 100%, bro. It's, it's like that. I recently did some online content. I've also, by the way, new news dropped this morning. I started the first, started my second book actually that will focus on warrior training specifically.

So the, the book that you're Writing now it's basically more training program based.

No. So this will be like, this will be re. You know, research based, academic, but readable. So it's basically I'm going to pick out maybe 20, I've got maybe 12 of them so far. I'd like 20 good warrior cultures. You know, the Spartans and gladiators will be in gladiators. I got some good stuff on them. Spartans and gladiators will have plains Indians. We'll have, you know what I mean, your Aztecs and your Incas, your samurai. And it's going to be a deeper dive into each culture. Whereas the first book, you know, it was cool, but it was meant to like introduce people to the idea of like, hey, like, you know, this is what I geek out on. This exists. Like, here's a little sampling of a million different things from ancient boxers to Spartans and gladiators, like, you know, little sample platters, so to speak. Now I'd like to kind of really dive in and flesh out, you know, the war starting with the warrior training specifically. And yeah, so it's just, it'll be, you know, it won't be sets and reps or anything like that. It's literally just be academically like, all right, this is how they trained. This is what they ate. This is, you know what I mean, the, the way they fought in battle and why they trained like this, you know, in this specific way.

Yeah, but you do have a training program. I think you write about the book. It's like Rocky meets Muhammad Ali meets Mike Tyson training plan.

Yeah. So actually I, I'm, I believe, last my people checked, I'm. I'm either. I'm in the top three functional fitness training program distributors on the planet. And so I write and program training. It's a sub. Training programs, books and seminars are kind of like my bread and butter. Beyond the athlete stuff.

If somebody was listening and they wanted to try a training program on for size, what would be a good one to try?

So over@wildhuntconditioning.com I actually might. One of my goals is to be also the biggest free program distributor, the fitness game. So most of the stuff over there has at least you can try it for free or there's free programs if you want to. Like the most recent one, just for example I put out is a completely free program based on berserker training. Viking berserkers. These guys were the guys that ate. They ate psilocybin. Went into the.

I was gonna say, does your book come with henbane and psilocybin extract.

You and me can discuss the legality of that. We find a workaround and that might be. But. But yeah. So it's just basically. And again, these were like. With the berserkers themselves, it's not. They didn't leave written records. There's no specific workout things. However, we can also reproduce Viking strongman movements that were used. Broad, broad spectrum. We can also extrapolate certain things based off performance factors. Like, you ever hear a guy, the. There was a guy about 1000 years ago who walked three steps carrying a 1400 pound, 30 foot ship's mast on his back. And it was a feat that all the modern strongmen tried to replicate. Eddie hall tried it, failed. You know, all these guys, Nick, all these guys, half. Thor Bjornsson was the only one who could manage it. And we're talking, you know, a thousand years before performance enhancing drugs of the modern kind even existed. And so it's like, you can. You can look at these and be like, okay, so obviously this guy's walking with something heavy on his back if he's gonna, you know, train. And then you hear training with ship mass chaining with bags of rocks. All the, you know, you just get little scraps of things here and there. And so I pieced that together into a program that people can do for free at home. It's like, literally you can do it with bags of rocks, buckets of rocks. It's branches, it sticks, it's stone. You don't need. The idea being that like, I could put out a primal cool training program that no one would ever have to pay a dollar for for in terms of buying a program or a gym membership or any special equipment or anything like that. And that was honestly more exploratory because most of my stuff is like, all right, here's how to get strong. If you have dumbbells, kettlebells and. Or barbells, and you want to replicate the way that. Or integrate the way that.

One of my favorite books back in the day when I used to Race Spartan was Zach Ebenezer's underground encyclopedia of strength training. And it was rocks logs. Yeah, Zach's got a great. It's a. It's a. It's kind of like a big picture book, but great training manual. Kind of sounds like the type of training systems you're putting together.

Yeah, yeah, pretty much. And then, so it's like. And then I'll have like. So my own. Some of the training programs are based off my own stuff. So it's like If I go do something, you know, like last year I ran across the state of Oregon. I ran the Oregon section of the PCT. It's 500 miles, about nine and a half days. And then it's like after that people were asking, you know how you train for it, what do you do? So I just put out the training program and like nothing crazy, not hundreds of dollars or Thousands, like here's 40 bucks or 50 bucks or whatever. And it's just exactly how I trained. It's the Apache breathing method I used, you know what I mean? Which is filling your mouth with water and basically going for like high intensity hill runs without spilling a drop of that water. Meaning?

Meaning forced nasal breathing.

Forced nasal breathing. Also mental control. Because everything in your body is going to want to swallow that water. Swallow that water. You gotta like, the Apache would have to spit it out for their instructor at the end, at the end of a training session, the young boys have to spit it on the dirt and you know, just prove that they hadn't swallowed that water the whole time either. And then the longer you run and you get this weird thing where you're like feeling thirsty at your mouth is full of water and all you want to do is swallow that water and drink it, but you can't. It's, you know, it's good mental control. It's good forced nasal breathing.

I used to have my sons follow me around on the obstacle course with a mouth full of water, jump in the ice tub while I was doing push ups. And yeah, this is back when they were like 6 years old and just chase dad and they didn't have to do any exercise, they just had to chase me with the mouth full of water.

No, that's awesome, bro. And I mean, you got it. Yeah, with kids you make it fun too. And there's like nothing that they won't just run straight towards. But yeah, so it's like I do stuff like that I would do like the Incas were known for like.

Running, running weighted. The Incas and the Aztecs were both known for running weighted, but not like, well some of it was for war, which is kind of cool. But honestly a lot of it came from the fact that their rulers were like hyper rich emperors and like so like if you're say you're an Aztec, you're an Aztec emperor and you're chilling in what, you know, Tenochtitlan, what is now Mexico City, which is, you know, a highland mountain flat capital. Right? But you're like, man, like I, I really like me and my girl the other, we were in SoCal, we stopped at Nobu and got some sushi. And it's just like we were willing to, you know, shit, we probably would have driven down there and just eat there without, you know, without any business being down there. But if you're some Aztec emperor and you just decide that you want Nobu one day, like, all you have to do is send like a guy to run 320 miles to the coast, get some fresh caught, you know, sashimi, and have it back. I have a relay of runners bring it back 320 miles, about, you know, 18 hours, one DoorDash.

Yeah.

So same thing. They would do that with snow and ice. These guys would like, like emperors would want like a snow cone and literally just like send a guy to run to the mountains and relays to bring blocks of ice to be chiseled out. And then of course you're seeing like, like they found cacao in the southwest, bro. Think about that. Like, you know, like Anasazi, like, you know, cacao. Cacao comes from how many hundreds of miles away in the jungles of. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Like somebody had to get it. You're right.

Yeah.

And they weren't. They weren't using horses.

No, no. Horses weren't even on the New World yet, bro. Like, the horses didn't come to the Spaniards. That's why the native American messenger warners were probably like in terms of ultra. Ultra, you know, like your hundreds and hundreds of miles of runners. They were probably. They're the best thing that we know of in terms of history within the last several thousand years. Wow.

Incredible.

Because they didn't have wheels or horses.

Yeah, yeah. I got to come back full circle to the Spartans because I promise. But what did they eat?

You're gonna love this. So the Spartans ate pretty. So like in. Throughout the other Greek city states, you had a lot of lamb, you know, a lot of. A lot of, you know, the same cheeses and olives and type stuff that we see today. A lot of figs. The Spartans themselves had a very, very, very strong preference for game meat over cultivated meat to the point that they would eat. They eat like, you know, deer and wild boar and stuff. They also ate a lot of like a wild hare and birds and like, like, you know, small to medium sized game. And they also, you may have heard of this, were famous, you know, had a very negatively mixed reputation, but were famous for their Spartan black soup. And this was soup that was made from pig's blood vinegar and Usually just some chunks of pork thrown in there also and essentially like boiled. And they ate it completely unflavored beyond adding some salt to it. And. But the Spartans themselves sweared by this as a, like a, you know, a staple food. You know, it's kind of like a strong peasants food. And we're also. They were also said to have like blood sausage and stuff like that. But like I said, they were big on game. And then the blood. So the two things that stood out, though were the blood soup and then, of course, Greek mountain tea, which is still. I drink it myself.

Now, almost everything you've just listed is very rich in Coenzyme Q10. And you find that a lot in the game in it. So you're basically just fueling up the mitochondria for endurance.

Yeah, that actually, of course, Spartans, above all, they were the best run. Like, you know, there's. The Spartathlon is one of the most famous ultras in the world that, you know, goes throughout the part of the world. And like, the Spartans themselves were just. Like I said they were. No, and oh, the other thing, they were without exception, without exception, they trained barefoot, ran barefoot, lifted barefoot, fought in battles barefoot. Completely barefoot, too. Not like, you know, little leather slips, like, you know, which are fine. I wear like little simple leather, so, you know, kind of soulless type shoes, moccasins and stuff myself. But the Spartans were just pure barefoot. They made their children go barefoot, they trained barefoot, and they swore, you know, once your feet were adapted, you could run faster.

And so now why would you pick them versus a couple of these other populations, like the Indians or the ancient Chinese warriors, who also seemed pretty impressive.

They were. Oh, no, they were all very impressive. And let me be clear that the biggest thing in any scrap between any Deadliest Warrior matchup is always going to be the individual. You know what I mean? Like, they're, you know, the baddest dude. And, you know, but let's see, the way I think about it is like, let's say that two twin brothers at birth, you know, they take their first steps and each one trips into a separate time machine. One goes to ancient Sparta and one goes to ancient China. You know what I mean? If those two guys meet in some sort of battle, you know, the Spartans gonna win. If you ask me, however, there's different, you know, there's different types of battle. You know, it's like if you're an aquatic warrior, you don't want to, you know, you don't want to get, you know, in a Fight and on a sand dune against you, an Arabian horsemen, you know, in North Africa or anything like that. But taking Just. Basically, for me, it comes down to the level of dedication. The Chinese, you know, they've created some great warriors, some great military, some great military minds. And let's be honest, you know, it heavily influenced the way we work out to this day. Having said that, neither one of them were a society completely and utterly designed to create the perfect warrior, which is all the Spartans were. They were the only one. Like I said, you could. You could isolate some, like the, you know, Takeda Shingen and his men in feudal Japan, they had a pretty badass clan that was pretty dedicated to being, you know, to war. But like, the Spartans, we're talking hundreds and hundreds of years, and they just. Just, how do we make the perfect guy? How do you know? And then, of course, how do we make that guy think like his entire life is dedicated to the perfect death in defense of his nation?

That that was their entire culture's identity. The. The interesting thing is that if you look at our current presidential candidacy, you would not expect a president to fall into any of the categories that you and I are right now talking about. But you have not one, but two presidents in the book. Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

Yep.

Why did you put them in the book?

So the truth is, I didn't. There was no ulterior motive. They were both just freak athletes. Just by coincidence. I mean, not by coincidence, obviously, if you, you know, they're hard men from hard times who got hard men to follow that. Them. So obviously they were capable of doing hard shit. But the truth that, like, George Washington was. I mean, you almost can't even credit for him. He was just born a freak athlete. Like, everyone who knew him, they just talked about, like, he. Everything he tried, he got good at quick. He had immense physical strength, his endurance, his ability as a horseman was second to no one in the colony, you know what I mean? Rode like a native. And Abraham Lincoln was just a really good wrestler with crazy physical strength who did all sorts of actual wrestling matches, competitive wrestling matches, frontier wrestling matches, which would have been mma. Like, kicks and punches would have been allowed in frontier wrestling.

And went, you know, 301 propaganda aside, like, you know, whether he actually went the hicks and Gracie style, 300, you know, 300 wins without anything going wrong. He won against every notable person that he faced. Even before he was president, people were willing to, you know, lie for him or. Or say, you know, exaggerated.

301. Geez.

Yeah.

And the style of wrestling was a little different then. I read. I'm looking at this page. You describe it as a. Yeah, Catch wrestling. What is it?

Yeah, so that would be basically, you know, wrestling with submissions. But also, like I said, in the frontier wrestling, there were a lot of times the matches would have strikes, like you would agree to the rule set, but we shake hands with the guy, and then you'd go do it, you know, and there could be very small variations, but, yeah, you could get choked out. You could get, you know, you could get a heel hook or a toehold that tore your knee. Knee or ankle apart. You could, you know what I mean, get knocked out. And so it's like that, you know, that can happen. Very, very, very few. Generally no biting or eye gouging, which were in rough and tumble fighting. And a little earlier on in the colonies, rough and tumble stuff, they did allow, like, in colonial eras, they did allow biting and eye gouging. In fact, there were, like, a number I recovered from English governors in the new World, sending them home to England, basically just asking for help. Like, they were coming back with, like, eyes gouged out and fingers missing and like that from all these. Yeah, these rough and tumble matches in the colonies. Virginia.

And how strong do you think George Washington was.

Probably?

I mean, he was. He's known to be 62 or 6 3. Like, he was a tall dude, a big dude. But there was, you know, no, he didn't. He didn't leave any deadlift numbers behind or anything, but there was this, like, actual written account of these guys that were. They basically were. They were screwing around one day in a field just trying to see who could throw this iron bar the furthest, which is literally, like every. You know, we've been doing this stuff for, you know, since the first caveman picked up the first rock. And his. For the first. His first friend saw him do it and wanted to try it too. You know, so these guys are just throwing an iron bar in a field, and then they'd go, market, you know, see, like, oh, this guy threw it how far when they mark it? And I guess he just rode up on his horse one day, and they didn't even really know who he was at the time. He just asked, like, if he could try it, and he just literally threw it double the distance of, like, the farthest prior throw. And they. They were like. They couldn't believe. They just, like, just punched into the earth. And so he was significantly stronger than strong men in an area where survival, you know, in Time where survival required you to be pretty strong.

Yeah, but obviously exercise, science, supplementation, you know, even performance enhancing drugs, you know, Adderall, etc, have come a long way since then. So in a cage fight, who do you think would win? George Washington or Joe Biden?

George Washington. George Washington. George Washington. George Washington.

Pretty much anyone. But no, the. I totally agree. Don't get me wrong, I'm not like it's. It could be easy to overly romanticize the past, you know, and be like, you know this, you know, and start believing things that are true or less than likely. I think I'm a big believer, you know, like I, I'm a big supporter in everything that science has done to advance athletic performance and nutrition and longevity and all this stuff in the last hundred years, let alone the last 2000 years. Having said that, the one thing I think that we can't dismiss is the fact that our culture, well, actually, I mean, we've been alluding to this, but our culture, we are not a culture where our priority is health and physical fitness or martial prowess, no matter how much we like to believe it or think about it. We're a culture that prioritizes Kardashians and political elections and, you know, whatever else is going on. And.

That counts for a lot of. When you think about the fact that there are cultures that even in, you know, at ancient Greek levels of technology, spent 500 years putting their every resource of their entire culture behind creating perfect athletes and warriors, you know.

Yeah. And you're, you're forced into it a lot, a lot of the time. I mean, you were forced into weather and inclement conditions, hard labor, outdoor labor. You know, there weren't indoor cushy jobs. I mean, look at me, I'm walking on a treadmill right now while I'm talking to you, because I literally have to fabricate, you know, primal ancestral lifestyle as a podcast or so I'm at least moving, you know.

No, you nailed it. That's how I always say I'm like the reason we have to go seek out these cold, you know, cold tubs and hot saunas and long runs and, you know, hard lifts and mobile lifestyles. You know why I try to. Every time I'm on a laptop, I try to sit, you know, on the ground or do something else. It's just so easy to just get stuck in that chair, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. Now, how about this guy who you describe as the best all around athlete in history, this Donald Trump Denny guy. What made you choose him as the best all around athlete in history he might be.

So the thing is that I can name a dozen people that could beat Denny in any one or two things. I just don't think that there is anyone who ever got. I mean, the guy literally, he was. He ran like legitimately fast times in hundred meter stuff, 200 meter stuff. He could throw like stones and cabers and shot puts. He could lift maximally, like crazy, crazy, maximally heavy things. He had some insanely, like close to undefeated record. And not just in wrestling, like in different wrestling disciplines and styles. Like he was. I mean, I also think that he was a Highland Games champion and I think the Highland.

He was a Scottish, right?

Yeah, yeah. And the Highland Games, especially like the earlier versions of them, I think did an excellent job of really, really demanding someone be an excellent, well rounded athlete. I mean, you had foot races, you had hurdles, you had heavy lifts, you had, you know, dynamic throws, plyometric type stuff. You had actual wrestling, you had strongman events, like just a really good medium to prove, like, hey, I can do everything, you know, like, talk about the ultimate hybrid athlete. Probably that guy was there, you know, tribal warriors that could run longer, Maasai warriors that can jump higher, sprint fast, like, of course, but. But we're talking a guy again, in the time before performance enhancing drugs, at least the modern type, who's just eating. He's literally waking up, he's eating haggis, he's picking a few eggs out.

I tried to make haggis once.

How'd that go?

I used the stomach of a sheep that I'd shot and ground up a bunch of kidney and heart and liver and kind of did my own twist on it. And honestly, when that stomach tripe fat melted in the oven, bake over all the organ meats with some of the herbs I threw in there was actually super tasty.

That sounds pretty good to me. I mean, I like stuff like that. In general though, I'm not, you know, I'm pretty. I'm pretty, pretty meat and potatoes, meat and bones with my food.

Yeah, yeah, this definitely fell into that category. There was one guy that kind of surprised me though. I didn't expect to see a poet in the book, this, this Walt Whitman guy. I mean, he obviously didn't have to work out, but he did tell me about this guy.

Dude, Walt Whitman was crying like. So I didn't know too much about him as a poet or anything other than that when I came across some of his quotes talking about the ancient Greeks and how their performance in the gymnasium and the palaestra would basically elicit the best version of a man. Physical training, competition, martial humbleness, these were key things that him, in the late 1800s was already seeing were lacking in American society. So he had a very, very like, he's one too. We have his actual workout routine. Like he wrote down, he left an actual workout routine of like, you know, like squats.

Yeah. You got it in here? Yeah. You want me to read it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's got it says in the evening he wrestled a 12 foot oak tree for exercise every night well into his 60s, even after suffering from a stroke. Woke nearly every day to do calisthenics for an hour, swim in a cold river, then eat a plate of unflavored lean meat with a chunk of bread and a cup of tea. And this daily calisthenics routine, it says he always did it outdoors, I'm assuming no matter what the weather was. He had a dynamic overhead stretch, planking, lunging, single leg deadlift, fence hops, springing over a fence, then back against shadow boxing and jump squats. And that's all in addition to his cold water swimming in the evening rest, whatever that means. Wrestling a tree. I can only imagine.

So, yeah, apparently he would literally try to do like judo throw trips and throws on a tree and he would hype when apparently he would be fully into it, like high intensity. But yeah, just literally trying to pull a tree out. I mean, it's isometrics one, you know, every sort of isometric movement you can think of, I suppose. But like, look at that daily routine, that morning routine, that exercise routine, especially for a guy who's in his 40s, 50s, 60s, and tell me that's not excellent, you know what I mean? Like, tell me that your fitness influencer is going to do better than that today in programming something.

Yeah, I like that mentality too, because like, again, me, I don't have to work out. Like, I wake up and I write stuff and I podcast. But man, you feel so much better when you go outside and you jump in cold water and swing some kettlebells around and, you know, chase through the forest for a little while and with some heavy stuff. I mean.

Honestly, a lot of this stuff. I actually had this documentary film crew at my house over the weekend. They're like, we want to film you working out. So I set up all the lights and stuff in the gym because they wanted some clean, predictable.

Single space, whatever dumbbell chest presses and goblet squats, which are great, but I told them, look, let's Go outside and show people how to really work out. So we wound up. They wound up chasing me through the trees with their little camera stabilizer, doing rope climbs and rock carries and balance beams. But, yeah, I think especially with this style of training that you talk about in the book and simulating a lot of these ancient athletes, I think it's unpredictability, inclement weather, undulating terrain. I think a lot of that is just as important as stepping into a health club and lifting heavy stuff.

Oh, I think it's more important because both the outdoors and the health club, they can give you hypertrophy, they can give you your energy systems, training, your anaerobic, your aerobic, your creatine phosphate. You can do all of that outside. The only thing I would say is, like, if you're really into, like, uniform hypertrophy, like, you know, you want to build a certain physique, all that, like, get some uniform stuff. Get a couple pairs of dumbbells, you know, and light, medium and heavyweight and everything else you can do with trees, with rocks, with a kettlebell or two. Like, I don't even have a gym membership. Like, I can deadlift 550. I can. I've run 500, 500 mile ultramarathon, and I don't have a gym membership. So what does that tell you? You know what I mean? Yeah, like, and right now, my. I do a lot of calisthenics. I do calisthenics every day. I'm a former drug inmate, and one of the things that really helped me kind of build was just daily routine. So it's just your meditation, your bible or whatever your thing is in the morning, first thing, then calisthenics, then you start your day. Don't even think, don't even do any. For me, that was just a very, very simple thing I could do. I still do that. But right now, my workout, I have a couple kettlebells for my buddy over at Great Lakes, Gary, by the way. He's. Yeah, and those kettlebells are insane. He might be making tungsten kettlebells, by the way.

Oh, that's pretty cool.

Yeah, that's pretty cool. I've never even heard of that. But. And I do my. I basically I reconstructed an old. Their Soviet Olympic team and the Soviet special forces program, the kettlebell movement that they use. And it's. It's very, you know, similar but different to what you'd see. Like, so overhead presses, instead of just being like, here, here's a basic overhead press. Like, the Soviets did like to Do a clean and double press. So it' one rep clean. Now they do these stuff or alternating, like press, press on one side, press, press on the other side, one rep. Instead of swings, they like to do like, deficit deficit high pulls. Like, stand on two boxes, get that weight all the way down, and then come all like a dynamic high pull all the way up high here like that. You know, just like, little things.

They don't really teach that stuff in the. Because I did the. The RKC certification. That's pretty standard. You know, swings, goblet squats. Where do you learn that stuff?

So that I'm unique on this. So it's like Pavel, like, and all that stuff. He has a lot of good stuff, but this is different. I sat down with actual defectors, most of them old man. Now, starting with one guy who was a fucking. It's like a five foot four sambo guy that was on one of my jiu jitsu teams that was just giving all of us problems. And he was like, 65. We're just like, dude, what. What is going on with you? And it turns out he used to be a spetznack guy. I'm sorry, paratrooper. And so I started talking to him. I actually got my hands on a variety of different little clips of actual Soviet archival footage. Some of it, some of it, I got a couple of the exercises from clips I found on YouTube. Although it's pretty sparing here and there, I dug up some of it from old, like, strength training form from Westside Barbell from like the, like 2011 or like crazy shit. Other stuff from a buddy, a couple buddies I have at west side.

Didn't get too much of it from Pavel because he speaks more in like, principles and stuff like that as opposed to specificities. And I. I don't know if he. At least I'm not sure.

Pablo's ateline former podcast guest. Yeah, you're wondering who we're talking about?

Oh, yeah, he's the guy that got me into kettlebells. I mean, Pablo's awesome.

Me too, but.

But, yeah, just in terms of like the historic geeking out, I just went. So, yeah, found all sorts of archival footage, interviewed three different defectors. And I'm actually.

I went back and had a conversation with one of the guy and he told me some. Some stuff that has me thinking I'm gonna try to build a sequel maybe towards the end of the year at some point. But it was actually I. I just. I released it for 24 hours only. The Soviet program earlier this year, and it actually sold more kettlebell programs than any.

Except I was gonna say, I want to. I want to try it. I'm gonna have to connect with you afterwards and try this out.

Yeah, I'll send it over, bro. I'll send it over. It's a. It's one of my. It was one of my limited edition drops. It was only available for 24 hours, and it outsold all but, like, the three biggest kettlebell programs of all time. So I was like, well, there's. There's interest there. It's fine. You know, they didn't like a lot of lateral swings and stuff to, you know, staggered stance, split stance. So just small variations on the. That all. You know, if you've been using kettlebells for, you know, two years, you've seen swings, you've seen presses, you've seen Turkish get ups. And so this is just kind of a little. Little flavor on that, you know?

Yeah. I'm curious. You mentioned you read the Bible in prison. And I was thinking about this before the interview because I was just reading a little bit in first and second Chronicles, and I was thinking about some of these ancient Israelites, you know, because they were kind of a. They were kind of a force. You know, David had his. His mighty men, you know, in battle, you know, a few of them would. Would defeat like, you know, a few hundred Philistines. Did you ever dig into any of that, like, the ancient Israel training techniques or warrior tactics?

I haven't. They're fighting tactics, but not the training techniques so much. They were excellent guerrilla fighters. So, like, the thing is, the Roman Empire, they did in top. And, like, in terms of conquest and expansion, they did it better than everyone, except maybe. Except the Mongols. The Romans hated Judea. They hated it. There were no major armies. There were no, like, none of the traditional obstacles, yet they just could not. It was the one place they went where people just would bend the knee to them. It was like you could conquer a town or a city, and then you would just be dealing with 70 years of guerrilla warfare after from that one group, and then it was just over and over. So they were expert guerrilla fighters. Hit and run. Very, very good at, like, materializing to attack and then dispersing in different directions. Very good at using improvised weapons. Obviously, we're all aware of, you know, David and Goliath, just what a sling can do. Anyone who's even played around with the sling and a little piece of lead or a rock knows that that's. That's insanity.

Obviously, that was years of training from. From defending sheep. But yeah.

Oh no, exactly. And so that. But that's the thing is these guys were lifestyle. You know, their physical traits came from their lifestyle, which is there you go. Or the more hard scrabble you go. You see this more and more. But it's like we exercise like organized exercise generally is done as war training, as like a community activity, like, you know, you're a Celtic, you know, festival, like, you know, the Highland Games or it's born from just your lifestyle of like, you know, if you're a Hebrew farmer, you're gonna get really, really strong at lips and sifting earth all day long. And if you're a Hebrew shepherd, you are going to have crazy endurance from running around the mountains, literally keeping up with, you know, sheep and then fighting off wolves and then scrambling here and there. You're going to be good with a sling, you're going to be good with.

A bow and a spear.

In rugged, hot territory too. I did the Israelman one year on the Red Sea. They say he's the hardest half ironman in the world. And my feet were all bleeding and blistered after the race because the surface of the ground was so hot. You know, we had to ride up bikes up between the Egypt and Israel border and it was just, it was stupid hot. And then the terrain is just rocky and exposed and open and thistly. And yeah, it's a hard area.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That was Sonora was actually kind of like that too. But it's. And so it's like, you know, they say like there's a quote that I like, the gods of the valley are not the gods of the hill. And that means that it's actually a quote from the American Revolution from a guy named Ethan Allen. But basically what I take that to mean and what he, what he was, he said it to the British. To the British as a threat more than anything. It's like, hey, you guys live down here in the New York Valley, like you do your thing, you know, in a certain way. Me and my boys up in the Vermont, like we're live. We were raised and we live a different lifestyle and it makes a different type of man. Like, if you come up here, you're gonna find out, you know what I mean? And so I always take that to mean, like, you know, hard places, hard lives, they make hard men. And Israel for sure, man, well, man.

If you want to get inspired to be hard. This book, a history of physical fitness. I'll link to it if you guys, go to BenGreenfieldLife.com FitnessHistory you may have heard me mention some other interviews like the one with Paavo and some other resources. I'll put them all in there along with links to James's website, his Instagram Great follow wildhuntconditioning on Instagram. James, this is so cool. And I'm gonna have to have you have you back on for part two when you finish this next book.

Oh, I will, I will. I'll be happy to come chat on that. I'll have a bunch more. Bunch more research by then too.

All right, Cool man. Well folks, Again, go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Fitness History. The book is A History of Physical Fitness by James Pierre. Until next time, I'm Ben and James signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an incredible week.

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