The Burden of Truth: A Cautionary Tale for the Fitness Industry

In this conversation, Beau Beard and Brian McKenzie explore the intricate relationship between health and performance, emphasizing the importance of understanding the process over the outcome. They discuss the evolution of human performance training, the role of responsibility in health, and the significance of introspection and learning. McKenzie shares insights on pain, change, and the illusion of sport, advocating for a more holistic approach to health and performance. The dialogue highlights the need for deeper conversations and collective responsibility in leadership and personal growth

Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:01.902)

so on the show today, we'll have a intro prior to this, but joining me is Brian McKenzie. We've actually never met, so I'm really glad to have him on the show because I feel kind of like a fan boy. I've been following Brian's work for a little while. And, first things first, we don't need like birth to now, but for anybody listening who doesn't know who you are, can you just give us like a brief intro and what you're up to these days?

yeah, I got involved in human performance as a trainer, in, Southern California. it was, I found it through school of all things. I did not like school. I was, I'm not a fan of school, hence, you'll never see acronyms after my, and I would do that on purpose regardless, but I don't, you know, I, at any rate, I,

I got enamored with going fast, I guess. And I love skateboarding, BMX, but I played sports too. Sports probably saved my life. I loved water polo, played it all through high school, and then I was also a swimmer my entire life. And so I used a lot of that stuff as kind of the idea behind what I actually found. Nonetheless, I didn't find human performance or what it was that I found until

my late 20s. And then I got heavily involved in it, trained a lot of people, worked with a lot of people, ended up getting pigeonholed into the endurance world and spent some time there doing things particular ways, following particular methodologies, enjoying that, getting addicted to that, I guess you could say.

Fortunately, I was mentored by a good group of people. One of those people was a guy by the name of Dr. Nicholas Romanoff, who was the creator of the Pose Method of running. That was early 2000s. That was like 2001, 2002. And then, you know, he flipped everything I was trying to understand on its head. He just made me question things in a way that I'd never seen. And I started considering things at that point. And this is important because I started considering things that were not conventionally thought of.

Speaker 1 (02:19.392)

And this is a very, as you could tell from his name, he's very Russian. And Russian thinking, Eastern block thinking, has always been very different and very kind of ahead of the game, regardless if we're looking at performance enhancing drugs or systems around that, which we now see.

Not always maybe by the rules, but yes ahead.

Exactly. Yes. And they looked at the athlete very differently than the rest of the world actually did. And thus that was kind of where I started really playing with things. And so I inevitably ended up creating quite a paradigm shift in the endurance world by looking at reorganizing the way we were looking at things. so I took a different approach and that approach became a skill-based training to endurance training. And that also involved intensity.

It that also then involved a considerable reduction in volume of training for most athletes. And that was where I kind of made my mark in the world, where I gained some kind of leverage, to a large degree, I guess you could say, you know, I, I gained some popularity, I polarized some things and you know, I, I've continued on that path, but you know, I've, I've, been, I've always been in search of,

more learning. I'm, I just because I didn't like school does not mean I do not enjoy learning. I have my, my library is full of every probably book you've a lot of the books you've actually used with your degrees that I've had sent to me by physiologists and people who are running programs and things. And I've gone through these things and I've, I've immersed myself in education.

Speaker 1 (04:12.11)

through that vehicle of my own desire to learn more and put myself around people who actually have educated themselves to a large degree but are doing it differently. And so where we're at now is we've opened up a door into looking at the, I'd say human performance from a more deep practice standpoint and we're using breathing to a large degree.

as a way of getting there. a lot of people pigeonhole this into thinking that our new thing's breathing. And breathing isn't our thing. We're just actually, it's something that we do and we don't stop doing it. Yeah. And it's a tool and it just so happens that it's...

it's integrated into everything we do physiologically or psychologically, right? And even from a movement standpoint, right? So it's just something we're using as a tool to connect dots that we've been talking about for quite some time. So ultimately I look at human development at this point and my job largely is kind of a research and development guy or

a creative, you will, because I literally my job is almost like a professional athlete, although I'm not trying to win anything. I'm trying to understand things. so on a daily basis, whether when I get up in the morning and I'm doing some sort of breath work or I'm doing some sort of like altitude training thing, or I go get on my bike or I go get in the gym, I'm using that.

as an understanding of what it is I'm doing and how I connect movement, I connect my breathing, what my heart rate's doing, all of these things so that I can understand it on a deeper layer to actually put that information out to kind of get people to start exploring more about the innate abilities as human beings versus

Speaker 2 (06:18.094)

In essence, you're the ultimate player coach. Yeah, I mean, that's, you know, if we can organize sports, that's what a player coach is. Somebody that's still putting themselves in the gauntlet repeatedly. Maybe not with the same mind frame, right? From this, like, how do you tap into performance? A lot of times just like, hey, I have to be doing this thing to coach this thing. So I want to break down because that was a lot of info. So there's a lot in there just in the beginning. When we talk about performance,

Just yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:46.912)

The thing that in my opinion should precede performance is human health. And this show is called AnthroHealth. But I know paradigm has shifted a bit even in the last five years. But a lot of the times health is completely lost when we go after performance. We sacrifice health to get to that level. So I want two questions here. How would you define health and how would you define performance? And then how do you bridge those two?

in what you're doing as kind of a daily N equals one of yourself and using that experience with yourself and other athletes and other people.

Yeah, well, I appreciate that question. I don't look at health and human performance as two different things. Yeah, I don't think you do, based on your question. to be, know, like I looked into your work, you know, and I typically, I do that with

i agree i don't think they should

Speaker 1 (07:52.364)

you know, anything I'm going to really jump on. but you know, there's a reason why practices like chiropractic have ever have risen up. And it's, it's largely in part because we've put a bird, beast of burden on the medical community that shouldn't exactly exist. Medicine is important. It's a part of our lives. And it's also why most of us are alive and are in

capable of living the lives we have. That should not be, that should not carry the burden of this is health. And unfortunately, that's what we've done because we, by and large, the populace wants to look at health as a quick fix or something that can happen.

And that's why you can't just come in and work with a chiropractor or even most chiropractors don't just have a chiropractic doctorate. Right. That's not what they carry. They carry many more things to that. And it's not that doctors don't do that, but literally there's all these underlying things that start to, you know, come with that because you start to see, wow. I can't just adjust somebody's spine here and think that

this is the way to help. They've got to actually start taking care of them. So you'll start to see dips dabbles in nutrition, right? And I'm not going to get on a you I don't want to hop on the game of how much you know, how much nutrition information doctors get, you know, but we're all aware of that to some degree. And unless you are a doctor who goes and invests your time and seriously into nutrition, you have no real understanding of nutrition. And so the information

And that field is starting to understand the gaps in that knowledge and how that applies to this lack of being able to help people nowadays stuff is different.

Speaker 1 (09:51.606)

Of course, of course, but I don't think it's their burden to take on. I think that if you're going to specialize in being an ENT or you're going to a podiatrist or a gynecologist or what you stick to, you stay in your lane and stick strictly to that and let's be very clear what that means. so health is literally lifestyle.

That is all it is and how I live my life. And if my lifestyle doesn't match what it is that I want or I'm not getting, then I've got a lifestyle problem or I've got a health issue. And whether that falls in line with my knee hurting, whether it falls in line with some sort of disease that I have or ailment I've got or sickness I contract or a performance issue.

I feel it's the exact, I feel it's all the same thing. And I can, my job has largely been to take what it is I believe I understand in that if I can affect an elite performer with breathing, controlled respiratory, controlled ventilation in a performance situation, and that can get them to either A, understand something or perform better.

That is going to have an impact on somebody who's sitting on their couch and can't find the time to get off of it and go for a walk. Right? Or is dealing with cancer. Right? I don't think I'm going to cure it. I don't think that's the, what, what, what, that is not what I'm saying in any shape, way, or form. But I do know that if I can get somebody to start being more aware of what is going on, that they actually can, can

change something for the greater. And that greater has a psychological, physiological, and a mechanical place. And these are the principles that we live by.

Speaker 2 (11:58.316)

When we talk about this all the time to our clients, I mean, we have an extremely athletic population, but then they're, you know, we call them regulars or Jen pop, whatever you want to call them, the people that aren't going after performance per se. But one of the biggest things I talk about are these catalyzing aspects of whatever you're doing. if I have decreased energy overall due to nutrition, sleep, whatever it is, I'm a heck of a lot less likely to do whatever rehab drill I give somebody.

So maybe instead of going after rehab, I have to go over here and mess with this to give them, you know, find the time, AKA maybe energy to do the thing, to get themselves out of pain. yeah, like you said, we, the always learning, right? Always be learning if that was our, you know, 80 quote. We find the gaps where we're not able to help people and we don't completely go down that lane because there are specialists in all of those.

but you have to know enough to maybe start the fire under somebody's ass to get them to do what you need them to do in your lane. And that is becoming more so. mean, you know, you think of like the book Sapiens and talking about creating these commandos of health, right? Like these, these people that have to know a little bit of everything and are they going to be the people that take over? And this is the next question I want to get to, or are we going to create more of this reductionist medical system with all these specialists?

So you said that the burden in your opinion doesn't lie with, you you know, the gyno, the OB, the cardiologist to tackle all these things. Do you think the burden just lies with the individual? Like health is ultimately our responsibility. It's our body. It's our life. It's our lifestyle. Um, how far do you think that burden lies with a person before they need to go out and learn from others or, you know, seek out help or, know, that's hard nowadays. I there's a bunch of shit out there. Um, and that's like half the battle is like,

peer in through the weeds to see what's real. So where do you think that burden lies and how do people kind of address like finding out how to take care of themselves?

Speaker 1 (13:57.376)

Well, so I have a question for everybody who listens to this. What is freedom?

Hmm. Ooh, man.

and what is truth. And I'm sure that whether you want to look at this from a spiritual or religious context, that a lot of people can understand that, what truth is. But what I'm connecting is that truth with physiological and mechanical truths, right? So.

If you can't get those things aligned, this is called responsibility. And this is, this is why I feel as a society and, and, and at large, and this isn't everybody that people struggle. They're not actually really that honest with themselves. I have spiritual truth, but I am a hundred pounds overweight. Well,

I don't know that you totally understand what freedom and truth mean. And if you're not paying attention enough, then you're just not understanding truth enough. And so I think there's a whole connection to this entire thing. I mean, I'm not somebody who chases spiritual context, I like, because I think the moment that people actually do, you know, try and chase spiritual context or try and chase the spiritual side of things,

Speaker 1 (15:30.818)

that they're going to miss it. I think it's a body mind connection that you inevitably find through awareness. And that truth in itself exposes itself to who you are and realistically. So the fact is, is the reality of everything is we all carry responsibility and we all know what we all understand to a large degree, difference between right and wrong. there, yeah, there are people out there that yet they have, they struggle.

They have meant there's true mental disorders and things like that that are going on that people struggle and I am totally compassionate to that. What I am not compassionate to is just people who want to take the quick fix to something where it's, I'm, you like pain, you brought up pain or, you know, just briefly went by it and it's like, look, factual information.

What science says whether i'm reading a book about the brain or whether i'm reading something about people who are you know Addicts, you know, or i'm reading something about people who you know, or i'm reading something about, know orthopedic stuff and people being in pain with joints, right? People who run from pain Are in far more pain than those who actually go towards pain to understand pain and

you see that even in the in the brain that people who actually deal with chronic pain actually dedicate more areas in the brain to pain when in fact they aren't actually dealing with as much pain as somebody who really I mean I I've surrounded myself with some pretty interesting people and I've seen people running around on limbs that should have been replaced long ago that

basically are like, I can get through this. This no big deal. And then we go get MRIs. And it's like, yo, you have no headgear femur. Like, it's been worn off. And it's like, what? Like, you've been running around in all this pain. And it's like, but you're not, they're not actually dealing with pain. And I there's instance after instance after instance with this thing, you know, with these types of experiences. And I'm not, I'm not trying to

Speaker 1 (17:51.0)

put people down who are dealing with pain and who are in these things, but I am saying that if you, this is where real change actually happens. And this is what real change actually is. And it's the death of a way or a pattern or a habit that has got me in a place that I'm doing something that has me in this control mechanism. And it's a behavioral control thing where we're using our survival skills

as a means for non-survival type situations. And we've been doing this since we were children. We all do it. I'm not like I do it, right? And fortunately for me, I've got a wife who will call me out on, you know, and I'm like, damn it. All right, she's right. I've got to stop doing that. And that's where truth starts to play itself out. But physiology has the same mechanism here. And this is why we've gone towards this breathing thing is because

There's only one way to understand what we're doing with energy and the way we can measure it right now. And that's through respiration. And that's what we've been doing for eons. And we use a metabolic cart to do that. And we measure every single breath, what goes in, what goes out. And based on the carbon dioxide and oxygen going in and out, we can understand how we're burning things metabolically. And so when I'm moving more of that needle towards I'm burning more carbohydrate or I'm offloading more carbon dioxide,

and I'm pulling oxygen in, I know we've got a problem. And so if I've got somebody going on a walk who's got to open their mouth to do that, then I've got somebody who's physiologically or metabolically inefficient. that could be, now, if I've got somebody doing that on a walk, but I've gotten an elite athlete who's got to go out on a run and they've got to run or they've got to work out for an hour with their mouth open.

That's a problem. And our body says that. mean, do think there's a reason why we store in quote unquote plus or minus 2000 calories of glycogen? Like what uses sugar in our body all the time? Brain, nervous system. So if I'm depleting those things constantly, what am I depleting my system of? Well, my nervous system and brain are gonna have be a little bit more foggy. You're gonna have to overwork today.

Speaker 1 (20:14.926)

Or my body's gonna have to overwork in order to produce that I don't insert that so then we got people who are eating a lot of crap food Because they feel this need or desire to move towards something that's gonna fulfill that desire or that the need for sugar or carbohydrate right and it's this whole compounded effect of What does my what is the reality or what is the truth of what's going on? And I'm not you know, I hate

to be as deep as this and I don't want to go over people's heads with this, but this is the reality of what we're doing with our lives and we're trying to hack being healthy.

I think what you just said is probably the biggest problem with let's not even call it health, just the field of human, like being a little more human is that we think it is wrong to go over people's heads when what we should be trying to do is go into their heads and get them to go inside themselves. And that's what you basically just said, like these three truths, right? There's factual truth. That's the things that we study, but they're not really truth until they've been tested, right? That's the whole.

the whole scientific process. we have truth is like, it is known, right? That would be, we know right and wrong from a moral standpoint, basically from the time we were little kids, even if our parents don't really tell us. But then you have perceived truth, the things that you've done through life that build a lens to look at both of those truths and then say, I know that says this and I thought that, but now I kind of have my own little amalgam. But I think that's what, you know, if you use breathing as an example of this,

The hardest things for people to do are be honest with themselves, like you said, which requires introspection, spending time with yourself. That could be from the mental aspect, physical aspect. But when you get down to brass tacks, like there are a lot of people that are willing to push themselves, you know, on a run, you know, per se, but then they won't take the time to slow down on that same run and see what's the quality of it. How do I breathe? You know, what could I change with these small factors and stuff saying, I'm just going to crush it.

Speaker 2 (22:22.062)

And then that turns into your entire entire lifestyle, which like you said, health is a lifestyle and people are out there just, you know, this, like you said, snowball is rolling downhill of my cognition has declined due to how I breathe through the day and then how I exercise. Then the food choice is based on that state that I'm in. And then all of a sudden I'm three months down the road. No wonder I have an autoimmune disease. Like you've literally kicked your body's own ass and now it's

going to fall under the health purview of we got to take care of it with, you know, some, maybe it's functional medicine or the standard medical side. But I think we need to, in my opinion, as we said, the burden lies with us. We need to, I think in our field, stop thinking, I've got to, I've got to go down to a level where they understand it. No. Well, I think what we should do is say, you know, I have a client, you know, two months ago, she got a brand new Porsche and she was super excited. And she came in and she said,

You know, I've had to go to the dealership three times just to figure out how to work this damn thing. This is the same client that won't take enough time to figure out how their body works. So here's this thing, your best asset you're ever going to get. You're with it your whole life and you're not willing to read. You know, there is no manual of human health. There's a lot of books on it, but there's not a, you know, something you can follow, but we're very wary of taking time with ourselves to learn ourselves when that's

biggest asset I think you have. It's just figuring your shit out and then applying that day after day and that's going to change every day. So you're constantly revisiting it. So what are some practices? I know obviously breathing is a big part of what you do personally and then also professionally. What are some practices that you have used that have either not been so great at figuring yourself out and then other things that have been just game changers?

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (24:18.254)

Thank

mean, everything I've done has had some sort of impact on me, good or bad, right? you know what mean?

Speaker 1 (24:36.224)

Running was a great fun thing for me, but I was doing it to learn something, to understand something. And it wasn't, it's not necessarily my jam, right? And so a lot of people think that I'm this running, used to think that I was this running guy.

Did you go knowing that that it was? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, I went into ultra running and that was where I went into really went into running but I started running when I was doing triathlon. You know, and I thought I was gonna stick with triathlon but then I just got just got too cultish for me. I'm just not real good with cults even though people be like, well, you're part of CrossFit. I was like, well, actually, I'm not part of CrossFit anymore but

There's nothing wrong with CrossFit and there's nothing wrong with triathlon. just wouldn't becomes culty. And there's a lot of things, a lot of people. Yeah. I'm just like, I'm good. you know, I running was, I think I still run from time to time and I use it to expose things. And, and so my practice is largely about exposure. And, know, I think somebody like Jocko Willinick is very important in the fact that what he's talking about.

It is absolutely a reality in the fact that if you can create discipline and a habit to something you can you can basically create freedom in something I also think paradoxically though that Once you've started a hat once you've created a habit that You should be breaking that habit and and building on that changing that to some degree

Speaker 1 (26:19.242)

So for instance, let's just say you're getting up at 430 in the morning like Jocko, right? And this is, know, like I get up early and then I go work out and I start the day, seize the day and starts my day and I feel great about it. Well, once you're in a routine and that just becomes something that you automatically are doing and you know you're going to do, well, change that up. Like do something different with it.

You know, for me, like breathing became something I went and started to understand a lot of different things. Like I went through several different pranayamas, like yoga, traditional breathing practices. I did those in the morning, stuck with them. Then when I, those became very big habit. I fell into the Wim Hof thing. did Wim Hof for a very, for I think probably like four to six months. Right. And then I started noticing some things with that, that I wasn't real. I just didn't.

Enjoy as much and so I started going in back into some other thing or I started looking in the free diving culture in the world Started doing co2 and o2 tables. and then after I've got real good at that or you know got my breath holding down and started to understand that deeper I Changed that into well Now I can start manipulating my o2 levels to start to play with things when I'm

you know, working out or my CO2 levels when I'm training. So instead of just going in in the morning and doing breath work, I started doing some more mobility type stuff or yoga. got more involved in yoga, right? Like I started doing yoga in the morning. Then I would go and start my training and I would use my cardiovascular training. Like I do a lot of bike stuff. So I'd go and I, I,

Apply a lot of the knowledge that I learned through those varying techniques or methods and I would start applying it to the training that I was doing to understand what I could do with the training so Wasn't like I was getting rid of my breath practice, right? But the breath practice got manipulated got changed that habit changed I became I started diving into it differently and I've spent six or so more years playing with these various different things

Speaker 1 (28:23.798)

and trying to understand them and connect the dots with inside the spectrum of other habits or other things that I created in order to learn more about them so that I've never pigeonholed into just one thing or getting up at 430 in the morning. But the fact of the matter is, is I naturally get up somewhere between four and five thirty in the morning. alarm. That's what happens. I never used Jocko's thing. I was in the military. I got up early. I was always an early riser.

but I go to bed early. And so I pay attention to things. And so I create habits around things that I'm doing. Right. And so naturally, if I get up early, I'm probably going to be pretty tired around seven 30 or eight o'clock at night. So I follow that. I don't, I don't mess with that. That that's what those are called principles. Like, Hey, like I'm not going to go to dinners at eight o'clock at night, no matter who or what they are. Like,

I just it's just a print. don't care if it's a big money deal or a big business deal or whatever. I'm sorry, I'm not going to be effective at that time at night. And then it's going to screw with the next day and I may have meetings set up or important things set up that next day that are now going to suffer as a consequence of that. Right. And so I start to integrate these things and lo and behold, wow, most of my day is

has controlled breathing centered around it and me paying attention to what's going on in my head and when my thoughts run away, when my body's feeling a particular way or I feel pain doing something and I've manifested that through time by just implementing little things that I created habits out of that then I changed those habits, right? And so it literally became this compound effect and you know, throw nutrition into that. wow, well I played around with paleo, I played around with vegan, I played around with

Low carb I played around with keto. I played around with high protein or low protein or high car like I did a high carb I was part I was part of a high carb club like I understand all these different ideologies that or methods that people End up gluing and crossfit like I didn't crossfit when I was a crossfitter and I glued myself to it to understand it so that I didn't need to be it and so just taking this even back

Speaker 1 (30:45.298)

to when you brought up Harari and like Sapiens and what we're going to be looking at here in the future, I think, is a, I already think it's happening and there's a guy by the name of Sam, Sam Veknon, I believe is his name and he's a highly intelligent guy and he's out of Israel and he talks about a lot of this stuff as well, but

there's going to be a separation of humanity that's coming. And it's the same separation that's going on right now. And it's the people who want to take a pill for what's going on. And there's nothing wrong with taking a pill when you come out of surgery or you've got some inflammation going on when it's acutely done.

But when it becomes something that is chronic and that you need for long term, and I'm talking SSRI, I'm talking opioids, I'm talking whatever it is, if you're not willing to go down that road to understand what is going on, and sure, there are people and things that are going on that are gonna need medications the rest of their lives. Those exist. That is not, by and large, most of the population. It's a fraction of the population.

but it's the same population that sits there on social media and thinks that social media is actually socializing and thinks that by looking at what some gal or some guy who's got a million followers who has no real worth in the world other than the butt they're showing or the abs they're showing or whatever it is they're doing, right? And there's nothing wrong with this. Only the fact that I'm comparing myself to that and thinking that's a real

That's real. And that is something that I'm engaged in versus the conversation you and I are having right now. And even though this is virtual, it's still happening. And I'm responsible for the words that are coming out of my mouth because you can question those words. And we have a conversation going on where when I post something on the internet and somebody feels like they don't agree with that and their opinion is warranted on that post that

Speaker 2 (32:43.768)

Even though it's virtual.

Speaker 1 (33:04.91)

Your opinion isn't warranted. It isn't. And it doesn't matter what your opinion is. You have your own platform in order to provide information on and people can choose or not to choose to be there. But the fact that you think or I think that my opinion is warranted or that it's valid to be on that is the problem. It's not everybody's an expert. And even for myself, I may not be the expert, but I'm going to put out information as I've not only experienced it,

but as we're testing and I'm having scrutinized on the, I'm going to put it out and you are more than welcome to absorb that or take that and go, you know what? I questioning this. I'm to ask this guy a question. So ask me.

I made a rule that probably six months ago, if I, cause I, I mean, I follow my Instagram is basically in Twitter for like research, like people that I want to learn to get ideas. I made a rule that I can only ask questions because early in my career within my field, there is a lot of just dogma and you know, this, that, or the other. Um, and I would get caught up in some of this shit and you know, that was my own fault. Um, but I made a rule. I can only ask questions. I can only learn from what they post because

I agree with what you said. My opinion doesn't matter. And I also that post, even if it's a long form post is that's all it is is a post, right? So if I ask one question, but I don't ask it in a question, I just throw it out there like your typical, you know, end of a end of a talk question. That's not a question. They just want to hear themselves validate their own point. That's what I was doing early in my career is like, no, this is my stance. I may form it as a question, but it wasn't, it was just a dig.

And I think if we went about it in this deliberative process where we say, and Brian put out a post, it's freaking awesome. I may not agree with this, but I got to figure out what he was talking about first. And that may take 10 questions, right? But then we can actually, that isn't a conversation, but at least it's digging in instead of just digging at. And yeah, I agree.

Speaker 1 (35:05.538)

that there's a yeah if you ask an intelligent question on my platform you will get a response if you direct something or create an opinion you're gonna either I'm most likely not even gonna touch it or respond if you're put something on there that's in poor form I'm just gonna remove it you're gonna get blocked because it just go somewhere else man

Why do you think that you are like that? So everything that you were just saying, even how you went out running in the beginning, you went at it because you knew running wasn't your jam, but you to figure something out and then trying all these diets, trying yoga, breath work, different types of breath work, A, that's kind of your job right now. You've made a living on knowing all this stuff and then diving into it and then dispelling kind of your

take on it to athletes and other people. But what like have you always been like this? Is this how you were as a kid? Like I'm gonna do a million things and you know or I or is it that because there's a little bit of that like anti establishment to your entire approach, right? yeah. Which is cool. We need more of that. But why do think that is?

Well, I mean, I guess, well, A, yes, I've always been like this. This is the part of me that has been true from the beginning.

And it's cool that you're capitalizing on that. That's literally what you're getting out of this.

Speaker 1 (36:28.27)

Yeah, and this is what it's like, you know, I figured out who I was. I figured out who I was right around 30, you know, now.

I took some time. What'd you do in that?

your side. There was a lot of learning from 30 to 100%. Let me tell you, you know, like I did not handle myself very well. And I've come off the wheels have come off on the internet with me before, you know, and this is the interesting thing about social media itself is like, the moment you realize that this isn't actually real, you can actually do with it what you choose.

versus it controlling you you becoming responsive or reactive to it. Right? And I felt I jumped off all social media for about a month. And then I realized that, you know, in this like, matrix-like moment was like, there is no spoon. Like, I can't run from this thing because this is where people are going for information.

So there's an inherent responsibility in what I'm doing as a person and as you know, what I've chosen to do with my path and people wanting to hear information from me. Granted, it's not an epic ton of people, but there's enough people that push my button and be like, yo, what are you doing next? What's going on? I want to know like, what is this? And we're providing information for our platforms, right? What we're doing. So there's a responsibility for me to actually do that.

Speaker 1 (38:04.78)

And that's what I think that's, that's where it lies, but that doesn't mean I need to sit on there and go through the comments and look at the likes and the moment I'm looking at how many likes and what, like all the comments and all this stuff versus going, okay, did somebody ask a question here that it's actually relevant? That's a very different scenario or looking through the feed to see what I can compare myself. When I catch myself doing that, it's got me right. So I think for me,

I've always like, there's been this, there's been this pull and push that's happened throughout my life, the anti-authoritative movement, right? And there is an absolute need for an authority to a large degree, but that authority is not one person or one thing. That is a group collective. And I think,

By and large, when we start to agree as a group, that's what it is. But I don't think at any point in my life, when everybody was doing the one thing or got hooked to the thing, you know, when that was the moment I, I don't know why, but it was almost like I naturally understood it was time to change. It was time to do something different. And it's not that I needed to

bounce out of it or completely take myself away from it because I went and I did running and running essentially became an identity to some degree. The moment I realized that was when I walked away from it. And the moment I start to realize I start to get and I, my identity gets kind of attached to something. It's time for me to dissociate from that. Or I think dissociate's a bad word. It's time for me to walk.

in a different direction. That doesn't mean I can't come back and use it from time to time.

Speaker 2 (40:05.6)

Have you read, I'm sure you have Robert Green's book Mastery. So it's interesting because if you think about it from, yeah, the cultural standpoint, maybe the past hundred years, but then the evolutionary standpoint of why you may do that, you know, that's what spurred, you know, we've, there have been multiple Renaissance movements throughout time, not just the Renaissance. And one is happening now in my opinion, but that's what we're talking about when we talk about this kind of well-rounded man. So there,

Yes.

Speaker 2 (40:34.488)

there would have been tribal leaders throughout time that were just absolute beasts at one thing, right? The hunter, the thinker, the medicine man. But what you probably saw more of over time was more of this like polymath, like leadership where humans, know, not just men, but also women became very adept at multiple things to the point where they could lead people. Because like you said, it's not one person that creates leadership. It's a group.

And the reason being is everybody brings different ideas, knowledge, basis, expertise, and then it's ever evolving. But if you're the person that is the hunter, that shelf life is low. And you're also the tribal leader that's probably going to get taken out by somebody else because they think they're the better hunter. when you, you know, and this isn't a competitive scenario I want to build. want to say as humans, are cognition is our power, right? Our ability to adapt to, you know, around our environment.

But that's only because we became awesome at everything, not one thing. If we would have just been really good persistence hunters, we wouldn't have made it out of the other.

What you're really describing here is, have you read Nassim Taleb's book, Anti-Fragile? Yeah. Yeah. The more specialized I am, the more fragile you are. our problem is, and this is to take nothing away from Elon Musk, is that we're putting all the power in somebody like Elon Musk.

Elon Musk is a highly intelligent person who's doing some great work. He should not be, in my opinion, he probably should not be running a company. He should be the creative mind behind what that company is doing. He should have some power, but trying to run that company is making him go nuts.

Speaker 2 (42:24.492)

killing his ability to create more ideas. Yeah.

100%. 100%. So you take this tech world and we start to go and look at people who are, created these platforms and we look to them for leadership. Really? You want a guy like Mark Zuckerberg leading everybody? You want a guy like Jack Dorsey leading everybody? These are guys who literally sat in their rooms on computers and didn't socialize with people until they were like 30. Right? And this isn't to take anything away from them. This is just factual information.

So they created platforms or got involved in platforms that allowed them to not have to actually be involved like we are right now. And be responsible for a lot of the things that they're doing or saying. And thus now everybody's on there and we're behaving like them. there's these, and the problem here is that it's altering the way the landscape of our brains work. Because we're not needing to use them in a manner that they're actually

And then we won.

Speaker 1 (43:26.562)

We've evolved to use them. Thus, we're shutting them down and creating dopamine trigger responses to things and reactiveness to things that in regular social atmospheres would never go anywhere.

When what you're touching on parallels what we've done with celebrity, right? We got it. Our perception of leadership has been based on popularity, which was at one time maybe a bit of a life and death scenario of, you know, the popular leader or do I stay alive because people like what I'm saying or they don't. There's going to a reason. This we turn that mastery of technology, right? These people that.

are to establish ideas and create something out of nothing. And then we took that in our, our kind of monkey brain to be like, my God, if they can master that they can lead us. Maybe not.

Exactly right. know, maybe at one time, maybe at one time, you know, I think there was a time actually in entertainment where you had some real Renaissance type people. And that doesn't mean they don't exist right now. yeah, yeah, yeah. And they still do. And that doesn't mean Jack Dorsey or Mark Zuckerberg is a bad person. They're just means we just put we just as a society put pigeonhole these guys.

into some responsibility that they are incapable of actually dealing with and I don't know if you've ever watched an interview or eat I mean she spent or whoever it were I mean if you've ever watched these individuals or listened to him all you got to do is go and listen and see and and and go Yeah, we probably shouldn't have these guys Leading a charge towards something or giving them too much power like allow them to do what they're doing and you know

Speaker 1 (45:20.406)

understand that but going towards these folk or anybody for that matter who just has a high popularity rating or high money rating or you know like hey Wern Buffett is knows what he's doing with money he does and by and large I've listened to him he's pretty humble and he's he's probably a very very rare human being at the top of that list in fact

I know he is because I've met a few billionaires and they're not all people who I would want in charge of things. Like they're pretty, a lot of these guys can be very, and gals can be very power hungry. That is not somebody you want in charge, right? You need people who understand that power is actually a responsibility, you know, and looking to people like that and understanding their limitations of what they're doing and being able to say,

this isn't a decision for me. This is a decision for a collective. You know, this is a decision for a group to make or this guy over here should be involved in. It's why, you know, this is the problem of science as well. We look at science to guide us into everything versus like, hey, just because that study said that doesn't mean you shouldn't go and, you know, be playing around with that in a different manner. mean, hey, go actually do what that study said.

Did you get the results that gave you, that gave them for you? And, you know, literally that's where you start to figure out, N equals one. I guess there is some differences in how we're actually doing blood work as a doctor and the limitations of what's in what the general population shows as a marker versus an elite athlete in somebody who's dealing with chronic disease. there may be some differentiation there.

And I mean, even more of some, some, some different variables in order to look at, Oh, cholesterol. Maybe we should be looking at different markers with the cholesterol versus looking at the overall marker or blood pressure or whatever. You know what I'm saying? I mean, it just goes down and down and down to where we've pigeonholed ourselves in the places that aren't exactly that. Hey, science works for a reason. And it creates a broad scope for us to be able to look at and go, that's interesting.

Speaker 1 (47:45.344)

maybe I should consider applying this in some fashion to my life. And it's not necessarily how, it's why, right?

So we're talking high level here, like how, you know, a collective, how leadership is formed, you know, all this stuff, but I ask myself this question a lot. So there are big issues in the world that need tackling, right? Finances, the environment, know, everything. When you and I'm

assuming here, so correct me if I'm wrong, you work with a lot of athletes and high performers and things like that. I have a big focus on athletics because that's what I grew up doing. Um, I chose that because the compliance is a lot easier with people that are already athletic. But when I look at it, sometimes I'm like, is this just fluff, right? Like I'm allowing somebody yes to use their body. But a lot of the time it's in pursuit of things that are just, what the hell does it matter if you're on a marathon? What the hell does it matter if you can do collegiate basketball?

So what you like? How do you form that when you're like, okay, if my mission is a human, you know, and this is my thought, my mission as a human is to help out everybody else somehow. Right. And that is going to be figuring out first of all, who, who am I and how do I plug into that scenario to be part of that collective? And then sometimes I'm like, really? I'm helping, I'm helping these, these bros and gals run trail races. Awesome. But how is that? You know, yeah, they're happy. And that, and then we can talk about the exponential snowball effect. But sometimes they're just like, damn, this seems

pretty cheap to think about athletics as a very important part of our society. And I know you could argue, what's your thought on that? Like how do you reconcile that with who you work with and what you're doing now?

Speaker 1 (49:35.01)

Well, I'm happy to hear where your thinking is with this. I'll tell you that. You know, is sport healthy? This was something Kelly Starrett and I talked about and we put it out publicly. And it was a long conversation, and it's on that disruptors episode that we put off on power, speed, endurance.

Sport is not healthy. Sport is not health. And in fact, what we're starting to find out is it's fairly unhealthy. And it's being used in the same exact manner that the same things that we're dealing with in an unhealthy society is dealing with. It's just being, it's just a different mask. It's just a different identity. I'm

a professional rower or I'm a professional basketball player, I'm a professional runner or I'm ultra runner, right? And I've worn these things, And it literally, the moment that occurs, we've just stepped into, we've just stepped out of health. That doesn't mean you can't go run trail marathons or ultra marathons or compete at an elite level. But to take on something

in the fact that or with the idea that it's about winning is I'm just or it's about accomplishing this goal is you've just removed, you've just created the biggest illusion that we have.

I like that look at it.

Speaker 1 (51:16.172)

Nothing wrong with winning. There's nothing wrong with winning and there's nothing wrong with accomplishing or running an ultra marathon or running a marathon. Nothing wrong with that. If that's what the goal is, you have just skipped what it means to be or to be a human being. It's about process and it's about going through a process and it's there's going.

If I go to the Olympics and win and I've watched this with several Olympic gold medalists and it is a horrific experience to win a gold medal. Horrific. Yet what do we as a society do with it? We lift it, we lift it up and idolize it. Yet nobody cares what happens to these people. And it's been very public about what guys like

Idolize it.

Speaker 1 (52:12.726)

or people like Michael Phelps have gone through. He can't stop. Yet he's dealing with depression and all these things and know, is he depressed or is that just a byproduct of what he's been doing? Like we all get depressive symptoms. We all deal with anxiousness at times. Why is this continuing to happen? What is the means? So what is the process of what it is we're doing?

Is it about the goal or is it about the process of the goal? And then what's the process off that? So if I've got to go run an ultimate, and this is something I picked up real quickly on in the ultra running world was people would go and we would go, I was a part of it, go and do an ultra marathon. The moment you finished it, you're thinking about the next one you want to go do. Right.

But we weren't thinking about what it meant to actually do that and come off that mountain. You know, there's a story my wife picked up and I can't remember where she got it, but she tells it all the time. And it's about these two mountain climbers that go up into, I think might've been Nepal or whatever. And they go up there and there's an avalanche or there's a group of people that go up climbing in Nepal and there's a big avalanche. And most of the people are killed and two of the guys survived.

And they're both hurt pretty well, but they both can walk. And one of the guys is a little more banged up and a helicopter comes in and they're able to come and they get the one guy and they take him down and they take him from the helicopter down to the hospital. And the other guy is approached by one of the Sherpas. And the Sherpa says to him, if you don't walk off this mountain the same way you came on, you're not going to understand.

what it meant to go through what you just went through. And this is our problem. And so the guy walked down the mountain and understood, and you know, it takes a long time to get up to the mountains in the Himalayas from Nepal. It's not an easy trip. It's like week takes a couple of weeks, right? So it took this guy a couple of weeks to come down and understand the process of what happened and the people that died and the things that happened versus jumping into a helicopter, being rushed to safety.

Speaker 1 (54:33.868)

and not having to totally process what just happened. Right? I was just, I almost broke my neck, you know, and I went through this thing that I had to come to terms with pretty quickly. and, and, and look, I'm very fortunate. I'm walking, I'm moving, I'm fitter than I've been in a decade. I've, know, but I, I tee that up to actually going through a process of understanding, Hey, I might be paralyzed right now for the rest of my life.

I may be burdening my wife and my family and everybody around me to a degree that I need to take responsibility for what just happened. And what just happened was I was playing on a playground with my nephews. That was it. But I chose to be there and I chose to go through it. that's life, man. Life is that.

And if you're not in the process of what it means to actually injure yourself and understand that injury and walk off that mountain, then you're going to skip the entire thing and you're going to be dealing with depression or anxiety and all of these things that you refuse to want to understand. Therefore we medicated and don't understand it. I going to say. Yeah.

What a great analogy. That story is just for life nowadays in general, not everybody, but that we will, the helicopter could be your, your phone. could be Netflix. It could be, could be anything to transport you from the interested to where you were, alcohol. could be a numerous things that we don't, you know, ask them what the next race is. We transport ourselves to the very next thing. Cause that's how we're being trained to operate.

First all, I think you have your next book title. It should be illusion of sport and dive into this. we talked about, but you, you asked, well, what are my thoughts on this? And this, this is where I, I struggle. I see sport, which it always was. It was a branch off of what we did as humans, right? A lot of, you know, like lacrosse came out of your coin games, but the first game to the ear coils was a version of hunting, right? You're training boys, how to do something to survive.

Speaker 2 (56:46.72)

It wasn't because you wanted to be really good at that sport. It was a necessary skill or task or thought process for life. We've completely lost that. So what I always try to get myself to understand or athletes, because let's say I'm trying to get somebody out of pain that does want to run an ultra race. If you attach your outcomes to a getting rid of pain, be completing the race and that's it like good luck. Like you're, you're not going to make it in my opinion.

And I think we have to figure out like, why am I driven to do this in the first place? Why would a human nowadays when you don't have to want to run a hundred miles, why would a human want to, you know, take a bike ride across America? Like, why would we want to do these things? And it's not like you have to understand anthropology and evolutionary biology to ask this question. You just have to, you have to, you know, it's the Toyota ask the five wise, like why am I doing this? You know, my friends are doing it. I'm in that community, you know, whatever it is.

but we skip, right? Just like you said, we get on the helicopter and we say, I don't, you know, I'm, gotta get in shape. I got to run a marathon. That's what everybody does. And then we, never get the why. And then when we get hurt or we get lost, like, and that's what you're alluding to. The process is starting with the why and then everything else builds off that in a very nice fashion without, you know, when shit gets hard or you get injured that

you've got to fall back to the process because it's not going to be a B line, you know, or a to B for anything in life, let alone an athletic endeavor. But I always fall back to like, why would I want to do this? Like what's in my DNA? What's, know, what would drive me to do this? Because, you know, and we could go super deep on this and say, you know, you talked about freedom. Well, is there free will or am I just like, man, am I manifesting these neurochemical signals to drive myself into some place that

you know, my, my body's inherently telling me to do, even though I think I chose to sign up for that race. I don't know. You know, that's, don't know if anybody can answer that to be honest with you, but what the, want to kind of, I want to be respectful of your time. I don't want to wrap up with something that I ask everybody. And this may be hard if there's not a singular concise answer. That's fine. But it's more of the concept as we evolve as people. And in particular, if we think of ourselves as a bit of a researcher or a coach, we have to change our mind.

Speaker 2 (59:03.724)

almost every day, right? On things we used to believe. So I'm always curious, like what is something that you unnecessarily did? And this could not even be an athletics. What's something you believed? Like I'm talking like this is the way it is, right? That you have 110 % change based on knowledge or learning from yourself or other people you've surrounded yourself with.

Everything.

Probably the best answer. I know it's a tough.

Look, there isn't a thing I can't walk you through other than the fact of the one thing that I've said I've been my entire life was

wanting to to understand or do things in the way I wanted to do them, right? And and that's basically I just want to learn I want to learn and I am of sound mind at this point that no matter what my opinion is on a particular subject or idea that that is not the only way or thing that process that that could be.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20.856)

They're, you know, it's, like.

I loved long slow distance. I love all of that. And I thought that was the answer. And that's not an answer. No, it's, like, just come back to the last question or the last thing we were talking about is it's like, you know, there's a lot of people like that are chasing dragons, man. And you, you,

sport and athletics and, and, know, becoming an ultra runner or trail runner or whatever. That's no like, there's a lot of people that do psychedelics now and, and they, and they're in it and they, they're in it for the, you know, like the journey and the guy getting guided through this yet. I continually hear these people continuing to go back and do them and participate in this.

And that is no different than the need to go and race again and or accomplish something again. Right. It's not the accomplishment. It's the process of these things. And so I think they're like I read a book on a particular subject. I get some information. I download I try and process that and learn from that. I'll read another book on that information that comes from a different point and I'll start to go down that rabbit hole.

and see that there's things to understand from that. my, I think the most intimate thing I could be honest about is even my personal life and how I've behaved and done things and the ability to look at how my wife sees those things or feels when I behave in specific ways, good, bad, or indifferent. And my ability to actually stop

Speaker 1 (01:02:27.502)

hear what she's saying, process what she's saying and look at it as though maybe there's some truth in that. And that regardless of how I'm behaving and how I feel, that no matter what I'm stuck to about that might just not be right. And that is the biggest fear we have. There's a prolific writer, name's James Baldwin, was African American guy, he died.

a little while ago, part of the entire movement of civil rights, but he used his mind more so than being somebody like Martin Luther King who stood up and we all know and recognize and Martin Luther King is amazing. But James Baldwin is particularly attractive to me for his thinking and the way he thought and wrote. And one of the things that he distinctively talks about.

is the fact that we that changes this inevitable thing. But the fact of the matter is, is that real change only comes about through the death of habit and behavior and these things that we may hold on to that we think are true. And the only reason we're hanging on to them is because of the fear we may be wrong or that there may be another way. And that is the reality of life.

And that is the reality of everything. And I think that I'm just open to the fact that I could be wrong about everything and that there might be another way of doing it. But I'm going to make damn sure that I enjoy the process of that and that I make it a game. And I never stopped being a kid in that sense. And it's like climbing a tree or building a tree for it or skateboarding all over again and trying that thing.

and not looking at it as this burden of like, man, I've got to change who I am. you know, well, yeah, your body is going to change anyway. Like your brain, your cells are going to turn over. Your skin changes, your hair changes, your brain cells change. Like all of this stuff changes. Yet we fight that one truth. And that is our only true reality is death. And like we will die.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53.036)

and we behave as though we're not going to. And that's our problem.

what not that I can add to the eloquence of Baldwin on this, but in my mind, real change, like you said, he's alluding to like, you know, a, have to realize there's a habit to break it or to change behavior. But that in my opinion is literally what makes us human is the ability to have decision, right? Like there were not whether that's a farce or not, right? We are choosing what we do. And I think this whole conversation could be summarized in or

you're living your life or your life in a way that you're better equipped to choose more appropriately more often, right? And in a faster fashion because you're constantly evolving your thought process when you're faced with something that challenges your views, challenges your physicality, whatever it is, you're you've built this, this basis or this foundation of how you think. And we've said thinking, I don't know how many times, maybe we'll do a little statistic here after we get off here.

But I think that's what we miss nowadays because we're, told a lot, right? We, like you said, we look at social media, we look at the news, we're told a lot. The thing in my opinion that makes us human is to decide and we're robbing ourselves of our own decision. And that gets, it gets worrisome. wouldn't say scary. It gets worrisome because like that is what you get to do. That's the only thing that you're assured is that you get to decide, right? And it's sometimes harder to make a decision based on circumstance or

that you always have the ability to decide. And one thing I wanted to kind of point out that you said like, people are out there chasing dragons, 100 % agree. You know, I was just reading an article on the new midlife crisis is extreme athleticism, right? That we chase these things. I think it's fine to chase dragons, just like you said earlier, as long as you admit that it's an illusion, right? Dragons are not real, as long as you know that.

Speaker 1 (01:06:52.65)

Once you understand there's no dragon, you can do with it what you want.

Yeah, like.

And think that's a, just that alone, if people can really grasp that, like that will change so much what you do throughout your day. It's like, hey, that's not just a race. That's many things in our daily life. This is not real. This is something I'm making up to either force myself into that or to make myself do something. We do it all the time, right? I have to do A because of B. Do you really? Have you really?

like thought about this, do you have to eat this certain way to lose this weight or are there 15 other options and they may be better for you than that? And we we confine ourselves in these, you know, just tunnels and gauntlets of just sometimes.

It's this fragile world that we create, man. It's just a glass box. I mean, it's unfortunate that, you know, the civil rights movement has been what it's been. And we've had to use black and white as that representation of what ultimately is truth or reality. And it's the reality of what's going on. And I think that's what Baldwin was really trying to convey.

Speaker 1 (01:08:08.3)

was I just want you to think about what you're saying and doing and what the reality of things actually are. And when you realize that I'm a man just like you're a man and that I deal with the same shit you're dealing with or I have to deal with a burden far greater than you because of the color of my skin, you know, and it's no different than what the Me Too movement's doing either. And it's like, when we actually start to come together and start to think about this stuff,

even in the context of sport or human performance, it's the same thing. It's no different. And when we actually get to the reality of what's going on, there is, there's only one possibility. And that's all I'm in search of, you know, and that's all I'm trying to do is have fun and expose that through the medium of human performance or human development versus

civil rights or you whatever. Like this was the medium I chose in order to convey the message of, hey, you're in pain because you're not listening. You're moving poorly. Let's check your, let's, let me show you through running mechanics, reality of what's going on. Are you in less pain now? Okay. Change what you're doing. Listen to what's happening, right? If you're overweight, maybe change what you're eating or, or consider something or

Hey, what's going on with your breathing? Like how is this affecting you? Why is this? Why are we going after this so hard? Why do we understand this in the way that we do and we're talking about it the way that we are and by the way, we know aerobic Efficiency, we know aerobic capacity affects everything and the more and the better you're at with it The better off your entire system functions brain and body And what you may be doing

is not necessarily aerobically efficient, even though you think it might be. So here's that reality and here's that truth and may you find in that exploration the reality that I found. And you can do with that whatever you want at that point.

Speaker 2 (01:10:25.77)

I don't think we could put a better bow on it than that. I mean, if you had to sum up why you're doing what you're doing and what you're doing, you know, and keep conveying the message. Like you said, your message is just one, you know, I think the thing I like most about what we've talked about today is that even though you have built a following and you've done a lot of great things and you may not have an acronym behind your name, you've got a lot of accolades of what you've touched and who you've worked with and all these things. But the thing is that you're still saying it's just my thoughts.

I'm could be wrong right? Let's just consider this as an option. This is my Perspective, but we just we need a hell of a lot more of that and not just the field of human performance We just need that overall in my opinion nowadays There's a lot of names that you could put on that but I think you put a good bow on it and Yeah, anything you want to leave us with mean, I feel like this is just like I should just have one liners bill of just quotes through this whole thing I'll do as many of those as I can

but I can't thank you enough, man. This was an awesome conversation. I like we could go on for four hours. I'm sure we could and it could get deep. That's and we need, and that is, that's a good point. Like you said, social media is not a conversation. Have more conversations with people, right? Just on daily bit, like learn something from somebody different. That's probably one of my favorite parts of my job is that I get to see people that do a bunch of different stuff. Yeah, I get to help them, but

they're telling me about their job, what they do. Like I learned as much from them about just human life overall, as I do from, you know, even high performer, like, yeah, you're a wealth of knowledge, but just because I have a stay at home mom with four kids doesn't mean she can't teach me something that I never even thought about. And I think we need to have that mindset more of the people around us, which you don't could get into the whole thing with civil rights and social equality and thinking everybody's got something to say. Brian.

Can't thank you enough, man. Appreciate you being on here. Yeah, and how can people reach out to your social media? Give them a few hits here.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28.462)

Well, Beau, I appreciate you having me on, Instagram is Brian, you can find me, Brian McKenzie, at underscore Brian McKenzie. Twitter's Brian McKenzie. And then everything we do, everything I'm doing is done off of Power Speed Indurance. And you go there and you'll find everything.

And I'll put links to all that in the show notes. So Brian McKenzie guys, appreciate you having on. We'll talk to you guys later.