Motivation, Discipline & Getting Through Hard Times - Jesse James West (4K)

Jesse James West is a YouTuber and an athlete. Fitness is supposed to be enjoyable. And so is creating content about your favourite hobbies. But what about the dark side you don't see in your favourite influencers? How low were the moments they got to and what are the lessons to take away? Expect to learn how to overcome the fear and judgement of others, what running every day for 30 days does to your physique, Jesse’s experience from his first time competing in bodybuilding, the current sate of male body dysmorphia, what it was like spending time with Liver King and doing the hardest challenge Jesse has ever done, and much more… - 00:00 Stay Relentless 09:07 Making Bold Decisions to Pursue Your Passion 23:01 Overcoming the Judgment of Others 30:09 How Jesse Finally Quit Lacrosse 41:34 Jesse’s Experience With Anxiety & SSRIs 52:46 Running Every Day for a Month 59:14 The Hardest Thing Jesse Has Ever Done 1:03:27 Becoming Resilient to Physical Discomfort 1:12:57 Losing Fat Very Quickly for a Challenge 1:22:57 Would Jesse Take Psychedelics? 1:25:07 YouTube Limiting Fitness Videos for Teens 1:30:29 Jesse’s Thoughts on Ronnie Coleman 1:34:31 Chris’s Injury & Stem Cell Experience 1:41:28 Where to Find Jesse - Get a 25% discount on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Get a Free Gift, 5 Free Travel Packs, Free Liquid Vitamin D and more from AG1 at https://drinkag1.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) Gymshark’s biggest sale of the year starts Nov 21st. Get up to 80% off everything sitewide at https://gym.sh/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM10) Get expert bloodwork analysis and bypass Function’s 300,000-person waitlist at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom (automatically applied at checkout) - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Where does stay relentless come from?

• 0:02Speaker 01

  Uh, the relentless part, that comes from my father a hundred percent where he definitely ingrained in my head being relentless. I feel like without saying stay relentless to me, just sort of by his actions throughout life.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  And I believe that as I have gotten older, as I've played sports my entire life and obviously not now, but from 11 years old all the way until 18 years old playing sports. I discovered the whole like nonstop continuously grinding and the more work you put in, the more you get out. And I feel like that's sort of defined who I am. And I feel that that's something that I've always aspired to be is be the hardest worker in the room. And to do that, you need to be relentless. I mean, like you look at the dictionary definition, I'm sort of explaining it. And it really stuck with me and I was like, I feel like this is, this is something that I embody. And also can sort of motivate others to become hopefully.

• 1:02Chris Williamson?

  What's your dad got to do with that?

• 1:03Speaker 01

  My dad, so my dad, he's a blue collar guy. He is, his name's John. So John is a blue collar man. He has worked many jobs. He's cut wood in the winter and made me load it next to him and stuff. So he has always had a lot on his plate and just never really complained or anything. He just always did it, did it, did it, get it done, get it, get it done and never had an excuse either. And I was like, sort of growing up around him was very much. He believed that that's how I should be as well. So one by showing me and two by always like telling me like,

• 1:38Chris Williamson?

  Expectation.

• 1:39Speaker 01

  If there's something that needs to get done, you don't wait, you do it now. If you are trying to be great at something, you go practice, you get better and you will be great. Like it was very like tough love and stuff, but he always was, he had a million, he had five rental properties. Uh, all at once that he was a landlord too. He fixed everything in the house, rebuilt the entire house on top of a normal nine to five that he wakes up at like four in the morning, driving an hour into the city, doing work. So it was like witnessing that firsthand. It was almost like I grew up with no excuse to be made. So I feel like that really ingrained in my head from a young age, just being relentless and like, that's just who I am. And it's like, I can't not be that way.

• 2:19Chris Williamson?

  It took a while for me, my sport growing up was cricket, which is much more gentlemanly.

• 2:24Speaker 01

  You played cricket?

• 2:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that was my game for a decade. But it's also not only gentlemanly, but quite gentle as well. It's very much an art form. It's almost exclusively about skill. S and C for it is primarily just for injury prevention.

• 2:42Chris Williamson?

  So the line of the hard work, what you put in is what you get out. That line wasn't really made clear to me until I got into the world of business and university. Even at school, I don't know, I just didn't, I kind of wish that I did, but I didn't draw the line between hard work equals good performance. I'm aware that that's a very basic realization. It didn't come to me until I was much older. But what does being an 11 to 18, 19 year old lacrosse?

• 3:12Speaker 01

  I played lacrosse, yeah.

• 3:16Chris Williamson?

  What does that philosophy, when you're still a child, feel like?

• 3:21Speaker 01

  You know, it was, it was very, it was very difficult to like comprehend as a kid. Looking back, it all makes sense. And I'm like, I have no regrets on my relationship with my dad, my relationship with coaches and sports. But playing lacrosse, I was fortunately very good at it right away. And I feel like whenever I was good at something, definitely my family was like, we gotta, we gotta push them the most we possibly can. And specifically, my mom pushed me a lot, but like my dad definitely pushed me a lot. It was like, you see those dads on like documentary shows about like a football player or something. A classic sports dad that's just like, well, this son's gonna be the best. He's gonna be the greatest. He's gonna work harder than everybody. And it was very much that, which, but I did enjoy, I loved lacrosse. So I didn't see it as a problem.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  So it was, it was sort of like, he's inducing that, that sort of relentless vibe to my life and like practice. And then my love for the sport also coming together, it worked very well from a young. Age. So like I saw no problem with it. My mom saw no problem with it.

• 4:20Chris Williamson?

  The drive and the passion of working together.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, like just it it met well and the synergy was there of of his ideation and and my love for the sport. And then as time went on and I got older, you know, I I discovered the gym. I really fell in love with bodybuilding. I saw I watched people like Christian Guzman on on YouTube, an OG YouTuber in the fitness world. And I was like, you know, I love lacrosse. I want to play. I want to play pro right now. Or in the future, I want to play pro and I have the aspirations to be the best in the country. But part of me, like my my my inner soul isn't being fulfilled. And as you get older, I feel like you discover that more and more. And as I approached fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I realized like,

• 5:00Speaker 01

  maybe lacrosse isn't gonna be my end goal. Maybe there's something more for me like fitness or doing YouTube. Like I really didn't have that desire from a young age. Let me let me add this. I made YouTube videos since I was twelve. You look up Spartan strings online right now and I am on the internet like, hi, I'm Jesse James. I'm like little little boy on the internet. But I had I had aspirations outside of lacrosse that just kept getting bigger and bigger. And the problem was that my dad, his aspiration was to push me in lacrosse and push me to my absolute limits, waking up early for workouts, chugging, mass gainer shakes. You gotta gain weight. You gotta get bigger. You gotta be stronger than everybody else.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Out there in the rain, the snow, the hail, throwing the ball to me and I.

• 5:46Chris Williamson?

  Web was home for you?

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Home was New Jersey.

• 5:48Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  And so around the we're in the boondocks in the frickin' woods. He's tossing the ball. It's pouring. It's snowing. Doesn't matter what the weather is. And we're getting the reps in because like I do have this love, so I don't see it as too much of a problem. But then there's just a little bit too much force from him to do it where it almost kind of pushed that love away from the sport. And I was like, I just want to I just want to body build. I want to lift. I want to do these things. And you know, it developed into what it is today. So I'm like, super grateful of every aspect of where my life went. But it kind of, we had our struggles and stuff of our relationship because of the, the love of the sport dying and his push becoming more. So it was like a

• 6:28Chris Williamson?

  He feels you pulling away. It's almost like being in a relationship with someone and they're pulling away and you're

• 6:33Speaker 01

  Exactly. And honestly, even coaches started feeling me pull away. And then I got the pressure from them too. So it was like this very odd thing to grow up with. When I was 15 years old, I committed to Lehigh University, which is like a very prestigious academic university. And I committed when I was 15. Like I, they were like, you are, you're going to be on a 90% scholarship in four years from now. So I'm like 15 years old. I'm going on college visits. I went to Loyola Rutgers. Uh, I was looking at Virginia. I was looking at Lehigh, obviously. I went to Udel. I like, I'm like pitching myself to these coaches as a 15 year old. My mom's driving me there like, this is so cool. And I'm like, this is awesome. But like, also, I'm negotiating with a 45 year old coach at 15. It's a very odd.

• 7:18Chris Williamson?

  Were you quite mature?

• 7:19Speaker 01

  I feel like I had to be because like, I, I literally would be going into business meetings, one on one with a coach in a button up at 15 years old. Basically saying like, why, trying to hold together and trying to understand, I'm like, what the hell is going on? But I'm trying to pitch myself to this coach of why I should be on his team in four years from now. They got rid of that rule, like NCAA came in and was like, this is ridiculous.

• 7:41Chris Williamson?

  You can't scout.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  You can't scout children, literally. It's like, too, it's just too far. Now they have to wait till their, their September of their junior year to even talk to them.

• 7:49Chris Williamson?

  What age is that?

• 7:50Speaker 01

  Seventeen. So a good

• 7:53Chris Williamson?

  I feel like there's a big difference between 15 and 17.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like, that was a very interesting aspect of my life, where it definitely, looking back now, helps me drastically in business meetings now. Like, I have no discomfort in meetings.

• 8:05Chris Williamson?

  For best part of a decade.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  Literally. So I'm only 24. So like, for the last nine years, I, I'm pitching myself to companies saying, oh, why, why should you give me a higher scholarship than the next, than the next place? And so I landed a scholarship at 15 for, let's say about $200,000 ish, um, for a four year period. Like, it's a verbal commitment. You're not actually signed. You can leave, but like, you're shunned if you leave. Like, why would you leave this opportunity?

• 8:30Chris Williamson?

  Especially given that you're getting education essentially for free.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Literally, and like my parents, you know, they're middle class, middle upper class by now. And this was something like you're either going to community or you're gonna get a scholarship, which nothing wrong with community college, but like they wanted me to go play sports. They were like, kind of like dangling in front of me, like you need to go do this. And I thought that was the best path for me. And obviously things changed as I'm sure we'll get into, but things were very interesting from like 15 to 17, 18. I feel like I grew up 10 years in those two years. And obviously it led me here, but very unique.

• 9:06Chris Williamson?

  What is negotiating? I think a lot of people, even those that aren't still 15, can resonate with this sort of having multiple desires at once. So I have one thing which I may be very good at and the world gives me recognition for, or perhaps I have a job title, or maybe that provides for me or my family in one way or another. And then I've got this other thing that's kind of my secret passion. I almost feel a little bit ashamed about weirdly because it's not the main thing and I've committed so much time to it. So I've got sunk cost fallacy into the old thing. What have you learned about balancing those two and the sort of split brain existence that you have there?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  I, I discovered a lot once I actually got to college. You know, through those years from 15 to 18, it was like growing up quick. And then by the time I was 18, it was very much in your face. This is reality now. And now instead of this idea of I want to go do this thing, but I'm, but I'm contracted by a lacrosse team to go perform. That didn't exist beforehand, but now it's in place. I'm at practice. I am at, I'm in front of the coach. He's telling me that I need to do these things. I'm in front of a tutor because I'm failing out of a class that I can't handle. And with all that on my plate, which many people can relate to, they're, everyone's busy, everyone's, everyone's schedules hard. Everyone's trying their best, but maybe not succeeding yet, you know, they want to be there.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  And then you have this love for something else like bodybuilding, like content, and I'm in this situation and I'm. I'm young and I'm figuring out that it is only on me to make these decisions. And as much as my, I've listened, I'm very good at listening to what I, I'm very good at being told what to do and listening and doing it great. And that has gotten me places, but also hurt my own personal like soul at the same time, because if I don't have that desire to go do it, I could still do it and I'll do it great. And I'll do a fantastic job.

• 11:01Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I had this, uh, uh, this insight around, did you ever hear me talk about the region beta paradox? So it's where you feel sort of comfortably numb and you're stuck in this weird, um, sort of interquartile range. Where things aren't so bad that they're terrible, but they're not sufficiently good that you're actually living an amazing life. And I had this, so this, this thing went kind of viral after I told Rogan about it. And I came up with this idea called the reverse region beta paradox. Being in an aggressively terrible working cadence or environment, but having such a tolerance for discomfort that you can endure it for a lifetime. Lower resilience, less stubborn people would snap and have to find a way to change, but not you.

• 11:45Chris Williamson?

  You're the David Goggins of working hard. Who's going to carry the workload? You are forever.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  I, you're like speaking my language right now. For so long, I, my, you know, my dad and, and coaches and stuff, and I, I love my dad. I don't want people to think otherwise. We have a great relationship now, but there was definitely rocky, rocky times, uh, with, with him and in my, and being on the lacrosse team. Where I was so good at just freaking being uncomfortable. I was like, this is my life. I've accepted this.

• 12:14Chris Williamson?

  If I'm not so happy, even if I don't want to do it.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. I honestly just like, and this might shock a lot of people. I genuinely thought I was just a depressed person like for years. I was like, I'm just depressed. Like, I don't think I'm ever going to escape this. And that's just, I have anxiety and depression. That's me. But then when I was about 18, I realized that. I am the only one, like, like, let's say it's David Goggins. I'm the only one that can carry the damn boat. Okay. And that boat is going to crush me if I don't decide to do something with it. So I, I remember, I'll never forget, I remember calling my mom and I was like, Mom, and she's a very like opposite of my dad, where my dad's like tough love. She's very like soft nurturing love. And I was like, I, I can't handle this. I'm making the decision. I'm quitting.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  I know this is gonna, this is gonna shock the entire family. It's gonna shock the coaches. I'm gonna have to do a bunch of stuff. I have paperwork, find a new college. We just got here like a month and a half ago at Lehigh and I'm like,

• 13:08Chris Williamson?

  How long did you last?

• 13:11Speaker 01

  I did one full semester, but it was like, we got in on like mid-August and by October I was like, this is the worst feeling I've ever felt in my life. I have to be done or this is gonna end badly in like a year. And I consciously picked up that fucking boat and was like, I'm out. And it was a very empowering and like, it was a very strong spiritual awakening of inner peace, of making this decision for yourself. So for anyone that's like listening and trying to understand in their scenario, you're the only one that can pull yourself out and like save yourself. Like truly, there might be people that can help you. You can lean on, you can, you know, you can count on them always, you know,

• 13:53Speaker 01

  talking you off the ledge or whatever it might be, helping you. But at the end of the day, there's one person that can truly make a decision and do things for you and it's yourself and you have no choice but to make that decisions, as uncomfortable as they are and scary as they are, you have, like you have to do these things and make those decisions that are tough.

• 14:11Chris Williamson?

  Let's just linger on that for a second. So it's got me thinking about the fact that,

• 14:16Chris Williamson?

  I'm a big proponent of encouraging people to have social support. I think in a world that's fragmented and atomized and everyone's a droid bleep bleeping their way through TikTok, spending a lot of time and having a strong social circle is, is a really good thing. And you lean on friends. They help you with lots of stuff. But there's a particular category of decision or maybe a number of categories of decisions that your friends simply can't help you with. They're not going to help you leave a relationship or leave a job or move house or change country. They'll, once you've made the hard decision, as in the pivot in direction, they can sort of help you speed up or help you slow down. They can bring you into land if you,

• 14:56Chris Williamson?

  man, I'm gonna have the conversation with my boyfriend or girlfriend and I really don't want to so on and so forth. They can help with that bit. But the actual, what am I going to do if it's a hard left or right turn? There is nowhere else to hide. I mean, you can have a conversation with them and you can talk it out. But there's nobody else that's going to come and leave the job.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:15Chris Williamson?

  Or the relationship, or the flat, or the country, or tell your parents that you do or don't want to do that thing that they do or don't want you to do.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Mm hmm. It's, it's so important. I've learned this in the past, like, I mean, decade for sure, but the past few months, I have really thought to myself about not having fear. Cause I think.

• 15:33Chris Williamson?

  You've got fearless tattoos.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  I have a fearless tat, I have a fearless tattoo right here. I, I have many words on my body that I try to just live by. So I'd be like relentless, fearless, empathy, which always trying to work on, being more empathetic, caring as much as possible. I think surrounding people, your surrounding core can also support those meaningful things to yourself, but being fearless is not just going and doing something, oh, I'm gonna jump off a cliff because I'm scared of it. It's doing the things that, like quitting your job, because you, you're, you're so passionate in this other thing and you're like, I'm gonna make this happen. I think being so fearless in my decision of, of leaving a scholarship, it was something that I didn't even realize I was doing, but I think it's

• 16:12Speaker 01

  the, where, where I make mistakes in life and have to learn the most, which is always good to learn from your mistakes, but where I make the most mistakes is when I'm in fear. When I have fear and I, and it alters my decision or like puts these glasses on my face that I, that I, I don't even know they're on and I'm doing things and I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm acting a certain way and I'm like, wow. I, I messed up pretty bad here. I made this decision was so stupid because I was afraid of X, Y, Z.

• 16:38Chris Williamson?

  Well, you're compensating to not do the one thing that you know you probably should do, but are terrified of doing.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:44Chris Williamson?

  You've got this large, important elephant that you need to slit the throat of.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:49Chris Williamson?

  And you're going to run around this entire jungle as opposed to just facing that one elephant. Uh, Homose says, I think it's Leila actually, uh, that says fear is an inch deep and a mile wide. So when you look at it, it looks like a huge ocean that's going to cause you to drown. But when you step in it, you realize it's just, it's really shallow and you're going to survive.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  And I think that's almost, it's really important to do things daily, you know, have daily habits of. Getting in the gym, doing things that are very difficult. Maybe, maybe you join a run club like, like we talked in our, our panel, join a run, a new run club, start CrossFit or sign up for a marathon. Or like I said, getting in an ice bath is a great example. It's like literally one of the reasons I do it. Cause like every day you look at that thing and you're like, I hate you. This is gonna hurt. I'm kind of afraid to get in right now. But doing those little things that you can accomplish and get over fear for add up. And then it's like, it's like building habit and building blocks. So that way when you have these really hard things of like, hey, that relationship's not working. This job isn't working. You at least know the, the habitual side of it.

• 17:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Well, you've got a basis where you're not super fragile. And if somebody sort of hits you a little bit, you're not going to shatter into a thousand pieces.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:58Chris Williamson?

  That being said, I'm very good at the discomfort, train, breath work.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 18:05Chris Williamson?

  Ice bath thing. Um, but for me, I'm a perennial people pleaser. I hate making other people feel uncomfortable. So I'm a pretty good example for someone. That stuff, actually the hardness comes easy in the physical realm, in the mindfulness realm, in the role of all the rest of it. But when it comes to the social realm, that never really translated over that much. So one of the things that at least I've learned over the last, probably only the last year, uh, that is a good daily habit or a regular habit to think about leaning into. What you're talking about is basically taking the stairs, being able to do something that's a tiny little bit more difficult than it maybe needs to be. That's the ice bath. That's the, the sauna. That's the whatever. Um, a social equivalent of that, which has

• 18:48Chris Williamson?

  made me braver and fear less in social scenarios is making my, making my demands or my feelings known, like, uh, basically arguing for my own side. So, uh, somebody says,

• 19:06Chris Williamson?

  Asks me how the day's going. I'm like, dude, you know, it is actually things are a bit tough at the moment. Or X, Y, and Z. A conversation where you know that you need to tell somebody about how they made you feel. Got to tell you, man, I know that you probably didn't mean it, but the other day, that thing that happened, that really pissed me off. And yeah, I don't want this to impact our friendship, but that's, I don't want that to happen again. And this is how it made me feel. And I just wanted to let you know, because you know, I cherish this friendship. That's a really difficult conversation to have, but those little things. So again, the reason I say that is that I feel like there's a big cohort of people who are great at making themselves suffer in work, in physical training, in diet, in whatever it is.

• 19:50Chris Williamson?

  And then they still get into the social realm. I feel like a pussy. Why am I such a pussy? When it comes to having a difficult conversation with a boss or a coworker or a friend or a girlfriend. And that, make your demands known, advocate for yourself. That's what I meant to say. Advocate for your own needs and make them a priority and tell other people gently. And again, proving that if you apply a little bit of pressure, you're not made of glass and you're going to shatter. What one of my old boxing coaches said that the most important lesson that you learn in boxing is that when you get hit in the face, you're not going to break. That when you see new boxers, maybe even up to amateur boxers, there's a degree of flinch, the flinch response.

• 20:32Chris Williamson?

  But once you've beaten that and you realize, do you ever remember that Conor McGregor sequence that he did against, who was the second guy that he won the title off, the lightweight title? Not Aldo.

• 20:48Chris Williamson?

  Khabib? I have no clue. Who was the second dude that he won it off? You can see Chase is opening up his laptop. Anyway, he's got this, he throws this combination, but the combination begins with this overhand right from the guy that he's fighting against. And it, it makes the end of Conor's nose go like that. It like, but he just knows the distance so well. And I always think about that punch sort of incoming. And him basically understanding his tolerance, his resilience, and knowing that that wasn't going to hurt. And he's, he doesn't even blink. His eyes are open. Eddie Alvarez. Wow. He doesn't even blink and this fist comes in and touches him on the nose.

• 21:31Chris Williamson?

  And then from there, he's just open to do this. So I think socially, the same with that. Have this difficult conversation, advocate for your own needs, make your needs a priority and believe that they're worthwhile. And show that the world's not going to break down. People aren't going to call you a selfish, egotistical narcissist for doing it. And that's a good daily practice too. A hundred percent. Trust really is everything when it comes to supplements. A lot of brands may say that they're top quality, but few can actually prove it, which is why I partnered with Momentous. They make the highest quality supplements on the planet. They're literally unparalleled when it comes to rigorous third-party testing. What you read on the label is what's in the product and absolutely nothing else.

• 22:14Chris Williamson?

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• 23:00Chris Williamson?

  Your high school, I remember you saying that when you started doing something a little bit different, your high school became very judgy. Oh, yeah. And they weren't exactly super supportive, but as a young person.

• 23:15Chris Williamson?

  How do you overcome the judgment of other if you don't have the support of people around you?

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I have like so many scenarios in my head of like sort of screwed up things that people would do or say or what they were. I'll I'll explain them. So when I was, let's just say fifteen to seventeen, I don't exactly remember what exactly what age. But I started my fitness page, which is now my Instagram, and it was called Jesse James Fitness. You know, it has a little ring to it. You know, it's like, it's clearly not my just name. It's like, oh, this brand that I'm trying to do, you know, sell T-shirts, work programs, whatever it might be. And obviously I said I had aspirations of being a YouTuber and all that stuff. And as you're in high school, at least in my high school, back then also additionally, it was not as normal to try to start a YouTube. There was no TikTok, like Instagram and stuff. And they see this and they see me trying to do it.

• 24:04Speaker 01

  I have a good physique at this point, like there's no, it's not even like I have no, no physique, no, no nothing.

• 24:10Chris Williamson?

  Total wannabe fitness.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not even like I'm really just trying to be a wannabe. I genuinely could already be in the, in the industry, in my opinion. I have good genetics. Thank you, mom and dad. And at this point, uh, I have like a few thousand maybe followers. And honestly, a lot of them are probably just from lacrosse. And I go to the pep rally of like freshman, sophomore, junior, seniors. Everybody's at their own bleacher. They're doing tug of war, doing challenges, battle of the classes, it was called. And I'm, I'm a freshman at this time, I remember right now, or sophomore, whatever. And the seniors all chant Jesse James Fitness, Jesse James Fitness. And I'm standing there and I'm like, shit, okay, I can do two things here.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  I can look down and just like admit defeat and like let them win. And I'm not like that at all. And or, you know, I can keep my chin up. I can look at them. I can double bicep flex and say, what do you want? What do you want? So we were going out for tug of war and that's when they were doing it. And I just look at them and I'm like, and I flex in my head, my soul. I'm like, I'm panicking, I'm uncomfortable, I'm embarrassed, I'm so embarrassed. Like there's the girls behind you that you want to date, the friends that you, you know, you're making and all this stuff. And like, I'm trying to be cool and what, and whatnot, but I'm like. I can't let them see that like it's a poker face that I gotta keep on because at least at least I can win that and I feel like I kept doing that for so long. I really

• 25:36Speaker 01

  did like partially not give a fuck but also you'll always give a fuck. I still give a fuck. I get a hate comment now. If I get enough of them, I'm still gonna give a fuck. I'm never not gonna give a fuck. If you if you don't care, that's just because you don't have a desire in this anymore. And I remember I do the flex, we do the tug of war, whatever. And then in the hallways, they'd be like, Jesse James Fitness, what's up, man? And I'd just be like, what's up, bro? What's up? Like, you know what? I'm on phase. I don't care. And I feel like people really started to pick up on that. And like, they're like, damn, this this this MFer is like, not breaking. And these were like, the the junior or the greater above me or whatever, the the cool kids. I called them the entitled kids. They

• 26:17Speaker 01

  very much were. No hate against them now. Everyone, no big deal. It made me who I was. But another time was a kid for Halloween, I and he might even be watching this. I forgive you. It's okay. Uh, he dressed up as me. Hey, no kidding. He dressed up as me. And I remember seeing this and I was like, this is this is a this is a new level I have to accept. Like, this is fucked. And honestly, like, I'll get into more. So he he dresses up in me. He has a fucking muscle suit on at a party. We're probably 16, 17. He was one of the kids that like, go drink with his friends. I I drank a little when I was in high school, whatever. And I wasn't really a partier. I didn't have time. I was playing lacrosse every day. And I was like, I'm sitting at home, seeing on my on my Instagram, and

• 27:00Speaker 01

  I'm like, wow. This fucker is dressing up as me right now. It says Jesse James Fitness. And like, those things just like, stick with you as like, a a driving motivation of like, why I want to make it even more. It's almost like a trauma, a trauma reaction. Like, I was traumatized. My reaction is, I'm gonna, I'm gonna win. You're not gonna, you're not gonna control me. I'm going to defeat you and everything in front of me. You're just a wall that I have to break through, you know? And if I can't handle this, I don't deserve what I want. Like, if you, that was my mindset. And I saw that, I remember. And and you know what's crazy is that now? Yeah, probably a few months ago, he messaged, I'm not, I would never name him, but he messaged me about my Michael Chandler collab. And he's like, dude, saw the Chandler collab?

• 27:45Speaker 01

  So sick, great job. And I was like, huh. Weren't you? And I was like, honestly? Thank you.

• 27:52Chris Williamson?

  It's one of those weird things about having a chip on your shoulder about stuff that happened in your past that

• 27:59Chris Williamson?

  maybe some kids knew or in reflection realized how much it might have impacted you.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 28:06Chris Williamson?

  But a lot of the time, it's just kids being kids.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  I know.

• 28:09Chris Williamson?

  And that's very strange, right? Because the impact of something is so much greater than the like estimate of it. It hurts way more than what was thrown.

• 28:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:20Chris Williamson?

  If that makes sense. And um, that's a really strange thing, I think, for people, a circle for them to squat.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 28:26Chris Williamson?

  How can it be the case that this person doesn't deserve for me to still bear a grudge against them? They that that hurt and I remember, you still remember it now, you know, nearly 10 years later.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 28:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 28:38Speaker 01

  And it definitely stung for a while, but it's also like one of the things that for some reason, and I'm gonna assume that it's from my mom, the way she raised me and always like hyped me up in a way. Where she believed in me before I believed in me. And she believed in me so much that I ended up believing in myself and everything. I am, I weirdly believe in myself for things I shouldn't believe in myself where I'm like, I could be, I could be a musician if I wanted. Let's be real, Jesse. You're a little tone deaf, but like, you know, I mean, like I had that mindset that's ingrained in me. And from a young age, so seeing those things happen and then she would kind of be, she'd be like the backbone, she'd be like, you can't let this affect you, like. And in reality, this is not doing anything. It's really not doing anything.

• 29:22Speaker 01

  The only thing I could do is hurt you and then you're just stopping yourself from doing anything. Cause it's in your head, like, no one else is seeing that and going, you know what? I'm, I'm not gonna support Jesse because that kid wore a muscle suit like, like that shit doesn't exist. It's all how we perceive it. So having that like backbone and belief in my body that my mom instilled me from a young age. I feel like is one of the reasons that I am in the position I am where. I have so much unconditional belief in myself that I tell people that if you believe in yourself, like you actually believe, not just like, oh, I believe in myself because I was told by Chris and Jesse on a podcast too. Like, if you genuinely believe in yourself, you are 75% already there towards your goals. Like, you will, you will accomplish them. If you believe yourself, put in the work, it's done.

• 30:08Chris Williamson?

  What has been the,

• 30:13Chris Williamson?

  what's been the process of closing the loop with your dad?

• 30:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:18Chris Williamson?

  Having been pushed so hard, presumably a lot of disappointment when the thing that he's worked on with you for nearly a decade.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:27Chris Williamson?

  Goes like, pull the pin and just toss it out the window.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Oh, that was a, that was a very hard time, honestly, for my whole family because like, me, it's me, my sister, my mom, my dad, and we're all very close. We all communicated a ton, great relationships. And for years it was all great, but then with my dad being so, and he, because he thought this was the best for me. He thought, ah, this is gonna make Jesse successful. He's gonna have security when he's older, like this. It was out of love. It was just this love that was, I guess you could say, hurtful in a way and like a little toxic. And so I go through, I'll give you the kind of like the rundown of quitting and like ripping and then pulling the pin on the, on the grenade and chucking it. I call my mom. I call my sister, I believe first, I've always kind of gone to hers, like, all right, what do I do?

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Like, she's just kind of like another parent to me. And she's like, you're gonna have to like, you just call mom, tell her what's going on. She'll, she'll handle dad. That was kind of always how it went. Like, mom's gonna handle dad. And I tell my mom and she's like, I'll talk to your father. And basically, my mom tells me the conversation went like this. They came to visit me at Lehigh during an alumni game. We were playing a game. And after the game, we went to Target. Me and my mom are going in, just getting like college supply stuff. Cause you go early in, in sports, you, you don't go when everyone else starts. And I go in there and this has been, I've been there for about three weeks and I'm really fucking struggling, like very, very depressed. And I break down crying to her, just like, I can't keep it in, like, and I'm just walking Target, like,

• 32:00Speaker 01

  about to like shot, uh, to checkout aisles to my right. And I start tearing up and I'm, and I'm like, oh my God. And I'm, I look at her and I'm like, I'm like, something's so fucking wrong. Like, I, I, I feel like I can't feel anything. I, Have no interest in like women right now and not that I was pursuing anything else, but just like my emotion of who Jesse was like, I always wanted to go out and like, talk to the girls, didn't care at all, none of that. Social media, I was still doing it, but I was just like, fuck man, like my desire of everything is gone. The only thing I had that kept me sort of sane was lifting and music. And those are like two things that I like combined

• 32:38Speaker 01

  together and it was my only safe space. And I remember leaving that uh target, my mom then dropped, my mom and dad are in the car. My dad doesn't know, I just cried. I'm like, fucking suck it up. Like you're fine. Like get in the car. Like I'm, I'm the good boy that's fucking completing this mission of hours. And when she drops me off, she told, tells me the conversation, she looked at my dad and was like, you're not saying a word. He's leaving. You have no say. So shout out Karen to this fucking legend. And she's like, you have to accept this and that's how it is. Period. End of conversation. And I feel like he kind of knew for a while. Like I know we're skipping parts in the story of like my darkness and stuff, but like he kind of caught the idea a little bit

• 33:20Speaker 01

  like my son struggling, but I feel like he kind of didn't want to admit it. And but what that did was it broke down this massive barrier of how my dad thought I should go about life and also broke down a massive barrier for myself that maybe I don't have to listen to everyone telling me to do things and maybe I should just listen to myself and actually like pursue things that I want to. And I haven't, I haven't been able to in six years of my life. I've been playing lacrosse every day, every weekend, missing homecoming, uh, late to prom, leaving prom weekend because I gotta go play in an all-star game. Like the shit never ended and like, it made me like relentless

• 34:04Speaker 01

  and it definitely was like dedication and relentless right there, but that shit stuck with me for so long of like, I didn't get anything for a while of like experience that normal people have. And I feel like it just hit a big breaking point when I got to college and once that happened. It was uh, it was then now time, like my mom tells my dad, Jesse's out, accepted or you know, you're not gonna have a relationship with your son, basically. I then, you know, I come home for the weekend. Um, I talked to my dad and stuff and he's like, he's very understanding. He's like, honestly, I, I would, I, I don't wanna speak for him, but I think it's one of his biggest regrets is pushing me that,

• 34:44Speaker 01

  that far to my limits where as a father, you never wanna push your son into depression or anything. Not that he pushed me there, but like his actions added up.

• 34:52Chris Williamson?

  The setup.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I know like, we have a great relationship now. We did throughout years. It was up and down, good, bad sometimes. Now it's a great relationship, but during that time, it definitely like changed his mindset of like, just everything. And really like, John had to become a new man and accept things. And I had to become a new man and learn that I have to say what I want in life, do what I want. And like you said, hold yourself, I have to advocate for myself at all times because I, I, this is a saying that I stuck with, do what you're meant to, not what you're supposed to. Everyone is always supposed to be doing something, but if you're not meant to be doing that, why the fuck are you doing it? Like seriously?

• 35:33Chris Williamson?

  I wonder how many people have gone through their entire lives, never doing anything that they weren't supposed to do.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Yup.

• 35:40Chris Williamson?

  You know, that there's.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  Sad.

• 35:42Chris Williamson?

  It's just been one big series of dominos from when they were born until now, at whatever age they are, where they never told their dad or the equivalent of it that they didn't wanna do lacrosse.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And ah, it's like, one of my main missions on social media, yes, I wanna do big things, make cool videos, but like the, the true why of like the core of why I started, why I do all this, was because I went through that. And I feel like I went through such a dark phase of my life with such a bright awakening. I was like, people need to know this shit. Like, people need to just not, not be told it, but shown it. I would, I'd advocate for myself that on my channel, it's me living my best life. Doing cool things that I have desires, that I'm interested in, you know, I'm interested in Vikings. I'm gonna go freaking Norway, jump off cliff of Vikings and eat and drink mead and do these cool things. Cause like, that's something I've always wanted to do. I have a lot of fascination and stuff like that. And.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  I always wanted to leave a subconscious message with my videos. Like, if you're not living life to the fullest, like, you are missing out on so much. And I hope that people can watch this and realize that you are worth that meant to life, rather than that supposed to life.

• 36:56Chris Williamson?

  Mm hmm.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  And I hope people can pursue their meant to eventually.

• 37:00Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's scary, man. That's, you know, why I think advocating for yourself, making your needs known. Almost, there's this sort of assumption a lot of people have, very much a British thing. But maybe a working class thing too, that who am I to actually have needs? Or desires or wants in that regard? That there's this sort of weird glory and sacrifice in subjugating yourself. It's like, no, no, no, it's noble for me to hate what I do and still do it. It's noble for me to suffer this sort of weird sort of self-flagellation as you whip yourself through whatever it is that you're going through. And in some ways there is, but no one's going to give you some award at the end of your

• 37:44Chris Williamson?

  life that says, he suffered in silence.

• 37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:49Chris Williamson?

  There's not going to be a banner over your deathbed that goes, congratulations for never making a fuss.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:55Chris Williamson?

  I don't think that that exists. And so much of the advice that's on the internet at the moment has been born out of a identity politics, victimhood, fragility, over-diagnosis of normal human discomfort as a pathological mental problem world. So most of the content is Goggins and Jocko saying, stay hard, suck it up, buttercup. You don't need to be such a soft person. But there is a world of people out there who are making themselves suffer too much, who aren't advocating for their own desires, who aren't making their needs known, who don't believe that they're, that they should be a priority in their life or in anybody else's. And I think that they're the sort of people that listen to this show.

• 38:41Chris Williamson?

  And that stuff in many ways pushes them further into what they already have too much of. They don't need to do more suffering. They need to get better at making their own needs known to the people around them.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think it comes down to like how I said about believing in yourself. I think a lot of people weren't raised the way to have that, where they need to learn that in their twenties, thirties, forties, whatever. And that's way harder than growing up thinking that. So I'm definitely like very blessed to have that intuitional belief in myself from like day one. And I think for those that may not relate to that, how I have that belief, it's one of those things that that's where I think you need to realize there's things like the nine to five and there's things like the entrepreneurial route.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  And I think it's really important for people to realize that it isn't always grass, isn't always grass is greener on the other side. I think people need to realize also that there is just as much in some scenarios, struggle in, oh, I'm gonna do everything on my own. I'm being an entrepreneur. You're working 24 hours, brother. Good luck. It's hard. Nine to five. Good luck. If I had to go to that, good luck. It's hard. It's hard on both ends of life. It's just a matter of almost like, what evil do you wanna put your energy into?

• 40:02Chris Williamson?

  What pain do you wanna have to deal with?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Like they see Goggins and they think, oh, suffer, suffer, suffer. Let's go, let's go. I'm gonna fucking get through this job. I don't care. And that makes them, maybe they get dopamine off of that. But you also could just input that same exact suffering energy into maybe something that you have passion and drive for. It's still gonna maybe have its moments of difficulty and suck, but at least it's towards something that like your inner soul. It's different feeling of, of outcome of just internal feeling of your, like your soul's dopamine hits. You know what I mean?

• 40:31Chris Williamson?

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• 41:14Chris Williamson?

  So if you want to replace your multivitamin and more, start with AG1. Right now, you can get a year's free supply of vitamin D3 and K2, plus five free AG1 travel packs and that 90 day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinkag1.com/modernd wisdom. That's drinkag1.com/modernd wisdom. What's your advice to people who don't have a supportive surrounding that maybe are in a, you've heard of food deserts? It's places around countries where it's very difficult to get hold of high quality food. I often think about role model deserts or sort of support deserts, places where someone is trying to do something a little bit different.

• 41:55Chris Williamson?

  Maybe they're not following the prescribed route that typically people from where they're from are doing. And they go, uh, cause you did it twice. You first left the normal education, normal teenager life to do the lacrosse thing and then left the lacrosse life thing to do the next thing. So in both situations.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  It's been like five things that I've kind of like said, I'm out. I went, I left that normal teenage life. That's one, left Lehigh, that's two, went to Montclair State University, D3 school, very close to home, sort of like a more expensive community college you can live at and played lacrosse there and played there, did very well, was like a, had the most goals in the team and stuff like that. So again, people are like, keep doing it, bro. Keep doing it. You're doing amazing. Oh, my God.

• 42:44Chris Williamson?

  Positive reinforcement.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  And I'm like, I'm like, is this what I'm supposed to be doing though? So then that got to a point where. I was like, I went into, I went straight into my coach and was like, hey, I don't want to do this anymore. That was, that was the third time. He luckily, like, I appreciate what he did. He was like, I want you to shift your perspective. I don't want you to look at this. I was waiting for the beep thing. Uh, I don't want you to look at this as, ah, you have to be here. Just go out, hang out with the guys, do your thing.

• 43:13Chris Williamson?

  Putting pressure on yourself.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Stop putting pressure on yourself. And that lightened it up for a while, it really did. And kind of like, it's almost like an internal anxiety that we all put on ourselves of like, I have to be here. I have to do this. Oh, I gotta wake up at 6 a.m. tomorrow. Rather than just being like, you know what? It's happening. Let's accept this rather than fight it in that internal fight. That internal fight is where anxiety is painful. Because in your head, you're basically living through it multiple times and you're forcing yourself to feel the anxiety that's happening in real life. But if you just take a second, this helps me a lot with anxiety. I take a step back. I go, I have anxiety right now. And I'm feeling it and I allow myself to feel this anxiety and my body almost like releases the tension and I kind of relax into it.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  And yes, there's still anxiety, but it's like, it's like when you're in the ice bath and you're, oh, fuck. Oh my God, I'm dying. This is, this is killing me. And then you're like, you know what?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  And you just let it. Yeah, it still hurts.

• 44:08Chris Williamson?

  There's some days that you get in that.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  You have to just let it, you have to just let, just accept it, accept the pain.

• 44:12Chris Williamson?

  Mark Twain says worrying is like paying a debt that you don't owe.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:17Chris Williamson?

  And that's it. It's not just the discomfort of the thing that you're going to have to do. It's the 50 times that you think about that thing in advance of it. And then once you finish thinking about it and it happens, you then sort of ruminate about the fact that it, yeah, I know exactly what.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  I also want to say, and I don't think a lot of people know this about me, um, which I'm totally fine being open about, but I, I'm on an antidepressant since I was 15. I experienced a ton of anxiety when I was like 15. I had no idea how to handle it. So I, I kind of like acted out in anger. Cause I just didn't know what this feeling was and it was just straight up anxiety. And it came a lot from the pressure of sports and I only scored two goals today. I performed better last week. Ah, what do I do? I just dropped the ball. Everyone's looking. At me, the coaches are mad, whatever it might be. And I went on to Zoloft, I'm at like 50 milligrams for literally nine years, pretty crazy. The one time I came off, and the reason I'm bringing this up because I want to almost normalize like, hey, if you're on this stuff,

• 45:13Speaker 01

  like, I used to feel ashamed that I was on it and not tell anybody, like, maybe my two best friends knew for like five years and no one else knew. But I went on it for from 15 to 18, when I went to Lehigh, is the only time I ever came off.

• 45:29Chris Williamson?

  The time you made the most important decision in your life.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  The time I made the most important decision in my life and also felt the most pain in my life. Did I feel more pain because I was off? I have no idea. 50 milligrams, not a lot. It's small. But I then went back on, you know, felt regulated. Does it work? I have no, I honestly have no idea. I can't really tell you.

• 45:46Chris Williamson?

  You without being on it.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  I've never not been on it.

• 45:49Chris Williamson?

  Would you ever be interested in titrating down or dropping off it? Or is this going to be for the rest of your life?

• 45:56Speaker 01

  It's a good question. I've had these conversations. Um, one thing that I'm afraid of is altering my mind from where it's at right now. I think eventually, I think it comes from a lot of internal work and daily practices to be able to shift off of it. Like, you know, I get on breath work. I don't do that now. I gotta, I gotta maybe go in the sauna and the ice bath. I don't know, little things like that, that I need to take into account if I'm coming off of it. The only thing I fear, and I could be like, just like a, a trauma thing, is in 2018, just being that depressed and having that. I think that me stopping registers in my brain as that's gonna happen again. It might not, you know, it probably doesn't, but in my head, I'm scared.

• 46:39Chris Williamson?

  It's a high risk strategy, man. I mean, I have no idea what long term, decades long SSRI usage is, but you know, you've got fiance, you've got business, you seem like you have a lot of energy. So a lot of the things that seem to come along for the ride with SSRIs, like libido dipping, energy dipping, desire to drive and train and stuff like that.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  I don't have that, luckily.

• 47:01Chris Williamson?

  Well, yeah, it's.

• 47:02Speaker 01

  Or maybe imagine if I was out without it, I'd be like, whoa.

• 47:04Chris Williamson?

  Having sex with everyone.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Everybody watch out.

• 47:07Chris Williamson?

  Keep it away, keep it away.

• 47:09Chris Williamson?

  I had Andrew Wilkinson on the show. He's a billionaire. He owned tiny.com. He's got a bunch of other businesses. And he was singing the praises of SSRIs as well. And this is another, another one of those conversations where.

• 47:21Chris Williamson?

  The midwitt headline is SSRIs are over prescribed for people that don't need them. Therefore, all SSRIs are bullshit and everyone that's on them is a wimp. Right. The second order smarter person thinking is there probably is over prescription. And maybe SSRIs do only move the needle a little bit, especially for many cohorts. But some drugs, some people are hyper responders to certain drugs. And it seems like for you, it hasn't come with a whole bunch of side effects. And it does seem to work well. Andrew Wilkinson said the same. He tried everything. He tried keto. He tried carnivore. He tried breathwork, he'd done all of the different things. And then he tried SSRIs and it seemed to work.

• 48:00Chris Williamson?

  So I'm like, I'm really keen to just get people out of this reflective midwitt thinking, which is, oh, pussy SSRIs. You go, okay, what is it somehow more noble for someone to suffer and be miserable as opposed to take this? It's the same thing with Ozempic. I think lots of people are going to come around eventually when the conceptual inertia of taking a pill to lose weight is cheating. Okay, does that mean that the caffeine in your drink is cheating? Cause that's augmenting the way that you operate. Does it mean that a diabetic that can't produce insulin that needs to take a shot? Are they cheating to stay alive?

• 48:41Speaker 01

  They're pussies.

• 48:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, pussy, just like suck it up, pussy. So I really, and I'm fortunate with the audience I have that they're thoughtful people. But yeah, avoiding that midwitt thinking is something that's super important. And it's really cool, the SSRI effectiveness for you that seems to have you functioning pretty normally.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  People, I've heard on the mog cast, it's like Sush and James English years ago. They were like, I think Jesse's brain automatically produces Adderall in his head. And I was like, that makes a lot of sense. I don't, I don't do any drugs like whatsoever. I drink maybe one drink a month. And it's like, some, the way I'm operated is almost like I.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  I'm on these performance enhancing drugs, I feel like, but just naturally something's in my body and drive and passion. So luckily the SSRIs haven't affected me in any negative way. Maybe that's why I'm like able to work so much. I don't know.

• 49:35Chris Williamson?

  It seems like it's functioning pretty well.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  That's why I'm so happy, guys.

• 49:38Chris Williamson?

  Also, to think about what you said, that if you were to come off them, you'd have to go through all of these routines, maybe to ensure that mental health was in a good place. So last six to eight months for me has been rough. I've been detoxing from mold in a house that I was living in, which for anybody that's going through it, it's brutal. I still haven't sort of fully talked about it on the show yet, but it's been awful. It's so hard. And the way that I described it to my therapist was it feels like the gravity of your mood is so much heavier.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 50:11Chris Williamson?

  So in order for me to be in a good mood or for my brain to be functioning well, I have to have just got out of a cold plunge after doing a sauna, listening to my favorite music on my way to see my friend, to eat my favorite food while the sun's shining, you know, it's, it doesn't just, you don't just stumble upon a good mood and you don't just stumble upon a good sort of a mind space in terms of energy. I'm always forgetting things. My mood is always struggling and it feels like swimming upstream. And that's kind of the same thing you're talking about there. So when it comes to enhancements in different ways, I was talking to Dr. Mike and Crystal, his wife, the other day. And she was saying, there's even this new class of SSRIs now that they've dialed in the formulation more effectively.

• 50:55Chris Williamson?

  It works on a different pathway. There's even fewer side effects. It's basically free happiness. And I understand because of, up until now, most of pharmacology hasn't come along. Every time that you try and give someone a free lunch, there is some unseen cancer down the road. There is some side effect, cholesterol's through the roof and people are dying because of blood clots, whatever it might be. There are all of those. Apart from when you get to the stage where you can fully master these things, that's like kind of saying previously, well, you know, we've said that surgeries are going to work for all of this time. But each time that we do it, people keep on getting infected. It's like, yeah, that's because you didn't have an understanding of the germ theory of disease.

• 51:34Chris Williamson?

  But then as understandings continue to develop, I think we should be cautious about using lessons from the past to sort of inform right now, at least super judgmentally. It's like, let's be open to this, especially given, it's like saying, how can you have a computer that talks to you? You go, well, I don't know, L L M seem to be doing a pretty good job. So the same thing might happen in pharmacology as well. But yeah, the, the idea of having to work hard for a good mood is something that I've been intimately familiar with over the last few months. So I, I feel you.

• 52:05Speaker 01

  It's a fun fact, I actually forgot to take mine last night. So today I was like withdrawing. That's one of the reasons that I also like.

• 52:10Chris Williamson?

  It's that short acting.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  The, what do you mean?

• 52:14Chris Williamson?

  What does that? S S R I's, it's, well, you didn't take it last night.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:17Chris Williamson?

  And today you feel it.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  About, about an hour and a half ago, I was like, I was like, why am I so fucking dizzy? And then I looked at my fiance and I was like, I didn't take my fucking pill last night. So I'll turn a corner and my brain was like, ooh.

• 52:27Chris Williamson?

  Wow. So it's, it's happening.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  So it's about delayed by like, it's like 36 hours I got hit and I was like, whoa.

• 52:33Chris Williamson?

  Okay, but it's not as if you build up some passive reservoir of this stuff.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  I guess not.

• 52:40Chris Williamson?

  So it's happening pretty quick. That's interesting.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  I've always had that, like, if I miss it one day, I get, I get dizzy.

• 52:45Chris Williamson?

  Getting on to some of the stuff that you've done in fitness. We talked about this earlier on. Hybrid training, running is super popular at the moment.

• 52:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:53Chris Williamson?

  You ran every day for a month.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:56Chris Williamson?

  What did that do to you?

• 53:00Speaker 01

  It gave me a lot of respect for runners, especially hybrid runners. I don't say all runners, any, any, any new challenge or workout is tough, but doing it every day, it was like. New and fun and you're sore in the beginning and it's really hard, but I feel like running is a different sort of reward where I see a very quick result where I run three miles on day one, horrible time, I'm dying, I'm cramping, I feel terrible. I'm like, bro, I'm running a marathon in 30 days. How is this gonna happen? By day seven, I'm like, I can run three miles. Then when you go six, you know, it's hard again. You gotta taper up. I did a very rapid prep. No one really does this. Nick Baer sorta coached me. He's like, hey, this is the best case scenario. You're gonna run this many miles each day. Good luck. No one should do this.

• 53:44Chris Williamson?

  So you started from not being a runner?

• 53:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 53:48Chris Williamson?

  And within 30 days, did?

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Full marathon.

• 53:52Chris Williamson?

  Full marathon.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Sub four, baby.

• 53:53Chris Williamson?

  How did that feel?

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Uh, the marathon? Excruciating. Uh, it wasn't the most painful thing I've ever done. And I'll segue into what it is, because you want to hear that. Um, the marathon, the first 13 miles were pretty chill. And I was like, all right, halfway, like, this is gonna be pretty easy. Like, not easy, but like, I'll be okay. And then I get to mile 15, and I was like, bro, my legs like are just like not cooperating now. Mile 16, I entered, uh, the wall, which they call it. It's like a wall. The wall means, the wall in running is where you hit this block a period of time, many miles, one mile, could be 10, doesn't, everyone's different. And it's the biggest hurdle that you have to get over.

• 54:37Speaker 01

  It's the same, you're running at the same pace. There's no difference. Nothing has changed. It's just your body has, and your body and mind has created this wall that you have to literally get through. And for me, it was mile 16 to 24. For many people, everyone's like, dude, when you hit mile 20, you're gonna hit a wall. It's, you'll get through it. You'll get through it. 20, 20, you'll hit it. 20, you're hit, bro, 16. And I kept, I kept, it kept getting drastically worse and worse. And I was like, I was like, I have to be leaving the wall soon. I have to be leaving the wall soon. Mile 22, why am I still in the wall? What is happening? Am I, am I gonna die?

• 55:12Chris Williamson?

  Longest wall in history.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  So, and it's probably because I had a very rapid training for it. Um, and at this point, I'm like, my hip flexors feel like they're gonna tear off the bone. And I'm very underprepared. 30 days is nowhere near enough. No one should ever do that. Unless you're stupid making YouTube video. Uh, we get to mile 24. I meet an angel of a man. I think his name was Matt. I believe it was Matt. It was like, literally like an angel that someone just put right there. And I was like, hey, hey you. And he's like, hey, oh, you're that YouTube guy. He's like, I've seen you. And I was, I was like, uh, can I, can I run with you, please? Cause we're running, we're through the woods also. So it's kind of like a difficult, uh, marathon. They're all hard. And I catch up with him and I look at him, I go, do not slow down. Don't slow down. I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep up with you.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  And then we start getting this pace and I'm just like, I'm, I, I wanna cry already. It's, it's happening. But I stick with him and then, and then he starts slowing down. I, and then I pick him up and I'm like, come on, bro, come on. And then a third dude joins us and we're all dying together. And it's like, we've never met each other in our lives. We're all like, you got this, bro. What's your name? Nice to meet you. And we're dying and, and we finally make it. And honestly, I like my, if I didn't meet Matt at mile 24 ish. I genuinely, I kept like walking, running, walking, running the last few miles before I met him. And I was like, dude, if I have to walk this, like, I have failed so miserably. I'm so mad at myself because I know I can, I can handle the pain. And I kept reminding myself, this is not the hardest thing you've done.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  The hardest thing I've done, by, by the way, when I finished the marathon, my fiance was at the end, euphoric feeling, gave her hugs, saw my mom, had my team there. Laid on the ground, couldn't get up. Uh, I couldn't train hamstring for like six weeks.

• 56:53Chris Williamson?

  I was gonna say, what were the next few days like?

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Oh my God, the pain was so bad. I, I was limping for multiple days. Like could barely lift my leg. And for about six weeks, my, the tendon behind your knee, there's like those two like stringy tendons. Uh, I could not do a hamstring curl for the life of me. I could do like squats and stuff, but I could not curl anything, like not even like five pounds. Felt like I probably tore something. And then my hip, I could not raise my right leg. And then for a while, there's a lot of crunching going on. I was like, this was a bad idea. And. Video did great, 3.3 million views, probably and growing. The, my favorite part about that video was the, the storytelling and ending at the end was so like pure.

• 57:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  And it really moved people and got people so much. Like the comments on that video was, was different than anything else.

• 57:43Chris Williamson?

  Did you see Casey Neistat's video about his marathon?

• 57:46Speaker 01

  Which the, the sub three? Yes. I saw how it took him like years.

• 57:51Chris Williamson?

  Decades, I think.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  Decades. I ran mine 353. And I was super happy with that. I was like, what the hell did I just do? I, I, I'm not gonna lie. I'm an athlete. I played Dune lacrosse. I was very good at sports and stuff like, being athletic doesn't, doesn't, isn't hard for me, but running a marathon is wildly different. Athletic doesn't really matter there. It's just a matter of like willpower.

• 58:15Chris Williamson?

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• 58:58Chris Williamson?

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• 59:14Speaker 01

  But let me tell you about the hardest thing that I've done. Oh God, I have trauma from this one. You can thank a guy named Brian Johnson, AKA Liver King. Okay, this guy, psychopath. Love him. Great guy to be around. Uh, extremely successful businessman, very motivating. Uh, he does this thing called the barbarian. You have 15 pound on ankle weights on each leg, 15 pound, uh, or 70 pound backpack, 150, 140 pound sled and holding 70 pound kettlebells.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  And it's 112 degrees outside in Texas and it's August or July or something. And you have to go through the sand. So like sand gives resistance as you pull it's digging. It's digging itself into the ground. So it's torturous. So it's like, if you add do the math like 315 pounds you're carrying. So like, and you have to go a mile. I've done it once with him. The first time I met him. Uh, and we did it on flat gravel. I did it in an hour, in 20 something minutes. I beat him by an hour. I was like, what the hell just happened, bro? That was like, okay, that was one of the, one of the hardest things I've done. Not the hardest. Then I do the second challenge a year later. He invites me back. He's like, I want you to do the barbarian crucible. I'm like, this sounds terrible, but I'm in, I'm all for stupid things that I'm gonna have to put myself through. That's why I literally have like scars from this and

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  we do this about quarter mile in, I was like, already having a first heat stroke and I was like, what is, I was like, bro, this is next level because it's through sand. It's through dirt. It's through. It's the same thing. Same exact thing, same mile, just the course is 10 times harder. And he, last time he did it, it was a competition. So you kind of have that like, let me chase you feeling. This time he's just chilling. He's smoking a cigar, drinking his whiskey, calling the walkie talkie guy next to me, talking shit. And I'm like, I, I told him, I said, I will finish this. And this goes back to my like, almost stupid belief in myself to where I do things that hurt myself because I'm like, I'm not gonna fail. I'm not gonna stop. So I psychotically do this for like, let's say three quarters of the mile.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  And I get to the sand. It's like first half, just gravel and dirt and stuff, hard, but not the worst. Sand at like last point four miles and I, uh, I get to this point where I'm now full on having a heat stroke. I'm freezing. It's 112 degrees outside. It makes no sense. I've sweat all water out. Now I'm covered in white because like my, uh, like electrolytes are just on me and I'm like, I'm like, I'm dying. I look at their, their producers and stuff. I'm like, bro, I'm done.

• 1:01:46Chris Williamson?

  Were you allowed water?

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  I was allowed to drink water. They were pouring a ton of water on me, but like nothing was working. And I look at their producer and I'm like, I'm done. I'm, I'm going to, they said, if you unclip, you're done. About to unclip and they're like, don't do it. And I'm like, I'm stupid. I'm good at being told that what to do, like and still doing it. And I'm like, okay, you said, don't do it. I'm not going to do it. I'm going to keep going. I go, I go. Next heat stroke on the ground, laying there for 30 minutes. I'm like, my soul has left my body. I know I don't have sweat left in my body. I'm covered. I lick my lips. It's salty. Like I needed some of this stuff. Great plug.

• 1:02:21Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  But I get to a point where I'm like, I'm like, dude, I have point one, five left of a mile. Like I have to just finish this. Same thing in the marathon. Like if I don't, I'm just going to be pissed. Once I feel better, I'm going to be pissed.

• 1:02:33Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  And I, I somehow slug my way to the end. Five steps drop, five steps drop, five steps drop. I'm like dead in the face. I get there, I cross the finish line. I just collapsed on the ground and he's like, yeah, there you go, brother. And he's like, yeah, yeah, boy. He says that. So he's like, uh, he's like, let it the fuck. And he has all these sayings. They're just psychotic and I'm laying there.

• 1:02:58Speaker 01

  And safe to say, it took me four hours. Four hours to go a mile. And that was the most painful thing I've ever done in my life. So when I did the marathon, I just kept thinking about that. And I was like, that was four hours of way more pain. This is four hours of a different pain. My legs have never had so much lactic acid in my body, but my upper body is perfectly fine. My mind can push through this, but with Liver King, it's like your arms are tired, your legs are tired, your soul. You can't even feel your soul because you're so dehydrated.

• 1:03:27Speaker 01

  It was a crazy experience.

• 1:03:28Chris Williamson?

  What have you learned about resilience to physical discomfort from the challenges and things that you've done?

• 1:03:33Speaker 01

  I've learned that you can push your body so much farther than you'd ever think. Something that I that I learned at Lehigh, uh, we had a Navy SEAL course come to us. And so I hated everything about Lehigh, school, uh, the guys were cool. The coaches were always nice to me, but like the program didn't want to do it. All that stuff sucked. When they brought in Navy SEALs and made us stay up 50 hours, favorite thing. I was I was depressed at that, fucking loved it. Way better than whatever the hell we were doing before. So it was like this, we everyone else hated it. I was like, I don't know why. That was the best part of my month. And we do this, oh dude, I'm like remembering this shit. It's crazy. Okay, I'm like 18, we're I'm like, I'm like 180 pounds right now. I was probably almost 200, just meat stick, bro. Fucking 4,500 calories a day.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  And they make us do perfect jumping jacks, perfect sit ups, perfect pushups. One person messes up, everyone is required to call that one person out, basically make it make them feel like shit. And then everyone runs because of it. We do that for four hours straight. They said, go home, get one hour of sleep. We go home, we fucking lay down and we get right back up. We're in a pool at 3am. They say, put your sweatsuits on, full crew neck, full sweatpants. These sweatpants are like double XL that we're wearing and they're like, jump in the pool. And I'm like, what the fuck? And they and they're like, if you can't swim, go to the shallow end. Like dead ass, they said this to us and I was like, someone's gonna die. We go in and they're like, okay, we're gonna do the pushups, the situps, to everything on the outside of the pool. We're soaking wet, we're doing them, we're calling out people for not doing it right. And you're you're held accountable if you don't, if you if they see you see someone and say, and you don't go,

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  hey, Johnny over here didn't do his push up right, now you're fucked, now you get called out. So it's everybody's calling out each other and just saying like, you suck, you're horrible. Very traumatizing for some people. Did you see that the faces on these people were, I'm gonna die. And then we go in the pool and we're like, okay. Now we're going to do basically like a deep end simulation thing where you have to take off your sweatshirt. You have to switch with somebody and then put it on. It's it's some Navy SEAL training. Um, don't know the name of it, but wild experience. That you tread, you're treading and you're in like, picture like so much resistance on your legs. And you're like 40 pounds, 20 pounds heavier with this like weighted clothes on you. And you're trying to swim and everyone's like, huh, everyone, and you're trying to like, hey, you got this, you got this.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  You're talking each other up and they're like, all right, everyone, take off your sweatshirt. And you have to go on a ready, ready attack call. So like, Everyone's on the exact same page and you take it off and you're treading, you're treading at one arm, you have to hold it up with one arm until everybody is ready. You know, and it takes two minutes at least to get these things off. It's like stuck to you, kids don't know what they're doing. Some kids literally are being held up by other people. I shouldn't say kids, we're like adults at this time and we're treading, we're treading. And then it's like ready, ready, attack, switch with somebody. You switch now, ready, ready, attack, put it on. So think of like a wet rag, like stuck together and you're like trying to like find the opening and you're treading still for like, we're at like minute eight of treading. And then we put it on and we're like all just dying. Some kids are near drowning, like genuinely just two people holding their arms up and they're

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  like their head is barely above the water. And if they don't complete it, restart. We did like four rounds of this thing and they would, they'd look at the team captain and go, how quick can you do it? And they wanted to push the hell out of us. And the team captain says something like two minutes. Okay, do it again. They look at him again. You didn't, you didn't 150, how quick can you do it? 130. They're like, all right, 130, you didn't 125, how quick are you doing? All right, 120. We do it, we get all the way down to like 115, 120. And we're all, we've been treading water for like 40 fricking minutes. Cause in between, maybe you get like a quick, put the shoulder on something, but you're back. Crazy experience. And that is pre YouTube challenge. So like doing that, uh, definitely showed me like you're capable of so much.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Those seals that day were like, listen, when you think you're done, when you think you're done, not just like, ah, I'm tired, I'm done. When you think you're truly done, you have 40% left in the tank. And you need to tell yourself that every single time when you're on the field, when you think you're done, 40% left. Keep pushing. And I was like, damn, I'm gonna live by that. And like, obviously I'm not a Navy SEAL by any means or anything, but like that, that, that stuck with me. And when I get in those moments, I think there's still 40, like that still sticks with me. 40% left. When I'm on my marathon and I'm at mile 24. Still 40% left sadly.

• 1:07:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I wonder again, how many people would benefit from really formative experiences like that?

• 1:07:51Speaker 01

  You know?

• 1:07:52Chris Williamson?

  It's such an opportunity for you to do it as a college athlete, but most people get out of that. You know, I hear about these alpha bootcamp things that are happening.

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  I know the owners.

• 1:08:04Chris Williamson?

  And there's a bunch of them. Bedros has been on the show, Julian, if you know him.

• 1:08:10Chris Williamson?

  And there's, it's kind of easy to mock online because the storyline tells you too much. It's just way too easy of a headline where someone says, a man pays $10,000 to have dude with beard and full sleeve shout at him while he doesn't sleep. You know, it's a funny headline, but when you actually look at what those kinds of formative experiences maybe teach you, and the fact that you got to learn that at 18.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:38Chris Williamson?

  The reason that it's a bit, that people think it's a bit cringe, and it might be cringe, I'm not too sure. The reason that people think it's a bit cringe is why are you at 45 needing this? You go, well, what if you've never had it before?

• 1:08:51Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:08:52Chris Williamson?

  What if you've never pushed yourself to that place before? Normal person, at what point in your life are you going beyond that 40% line that you think is your normal one? Even someone that runs a marathon, if they're preparing for six months or a full year for it, it should be a relatively sure thing unless you've got some sort of weird pathology and your heart blows up halfway through. It's a difficult and impressive, but relatively, and then you go, okay, what about an Ironman? Well, okay, even with that, the point is that you're training to be able to do the thing.

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:26Chris Williamson?

  It would be almost like.

• 1:09:27Speaker 01

  I see what you're saying.

• 1:09:28Chris Williamson?

  You're.

• 1:09:29Speaker 01

  Doing, doing something that you're almost not prepared for, to torture yourself so much that you will gain a much more valuable lesson than if you prepared for it.

• 1:09:37Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:09:37Speaker 01

  Which is crazy.

• 1:09:38Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 1:09:39Speaker 01

  And going through that, I'm very great. This is where the moments where I then look back at my dad setting me up in these situations where I'm like, thank you so much for, even though it was rocky at times, thank you so much for making me go do this, because there's a reason I'm in the position. I am. There's a reason I can handle so much and there's a reason that I can push myself so much and it all falls back to being in the rain, the hail, the snow and throwing the ball a million times. And I'm like, why are we doing this? It all makes sense now. And the way Liver King is, is why I respect him so much. And yes, he has had his scandals, but as a man, and you could argue this because he lied, whatever. As a man that I know, as he's like a friend of mine, I see his sons and then I see the way he is with them and how it was similar to my father and the way that

• 1:10:23Speaker 01

  he pushes them and the way that my dad pushed me and I'm and I look at I looked, I told them and I said, I said, I know it and it might not make sense now what your dad is doing and how you got to do the barbarian. You gotta, you know, be strict with your diet or whatever. I'm like, it's gonna make, give it 10 years, you're gonna thank him. And I, and I promise, I promise they will. I won't say I promise, but 99%, there might be 1% chance that they will. And that's like one of those things where doing hard things is so necessary. And I think even if you're 45, I mean, what age is Warren Buffett become a billionaire or a millionaire? Wasn't like 40 or 50? It took a long time. Oh, let's make fun of his fricking self for, for, why weren't you a millionaire younger, bro? Like, no, he's a billionaire now. Like, it doesn't matter what

• 1:11:08Speaker 01

  time you start, what age you start. I think the fact is that not everyone has the opportunity to go to a D1 lacrosse program on a scholarship and have a dad push them and care for them that much with that he wants to put him in that scenario where you end up going do those things and learn those lessons at 18. It's unrealistic.

• 1:11:23Chris Williamson?

  Some people do have to learn lessons in adulthood that they should have learned in childhood.

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  We all do. There's a million lessons to learn.

• 1:11:29Chris Williamson?

  And it's kind of, it is very strange in a world where we want people to be more resilient. There is a, an odd amount of sort of teasing and pity and mocking for people that take stuff seriously when they get into later life. And you go, okay, it's not far off the developmental equivalent of mocking a fat person going to the gym.

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:51Chris Williamson?

  You go, the exact thing that they need is the thing that they're trying to do.

• 1:11:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:55Chris Williamson?

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• 1:12:39Chris Williamson?

  Function has a waitlist of over 300,000 people. But every Monday, they open a few spots for Modern Wisdom listeners. So right now, if you go to the link in the description below or head to functionhealth.com/ModernWisdom, you can bypass that waitlist today. That's functionhealth.com/ModernWisdom. Speaking of fat person going to the gym, you competed recently.

• 1:13:01Speaker 01

  You called me a fat person before? I'm kidding.

• 1:13:04Chris Williamson?

  You're leaner.

• 1:13:05Speaker 01

  I was less lean.

• 1:13:06Chris Williamson?

  True. You competed?

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:13:09Chris Williamson?

  What was that process like? What's it feel like to be that lean?

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Terrible. Um, so I'll, I'll, I'll explain. Once again, this is sort of a scenario where it's, I tend to do things in a much shorter period of time than you're supposed to. One, because it's like a new challenge that I think is different than everyone else's challenge that maybe I just am drawn to. But then secondly, I think it's, it's more interesting for videos and real life and more realistic for me. I can't devote a year to training. I could, but like I realistically, I got other, three other 90 day, or three other 30 day videos I want to make this year. So I can't devote a year to training for a marathon. I only got 30 days and then when that's done, I got the next 30 day challenge. I wake up at 5:00 AM and can't do multiple, you can't do multiple at once unless you want to be shit. So restate the question, sorry.

• 1:13:58Chris Williamson?

  What does it feel like to be that lean?

• 1:13:59Speaker 01

  What does it feel like to be that lean?

• 1:14:00Chris Williamson?

  And the process of losing that much fat in such a short space of time.

• 1:14:03Speaker 01

  So you look at like a bodybuilding prep, it's 16 weeks. I did mine in, let's say, eight. I'm always pretty lean. I never really bulk past like 15% body fat. The first week or two is, you know, like you're like, all right, it's tough. You're doing your cardio, whatever, maybe you're tired. But the, the last like three weeks, um, were so, so tiring and like.

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  Emotionally stealing in a way where I literally felt nothing like I was a corpse. You could look at me in the eyes and you could be like, you're thinking nothing right now. You have no emotion and everyone experiences prep different. Some people look at it in a very beautiful way and they love seeing the changes in their body. For me, it was tough seeing the changes like dated looking back at photos. Damn, I was shredded, but then in the moment it's very odd because you look at yourself and you pinch the side of your body. And I'm like, I'm not even that lean.

• 1:14:58Chris Williamson?

  Dysmorphia is strong.

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  I'm so skinny right now, like I don't look like C bum. I look, I look stupid.

• 1:15:05Chris Williamson?

  Fat bum.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm posing and my legs are, my legs aren't even touching. They're so skinny, you know, it's like you start really picking at all these negative things in your head. And if I wasn't making content around it, I think that definitely helped keep my mind off that sort of dysmorphic thought. And it was like, okay, we have a mission here. We're making awesome videos at the same time. I can focus on that more, but it definitely, it took a huge toll on my relationship. Uh, I've literally like every single emotion I just didn't have like, I couldn't feel happy.

• 1:15:38Chris Williamson?

  Except hunger presumably.

• 1:15:39Speaker 01

  Honestly, I don't really deal with too much hunger, which is like a gift. It's just lack of energy. I feel like lethargic of, of, I feel like I know my blood sugar is low. What is it hypoglycemic? I feel very hypoglycemic all the time. And I was like, this is just brutal. Just get to the end date. The show is a very fun experience. It's very rewarding. It's awesome being on stage, you know, yelling, most muscular, posing against people. Awesome experience. Highly recommend everybody do it maybe once, uh, or at least I think everybody should get pretty lean once to experience what it's like to one, look at your best. And two, really see the different type of hard work it takes to get to the next level of body conditioning. Because my level, and then there's even so much farther that C bum goes.

• 1:16:24Speaker 01

  And every other competitor out there, I just name him because I feel like.

• 1:16:27Chris Williamson?

  What do you think you got down to?

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Uh, Greg Dusset said six percent.

• 1:16:32Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  So even let's say six and a half to be friendly.

• 1:16:35Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:16:36Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:16:36Chris Williamson?

  Pretty lean.

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Pretty lean. And as a natural, my hormones were tanked like, like 200 nanograms test, 200 free, like, oh my God, dude. Thankfully, still works.

• 1:16:47Chris Williamson?

  Come back.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  Still works, don't worry. But the feeling of 200 test is absolutely horrible. And that's like one reason why I just like, don't have a desire to compete anymore slash for a very long time.

• 1:16:58Chris Williamson?

  What was the hardest part of it?

• 1:17:03Speaker 01

  I feel like accepting, you know what it is? The hardest part is that same anxiety fight where these, you're like, I'm so uncomfortable and you, and your body like wants to tense internally and fight this uncomfortability feeling.

• 1:17:16Chris Williamson?

  Always sympathetically activated.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, rather than just like, like, I've talked to Chris about this recently and he was like, you have to just know that this is your choice. You can stop if you want. And it almost, I feel like he has that like, where he can turn that, that internal battle against it. And a lot of other successful bodybuilders have that ability. I haven't learned it yet.

• 1:17:34Chris Williamson?

  It's the same as you were saying, I've got to get up at six in the morning. I've got to get up at six in the morning. As opposed to, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just going to get up at six.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  It's gonna happen, yeah.

• 1:17:42Chris Williamson?

  Exactly. Yeah, it's so funny, man. I think it's, it's cool to see, uh, you're like an elite normal. You know what I mean? You're kind of a representation for, nobody looks and goes, see bum. Genetic freak, once in a generation bodybuilder with a fantastic background and the perfect nutrition and a little bit of hormonal help and all the rest of it. So when I ask him, he's on the show this week, when I speak to him about what prep feels like, what theory of mind have I got to know what it's like to be Chris Bumstead, the bodybuilder? None. But I feel like you're just elite normal. You're just like.

• 1:18:22Speaker 01

  That's a great way to put it. Dude, we got, we gotta take my team's behind there. We gotta take notes and that's gonna help, that's gonna help like ideas.

• 1:18:29Chris Williamson?

  The best of the normies.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Because if you think about it, it's like, that's like, I did an elite normal thing, the marathon, elite normal thing, wake up at 5:00 AM for 30 days. It's not really that much elite, that's more normal. Um, cold plunge every day.

• 1:18:40Chris Williamson?

  That's just cold having a kid.

• 1:18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or, or we had a puppy and the same thing.

• 1:18:44Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:18:44Speaker 01

  But uh, yeah, I think, I think another experience that really stands out to me, this is kind of a tangent, but an experience that I want to talk about that truly changed my life was with Wim Hof. And that was, oh my God, that was such a. Magical experience, doing that in person, because we know what the Wim Hof method does. I'm sure, have you ever done the breathing?

• 1:19:07Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:19:07Speaker 01

  So we know, we know how good that breath, that breath work feels, the ice bath, you get endorphins. But imagine doing it with a dude that's like

• 1:19:14Chris Williamson?

  The guy.

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Creator of it almost, you know what I mean? And he's the kindest person, really, I felt so like safe with him. And I come in, first thing we do, he's like, let's

• 1:19:24Chris Williamson?

  What is this, Finland?

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Uh, Nor- uh, Nether- Netherlands, Netherlands.

• 1:19:27Chris Williamson?

  They're all the same.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  I'm like, where have I been?

• 1:19:29Chris Williamson?

  Whole area, I shouldn't say that, there's loads of people that listen in Finland. Uh, but did he do that thing where you have to penguin dive off the?

• 1:19:36Speaker 01

  He, he did it, I didn't, I was like, that's a little extreme, that water is gotta be like thirty one and point nine degrees Fahrenheit. Um, but yeah, we, first thing he does, dive in the cold water, I'm like, oh my god. And I'm like, a from, I'm a little familiar, I've been taking cold showers to prepare for this video. And I'm like, alright, we're in it, let's go. And then we do, we do some abs, we do some breath work. And when, I want to talk about the breath work, because that was the most like spiritual awakening moment I've ever had in my life. He does four, three, four rounds of breath work, one minute, one and a half, two, two and a half, three. And you hold your breath for those lengths of period, uh, the time period that I just mentioned. And we get to the second to last round and I'm at two, two and a half, I'm feeling so safe with him.

• 1:20:21Speaker 01

  And I'm like, you know, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna like not fight it. And you could have that anxiety about this, but I'm, I'm here, let's make it happen, hold my breath, two and a half minutes go by. That man, on the dot, my sister was there, timing, uh, the, the two and a half, on the dot. He goes, and time, and my sister's like on the, like she didn't even say anything, it was two, two twenty nine point nine.

• 1:20:44Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:44Speaker 01

  And it was like, this dude, another level. And then we do the three minute, and I hold my breath for three minutes straight, it feels like thirty seconds, it flies by, I open my eyes. And I have just this insane euphoric feeling, I don't know if I was dying, and maybe that's what you're supposed to feel when you die. I have this insane euphoric feeling, I open my eyes, I see my sister, I have my cameraman, I have Wim, and like this, this feeling of just Purity of love and I'm just like gratitude and nothing else mattered. It was like, it was almost like I was like born into this exact moment and I knew nothing about the universe and it was just how you're supposed to feel. It's crazy. And that was a very life-changing moment. I've done the breathing a few times since then. I probably need to get back and do it.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  Um, but that and the ice bath, like man's on to something and I don't know what happened inside my brain, but that was the most content and like happy feeling. Like a different type of happy. It was just, I had to share that. It was a crazy experience.

• 1:21:43Chris Williamson?

  It really does clear your mind in a crazy way. If you do some forced breath work, Wim Hof breathing, whatever you want to call it.

• 1:21:54Chris Williamson?

  The last time, have you ever done it and passed out?

• 1:21:57Speaker 01

  No, I've seen people.

• 1:21:59Chris Williamson?

  Okay, so I've, I've pushed it a little bit hard in a couple of breath work classes in Austin. And um, you sort of come back around and you've got whoever the facilitator is with that hand on your chest, sort of chilling you out and they do something with your neck and maybe it's to do with your nerve here or the blood flow here. I'm not really too sure. Uh, but I always see the same fucking cat. Every time I do it, this fucking cat pops up. It's just this face looking at me.

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  What?

• 1:22:23Chris Williamson?

  I don't know what's, I don't know what it is.

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  That's the DMT being released in your brain, bro.

• 1:22:27Chris Williamson?

  Um, would you, are you ever going to pivot into psychedelic bro era? I, I did ayahuasca every day. I haven't.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  Oh, I did. That's Connor Murphy right there.

• 1:22:38Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, well, exactly. Drinking semen.

• 1:22:40Speaker 01

  So, I haven't tried that yet.

• 1:22:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  So psychedelics, I have friends that have done it. Um, I have people that are close to my life that have done it and no judgment whatsoever. Cool. Do whatever you want. For me, I feel that I almost have a

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  A little bit of an enlightened mindset as is that I feel like I've awakened from reaching a point of peace when I left Lehigh in 2018 when I was 18 years old and I quit. I had this like super spiritual awakening moment where I could not describe it, but I could like sense your energy in like the most pure way. I'm like, you are full. Like I don't, I couldn't just, I don't know what language I needed to speak it, but I'm like, you're full, you're half, you're like I sounded, I thought I was fucking crazy dude. I probably was. And I feel like that sort of opened my mind and like, well, maybe, maybe the mind is, is capable of just naturally experiencing all these crazy phenomenon things. And I feel like I also have this, this undoubtedly belief

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  in myself that maybe a psychedelic would open up for somebody else and like gratitude, like they'd open up. And I feel like I have a good base of that and I don't want to fuck with it. So that's like my mindset of

• 1:23:55Chris Williamson?

  Same with the SSRIs in some ways.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's like my mind, I'm, I'm happy. I love my life. Like beautiful fiance, family's healthy. Got a dog, got a house. Like my life is awesome. I, I truly am grateful. My, my fans are amazing. They support me, all that stuff. So it's like one of those things where it's like, if I do this, there's a chance that it goes, there, there's always, I've heard, you hear the horror stories of it going south and I'm like, why would I mess this up? Everything's good.

• 1:24:20Chris Williamson?

  Riding so high.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  If I, if I find a need where I need an awakening, I don't know, maybe, but like, I also like, I've literally never done anything stronger than smoking pot when I was like a teenager, like once. And I've never done any, any brain type of, I've never touched Adderall, never done cocaine, nothing at all. I probably will die never doing it, which I'm fine with. But I just, I'm very like protective of where my mind is and the trajectory of how my mind develops naturally and stuff where I'm like, I don't need, I don't need something to alter to, I don't need more. I'm now, I'm already, I'm on that ride on my own. I don't need that kick. Maybe I'm, maybe I'm, maybe I'd be a billionaire if I took something crazy shit.

• 1:25:03Chris Williamson?

  Or maybe you'll turn into Connor Murphy and have a.

• 1:25:05Speaker 01

  It's one of those things you don't want to risk, you know?

• 1:25:06Chris Williamson?

  A total breakdown, yeah. Just going back to the getting lean thing. There was this news article I saw recently. YouTube is to limit recommendations of certain health and fitness videos to teenagers, including those which may idealize certain body types. It says thirteen to seventeen year old users will still be able to search for and view fitness related content, but will not be encouraged into repeated viewing of similar videos. YouTube says it is acting because of concerns that repeated exposure to such material can lead young people to develop negative beliefs about themselves. The platform says this will no longer be offered for teens when they can view certain types of content, including videos that compare physical features and idealizes some types

• 1:25:47Chris Williamson?

  over others, videos idealizing specific fitness levels or body weights, videos displaying social aggression in the form of non-contact fights and intimidation. The measures were being taken after its Youth and Families Advisory Committee found that teens are more likely than adults to form negative beliefs about themselves when seeing repeated messages about ideal standards in content they consume online. What do you think of that?

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  I think it's very stupid because, and if YouTube's watching, I love you guys as a platform, but this is dumb because, think about it like this. Okay, fitness might influence a teenager to do steroids, let's say. I have a video coming out on that. But the music videos that are dudes swinging guns or, I don't know, idolizing weird things that like, there's always conspiracy behind like crazy, you know, music videos and stuff. And I don't care what it looks like, but that can just as well influence a teenager to go try smoking pot or go hang out with the wrong crowd or something like that. You could be influenced by literally anything. And also, I think, this is why I don't think it's going to happen because the amount of

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  money that fitness, CPMs in fitness are well, they're not the best, but they're probably one of the top.

• 1:27:01Chris Williamson?

  They're not tech or finance.

• 1:27:03Speaker 01

  They're not tech or finance, but they're right there, dude. Like right below it on, on the next year.

• 1:27:06Chris Williamson?

  There's so many supplement CPGs.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. So YouTube be shooting themselves in the foot because there's so much content that's just good health.

• 1:27:14Chris Williamson?

  I wonder how much is derived from thirteen to seventeen year olds age brackets.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  A lot.

• 1:27:21Chris Williamson?

  That's a good point.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  Or everyone's just gonna lie about their age and nothing's gonna change and they're gonna make new accounts.

• 1:27:25Chris Williamson?

  I do think you're right that.

• 1:27:27Speaker 01

  I think the advertising is way too, they're way too lucrative on advertising on these videos. I mean dude, I'm getting like five million views, one million to five million views on every video. You're gonna cut my ads? Good, good for you. You're gonna make no money. I'm gonna go friggin start a Patreon.

• 1:27:40Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah. The negative beliefs thing seems odd, given that we just went through a body positivity movement that was glorifying people being big. So it's okay. So not only are we glorifying fat people, we're also now limiting your ability to see people who might actually be fit. I mean, think about, just think about the entire generation, mine into yours. Do you, I was the start of it with sort of Ziz, Matt Ogus, then bleeding down, I guess, into the Matt Does Fitness. See sort of Mike Thurston type stuff now into your era.

• 1:28:16Chris Williamson?

  All of us were brought into this because of YouTube.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  The weird thing is, is that, one, I have asked my YouTube rep, like, I'm like, please tell me this is, this is false. And he's like,

• 1:28:28Chris Williamson?

  Oh, so you brought this up?

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  I straight up sent it to YouTube, one of the employees, and I was like, there's no way this is true, right? Like, you, I'm like, and if you, if it becomes true, you need to tell me ASAP. He didn't think it's like real. He was like, he said, first thing he said was cap. And then I was like, okay, what color hat? I'm kidding. That's stupid joke. And so he says, like, he thinks that. And then I sent him that article that you just read. And I'm like, are you sure? And he's like, I just, I don't know. He's like, it just sounds like it wouldn't be like plausible. But hypothetically, let's say it does. This is what's gonna happen in the fitness industry. There's gonna be a huge divide of people that, I don't wanna say that they're not intelligent enough, but they're not, let's say, social networking aware enough to adapt.

• 1:29:14Chris Williamson?

  To be able to bypass it.

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  They're, they're gonna be like, oh, fuck this. I'm gonna keep doing what I want. And they're just gonna hurt themselves. It's a really dumb mindset.

• 1:29:20Chris Williamson?

  How many people that are 13 to 17 are watching your videos?

• 1:29:23Speaker 01

  Dude, as I get bigger, it's getting more and more.

• 1:29:25Chris Williamson?

  Interesting.

• 1:29:25Speaker 01

  There's like kids, I'll be at the grocery store and they're like, I see you on TikTok and stuff and I'm like, alright, I'm watching. I'm like, what videos are you watching, bro?

• 1:29:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you're skinny.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  But it's like one of those things where, one, I find it hard to believe that'll happen. And if it does, I have the unbelievable, un, I have the believability in myself that it's like, I'm good. I'll pivot, bro. Come at me, you know?

• 1:29:48Chris Williamson?

  I don't know how big your thirteen to seventeen year old fan base is. But I, I don't know. It's an interesting, it's an interesting challenge because I would have been very, I would have been very disempowered, I think. You know, watching YouTube and seeing fitness advice from the internet.

• 1:30:10Chris Williamson?

  It's also, it's such woolly language.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  What are you gonna do like Jeff Nippard? Like, is Jeff Nippard gonna be censored?

• 1:30:15Chris Williamson?

  Because it's evidence-based lifting, saying that.

• 1:30:17Speaker 01

  It's like, okay, then in every video, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna call a doctor and say, this is evidence, right? Yes, thank you there. Check. Send in Fervu.

• 1:30:24Chris Williamson?

  Again.

• 1:30:24Speaker 01

  Like, there's gonna be, if there's a rule, there's a way around it. That's how I see it.

• 1:30:27Chris Williamson?

  What? You've done a million videos with Ronnie Coleman.

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:30:34Chris Williamson?

  I get sad when I see him.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:30:36Chris Williamson?

  I, I mean, I know he's still got the sort of yeah buddy thing, but he's also largely a man that's crippled.

• 1:30:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know.

• 1:30:43Chris Williamson?

  Is it tough being around him?

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  It was something definitely like to get used to at first, because I've shot five videos with him total, so I'm with him, you know? And I was a young LA before Jim Shark and I would be at events with him, always loved seeing him.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  There's been a few times where it's been like genuinely, like I felt, I felt very bad. And the few times where it's like I completely forget and I think almost he's forgetting, he's just like, he's just Ronnie, you know? He's very authentic, which is awesome. I have a blast with him every time I see him. The one time where I was like, damn, bro, this is like kind of brutal, like to see because, I mean, he's a legend. He was obviously not crippled at one point and fully thriving.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  It was when, it was when we were at uh his gym in Texas, in Dallas, Metro Flex Arlington. And the, the equipment is so damn congested there. And he trains there all the time, so clearly he like does not mind. But, his, his inability to maneuver from just like one area to the next and everybody's like pausing.

• 1:31:46Chris Williamson?

  It's not exactly disabled access.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, not at all. It was like horrible setup for him, but like obviously, he is his home base, where he likes to be, so he feels good. But I was like, I was like, like do you, do you, uh, do you wanna help him? Do you wanna like, hey, you need help getting up?

• 1:32:00Chris Williamson?

  Is it patronizing?

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. I don't wanna, I don't wanna feel, I always, my biggest thing with anybody I'm ever with, I don't care if you're fucking Dwayne The Rock Johnson or Joe Schmo down the street. I always go into my shoots or like meeting people with just like, what's up, bro? Like, there's no, like, no difference, cuz I, no, I, I don't, I don't want anyone to ever feel like I look at them in a certain way, or I'm, I'm idolizing, over idolizing them and that bothers them. Everyone idolizes me, whatever, like, you know what I mean? So, I always just, he's Ronnie, he's a dude, you know, whatever, so I, I, I didn't wanna push boundaries too far. And then one time, another time, we, we were on a boat and stuff, we were on a yacht, it was Ronnie's fucking yacht in Dubai. And he was just chilling downstairs and he was very content, and I was like, Ronnie, you, you want anything?

• 1:32:40Speaker 01

  Very chill, chilling, and I'm, obviously, I, I don't know what's going through his head, and it's one of those things, like, you know, back in the day, maybe he'd be up there fucking fist pumping and shit. He was always like a very extroverted person, still is to a degree, but I think it's one of those things where he, when you talk to him, uh, and you talk to him about, you know, I asked him, do you have any regrets? Any regrets in like what you've done? And he's like, no, no regrets.

• 1:33:04Chris Williamson?

  Do you think that's true?

• 1:33:06Speaker 01

  I mean, he, he tells me his only regret is that he didn't go for seven or eight reps on his 800 pound squat. And then he says, yeah, buddy. And I'm like, I believe it, but I think maybe you never know, you know? I think you should have him on.

• 1:33:18Chris Williamson?

  How much pain is he in? Day to day, do you know?

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  I've heard many things. I just, I don't know.

• 1:33:22Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, cuz I'd heard that he said, my pain is always an eight out of 10 and I take the maximum dose of whatever that painkiller is that's super, super strong.

• 1:33:30Speaker 01

  He's doing a lot of stem cells.

• 1:33:31Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:33:31Speaker 01

  And he says with every treatment, it gets better and better and better.

• 1:33:34Chris Williamson?

  That's good.

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  So, you know?

• 1:33:36Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's a, it is, it is uncomfortable to see, dude. And it's so odd as well cuz you've got Jay Cutler, who is, as far as I can tell, just perfectly functional.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've talked to him about it.

• 1:33:49Chris Williamson?

  We were with Phil Heath today.

• 1:33:50Speaker 01

  Phil Heath's healthy.

• 1:33:51Chris Williamson?

  Again, you get playing basketball.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:33:53Chris Williamson?

  Dicking around, so.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  I think that's the importance of realizing, I mean, right now I have a slipped disc in my back and like, in it, I'm not able to squat, not, I could if I like gun to my head, but like shouldn't squat, shouldn't deadlift, all that stuff. Yeah, uh, but it's those type of things where, you know, when people say like, careful squatting, careful deadlifting, you're gonna mess up your knees, you're gonna mess up your back. And you're like, no, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm invincible. Until you wake up and you're like, shit.

• 1:34:19Chris Williamson?

  That hurt.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  I, I just, I broke something or doesn't, you gotta be careful.

• 1:34:22Chris Williamson?

  Backs and knees, man. Backs and knees are two things that you just gotta be super, super sensitive with.

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:34:29Chris Williamson?

  Uh, you know, the, the end of my hardcore fitness career was two bulging discs in my back.

• 1:34:35Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:34:36Chris Williamson?

  And then I just thought, right, okay, I'm, it took, it was uncomfortable for maybe three or four years for me to realize, okay, you can't do what you used to do responsibly. You can do it, but you're just rolling the dice.

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  What did you fix it? Just stop doing things like that?

• 1:34:53Chris Williamson?

  Uh, so Stu McGill's big three.

• 1:34:55Speaker 01

  Heard that.

• 1:34:56Chris Williamson?

  Yep. So you should speak to Stu about back, about back pain. I can intro you if you want.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  Please.

• 1:35:00Chris Williamson?

  He'd love to speak to you. Um, he is the number one lower back pain specialist on the planet. Uh, he's done a lot of these studies, the original studies at Waterloo that much of sort of back pain science was built on. I get the sense that the field is continuing to progress now. Uh, I, I haven't spoken to him about my stuff in a little while. Tapped into him before I went and did stem cells in Medine last year.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  I was just about to ask you, have you ever done stem cells?

• 1:35:26Chris Williamson?

  I did stem cells.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  What's your experience like?

• 1:35:27Chris Williamson?

  Bioaccelerator.

• 1:35:28Speaker 01

  Okay, I know them.

• 1:35:29Chris Williamson?

  So.

• 1:35:31Speaker 01

  Columbia?

• 1:35:32Chris Williamson?

  Yep, yeah, Medine, um.

• 1:35:35Chris Williamson?

  Psychologically neutral, quite an enjoyable experience. The service is very good. Physically, very rough. Really? So for me, because I got site injections, so I had intra-articular into the shoulder capsule and my rotator cuff, there's no anaesthetic, into the quad tendon above and below the patella, and then into my Achilles that I ruptured, straight into the tendon. So the ones that I got, I got every lumbar facet joint down my back. I got one intra-discal injection into one of the bulging discs. One of them was so bad that they couldn't, they weren't even prepared to do it. The other one they did, but you're under general anaesthetic for that, so you just go to sleep. You wake up and you're like, oh, sweet, that's all been done.

• 1:36:17Chris Williamson?

  But the ones in my knee and the not, the one in my shoulder was maybe an eight out of 10 pain. The one into my knee, I'm bouncing off the bed screaming. The nurse left, this nurse who's conditioned at seeing this stuff, because it's a tiny little tendon like that, that this guy is trying to fit viscous fluid into. Yeah. And you think, oh, well, at least, at least that's the pain over and done with. And then the inflammation response comes. Yeah. And it is, I had to walk like the Tin Man out of fucking whatever that movie is. And I can't bend my knees.

• 1:36:51Chris Williamson?

  Oh. For days, I was there, do you know Al Jermain Sterling? He was the bantamweight or flyweight, whatever, the super lightweight thing in the UFC. He was a champion and he got his wrists done when he was there. He got his neck and his wrists done, so he was my lab partner, my clinic partner for the week. Yep. He, his wrists hurt so much, he couldn't pick up a phone. Oh. So the weight of a phone was so much that it caused his pains, his wrists to be in a ton of pain. So basically, pretty uncomfortable, but it's a unique category of pain because you know that it's in service of making you better. So almost all pain, you put your hand over a flame and you know that you're gonna need a skin graft.

• 1:37:35Chris Williamson?

  You break your leg and you wonder whether or not you're going to ever be able to walk the same again. But this pain, you, as long as you have faith in the doctors, which I did, you go, this is. Kind of like the suffering that you go through before something great happens on the other side of it. So again, you know, one of the themes today has been the story that you tell yourself largely determines your experience of the thing that you're going through. So the story I'm telling myself is I'm screaming bouncing off this bed, but there was no fear. It wasn't wrapped in terror or worry or anxiety. It's just straight pain. I'm all right. I'll, I'll shout and scream and call, call the doctor a couple of names. Uh, so that was interesting for me. Stu McGill's big three I did for a long

• 1:38:14Chris Williamson?

  time. I mean, I've done thousands of hours of that one routine that he came up with. I've done it around the world. I've done it on a paddleboard. I've done it in hotel rooms. I've done it in my home, done it everywhere. I can show you. Um, so that's helped. And then his main thing is he causes people, advises people to keep a neutral spine. So he calls it spinal hygiene. So the book is Back Mechanic by Stu. Um, it's a little bit expensive. It's about 50, 60 bucks, but it's really good. And, um, in it, what he's advising is don't bend at the waist when you need to tie your shoes. If you're brushing your teeth, uh, at the basin, most people just hinge from the hips, but you can actually

• 1:38:55Chris Williamson?

  support by having one hand to brush your teeth and the other can actually be relieving a little bit of the weight by putting your hand on your thigh or putting your hand on the basin. And he's got an advice for how you get up and get down off the ground without going into spinal flexion. So the whole goal is to just get your back to chill out. Wow. Um, but it's a very, especially if you had, did you have a fallen back attack? Was it a slipped disc where you were locked? No, no. Okay. I like woke up and just like could not bend backwards. Okay. So if you, even going through that, his, uh, suggested protocol is just so

• 1:39:34Chris Williamson?

  slow and, and kind of frustrating. But now I have no pain. I can sit and stand for as long as I want. I don't deadlift, but step ups, lunges, reverse lunges, walking lunges, leg press. Uh, all of that is fine. And I'm sure I probably could squat if I wanted. I just think, ah, I think I can achieve, I think I can achieve the same gains without doing that. So yeah, I pivot. One of the other things I was interested in asking you, you've worked out with a variety of, uh, non-typically fit people, like inmates and gang members and stuff like that. Yeah. Who are some of the sort of secret fittest guys that you've been around that you wouldn't have thought of?

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  Construction workers.

• 1:40:18Chris Williamson?

  Right?

• 1:40:19Speaker 01

  Dude, I mean, I found the strongest ones that exist, basically.

• 1:40:24Chris Williamson?

  Where do you find strong construction workers?

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  Ah, you hire a really good producer.

• 1:40:28Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 1:40:29Speaker 01

  Uh, and on Instagram, um, they were, they do construction and they were freaks of nature. Definitely, uh, on some sauce, definitely not natty.

• 1:40:39Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:40:40Speaker 01

  I'd say another one would be the ex-convicts. I mean, that's like stereotypical. They work out a ton. They were very, they're, they're more just jacked.

• 1:40:47Chris Williamson?

  Big hands on the construction workers, I imagine.

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  Monstrous hands. You know who's real, you know, what's really, uh, who has really good strength is like arm wrestlers.

• 1:40:57Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:40:57Speaker 01

  At least their arms, like in, like the, the sheer strength of Devon Laird's hands. I tried to, and even David Lay went against him, like two hands. You go, dude, you're never getting anywhere. Arm wrestlers are built differently. Like their tendons have just like calcified.

• 1:41:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 1:41:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  From all the scar tissue. I did one arm wrestling competition. I could, I was walking like a T-Rex for like a week.

• 1:41:21Chris Williamson?

  Wow.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  I could not move my arms and for them to do hours and hours and hours, I can't imagine what their tendons look like.

• 1:41:26Chris Williamson?

  Dude, that's so cool. Jesse James West, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, I appreciate the heck out of you. Where should people go? They want to keep up to date.

• 1:41:32Speaker 01

  Guys, check out the YouTube channel, Jesse James West and, uh, stay relentless.

• 1:41:38Chris Williamson?

  Heck yeah. Thanks, man.

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  Thank you, bro. Thank you for having me. Seriously. We did it. All right. You guys got my check?

• 1:41:45Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 1:41:56Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:42:02Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze in there. That's what.

• 1:42:06Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:42:09Speaker 04

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 1:42:10Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.