Latest / The You Project / #1691 The Sh*t Stirrer - Damon Hayhow

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#1691 The Sh*t Stirrer - Damon Hayhow · The You Project

0:00
Speaker 1: A good a team. You're bloody champions. Welcome to another
0:02
Speaker 1: installment of the You Projector's harps Craig Anthey harp alive
0:06
Speaker 1: from the thriving metropolis, Well not live, live as I speak,
0:09
Speaker 1: but recorded as you hear, I guess, from the thriving
0:12
Speaker 1: metropolis of Melbourne. Now today's guest I had on a
0:16
Speaker 1: long time ago. I don't even know. I should have
0:18
Speaker 1: looked it up. I probably should have had a re listen.
0:20
Speaker 1: But it was fucking two hundred years ago when we
0:23
Speaker 1: were just baby stepping the whole podcast experience, and now
0:28
Speaker 1: we're old, now we're old hands at it. It would
0:31
Speaker 1: have been a good four or five years ago, I think.
0:34
Speaker 1: Damon Hayhowe, Hi buddy, how are you?
0:37
Speaker 2: Eh mate? Great to hear your Ossie accent. I was
0:41
Speaker 2: listening to the show last night and the first thing
0:43
Speaker 2: that struck me was just, you know, seeing as I
0:45
Speaker 2: haven't been there for a few years, like, whoa so Australian?
0:49
Speaker 1: So yeah, good to hear you man. Which one we're
0:52
Speaker 1: listening to? Can you remember was it a solo one
0:55
Speaker 1: or was there a guest?
0:56
Speaker 2: It was the solo one and you said some pretty
0:59
Speaker 2: profound stuff that I found quite interesting, so it was good.
1:01
Speaker 2: It was the most recent one, sixteen eighty nine. I
1:03
Speaker 2: think it was.
1:04
Speaker 1: Oh good, I'm glad you listen. Thank you. Hey. So
1:09
Speaker 1: for my listeners who don't know who you are, which
1:12
Speaker 1: I would think at this my point in time might
1:14
Speaker 1: be the majority, give us a bit of a snapshot
1:18
Speaker 1: of who you are and what you do, and then
1:20
Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll see wherever the fuck we go. Yeah.
1:23
Speaker 2: Well, I'm a guy who lifted some heavy weights and
1:28
Speaker 2: took off his clothes and flexed his muscles in front
1:30
Speaker 2: of some people, and they said, you're pretty good, and
1:33
Speaker 2: they handed me some trophies for that. And so then
1:36
Speaker 2: I went and somehow started a business teaching other people
1:39
Speaker 2: how to lift heavy weights and take off their clothes
1:41
Speaker 2: and flex their muscles. And people seem to like that.
1:44
Speaker 2: And then I started an organization to credit people who
1:48
Speaker 2: were professional at teaching people how to lift heavy weights
1:51
Speaker 2: and take off their clothes and flex their muscles. And
1:55
Speaker 2: then I built a piece of software that helps direct
1:59
Speaker 2: people lifting heavyweights and taking off the clothes and flexing
2:02
Speaker 2: their muscles, which allowed me to bail on Melbourne during
2:08
Speaker 2: COVID because screw that and live anywhere else in the
2:11
Speaker 2: world that I chose to. So that's my life story.
2:15
Speaker 1: And have you been in the same place the whole
2:17
Speaker 1: time or do you move? Like where are I actually
2:20
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to this question everyone. Where are
2:22
Speaker 1: you at the moment? Right now?
2:24
Speaker 2: I'm in my apartment in Tabilisi, Georgia, just south of Russia,
2:28
Speaker 2: where they've just had the elections, and I've been watching
2:31
Speaker 2: all of the really interesting NATO EU US interference in
2:35
Speaker 2: the election and all sorts of intrigue and stuff that
2:39
Speaker 2: you don't really hear about on the news, but you
2:41
Speaker 2: understand what's going on. And prior to that, I was
2:45
Speaker 2: in Dubai, So I've had a place in Dubai and
2:48
Speaker 2: I've been splitting my time between the two of them.
2:52
Speaker 2: Was in East Anbul and Turkey for a little while
2:55
Speaker 2: when I first left Australia and I absolutely love that place,
2:58
Speaker 2: just absolutely fab the city. Went to Serbia for a
3:02
Speaker 2: little while, and yeah, a couple of other places it's
3:06
Speaker 2: been in terms of living, It's been to Blasi and Dubai.
3:10
Speaker 1: What why to Bleisi? Like what where? How do you
3:15
Speaker 1: end up in Georgia? And I'm not Georgia, the state
3:19
Speaker 1: in America, Georgia, the country near Georgia, the small little country. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:26
Speaker 2: Basically it was you know when the COVID thing happened,
3:30
Speaker 2: and it was a case of I need to find
3:33
Speaker 2: a place where primarily minimal government fuckery and recently communists
3:41
Speaker 2: so they know never to go back to that bullshit.
3:45
Speaker 2: So as different to Australia and particularly Melbourne as it
3:47
Speaker 2: possibly could, and so to Bleisy, I mean, fascinating story
3:54
Speaker 2: how it came along completely corrupt. They didn't even have
3:58
Speaker 2: running water or electricity. Twenty four hour I was a
4:00
Speaker 2: day back in the late nineties. Guy came to power
4:04
Speaker 2: after a US coup and you know, view an EU
4:08
Speaker 2: and all the rest of it. You've got to take
4:09
Speaker 2: out the IMF loans, blah blah blah. And he said,
4:11
Speaker 2: now screw that, and he got a libertarian to interview
4:15
Speaker 2: the heads of every government department and they gutted seventy
4:19
Speaker 2: five percent of the government, just fired them all, closed
4:22
Speaker 2: down the departments, sacked the entire police force top to bottom,
4:27
Speaker 2: like overnight, you're all fired. You can't can't be rehired.
4:30
Speaker 2: We're going to hire a new police force. Went from
4:33
Speaker 2: one of the most corrupt and in opportune countries in
4:40
Speaker 2: the world to top ten in Europe in a space
4:42
Speaker 2: of two years.
4:43
Speaker 1: Was back to profitability.
4:45
Speaker 2: And budget surpluses within the first twelve months, and they
4:51
Speaker 2: wrote into the constitution there are five taxes and you
4:54
Speaker 2: cannot increase the taxes without an actual referendum around the country.
4:59
Speaker 2: So this is just one of the freest countries in
5:02
Speaker 2: the world. You can as an Australian New Zealander, you
5:05
Speaker 2: can come here twelve months visa on arrival, no messing
5:08
Speaker 2: around with anything like that. If you earn your income
5:12
Speaker 2: overseas and you pay no tax locally. The government is
5:17
Speaker 2: so efficient it's not funny. The government's like no government
5:20
Speaker 2: I've ever dealt with in that there's one public service building.
5:23
Speaker 2: You go there for everything. The people are polite, attractive,
5:27
Speaker 2: they help you, they get everything together for you. It's
5:31
Speaker 2: it's it's just really free and easy.
5:34
Speaker 1: So yeah, fucking you should work for them. You're like
5:38
Speaker 1: the best pr This is terrible. But what is the
5:44
Speaker 1: population or do you know the population Off the top of.
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Speaker 2: It's about four million, and Tbilisi, which is the capital,
5:50
Speaker 2: we've got about a mill a million and a half here.
5:53
Speaker 1: And how big is it, let's say, compared to I
5:56
Speaker 1: don't know Victoria. Geographically, it's pretty small. I guess it's
6:02
Speaker 1: a small ish country.
6:05
Speaker 2: I need to really look at the map to compare
6:07
Speaker 2: the sizes of places. I mean, it's bigger than some
6:10
Speaker 2: European countries and not as big as others. So it's
6:13
Speaker 2: probably like Victoria and New South Wales. Off the top
6:17
Speaker 2: of my head, I might be way off, but it's
6:19
Speaker 2: now the tiny, tiny country.
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Speaker 1: That is so fucking interesting. See when you said ten
6:24
Speaker 1: minutes ago, what are we talking about? I said, mate,
6:26
Speaker 1: let's not plan And here we are talking about Pelisi
6:29
Speaker 1: and Georgia and my potential relocation out of Australia. See
6:34
Speaker 1: your mom and dad, how did you How did you
6:38
Speaker 1: find out about it? Like, did somebody talk to you
6:41
Speaker 1: and say, mate, you've got to check this joint out?
6:43
Speaker 1: Did we you just online fucking around going what's the
6:45
Speaker 1: best place in the world to live that nobody knows about? Yeah?
6:49
Speaker 2: When I mean when I first for me the COVID thing,
6:53
Speaker 2: COVID was just the last straw and I was really embarrassed,
6:59
Speaker 2: to be honest, and annoyed it myself that I hadn't
7:04
Speaker 2: seen the writing on the wall so much earlier because
7:06
Speaker 2: I was so miserable and so angry all the time,
7:10
Speaker 2: trying to run a small business in Australia and just
7:12
Speaker 2: always fighting the system, like, as you know, business is
7:15
Speaker 2: hard enough as it is without except the business part
7:19
Speaker 2: wasn't the problem. The problem was just fighting bureaucracy and
7:21
Speaker 2: stupid crap. And when COVID happens, like what the hell
7:25
Speaker 2: am I doing here? It's like it's the most expensive
7:27
Speaker 2: country in the world. The government is just absolutely out
7:31
Speaker 2: of control. I've had government officers say to me, we
7:35
Speaker 2: proudly we crush many dreams around these parts, and that's
7:40
Speaker 2: that was the attitude. What am I doing? So I
7:43
Speaker 2: went on to just full time. Where do I go?
7:46
Speaker 2: I got to get out of here. It was during
7:48
Speaker 2: COVID and that was the hardest part, so I was
7:52
Speaker 2: Initially I went to Turkey because at the time, people
7:55
Speaker 2: Turkey wasn't being a dick about COVID, and I could
7:59
Speaker 2: if I left Australia and went to Europe they would
8:01
Speaker 2: lock me up for two weeks. So I went to
8:03
Speaker 2: Turkey first. By the time I got to Turkey, it's
8:05
Speaker 2: if you come from Turkey, We're going to lock you
8:06
Speaker 2: up for two weeks. If you came from Australia, you'd
8:08
Speaker 2: be fine. So I wound up stuck. Yeah, I wound
8:11
Speaker 2: up sort of stuck in Turkey, which I which turned out.
8:13
Speaker 2: I absolutely love that country. Istanbul is just amazing. Anyway,
8:18
Speaker 2: I was. I was planning to go to a little
8:20
Speaker 2: country in between Spain and France, tiny little micro state
8:25
Speaker 2: and same sort of situation, no taxes if your income
8:28
Speaker 2: isn't isn't local, you know, minimal government, YadA, YadA, YadA.
8:32
Speaker 2: But I couldn't get in because it was trapped between
8:34
Speaker 2: Spain and France. So then kept looking around. Serbia was
8:37
Speaker 2: on the list, Malaysia was on the list, as in
8:40
Speaker 2: Kuala Lumpur I've been before and I like and Georgia
8:45
Speaker 2: was one of those countries where minimal government fuckery, no
8:50
Speaker 2: tax crap if you set yourself up right. Yeah, So
8:56
Speaker 2: it was just.
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Speaker 1: Have you like, it's it's very rare that somebody is
9:01
Speaker 1: just gonna you know, like a lot of people think
9:04
Speaker 1: about what you're doing, and to me it sounds really attractive,
9:07
Speaker 1: but the chance of me doing it next to fucking zero.
9:09
Speaker 1: Maybe because I'm a big pussy maybe who knows, but
9:14
Speaker 1: like very few people will actually get up and go
9:17
Speaker 1: and do that. It's like you have a little bit
9:21
Speaker 1: of a global identity less than a national identity, and
9:25
Speaker 1: in a good way.
9:26
Speaker 2: I think, Well, I'm a Kiwi and so it's I
9:31
Speaker 2: think most of us unfortunately absolutely beautiful country and I'm
9:37
Speaker 2: a hugely proud Kiwi, but I wouldn't want to live there,
9:41
Speaker 2: and so Australia was already my second home. I've never
9:45
Speaker 2: felt any sense of displacement where other people have talked
9:48
Speaker 2: about travel before. It's like, I don't care where I am.
9:51
Speaker 2: It's a piece of dirt and there's people, and people
9:54
Speaker 2: are mostly the same everywhere you go in a certain sense.
9:58
Speaker 2: Most people are very nice and hospital foods different in
10:02
Speaker 2: every part of the world, but you know, the good
10:04
Speaker 2: stuff's always good.
10:06
Speaker 1: So yeah, So what do you do over there? Mate?
10:08
Speaker 1: How do you make No? Do you need to make dough?
10:11
Speaker 1: I don't know. Like, by the way, Damon and I
10:13
Speaker 1: haven't spoken for about five years, so like literally apart
10:16
Speaker 1: from this call right now, so I don't even know
10:19
Speaker 1: what he did. He could be a fucking trillionaire. I
10:21
Speaker 1: don't know. But are you still Are you still working?
10:24
Speaker 1: And if you are, what do you do? Yeah?
10:26
Speaker 2: So the software that I was doing when I was
10:30
Speaker 2: when we were chatting earlier years ago, that's still going.
10:34
Speaker 2: So that's been thirteen odd years now. So that's my
10:38
Speaker 2: source of income that allows me to leave and go
10:41
Speaker 2: anywhere in the world that I want to do and
10:43
Speaker 2: keep on working, you know, the laptop lifestyle, so to speak.
10:47
Speaker 2: But that said, one of the other benefits of TBLISI
10:51
Speaker 2: and one of the other things I was looking for,
10:52
Speaker 2: was just that lower cost of living than what you
10:54
Speaker 2: have to suffer in Australia. And you come here, you
10:57
Speaker 2: can get technically temporary residence, but you get residency in
11:01
Speaker 2: the country if you spend one hundred thousand dollars on
11:03
Speaker 2: a property and one hundred dollars yeah, yeah, and one
11:09
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars on a property. Here is a nice place.
11:12
Speaker 2: You know. The deposit on a on a on a
11:15
Speaker 2: on an apartment in Melbourne will buy you a good
11:17
Speaker 2: place in Georgia.
11:19
Speaker 1: It's I'll do even I mean, I don't know what
11:22
Speaker 1: it is, but it's it's. The median house price in
11:26
Speaker 1: Melbourne is it's around a million dollars. It's ridiculous.
11:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is now, Yeah, it's it's.
11:31
Speaker 1: It's it's and what you say, it's what and what
11:35
Speaker 1: you get for a million dollars is.
11:38
Speaker 2: Live in it. Yeah.
11:40
Speaker 1: Some friends of mine who are not rich, they're just
11:42
Speaker 1: you know, a couple mid mid thirties to kids. They
11:47
Speaker 1: just bought a by one say where but out like
11:50
Speaker 1: out out out. I think they spent one point twenty
11:53
Speaker 1: five million and it's in their words, it needs two
11:57
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty grand spent on it to make it nice.
12:00
Speaker 1: And it's not a palace. I mean, it's just a
12:04
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe three or four bedroom brick house
12:07
Speaker 1: from the eighties and it was like fucking hell like that. Anyway,
12:11
Speaker 1: let's not do the real estate thing. And so you
12:15
Speaker 1: moved by yourself. You didn't move with anyone. You didn't
12:18
Speaker 1: move with friends, family, partner or anything. Just you, not
12:22
Speaker 1: just me. Yep. So when you move to the other
12:26
Speaker 1: side of the world and you go to a place
12:28
Speaker 1: where no one knows you, obviously the world's a bit
12:31
Speaker 1: smaller in terms of connectivity these days, of course, yes,
12:35
Speaker 1: but are difference. Yeah, where do you start, like, what
12:39
Speaker 1: do you like Okay, now you're in Georgia. Now you're
12:42
Speaker 1: in this very small country on the other side of
12:44
Speaker 1: the world. Like language, culture, sociology, where do you live,
12:52
Speaker 1: fucking money, where.
12:54
Speaker 2: Do you start?
12:56
Speaker 1: This is the other thing is that.
12:57
Speaker 2: It's it's so easy now.
12:59
Speaker 1: You know.
13:00
Speaker 2: It's like you want a place to stay, you go
13:01
Speaker 2: on Airbnb and you find a place to stay. English
13:04
Speaker 2: has spoken, you know, most parts of the world you'll
13:07
Speaker 2: find people who speak English. But everything's on apps. You
13:09
Speaker 2: want to travel, you use Uber or the local taxi app.
13:14
Speaker 2: Shopping malls are everywhere, supermarkets are everywhere. They've all got
13:17
Speaker 2: the same, the same shit everywhere that you go. You know,
13:20
Speaker 2: in Dubai you're buying Australian beef for the same price
13:24
Speaker 2: as Australian beef costs in Australia. In the supermarket, you know,
13:27
Speaker 2: it's the same. And gyms are the same everywhere. You know,
13:32
Speaker 2: there's Tbilisi's a small, poor country, but it's still I'm
13:36
Speaker 2: training on the same hammer strength equipment you know that
13:40
Speaker 2: you that you do anywhere else in the world. It's
13:42
Speaker 2: like they're gyms here are seriously nice, modern, Everything you
13:45
Speaker 2: could possibly want, you've got. You know, just jeans and
13:50
Speaker 2: all the usual American chain things are in every single
13:54
Speaker 2: country in the world, along with your Louis Vuittons and
13:56
Speaker 2: your blah blah blah.
13:58
Speaker 1: So it's and you know, the other.
14:00
Speaker 2: Thing is that it's connecting the internet. Here I pay,
14:04
Speaker 2: you know, my internet. I'm talking to you on right now.
14:06
Speaker 2: I think I've got about two hundred megabits per second
14:10
Speaker 2: and it costs me about unlimited, costs me about eight
14:14
Speaker 2: dollars a month.
14:16
Speaker 1: That is crazy. When you say I'm sorry everyone for
14:20
Speaker 1: gone down. I feel like this is a very self
14:22
Speaker 1: indulgent conversation because usually I'm very aware of the audience
14:25
Speaker 1: and what they might want to hear. But fuck it,
14:28
Speaker 1: Hopefully you're interested in what I'm interested in. Did you
14:32
Speaker 1: say before that you can buy a place for like
14:34
Speaker 1: a hundred grand?
14:35
Speaker 2: Yeah?
14:36
Speaker 1: Yeah.
14:36
Speaker 2: So I'm actually in a one of the landmark building
14:42
Speaker 2: of Tabilisi. It was built by the Saudi Arabians, and
14:45
Speaker 2: then the opposite officey tower thing to it, we've got
14:50
Speaker 2: Deloittees and Microsoft and all of those sorts of things.
14:53
Speaker 2: So this is the upper echelon building and I got
14:56
Speaker 2: in at a good time, but I got a one
14:58
Speaker 2: hundred and seven square me a corner apartment with wrap
15:01
Speaker 2: around glass, you know, all the mods stuff for one
15:05
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty eight grand.
15:07
Speaker 1: God, God, what flora you want? What flora you on?
15:12
Speaker 2: I'm only on the eleventh floor, but you know.
15:16
Speaker 1: So you're living in You're living in a very very
15:19
Speaker 1: fancy apartment, which is.
15:21
Speaker 2: A beautiful apartment. Yeah, spectacular, beautiful building.
15:25
Speaker 1: Yea one hundred and sixty eight grand will buy you our.
15:28
Speaker 2: Brand new glass tower. There's a there's a beautiful restaurant
15:33
Speaker 2: on the on the opposite building. You go up to
15:35
Speaker 2: and you've just got three hundred and sixty degree views
15:37
Speaker 2: of the entire city all lit up. You can see
15:40
Speaker 2: up and down the river that runs through to Bleasy
15:42
Speaker 2: and up over the mountains. It's beautiful, you know, it's
15:46
Speaker 2: really nice.
15:47
Speaker 1: And how on earth is that country economically viable? Like
15:52
Speaker 1: that seems like that would be worth more than that
15:56
Speaker 1: to build.
15:56
Speaker 2: It would seem wages alone. So I mean, like I said,
16:01
Speaker 2: it's a poor country, but you need to look at
16:02
Speaker 2: where it came from as of only twenty five years ago,
16:06
Speaker 2: thirty years ago, where it was, like I said, they
16:09
Speaker 2: didn't even have running water or electricity. Twenty four hours
16:12
Speaker 2: per day, So they've come a long way in a
16:14
Speaker 2: short time, but it's still a country with it's still
16:18
Speaker 2: a poorer country. So I'm not saying that you'd want
16:21
Speaker 2: to be born here to a typical average person and
16:24
Speaker 2: that you'd live like a king or anything. But when
16:27
Speaker 2: you're coming from Australia, it's sort of like what you
16:29
Speaker 2: spend on your car parking will pay for a really
16:32
Speaker 2: nice apartment rental here.
16:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, so have you made this is a dumb question,
16:38
Speaker 1: but have you made friends over there? Mate? Or is
16:41
Speaker 1: all your all your relationships primarily online or.
16:44
Speaker 2: Have you got a social network? Like I say, you
16:48
Speaker 2: make friends everywhere. Everywhere people are very much the same.
16:51
Speaker 2: I mean, you really feel that in Dubai you've have
16:54
Speaker 2: you been to Dubai or spend anything? No, no, no,
16:57
Speaker 2: oh dude, you have to go to Dubai at some
16:59
Speaker 2: point like Mars.
17:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I feel like I feel like Tblisi is
17:06
Speaker 1: probably more in my budget.
17:10
Speaker 2: Well, the other thing about Dubai. When I went to Dubai,
17:12
Speaker 2: I was so that the short version of the story
17:17
Speaker 2: was that I wanted to come to Georgia. I'd got
17:19
Speaker 2: an airbnb and I found out the day before I
17:22
Speaker 2: was flying that I couldn't go to Georgia without a
17:24
Speaker 2: special invite from the government, so I contacted the because
17:27
Speaker 2: of COVID, so I contacted the airbnb host and I said, mate,
17:31
Speaker 2: I can't come, and he's like, that's all right, I'm
17:34
Speaker 2: friends with Minister of the Interior. I'll get you a
17:37
Speaker 2: formal invite. Less than an hour later, I get this
17:39
Speaker 2: email through official Georgian government letterhead from the Minister of
17:44
Speaker 2: the Interior cordially inviting Damon hayhow to Tblisi is a
17:48
Speaker 2: special guest of the minister.
17:51
Speaker 1: So that is it's a wonder you don't have some
17:56
Speaker 1: kind of government position. You've been there a year, I
18:00
Speaker 1: should do.
18:00
Speaker 2: That was the first friend that I made, and he
18:04
Speaker 2: was just, you know, the most generous, hospitable, hospitable guy
18:08
Speaker 2: you could possibly imagine. Took us around to the Georgian restaurants.
18:11
Speaker 2: The restaurants for anyone who's a foodie, which you know
18:14
Speaker 2: Melbourne obviously people are. You would just absolutely well, you'd
18:19
Speaker 2: put on a lot of weight in Georgia. Let's just
18:20
Speaker 2: say that the food is incredible, it's cheap, and he
18:24
Speaker 2: would take us around to these Georgian restaurants and just
18:27
Speaker 2: feed us up like like the Greeks. Do you know.
18:30
Speaker 2: It's like if there's a spot on the table that
18:32
Speaker 2: doesn't have food on it, then someone needs to put
18:33
Speaker 2: food there very quickly.
18:36
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in your lifestyle, so I love this
18:41
Speaker 1: kind of this different, you know, kind of paradigm of
18:45
Speaker 1: work life lifestyle, working for yourself. So how many how
18:52
Speaker 1: many hours a day on average would you work? Do
18:54
Speaker 1: you reckon?
18:56
Speaker 2: I honestly couldn't tell you, because it's always for my
19:00
Speaker 2: entire working life, it's always blended in with life like
19:05
Speaker 2: they kind of intersect and they go together. You know,
19:07
Speaker 2: my hobby is going to the gym, but it's also
19:09
Speaker 2: my career in my life, you know. So the people
19:15
Speaker 2: that I speak to are generally most of my best
19:17
Speaker 2: friends are people that work in the industry and.
19:22
Speaker 1: All the rest.
19:23
Speaker 2: So so I don't know workers there from the time
19:25
Speaker 2: I wake up in the morning and check the emails
19:27
Speaker 2: to the time I go to bed at night, and
19:30
Speaker 2: I do whatever I want in between. It's I've always
19:33
Speaker 2: seen work as part of life rather than you know,
19:36
Speaker 2: this is my work time and this is my free time.
19:40
Speaker 2: So I don't remember me.
19:42
Speaker 1: I remember hearing about you. You were like this fucking
19:45
Speaker 1: you were like this enigmatic character. You were like the.
19:52
Speaker 2: Dark into the extreme.
19:54
Speaker 1: You were like the dark overlord of the fitness industry
19:57
Speaker 1: or something, and you just like surround undered by mystery.
20:01
Speaker 1: And I'd never I don't think we'd ever really met.
20:05
Speaker 1: And then I met. I came to Recomp. Is that
20:09
Speaker 1: what your place was called? Recomp?
20:10
Speaker 2: Yes?
20:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And what a fucking amazing facility, by
20:14
Speaker 1: the way, just thank you. World class, beautiful, amazing, like standalone,
20:21
Speaker 1: incredible center in wherever it was in the city in Melbourne,
20:25
Speaker 1: and met you. I don't know if we met before that,
20:28
Speaker 1: but I definitely had a chat to you, and I'm like,
20:30
Speaker 1: this guy's a fucking champ, you know. Not that I
20:33
Speaker 1: feel like not that, not that I heard a lot
20:35
Speaker 1: of bad stuff. It was just like you were, yeah,
20:39
Speaker 1: this enigma and because you gave no fucks about keeping
20:44
Speaker 1: anyone happy. I was probably a bit of a people
20:48
Speaker 1: pleaser because I was fucking insecure and you know, the
20:52
Speaker 1: ex fat kid, and I wanted people and you were like,
20:55
Speaker 1: not not fuck that, he's a dickhead. That's good, that's bad.
20:58
Speaker 1: This is I'm like, fuck, this guy has got no filter.
21:02
Speaker 1: But it's kind of sexy. Well it is, it's fucking
21:09
Speaker 1: you know. It's like even challenging the status quo in
21:13
Speaker 1: the fitness industry in terms of I think we spoke
21:16
Speaker 1: about this five years ago, but qualifications and accreditation and
21:20
Speaker 1: all of that. You're like, it's kind of bullshit because
21:22
Speaker 1: you know, it's not really worth the paper it's written on.
21:26
Speaker 2: In some ways, Absolutely, yeah, and there's a there's a
21:31
Speaker 2: whole you know, Like I say to so many of
21:34
Speaker 2: the personal trainers at the time, you know, do you
21:36
Speaker 2: do you really think that the police are going to
21:38
Speaker 2: come and arrest you for exercising with a friend in
21:41
Speaker 2: the gym because you didn't pay a registration fee to
21:44
Speaker 2: Fitness Australia, Like, seriously, what are you talking about? You
21:48
Speaker 2: can't work without this thing?
21:49
Speaker 1: Who are they?
21:51
Speaker 2: You know? And it's always that case of if you're
21:54
Speaker 2: going to tell me something, I'm going to process whether
21:56
Speaker 2: or not it makes sense, and if it doesn't make sense,
21:58
Speaker 2: well I'm going to investigate it more. And if it
22:00
Speaker 2: turns out to be bullshit, I'm going to say it's
22:02
Speaker 2: bullshit because it's bullshit. And that doesn't gel with a
22:07
Speaker 2: lot of people because a lot of people live in
22:09
Speaker 2: a world of bullshit. They like to they don't like
22:12
Speaker 2: having their feathers ruffled. You should well.
22:18
Speaker 1: And I think also when when you're getting your information
22:20
Speaker 1: from people who have a commercial agenda or you know,
22:24
Speaker 1: then you're not getting you're not getting objective data, you know. So,
22:29
Speaker 1: And it was funny because I remember you telling me
22:32
Speaker 1: years ago, I think you were. You were saying, hey, mate,
22:37
Speaker 1: you know that that that not only can you I mean,
22:41
Speaker 1: of course we want people in the industry. You've got
22:43
Speaker 1: knowledge and skills and all of that. But you're basically
22:46
Speaker 1: talking about how how how worthless some of the accreditations were.
22:56
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, oh, he's got an issue, he's
22:58
Speaker 1: got And then I then I kind opened that door
23:00
Speaker 1: a bit wider, and I did a bit of my
23:02
Speaker 1: own research, and I'm thinking, yeah, it's like even some
23:06
Speaker 1: of those because I think some private businesses almost they
23:10
Speaker 1: almost try to present themselves as some kind of government body,
23:15
Speaker 1: when in fact they're just a for profit business. Yeah,
23:18
Speaker 1: it's like quite oh no, so that's just a that's
23:22
Speaker 1: just a private company to company which they have every
23:25
Speaker 1: right to make money and sell courses, but don't pretend
23:29
Speaker 1: that this is some kind of sanctioned or authorized government
23:33
Speaker 1: entity or something.
23:35
Speaker 2: But even even then, you know, my my contrary and
23:37
Speaker 2: view of things a little bit. It's that case of
23:40
Speaker 2: who the fuck are you to sanction anything? Like you know,
23:44
Speaker 2: you I've I've never met a bureaucrat or an academic
23:49
Speaker 2: who was particularly competent in anything that they actually did.
23:51
Speaker 2: They spoke a lot of shit, and they said that,
23:53
Speaker 2: you know, we make the rules for the other people
23:55
Speaker 2: who do it, but the people who do it normally
23:58
Speaker 2: hate them and are doing everything they can to work
24:01
Speaker 2: around the bureaucratic crap. And you know, I think I
24:06
Speaker 2: told you the story when we spoke last of how
24:08
Speaker 2: I tried to create a course and I went and
24:11
Speaker 2: did my certificate for and it was years ago, so
24:16
Speaker 2: I forget what it's called now, but.
24:17
Speaker 1: The workplace training thing, like that's.
24:19
Speaker 2: The one, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for the vocational training.
24:22
Speaker 2: And then a client of mine put me in contact
24:26
Speaker 2: with the lady who at the time was apparently the
24:28
Speaker 2: head of the vocational education department, and I said to her,
24:32
Speaker 2: it's like, I want to create this course for basically
24:36
Speaker 2: elite level pts. Who focus on bodybuilding style training, and
24:41
Speaker 2: I don't want them to just get the piece of
24:42
Speaker 2: paper based on the fact that they sat in a
24:45
Speaker 2: classroom and listened to some stuff and regurgitated into a
24:48
Speaker 2: you know, on an exam sheet and long and short
24:51
Speaker 2: of it. She said, well, you can't do that. And
24:53
Speaker 2: the example that she gave was she said, for example,
24:57
Speaker 2: you couldn't deny a double am QT a certificate in
25:01
Speaker 2: CPR even though it's physically impossible for a person with
25:05
Speaker 2: no arms to do CPR. This was the example given
25:08
Speaker 2: by the head of the department, right, And I'm like,
25:12
Speaker 2: what good is a qualification in CPR if you have
25:15
Speaker 2: no arms and you can't perform CPR. And she's like, well,
25:19
Speaker 2: you can be competent in it, but not actually able
25:22
Speaker 2: to do it. So it would be discrimination not to
25:25
Speaker 2: give him a certificate a qualification in CPR just because
25:28
Speaker 2: he can't do CPR. It's like, right, and she said,
25:33
Speaker 2: because if there was somebody else around with two arms,
25:35
Speaker 2: you know, they could explain how to do it. And
25:39
Speaker 2: it's like someone's going to be dead on the basis
25:42
Speaker 2: of this qualified person with no arms being there. Like,
25:46
Speaker 2: so you give a job to a person who's qualified
25:48
Speaker 2: in CPR but it has no arms and can't actually
25:50
Speaker 2: perform CPR. They can be an ambulance officer, now can they?
25:53
Speaker 2: And that would be discrimination? So what is what are
25:59
Speaker 2: these qualififications worth anymore?
26:01
Speaker 1: So?
26:01
Speaker 2: I was looking at certificate three and nutrition and Certificate
26:04
Speaker 2: three and nutrition doesn't actually teach you anything about protein,
26:06
Speaker 2: carbs or fat.
26:09
Speaker 1: Right, what does it teach you?
26:11
Speaker 2: It teaches you about the dietary but the sensitivities of
26:18
Speaker 2: cultural needs and dietary things and how workplace health and
26:23
Speaker 2: safety around the kitchen and just anything other than actual nutrition.
26:27
Speaker 2: But you qualified and nutrition now and it's just I
26:31
Speaker 2: can't work with them. This, this is just crap.
26:33
Speaker 1: So what is the what's the state of affairs in
26:37
Speaker 1: terms of gyms in Tibilisi or in Georgia? Like, is
26:43
Speaker 1: there a fit this industry per se? Is there are
26:46
Speaker 1: there trainers?
26:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's personal trainers here and they're doing the same
26:50
Speaker 2: useless ship that all the personal trainers in Australia do.
26:53
Speaker 2: And it's it's quite funny. Actually, there's there's not a
26:56
Speaker 2: huge amount of English spoken in Georgia or some of
27:00
Speaker 2: the other countries that I've been either and every single
27:02
Speaker 2: gym I've been to, all of the platitudes up on
27:06
Speaker 2: the on the wall, all written in English. Oh really,
27:10
Speaker 2: you know, go hard or go home, and all of
27:13
Speaker 2: these sorts of things, And it's just it's just interesting.
27:17
Speaker 2: It's like none of the people here actually understand this,
27:19
Speaker 2: that it speaks volumes to how worthless the platitudes are
27:23
Speaker 2: always thought that. It's like we even write these same
27:25
Speaker 2: things on the wall and countries that don't even speak
27:27
Speaker 2: the language.
27:28
Speaker 1: It is interesting, isn't it. I've always thought about and
27:32
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you know, I was in on the
27:34
Speaker 1: ground floor, as you well know, with personal training, but
27:37
Speaker 1: I've always thought, sure were it's it's personal training is
27:41
Speaker 1: so like the actual job, like to do it well,
27:47
Speaker 1: to do it well, Like people don't understand to actually
27:52
Speaker 1: to actually do that role where you train people or
27:55
Speaker 1: work with people, consult, coach whatever, teach, educate in by
28:00
Speaker 1: all that shit where it is such a big job
28:05
Speaker 1: where you need so much knowledge, right because apart from
28:10
Speaker 1: the you know anatomy and physiology and biomechanics and nutrition
28:14
Speaker 1: and energy systems, and you also need to understand the
28:17
Speaker 1: person in the body as well as the body. You know,
28:20
Speaker 1: and it's it's the I can't say who because I
28:26
Speaker 1: don't want to get anyone in trouble, but someone that
28:28
Speaker 1: I know very well. Their kids are doing the course
28:31
Speaker 1: at the moment, and let's just say that some of
28:34
Speaker 1: the shit that they're learning is so fucking so far
28:38
Speaker 1: from the market what you well, and it's just irrelevant crap.
28:43
Speaker 1: But the stuff, the stuff that they I believe that
28:47
Speaker 1: really really matters and they're not being taught. But also
28:51
Speaker 1: part of the problem, damon, is that you know, and
28:56
Speaker 1: I'm generalizing this is not everybody, but you've got people
28:58
Speaker 1: in front of these students. It's teaching these students who
29:02
Speaker 1: don't work in the fucking industry and never have you know,
29:05
Speaker 1: and couldn't teach you how to do a squad a
29:07
Speaker 1: deadlift or you know what I'm saying. It's like.
29:10
Speaker 2: But this comes back to our discussion previously, and one
29:14
Speaker 2: of my biggest grievance is about the whole that industry,
29:18
Speaker 2: and it applies across most industries unfortunately. But it's the
29:22
Speaker 2: product that you think of as personal training, that you
29:25
Speaker 2: created with Harper's Fitness all the way back in the day,
29:29
Speaker 2: is not the product that the fitness industry is about
29:33
Speaker 2: The fitness industry is part of the health industry. They've
29:36
Speaker 2: changed that recently, but it's always been part of a
29:38
Speaker 2: health industry and it's a case of going The majority
29:41
Speaker 2: of Australians are going to die of a horrible disease
29:44
Speaker 2: because they're completely and utterly sedentary, and all we need
29:47
Speaker 2: to do is get them off. They're ass for half
29:49
Speaker 2: an hour three times per week. And so the course
29:52
Speaker 2: that you'll learn it it doesn't matter whether you squat
29:54
Speaker 2: effectively or well. If you go and you do bad
29:58
Speaker 2: squats every single day, that's health and fitness. That's great.
30:02
Speaker 2: You're doing rat shit squats, awesome. You're doing ratshit squats
30:06
Speaker 2: with a polystyrene barbell. That's fantastic. You'll never go anywhere,
30:10
Speaker 2: you'll get bored and you'll quit. That's another problem. But
30:13
Speaker 2: we've got you active. We've solved the only problem that
30:16
Speaker 2: there is.
30:16
Speaker 1: So given the.
30:18
Speaker 2: Fact that they've got to give as I said, you
30:20
Speaker 2: can give double amputees qualifications and CPR even though they
30:24
Speaker 2: can't do it, you get complete nafties going into the course.
30:27
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to fail anybody anymore because that would
30:31
Speaker 2: be discrimination. You're not giving them every chance to succeed.
30:35
Speaker 2: So that's literally the wording that they use. It's discrimination
30:38
Speaker 2: if you fail somebody, So you've got a water down
30:43
Speaker 2: the course to be the simplest, basic, most useless shit
30:46
Speaker 2: that it can possibly be, where that person can't harm
30:49
Speaker 2: a completely incompetent per So an incompetent person can't harm
30:53
Speaker 2: another incompetent person when teaching them to waste their time
30:57
Speaker 2: doing half an hour of any random crap that there is.
31:00
Speaker 2: So what do they teach them? They teach them basic
31:03
Speaker 2: rehabilitation techniques and boring useless shit that you and I
31:06
Speaker 2: know won't won't shed a pound or develop an athlete
31:11
Speaker 2: in any way, shape or form. But developing an athlete
31:13
Speaker 2: is not the point. And then the whole and then
31:15
Speaker 2: the bit that makes me mad is that the industry
31:17
Speaker 2: then goes around pretending that what it's about is creating
31:21
Speaker 2: athletes and athleticism and the ability to do good squats
31:25
Speaker 2: and enjoy these high energy workouts, and it's like, that's
31:27
Speaker 2: not your industry. You're not selling that, You're not allowed
31:29
Speaker 2: to do that, even except they know that the product
31:32
Speaker 2: everyone wants to buy is that everyone wants to be
31:36
Speaker 2: this high energy, you know, ripped abs, muscular, all the
31:41
Speaker 2: rest of it. That's what people are buying. They're not
31:43
Speaker 2: allowed to sell it, and so it's just dishonest to
31:47
Speaker 2: its core, from top to bottom the course, to the advertising,
31:51
Speaker 2: to the product being sold by the gyms, to what's
31:53
Speaker 2: actually covered by the insurance. Everything about it's just a
31:55
Speaker 2: bunch of lies, and we know how it works in
31:59
Speaker 2: the gyms. Eighty five percent non attendance is the goal
32:03
Speaker 2: because the gym couldn't possibly operate if all of the
32:05
Speaker 2: members actually turned up and use the facilities. So everything
32:08
Speaker 2: about it is just this grotesque ripof.
32:12
Speaker 1: I've said, I've spoken about that number before. I don't
32:14
Speaker 1: know where that came from, but I remember hearing that.
32:18
Speaker 1: The term I was I heard was active gym membership
32:21
Speaker 1: and it was fifteen percent, which meant that of the
32:24
Speaker 1: current members in most gyms in Australia, about fifteen percent
32:27
Speaker 1: actually went actually to the facility.
32:30
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, because in any kind of depreciation on the Yeah,
32:34
Speaker 2: the other wouldn't pass if they all turned up and
32:36
Speaker 2: you couldn't get on all of the equipment, and they
32:37
Speaker 2: wouldn't be able to run the facility if everyone turned up.
32:40
Speaker 2: So they want eighty five percent non attendance. It's pay
32:43
Speaker 2: your membership, stay doll away. Yeah. Yeah, well, the facilitated
32:48
Speaker 2: if you think about it, it was like, I don't
32:49
Speaker 2: know if it was deliberate, but it's certainly facilitated by
32:52
Speaker 2: things like treadmills and bikes and all of those sorts
32:54
Speaker 2: of things. Like who the hell you and I have
32:56
Speaker 2: been training? I mean I've been thirty three years. You'd
32:59
Speaker 2: be around the same or longer, you know, would you
33:03
Speaker 2: be walking on a treadmill three times a week an
33:06
Speaker 2: hour for thirty three Hell no, who's going.
33:09
Speaker 1: To do that?
33:10
Speaker 2: You wouldn't do it for thirty three days?
33:13
Speaker 1: And dude, I started when I was I was fourteen,
33:15
Speaker 1: which is fucking forty seven years ago. I'm sixty one.
33:18
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. But yeah, it's it's it is amazing. Let's
33:25
Speaker 1: get on something more positive. Yeah, no, no, it's all good.
33:30
Speaker 1: I love it because you know, it's it's true. And
33:34
Speaker 1: I try to get people to understand. You know, they
33:38
Speaker 1: are good and bad gyms, good and bad trainers, just
33:39
Speaker 1: like there are good and bad brick layers. They're a
33:41
Speaker 1: good and bad bloody neurosurgeons. Right, it's not absolutely. Yeah,
33:45
Speaker 1: you know, there are great people and not so great people.
33:47
Speaker 1: But explain to people what your business is now, Like,
33:52
Speaker 1: what is it that you do now?
33:56
Speaker 2: Now is just the software. So before I used to
33:59
Speaker 2: have the gym, there used to be the anti aging
34:02
Speaker 2: medical business, and then also the registration business for personal
34:07
Speaker 2: trainers to be insured for actually being able to train
34:10
Speaker 2: people with heavyweights. And now is just the software. And
34:12
Speaker 2: the software is Recomposer, and it's it's an app for
34:16
Speaker 2: coaches to prescribe diet and training to their clients in
34:21
Speaker 2: order to alter their physique. So yeah, as of the
34:27
Speaker 2: last few years, that's been a bit of an uphill battle,
34:31
Speaker 2: which I won't get into because it's boring, but it's
34:33
Speaker 2: just been you know, we needed to rebuild it, and
34:37
Speaker 2: the rebuild didn't go so good, so then we had
34:39
Speaker 2: to rebuild it again and so a lot of money
34:41
Speaker 2: went flushed down the toilet and finally we've got everything
34:46
Speaker 2: back to where it started, except working much faster and better.
34:50
Speaker 1: So yeah, but you were you were really in early,
34:53
Speaker 1: an early adopter in terms of you know, getting in
34:58
Speaker 1: with with an app those years ago. Yeah, Now there's
35:04
Speaker 1: a fucking there's a mine field of apps, isn't there?
35:08
Speaker 2: There really is? Yeah, the difference is so.
35:13
Speaker 1: I actually I.
35:15
Speaker 2: Taught myself. My dad bought me a little computer, a
35:19
Speaker 2: little Dick Smith computer for my ninth birthday, and I
35:26
Speaker 2: just wanted to play games like any kid did, and
35:27
Speaker 2: my parents didn't want to spend the money on these
35:29
Speaker 2: games for me to be sitting there like an idiot
35:31
Speaker 2: playing games. So I taught myself algebra and programmed my
35:35
Speaker 2: own games. And because that's what you do, it's just
35:39
Speaker 2: you solve the problem. So I was programming from nine,
35:42
Speaker 2: just in basic. But then by the time I was twelve,
35:46
Speaker 2: I'd started to dabble an assembly language, which is the
35:48
Speaker 2: very low level code that runs on devices and things now.
35:53
Speaker 2: But I was a nerd into computers for a very
35:56
Speaker 2: very long time, and then I got into weight training
35:59
Speaker 2: and I came back around to it and work for
36:00
Speaker 2: some web development companies for a while doing systems architecture
36:04
Speaker 2: and such, and basically I had a staff member leave
36:10
Speaker 2: my business and take all of the company IP with them,
36:13
Speaker 2: so we had everything in spreadsheets and all the rest
36:16
Speaker 2: of it. And I was like, well, this is a
36:18
Speaker 2: very bad way of running a business. If there's going
36:21
Speaker 2: to be any sort of sustainability to it. So I
36:24
Speaker 2: designed this app as a tool for my company to write,
36:29
Speaker 2: create our programs and diets for the clients. Prescribe all
36:33
Speaker 2: of the weights, prescribe all the nutrition, measure their body composition,
36:36
Speaker 2: do all of the calculations for body fat from the
36:38
Speaker 2: skin folds, et cetera, et cetera. And it was designed
36:43
Speaker 2: to answer a business problem. I didn't go, I want
36:46
Speaker 2: to make money from an app and leave the country
36:48
Speaker 2: and live around the world. It was my business has
36:52
Speaker 2: a serious risk, and we've already got the systems in place,
36:55
Speaker 2: but we need to develop them on an online platform.
36:59
Speaker 2: So we did that and then I licensed it out
37:02
Speaker 2: to other people and it turned into a business where
37:05
Speaker 2: the way things are now is that you've just got
37:09
Speaker 2: all of these people out there going you need an app.
37:11
Speaker 2: It's like, what does the app do? It doesn't matter.
37:14
Speaker 2: You need an map, and everyone's got a nap and
37:17
Speaker 2: most of them are completely useless, and most of the
37:19
Speaker 2: apps out there when it comes to training and diet
37:21
Speaker 2: are I describe them as being like a shopping list
37:26
Speaker 2: app where you write down what you bought at the
37:29
Speaker 2: supermarket after you went to the supermarket, completely fucking useless.
37:36
Speaker 1: You just why would you want to diorize what you ate?
37:39
Speaker 2: It's just sort of like, wow, now I've got a
37:41
Speaker 2: full list of everything that I ate to turn into
37:43
Speaker 2: a fat bustard. Awesome, what do you do about it?
37:47
Speaker 2: That's not the way that it works.
37:49
Speaker 1: It needs to be prescriptive.
37:51
Speaker 2: It needs to be a scientific experiment. You need to
37:53
Speaker 2: go I think if I eat this and I do this,
37:56
Speaker 2: that this will be the outcome. So I practice what
37:59
Speaker 2: I've written down, and then I measure and test whether
38:03
Speaker 2: or not my hypothesis was correct. And that's how recomposer works.
38:08
Speaker 2: It's we set a goal for a body composition. We
38:11
Speaker 2: write a diet which prescribes every gram of every food
38:14
Speaker 2: to eat every meal, every day, and then the training
38:17
Speaker 2: program which prescribes every weight to lift it every workout,
38:20
Speaker 2: on every set of every exercise. And at the end
38:22
Speaker 2: of the week, you measure your body composition again and
38:24
Speaker 2: go did it work? And if it didn't, you go, well,
38:26
Speaker 2: how was the result different to what I expected? And therefore,
38:29
Speaker 2: what do I logically do to get a different result.
38:33
Speaker 2: He goes, this is very very logical, but my god,
38:35
Speaker 2: you wouldn't believe how furious it makes people when you
38:38
Speaker 2: suggest doing things this way, like that's on scientific, that's
38:42
Speaker 2: not science and evidence based, and you don't need to
38:46
Speaker 2: do it like that. And it's like, well, yeah, actually
38:48
Speaker 2: you do. You need to measure and plan in order
38:53
Speaker 2: to measure whether or not your plan worked.
38:56
Speaker 1: It's like, no, you don't. You could just do stuff
38:58
Speaker 1: and eat stuff and it's fine. It's like, yeah, well,
39:01
Speaker 1: I think I think we're really I mean, I talk
39:03
Speaker 1: a lot about with my groups and my audiences and
39:08
Speaker 1: running a mentoring group at the moment, which is a
39:10
Speaker 1: ten week group. And we spoke last night about last
39:14
Speaker 1: night is tonight Tuesday? Yeah? Last night Monday. You know,
39:17
Speaker 1: the idea of your life being an ongoing experiment, and
39:20
Speaker 1: my life has been in some ways, My life has
39:22
Speaker 1: been an an equals one experiment since I was a
39:25
Speaker 1: fat fourteen year old, right, And here we are forty
39:28
Speaker 1: seven years later, and I'm still adapting and adjusting my
39:31
Speaker 1: protocol because my physiology changes, my needs, change the way
39:35
Speaker 1: that my body will respond to different stimuli, change what
39:39
Speaker 1: worked for me.
39:40
Speaker 2: When I am changes the Yeah, what's in the food
39:43
Speaker 2: that you ate this week is not what was in
39:45
Speaker 2: the food that you eight ten years ago.
39:47
Speaker 1: Fucking oath. And you know, so you go, you know,
39:50
Speaker 1: like what used to work for me with three or
39:52
Speaker 1: four meals a day, what works for me now is
39:54
Speaker 1: too And when I say that, that's not a recommendation
39:57
Speaker 1: for anyone else. That's not I'm not saying you should.
40:01
Speaker 1: I'm saying here's what happens. When I ate three, I
40:04
Speaker 1: gain that, I go. It depends. I'm sure I could
40:07
Speaker 1: create a model at work, but for right now, I
40:09
Speaker 1: eat it about why bother? It's I can get this,
40:13
Speaker 1: So I do this, yeah, at seven am and seven
40:16
Speaker 1: pm aroundabouts, and it works. I'm eighty four kilos, I'm
40:20
Speaker 1: pretty lean, I'm probably under twelve percent. I'm quite strong.
40:24
Speaker 1: I've got enough muscle for an old fucker, and and
40:27
Speaker 1: things are okay, you know. And it's that that kind
40:32
Speaker 1: of tendency for people to trust and believe people who
40:37
Speaker 1: don't even know them, you know, when they go you
40:40
Speaker 1: should do this, this and this, yeahs based on fucking nothing.
40:45
Speaker 2: I've had over the years where it's like someone goes
40:47
Speaker 2: to them just goes, oh my god, you look fabulous.
40:50
Speaker 1: What have you been doing?
40:51
Speaker 2: Your skin looks good, your eyes are your hair is shiny,
40:55
Speaker 2: and you've lost so much fat and you just look
40:57
Speaker 2: like a bundle of energy and so healthy and you're
41:01
Speaker 2: getting leaner. And da da da da da.
41:02
Speaker 1: What are you doing?
41:03
Speaker 2: They're like, oh, well, we met this guy and we
41:05
Speaker 2: eat this food and we do this Tralia.
41:07
Speaker 1: You can't do that.
41:08
Speaker 2: That's completely wrong, that's not sustainable, that's not what works.
41:12
Speaker 2: And it's like you start, you literally started the conversation
41:17
Speaker 2: having noticed the.
41:18
Speaker 3: Evidence of it, And yeah, well, I think also, you know, obviously,
41:24
Speaker 3: when you talk about food, when you talk about exercise,
41:27
Speaker 3: when you talk about supplements, when you talk about health,
41:30
Speaker 3: when you talk about lifestyle, habits, behaviors and protocols, there
41:34
Speaker 3: is a huge percentage of the population that is emotional
41:38
Speaker 3: about all of that or.
41:39
Speaker 1: Some of that hugely now, and you think, damon, how
41:43
Speaker 1: many people have like, for example, I won't even say which,
41:48
Speaker 1: but they have their identity is intertwined with their training protocol,
41:53
Speaker 1: or their identity is interchangeable with their eating paradigm. I
42:00
Speaker 1: am a fill in the blank, right, And so when
42:05
Speaker 1: the way that you eat, or the way that you train,
42:08
Speaker 1: or even your fucking job for that matter, or your
42:11
Speaker 1: beliefs when your beliefs basically shape your identity. Well, now
42:16
Speaker 1: you have made yourself essentially unteachable unless I am reinforcing
42:21
Speaker 1: your current thinking, which is confirmation bias, which is your
42:25
Speaker 1: own personal echo chamber. Right, So this is this is
42:29
Speaker 1: one of the dangers, and this is one of the
42:31
Speaker 1: practical realities and real world realities of you know, like,
42:35
Speaker 1: I've been working with bums and legs and bodies and
42:38
Speaker 1: micros and macros and minds and all that shit forever
42:41
Speaker 1: and I'm still learning. I'm still learning doing my PhD.
42:45
Speaker 1: I'm nearly done. I'm an exercise scientist. I've got a
42:48
Speaker 1: whole lot of shit and I probably know five per cents. Yeah,
42:54
Speaker 1: I know, not five percent of what there is to know.
42:58
Speaker 1: And I'm constantly getting shit wrong and some shit right,
43:01
Speaker 1: you know. But it's such a it's such an emotional triggering.
43:08
Speaker 2: You know, shit I first, yeah, you know, because I've
43:14
Speaker 2: I've never drank in my life, so sign sign never
43:18
Speaker 2: been oh good man. And well then you'd understand and
43:21
Speaker 2: you'd know this as well. How you'd go to a
43:24
Speaker 2: party or a bar with work colleagues or something like that,
43:28
Speaker 2: and how violently upset people get with you for not drinking,
43:33
Speaker 2: and it's it's like, my, my consumption of alcohol doesn't
43:38
Speaker 2: affect your enjoyment of alcohol whatsoever. I'm not judging you,
43:42
Speaker 2: but they feel judged. And that was what I felt
43:46
Speaker 2: it came down to, was that fact that nobody sees
43:49
Speaker 2: drunken disorderly behavior as an attractive, you know, positive thing
43:54
Speaker 2: to be doing with yourself. But so long as everybody
43:56
Speaker 2: else is doing it, it's okay. And then as as
44:00
Speaker 2: someone comes along who's just like I just don't want
44:03
Speaker 2: to do that, they feel very insecure and judged because
44:07
Speaker 2: they know they're partaking in something that to them, they
44:11
Speaker 2: know is not the way that they ideally should be
44:13
Speaker 2: behaving sort of thing. And that seems I've seen that
44:16
Speaker 2: mirroad over the years with the people who have that
44:19
Speaker 2: same problem with eating, and it's really it's been really
44:24
Speaker 2: interesting with the way that I do the food thing,
44:25
Speaker 2: where it's like a person comes to me, pays for
44:27
Speaker 2: a diet, and I say, the deal is this, I
44:30
Speaker 2: don't know what's going to work for you. I don't
44:32
Speaker 2: know what food allergies you have or anything else like that.
44:34
Speaker 2: I've got a damn good idea and I know how
44:37
Speaker 2: to fuel you for your weight training. But here's what
44:40
Speaker 2: we need to do. I want to give you this
44:42
Speaker 2: many calories at this percentage protein, carbs, and fats. You
44:45
Speaker 2: choose the food. We're going to build the diet together.
44:48
Speaker 2: You're going to tell me what you want to eat
44:50
Speaker 2: based on the options that I go are available to you.
44:53
Speaker 2: I only want you to eat it the seven days.
44:55
Speaker 2: You choose the food. You make it fit your preferences,
44:59
Speaker 2: your lifestyle, everything else like that.
45:01
Speaker 1: I just want my numbers.
45:02
Speaker 2: You do it for seven days, I measure you and
45:05
Speaker 2: we see if it works. Can you do that? You're
45:07
Speaker 2: just giving me three hundred dollars.
45:09
Speaker 1: You choose the food. Can you eat the food?
45:12
Speaker 2: And some very few people will go no, that's just ridiculous.
45:16
Speaker 2: But most people will just go, well, yeah, I'm going
45:17
Speaker 2: to give you three hundred dollars, and that makes total
45:20
Speaker 2: sense to me. I eat the food so you can
45:21
Speaker 2: measure what it does. A week later, they've already got
45:24
Speaker 2: visible feelable transformation and they're going, Wow, this is incredible,
45:29
Speaker 2: and you go, cool, let's make an adjustment. Okay, you're
45:32
Speaker 2: bored of that, will swap that out for this. That's
45:34
Speaker 2: the numbers. Seven days. I'll see you in seven days,
45:36
Speaker 2: will measure it again. It's amazing how little motivation is
45:41
Speaker 2: required in a person to do the thing when the
45:44
Speaker 2: thing just makes sense. And it's not you take away
45:48
Speaker 2: that judgment element from it.
45:49
Speaker 1: It's just you choose the food.
45:52
Speaker 2: Let's eat it for a week, measure what it does.
45:53
Speaker 2: That answers the question it doesn't work, we need to
45:55
Speaker 2: change it. It does work, Happy days, keep going.
45:58
Speaker 1: And I love the fact that you said. I mean
46:01
Speaker 1: essentially what you said. Correct me if I get it wrong.
46:04
Speaker 1: But I say this all the time as well as
46:07
Speaker 1: what we're doing is we're taking a highly educated guess,
46:10
Speaker 1: but we don't know exactly how your individual physiology will respond.
46:16
Speaker 1: You know, because you and I could see ten guys
46:19
Speaker 1: or ten girls or whatever a mix and who might
46:22
Speaker 1: look and seem similar, and so we give them a
46:25
Speaker 1: similar protocol and we get different outcomes. And so that
46:28
Speaker 1: is why you know that an equals one. Well, let's
46:31
Speaker 1: you know, we've got a fair bit of knowledge, we've
46:33
Speaker 1: got a fair bit of research, we've got a fair
46:35
Speaker 1: bit of evidence under our belt. Let's I think this
46:38
Speaker 1: is a really good starting point. But let's do this
46:41
Speaker 1: and see what your body tells us, because it's always
46:44
Speaker 1: going to tell us.
46:45
Speaker 2: Something exactly, and everything's relative too. So it's when you
46:49
Speaker 2: realize that you're not trying to achieve the This is
46:53
Speaker 2: not teleportation. We're not going to just eat the right
46:56
Speaker 2: food and then pop out a bed tomorrow morning with
46:59
Speaker 2: the hercules ripped physique that we've always wanted in our dreams.
47:02
Speaker 2: It's a process. So it's just like, well, let's start here.
47:06
Speaker 2: It's going to be a move in the right direction.
47:08
Speaker 2: We can be pretty certain of that. And you know,
47:10
Speaker 2: if you get if you get one day into it
47:12
Speaker 2: and you're going to the toilet eight times, then it's like,
47:15
Speaker 2: give me a call.
47:15
Speaker 1: We'll fix the diet. Like, clearly it's.
47:18
Speaker 2: Not working, but chances are they're the foods that you
47:21
Speaker 2: like anyway and you want to fit in your day.
47:22
Speaker 1: It's like, let's just structure them.
47:24
Speaker 2: A little differently, take out, you know, but also focus
47:28
Speaker 2: on the positive. It's also that we're eating to achieve something,
47:33
Speaker 2: and you are doing it only to find out whether
47:36
Speaker 2: it gets the result. So you know, I'll say to clients,
47:40
Speaker 2: if you eat a pizza on Wednesday night, I'm not
47:43
Speaker 2: saying it's going to make you fat.
47:44
Speaker 1: It won't.
47:45
Speaker 2: You might wake up the next morning looking better or
47:47
Speaker 2: looking Who knows the problem with eating the pizza on
47:50
Speaker 2: Wednesday night is that when I test you on Friday,
47:52
Speaker 2: I don't know whether the result was the diet or
47:55
Speaker 2: the pizza. Maybe you need to eat pizza every day
47:58
Speaker 2: or every Wednesday. I don't know, because you threw another
48:02
Speaker 2: variable in there. So just don't eat the pizza on
48:04
Speaker 2: this Wednesday so we can measure what the diet did.
48:07
Speaker 2: And most people go, that makes sense. You're not integrating
48:11
Speaker 2: me or telling me something that the evidence doesn't line up,
48:15
Speaker 2: because everyone says to me, if I eat the pizza,
48:17
Speaker 2: I get fat. But when I eat a pizza, I'm
48:18
Speaker 2: not fat the next.
48:19
Speaker 1: Day, So yes, it is. It is funny that, you know,
48:23
Speaker 1: when people kind of infer that, like you were saying,
48:28
Speaker 1: you know, with you not drinking booze and people being
48:31
Speaker 1: defensive or whatever, or that whole kind of you make
48:35
Speaker 1: me feel I find that a very interesting mindset. And
48:38
Speaker 1: I say to people when they say you make me
48:41
Speaker 1: feel like this, I go, so, I'm in charge of
48:43
Speaker 1: your feelings now, And I'd say that, you know, I'm like, dude,
48:48
Speaker 1: I'm not in charge of that. That's just your individual response.
48:52
Speaker 1: And if I'm that.
48:53
Speaker 2: Was already there, I just triggered it.
48:55
Speaker 1: By the way the way that I live, in the
48:57
Speaker 1: way that I think, and my last dollar. My operating
49:00
Speaker 1: is on no level a recommendation. I'm just telling you
49:06
Speaker 1: what I fucking do. If you don't want to know,
49:08
Speaker 1: that's cool, you know, But what I can tell you
49:11
Speaker 1: is that it is in your interest to try to
49:15
Speaker 1: figure out what works for you optimally. Hey, mate, we've
49:19
Speaker 1: got maybe ten minutes. I want to ask you some
49:21
Speaker 1: kind of rapid fire questions because I think people will
49:26
Speaker 1: be interested in. Now I'm going to ask you a
49:28
Speaker 1: question and I want you to try and get an
49:30
Speaker 1: answer out in about one minute. You're a fucking chatty kathy,
49:33
Speaker 1: so that's.
49:33
Speaker 2: Going to be harkened to do.
49:35
Speaker 1: So let's see how we go. All right, one or
49:38
Speaker 1: two minutes of advice For people who are absolute beginners.
49:42
Speaker 1: They're listening to you and they're like, kind of makes sense.
49:45
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I know you could talk about
49:47
Speaker 1: this for an hour, but I don't know where to start.
49:51
Speaker 1: Just give me a fucking something, damon, give me a
49:54
Speaker 1: where to start so I can maybe open the open
49:58
Speaker 1: the door tomorrow.
50:01
Speaker 2: The body that you acknowledge that the body that you want,
50:06
Speaker 2: because I assume we're talking about body composition here, that's
50:08
Speaker 2: what they're training.
50:09
Speaker 1: For, changing their body, whatever that means to them.
50:13
Speaker 2: The body that you want is a superior physical specimenist,
50:17
Speaker 2: a superior athlete to the body that you currently have.
50:22
Speaker 2: That's the sole difference. It all comes down to the
50:27
Speaker 2: athletic performance. It's not about going and doing random bunches
50:32
Speaker 2: of shit as punishment or penance for having sinned or
50:37
Speaker 2: anything else.
50:38
Speaker 1: You've got to find something.
50:39
Speaker 2: That actually interests you in terms of an athletic endeavor
50:43
Speaker 2: and legitimately try to get really, really really good at it.
50:48
Speaker 2: And if you can do that, everything else takes care
50:50
Speaker 2: of itself.
50:51
Speaker 1: Perfect all right, And I know this list is very long,
50:54
Speaker 1: but the most common mistakes and I know this, but
50:59
Speaker 1: across the board in general terms, the most common mistakes
51:03
Speaker 1: that people make with diet. Now, I know this is
51:06
Speaker 1: almost a stupid question, but go processed food. That's it.
51:12
Speaker 2: It's nobody got fat eating organic chicken and rice in
51:18
Speaker 2: any quantity. It can't be done right. The reason that
51:23
Speaker 2: we have so many people so fat is because of
51:28
Speaker 2: the source that they add to the chicken and the rice,
51:30
Speaker 2: and the obsession with flavor and the obsession with convenience.
51:34
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter whether you're talking about protein bars or
51:38
Speaker 2: pre workout formulas or anything else, whatever the hell they
51:41
Speaker 2: stick into food these days. These things that God did
51:46
Speaker 2: not put on this planet to be consumed by human beings,
51:49
Speaker 2: Whatever is in it, that's what's causing all the problems.
51:52
Speaker 2: Because wherever you go in the world, where where people
51:54
Speaker 2: don't eat that shit, they don't have any of the
51:56
Speaker 2: problems that we have. And that's the number one thing.
52:00
Speaker 2: Just eat natural foods. And it's pretty difficult. I mean,
52:05
Speaker 2: I mean we're as a starting point, that's the primary thing.
52:09
Speaker 2: It would be before I even get to protein, carbs
52:11
Speaker 2: and fats. If you're eating shit, you're eating shit, and
52:13
Speaker 2: who knows what it's going to do. Yeah, And I
52:15
Speaker 2: measure that. I've been measuring this stuff in people for
52:18
Speaker 2: decades and the difference that a little bit of shit
52:21
Speaker 2: makes is profound. You know, if you think a diet
52:25
Speaker 2: coke doesn't make a difference, I'm telling you it makes
52:28
Speaker 2: a difference.
52:29
Speaker 1: Really, what's diet coke? Do I have? The odd diet coke?
52:35
Speaker 1: Come on again.
52:36
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know the physiology. I don't
52:39
Speaker 2: really care. What I can tell you is if I've
52:41
Speaker 2: got a person on a on a diet and a
52:43
Speaker 2: training regimen and we're going for just ultimate fat loss
52:46
Speaker 2: with muscle retention and it's just stalled out and they're
52:49
Speaker 2: doing that, you just pull that out and the fat
52:52
Speaker 2: just goes for weeks on the same diet of the
52:55
Speaker 2: same train diet.
52:56
Speaker 1: Coke.
52:57
Speaker 2: Really, yeah, that's that is It's so interesting. It was
53:02
Speaker 2: fascinating because you know, I was one of the ones
53:03
Speaker 2: back in the day. I'm just sort of like, yeah,
53:05
Speaker 2: if you want to have that, that's fine, there's nothing
53:07
Speaker 2: in it. And then it's like, man, nothing's really working.
53:10
Speaker 2: Let's just pull that out and see if it makes
53:12
Speaker 2: a difference. Because these things always do and butter bang consistently.
53:16
Speaker 2: It's not like a some people can get away with it.
53:19
Speaker 1: And this is sorry. I know you said one minute.
53:21
Speaker 2: But a really interesting thing you'd find was going to
53:24
Speaker 2: Dubai and it actually threw me off my game in
53:28
Speaker 2: a big way. When I went to a gym, Binos gym,
53:31
Speaker 2: very world famous bodybuilding gym in Dubai and the physiques
53:34
Speaker 2: in there are. I've been around probe as you. I've
53:37
Speaker 2: been around pro bodybuilders. I've had big Rammy train in
53:40
Speaker 2: my gym. I've had the biggest and the leanest guys there.
53:43
Speaker 2: And these guys are freaks. These are the biggest, leanest, scariest.
53:49
Speaker 1: Like everyone in there.
53:51
Speaker 2: It's like I was the fattest, weakest and smallest of
53:54
Speaker 2: the women in Benos gym. Like they are just next
53:59
Speaker 2: level everywhere. And the training is absolutely fucking abysmal. We're
54:06
Speaker 2: talking lightweights with bad form, with long rest between sets.
54:12
Speaker 2: No one puffs, no one sweats. Occasionally you hear someone
54:15
Speaker 2: grunt or do something. It's just shit, absolute shit, And
54:20
Speaker 2: so you go to you look around and you're going,
54:22
Speaker 2: this doesn't gel like what's going on here? And you go,
54:27
Speaker 2: what it's got to be the drugs. It's not the drugs.
54:30
Speaker 2: It's the same drugs as everyone's using everywhere else. And
54:32
Speaker 2: there's you know, all the eighty kilo guys are using
54:34
Speaker 2: the probably more drugs than half of these guys, and
54:37
Speaker 2: these massive ripped guys. And then one day I see
54:41
Speaker 2: I start noticing every now and again a guy would
54:45
Speaker 2: come in with a great physique and a bunch of
54:47
Speaker 2: his friends. It'd be like, you know, natural national champion
54:51
Speaker 2: level kind of physique, nice round muscles and everything, but
54:54
Speaker 2: nothing too crazy or anything else like that. Never trained before.
54:58
Speaker 2: They're teaching him for the first time.
55:00
Speaker 1: And these are all.
55:02
Speaker 2: Arabs, Egyptians, Africans, all of them. And the genetics on
55:06
Speaker 2: these guys is like nothing I've seen anywhere in the world,
55:10
Speaker 2: just absolutely freaking unbelievable. And you watch these guys pre
55:15
Speaker 2: drugs with physiques better than most of our top natural bodybuilders.
55:19
Speaker 2: And then they lift a few half fast lightweights, fucking
55:22
Speaker 2: around with bad form. No squats, no deadlifts, no bench press,
55:25
Speaker 2: is just machine everything with crap weight, long rest, no puffing, nothing,
55:29
Speaker 2: no effort, and you watch them transform, they grow muscle
55:32
Speaker 2: light they're on drugs, and then they put the drugs
55:35
Speaker 2: in and you just see them turn into probody and
55:37
Speaker 2: I'm just like, what the what the fuck is going on?
55:39
Speaker 2: This just throws out every belief I've ever had about drugs, training, diet, like,
55:45
Speaker 2: because they don't eat proptly either, They just eat whatever
55:47
Speaker 2: the hell they want. And then and then a few
55:51
Speaker 2: times I've seen one of these ginormous guys just lie
55:55
Speaker 2: down on the bench press with somebody else in there
55:58
Speaker 2: who's actually doing some serious bench presses, and they'll just
56:01
Speaker 2: casually bench press are wobbly five plates for a few reps,
56:06
Speaker 2: having never lifted a having never lifted a heavyweight in
56:09
Speaker 2: their entire life, they're doing Australian record bench presses with
56:13
Speaker 2: the worst, most ugly shouldered, destroying technique you've ever seen
56:18
Speaker 2: in your life because they've never learnt to bench press.
56:22
Speaker 1: It.
56:24
Speaker 2: And that's when the penny drops and you're like, it's
56:26
Speaker 2: still the same shit. These guys have these genetics that
56:30
Speaker 2: allow them to become world champion level strength athletes without
56:35
Speaker 2: putting any effort into actual strength training or actually learning
56:38
Speaker 2: out of strength train. They just fuck around with some
56:41
Speaker 2: weights and the body just grows muscle because for whatever
56:44
Speaker 2: reason that that's how their DNA has said to, you know,
56:49
Speaker 2: respond to very low levels of stress, and they the massive,
56:55
Speaker 2: massive guys are still every little bit as strong as
56:57
Speaker 2: you would expect. But these guys don't lift heavy and
57:01
Speaker 2: when they try to, because they don't care and they
57:03
Speaker 2: don't really understand and they never lifted it, they hurt themselves.
57:07
Speaker 2: So then they tell everyone, well, I don't lift heavy
57:09
Speaker 2: because it's really risky and you get hurt and injured,
57:11
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, no, you just suck at it
57:14
Speaker 2: because you never actually learned how to do it, and
57:16
Speaker 2: you don't care because it's not hard and it's really interesting.
57:22
Speaker 2: And the reason I get into this is because this
57:24
Speaker 2: has permeated all of the training beliefs of everyone around
57:28
Speaker 2: the world that you don't need to put high effort
57:31
Speaker 2: into your training. You can lift light weights and just
57:33
Speaker 2: squeeze your muscles and you'll grow muscle the same. They
57:36
Speaker 2: look at what these unusual genetic anomalies do and they go,
57:41
Speaker 2: if I do what they do, I'll get the same results.
57:45
Speaker 1: You didn't even walk into the gym looking like them.
57:47
Speaker 2: You won't.
57:49
Speaker 1: It's it's like one of the things I see a
57:53
Speaker 1: lot in I try a little In fact, I trying
57:57
Speaker 1: a gym called Snap, which is one of my old
57:59
Speaker 1: gyms Would which is now a Snap franchise, And you know,
58:04
Speaker 1: a good little gym, and it's got everything I need
58:07
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's probably got a million bucks
58:08
Speaker 1: worth of equipment. It's not the bloody best gym in
58:10
Speaker 1: the world, but it's good for me. But more than
58:14
Speaker 1: ever I'm seeing young like more than I've ever seen
58:16
Speaker 1: in my life. In gym's young dudes coming in like
58:19
Speaker 1: at at four o'clock, five o'clock. Seventy percent of the
58:23
Speaker 1: clients are boys age between fifteen and twenty, like seventy
58:28
Speaker 1: percent of the people in the gym. And some of
58:30
Speaker 1: them good, some of them are you know, young studs.
58:35
Speaker 1: But the other thing that's happening is because they're watching
58:38
Speaker 1: so much shit online and they're watching fuckwits who do
58:41
Speaker 1: a set of dumbbell presses incline and then drop the
58:45
Speaker 1: weights from a great height. Right, But these guys are
58:49
Speaker 1: doing you know, incline presses with hund kilos each dumbbell
58:54
Speaker 1: or whatever. But then you get the young guys in
58:56
Speaker 1: the gym who are emulating their heroes and just throwing
59:00
Speaker 1: weights from four foot high. And then when I would
59:05
Speaker 1: go up and go, hey, champ, don't do that, they
59:07
Speaker 1: look at me like I'm the fucking enemy, the.
59:09
Speaker 2: Old rouch in the gym.
59:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, what are you doing? And they're like what,
59:13
Speaker 1: I go, what are you doing? It's just it's not
59:16
Speaker 1: okay to just throw you weights from three feet I
59:19
Speaker 1: and nobody tells them it's and they just want the
59:23
Speaker 1: shit on. Yeah, they mate, you're not a fucking pro bodybuilder.
59:28
Speaker 1: And and you know this, this floor is not the
59:32
Speaker 1: floor that they're throwing their way. It's different. And those
59:35
Speaker 1: weights they're not built for that, you know.
59:38
Speaker 2: Oh well, you look at Metroflex gym in Texas where
59:41
Speaker 2: Ronnie used to train, and it's like, you're going to
59:44
Speaker 2: make this gym look like Metroflex, like like an absolute
59:47
Speaker 2: shithole where everything's you know, beaten up.
59:50
Speaker 1: Oh that joint, I've seen that joint. That's that's absolute chaos.
59:54
Speaker 1: All right. I just want to okay, a couple more
59:56
Speaker 1: than we're going to wind up. And of course different
59:59
Speaker 1: people need different things. But putting aside drugs and putting
1:00:04
Speaker 1: aside peptides, what are the in general terms, what are
1:00:10
Speaker 1: the supplements that you think are okay these days? And
1:00:16
Speaker 1: I know it's a kind of a dumb question because
1:00:19
Speaker 1: different people need different things, but what are the supplements
1:00:22
Speaker 1: that are on your maybe list?
1:00:24
Speaker 2: Protein powder is the only one, really, protein powder, Vitamin C,
1:00:28
Speaker 2: vitamin D, you know, for people who are not getting
1:00:31
Speaker 2: out in the sun or using sunscreen.
1:00:34
Speaker 1: But that's about it.
1:00:35
Speaker 2: I've never been a huge supplement guy, creatine. Creatine can
1:00:39
Speaker 2: be beneficial on a high carbohydrate diet, not the way
1:00:45
Speaker 2: most people think. I find that it prevents people getting fat,
1:00:49
Speaker 2: so fat.
1:00:49
Speaker 1: On a high carbohydrate diet. But that's about it.
1:00:55
Speaker 2: I absolutely loathe pre workouts with all of the you know,
1:00:58
Speaker 2: basically amphetamine and a raspberry tever. Yeah, just absolutely terrible.
1:01:04
Speaker 1: Well, people don't understand either, by the way, I don't know,
1:01:06
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this story, you probably do.
1:01:08
Speaker 1: But do you know that my training partner died at
1:01:11
Speaker 1: the gym? They? Yeah, you know, you mentioned it? Yeah,
1:01:15
Speaker 1: I vaguely remember that. Yeah, so Mark Mark Lampard, who
1:01:20
Speaker 1: was a pro bodybuilder.
1:01:21
Speaker 2: Unbelievable for z yeah, beautiful physica.
1:01:23
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, so he died for seventeen minutes, right,
1:01:26
Speaker 1: So Friday afternoon five years ago. I think it was
1:01:31
Speaker 1: the seventeenth of October, So the anniversary has just passed.
1:01:34
Speaker 1: His fine, now, everybody only he was but literally five
1:01:37
Speaker 1: minutes past five on a Friday afternoon, he went off
1:01:40
Speaker 1: line dead cardiac arrest and was gone, fucking gone for
1:01:45
Speaker 1: until twenty two minutes past five.
1:01:48
Speaker 2: And really shit, and it's minutes I come back from
1:01:52
Speaker 2: seventeen minutes.
1:01:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, very few people come back, and also very few
1:01:56
Speaker 1: people come back without significant brain brain issues, brain damage. Yeah,
1:02:03
Speaker 1: but yeah, he was gone. He was literally dead for
1:02:06
Speaker 1: seventeen minutes. But this is just my theory everyone, and
1:02:11
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say which brand, but my theory
1:02:14
Speaker 1: is because he had nothing wrong with his heart, nothing
1:02:17
Speaker 1: wrong with all that. Let for one of a more
1:02:20
Speaker 1: technical term, plumbing of his heart, all these arteries and veins,
1:02:24
Speaker 1: and they ordered everything fine, right, no degeneration, no arteriosclerosis,
1:02:30
Speaker 1: no atherosclerosis, no reason in inverted commas to have a heart. Well,
1:02:35
Speaker 1: he didn't have a heart attack. He had a cardiac arrest. Now,
1:02:39
Speaker 1: the day that he had that, he was out all
1:02:43
Speaker 1: day working in the heat. I think he was dehydrated.
1:02:46
Speaker 1: He was down at Lawn. He drove two and a
1:02:49
Speaker 1: half hours back from Lorn to the gym. He came
1:02:51
Speaker 1: straight from LRN to Lawn as a place to everyone,
1:02:55
Speaker 1: not the grass out in the front of your house,
1:02:56
Speaker 1: but l O r N. It's a coastal town. He
1:03:00
Speaker 1: was down there, drove back, dehydrated. He drove he drank
1:03:06
Speaker 1: something like two or three I won't say which brand,
1:03:12
Speaker 1: but caffeine drinks probably the equivalent of eighteen or twelve
1:03:18
Speaker 1: coffee yeh, fucking whatever. And then he came to the
1:03:22
Speaker 1: gym and had some pre workout. Now, oh Jesus, yeah right,
1:03:26
Speaker 1: so he's probably got the equivalent of twelve fifteen coffees
1:03:30
Speaker 1: on board. He's dehydrated, So if you're dehydrated, you've got
1:03:33
Speaker 1: less blood volume. Your blood is thicker, so if viscosity increases,
1:03:38
Speaker 1: all this shit happens. And then he did twenty chins
1:03:41
Speaker 1: literally two zero chins and held his breath for every rep,
1:03:45
Speaker 1: and then he died or no fucking shock that he died, right, still,
1:03:51
Speaker 1: he died, but yeah, yeah, he died. They died. I
1:03:55
Speaker 1: have an absolute fucking passionate dislike for pre workout because
1:04:00
Speaker 1: apart from the fact that there's just a central nervous
1:04:03
Speaker 1: system stimulant that puts an incredibly unnecessary load on your
1:04:08
Speaker 1: cardiovascular system, and kids are drinking it like it's water, yeah,
1:04:14
Speaker 1: you know, not only that, then they're then they're just
1:04:17
Speaker 1: cranking out cortisole and adrenaline and not in a good way,
1:04:22
Speaker 1: and they're they're predisposing themselves to issues down the track,
1:04:26
Speaker 1: you know, and so bad.
1:04:29
Speaker 2: I just find it completely the opposite of to train effectively,
1:04:37
Speaker 2: you need to be focused. That's not focus, it's just
1:04:43
Speaker 2: pure panic. You just become you know, it's just manic panic.
1:04:49
Speaker 2: And if you're you know, if you're doing the last
1:04:54
Speaker 2: rep of any kind of pressing movement, it takes a
1:04:57
Speaker 2: period of time and it's like you're pushing with everything
1:05:01
Speaker 2: you've got, Like on the last rep of a squad
1:05:02
Speaker 2: which we call an eight minute rep because you know,
1:05:05
Speaker 2: you die of brain death from lack of oxygen doing
1:05:07
Speaker 2: that last rep. That's just so slow. When you're totally
1:05:13
Speaker 2: off your head on these stimulants, that three seconds of
1:05:17
Speaker 2: actual time that a very very hard rep might take
1:05:21
Speaker 2: to grind all the way to the top feels like
1:05:23
Speaker 2: thirty minutes. You quit within a micro second of putting
1:05:26
Speaker 2: the effort in and just go, oh, I missed and
1:05:28
Speaker 2: I was trying, you know, it felt like you were
1:05:30
Speaker 2: trying for thirty second. You weren't trying for a third
1:05:34
Speaker 2: of a second because the brain's all scattery. And I've
1:05:37
Speaker 2: seen that many people they just miss their performances because
1:05:40
Speaker 2: they're so buzzy and wide and it's the wrong state
1:05:44
Speaker 2: of mind to be in for a properly intense workout.
1:05:48
Speaker 2: If you want to go for a run, probably a
1:05:51
Speaker 2: you know, great thing. Yeah, you're you're energized, and you
1:05:54
Speaker 2: just even then, probably you run too fast at the
1:05:57
Speaker 2: start and you tie yourself out too soon. It's it
1:06:00
Speaker 2: doesn't contribute to performance like I think people believe that
1:06:04
Speaker 2: it does.
1:06:05
Speaker 1: I agree, mate. If people want to find you or
1:06:09
Speaker 1: follow you, or connect with you or learn about your app,
1:06:14
Speaker 1: how do they get involved?
1:06:17
Speaker 2: If you search, damon, hey, how you'll you'll find me everywhere?
1:06:21
Speaker 2: Not that active on the socials lately. Struggling with that
1:06:24
Speaker 2: a bit.
1:06:25
Speaker 1: But yeah, your last post, your last post on Instagram
1:06:29
Speaker 1: was twenty twenty two. To say that you're not that
1:06:32
Speaker 1: active lately is like fucking saying I.
1:06:38
Speaker 2: Never Instagram never never grabbed me, just like you know,
1:06:44
Speaker 2: Snapchat or anything else. It's just I don't know, it
1:06:48
Speaker 2: just never worked for me.
1:06:49
Speaker 1: So you're doing all right.
1:06:53
Speaker 2: I'm getting by anyway, So.
1:06:55
Speaker 1: Mate, I appreciate you. We'll chat off here in a moment,
1:06:58
Speaker 1: but for the time being, thank you for this, Thanks
1:07:02
Speaker 1: for hanging out on the you project. Appreciate you. I'm
1:07:04
Speaker 1: glad you're doing great, so fucking fascinating to hear about
1:07:07
Speaker 1: your story and good luck with everything moving forward.
1:07:11
Speaker 2: Man, Thanks mate, appreciate it.