What is the balance for you in terms of structure and lack of structure? And I'm not going to ask for your daily routine. We know that you get up early, you train. But I do have some specific questions that I think would be helpful in putting some meat on the kind of the notions about you.

And again, this isn't to pick into your life, but more to grab, well, it's to pick into your life. The, so a question I asked you in the lobby, because it's one that, you know, having seen your content for a long time and really benefited from it. I was curious, you get up early at about 4.30, you train every morning.

How long do you train for? And is there any global structure to that? And of course everyone needs different programs, but do you, is it like weight training one day, cardio training the next day? Are you combining them? Is it always an hour? Is it always half an hour?

I think people would benefit from getting a little bit more understanding of what that looks like for you with the caveat that everyone has different needs, levels of, you know, background, et cetera. I'm intensely curious about this and I'm certain I'm not the only one. So do you want to talk about weightlifting or rock and roll on the guitar?

I want to talk about, um, let's you're, let's talk about the most structured first part of your day. And then let's talk about the least structured part of your day, at least the part that you can share with the, with the world. Yeah. Uh, waking up early and I'm going to work out and depending on what's going on that day, if I have an early flight, I might work out for eight minutes, right?

I might go in and do 2000 meters on the roller, get, get a sweat going hard as I can. And then I'm done. And cause I got to go catch a flight. So that could be happening. Maybe I'm supposed to go surfing in the morning. I wake up, the waves are terrible.

And so now I've got nothing to do. I've planned out, you know, to be surfing for two or three hours and now I'm not going to go surfing. So I'm going to go, I'm going to go lift and I'm going to go play in the gym and do a bunch of stuff.

I'm gonna spend two or three hours in there. I love doing that. So the workout could be anywhere between what I just say eight minutes and three hours and it could be anything in between. I fully enjoy the, the physical aspect of working out. So if I have more time to spend in the gym, I'll spend it.

I remember my dad saying at one point, if I retired, I wouldn't know what to do. And I, I was thinking to myself, are you serious right now? You know, if I didn't have anything to do, I'd spend six hours a day in the gym. That's been four hours doing jujitsu.

Like I could fill my day. I could fill every day with just physical activity, things that I just like doing. But that's so wake up early, get a sweat going and do I lift? Yes. Do I do cardio? Yes. Do I run? Yes. Do I sprint? Yes. Do I lift heavyweights?

Yes. Do I swing kettlebells? Yes. I, I do everything and, and anything and I enjoy all of it and I'm not really good at any of it. You know, I'm not, I'm not really good at any one aspect of physical activity. I, I'm, there's people that are infinitely better at me in every aspect of, and I'm not just talking about, oh, this guy's a world-class limp.

No, there's like a guy named Fred down at the gym that can deadlift more than me. There was a guy when I was at SEAL team two, there was a guy who was probably five, seven and he looked kind of chubby and he was older than me and he could run faster than me and he could bench more than me.

Those guys that were out there. Yeah. It was just so bothersome. Yeah. They're out there. They, they, they got some engine in there related to something. I mean, I do think there are genetic differences in terms of people's resilience and workout, but even just grip strength is highly, highly subjected to like genetic influences, maximum grip strength.

But of course there's a huge range in what people can develop, but I guarantee your grip strength is, is greater than mine. People ask me this all the time. Who would win in arm wrestling between you and Jocko? My Jocko. Who would win in jiu-jitsu? Jocko. You know, there's a lot of technique in arm wrestling.

I have to imagine they're putting their body behind it. They're putting their back in. It's not just that. Like there is legitimate technique in arm wrestling. There's hope for me yet. Yeah. There's, no, like if we could bring a female arm wrestler in here that knows how to arm wrestle, because I don't know how to arm wrestle either.

And she would be both of us because there's a lot of, there's a lot more technique in arm wrestling than you know. Then most people recognize there's all these little games that are going on. There's all this little arm position that you get. So just like everything else, it's technique.

There's a lot of technique in arm wrestling. That's good to know. I didn't know that about arm wrestling. I think we all start off with some genetic predispositions, both good and bad for different things. And then there's, as far as we know, there's a huge range based through neuroplasticity and muscle adaptation, et cetera, in what we can obtain.

So I never want genetic predisposition to serve as a barrier. No one knows also what the upper limits of any of these things are. And some of the best examples we know from sport and certainly from academia are people who knew they were at a disadvantage and just worked 10 times harder than everybody else because they had an ax to grind with their genetic disadvantage, which is really cool at the face of it.

So you get, you get the training and do you track your training in a detailed way? Are you keeping track of lifts? And so I write down what I do and I'll write down, I write down what I do every day. And that way I can go back and say, you know, what was I doing back then?

Because I might go through some phase where I'm trying to do more pull-ups or I'm trying to deadlift more and I'm trying, or whatever the, whatever the thing is, I'll go back in because I got bored of deadlifting after a while. And let's face it, if you just want to be a good deadlifter, you're not going to be that fast, right?

You're, you're going to be slow on long runs. So you don't want to go too deep into deadlifting and you don't also don't want to be so good at long runs that you can't deadlift, you know, a good amount of weight. So I got to go through phases and I'll get into something for a while and I'll get into something else.

So I do log down what I'm doing. So I can look back and say, oh dang, you know, I'm, I'm not even close to as strong as I used to be. Need to get back to that. I'm fascinated by the concept of energy. I think it's one of the most interesting aspects in all of biology, all of psychology and all of life.

And what, when I say energy, I mean the distinction between being back on your heels, flat footed or forward center of mass, you know, and I get the impression. And I think everyone gets the impression that you're somebody with a lot of energy. And I wonder whether or not you wake up with a lot of energy and you feel like you have to burn it off with this physical activity and work and other demands in your life.

Or do you find that you wake up and your energy is kind of neutral and exercise and physical activity gives you energy? Because I think this is one of the key things out there, I think that acts as a barrier for people doing more with their body because they, maybe they don't want to tire themselves out or maybe they don't feel like they have enough energy to begin with.

It's also feeds into this idea that, oh, you know, some people just have a lot of energy, they're really physical and other people aren't. So on, let's just say on most days, do you wake up feeling like you want to burn off energy, build energy? What does exercise mean to you?

And then maybe we can talk about some of the underlying stuff going on there. Cause I think we both might find it interesting. I would say it's both, right? There's no way I can sit here and say, oh yeah, every day that alarm clock goes off and I'm like, oh yeah, let's rock and roll.

Not certainly. That's not the case. It's also certainly not the case that every day I'm like, oh God, not again. No. I'd say most of the time the alarm clock goes off and I don't think a bunch. Like when my alarm clock goes off, I don't, I don't think a bunch, I don't debate with myself.

I'm not negotiating. I just, the thing goes off and I'm doing what I'm supposed to do. Sort of robotic. Now this, this much I can say, when you go and work out, you're going to feel better. You will get energy from working out you. That is, that is a guarantee.

If you go work out, you're going to feel better. If you go break a sweat, you're going to feel better. You're going to get more energy from it. And look, you got to go really, really hard to where now you feel more tired when you're done. And even that, I mean, you got to go psycho.

I'll do that occasionally, but I don't do that on a daily basis. You know, at the end of a day, if I wake up, lift, run, surf, and then I do jujitsu in the afternoon, like at the end of that day, I'm tired and I feel tired. But normal day working out just makes you feel better.

It definitely gives you, it definitely gives me energy I should say, cause I guess I'm not everybody. Yeah. It's, I think it's a very important point because one of the things that we are learning from circadian biology, you know, time of day effects and sunlight and all that stuff that we talked about in our podcast that you've done intuitively, right?

This is what we kind of arrived to. It was kind of crazy. Last time we had a conversation is that so many of the things that science is telling us to do and that we emphasize on the podcast, this podcast you've been doing or are built into military schedules.

And one of them is this notion of waking up early and getting physical early in the day. And I suppose if we were to just throw one blanket rule on the table to encompass the broadest number of themes, it's that once every 24 hours we each and all get a big increase in this release of the hormone cortisol, which everyone says, Oh, cortisol, it's terrible.

You know, he's going to burn you out, adrenal burnout, all that stuff. But it's a non-negotiable peak and you want it to arrive early in the day and viewing sunlight, physical activity, caffeine, and in particular intense exercise all amplify that cortisol peak. In fact, I think it's the numbers I'm seeing is just sunlight viewing gives you a 50% increase in that cortisol exercise.

On top of that, another 50 to 75% increase. So this huge release in this hormone that everyone thinks is terrible, but actually sets this huge wave in motion for the rest of the day, which gives you more energy, higher levels of immune function, more focus, et cetera. And does indeed, as you mentioned in your example of your daily life sets a timer so that about 14 to 16 hours later you're sleepy, which is what you want 14 to 16 hours later.

Unless of course you're running vampire shifts in the military or you're on shift work, but most people aren't of course. So I think the idea that movement and exercise gives us energy, I think is an important idea. And it's something that I was, frankly, I was hoping your answer would be that as opposed to that, you know, you wake up every day and you just want to just attack the world because you have so much energy getting out of bed, because frankly, I never feel that way, but I always feel better after I train, always.

And of course there are times when I crash in the early afternoon if I train really, really hard, but usually that's when I over-caffeinate to an outrageous degree and then I don't nourish after or I over-nourish. So this is the other thing that eating, the whole rest and digesting, the digest word in there is meant to, it's there for a reason, which is that when we eat a really big meal, we actually need to slow down.

So I hate to get into daily schedules at the level of nitpicking and nutrition is about the most controversial topic on the internet. But do you nourish after you train? And if you do, do you do it to the point where you kind of like, okay, I'm mostly full or I'm full?

Are you trying to really nourish yourself or do you find that eating slows you down? I find that eating slows me down. And I would say, again, it's weird how some of this stuff is like, the main reason I got in the habit of waking up early and working out is because if you do it before anyone else is awake, then they can't bother you and you can get stuff done, right?

You go to the SEAL team and you get there before anyone else is there. No one can say, "Hey, can you help us with this? Hey." No one sent you an email. So you get that time, you get it done and it's yours, right? I remember when you were on my podcast and I don't wear sunglasses when I run in the morning because I sweat and it fills my sunglasses.

It's not because I want to let the UV light into my eyes. That's not what- Cortisol boost. Yeah, cortisol boost. I didn't know that. It's cool that I know it now, but I just did it because I don't want to sweat and my sunglasses can't see. So I just run without and I put a hat on.

As far as eating, I don't like to do physically active things with food in my stomach. That's just the way it is. Yeah, me either. And so I don't want to... And what really keeps that in line for me is I'm doing jujitsu in the afternoon. And so if I'm eating a big lunch, by the time the afternoon rolls around, I'm kind of, I got food in my gut and I just don't like that feeling.

So no, I don't eat a big meal until I'm kind of done with the physical stuff for the day, which is usually at night, six, seven o'clock at night, which I guess there's some bad things about that. I eat too late. Well, the data say, you know, if you're, yeah, we could go down a rabbit hole with this and then someone's going to pull up some little clinical study and then another one that counters that.

But the data essentially say that having a regular meal schedule that allows you to sleep well at night, whatever that means for you, and that allows you to be active and focused when you need to be active and focused, that's the ideal schedule.