Pushing The Limits

Dr Thomas Levy is a cardiologist and a lawyer and author of more than 13 books including his latest "Rapid Virus Recovery." In this podcast, we discuss ways to boost our immunity and protect ourselves from viruses. Our bodies are more capable than we think. If it has the correct nutrients, the human body can simultaneously recover from viruses and/or protect itself from them. We just need to make sure that we are supporting its innate abilities and Dr Levy gives us a list of things we can do to protect ourselves. He also shares that clinical recovery is often different from true recovery. Studies suggest that 40% of the novel virus-positive patients retain the virus — even after they think they've recovered!  If you want to learn more about how to achieve true recovery from disease and protect yourself, then this episode is for you! Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Understand how supporting your body's natural abilities, supported by vitamin C and hydrogen peroxide nebulisation, lead to true recovery from diseases.  Discover the concept of pathogen colonisation, where you may be clinically well but still harbor pathogens.  Learn why vaccines have side effects and what they do in your body.    Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron!  Episode 167: Curing the Incurable with Vitamin C with Dr Thomas Levy MD, JD   Get Dr Thomas Levy’s books https://www.peakenergy.com/books.php and be sure to check out Rapid Virus Recovery  Download the Hidden Epidemic E-Book for free! Get Magnesium: Reversing Disease also for free download Free Download! Get Death By Calcium Canceling the Spike Protein - Striking Visual Evidence Hydrogen Peroxide Nebulization and Virus Resolution - Impressive Anecdotal Results Learn more about Dr Paul Marik's protocol for sepsis using vitamin C and steroids.  Check out this study published on the International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine about comparing levels of ascorbic acid in plasma and white blood cells from vitamin C supplementation with hydrocortisone.       Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to https://wellness.lisatamati.com/epigenetics.   Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Health Optimisation and Life Coaching Are you struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world? Then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, contact us at support@lisatamati.com.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful third-party tested NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health   My  ‘Fierce’ Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Episode Highlights [02:22] Dr Thomas’ Latest Book, Rapid Virus Recovery  Before the pandemic, Dr Thomas had been researching Vitamin C and hydrogen peroxide nebulisation.  He found that hydrogen peroxide is a natural product that the human body already produces in large amounts. The epithelial cells that line your lung airways produce hydrogen peroxide that acts as anti-pathogens.  In addition, the human body converts up to 5% of the oxygen you inhale into hydrogen peroxide. Dr Thomas shares that people can achieve a true recovery from the virus so much faster when we optimise our body’s ability to protect and heal itself.  [06:37] Clinical Recovery Is Not True Recovery   The healthcare industry focuses on treatment methods that generate profit — hospitalisation, medication, therapy, and intubation. Even if you clinically get better from the virus, it does not mean that you have eliminated it from your body.   40% of novel virus positive patients become sick even after they recover from an acute episode.  All diseases involve excess oxidation, which stimulates the growth of new pathogens and toxins in your gut and cells.  [10:35] Is Hydrogen Peroxide Dangerous?  Hydrogen peroxide can kill pathogens both inside and outside the body.  Remember that many prescription drugs can be toxic when applied inappropriately and with the wrong dosage and concentration.  When nebulising 3% hydrogen peroxide, you can raise your blood oxygen level by 3% in around 1 minute.  Listen to the full episode to hear how a woman in Colombia treated twenty of twenty patients with advanced infection of the novel virus successfully in just five days!  [15:09] Don’t Be Afraid, Let Your Body Heal Itself Don’t be afraid of the novel virus — you can address it using easily-accessible methods.  Hydrogen peroxide nebulisation is not just for novel viruses — it can also help treat cancers. Dr Thomas shares how it can normalise the gut and cure tumours in the full episode. Cancers are caused by excess oxidative stress, which leads to chronic pathogen colonisation.  When you give your body more oxygen and nutrients, you give it the chance to heal itself. Utilise hydrogen peroxide nebulisation, hyperbaric oxygen treatments, and even vitamin C!  [24:40] How Vitamin C Works With Hydrogen Peroxide It's vital to remember to balance the effects of what you take — there are cases when you want pro-oxidant substances, like Vitamin C.  Dr Thomas shares that taking large amounts of Vitamin C can help the hydrogen peroxide break down.  This combination then leads to an oxidative effect that kills pathogens  Vitamin C can also produce more peroxide from which cells can mobilise iron. This iron then further supports the way Vitamin C and hydrogen peroxide work together.  Listen to the full episode to hear the in-depth explanation of how Vitamin C, hydrogen peroxide, and iron all work together.  [30:43] How Iron Works  All pathogens, cancers, and infections accumulate iron. The more iron you have, the more it can fuel pathogens.  However, iron key links can bring cancers and infections under control.  For people with too much iron, also called hemochromatosis, you can manage and mobilise iron levels with vitamin C therapies.  [33:37] Vitamin C Is Essential for Health Remember that inflammation means high oxidation levels in certain areas, which causes a depletion of Vitamin C.  Your body will fight against this inflammation using its antioxidants.  Dr Thomas argues that the immune system is all about supplying antioxidants in the form of Vitamin C.  If your cells, like macrophages, can't do their job due to a lack of Vitamin C, then you can help boost its cell absorption by combining a low dose of hydrocortisone with vitamin C.  [37:30] Vitamin C Can Also Be Used to Cure Sepsis  Dr Thomas shares that curing sepsis can be as easy as taking 12.5 to 25 grams of Vitamin C every six hours.  When you have high cortisol levels due to sepsis, you don't need to use cortisone.  You need Vitamin C to reduce the oxidised receptors and normalise your cortisol.  Cortisone is beneficial for those who have had their adrenal glands removed and can no longer produce cortisol on their own. [42:03] Vaccine Side Effects   Many vaccines use spike proteins instead of an inactivated virus, hoping to create antibodies to protect against the virus.  However, the spike protein can replicate on its own and, in many cases, be a toxin itself.  Different side effects often depend on the spike protein’s binding site. For example, when it binds to the vascular endothelial, it can lead to blood clots.  Remember that once a pathogen enters and colonises your body, it will linger unless you eliminate them all. You can treat viruses, vaccine side effects, and even fungal infections with vitamin C and hydrogen peroxide.  [51:08] What Happens In The Body When There Are Spike Proteins  It’s logical to think that having a lot of spike proteins in your body may deny the natural function of cells and their H2 receptors.  Side effects are not just dependent on spike protein's binding site — it can also be people's area of susceptibility to increased oxidative stress.  [55:00] How The Pandemic Will End  This pandemic can end faster when more people achieve true recovery using hydrogen peroxide nebulisation.  When people are afraid, they listen to only one narrative.  Take ownership of your health and figure out what’s best for you   7 Powerful Quotes ‘Here's something that just about killed my extremely healthy 50-year-old best friend, and when is it going to hit me? So I understand the fear. However, you should understand... you don't have to have that fear because we have the information and the techniques to deal with it across the board.’ ‘The healthcare industry is not the slightest bit interested in spending millions of dollars on research on something that will generate them nothing. Quite the contrary to generating nothing, it will take money out of their pocket and take away prolonged expensive hospitalisations, and antibiotics and intubations, and you name it.’ ‘Actually, it shouldn't come as a surprise because your body has a mechanism if you support that mechanism for dealing with killing any pathogen you encounter. I mean, if the body didn't have that, we'd all be dead and we would have never survived as a species’. ‘If you don't do the legwork, and study for yourself, and figure out what's best for you, but instead, just walk into the doctor's office and say, “Here's my warm body, do whatever you think is best”, it's only you that's going to suffer.’ ‘If you have a physician that doesn't have the time or inclination to talk with you and discuss things that you want clarification on, don't walk — run out of that office!’ ‘Unless you have a specific biofilm-dissolving pathogen-killing intervention, such as hydrogen peroxide, but it's not the only thing that will do that, you're going to keep that colonisation for life. And this is why people have bowel disorders for life.’ ‘Not everybody has that ability to do that or their willingness to do that. But you have to take responsibility for yourself. Nobody else can take that away from you. You really do have to put in the hard yards.’   About Dr Thomas Levy Dr Thomas Levy is a board-certified cardiologist and a bar-certified attorney. After practising adult cardiology for 15 years, he began to research the enormous toxicity associated with much dental work, as well as the pronounced ability of properly administered vitamin C to neutralise this toxicity. He has now written 11 books. Several of them address the wide-ranging benefits of Vitamin C and its capacity to neutralise toxins and resolve most infections, as well as its vital role in the effective treatment of heart disease and cancer. Others tackle the essential roles of dental toxicity and nutrition in disease and health. Recently inducted into the Orthomolecular Medicine Hall of Fame, Dr Levy continues to research the impact of the orthomolecular application of vitamin C and antioxidants in general on chronic degenerative diseases. His ongoing research involves documenting that all diseases are different forms and degrees of focal scurvy arising from increased oxidative stress, especially intracellular. Furthermore, they all benefit from protocols that optimise the antioxidant levels in the body.  He regularly gives lectures on this information at medical conferences around the world. If you want to learn more from Dr Levy, you may contact him at televymd@yahoo.com or through his website.    Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you were inspired to do your hard yards, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they too can find true recovery from diseases. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional. To pushing the limits, Lisa The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional  

Are you facing an obstacle that you fear you can’t overcome, or a milestone you can’t seem to reach? Don’t let this emotion trap you; everyone experiences difficulties when starting something new. Face the challenge head-on! Conquering will make you stronger. And what better way to challenge yourself than by running a marathon?   This week, Angie and Trevor Spencer from the Marathon Training Academy join us for a conversation on all things marathon running. They share their experiences about their running journey and the marathoning community they created. Angie discusses how she got into marathoning and how it led to their podcast. They also recount their most memorable marathons and the lessons that they learned along the way. Finally, we learn the value of facing challenges, staying in the present, and paying attention to our overall health.  If you want to overcome life's obstacles and know how to train for a marathon, this episode is for you.    Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn more about Marathon Training Academy and how Angie and Trevor can help you train for a marathon.  Discover how you can keep challenging yourself.  Understand that we’re all built differently.    Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron!  Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-aging and longevity with NMN Bio.  A new programme, BOOSTCAMP, is coming this September to Peak Wellness!  Listen to my other Pushing the Limits episodes:  #8: Dean Karnazes - The Road to Sparta #183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova Newest Episode with Dean Karnazes  A Runner’s High: My Life in Motion by Dean Karnazes Marathon Maniacs 50 States Marathon Club Spartan Race Spartan Up Podcasts Can You Endure? Lisa Tamati and Joe de Sena The Spartan Way by Joe de Sena Marathon Training Academy: Website | Podcast | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook      Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.   Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, contact us at support@lisatamati.com.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful third-party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health My  ‘Fierce’ Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Episode Highlights [05:43] About Marathon Training Academy Inspired by Angie's experiences with marathons, Angie and Trevor started Marathon Training Academy back in 2010. Marathon Training Academy helps people learn how to train for a marathon. They also provide tips, strategies, and principles on how to run marathons well.  To date, the show has over 10.8 million downloads.  [08:15] Angie’s Marathoning Career Angie shares that we need to be careful about comparing our accomplishments to others.  At first, she started running to lose weight. After giving birth to her second child, Angie signed up for her first 5k race.  Then, she decided she needed a bigger challenge, so she signed up for her first marathon.  Although the experience itself was miserable, Angie knew that she wanted to experience the feeling of finishing a marathon again.  Her personal experiences paved the way for Marathon Training Academy. She wanted to teach others how to train for a marathon so that they won’t get injured.  [14:19] Learning How to Train for a Marathon to Avoid Mistakes Many runners think they don’t need coaches, but it’s essential to have guidance.   Seek good advice on how to train for a marathon so you can reduce injuries.  Being part of a community can also help you avoid costly mistakes.   [16:14] Marathon Training Academy’s Growth They started in 2010, around the second wave of podcasting. Back then, many people were still not aware of what podcasts are.  We’re now in the fourth wave of podcasting, where even news agencies and TV shows have podcasts.  Trevor shared that connecting with their audience helped build the community from the start.  So, they would do shout-outs during their episodes. They are also active on social media.   Angie and Trevor also recognise the value of their audience’s time. So, they try to keep their episodes short while giving out as much valuable information as possible. [20:31] Angie’s Journey Towards 50 Marathons in 50 States Angie first heard about running challenges when she encountered the Marathon Maniacs. You can get into this club if you do two races in two weeks or three in 90 days.  At first, she thought that she wasn’t up to the challenge, but she proved herself wrong. We often make excuses about not being able to do something. If you surround yourself with people taking on these big challenges, you push yourself as well.  She then challenged herself to run 50 races in 50 states. This endeavour took 12 years. Trevor shares that Angie ran her 50th marathon the fastest. This achievement only proves that age can’t stop you from challenging yourself.   [24:47] We’re All Different We’re all built differently, so don’t feel pressured to do back-to-back marathons. Find what works best for you and your health.  Don’t be caught up in the misconception that running marathons can slim you down.  Also, don't compare yourself to others — focus on yourself and your progress.  [29:10] Angie and Trevor’s Most Memorable Races Trevor’s favourite race was the Jungfrau Marathon in Switzerland because of the views. He talks more about the experience in the full episode. Meanwhile, Angie loves the Loch Ness Marathon in Scotland. She also enjoys several other races in the US.  Trevor shares that his toughest race was a 50k race in Montana. He admits that he wasn't able to train for it.  On the other hand, Angie’s toughest race is the Leadville Trail Marathon. Located in Colorado, this race starts at 10,000 feet and continues to go up.  [34:23] Lessons Learned from Running Marathons Marathons can teach you a lot about life. As people, we're continuously changing and evolving.  Running accomplishments are good. However, you need to take care of your overall health as you train for a marathon.  We also have to learn how to appreciate the present and the challenges that come with it. Doing hard things prepares you for the struggles ahead. Marathoning teaches you to have a singular focus to reach your goals. [38:50] How Running Marathons Builds Resilience When you do hard things, it becomes easier to push through the obstacles in life. This idea is called obstacle immunity. It’s important to acknowledge difficult situations, but don’t let that stop you. Instead, use these emotions to fuel you.  Once you overcome a challenge, your horizon expands. You see the other battles you can overcome.  [43:59] How Angie and Trevor Balances Life Angie shares that being self-employed helps them find the time to run and train for a marathon.  They also try to include their children in the marathoning journey.    7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘Running is putting one step in front of the other and then being open to learning.’ ‘I think doing things in community makes it so much richer.’ ‘A lot of times we make excuses why we can't do something and sometimes, it seems very valid at the moment. But it's all a matter of priorities.’ ‘For most of us, it is about you versus you. I think that's the beautiful thing about this sport. That we can all do this together but it's actually each of our journeys.’ ‘It is important to have goals and everything, but I think it's also important to just look at your overall health.’ ‘If I can't be happy now, I'm not going to be happy in the future. If I accomplish these goals, there's always going to be something else to chase.’ ‘Having done hard things in the past prepares you for those challenges that you never wanted to take on in the first place.’   About Angie and Trevor Angie and Trevor Spencer started the Marathon Training Academy Podcast in 2010 to empower and inspire people to achieve better health with marathons. The show shares simple and actionable tips on how to train for a marathon.  Angie delved into the world of marathons after having her second child. However, she was plagued by training injuries. So, she was determined to find a better way to train for a marathon. Thus, the Marathon Training Academy was born.  She has since run 66 marathons with a PR of 3:19:55. She is also a Registered Nurse and a USATF Level 1 and RRCA Level 2 certified running coach. Meanwhile, Trevor is the manager and producer of the Marathon Training Academy. He has completed 17 marathons, one 50k, 21 half-marathons, and a Spartan Trifecta. Want to learn more about Marathon Training Academy? Check out their website and listen to their episodes on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and Spotify.  You can also reach out to them on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.            Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends to inspire them to seek challenges and teach them why it's crucial to train for a marathon well. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You can also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa   Transcript Of The Podcast  Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.  Lisa Tamati: Hi, everyone. Lisa Tamati here at Pushing the Limits. Welcome back to the show. Today, I have Trevor and Angie from the Marathon Training Academy in the United States, really well-known podcasters and run coaches. So our equivalent, over in the States. But these guys have been going for a long time and doing fantastic things. I heard their podcast when I was looking for information on my friend Dean Karnazes's latest book and listened to the podcast. I thought these guys are really rock stars, so I reached out to them. I have them on the show today so really exciting. They're in Montana in the United States, and they’ve got some great ideas and great information for you. This is one for the runners out there, and we get into all sorts of topics as well. Really, really exciting.  Before we head on over to the show, just want to let about our epigenetics program. We'd love you to come and do our flagship program about epigenetics to help you understand your genetics and how to optimise. This is really the future of personalised health is understanding what your genes are doing. All your health professionals should be personalising everything to your own genetics, and this information is pretty damn valuable. If you want to have a user manual for your own body, understand what food you should have, what types of exercise you'll benefit mostly from, your mood and behaviour, your hormones, what predispositions you have, all this fantastic information that you'll get about yourself when you go through this program.  Then, we can help you actually put it into place so how do you actually... Because it's great to get information and reports. A lot of the DNA reports that you get, you basically get 'Oh, that's nice' and it's a report and you stick it in your top drawer because you don't know what to do with it. But that's what we help you with. It's really powerful information that can really change your life. It certainly changed mine and changed my approach to different areas in what I do, what I eat, what times I do things, the way I set up my entire day, all of these things are affected. Head on over to lisatamati.com, hit the 'Work with Us' button and you'll see our Peak Epigenetics Program there.  We've also got BOOSTCAMP coming up on the first of September. You'll be listening to this after that so this round will have already started but we will be running this eight-week live webinar program again. We'd love you to come and check it out if you want to upgrade your life in all areas, understand how your biology works, understand everything that can help you achieve high performance, help you with health journeys, a really intimate small group of people who are wanting to upgrade their lives. Make sure you check that out. You can go to peakwellness.co.nz. I'll say that again, peakwellness.co.nz/boostcamp.  Lastly, before we head to the show, don't forget our NMN supplements. nmnbio.nz is where you'll find out all the information about this longevity and anti-aging supplement by Dr Elena Seranova, a molecular biologist, really powerful supplement that has been doing some amazing things for me, and my life, and my family's health, and turning back the clock, basically. It's up-regulating your sirtuin genes, which are your longevity genes, helping with the NAD levels in your cells which are... Every single cell needs NAD and these deplete as we get older, so check out the science behind it, check out the information. There's two podcast episodes that I've done with Dr Elena also on Pushing the Limits, go and check those out if you want to do a deep dive into it. Head on over to nmnbio.nz.  Right. Now, just before we head over to the show, I want you also to maybe follow us on Twitter, on Instagram, on YouTube. Especially our YouTube channel. If you can go and subscribe to our YouTube channel, that really supports the show. All of the shows are actually put up on YouTube. Just, if you search for Lisa Tamati when you go to YouTube, you'll come up with my channel and make sure you subscribe. There's a ton of videos on there. We've got about 600, I think, including all my documentaries as well. Make sure you check that out and we'll head on over to the show with Trevor and Angie.  Hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This week, I have Trevor and Angie from the Marathon Training Academy. It's super exciting to have you guys. Welcome to the show.  Angie: Thanks so much, Lisa. It's great to be here.  Trevor: Yeah, we're excited about this.  Lisa: Yeah, well, I found you actually through a mutual friend, Dean Karnazes, who I know you've had on the show a couple of times. Dean's been a huge influence in my life as you can possibly imagine. I owe him so much both as a role model and as a friend. He's done lots of things for us. He's a wonderful guy, so shout out to Dean, who I think has just got out of lockdown in Australia. He was intending to run around Australia and that's been curtailed because of the bloody COVID thing. Yeah, shout out to Dean. Thanks for introducing us. I just loved your show so I thought, 'Well, I got to have you guys on.'  You guys are running coaches, and you have three kids. Let's start there. Tell us a little bit about your training academy, and what you do, and your podcast, and all that sort of good stuff. Trevor: Yeah, awesome. Well, thanks for the opportunity to be on the podcast here. I'll introduce myself. This is Trevor. I am America's most okay-est runner.  Angie: I thought you were gonna say laziest.  Trevor: Laziest? No.  Lisa: That’s me.  Trevor: Angie is my better half. She's actually the running coach. I'm more like the business guy behind the scenes. We started in 2010. We launched the Marathon Training Academy podcast because we figured, 'Hey, maybe Angie had some knowledge and experience running a couple marathons, maybe people would benefit from learning how to do it.' We launched it and have been pretty much releasing content consistently for the last 11 years. It is not easy, as you know.  Lisa: No it is not. It is so, so impressive to keep going for that long. We've been going five and a half years, and I thought I was ancient and the podcast basically. So amazing. You've got a huge following and a huge... You're telling me some of your download stats and I'm like, 'I'm embarrassed.' You guys are rock stars.  Trevor: I guess we've been fortunate in the beginning when we've launched. I don't think there was a lot of competition for what we were talking about there. At least in the US, on iTunes, there was podcasts where people would carry a recorder out when they ran and they would just dictate breathing really heavy into the mic and stuff. There wasn't a whole lot of prescriptive training advice, which is what we tried to do. When we tell stories and we do race recaps and take people with us as we go racing around the country. But we try to be prescriptive: sharing lots of tips and strategies and principles.  Angie’s also a registered nurse as well as being a running coach, so that appealed to people. It just took off in the beginning. We got lucky. I guess it was dumb luck. I don't know, but we started connecting with people right away. Folks would email us from all over the world. We just had a great audience ever since. I just checked the numbers today. Our show’s been downloaded 10.8 million times since we started.  Lisa: That is insane. I got a long way to go to catch up to you guys. You guys are rock stars. Angie, you are a legend in the running space. You've already done 50 marathons in 50 states, for one thing. Tell us a bit about your career.  Angie: Well, I definitely don't feel like a legend. I guess that's when you are the person who is doing it all you always kind of feel like, 'Wow.' I kind of feel there’s still so much that could be accomplished. There's always that comparison trap we can fit ourselves into. There's always someone who can run faster unless you're Eliud Kipchoge. There's always somebody who's done more crazy challenges. I think that's a dangerous field to start comparing yourself to other people, but I will say that I started running off and on when I was a teenager. I didn't have a great motivation. It was more about trying to lose weight. When I didn't see instant results, then I would kind of give it up and be like, 'Oh, this isn't working.'  But I do feel I really finally became a runner in my late 20s. We'd moved across the country. It was a move that I really didn't want to make. It was for work, and I had two little kids at home. I just felt I was stuck, and I needed a new challenge. Kind of on a whim, I signed up for a 5k race and they say the 5k is the gateway drug to long-distance running. In my case, it was. It was a completely miserable race. It was hot and humid and I'm not a good hot weather runner, but I felt there was a spark inside me. This is something that really fired me up. It wasn't about beating other people. In fact, I had a very, very average time but I just kind of felt like, 'Wow, I bet you I can get better at this.'  I'd never considered myself an athlete before. I never played any sports, so running was something, it was just kind of me against me. I decided I need a bigger challenge, so I signed up for my first marathon. At the time, I didn't have any friends who are runners. They probably would have advised me against it, actually. I don't know anyone who had ever done a marathon before. In fact, at the time, we were so poor that I could either afford the race registration or a new pair of shoes. My mom actually paid for my race registration, so I consider her my first official sponsor.  I'm training for this marathon on my own. Long story short, I do everything wrong. I just run. I don't do any kind of recovery or cross-training or strength training. I'm getting injured, dealing with back pain, and IT band pain, and all the things, but I was stubborn enough that I kept going and was able to finish the marathon. Although it felt completely gruelling at times, just when I crossed the finish line, it really... I was like, 'Wow, I know I'm going to do this again.' That kind of just started my journey. I actually, after that first marathon, had to take three months off of running because my IT band was so bad. Had knee pain. The whole nine yards.  That's when I started doing yoga and kind of discovered like, 'Wow, I can really start to learn more about my body, not ignore these signals that it's sending me.' There are some areas that need to be strengthened and I think that kind of sowed the seeds for what became Marathon Training Academy. Because I wanted to help people have a better experience than I did the first time: have the knowledge, have the information to not get injured and not have to do things the hard way.  I went on to run my second marathon training much smarter and was able to break four hours for the first time, which was a huge goal of mine. I think that's kind of when Trevor mentioned wanting to start a podcast about marathon training. I was like, 'I don't feel like I know enough. Who's going to listen to us? We're just sitting in our living room recording this thing.' I had very low aspirations for where it was going to go, but he had the vision. We stuck with it and just have had a very wonderful, gracious audience. We’ve just been able to meet so many amazing people throughout the years. I think that's been the most rewarding part of it.  Lisa: That's amazing. Trevor, your wife's bit of a superstar, from what it sounds, but she's very humble.  Trevor: She's amazing. She puts me to shame. She does everything that you're supposed to do, that your coach tells you, that you see on your training plan, doesn't miss a day, doesn't miss a workout. I do 25% of my training plan. Lisa: That's brilliant though. But I love the fact that you... Like me, when I started running, I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I just put one foot in front of the other. I was hopeless, and I was slow. I'm still slow 25 years later. Genetically speaking, not the most gifted person in the world but very, very stubborn. That's all you need with running. I love that you are all about the everyday runner. We have a running coaching arm of our company as well,  and we are very much into that holistic approach to running too, with the strengths, and the immobility, and the mindset, and the nutrition, and all of that sort of stuff.  I had no idea about that back in the day and I just bumbled along, running long because that's what you did, isn't it? If you're going to run long, you run long. What the hell is strength training? What do I need that for? I think we know we've both bumbled into the space and this is the key thing, I think, from your story. That when you just keep going, and keep going, and keep going, you suddenly find yourself looking back on, 'Holy heck, I've done a lot. I've done some pretty amazing things.'  It's just like running is putting one step in front of the other and then being open to learning, getting good coaching so that you... because I like what you said, Angie, about making mistakes and then not wanting other people to make them. That is just the motivation for what we do too because I reinvented the entire wheel, and you don't need to. Do you find a lot of runners come and they don't think they need a coach for starters? Most people only come to you when they're injured. Is that happens to you guys as well?  Angie: Yeah, I think often, there is part of human nature, and I think certain personality types who are more driven to like, 'I'm going to do this myself and I'm stubborn. I'm going to see this through.' Yeah, maybe they've tried a few times to hit a specific time goal that they have, and they realise, 'Wow, it's not going in the direction that I thought it should be going or the injury issues.’  I think people's knowledge and information, it's better now. There's so much more out there that a lot of people who are probably smarter than I was are like, 'Hey, I can probably cut out the injury part, and I can get good advice and good help in the beginning and make this so much a better journey.' I think also for me, I went alone for the first few years. Just being part of the community makes it so much more special, and I think the running community is just amazing. You meet the best people and have conversations with people like you. I think doing things in community makes it so much richer.  Lisa: Oh, man. I could learn so much from you guys. I think you've got a really good approach to it. Trevor, looking back into podcast space, because you say you're the businessman behind the amazing lady, got any tips for a podcaster? Because obviously you guys are doing something right. You started off in this space like... You've grown this massively. I know what goes into it. When you come to it a bit later, it's been a bit harder, for sure. What have you learned on that journey from a community-building point of view? Because I feel we've still got work to do in that space, and I'm always keen to learn from people who are so successful.  Trevor: Well, one thing, when Angie was talking and she was telling the story of when I pitched the podcast idea to her, one thing she didn't tell you was her first response was, because this was 2010, actually '09 when I pitched the idea. Her first response was, 'What's a podcast?'  Angie: Totally ignorant.  Lisa: Yeah, we still get people not knowing what the hell a podcast is.  Trevor: Yeah, so I think getting in early, obviously, was a big help to us. Kind of to be on the front end of a trend. We actually started in what was called the second wave of podcasting. Podcasting got going in earnest around '06, so they say that was the first wave. And then around 2010 was the second wave. There's a lot more shows starting and now, we might be in the fourth wave of podcasting now where almost every major company has a podcast, every news agency and every late-night TV show host.  It's definitely a more crowded space. But on the other hand, there are still people, like you said, who'd never heard of a podcast. More and more people are coming to the medium, downloading shows. Podcasts is becoming more mainstream. I know here, at least in the US, it's not unusual to hear people on TV talking about podcasts, just in anywhere you look, you can see subscribe to my podcast. It's cool to see the cultural awareness rise since we've started.  But I think in terms of tips on growing the show and community, one thing that helped us in the beginning, and still helps us, is hearing from listeners, featuring their stories. At the top of our show, every episode, we do shout outs where kind of like a virtual high five. People are, like all of us, people like to hear their name in a podcast. It just makes them feel... Yeah, lights them up. It puts a smile on their face, and we try to do that a lot where we engage the audience that way. Then, the off-podcast stuff too is also important like our social media stuff and all that. Yeah, building community. Angie: We also kind of try to keep in top of mind like, 'What's in it for the listener?' Because at the end of the day, people only have so much brain space and time. They're going to keep listening to shows that they feel you're giving them good value and that they connect to you in some way. I think just keeping that listener focus and stuff. No one wants to hear about a dissertation of what we've been doing for the last week in-depth. They want to get to know us a little bit, but they also want to know that we care about their needs and everything and what's top of mind. I think that's been helpful as well.  Trevor: Yeah, I edit our show judiciously. Oh, yeah. I spend way too much time. I'm just a perfectionist with it. I haven't been able to outsource that yet, so I edit our show and I'm like, I don't know what the word is, I'm just a stickler when it comes to audio quality. Also like Angie said, I know people's time is important, so if we go down a certain path in the conversation that I think is not pertinent enough, I'll just cut it. I'll take that one-hour episode then maybe sometimes cut it down to 40 minutes.  Angie: He has to edit out all my ‘likes’ and ‘you knows’, all my verbal clutter. It takes about half of the content away. Lisa: It's so much work. It's just so much work but I love that you do that, and you're a perfectionist. I'm technically completely disabled. I have a team of people behind me doing a lot of stuff, but we can still improve and get better. I love the meandering type of conversations that we have. Let's go and talk a little bit about... For start, Angie, I do have to ask you about your 50 marathons in 50 states, like our friend Dean. How did that come about and when did this become a challenge?  Angie: Well, sometimes things just kind of sneak up on you. I think it was my fourth marathon and it was before the race. I was sitting around talking to a couple ladies and they had these shirts on that said: 'Marathon Maniacs.' I was like, 'What do those shirts mean? What's a marathon maniac?' They're like, 'Oh, it's a club where you have to run a certain number of marathons to be able to get in.’ I was like, 'Oh, how many?' They said, 'Well, you have to do two in two weeks or three in ninety days.' I was like, 'What?' That's crazy. That's a maniac.' I was like, 'I could never do that.' I said that I could never do that, and they're like, 'Oh, you could if you really wanted to.'  That just kind of stuck with me. I was like, a lot of times we make excuses why we can't do something, and sometimes, it seems very valid at the moment. But it's all a matter of priorities. That stuck with me. I'm like, 'Could I do that?' Later that fall, I did end up doing three marathons in that 90-day space, and I became a marathon maniac. When you surround yourself with people who are doing all these big challenges... I would joke that I was like a baby maniac because there was people who had done three, four, five hundred marathons in the club that you would see at these races.  Then, of course, I heard about the 50 state club. People who run a marathon in each of the 50 states. I thought, 'Wow, that would be cool. I already have a few states under my belt. Why not?’ It doesn't have to be anything like Dean Karnazes doing it in 50 days. No one cares how long it takes and everything. Both Trevor and I love to travel. It seemed like a really great way to be able to explore our very diverse country and see all these amazing places, get to run. It just kind of started that way, and it took me 12 years to finish all 50 states. But it's about the journey and not the destination.  Lisa: Absolutely and that is a really... It rolls off the tongue really beautifully. Yeah. I’ve done a marathon in every state, 50 states.  Trevor: Here's what's cool, Lisa. I don't know if Angie is going to tell you this but she actually ran her last marathon fastest. That was her fastest marathon. That's what's so cool about our sport: that even though you get older, you can still improve in so many ways. Her very 50th state was in Hawaii. She ran 319, qualified for Boston by 20 minutes and that was at age 41. She was 10 years older but ran an hour faster than when she started.  Lisa: I love it. Go, the oldie. I'm way older than you, so I can say that. I totally agree. Endurance is one of those things. I read a statistic once said a 19-year-old and a 64-year-old are on the same level of endurance or something. You peak around 48 as far as endurance goes and I'm like, 'Yeah, amen to that.' I have similar stories. I did my best performances in my 42, 43, around that age were my peak performances. I'm way after that now, so things have slid off a little bit. Of course, it's what's going on in your life. I've had a few other dramas in my life. There's reasons for things slipping off, but I love that. 319 is an incredible time. That's just amazing. Angie: I still can't believe I did that. Was that me? I don't know. It was just one of those days where everything comes together, and you can never predict that.  Trevor: In Hawaii to boot.  Lisa: Yeah, isn't it really hot in Hawaii? Isn't that really difficult to do?  Angie: It was January so it was cooler, but it was hot compared to what I was used to. Lisa: Amazing. Trevor, how many did you do of those states? You did a few of them?  Trevor: I have. I think I'm up to 17 marathons. I'm actually doing my 18th in about 10 days from now.  Angie: But he's done a lot of half marathons. A lot of the time where I'd be doing a marathon, he would do the half marathon so he's probably run in most of those states as well.  Lisa: I study genetics, right? We have a epigenetics and functional genomics arm to our business. Everybody is genetically different. When people listen to you and go, 'My god. She's amazing. She’s run 50 marathons in 50 states.' I want people to not take away from that that they should be doing back-to-back marathons because even though yeah, that's really cool to have these challenges, we're not all genetically set up for that. We need to respect that sometimes. It's been fascinating, this journey of learning about genetics.  When I did my genetics, it came back... Actually, I'm really not suited to the super long-distance running. I was like, 'What? Is that why I've got all these health problems?' Actually, my body is more set up... That doesn't mean I can't ever do an ultramarathon again, but it does mean if that if I want to have longevity and health for a long time which I do now, because I'm 50 so I want to make sure that I stay on top of things, then I shouldn't be doing back to back ultras.  That my body is much more suited to doing shorter and high-intensity sort of workouts and lots of yoga and Pilates and things as well.  I just want people to take away from there, everybody is different. For some people like my husband, he can run super super long, and it's genetically good for him to do that. For me, not so much. One of the other things that I've found within our running coaching, and we get a lot of ladies, we're probably about 70% ladies in our run coaching community. A lot of them are in their 30s, 40s, 50s. It's not the best weight loss thing, is it?  Angie: I could gain weight while running marathons and even watching what I'm eating so yeah, it is definitely. It's tricky.  Lisa: Yeah, it's not. For people to understand, if you're wanting to do a weight loss program, that would be a completely different program that I'd set you than if you're wanting to do marathons for the challenge of doing a marathon. Because there is this misconception that yeah, 'I run a marathon and I get really thin and slim.' No. I got fatter doing marathons. When I ran through New Zealand, I put on weight, and I was running 70-odd kilometres a day. Then, I put on my... I'm like, 'The hell is this about?' Everybody is different. Respect your genes. Respect your body. And as Angie said at the beginning of this podcast, compare yourself only to yourself. Unless you're in the Olympics, then, you probably compare yourself to the others. But for most of us, it is about you versus you. I think that's the beautiful thing about this sport. That we can all do this together but it's actually each of our journeys.  Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on air. It's been a public service free for everybody, and we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on patron.lisatamati.com. That's patron.lisatamati.com. We have two patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as 7 dollars a month, New Zealand, or 15 dollars a month if you really want to support us. We are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us: everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries, and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com. And thanks very much for joining us.  Lisa: Trevor, what was your favourite race that you've done?  Trevor: Oh, thanks for asking. There's this marathon I love to talk about. You've probably heard of it. It's the Jungfrau Marathon in Switzerland. That's such a beautiful place. It's almost unreal. Otherworldly how beautiful it is.  Angie: Probably like New Zealand actually. Really beautiful.  Trevor: I've heard it's nice there too. Well, I haven't been in New Zealand yet, unfortunately. As of right now, Switzerland is my favourite place that I've run. They say that when, for those Lord of the Rings nerds who might be listening, when Tolkien, after World War I, was marching through the Lauterbrunnen Valley in Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland. He sees this amazing place and that was the inspiration for Rivendale in the book, in the movies.  Lisa: They did it there first. Trevor: Yep, exactly. Lisa: Then, we came to New Zealand to film it ‘cause it was even better.  Trevor: What's cool about that marathon is it's just pretty much all up this mountain until you get to this 7,000 feet elevation. It's pretty much a lot of power hiking. Yeah, exactly. It's pretty much a thousand... It's pretty much a lot of power hiking after the second half, which is fine because I felt like I was still making progress. But people were throwing up on the side of the trail, and I was fine because I was just I'm just power hiking. I was kind of used to it. That's been my favourite marathon thus far. Plus I had the Alps horns, Swiss Alps horns and stuff. Very transcendent.  Lisa: It was so special. I lived in Austria for 13 years and would go over to Switzerland regularly. Austria and Switzerland are very similar. And just absolutely beautiful. I really miss the beauty of the place, and the culture, and the traditions, and the cool boating. All of those sorts of things. Yeah, it's pretty special. What about you Angie? What's your favourite race?  Angie: I don't know. It's hard to hard to pick one. I would say my favourite international race was the Loch Ness marathon in Scotland. Just going around Loch Ness the lake and just incredibly beautiful. Just the chance to be able to be there and be in the country and see so many amazing things. But I don't know. There's a lot of races that I love here in the US as well. Boston is a very iconic special race. The Marine Corps marathon is really moving. Yeah, Washington, DC. Then, my home state is Montana. I've gotten to do a couple marathons there. Of course, I'm a little biased, but I love the mountains there. Lisa: Absolutely. For both of you, what was your toughest race? Have you ever not made the finish line?  Trevor: Thankfully, no.  Angie: Actually that one race that they closed the finish line. Trevor: Oh, yeah. I remember the marathon in... That was an Austria fact in 2019. They had to shut the course down because of the weather. I think that for me, the toughest race was 50k in Montana. I was probably undertrained because I'm so lazy, and I ended up taking lots of breaks. Angie: Like laying on the ground. Trevor: But I finished before the cut off and I wasn't dead last. Lisa: You take whatever you can get when you go to the bottom of the barrel. That's not much... If you get across the finish line... Trevor: Exactly. It was on the Continental Divide Trail so there's a lot of elevation. How about you, Angie? Angie: There have been a lot of marathons where I finished feeling, or even ultras, that was dragging a body part behind me but I was too stubborn to quit kind of thing. But I think, probably the most difficult one was the Leadville Trail Marathon in Leadville, Colorado because it starts at 10,000 feet and it just goes up from there. There was a section, a one-mile section to get up to Hope Pass, which was the highest point, and it took me 30 minutes to go a mile. I would just walk a few feet, just breathe, gasp for air, pretend like you're taking a picture because you're embarrassed at your pace. That was very challenging because I was not... We were living in sea level basically. To go and do that not being acclimated, it was challenging. Then, to look to the side of the trail and like, 'If I make a misstep, I'm going to fall off this mountain and die.' One of those where I finished and I was just like, 'So thankful to be alive.'  Lisa: Sounds pretty damn scary. What do you think are the biggest learnings from all of these races in this journey that you've been on for however long you've been running for? What what are some of the biggest takeaways? Do you think this crosses over into daily life, and to your businesses, and to the work you do, and stuff like that, and challenges in your home life, and stuff?  Angie: Yeah, I would say the marathon and any long-distance running is a great metaphor for life because you have to look at the long picture. Like you were saying earlier, we're always changing and evolving as people, and we have to keep that in mind. I've kind of through the years, through some trial and error, my goal is to be a strong healthy runner for life. Being healthy through that lifespan is way more important than any one race for me. I think that it's very important like we see people who are taking on these challenges.  It is important to have goals and everything but I think it's also important to just look at your overall health. Is your sleep, is your nutrition, is your overall strength, are your relationships good? How is your mental, and your emotional, your spiritual life? All those things go hand in hand. I think that at some point, running accomplishments are only going to be so satisfying if those other things aren’t in place. That's been a big thing for me. I tend to be really goal-oriented person. Always looking to the future like, 'When this happens, I'm going to be happy and be satisfied.'  I finally came to the realisation that if I can't be happy right now, in the imperfect, the way life is if I can't be happy now, that I'm not going to be happy in the future. If I accomplish these goals, there's always going to be something else to chase. That's been something that I've been thinking about lately of just how to really appreciate the present. I think that really goes into running or whatever people's goals are because there's going to be a lot of the present that is challenging and that we don't want to go through. I think it's important to do hard things, take on hard challenges. But there's going to be a lot of hard things that find us that we don't want to have to deal with, that we're going to be forced to wrestle with. I think that having that long-term goal and having done hard things in the past prepares you for those challenges that you never wanted to take on in the first place.  Lisa: Yeah, when you've been struggling, going back to the genetics, you probably got a dopamine thing where you have to be chasing dopamine all the time. I know I've got that gene called the DRD2 gene where I don't have a heck of a lot of receptors for dopamine, so I'm always chasing a mission. Just coming to understand that about yourself, it's like, 'Aha. That's why I tend to...' Like my brother said to me once, 'Why are you always on a mission? Why can't you just sit on a beach and enjoy the day?' ‘It's like asking a table not to be flat. That’s who I am. I get up and I'm missioning all day, every day.’ And I'm like you, Angie. I'm trying to change the talk in my head to being present.  Sometimes, when you are going through challenges and life keeps chucking them at us at the moment, you don't want to be in the now. One of the big things that I really miss because I'm not doing ultras anymore, is having that single focus, one goal. Life was purely about being a selfish athlete who's just got on a mission. I don't have the luxury of that now with things in life. I miss it. I miss it terribly. That simplicity of life where you've got just one big huge goal and you're doing your work and stuff. But this is the one thing, and then when you're actually in the race, that's what I found beautiful about racing, you're not thinking about the mortgage and the what's going on in the family or anything else because you're just like, [imitates heavy breathing], ‘Got to get up this hill.'  Angie: To the next aid station.  Lisa: Right in the moment. For so much of my life, I know that I'm in the future or the past and that's really learning to be in the now without having that single singular focus. Really wise words, Angie, I think. Trevor, what would you say that running has bought to your mental resilience and toughness and ability to cope with things?  Trevor: Well, I know running marathons makes a lot of other stuff seem easier. Yeah. I remember how tough my first half marathon was, and I thought I was going to die because I was pretty much a non-runner previous to meeting Angie. After I did my first full marathon, then a half seemed a walk in the park. It seemed so easy even though they're still challenging, especially if you're trying to race a half marathon. We've had Joe de Sena on our podcast a couple of times. He's the founder of the Spartan Race. Lisa: Yeah, I've been on his show. Awesome.  Trevor: Oh, Cool. Yeah. He's a scary guy. I always remember something he talks about in his book, Spartan Up and that's obstacle immunity. When you make yourself do hard things, you become immune to obstacles in life. You can just push through them, hurdle over them. But it's when you're playing it safe, when you're afraid to get out of your comfort zone, sign up for that challenge, that marathon, or whatever your challenges is, it's this when you get more timid and hard things seem harder than they really are. It's all in our heads.  Lisa: Ah, that's gold. Obstacle immunity. That's going on my Instagram today. Thanks, Joe. Because it is. When somebody or when someone tells you can't do something, that's just for me like, 'Oh, we'll see. I don't agree with you. We'll find out.' That's really served me well. The more that you realise when people tell you can't do something, and then you go and do it, that's just other people's limiting beliefs. This is an all areas, certainly in the medical space and with story with my mum that my listeners know about. If I'd listened to everybody telling me I can't do something, we would never be where we are now. I think you have this mentality. You have, 'Oh, obstacle? How do I get around that? What else can I do?' Rather than, 'Oh, obstacle. I have to stop and sit down and cry and that's it.' I think that mentality is brilliant. Obstacle immunity. Hear, hear. I love it. Angie: It doesn't mean that you don't feel those hard feelings as you get over the obstacle. I think it's important to acknowledge that it's hard and take time to feel that frustration or that sadness or that disappointment. But I think also acknowledging those emotions helps you get over the obstacle too because you're not fighting your emotions then. You're using those and using that to fuel your fire or to just do what needs to be done. Lisa: What I think is beautiful too is when you look back and you've overcome challenges that makes you stronger for the next challenge. You lift your horizon up every time. You get to the end of your first half marathon. For five minutes, you go, 'I never ever want to do that again because that hurts so much.' Then the next day, you're on the internet, 'What is the next one? Where's the next challenge?' You can see runners do this over and over again. I just laugh now when they say 'I'm never doing that again.' Because it's usually until the pain wears off and they're off on the next mission.  It is like lifting your horizon every time. It's not something that stays out there permanently either, by the way. You build yourself up to marathon, ultramarathon, whatever your goal is. Then if you don't do it for a while, I can tell you as someone who's not doing ultras now, your world starts to shrink back in as to what you are capable of doing. For me, I'm thinking, 'Can I do a half marathon?' That's what I would like at the moment with a load that I've got on, which is a lot, 'Can I get back to that stage?' My focus has been on CrossFit and other things.  My body's changed considerably, for the better I'd say, but when it comes to going back long, whoa. I've got to push that horizon back out again. It doesn't stay permanent. In other words, it's a constant work battle really to keep it. When you're getting older, you've also got that aspect coming into it too, trying to keep things at bay. I had Dean on the podcast last week and we were talking about that because we're both somewhat north of 40. It's like, 'Yeah, things aren't quite working like they used to do. I'm like, 'Yeah, I'm working on that. I've got all these things for you, Dean.' 'Some great longevity stuff. Come try this and do that.'  That's sort of an interesting path to go down to because you start to think, 'Well, I can keep my fitness to the best that I can by keeping up with the current research, and the knowledge, and stuff, and doing the best things, and prioritising things like sleep.' You can have a massive impact on your body, and it's not just about the training I think is what I'm... Yeah. Guys, you've also got three kids. Three kids, busy life, running marathons. Most people can’t, I can't do that. How do you find the time?  Angie: Well, we are very fortunate that now we are self-employed. We kind of can design our own schedules, and I think that's a big advantage to the training because some days, it happens at a certain time. Some days, it has to be pushed around a bit because of appointments, kids, things that we've got going on and everything. We've also tried to include our kids in the journey. Especially when they were young, they would travel with us a lot and they got to go to so many of the states that we travelled to. We tried to expand their horizons as well.  Now that they're older and everything, sometimes, he travels, he's going to Italy next week. I'll stay home with the kids, and then I'll go somewhere in September. It's just about making it work and making sure the family is supportive. It's not like your family has to be your biggest fans because there's only a certain level that your family is going to get it. Like our kids could pretty much care less that we do marathons. They're like, 'So what?'  Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I know. I hear you.  Angie: 'What are you making for dinner, Mom? I don't care that you just ran a race.' You know that kind of thing? Lisa: They're very good at bringing you back down to earth, family. I've got brothers and yeah. 'You ran across the Sahara? Oh, yeah. Whatever.' 'Oh, you wrote a book? Oh, that's cool. I'll never read it.'  Angie: 'What's it about?' 'Okay.'  Trevor: That's cruel.  Lisa: But that’s family, that keeps you keeps you grounded. 'Oh, would’ve been nice to get a pat on the back.’ They're not like that at all. Very supportive actually, but when we were younger, that was definitely the case. Probably vice versa because my brother does surfing and I'm always like, 'Oh, yeah, are you just riding 20-foot waves? That's cool.' Now, I'm sort of like, 'Oh, Wow. That's pretty awesome. Go guys.'  You guys have been epic today. Thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it. I thank your podcast. And tell everybody where they can find you: Where's the best home to find you on the internet and Instagram and all those sort of good places and how to connect? Trevor: No problem. Yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity to be on the podcast, and if anybody wants to find this, you can just go to marathontrainingacademy.com. If you are looking for our podcast, if you just type in marathon training, we usually just come up as the first result, but it's called The Marathon Training Academy podcast. We're on Instagram, @MarathonAcademy.  Lisa: Wonderful. I will put all those in the show notes. Thank you very much guys for your time today. It's been absolutely wonderful chatting with you.  Angie: Thank you so much. Trevor: Likewise. Thank you.  That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends, and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com  The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.  

In our fast-paced world, everyone feels pressured to be the best and to do their best. It's easy to succumb to worry and anxiety during this time. This week, a superstar athlete encourages us to reframe pressure as an opportunity. You may not be involved in the sports world, but you can still learn from it. For our guest, overcoming high-pressure situations boils down to two things: trusting in the preparation you've done and taking things one step at a time.  Retired All Blacks player Conrad Smith joins us in this episode to talk about his experiences in the sporting world. He gives us a glimpse into his childhood and how he transitioned in and out of professional rugby. It's easy to make sports your whole identity if you're not careful, and Conrad details how athletes can avoid this trap. He also shares how we can equip ourselves to handle high-pressure situations. If you want to hear about Conrad’s tales with the All Blacks and know how to be better at dealing with being pressured, this episode is for you.    Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Gain insights on the dangers of being too immersed in a sports bubble.  Learn how you can deal with feeling pressured. Understand the importance of adaptability in our fast-changing world. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron!  A new program, BOOSTCAMP, is coming this September at Peak Wellness! All Blacks  International Rugby Players    Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.   Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, contact us at support@lisatamati.com.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health   My  ‘Fierce’ Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Episode Highlights [02:59] Conrad’s Childhood Conrad’s family used to move around until they settled at New Plymouth when he was six. His family was very close, as his parents always made time for him and his siblings.  They were also supportive of both his academics and sports. Conrad spent most of his childhood playing sports and helping out on their family farm.  [09:03] Conrad as a Young Sportsman  Conrad wasn’t initially an overachiever when it comes to sports.  During his time at school, rugby didn’t take up a huge portion of his life. Conrad didn’t feel pressured to play, unlike most kids involved in sports today.  He’s very grateful that he was able to finish his law degree before he started playing professionally.  [11:44] The Dangers of the Sports System Nowadays, there’s an obsession with finding talent and training them hard from a young age.  The rationale behind this is to give these kids the best chances of success. However, Conrad is sceptical about this approach. He believes that balancing life and sports is crucial, especially because sports is a short-term career. Many athletes end up going bankrupt or developing depression because they don't have a life outside of playing sports. [16:26] Staying Grounded When you’re in a sports bubble, it’s easy to lose touch with reality. If you’re handling a high-paying sports career, you can forget how real people live. Athletes need to stay grounded and not tie their identity with their sports. This way, they can land on their feet after the bubble bursts.  The challenge is to find other things that you enjoy and avoid the trap of coaching after your playing career ends.  [29:39] On Career Transitions With the rapid changes in the world, we need to adapt to stay relevant.  It takes courage to change your career.  However, you can always find support when you open up to the people around you.   [33:06] Mental Health in Sports  All athletes feel pressured with their sports—what’s important is how they deal with it.  When you look at being pressured differently, you can see it as an opportunity.   There's no quick fix for handling high-pressure situations. It's essential to find what works for you. [36:38] How to Deal with Feeling Pressured  Preparation is critical to help overcome feeling pressured.  If you have done the prep work, all that’s left for you to do is execute.  Don’t get overwhelmed by the bigger picture. Instead, focus on the minute details. You need to be at the top of your game if you’re playing in the Rugby World Cup. Listen to the full episode to hear how Conrad overcomes being pressured! [45:21] Conrad’s Experiences with the All Blacks Conrad was playing for the Wellingtons when he was picked to play for the All Blacks. His fellow players and coaches told him not to feel pressured and encouraged him to have fun.  For Conrad, being an All Black never lost its glow. He acknowledges what the team means for the country.  He believes that the All Blacks continues to perform well because the players uphold the team’s legacy. In particular, their jersey means so much to Conrad. Find out why when you tune in to the full episode!  [52:51] The Future of Rugby Now working as a lawyer in the player association, Conrad speculates that women’s rugby will see tremendous growth in the coming years.  The women’s rugby players are more motivated by the sport. They want to reach more women and girls through it.  Since this women's rugby is still a relatively small industry, there's not much effort to commercialise yet.  This can be an advantage. It's similar to how small but nimble companies can overtake big industries. [59:56] Conrad’s Advice to Parents and Children It is much more harmful to shelter your children from sports. As you get serious about sports, remember to stay grounded and balanced. Connect with the real world as much as you can.  Lastly, be open to opportunities and changes.    7 Powerful Quotes ‘I think it's fine to keep a balance, and to play other sports, and to experience, just live a normal life. I think you can still excel.’ ‘You have a crazy number of bankruptcy, crazy number of rates of depression because they haven't learned to live outside of their sport.’ ‘You have a lot of retired players that feel like they have to coach because they think it's all they know. The challenge, I suppose is, then of being careful not to fall into that trap.’ ‘Whatever you decide that you want to be, you can become.’ ‘The bigger the moments and the bigger the pressure, it's the funny thing, it's the more important that you focus on the smaller, minute detail.’ ‘If you break it down into one more step, just one more, and then you just keep going and keep going. Then, invariably, that mindset or that thing that's in your head passes and then you're back in the game.’ ‘If it's a conversation you're just having in your own mind, you will never get anywhere. You just need to open up about it.’   About Conrad Conrad Smith was a long-time player of New Zealand’s All Blacks and helped lead the team to the 2011 and 2015 Rugby World Cups. He is widely known as “The Snake” for his ability to slip through tackles. At 38, he captained the Wellington-based Hurricanes in the Southern Hemisphere’s Rugby league, then retired after the 2015 World Cup.  He now serves as legal counsel and project manager for International Rugby Players, the global representative body for the sport. He is also the high-performance manager for Pau, a French club that competes in the Top 14, the highest in the country’s domestic league.  Find out more about Conrad and his work at International Rugby Players.    Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends, so they can learn what to do when they feel pressured.  Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa     Transcript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential, with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.  Lisa Tamati: Lisa Tamati speaking. Welcome back to Pushing the Limits. This week, I have Conrad Smith, the famous, famous All Black, who many of you Kiwis at least will know, a superstar athlete. And we share information about his career, and what it's like to be in the World Cup, and lots of exciting stuff. Also, what it's like to be post-career now, retiring, some of the issues that he sees around young athletes. Really lovely and interesting conversation with the amazing Conrad Smith who's also a lawyer as well as an All Black. Talk about an overachiever.  Before we get on to the show, just want to remind you, we have our epigenetics flagship program that we're running constantly. So if anybody wants to find out what the genes are all about, and how to optimise your food, your exercise, your lifestyle, your chronobiology, your mood and behaviour, all these things to your specific genes, and get the blueprint and the user manual for your body, then please come and check out what we do. Head on over to lisatamati.com, hit the ‘Work with Us’ button, and then you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program. That will take you over to our site where you can find out all about that. Or you can always reach out to me, and I can send you a little bit of a video, and maybe jump on a call to explain how it all works. It's a really powerful and awesome program. We've taken hundreds and hundreds of people through this program, and it's really been life-changing for so many, including myself and my family. So if you're wanting to find out about that, just head on over to lisatamati.com and hit the work with us button.  Also, just wanted to let you know that I do a lot of motivational speaking, corporate speaking. I would love if anyone knows, or organising a conference, or team workshop, or anything like that, please reach out to me: lisa@lisatamati.com if you're interested in finding out about my speaking programs. Also, we do corporate wellness programs on that front as well. How can you upgrade your life and be the best version of you can be at work and at home? That's what we're all about. So thanks for that letting me do that little plug.  Now, we're going to be going over to Conrad Smith who's just been moved back to New Plymouth. I've had the privilege of meeting him a number of times and working on a couple of things. So I hope you enjoy this conversation. Now, over to Conrad.  Well, hi everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits this week with Lisa Tamati. I am really excited for today's conversation. I've teamed up with another amazing superstar, a top athlete for you guys to enjoy learning from today. I have Conrad Smith. Conrad, welcome to the show.  Conrad Smith: Thank you, Lisa. Thank you for the introduction.  Lisa: You hardly need an introduction especially to people living in New Zealand. A legendary All Black. You played for how many years? I think it's 2004? Conrad: 15 years. Lisa: 15 as an All Black, as a winger. You've been a captain of the Hurricanes. You've been, I don't know, Player of the Year and Sportsman of the Year in Wellington. Your accolades are such a huge list, Conrad. You're blushing already, I can see. But really, an incredible athletic career and you were also talented as a cricketer, I understand. Conrad: When I was a little fella, when I was little fella. I was too little for rugby so I played more cricket, but yeah.  Lisa: And then you grew. Conrad: I was a New Zealander. New Zealand kid back then. Yeah, then I grew up. That's right.  Lisa: Yeah. Then you grew up and you were big enough to take on the big boys. Say, Conrad, give us a little bit of a feel like where you grew up. And how much of an influence did your childhood have on what you ended up doing with your rugby career? Conrad: Yeah. So I was actually born down Hawera. My father was a policeman so we moved around with him a little bit in the early years, and then moved to New Plymouth when I was about six. We’re a very, very close family. He gave a lot of time. My mom and dad would always make time for the kids: a couple older brothers, younger sister. Yeah, it was a great childhood. A lot of sport was played but we all did pretty well academically, which my parents laughed at because both of them never made it. They did poorly in school. Really, really supportive parents in terms of... It's funny, I probably took it for granted then, but I don't ever remember my parents either not being there or having to work.  Everything we did, we always were supported. And they were there, whether it was just drive us there, or coach our teams, or try and help us with our homework. I think that was what I've, like I said, took for granted but now, being older, I realise how important that was and why we're still such a close family, and my brothers are my best mates, and my sister is. We still meet. Yeah we still, obviously. We're all sort of have moved around the world but we're sort of pretty close together again. I suppose I try to be now with my own family like my dad was to me. Yeah, so those were the luckiest break in my head, I suppose. I always say people talk about luck, especially in sport but for me, it was just the family I was born into and the sport I had as a young fella.  Lisa: Yeah. Now, that's brilliant. And you had a couple of kids yourself?  Conrad: Yeah, yeah. Now, we've got two of them, just about to go off to school. Luca is my seven, and we had him in New Zealand, and then our daughter was actually born over in France while I was over there for four or five years. She's come back with us. Lisa: Growing up in the... You grew up in the 80s, I grew up in the 70s. Showing my age, yeah. But I think in the 80s, it was still very much like an outdoorsy lifestyle, like that good Kiwi kid upbringing, especially in Taranaki because we both come from here. Having that being outdoors in nature all day, as kids, we never came home before dark, sort of thing. Was it the same in your household?  Conrad: Yeah, for sure and like I say to all the brothers, they were pretty influential in what I did. I just sort of hung around, tail off them but very much, we were always out. I just think of my childhood, it was all about playing sport, finding areas to play sport. You'd sort of get pushed out, and as we try and play inside, then we'd get pushed out to the garden and we'd ruin the garden or ruin the lawn. We’re just constantly finding places to do what guys do with a ball and you can do anything. Then, the wider family were farming so my dad was on the farm. He sort of got kicked off by his older brother, but that was a family farm.  So we would eat out that way and that's that Douglas from Stratford on the way there with my mom in there. That's been in the family for three or four generations and that would be where we're kids. We'd help with haymaking, we'd help with carving, we'd help all sorts. That was pretty much my favourite holiday, and the same as all of us kids would be to go spend some time there and help on the farm. That was just a childhood, yeah. You just know what friends to do and always outside, didn't matter if it was raining and cold as it often is at most parts. We just put a coat on and carry on.  Lisa: Oh, man that just takes me back to my childhood, and I often think, 'Man, I want to go back.' What happened to that simple life that we had when we were kids? You're very lucky to have such wonderful parents, obviously. It's such a cool family. You also went off into university and became a lawyer, as you do, as an All Black. A slight overachiever there, Conrad. Did you always want to be a lawyer apart from wanting to be an All Black?  Conrad: As I sort of said before, I wasn't a huge overachiever on the sport front. Well, I went to Francis Douglas; it's not a huge sporting school. We had sporting teams, but that wasn’t very much. Part of it, you were there to study, you were there to get an education, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed school. I think it is a great school, and a lot of my mates now are still from the mates I made in my school years, and yeah. So I didn't mind class and I never had a... I suppose leaving high school as it was when I was going to go to university, my brothers had both done that. That was sort of a thing to do.  Law was, yeah. It was something. I enjoyed English history. Those sort of subjects at school in Wellington wasn't too far. I sort of wanted to go down to meet my brothers down there and that was the scarfie life was. But he sort of talked me out of it just because he... I think he'd done about four years by that stage, and flying down, and getting himself back and forth was pretty tough. They sort of said, 'Well, if you have to, go closer to home.' and that was when I ended up in Wellington and I really enjoyed law and rugby.  Yeah like I say, sport was great, but it was two nights a week. It wasn't taking over my life as I know it does to a lot of kids nowadays. They make academies, and whatnot, and maybe talk about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. But yeah, I was able to finish a full law degree and luckily, that sort of perfectly dovetailed into when I started playing professionally. Yeah, it was just sort of fortunate for me in terms of the way it all worked out and the timing. That's something I was very grateful for, obviously. Lisa: Yeah, yeah. Because right now, like your career, your playing career at least is over, you've got something to do. You've got a qualification. If we dive into that subject a little bit, so a lot of the young guys now are coming through and they're sort of getting picked out early along the way. What sort of dangers do you see with that system?  Conrad: Yeah, I do worry about it,  and I've spoken about it before. Because it's not just in rugby. It's in all sports. There's sort of a real obsession towards identifying talent young. Then the excuses, are you giving them the best chance of success? So we're gonna do all the work with them, and specialise them, and make them concentrate on the sport. But firstly, I don't know if that actually helps them with their sport a whole lot. I think it's fine to keep a balance, and to play other sports, and to experience, just live a normal life. I think you can still excel. But the other thing is that if it doesn't work out or even if it works out, sports are short term industry. You know, I know that that's not forever, and when you get to the back end of that, if you’re purely invested in one sport when the time runs out, you got to rebuild a lot of the... Yeah and that's a real problem.  And you don't need to look far to find a lot of evidence about that. We've been afoot and looking at American sports because they’ve been professional a lot longer than we have. Some of the statistics is just shocking. And people would think that they paid so much money, the athletes in those sports in America that they should be able to live literally after... They could do whatever they want. Theoretically, they have enough money just to retire but the statistics are not that at all. You have a crazy number of bankruptcy, crazy number of rates of depression because they haven't learned to live outside of their sport. That's sort of been taken away from them because they’re placed into their sport so young, and then just cut, and there's no real assistance around that.  So yeah, that's an extreme example and we're nowhere near at that stage here with the way the academies and that are set up. I know most of the people involved are very mindful of the things I've just talked about. Lisa: That's pretty...just open that conversation now. Conrad: Yeah. I just think there's a lot to be said around leading young people. I look at myself and from that period of development where maybe nowadays, I'd been in an academy, I was lead to play multiple... I played cricket, I played basketball, I ran, I did, God knows, all these things, and who's to say what lessons I learned from those other sports that I actually used in rugby? Because there's so much that you can pick up and also being able to study.  For me to have a degree, the benefits that gave me to deal with injuries, to deal with all the downsides of sport because I had a background and the education. It's really helpful. You relax a lot more. You get a perspective on the sorts of things that if you're just wrapped up in a sport and you get an injury, man that's tough. You can't do what you would like to do. Where do you turn? But I think if you've had a bit of an education, and it doesn't have to be a law degree, but if you've got some other life or other opportunities and options that you can turn to in those times, and it gives you perspective and a sense of reality, and you don't get so caught up in that, so yeah. I know it is appreciated. I just think it may be still underrated by a lot of the people that are setting up these academies and things for the young sportsmen.  Lisa: Yeah, and that's a good conversation to have and just be open about. Because you're one injury away from ending your career at any time. And then, to build... that's like building a sort of a house on a foundation of saying if you haven't got something else and you haven't got the life skills, if I just look at the opposite extreme with my sport where you have... When I started, just a bunch of weirdos doing crazy stuff, right? There's no structure, and there was no support. There was no knowledge, but it taught me that I had to go and market myself. I had to go and push everything that... Even when I represented New Zealand, I had to buy my own singlet to wear at the thing. Get a little... I'm getting here and do all of the things. So you had to market yourself, present yourself, become a speaker, do all of this sort of stuff in order to... So through that, you learn a lot of life skills anyway and then it was never a professional sport, in a sense. I managed to live off my sport for a number of years, but that was an exceptionally... That just because I found ways to do that but it wasn't a pathway that anybody could follow. But it taught me to fight. I remember having this conversation with my brother, Dawson, who I know was one of your heroes when you were a little feller. My brother, Dawson, was a Hurricanes player and Super Rugby in Taranaki and international as well. When I came back from Australia, and I came back to New Zealand, and I was raising money to go to Death Valley, which was a big race for me, he was like, 'Why are you in the media? Where you want to be? I used to hide from the damn media.’ And I'm like, 'Yeah, but you got everything given to you, mate. You got all your clothes, all your gear, you got stuff gifted to you left, right, and centre. You've actually got no idea what another sport is.’ That structure, that framework is not there. And that's good and it's bad.  When you have everything laid on for you, but you haven’t had to fight in society for your things... Because I've talked to a lot of rugby clubs actually around the country to all the younger guys. Everything is laid out for them. They have to fight. They've got a lot of pressure as far as performance and all that sort of stuff goes, but the rest of life is sort of taken care of. So it's something to be wary of. I think you got young ones and going up through this system is to just think about, 'What is the fallback option here? What else are they going to do when their career is over?' Because it can be very short, and not everybody reaches the stardom that you did. Not everyone gets to play for the All Blacks’ 94 games or... Conrad: We talked about the bubble. They use that term a lot within sports. So you come into this bubble. When you stay in that bubble, you lose touch with reality. You're actually... I know because I've seen it, and I'd use that same terminology and say, 'Come on and talk to the guys. I've got to get out of the bubble.’ It was always a thing of because people would... And you'd see it with people that get drawn into a sporting career and if they're doing really well. And you're right. It's only in New Zealand that it's probably only really rugby. There are other sports now that get paid really well, but they have to head overseas so... You're thrown into a lifestyle where everything is laid on and you don't actually... You forget how the real people live and the real life is, and that the bubble bursts, and it all comes about, and this is what I'm saying: The more time you spend in that bubble, when it bursts, the harder it is. The fall can really take a lot of getting used to it and some people don't.  Unfortunately, even the guys I have played with, I’ve got as many stories of guys who are struggling, still struggling as the guys who fell on their feet. I don't think anyone does straight away, even myself. People will say ‘You handled it well.’ I've been retired just over three years and I knew. Everyone seemed to me it's at least two years before you even... There’s still things you struggle with it. And that was spot on. It just takes a lot of time to understand that you're never going to get up in the morning and have that same drive. You're very lucky that when you're as a sportsman or woman to have that drive. Just do the same thing. But you got to find something else, and it will never replace that and it's not meant to, but it's a challenge for everyone. Those life experiences during that sporting career are so important so that when the bubble bursts, when you come out of it, it's just a little bit easier to find your feet. Because otherwise, that is tough, and it's a bit of a worry.  Lisa: Yeah yeah exactly. Just on even from that identity of being this athlete and you had a singular purpose. Pretty much every day when you got up, it was to train and it was to be the best for the next game or the next whatever. And that gets taken away and then the complexity of life comes in. Yeah? I retired from doing ultramarathons at 48. It's a sport where you can go a lot longer, and I've got mates that are still in their 60s and 70s doing it. But what I do see often in the ultra running community is they don't know anything else so, 'I'm going to stick with what I know and I'm just going to beat the crap out of my body until it falls into the ground.' Rather than going, 'Hang on a minute. This is no longer conducive to what I really want for me.’ And reassessing. With rugby, you're forced to because physically, at 48, you wouldn't be able to keep up with a 20-year-old.  There's that whole, have you struggled? I know I've struggled with that whole identity. Like, 'Who the hell am I if I'm not that hardass athlete and I'm not able to do what I used to do?' Because I still get it in the running scene, 'Oh, a marathon must be... you must do that before breakfast.' I'm like, 'Yeah, no. That's not...' Now, a 5K’s quite long. You know what I mean? So your horizon comes back in. So I've spent decades pushing my horizon out to be able to go longer, longer, longer, bigger. Then, life happens. In my case it was mum and that was the end of the career. It was high time; it was overdue. But that whole, you just had the rug pulled out from under you, and your identity is tied up in that performance. Have you found that a struggle?  Conrad: Yeah. Yeah, I think. Like I say, everyone does. You're lying if you say people do it easy. Again, I think a lot of the work, hopefully, athletes that handle it better have thought about that work during their career and they don't... We were given some great support while I was playing, particularly, within the All Blacks, guys like Gilbert Enoka with the background. And the whole mental side of not just the game, but of life, in terms of keeping...being grounded, keeping perspective. Part of that was your identity and not letting rugby define you. We used to say that you're a person that plays rugby, you're not a rugby player. It has this other life. You're actually... I play rugby because I like playing. Maybe that's not who I am. That's what the public sees, and I think if you get a handle on that while you're playing, then you understand that when rugby is taken away but that's not part of... ‘That's what I used to do. Now, I'm not doing it anymore but I'm still the person I've been this whole way. Now, my journey carries on.’  Like I say, that's easier said than done. There’s people that become the rugby player. That's all they are, and so that's the real challenge. For me, it was about just finding other challenges. And I think anyone in terms of rugby or any sport yourself, you find other challenges, it gives you... You realise your own identity and you find other things to do that give you fulfilment. I think aligned with that is the whole... When I think of rugby players, a lot of them who find the identity in rugby, they then just go on to coaching, and this is a real problem, and it might... I don't think that's just with the sport of rugby, but you have a lot of retired players that feel like they have to coach because they think it's all they know.  The challenge, I suppose is, then of being careful not to fall into that trap. It was easier for me. I studied. I used to be a lawyer. I'm sure I could go back and do that. Maybe not as a lawyer, but there are other skills that I have. That's a really hard message, but it's a really important message to give all sportsmen. To rugby players, I'm always telling them, 'You don't have to stay in rugby, you know. You played, you finished, you don't have to coach.' There's going to be hundreds and thousands of players finishing career and they think they have to coach. But their skills are transferable to hundreds of different professions and things that will pay them well. You can keep being yourself.  Even for me, I've stayed within rugby but it's not coaching. I'm working with the Players Association, International Players Association and that suits me. That's my skill set: a bit of the law, the analytical side of me that I've always had. And I think that was important. It's sort of my process of moving away from that identity as just 'Conrad Smith, the rugby player.' It's important to find other things that challenge me and that I enjoy. Lisa: Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on air. It's been a public service free for everybody and we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on patron.lisatamati.com. That's patron.lisatamati.com. We have two patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as 7 dollars a month, New Zealand, or 15 dollars a month if you really want to support us. We are grateful if you do.There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us: everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries, and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com. And thanks very much for joining us.  Lisa: That's awesome and thanks for sharing that because I think that's... Being able to openly have these conversations because there are a lot of athletes in lots of different sports struggling with this whole process of... Your career is so short, and you're not a has-been. I asked myself these conversations, and most especially in the beginning is, 'You’re nothing now. You’re a has-been now. You can’t do it.' And being embarrassed about that, instead of going, 'Hang on a minute. I'm still pretty fricking epic and I do other stuff.' Now, that's freed up a huge piece of my brain and my daily power and energy to then go and attack other massive projects.  There's so many things in the world that you can take on. It's all up to you to develop a certain passion. And I think it's not even just in the sports realm. I see people who are in careers that got friends and careers, they don't want to be there anymore but they studied it, they became it, they did it. whatever it was. Now, they're like, 'Is that it?' It doesn't have to be it, no. We live in a day and age where we can actually go and retrain. In fact, we have to be adaptable and flexible in this day and age if we want to keep up because the world is changing so fast. So many jobs are going to be gone and whole industries.  As a jeweller in a previous life, that industry got destroyed, really. If you weren't in the big game with big brands and Chinese mass production and stuff like that and you're an artisan, a person who made one-off pieces, you're struggling now unless you really got the top massive diamonds and God knows what. Everyone else is struggling, so you have to go, 'Okay, that industry’s change. I'm going to have to adapt, change, go with it, overcome it, improvise, and keep developing.' I think that's the message that we're getting here is you don't box yourself in. don't just be that one-trick pony. That's not, and Conrad is now an advocate, he's a father, he's a speaker.  Whatever you decide that you want to be, you can become. And you're not just Conrad, the All Black. I think that's a really important transition for everybody to go through. Even if you're a policeman or a teacher and you don't want to do that anymore or whatever the case is. Conrad: Yeah, and it takes a bit of courage. Like I said before, it's easier said than done a lot of the time. And that's what people just need that encouragement. Especially with finances and people suddenly are, 'I've got a mortgage on a house. I don't want to change career because there might be a layer where I'm not earning money.' But yeah, I just think that's... You come back to some questions about who you are, who you want to be, and you've got to be... You'll be happy doing what you're doing. So I just think all the help you can get from people around you, that's where you'll draw the energy, I think. If it's a conversation you're just having in your own mind, you will never get anywhere. You just need to open up about it, speak to people close to you, and I think that's generally where the answers come from.  Lisa: Yeah. I think that's gold. On that point, how big is mental health in your work? Do you do a lot around supporting mental health, and that sort of thing, and helping people transition, and all that sort of jazz?  Conrad: Yeah, absolutely. More and more, it's a complex field. When you talk about players in the game, in the sport of rugby, it's really difficult. We were starting to appreciate the pressures I think that sportsmen and women are under in these fields. It's a lot of… it draws that back on what we were talking about before. You're in a bubble and you do lose perspective and so not as the... The challenge is to help these young, these kids that are in these bubbles to speak different, and keep living, and look at sport as this amazing opportunity, and not feel the pressure. Well, maybe saying not feeling the pressure is the wrong way to put it because it's natural, but to feel the pressure and find a way to deal with that, a healthy way to deal with it. Again, I look back on my career and you're playing for the All Blacks, you're playing World Cups, it's easy to talk about pressure. There was never times that I didn't know how to deal with it, and that was from the sport I had, and maybe the background, and my upbringing. But it was easily... You just channel that and see and look at it differently and decide. Look at the opportunity that every time you feel pressure, you get it, it's as simple as just changing the perspective of things rather than the pressure of, ‘You have to win’. ‘I'm an All Black, I want to win because…’ Whatever. ‘I've got a country behind me,’ and suddenly, it's a burden that's lifted and yeah, you flipped it and you're puffing out your chest, and you want to do it. If it doesn't come off, it’s a game. There's more important things, absolutely, around. But yeah, like I keep saying, it's not easy for everyone and there’s people that understand that better. The challenge is getting through to people of different backgrounds, and different cultures, and different ages.  Lisa: Yeah with different problems.  Conrad: Yeah. I'm saying that because I know what works for me, but I know a 17-year-old young Samoan boy who's playing rugby, I don't know for the Highlanders, I might not be able to connect with him. The things that worked for me won't work for him. That's what I'm trying to say. Or the female swimmer who's doing, training for an Olympics. We're all different, and the challenge is finding a way for everyone to deal with that pressure and to be mentally healthy through a sports career. Lisa: I love that approach and just coming off the back of the Olympics. It was just wonderful to watch our amazing athletes doing amazing things. Lisa Carrington just blows me away. She's mentally just insane. But I love that thing of the challenge versus threat. I think this is a really important thing to do. When you're feeling overwhelmed and overburdened and like the whole world of pressure is on me, you going out and something the World Cup, were you able, even in those extreme pressure moments, to turn that into an opportunity and not a threat? Because that does change the physiology. Like when you're running on the paddock on those days, those couple of times in your life where it's just been horrifically big pressure, how did you physically and mentally cope there?  Conrad: Yeah, I think we've spent a lot of time, and everyone did, preparing for that World Cup. Again, as All Blacks, you have to spend a lot of time because you know the pressure that comes with and the expectation that comes with being an All Black in New Zealand. But even more so a World Cup, a home World Cup, when we hadn't won, I think 2011. A lot of our preparation time wasn't just being on the field with how we're going to play but was how to deal with that pressure. For me, it was just constantly turning it around so that it was never a moment I even... I can look back and think of times in the game where the team was under pressure and it would be perceived as... Even in that final hour, the team struggled a bit with the pressure, but if I'm being honest, our preparation never let us feel that way. We were dealing with that all the time.  We just were focused on doing our job. We talked so much about whatever comes our way, we were going to adapt and deal with it and that's what you just had to keep doing. You never sort of stop, and you'll notice yourself, you just don't let yourself stop and think about that. I think if you've got to that stage, it's too late. If you're having to go through a process of. 'How do I deal with this?’ It's probably too late. You've already, hopefully, got a process in place where you're just, it's just instinctively, you're just channelling that, focusing on little details. Because you know whatever the pressure, that's not going to influence you unless you need it. You just focus on the small tasks and you get through 80 minutes of rugby like that, keep a smile on your face. Lisa: Pull your focus into the job at hand instead of the: 'Oh my god. Everyone's watching me. Everyone's pressuring. Hang on a minute I've just got to pass this ball right now.' You're breaking it down into little tiny... Conrad: We all have little trigger words and I know we've talked about this: ‘Be in the now.’ Be in the now, which is like just what you're talking about. It's not thinking about the mistake you might have just made, the ball you drop, the tackle you missed, and it's not worrying, and you're not thinking about the World Cup, you're going to win at the end of this game. Because you can't do anything. Right now. ‘Right now. Right now, I'm going to catch this next ball.’ Look up, keep looking, keep calling, whatever it is. It's as simple as a little thing like that that just keeps you in tune with the moment and not letting you get overwhelmed by the bigger picture. Yeah, massively important, obviously. The bigger the moments and the bigger the pressure, it's the funny thing, it's the more important that you focus on the smaller, minute detail.  Lisa: I love it. I said try to forget the consequences of what you're doing. You've done the preparation. You've done the work. You've done everything that you possibly can. You’re standing on the start line, in my case, a race, then letting go of the outcome because you've done what you can do. And now, it's up to the whatever happens in the next few hours or days, in my case. So this was no longer just in your hands then. Because the gods have a thing to say about it as well. Sometimes, if you try and control the uncontrollable, then you'll drive yourself to madness, whereas if you can go, 'I've done the stuff that I was responsible for. I've put the work and I've done the preparation. I know my strategies. I know my pacing. I know whatever it is I'm doing. I got that right. Okay. I'm going to keep my eye on the ball here. But I'm going to let go of the outcome now.' Because when you let go of the outcome, then that pressure goes and you're in that...  Being in that now is a really powerful message to people. Because when you're in the past or the future, you're either worrying about the future, or you're regretting what's happened in the past, or it's a load for you to carry. In the moment, when you're under pressure, all you can cope with is that second right now. The next minute. That's it. When I was running long distances, I would break it down into: 'What's the next power pole? I just got to get to the next power pole. If I can't even get that far, I'm just gonna take one more step.' You can always take one more step, right? If you break it down into one more step, just one more, and then you just keep going and keep going. Then, invariably, that mindset or that thing that's in your head passes, and then you're back in the game.  Conrad: That's funny, you sound... because someone I remember that came and spoke to the team when we were outside joined the team in 2004, and we had Amish Carter came and spoke with the team. It was before the 2007 World Cup and obviously, that World Cup didn't end well, but some of what he said, I still remember it. He was talking about his Olympic performances, and he said, and I think one of the questions from the players was about we're talking: the nerves and the pressure. And I remember him saying that he wasn't nervous. He wasn't nervous when he got to the start line just for the reasons you said. He said: ‘Because then, I'd backed on my prep, I'd done everything I needed to do. Now, it was just a matter of going out and doing that. You can't do anymore.’ It's funny that when I looked, especially towards into my career, the only times I would feel nervous normally, on the start of a week. So if we play the game on a Saturday, and that was because I'm nervous thinking of all the things I've got to do on the Monday, Tuesday. But by the Friday, I would have this real sense of calm. I'd have a smile and I'll be like, 'Right now, it's time to do it.' It's funny because people, it's the opposite. They're not thinking about a game on Monday, Tuesday, but they were getting nervous on before a game starts thinking, 'You must be even worse.' But yeah, that was the way I could explain it is that we're really... I was nervous thinking about the game but now, I've done all that. This is the path I've taken. This is the training I've done for this game. Now, I'm ready to... I'm going to go and do it and see if it works. Lisa: Yeah, this is the reward phase. This is actually what you've been preparing for all along, so this is the time when you actually should be enjoying it. It wasn't always that easy especially when you're doing a couple hundred K's somewhere because sometimes it’s not that pleasant. But you've done the work to get to the start line and the times where I am being nervous is when I hadn't done the work.  Conrad: Exactly. I think of some... I don't like admitting it but normally, with All Blacks, you always have checked every box but there were games, I’d go back even the Hurricanes or Club Games and that's the ones where I'd be nervous because I'd be thinking... ‘I haven't really... now this week. I probably haven't done…’ Then, you get nervous but actually the bigger the occasion, the preparation is normally good.  Lisa: You took it seriously and yeah, yeah. I've come stuck on some short races where I've had my ass handed to me because I went in with the... That's just the short race, and oh my god. Had my ass handed to me. So yeah, always respect every distance or every game. I think it's key. What's it actually like, Conrad, to be... The first time that you put on that All Blacks jersey? Because it's every little boy and now, little girl's dream too. What's it actually like to put on that sort of thing for the first time? Can you remember?  Conrad: Yeah for sure. It's pretty special. I do think I was really lucky the way it panned out for me in terms of... It happened really quickly. I'd play. I hadn't even played the Super Rugby game. I hadn't played for the Hurricanes. When it started, I had a really... I was playing for the Wellington Lions. We made the final, and then I was picked, fortunately. So the coaching staff that had come in wanted to pick some new younger players and I was one of those. That was very much sort of out of the blue. Then, I was starting the following week. So I played a final. The team was picked. We assembled the end of that following week. We flew to Italy, and then I was playing.  But that was great in hindsight because it didn't let me overthink that. It was sort of okay, and I just was like, 'Right.' Little bit like what I said before, 'I'm just going to enjoy it.' Admittedly there were people around me. Graham Henry, Ryan Smith, Steve Hansen, great coaches, and Gilbert Enoka that were giving me those messages. Just telling me, 'We're picking you in the first game. Just go and enjoy it. Just keep doing what you're doing. We love what you're doing.' So those messages for a young guy were perfect. I didn’t actually question that. Yeah, I just took the jersey. I was still sort of pinching myself how quickly it happened. But yeah, then there I was playing and yeah, it was an amazing experience.  I'm glad to say it never really diminished. I was lucky to play for over a decade, and it was always special putting on the jersey. The team does a great job, I think, of respecting the jersey, acknowledging how important it is to their country, what we mean to everyone, and staying grounded, and all that good stuff about acknowledging the connection that you have with the young men and women who are dreaming to being All Black, wishing they were there, would give anything to be in your place. So you're always aware of that, and so it never loses its glow. Then I put my jersey on.  Brian Hoyer who was a big part of the team when I joined the team, he said ‘When you put the jersey on, you shouldn't be able to fit outside the doorway.’ You grow that big. I'm not using the words and I always... For me, I was normally marking someone bigger than me or normally not the biggest in the room but I always felt that. That I have to turn sideways to get out the door but that was the sort of feeling and you hear that even today: The way you sort of, you grow in the jersey. Lisa: You're carrying the manner and the tradition of that, and the reputation of that, and the hopes of a nation, basically, on your shoulders, which can be either a load or it can be like, 'Wow, how lucky am I that I get to stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before?' Basically and like you said, 'Yeah, I can't fit through the door because I'm just filled with all that.'  Okay, just a very quick anecdote. I was running through in the Gobi Desert at one point and we were running through these slot canyons. These really crazy. It was hot. One guy died out there that day which was really terrible. I was running through there and I was chasing down this American woman who was in front of me and I was second. I'm like, 'I've got to plan something here if I want to beat this person in front of me that I was chasing down through these canyons.'  So I started singing the Maori Battalion song to myself and I started to... like my ancestors, and my tradition there, my heritage like, 'I'm going to bloody beat you, American. Yeah. I'm gonna chase you down, and I'm singing away to myself running along through this canyon.' I beat her, right. It was awesome. I just went dashing past her, and I beat her. But it was just like, 'Wow.' It's just like you're pulling out stuff that you... It's not just you. You're like your ancestors and your heritage, and they're powering you. So I imagine it's a bit the same with the All Blacks jersey.  Conrad: Yeah. It's powerful stuff. Like, and it's all about creating something bigger than you. There's no doubt the history of things or like you say, in individual sports. As soon as you can create that connection to a greater cause. Actually, in the All Blacks, it's actually easy. I say this when I talk to other sports teams around how they create the identity. But the All Blacks had it handed to them because they have 130 years of whatever it is of this amazing performance, of this history, this black jersey that this country that's mad obsessed with them, great air of success and also, this idea that we do unite. We're the flagship of New Zealand. Rightly or wrongly, that's the way we're saying and you got to embrace that.  The fact that every time an All Black teams practice, it's a culture we have in New Zealand. This great collection of men who are representing the country. You capture that in the right way, and it counts as something. The field is 00 but I always felt... Yeah, when we got it right, we're straight away. That's worth some points at least on the board. It's something special that the All Blacks do have, and to the credit of the team, the whole time, I was involved. I know that it's carrying on that the way they connect and acknowledge that, it's really well done. It's the reason that the team continues to perform well. Lisa: And it does it empower whole generations. Like I said to my brother Dawson, my dad wanted him to be an All Black, and he wanted him to meet all those milestones along the way. I remember like... We lost my dad last year, as people know, if they listened to my podcast. I said to my brother the other day, 'Dawson,' because he went to the game up at the park, at Pukekura Park and they had the 25-year anniversary for the Ranfurly Shield because he was on the Ranfurly Shield team. He was excited to go to the Ranfurly Shield thing, and I remember that being the proudest moment of my dad's life. Of all the things that my dad got to do and see, all of their kids, I said to Dawson, 'You gave him the highest point in his life was when you came home with that Ranfurly Shield, and you're a part of that Taranaki Team. That was, for him, the pinnacle.'  That's beautiful because that is just like... Especially when you've lost somebody... And Dawson’s like, to be able to go and celebrate that Ranfurly Shield with his old mates and reminisce on those times. That stays with you to the end: those special moments that you get, and that camaraderie that comes with it, and all of that sort of stuff. He gave my dad a precious gift really by being a part of that team. Dad was just so proud.  Dawson said to me once, 'Lisa, you could run across every fricking desert in the world and it would still not mean as much as that Ranfurly Shield.' And I said, 'You're damn right, and that's okay.' Because he was right in that. It's okay because he loved rugby, and he loved rugby teams, and the rugby world. My dad played, what do you call that? Fifth-grade rugby until he was 45 and he only quit because people were telling him he was too old, and then he played touch for another 10 years. He was a legend. A legend.  You're carrying all that on your shoulders. There are five and six-year-old kids looking at you on screen like you did with Daws back then. Like, 'Oh, these big Taranaki players and stuff.' That’s just beautiful. I had that just wanting to represent New Zealand in something because I couldn't be in All Blacks because back then, we didn't have women playing rugby, much to my dad's disappointment. Actually watching the girls at the sevens in the Olympics, oh, I just fell in love with that team. They were just epic. Ruby Tui is my new bloody hero. She's just amazing. I think she's just epic. But just to watch the camaraderie of those girls and the performance that they put on, I'm glad that women now have the chance to do that tough stuff too. Because that's pretty special as well: seeing girls going there and giving it everything, just going hard.  Conrad: You speak to the Black Ferns, the women's rugby, it's growing so much not just in New Zealand, but around the world and that's pretty exciting, especially for Fifteens and the opportunity it's giving so many young women. Yeah and so for myself, that's really refreshing now with international rugby and the Player Association and we deal with both men and women's. The joy I hear working in women's rugby, seriously, compared to men's, especially men's Fifteens, it's a lot of established... Careful with my words, but it's just so hard. To put it simply, it's so hard to get things done even if you agree there's so much.  Whereas in the women's game, it's so refreshing. There's just an openness and the enthusiasm. They just, 'Yep. Let's get that done and this.' You will see, women’s rugby going to go great in the next few years, and it's because of... In the men's game, I don't like to say it, but it might not have anywhere near the same growth or evolution just because it's... Lisa: Stayed in the old ways. It obviously breaks everything, isn't it?  Conrad: The money, the money at that level is so big that there's so much at stake. That's just what grinds along, whereas the women's game, they're not... Obviously, they’re trying to commercialise on the game, but it's crumbs compared to the men's for things at the moment. But they'll catch up at a huge rate because they're just open about... Like at the moment, they're motivated by having fun, being patient, at getting the product out, getting more and more women and girls playing the game.  Lisa: That's amazing and isn't that though that's a really good analogy for everything in the world? Like that the big old institutions or big bureaucracies are going to be struggling in the future, I think. Completely off-topic but from the governments, to the big corporations, to the big institutions are going to be struggling against these young, nimble, small, exponentially powered technology-based companies and the rate of change that's coming that these big state, old bureaucratic, not just talking about rugby here, but governments and things are actually going to be on the backfoot shortly.  I always think of that Kodak, the company Kodak that used to be the biggest player in the world and photography, right? They didn't go with digital evolution, then they went under. Because they were too busy trying to protect what they already had, they actually discovered digital photography. They started it, but they didn't pursue it because they thought, 'Oh, that's going to be a threat to our current existing business.' That mindset is when you get overtaken by the young upstarts that come along with enthusiasm and they can, on a company-wide level, they're smaller. They're nimble. They can make decisions quicker. They can move faster. I see this in all areas happening. Hopefully, in the right way it'll brush off as well, but the girls certainly are next level.  Conrad: They're great. And I’ve got to know a few of them, a few of the Black Ferns. Lisa: Can you help me out with Ruby? I want to get in with Ruby. Conrad: That is such great Kiwi so yeah, more than happy. She'd love to chat. Lisa: Woohoo. Okay. I know she's pretty busy right now. Everybody in the world wants to see her right now. And the other girls, they're just amazing. Conrad, as we wrap it up now in a minute because I know you got to go, but what is it that you want to get across? So if we highlighted a couple of points now, if you were talking to your children, you've got two kids, what do you want them to do in the future? Or what would you, if you were talking to some young kids out there that want to have a life in the sporting world? What’s some last parting wisdom or for the parents of those kids?  Conrad: Yeah, I think if you're speaking to parents, the first thing is the value of sport, I think. I just worry a little bit. I know I'm working in rugby, and there's some crazy things being said about the potential harms of playing a contact sport. But honestly, I've had the benefit of seeing, digging a lot deeper into that and that is not at all as clear as it's conveyed because of the sensationalism of journalism. Kids are kids. They love playing. If I leave my boy and his next-door neighbour, they're gonna wrestle; they're gonna fight. There's no harm in playing.  But on the flip side, the harm of not playing sport, of sheltering them, of thinking, of sitting in a lounge with a Coke and a bag of lolly is better for a kid than going and playing rugby because he might knock his head. That's so far from the truth. That would be my wish for parents' young kids. Just play sport but... And then, I suppose, if it's to reflect on what we've talked about, when the kid means getting serious about a sport, it would be to keep you balanced, to not lose sight. If you’re put in a bubble because it's a performance bubble, then that's all well and good but now, it's a bubble and you need to step out of that every chance you get and connect with the real world as much as you can.  Unfortunately, there are dangers and there are risks when you are totally invested into a sport. The crazy thing is sport is a great thing. It should be enjoyed and if you're even not enjoying it, it's not hard just to talk to someone and step outside your sport to reconnect with the people in the real world. Then, that should give you back your love of the game, and then you'll go well and be like Lisa and I and have a life where you've had a sport that you've loved, and it's given you amazing opportunities, and literally meet great people, and you still come out of it, and you're still happy, and still meet people but doing different things. Lisa: This is gold. Conrad, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. I'm looking forward to doing our speaking gig together shortly and that's going to be exciting. I'm just really glad to have made your acquaintance and I think that you have such a level approach, level-headed approach to this whole thing and gave us some great insights today on what it is to be an All Black, but also what it is to come out the other side and gave us some really good perspective. So thanks for your time today, Conrad. Conrad: Pleasure, Lisa.  That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends, and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.  The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.  

When was the last time you got up and ran? Simply jogging around the neighbourhood during the weekends to keep fit may be daunting for some. Now, imagine the sheer amount of dedication, endurance, and resilience ultramarathoning requires. This type of long-distance running is an activity that tests the limits of human endurance. You might think running a thousand miles is impossible, but today’s guest continues to prove others wrong. He’s on a mission to exceed his limits and inspire others to do the same. Dean Karnazes joins us in this episode to get up close and personal about his experiences in ultramarathoning. He candidly shares the highs and lows, the triumphs and defeats. We also find out the importance of failure and finding magic in misery.  If you’re interested in discovering how you can build your character, embrace pain and failure, and get inspired to push your limits, then this episode is for you.    Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover how to cope with the ups and downs of ultramarathoning. Learn about the importance of pain and failure. Get inspired by Dean’s valuable takeaways from his career.   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health program all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. You can also join their free live webinar on epigenetics.   Online Coaching for Runners Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. You can also join our free live webinar on runners' warm-up to learn how a structured and specific warm-up can make a massive difference in how you run.   Consult with Me If you would like to work with me one to one on anything from your mindset, to head injuries,  to biohacking your health, to optimal performance or executive coaching, please book a consultation here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/consultations   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: http://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ For my other two best-selling books, Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   My Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron!  Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-aging and longevity with NMN Bio.  A new program, BOOSTCAMP, is coming this September at Peak Wellness!  Listen to my other Pushing the Limits episodes:  #8: Dean Karnazes - The Road to Sparta #183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova Connect with Dean: Website Books by Dean Karnazes:  Ultramarathon Man: Confessions of an All-Night Runner A Runner’s High: My Life in Motion Dean’s other books   Episode Highlights [05:21] Dean’s Lockdown Experience in Australia Dean was supposed to go on a 1000-mile run across New South Wales.  After boarding a jet to Australia, he found that the pandemic situation was getting worse.  And so, Dean and Pat Farmer will be doing their run in a military base instead. Although he’s quarantined inside a hotel room, Dean always stays moving and does bodyweight exercises to remain active. It was challenging to go from California, where 80% have been vaccinated, to Australia, which is still in lockdown. [11:18] Chronological and Biological Age Chronologically, Dean is closer to 60 than 50 years old. There are various ways to test your biological age, like C-reactive proteins and inflammation. Tune in to the full episode to learn more about what else goes into calculating your biological age. [14:17] Dean’s Greek Heritage Dean's mother is from Ikaria, a Blue Zones with the highest concentration of centenarians worldwide. People in Ikaria live long, healthy lives. They don’t pay attention to time and live in a strong community. Therefore, they are not prone to stress. Dean doesn’t have any back, muscle, or joint pain. [18:50] Know What Your Body is Built For People are built to run at different speeds and distances. Various factors affect what you're optimised to do.  What’s important is knowing the things that are optimal for your health. Dean has run over 300 traditional marathons in his career. He has also seen people well past their 70s who are still physically able and active. [22:04] What is A Runner’s High About? A Runner’s High is about the changes that he, the world, and ultramarathoning has undergone. Ultramarathoning impacts the people closest to you. Dean wanted to write a true and honest story about his reflections over the past three decades.  [24:00] Running the Western States Endurance Run This 100-mile trail race starts in Sierra Nevada, California. Dean first did this race in 1994. To him, this was an unforgettable experience. Going back after 13 times, Dean found that watching his dad and son crew for him and seeing how things changed over time was transformative for him. Dean recounts his experiences in detail in A Runner’s High. [25:54] The Surprises of Parenting Kids grow faster than parents can adjust to them growing up.  Dean describes his son Nick as dichotomous, recounting how he would complain about his roommates being slobs while his own room is a mess. Nick volunteered to crew for him. Dean thought Nick would be irresponsible. Nick surprised Dean; he was much more responsible than Dean’s dad. It’s a parent's burden to accept that their child is now a self-sufficient, capable adult. [29:58] Did Dean’s Career and Fame Affect His Family? Ultramarathoning has always been a family affair for Dean.  He would take his family to where his marathons are. Dean’s kids had the opportunity to travel to different places from a young age. Fans that come up to him asking for autographs and selfies are decent people. [34:44] Dealing with Pain and Failure When you're in pain, it's difficult to interact with others. Dean admits that it can be tough when his fans come up to chat with him during this time. He commits to setting aside his ego and always gives 100% in everything he does, including ultramarathoning and interacting with fans. [40:44] The Value of Failing Success builds character, but failure more profoundly so. The emotional range that comes with failure makes one a better human. Don’t shy away from hitting rock bottom because you’ll be missing out on a profound character-building opportunity. In the end, it’s a matter of perspective. Most people will applaud the distance that you run, whether you come in first or not. [44:49] Ultramarathoning is Achieving the Impossible Dean initially thought there was trickery involved in ultramarathoning. The moments that stuck to Dean in his career weren’t victories or crossing finish lines.  What stuck to him were the moments when he was on the verge of giving up but persisted through difficulty. [48:04] The Importance of Character Ultramarathoning teaches you to be resilient through the tough times. Running doesn’t hurt when you’re doing it right. Some people try to avoid difficult things and pain, while others embrace them. We've built our world around comfort, but somehow we're still miserable. However, the more struggle you experience, the more strength you build. [53:21] Dean’s Biggest Takeaways From Ultramarathoning To Dean, it’s the little moments that are the most priceless. Ultramarathoning is a journey, a passion, and a commitment. Staying true to yourself is valuable, simple, and magical. [56:11] Forming Connections Through Books Writing is laborious, but the motivation it brings to people makes it worthwhile. Dean dictates the things he wants to write on his phone while running.  Running clears Dean’s thoughts. To him, motion stirs emotion. A singularity of purpose is achieved when focusing on a specific goal or mission.   7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘Some people are built to run far and slow, and other people are built to run quick and short.’ ‘In school, you get the lesson and you take the test. In parenting, you take the test, and then you get the lesson.’ ‘What can you do other than just do your best? You're human. All of us can only just do our best.’ ‘When I stand on the starting line, I'm going to give it my all. I'm not going to leave anything on this course. I'm just going to be the best that Dean can be. I'm going to try my hardest and the only way I'm going to fail is if I don't try my hardest and don't give it my all.’ ‘I think bold failures build character. I have to be honest. Success builds character, but so does failure and in a more profound way.’ ‘We've built our world around comfort: having every comfort available and removing as much discomfort and pain as we can. And I think, in a way, we're so comfortable, we're miserable.’ ‘I'm just a runner, but that's who I am and I'm staying true to that. I'm going to do that to the grave. And I think in that, there's a simplicity and I think there's some magic in that.’   About Dean Dean Karnazes is a renowned ultramarathon runner. Among his many accomplishments, he has run 50 marathons in 50 days on 50 consecutive days, gone across the Sahara Desert in 120-degree temperatures, and ran 350 miles without sleep. He has also raced and competed in all seven continents twice. Dean has carried the Olympic Torch twice. He appeared on the covers of Runner's World, Outside, and Wired, and has been featured in TIME, People, GQ, and Forbes. He was named one of the "Top 100 Most Influential People in the World". Men's Fitness has also labelled him as one of the fittest men in the world. To top it off, Dean is also a New York Times bestselling author and a much sought-after speaker and panellist in running and athletic events worldwide.  If you want to learn more about Dean, his incredible adventures and his achievements, you may visit his website.   Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can find inspiration from Dean's stories on ultramarathoning and the lessons he learned along the way. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You can also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa   Trasncript Of The Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential, with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com. Lisa Tamati: Good day, everyone. Welcome back to Pushing the Limits, your host Lisa Tamati here. Today, I have one of my longtime friends and a guy who has had a massive influence in my life both as a role model and as someone who has facilitated me with a lot of help with my books and so on. He's a worldwide legend. He is Dean Karnazes. He is the author of four books. And he has a new one out called the Runner's High, which I was excited to give me an excuse to chat to my buddy, and see what he's been up to, and to talk everything, ultramarathon running. We talk a whole lot about getting older in ultramarathon running, and the difficulties, and we talk about life in general and longevity, and the beauty of the sport. He's an incredible ambassador for our sport. He's done so much. He's brought so many people into the sport worldwide and he's an incredible human being. He's actually stuck in lockdown in Australia right at the moment as we were recording this and was about to do a race ride around Australia with my other friend, Pat Farmer. Another incredible human being. These guys are just next level crazy, and bloody COVID has ripped everything so they're now down to doing thousand-mile race around a military base in Australia in New South Wales. But in true ultramarathon form, where there's a will, there's a way. And when there's an obstacle, you find a way around it. Improvise, adapt, and overcome as my friend Craig Harper always says. So that's what these guys have been doing. So I hope you enjoy this episode with Dean Karnazes. Without him, I wouldn't have my books. He is a very generous and caring person as well as being an incredible athlete. Before we head over to the show, just want to remind you, we have our BOOSTCAMP live webinar series coming up starting on the first of September 2021. If you're listening to this later on, we will be doing these on an ongoing basis. And actually, we have planned to set up a mastermind that goes the year long. I don't know how long it's gonna take us to get organised but that is our goal. We're all about helping each other upgrade our lives and be the best versions of ourselves that we can be. This one's called BOOSTCAMP. This eight-week-long webinar series that Neil and I are doing. This is a live series where you hang out with us once a week for an hour and get a lot of great information: the latest science, the latest biohacking, the latest longevity, everything about mental toughness, resilience, everything that's going to basically upgrade your life and help you be a better human. The stuff that we've spent years and decades actually studying, learning, and doing. So I hope you get to enjoy this with us. You can head on over to peakwellness.co.nzboostcamp. That's B-O-O-S-T camp. BOOSTCAMP, not boot camp. We won't be making you run around doing anything. We're just going to be having wonderful chats and education. A lot of lectures and a lot of fun to be had along the way. And, I think, what's most important is you'll be networking with like-minded individuals. They say that you are the sum total of the five people that you hang out with most. And make those five people, in this case, it will be a few more, some top-quality people who are all on a mission the same as you are. So if you want to come and join us, that's BOOSTCAMP. We also have our epigenetics program. If you want to know all about your genetics, and how to upgrade your life through your genes, understanding what your genes do, if you're dealing with a difficult health journey, and you don't know where to go to next, this is a very good place to start. This is our flagship program that we've been running for years now. We've taken hundreds and hundreds of people through this program. And it's really an incredible all-encompassing program that looks at your food, your exercise types, what time of the day to do different things, your mood and behaviour, and lots, lots more. So come and check that out at lisatamati.com and hit the ‘Work with Us’ button then you'll see our Peak Epigenetics program there if you're interested in doing that. Right. Now, over to the show with Dean Karnazes who's sitting in lockdown in Australia. Well. Hi, everyone and welcome to the show. Today, I have my very good friend and absolute legend of ultramarathoning, Dean Karnazes, with me. Dean, welcome to the show, again. Repeat offender. Dean Karnazes: Oh, it's so nice to be back on with you. Thank you for having me. We always have such lively conversations. I love it. Lisa: We do, right? I just absolutely enjoy your company. Whenever I've had the chance to spend a little bit of time with you, it's been absolute gold whether it's been on the podcast, or interviewing you, or hanging out with you on the Gold Coast like we did last year. That was absolutely awesome. Dean, you've just brought out another book. Another amazing book called Runner's High, and that's why we had to get you back on, because I want to share about all this book. But before we get into the book, you're sitting in lockdown in Australia. Tell me what is going on there. Dean: It's a long story but it started with a run across Australia with Pat Farmer. So from Western Australia to the East Coast, and that was the original idea; it was 5,000 kilometres. And this was six months ago when the world was going in a better direction, and over the past six months, boy, the world has done just the opposite. And we, like you, are a fighter and we kept saying we're going to persevere the same... Well, the run across Australia got mixed to a run across New South Wales, a thousand-mile run across New South Wales. And we kept thinking, 'This is going to happen. This is going to happen.' I boarded the plane, I flew to Australia with 10 people on the huge jet, yeah. And when I get to Australia, I realise how bad the situation is here. And every day, I turn on the news. It's getting worse, it's getting worse as I'm in quarantine, and then finally Pat called me a couple days ago and said, 'We can't do the thousand-mile run now. We could still the thousand-mile run. It's just going to be contained within a military base because we need to stay in our own bubble.’ And I thought 'Oh.' Lisa: He has flown away from America to Australia to run around the military base. It sounds a bit like being tactic stuff. Dean: Oh, yeah. And not only the... To sit in quarantine. To your point, I've been in our hotel room for 12 days now, waiting to get out, yeah. Lisa: For someone like you... You're just like me. Obviously, you're even more extreme than me. It must be torture. I just can't comprehend being in a room. This must be awful for you. Dean: Don’t remind me, but yeah. Basically, from the moment I get up, I'm staying active. We both know the importance of movement. So from the moment my head leaves the pillow, I'm not sitting down ever. Even right now, I'm pacing back and forth in this room, and I'm doing bodyweight exercises just constantly, at least throughout the day. Lisa: I used to... If I was travelling and I was stuck in a hotel room somewhere in a dangerous city or whatever, I'd put on something running on TV and run along with them. I was doing the Boston Marathon in Budapest in a hotel room one day. Just run along the spot. Doesn't matter. You got to do something to keep active, so I can imagine it being a bit of a mission for you. So my heart goes out to you and hang in there for two more days. And all my love, please, to Pat Farmer. I love the guy. He's just amazing. We got to hang out when we're in the Big Red Run together, which I failed spectacularly, by the way. I had a back injury that walked me out in the middle of that race. But one of the big advantages of that run was actually getting to meet Pat Farmer because he's an absolute legend of the sport. So you two together would be a really powerful combination. I'm really sad that he’s not going to go right around Australia because imagine the people that would have come out and enjoyed meeting you two. Dean: Oh, he pulled all the strings. He's very well connected in political circles and the Australian Army is crazy for us. So we had 13 Army personnel and they're setting up a tent city every night, and they're cooking for us. It was amazing but COVID had other plans. Lisa: Oh, bloody COVID. It’s wrecking every damn thing. Hey, but it's ultramarathon runner and Pat Farmer who has run from the North Pole to the South Pole, people. Absolute crazy guy. Obstacle? Find a way around it. Obstacle? Find a way around. And that's what you guys are doing, and you have to be flexible. That's a good lesson for this day and age because we're all having to be very, very flexible right now, and adapt to a hell of a lot of change, and being able to cope in different situations. So I bet you guys would just find a way through it and it will be another incredible story at the end of the day. Dean: I think the world needs it. As controversial as the Olympics were, I think it was an amazing thing, and it's so scaled back, right? But still, people are stuck in their house and now, what are they doing? They're watching the Olympics. They're getting energised, and they're thinking about the future so yeah, thank you. It's been a very emotional journey for me to leave a place... Where I live in California, we're over 80% vaccinated. So to leave a place where there was no masks then come here, it's been eye-opening and challenging. Lisa: You should have Pat go to you and run around California. You got it backwards. I have no doubt that you guys will just find a way through, and you’ll make it epic, anyway. Say you get given lemons, you make lemonade. Dean: Yeah well, at least we're staying in military barracks, and we're basically running. Every day, we're staying in the same place so logistically, it'll be easier. Lisa: Yeah. Oh my god, you guys just don't stop. I admire you guys so much, and I was saying to you last year, when we're in the Gold Coast, 'I've hit the wall at about 48 but to be honest, I had a pretty hit on, full-on war with my body and....' But you guys just seem to keep going, and going, and going. I had Mum as well so I did have an excuse, guys. But pretty highly, it was a stressful last five years. But you just seem to... Because how old are you now, Dean, if you don't mind sharing? Dean: Yeah. Well, when anyone would ask my age, I would say, 'Are you talking about my chronological age or my biological age?’ Lisa: Well, your chronological because biological, you're probably 20 years younger. Because I definitely am. That's my take on it. Dean: Chronologically I'm closer to 60 than 50. Lisa: Exactly. Have you actually ever had your biological age done? Because that's an interesting thing. Dean: Yeah, I had a couple. There's a lot of good ways you can test it, and I've had it done a couple different times. One, I was about I was in my late 30s. And then on another, I was older than my actual chronological age. Lisa: Which one was that? Dean: It was post ultramarathon. So after racing, we spoke about C-reactive protein earlier and inflammation. And that was one of the biomarkers that they used in calculating your biological age. So when I looked at the results, I said, 'Hold it. How did you arrive at that figure?' And they gave me all the markers they looked at, and I said, 'Well, look. This is wildly elevated because just four days ago, I just ran a hundred miles.' Lisa: Exactly. And C-reactive protein, if you've just had a cold, if you've just hit like we were talking about my dad before and sepsis and his C-reactive protein was just through the roof. So that makes sense that they would be out. There's a whole clock, which is the methylation markers, which is a very good one. I've done just one very basic one that came out at 34. I was pretty pleased with that one. At the end of the day, I think if you can keep all your inflammatory markers like your homocysteine and C-reactive protein generally under control, keep your albumin levels high, they are pretty good markers. Albumin is one that is looking at, it’s a protein that your liver makes, and that's a very important one. And if you albumin starts to go too low, that's one sign that things aren't going to good. So keep an eye on all those. I love studying all this longevity stuff because I plan to live to 150 at least, and I don't think that that's unrealistic now as long as I don't get run over by a bus or something. With the stuff that's coming online and the technology that's coming, we're going to be able to turn back the clock on some pretty advanced stuff already. Now, my mum's on more than me because obviously, her needs are a bit greater than mine. I can't afford for us to be on all the top stuff. But yeah, I'm very excited. We don't need to age like our grandparents have aged. We're gonna have... And someone like you, Dean, who's lived a good healthy life, apart from pushing the hell out of your body, and I'll talk about that in a sec, but I think you've got the potential to live to 150, especially because you're Greek. You come from stock. Dean: And my mom is from one of the Blue Zones. An island called Ikaria and I've been there and I've met... Ikaria, the island she's from, has the highest concentration of centenarians anywhere on Earth. Lisa: Oh my gosh. So you're going to live to 200 then. Dean: Well, the beautiful thing about these people is that not only are they over 100, they still have a high quality of life. They're still mobile; they're self-sufficient. Mentally and cognitively, they're sharp as a tack. They're active. The one thing that they have that we don't have the luxury of is the complete absence of stress. They don't pay attention to time. Lisa: That's, I think, a crucial point. Stress is a killer in so, so many ways. Dean: Even the fact that we have mortgages, and we have payments, rent, all those sort of things, I think, contribute to obviously, to stress. And fitting in with new society. It's much more of a sense of community in these villages where everyone is part of it. They all take care of each other, so it's a different lifestyle. Lisa: I think, definitely when you're actually living the old way of being out in the sunshine, from the time you get up to the end of the day, you're working outside and on the ground, in the land, hands in the dirt, all of that sort of stuff really... Because I studied lots about circadian rhythms and how our eyes, for example, you see sunshine early in the morning. That resets your circadian rhythms, sets the clock going for the day. Your adenosine starts to build up over the day. You get tired at about 14 to 16 hours later. All of these things that we've... as modern-day humans, we've taken ourselves out of the old way of living and put ourselves into this artificial comfortable environment. But this is upsetting all our ancient DNA, and that's why that's leading to problems. And then, of course, we've got this crazy life with technology, and the stuff we have to do, and work. Just like stress, what it does to the gut, the actual microbiota in the gut, and how much it affects your gut health. And of course, gut health affects everything. Your brain and your gut talk all the time. All these stuff so I think if we can harness the cool stuff of the technology coming, plus go back and start respecting as much as possible our ancient DNA, and then eating our ancestors did as best we can with these depleted soils, and pesticides, and glyphosates, and God knows what's in the environment, but doing the best we can, then we've got a good chance of actually staying around on this planet and still be running ultramarathons or at least marathons when you're a hundred plus. I don't think that that's unrealistic anymore, and that excites me. So I'm always learning on that front. Dean: But I want to be that guy that's running a marathon when you say a hundred. That's my ambition now. Lisa: I'll keep you up on the latest stuff then. What you need to be aware of. Dean: I don't have any... People say, ‘You must have arthritis, or back pain, or knee pain, or joint pain.’ I don't have any of those things. I don't know why but I just... I'm so happy. I get up every morning and feel fresh. Lisa: That's absolutely amazing. I think one of the amazing things with you is that... Because I studied genetics, and I looked at my genes. And actually doing really long bouts of exercise with my combination of genetics and my cardiovascular system, especially I've got a very weak glycocalyx, which is the lining of your endothelial cells. Bear with me people. This means that if I do a lot of oxidative damage, which you do, of course, when you're running, that's pretty damaging to my lining of my blood vessel. So I've got to be a little more careful and take a lot of antioxidant support. But having that inflammation means I can now take steps to mitigate that so that I can still do what I love to do. And that's really key. It's hitting stuff off at the pass and there's so much we can do now and that's really, really exciting. But I've gone completely off topic because we should be talking about your book. Dean: No, I think it's very relevant because I think that some people are built to run far and slow and other people are built to run quick and short. Lisa: Yeah. I do and I agree and it's not just about your fast-twitch fibres. It is also about your methylation and your detox pathways, your hormonal pathways, your cardiovascular genes. All of these things do play a role, and that's why there's no one size fits all. And that's why we don't all have to be Dean Karnazes or Pat Farmer. You know what I mean? Not everybody is built for that or should be doing that, and that's okay as well. And working out what is optimal for your health is the key thing. Having role models like you guys is just mind-blowing because it does lift your perception of what the human body is capable of. That leads the way for others, and to follow, and to test out their personal limits. I think that's important too. Dean: Well, I've run over 300 traditional marathons. And you go to the Boston Marathon, you go to these big marquee marathons, the New York City Marathon, and you see people in their 70s and 80s that, compared to their peers, are off the charts. You say, 'Well, that running is gonna be bad for you.' I don't subscribe to that. Lisa: I've done what, 70-odd thousand K's. Not as much as you have. And I don't have any knee pain. I don't have any back pain because I keep my core strong and that's despite having accidents with my back and having no discs. Because I keep myself fit and healthy. I have had some issues with hormones and kidney function because when we... You would have been rhabdomyolysis, no doubt a few times. Dean: Minor, minor, but I have. Yeah. Every ultra runner has, yeah. Lisa: Yeah, so things that. You've got to just keep an eye on and make sure you don't... You look after your kidneys otherwise and do things to mitigate the damage. Because yeah there are certain things that damage. But life damages you. Like living, breathing is damaging. It's causing oxidative stress. So you've got to weigh up the pros and cons, but having an active physical life outdoors, and having adventures, and being curious and excited, and being involved in the world, that's got to be beneficial for you. So when do you actually start with this big adventure with Pat? Dean: It's on the 14th of August, so in about a week. Yep. They finish on the 24th, yeah. Lisa: Oh, I'd like to get you both back on at the end of it to give me a rundown, have a go. That will be cool. Dean, let's just pivot now and let's talk a little bit about your book. Because you brought out some incredible books over the years. You're world-famous. You're a New York Times bestselling author. You've been named by the Times magazine as one of the most hundred influential people of the world. That's just insane. And now, you're brought out Runner's High. What's different about this story? Dean: Well, my first book was Ultramarathon Man, and that was kind of a coming-of-age book. It was about me learning about this crazy universe of ultramarathon and people doing things that I thought was impossible. And Runner's High is five books later and three decades later. How am I still doing it? And how have I changed? How has the sport of ultramarathoning changed? How has the world changed? And that was the book. And it was also a very personal book and that... You're an ultramarathoner, and you know ultramarathon is an island. If you start running these long distances it impacts everyone in your life including your family. Very much for your family. The book, it is not really about running. It's funny. People read it and they say, 'Wow. It's amazing but it's storytelling.' And you and I are both good storytellers, and that was what I just set out to write a book that was true and honest, and it was enjoyable for the reader. And yeah, it's doing really well in New Zealand, actually. Lisa: It must be doing well around the world. And this one is very... It's really real, and genuine, and raw. No holds barred. No barred... What do you call it? No... How do you say that? It's very much a real and it's a love letter to, basically, like you say, to running. And you're actually revisiting the Western States, a race that you've done how many times? 13 times or something? But coming back in your 50s, late 50s to do this again in 2018. It was a bit of a tough road, shall we say. Can you tell us a little bit about that part of the journey and why Western States are so special to you? Dean: Yeah. The Western States 100 mile endurance run is in the Sierra Nevada, California. And it was the first 100-mile trail race, and I first did it back in 1994. So your first is always your best. It's kind of this amazing experience that you have, and you just never forget it. I can recall literally conversations I had in that race in 1994. I can recall what people were wearing. I can recall where I saw my parent. I recall it. It gets impressed upon your mind. So my synapses just absorbed it. So going back here after 13 goes at it and thinking, 'Wow, is this going to be a stale experience? Or what is it going to be like?' And it ended up being quite magical and quite transformative in my career as well as... I learned a lot about my father and my son, and I wrote a lot about that in the book, and watching them crew for me, and how things have changed over time. It wasn't a good race. I don't want to be a spoiler but I think good races don't make good stories. Good races, you pop the champagne, yeah, it's boring. You high five at the finish, you have some champagne, and all this good. When things go to shit, that's an interesting story. Lisa: Yeah, absolutely. I've got three books full of things turning to shit. And I think it's beautiful that you talk about your dad or what a crazy guy he is, and your son coming and how your son was actually... Like you didn't know whether he was up to crewing for you really because he's a young man. He wasn't going to take this seriously because you need your crew to be on form. How do he actually do when he was out there? Dean: Yeah. There's a saying that in school, you get the lesson and you take the test. In parenting, you take the test and then you get the lesson. You're just like, 'Boy I screwed that one up.' You lose track of your kids, especially when they go off to uni. Lisa: Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits, if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on air. It's been a public service free for everybody and we want to keep it that way. But to do that we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on patron.lisatamati.com. That's patron.lisatamati.com. We have two patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as 7 dollars a month, New Zealand, or 15 dollars a month if you really want to support us. We are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us: everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries, and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com. And thanks very much for joining us. Dean: As a parent, your kids grew up quicker than you adjust to them growing up, and I always treat them as a guy that needs his diaper change kind of thing even though he's 20 years old now. Nick was just such a dichotomous individual because he complained to me when he came home from uni that his roommates were such slobs. I said, 'How do you like living with three other guys?' He's like, 'It’s great. They're my best friends, but they're such slobs.' Every every time I walked past his room, I'd look in his room, and it was a Tasmanian devil had gone through it. ‘Your room is such a mess.’ When he volunteered the crew for me at Western States, claiming he knew how to do it, even though the last time he'd done it, he was nine years old, and he didn't do anything. At this time, he was actually driving a vehicle. He was the most important support I had during this kind of foot race. And I just thought that it was gonna be a horrible experience. That he'd be irresponsible, he wouldn't show up, and this, and that. At least it was just the opposite. He was the most responsible, so much more responsible than my dad. So much more capable. My dad's been doing this for 30 years, and my son who's never done it was so much better than my dad. He showed me a new side of him that I'd never seen. Lisa: That's him growing up, I suppose? Dean: Yeah. I think every parent that's got a kid is kind of nodding their head as they're hearing this because they can relate. Lisa: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think kids, sometimes when they can be a kid, they'll be a kid. They'll be the irresponsible... But when you actually put them on the spot and expect something from them, sometimes, they come to the party if you're lucky, and actually step up to the line, and actually do a good job, and obviously, Nicholas did that. Dean: Yeah. I think it's more the burden of the parent to accept and to realise that this little baby is self-sufficient and capable. Let go of the fact that they once were so dependent on you. They're not anymore. They have their own life, and they can navigate their way through the world. Lisa: It must be pretty hard to let go. What do you think it's been like for them having such a famous, crazy, extreme athlete dad? Was it hard for both of them? Because I can imagine you were away a lot. You're doing dangerous, crazy, amazing things. Everybody knows you. You're extremely well known when you go anywhere. How did that affect the family in general? Dean: It's funny. My kids have never known me as anything different. They've always known me as this ultramarathoner, and it's always been a family affair for me. My kids, they've been to Australia, they've been to Europe multiple times, South America, all over North America. I have taken them with me. I once ran 50 marathons in all of the 50 US states in 50 days, and they were along. Yeah. How many kids... My son was nine, my daughter was 11. How many kids ever, how many people ever get to see all of the states of America, let alone when you're that age? So I think that they just accept me for what I am. Sometimes I get the fan thing where people come up to me like at a restaurant. Like, 'Oh, can you sign this or that?’ And it's always good people. The people that come up to me in an airport and say, 'Hey, I really admire you. Can we do a selfie?' They're decent people. Like I want to go have a glass of wine with this guy or this lady. It's not like I'm a rock star or movie star where I have all the crazy people chasing around. The people who chase me around are my peers. People I really admire myself. Lisa: Or other runners. You know what? Something I've always admired about you, too, was that you always gave every single person time of day despite... And when we did that speaking gig together last year on the Gold Coast, I was really nervous, to be honest, because I was like, 'I'm on the stage with someone who is a superstar, and I'm little me.' Right? I'm sort of like, 'How the hell am I on stage with you? Because no one's gonna be interested in what the hell I've got to say when you're standing next to...' It's like some superstar, and you're standing on the stage with them, and you've got to do... It was quite difficult in a way because everybody wanted to... The line for your books was just two hours long. The line from mine was two people long. Dean: You carried yourself beautifully. I thought together, we were a great pair. We complemented each other. Lisa: You are a gentleman. You would always straight to me and make sure that I was included, which was fantastic. I saw you. Like you take the time for every single person. You are present with everybody, and that's a really hard thing to do. It's not so hard in a book signing, but it's bloody hard in the middle of a hundred-miler or a hundred K-er or when you were half-dead, dragging yourself into a checkpoint, and somebody wants a signature from you or a selfie, and you're trying to just get your stuff together. I found that difficult on my level of stuff. Because when I enter in New Zealand, I found that really difficult. I'd have people coming out on the road with me all the way through. And in that preparation, I thought that would be cool. In the reality of the day-to-day grind, did you know when you're... Because I was running up to 70K's a day. I was in a world of pain and hurt most of the time, and just struggling to keep going, and very, very breakable, you feel like. And then, you'd have people coming out and now it's been maybe 2, 3, 4 or 5K's with you, and they're full of beans, and they want you to be full of beans and full of energy, and give them the greatest advice in their 5K's when you're half dead. I found that really, really hard because I'm actually, believe it or not, quite introverted and when I'm running, I go in. How do you deal with it? How do you deal with that without being... Because you don't want to be rude. You don't want to be disrespectful to anybody, God forbid. But there were times on that run when I just literally had to say to my crew, 'I can't cope right now. I'm in a world of pain. I need some space.' And they have to sort of politely say, 'Sorry, she's not in a good space.' How do you deal with that? Dean: Well, it's amazing that we're having this conversation because there are not a lot of people that can relate intimately to what you just said. Because most people will never be in that position but what.. I experienced exactly you've experienced. When running 50 marathons in 50 days or running, I ran across America as well. When you're in a world of hurt, you've got this protective shell on, and you don't want to be social, and then I'd have groups of college kids show up with my book. Like 'Oh my god. Karnazes, you're such a great influence, and we love your book.' And 'Let's order a pizza.' I just feel like I just want to crawl into a mummy bag and hide and you just got to turn it on. Lisa: You've got to step up fine. Dean: Yeah, they're so happy to see you, and they want to see you on. They don't want to see you like this groveler just dying. They want to see you strong and engaging, and it's really tough sometimes. Yeah. It's definitely really tough sometimes. Lisa: Yeah, and that's why I admire that you managed to do that most of the time. You turn it on no matter in what shape you were. If I were to pull it out whereas, to be honest, a couple of times, I just couldn't. I'm just like, 'I'm done guys.' Remember on the run through New Zealand that one time? This was not with fans. I was running for CanTeen, the kids with cancer. I was in an immeasurable world of hurt one night after running for, God knows how long I've been out there, 1200 K’s or something at the stage. I had a 13-year-old boy was sent into my room to give me a pep talk. He was dying of cancer or had cancer, and he was here to give me a pep talk because I was crying. I wasn't able to get up and run the next day. And he came in and told me how much it meant to him, and to his peers, and what it meant to him that I was undertaking this journey. That was a real lesson. Like, 'Oh, get over yourself. You're not dying, okay? You're not a 13 year old with cancer. You just have to run another 70 K's tomorrow. So what?' That's a good perspective. I did get up the next morning and go again and that was like, 'Here, come on.' Some funny but really touching moments. You are human and it's very easy when you go to a speaking engagement or whatever to be what you meant to be, a professional. But it's bloody hard when the chips are down and you're in the middle of a race to do that. So I really always did admire that about you. What I also admired was that it didn't matter whether you came first or last in a race. With the Western States, it was a struggle. You never shied away from the fact that today might not have been your day, and you're having a bad day, and you weren't embarrassed about that. I've had races with Pat Farmers, a classic one in the middle of the Big Red Run where I was just falling to pieces. I was going through some personal trauma at the time, and my back went out. Yeah, I was just at a bad place. And I was embarrassed because I failed at a race at that stage. I was in that mindset. Now, I look back and go 'Give yourself a break.' How do you cope with that? How do you... Like when you don't do what the fans expect you to do on that day? Dean: To me, it's your ego. Yeah, it is such an ego thing. And let's be honest, when you're a public figure, your failures are public. You don't fail in silence. You just kind of DNF and walk away and live the race another day. You DNF and people are taking pictures of you, and it's on the internet. I always got crowded. But in the end, I just... What can you do other than just do your best? You're human. All of us can only just do our best. So my commitment now is like, ‘When I stand on the starting line, I'm going to give it my all. I'm not going to leave anything on this course. I'm just going to be the best that Dean can be. I'm going to try my hardest and the only way I'm going to fail is if I don't try my hardest and don't give it my all.’ And when you go with that mindset, no matter what happens, you're doing yourself a service. Lisa: Yeah, and you're a winner. This is such a powerful message, I think, for young people listening because often, we don't even try because we don't want to risk embarrassing ourselves, and risk failure, and risk looking like an idiot. And what you're saying is just forget your ego, set that to the side, and go, 'I'm going to give it all today, and if it isn't enough, it isn't enough and that's fine. I'll learn something out of it. And it's a journey that I'm on. And I'm going to be the best I can be today.' That's such a powerful story of perspective, and resilience, and leaving the ego at the door. I did struggle with that when I was younger because I had some pretty spectacular failures, and they really hurt. They really hurt where you take a long time to sort of go, 'Do I want to do that again in the public eye?' So to speak. And you've just always just been 'If it was a good day, it was a good day, and on to the next one if it was a bad day.' Dean: Yeah, I think bold failures build character. I have to be honest. Success builds character, but so does failure and in a more profound way. I lean into every emotion that I have. Either success or failure, sorrow or regret. All those things that happen when you have a bad race or a bad day. I want that full emotional range. It just makes you a better human, I think. Not to shy away from those deep lows where you're just crushed. I think that people that try to avoid that are really missing out. Yeah, yeah, it's painful and it hurts but it builds your character in a profound way. Lisa: Wow. That is so deep, actually. Because we're often taught push down your emotions, and keep them in a box, and be a professional, and keep going, and keep calm and carry on type thing. And it has its place as far as when you're in the middle of a race, you’ve got to keep your shit together, and compartmentalise stuff, and be able to function. But I think it's also very important to experience the pain, the grief, the pain, or whatever you're going through, and the happiness. It's another thing. I would get to the end of a race and it didn't matter how well I'd done, and what I've just achieved, and how difficult it was. I remember doing one in the Himalayas and a friend coming up to me afterwards and it was 220K race, extreme altitude, hell of a journey to get there, all sorts of obstacles. I get to the finish line and he's just like, 'Wow, you're amazing. It's incredible. I can't believe what you just did. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it.' And I just went, 'Oh no. Someone else was faster, and there's a longer race.' You know what I mean? And I didn't integrate it. And he just went, 'Oh, for crying out loud. Can't you just take this one to the bank and actually bank it as being a success and a huge win?' And I really took that to heart. And now, I pat myself on the back when I do even a little thing good because it reinforces that neural pathway in my brain that tells me, 'This was great because I just got a little reward' rather than, 'You're never good enough.' Because that was what I was telling myself before. No matter what I did, it wasn't enough. And now, flip that script around to go, 'Hey, you managed to do your shoelaces and get to the end of the road today. Well, done.’ And it's the thought of it. Dean: It is, completely. My son said something to me that was along that same vein during the Western States. I said, ‘Nicholas…’ This is maybe a mile 60 or 70 of a hundred-mile run. I said, 'My race is crap. I'm not having a good race.' And he looked at me, said, 'Dad, you're running a hundred miles. To most people, that's enough.' And I put it in perspective. That although I'm with all these super elite athletes, you're not doing that... To most people that hear about anyone running a hundred miles, they don't care if you came in first or last. A hundred miles? They don't care if my time was 15 hours or 50 hours. They're just so inspired. Yeah, blown away by it. Yeah. Lisa: Exactly, And I think that puts it because when we hang out... Because you are the sum total of the people that you hang out with, the top five, as the saying goes. And that can have negative connotations as well as positive. It can be the fact that you think if you're hanging out with the five top guys in the world, then you are going to be not looking too good. But if you're hanging out with just the average person, and you're doing something this long and this incredible, for most people, that's just like, 'Huh? Humans can do that?' I did a speaking engagement yesterday in Auckland and the people were like, 'But that's humanly impossible.' I go, 'It actually isn't, and there's actually thousands of us that do the stuff.' And then, they're like, 'What? I don't get it.' Dean: That was it. That was the same reaction I had when I heard about someone running a hundred mile like that. They're, 'Oh, there's trickery.' I thought there's trickery. I thought there's hotels, or just campgrounds, or something. The guy said, 'The gun goes off and you just run, and you stop when you cross the finish line.' I couldn't wrap my head around it. Lisa: Until you did it. Dean: Until you did it. Exactly, yeah. Lisa: And you built yourself up to it, and this is the thing. It's a combination of so much and it's that journey isn't it? So I think what we're talking about is it being this incredible life journey that you go on within an ultramarathon and within the training of our ultramarathon. It's like living an entire life in short. You're going through the highs, and the lows, and everything in between. And it's long, and it's hard, and it's awesome, and it's amazing, and you meet incredible people. It's everything that you go through in life but just on an intensive timescale, I feel like. And it's just a beautiful experience to go through, especially with the value of hindsight. Sometimes, in the middle of it, mile 70 of a hundred-mile race, it's not looking too flash. Dean: Well, but I mean, to that point, when we reflect back on moments that we remember, at least me, it's not the victories. It's not the crossing the finish line first to me. It's always that time where I thought, 'I'm done. This is it. I can't get out of this chair. I'm trashed.' And somehow getting through that really, really tough moment and carrying on. That's what sticks with you. It's pretty weird, at least with me. Those are the moments that reflect back on my career. It's those horrible moments that I somehow persisted. Lisa: When you look back, you're proud of yourself and you know that when... One of the biggest values, and I've seen this with my story with Mum and, unfortunately, recently with my dad, is that when the shit hits the fan, like it did in those two situations, I knew that I could step up to do everything within my power and that I was a fighter. I knew that I was a fighter, and then I knew that I would fight to the bitter end, whatever the outcome was. And that's a really good thing to know about yourself. Because you need to know that when things are down, what character do you have? Who are you when all the niceties of our world have gone? What are you capable of? And you learn to be able to function when everyone else is gone. And that's a really powerful lesson that ultramarathoning teaches you, I think, in decades of the sort of hard work. And that's why athletes, I think... When you're employing athletes or you going into business with other athletes, you're more likely to have someone who's willing to fight through the tough times than if you just get someone who hasn't ever experienced any sort of discomfort in their life. Then they're not liable to be able to push through and be as resilient. I think that's what I'm trying to say. Dean: I agree with you completely. And I often wonder if people have those character, those values, and that's what draws them to ultra running or if ultrarunning instils those values. I remember coming home from a run one time, and my neighbour was fetching up the morning paper. He saw me running back to my house and I'd, I don't know, I'd run 30 or 40 kilometres, and he said to me, 'Doesn't running hurt?' And I said to him, 'It doesn't if you're doing it right.' And he looked at me, 'I do everything to avoid difficult things.’ And I’m like, ‘And I embrace it.' It's just a different mindset. Lisa: And if you have the mindset of wanting to always avoid all sorts of pain in life, then you're not going to experience very much. And when you're in a tough situation, you won't be able to cope because you won't have experienced any sort of pain. So the more that you had to struggle, the more strength you develop from that. The old proverb: 'Strength comes from struggle' is valid in all walks of life. So unfortunately, this is the way the world is set up. If you seek comfort all the time, you're actually going to be in deeper shit somewhere along the way and not able to help yourself because you haven't learned to fight, and you haven't learned to push through and to deal with a certain level of discomfort and a certain level of pain. And I think that's a really, really valuable thing to do. Every day, I try to experience some sort of discomfort or pain: whether it's cold, whether it's pushing myself mentally, intellectually, whether it's pushing myself physically, doing some intense extreme exercise, or whatever the case may be. Every day, I try to do something that it scares the shit out of me or pushes me in some way because then, I know that I haven't gone backwards that day. I've probably learned something, and gone forward, and I've strengthened my body and my mind in some sort of way, shape, or form. Dean: Yeah, but I think you're an exception. I think most people just try to take the path of least resistance and avoid difficult things and avoid pain. I think we've built our world around comfort: having every comfort available and removing as much discomfort and pain as we can. And I think, in a way, we're so comfortable, we're miserable. Lisa: Exactly. That's exactly the problem. Because by actually experiencing a little bit of pain, by doing your push-ups, going for your run, doing your pull-ups, whatever the case is, being outside and digging the garden and doing stuff that is a bit unpleasant, it actually makes your body stronger, and it makes you mentally stronger. If we all sit on the couch and watch Netflix all day every day and eat chips, what's going to happen to us? We're going to destroy our health. We're going to just be so... And this is... I think I'm scared for the younger generation, that they haven't actually... We grew up. We're roughly the same age. You're a couple years older. I grew up in the 70's where we were outside, doing something all day, every day. We came in at night time for a feed and went to bed. That was our childhood, and that was just a beautiful way to grow up. We were cold. We were hungry. We were tired. We were happy. Dean: We were playing, right? We were exercising. I remember riding my bike just everywhere. I never thought of it as exercise. It was playing. Kids don't play that way anymore, unfortunately. Lisa: It's a scary thing for them because we need to teach them. Because again, it goes back to sort of respecting our ancient DNA and that's what I think... That's another thing that ultramarathoning does, or even trekking, or adventuring in any sort of way, shape, or form. It's that we've come from stock that used to have to build their own houses, cut down their own trees, chase animals, whatever the case was, just to survive. And then, we now have it all laid on for us. We're in lovely houses. We've got light all day or night. We've got food every street corner. And our ancient DNA isn't just set up for that. This is where all the problems come. We could go on a complete rant, which I often do on this podcast. But coming back to your story in your Runner's High, what do you think now looking back at this incredibly long and prolific career and this incredible journey that you've been on so far, and I do think that you still got miles and miles to go. What are some of the biggest lessons that you've learned along the way on the thirty-odd year journey that you've been? What are the biggest takeaways from ultramarathon running? Dean: I think that it's the little moments that are the most priceless. It's not the moments where... I write about meeting with First Lady Michelle Obama. Yeah, that was great. It was amazing, and incredible, and everything else, but it's the little moments of having a moment with a crew member or your family that you just you reflect on and laugh about. So it's those things to me that are most priceless. The other thing with ultramarathoning that I've certainly learned is that it's a journey. To me, it's a passion and it's something I've committed my life to. And staying true to the person you are, there's value in that. Even though it's just running, Lisa. It's nothing hugely intellectual. I'm not winning Nobel prizes. I'm just a runner, but that's who I am and I'm staying true to that. I'm going to do that to the grave. And I think in that, there's a simplicity and I think there's some magic in that. Lisa: Oh, absolutely. You know what you're born to do. You say it's only running but actually, you're a teacher; you're an author; you're a person who empowers others. You're doing all of that in the framework of running. So you do a heck of a lot more than just running for me. You’ve influenced an entire generation worldwide. I hope you know. Without you, ultramarathon running would not be where it is today. So I think you know a little bit more than just running yourself. This is the power of books, and this is the power of storytelling. And it's the power of having such a unique character that is so charismatic and draws people in. And those are all the things that you've managed to take. You could have just been a silent runner who just did his thing and went away again, but you've chosen to share your journey with the world. And that's just gold because that just gives people an insight into what they can do. It's all about... when I read your books, I'm getting something for me. And everybody who's reading those books, that's actually, 'Yes, we talk. We're hearing Dean's story.' But we're actually going, 'Huh. Maybe I could do that. Maybe I could try that. Oh, yeah I've experienced that.' This is the conversation that are going on in people's heads when they read those stories, and that's why they have such an intimate connection with you. And why, even though it's weird when people come up and ask you for an autograph or any of that, they feel like they know you, and they do know you. Dean: I've got a message from a guy. Yeah, I know. Every time I think, 'Wow, this is really laborious, writing these books. And maybe it's my last book.' I got a message from a guy a couple days ago and he said, 'I was planning on reading a couple chapters of your new book before I went to bed.' And he said five hours later, 'I finished the last page.' And then, he said, 'And then I got up. I just had to go running.' Wow. Then the book worked if it motivated him to read the whole thing in one sitting and get up and go running, then it's worthwhile. Lisa: Absolutely. And you know when you read, I read books ferociously, and the list is long. I'm usually reading about 10 books at a time. And when I'm reading, I am distilling the world's top people and their entire experience, I get to absorb within the space of 10, 15 hours of reading their book. That's a good return on investment. If I want to download someone's experience, or knowledge, or whatever the case is, then reading books is just such a powerful way to do it and listening to podcasts as well. Because that's another way that you can do it without having to... You can be out and about, driving, or running, or whatever and absorbing some new information. And I think we're just so lucky to have access to all of this. It's just incredible. Dean: It is and it's a pity if you don't take advantage of that because you're so wise and educated. That conversation we had before the podcast, it's amazing how... It's amazing. Your knowledge base and how you developed your knowledge base. Well, you've absorbed the best of the best and what they're thinking and the research they've done. Lisa: Exactly. All you're doing is you're absorbing it from the best scientists, the best doctors, the best athletes, the best executives, the best business people, and then, you get to share it, teach it. This is the other thing. If I learn something in the morning, I'm teaching it in the afternoon. Usually it's to my poor husband or my mother. I'm teaching it and then, I often build into my programs, or it comes out in my webinars, or whatever. And you’re basically just regurgitating stuff that you've learned, but it's powerful when you put it into the perspective of your experience and you change it. You learn it, you teach it. You learn it, you teach it. And that's a such a cool way to share, and get that information out there into the world, and actually help the world on your little corner of the earth and what you're doing. And that's what I love to do and that's the power of what your books are all about. So yeah, I commiserate with you. Getting a book out is a bloody long, hard journey. People don't realise how hard it is to write a book. Give me a bloody hundred miler any day over writing a book. In fact, give me ten hundred milers over any day because it's such a long process, isn't it? Dean: Well, I do a lot of my writing while I'm running actually. So I dictate into my phone now. Because we have some of our clearest thoughts while we're running. Before, I used to think, 'God, why didn't I write that down? How did that go again?' Now, I just dictate as I'm running and then come home, put in an earbud, and just type up my notes. Lisa: I haven't done variations of that. I do end up stopping on my runs and just writing a quick note. I haven't actually dictated. I have to start adapting that because maybe that'll make it easy because you're damn right. When I'm actually at the computer, there's distractions. There's a hundred windows open; there's notifications coming all the time, and I really find it hard to sit down and write. It is sometimes best if you could just dictate into something, so I'll have to give that a crack next time. Dean: I think motion stirs emotion. Lisa: Yeah, it does and it clears the mind. That's one thing I miss now that I'm not doing the ultras, personally, at the moment. It's that singularity of purpose. That cleanness the mind had before of this one goal. And I'm watching my husband's preparing for a hundred miler in November. And just watching everything in his whole day, and he has the luxury of doing this because we haven't got kids and stuff, but everything in his whole day is centred around his training and getting to that hundred miler in the best shape that he can. And that singularity of purpose, if you like, almost that selfishness but having that one thing that you're doing, oh, I miss that. I miss that. Dean: It's funny because I have friends that are mountain climbers, and we compare notes in that regard, and they say the same thing. They said life is frenetic, and we're moving in all these different directions. It's crazy basically. But when we're preparing for a summit quest, we have a mission. There's this we get to the summit like everything we're doing is focused on reaching the summit and there's clarity in that. You're right, that singularity of purpose. That's a good way to put it. Lisa: Yeah, and this clarity that I really, really find, I think, a lot of us are struggling with because I don't have the luxury of that sort of clarity at the moment and that singular thing because I'm building businesses, and looking after Mum, and doing a hundred bloody things that I do. And my brain never gets that quiet singular thing. It does want to go for a run, but it's a short run now. And so that's not long enough to actually get that feeling and I'm not on an athletic mission. Okay, it's a time in my life, and it's where I'm at, and that's fine. But Jesus, hard sometimes. Just not to be able to have that freedom of living just for yourself and being actually dedicated to one thing. And I find that very, very hard sometimes, especially with all the thousand things that are coming at you when you run businesses. Dean: That's why I run, they say. Lisa: I haven't worked that one out. I haven't organised myself for a while. What I have done. Oh, Dean, you've been absolutely wonderful today. I don't want to take up any more of your time in lockdown because goodness knows, you've got lots to do there, probably. Dean: It's an exciting day because I think it's my fifth COVID test since showing up. So every couple of days, they show up. They knock on your door and stick a swab up your nose. I've been fully vaccinated. You've just been here five times. I don't think I'm going to get it. I've been in the hotel room by myself for two weeks. Lisa: Yeah. Come on. Dean: Where's it going to come from? Lisa: Yeah, it must be very frustrating. But hey, two more days and you're in freedom and then you're going to be able to run, and run, and run. Dean: I'd get to run a thousand miles, yeah. Lisa: With a very cool mate so give my greetings to Pat Farmer. He's a legend, and I've got to get him back on. Actually, you guys should come on together at the end of your run. That'd be just fabulous. Mum is sitting over in the chair, waiting for me to take her to the gym so I better get my bum into gear. Dean, thank you so much for your time. I love you to bits. I think you're amazing. I think your books are awesome and what you've done for the world of ultramarathoning and beyond is just incredible. Thank you for your time today. Dean: Well, the feeling is completely mutual, Lisa. Thank you, and I look forward to the time where we can share some footsteps together again. Lisa: Oh, that would be absolutely gold. That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends, and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional  

How do you handle stressful situations? Everyone’s built a little different — some people can take their hits on the chin and come out smiling. But not everyone can take those hits. The pandemic has taken its mental toll on so many people. Others might still be struggling with past traumas and dealing with anxiety. Their situation keeps them in a state of constant worry and hypervigilance. That state of mind doesn't only harm their mental and emotional health — it can make them sick and more prone to physical diseases. More than ever, it's time to begin mental healing from past traumas, so we can better cope with our daily stresses.  Dr Don Wood joins us again in this episode to talk about the TIPP program and how it facilitates mental healing. He explains how our minds are affected by traumas and how these can affect our health and performance. If we want to become more relaxed, we need to learn how to go into the alpha brainwave state. Since mental healing is not an immediate process, Dr Don also shares some coping strategies we can use in our daily lives.  If you want to know more about how neuroscience can help you achieve mental healing, then this episode is for you.    Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn how trauma can put you in a constant state of survival and affect your performance and daily life.  Understand that it's not your fault. Achieving mental healing will require you to learn how to go into an alpha brainwave state.  Discover healthy habits that will keep you from entering survival mode.   Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron!  A new program, BOOSTCAMP, is coming this September at Peak Wellness! Listen to other Pushing the Limits episodes:  #183: Sirtuin and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova  #199: How Unresolved Trauma Prevents You from Having a Healthy Life With Dr Don Wood Check out Dr Don Wood’s books:  Emotional Concussions: Understanding How Our Nervous System is Affected By Events and Experiences Throughout Our Life You Must Be Out Of Your Mind: We All Need A Reboot   Connect with Dr Don Wood: Inspired Performance Institute I Facebook I LinkedIn     Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.   Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Still, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful third party-tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health   My  ‘Fierce’ Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Episode Highlights [06:05] The Pandemic-Induced Mental Health Crisis The pandemic forced many people into a state of freeze mode, not the typical fight or flight response.  As people get out of freeze mode, there will be a rise in mental health issues.  Teenagers are robbed of the opportunity to develop social and communication skills during this time.  [08:24] How Dr Don Wood Started Studying Traumas Dr Don’s wife grew up in a household with an angry father who instilled fear. He used to think that she would be less anxious when they started to live together, but she struggled with mental healing.  She had an inherent belief that misfortune always follows good things. Her traumas and fears also led to a lot of health issues.  She also was hyper-vigilant, which she used as a protective mechanism. However, this prevented her from being relaxed and happy. A person’s environment can dictate whether they go into this hyper-vigilant state, but genetics can also play a factor.  [15:42] How Trauma Affects the Brain Trauma is caused by a dysregulation of the subconscious. If your brain is in survival mode, it will access data from the past and create physiological responses to them. These emotions demand action, even when it is no longer possible or necessary. This dysregulation prevents you from living in the present and initiating mental healing.  In this state, people can be triggered constantly, which interferes with their day-to-day life.  [21:07] The Role of the Subconscious Your conscious mind only takes up around 5%, while the subconscious takes up 95%. Your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between real and imagined.  In survival mode, people will keep replaying the past and think about different scenarios and decisions.  You’re left stuck because the subconscious mind only lives in the now. It does not have a concept of time.  This process is the brain trying to protect you. [25:04] What Happens When You’re Always in Survival Mode Being in survival mode will take a physical toll since it’s constantly activating the nervous system, increasing cortisol and adrenaline. When you’re in this state, your body and mind cannot work on maintenance and recovery. It is more focused on escaping or fixing perceived threats. Over time, this will affect your immune system and make you sick.  To truly achieve mental healing, you need to get to the root cause of your problems.  However, you also have to develop coping strategies to manage your day-to-day activities.  [30:18] Changing Your Brainwave State Traumatic events are usually stored in a beta brainwave state. Changing your response to traumatic events starts with going into an alpha brainwave state.  The beta state is usually from 15 - 30 hertz, while the alpha is lower at 7 - 14 hertz. Anything below that is the delta state, usually when you're in deep meditation or sleep. People who have trouble sleeping are usually in that beta state, which keeps processing information.  It's only in the delta state that your mind and body start the maintenance phase. This phase helps not only with mental healing but also physical recovery.  Learn more about Lisa and Dr Don’s personal experiences with these brainwave states in the full episode!  [34:30] Mental Healing and Physical Recovery Starts with the Brain Recovery is about genetics and the environment. In sleep, your mind will always want to deal with the threats first. It can only get to the delta state once it finishes processing these dangers. Your risk for developing sickness and depression rises if your brain can't do maintenance. Living in the beta state will make it difficult to focus.  [41:40] It’s Not Your Fault If you have a lot of trauma, you are predisposed to respond in a certain way. It’s not your fault.  There’s nothing wrong with your mind; you just experienced different things from others.  Dr Don likened this situation to two phones having a different number of applications running.  Predictably, the device that runs more applications will have its battery drained faster.  [44:05] Change How You Respond Working on traumas requires changing the associative and repetitive memory, which repeats responses to threats. You cannot change a pattern and get mental healing immediately—it will take time.  That’s the reason why Dr Don’s program has a 30-day recovery phase dedicated to changing your response pattern.  Patterns form because the subconscious mind sees them as a beneficial way of coping with traumas.  This function of your subconscious is how addictions form.  [47:04] Why We Can Be Irrational The subconscious lives only in the present. It does not see the future nor the past.  It will want to take actions that will stop the pain, even if the actions are not rational.  At its core, addiction is all about trying to stop the pain or other traumatic experiences.  Survival mode always overrides reason and logic because its priority is to protect you. [50:57] What to Do When You’re in Survival State In this survival state, we’re prone to movement or shutting down completely.  The brain can stop calling for emotions to protect you, and this is how depression develops.  When in a depressed state, start moving to initiate mental healing. Exercise helps burn through cortisol and adrenaline.  Once your mind realises there's no action required for the perceived threats, the depression will lift.   [53:24] Simple Actions Can Help There’s nothing wrong with you.  Don’t just treat the symptom; go straight to the issue.  Don’t blame genetics or hormonal imbalances for finding it hard to get mental healing. Find out why.  Also, seek things that will balance out your hormones. These can be as simple as walking in nature, taking a break, and self-care.  [56:04] How to Find a Calming Symbol Find a symbol that will help you go back into the alpha brainwave state.  Lisa shares that her symbol is the sunset or sunrise, and this helps her calm down. Meanwhile, Dr Don’s are his home and the hawk.  Having a symbol communicates to all parts of your brain that you’re safe.  [59:58] The Power of Breathing  Stress may lead to irregular breathing patterns and increase your cortisol levels and blood sugar. Breathing exercises, like box breathing, can also help you calm down because the brain will take higher oxygen levels as a state of safety.  If you’re running out of oxygen, your brain will think you’re still in danger.  Make sure that you’re breathing well. It’s also better to do nasal breathing.    7 Powerful Quotes ‘The purpose of an emotion is a call for an action. So the purpose of fear is to run.’ ‘People who have a lot of trauma have trouble sleeping. Because not only is their mind processing what it experienced during the day, it's also taking some of those old files saying “Well, okay, let's fix that now. Right. Let's get that.”’ ‘I was getting maximum restorative sleep. So an injury that I would have that could heal in two or three days, my teammates would two or three weeks. Because they were living in these, which I didn't know, a lot of my friends were dealing with trauma: physical, emotional, sexual abuse.’ ‘There's nothing wrong with anybody's mind. Everybody's mind is fine except you are experiencing something different than I experienced so your mind kept responding to it, and mine didn't have that.’ ‘That dysregulation of the nervous system. That's what we want to stop because that is what is going to affect health, enjoyment of life, and everything else.’ ‘I talked about addiction as a code. I don't believe it's a disease. Your mind has found a resource to stop pains and your subconscious mind is literal. It doesn't see things as good or bad, or right or wrong.’ ‘If there's a survival threat, survival will always override reason and logic because it's designed to protect you.’   About Dr Don Dr Don Wood, PhD, is the CEO of The Inspired Performance Institute. Fueled by his family’s experiences, he developed the cutting-edge neuroscience approach, TIPP. The program has produced impressive results and benefited individuals all over the world.  Dr Wood has helped trauma survivors achieve mental healing from the Boston Marathon bombing attack and the Las Vegas shooting. He has also helped highly successful executives and world-class athletes. Marko Cheseto, a double amputee marathon runner, broke the world record after completing TIPP. Meanwhile, Chris Nikic worked with Dr Wood and made world news by becoming the first person with Down Syndrome to finish an Ironman competition. Interested in Dr Don’s work? Check out The Inspired Performance Institute. You can also reach him on Facebook and LinkedIn.    Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can learn steps to mental healing. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa   Transcript Of Podcast Welcome to Pushing the Limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host Lisa Tamati, brought to you by lisatamati.com.  Lisa Tamati: Hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today, I have Dr Don Wood who, you may recognise that name if you listen to the podcast regularly. He was on the show maybe a couple of months ago, and he is the CEO and founder of The Inspired Performance Institute. He's a neuroscience guy, and he knows everything there is to know about dealing with trauma and how to get the mind back on track when you've been through big, horrible life events or some such thing. Now, when we talked last time, he shared with me his methodology, the work that he's done, how he can help people with things like addictions as well and depression, and just dealing with the stresses of life, whether they be small stressors or big stressors.  We got to talking about my situation and the stuff that I've been through in the last few years, which many of you listeners know, has been pretty traumatic. From losing babies, to losing my dad, to mom's journey. So I was very privileged and lucky to have Dr Don Wood actually invite me to do his program with him. We share today my stories, how I went with that, and he explains a little bit more in-depth the neuroscience behind it all and how it all works. So if you're someone who's dealing with stress, anxiety, PTSD, depression, if you want to understand how the brain works and how you can help yourself to deal with these sorts of things, then you must listen to the show. He's an absolutely lovely, wonderful person.  Now, before we get over to the show, I just love you all to do a couple of things for me. If you wouldn't mind doing a rating and review of the show on Apple, iTunes or wherever you listen to this, that would be fantastic. It helps the show get found. We also have a patron program, just a reminder if you want to check that out. Come and join the mission that we're on to bring this wonderful information to reach to people.  Also, we have our BOOSTCAMP program starting on the first of September 2021. If you listen to this later, we will be holding these on a regular basis so make sure you check it out. This is an eight-week live webinar series that my business partner, my best buddy, and longtime coach Neil Wagstaff and I will be running. It's more about upgrading your life and helping you perform better, helping you be your best that you can be, helping you understand your own biology, your own neuroscience, how your brain works, how your biology works. Lots of good information that's going to help you upgrade your life, live longer, be happier, reduce stress, and be able to deal with things when life is stressful. God knows we're all dealing with that. So I'd love you to come and check that out. You can go to peakwellness.co.nz/boostcamp.  I also want to remind you to check us out on Instagram. I'm quite active on Instagram. I have a couple of accounts there. We have one for the podcast that we've just started. We need a few more followers please on there. Go to @pushingthelimits for that one on Instagram, and then my main account is @lisatamati, if you want to check that one out. If you are a running fan, check us out on Instagram @runninghotcoaching and we're on Facebook under all of those as well. So @lisatamati, @pushingthelimits, and @runninghotcoaching.  The last thing before we go over to Dr Don Wood, reminder check out, too, our longevity and anti-aging supplement. We’ve joined forces with Dr Elena Seranova and have NMN which is nicotinamide mononucleotide, and this is really some of that cooler stuff in the anti-aging, and longevity space. If you want to check out the science behind that, we have a couple of podcasts with her. Check those out and also head on over to nmnbio.nz. Right. Over to the show with Dr Don Wood.  Hi, everyone and welcome back to Pushing the Limits. Today, I have a dear, dear friend again who's back on the show as a repeat offender, Dr Don Wood. Dr Don Wood: I didn't know I was a repeat offender. Oh, I'm in trouble. That's great.  Lisa: Repeat offender on the show. Dr Don, for those who don't know, was on the show. Dr Don is a trauma expert and a neuroscientist, and someone who understands how the brain works, and why we struggle with anxiety, and depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. We did a deep dive last time, didn't we, into the program that you've developed. Since then, everyone, I have been through Dr Don's pro program. He kindly took me through it. Today, I want to unpack a little bit of my experiences on the other side, s the client, so to speak. Talk about what I went through.  Dr Don, so firstly, welcome to the show again. How's it all over in your neck of the woods? Dr Don: Well, it's awesome over here in Florida. COVID is basically non-existent. Oh, yeah. Well, in terms of the way people are treating it, that's for sure. Very few people you see in masks now, everything is pretty much wide open. You can't even get reservations at restaurants. It's unbelievable. The economy is exploding here. There's so much going on. Yeah, I know the rest of the country, a lot of different places are still struggling with whether they're going to put mask mandates back on and all this kind of stuff but Florida seems to be doing very well.  Lisa: Well, I'm very glad to hear that because any bit of good news in this scenario is good because this keeps coming and biting everybody in the bum.  Dr Don: I know. Especially down there. You guys are really experiencing quite severe lockdowns and things, right? Lisa: Yeah and Australia, more so. Australia has gone back into lockdown. I've got cousins in Sydney who are experiencing really hard times in Melbourne and we've stopped the trans-Tasman bubble at the moment. Trans-Tasman was open for business, so to speak, with Australians being able to come to New Zealand without quarantine, but it's been shut down again. So yeah, we're still struggling with it, and the economy is still struggling with it but actually, in our country, we've been very lucky that we've managed to keep it out because they've had such tight controls on the borders. But yes, it's a rocky road for everybody, and it's not over yet, I think. Dr Don: Looks like it's going to continue, and that's creating a lot of stress.  Lisa: Oh, yeah, perfect.  Dr Don: This is what I've said. I think we're coming up to a tsunami of mental health issues because a lot of people have gone into freeze mode as opposed to fight or flight. Some people are in fight or flight. You're hearing about that on airlines: people just losing it, and getting mad, and fighting with flight attendants and passengers, and you see a lot of that. But I think that's obviously not the majority. I think most people are in that mode of just get through this, do what they ask, don't cause any waves, and just get this over with. So that's a freeze mode, and I think when people come out of freeze, you're going to start to see some of these mental health issues.  Lisa: Yes, I totally agree and I'm very concerned about the young people. I think that being hit very hard especially in the places that have the hardest lockdowns. If you're going through puberty, or you're going through teenagehood, or even the younger kids, I think, they're going to be affected massively by this because it's going to be a big before and after sort of situation for them.  Dr Don: And just the social. When we were teenagers, social was everything, I suppose. Learning how to communicate, and talk, and get along with other people, and good and bad. There were always struggles in school with learning how to get along with everybody but that is just sort of squashed. It's going to be fascinating to see when they do a study on the real true results of this pandemic. It's going to be a lot different than many people think.  Lisa: Yes, and I think the longer you ignore stuff, is we’re going to see it's not just the people are unfortunately dying and being very sick from the actual COVID, but the actual effects on society are going to be big. That's why talking about the topic that we're talking about today, dealing with anxiety, and dealing with stress, and being able to actually fix the problem instead of just managing the problem, which I know you're big on.  So let's dive in there, and let's recap a little bit. Just briefly go back over your story, how you got to here, and what your method sort of entails in a helicopter perspective. Dr Don: Yeah, basically how I developed this was really because of the life that my wife led first and my daughter. My wife grew up in a very traumatic household with a very angry father that created tremendous fear. So everybody was... Just constant tension in that household. When I met her, I just realised how this was so different than my life. My life was in the complete opposite: very nurturing, loving. So I didn't experience that. I thought when she started moving in and we got married at 19, we were very young, that this would all stop for her. Because now, she's living in my world, my environment, and it didn't.  She just kept continuing to feel this fear that something was going to go wrong and nothing is going to go right. She struggled with enjoying things that were going well. I would say to her, 'We've got three beautiful children. We’ve got a beautiful home. Everything's going pretty good; nothing's perfect. You have your ups and downs, but it's generally a pretty good life.’ She couldn't enjoy that because as a child, whenever things were going okay, it would quickly end and it would end, sometimes violently. So the way she was protecting herself is don't get too excited when things are going well because you'll get this huge drop. So that was what she was doing to protect herself. I just had a lady come in here a couple months ago, who very famous athlete is her husband: millionaires, got fame, fortune, everything you want, but she had a lot of health issues because of trauma from her childhood. When I explained that to her, she said, 'That's me. Your wife is me. I should be enjoying this, and I can't get there. I want to. My husband can't understand it.' But that's really what was going on for her too. Lisa: So it's a protective mechanism, isn't it? To basically not get too relaxed and happy because you've got to be hyper-vigilant, and this is something that I've definitely struggled with my entire life. Not because I had a horrible childhood. I had a wonderful childhood but I was super sensitive. So from a genetic perspective, I'm super sensitive. I have a lot of adrenaline that makes me code for, for want of a better description, I'm very emotionally empathetic but it also makes me swung by emotional stimuli very much. So someone in my environment is unhappy, I am unhappy. I'm often anxious and upset. My mum telling me she took me to Bambi. You know the movie Bambi? From Disneyland? She had to take me out of theatre. I was in distraught.  That's basically me. Because Bambi's mother got killed, right? I couldn't handle that as a four-year-old, and I still can't handle things. Things like the news and stuff, I protect myself from that because I take everything on. It's even a problem and in our business service situations because I want to save the world. I very much take on my clients' issues. I'm still learning to shut gates afterwards, so to speak, when you're done working with someone so that you're not constantly... So there's a genetic component to this as well.  Dr Don: Absolutely. So yours was coming from a genetic side but that's very, very common amongst people who have had a traumatic childhood. They're super sensitive.  Lisa: Yes. Hyper-vigilant.  Dr Don: Hyper-vigilant. That was my wife. She was constantly looking for danger. We’d come out of the storage and go: 'Can you believe how rude that clerk was?' 'What do you mean she was rude? How was she rude?' ‘You see the way she answered that question when I asked that, and then the way she stuffed the clothes in the bag?’ And I'm like, 'Wow.' I never saw her like that. She was looking for it because that's how she protected herself because she had to recognise when danger was coming. So it was protection, and I hadn't experienced that so that made no sense to me; it made perfect sense to her.  Lisa: Yeah, and if someone was rude to you, you would be just like, 'Well, that's their problem, not my problem, and I'm not taking it on.' Whereas for someone your wife and for me... I did have a dad who was  a real hard, tough man, like old-school tough. We were very much on tenterhooks so when they came home, whether he was in a good mood today or not in a good mood. He was a wonderful, loving father but there was that tension of wanting to please dad. Mum was very calm and stable, but Dad was sort of more volatile and just up and down. It was wonderful and fun and other times, you'd be gauging all of that before he even walked in the door. That just makes you very much hyper-vigilant to everything as well.  Then, you put on, on top of that, the genetic component. You've got things like your serotonin and your adrenaline. So I've got the problem with the adrenaline and a lack of dopamine. So I don't have dopamine receptors that stops me feeling satisfaction and... Well, not stops me but it limits my feeling of, 'Oh, I've done a good job today. I can relax.' Or of reward. And other people have problems, I don't have this one, but with a serotonin gene, which is they have dysregulation of their serotonin and that calm, and that sense of well-being and mood regulation is also up and down. While it's not a predisposition that you'll definitely going to have troubles because you can learn the tools to manage those neurotransmitters and things like nutrition and gut health and all that aspect. Because it's all a piece of that puzzle, but it's really just interesting, and it makes you much more understanding of people's differences.  Why does one person get completely overwhelmed in a very trivial situation versus someone else who could go into war and come back and they're fine? What is it that makes one person? Then you got the whole actual neuroscience circuitry stuff, which I find fascinating, what you do. Can you explain a little bit what goes on? Say let's just pick a traumatic experience: Someone's gone through some big major trauma. What is actually going on in the brain again? Can we explain this a little bit?  Dr Don: Yeah, this is one of the things that... When I did my research, I realised this is what's causing the dysregulation: is your subconscious your survival brain is fully present in the moment all the time. So everything in that part of our brain is operating in the present. which is what is supposed to be, right? They say that that's the key, that success and happiness is live in the present. Well, your survival brain does that. The problem comes in is that only humans store explicit details about events and experiences. So everything you've seen, heard, smelled, and touched in your lifetime has been recorded and stored in this tremendous memory system. Explicit memory.  Animals have procedural memory or associative memory. We have that memory system too. So we have both. They only have procedural, associative. So they learn through repetition, and they learn to associate you with safety and love, but they don't store the details about it. But we store all the details about these events and experiences. So this is where this glitch is coming in. If you've got the survival brain, which is 95% of everything that's going on, operating in the present, accessing data from something that happened 10 years ago because something looks like, sounds like, smells like it again, it's creating a response to something that's not happening. It's looking at old data and creating a physiological response to it, and the purpose of an emotion is a call for an action. So the purpose of fear is to run, to escape a threat. But there's no threat. It's just information about the threat. That disrupts your nervous system and then that creates a cascade of chemical reactions in your body because your mind thinks there's an action required. Lisa: This is at the crux of the whole system really, isn't it? This is this call for action to fix a problem that is in the past that cannot be fixed in the now. So if we can dive a little bit into my story, and I'm quite open on the show. I'm sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly. When I was working with Dr Don, I've been through a very, very traumatic few years really. Lost my dad, first and foremost, last July, which was the biggest trauma of my life. And it was a very difficult process that we went through before he died as well. And there’s a lift, as you can imagine, my brain in a state of every night nightmares, fighting for his life, he's dying over, and over, and over, and over again.  Those memories are intruding into my daily life, whereas in anything and at any time, I could be triggered and be in a bawling state in the middle of the car park or the supermarket. Because something's triggered me that Dad liked to to buy or Dad, whatever the case was, and this was becoming... It's now a year after the event but everything was triggering me constantly. Of course, this is draining the life out of you and interfering with your ability to give focus to your business, to your family, to your friends, every other part of your life. I'd also been through the trauma of bringing Mum back from that mess of aneurysm that everyone knows about. The constant vigilance that is associated with bringing someone back and who is that far gone to where she is now, and the constant fear of her slipping backwards, and me missing something, especially in light of what I'd been through with my father. So I'd missed some things, obviously. That's why he ended up in that position and through his own choices as well.  But this load, and then losing a baby as well in the middle, baby Joseph. There was just a hell of a lot to deal with in the last five years. Then, put on top of it, this genetic combination of a hot mess you got sitting before you and you've got a whole lot of trauma to get through. So when we did the process, and I was very, super excited to do this process because it was so intrusive into my life, and I realised that I was slowly killing myself because I wasn't able to stop that process from taking over my life. I could function. I was highly functional. No one would know in a daily setting, but only because I've got enough tools to keep my shit together. so to speak. But behind closed doors, there's a lot of trauma going on.  So can you sort of, just in a high level, we don't want to go into the details. This is a four-hour program that I went through with Dr Don. What was going on there. and what did you actually help me with?  Dr Don: So when you're describing those things that were happening to you, what was actually happening to your mind is it was not okay with any of that. It wanted it to be different, right? So it was trying to get you into a state of action to stop your father from dying: Do it differently. Because it kept reviewing the data. It was almost looking at game tape from a game and saying 'Oh, had we maybe run the play that way, we would have avoided the tackle here.' So what your mind was saying 'Okay, run that way.' Well, you can't run that way. This is game tape. Right? But your mind doesn't see it as game tape. It sees it as real now, so it's run that way. So it keeps calling you into an action.  And especially with your dad because you were thinking about, 'Why didn't I do this?' Or 'Had I just done this, maybe this would have happened.' What your mind was saying is, 'Okay, let's do it. Let's do that.' What you just thought about. But you can't do that. It doesn't exist. It's information about something that happened but your mind sees it as real. That's why Hollywood have made trillions of dollars because they can convince you something on the screen is actually happening. That's why we cry in a movie or that's why we get scared in a movie. Because your mind, your subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between real or imagined. So that's actually happening.  You were just talking about the movie with Bambi, right? When you were little. 'Why is nobody stopping this from happening?' So your mind was not okay with a lot of these things that were happening, and it kept calling you to make a difference. That's what I never understood my wife doing. That before I really researched this, my wife would always be saying, 'Don't you wish this hadn’t have happened?' Or 'Don't you wish we hadn’t done this?' What I didn't understand at the time, because I used to just get like, 'Okay, whatever.' She’d go, 'Yeah, but wouldn't it have been better?' She wanted to get me into this play with her, this exercise. Lisa: This is going on in her head. Dr Don: Because it's going on in her head, and she's trying to feel better. So she's creating these scenarios that would make her feel like, 'Well, if I had just done that, gosh that would have been nice, thinking about that life.’ And her mind seeing that going, 'Oh, that would be nice. Well, let's do that. Yes.' So she was what if-ing her life. And it was something that she did very early as a child because that's how she just experienced something traumatic with her father. In her mind, she'd be going, 'Well, what if I had to just left 10 minutes earlier, and I had have escaped that?' Or 'What if I hadn’t done this?' So that's what she was doing. It made no sense to me because I hadn't experienced her life, but that's what she was doing. Her mind was trying to fix something. It’s never tried to hurt you. It was never, at any point, trying to make you feel bad. It was trying to protect you. Lisa: Its job is to protect you from danger and it sees everything as you sit in the now so it's happening now. I love that analogy of these... What was it? Two-thirds of the car or something and... Dr Don: So goat and snowflake? Lisa: Goat and snowflake. And they're going off to a meeting and they're late. And what does the goat says to snowflake or the other way around? Dr Don: So snowflake, which is your conscious mind, your logical reasonable part of your mind, there's only 5, says the goat 95%, which is your subconscious mind. Who runs into a traffic jam says, 'Oh, we're going to be late. We should have left 15 minutes earlier.' To which goat replies 'Okay, let's do it. Let's leave 15 minutes earlier because that would solve the problem.'  Lisa: That analogy is stuck in my head because you just cannot... It doesn't know that it's too late and you can't hop into the past because it only lives in the now. This is 95% of how our brain operates. That's why we can do things like, I was walking, I was at a strategy meeting in Auckland with my business partner two days ago. We were walking along the road and he suddenly tripped and fell onto the road, right? My subconscious reacted so fast, I grabbed him right, and punched him in the guts. I didn't mean to do that but my subconscious recognised in a millimeter of a second, millionth of a second, that he was falling and I had to stop him. So this is a good side of the survival network: stopping and falling into the traffic or onto the ground.  But the downside of it is that brain is operating only in the now and it can't... Like with my father, it was going 'Save him. Save him. Save him. Why are you not saving him?' Then that's calling for an action, and then my body is agitated. The cortisol level’s up. The adrenaline is up, and I'm trying to do something that's impossible to fix. That can drive you to absolute insanity when that's happening every hour, every day. Dr Don: Then that's taking a physical toll on your body because it's activating your nervous system, which is now, the cortisol levels are going up, adrenaline, right? So when your mind is in that constant state, it does very little on maintenance. It is not worried about fixing anything; it's worried about escaping or fixing the threat, because that's the number one priority.  Lisa: It doesn't know that it's not happening. I ended up with shingles for two months. I've only just gotten over it a few weeks ago. That's a definite sign of my body's, my immune system is down. Why is it down? Why can that virus that's been sitting dormant in my body for 40-something years suddenly decide now to come out? Because it's just becoming too much. I've spent too long in the fight or flight state and then your immune system is down. This is how we end up really ill.  Dr Don: We get sick. I was just actually having lunch today with a young lady and she's got some immune system issues. And I said, 'Think about it like the US Army, US military is the biggest, strongest military in the world. But if you took that military and you spread it out amongst 50 countries around the world fighting battles, and then somebody attacks the United States, I don't care how big and strong that system was, that military system was. It's going to be weakened when it gets an attack at the homefront.’ So that's what was happening. So all of a sudden, now that virus that it could fight and keep dormant, it lets it pass by because it's like, 'Well, we can let that go. We'll catch that later. Right now, we got to go on the offensive and attack something else.' Lisa: Yeah, and this is where autoimmune, like your daughter experienced... Dr Don: About the Crohn's? Yep.  Lisa: Yep. She experienced that at 13 or something ridiculous? Dr Don: 14, she got it. Then she also got idiopathic pulmonary hemosiderosis which is another lung autoimmune disorder where the iron in the blood would just cause the lungs to release the blood. So her lungs just starts filling up with blood. They had no idea what caused it, that's the idiopathic part of it, and they just basically said, ‘There's no cure. She just needs to live close to a hospital because she'll bleed out if she has another attack.’ Only 1 in 1.2 million people ever get that. So it's very rare so there's no research being done for it. They just basically say, ‘If you get it, live close to a hospital.’ That's the strategy. Lisa: That's the way of fixing it.  Dr Don: And so both of those are autoimmune, and ever since we've gone to the program, she's hasn’t had a flare-up of either one of those. Because I think our system is directly now able to address those things.  Lisa: Yeah, and can calm down. I think even people who haven't got post-traumatic stress like I've had or whatever, they've still got the day to day grind of life, and the struggle with finances, and the mortgage to be paid, and the kids to feed, and whatever dramas we're all going through. Like we talked about with COVID and this constant change that society is undergoing, and that's going to get faster and more. So this is something that we all need to be wary of: That we're not in this. I've taught and learned a lot about the coping and managing strategies, the breathing techniques, and meditation, the things, and that's what's kept me, probably, going. Dr Don: Those are great because they're... Again, that's managing it but it's good to have that because you've got to get to the root of it, which is what we were working on. But at the same time, if you don't have any coping, managing skills, life gets very difficult. Lisa: Yeah, and this is in-the-moment, everyday things that I can do to help manage the stress levels, and this is definitely something you want to talk about as well. So with me, we went through this process, and we did... For starters, you had to get my brain into a relaxed state, and it took quite a long time to get my brainwaves into a different place. So what were we doing there? How does that work with the brainwave stuff?  Dr Don: Well, when we have a traumatic event or memory, that has been stored in a very high-resolution state. So in a beta brainwave state because all your senses are heightened: sight, smell, hearing. So it's recording that and storing it in memory in a very intense state. So if I sat down with you and said, 'Okay, let's get this fixed.' And I just started trying to work directly on that memory, you're still going to be in a very high agitated state because we're going to be starting to talk about this memory. So you're going to be in a beta brainwave state trying to recalibrate a beta stored memory. That's going to be very difficult to do.  So what we do is, and that's why I use the four hours because within that first an hour and a half to two hours, we're basically communicating with the subconscious part of the brain by telling stories, symbols with metaphors, goat and snowflake, all the stories, all the metaphors that are built-in because then your brain moves into an alpha state. When it's in alpha, that's where it does restoration. So it's very prepared to start restoring. And then, if you remember, by the time we got to a couple of the traumatic memories, we only work on them for two or three minutes. Because you're in alpha, and so you've got this higher state of beta, and it recalibrates it into the same state that it's in. So if it's in alpha, it can take a beta memory, reprocess it in alpha, takes all the intensity out of it.  Lisa: So these brain waves, these beta states, just to briefly let people know, so this is speed, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it's the speed at which the brain waves are coming out. So in beta, like you'd see on ECG or something, it's sort of really fast. I think there's a 40 day... Dr Don: It's 15 to 30 hertz. Lisa: 15 to 30 hertz and then if you're in alpha, it's a lot lower than that? Dr Don: 7 to 14. Lisa: 7 to 14, and then below that is sort of when you're going into the sleep phase, either deep meditative or asleep. Dr Don: You're dreaming. Because what it's doing in dreaming is processing. So you're between 4 and 7 hertz. That's why people who have a lot of trauma have trouble sleeping. Because not only is their mind processing what it experienced during the day, it's also taking some of those old files saying, 'Well, okay, let's fix that now. Right. Let's get that.’ That's where your nightmares are coming from. It was trying to get you into a processing to fix that. but it couldn't fix it. So it continues, and then when you go below 4 hertz, you go into delta. Delta is dreamless sleep and that's where the maintenance is getting done.  Lisa: That's the physical maintenance side more than the... Dr Don: Physical maintenance. Yeah, because that's not processing what it experienced anymore. What it's really now doing is saying, 'Okay, what are the issues that need to be dealt with?' So if you're very relaxed and you've had a very... Like me, right? I played hockey, so I had six concussions, 60 stitches, and never missed a hockey game. The only reason now that I understand I could do that is because I'm getting two or three times more Delta sleep than my teammates were. Lisa: Physical recuperative sleep.  Dr Don: Yeah, I was getting maximum restorative sleep. So an injury that I would have that could heal in two or three days, my teammates would two or three weeks. Because they were living in these, which I didn't know, a lot of my friends were dealing with trauma: physical, emotional, sexual abuse. I didn't know that was going on with my friends. Nobody talked about it. I didn't see it in their homes, but they were all dealing with that.  Lisa: So they are not able to get... So look, I've noticed since I've been through the program. My sleep is much better, and sometimes I still occasionally dream about Dad. But the positive dreams, if that makes sense. They're more Dad as he as he was in life and I actually think Dad’s come to visit me and say, ‘Hi, give me a hug’ rather than the traumatic last days and hours of his life, which was the ones that were coming in before and calling for that action and stopping me from having that restorative sleep.  I just did a podcast with Dr Kirk Parsley who's a sleep expert, ex-Navy SEAL and a sleep expert that's coming out shortly. Or I think by this time, it will be out, and understanding the importance, the super importance of both the delta and... What is the other one? The theta wave of sleep patterns, and what they do, and why you need both, and what parts of night do what, and just realising...Crikey, anybody who is going through trauma isn't experiencing sleep is actually this vicious cycle downwards. Because then, you've got more of the beta brainwave state, and you've got more of the stresses, and you're much less resilient when you can't sleep. You're going to... have health issues, and brain issues, and memory, and everything's going to go down south, basically.  Dr Don: That's why I didn't understand at the time. They just said 'Well, you're just super healthy. You heal really fast.' They had no other explanation for it. Now, I know exactly why. But it had nothing to do with my genetics. It had to do with my environment. Lisa: Just interrupting the program briefly to let you know that we have a new patron program for the podcast. Now, if you enjoy Pushing the Limits if you get great value out of it, we would love you to come and join our patron membership program. We've been doing this now for five and a half years and we need your help to keep it on here. It's been a public service free for everybody, and we want to keep it that way but to do that, we need like-minded souls who are on this mission with us to help us out. So if you're interested in becoming a patron for Pushing the Limits podcast, then check out everything on patron.lisatamati.com. That's patron.lisatamati.com.  We have two patron levels to choose from. You can do it for as little as 7 dollars a month, New Zealand or 15 dollars a month if you really want to support us. So we are grateful if you do. There are so many membership benefits you're going to get if you join us. Everything from workbooks for all the podcasts, the strength guide for runners, the power to vote on future episodes, webinars that we're going to be holding, all of my documentaries, and much, much more. So check out all the details: patron.lisatamati.com, and thanks very much for joining us.  Dr Don: That's, at the time, we just thought it was all, must have been genetics. But I realised now that it was environment as well. So maybe a genetic component to it as well, but then you take that and put that into this very beautiful, nurturing environment, I'm going to sleep processing in beta what I experienced that day and then my mind basically, at that point, is 'What do we need to work on? Not much. Let's go. Let's start now doing some maintenance.' Because it wants to address the top of item stuff first. What is it needs to be taken care of right now? Right? Those are the threats.  Once it gets the threats processed, then it can then start working on the things that are going to be the more long-term maintenance. So then it'll do that. But if it never gets out of that threat mode, it gets out for very little time. Then, if you're getting 30 minutes of delta sleep at night and I'm getting two hours, it's a no-brainer to figure out why I would heal faster.  Lisa: Absolutely, and this is independent of age and things because you've got all that that comes into it as well. Your whole chemistry changes as you get older and all this. There's other compounding issues as it gets more and more important that you get these pieces of the puzzle right.  Do you think that this is what leads to a lot of disease, cancers, and things like that as well? There's probably not one reason. There's a multitude of reasons, but it's definitely one that we can influence. So it's worth looking at it if you've got trauma in your life. People were saying to me 'Oh my God, you don't look good.' When you start hearing that from your friends, your people coming up to you and going, 'I can feel that you're not right.' People that are sensitive to you and know you very well, and you start hearing that over and over, and you start to think, 'Shit, something's got real. Maybe I need to start looking at this.'  Because it's just taking all your energy your way, isn't it, on so many levels. The restorative side and the ability to function in your life, and your work, and all of that, and that, of course, leads into depressive thoughts and that hyper-vigilant state constantly. That's really tiresome rather than being just chill, relax, enjoying life, and being able to... Like one of the things I love in my life is this podcast because I just get into such a flow state when I'm learning from such brilliant... Dr Don: You're in alpha. Lisa: I am. I am on it because this is, 'Oh. That’s how that works.' And I just get into this lovely learning in an alpha state with people because I'm just so excited and curious. This is what I need to be doing more of. And less of the, if you'd see me half an hour ago trying to work out the technology. That’s definitely not an alpha state for me. Dr Don: That's where they said Albert Einstein lived. Albert Einstein lived in alpha brainwave state. That's why information just float for him because there was no stress. He could then pull information very easily to float into. But if you're in a high beta brainwave state, there's too much activity. It has trouble focusing on anything because it's multiple threats on multiple fronts. So when we have a traumatic event, that's how it's being recorded. If you remember, what we talked about was there's a 400 of a millionth of a second gap in between your subconscious mind seeing the information and it going to your consciousness. So in 400 millionths of a second, your subconscious mind has already started a response into an action even though your conscious mind is not even aware of it yet.  Lisa: Yeah. Exactly what I did with rescuing my partner with the glass falling off the thing. I hadn't reached that logically. Dr Don: It's funny because that's one of the things that I talked about ,which is sort of, give us all a little bit of grace. Because if you've had a lot of trauma, you're going to respond a certain way. How could you not? If your mind’s filtering into all of that, of course you're going to respond with that kind of a response because your mind is prone to go into that action very, very quickly. So we can give ourselves a little bit of grace in understanding that of course, you're going to do that, right? And not beat ourselves up.  Because you know what I talked about with everybody, there's nothing wrong with anybody. There's nothing wrong with anybody's mind. Everybody's mind is fine except you are experiencing something different than I experienced so your mind kept responding to it, and mine didn't have that. So you had multiple... Think about we have a hundred percent of our energy on our phone when we wake up in the morning, right? Fully powered up. You fire the phone up and eight programs open up, right? And mine has one.  Lisa: Yeah. You're just focusing on what you need to. Dr Don: Then noon comes, and you're having to plug your phone back in because you're out of energy.  Lisa: That's a perfect analogy. You’re just burning the battery. My all is a hundred windows open in the back of my brain that is just processing all these things and so now, I can start to heal. So having gone through this process with you, like you said, we worked on a number of traumatic experiences, and I went through them in my mind. And then you did certain things, made me follow with my eyes and track here, and my eyes did this, and then, we pulled my attention out in the middle of the story and things. That helped me stay in that alpha state, brainwave state as I probably now understand while I'm still reliving the experience. That's sort of taking the colour out of it so that it's now sort of in a black and white folder. Now, it can still be shared, and it hasn't taken away the sadness of... Dr Don: Because it is sad that these things happen but that's not the response for an action which is that fear or anger, right? That dysregulation of the nervous system. That's what we want to stop, because that is what is going to affect health, enjoyment of life and everything else.  Lisa: Wow, this is so powerful. Yeah, and it's been very, very beneficial for me and helped me deal. For me, it also unfolded. Because after the four hour period with you, I had audiotapes and things that are meditations to do every day for the next 30 days. What were we doing in that phase of the recovery? What were you targeting in those sort of sessions?  Dr Don: So if you remember what we talked about, we have two memory systems. The explicit memory is what we worked on on that four hours. That's detail, events, and experiences. Once we get the mind processing through that, then we have to work on the same memory animals have, which is that associative repetitive memory. So you've built a series of codes on how to respond to threats, and that has come in over repetition and associations. So the audios are designed to start getting you now to build some new neural pathways, some new ways to respond because your mind won't switch a pattern instantly. It can switch a memory instantly, but a pattern is something that got built over a period of time. So it's like a computer. If I'm coding on my computer, I can't take one key to stop that code. I have to write a new code. Yeah, so what we're doing over the 30 days is writing new code. Lisa: Helping me make new routines and new habits around new neural pathways, basically.  Dr Don: You don't have that explicit memory interfering with the pathways. Because now, it's not constantly pulling you out, going back into an action call. It's basically now able to look at this information and these codes that got built and say, 'Okay, what's a better way? So do we have a better way of doing it?' Or 'Show me that code. Write that code.' If that code looks safer, then your mind will adopt that new code. Lisa: This is why, I think for me, there was an initial, there was definitely... Like the nightmares stopped, the intrusive every minute, hour triggering stopped, but the process over the time and the next... And I'm still doing a lot of the things and the meditations. It’s reinforcing new habit building. This is where... Like for people dealing with addictions, this is the path for them as well, isn't it?  Dr Don: Yeah. Because I talked about addiction as a code. I don't believe it's a disease. Your mind has found a resource to stop pains, and your subconscious mind is literal. It doesn't see things as good or bad, or right or wrong. It's literal. 'Did that stop the pain? Let's do that.' Because it's trying to protect you. So if you've now repeated it over and over, not only have you stopped the pain, but you've built an association with a substance that is seen as beneficial. Lisa: Because your brain sees it as medicine when you're taking, I don't know, cocaine or something. It sees it as essential to your life even though you, on a logical level, know that, ‘This is destroying me and it's a bad thing for me.’ Your subconscious goes, 'No, this is a good thing and I need it right now.' Dr Don: Because it's in the present, when does it want the pain to stop? Now. So it has no ability to see a future or a past. Your subconscious is in the moment. So if you take cocaine, the logical part of your brain goes, 'Oh, this is going to create problems for me. I'm going to become addicted.' Right? Your subconscious goes, ‘Well, the pain stopped. We don't see that as a bad thing.' I always use the analogy: Why did people jump out of the buildings at 911? They weren't jumping to die. They were jumping to live because when would they die? Now, if they jump, would they die? No. They stopped the death. So even jumping, which logically makes no sense, right? But to the subconscious mind, it was going to stop the pain now.  Lisa: Yeah, and even if it was two seconds in the future that they would die, your brain is going...  Dr Don: It doesn't even know what two seconds are.  Lisa: No. It has no time. Isn't it fascinating that we don't have a time memory or understanding in that part of the brain that runs 95% of the ship?  Dr Don: It's like what Albert Einstein said, ‘There's no such thing as time.’ So it's like an animal. If an animal could communicate and you say, 'What time is it?' That would make no sense to an animal. 'What do you mean? It's now.' 'What time is it now?' 'Now. Exactly.' Lisa: It's a construct that we've made to... Dr Don: Just to explain a lot of stuff, right? When something happens.  Lisa: Yeah, and this is quite freeing when you think of it. But it does make a heck of a lot of sense. So people are not being destructive when they become drug addicts or addicted to nicotine, or coffee, or chocolate. They're actually trying to stop the pain that they're experiencing in some other place and fix things now. Even though the logical brain... Because the logical brain is such a tiny... Like this is the last part of our evolution, and it's not as fully...  We can do incredible things with it at 5%. We've made the world that we live in, and we're sitting here on Zoom, and we've got incredible powers. But it's all about the imagination, being able to think into the future, into the past, and to make correlations, and to recognise patterns. That's where all our creativity and everything, or not just creativity, but our ability to analyse and put forth stuff into the world is happening. But in actual, we're still like the animals and the rest of it. We're still running at 95%, and that's where we can run into the problems with these two.  Dr Don: Because you got two systems. You got a very advanced system operating within a very primitive system, and it hasn't integrated. It's still integrating, right? So if there's a survival threat, survival will always override reason and logic, because it's designed to protect you. So there's no reason and logic that will come in if there's a survival threat. It's just going to respond the way it knows, does this Google search, 'What do we know about this threat? How do we know to protect ourselves, and we'll go instantly into survival mode.' Again, there's the reason and logic. Why would you jump out of a building, right? If you applied reason and logic, you wouldn't have jumped, right? People will say, 'Well, but they still jumped.' Yes, because reason and logic didn't even come into the process. It was all about survival.  Lisa: Yeah. When the fire is coming in it was either... Dr Don: 'Am I going to die out now or I'm going to move and not die now?'  Lisa: Yeah, and we're also prone to movement when we're in agitation and in an agitated state, aren't we? Basically, all of the blood and the muscles saying, 'Run, fight, do something. Take action.' Dr Don: That's why when people get into depression, it's the absence of those emotions.  Lisa: Yeah, and people feel exhaustion.  Dr Don: Yeah. The mind kept calling for an action using anger, for example, but you can't do the action because it's not happening, so it shuts down to protect you and stops calling for any emotion, and that's depression. So the key to get out of depression is actions. It's to get something happening. So in a lot of people who are depressed, what do I tell them to do? 'Start moving. Start exercising. Get out. Start doing things.' Right?  Lisa: So I run ultras. Dr Don: Exactly. Perfect example, right?  Lisa: Yeah, because I was. I was dealing with a lot of shit in my life at the time when I started doing ultra-marathons. To run was to quiet the pain and to run was to be able to cope and to have that meditative space in order to work through the stuff that was going on in my life. And I know even in my husband's life, when he went through a difficult time, that's when he started running. So running can be a very powerful therapeutic, because there is a movement, and you're actually burning through the cortisol and the adrenaline that's pouring around in your body. Therefore, sitting still and that sort of things was just not an option for me. I had to move. And it explains what, really. It's calling the movement. Like it was a movement because I couldn't fix the other thing.  Dr Don: That's what they'll tell you to do. To get out of depression is to move. What I say is the way to get out of depression is to get your mind to resolve what it’s been asking for. Lisa: It's going a little deeper.  Dr Don: Yeah. So it's going down and saying, 'Okay, why has it been getting you angry and now, it shut down from the anger?' Because it's been trying to get you in your situation. 'Don't let Dad die. Don't let this happen.' Right? So because you couldn't do it, it just shuts down. Makes perfect sense but when we get to the resolution that there is no action required, there's no need for the depression anymore. The depression will lift because there's no more call for an action.  Lisa: I can feel that in me, that call. Anytime that anything does still pop up, I sort of acknowledge the feeling and say, 'There is no call for action here. This is in the past. This is a memory.' So I do remind myself that when things do still pop up from time to time now, as opposed to hourly. I go, 'Hey, come back into the now. This is the now. That was the then that's calling for an action. This is why you're doing thing.' Even that understanding, that process now actually helps me in that coping sort of state as well. Dr Don: And that's why I spend so much time on the education because when you understand that the problem is not as big as we make it, there's nothing wrong with you, right? So people will say, 'Well, I got a chemical imbalance.' I go, 'Why?' 'Well, my brain has a chemical imbalance.' 'Yeah, okay. Why?' Right?  Lisa: You're always going deeper. Dr Don: They're talking about the symptom. I want to get to the issue, not treat the symptom. So if you come in and said, 'Oh, I have a low serotonin.' So they're just going to say, 'Okay. Well, we're going to put you on 5-HTP to boost your serotonin.' But I say, 'Well, why do you have low serotonin? There's got to be a reason. It's got to be a gut imbalance or there's got to be something going on right within your brain.' Right? Lisa: Yeah, and this is how the whole of the medical world should operate. Like. 'Let's go back as deep as we can.' It's very difficult because you have to be very investigative in your approach. You have to sort of work out and try to work back where is it coming from. It's much easier just to take an antidepressant in the worst case, or 5-HTP in the more gentler case. Because it is the chemicals, but why is the chemical there or lack of chemicals there?  I can tell if it was my husband, he's training for a hundred miler at the moment, and he's got a full-on job as an officer in the fire brigade, and they have lots of night shifts, and they have very traumatic scenes that they experience on a daily sort of thing. I know when his serotonins are dropping, and I know why they're dropping. For him, time alone in nature, taking some time out, doing some self-care, having some extra sleep, doing those things to try to balance things, getting back to baseline is the level that I can work at as a health optimisation coach. But this sort of program is going even a level deeper, and that's really, really powerful.  Dr Don: Then giving you the tools. So first, we fixed what caused the problem, and we give you the tools to be able to stay present. Lisa: To stay in there. Yeah, to stay on that nice balance. Dr Don: And teach your brain what it means to go back. There's where your symbol, and statement, and anchor came in. The idea behind that is to be able to get your mind to make that associative, right? 'Oh, what does that mean when I see that symbol?' Or 'I see that, that means we're safe.' Right? Then it goes back into alpha brainwave mode. Lisa: I do that one every day. In fact, I deliberately go and search out sunsets now whenever I possibly can, job allowing, and so on. I'm trying to get to see a sunset or sunrise, just reverse it because it was my anchor. It was my symbol, if you'd like. Then instantly, that calms me down, if I'm looking at a sunset going down. Dr Don: It's an automatic. It's a science. Because when your mind gets... So when I was growing up, my mother, my father, my house was my symbol of safety. So as soon as I would come home, my nervous system would completely go back into regulation because it felt safe. So what we're doing is giving you the tools to teach your mind that when it sees that, hears that, or feels that, that you're safe, and it builds the association. There's what the 30 days of associating that sound, that smell, or that touch, and that symbol with ‘I'm safe.’ Then, it just becomes automatic. You don't even have to think about it. That's why the 30 days are powerful.  Lisa: I think, actually, keep practising that ongoing. Dr Don: I use it for years. I still do it. Mine is a hawk. I see my hawk all the time. It's unbelievable. He literally buzzes my car two or three times a week. No other bird ever does this, and I see him constantly just coming right in front of my car. So a very powerful symbol for me, but it just is my constant reminder that I'm good. I'm fine. There's nothing I need to be doing. When one of those thoughts come in, you go to your symbol, your mind just goes, 'Oh, I don't need to do anything about that.' Lisa: What were we doing when I grabbed the risks with my anchor? I think you call that, is it the anchor? So when I see a sunset and I grab my rescue, that was my anchor, what were we doing there? Is it sort of an NLP technique? Dr Don: Well, it's also activating the parietal lobe in your brain, right? Because that part of your brain recognises touch, and then one part of your brain recognises sound, and another one recognises pictures, the occipital lobe, right? So we're basically giving the whole brain: the occipital lobe, temporal lobe, parietal lobe the same message. 'We're safe.' It gets it in different communications because it communicates differently, right? So when your occipital lobe sees your symbol, with your sunset, that's one part of your brain getting the message, then another lobe in your brain gets the message, and then another lobe gets a message. It's like, 'Oh.' We got it from every corner of the brain. Lisa: So we must be in a safe, good place.  Dr Don: We must be in a safe place so we wouldn't be feeling this or experiencing this. If you remember, we connected it up to these great events in your life as well.  Lisa: Yeah, yes. Yes, that's right. Then, I also, and I don't know if it's right, but I built in the breathing stuff thing too.  Dr Don: Oh, no. That's perfect too because there's lots of oxygen in there. You can't be stressed out if you've got a lot of oxygen. It's impossible.  Lisa: Yeah, yeah. It just pushes it down. Like that parasympathetic state. Being able to activate that very, very quickly with a couple of the tools and different breathing techniques that I have. I find myself doing that 10 times a day. Just bring me down, or when I'm swapping from one thing to the other, or just to recalibrate my brain almost, or even in training. So we go to the gym. In between the sets, if I'm doing a really hard workout, I'll do physiological size which is just double intakes and exhales. Long exhale is to reset my body because when you go into high-intensity interval training, you're actually putting your body into a state of stress, and that can actually make your cortisol and your blood sugar go up and everything else. So in between the sets, I often do this physiological side. Whether within a couple of seconds, it's like, 'Reset. Okay, go again. Reset. Let's go again.'  At the end of a really hard session I’ll do sort of box breathing exercises to just take my whole nervous system down. Then, I've given that stimulus of the training and then taking the other is if you do... Especially be doing training late at night, and I'm getting off-topic but... And you're doing cardiovascular training, say, at late night, high-intensity running or something that, that can actually stop sleeping because you're in that heightened state of stress. Dr Don: Yes. You're not safe. Lisa: Yeah. You're not safe and you need to bring it down and bring that parasympathetic state in. Because at the bottom of it is this autonomic nervous system branch of parasympathetic versus sympathetic state and we want to be more than that sympathetic. I'm always constantly in the sympathetic, sorry, and not the parasympathetic. You've taken me on using this technique to be able to bring me down, basically, very quickly.  Dr Don: Yeah. Because that vagus nerve is going to send a message that we have oxygen. That tells the brain that if there's lots of oxygen, we couldn't possibly be in danger. Because if you're in danger, you'd be running. If you're running, you wouldn't have much oxygen, which would then remind the brain to keep pumping because we're still in danger. That's literally where a panic attack comes in. It's that the mind is looping through something even though there's no threat.  My wife really taught me this is because every once in a while, she’d just go, ‘Huh.’ I go 'What?' 'I just wasn't breathing.' She would literally stop breathing because she was so tense. That made no sense. 'Well, why would you not be breathing?' She’d go, 'I don't know. I just stopped.' Because she was so tense, and her mind was looping. Then all of a sudden, now the oxygen, CO2 level changes, right? Then the brain gets a message that we're running low on oxygen so then the vagus nerve send in a message like, 'Breathe!' But again, that's all interpreted by the brain as threats.  Lisa: Yeah, and if you find yourself doing a lot of sighing or a lot of that type of thing and you've actually stopped breathing, then you need to retrain those breathing systems and ideally, nasal breathing. Because again, there's a lot of good reasons why the nose or going through the nasal passage instead of breathing with the mouth it's very, very beneficial as well. It's an instant thing and when we constantly... Like we're focused on our emails, and we are like 'Oh, the phone call is coming in,' and we just forget to breathe or we overbreathe and we go [imitates hyperventilating]. Dr Don: Hyperventilate, yeah.  Lisa: That just sends body, 'Panic, panic, panic, we're in panic mode,' and off you go into that whole cascade of panic situations. Dr Don, we've gone all over the place today. It's been a brilliant... I love talking to you. It's just so fascinating. It's reminding me again of some of the things that I've got to keep doing that and gives people listening some tools.  But where can people actually come to see you and actually go through the program that I've been through? I highly recommend you do this. If you're dealing with some serious, especially dealing with serious addiction, or trauma, or anything that's really stuffing up your life, you need to go through this program with Dr Don. There are a couple of different options for people. So where can they find you and how best to reach out to you? Dr Don: You can come to our site which is... We have a website but we also have an easier way to get there which is Gettipp. The program is called Tipps so gettipp.com. And if you come to gettipp.com, then you'll be able to see all the information. You can watch some of the testimonials of people who have been on the site that have gone through the program. Lisa: Including me. Dr Don: Including you. Yep, awesome, and that's what we're looking for. Because you may hear one story, and that doesn't resonate with you but then you hear somebody else. These are just people who have experienced what you're experiencing, and everybody has different things in their lifetime. So when you hear somebody else and you go, 'Oh, that's me.' That's why I laugh at this because when I first met my wife, she swore me to secrecy. I could never tell anybody about her childhood and now, everybody knows about her childhood.  Lisa: That's brilliant because it takes the power out of the whole damn thing, and it's helping people. Dr Don: That's what I said. I always said to her, 'I really believe your story is going to help people.' She was 'No, no. I'll never be able to stand up and talk about it.' Now, she can completely talk about it. Lisa: She’s completely healed. Dr Don: Because her system doesn't get activated. Before, if I had said to her, 'Oh, tell this person about what happened to you as a child,' she'd be sobbing. She couldn't even get it out of her mouth because her mind would be looping through. In order to start talking about it, she'd have to go into memory. When she goes into memory, her nervous system would get activated, and she'd go into a fight stage. Who could stop that? Lisa: You can tell me, just the conversation we've had today, and I've been talking about Dad, and all that traumatic stuff that I went through, not once did I bawl my eyes out today, which I usually would have. Not to say that I'll never cry over Dad again because I probably will, but it will be not being instantly triggered in inappropriate situations. It will be when I want to think about my dad in my time, in my way, and it will be mixed of love and gratitude in the memory rather than the trauma. And that's gold. So Dr Don, thank you. So gettipps.com.  Dr Don: You have to see this. I just lost it. I have a ball. Five balls on my desk, I just throw them.  Lisa: You need Siri. You need Siri. 'Hey Siri, turn the rocks tape on.' Dr Don: It's just motion activated because I haven't been moving. So even for performance. Because again, we'll be always built on performance more than just trauma. Because I say again, nothing's wrong with you. So the idea is when we get these traumatic events and experiences out of the loop, then your performance can go up. So that's really the key. Lisa: So high-performing executives, athletes who are wanting to perform at the top of their game and are being drained by whatever, this is a program for them. So the actual name of your institute is The Inspired Performance Institute rather than just The Trauma Institute or something. Dr Don: So yeah, because what's interfering with you reaching that next level of performance? As you know, as a world-class athlete, the edge between winning and second place is small, but if you get that little edge... That's really what this is all about is to give you that edge so that you can perform at your highest level.  Lisa: Yeah, this is fantastic for athletes. Absolutely. And executives as well who are high-level, high-functioning people who have to be on the ball all the time. This can be really powerful so it's not just draining energy. I know that I've been running on a battery of less than 30% for the last year, for sure. Now, I can start to rebuild my health and it's going to take a little bit of time probably in my... All of that sort of aspects. But now, I'm on the right track, and getting my energy back, and feeling a lot better because this looping isn't happening, and I'm not in that constant state of fight or flight.  Dr Don, much, much gratitude to you for your work, what you've done, and how you've developed this program, for taking me through it. I'm very, very, very grateful. and highly recommend that anyone who was dealing with stuff like this or wants high performance, go and check gettipp.com or theinspiredperformanceinstitute.com is also the full website. Thank you, Dr Don and I hope you'll be home shortly. Dr Don: I absolutely love it. Loved talking to you so anytime you want me back, I'll be back.  Lisa: Absolutely. Awesome. Thanks, Dr Don.  Dr Don: Thanks. That's it this week for Pushing the Limits. Be sure to rate, review, and share with your friends, and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com. The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.  

Lisa interviews one of her athletes from our Running Hot Coaching Tribe, Matt Scrafton. Matt joined Running Hot with the goal to run a 100km trail race at Taupo in New Zealand.  Previously he had successfully run a couple of 50km events and really wanted to push himself but as a Dad, husband and having a full on career he wanted to do this challenge without breaking himself.   Matt shares his triumphs and struggles on his road to 100km glory in this no holds barred honest and raw account of what it takes to run 100km when you have a full on life and you don't have the luxury of being a full time athlete or having all the talent of a Scott Jurek or Dean Karnazes.   Many will relate and find inspiration in this story.    Matt describes himself as “An incurable dreamer. An unapologetic introvert. A Husband and father. Just a guy who loves life and running long distances.   Since moving to New Zealand 14 years ago, Matt has swapped the rugby boots for endurance sport. He’s completed Coast to Coast, cycling round Taupo and and a few ultra races.”   You can follow Matt on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/mattscrafton/   We would like to thank our sponsors Running Hot - By Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff If you want to run faster, longer and be stronger without burnout and injuries then check out and TRY our Running Club for FREE on a 7 day FREE TRIAL Complete holistic running programmes for distances from 5km to ultramarathon and for beginners to advanced runners.   All include Run training sessions, mobility workouts daily, strength workouts specific for runners, nutrition guidance and mindset help Plus injury prevention series, foundational plans, running drill series and a huge library of videos, articles, podcasts, clean eating recipes and more.   www.runninghotcoaching.com/info and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel at Lisa's Youtube channel  www.yotube.com/user/lisatamat and come visit us on our facebook group   www.facebook.com/groups/lisatamati Epigenetics Testing Program by Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff. Wouldn’t it be great if your body came with a user manual? Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise? These are just some of the questions you’ll uncover the answers to in the Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There’s a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the “future of personalised health”, as it unlocks the user manual you’ll wish you’d been born with! No more guess work. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research. The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyse body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home Find out more about our  Epigenetics Program and how it can change your life and help you reach optimal health, happiness and potential at: https://runninghotcoaching.com/epigenetics You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com    Transcript of interview: Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati brought to you by LisaTamati.com. Speaker 2: (00:14) Well, hi everybody. Lisa Tamati here at pushing the limits. Fantastic to have you back again. I really appreciate your naughty checking in on the show every week. Today. We've got a little something special for you. I've got actually one of our athletes it running hot coaching has agreed to come on and share his story. So it's a little bit of a debrief, a little bit of a coaching call. Hopefully you guys will pick up some gems of wisdom. We're gonna, she's gonna. She has insights and the journey that he went all to get to a hundred K, which was his ultimate race recently. So welcome to the show Matt Scrafton how are you? Morning, I'm good. How are you? Very, very good. So I met his sitting in Wellington. You got to sunny day down there. Speaker 3: (00:56) Yeah, it's beautiful and it's, there's no wind for once. So yeah, really nice. Speaker 2: (01:01) That's unusual. So I met let's step back at the beginning. So tell us a little bit about yourself, where you come from and then we'll get into the running side of it. Speaker 3: (01:13) Alrighty, Um so I'm British. And I've be, I moved to New Zealand in 2005 where I met my now wife. So I grew up in, in the UK and political Brighton by the sea. And we live in the mighty Waikato in Cambridge and we've been all over the place. You know, Alton, Wellington, Melbourne, but Cambridge is home and some my wife and I have a baby girl, Darcy's four, and we have a crazy eight months old poodle, Daisy. So life is pretty full. But yeah, no, I've been, I'm, I found running probably about six or seven years ago. I've been doing endurance sports or Madi sports, probably longer. But as time went on, it got harder to balance all three disciplines. And then I decided that I really wanted to do something that had an endurance element to it and trail running or running was the easiest, you know, put on your shoes, get out the door and go. Speaker 3: (02:07) So yeah, so I got into sort of trail running proper about six or seven years ago and set myself the goal as I kind of do with, with life of, of running a 50. And and we were living in Melbourne at the time and the North face 50 was a, an annual event in may of each year around the blue mountains. It's just outside of Sydney. Gorgeous rice. Yeah. And so I spent probably about a year building up for that with a few feeder events. But the big goal of running the 50 yeah. And did that eight hours, 39. And that was really tough. It was quite a hard race. But yeah, I was surprised that what I now understand to be that mental state that you there are so important to an athlete. That went, that race went really well mentally for me. Speaker 3: (03:02) So I thought, yep, this is definitely not a one off. So a couple of months later, Darcy arrived and, and life changed. So took a while. Yeah. Yeah. It took a while to find that, that rhythm. We moved back to New Zealand and I then locked in the terror wearer this year, actually, 2019 and so spent it about, you know, another year building up for that. But I was kind of, yeah, so doing the, I'm doing the 50, I did have aspirations to run further, but my wife said, no, no, get another 50 under your belt before you, before you go further. You know, that it definitely wasn't a one off. So yeah, spent about a year building up for the 50 and did that in I think it's February of this year. So came home in about seven hours and yeah, it was just a really hot day. Speaker 3: (03:55) And I thought there's no way I'm running and as our ultra in the middle of summer, it's just crazy times. Which probably discounts the marathon disabler but there we go. But the it was, it was pretty cool race fantastic atmosphere and some really great support crew and aid station folk that rock up and make it a really memorable day. And then I woke up, I got home, woke up the next day and I had this, this kind of overwhelming feeling that it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a sense of mission accomplished. I had done that, but there was more. And I didn't quite know what it looked like. So before everyone else got up, I was looking online for big events or things to do, you know, huge running goals to chase and telco was on in October, so it was always, Speaker 2: (04:45) Let's back up a little bit. So you ran 50 Ks, paid him some seven hours or something and the tank wasn't in thi the next day. Like most people get to the finish line on any race and go, never again. Well that's it. Unless a very experienced one or something, they know that that's, that's going to be temporary. But you in the very next day started looking online. Usually it takes at least five days. Speaker 3: (05:11) Yeah, no, I think I'm really like goal-orientated I I think I, you know, you, we do what we do during the hours of nine to five to make ends meet and pay the bills, et cetera. But running is I've come to learn that it's a, my thing, it gives me that time and space. And it's, you have a, there's a fantastic mental feeling that goes with running. And if you marry that for me with huge, big, hairy audacious goals it gives me that balance. And if I don't have that big hairy audacious goal on the horizon or near, then I start, I start to struggle. Yeah. And my life is a bit out of balance. So I think it was physically I was, I was a bit poked, you know, my legs hurt and you know, I had a few tight muscle groups. Speaker 3: (06:09) But there was definitely a sense of there's more in the tank. And for me it was a case of you've got this base, you've legs, you've come through, okay, yeah, they're gonna hurt, but whose legs wouldn't after running 50 a day and let's use that base as a launching pad for the next big hairy audacious goal. And the counsel or guidance from my, from my wife was find a 70 or 80 K wise woman. This lady, she is, yeah, very, very wise. She's my CEO, my CFO and everything else. But to ignore that, no, she's a lovely lady. See no, I, I did ignore it and as I tend to do with some guidance and I thought, no, let's go a hundred now. Let's lock it in because there was nothing else on the horizon that was closer and telcos on our doorstep and yeah, it was on. Yeah. Speaker 2: (07:05) Well, so Topo 100 K for people who, let's see, from overseas. So taco is universal part of the country in the North Island of New Zealand, and I have a hundred K of the year, which is, can be a muddy, muddy, and hilly fee. So you signed up for that already straight after, straight out of the gate after Tyler WEDA. And what happened then? Speaker 3: (07:28) Literally I text my brother in law and said, what are you doing on the 12th of October? I have a deal for you. And I, then you came back and said, yep, nothing. What have you got in mind? I said, Oh, would you like to be my support crew for 'em a hundred K? It's like, are you sure? It's crazy idea, but let's do it. When Shelly and Darcy woke up, I kinda very casually dropped in conversation and yeah, it, you know, I gave myself a good few weeks to recover. Possibly from what I've learned from Neil subsequent after the a hundred possibly digging it myself long enough to recover which then is how I, I met you Lisa. So yeah, so I started training and, and literally followed the same sort of process and build up that I'd been doing for the 50, but obviously slightly longer distances for the a hundred. And I think it was around may or June of this year that I started to realize that what had got me through the 50 wasn't necessarily gonna get me through the a hundred. And that's when I, yeah, that's when the world changed. Speaker 2: (08:35) And that's when you found us. Speaker 3: (08:37) Yeah. So I was looking for not only coaching but a community that I could connect with. Cause I think when we run, we do a lot of this stuff in isolation. And I think I was looking for more than just a frequent, frequent contact the coach. I wanted to understand how everyone else was doing the trials and tribulations irrespective of distance and just share that knowledge. And yeah, I did my research and I think you and I had a phone call and yeah, gave it a go and yeah. Jumped on board Speaker 2: (09:11) And yeah, so we were, we were start the heavy onboard and we've now got this 100 K goal. And you said, I think it's what's important is a lot of people stand out on their own and they, they, they do fine for a little while. And then you start to either run into injuries or you go weeks bigger or you start to have troubles in some way, shape or form. I begin a bit burned out, maybe lose your motivation. And that is some people often come to us and say, Oh, I need a bit of structure. And it's an, it's not like probably 90% of people who join us have hit the wall in some way or hit a big, big, big scary goal that they know they need to take a little bit more seriously. So it's one or the other. Or they're just starting out that that's another thing and they want some really good guidance and structure. So what was the main difference like when you came to running hot coaching and jumped into our planes, what was the major difference that you found campaign to say and screeching off the internet? Speaker 3: (10:17) Yeah. So I think the catalyst for looking beyond our training in isolation on my own was I wanted a more rounded approach to the a hundred. I realized that I wasn't spending enough time on core strength for example. And I also knew that my own knowledge and experience wasn't enough and that there were people out there who had years of experience and I'd be daft not to tap into that. So recognizing that I had my own limitations. So from a knowledge perspective and actually I, the biggest thing for me is that I was starting to get a sense that I wasn't approaching my long runs fresh. Yup. So I was going into the weekend quite fatigued and I wanted a more, I wanted to know if there was a way to balance training for a hundred so that you didn't feel you know, shot all the time and fatigued. Speaker 3: (11:11) So that was the catalyst. And and then the conversation with yourself and then actually working with Neil, it's on pick the a hundred K plan. I was like, wow, the longest run in the week, mid week is actually shorter than my current longest midweek run. So automatically the, I'm going to start feeling a little bit fresher. Yeah. And then I started getting actually the first core strength session I did, I probably couldn't walk proper for about a day or two. I remember doing the lunges and I was like, Oh wow, I'm going to, yeah, this is, there's a reason why I'm doing this. Speaker 2: (11:46) Oh, that's fine. So, and like [inaudible] that is a key thing. Like you don't know what, you don't sometimes how weak you've gotten to, like when you run, it's a catabolic exercise. So it starts at eight, you eat away at your muscles. And so if you're not counteracting that with strength training, with a, also with your mobility and for, for different reasons then over time you're going to get weaker and more flacid than the, in the, in the core for example, you'll have strong leaks, but that's what, you know, run isn't going to have strong links obviously, but the rest of you will, will suffer from. And that's when things can come unstuck as well, especially if you're not 20 anymore, you know, you need to start thinking about muscle max loss, which is, which we sort of lose around 200 grams a year after the age of 40 on average. So let's say they say so we want to be counteracting that as well as the fact that you are in a catabolic sport that is actually eating away at you and you want to be able to maintain. So, okay. You started into the strength program is think, well this is, this is different. Yeah. And how, how, how was it for you when the mileage, like a lot of people think, okay, I've gone from 50 to a hundred, I have to double the mileage. Doesn't work, does it? Speaker 3: (13:00) Absolutely not. No. So the a hundred, the leap from 50 to a hundred was for me, surprisingly manageable. I'm working in within the a hundred K plan that you guys gave me. So midweek run automatically shorter. So there's some gains there. And actually the, the longest run was actually comparable to my 50 K. Yeah. And I think we added maybe another hour onto it just because I was questioning, well, if I'm going to take 15 or 14 hours, then you know, do I need to run a little bit longer than what I've been doing? 50. And then it was like, you know, if you want to run a little bit longer, that's okay. But there isn't a one size fits all. You've got to just make it work for you. Speaker 2: (13:42) Yeah. Yup. And this is a, the thing that's like, I've said to people sometimes when they think, how the hell am I going to double that? And, and I'm not actually doubling the distance and I say to them like, when I'm running or set of 200 K race or two 50K race, I don't double it again, because you can't double it. You can't keep doubling that. You're training distance to suit your and with, we've come from, you know, most people have come from maybe a marathon,udistance training. We are, you know, from half marathon, two marathon, you steeping up your mileage a lot more and your long run does get a lot bigger and you're doing sort of three quarters, you know, 32, 33 K run as your longer time before Marisol. So people extrapolate that and think that that's what happens when you're doing a 200. Okay. And it isn't, you can't, you cannot physically recover from training intents on this. You kept choking or somewhat [inaudible]. Speaker 2: (14:39) But generally you can't recover. And that's where the wheels start to come off. People if they start to try to do this high mileage, so we're not high mileage coaches. And we get a lot of people coming to us who've come from high mileage coaches and that approach would work at the beginning and it will work when you're younger. When you've got kids in careers and you're getting a little bit older, they had approached that to unravel. If you're a lady, you can often start getting hormone problems as well. And so both sixes adrenal exhaustion is on the horizon too. So those are things that we always very aware of and you're trying to keep you from tipping over there. It's a very fine line to walk sometimes. Okay. So walk us through the next part of the process. Speaker 3: (15:23) So I think we're just on that around the longest run. So I training was going really well. You know, mobilization work, strength work, and then I got through what I turned my apex weekend, the longest run weekend. Yep. And I run it as per the schedule where I may be through one half an hour for mental confidence and yeah, it's about 43 K I think in total. Five and a half hours in the Hills. Yeah. And then that the following week is when it all came crashing down, fell off. The wheels did come off big time. Yeah. Yeah. I, I'm Speaker 2: (16:03) You run into an injury problem. Speaker 3: (16:05) I did. I had basically an absolute awful pain sensation in my left ankle tendonitis. They turned out and that, yeah, that happened literally on the Wednesday after my long run. I could feel it. You know, in the sort of the Tuesday morning and then I went for another run on the Wednesday, which I shouldn't have done. And it was hurting like never, like no other pain I'd had before. So I knew something wasn't quite right. And managed to get to see my awesome physio in Cambridge and and she said, yeah, you've got some, some tendonitis. And we basically worked up a plan where I would, and I, I think at that point, if I don't take it back a step, there was a day, I think it was a Thursday where I was sitting in my office in Cambridge and I was literally in tears because I thought, how am I, how am I going to get to the start line, let alone the finish line and put all this effort in. And you know, I spoke about the balance or the need to have balance in professional life and personal life. Suddenly I could see the Seesaw completely, you know, mounted as broken for overseas friends. And I I was just learning bits because I thought, I can't run. How the, what am I going to do? I can't walk this thing. So I think I flipped you guys a note and said, how do I typo? Speaker 2: (17:35) You were in immediately black spice and you, you reached out and I could tell from the, you know, you asking about specifically about the, the injury I think, which was part of the same, but the what, what, where I jumped in was more the, the meaningful side of it because you were, you were taking the deep dive. So when you've put your heart and soul into something massive and then it starts to unravel and then you're thinking you're fearing not being, because it's not along to the race now that you're not going to get there. And every decision that you're missing in this is very, you know, normal things that though it still starts crashing down around your ears. So how did they, so I, I jumped on a call with you and we started to work through some of the, the mental stuff. How did that help you? Speaker 3: (18:18) Yeah, it was, it was really interesting cause I, I went straight to the physical side. So how do I taper? How do I still do these sessions? You know, I've got an internal session tomorrow. How do I run that with an ankle that I can't run them? And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. Take a step back here. This is you, you, I think you actually said you've got this your legs have got all the miles they need to do to do the a hundred is now about the upstairs. How do you mentally stay, stay in the fight to get yourself to the start line and through the race. And I was, I was actually quite taken aback about that because I thought, well, I'm missing all these sessions or I'm going to be missing all these sessions. Speaker 3: (18:59) And I'm generally fairly confident person, but I guess susceptible to blows from life as, as anyone is. Yeah. And I couldn't, I wasn't listening to you, I think at first. And then you followed up in an email and it, I actually, it took me three or four attempts to reread what you'd written. And then we communicated over the next 48 hours. And you said over the weekend, I want you to read a book if you can. And the book is the biology of belief. Yeah. Bruce Lipton. Yeah. And it was a little too it took me way beyond my, my scoring. Yeah. School level science around biology, but it was the last section that really knitted it all together, which is about how your perception and beliefs influence your physiology or can influence your physiology. And I think that's when the penny dropped for me that this is all about the mind going into these next three and a half weeks. Speaker 2: (20:06) Yup. And that's the key point because the situations happen, the injuries happen. Speaker 3: (20:12) Yup. Speaker 2: (20:13) What we've got, we can, we can, the, the, the, the thing that you're going to do wrong is to keep training over that injury and to try and fight through it when you've got a rise at the other rains. So the panic is that I'm not going to be fit enough when the reality is if you, if you get through 70, 80% of your total training malls, you're going to be fine. And I, and as a coach, you don't, you, you trying to get your people, I'm a bit more than that, but if something happens, you, you will get there. The best race I've ever had in my life, one of the most amazing races put that way, let have, was that one that I did in the Himalaya's, which I shared with you, that 222 K rice. So of the two highest mountain passes and in the world mudroom bubble passes and I ripped the ligaments off my league team weeks out from the rice. Speaker 2: (21:01) I couldn't run for seven weeks and I had a hypoxic brain concussion from doing altitude training. So I didn't have enough oxygen in my body. So of course all these evictions and so on. Some of the listeners would have heard this story, but eh, when I, and I was either I'm going to pull out or I'm going to carry on. And I decided I'm carrying on because I'm put in so much. If it as you know, the effort that goes into training for something like this, we need alone the sponsorship, the foam, the documentary that, you know, the whole works just made that I couldn't just pull out. And so I had to try and face it with only a couple of weeks training at the end of that seven week. So not being able to train on my foot. So I did cross train, I didn't want to cook with my body and I spent the rest of that time on my mindset. Speaker 2: (21:44) And when I got to the stat line, my body was actually in better shape than if I'd smashed it right till the end because I'd actually given my, my body hadn't had a recipe years putting it, you know, mildly. And so this actually was the best thing that could've happened and it was fit. And I did the 222K race mind do like a really hard, tough, long at altitude, extremely dangerous race and, and killed it, you know, was, was briefly had, I've got documentary if anyone was walked,uI'm slightly simplifying it, but the point was you didn't need to do every one of those training sessions that you think you need to do. And when you don't have the choice, it's either you change your mindset to the whole thing and you stay on board with it and you better, or you give up and you pull out or you keep trying and you and yourself even more, and then you might be out for six months, you know? Speaker 3: (22:37) Yeah. And I think the, the biggest thing as human beings, we often always easy to do, is to, is to not learn from the mistakes as we go through life. You know, to the definition of madness is to repeat the same action and keep expecting the same or different outcome. Okay. And, yeah. So, so I think you know, when I spoke to you in that scenario that you described around that, that race, you said to me, the one thing you did do was you asked your support crew and those around you on that day or leading up to the event and through it to be 100% positive that you didn't want any negativity around you. So when I was going through this over that weekend I said to my wife, you know, do I pull out? She said, well, you can't because you, there's no point. Speaker 3: (23:20) You missed the withdrawal date. Yup. No, you might as well just take each day as it comes, see where you are. We're going to go down, everyone's booked in to come down and stay, et cetera. So that's just do it and just see what happens. My wife is a Kiwi. She's her world view is inherently positive. I'm, I'm British and naturally cynical about most things in life. So glass half full glass half, we kind of marry each other out. But yeah, so, so I I got through that weekend and I jumped in the pool and on the bike and I was having physio, physio sessions and I wasn't running and it was a really weird sensation. Weight in the sense I felt like I was getting behind. So that's when I, little things like, you know, I did that accountability mirror exercise where I took post-its and wrote down in a motivational statements or words on a mirror and I took a wee picture and I know it's a silly thing I did just to hold myself accountable going through the next three and a half weeks to do towel pose. Speaker 2: (24:28) And that is not silly. That is really, really good. Anything, any positivity that you can surround yourself with is, is the mental game, is everything in ultra? Speaker 3: (24:37) Oh, it is totally. And this is the biggest, you know, you do these events in life and I've, the one thing I've learnt this time round is that it is all mental. It is a hundred. I mean you're also, you're palsy, you know, needs to be conditioned. [inaudible] Speaker 2: (24:52) Healthy and you need my foot. But the rest is in your head. And Oh man, I'll say next weights, you know, finish races that they shouldn't have been running cause they went far enough to do it, but mentally they were strong enough to get through it. We don't recommend doing that because you're going to scroll your body in the long run, but it is about this up here. How much, how much pain can you suffer, how much can you overcome, how much, what's your why and how big is that? Why and how strong is that? Why you really, really want this? And then you find ways around obstacles. And, and I think having seen what I've seen in other athletes, I've seen people with incredibly bad injuries survive races. I've seen you know, people who are blind run across the Sahara. And I've seen this before. People with, with one leg run across your belly. And a whole bunch of people who carry kids who had cerebral palsy is to give them a cross them a mouth on the Saturdays, you know incredible stories. People who really believed in saving the rhinoceroses and addresses the rhinoceros the entire time across the Sahara. You know, absolutely crazy things that physically shouldn't be now able to do. But they did. Speaker 3: (26:05) But because of their why and their purpose, they did. Yeah, absolutely. Speaker 2: (26:08) In a very, very strong why. And there has to be the, the ultimate. OK. So you, you started to tune your mindset around, so this positivity and surrounding yourself with positive people and your wife's telling you, you could, you know, you got this, we started, we just starting and that is the thing. Get to the stat line, start, see what happens. Speaker 3: (26:24) Yeah. And I think the biggest thing they have along the way, I was training with a guy it lives in Oakland and we've done a few training runs together and I sent him a text set, ah, you know, with start together, but we'll be finishing separately. I don't know if I'm going to finish in my current state. And he phoned me and he, he's a really happy go lucky guy, positive outlook. He said, no, no, we will walk this out together if we have to. And I thought, wow, okay. That's, that's pretty cool. So yeah. Speaker 2: (26:58) Oh yeah. This guy gives us his name. Give them a shout out. Speaker 3: (27:01) Johnny. Johnny, Denise. Yeah. Nice. Good guy. So yeah, so Johnny and I were, we ended up training separately of those last couple of weeks. And I was trying not to look at Strava and you know, get envy about long runs that he was putting in. And I was in the poll in my Emma Speedos. It wasn't good. But anyway yeah, no, so sorry, go on. Yeah, it worked. It worked. Yeah. So we got through that through those last few weeks. I'm in the pool and on the bike and having some fun on the mountain bike. And actually it was really nice just to get out in the Hills and just turn around. And then I remembered actually coming down one single track in, in Cambridge that I was actually doing a race the following weekend, so I should probably take it easy and not go too fast in case it came off. But yeah, no. So I, I started just to test the run walk literally the Monday before the race on the Saturday and that was the first time I'd got back on my feet and it was a really tentative run walk. And then I did another one the next day. And then the final one I think was on the Wednesday and no reactions from the ankle. So I thought, well, yeah, big, big mental hurdle cleared. You know, we're locked in to do this and we're going to do it. And yeah. Speaker 2: (28:18) And that's pretty like, it's pretty ballsy to be fair. You know, like it is hard when you're facing a hundred K and you haven't been able to try and fill the last few weeks and you're in the last phone a week, people before the race and you're like, can I even walk, run, walk, run in a couple of days you can change it. We'll be trying this out. And you're standing on the start line and said, and the morning it a hundred K, you know, it takes a lot of mental strength. So well done. Thank you Chuck it all in. Speaker 3: (28:44) No, definitely not. And I think at that point even I think my physio had said to me you are doing this, you can do this. And that you will break, you will not break anything in your ankle if you do this. And it hurts. It's just, it's not just ligaments, tendons, just tendons and they will recover. And I think that hearing that actually, I was like, okay, so if my body hurts, it's going to have to live with it and my mind is going to tell it. And that was the process I was going through. I think I spoke to you in the buildup and you said to me that this could be the body's way of trying to tell your mind that this isn't a great thing to do. Let's just sit back and watch some Netflix on the Saturday. Speaker 2: (29:20) Yes. Let's dive into that for a sec. The, in my experience in nearly every big race that I've done and the week before or two weeks before, something goes wrong on my body. Like I get sick, I'll get a cold, I get the flu, I get something, some, some single play out. And I, and I S I think it's the subconscious we aiming already actually body because it knows that you've got this big race coming up and it's trying to stop you. We'll throw everything at you. Just stop you. Speaker 3: (29:50) Yep. And that book I mentioned earlier yeah, a lot of it was about using your conscious mind, so not drifting off into unconscious thinking, focusing on the now using your conscious mind. And there's a lot more power in, in, in potential, in the using your conscious mind rather than the subconscious mind. So if you play it forward, then my subconscious was trying to tell me not to do the race because it's going to be tough. It's going to hurt. But my conscious mind was going, no, you've got this, you can do this. It's going to hurt, but it's gonna be fine. Yeah, yeah. We are doing this. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So we got through that last week and you're headed off to Topo and it was just a really interesting segue the night before Johnny and I, we've got a big house in our families came down and my, my mother and father who I love them to bits and my father in law was chatting away with Johnny who was really laid back and Johnny was having a, just the odd beer, one beer before the race. Speaker 3: (30:55) And I'm quite serious about my prep. I was not talking to anyone. I was going through my mental checklist and all that stuff. And my father in law said to me, man, why aren't you more like Johnny lay back and relax? I was just like, nah, we're all different. You know, everyone's got a little different around different ways of preparing. So yeah. So there's nothing wrong. Speaker 2: (31:17) And by the way, cause I mean, I talked to me the night before you know, I'm in the zone, you're in the zone and, but there are people who are just totally chilled out and whatever happens happens when that, the different personality types, unless I wasn't really be confused because everyone has their own way of preparing for such a battle because it is going into Epic bed already. Speaker 3: (31:37) Yeah. I think physically I'd appreciated the difference prior to this race around ultras and running and athletes, you know, we all come from different shapes and walks of life, but mentally as well, I was seeing some really interesting sides of people and athletes. So yeah. So yeah, John and I were up the next day about I think four o'clock got to the start line half five. It was absolutely freezing and telco. And I actually, I've never done this before, but I fell asleep again in the car on the way to the style line is about a 40 minute journey. But for me it was a sign of just how relaxed I was and whatever was going to want to fold was going to one fold, but it was going to do so in a way that was going to have a positive outcome. I was, I was quite relaxed about it. Which was really bizarre. So Speaker 2: (32:27) Thanks. Turn around to the T is three weeks before and the Speaker 3: (32:31) Oh, chalk and cheese. Yeah. Chalk and cheese. Yeah. I yeah, so there's, so we got going and Johnny had forgotten his headlight as usual, so I let us out and I said to John, look, we're going to run, run what I call fifteens, which is you run 10 minutes and maybe walk for five minutes. And I think I said to Johnny that it's going to be the pattern for me throughout the race. And he was like, yep, sweet. I'll run with you would walk this together. You just set the pace you, you'd be mr timekeeper. And we go so we we started off and are we running really comfortably? I think we ran the first 20 miles you know, I don't know, roundabout, just under four hours or something. Yeah. and at one point we were, Johnny was leading in and we were running up the Hill, then we were running down a Hill and he said, Oh, I probably ran that a bit hard. Speaker 3: (33:21) How's that? Yep. So but we were trying not to get too excited and carried away with ourselves. So to got to that first checkpoint, all good. And then I think it, it started to hit home around the, you know, you get into the race and we were running this sort of 15 thing where you run 10 and walk five. And I had this little checklist in my head where I'd come up with four things to think about on a rotation deliberately so that I could focus on the now using my conscious mind. Does that make sense? Yup. Yup. Yeah. So I, I'd ran through this little cycle where I'd go you know, what's my effort? Am I running comfortably? Am I running too fast or too slow check. My nutrition you know, have I eaten in the last half an hour? Have I taken some water in fuel? Speaker 2: (34:11) It's called association. I call that association where you're associating, you're actually checking in with your body. Yeah. And then another strategy, which is just association, when you're in pain that you're actually go off and do your heavy place and might be visualizing, may swimming with whales or something like that, that I'm in somewhere else or I'm renovating my house or I'm doing something like that and I'm taking my mind somewhere else. So these two strategies are really, really good to open to your practice. Speaker 3: (34:37) So now I know that I was doing the disassociation thing around the ADK Mark, but the yeah, so I was, and the other thing I deliberately, I was checking, you know, am I in touch with my environment? Can I feel with my feet and in whatever, my body, the physical environment, just to make sure that I was using my conscious mind. And I would go through this little checklist again, every 20 minutes or so. And so we got through the first 20 miles, it felt quite, quite quickly. And we hit the farm lands, which is a really monotonous physical environment, more walking or hiking than it is running. And it's not fun. It's not inspiring. But we got through that, hit the first major aid station, I think it was around the 50 K Mark. And I said to Johnny I'm now running into territory unknown territory from a distance perspective, even though I've technically run longer time on feet, this is going to be your ground. Yeah. so they'll talk about the different approaches. Johnny and I Johnny got to that big ice station and he had a white bike fritter. And I was like, no, I cannot stand that stuff. Speaker 3: (35:53) So yeah, so I, as, as we left the ice station, my wife said, how you feeling? And I said, honey, I'm really suffering. She said, well, you're halfway. This is all upstairs now. I see the neck see you at 75 K or whatever it was. I was like, Holy moly. So here we go. I'm sorry. It literally felt like I was stepping off an area called comfort and known into the unknown and uncomfortable, and this is going to hurt. It's gonna hurt. And this is where growth happens. Yeah. Yeah. So and we were running together, but we were always about, I don't know, three or four meters apart just because that's how you find yourself. And I think I got to about 65 K in Kinlock or something like that. And I said, I was crying behind my glasses, my sunglasses, because I was going through this dark patch where I was like, if I stop, I'm going to stop and I'm going to let all these people down and I will have this sense of underachievement pressure, yeah. Speaker 3: (36:59) For hanging around my neck. And as we approached, or one of the mini stations, I said to Johnny, Oh, you run on now, I'm I'm close to DNS thing. I'm gonna work through this. He said, no, no, no. We are, we're going to walk. We start if we have to together. Wow. He's doing. Yeah, he is. He's a really good dude. So so then our run at that point became a shuffle and you know, you're tired, you're physically tired. You can't run at that same pace. So we're still running, but it was just a, a shuffle and yeah, Johnny dragged us into the into the Kinlock aid station where we picked up our pacer. And my wife's friend who's training for coast Hannah, so she she signed up to be a pacer and yeah, my my wife took a video. Speaker 3: (37:48) She she asked me a question and she was videoing the response at the, at the 74 K line and a station, sorry. And she said, how do you feel? And I said explicative tired. And she said, Oh do you want to do a another hundred or on 160 after this? And there were a few more expletives that followed. And she she's kept the video and I've, it's a nice reminder, but so then we, yeah, we Johnny had another white bite fritter and I was just like, my God, he's going to suffer in a minute. And yeah, so we hit the Hill behind Kinloch and off we went. And that's, I think when the disassociation came in for me, cause my, my body was really hurt and my feet were really broken, like listers, toenails, just feet were sliding all over the place in my shoes. And it got through Kinlock with a reduced shuffle. And then I think we popped out around the 90 K Mark and into the, off the Hill. And I think that's when I th I finally felt that I was going to do this or sort of finish it. Yeah. Speaker 2: (38:58) That's a good feeling when you think, yeah, I've got this now. Like, Speaker 3: (39:01) Yeah. I mean I think we are our pacer was really good. She, you know, was checking in and if you're pacing someone that you've, you, you know, haven't done that sort of distance with, it's you've got to find your rhythm. And when we got to that last day station, I think, you know, eight K to go or whatever it was that's when we all thought, yeah, this is this, we're on the home stretch here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And across the finish line and yeah, happy days Speaker 2: (39:30) Come back to like be like you've been in the, in the hurt locker for a good city. K so 25 Ks or something, which is an awful long time by the way. And I always say to people, the rice doesn't really step from Sydney. [inaudible] Usually that's when you know, when you pace yourself, right, with you hydrated, right. Whether your nutrition was right up until that point. And there's always going to be a time in those big long races and that can laugh for hours when you're absolutely miserable and you just want to die every second and give out. And if you can get through that, sometimes what happens is very often as you come into another space where suddenly it's all good again, you don't know how or why, but you, Bonnie sort of comes back. Did you experience that? Speaker 3: (40:09) Yeah, I think so. I took the, I spoke about in that 60 K Mark, you know, where I was close to DNF thing and you know, when Johnny said to me no, we're going to walk this out if we have to. So let's just keep going. I think what I now understand a little bit more about, I was going through a battle with my body and mind and what my body was going. Now let's just stop, you know, there's an aid station, there should, it can come pick you up. We'd go home and my mind was like, no, no, you were going to do this. And it was, it was like there's a little war going on between the two. Totally. Yeah. And Speaker 2: (40:39) Welcome to the, I enjoy the devil, the lion and the snake. Yeah. Louder. And it gets more and more frantic up there. Right. Speaker 3: (40:46) And I, I'd, I'd heard about it from, from you and others around in that war, your, your mind is telling your body, no, we're going to do this. So just shut up and just live with the pain. And that pain that I was experiencing physically actually reached a point and it didn't go any further. It just settled, it dissipated. And and then I got into a happy, happy place where I thought, yeah, I've got a shuffle going on. I'm not gonna run this full bore, full bore. I can't, but I'm moving forward and I'm getting closer to the next stage station and we're going to pick up HANA, you know, 74K and then we're going to do the same from there, up and over. Kinlock. Uand even with my, you know, like going through that,uI found a way to keep moving. Speaker 3: (41:39) It was almost as if the blisters, they were just blisters, they were going to go away. Toddlers grow back. And that's how I kind of quickly processed it. But it was just keep, even if you have to walk up the Hill, walk up the Hill, yeah, it's fine. Cool. so yeah, we got to, you know, from the 63 to Kinlock, which is a 74 and I think I mentally was getting into happy site. You know, like I, my body had quiet and down. The pain had kind of reached a point but hadn't got worse. And mentally I was I was over, you know, picking up the pace of 74 was a significant milestone. And we were, I think I could see the end you know, it was, we were close and it was just a case of getting through it. Yeah. And I was, I was still trying to bring myself back to the now going through my little checklist I mentioned earlier. And it was a way of just kind of putting into a little box the different pains or feelings I was experiencing. Discomfort around my feet, discomfort around my legs, you know, it got worse or sorry I've got bad, but it wasn't gonna get any worse. Speaker 2: (42:58) It's quite funny on that point. That yeah, when the body starts to scream at you, it's a bit like when it does pre-race, you know, when it throws it, you know, a sickness that you at the cold or some something that or try and stop you doing it and also does it arise. We are getting to the point where you like, the pain is so bad. You're thinking, how the hell am I going to carry on? And then when you do persevere, once again, the brain seems to go, Oh well she's not stopping. We've got to keep going. So I better stop putting those signals out. I don't know how it works. And I'd be interesting to see if other athletes have experienced the same thing, but it doesn't actually get any worse than bad. It's already bad, but keep getting worse. Speaker 3: (43:40) Yeah. And you know, it's, I don't know whether it was a combination of you know, mental fortitude or whatever word you wanna use or we'd reached a significant milestone. So getting up and over Kinlock Hill was huge cause it in 90 K there's two little eight stations and hitting the eight, the ice station at 90 K, as soon as you turn the corner off the ice station, it was like a wall of noise from the finish area had made its way up to up. You could hear it. And it was like, wow, we are so close. So any, it was like another wave just picked you up and was going to carry you down this, this fricking mountain. And you know, you could just, where that point, we were kind of walking shuffling and it was in the dark and it was quite wet. Speaker 3: (44:30) So you'd probably didn't have any other choice to be honest. And it was just, you know, you could feel the end. So we just made our way down the mountain. And we were joking amongst the three of us, you know, pace from Johnny about, you know, what we're going to have to, we was our favorite post race mill, just really silly crabs that was just getting us through the finish to the finish. And yeah, so yeah, we, we, we hit that last cause like a sty that you've got to climb over and it's like a physical barrier where you're leaving the trials to a four wheel drive tack that literally throws you out at the finish line and climbed over that STI. And it was just, we've done it. We know we're almost there. Speaker 2: (45:20) And you can see, you know, you can see that you can hear the people and you can feel that you're getting near and you can light at the end of the tunnel after a very dark long tunnel. Speaker 3: (45:29) Yeah. And it was, it was funny. It's like, wow. You know, you crossed the line, we crossed the line together. I had a big of a bit of a hug and you know, like we've, I think it was a realization for me that, wow, we'd, we'd just done this. There's a huge achievement personally, yeah, Speaker 2: (45:48) It is a huge achievement. What did you feel at the finish line? Because some, sometimes in sunrises I felt like, you know, I've just broken down in tears, absolutely with relief and I can actually stop because you dream about being able to stop and other times it's just no emotion because you just like numb. You sort of wanted that beyond anything. What was your reaction? Speaker 3: (46:10) So what I didn't mentioned is on that way up and over Kinlock Hill towards the 80 and 90 K stations, I, I was going through a real roller coaster of emotion, you know, just trying to get to that final eight station. When I'd, I was on the home stretch, I was, I'm really struggling to hold back the tears. And Johnny was in front of me. My pace was behind me, so they had no idea what my facial expression was. But so, so I thought, and I actually Johnny Johnny and I said, look, there's going to be some tears at the finish line, Hannah pacer be prepared across the finish line. And my overall overwhelming feeling was done it job done. And yeah, it was just satisfaction. I think it was w with no tears at the finish line because I think that emotion had passed and I think it was just sheer bloody relief. Yeah. Keep going. And I think it was excitement of now being able to eat real food like chips or dip or pizza or just something other than you know, a gel or you know, the equivalent paleo equivalent. Yeah, Speaker 2: (47:27) Yeah, yeah, yeah. All the horrible stuff. You're sick to death of what in and you thought EEG and it starts really, really interesting. The emotions that you go through. I did a a hundred K rice with Neil, you know, my, my offsider running hot coaching and it was his face on hundred and I mentioned this before, but he got, you know, he's a, he's a strong, tough med, but it's 70 Ks. He was in tears. He was in so much pain and he couldn't see his way to the finish line. You know, when you get into that deep dark space of absolute despair. And it also, and I cried pretty much every race, you know there's this, I don't think there's ever been an ultra where I haven't balled my eyes out somewhere. It's just part of the thing. And what happens is that when you get, when you have given everything at your body, you are so raw and you're so emotional, like everything is like any little thing can sit you off. Speaker 2: (48:27) Hello D and I was like 180 Kazan or something into death Valley, 270 K the same thing guys. And I was in such a world of pain and there was a 60 kilometer strike road that was just blowing my mind. And Neo was running behind me and he exited. We hit my ankle when he was running, just, just a couple of steps behind. And he hit my ankle and he tripped me up. And the adrenaline rush of being tripped and falling just opened the floodgates of the emotions. Like, cause I was holding it together desperately. And when I fell on the drill and came out, I was just bawling for the next hour, still running up, polling my eyes out and just could not control myself, you know. And he was like mortified. I swapped people who are, who are cruising for me. And it wasn't, it wasn't about him. Just that shock of falling just released everything that you are holding on so tightly toe. It's a ultra marathon and doing something like this huge achievement that you've just done is really it's life squeezed into a 50 an hour or 50 narrow or whatever it was, timeframe. Speaker 3: (49:46) It's, yeah, every emotion that you can possibly feel you in a, in a human lifetime, you can, you know, you just go through a roller coaster of emotions. And I think for me that, you know, from 60 K through two sort of 80, 85 when we crossed that last day station that was probably mentally quite tough, you know, just to keep moving one step after another. And then you, it was just sheer, utter relief. Yeah. Job done. Yeah. Speaker 2: (50:21) Yeah. So now you've done your Europe year in the hundred K club, you're an ultra marathon now done, you've done a few FFTs already in this, your first hundred. How are you feeling? You're three weeks out, have you, what w what often happens with runners, and I won't free that with you, but how did you go through a bit of a elation stage and then a ho down the other side stage and a bit of a depression before you started coming out the other end? Are you still in that roller coaster of a post race situation? How are you keeping now? Oh, we lost you there for a sec. [inaudible] Yup, yup, yup. We know on the pool was sorry about that people. So yeah. Did you F what are you going through now? Emotionally? Speaker 3: (51:16) So I I think I, I probably relaxed too quickly post race. I, I'm is my wife's 40th birthday, a couple of days after. So you know, that new, that normal discipline around diet and hydration probably relaxed a bit too quickly. And I suffered that first week not only with like aching niggles and blistered feet, but I had a, a really heavy, bad, nasty cold. So my immune system was absolutely smashed from the race I think. And just my body going, I think know, thank God that's over. But I, I started walking you know, daily on the Monday. So I had Sunday off, started walking and then walk, running again by Wednesday just to keep the body moving. And I got through the cold and I'm back running. But I've, I've seen some advice in the group around from Neal around, you know, try and keep that long, run to no more than an hour. Speaker 3: (52:14) First month I had a chat with Neil actually around you know, what is my recovery looking like? And I wanted to I, I S I swore during the race I would never do this, but I've started to look at what next and I actually, I'm getting itchy feet around. Myla so 160 K so but it's not for, it's not for cause North burn really appeals to me from a sheer physical challenge. I don't think I wanna go back to Tara [inaudible] and do the a hundred or the 160, because the environments are similar to telco. Yeah. So I'm drawn to really challenging races, physically challenging, like really gnarly mountainous, hilly, tight races. So North really appeals to me. Yeah. So that's a 20, 21 goal, I think. I want to, somebody said to me the other day, take some time to smell the roses. And I'm just going to enjoy running and just mountain biking. You're having fun, but my body's coming. Right. yeah, I I'm just gonna still run absolutely by just, I just wanna run for the enjoyment Speaker 2: (53:26) Of it at the moment for my, for my 2 cents as, as when, when after a race, you often do have an immune system because you have knocked the hell out of your immune system. Really. You've, you've used that point every, a lot of your hormones, like your endorphins and serotonin. So you can go into it at depression about usually 10 days out seeming to teen dies yet is when you usually have a bit of a mental job. You can be on a high for a couple of days straight after the race because you're, you saw you're tired, but just so stuck with yourself and you're on this adrenaline. Your body's been in a fight or flight state during that race. And so it's still in that fight or flight state often for a good couple of days. And then you start to come down from it and that's when you can start to get sick. Speaker 2: (54:10) And you also usually ravenously hungry at this time. So you just pigging out like no tomorrow. And your body is actually goes into a repair state after, you know, a couple of days and you come down and often that can be quite a Rocky road for people. Not always, but it is number one, you've lost the big goal that you had that is now achieved and done and there's a bit of an empty space in your life and then you're, you're also, you've had a bit of a trauma, you've gone through some trauma, so there's some post-traumatic sort of stuff going on. Some you're still working through. What the hell was that that I just experienced, especially when you do overseas races and you are out of your actual cultural environment on top of it all. And then after team dies, you might start to come out of it. Speaker 2: (55:01) That sort of adept, which often happens and then is when your mind starts to go, what next? Because you've got a big hole and you sort of need something to be aiming towards again. Yeah. Thing is, and this phase is, it's great to have and I'm glad you say 2021 because that means that you're being like sensible in, in, you're going to let your body get over this experience and then build yourself up again. And you have some other races, no doubt along the way that will build you to Wallington northbound 2021 and North burners approach little tasks a hundred mater. Like if you, if, if you wanted an easy a hundred water, that ain't it, you know, I bet any easy a hundred motto cause a hundred most soccer balls. But that one is a particularly tough, tough, tough one. But super exciting and an amazing, have been really lovely family. Speaker 2: (55:54) I was cofounder of that race and loved it and I sold it last year to the guys teary and Tom and, and they, they've done a fantastic job with it. And it's really a special special event and it's a small family event as opposed to the big Tyler widow. I'll post that. It's a lot more this corporate feel. It's a lot more intimate. And I also think for me that I wanna quite life is so precious. I want to, I want to spend time being as well and not just getting lost, chasing massive goals all the time. Oh, you're so wise. Honestly, like honestly the, a lot of people go into this phase because I've seen it like, you know, after having trained so many people and gone through this process with so many people, you get to camps, you get the ones who say on never even want to do that to myself again. Speaker 2: (56:44) And then they gone out of, out of it. Hopefully if you've prepared people well, like don't actually fall off completely, but often they need a really decent break or you get other ones who go, that's totally lost without the next huge thing. And I, and I fell into that camp for many, many years on this hamster wheel of having to do events because I didn't know what the hell else to do with myself if I wasn't completely, this was my identity and it was very tied up with who I was and my self esteem and my confidence. And so when, like three years ago, and I actually retired from the long staff because my mom but it was overdue, it was overdue to have a break, you know, at least a break if not, you know feminine. Like, because I was just in this hamster wheel of, of trying to outdo myself all the time. Speaker 2: (57:39) And you can't, you know, there comes a point where you can't do more than you did. You know, you can't keep topping it and keep trying and you just blowing yourself out completely and you're not allowing yourself that recovery time in between. And I can even see it in some of the top, top elite, you know, famous super crazy ultra runners out there that I'm friends with who are still doing it as they're getting older and older and older and this like the fifties and sixties, but that, that they, they the obsessive, you know, and then not as healthy as I could be if they actually took a step back now and I'm going to take some time out for a year or two and just reassessed where my body's at. And it's really hard to do that to step away for a while because you know that to get back to that level, why are we're out now and do a hundred K or something. Speaker 2: (58:36) I couldn't go and just do it because I haven't been trained to get back there would be in your mind, the hard part is when you've done so many is that you expect yourself still to be there even when you are not there. And it really hard one for people coming back from injuries for older runners, people who have retired and then we'll come back out or then I they did to get I've got a lady at the moment who's been struggling with a really bad illness and was comparing herself to how she was two or three years ago as to how she is now and rebuilding and keeping and being very disappointed in herself because she still thinks she's back there instead of going, starting from scratch again in moving forward in what was, is gone and not comparing yourself to who you used to be. Speaker 3: (59:27) Yeah, I think, yeah. And I think you know, when I did coast 10 years ago, coast to coast I started and stopped very abruptly, the whole endurance small sport journey and it took a few years to reconnect with running. I don't want to stop running, but I, there's no way I could do why I probably could, but I, I would just, I wouldn't be best prepared. Do you know what I mean? Speaker 2: (59:53) Wouldn't be the best husband and you wouldn't be the best father, the best person you are at work. You know, so it these things and this is what I try to get across to people is that when you take on these message goals, you are sacrificing some other part of your life and it's, it's and that's fine if that's what you've decided you're going to do, but to understand the impact that it's going to have on your husband and wife and your children, what impact, you know, for positive infinitive it can, but if you are doing it back to back to back to back, it can actually have a negative effect on your family and your friends on it. So what's weighing all that sort of stuff up and understanding where we are as my focus going now? It's something I battle with constantly because part of me wants to go back and do all that crazy stuff right now when I have other priorities, it's just life. Sometimes it's very hard to, to knock it down on yourself and to feel guilty cause you're not doing everything. Speaker 3: (01:00:54) Yes. Yeah. And, and life's important, you've gotta enjoy it as you go through it. And if, yeah, I dunno. That's so I, I, yeah, I finished and I'm happy, but I'm actually at peace now with the fact that next year is some smaller races. But the big one is me potentially in 2021. Speaker 2: (01:01:12) Yeah. And you've done this one and what your friends said celebrate and smell the roses. That is a fantastic principal to take away. And it's something that someone told me at the end of a big race when I just went, Oh, what, you know, I wasn't as fast as so-and-so and I didn't, you know, I bet it's a bit a longer race and they went for goodness sake, you know, after I'd just run a mess. Okay. Right. They just said, you know, cannot, can you not just congratulate yourself, celebrate your wins, integrated into your psyche and who you are before you go chasing the next goal. Yeah. Actually type this hundred K telco run and put it in your hat and go, I fricking did that in our religion for doing that. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna suck this, I'm gonna suck this one dry before I go and chase the next. Speaker 3: (01:02:04) Oh, totally. Yeah. So I think I think with the the English get into the rugby world cup final thing, I'm going to have a little beer or two this weekend. Speaker 2: (01:02:14) Yes. I was saved and then I apply. Well they were, they were absolutely amazing. And, and hits off their guys too. You know, you, you can always be no. So, Hey man, thank you very much for sharing your story. I hope this is empowered and lots of other people listening to this. I hope it's made you think maybe I can do it if Matt can do it. And to understand the journey that you go through and then it isn't or you know, roses, it is difficult along the way, but that you can overcome any final words that you'd want to. If you were talking to you two years ago, what sort of advice would you give Mitt Speaker 3: (01:02:57) If you believe in yourself and believe in others around you? And Oh yeah, just if you want something, go after it and, and no, no distance, no goal is too big, if you know what I mean. Life is, you get one lap in life and you've got to make the most of it Speaker 2: (01:03:17) I made to that one. Speaker 3: (01:03:19) Yeah. So thank you Lisa. I really appreciate the opportunity. Speaker 2: (01:03:22) No, it's been absolutely fantastic. It's wonderful to have you in a running hot coaching tribe in. If anyone else wants to join us, of course we'd love to have you come and join us and check us out. I'm sure Matt will agree it's been a a good journey with, with having a bit of structure to your training and having some goals and someone to, to ask questions to and to make sure that you're doing things right. So Matt, congratulations once again on your huge success and your mess of victory. And we'll talk to you again so no doubt. Awesome. Thanks Lisa. Speaker 4: (01:03:55) [Inaudible] Speaker 1: (01:03:55) That's it this week for pushing the limits. We showed her write, review, and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team, at least at www.lisatamati.com. The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.

We are living through multiple crises. Not only are we going through the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is also a hidden epidemic going on. Over the years, people have become more obese. In 2013, only 34% of our population was within a healthy BMI range, and this statistic is falling exponentially over the years. We need to take action now because obesity is not about how you look — it's about real health consequences.  Dr Katherine Sowden joins us in this episode to talk about women's and public health. She explains how obesity changes our bodies and causes various diseases and cancers. She shares that it’s often not even people’s fault. There’s a range of factors that encourage this epidemic. Exacerbating the socioeconomic and cultural factors is the food industry. Dr Katherine emphasises that we need to start educating ourselves on our health. Only then can we make better choices to prevent these diseases. If you want to know more about taking preventive measures against cancer and other diseases, this episode is for you.    Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn about the current state of public health and how to be a proactive patient. Discover the ways obesity can lead to an increased risk of cancer, particularly in women. Know how you can make better health choices to avoid developing cancer.   Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron!  A new program, BoostCamp, is coming this September at Peak Wellness! Listen to other Pushing the Limits episodes with Dr Elena Seranova:  #183: Sirtuin and NAD Supplements for Longevity  #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity   Connect with Dr Katherine: Auckland Women's Gynaecology I Ormiston Specialists I Email   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.   Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of ageing while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health   My  ‘Fierce’ Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Episode Highlights [04:06] The Current State of Women’s Health One of the most significant issues in women's health is the normalisation of obesity.  This situation comes from a lack of understanding of the importance of nutrition and movement to our health.  Endometrial cancer is a progressive order that is caused by having too much estrogen. One of its leading causes is obesity.  Obesity can also decrease fertility since it affects the ovulatory cycle by affecting the production of progesterone.  Before, we used to see endometrial cancer affecting women over 40, but now there are cases as young as under 20.  [07:59] Effects of Obesity Women’s relative risk for endometrial cancer is one if they have a normal BMI. However, when they’re in the range of 30-35 and over 40, this is raised to 2.5 and 7.1 respectively.  There are now many obese young women who are in this constant state of a hyper estrogenic environment.  The definitive treatment of this cancer is hysterectomy, making a huge impact on women’s choice for reproduction.    In addition, obesity can increase the risk of breast cancer too. [10:43] What Changes Does Obesity Make?  Obesity leads to an abnormally high aromatase gene expression, which is in charge of estrogen production.  With obesity, the body converts more of the androgen peripheral tissue into estrogen too.  This problem does not apply only to women. Obese men also have hormone issues and tend to have feminine features. [14:04] How the Food Industry Affects Our Health One of the main drivers of the obesity epidemic is the wide availability of obesogenic food.  Lower-income families tend to consume more of these foods since they are cheaper than healthier options.  We can remove taxes on fruits and vegetables to help address the problems in the food industry — as other countries have done.  Even if junk foods seem cheap, these are costing the country more. Public health will collapse as more young people develop diseases.  Obesity doesn't just cause cancer — it can also lead to diabetes and heart disease.  [16:19] What Needs to Change?  The market needs to change to make healthy foods more accessible. The food industry also needs to assess the way they use additives and preservatives.  It's not totally our fault that we're obese. This epidemic is driven by socioeconomic and cultural factors, in addition to the food industry.  Widespread normalisation of a high BMI is also harmful since people don’t understand its consequences.  While doctors can help treat your diseases with pills and surgeries, it will always come with risks. It’s your responsibility to prevent hospitalisation. Medication should not be your first and only option.  [23:19] Start with Educating Yourself Preventing disease progression starts at an early stage.  Some medical interventions may not be the cure to fix your health. There is a need for a holistic approach to health.  In public health settings, most doctors only have 20 minutes to get to know a patient. This amount of time does not give them a complete picture of what the patient needs.  Personalised health care starts with self-education. Do your research so you can ask specific questions to your doctor within the limited timeframe given to you. Dr Katherine shares that not only does obesity have compounding effects on health, it can also affect surgeries! Learn more about this in the complete episode.   [31:13] How Obesity has Risen Over the Years Even if our lifespans have increased because of medicine, people are also dying earlier because of diseases.  A study in New Zealand found that the standardised incidence of endometrial cancer used to be 1.9 per 100,000 population in 1996.  This rate increased to 24.2 in 2012, with the Pacific Islanders' at 46.06.  In 2013, around 34% of the population were within the range of a healthy BMI. This percentage has decreased sharply over the years.  Preventing cancers, such as endometrial cancers, starts with losing weight and changing lifestyles.  [37:05] Start Early It’s more difficult to reverse cancers and diseases than taking preventive measures.  Diseases and cancers don’t happen overnight. It’s the result of malignant states developing over time.  Not all cancers are preventable, but we can decrease our chances of developing them, especially with estrogen-dependent cancers.  [40:20] Stop the Vicious Cycle Nowadays, it's commonly seen as politically incorrect to discuss obesity. Remember that our physical states impact our health, whether we like to hear them or not.  Understand the consequences of obesity. These include the increased likelihood of infertility, cancer risk, diabetes, dementia, heart disease, and many more illnesses.  Start with adopting lifestyle changes in terms of nutrition and movement.  Eating unhealthy foods can cause a vicious cycle of degrading health, both physically and mentally.  You can also seek more personalised healthcare from health coaches and other allied health professionals.    7 Powerful Quotes ‘We tax cigarettes, we take alcohol. Why aren't we taxing some of this junk food? It is of no benefit to people whatsoever.’ ‘We need to do something and even if it is unpopular. So for example, taxing sugary food and drinks. It's got to be worthwhile.’ ‘We can do operations that do amazing things, and really cure people of cancer, and improve their quality of life, but equally it shouldn't be the first option.’ ‘But I think we've always got to look at the patient as a whole person. The least invasive cure, the better.’ 'The more people we can keep out of the hospital, the better because it means we can deliver quality personalised health care.' ‘The more you can educate yourself, the better. So that when you get that 20 minutes in the public system, you've got the questions to ask, you know what you're going in for.’ ‘It's also seen as politically incorrect to discuss obesity. But it's not politically incorrect. That's factual and it's a crisis. We need to stop pussyfooting around it.’   About Katherine Dr Katherine Sowden is a highly respected gynaecologist and has been the Clinical Lead in Counties Manukau Health since 2014. She is also a Consultant Gynaecologist in Auckland Women's Gynaecology and Ormiston Specialist Centre.  Dr Katherine is a fellow of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. She is currently the departmental lead for non-tertiary gynaecological oncology and focuses on the management of premalignant gynaecological conditions.  She provides a wide range of gynaecology services. You can find out more about her practice in Auckland Women's Gynae and Ormiston Specialists.  You can also reach Katherine by email.       Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can make better health choices to prevent cancer. Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.

In this episode Run Coaches Lisa Tamati and Neil Wagstaff look at the structure of a good run training system.  The many elements of a holistic program - run sessions, skills and drills, mobility and flexibility work, strength work, sleep and recovery, nutrition and supplementation and mindset. They look at the benefits of video analysis and when to build in technique and drill work and when and how to build in strength training that is specific to running. How mobilty work plays a part and the role of your hormones and rest and recovery and much more.   We would like to thank our sponsors Running Hot - By Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff If you want to run faster, longer and be stronger without burnout and injuries then check out and TRY our Running Club for FREE on a 7 day FREE TRIAL Complete holistic running programmes for distances from 5km to ultramarathon and for beginners to advanced runners.   All include Run training sessions, mobility workouts daily, strength workouts specific for runners, nutrition guidance and mindset help Plus injury prevention series, foundational plans, running drill series and a huge library of videos, articles, podcasts, clean eating recipes and more.   www.runninghotcoaching.com/info and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel at Lisa's Youtube channel  www.yotube.com/user/lisatamat and come visit us on our facebook group   www.facebook.com/groups/lisatamati You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com    We are also holding another live event on the 31st of August- 1st of September in Havelock North, New Zealand - Its a weekend running seminar  Join us for a weekend of fun, inspiration and education around everything Running Do you want to run with less pain and injuries, avoid burnout and over training? Do you want to have a better running technique? Want to improve your times? Want to learn how to maximise your training time and train efficiently while getting optimal results? If you answered yes to any of these questions then this weekend is for you! Suitable for absolute beginners just starting out on their journey through to elite ultramarathon runners looking to improve their 100 mile times. So come and meet some great like minded people and hang out with the Running Hot Coaching team and completely change the trajectory of your running career.   What's included Saturday 31st of August (9am-4pm + Dinner) Run video analysis and review Drills and skills for runners Core and strength training for runners Flexibility and mobility for runners Nutrition for runners Mindset training Dinner and tales from the trails with Lisa Tamati and Neil Wagstaff (Meal and entertainment included in the package price, drinks extra) Sunday 1st of September (9am-12:30pm) Putting it all together into a programme that works for you 2 hours walk/hike/run on Te Mata Peak (suitable for all abilities) Find out more and register here: https://training.runninghotcoaching.com/how-to-revolutionise-your-running-training?fbclid=IwAR2bFPz6A26CMbzrMhqRyIcdCs9Sgb25mnYv3jTbneouxyyWtzqIx9ZZrKI The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.  

If you want to work towards success, you need to start living a life that’s indistractable.  We know we need to be focused. Yet, how many times a day do you get distracted from doing your most important work? It's easy to get sucked into hours of scrolling through social media or mindlessly skipping channels. These external triggers often take the blame when we get distracted. However, did you know that a more dangerous form of distraction is one where we think we're being productive? The secret is that the opposite of distraction isn't focus: it's traction. Behavioural designer Nir Eyal joins us to talk about how to form good habits and break bad ones. He discusses the four steps to becoming indistractable and staying on top of your goals. We also learn how to change our mindsets around self-limiting beliefs and pessimistic thoughts. Finally, Nir shares his expertise in creating effective habit-forming products and building an engaged community.   You have the power to become indistractable. Tune in if you want to know about how to create a distraction-free life!  Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Discover the four steps you need to take to become indistractable. Understand the true meaning of distractions and why we need to let go of limiting beliefs.  Learn how to make habit-forming products and services along with a strong community engagement. Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron!  Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-aging and longevity with NMN Bio.  A new program, BOOSTCAMP, is coming this September at Peak Wellness!  Listen to other Pushing the Limits episodes with Dr Elena Seranova:  #183: Sirtuin and NAD Supplements for Longevity  #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity   Connect with Nir: Website I Twitter I LinkedIn Books by Nir:  Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life Steven Kotler and The Flow Collective Mindset by Carol Dweck Factfulness by Hans Rosling Peter Diamandis and his books Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/. Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching. Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com. Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again. Despite their words, I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books. Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful, third party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health My  ‘Fierce’ Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection. Episode Highlights [04:57] Nir’s Background As a behavioural designer, Nir helps companies build products and services that encourage individuals to develop healthy habits. The same strategy and technology addictive platforms like Facebook use can help people form good habits.  Nir has written Hooked to help people build good habits. Meanwhile, Indistractable teaches people how to break bad habits. People often know what to do to create a better life but don't take action. As such, Nir believes that learning to be indistractable is the skill of the century. [06:25] On Indistractable: Understanding Distractions The opposite of distraction isn’t focus; it’s traction.  Traction is any action that will bring you closer to your goals and values.  Therefore, distraction is any action that will pull you away from your goals and values.  The most dangerous form of distraction is the one where we think we're being productive.  We often prioritise the urgent and easy work over the hard and important ones.  [10:40] Social Media and Addiction There’s a widespread belief that social media will make you addicted. But in reality, this is learned helplessness.  When people believe that they’re addicted, they often don’t do anything about it.  There’s nothing wrong with social media. The problem is how we use it.  We are not powerless against technology.  [13:22] How to Gain Back Control People don't accomplish a goal because they quit early and don't feel like doing the work. We often blame our distractions on external forces. However, around 90% of these are due to internal triggers.  Internal triggers are uncomfortable emotions that we want to escape. We do this by distracting ourselves.  In reality, time management is about pain management.  [17:43] Letting Go of Limiting Beliefs Nir warns against anchoring our autonomy on neurotransmitters. When we believe we have a specific nature, we limit our agency. Before labelling yourself a certain way, do the work.  People find success when they act before they make excuses.  Believing in ego depletion is also harmful. Find out why in the full episode!  [24:49] The Indistractable Model: Steps One and Two The first strategy to becoming indistractable is mastering your internal triggers through visualisation.  Don’t envision the outcome. Doing so can be harmful because it makes you feel like you’ve already done the work.  Visualise what you'll do when you're tempted to go off track. The second step is to make time for traction. You can’t call something a distraction unless you know what you’re distracted from.  Having a to-do list can be harmful; plan daily schedules instead.  [27:44] The Indistractable Model: Steps Three and Four The third step is to decrease external triggers.  Finally, prevent distractions with pacts or pre-commitments.  [30:40] What You Should Measure  We have a lot of self-limiting beliefs. You need to distinguish whether these are things you cannot do or just ones you don't want to do.  When doing something, the consistency of your actions contributes more to your success than the intensity.  Understand that accomplishing your goals takes time.  Instead of looking at your output, learn to measure your progress through your inputs, such as time and effort.    [37:57] Be Willing to Put in the Hard Work  There’s no magic pill for our problems and goals. Everything takes time and work.  Keep showing up and doing the hard work.  We now have access to so much information; you just need to get out there and learn.  Remember that if you’re looking for distraction, it will come.  [41:58] Adapting to Changes Around Us All new things have consequences. The good thing is, we humans are highly adaptable. In the same vein, you have the power to adapt and control how you consume ‘addictive’ social media. Not the other way around.  Nir believes that the world is getting better. However, good news does not get much media coverage.  Try to be more optimistic. Only then can you seek solutions to problems and not resign yourself to the situation. You don't need to worry about everyone's problems. Your human capital is best directed toward issues where you can make the easiest and most significant impact. [50:48] How to Make Habit-Forming Products Use habit-forming products frequently and soon. It should be something that you use within a week or less.  First, tap into internal triggers and specify which uncomfortable emotion your product wants to solve.  Second, reduce friction. Make your product as easy as possible to use.  Third, create variable rewards. Uncertainty is what excites people and gets them hooked. Finally, it helps to make people invest in the experience. Listen to the full episode to dive deeper into making habit-forming products!   [55:19] The 3 C’s of Engagement Fostering engagement can be done through content, community, and conversation.  Curate content that will give value to others.  Empower people to help one another so you can create a strong-knit community.  Lastly, have conversations with people to share knowledge and wisdom.  7 Powerful Quotes from This Episode ‘The opposite of distraction is not focus. If you look at the origin of the word, the opposite of distraction is traction. You'll notice that both traction and distraction end in the same six letters, a-c-t-i-o-n.’ ‘Traction, by definition, is any action that pulls you towards what you said you were going to do. Things that you do with intent. Things that move you closer to your values and help you become the kind of person you want to become.’ ‘We have this model in our heads: traction, distraction, internal, external, right? Now we know that the four big parts of the Indistractable model. So now, we work our way around these four steps like the points on a compass.’ ‘One of my life mantras is: “Consistency over intensity”. I think that's how we change.’  ‘We want that instant relief. We want that instant solution. Look, the things that are worth having in life, they take time.’ ‘What's going to lead us out of our problems is not running away from these problems, not throwing up our hands and giving up. But rather, engaging with these problems, right?’ ‘[Habit-forming products] appreciate in value, meaning they get better and better the more we interact with them because of what I call stored value.’ About Nir Nir Eyal writes, consults, and teaches about the intersection of psychology, technology, and business. He helps companies create behaviours that benefit the users and educates people on building healthful habits in their lives. Nir previously taught as a Lecturer in Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design. He is the bestselling author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products and Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life. He also shares his insights with his newsletter at Nir and Far and has written for Psychology Today, The Atlantic, TechCrunch, and the Harvard Business Review.  Nir is also an active investor in habit-forming technologies, such as Eventbrite, Kahoot!, and Anchor.fm.  Interested in learning more about Nir's work? You check out his website. You can also reach him on Twitter and LinkedIn.        Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so that they can learn what it takes to form good habits and become indistractable.  Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.

As the saying goes, trust your gut — and this isn’t only figuratively. One of the most overlooked aspects of health is our digestive system. We tend to ignore and underestimate the symptoms we experience around our gut. But with its link to our brains, our guts play a much more significant role in our overall health. The simple act of eating healthy foods can completely turn your life around. Kirsty Wirth joins us in this episode to share how reexamining gut health impacted her and her son's life. She talks about the road to recovery, specifically her family undergoing fecal microbial transplant (FMT). Kirsty highlights the importance of in-depth gut health testing, cutting out junk foods, and consuming healthy foods. She further discusses the two types of fermented food and how we can incorporate it into our diet. If you’re having trouble with your digestive system and want to know which healthy foods to choose, this episode is for you.    Here are three reasons why you should listen to the full episode: Learn how an undiagnosed gut issue can lead to an autism spectrum misdiagnosis. Discover the importance of eating healthy foods when looking after your microbiome. Find out the two types of fermented food and their effects on the body.   Resources Gain exclusive access and bonuses to Pushing the Limits Podcast by becoming a patron!  Harness the power of NAD and NMN for anti-aging and longevity with NMN Bio.  A new program, BOOSTCAMP, is coming this September at Peak Wellness!  Listen to my other Pushing the Limits episodes:  #170: The Search for the Perfect Protein and Why So Many of Us Are Deficient with Dr David Minkoff #183: Sirtuins and NAD Supplements for Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova #189: Understanding Autophagy and Increasing Your Longevity with Dr Elena Seranova Connect with Kirsty: Instagram I Facebook I Email  Kultured Wellness Get your Kultured Wellness starter culture here! Join a Kultured Wellness Programme today! Kulturing Kuriosity podcast Lifespan: Why We Age – and Why We Don't Have To by Dr David Sinclair   Get Customised Guidance for Your Genetic Make-Up For our epigenetics health programme, all about optimising your fitness, lifestyle, nutrition and mind performance to your particular genes, go to  https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epigenetics-and-health-coaching/.   Customised Online Coaching for Runners CUSTOMISED RUN COACHING PLANS — How to Run Faster, Be Stronger, Run Longer  Without Burnout & Injuries Have you struggled to fit in training in your busy life? Maybe you don't know where to start, or perhaps you have done a few races but keep having motivation or injury troubles? Do you want to beat last year’s time or finish at the front of the pack? Want to run your first 5-km or run a 100-miler? ​​Do you want a holistic programme that is personalised & customised to your ability, goals, and lifestyle?  Go to www.runninghotcoaching.com for our online run training coaching.   Health Optimisation and Life Coaching If you are struggling with a health issue and need people who look outside the square and are connected to some of the greatest science and health minds in the world, then reach out to us at support@lisatamati.com, we can jump on a call to see if we are a good fit for you. If you have a big challenge ahead, are dealing with adversity, or want to take your performance to the next level and want to learn how to increase your mental toughness, emotional resilience, foundational health, and more, then contact us at support@lisatamati.com.   Order My Books My latest book Relentless chronicles the inspiring journey about how my mother and I defied the odds after an aneurysm left my mum Isobel with massive brain damage at age 74. The medical professionals told me there was absolutely no hope of any quality of life again, but I used every mindset tool, years of research and incredible tenacity to prove them wrong and bring my mother back to full health within three years. Get your copy here: https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books/products/relentless. For my other two best-selling books Running Hot and Running to Extremes, chronicling my ultrarunning adventures and expeditions all around the world, go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/books.   Lisa’s Anti-Ageing and Longevity Supplements  NMN: Nicotinamide Mononucleotide, an NAD+ precursor Feel Healthier and Younger* Researchers have found that Nicotinamide Adenine Dinucleotide or NAD+, a master regulator of metabolism and a molecule essential for the functionality of all human cells, is being dramatically decreased over time. What is NMN? NMN Bio offers a cutting edge Vitamin B3 derivative named NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) that can boost the levels of NAD+ in muscle tissue and liver. Take charge of your energy levels, focus, metabolism and overall health so you can live a happy, fulfilling life. Founded by scientists, NMN Bio offers supplements of the highest purity and rigorously tested by an independent, third-party lab. Start your cellular rejuvenation journey today. Support Your Healthy Ageing We offer powerful, third-party tested, NAD+ boosting supplements so you can start your healthy ageing journey today. Shop now: https://nmnbio.nz/collections/all NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 capsules NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 250mg | 30 Capsules 6 Bottles | NMN (beta Nicotinamide Mononucleotide) 500mg | 30 Capsules Quality You Can Trust — NMN Our premium range of anti-ageing nutraceuticals (supplements that combine Mother Nature with cutting edge science) combats the effects of aging while designed to boost NAD+ levels. Manufactured in an ISO9001 certified facility Boost Your NAD+ Levels — Healthy Ageing: Redefined Cellular Health Energy & Focus Bone Density Skin Elasticity DNA Repair Cardiovascular Health Brain Health  Metabolic Health   My  ‘Fierce’ Sports Jewellery Collection For my gorgeous and inspiring sports jewellery collection, 'Fierce', go to https://shop.lisatamati.com/collections/lisa-tamati-bespoke-jewellery-collection.   Episode Highlights [04:55] The Story Behind Kultured Wellness Kirsty started Kultured Wellness because of her personal experience and what her son went through.  She started having tummy upsets from age two onwards. She would constantly swing between constipation and diarrhea.  Acquiring viral encephalitis at age 13 and being hospitalised for a week was a landmark time in Kirsty’s life. Gut problems became a constant issue from then on. Her husband, who is a nurse, told her constant diarrhea is not normal. So, she dabbled with various diets but didn't stick with them. It’s not until they found out about her son’s conditions that Kirsty took concrete action. [09:55] Kirsty’s Son’s Autism Spectrum Diagnosis At 13 months, Noah suffered from infections and tummy troubles. Fortunately, his recovery progressed well. But at 18 months, Noah became completely non-verbal, underwent behavioural changes, and suffered from constant diarrhea. The paediatrician said that Noah’s condition was normal. However, his condition only worsened.  Then, Noah was diagnosed with autism. This gave them funding for treatment and support. [13:56] Discovery of an Underlying Gut Issue The possibility that Kirsty passed on her diarrhea issue to Noah was always at the back of her mind. They found a doctor who listened to their suspicion that Noah has an underlying condition.  After testing Noah’s stool sample, they discovered that he had Clostridium difficile, a type of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. This bacteria releases endotoxin that compromises the gut and the blood-brain barrier. They found that the endotoxin in Noah's body had attached to the brain receptors responsible for socialisation and learning. [17:21] Undergoing Fecal Microbial Transplant (FMT) Kirsty and her two children participated in a research study in Canada. There, they underwent a fecal microbial transplant. Their guts were flushed with antibiotics to get rid of everything, including the Clostridium difficile. These were then replaced with donors’ microbes.  Kirsty’s children were the youngest people to undergo FMT. While they were there, Noah started becoming more sociable. Not everyone needs to undergo FMT to recover their gut. There are now many ways to modulate the gut, one of which is eating healthy foods. Tune in to the full episode to hear more about Noah's recovery and development as a teen! [25:42] Getting Diagnosed with PANDAS PANDAS is an autoimmune neurological condition associated with an antigen. Both Kirsty and Noah got diagnosed with it. It stands for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections. Listen to the full podcast to learn more about PANDAS and how Kirsty acquired it! [33:13] Looking After Your Microbiome Test, don’t guess. Get a comprehensive stool analysis. Kirsty uses two tests for her clients. You need to be intentional in choosing healthy foods. Include fermented and nourishing food for your gut. Also, remember that diets do not work. No amount of willpower can go against our primal built-in set point. [46:10] Two Types of Fermented Food and Their Effect on the Body The first is the wild type. This includes histamine-forming foods or lactate-forming metabolites. Our gut has microbes that consume histamine and help us not develop histamine issues. The second is uncultured ferment. These are specific ferments in a controlled environment with specifically chosen strains. People struggling with lactate-forming metabolites should choose D-lactate bacteria strains.  These strains break down and down-regulate histamines without causing reactions. [48:50] Incorporating Fermented Healthy Foods into Your Diet You can start with small amounts of uncultured ferment to build out your microbiome.  Then, you can start dabbling with wild ferments. Kirsty develops cultures with nine different strains that have efficacy for autoimmune, neurological, and digestive conditions. Kultured Wellness offers a starter culture that you make yourself. Listen to the full episode to know the ingredients and the procedure! [53:05] On Probiotics and Digestive Enzymes One capsule of probiotics in the market has around 3 million CFU or colony-forming units.  Meanwhile, a cup of Kultured Wellness yoghurt has 41 billion CFU. The absence of digestive enzymes and stomach acid is a major problem today. Fermented food helps with this problem because it has already been pre-digested from the fermenting process.  Fermented food doesn't require a robust amount of digestive enzymes. In fact, it supports the excretion of stomach acid. [57:06] Parting Advice  Be curious and try your best to connect with your body. You’re in a state of fight or flight all the time when you’re unwell. We should not be focusing on DNA; it's the microbes that affect our DNA. Being curious, taking responsibility, owning it, and wanting more for yourself is crucial.   7 Powerful Quotes ‘I have seen how important your gut is and how it can completely change the pathway of your life. It can completely change who you are as a person.’ ‘You don't just suddenly wake up one day and you've got cognition issues; that's coming from somewhere.’ ‘So the first thing is just test, don't guess... We [can] really find out what is happening in our gut, and we can find out what it is doing to the rest of our body.’ ‘If you want to make change, you've got to front up to make the change.’ ‘If they don't include fermented foods and they don't include nourishing foods for their gut, they're relying on willpower. No one can get anywhere with willpower.’ ‘It's what everyone finds hard and doesn't know, is that you should never rely on willpower. Diets will never work.’ ‘DNA is not what we should be focusing on. It's actually the microbes and those fungi and viruses that make up our whole body that actually interacts through that.’   About Kirsty Kirsty Wirth is the founder of Kultured Wellness and an expert in cultures, gut health, and probiotics. Kultured Wellness is a company dedicated to providing knowledge and healthy foods for optimum gut health. As an integrative health coach, Kirsty's area of interest is in how lifestyle, environment, and diet can impact gut health and the immune system. Drawing on her background and years of research, Kirsty educates people on the root cause behind underlying conditions. Her mission is to spread the word about the benefits of healthy foods, particularly fermented food in nourishing the gut's microbiome. If you want to learn more about Kultured Wellness, you may visit their website. You can reach out to Kirsty on Instagram and Facebook. You can also send her an email at mailto:info@kulturedwellness.com.     Enjoyed This Podcast? If you did, be sure to subscribe and share it with your friends! Post a review and share it! If you enjoyed tuning in, then leave us a review. You can also share this with your family and friends so they can be inspired to eat healthy foods for their gut health.  Have any questions? You can contact me through email (support@lisatamati.com) or find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. For more episode updates, visit my website. You may also tune in on Apple Podcasts. To pushing the limits, Lisa The information contained in this show is not medical advice it is for educational purposes only and the opinions of guests are not the views of the show. Please seed your own medical advice from a registered medical professional.