Dr. Jose Greenspon is a board certified pediatric surgeon with a special interest in metabolic disorders, obesity, and bariatric surgery. He gives us a thorough and rather shocking state of the childhood and adult obesity epidemic, as well as a ton of practical takeaway advice for all families. We also get into the specifics of TeenLIFT, a multidisciplinary adolescent weight management program that was carefully designed to increase the likelihood of compliance, success, and long-term sustainability. Additionally, we put the fructose debate to bed once and for all.   For more information on TeenLift, visit their website or follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

John O'Sullivan is the founder of Changing the Game Project, whose mission is to ensure that we return youth sports to our children by providing the resources needed to make sports a healthy, positive, and rewarding experience for kids. After two decades playing and coaching soccer, John is an expert at training high-performing athletes by creating player-centered environments. He is also the best selling author of both Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes, and Giving Youth Sports Back to our Kids and Is it Wise to Specialize? John offers some really practical advice on how parents and coaches can help bring the fun back into youth sports.   For more about John and Changing the Game Project, visit their website, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Mark Verstegen is the founder and president of EXOS and one of the world's foremost experts on human performance. Mark has coached some of the most elite athletes on the planet and has also worked extensively with the NFL, corporations, and the military. EXOS is built around four pillars of performance - mindset, nutrition, movement, and recovery - and Mark takes us through it all. He has trained a ton of kids and gives everyone from parents to coaches a lot of great takeaways. We were so excited to have Mark in-house to talk about his philosophy and experience training youth athletes.   For more information on Mark and EXOS, check out the EXOS website, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Season 3 of The Ready State is here and it's all about KIDS! We wanted to understand how to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted kids without mucking it up. We talk extensively about nutrition, fitness, sleep, the current state of childhood obesity, sports specialization, what we are doing right, and what we are getting wrong. Our goal was to provide parents and coaches with tons of practical advice and takeaways that are both actionable and reasonable. Check out these fascinating conversations with Mark Verstegen of EXOS, John O'Sullivan, Dr. Jose Greenspon, Dr. Stacy Sims, Gray Cook, Dr. Mark Benden, Katie Wells, and Nic Gill of the All Blacks.

Amelia Boone started her racing career by winning 2nd place female (11th overall) in 2011’s World’s Toughest Mudder, her first ever obstacle race. Since then, she has become the most decorated obstacle racer of all time with over 50 podiums, all while working full-time as a corporate attorney. In 2016, Amelia suffered a debilitating femur fracture and subsequent sacral fracture that kept her from racing for over a year. Amelia talks to us about how she manages pain during competition and gives us an honest look into everything she feels she did wrong while recovering from her injuries to return to an elite level of performance. Amelia joined us via Skype.

We can not get enough of Alex Hutchinson’s book, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance (2018) this year. His book takes a detailed look into the science of endurance and covers heat, hydration, nutrition, and all the things that we love to think about! Alex takes us through many of the topics in his book and gives us some insight into how the brain may ultimately be the limiter on our ability to suffer, and how changing our perception of pain can expand the limits of our endurance. As an added bonus, we talk briefly with Erin Cafaro, a 2x Olympic Gold Medalist in rowing, about how she thinks about and manages pain while competing. Alex joined us via Skype from Toronto.

A conversation about pain would not be complete without acknowledging opioids and all of the drugs used to treat pain. Chris Bell is the award winning documentary filmmaker behind Prescription Thugs (2015) that explores the opioid crisis in America. His newest film, A Leaf of Faith (2018), covers all aspects of the controversial drug, Kratom, a plant-based supplement showing big promise in pain relief. Chris has first-hand experience with chronic pain and the all to common drug abuse that comes with it. He talks openly about his experience with pain, drugs, death, and we go deep into all things Kratom. Chris joined us via Skype.

Sue Falsone is the first female head athletic trainer in any of the four major sports in the US, most recently with the LA Dodgers for 6 years. Functioning as both an athletic trainer and physical therapist to her athletes, she was able to develop a truly innovative and successful approach to treatment. She discusses her philosophy on pain and treatment, returning injured athletes to an elite level of sport, as well as being female in a male-dominated field. Sue joined us via Skype.

You may know Laird Hamilton as a big wave surfer, innovator, actor, and writer. What you might not know, is that Laird suffered and surfed through extreme chronic pain from a hip injury (and various other injuries). Laird has an interesting perspective on pain and helps us understand how his philosophy on life, nutrition, and fitness all play into health and recovery. Laird joined us via Skype from his home.

Dr. Andrew Huberman is a professor and researcher at Stanford University and is one of the foremost experts in neuroplasticity. He talks about the experience of pain, the brain's capacity to re-wire itself, and what he calls self-directed and adaptive plasticity. As we get into the specifics of his current work around fear and anxiety, he even gives us some fear reduction techniques. Andrew joined us via Skype from his lab at Stanford.