#460： The Eat, Sweat, Thrive Protocol for Tactical Athletes
Episode Stats
Summary
Adam LaRue is a former Navy SEAL and founder of O2X, an organization dedicated to training tactical athletes. In this episode, Adam walks us through the unique challenges soldiers and first responders have when it comes to physical fitness, and explains his philosophy on training them. We then discuss insights civilians can take away from how first responders train, including making time for working out on an erratic schedule, managing stress, and making recovery a priority. Finally, we discuss the other organization Adam founded, One Summit, which pairs children who have cancer with a Navy SEAL mentor who helps them gain greater resilience through rock climbing.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. First responders
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and members of the military have physically and mentally demanding jobs. To tackle those
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jobs effectively, they need to be in shape physically and mentally. But most first responders
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have an erratic schedule that makes working out difficult. So many don't and consequently
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suffer from injuries and poor health. My guest today is a former Navy SEAL on a mission to solve
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that problem. His name is Adam LaRue and he's the founder of O2X, an organization dedicated to
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training tactical athletes. Adam walks us through the unique challenges soldiers and first responders
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have when it comes to physical fitness and explains his philosophy on training tactical athletes. We
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then discuss insights civilians can take away from how first responders train, including making time
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for working out on an erratic schedule, managing stress and making recovery a priority. We
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entered a conversation discussing the other organization Adam founded called One Summit,
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which pairs children who have cancer with a Navy SEAL mentor who helps these kids gain greater
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resilience through rock climbing. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is
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slash O2X. That's O2X, not 02X, O2X. You can find links to resources where you can delve deeper
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into this topic. And Adam joins me now via clearcast.io. Adam LaRue, welcome to the show.
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So we got an interesting background. We're going to talk about these organizations you founded. But
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before we do, tell us about your SEAL background. You were a Navy SEAL. How does that work? Are you
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always a Navy SEAL? Or do you leave the SEALs? What's the status on that? I'm okay being a
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Former Navy SEAL. All right. So what led you to join the Navy SEALs?
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A lot of it started with my family. And I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about that initially is
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my mother and father were both teachers. I grew up in New Jersey. They grew up in Albany,
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New York, kind of grew up down the street from each other. Actually, my mom and dad met when my dad was
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nine years old and delivered newspapers to this little girl that used to wait for him every
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morning to get the paper. And believe it or not, that happened. And my grandfather worked for Nabisco,
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drove a truck for Nabisco, the cracker company, ended up in New Jersey. They kind of went their
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separate ways. My dad got drafted. He went to college and university at Albany and got drafted,
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came back after Vietnam and married my mother, New Jersey. And I can tell you, my mom was a second
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grade teacher. My dad was a gym teacher for a while and a soccer coach and then went on to
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sales. And I can tell you by watching them, they just had a culture in the household and raised us to
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really kind of be anybody we want to be. I was fascinated with the military. I mean,
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there was a time where I was always just looking at my dad's uniform in the closet
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and asking him questions about it. But really the values that my family instilled in the household
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and kind of brought and raised us up, I have an older sister and a younger brother.
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Those values, when I stumbled across the SEAL teams at a fairly young age, those values that the
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SEAL teams embodied and kind of what my family believed in and what I was raised on kind of
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merged pretty well. So always a very, very goal-oriented person at a young age. So, I mean,
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I remember walking into my guidance counselor in eighth grade and said, you know, I want to go to
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Naval Academy. I want to be a SEAL officer. And I think back then they were like, ah, you know,
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pump your brakes. It's going to change. It's going to change quite a bit. But I was certainly
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focused on that. I didn't necessarily choose the exact path of going to Naval Academy. I ended up
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going to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. So I graduated from high school, went to the U.S.
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Merchant Marine Academy. And the big challenge there was finding the direct pathway to apply,
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even apply to the SEAL teams. Because from up until that point, no one has ever went directly from
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Merchant Marine Academy and then gone right to SEAL training before. So finding a pathway and
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there's a certain amount of spots on how that works. Back then there was about 40 spots and most
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of them came from Naval Academy and the rest would come from ROTC spots or OCS and trained quite a bit
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and met a lot of people and had some great help and great mentors along the way and was lucky enough
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to get picked up and selected my senior year for what they would call basic underwater demolition
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SEAL training. Awesome. So yeah, Merchant Marine. We've had a podcast about the Merchant Marines
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during World War II. It's one of those organizations, like part of the military that a lot of people
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don't know a lot about. That's right. It's kind of like the best kept secret out there for federal
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academies, I think. I mean, you can, at this point, there's a pathway to go Army, Navy, Air Force,
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Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Air National Guard, or stay in the Merchant Marine. But it's a unique
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school that you do four years of schooling in three years and you have to do a year overseas
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and it's divided up on what sport you played, on what year, how many, you might be gone four months
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your sophomore year and eight months your junior year and you're just out there on merchant vessels
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working and collecting enough SEAL days and learning enough hands-on training combined with
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the curriculum at school to sit for your Coast Guard exam your senior year. But the school was
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founded during World War II. It was actually on the grounds of Chrysler's old building. So you had a
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direct line of sight into New York City, which was interesting because I was there at the Merchant
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Marine Academy when 9-11 happened and we were able to see everything kind of unfold in front of our eyes
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there. I graduated in 2002. But unique campus, unique area, and definitely unique opportunities.
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But the Merchant Marine Academy, even during World War II, we lost 142 midshipmen during that time
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because they were just pumping kids out and midshipmen out after a year and a half of training
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to get out and what's now known as the Tin Can Sailors.
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Right. So I guess, were you the first midshipman, Merchant Marine midshipman to become a Navy SEAL?
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That went directly from the academy right to SEAL training and become a SEAL, yes.
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Awesome. And after you completed BUDS, what team were you with on the SEALs?
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So I went to East Coast. I went right to SEAL Team 4, then it was over at 8. So I spent all my
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time on the East Coast-based SEAL teams, which being from New Jersey, I was able to be in the
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same time zone. And during between training trips and deployments, I still had opportunity to see
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my family up north, see my sister's kids and my brother and watched him kind of grow up and
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All right. So you did SEALs. After you left active duty, you decided to go to Harvard to get your
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master's in, what, MPA? Was that master's in public, what's that, administration?
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What was going on there? What was your plan with that?
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Well, I'd say Harvard was a little bit of a Hail Mary for me. I put my application in. I looked at
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a lot of different programs. For one, I was just transitioning after about 11 and a half years
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in the SEAL teams, deploying and gone quite a bit. I was looking for basically to challenge myself in
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the, I guess, in the civilian sector. I wanted to really put my hands and try my hand in
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entrepreneurship. But a big thread for me was service. I wanted to continue to serve in ways
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outside the military when I wasn't wearing a uniform. The Harvard Kennedy School seemed like
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an incredible program. For one, it was a one-year program. At the time, I was 33, 34 years old. So I
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was like, hey, I just want to go there. There's a lot of seams that I need to fill. I mean, I had a lot
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of experiences and a lot of leadership time, but a lot of seams that I thought that I needed to fill
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and maybe some time to just kind of reflect a bit. And grad school seemed like a great,
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great transition program. One topic that was in one subject that I kept on reading about was
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social entrepreneurship. So this is impact. How can you start organizations and companies that leave
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impact and leave, I guess, the world in a better place than you found it? And I thought that that
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was really unique. I thought that based on a lot of the experiences that I had and lucky enough to
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serve with some of the most amazing people, SEALs, men and women, support staff, and had a lot of great
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experiences along the way. I was like, I thought that was really fascinating to me. How can I continue to
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serve outside the military? How can I continue to have an impact or start an organization that
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would help me facilitate that? The Kennedy School education was very elective-driven,
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and I liked that aspect. So I said, all right, well, I can take a class over at Harvard Business
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School in entrepreneurial finance. I can go to MIT and take a cross-register in a class of
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startup challenges or stop by classes at the law school or even just learn about statistics and
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policy and how to make impact in the public sector. And really, that tied up pretty heavily
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into both organizations that I ended up founding and co-founding.
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Right. So let's talk about that. You graduate, got your MPA, and you helped found not just one,
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but two organizations. Let's talk about O2X Human Performance first. Tell us what it is and who
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So O2X is a human performance education and training company. And what we founded it as,
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I mean, our mission was always being to help people maximize human performance, how to reach peak and
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sustain peak performance. And the big thing is durability, sustainability, longevity. I mean,
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how can we continue and get people to go through a transformational experience to educate, provide
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the tools for them to improve by 1% every day? And we started out... Initially, we had a great
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vision of... We had a lot of people out there, a lot of organizations that we would look at.
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They have a product and they try to build a brand around a product. And we wanted to provide an
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experience. And we started out with this base to peak mountain race. And it sounds quite intense.
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And I think if all the participants knew what it was before they started, they probably wouldn't
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have signed up for it. We had some pretty extreme athletes, like top Nike runners and trail runners
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and off-trail mountain racers that were there. But then we just had everyday athletes or people that
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were just coming out there because they wanted to be inspired. They wanted to get back to the outdoors.
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And we utilized that. And the basis of the center of gravity of that event, Brett, was that was
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our base camp. And our base camp was education. It was fireside chats that we called it. We had
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human performance specialists. And the mission was always to maximize human performance. And we started
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with that and grew it in the Northeast and it expanded across North America. We had some race
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in Canada, Pacific Northwest, Midwest. And over that time, we really honed in and developed our curriculum,
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which is now what we outroll to our main market, which is tactical athletes. Tactical athletes for us
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is people with physically, mentally, emotionally challenging jobs. Ones that are nation's heroes that
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are out there on the front lines every single day that give us the opportunity for us to kind of be
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safe and live our lives. They're the first responders. They're the police officers. They're
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firefighters, which we work with quite a few of them. EMS, Department of Corrections, it's our military.
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So we've worked with quite a few departments across the country now. Now we've started out with Boston
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Fire, expanded out. We've been working with about 20% of Montana. So we're slowly building and growing
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and delivering our education program that primarily is tackling a lot of the occupational
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challenges that are plaguing these tactical athletes. And what are those occupational challenges?
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Like what unique fitness issues do they have that say like just a regular citizen doesn't have?
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So, you know, I'll go back to a little story of how we came into the tactical space. For one,
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our background being in the military and special operations is something that we were passionate
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about. We had a lot of first responders that came to our events. They wanted more. We ended up having
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a meeting with Boston Fire. And I can remember every detail about that meeting. The other co-founder,
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we have two other co-founders with O2X. One was a, both are former Navy SEALs. One I served with,
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Paul McCullough. Another one is Gabriel Gomez who got out right around 1996. So I remember walking
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into this meeting and we walked in and they said they were looking for an injury prevention program.
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Mainly they were, had over a hundred shoulder surgeries a year. And of course, for one, it wasn't
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sustainable. Two, it's costing the city an incredible amount of money. And, you know, people are just not
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feeling good. You know, in the meeting we had the, you know, the union, which was kind of like our
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first exposure into not only the Massachusetts, but the firefighting union as a whole, but obviously
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all, all these first responders have unions. So we had the, you know, the International Association
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of Firefighters or the Massachusetts State Firefighters Union, the local 718, which is run,
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is about 1500 members strong with Boston Fire there. And then we had health and safety division.
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And so the health and safety division of Boston Fire was, was really just getting re-energized
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because there's a lot of these issues that they had to do something about. They could not turn their
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head. And it's interesting because you look at the fire service or, you know, really first responders
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as a whole. I mean, you're, Boston Fire was the first fire department in the country. It was the
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nation's first. And you're about mid 1600s, like 1650. I think they got the first engine and
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the first paid firefighter, the first fire chief was like in 1670s at some point. So a ton of history
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and a ton of amazing things about the culture. For one, incredibly tough guys, like tough guys
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that, that really step up to these challenges that they face every day. But there was also
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things about the traditions and culture that needed to change a bit. And it wasn't just about fitness.
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It's about general performance and what you needed to do and how do you need it to perform on the
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fire ground and your tasks. Some of these issues they had were, and this is what we peeled the
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onion back in that meeting was it wasn't just shoulder surgeries, which over a hundred a year is quite a
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bit. It was the sleep apnea and the shift work. It was obesity or type two diabetes. It was the
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cardiac disease, which is rivaling basically number one killer of firefighters, occupational related
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killer of firefighters. And then there's cancer. So the cancer every three weeks, a Boston firefighter
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is diagnosed with cancer and cancer is prevalent. And, and I think the statistic is you're two and a
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half times more likely to get cancer as a firefighter than just, than just anyone in the average
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population. And the reason is that for one, there's occupational related hazards all over
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the place. Everything is flame retardant materials and the carcinogens in these fires, whether it's a,
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a car fire, house fire, whether you can see it or we can see the smoke or not, it's in the air.
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So it's a kind of a caustic cocktail between, okay, maybe fitness wasn't a priority. Training for
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performance isn't a priority. Maintaining your weight wasn't a priority for some, the sleep and
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the shift work made it really hard to recover and feel good. So during that meeting, and truthfully,
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we didn't know which direction it was going to go because we were talking about tackling all this
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holistically because it's not too far off minus, maybe minus the cancer. It wasn't too far off of what
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we saw in the military and what we wish we had. And that's the premise of where O2X came from.
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This is the program, the education, the holistic, the complete program, the curriculum that we wish
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we had. It was more or less, you know, teaching everybody how to fish versus the catch of the fish
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for them. So how do all these things interconnect and how do we take care of ourselves so we can
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finish our careers as strong as we started them? Gotcha. So firefighters, police officers, EMS,
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soldiers, like let's talk about their physical, your strength and conditioning programs for these
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guys. Do you train them pretty much all the same or do you modify it based on their occupation?
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No, we definitely modify it. We modify it not only to the occupation, but also where they're at.
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For one, first responders, you have, I mean, you have some wildland firefighters that are 22,
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23 years old, or, you know, some of those individuals that we train over a lot of recruit
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classes in the academies. And you have some military veterans coming out at 24, but then you have
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some that are 60 years old. So, and they're all different demands. They have different positions
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and roles. When you talk about law enforcement, you talk about maybe a SWAT team or ESU, maybe people
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that are doing a lot of search warrants that are getting, kind of getting their hands on and kind of
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really dealing with certain sort of non-permissive environments or hostile suspects and things like
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that versus say firefighter in Boston is doing 30 calls a night versus a wildland firefighter that,
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you know, is spending multi-days without sleeping in the field and battling firefighters and pretty
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much fighting fires with garden tools for the most part. So we have to analyze how we train them is
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it's very, our model is eat, sweat, and thrive. And under our SWAT pillar is a big part of,
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it's very personalized and it's personalized through like a needs analysis. So basically,
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physiologically, what do you need for your job to perform? What are your specific job tasks? And
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I mean, I just came from a workshop outside of Chicago last, like really last couple of days.
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And we were going through this and we were talking, each individual was like, what, tell me,
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tell me about your job. You know, what, what are your specific needs that we, that you have,
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whether, and what is the specific movements? Is it squatting? Is it benching down? Is it tight,
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confined spaces, uneven terrain, hot, very hot or extreme temperature environments?
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What a type of injuries do you have? What are preexisting things that you've had before?
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And then also what's people's training age? Training age is like really that the age that
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you've been training correctly, the duration of the age you've been training correctly for.
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So if you were been trained and you were a competitive athlete and, you know, you were
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in the weight room, you know, at 15 years old and really had an idea of new, you knew what you were
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doing and you're 30 years old, your training age would be 15 years, which is someone that has never
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been trained before. Maybe wasn't at, wasn't as athletic or maybe did not, weren't involved in
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sports. And it's kind of a late bloomer when it comes to that. And they've only really been
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training for a couple of years, believe it or not. So we have to look at the skill sets of everybody
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too, of what they're doing. So we believe in three things under our sweat pillar, not only about for
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one specific, specificity of training, like what is your job? Because performance is so job specific
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and, and your training should be as well. Right. I don't think anyone's going to argue that,
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you know, a strong man is, is very kind of fit in his own way. And so it was an ultra marathoner.
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But if you, you stuck a strong man in the water and told him to swim, you might, it might not bode
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so well. Or if it took an ultra marathoner and say, Hey, pick up that, pick up that Atlas stone over
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there. That might not help. Right. So when we're talking about this, like we need to train for
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performance versus training for fitness. And if you train for performance and what your job tasks will,
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a by-product is you will, you will get fit, but you will be prepared for your job.
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We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. So like what kind of stuff you haven't liked it. So I imagine there's
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like, are you guys doing like kind of CrossFit type stuff, barbell training? What is that like a
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typical program might look like? So a typical program, it's all we call periodization, which I'm sure
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you've heard before. It's a, you know, kind of a methodology is like, what are we looking at? What energy
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systems, whether it's, you know, aerobic, anaerobic, whether it's, you know, obviously analyzing your
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needs and demands and then setting up a, a, a structured program. It's not waking up and being
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like, I wonder what I should do today. It's very structured. It's, you know, we have programs that
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are very, very basic for people that are three days a week. We have programs that are, are five
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days a week. We have more advanced programs. Some of the, it's not CrossFit style. I would say it is
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more of, you know, hitting the right energy systems at the right times, knowing that you have to be
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ready for your, I'd say quote, it'd be the toughest day of your life. You know, when you get that call,
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you need to be prepared for, you have to have a certain amount of preparation. And if you're just
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a runner and you're just, you know, kind of more of an aerobic athlete, well, you may not be able to
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pull your buddy out of that fire. So we have to, when we talk to them about it, we're like, all right,
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we have, you know, 50, 60 different programs on our tactical athlete portal. We have this,
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this portal that houses all of our education information. We give them access to that.
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And then we'll have them go through and basically say, all right, I need to develop more strength.
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So what's that going to look like? And to get to your question, it might be more barbell training.
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It might be more working on some explosive speed. It might be someone who's aerobically built or
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that needs to put a couple of pounds of muscle on. It might be more focused on that. So we're very,
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I'd say very structured in our programming. However, I want people to go home and when
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they come through O2X to find it approachable for everybody. So we don't, we're not training
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the same way as a 60 year, for a 60 year old firefighter has been in service for 30 years
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versus a 25 year old. On some ways, what I'm seeing in the, in the first responders is that
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it's a, it's extremes on both sides. I see people that are working out and are pretty much in the
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overtraining range. And then I see people that are not training at all. So I also don't want to
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implement something that's so structured that they're not going to stay with and they're not
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going to have fun with, because I want to make sure that it's fun. It's exciting for them. And also
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I want to meet them where they are and I want it to be approachable. So some of the first responders
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that we've had in our course, some of the tactical ads, it's been a long time, believe it or not,
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since they've trained. So we go through our methodology of, uh, uh, prepare, sweat, recover.
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So we're preparing for movement, which kind of involves a lot of like, you know, front planks
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and side planks and work on, you know, basically firing your muscles before movement. We do it a lot
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of like those mini bands that we get, we, we were kind of partnered with perform better. So these
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little, these little mini bands, you put around your ankles, your knees, and we can get your,
00:24:12.340
your, uh, posterior chain, like your glutes, your hamstrings firing. So we can get those movements
00:24:18.460
ready. Then we go into a dynamic warmup and we're basically preparing them for actual movement with
00:24:24.840
their sweat is. And then we do some foam rolling and static stretching, which we call the recover
00:24:29.480
section at the end. But there's some people that come through our course or some first responders
00:24:33.840
say like, I don't even know where to start with some of, some of my team that might be 80 plus
00:24:39.480
pounds overweight. And we say, well, you might want to just start with the prepare and the recover.
00:24:44.180
You might want to just help them getting active and feel approachable and kind of improving.
00:24:49.420
We say this over and over again, is that improving by 1% every day, just get people moving again to
00:24:56.140
start feeling better. So our model feel like it's, it is very structured. It is very science and
00:25:03.140
evidence-based and, in fact, you know, fundamentally sound, but we want to make sure that if someone
00:25:09.660
writes in and they want to run a 5k and they want to train with a 5k in their, in their hometown with
00:25:15.660
their wife, well, there's some benefits of that, of them working together and motivation that will help
00:25:21.260
just get them started on a program or working towards a goal. It's a lot of goal setting, Brett.
00:25:26.420
Right. Right. I think how you train these guys or what, I mean, cause I think when I've talked to
00:25:32.440
people who've wanted to start working out, just talking about regular civilians, one of the things
00:25:35.880
like, well, the hurdles they have, like, I just don't have the time. It just doesn't fit in my
00:25:39.500
schedule. But like, you're working with people whose schedule is like super erratic, right? And
00:25:45.080
it's super already pretty strenuous yet. They're, they're finding time to do that. So like, what allows
00:25:50.700
them to do that? Like, how do you get these guys to train, even though their schedule might be wonky
00:25:54.500
or they just got back and had like a terrible shift. It was super hard, but they still got to
00:25:58.920
train. So what do you do to help them do that? Yeah. Well, for one, I bring up the goal setting
00:26:04.600
because I think that setting some very tight goals and also finding motivation, anytime you can align
00:26:11.620
someone's like someone's values behind like what their goal is. And for a lot of the people that I,
00:26:17.460
you know, I think that I've listened to your show, they just want to, they want to feel better.
00:26:20.440
Right. And we're not saying that you have to live this, this rigorous life and you have to start like
00:26:25.460
five days a week training and getting up at, you know, four o'clock in the morning. Like you don't
00:26:30.320
necessarily need to do that. You just need to be able to set a goal. If your goal in six months is
00:26:35.720
to start feeling better and to start getting in better shape or losing some pounds, like getting
00:26:41.280
very specific on the goals and setting a structured program and easing, easing into things. So someone who
00:26:46.960
hasn't even touched it, they say, for one, I don't have time to work out. Well, some of the first
00:26:51.680
responders we have, they only get about 15 minutes between calls and they'll find an opportunity to
00:26:57.640
work out. And then there, and we hear another thing was like, I don't have equipment. Well, there's a lot
00:27:02.160
of places that we served in, in the military that didn't have equipment. And the one thing you have
00:27:07.100
always is you have gravity, right? And you got your body weight. So there's incredible amount of
00:27:13.700
things that we, that you can do with just your body weight and really just using a body weight
00:27:19.160
conditioning exercises and, and things that you can tackle. And if you start making set goals,
00:27:25.500
start building a routine and I'm, you know, couldn't preach building a strong and a realistic
00:27:31.780
routine for yourself, then it starts developing better habits. But I would say that for the listeners,
00:27:38.280
starting, starting with a 1% change, if you can just move a little bit more every day,
00:27:43.920
if you can set like, Hey, I'm going to take 10 minutes to foam roll in the morning, or I'm going
00:27:49.420
to take 10 minutes to do a body weight workout at some point where I know I can control the day.
00:27:54.840
And I think that's very, very important. I know that's for me is being able to put my workouts and put
00:28:00.720
my training sessions in a time of the day that I can control because essentially once 630 hits,
00:28:10.240
I mean, the emails or phone calls are coming in and we're just going and it doesn't, it doesn't
00:28:14.780
necessarily stop. So I know I can, I know I've really, really value and like cherish my mornings.
00:28:21.540
That's the, my time for, you know, for my own professional development. And I can tell you that if you
00:28:27.260
don't take care of yourself, everything else, your business, your family, you know, how you perform,
00:28:32.780
it seems like all that other stuff starts coming apart. So I, you got to set yourself as a priority.
00:28:40.440
Right. So yeah, I think a good insight there is like, don't expect like perfection all the time,
00:28:46.380
like do what you can to control the situation with your workout. But sometimes you just,
00:28:50.080
you can only do what you can do and that's okay.
00:28:52.480
Yeah. Same thing with the, the nutrition component is the same. We see a lot of people just,
00:28:56.480
they're trying to do too much too quick. And if it's not a sustainable plan that you can do for
00:29:01.540
the rest of your life, I mean, it's hard to get, it's hard to achieve a lot of your goals. If you,
00:29:06.200
I think the adage is you can't outwork a bad fork so you can work really hard and train really hard.
00:29:12.000
But if your nutrition is lacking, it's really challenging. So I think staying, staying ahead
00:29:18.120
of that, but not feeling guilty when you miss a workout. I mean, that's going to happen. Life
00:29:22.960
happens, right? My, my sister's got, you know, three kids and it always sounds like every time
00:29:28.460
I call, it sounds like, you know, world war three in the background. And, and I know that she's got a
00:29:33.020
lot, she's got a lot going on, but finding those moments for, for themselves and finding some time
00:29:39.300
to take a moment to, to structure a program and, and not feeling guilty when, when life happens and
00:29:45.260
say, Hey, this week said 80, 20, you know, if you could do 80% of the time, if you can do what's
00:29:49.680
right, that's great. 20% of the time, like, don't feel, don't feel guilty having that dessert at
00:29:54.880
dinner, right? Don't eat half of it. Just like, just commit to and eat the whole thing. Just get
00:29:59.420
back after it the next morning. Right. Well, so an important part of physical fitness, a lot of
00:30:05.360
people focus on the training and the nutrition part, but like where the growth happen is, is during
00:30:10.420
recovery, right? When you're not training, but I imagine recovery for these guys, for these tactical
00:30:16.700
athletes is hard because as you said, they're on, they're doing shift work. So there might be,
00:30:20.820
you know, sleep is an important part of recovery. These guys might be awake when they should be
00:30:25.240
asleep. So how do you manage recovery for these guys? Yeah. I mean, for one recovery time is
00:30:31.320
completely unpredictable because you don't know when you're going to get the next call. You're operating
00:30:35.860
in extreme unpredictable environments and terrain, there's shift work, you know, and there, the variety of
00:30:42.440
different shift schedules, some are, some are better than others and a lot of high pressure
00:30:47.160
situations and giving them tools to recover and relax, which gets a lot into our thrive pillar,
00:30:55.040
which is like the mental performance, stress mitigation is very, very critical in that recovery
00:31:01.340
process. You know, in our programs, we teach about breathing, we teach about mindfulness and yoga.
00:31:06.860
We teach about the value of, of sleep and sleep hygiene and building really good sleep habits,
00:31:13.540
knowing how to set up your environment to sleep, where it's a place of, you know, it is a place of
00:31:18.560
recovery, right? And, and also mindset, you have to make it a priority. All these things are
00:31:24.180
priority, prioritizing the right way. And if you make priority, like sleep a priority and make that a
00:31:30.840
priority as, Hey, this is part of my job preparation. And I don't care if it's like in the boardroom
00:31:35.860
or out in the field or in the military. I mean, there's an element of like, you have to recover
00:31:41.720
there. Now there's times where these guys are working a 24 hour shift and doing 33 calls at 33
00:31:47.780
calls a night. They're busy. They don't have time, but to be able to give them the tools to take care
00:31:54.420
of where a lot, Brett, it gets into is, is what's, what's between the ears, right? So taking care of
00:32:01.260
everything, taking care of your mind and provide those tools. So when they are off shift and when
00:32:07.060
the dust settles after the helicopters kind of take off and you're there, you have that time to
00:32:13.060
relax. You have that time and you have those tools in your toolbox at your disposal. And I don't expect
00:32:19.540
people to, you know, they come through our program, they come through our workshops, they see our online
00:32:24.720
information, online courses, and to be subject matter experts. And I don't want to give them a problem
00:32:30.380
with the, you know, having a complete holistic program is if there's a lot of information,
00:32:34.200
so how to make it very, very simple. And so we give them access to things like that tactical athlete
00:32:40.020
portal, which is, has those breathing exercises on, and it has the yoga nidra, the eye rest, the sleep,
00:32:48.520
the meditation. And so we can start building those healthy habits there and also training a new skill
00:32:54.840
set because the conditioning and nutrition, I mean, there's a lot of, you know, the science
00:33:00.240
evidence, things change a bit, but maybe not as, not as rapid as we all, as we all think what's
00:33:07.420
fundamentally sound. But, you know, I can tell you that every workshop, every time that we go out and
00:33:14.380
train tactical athletes, we do work even with the Chicago Blackhawks, professional sports,
00:33:18.620
some federal agencies. And we always ask what percentage of your job is mental versus physical.
00:33:25.360
I will tell you a hundred percent of the time in every single job. And even within corporation,
00:33:30.500
they say their job is more mental than physical. And, and then we're like, well, why don't we train
00:33:35.660
that? If your job is, you know, people say various different percentages, but they all say it's more
00:33:41.700
than less. They would say, well, why don't we train what's between the ears then? If that, if that's a
00:33:47.740
higher focus or that's a higher probability, we're always going towards the nutrition and
00:33:53.080
the conditioning, but can't underestimate the value of the rest, the recovery, dealing with stress
00:33:58.720
management, which, which is a huge thing for, for these types of high stress occupations. It's,
00:34:04.080
it's kind of tough to manage the day to day. Their, their jobs are not easy.
00:34:08.900
Right. I imagine that's how you sell it to them. Cause I, I can see a lot of these, you know,
00:34:12.120
you said firefighters, these guys are tough guys, police officers saying like, tell them like,
00:34:16.000
Hey, you need to meditate. And they probably have these associations of meditation of like
00:34:19.620
sitting in yoga pants or something, but that's something like your, if your job's mental,
00:34:24.320
like train the mental. Yeah. There's an element of grit and toughness that,
00:34:28.020
that needs to be a part of it. You know, I I'd say from the mental performance side,
00:34:32.380
like when you bring up some of the top athletes or I'd say it's become more and more acceptable
00:34:38.880
now because you're hearing a lot more about it, whether it's in athletics or in the special
00:34:43.880
operations community, but it's all, it's all in the messaging and it's all how the curriculum is
00:34:49.100
outrolled, you know, to walk into a firehouse, to walk into a police station or a team room or a
00:34:56.660
locker room and say, all right, guys, this is what we're going to do. We're going to, we're going to
00:34:59.600
get down here and start meditating and we're going to really practice breathing. That would not,
00:35:03.900
that would not work well, you know, to be able to kind of get them to trust and,
00:35:08.020
to trust and buy into the program and most importantly, see the results.
00:35:14.460
And I think when people, people see these results and these impact, it could be,
00:35:19.420
you know, feeling better from a mental health standpoint, managing stress. Some of the law
00:35:26.240
enforcement officers that are out there, I mean, they're, they're by themselves or operating by
00:35:30.540
themselves. And so there probably couldn't be a more stressful time in the, you know, than,
00:35:36.660
than now to be a law enforcement officer. And there's a lot of pressures and a lot of stress.
00:35:42.600
There's a lot of visibility. There's a lot of oversight that's happening. And when you come
00:35:47.640
from a domestic dispute and then you're going into your high speed chase and you're also detaining
00:35:54.180
somebody, and then you're going to an overdose, and then you're standing in the middle of the
00:35:59.060
traffic, directing traffic for in the morning as everyone's going to work. Like when I passed those
00:36:04.540
law enforcement officers, the police officers out in the field traffic, like I can't imagine what's
00:36:09.180
good. The ones that we work with, it's like the person that's directing traffic there, you know,
00:36:13.600
they just, they just could have had one hell of a night and here you are passing them on your way
00:36:17.900
to work. And it's to provide them the tools in order to kind of self-regulate, to be able to,
00:36:25.440
hey, when I'm in my car and I got a minute, I got time to kind of just, you know, catch my breath
00:36:31.620
and to be able to kind of recenter and get back into the zone. And it's the same thing that we talk
00:36:38.180
about with our athletes. Hey, like, how do you know when you're in a, when you're in a bad spot
00:36:41.880
and you're, you know, you're, you're at a level of a five and you want, you need to be playing at a
00:36:48.580
So that's O2X performance. You guys are helping, like, that's one way you're making an impact
00:36:52.300
is with the first responders, getting them not only in shape physically, but also mentally.
00:36:57.320
Let's talk about the other organization you founded, One Summit. What's, what's that?
00:37:01.440
One Summit is a nonprofit that builds resilience in children battling cancer. We do this through
00:37:08.360
a couple of different pillars, but experiential learning. We take them, take them rock climbing.
00:37:13.600
We do it through storytelling. We have opportunity for them to kind of tell their stories and then also
00:37:18.620
education into the community. So in community engagement.
00:37:22.800
But what makes it unique too, is that you also hooked these kids up with a Navy SEAL mentor,
00:37:28.200
Yeah, that's correct. So actually right around the, it was right around the same time that I
00:37:33.380
put together O2X, One Summit was, was really my first idea coming out of the military.
00:37:40.060
Unfortunately, I lost my mother to cancer on my first deployment. I was deployed and kind of got
00:37:45.100
the word that my mom passed away. She was battling breast cancer for, for about a year and a half.
00:37:51.680
She fought it, you know, really hard, inspired a lot of people along the way. And, you know,
00:37:57.020
that was the first time I've ever had an exposure to cancer. That was the closest I've ever been to it
00:38:03.260
before. I didn't know much about it at the time. And, and I wanted to do, find a way to, to help and
00:38:10.120
learn more and get closer to the thing that really took, you know, took someone who I cared about and
00:38:14.920
loved, you know, so much. So I started volunteering at a, at a variety of different cancer organizations
00:38:20.580
and, you know, over time was surprised on how many children get cancer. And it seemed like an
00:38:30.020
incredibly unfair fight to me, you know, here, you know, things that happen to us later in life.
00:38:34.920
I mean, yeah, we can reflect on a lot of experiences we've had and, and we can kind of dig, dig deep
00:38:40.980
with inside and kind of reflect on those experience to kind of inspire us to rise to the occasion and
00:38:46.460
fight in battle. But to me, when these kids were getting cancer at a number of different ages, I mean,
00:38:52.600
it's completely an unbiased disease, right? It was, it was just an unfair fight. It was like pulling
00:38:59.020
their childhood from them when they should be in school, when they should be out on the playgrounds and
00:39:04.560
playing sports and having fun, you know, they're spending their time in, you know, their, their
00:39:09.320
other locker room, which is, is really the pediatric oncology, you know, center and going through
00:39:15.840
chemotherapy and, and going through radiation and, and hearing all these prognoses, not only, but
00:39:22.100
if they make it through, but all the possible secondary impacts that could have that not a lot of
00:39:26.780
people don't talk about along the way. I was at, during that time and I was volunteering, I was
00:39:31.480
obviously serving in the, in the SEAL teams and, you know, I happened to be surrounded by just an
00:39:36.140
incredible bunch of human beings that were extremely inspirational. They were, they were tougher than
00:39:43.240
hell. And I tell you, they, um, I saw an opportunity to merge like kind of two of my passions and two of
00:39:49.980
my worlds together. All I wanted to do is just, I thought that it was a, it was a great opportunity to
00:39:54.840
connect this group that was very resilient, but I thought also, you know, needed another connection
00:40:02.460
outside the military. And then I saw this group of kids that were like battling and they were both
00:40:07.420
warriors in their own sense, but merging these two warriors together made, you know, kind of created
00:40:13.400
something great. At first I reached out to a lot of different hospitals, well, mainly because I was
00:40:19.280
moving up to Boston, Massachusetts. There's an incredible amount of hospitals. I reached out to a
00:40:23.980
number of hospitals. This is no nonprofit, no program, just that really an idea. I said, you
00:40:29.540
know, I'd love to take partner these kids up with Navy SEALs, give them a mentor, you know, basically a
00:40:37.260
mentor that can kind of help navigate them through this in life and be there for them, provide those
00:40:42.760
skills. But I want to do it and I want to give them some skills through, through rock climbing.
00:40:47.600
And for me, rock climbing taught a lot, taught us a lot about, a lot about life. There, there's
00:40:53.600
overcoming fears of starting a new challenge for them. Like it could be this, most of them it's rock
00:40:58.960
climbing for the first time. Just like when you're starting to bet your battle against cancer or
00:41:03.280
whatever your new challenges in life, you have this monumental hurdle and there's an immense amount
00:41:08.180
of fear of just kind of taking that first step. And then we talk about setting goals and not
00:41:14.060
getting overwhelmed about this like huge mountain or this huge rock that you need to, you need to
00:41:18.340
climb. It's, it's taking one hand and one foothold at a time or, you know, the direction you, direction
00:41:25.440
you think you're going to take in life, you know, the one that you, the route that you think you're
00:41:29.400
going to take and the route that you actually take is usually two different things. And that's a hundred
00:41:34.440
percent just like in life. It's like the path, the pathway that we think that we're going to go on
00:41:38.860
and we end up taking are, are almost always different. And the biggest part then is, is
00:41:43.720
trust. And when we bring these kids out climbing for one, they're meeting a complete stranger for
00:41:50.140
the first time. We do things like workbooks and we, you know, we get, there's little surveys and
00:41:54.780
questionnaires that we go to kind of educate on both sides. So it's not a complete cold start,
00:42:00.180
but for the most part, they're coming in and they're meeting a complete stranger.
00:42:03.020
And that complete stranger is in within 15, 20 minutes is showing you that your life-saving
00:42:10.760
gear, your harness and your ropes and how this whole process will, will work. And there's an
00:42:16.800
immense amount of trust that happens. And I, and I think that's indicative of, you know, for one,
00:42:22.380
when you're, when you're going through battling cancer, there's immense amount of trust that you
00:42:26.980
have to have like, like in your parents and the healthcare workers and the, in the aids that are
00:42:32.020
there. And, uh, you know, I've been lucky with, with one summit, you know, I have a tremendous
00:42:36.680
amount of people that have, have got behind it. And the impact has truthfully, it's, I knew something
00:42:44.900
special was going to come out of it, but I'm, I'm, I'm blown away every day about the stories that we
00:42:50.180
hear. Well, and I'm sure there's tons of them, but I mean, is there, there are a few that stand out
00:42:54.860
to you of how not only have the lives of these kids been changed, but also the seals too?
00:43:00.640
Yeah, there's one in particular that stands out. This one kid that was one little warrior there that
00:43:07.520
was, uh, you know, battling cancer for quite a bit of time. And, you know, there there's highs and
00:43:12.820
lows. It goes into remission. It comes back and, you know, it just continued to battle over and over
00:43:18.340
again. And, um, he was going into taking the ride like he normally did with his father into,
00:43:25.840
you know, getting another brain scan. He had brain cancer and he was coming in there and he turned to
00:43:31.840
his dad in the car ride. And he said, you know, dad, you know, I, I hope, I hope this tumor grows.
00:43:39.800
And basically, you know, what his dad described to us was like, you know, he was saying,
00:43:44.700
you know, I, like I, I'm fought this fight. I fought this fight like long enough, like I'm tired.
00:43:51.960
So you can only imagine what that would be to hear that as a father. You could not even imagine.
00:43:56.980
Right. So he goes in and he comes across this, this flyer there for a one summit and he, he, um,
00:44:06.460
comes back and he ends up reaching out to us and there's an application process and he, he comes through.
00:44:11.880
By the way, we didn't even know this, this part of this story beforehand. He comes to our program
00:44:18.660
and just, I guess it gave him a second wind. It, you know, put him and made him a kid again,
00:44:25.940
got him back up on the wall. He, he, he left there thinking he had superpowers. Right. And so
00:44:33.000
sometimes it's all about, you know, there's certain things that you just, obviously with the treatment
00:44:36.920
and cancer and how aggressive it is and how it attacks on people, there's certain things you just
00:44:40.620
can't, you just can't do anything about. Right. But sometimes it's survival and it's sometimes
00:44:46.000
it's survival between the mind and the body and that connection that's there. So that fire that
00:44:52.820
was lit, you know, in that child and that little warrior after that, he ended up just changing his
00:45:00.060
mindset and battling. And, uh, about six, uh, it was about eight or 10 months later, his dad reached
00:45:07.860
out with that story and said, you know, I can tell you before one summit, he was, he was ready
00:45:12.360
to throw the towel in and he told the story. He said, but after that event and that experience and
00:45:17.580
his work with a mentor, he's like, he, uh, he's like, but he's like, and by the way, I just want to let
00:45:23.680
you know his, his tumor just shrunk two millimeters. That's awesome. And I, I'm sure these seals that are
00:45:29.960
involved. I mean, that transforms their life too, to, to see these kids battle. Absolutely. Even more
00:45:36.520
so, you know, really the guys are, the guys are, are humbled. I think they're in awe. I think the
00:45:43.260
kids come in and they think that we're going to be, they're going to be in awe of us. And that's like
00:45:47.380
the, that's their mindset. They're like, Oh, I'm meeting a, I'm meeting a superhero today, but I can tell
00:45:53.120
you, uh, we learn way more from them. There's way more impact and inspiration that comes and
00:45:59.600
they're, they teach us about what, what resilience and what true toughness really is. Is there a way
00:46:05.340
for people who are listening to the show to get involved in the program, help support this? Because
00:46:09.180
I'm sure there's people who would like to do that. Yeah, sure. It's a onesummit.org. So it's O-N-E-S-U-M-M-I-T.org.
00:46:17.720
Yeah. And you can, you can get involved with someone on Oregon and O-2-X is, uh, just O-2-X.com.
00:46:23.920
Well, Adam, thanks for coming on. It's been a great conversation.
00:46:26.300
Yeah. I appreciate it. Thanks for, uh, thanks for having us on. And, um, I do want to let
00:46:30.760
everybody know if, if anybody that, that listened to the podcast, you know, they want to access that
00:46:36.200
tactical athlete portal that has the strength and conditioning programs, the nutrition, hundreds
00:46:40.860
of recipes, the mental performance. And it also has like kind of a concierge human performance
00:46:46.000
reach back site and referral there. Um, we're giving everybody a one, one free month membership.
00:46:53.020
If they put in A-O-M, obviously, and so that's Alpha, Oscar, Mike there into the promo code,
00:47:01.140
you get one free month. So happy to give all your, all your guests that.
00:47:04.640
Well, thank you very much. We'll be sure to include that in our show notes.
00:47:08.000
Thank you. My guest today was Adam LaRue. He's the founder of O2-X, a human performance organization
00:47:13.240
dedicated training, tactical athletes. You can find more information about that at O2X.com.
00:47:17.580
Also check out his nonprofit One Summit that teams up Navy SEALs with kids with cancer,
00:47:22.600
take some rock climbing, go to onesummit.org to find out about that and find out ways you can
00:47:27.020
get involved with that organization as well. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash O2X.
00:47:32.600
We can find links to resources where you can delve deeper into this topic.
00:47:43.240
Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. For more manly tips and advice,
00:47:52.020
make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at artofmanliness.com. And if you enjoy
00:47:55.700
the show, you've got something out of it. I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give
00:47:58.840
us a review on iTunes or Stitcher. It helps out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you.
00:48:02.680
Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you would think would get
00:48:06.280
something out of it. As always, thank you for your continued support. And until next time,