The Art of Manliness - #460： The Eat, Sweat, Thrive Protocol for Tactical Athletes

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast. First responders

00:00:19.260 and members of the military have physically and mentally demanding jobs. To tackle those

00:00:23.040 jobs effectively, they need to be in shape physically and mentally. But most first responders

00:00:26.640 have an erratic schedule that makes working out difficult. So many don't and consequently

00:00:30.680 suffer from injuries and poor health. My guest today is a former Navy SEAL on a mission to solve

00:00:34.640 that problem. His name is Adam LaRue and he's the founder of O2X, an organization dedicated to

00:00:39.540 training tactical athletes. Adam walks us through the unique challenges soldiers and first responders

00:00:43.460 have when it comes to physical fitness and explains his philosophy on training tactical athletes. We

00:00:47.840 then discuss insights civilians can take away from how first responders train, including making time

00:00:52.200 for working out on an erratic schedule, managing stress and making recovery a priority. We

00:00:56.880 entered a conversation discussing the other organization Adam founded called One Summit,

00:01:00.540 which pairs children who have cancer with a Navy SEAL mentor who helps these kids gain greater

00:01:04.600 resilience through rock climbing. After the show's over, check out our show notes at aom.is

00:01:08.780 slash O2X. That's O2X, not 02X, O2X. You can find links to resources where you can delve deeper

00:01:14.420 into this topic. And Adam joins me now via clearcast.io. Adam LaRue, welcome to the show.

00:01:31.300 Hey, Brett. Thanks for having me on.

00:01:32.880 So we got an interesting background. We're going to talk about these organizations you founded. But

00:01:38.380 before we do, tell us about your SEAL background. You were a Navy SEAL. How does that work? Are you

00:01:44.120 always a Navy SEAL? Or do you leave the SEALs? What's the status on that? I'm okay being a

00:01:49.260 former Navy SEAL.

00:01:50.780 Former Navy SEAL. All right. So what led you to join the Navy SEALs?

00:01:54.180 A lot of it started with my family. And I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about that initially is

00:02:00.820 my mother and father were both teachers. I grew up in New Jersey. They grew up in Albany,

00:02:06.940 New York, kind of grew up down the street from each other. Actually, my mom and dad met when my dad was

00:02:12.360 nine years old and delivered newspapers to this little girl that used to wait for him every

00:02:17.660 morning to get the paper. And believe it or not, that happened. And my grandfather worked for Nabisco,

00:02:23.740 drove a truck for Nabisco, the cracker company, ended up in New Jersey. They kind of went their

00:02:28.880 separate ways. My dad got drafted. He went to college and university at Albany and got drafted,

00:02:35.940 came back after Vietnam and married my mother, New Jersey. And I can tell you, my mom was a second

00:02:43.740 grade teacher. My dad was a gym teacher for a while and a soccer coach and then went on to

00:02:49.000 sales. And I can tell you by watching them, they just had a culture in the household and raised us to

00:02:58.840 really kind of be anybody we want to be. I was fascinated with the military. I mean,

00:03:05.480 there was a time where I was always just looking at my dad's uniform in the closet

00:03:09.020 and asking him questions about it. But really the values that my family instilled in the household

00:03:15.600 and kind of brought and raised us up, I have an older sister and a younger brother.

00:03:20.660 Those values, when I stumbled across the SEAL teams at a fairly young age, those values that the

00:03:27.160 SEAL teams embodied and kind of what my family believed in and what I was raised on kind of

00:03:32.480 merged pretty well. So always a very, very goal-oriented person at a young age. So, I mean,

00:03:38.500 I remember walking into my guidance counselor in eighth grade and said, you know, I want to go to

00:03:42.700 Naval Academy. I want to be a SEAL officer. And I think back then they were like, ah, you know,

00:03:48.520 pump your brakes. It's going to change. It's going to change quite a bit. But I was certainly

00:03:52.340 focused on that. I didn't necessarily choose the exact path of going to Naval Academy. I ended up

00:03:59.220 going to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. So I graduated from high school, went to the U.S.

00:04:04.340 Merchant Marine Academy. And the big challenge there was finding the direct pathway to apply,

00:04:11.860 even apply to the SEAL teams. Because from up until that point, no one has ever went directly from

00:04:18.040 Merchant Marine Academy and then gone right to SEAL training before. So finding a pathway and

00:04:24.100 there's a certain amount of spots on how that works. Back then there was about 40 spots and most

00:04:28.960 of them came from Naval Academy and the rest would come from ROTC spots or OCS and trained quite a bit

00:04:37.220 and met a lot of people and had some great help and great mentors along the way and was lucky enough

00:04:42.080 to get picked up and selected my senior year for what they would call basic underwater demolition

00:04:47.560 SEAL training. Awesome. So yeah, Merchant Marine. We've had a podcast about the Merchant Marines

00:04:52.780 during World War II. It's one of those organizations, like part of the military that a lot of people

00:04:57.440 don't know a lot about. That's right. It's kind of like the best kept secret out there for federal

00:05:03.420 academies, I think. I mean, you can, at this point, there's a pathway to go Army, Navy, Air Force,

00:05:09.860 Marine Corps, Coast Guard, Air National Guard, or stay in the Merchant Marine. But it's a unique

00:05:15.140 school that you do four years of schooling in three years and you have to do a year overseas

00:05:20.700 and it's divided up on what sport you played, on what year, how many, you might be gone four months

00:05:27.260 your sophomore year and eight months your junior year and you're just out there on merchant vessels

00:05:31.620 working and collecting enough SEAL days and learning enough hands-on training combined with

00:05:37.340 the curriculum at school to sit for your Coast Guard exam your senior year. But the school was

00:05:42.180 founded during World War II. It was actually on the grounds of Chrysler's old building. So you had a

00:05:48.180 direct line of sight into New York City, which was interesting because I was there at the Merchant

00:05:53.000 Marine Academy when 9-11 happened and we were able to see everything kind of unfold in front of our eyes

00:05:59.580 there. I graduated in 2002. But unique campus, unique area, and definitely unique opportunities.

00:06:08.640 But the Merchant Marine Academy, even during World War II, we lost 142 midshipmen during that time

00:06:17.280 because they were just pumping kids out and midshipmen out after a year and a half of training

00:06:22.800 to get out and what's now known as the Tin Can Sailors. 0.97

00:06:27.040 Right. So I guess, were you the first midshipman, Merchant Marine midshipman to become a Navy SEAL?

00:06:32.020 That went directly from the academy right to SEAL training and become a SEAL, yes.

00:06:37.740 Awesome. And after you completed BUDS, what team were you with on the SEALs?

00:06:42.700 So I went to East Coast. I went right to SEAL Team 4, then it was over at 8. So I spent all my

00:06:48.640 time on the East Coast-based SEAL teams, which being from New Jersey, I was able to be in the

00:06:54.100 same time zone. And during between training trips and deployments, I still had opportunity to see

00:06:59.560 my family up north, see my sister's kids and my brother and watched him kind of grow up and

00:07:06.200 play sports and things like that.

00:07:09.300 All right. So you did SEALs. After you left active duty, you decided to go to Harvard to get your

00:07:16.500 master's in, what, MPA? Was that master's in public, what's that, administration?

00:07:21.520 Yeah, master's in public administration.

00:07:23.420 What was going on there? What was your plan with that?

00:07:25.800 Well, I'd say Harvard was a little bit of a Hail Mary for me. I put my application in. I looked at

00:07:32.400 a lot of different programs. For one, I was just transitioning after about 11 and a half years

00:07:38.600 in the SEAL teams, deploying and gone quite a bit. I was looking for basically to challenge myself in

00:07:45.680 the, I guess, in the civilian sector. I wanted to really put my hands and try my hand in

00:07:51.200 entrepreneurship. But a big thread for me was service. I wanted to continue to serve in ways

00:07:57.840 outside the military when I wasn't wearing a uniform. The Harvard Kennedy School seemed like

00:08:03.200 an incredible program. For one, it was a one-year program. At the time, I was 33, 34 years old. So I

00:08:10.660 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

00:08:15.380 of experiences and a lot of leadership time, but a lot of seams that I thought that I needed to fill

00:08:21.700 and maybe some time to just kind of reflect a bit. And grad school seemed like a great,

00:08:26.420 great transition program. One topic that was in one subject that I kept on reading about was

00:08:33.040 social entrepreneurship. So this is impact. How can you start organizations and companies that leave

00:08:40.760 impact and leave, I guess, the world in a better place than you found it? And I thought that that

00:08:46.220 was really unique. I thought that based on a lot of the experiences that I had and lucky enough to

00:08:52.900 serve with some of the most amazing people, SEALs, men and women, support staff, and had a lot of great

00:08:59.040 experiences along the way. I was like, I thought that was really fascinating to me. How can I continue to

00:09:05.300 serve outside the military? How can I continue to have an impact or start an organization that

00:09:12.140 would help me facilitate that? The Kennedy School education was very elective-driven,

00:09:19.580 and I liked that aspect. So I said, all right, well, I can take a class over at Harvard Business

00:09:24.000 School in entrepreneurial finance. I can go to MIT and take a cross-register in a class of

00:09:31.920 startup challenges or stop by classes at the law school or even just learn about statistics and

00:09:38.900 policy and how to make impact in the public sector. And really, that tied up pretty heavily

00:09:46.900 into both organizations that I ended up founding and co-founding.

00:09:51.040 Right. So let's talk about that. You graduate, got your MPA, and you helped found not just one,

00:09:57.200 but two organizations. Let's talk about O2X Human Performance first. Tell us what it is and who

00:10:03.800 are your main clients?

00:10:05.300 So O2X is a human performance education and training company. And what we founded it as,

00:10:11.500 I mean, our mission was always being to help people maximize human performance, how to reach peak and

00:10:17.600 sustain peak performance. And the big thing is durability, sustainability, longevity. I mean,

00:10:23.760 how can we continue and get people to go through a transformational experience to educate, provide

00:10:30.220 the tools for them to improve by 1% every day? And we started out... Initially, we had a great

00:10:37.960 vision of... We had a lot of people out there, a lot of organizations that we would look at.

00:10:43.220 They have a product and they try to build a brand around a product. And we wanted to provide an

00:10:48.080 experience. And we started out with this base to peak mountain race. And it sounds quite intense.

00:10:57.020 And I think if all the participants knew what it was before they started, they probably wouldn't

00:11:01.100 have signed up for it. We had some pretty extreme athletes, like top Nike runners and trail runners

00:11:07.720 and off-trail mountain racers that were there. But then we just had everyday athletes or people that

00:11:14.200 were just coming out there because they wanted to be inspired. They wanted to get back to the outdoors.

00:11:19.800 And we utilized that. And the basis of the center of gravity of that event, Brett, was that was

00:11:26.400 our base camp. And our base camp was education. It was fireside chats that we called it. We had

00:11:34.380 human performance specialists. And the mission was always to maximize human performance. And we started

00:11:40.960 with that and grew it in the Northeast and it expanded across North America. We had some race

00:11:47.800 in Canada, Pacific Northwest, Midwest. And over that time, we really honed in and developed our curriculum,

00:11:55.640 which is now what we outroll to our main market, which is tactical athletes. Tactical athletes for us

00:12:01.980 is people with physically, mentally, emotionally challenging jobs. Ones that are nation's heroes that

00:12:08.040 are out there on the front lines every single day that give us the opportunity for us to kind of be

00:12:13.160 safe and live our lives. They're the first responders. They're the police officers. They're

00:12:19.900 firefighters, which we work with quite a few of them. EMS, Department of Corrections, it's our military.

00:12:27.160 So we've worked with quite a few departments across the country now. Now we've started out with Boston

00:12:33.220 Fire, expanded out. We've been working with about 20% of Montana. So we're slowly building and growing

00:12:38.800 and delivering our education program that primarily is tackling a lot of the occupational

00:12:44.980 challenges that are plaguing these tactical athletes. And what are those occupational challenges?

00:12:50.560 Like what unique fitness issues do they have that say like just a regular citizen doesn't have?

00:12:56.080 So, you know, I'll go back to a little story of how we came into the tactical space. For one,

00:13:02.240 our background being in the military and special operations is something that we were passionate

00:13:08.220 about. We had a lot of first responders that came to our events. They wanted more. We ended up having

00:13:14.660 a meeting with Boston Fire. And I can remember every detail about that meeting. The other co-founder,

00:13:22.520 we have two other co-founders with O2X. One was a, both are former Navy SEALs. One I served with,

00:13:28.340 Paul McCullough. Another one is Gabriel Gomez who got out right around 1996. So I remember walking

00:13:36.240 into this meeting and we walked in and they said they were looking for an injury prevention program.

00:13:42.120 Mainly they were, had over a hundred shoulder surgeries a year. And of course, for one, it wasn't

00:13:50.200 sustainable. Two, it's costing the city an incredible amount of money. And, you know, people are just not

00:13:56.200 feeling good. You know, in the meeting we had the, you know, the union, which was kind of like our

00:14:02.200 first exposure into not only the Massachusetts, but the firefighting union as a whole, but obviously

00:14:07.460 all, all these first responders have unions. So we had the, you know, the International Association

00:14:12.420 of Firefighters or the Massachusetts State Firefighters Union, the local 718, which is run,

00:14:18.180 is about 1500 members strong with Boston Fire there. And then we had health and safety division.

00:14:24.400 And so the health and safety division of Boston Fire was, was really just getting re-energized

00:14:29.320 because there's a lot of these issues that they had to do something about. They could not turn their

00:14:34.880 head. And it's interesting because you look at the fire service or, you know, really first responders

00:14:39.880 as a whole. I mean, you're, Boston Fire was the first fire department in the country. It was the

00:14:45.160 nation's first. And you're about mid 1600s, like 1650. I think they got the first engine and

00:14:51.540 the first paid firefighter, the first fire chief was like in 1670s at some point. So a ton of history

00:14:58.400 and a ton of amazing things about the culture. For one, incredibly tough guys, like tough guys

00:15:05.840 that, that really step up to these challenges that they face every day. But there was also

00:15:12.060 things about the traditions and culture that needed to change a bit. And it wasn't just about fitness.

00:15:18.520 It's about general performance and what you needed to do and how do you need it to perform on the

00:15:23.940 fire ground and your tasks. Some of these issues they had were, and this is what we peeled the

00:15:28.600 onion back in that meeting was it wasn't just shoulder surgeries, which over a hundred a year is quite a

00:15:34.420 bit. It was the sleep apnea and the shift work. It was obesity or type two diabetes. It was the

00:15:43.780 cardiac disease, which is rivaling basically number one killer of firefighters, occupational related

00:15:50.860 killer of firefighters. And then there's cancer. So the cancer every three weeks, a Boston firefighter

00:15:57.800 is diagnosed with cancer and cancer is prevalent. And, and I think the statistic is you're two and a

00:16:04.480 half times more likely to get cancer as a firefighter than just, than just anyone in the average

00:16:09.900 population. And the reason is that for one, there's occupational related hazards all over

00:16:15.320 the place. Everything is flame retardant materials and the carcinogens in these fires, whether it's a,

00:16:21.560 a car fire, house fire, whether you can see it or we can see the smoke or not, it's in the air.

00:16:27.900 So it's a kind of a caustic cocktail between, okay, maybe fitness wasn't a priority. Training for

00:16:35.280 performance isn't a priority. Maintaining your weight wasn't a priority for some, the sleep and

00:16:41.660 the shift work made it really hard to recover and feel good. So during that meeting, and truthfully,

00:16:48.260 we didn't know which direction it was going to go because we were talking about tackling all this

00:16:53.140 holistically because it's not too far off minus, maybe minus the cancer. It wasn't too far off of what

00:16:58.960 we saw in the military and what we wish we had. And that's the premise of where O2X came from.

00:17:03.820 This is the program, the education, the holistic, the complete program, the curriculum that we wish

00:17:09.060 we had. It was more or less, you know, teaching everybody how to fish versus the catch of the fish

00:17:13.760 for them. So how do all these things interconnect and how do we take care of ourselves so we can

00:17:21.060 finish our careers as strong as we started them? Gotcha. So firefighters, police officers, EMS,

00:17:26.660 soldiers, like let's talk about their physical, your strength and conditioning programs for these

00:17:30.640 guys. Do you train them pretty much all the same or do you modify it based on their occupation?

00:17:35.320 No, we definitely modify it. We modify it not only to the occupation, but also where they're at.

00:17:41.600 For one, first responders, you have, I mean, you have some wildland firefighters that are 22,

00:17:47.100 23 years old, or, you know, some of those individuals that we train over a lot of recruit

00:17:51.700 classes in the academies. And you have some military veterans coming out at 24, but then you have

00:17:56.540 some that are 60 years old. So, and they're all different demands. They have different positions

00:18:02.180 and roles. When you talk about law enforcement, you talk about maybe a SWAT team or ESU, maybe people

00:18:08.720 that are doing a lot of search warrants that are getting, kind of getting their hands on and kind of

00:18:13.880 really dealing with certain sort of non-permissive environments or hostile suspects and things like

00:18:22.100 that versus say firefighter in Boston is doing 30 calls a night versus a wildland firefighter that,

00:18:30.480 you know, is spending multi-days without sleeping in the field and battling firefighters and pretty

00:18:35.640 much fighting fires with garden tools for the most part. So we have to analyze how we train them is

00:18:42.200 it's very, our model is eat, sweat, and thrive. And under our SWAT pillar is a big part of,

00:18:50.040 it's very personalized and it's personalized through like a needs analysis. So basically,

00:18:55.920 physiologically, what do you need for your job to perform? What are your specific job tasks? And

00:19:01.720 I mean, I just came from a workshop outside of Chicago last, like really last couple of days.

00:19:07.240 And we were going through this and we were talking, each individual was like, what, tell me,

00:19:12.300 tell me about your job. You know, what, what are your specific needs that we, that you have,

00:19:17.160 whether, and what is the specific movements? Is it squatting? Is it benching down? Is it tight,

00:19:23.800 confined spaces, uneven terrain, hot, very hot or extreme temperature environments?

00:19:29.940 What a type of injuries do you have? What are preexisting things that you've had before?

00:19:35.040 And then also what's people's training age? Training age is like really that the age that

00:19:39.840 you've been training correctly, the duration of the age you've been training correctly for.

00:19:44.340 So if you were been trained and you were a competitive athlete and, you know, you were

00:19:50.200 in the weight room, you know, at 15 years old and really had an idea of new, you knew what you were

00:19:55.780 doing and you're 30 years old, your training age would be 15 years, which is someone that has never

00:20:00.240 been trained before. Maybe wasn't at, wasn't as athletic or maybe did not, weren't involved in

00:20:06.480 sports. And it's kind of a late bloomer when it comes to that. And they've only really been

00:20:10.020 training for a couple of years, believe it or not. So we have to look at the skill sets of everybody

00:20:14.780 too, of what they're doing. So we believe in three things under our sweat pillar, not only about for

00:20:21.180 one specific, specificity of training, like what is your job? Because performance is so job specific

00:20:27.200 and, and your training should be as well. Right. I don't think anyone's going to argue that,

00:20:32.680 you know, a strong man is, is very kind of fit in his own way. And so it was an ultra marathoner.

00:20:39.580 But if you, you stuck a strong man in the water and told him to swim, you might, it might not bode

00:20:44.620 so well. Or if it took an ultra marathoner and say, Hey, pick up that, pick up that Atlas stone over

00:20:49.840 there. That might not help. Right. So when we're talking about this, like we need to train for

00:20:54.800 performance versus training for fitness. And if you train for performance and what your job tasks will,

00:21:00.440 a by-product is you will, you will get fit, but you will be prepared for your job.

00:21:06.040 We're going to take a quick break for your word from our sponsors.

00:21:09.080 And now back to the show. So like what kind of stuff you haven't liked it. So I imagine there's

00:21:14.080 like, are you guys doing like kind of CrossFit type stuff, barbell training? What is that like a

00:21:19.260 typical program might look like? So a typical program, it's all we call periodization, which I'm sure

00:21:24.260 you've heard before. It's a, you know, kind of a methodology is like, what are we looking at? What energy

00:21:29.660 systems, whether it's, you know, aerobic, anaerobic, whether it's, you know, obviously analyzing your

00:21:35.860 needs and demands and then setting up a, a, a structured program. It's not waking up and being

00:21:41.200 like, I wonder what I should do today. It's very structured. It's, you know, we have programs that

00:21:47.060 are very, very basic for people that are three days a week. We have programs that are, are five

00:21:53.000 days a week. We have more advanced programs. Some of the, it's not CrossFit style. I would say it is

00:21:58.940 more of, you know, hitting the right energy systems at the right times, knowing that you have to be

00:22:04.280 ready for your, I'd say quote, it'd be the toughest day of your life. You know, when you get that call,

00:22:10.680 you need to be prepared for, you have to have a certain amount of preparation. And if you're just

00:22:15.880 a runner and you're just, you know, kind of more of an aerobic athlete, well, you may not be able to

00:22:21.320 pull your buddy out of that fire. So we have to, when we talk to them about it, we're like, all right,

00:22:25.700 we have, you know, 50, 60 different programs on our tactical athlete portal. We have this,

00:22:30.280 this portal that houses all of our education information. We give them access to that.

00:22:35.740 And then we'll have them go through and basically say, all right, I need to develop more strength.

00:22:40.020 So what's that going to look like? And to get to your question, it might be more barbell training.

00:22:44.320 It might be more working on some explosive speed. It might be someone who's aerobically built or

00:22:50.100 that needs to put a couple of pounds of muscle on. It might be more focused on that. So we're very,

00:22:55.040 I'd say very structured in our programming. However, I want people to go home and when

00:23:02.960 they come through O2X to find it approachable for everybody. So we don't, we're not training

00:23:07.960 the same way as a 60 year, for a 60 year old firefighter has been in service for 30 years

00:23:12.260 versus a 25 year old. On some ways, what I'm seeing in the, in the first responders is that

00:23:17.320 it's a, it's extremes on both sides. I see people that are working out and are pretty much in the

00:23:22.660 overtraining range. And then I see people that are not training at all. So I also don't want to

00:23:28.340 implement something that's so structured that they're not going to stay with and they're not

00:23:32.000 going to have fun with, because I want to make sure that it's fun. It's exciting for them. And also

00:23:37.080 I want to meet them where they are and I want it to be approachable. So some of the first responders

00:23:42.940 that we've had in our course, some of the tactical ads, it's been a long time, believe it or not,

00:23:46.720 since they've trained. So we go through our methodology of, uh, uh, prepare, sweat, recover.

00:23:52.480 So we're preparing for movement, which kind of involves a lot of like, you know, front planks

00:23:58.060 and side planks and work on, you know, basically firing your muscles before movement. We do it a lot

00:24:03.800 of like those mini bands that we get, we, we were kind of partnered with perform better. So these

00:24:08.460 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.

00:28:39.440 You have to.

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

00:36:46.500 seven. Like, how do you change that?

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,

00:37:27.640 right?

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.

00:47:07.120 Okay. Thank you.

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,

00:48:09.880 this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - November 21, 2018

#460： The Eat, Sweat, Thrive Protocol for Tactical Athletes

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