May 8, 2025 • 48 mins
In this episode of the Gladden Longevity podcast, Dr. Jeffrey Gladden engages in a deep conversation with Anthony Emtman and Erin Neuenfeldt about their athletic journeys, the influence of family, the transition to Olympic aspirations, and the importance of mindset in overcoming challenges. They explore the themes of resilience, internal validation, and personal growth through failure, emphasizing the transformative power of the mind in achieving one's goals. In this conversation, Anthony Emtman and Dr. Jeffrey Gladden explore themes of identity, resilience, and the journey towards Olympic training. They discuss the courage required to embrace change, the importance of smart training strategies, and the ethical considerations surrounding performance enhancement. The dialogue emphasizes the compounding effects of choices and the significance of transparency in personal growth and health optimization.
For Audience
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· Takeaways
- Anthony's competitive family background shaped his athletic journey.
- The transition from sports to other pursuits often leaves a void.
- Rowing emerged as a potential Olympic sport due to physical attributes.
- Mindset plays a crucial role in athletic performance and personal growth.
- Failure is a necessary part of growth and resilience.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Ongevity podcast.
I'm your host, Dr.
Jeffrey Gladden, and I'm here with good friends of mine, actually, Anthony Empman and hislovely fiance.
think at this point in time, if I'm not speaking out of turn, I don't know.
Maybe I am.
Maybe I got ahead of myself.
But if not, maybe inching that direction.
(00:22):
Maybe you're married by now.
I don't know.
could like anything could happen.
But Aaron Nuhn felt.
So they live in Puerto Rico and I met them in Puerto Rico m and they've become dearfriends.
And uh Anthony is on a uh mission here to become an Olympian as a Puerto Rico resident.
(00:42):
So this is going to be a fascinating conversation about the elements of performance, ifyou will, and should be great.
So Anthony, welcome to the podcast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
So bring the, bring the audience up to speed a little bit on your athletic endeavors.
(01:04):
think since we introduced the Olympics Reddit to get go, why don't we talk about that fora little bit.
And then, you know, you have many other interests.
He's a very accomplished thinker and he's involved with cryptocurrencies and a lot ofother business related things, building a really interesting app and on and on and on.
But let's just start with sort of little bit of the athletic elements.
(01:25):
So yeah.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
So I grew up in Washington state on a family farm and it's fifth generation actually.
So my whole family has been there since the late 1800s and they are still there.
That's pretty tough to move like.
this is not a little farm, by the way.
How many acres is this farm?
(01:46):
Yeah, so if you'll remember from middle school history class, the Homestead Act.
So that's what my great great grandfather did.
160 acres, he lived there for five years and then they give you the land and fast forwardto today, that's grown to I think right around 13,000 is how much it's all dry land,
wheat, Timothy, Triticale, hay, you all that.
(02:07):
So yeah, it's a fantastic way to grow up.
We'll get to it later.
But the lessons that you learn growing up on a farm.
and responsibility and discipline and failure and all of that.
It's just, it's a very unique ecosystem.
And uh I grew up in a pretty competitive family.
(02:27):
uh The older brother played sports.
My mom is one of the most competitive people that I know.
And yeah, she takes it to the absolute nth degree.
just loves to win.
So what does she compete at?
Is she also athletic or has this come down to card games or what are we talking about?
Okay.
(02:48):
Okay.
Oh, okay.
Got it.
are her absolute genius.
She just gets horses and she's got about 25 or 30 of them.
She's had them for decades.
So her dream was to be an Olympian in a of horse event.
Life kind of took her a different direction, but yeah.
(03:12):
she's betting on this horse.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, her son.
Yeah, my parents have, they know me well enough that whenever I come up with somethingthat's like world changing or at that level at this point, they're just, I like it, let's
go for it.
There's no apprehension.
They're just, the response is always how can we help?
(03:33):
So it's nice.
learned they've learned not to put up a roadblock because you're just plowing over.
Right.
So it's like, OK, well, let's just jump on board.
OK, we'll go.
better or worse, I tend to see it as a challenge if someone tells me I can't do it.
So you grew up in a competitive family, had an older brother or mother that was incrediblycompetitive.
And did that rub off on you?
Did that make you competitive?
Some people react another way.
(03:54):
It's like, I just don't want to buy into that.
Right.
So how did that how did that impact you?
Yeah, I went to a relatively small high school.
There's only 67 people in my graduating class and my brother was two years ahead of me.
And he was very well respected and looked up to because he just had that grit.
His mental toughness, you know, he ran the 800 and track, for example, was just a greedyrace.
(04:19):
Right.
He crushed it.
And so yeah, that just, just a fire for, well, I gotta, I gotta live up to the reputationthat my brother has set.
then, you know, so I played track and cross country and basketball and I was never a, um.
you know, I was not getting recruited.
(04:41):
I didn't get a single offer from any university.
You know, I ended up looking at the Air Force Academy because my grandfather on mymother's side was a fighter pilot.
Hmm
flew F-101s in the Korean War and was a big mentor and inspiration of mine.
And then if you get into one of the military academies, you get a full ride.
(05:03):
And so that I had it in my head that I was going to have to pay for university.
And uh so that was a pretty big attractant for me.
I was just in the meal line at the academy my freshman year and someone looked at me and
I you ever played volleyball?
You own a sport here?
(05:23):
And I ended up picking up volleyball and it was pretty good at it.
I played for the Air Force and the All Armed Forces teams for the next eight years, kindof all around the world, everywhere from the Netherlands and Germany and London, all the
way to Hawaii and most of the places in between.
So you have athletic talent and I've seen you play basketball.
(05:44):
You're pretty good.
And just so the audience understands, you're not five foot two, right?
How, how to all work?
Yeah.
You're not, you're not a point guard.
In my head, I'm a very normal height and it's not until I go to the airport that I realizeI'm actually taller than average.
So I'll probably 6'7".
there you go.
So six, seven.
Yeah.
So that's a good height for a volleyball player or a basketball player, but yeah.
(06:04):
Okay.
So, athletic ability, uh, you kind of stepped into that in the air force, it sounds like,and, um, even develop that maybe a little bit further there.
Um, okay.
And then, and then what, how, how does, how does this all lead to the Olympics?
So.
Yeah.
So I think that most athletes that have competed and, know, Erin can talk about herexperience with this later too, is that when you get out of university or you get out of
(06:33):
playing professionally something, there's a hole, there's a gap, there's a vacuum thatstill needs to be filled.
The way that you're wired, you still have this really strong desire to have a targetthat's difficult to reach and you got to wake up every day and work towards it.
And that doesn't go away just because you turn 25 or 30, you still need to fill it.
(06:57):
You'll see, it's pretty common.
People divert it to their careers and they'll go become a partner at that investment bankor that law firm or that consulting company and they'll run marathons or Ironmans.
they were the ones that were varsity athletes and getting 4.0s in school.
So they need an outlet for that energy.
And we were watching the 24 Olympics and
(07:20):
You know, you'll remember that this is just, you know, maybe a handful of months afterChad GBT like really started to get going.
We were playing around in the application and we'd also recently watched the movieMoneyball.
And it was just like putting in stats basically to Chad GBT.
He's like, Hey, I am a male.
(07:40):
I'm this old.
I'm this tall.
These are my natural strengths, my natural weaknesses.
I live in Puerto Rico.
you know, just giving it all the data and asking it the question, what event would I haveany shot at potentially getting to the Olympics in given all of that?
(08:01):
Like what's the highest probability?
And you know, at the end of the list is obviously going to be gymnastics.
Right, that's right.
And right next to that is probably playing second bass for the A's, right?
So, oh
And rowing just kind of kept bubbling up towards the top because I asked the question indifferent ways.
And rowing is an interesting sport in the sense that it's so driven by physics.
(08:28):
It's one of the few sports that's genuinely driven by how much horsepower does your bodyhave?
What is the total amount of force?
that your body can create.
it is, that's why it tends to be beneficial to be tall is you just have, yeah, leverage.
(08:52):
You've got a larger frame that can pack more muscle onto it, which can create more force,more, you know, generally larger lungs, more blood volume.
And yeah, so it is genuinely about horsepower as opposed to, you know, if I go compete,
and you know, I try and break the world record in pull ups.
(09:13):
It's like, well, pull up is relative to your body.
It's like, you know, someone with shorter arms is gonna, they've got less work to do,force times distance, right?
So that's part of why being tall is helpful for rowing.
So Aaron, let's talk about you for a minute because you have a very athletic background aswell.
um And why don't you tell the audience a little bit about that.
(09:36):
Yeah, so ah I played volleyball in college as well.
ah I played at University of South Carolina.
I played indoor and beach volleyball my freshman year, and then just beach volleyball mylast three years.
uh But I was not naturally gifted athlete uh or student really.
I was kind of that person that had to work really, really, really hard.
(09:59):
My sister is only 16 months older than me and she is just so talented.
She was a four time All-American at...
wow, okay, got it.
she had just letters coming in every day, like five a day from universities that werehuge.
They wanted her.
And I really wanted to play, but no one really wanted me.
(10:20):
So I was the one sending out the emails with my homies, highlight reels.
yeah, somehow I got South Carolina.
uh I worked my way up there.
I was just the kind of person that worked.
Harder than everybody else, you know talent.
What's the quote about a hard work without beats down?
(10:42):
It doesn't work hard that was kind of my mentality with it So I just had harder thaneverybody I showed up before everybody and ended up, know getting a full ride and becoming
captain and all that Yeah, so and then kind of like what Anthony was talking about withthe void that you feel after college, you know, I'm missing that locker
(11:03):
I definitely channeled that into grad school and running 5Ks.
would secretly, this is embarrassing, but I'd look around while I'm running a 5K and seewhat girls looked my age to see if I could try to win my age group.
So I'd see a girl that looked in my age group and I'd run faster.
I was secretly still trying to win trophies.
(11:24):
uh So I too felt that pull to do something uh post-cal.
interesting.
So neither one of you were like, you know, the, we would call maybe the truly giftedathlete, right?
The hand-eye coordination, the, know, whatever it was, uh, that nervous system thatenables people to kind of, you know, pick up a golf club and just hit it.
(11:46):
Although I've seen you play golf, Anthony, you're pretty good.
Certainly better than Aaron and myself.
but, but, um, but there's, but there's a work ethic there that I'm hearing, right?
And there's a competitive,
attitude and it's interesting, each of you had older siblings that was also, uh, they werealso competitive, but they were also in, some level, they were maybe more inherently
(12:09):
gifted or talented or whatever, whatever term you want to get used.
And yet, you you ended up captain of the volleyball team, right?
And you ended up playing kind of internationally for, for the armed services, right?
So what I'm hearing here is that you have a history of, um,
being able to play bigger than some people might give you credit for if they just lookedat you, know, right in eighth grade and said, I don't think so.
(12:36):
You know what I mean?
So, ah so that's very, very cool.
And it must have had an impact on your psyche, Anthony.
mean, what else have given in both of you really, it must have given you a sense of ahmaybe whatever I put my mind to, you know, I don't think you can, I don't think you can
beat me if I really put my mind to it.
I think there may be some element of that there.
I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but.
(12:57):
It's oh whether you think you can or can't, you're right.
That's one of my favorite quotes.
I'm such a massive, massive believer in the power of the mind, uh not only in terms ofanything athletic, but also emotional and relational and admittedly everything in your
(13:22):
body is driven by your mind.
so...
m
The story, the stories that go on in between your ears, day in and day out, have a verydirect impact on all the way down to the cellular level.
And I, yeah, I've just been intentional about choices and practice around exercising themuscle between our ears.
(13:46):
Well, it sounds like you've been intentional about the stories that you actually choose tobelieve and the ones that you do choose to tell yourself.
Right.
And I think a lot of a lot of us or a lot of folks in general, um, inherited stories,right.
It was a story that their mom told them to their dad told them their siblings told themtheir teacher told them their, their peers told them whatever it was.
(14:07):
Right.
And then we kind of live in the shadow of those stories as opposed to, um, realizing thatwe can.
we can create a better story or a different story.
so, kudos to both of you because I think both of you have really sort of stepped outsidethe shadow of those previous stories.
what's the, no pun intended, but what's the story that you're telling yourself now, right?
(14:29):
So.
Yeah, no.
the story that I'm telling myself now is primarily centered on self-confidence.
I think all of us have this relationship with why are we uniquely valuable?
know, humans are such tribal creatures.
(14:51):
We really, really need to have relationships in a tribe and a role in that tribe.
lot of what gives us a sense of purpose and passion is a unique contribution to thattribe.
It's what are we uniquely good at that I contribute to the tribe and the tribe appreciatesme because of that thing.
(15:15):
And to your point about the stories that you hear growing up, um you know, the concept ofa parent saying something out loud to a child
and the child internalizing that and that becoming their story.
That's what they believe about themselves.
That's, that is such a, once you understand how powerful that is, it's a transformative.
(15:40):
You can use it for, for, know, very good things or very bad things.
power of words.
And so one of the muscles that I think about constantly mentally is this fear of failuremuscle.
And
It is not something that just comes naturally.
(16:02):
It is something that just as a muscle in your body, you have to push it to failure.
No pun intended.
You have to break it to where it can't go any further in order for it to then come backstronger.
And if I ask you, Jeff, the question of tell me a story about one of the earliest failuresin your life.
(16:26):
You know, one of those kind of emotional stories as a child to where you let your parentsdown or you let one of your siblings down.
And there's probably a handful of stories that immediately come to mind.
And maybe they have something to do with, you know, breaking a vase or a lamp or crashinga car that it's just kind of like, it's just part of, you know, being alive.
(16:52):
And then if I ask you, okay.
Now fast forward a handful of decades and what's your most recent, like real big genuinefailure.
And the gap between the severity of those two is massive as it relates to the potentialimpact on the direction and quality of your life.
If you go get in a fender bender as a 15 year old with your driver's permit, that'sentirely different than uh a marriage falling apart or a business falling apart and
(17:22):
yeah.
got to move or you've got to, you know, those are like genuinely life direction changingthings.
And the ability to move through that, put one foot in front of the other is entirelyrelated to how strong is your fear of failure muscle.
And that this is what they do in military training.
(17:43):
And we learned this at the academy is they just break you down.
You get there as a freshman and you are worthless.
They tear down all of your ego because no matter how strong you are,
you reach a limit and that's all they're there to do is help you find that limit and pushyou past it.
That way you understand failure and you're going to get to the other side of failure andrealize, hey, I'm okay.
(18:06):
And so just about two and a half years ago, there were two big failures that happened inmy life.
The business that I had been building for a half decade and the relationship that wasabout that
as well, both of them took an about face and headed in the wrong direction.
(18:30):
And it looked like I wasn't going to have either of them all within about a six weekperiod.
And so the entire direction of my life was up in the air.
But 48 hours after both of them happened was actually the most confident that I had everbeen in my life.
(18:51):
because I had arrived at this conclusion that the title on LinkedIn, that the number andthe bank account, that any of that kind of quantitative or materialistic stuff was not
actually why I valued myself or why others valued me.
The sense of confidence was coming from something entirely different.
(19:14):
And it just manifested itself in this
pervasive feeling of whatever I put my mind to, I believe I will be able to do it.
And so now you arrive at where the Olympics comes from, it's like, oh, well yeah, if I putmy mind to this, yeah, absolutely, I believe I can do it.
(19:36):
And there's no reservations.
There's not a little voice in my head that says, nah, you're not good enough, Anthony.
Right.
It's an interesting concept, the concept of failure.
Certainly I've had failures in my life, numerous ones, right?
Some of them at the time were fairly devastating to me, you know, losing a family, youknow, a marriage going sideways or upside down or whatever.
(20:03):
And yet I will say that in my own, let's call it psycho spiritual journey, I've gotten toa point where there is no failure for me.
Right.
And so I think when we think about failure, when I think about failure, you have to giveme your input on this.
But when I think about failure, I think a lot of it boils down to whether or not we stillfeel like we're lovable on some level, right?
(20:28):
Whether we're still valuable, whether we're still lovable, right?
Whether, you know, we're still good enough or whatever it is.
And I think when you when you go through enough
hard times and you start to realize that your worth is not related to things external toyou.
Right.
(20:49):
In other words, you move from external validation into internal validation where it'slike, no, I'm, I'm, completely worthy.
I'm completely lovable.
All of it, you know, sort of in that psycho spiritual interpersonal space.
Then it really kind of gives you an amazing resilience because what could look likefailure on the outside is only part of the journey of learning.
(21:10):
you know, what you need to be learning to move on to the next things that you're going totake on.
Right.
So in essence, when I look at your, if I was going to interpret what happened to you, Iwould say, yes, those were, those were ruptures of one sort or another, but they were also
deeply, profoundly educational to you and also helped consolidate a sense of self thattranscended.
(21:34):
external validation, if that makes sense, right?
Which then gives you the internal strength and power to say, no, I'm aligned around who Iam and now I'm choosing a different story and now I'm able to go forward and find the love
of my life and I'm able to, you know, rebuild the business.
I'm willing to, you know, take on the challenge of becoming an Olympian and you know, allthese other things, right?
So I think, I think that's kind of how I would frame it.
(21:56):
Yeah, no, I agree.
think that Aaron has experienced that uh pretty viscerally over the last kind two and ahalf years of dating me to where, you know, you were a...
that as a failure for her.
I'm not sure how she feels about it.
m I hope you recover from this quite honestly.
No, just easy.
(22:18):
leaving the job and your identity there and then moving to Puerto Rico and identity withyour family and talk a little bit about that.
Yeah, kind of the perception of failure or sense of self and confidence and you know.
Yeah, yeah.
(22:39):
So I lived in New York before moving to Puerto Rico to join Anthony.
That's where we met and
You know, I was, like I said, I was that overachiever 4.0, you know, 5Ks and then tomarathons and just, just trying to do it all and trying to be really, really good in my
career as a medical speech language pathologist.
(23:01):
And, I think I put a lot of my self-worth and identity in those things.
And so, um, when Anthony was saying like, you know, you're going to be moving to PuertoRico, you know, and, and I was getting on board with that.
was getting all sorts of nervous of.
Well, what am I going to do when I'm not a speech pathologist anymore?
When I'm going out on a limb, joining you with on-air type things and like this, I hold myidentity here and this is what I'm good at and what people like about me.
(23:30):
And so it's really scary to leave that behind and start a whole new thing and hope that,you know, my friends and family are along for the ride and like Aaron, that they like
Aaron 2.0 just as much as they liked, you know, the other Aaron.
And so that was...
That was a lot of soul searching there.
You know, I think, I think you're bringing up a good point though, which is, uh, if you'relistening to this, think one of the keys, no matter where you are in your life,
(23:58):
chronologically or developmentally, it's, it takes tremendous, I think tremendous courageactually, to actually step into the next thing and to find that sense of resilience inside
yourself to bounce back or to take on the next challenge, if you will.
And I think you can really measure your own development.
(24:19):
based on how much resilience do I embody and how much robustness have I developed aroundmy sense of identity to be able to withstand external changes, if you will.
um But I think that's for me, that's this really key things because as we go through life,it's not just about going to the Olympics and winning the gold medal or having a
(24:41):
successful business or a marriage.
It's really how do we continue as individuals to grow and develop into
a fully expressed human, right?
The full expression of Anthony and Erin or myself for that matter to where we can bringall our gifts forward, right?
And I think in order to do that, you have to keep yourself married to the questions of howdo I keep going forward?
(25:02):
How do I keep growing?
And that fundamentally takes courage.
And I think a lot of uh us can settle.
It's like, well, things are pretty good.
Let's just kind of keep it going, right?
Even in a relationship, let's just kind of keep it going instead of asking the courageousquestions of,
Can we do this better?
Is there something different?
Is there something missing or whatever it is?
Right.
So I really commend both of you because I see you at a point in life where you're, you'rereally demonstrating a tremendous amount of courage, quite honestly.
(25:31):
um And that's, that's really inspiring.
So I hope the audience feels inspired by that.
Yeah.
Very cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So tell us about the Olympics now.
So you've got your eye on rowing um and you basically, I think went
and met with the Puerto Rican Olympic committee or team or something.
Tell us a little bit about that.
(25:51):
What happened?
Yeah.
So if you're listening to this, just an FYI, I did end up going through Jeff's programback in January, went out to Dallas and we did two or three days together of a bunch of
different testing.
that was kind of the kickoff of, okay, if we're going to start taking this seriously,let's figure out where am I weak?
(26:15):
Where am I strong?
What do we need to really be focusing on to get the
whatever is currently the ceiling pushed up, that way it's more in alignment with theother systems and learned a lot there that I'll talk about just in a second.
And then came back to Puerto Rico and was able to get in contact with the rowingassociation down here, which is a club that gets together Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.
(26:43):
And I've been going to that on and off to again, continue exploring this and
I actually ended up being able to row with the only Puerto Rican representative and rowingjust about a month ago.
is currently a, um, yeah, she's a resident in LA, but, um, anyway, that was a, that was agreat experience to be able to get in a boat with her for hour.
(27:11):
Uh, yeah, 2020.
Yeah.
So anyway, just came back to Puerto Rico on the other side of all the testing with youcame to.
The obvious realization that my aerobic engine is uh like, yup, we need to strengthenthat.
And so we've just been, you know, five or six days a week trying to optimize the trainingand the nutrition and the sleep and obviously the mind to, you know, start making
(27:40):
progress.
And to this money ball, red balloon kind of aspect to the story,
Moneyball, the Oakland A's, like you said, just took a fundamentally different approach tofiguring out how to win baseball games.
And if I'm someone that has a relationship that I'm serious about and we want to start afamily and we've got a couple of businesses going and would like to train for the
(28:10):
Olympics, it's very important that the training is smarter and not harder.
That's great.
So just a massive amount of research around, for every hour that you're able to spend inthe gym, how can you maximize the output from that?
It's a five or six minute race.
Do I need to be doing slow steady state stuff, you know, six days a week, that's two hoursfor each session, or is there a smarter way to potentially increase the aerobic capacity,
(28:40):
get the lactate threshold up and be competitive at a global level?
And so that's the moneyball side.
then the red balloon side is the, was a study sponsored by DARPA.
And what they did is they put red balloons all around the United States and they had abounty for the teams of people that found the balloons.
(29:07):
And what ended up happening is interesting in the sense that MIT
created a effectively multi-level structure of if you refer to person that ended upfinding that you got X percent of the bounty and then the further removed the less you
got.
And it created this network effect that they ended up finding the balloons, all of them,all around the continental United States in nine hours.
(29:34):
Just an absolute.
I think it thought it was going to take like a month.
Yeah, they thought of it.
And it was just.
instant.
That's the power of the internet.
That's the power of instantaneous information dissemination around the world.
so what we're doing with this journey is same thing.
It's totally public.
(29:54):
Every uh supplement I take, every bowl of ice cream I eat, every hour of sleep I get willbe public as a equation, as a science experiment.
for the world to help contribute to optimizing the engine.
It's a pit crew of how do you get more horsepower out of the engine of Anthony?
(30:18):
can't contribute.
He's doing it in his body size.
Yeah, exactly.
That's right.
you're an F1 car essentially.
Right.
Yeah.
That's it.
right now I'm still a go-kart.
uh
No, it's very, very cool.
I love that about the DARPA piece.
That's, um, that's really inspiring to think about the networking effect, right?
(30:42):
The ability to actually crack the code on things with a network.
Um, yeah, that's really, really inspiring.
So, um, and just so the audience realizes Anthony does have some real gifts when it comesto rowing.
This is not a Don Chiodi kind of, uh, endeavor, right?
I mean, he's very, very strong and I think he generates lots of power.
It's a question of really being able to do that over the five, six minutes that it'srequired, right?
(31:06):
Which is pretty anaerobic kind of scenario, right?
And so building lactate threshold and things like that.
So, you know, we like blood flow restriction to do that, you know, it's a good way tobuild lactate threshold.
There's many other things.
And then, you know, you've gotten into an interesting space because you've had someinjuries in the past.
um And we talked about.
(31:26):
you know, how to heal those injuries, right?
And so there's different things out there.
There's our stem cells and peptides and, and other regenerative factors and things likethat.
And you, you kind of took a hard look at that and kind of backed away from it.
Maybe, maybe you can explain that a little bit to the audience, your, your take on allthat.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, kind of a somewhat serendipitous and secuitous type of way that this cameabout.
(31:52):
just having gone through your program, end up receiving, you know, dozens of supplements,some of which were peptides.
And, you know, we got back to Puerto Rico and these shipments are kind of coming in everyother day.
I
I am someone that when I decide to do something, it's a very much a zero or a hundred.
(32:16):
It's not a kind of in between type of deal.
And generally what really helps me commit to doing something is the story of the whybehind it.
It's like, okay, what is this doing for me?
If I go eat a bunch of ice cream or I go eat a bunch of chicken breasts, what's thedifference?
How does that translate to five years from now?
What's gonna happen in my body?
(32:37):
And so...
kind of fast forwarded about a month, hadn't touched any of the supplements.
They're all sitting on the table and opened.
And I had actually received a, I think it was you that sent me a YouTube uh about kind ofthe 2000 Olympics and some of the, that kind of new testing and whatnot that had been
(33:00):
going on there.
In volleyball, you know, in college and in the Air Force, there was never any, like we'renot underwater.
This is the first time that I had heard of WADA, which is the anti-doping association thatall of the Olympics and professionals, there are a lot of sports around the world,
subscribe to.
(33:20):
And so there was this really loose connection that just kind of started me thinking, well,I should probably look into this.
And I went into, know, chat, GVT, and this was right after deep research had come out.
And I was.
asking it about, all right, what's allowed, what's not allowed.
(33:42):
And lo and behold, to your point, I've had ruptured Achilles, bad knees, bad back, justcome from playing sports, know, all the soft tissue and tendon stuff that, yeah, the
peptides would be super helpful to heal.
But if we're doing this red balloon strategy, we can't go say, hey,
(34:04):
This is everything we're doing and then leave something out because part of what thatwater research showed was, well, if you haven't declared for a sport, if you're not on a
team, sometimes if you're not in competition, it doesn't matter.
You, when you sign up at that point forward, you sign a document that says, Hey, I agreethat I'm going to be clean from here forward.
(34:29):
And, uh, for that, what that ends up meaning.
for most everyone is they just don't talk about it.
They do indeed go use the peptides and a lot of the performance enhancing substances.
the reality is you could absolutely get away with it.
(34:53):
You could absolutely go over the course of rest of this year, I could be using thepeptides and then when I decide to go into competition next year.
just say, yep, I'm clean from here forward and just never talk about it.
And that's kind of where, you know, this voice enters on your left shoulder and this voiceenters on your right shoulder.
And thankfully it was a very quick conversation, but you do have two voices there saying,well, you can get away with it and it's going to make you better.
(35:19):
And then on the other one is like, yeah, but it's too important that when you tell peoplethat you're sharing everything.
that you're sharing everything.
That's the whole point of transparency is that you don't get to hide the bad stuff.
You have to share everything.
And so I talked to Aaron, I talked to Travis.
Yeah.
And once he kind of arrived at the understanding of the regulations, you know, it wasprobably a five or 10 minute conversation that is quick.
(35:45):
And I was like, okay.
And then I sent you and the team, the email that said, Hey, we got to do this, you know,in alignment, totally understand that.
Yeah.
We don't necessarily have to.
We could just not talk about it and get away with it, but that's not the way that we'dlike to press forward.
Yeah.
And I think that's, I think that's a choice, right?
I think that's a choice.
People could play that six different ways, right?
(36:08):
They could say, well, I'm going to heal and then I'm going to commit or whatever it'sgoing to be.
But, but I think, you know, what you're, what you're outlining is, um, a sense ofintegrity around the process, right?
And the transparency.
And I think there's also an underlying question there for yourself, which is, um, how goodcan I do this?
You know, if I don't do any of the
(36:30):
you know, any of the real enhancing things.
Now, I will tell you that you will end up doing enhancing things, right?
You're going to sleep.
You're going to, you know, you may take molecular hydrogen.
You may do blood flow restriction.
You may use bicarbonate.
You may be, you know, there may be many things that you end up doing that are not illegalto do.
Um, and yet they're still going to be enhancing, right?
(36:50):
I mean, there's no downside to being nutritionally replete or, you know, whatever else.
Right.
So, so there is kind of a line in there somewhere.
It's just a question of whether you step over into where you feel uncomfortable aboutbeing transparent about it.
But I have a lot of respect for, the transparency and what you're doing.
(37:10):
And it'll be really fascinating to see, um, you know, how far you can take this.
You know, that being said, um, when you were here, we showed you some things on how toactually make your ankles bulletproof again, and do some things like that without peptides
and some other things.
And I don't know if you've been had the opportunity to use some of those.
techniques or not or whatever.
(37:31):
Maybe you can comment on that.
Yeah, you've got the jump soles, you've got the...
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, the elevation training mask.
That's right
training mask, obviously sleep.
One of the ways that one of the team members of yours kind of put it is when you are goingthrough a lot of training, it's a little bit like just having a revved up engine.
(37:57):
The revved up engine is going to go through all of the nutrients that it runs on from oilto...
transmission fluid to gas to, you know, it's no different in your body that the minerals,the electrolytes, you know, the things that are outside of what a lot of people think
about, you just use them up.
(38:18):
You're going through them.
They all get consumed more quickly.
Everything gets consumed more quickly.
That's right.
Yeah.
So.
so just trying to ensure that all of that's, don't know, optimized is all relative, right?
When we were talking in your office there, I'm probably on the less emotional side of thespectrum as it relates to food.
(38:45):
That's not a difficult thing for me to not have uh too much food or...
Uh, you I've been overweight.
I've been basically the same weight for the last 10 years, give or take like two or threepounds.
So, um, it's actually more difficult for me to add in, okay, I do need to have thesesupplements because the engines run more.
I do need to have more food because the engine's running more and, uh, every pound thatyou put on needs to be a productive pound because you have to drag that pound through the
(39:16):
water.
If you're going to have it, it's got to do something for you.
And, um,
Well, it's cool.
It's a very cool journey that you're on.
em think, you know, what I'm hearing is that you really have the right mindset about it.
You've really committed to the, to the transparency of the whole journey and the thingsthat you are doing, you'll, you'll be publicizing, right?
(39:39):
I mean, if you are using a jump souls or the elevation training mask or the blood flowrestriction, or, you know, certain supplements to replenish, you know, what you're burning
through that kind of thing.
I mean, that'll just be available.
I, I will tell you that there's no.
Um, there's no athlete out there that's not fueling and training and using tips and tricksand, know, recovery techniques and saunas and things like that.
(40:04):
you know, one of the tricks for building aerobic capacity is to do cardio and then jump inthe sauna.
That's a nice combination, right?
So, I mean, there will be things like that, that you'll report on, but they're notillegal.
They're just ways to kind of, kind of hack the system in a mild way.
mean, the other way to do it would be to just walk on.
and see how you did, right?
That would be the ultimate, I'm not even going to train kind of scenario, but I don'tthink that's the approach you're taking either.
(40:29):
So, yeah.
Now, to your point, it's a, you know, part of smarter, not harder is recovery.
You know, you've got kind of, uh, if you're training anywhere from an hour to six hours aday, the rest of the day is just recovery.
So regardless of what you do, you're always spending more time in recovery than you areactually working out.
(40:54):
so.
You know something that we're both super deliberate about is our sleep.
I've been tracking my sleep for almost 3,000 nights now.
Consistent.
Yeah, consistent.
And you know we've got the eight sleep bed, you've got temperature control in your room,you're watching your heart rate recovery, your respiratory rate, all of that.
(41:20):
We've got like a full recovery studio in the living room, we've got a game right week,myobor.
bands, toss balls, you know.
yep.
The one fun way, fun way that I found to think about it in that sense is windows ofopportunity and
(41:44):
So if you're looking at the Olympics in July of 2028, that means it's probably, I couldcheck it real quick here, probably 1,250 days, days until 2028 Olympics.
Yeah, just under 1,200 days.
So the way that I like thinking about that is how many eight hour windows do you have?
(42:11):
You know that a third of all of those windows are going to be sleep.
You know that you have the opportunity to maximize the other two thirds.
And you know, when you go out to dinner with friends and someone says, Hey, let's have acocktail.
When you think about, okay, I've only got 3,500 windows to take advantage of until raceday.
(42:37):
And if I go have a drink and that.
has an impact on my recovery tonight.
So if I had a really good lift today and then I'm gonna dampen my recovery because mybody's more focused on processing the alcohol instead of contributing to regrowing the
muscles.
So that's one window gone and then I'm gonna have a worst workout the next day andprobably the day after that.
(43:03):
It's like two nights.
And so then you're going through this and you're like, well that just had a not onlyneutral but negative impact on.
a handful of my available windows.
And so you're talking about, okay, that's like, you know, a quarter of a percent or half apercent of the overall amount of time that I have to train.
(43:25):
And so why would you make the decision to forgo that quarter percent or half a percent?
It's just, don't do it.
Yeah, what you're pointing out here is the compounding effect, right?
Of the decisions that we make.
It's, and I don't think it's realized by most of us when we're making a decision that ithas a compounding effect in another direction, right?
(43:46):
I mean, if you're looking at uh quantum mechanics, and I don't know if you've been payingattention to quantum computing, there's some amazing things going on there.
uh But you know, we come to understand that each decision we make actually creates a newreality.
And so.
You can basically create this reality that's compounding benefit or one that's actuallyneutralizing benefit.
(44:06):
And it does make, it really makes a difference.
yeah, kudos for you to sorting that out.
Yeah.
Makes the decisions easier, right?
When you realize that it has a ripple effect across future time, so to speak.
Yeah.
Very cool.
Yeah, you're either getting paid for what you did over the last 10 years or you're payingfor it.
Yeah.
said.
(44:27):
Well, this has been a really fascinating conversation.
Um, and, I hope the audience has enjoyed it.
So, um, we're wishing you guys all the best here as you go forward with this, uh,endeavor.
And, um, what we'll probably do is maybe do some follow-up podcasts as we get a littlecloser to it, see how things are going.
I'm sure people will be intrigued if people want to.
(44:50):
follow you or see what's going on.
How do they do that?
Where will they find you if this is transparent?
We can follow us on Twitter uh and we have a website for the brand that we're buildingright now as well.
So we'll look at that information to you.
The brand's called PathEyes.
uh Yeah, patheyes.com will kind of be putting up everything that's...
(45:16):
Yeah, that's right.
ah That's the brand name, but we're going to be talking about everything that Anthony'sgot going.
Okay, so P.
is there too, but just a landing page right now, but more to come.
Okay.
So P-A-T-H-I-Z-E, if you're interested to follow them along as it goes along.
that also the Twitter slash X account as well?
Is that correct?
(45:37):
Okay.
Beautiful.
Well, guys, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us here.
really a pleasure.
uh I'm going to be in, we're going to be, Mukti and I will be in Puerto Rico in May.
uh Yeah.
So we'll, we can coordinate dates.
So that'd be great.
Awesome.
All right.
Great to see you.
Yeah.
Welcome everybody to this edition of the Gladden Ongevity podcast.
I'm your host, Dr.
Jeffrey Gladden, and I'm here with good friends of mine, actually, Anthony Empman and hislovely fiance.
think at this point in time, if I'm not speaking out of turn, I don't know.
Maybe I am.
Maybe I got ahead of myself.
But if not, maybe inching that direction.
(00:22):
Maybe you're married by now.
I don't know.
could like anything could happen.
But Aaron Nuhn felt.
So they live in Puerto Rico and I met them in Puerto Rico m and they've become dearfriends.
And uh Anthony is on a uh mission here to become an Olympian as a Puerto Rico resident.
(00:42):
So this is going to be a fascinating conversation about the elements of performance, ifyou will, and should be great.
So Anthony, welcome to the podcast.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
So bring the, bring the audience up to speed a little bit on your athletic endeavors.
(01:04):
think since we introduced the Olympics Reddit to get go, why don't we talk about that fora little bit.
And then, you know, you have many other interests.
He's a very accomplished thinker and he's involved with cryptocurrencies and a lot ofother business related things, building a really interesting app and on and on and on.
But let's just start with sort of little bit of the athletic elements.
(01:25):
So yeah.
Yeah, no, absolutely.
So I grew up in Washington state on a family farm and it's fifth generation actually.
So my whole family has been there since the late 1800s and they are still there.
That's pretty tough to move like.
this is not a little farm, by the way.
How many acres is this farm?
(01:46):
Yeah, so if you'll remember from middle school history class, the Homestead Act.
So that's what my great great grandfather did.
160 acres, he lived there for five years and then they give you the land and fast forwardto today, that's grown to I think right around 13,000 is how much it's all dry land,
wheat, Timothy, Triticale, hay, you all that.
(02:07):
So yeah, it's a fantastic way to grow up.
We'll get to it later.
But the lessons that you learn growing up on a farm.
and responsibility and discipline and failure and all of that.
It's just, it's a very unique ecosystem.
And uh I grew up in a pretty competitive family.
(02:27):
uh The older brother played sports.
My mom is one of the most competitive people that I know.
And yeah, she takes it to the absolute nth degree.
just loves to win.
So what does she compete at?
Is she also athletic or has this come down to card games or what are we talking about?
Okay.
(02:48):
Okay.
Oh, okay.
Got it.
are her absolute genius.
She just gets horses and she's got about 25 or 30 of them.
She's had them for decades.
So her dream was to be an Olympian in a of horse event.
Life kind of took her a different direction, but yeah.
(03:12):
she's betting on this horse.
Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, her son.
Yeah, my parents have, they know me well enough that whenever I come up with somethingthat's like world changing or at that level at this point, they're just, I like it, let's
go for it.
There's no apprehension.
They're just, the response is always how can we help?
(03:33):
So it's nice.
learned they've learned not to put up a roadblock because you're just plowing over.
Right.
So it's like, OK, well, let's just jump on board.
OK, we'll go.
better or worse, I tend to see it as a challenge if someone tells me I can't do it.
So you grew up in a competitive family, had an older brother or mother that was incrediblycompetitive.
And did that rub off on you?
Did that make you competitive?
Some people react another way.
(03:54):
It's like, I just don't want to buy into that.
Right.
So how did that how did that impact you?
Yeah, I went to a relatively small high school.
There's only 67 people in my graduating class and my brother was two years ahead of me.
And he was very well respected and looked up to because he just had that grit.
His mental toughness, you know, he ran the 800 and track, for example, was just a greedyrace.
(04:19):
Right.
He crushed it.
And so yeah, that just, just a fire for, well, I gotta, I gotta live up to the reputationthat my brother has set.
then, you know, so I played track and cross country and basketball and I was never a, um.
you know, I was not getting recruited.
(04:41):
I didn't get a single offer from any university.
You know, I ended up looking at the Air Force Academy because my grandfather on mymother's side was a fighter pilot.
Hmm
flew F-101s in the Korean War and was a big mentor and inspiration of mine.
And then if you get into one of the military academies, you get a full ride.
(05:03):
And so that I had it in my head that I was going to have to pay for university.
And uh so that was a pretty big attractant for me.
I was just in the meal line at the academy my freshman year and someone looked at me and
I you ever played volleyball?
You own a sport here?
(05:23):
And I ended up picking up volleyball and it was pretty good at it.
I played for the Air Force and the All Armed Forces teams for the next eight years, kindof all around the world, everywhere from the Netherlands and Germany and London, all the
way to Hawaii and most of the places in between.
So you have athletic talent and I've seen you play basketball.
(05:44):
You're pretty good.
And just so the audience understands, you're not five foot two, right?
How, how to all work?
Yeah.
You're not, you're not a point guard.
In my head, I'm a very normal height and it's not until I go to the airport that I realizeI'm actually taller than average.
So I'll probably 6'7".
there you go.
So six, seven.
Yeah.
So that's a good height for a volleyball player or a basketball player, but yeah.
(06:04):
Okay.
So, athletic ability, uh, you kind of stepped into that in the air force, it sounds like,and, um, even develop that maybe a little bit further there.
Um, okay.
And then, and then what, how, how does, how does this all lead to the Olympics?
So.
Yeah.
So I think that most athletes that have competed and, know, Erin can talk about herexperience with this later too, is that when you get out of university or you get out of
(06:33):
playing professionally something, there's a hole, there's a gap, there's a vacuum thatstill needs to be filled.
The way that you're wired, you still have this really strong desire to have a targetthat's difficult to reach and you got to wake up every day and work towards it.
And that doesn't go away just because you turn 25 or 30, you still need to fill it.
(06:57):
You'll see, it's pretty common.
People divert it to their careers and they'll go become a partner at that investment bankor that law firm or that consulting company and they'll run marathons or Ironmans.
they were the ones that were varsity athletes and getting 4.0s in school.
So they need an outlet for that energy.
And we were watching the 24 Olympics and
(07:20):
You know, you'll remember that this is just, you know, maybe a handful of months afterChad GBT like really started to get going.
We were playing around in the application and we'd also recently watched the movieMoneyball.
And it was just like putting in stats basically to Chad GBT.
He's like, Hey, I am a male.
(07:40):
I'm this old.
I'm this tall.
These are my natural strengths, my natural weaknesses.
I live in Puerto Rico.
you know, just giving it all the data and asking it the question, what event would I haveany shot at potentially getting to the Olympics in given all of that?
(08:01):
Like what's the highest probability?
And you know, at the end of the list is obviously going to be gymnastics.
Right, that's right.
And right next to that is probably playing second bass for the A's, right?
So, oh
And rowing just kind of kept bubbling up towards the top because I asked the question indifferent ways.
And rowing is an interesting sport in the sense that it's so driven by physics.
(08:28):
It's one of the few sports that's genuinely driven by how much horsepower does your bodyhave?
What is the total amount of force?
that your body can create.
it is, that's why it tends to be beneficial to be tall is you just have, yeah, leverage.
(08:52):
You've got a larger frame that can pack more muscle onto it, which can create more force,more, you know, generally larger lungs, more blood volume.
And yeah, so it is genuinely about horsepower as opposed to, you know, if I go compete,
and you know, I try and break the world record in pull ups.
(09:13):
It's like, well, pull up is relative to your body.
It's like, you know, someone with shorter arms is gonna, they've got less work to do,force times distance, right?
So that's part of why being tall is helpful for rowing.
So Aaron, let's talk about you for a minute because you have a very athletic background aswell.
um And why don't you tell the audience a little bit about that.
(09:36):
Yeah, so ah I played volleyball in college as well.
ah I played at University of South Carolina.
I played indoor and beach volleyball my freshman year, and then just beach volleyball mylast three years.
uh But I was not naturally gifted athlete uh or student really.
I was kind of that person that had to work really, really, really hard.
(09:59):
My sister is only 16 months older than me and she is just so talented.
She was a four time All-American at...
wow, okay, got it.
she had just letters coming in every day, like five a day from universities that werehuge.
They wanted her.
And I really wanted to play, but no one really wanted me.
(10:20):
So I was the one sending out the emails with my homies, highlight reels.
yeah, somehow I got South Carolina.
uh I worked my way up there.
I was just the kind of person that worked.
Harder than everybody else, you know talent.
What's the quote about a hard work without beats down?
(10:42):
It doesn't work hard that was kind of my mentality with it So I just had harder thaneverybody I showed up before everybody and ended up, know getting a full ride and becoming
captain and all that Yeah, so and then kind of like what Anthony was talking about withthe void that you feel after college, you know, I'm missing that locker
(11:03):
I definitely channeled that into grad school and running 5Ks.
would secretly, this is embarrassing, but I'd look around while I'm running a 5K and seewhat girls looked my age to see if I could try to win my age group.
So I'd see a girl that looked in my age group and I'd run faster.
I was secretly still trying to win trophies.
(11:24):
uh So I too felt that pull to do something uh post-cal.
interesting.
So neither one of you were like, you know, the, we would call maybe the truly giftedathlete, right?
The hand-eye coordination, the, know, whatever it was, uh, that nervous system thatenables people to kind of, you know, pick up a golf club and just hit it.
(11:46):
Although I've seen you play golf, Anthony, you're pretty good.
Certainly better than Aaron and myself.
but, but, um, but there's, but there's a work ethic there that I'm hearing, right?
And there's a competitive,
attitude and it's interesting, each of you had older siblings that was also, uh, they werealso competitive, but they were also in, some level, they were maybe more inherently
(12:09):
gifted or talented or whatever, whatever term you want to get used.
And yet, you you ended up captain of the volleyball team, right?
And you ended up playing kind of internationally for, for the armed services, right?
So what I'm hearing here is that you have a history of, um,
being able to play bigger than some people might give you credit for if they just lookedat you, know, right in eighth grade and said, I don't think so.
(12:36):
You know what I mean?
So, ah so that's very, very cool.
And it must have had an impact on your psyche, Anthony.
mean, what else have given in both of you really, it must have given you a sense of ahmaybe whatever I put my mind to, you know, I don't think you can, I don't think you can
beat me if I really put my mind to it.
I think there may be some element of that there.
I don't know, correct me if I'm wrong, but.
(12:57):
It's oh whether you think you can or can't, you're right.
That's one of my favorite quotes.
I'm such a massive, massive believer in the power of the mind, uh not only in terms ofanything athletic, but also emotional and relational and admittedly everything in your
(13:22):
body is driven by your mind.
so...
m
The story, the stories that go on in between your ears, day in and day out, have a verydirect impact on all the way down to the cellular level.
And I, yeah, I've just been intentional about choices and practice around exercising themuscle between our ears.
(13:46):
Well, it sounds like you've been intentional about the stories that you actually choose tobelieve and the ones that you do choose to tell yourself.
Right.
And I think a lot of a lot of us or a lot of folks in general, um, inherited stories,right.
It was a story that their mom told them to their dad told them their siblings told themtheir teacher told them their, their peers told them whatever it was.
(14:07):
Right.
And then we kind of live in the shadow of those stories as opposed to, um, realizing thatwe can.
we can create a better story or a different story.
so, kudos to both of you because I think both of you have really sort of stepped outsidethe shadow of those previous stories.
what's the, no pun intended, but what's the story that you're telling yourself now, right?
(14:29):
So.
Yeah, no.
the story that I'm telling myself now is primarily centered on self-confidence.
I think all of us have this relationship with why are we uniquely valuable?
know, humans are such tribal creatures.
(14:51):
We really, really need to have relationships in a tribe and a role in that tribe.
lot of what gives us a sense of purpose and passion is a unique contribution to thattribe.
It's what are we uniquely good at that I contribute to the tribe and the tribe appreciatesme because of that thing.
(15:15):
And to your point about the stories that you hear growing up, um you know, the concept ofa parent saying something out loud to a child
and the child internalizing that and that becoming their story.
That's what they believe about themselves.
That's, that is such a, once you understand how powerful that is, it's a transformative.
(15:40):
You can use it for, for, know, very good things or very bad things.
power of words.
And so one of the muscles that I think about constantly mentally is this fear of failuremuscle.
And
It is not something that just comes naturally.
(16:02):
It is something that just as a muscle in your body, you have to push it to failure.
No pun intended.
You have to break it to where it can't go any further in order for it to then come backstronger.
And if I ask you, Jeff, the question of tell me a story about one of the earliest failuresin your life.
(16:26):
You know, one of those kind of emotional stories as a child to where you let your parentsdown or you let one of your siblings down.
And there's probably a handful of stories that immediately come to mind.
And maybe they have something to do with, you know, breaking a vase or a lamp or crashinga car that it's just kind of like, it's just part of, you know, being alive.
(16:52):
And then if I ask you, okay.
Now fast forward a handful of decades and what's your most recent, like real big genuinefailure.
And the gap between the severity of those two is massive as it relates to the potentialimpact on the direction and quality of your life.
If you go get in a fender bender as a 15 year old with your driver's permit, that'sentirely different than uh a marriage falling apart or a business falling apart and
(17:22):
yeah.
got to move or you've got to, you know, those are like genuinely life direction changingthings.
And the ability to move through that, put one foot in front of the other is entirelyrelated to how strong is your fear of failure muscle.
And that this is what they do in military training.
(17:43):
And we learned this at the academy is they just break you down.
You get there as a freshman and you are worthless.
They tear down all of your ego because no matter how strong you are,
you reach a limit and that's all they're there to do is help you find that limit and pushyou past it.
That way you understand failure and you're going to get to the other side of failure andrealize, hey, I'm okay.
(18:06):
And so just about two and a half years ago, there were two big failures that happened inmy life.
The business that I had been building for a half decade and the relationship that wasabout that
as well, both of them took an about face and headed in the wrong direction.
(18:30):
And it looked like I wasn't going to have either of them all within about a six weekperiod.
And so the entire direction of my life was up in the air.
But 48 hours after both of them happened was actually the most confident that I had everbeen in my life.
(18:51):
because I had arrived at this conclusion that the title on LinkedIn, that the number andthe bank account, that any of that kind of quantitative or materialistic stuff was not
actually why I valued myself or why others valued me.
The sense of confidence was coming from something entirely different.
(19:14):
And it just manifested itself in this
pervasive feeling of whatever I put my mind to, I believe I will be able to do it.
And so now you arrive at where the Olympics comes from, it's like, oh, well yeah, if I putmy mind to this, yeah, absolutely, I believe I can do it.
(19:36):
And there's no reservations.
There's not a little voice in my head that says, nah, you're not good enough, Anthony.
Right.
It's an interesting concept, the concept of failure.
Certainly I've had failures in my life, numerous ones, right?
Some of them at the time were fairly devastating to me, you know, losing a family, youknow, a marriage going sideways or upside down or whatever.
(20:03):
And yet I will say that in my own, let's call it psycho spiritual journey, I've gotten toa point where there is no failure for me.
Right.
And so I think when we think about failure, when I think about failure, you have to giveme your input on this.
But when I think about failure, I think a lot of it boils down to whether or not we stillfeel like we're lovable on some level, right?
(20:28):
Whether we're still valuable, whether we're still lovable, right?
Whether, you know, we're still good enough or whatever it is.
And I think when you when you go through enough
hard times and you start to realize that your worth is not related to things external toyou.
Right.
(20:49):
In other words, you move from external validation into internal validation where it'slike, no, I'm, I'm, completely worthy.
I'm completely lovable.
All of it, you know, sort of in that psycho spiritual interpersonal space.
Then it really kind of gives you an amazing resilience because what could look likefailure on the outside is only part of the journey of learning.
(21:10):
you know, what you need to be learning to move on to the next things that you're going totake on.
Right.
So in essence, when I look at your, if I was going to interpret what happened to you, Iwould say, yes, those were, those were ruptures of one sort or another, but they were also
deeply, profoundly educational to you and also helped consolidate a sense of self thattranscended.
(21:34):
external validation, if that makes sense, right?
Which then gives you the internal strength and power to say, no, I'm aligned around who Iam and now I'm choosing a different story and now I'm able to go forward and find the love
of my life and I'm able to, you know, rebuild the business.
I'm willing to, you know, take on the challenge of becoming an Olympian and you know, allthese other things, right?
So I think, I think that's kind of how I would frame it.
(21:56):
Yeah, no, I agree.
think that Aaron has experienced that uh pretty viscerally over the last kind two and ahalf years of dating me to where, you know, you were a...
that as a failure for her.
I'm not sure how she feels about it.
m I hope you recover from this quite honestly.
No, just easy.
(22:18):
leaving the job and your identity there and then moving to Puerto Rico and identity withyour family and talk a little bit about that.
Yeah, kind of the perception of failure or sense of self and confidence and you know.
Yeah, yeah.
(22:39):
So I lived in New York before moving to Puerto Rico to join Anthony.
That's where we met and
You know, I was, like I said, I was that overachiever 4.0, you know, 5Ks and then tomarathons and just, just trying to do it all and trying to be really, really good in my
career as a medical speech language pathologist.
(23:01):
And, I think I put a lot of my self-worth and identity in those things.
And so, um, when Anthony was saying like, you know, you're going to be moving to PuertoRico, you know, and, and I was getting on board with that.
was getting all sorts of nervous of.
Well, what am I going to do when I'm not a speech pathologist anymore?
When I'm going out on a limb, joining you with on-air type things and like this, I hold myidentity here and this is what I'm good at and what people like about me.
(23:30):
And so it's really scary to leave that behind and start a whole new thing and hope that,you know, my friends and family are along for the ride and like Aaron, that they like
Aaron 2.0 just as much as they liked, you know, the other Aaron.
And so that was...
That was a lot of soul searching there.
You know, I think, I think you're bringing up a good point though, which is, uh, if you'relistening to this, think one of the keys, no matter where you are in your life,
(23:58):
chronologically or developmentally, it's, it takes tremendous, I think tremendous courageactually, to actually step into the next thing and to find that sense of resilience inside
yourself to bounce back or to take on the next challenge, if you will.
And I think you can really measure your own development.
(24:19):
based on how much resilience do I embody and how much robustness have I developed aroundmy sense of identity to be able to withstand external changes, if you will.
um But I think that's for me, that's this really key things because as we go through life,it's not just about going to the Olympics and winning the gold medal or having a
(24:41):
successful business or a marriage.
It's really how do we continue as individuals to grow and develop into
a fully expressed human, right?
The full expression of Anthony and Erin or myself for that matter to where we can bringall our gifts forward, right?
And I think in order to do that, you have to keep yourself married to the questions of howdo I keep going forward?
(25:02):
How do I keep growing?
And that fundamentally takes courage.
And I think a lot of uh us can settle.
It's like, well, things are pretty good.
Let's just kind of keep it going, right?
Even in a relationship, let's just kind of keep it going instead of asking the courageousquestions of,
Can we do this better?
Is there something different?
Is there something missing or whatever it is?
Right.
So I really commend both of you because I see you at a point in life where you're, you'rereally demonstrating a tremendous amount of courage, quite honestly.
(25:31):
um And that's, that's really inspiring.
So I hope the audience feels inspired by that.
Yeah.
Very cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So tell us about the Olympics now.
So you've got your eye on rowing um and you basically, I think went
and met with the Puerto Rican Olympic committee or team or something.
Tell us a little bit about that.
(25:51):
What happened?
Yeah.
So if you're listening to this, just an FYI, I did end up going through Jeff's programback in January, went out to Dallas and we did two or three days together of a bunch of
different testing.
that was kind of the kickoff of, okay, if we're going to start taking this seriously,let's figure out where am I weak?
(26:15):
Where am I strong?
What do we need to really be focusing on to get the
whatever is currently the ceiling pushed up, that way it's more in alignment with theother systems and learned a lot there that I'll talk about just in a second.
And then came back to Puerto Rico and was able to get in contact with the rowingassociation down here, which is a club that gets together Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.
(26:43):
And I've been going to that on and off to again, continue exploring this and
I actually ended up being able to row with the only Puerto Rican representative and rowingjust about a month ago.
is currently a, um, yeah, she's a resident in LA, but, um, anyway, that was a, that was agreat experience to be able to get in a boat with her for hour.
(27:11):
Uh, yeah, 2020.
Yeah.
So anyway, just came back to Puerto Rico on the other side of all the testing with youcame to.
The obvious realization that my aerobic engine is uh like, yup, we need to strengthenthat.
And so we've just been, you know, five or six days a week trying to optimize the trainingand the nutrition and the sleep and obviously the mind to, you know, start making
(27:40):
progress.
And to this money ball, red balloon kind of aspect to the story,
Moneyball, the Oakland A's, like you said, just took a fundamentally different approach tofiguring out how to win baseball games.
And if I'm someone that has a relationship that I'm serious about and we want to start afamily and we've got a couple of businesses going and would like to train for the
(28:10):
Olympics, it's very important that the training is smarter and not harder.
That's great.
So just a massive amount of research around, for every hour that you're able to spend inthe gym, how can you maximize the output from that?
It's a five or six minute race.
Do I need to be doing slow steady state stuff, you know, six days a week, that's two hoursfor each session, or is there a smarter way to potentially increase the aerobic capacity,
(28:40):
get the lactate threshold up and be competitive at a global level?
And so that's the moneyball side.
then the red balloon side is the, was a study sponsored by DARPA.
And what they did is they put red balloons all around the United States and they had abounty for the teams of people that found the balloons.
(29:07):
And what ended up happening is interesting in the sense that MIT
created a effectively multi-level structure of if you refer to person that ended upfinding that you got X percent of the bounty and then the further removed the less you
got.
And it created this network effect that they ended up finding the balloons, all of them,all around the continental United States in nine hours.
(29:34):
Just an absolute.
I think it thought it was going to take like a month.
Yeah, they thought of it.
And it was just.
instant.
That's the power of the internet.
That's the power of instantaneous information dissemination around the world.
so what we're doing with this journey is same thing.
It's totally public.
(29:54):
Every uh supplement I take, every bowl of ice cream I eat, every hour of sleep I get willbe public as a equation, as a science experiment.
for the world to help contribute to optimizing the engine.
It's a pit crew of how do you get more horsepower out of the engine of Anthony?
(30:18):
can't contribute.
He's doing it in his body size.
Yeah, exactly.
That's right.
you're an F1 car essentially.
Right.
Yeah.
That's it.
right now I'm still a go-kart.
uh
No, it's very, very cool.
I love that about the DARPA piece.
That's, um, that's really inspiring to think about the networking effect, right?
(30:42):
The ability to actually crack the code on things with a network.
Um, yeah, that's really, really inspiring.
So, um, and just so the audience realizes Anthony does have some real gifts when it comesto rowing.
This is not a Don Chiodi kind of, uh, endeavor, right?
I mean, he's very, very strong and I think he generates lots of power.
It's a question of really being able to do that over the five, six minutes that it'srequired, right?
(31:06):
Which is pretty anaerobic kind of scenario, right?
And so building lactate threshold and things like that.
So, you know, we like blood flow restriction to do that, you know, it's a good way tobuild lactate threshold.
There's many other things.
And then, you know, you've gotten into an interesting space because you've had someinjuries in the past.
um And we talked about.
(31:26):
you know, how to heal those injuries, right?
And so there's different things out there.
There's our stem cells and peptides and, and other regenerative factors and things likethat.
And you, you kind of took a hard look at that and kind of backed away from it.
Maybe, maybe you can explain that a little bit to the audience, your, your take on allthat.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, kind of a somewhat serendipitous and secuitous type of way that this cameabout.
(31:52):
just having gone through your program, end up receiving, you know, dozens of supplements,some of which were peptides.
And, you know, we got back to Puerto Rico and these shipments are kind of coming in everyother day.
I
I am someone that when I decide to do something, it's a very much a zero or a hundred.
(32:16):
It's not a kind of in between type of deal.
And generally what really helps me commit to doing something is the story of the whybehind it.
It's like, okay, what is this doing for me?
If I go eat a bunch of ice cream or I go eat a bunch of chicken breasts, what's thedifference?
How does that translate to five years from now?
What's gonna happen in my body?
(32:37):
And so...
kind of fast forwarded about a month, hadn't touched any of the supplements.
They're all sitting on the table and opened.
And I had actually received a, I think it was you that sent me a YouTube uh about kind ofthe 2000 Olympics and some of the, that kind of new testing and whatnot that had been
(33:00):
going on there.
In volleyball, you know, in college and in the Air Force, there was never any, like we'renot underwater.
This is the first time that I had heard of WADA, which is the anti-doping association thatall of the Olympics and professionals, there are a lot of sports around the world,
subscribe to.
(33:20):
And so there was this really loose connection that just kind of started me thinking, well,I should probably look into this.
And I went into, know, chat, GVT, and this was right after deep research had come out.
And I was.
asking it about, all right, what's allowed, what's not allowed.
(33:42):
And lo and behold, to your point, I've had ruptured Achilles, bad knees, bad back, justcome from playing sports, know, all the soft tissue and tendon stuff that, yeah, the
peptides would be super helpful to heal.
But if we're doing this red balloon strategy, we can't go say, hey,
(34:04):
This is everything we're doing and then leave something out because part of what thatwater research showed was, well, if you haven't declared for a sport, if you're not on a
team, sometimes if you're not in competition, it doesn't matter.
You, when you sign up at that point forward, you sign a document that says, Hey, I agreethat I'm going to be clean from here forward.
(34:29):
And, uh, for that, what that ends up meaning.
for most everyone is they just don't talk about it.
They do indeed go use the peptides and a lot of the performance enhancing substances.
the reality is you could absolutely get away with it.
(34:53):
You could absolutely go over the course of rest of this year, I could be using thepeptides and then when I decide to go into competition next year.
just say, yep, I'm clean from here forward and just never talk about it.
And that's kind of where, you know, this voice enters on your left shoulder and this voiceenters on your right shoulder.
And thankfully it was a very quick conversation, but you do have two voices there saying,well, you can get away with it and it's going to make you better.
(35:19):
And then on the other one is like, yeah, but it's too important that when you tell peoplethat you're sharing everything.
that you're sharing everything.
That's the whole point of transparency is that you don't get to hide the bad stuff.
You have to share everything.
And so I talked to Aaron, I talked to Travis.
Yeah.
And once he kind of arrived at the understanding of the regulations, you know, it wasprobably a five or 10 minute conversation that is quick.
(35:45):
And I was like, okay.
And then I sent you and the team, the email that said, Hey, we got to do this, you know,in alignment, totally understand that.
Yeah.
We don't necessarily have to.
We could just not talk about it and get away with it, but that's not the way that we'dlike to press forward.
Yeah.
And I think that's, I think that's a choice, right?
I think that's a choice.
People could play that six different ways, right?
(36:08):
They could say, well, I'm going to heal and then I'm going to commit or whatever it'sgoing to be.
But, but I think, you know, what you're, what you're outlining is, um, a sense ofintegrity around the process, right?
And the transparency.
And I think there's also an underlying question there for yourself, which is, um, how goodcan I do this?
You know, if I don't do any of the
(36:30):
you know, any of the real enhancing things.
Now, I will tell you that you will end up doing enhancing things, right?
You're going to sleep.
You're going to, you know, you may take molecular hydrogen.
You may do blood flow restriction.
You may use bicarbonate.
You may be, you know, there may be many things that you end up doing that are not illegalto do.
Um, and yet they're still going to be enhancing, right?
(36:50):
I mean, there's no downside to being nutritionally replete or, you know, whatever else.
Right.
So, so there is kind of a line in there somewhere.
It's just a question of whether you step over into where you feel uncomfortable aboutbeing transparent about it.
But I have a lot of respect for, the transparency and what you're doing.
(37:10):
And it'll be really fascinating to see, um, you know, how far you can take this.
You know, that being said, um, when you were here, we showed you some things on how toactually make your ankles bulletproof again, and do some things like that without peptides
and some other things.
And I don't know if you've been had the opportunity to use some of those.
techniques or not or whatever.
(37:31):
Maybe you can comment on that.
Yeah, you've got the jump soles, you've got the...
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, the elevation training mask.
That's right
training mask, obviously sleep.
One of the ways that one of the team members of yours kind of put it is when you are goingthrough a lot of training, it's a little bit like just having a revved up engine.
(37:57):
The revved up engine is going to go through all of the nutrients that it runs on from oilto...
transmission fluid to gas to, you know, it's no different in your body that the minerals,the electrolytes, you know, the things that are outside of what a lot of people think
about, you just use them up.
(38:18):
You're going through them.
They all get consumed more quickly.
Everything gets consumed more quickly.
That's right.
Yeah.
So.
so just trying to ensure that all of that's, don't know, optimized is all relative, right?
When we were talking in your office there, I'm probably on the less emotional side of thespectrum as it relates to food.
(38:45):
That's not a difficult thing for me to not have uh too much food or...
Uh, you I've been overweight.
I've been basically the same weight for the last 10 years, give or take like two or threepounds.
So, um, it's actually more difficult for me to add in, okay, I do need to have thesesupplements because the engines run more.
I do need to have more food because the engine's running more and, uh, every pound thatyou put on needs to be a productive pound because you have to drag that pound through the
(39:16):
water.
If you're going to have it, it's got to do something for you.
And, um,
Well, it's cool.
It's a very cool journey that you're on.
em think, you know, what I'm hearing is that you really have the right mindset about it.
You've really committed to the, to the transparency of the whole journey and the thingsthat you are doing, you'll, you'll be publicizing, right?
(39:39):
I mean, if you are using a jump souls or the elevation training mask or the blood flowrestriction, or, you know, certain supplements to replenish, you know, what you're burning
through that kind of thing.
I mean, that'll just be available.
I, I will tell you that there's no.
Um, there's no athlete out there that's not fueling and training and using tips and tricksand, know, recovery techniques and saunas and things like that.
(40:04):
you know, one of the tricks for building aerobic capacity is to do cardio and then jump inthe sauna.
That's a nice combination, right?
So, I mean, there will be things like that, that you'll report on, but they're notillegal.
They're just ways to kind of, kind of hack the system in a mild way.
mean, the other way to do it would be to just walk on.
and see how you did, right?
That would be the ultimate, I'm not even going to train kind of scenario, but I don'tthink that's the approach you're taking either.
(40:29):
So, yeah.
Now, to your point, it's a, you know, part of smarter, not harder is recovery.
You know, you've got kind of, uh, if you're training anywhere from an hour to six hours aday, the rest of the day is just recovery.
So regardless of what you do, you're always spending more time in recovery than you areactually working out.
(40:54):
so.
You know something that we're both super deliberate about is our sleep.
I've been tracking my sleep for almost 3,000 nights now.
Consistent.
Yeah, consistent.
And you know we've got the eight sleep bed, you've got temperature control in your room,you're watching your heart rate recovery, your respiratory rate, all of that.
(41:20):
We've got like a full recovery studio in the living room, we've got a game right week,myobor.
bands, toss balls, you know.
yep.
The one fun way, fun way that I found to think about it in that sense is windows ofopportunity and
(41:44):
So if you're looking at the Olympics in July of 2028, that means it's probably, I couldcheck it real quick here, probably 1,250 days, days until 2028 Olympics.
Yeah, just under 1,200 days.
So the way that I like thinking about that is how many eight hour windows do you have?
(42:11):
You know that a third of all of those windows are going to be sleep.
You know that you have the opportunity to maximize the other two thirds.
And you know, when you go out to dinner with friends and someone says, Hey, let's have acocktail.
When you think about, okay, I've only got 3,500 windows to take advantage of until raceday.
(42:37):
And if I go have a drink and that.
has an impact on my recovery tonight.
So if I had a really good lift today and then I'm gonna dampen my recovery because mybody's more focused on processing the alcohol instead of contributing to regrowing the
muscles.
So that's one window gone and then I'm gonna have a worst workout the next day andprobably the day after that.
(43:03):
It's like two nights.
And so then you're going through this and you're like, well that just had a not onlyneutral but negative impact on.
a handful of my available windows.
And so you're talking about, okay, that's like, you know, a quarter of a percent or half apercent of the overall amount of time that I have to train.
(43:25):
And so why would you make the decision to forgo that quarter percent or half a percent?
It's just, don't do it.
Yeah, what you're pointing out here is the compounding effect, right?
Of the decisions that we make.
It's, and I don't think it's realized by most of us when we're making a decision that ithas a compounding effect in another direction, right?
(43:46):
I mean, if you're looking at uh quantum mechanics, and I don't know if you've been payingattention to quantum computing, there's some amazing things going on there.
uh But you know, we come to understand that each decision we make actually creates a newreality.
And so.
You can basically create this reality that's compounding benefit or one that's actuallyneutralizing benefit.
(44:06):
And it does make, it really makes a difference.
yeah, kudos for you to sorting that out.
Yeah.
Makes the decisions easier, right?
When you realize that it has a ripple effect across future time, so to speak.
Yeah.
Very cool.
Yeah, you're either getting paid for what you did over the last 10 years or you're payingfor it.
Yeah.
said.
(44:27):
Well, this has been a really fascinating conversation.
Um, and, I hope the audience has enjoyed it.
So, um, we're wishing you guys all the best here as you go forward with this, uh,endeavor.
And, um, what we'll probably do is maybe do some follow-up podcasts as we get a littlecloser to it, see how things are going.
I'm sure people will be intrigued if people want to.
(44:50):
follow you or see what's going on.
How do they do that?
Where will they find you if this is transparent?
We can follow us on Twitter uh and we have a website for the brand that we're buildingright now as well.
So we'll look at that information to you.
The brand's called PathEyes.
uh Yeah, patheyes.com will kind of be putting up everything that's...
(45:16):
Yeah, that's right.
ah That's the brand name, but we're going to be talking about everything that Anthony'sgot going.
Okay, so P.
is there too, but just a landing page right now, but more to come.
Okay.
So P-A-T-H-I-Z-E, if you're interested to follow them along as it goes along.
that also the Twitter slash X account as well?
Is that correct?
(45:37):
Okay.
Beautiful.
Well, guys, thanks so much for taking the time to chat with us here.
really a pleasure.
uh I'm going to be in, we're going to be, Mukti and I will be in Puerto Rico in May.
uh Yeah.
So we'll, we can coordinate dates.
So that'd be great.
Awesome.
All right.
Great to see you.
Yeah.
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