150: From Rookie to Retirement — Why Endurance Fades Faster Today

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Not long ago, NASCAR rookies were men in their 40s and 50s, battling the Cup schedule with grit and experience. Today? We’re seeing drivers step into the sport before they even graduate high school—while veterans are stepping out earlier and earlier. The question is: why is endurance fading faster now than ever before?

In this episode of Breaking Boundaries for Champions, we’re tackling the difference between chronological aging (the birthdays on your license) and biological aging (the true condition of your cells, tissues, and performance systems).

Here’s what you’ll discover:

• The Rookie-to-Retirement Shift — why past legends could thrive longer, and why today’s drivers feel drained by mid-career.
• The Real Cause of Early Burnout — stress redefined: Something Troubling Resulting in Essential System Shutdown. We’ll break down oxidative stress, environmental toxins, and the hidden internal stressors that accelerate aging.
• Heat, Endurance & Performance Loss — how untrained heat shock proteins, poor detoxification, and mid-season strain can wreck stamina in ways most don’t see coming.
• Motorsports & Toxins — from exhaust and rubber dust to paint fumes and fire smoke, racing is a toxic environment. And when your liver and detox pathways are overwhelmed, toxins don’t just disappear—they get stored in fat and even brain tissue.
• The 5R Method™ for Longevity — how Reveal, Remove, Replace, Rebalance, and Retain create a repeatable system to extend your biological performance window.

This is not medical advice and we do not claim to diagnose, treat, or cure disease. The purpose of this episode is education—to help you understand the difference between just “getting older” and actually losing your performance edge unnecessarily.

💡 Your Takeaway: You don’t have to “age out” before your time. With functional testing, recovery protocols, and targeted high-performance health strategies, you can extend your prime years and stay race-ready on and off the track.

👉 Grab your free gift, What’s Stealing Your Edge?, in the show notes or bio link, and if you’re ready for personalized support, schedule a free High-Performance Health consult today.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Not long ago, rookies in NASCAR were actually in
their 40s and now they'reteenagers and veterans are
leaving earlier than ever.
The difference Rapid agingversus age reversal.
Today we're breaking down whyendurance fades and how you can
leverage high-performance healthto stay race-ready for the long

(00:21):
haul.
Stay tuned.
Hello, I'm Jeffrey Mordo.
If you're like most in NASCAR'stop tiers drivers, crews,
owners or executives whileyou're busy chasing podiums,

(00:47):
have you fully considered who'staking care of you Right here?
You're about to starttransforming your mind and body
for peak race day performancewith High Performance Health
designed exclusively for thedemands of NASCAR.
As a certified High PerformanceHealth coach and consulting
hypnotist, I've coached eliteentrepreneurs and athletes to
higher energy, sharper focus andgreater resilience naturally,

(01:08):
safely and backed by science.
And right now I'm bringing thatsame engineered approach to the
best in motorsports.
Here you'll find no wasted time, just a unique blend of
integrative health, mentalconditioning and proven recovery
strategies, delivered in plainlanguage that you can use right

(01:28):
away.
Imagine a season withoutburnout, brain fog or the costly
crash of your health, becausethe truth is, the real race
starts within.
I'm grateful you're here, yes,always grateful for you joining
me.
I am Jeffrey Mort, yourpersonal certified

(01:49):
high-performance health coach.
And welcome to another episodeof the Breaking Boundaries for
Champions podcast.
And I want you to think back afew decades.
In NASCAR, it wasn't unusual tosee rookies showing up in their
late 40s or even 50s.
Take Icon Dick Trickle, forexample.
He even won Rookie of the Yearin 1989 in his late 40s I

(02:13):
believe he was 48 years old whenhe won Rookie of the Year and
contrast that with today.
Rookies in the Cup Series arebarely out of high school.
We've got 18-year-olds steppinginto one of the highest levels
of motorsports and running likechampions.
And here's the flip side Manyveteran drivers are stepping

(02:34):
away earlier than ever.
Some may move into partialschedules you know, maybe crown
jewel events like the Daytona500, the Coke 600, the Southern
500, or one of my favorites, theBrickyard 400.
And others may step down intomaybe the Xfinity or truck
series or even late models,because endurance in the car

(02:56):
just isn't there anymore.
And Dale Jr talked about thisopenly recently on his podcast
on the Dale Jr Download.
After stepping away he jumpedback into a few select races and
by the halfway point he feltcooked, hot, frustrated,
exhausted.
Even 300 laps felt like toomuch and then eventually he

(03:18):
shifted to the shorter, 150-laplate model races where the
demand fit his capacity.
And, of course, you know, westill see legends like kenny
wallace running a single mandirt operation at 62 years old.
And then, of course, kennyschrader still running locally
at age 70 and, absolutelyamazing, those guys are doing

(03:40):
that on a regular, weekly basis.
But when drivers are steppingaway in their late 30s, early
40s, the question is why?
Why are drivers, these athletesat the top of the sport,
feeling the effects of rapidaging earlier than before?
Now, before we dive in, let mebe completely clear.

(04:03):
This episode is for educationalpurposes only and we're not
here to, of course, diagnose,treat or cure any disease or
give you medical advice.
But what I share on thispodcast is rooted in the fact
that I'm here to help you infunctional health and
high-performance strategies thatare designed to optimize your
biology and performance safelyand naturally.

(04:27):
Now most people just say thatthis is simply part of aging and
some may say, well, it's thestress of the career choice and
that lifestyle.
But stress is more than themental weight of things like
kids, career or cash flow.
I like to redefine stress withan acronym Now stress

(04:49):
S-T-R-E-S-S.
That is something troubling,resulting in essential system
shutdown.
And we have external stressors,which are things like travel
and lack of sleep and financialstrain, relationship issues.
And then, of course, we haveinternal stressors.
These are toxins, gut bacterialovergrowth, vitamin and mineral

(05:14):
deficiencies, heavy metals,systemic inflammation.
These both can elevate cortisol.
Cortisol is our stress hormoneand when elevated it can cause
essential systems of the bodylike digestion, reproduction,
immunity and so many othersystems of the body to actually

(05:35):
shut down, to go offline, andthat can cause a cascade of
health issues.
And one type of stress that mostdrivers haven't considered is
oxidative stress.
Think of it like rust on metal.
The body is actually oxidizingfrom the inside out.
It damages cells and tissuesand accelerates aging Over time.

(06:00):
This oxidative stress canweaken endurance, it slows
recovery and it chips away atresilience.
But the good news is it'scompletely preventable.
And here's wherehigh-performance health gets
very interesting, because whenyour central nervous system and
biology are under chronic stressor experiencing that oxidative

(06:25):
stress, your body shifts intosurvival mode.
Energy goes to the essentialsjust keeping you alive and not
focused on endurance or stamina,and this is why endurance
diminishes.
That's why the summer heatfeels unbearable, that's why a
500-lap race feels like a1,000-lap race.

(06:47):
And if we ignore this rapidaging, if we address it, we
create age reversal, not bychanging the calendar, but by
reversing something that'scalled biological age, and I'm
going to share with you in justa moment on how we can actually
track that and reverse thebiological age.

(07:07):
Have you ever skipped the gymfor 30 days or even seven days,
and feel the difference when youcome back?
Well, the same is true for heatshock proteins.
These proteins protect yourcells and improve resilience in
the heat, but they only show upwhen you train them.
That's why training like usingsauna is so powerful, not just

(07:32):
for heat resilience but also fordetoxification.
It's able to clear out all ofthose environmental toxins that
you might be breathing in at theracetrack the rubber compound
from the tire, the compound thatthey put on the racing surface.
You know all the exhaust fumesand the heat buildup from the

(07:53):
paint.
Basically, you know paint andcarbon fiber and plastics.
If you can smell something frominside the race car, those
molecules are actually makingtheir way into the body and we
need to be able to detoxifythose and detoxification matters
.
Think about Bristol.
Just last week, as of therecording of this episode here,

(08:15):
the Fords specifically had anissue with the rubber buildup on
the headers and that wascatching fire and it was filling
the cockpits with smoke.
The drivers and the crewsinhaled that junk.
And if the liver can't keep upwith those toxins, they don't
just vanish, they get stored inadipose tissue this is the fat
tissue and then sometimes evenget stored in the brain, which

(08:38):
is mostly fat as well, and thenthat slows you down, that ages
you faster.
So that's just one example, andhere's where conventional
thinking really misleads people.
The body is not a machine.
Machines wear out and partsfail.
Now, yes, parts can fail in thebody too, but the body is a

(08:58):
continuous biological process.
It adapts and it thrives or itbreaks down, depending on how
you fuel, recover and clear thesystem.
And, unlike a machine, biologycan actually reverse age markers
if you optimize it.
So over at our private wellnesspractice, victory Lane Wellness,

(09:22):
we use what we call the 5Rmethod to reverse this rapid
aging process, and I'll give youthe five steps quick and then
we'll run through them one at atime Number one reveal.
Number two remove.
Number three replace, numberfour rebalance and number five
retain.
So let's talk about those.
How do we reveal?

(09:43):
Well, we run functional labtests, right, big five, and also
add in the biological age test,the DNA biological age test,
and this actually looks at yourbiological age, not your

(10:04):
chronological age, but itcompares it to it.
So you know, for example, I'm52 years old and if my
biological age says that I'm 55years old, I know that there's
work to be done and I canactually do things to reverse
that biological age.
So it's less than mychronological age.
And we do this with clients allthe time.

(10:24):
And the Big Five Labs actuallyhelp to look at the root causes.
These are deficiencies andtoxicities, hormone imbalances
and so much more.
So step number two was remove.
What are we removing?
We're eliminating toxins, we'reeliminating stealth pathogens,
we're eliminating stressors andso much more.
Number three replace we want torestore those deficiencies.

(10:48):
Talking about minerals, talkingabout vitamins and hormones
nutrients the body requires forbiochemistry to take place.
Remember I said earlier thatthe body is a biological process
and it needs raw materials todo that process.
Otherwise it's going to bescavenging.
For instance, it might bepulling calcium from the bones,

(11:09):
causing weak and brittle bones.
You know there's a lot ofdrivers that are having in the
same year.
They get in accidents andthey're having back injuries,
they're having broken shoulderscomes to mind.
And so you know how is thathappening.
You know, of course, 150 milean hour impact can certainly
break a back.
But could that have beenprevented from making sure we

(11:32):
have strong bones, and it's notjust from taking a calcium
supplement, it's from makingsure, actually, that we have
enough magnesium in the body sothat the the body is not trying
to pull calcium from the bonesand make them weak.
So that's just one example ofreplacing.
And how do we know that step?
Go back to step number one.
We reveal through thefunctional lab test if a person

(11:52):
has enough calcium.
And it's actually a mineralratio, a calcium to magnesium
ratio, which is not measured inblood work.
We actually measure thatthrough soft tissue, with a
simple hair sample, and that'swhy you can do these labs right
at the track.
So number four was rebalance.
We want to train the nervoussystem with things like light,

(12:14):
with sleep.
That's right.
Let me go back there for asecond.
Light is a nutrient.
Think of light.
Sunlight meaning is a think ofthat as supplementation.
So that helps to train thenervous system, getting that
morning sunlight in the eyes.
No sunglasses, I know they lookcool, you know, not through a
window, not through a windshield, but getting that morning light

(12:35):
and sunset light in the eyeshelps to set that nervous system
.
Also, sleep and movement andtargeted supplementation help to
rebalance.
And then, of course, we want toretain all of those results,
which brings us to step numberfive.
We want to build a repeatable,measurable system that sticks
season after season.

(12:56):
This is the actual blueprint tonot just maintain but to extend
careers, sharpen focus and keepyour competitive edge well past
when most are stepping down fromdriving.
And if you're serious aboutunlocking your edge, I got a
free gift for you.
What's Stealing your EdgeAssessment?
You'll find it in the link inthe show notes or in the bio

(13:18):
link.
It's a fast, eye-opening toolto uncover where stress is
draining your performance.
And if you're ready to rundeeper, schedule a free,
high-performance healthconsultation.
We'll walk through yoursymptoms, your goals and the
best starting point to turn backyour biological age and keep
you race ready for decades tocome.

(13:39):
So the final lap remember you'renot locked into rapid aging.
You can train your biology justlike you service your car,
train your pit crew or executeyour race strategy.
The rookies may come in youngbut with the right
high-performance healthstrategies, veterans can extend
careers, outlast the grind andwrite their own legacy.

(14:02):
And you can learn more aboutLegacy, champion's Edge and Pit
Precision programs in the shownotes or the bio.
Those are the programs thatVictory Lane Wellness offers.
That also supports their GiveBack Race for a Reason program
helping the kids of racingcharities heal through
integrative health.

(14:22):
You can learn more over atvictorylanewellnesscom.
Until next time, stay sharp,stay resilient and keep breaking
boundaries.
Bye-bye everybody.