The Training Journal: Accountability For Your Gains w/ Raph Freedman and Lachlan Rowston

Lachlan  00:00

This is Lachlan Rowston.

Raph  00:01

And I’m Raph Freedman.

Lachlan and Raph  00:02

You’re listening to the airborne mind show.

Misbah Haque  00:36

Hello, everyone, this is Misbah Haque. Thank you so much for joining me today. And welcome back to the show. Whether this is your first second, 10th or 30th episode, I appreciate you tuning in your time, your energy, your attention, and your ears mean the world to me. Without you listening, this show would not be where it is today. So once again, thank you. Before we get started, the biggest compliment that you can give is by leaving a review on iTunes, you have no idea how much that helps in terms of rankings, bringing more awareness to the show and bringing on more interesting guests. So if you could take two or three minutes, not while you’re driving, but take two or three minutes go ahead, leave a review it would be greatly appreciated. Also, be sure to head over to the airborne mind comm where you can check out some free resources and the full show notes there as well. today’s podcast episode is brought to you by audible.com. If you enjoy books, and you’re looking for something new to read, something that is relevant to problems that you’re trying to solve, I made a list for you at the airbornemind.com forward slash reading list. You can see a compilation compilation compiled. They say the right compilation of all the books that previous guests have recommended on the show. And if you decide you want to go for it, you can grab a free audiobook and a 30 day free trial there as well. Once again, that is the airborne mind comm forward slash reading list. Today my guests are Raph and Lacky from the Mind Muscle project. It is the number one health and fitness podcast in Australia. You may remember Lacky from a previous episode we did, which was my first in person podcast, and one I got to do at his gym CrossFit creature when I was visiting Australia, so it was really nice to have Ralph along for the ride this time. The thing I appreciate about their podcast is the entertainment aspect to it. I just really enjoy the back and forth Joe Rogan styled stuff that can go in any freakin direction. And so I always have a great time. Whenever I get to talk with these guys, we touch on you know things like podcasting, we talk about training, we talk about goal setting the five whys accountability deadlines, and a ton of stuff that I think you’re going to be able to walk away with and hopefully apply immediately. They have something that they created called the trading journal, which is a very, very beautiful journal that you can actually get like the PDF version for free for like 18 pages, but it’s like they distill down all 157 of their episodes into certain nuggets around training, nutrition and mindset. And along with that they’ve created like pretty much this accountability partner for 100 days. So there’s a lot of goal setting journals and things like that out there. And I personally have used like best self journal, which was super effective. But this one is specifically for training. And yeah, I think it’s pretty cool. They have a Kickstarter up and you can go ahead and preorder. I think that’s the only run that they’re going to do for this. The link for that is in the show notes there’s about 15 days left for it. So I hope you enjoy this episode, support these guys however you can and yeah, I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did and more importantly hope you do something with it. Ralp and Lacky Welcome to the show.

Lachlan  04:12

Thanks for having us dude. Thanks, bro. Second time

Misbah Haque  04:17

Lacky you have been on before we got to do it in person when I was in Australia, Raph weren’t there at that time so I’m excited to have you on both at the same time here. It’s gonna be fun.

Lachlan  04:28

Yeah, man, we had a good time. First one in person I’ve seen you do a few more in person since which is fantastic and a bit more of a group. My question for you now is do you enjoy it more in person or do you enjoy it more face to face? Over Skype.

Misbah Haque  04:43

Absolutely. 100% in person. You definitely know, there’s parts of it. That’s a little more nerve wracking. Like I don’t actually even with Skype ones. Now I don’t have as many notes or questions written down on the side. But when you’re in person, I definitely don’t have any of that. It’s just kind of Like, yeah, going with more of what’s in the moment. And it’s just easier to connect with people that way. ,

Lachlan  05:09

That’s why we’ve got to come to the US.

Raph  05:10

Yeah, it’s a lot easier said when you’re in San Rafael. Is (inaudible) everywhere?

Misbah Haque  05:17

When you guys are making a trip down here.

Raph  05:19

Well, San Rafael had the biggest wholefoods I’ve ever been to so the whole foods you go to it was, like, enormous.

Misbah Haque  05:25

Really, I didn’t notice a big difference but maybe I’m just spoiled by this.

Raph  05:30

Like big for Americans but I went to Whole foods San Rafael was huge. That’s probably gonna bring us back. We’re hoping to go back in November at the end of, like, late November.

Misbah Haque  05:41

You guys better make, I mean, we’re definitely a little bit farther away from like San Diego and LA but you should definitely stop by here.

Raph  05:49

We’re gonna go beat Marcus Filly at the Dubai fitness challenge, and then spend our winnings in San Rafael wholefoods. I told you it’s a big study, I got plenty of money to spend it.

Misbah Haque  06:01

Dude, aren’t the winnings for that competition? Like, ridiculous? 

Lachlan  06:05

I think what the prize money is like, the prize money is similar to the CrossFit Games across all the online qualifiers in the event. So it’s a lot of money in it. 

Podcasting

Misbah Haque  06:16

That’s insane. Okay, give us a little bit of context. For those who may not be listening. You guys are the hosts of the Mind Muscle project number one podcast health and fitness podcast in Australia. And I’ve listened to a bunch of your episodes. I’m a fan as well. But just give us a little bit of context as to what you guys do on mind muscle and like what else you guys have going on? I mean, you have the training journal, you’ve got peak chocolate, so much stuff going on. So just give us the lowdown.

Lachlan  06:44

So we still have three gyms at this stage, which is nice. We spent a lot of time at the gyms. But now on the podcast as it’s been growing with something recently, we’ve launched the training journal, which are in the Kickstarter phase. And then obviously Raph. Also running picks up chocolate, which are not involved with, I just ate it and helped us to sell it on the podcast as well. But yeah, we’ve been doing the podcast 157 episodes as of this week. So that’s three years of podcasting. And starting to look at, what is happening, I feel like there’s a bit of a momentum shift in our industry right now. And it’s hard to say exactly how that happens. But it’s more that it comes from the top down. So you’re listening to the guys like Mark Bell, some of the big bodybuilders in the industry, like Steve Cook, les Norton, that sort of thing. Even guys like Brent McCaskey and James Newby CrossFitters that we’ve had on Games athletes, I feel like there’s this there’s a shift going on right now. And I don’t exactly know what it is. But I feel like it’s something big and it has to do with the online space opening up a lot more than it ever has. And so we’ve got some plans to do more with our YouTube channel. kind of explore the online space a little bit more than just doing a podcast every week. So yeah, lots of stuff on the horizon.

Misbah Haque  08:13

So you mean like in the fitness industry in general, or in podcasting, specifically?

Lachlan  08:19

No, I just mean, in the fitness industry, I think I think we’re it’s almost like waking up a little bit. For a while we’re stuck in this phase where CrossFit and powerlifting, weightlifting, gymnastics, all this stuff was a little bit unknown. There weren’t a lot of established ways to do certain things, at least for the average person and where they could get it at a gym. But now the industry is like really settling in a little bit more with these training modalities. And a lot of the really high level athletes and high level coaches are kind of establishing these set ways that people can do really well. So for example, guys like Brent Fikowski, James Newberry, they’ve had their coach Rob down for a long time now. And he’s like a real industry leader. And he’s kind of established a really set way that seems to be how CrossFitters can do really well, long term and make progress doesn’t seem any more like a really high volume approach is a smart thing. And that’s sort of a shift as well, because there’s more exposure, there’s more podcasts, there’s more YouTube channels, there’s more vloggers out there, there’s more information. And so people have kind of, I feel like people are just waking up a bit more, they’re becoming a bit smarter to what else is out there. And you see the shift with what you guys are doing as well. Functional bodybuilding is getting massive, because people are just sick of doing the old cost itself. They’re looking for new things. They’re exploring new ways. Guys, like Mark Bell, are not training as hard anymore. He’s trying to make himself healthy. He’s talking about how he can use PEDS, but in a healthy way, if that kind of makes sense. He can. He’s monitoring his bloodwork. He’s getting proper chiropractic. He’s not trying to be really fat and overweight. I just think there’s this more shift towards health even The highest levels of performance, which for a long time, there really wasn’t. And we want to kind of get on that and kind of help out as much as we can, as influences. So just looking to figure out ways we can help with that. That makes sense.

Misbah Haque  10:15

When Dr. Galpin was on the show, he mentioned how there’s always a thesis. And then years later, there’s like an antithesis that’s like the complete opposite of that. And then years after that, you have the was it called synthesis? Yeah, where things kind of meet in the middle, and things aren’t so extreme anymore, and one sided, and I feel like that’s kind of what you’re referring to. That’s where we are right now, where it’s like, we’re able to see all the good things we can get from CrossFit or powerlifting, or the competitive mindset. But then we also see health and longevity. And somehow, there’s these unique ways that people are kind of bridging things together. I think it’s good.

Raph  11:00

Well, it only took 10 years and like 10 years. It seems like a long time. But I feel like it’s not very long. I mean, 10 years to sort of get a bit more of a groove with it. Because I guess what he’s saying is, right, because the first thesis was like 10 minute workouts every day. And then the second thesis was like, 10 minute workouts every 20 minutes, all day. And then and then I guess, maybe the synthesis is like, somewhere a bit more in the middle, like, yeah, yeah, 10 minutes is not enough. But all day is also unnecessary.

Lachlan  11:30

When you have the best athletes in the world, saying, Hey, I’m not like training that much anymore. And I play sports, and I have balance, and I go on holidays and stuff like that. Like it’s pretty, it’s different. I mean, they’re not gonna, they’re the best athletes in the world. You expect they spend their entire lives training, and when they tell you they don’t, it’s probably not a good thing. It definitely causes a shift. 100%

Misbah Haque  11:54

So you guys, he said, you’ve done 157 episodes now. So that’s, that’s a lot of dialogue, a lot of conversations. Like it always baffles me when I think about and I’m only at 50 some when you go back to Episode One it’s like, it’s like a long movie. That’s an audio only version people can hear you from the very beginning. And like how you developed your process, what you kind of learned along the way. And it’s, it’s a little weird, like, sometimes people know you more than you would imagine them to, because they’ve heard you and kind of been with you so long. Do you guys get that at all? Like, I don’t know, people in Australia, like running into like, Oh, you guys are from my muscle project. I listened to your episode. And like, they’re like true fans.

Lachlan  12:43

We get lost, we actually get lost because we have a gym. They come and visit the gym. So they might stop you. 

Misbah Haque  12:49

That’s even better. 

Lachlan  12:51

And there’s always a sneaking suspicion. I’m like, okay, so you came from the UK or you came from, you know, America or something. Why did you choose this gym, there’s lots of gyms you could have chosen from, and then nine times out of 10. They’re big fans of the podcast. And they’re just visiting Australia and they couldn’t help it, say the gym and I kind of feel guilty because now I want to coach their class, I want to hang out with them. Because I’ve traveled all this way to hang out. And I’ve got so much work to do. I’m like, okay, so have fun in class and get upset. But it is. It is really cool. The unfortunate thing is we used to say a lot of shit without thinking twice. And so people would come up to us and tell us these things that we’ve said. And well, we don’t remember. Larry, one thing in particular, actually, we we are okay, we’ll just talk about this but so on our CrossFit Games wrap up this year, what we like to do every we actually, so there was a Brazilian teenager who snatched five pounds more or five pounds less than Matt Fraser less, less. Okay. And then I made the allegation that this guy may be on some performance enhancing drugs, maybe. Allegedly. I got contacted by multiple people from Brazil, including his coach that were outraged. Outraged is like an understatement. At the responses they had.. 

Raph  14:18

They were big fans of the podcast until.

Lachlan  14:25

If we go to Brazil it looks like we’ll have to be working out of the Globo gym. We know CrossFit will accept us. Somehow, I think somehow insulted all of Brazil as well.

Misbah Haque  14:34

Do but I mean, that’s how it happens. You know, you can’t please everybody. And I can only imagine if you’re getting that, think about somebody like Joe Rogan who talks about anything and everything that’s controversial and like these conspiracy theories, strong opinions, like the type of backlash somebody like him must get.

Lachlan  14:53

He spoke out about the haka, the New Zealand haka, which is like their war chat. They like it. He made some joke about it. That was, it was a joke. And it was in a different context. It was maybe the basketball team doing the haka or something.. 

Raph  15:08

Like whenever not the rugby team is doing it. It looks pathetic. 

Lachlan  15:11

That’s what it was like. And they’re laughing at it. And then apparently he got so much backlash from New Zealand. He made a post about I think you can find it on Instagram. And he’s like, right. And I was like, I wonder how many people lash out 1000s of people 1000s. So anything he says is right. And he’s live. So when he says it, it’s out there.

Misbah Haque  15:39

You guys are huge fans of Bryan Callen and Brendan Schaub, right.

Lachlan  15:46

I’m a massive fan.

Misbah Haque  15:51

Did you go to his show when he was in Australia? Cuz I saw a picture of you guys together.

Lachlan  15:57

I did go to a show? He? He’s basically like a stand up comedian now. Yeah, disguised as it’s more just like storytelling, but he’s really funny. And yeah, he’s just doing a lot of cool stuff. I know. He’s in this stand up comedy scene with Joe and all those guys. And he’s just kind of got his own following from his podcast. So yeah, he was doing an international tour. He’s been to Ireland. He’s been to England. He basically wherever he goes, he sells out. So it’s pretty crazy. Let’s go nuts.

Misbah Haque  16:28

We’re gonna bookmark that for a second, because I asked you last time why you got into podcasting? What drew you into it? But Raph wasn’t there. So I want to get Raph’s thoughts on what got you into this. And what kind of sparked it for you like why were you drawn to podcasting?

Raph  16:45

I think I like podcasts, because when I was playing rugby before, I got into CrossFit, and if you wanted to find out what the athletes were doing for training, it was pretty much impossible. Like there was nothing out there and what they would do for training, and I would like to troll through things like interviews and shit. And then they’d have like, 1 30 second clip of them in the gym. And I’d be like, watching it nine times over, trying to work out what exercise they were doing, but he pretty much had no idea. And like, super occasionally, they’d be like, Oh, this is my bench press. And I’d be like, fuck, like, I wonder how they train. But like, there’s nothing out there. So then, when you get into CrossFit, obviously, it’s different because there is a lot more out there. But I think it just sparked curiosity and enjoyment and finding out how the other best athletes train, because there was so little of it when I played my first sport, so I always listened to podcasts basically for that reason.

Lachlan  17:33

And then that was when you listened to Joe’s podcast.

Raph  17:37

Here’s the blog. I mean, the one that had many podcasts back then was all the big ones. It was like a Paleo Solution. Weightlifting talk, Joe Rogan’s podcasts, I think even maybe like weed rolls podcast was out. There was like, not that many, but I would, I was obsessed with him. Because I mean, going from somewhere where you could basically never find out how any of the athletes trained, and then people would talk about it for hours was like, way different level. And I absolutely loved it. So I guess that’s why we got into it. And why? Lacky, I’ve enjoyed talking about it so much.

Misbah Haque  18:06

I can relate to that. Because, for me, even beyond training, and when you think about like business, or programming, or really any area that you’re interested in, nowadays, like you can go and listen to the best of the best having like this intelligent conversation back and forth, and you’re kind of like a fly on the wall, just able to absorb everything it’s just it’s sometimes I don’t know if you guys get this, but when sometimes people on the show and they’re like, giving this advice and their time is valuable. And whatever their services are expensive. You’re like, how the fuck are they giving this away for free? You know, I have some of that. I’ve had some of those reactions at times when talking to people like, damn, I wish people could hear this, right. It’s like a golden nugget of some sort. I’m sure you guys over 157 episodes have come across that at some point.

Raph  19:00

Yes, the way it is. These days, I think people don’t really expect to pay for inflammation that much anymore. Because this is so much of a phrase, almost like, oh, you can pay so much money to hear the smartest guy talk on investing. I blacked out. It’s probably like 100 podcasts with that already. So I don’t really know why.

Lachlan  19:19

Well, it’s kind of okay. So give you an example. That was just when I was getting into the property investing stuff. And I like this one podcast with so many episodes and like the number one property podcast in Australia. And I didn’t want to go through it all because I was so far behind already, that I just bought that book instead. So that’s basically I think the only way that they kind of sell that information is like that. It’s at a point now where there’s so many podcasts. There’s so much information that it’s almost too much now. And if you’re not up to date, yeah, like where do you start? And that’s kind of the issue we were having as part of the reason we made like the top 20 podcasts for us so people could have like a starting point and also why we created like our training journal, so people can would have 150 episodes in a book, and they can just like have it there, then they can just pick up on the podcast and where they’re at now. 

Misbah Haque  20:09

I think you’re right to like how much information there is. But I think what that also does is it paralyzes a lot of people, right? Like you can just consume and consume and consume, and not really know, like, what to execute on. And I think that’s where, I guess when we think about coaching  in whatever setting, but let’s say in the fitness industry, like coaching is going to continue to be valuable because it still has that like one to one connection, where somebody can kind of listen to you, they can confirm what you’re thinking, like, oh, how many times have you heard people give you like, or you’ve read books or read, listen to podcasts, where you get a certain piece of advice, like this is how you need to do X. But you don’t do it until you know a mentor that you really admire says the exact same thing. And then you’re like, all lit up, and you go ahead and do that. Right. I think that’s gonna be the thing as technology gets more and more like interfaces, is that coaching or one to one connection going to become more valuable?

Lachlan  21:09

I agree with that. For sure. It’s hard to execute. Yeah. And you said so much information, like exactly what you want to implement. So at the end of the day, it seems like I need something like this. Now, let me go find someone like a one on one coach, that’s going to give me that exact thing, nutrition, coaching, supplement, supplement regime, payday regime, whatever it is, you just realize you need it, and you go and hire someone to give it to you. They can put it all together.

Misbah Haque  21:41

Absolutely. So coming back to you Lacky when I asked you about Brendon trab and Bryan Callen. What is it about? Maybe it’s their podcast, specifically, but what is it about maybe their style that you like? And are there other people out there in terms of podcasting that you kind of maybe look to for inspiration? Or you did maybe when you first started,

Lachlan  22:07

So what I like about them, in particular, is that they don’t really need a guest to come on the show for it to be entertaining. So almost in itself, just the two of them is like tuning into your weekly TV show, like it’s entertaining and has segments, you kind of know what to expect. The jokes are funny, always. The chats are entertaining, there’s always the catch up on current events there, they catch up on each other, they’ll just talk about some random stuff and you just kind of follow their lives. And I think that’s what most influences need to, once they become fairly established, is just try and take more and more of them and put more of themselves out there. So rather than make it about the interviews and stuff, which they do, they need to make more about themselves, because that’s what people really enjoy. And that’s kind of something that we’re trying to do a little bit more of. Because at the end of the day, like everyone has their own story, and that’s kind of what you want to be around to follow. So that’s what I really liked about them is that they’ve managed to set it up in a way and this is because you know, they’re a little bit older, but I think Brendan’s 34, and talons 50 they’ve had a long, they’ve had long lives and a lot of experience in our brand has been professional athlete, Brian’s been stand up comedian actor for a long time. So they have really interesting lives and stories. And that’s just kind of what you’re they’re around to follow. And when they bring someone in to interview them. It’s good and it’s entertaining. But you’re really there for them. So for them, they’re like amazing entertainers. And that’s what I admire about them. Because to be entertaining, twice a week, like just every single week back to back to back is hard. And they’re naturally very good at it. So that’s what we try to bring to our podcast with a certain level of entertainment that people want to hang around and, and watch and enjoy. So yeah, that’s kind of how they’ve been an inspiration in terms of people that inspired me. That is slightly different. I watched a lot of YouTube videos from early 2009 to 2008. Again, they just like entertainers. That was this Asian guy called Timothy DeLaGhetto. I don’t know if anyone knows him, but he has millions of followers now. And same thing just not really entertaining dude, just giving his thoughts on relationships. And in the fitness industry, there were two guys, Elliott Hulse. And who are those two brothers? today? Yes, they were. The Hodgetwins two gods like that. 18 Yeah, they just, they’re just obsessed with just being funny and entertaining. But also at the same time. There’s life advice in there. There’s training advice in there, that sort of stuff nutrition that, to me, like moving into that sort of space, I think is really fun, really entertaining and it gives you a lot more options than just, interviewing people for the rest of our lives, which you still want to do but they want to do other stuff along with that as well. So yeah, people like that. inspirations. For me.

Misbah Haque  25:05

I’m all for that. I think anything like any type of education wrapped in entertainment is like 10 times more effective and 10 times more well received. Like, you think about somebody like Dave Chappelle when he does a stand up special and you hear like, He’s a phenomenal storyteller first of all, but like you hear him kind of doing his thing. And it’s there’s always like a, like a big picture idea, or like a controversial message or something wrapped inside of his joke that he won’t always say straight up, it just kind of you get it and I always admired that entertainment aspect. I think that’s why I would say Joe Rogan’s podcast is probably my favorite because it’s so laxed. And so like, he’s able to be entertaining. So often, like, I don’t know how often it is per week, but I feel like he’s always got a new episode coming out. And it’s not one hour. It’s not just one hour, it’s like three hours of dialogue back and forth.

Lachlan  26:03

It goes very fast. 

Raph  26:04

Good Joe Rogan is a pleasure.

Lachlan  26:07

Three hours just in a heartbeat. He’s so good at it.

Misbah Haque  26:11

Ralph, how about you? Do you have anybody who you’re like, I don’t know anybody’s style that you like, or you draw inspiration from or maybe have in the past?

Raph  26:19

I’m trying to think I mean, look, we used to listen to weightlifting talk, which was John North, Glen Pele, and Donnie Shankle. Just myself. And I always really liked having him on, because we had him on our second episode. And he was the guy that sort of got us to take charge and do the podcast every week. So I would say it was inspiration and getting started. And also, I just love the energy that they bring to the podcast and also Yeah, like education. Like I thought at that time, I didn’t know anything about the Olympic lifts. I actually think I learned a lot from listening to the podcast, because they just talk for hours about weightlifting techniques. And that could be pretty, that could be really, really boring. If you actually think about someone actually talking about some technique for two hours, it was unbelievably entertaining. John North is. So I would say like, yeah, that would. And even that would have life lessons in there as well. I would have liked Tony chenko to give serious life lessons on the podcast that I thought could be applied to anything. After that was like a pretty incredible podcast, because they did basically this guy’s lift weights, and they just finished training. Pretty sure they would drink a lot of the time as well. And they would just chat with that coach, but I could learn about weightlifting, learn about life and laugh a lot as well. So I think they were pretty inspirational. 

Gems that spark light bulb moments

Misbah Haque  27:37

Do you? Do you ever have when you’re talking to somebody or interviewing them? Or maybe it’s just between you two? When somebody says something like, maybe it’s a line or two? Where you’re like, Yes, like this is a line that would go into the training journal, right? Like, this is a nugget that you wish everybody would tune in for that you want them to hear? Because I find that I have those moments. And it’s like, you know, if a conversation is over an hour long,you have people who are going to listen to the entire thing. But who knows, maybe some people aren’t going to listen to it. And then they can’t, you know, they can’t benefit from whatever that nugget was, or, or utilize it in any way. I don’t know. Are you able to pick apart those moments at all?

Lachlan  28:21

I think we know after we finish the podcast, we’ll always look at each other and have a discussion about it in terms of what we thought and like how entertaining it was, and what we think people would get out of it. And over 157 episodes, you get a really good sort of gut feeling as to what was a really great episode, and you know, maybe what’s not going to have such a big impact every now and then when proven wrong, we might put something out and we’re like, Oh, we didn’t think it was that good. And then it gets really good reviews. And that kind of what that tells us is there’s always something in there for everyone. But at the same time, like we said, there’s tons of information out there, it’s pretty easy for people to just kind of skip an episode with us one week that might be busy or they’re just sick of listening to us or something, but they might miss something that could be the most impactful one line that they could be needing in their training or their life or whatever it might be. And so when we were finding the content for the journal, we knew it was going to be firstly a big undertaking of listening to ourselves over and over again, which is a painful process, but also a good process to learn how to get better at speaking. But we dropped a big list. I think we listened initially maybe like 60 episodes and then from the 60 episodes we kind of made a shortlist of that and then from there we assigned different listening to ah like Rafa, listen to this, another podcast or listen to this group. And then it was number four we even got to that. It was like, Okay, what are we listening for? Like what? Specifically, you know, because we could write any, we could write anything down. Everything’s useful, but it had to be training, nutrition or mindset to help people with one of those three things. So every time I listen to something cool. Okay, so is this going to help someone with their training, their nutrition or their mindset? And if it didn’t fit that question, it wouldn’t include it in the book. And that meant we did miss a lot of good stuff. So if we had Julian Pinyon, and it was a great episode, there would still be lots of stuff in there that most people would really, really enjoy. But it just didn’t fit the training nutrition mindset. And therefore it wouldn’t make sense for one into the book, it would just, it would just seem a bit off, people would read it and be like, Why is he talking about the education system and how it’s broken? It just doesn’t really fit. So that in itself was 100 hours combined. Just listening through it, writing it down, rewriting it, paraphrasing it? Yes. So big a process, but a valuable one?

Misbah Haque  30:49

That’s why I think, like Tools of Titans was such a genius idea and has done so well is because it’s taken all those interviews that he’s done, which some people may have never even listened to his podcast, like a lot of people may have just gotten the, you know, book version where they can get these distilled notes from over I don’t even know how many people are in that book, but it’s just like, pure, distilled nuggets that you can take and actually apply to in your life immediately.

Lachlan  31:22

He’s got a new one tribe of mentors as well, I think he’s done a similar sort of thing, taking advice from people on and off the podcast. And just put it into the same style of encyclopedia format, sort of pick something out of the unique category, and then go find it in the book.

Raph  31:39

Arcanist it’ll be the next level of podcasts and podcasts and get a lot more popular  when you’re able to much more easily share segments of podcasts. Like I think it’s crazy that you can’t be like to share, like all this 22nd segment from this podcast with like, all your friends on Instagram, whatever, you can easily just do that. I think let me think about it. Like, it’s like two hours, people like to check out this three hour podcast that was one bit in the middle that was really funny. It’s like, okay, I’m never gonna just listen to three hours for this one in the middle. But the day that you can just be like  bookmarking tiny little bits of audio, like downloading them into folders on your phone, and it’s just harder, just not very accessible right now and sharing them. I don’t know if someone can build up. And that’s what we have to go through the journal because basically, you can’t do that.

The Training Journal

Misbah Haque  32:23

Now that’s a, there’s two sides to that. I think it’s like, okay, the people that you do get, who end up listening for the three hours or whatever it’s like, they’re dedicated listeners, you know, they’re like true fans, they, they really care about what you have to say, if they’re willing to listen to you for over 60 minutes. The other thing I wanted to point out is, have you ever heard of anchor No, anchor is like, pretty much like they’re, they made it so you can essentially if you really wanted to, like really record yourself and release it as a podcast. But what it is, is meant to be like Snapchat, but for audio. So like you’re recording little bits of yourself, you can share songs that you like on Spotify. So it’s like your own radio station, in a sense, right. And it’s one of those things like, I love the idea, I absolutely like the way that it works. I’m like, Oh, this would be a super fun version to kind of do what I’m doing now, but like maybe more shareable. But it’s a matter of like, okay, it’s still in a growth phase where there’s, people have no idea what it is. And like, they’re still kind of getting in tune with that. But they just came, they just created this like software, where, let’s say that I put in a clip of me and you guys talking right? You can have that, like, pretty much transcribed into a video that just shows like the text and over I think you can have the sound there as well. And you can export that in like Instagram story format. Or you can have it in just like a regular Instagram shareable video format. And that was one of the things that they acknowledged to just like, you are like, yeah, there’s no shareable way yet to actually, you know, put out these bite sized pieces of content of audio specifically. And so that’s kind of been like their solution so far. I thought it was pretty cool. We are going to look into that. 100% Yeah, it’s really cool. I liked it. Yeah, I think it’s like anchor.fm or something like that. But yeah, so tell me a little more about like, when you guys thought of the journal itself, like, did this stem from something that you guys have used as well, like, I know, for me, I’ve used like the best self journal and I’m a fan of like, any type of journaling that just gets you to kind of think a different way like even morning, Five Minute Journal, whatever. That you know, it’s super simple. There’s like a couple questions and just gets your brain thinking in a bit of a different way like sets the focus for the day. or whatever it might be? What experience have you kind of had with yourselves? Like, how have you kind of maybe used journaling in the past? In regards to training?

Raph  35:10

I mean, something that we heard so many times on our own podcast and other podcasts is that the high level people, and particularly in athletics, they would review that training in some way, or they set intentions in some way. It’s the same in business. But obviously, as a fitness podcast, Budapesti hear it over and over again, we journal quite a lot. And then we got people like 75 minute journals for our members. So we do really believe in it, and we’ve got our members journaling. And we’ve always really believed in the power of it. Because I mean, if you stop and think about for a second, if you wake up every day, and you start writing down, you know how you’re going to make a trading exceptionally good that day, how are you going to reflect upon your biggest goal before you get into training, and you finish every day for five minutes reflecting on like, the two biggest problems you hadn’t training that day, how you can overcome those problems the next day. Over time, that is just going to compound it such better results compared to just drifting along, which is basically what we say some of our members do. And two years down the track, they’re exactly the same as where they were before. And the members that like intentionally moving forward, the ones that bought the Five Minute Journal and bought all the way in 20 times more progress, and the one that paid the same amount of money in about the same amount of times two years earlier. So I think coaching 100 athletes, you just say it over and over again. And everyone will be like, hey, there’s no one for training. And it was true that there wasn’t one for training, I didn’t even have a go on for training. I would like to try to write in the Five Minute Journal about training. And he’s asking about my gratitude, which is good. But it just wasn’t it wasn’t exactly what I needed. You know, and and after hearing it from too many podcast guests like Brent McCaskey, and like well, we maximize like what I do every day. And our members are blogging about it. That’s essentially what inspired us to create it.

Lachlan  36:50

There’s a good book called 59 seconds by Richard Wiseman. And it’s basically a book where a team of researchers went through all the personal development literature and everything that’s out there. And they, they looked into all the studies, and all the rumors and all the methods and techniques that people use to use for motivation they use for inspiration, basically, anything that people will go and seek, that are popular methods to improve their life. And one thing that they found over and over again, was that writing, answering some simple questions had the biggest impact for the smallest investment of time, on their happiness. So I think the study was one, they would journal one day in the month, for six months, where they had to reflect on just a bunch of questions that I gave them. And they reported higher happiness scores than people who didn’t. And it was only generally once every 30 days. So it’s not even that often. So obviously, he was saying, you know, if you’re journaling on a daily basis, or a weekly basis, your level of happiness, that mindfulness that you bring, that conscious thought that you bring to whatever actions you have during the day is going to result in a lot more happiness. And that’s what we thought we could do with people’s training. So we obviously know it works. Science says it works. So why not do it for your training? Because a lot of people don’t enjoy their training yet. They do it anyway. So I thought it’d be a great tool.

Misbah Haque  38:16

I can totally do that. What was the book called? You said? 59 seconds? 

Lachlan  38:22

Yeah. By Richard Wiseman. 

Misbah Haque  38:25

I mean, I think I told you this last time we chatted was like, the morning pages, which is three pages longhand, writing every morning is like the one thing that has remained consistent and constant. And I can only think of maybe like a handful of times that I may have missed it in the last like, I don’t know, 14 months or something like that. And I can tell you the days that I do miss it. It’s like, I don’t know, you just feel kind of scatterbrained. And I get a lot of fulfillment out of actually sitting down and writing and I keep it pretty loose, like I’ll write about whatever. But it’s just the act of running your hand through the pages. Especially when you are using technology all day long. When you’re on your phone like 500 times a day or checking it. It’s some absurd amount like that. You’re on your laptop, you’re always looking at a screen, being able to physically write things down. For sure. There has to be some science behind that.

Raph  39:24

Yama is common. It’s one of the top coaches in CrossFit, the training plan guy. He was a big morning pages guy. Yeah, he would do the pages every single morning and he had pretty much every athlete that he worked with closely on the training plan, if I remember well, had him journaling in some form. Some form work well for them.

5 Why’s Theory

Misbah Haque  39:44

So I looked at the preview that you guys have. I don’t know if the preview is available for everybody. But I took a look at the PDF version. And I like how you guys start with the why and I think it’s called the what is it the five whys theory Could you tell me a little bit about that? And like, what was the decision behind putting that in there?

Lachlan  40:05

I can’t remember his name. It’s like a Toyota or something.

Raph  40:08

Is it a Japanese guy?

Lachlan  40:09

Yeah, Japanese guy. 

Misbah Haque  40:13

Start Saki Saki cheetah

Lachlan  40:14

Has something like that. So it’s crazy Japanese people, it’s just like a really well studied process that was something one guy created, essentially, that helps people get down to really distill the answers behind their actions, I would say all the reasons behind their actions. Because people do a lot of things, they probably couldn’t tell you, or they want a lot of things, they set a lot of goals, but they don’t exactly know the reason behind it. And think it’s a useful process to apply to when you are going to chase a goal for 100 days, for example, or any sort of goal, because probably what you’ll find is maybe it’s not a great reason, maybe it’s some maybe it’s trying to please a parent that will never get placed. Or maybe it’s that you’re constantly comparing yourself to that guy who beat you in sixth grade, who now lives on the other side of the world and doesn’t care about you at all. And it was traumatic for you as a child. And it just seems that it’s a bit silly now. So I think when people can really bring a better understanding as to the reasons they’re doing certain things, it will drive them a lot harder, I think it would give them a lot more satisfaction at the end. Because if you do something for the wrong reason, when you achieve the goal, it’s not fulfilling, it doesn’t give you the happiness that you thought you would get from it. And that’s the biggest issue with it. You people invest all this time into these things, they feel like they want, they tell you they want, they never did the five whys or they never really looked into it, they get to it, they get the house, they get the car, the job on the salary that they wanted, nothing’s changed, and they’re actually miserable. And they will tell me that all the time. And I think that’s just, it’s sad, I need to look into the reasons behind their actions a lot more.

Misbah Haque  41:58

I think especially with something like training, because, you know, people are investing so much time into it on a daily basis. And when you add that up over the course of a week, I mean, that’s something at revival strength, like every single client. And a lot of these people forget, like somebody who wants to compete, you know, at a regional level, or whatever I’m saying like everyday people. That’s a dialogue that happens between a coach and client, like, why, you know, what gets you out of the bed in the morning? Why are you actually doing this? And for a lot of people, it’s hard to answer, it doesn’t happen right away. It’s like, you know, we do monthly consults, and every month, that’s something that you may circle back to, and over a couple months, like you might finally, you know, that answer might evolve. And you might get deeper and deeper into what that is. And I mean, the truth of the matter is, like, when you take a look at somebody who’s a high level CrossFit Games competitor, like if they didn’t have a strong touch with what theory was, they wouldn’t be where they are. And I think that goes for any person who is achieving high level success in anything is like there’s a lot of adversity and obstacles and shit that’s going to be thrown your way. And you’re right, it’s like you’re either going to stop before you get there, if you don’t have a strong why or when you get there, you’re not going to be happy. And then it’s kind of on to the next thing. And you’re constantly in that unfulfilled state, which I mean, for me at least, that’s kind of a shitty place to be.

Lachlan  43:27

It’s hard because we’re constantly comparing ourselves to others. So we’re comparing ourselves to what we think other people get from their happiness, or what things they associate with their happiness. Like we just watched. Did you watch the film Breaking Tanzania? Fuck. Anyway, so watch this documentary called breaking too. It’s about the guys that tried to break the two hour mark on the marathon. Really? Yeah. And so the guy who got close, who got two hours, 25 seconds or something? Spoiler alert, he does make. He’s like a multimillionaire and is essentially the most successful math THON runner of all time. And they go and they visit him in his village, or where he’s from in Kenya, I think, or Ethiopia. And you would not know this guy is like, he’s going to the wells and he’s like pumping water out of the well and checking it back. And, you know, sweeping dirt out of his house and stuff. And he just looks like an average dude. And it’s basically saying like this, the simple life is what brings you happiness. And he’s like, marathons are like running are simple. And it brings me happiness and everything else in my life. I just try to make math on just simple and, and easy. And he’s like, that’s how you bring the most happiness to your life as quite profound. This guy’s like a philosopher doesn’t even know. Yeah. And I was just thinking the same thing. I’m like, Man, this guy knows exactly what makes him happy. And he just does it every day. And probably because he understands you know why he’s doing it. Probably knows that. Yeah, like you said he has a good sense to have his wife, you know, to go through the marathon over and over and over again and get happiness out of it. I think it’s a powerful thing.

Misbah Haque  45:10

And then I think the next thing that’s huge is like, accountability of some form. I mean, that’s something that, you know, when I did the best, best self journal, which is like, three, I think it’s three months long, you know, you set these goals in the beginning, you you go through this process of like, maybe why, essentially, and a something that, you know, somebody else pointed out to me was like, Okay, if, if you don’t go in and fill out your journal, and like you stop at some point, chances are that you’re not doing what you were supposed to be doing. Right? And so it almost keeps you accountable in a sense that like, you know, why am I avoiding it? If I am avoiding filling out my journal? Like, what’s the reason behind that, and it comes back to I think, accountability, which is so huge for people.

Lachlan  45:57

Accountability is, is tough, because so like you can, I mean, we’ve tried so many different methods of accountability, like paying coaches and having different mentors and stuff for the business and that, and at the end of the day, it does really come down to like yourself and doing it on a daily, daily basis, the best way to be accountable is to make something a habit, that’s really what I’ve found is the best way to do it. So the most books I’ll read are when I’m reading all the time, not when I decided to pick up a book or someone told me about it is when I take the momentum going when I make a habit, when I make 25 minutes in the evening, a habit. And so people just need to realize there’s always going to be some certain amount of resistance and suffering towards the accountability that you want to do. It’s not just it’s not super easy. But if you make whatever you want to do a habit, then you’ll be more accountable to the habit of doing it, then the actual thing itself, if that makes sense. So pick that thing. And then suffer through Wilhelms it take to create a habit, 21 days or something, suffer through the first three weeks, like really, really make the effort, it’s obviously going to be a lot harder, but then after that, you’ll be so used to doing it that the accountability aspect of it is a lot easier than it was in the first three weeks.

Misbah Haque  47:14

What do you do because surely you guys see this, like a bigger picture connection between like, okay, with training, if you can perform a certain way. And if you can be accountable a certain way, it’s like a healthy discipline, you develop this type of practice, like, you can take that and you can apply it to something else, right, we see it with like, maybe high level athletes all the time, they took their discipline of, you know, being super dedicated to their sport, and maybe they applied it to business. And they saw a bunch of success in that, or maybe it’s in another facet of life or whatever. But was, is that I mean, does that kind of ring a bell? Or was that part of the bigger picture ideas? Like, we want people to have concrete goals with their training and somehow kind of, I don’t know, see, like a trickle down effect into other things.

Raph  48:05

I think that with training, it’s something that you just get so much happiness from when you do progress in it. Because I mean, I can’t guarantee that everything else in your life is gonna go perfect during your 100 days of the training journal. But if you’re progressing in your training, it’s like something awesome, that’s happening every single day. And in the chaos of the rest of your life, you can just fully control it. If you’re filling out the journal on a daily basis, almost impossible, you’re not going to be improving. Because you’re setting the intention, you’re doing the work, you’re reflecting on it, essentially twice a day. So I feel like it’s something that can just bring you happiness and certainty in your life, for that time period. And every time in my life, when I’ve achieved some sort of like, big training goal of some sort, or a sports goal. It just gives you so much confidence in the next thing you do. You’re like, I know, I can dream something up. And 100 days later have it in reality.

Lachlan  48:58

I was just gonna say the big, big issue that I find with goals, with training, and then other aspects of your life is that they’re very, they’re not equal whatsoever. I training is unique in its goal setting, and that nothing can influence the outcome except yourself. And maybe you could argue one or two things, but it’s very unlikely. And so if you’re talking about relationships, friendships, business, your job, your career, all those things are impacted by other people. And so if you set a goal for them, there’s always going to be an element of stuff you can’t control. You can’t control if the other person will love you back. That’s just you really can’t. If the customer is going to buy a product. Yeah, you can have the best marketing plan out there. You can speak to them. You have the best sales process, but ultimately it does come down to them. And their decision. That’s something you can’t control. In training, you control everything you control when you work out how you eat, how you sleep. How much intention you bring to training the program you Follow what coach you choose, you control every single aspect of your training. So there’s almost no excuse for not hitting your training goal, the only thing you don’t really control is your genetics, which is like your rate of adaptation, but by this point, you know, so you’re gonna set a goal that’s realistic for your genetics or you’re not. And if you set the right goal, which we have, like a process that helps you do that, then you’ll only there is no excuse almost if you don’t achieve it, because it’s all on you at that point. And it’s unique in that way.

Misbah Haque  50:31

What goes into it? You just said, like setting the right goal, I feel like that’s important to write is like, how do you? How do you dissect that down to what the right goal is for that person?

Lachlan  50:43

That’s like the magic question, setting the right goal. That’s something we had to put a lot of thought into. Obviously, we use the SMART Goal Setting system. So most people know what it is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and then time bound. And so that basically just brings into, it just brings into more of a system approach to setting a goal. And I think before we did that, we wanted to set up the premise of the context that you need to look at what goals you’ve set in the past, and how long has taken you to achieve them. And then how long it’ll take you to achieve this sort of goal. So is this 100 day timeframe realistic if it took you and you’ve got to remember as well that it changes over time. So getting from 60 to 120 kilos on the back squat is very different from going to 120 to 150. Because, yes, it’s half the amount of weight, but it could be three or four times the amount of time. So there are certain aspects of that you may not know, unless you’re very experienced. So setting up the context of just understanding what you’ve been able to do in the past, and probably what you’ll be able to do in the future. Thinking about if it’s meaningful to you as well, if you’re going to achieve this goal, you’re going to actually feel fulfilled at the end, you know, doing the WISe process and then being smart. So specific has to be measurable, you know, to achieve a subjective thing like happiness, you have to have an objective measure. So, said squat 200 kilos, that is measurable, as well as specific and it’s measurable, attainable, same thing you need to look at, it’s something within your class, if you’re squatting 100 kilos, you want to squat 200 and 100 days, and a lot of steroids, yeah. And powerlifting suit, and some knee wraps, and probably need to go to Mark Bell’s gym and have him slap you on the face before you lift it. So yeah, realistic, same sort of thing. And then time bound, so making sure that it is set in 100 days, or whatever your time might be six months, 12 months, that sort of thing.

Underestimating what we’re capable of in 100 days

Misbah Haque  52:52

I think it’s it, I think we underestimate what we can really kind of be capable of when you set a specific cutoff date or timeline for actually achieving something. Like our minds will go to great lengths to like, make something happen. If it really means a lot. And if you know there’s the right intention behind it, just like we do, you know, the opposite sense to avoid certain things. I can for me specifically, like even starting up, the podcast itself, like I remember from the day that I had that thought like, I really kind of want to do this, but like I don’t know if I should, from like that moment, to it actually being released. I think it was like four weeks, I had like three, you know, three or four guests recorded. I talked to you know, people like Mike cashew, and like others who I could get advice from and like went through all this crazy shit that I would probably not have. If I hadn’t been like, you know what, I really want to make this happen. And I want it to happen by the end of August or beginning of September, whatever. And then it’s just like it’s set my brain into a different rhythm or pattern to be able to kind of achieve that.

Lachlan  54:02

It’s like how we got to Kickstarter. It’s like, they give you a time limit for a reason. If they’re just like good luck raising the funds, like you’ll get there eventually. You probably never put any effort into it for years until you get that. Yeah, right. So as soon as I set it in motion like you go nuts, like, ticking Yeah, as soon as the clock started counting down immediately, I was just like, Oh, I just feel way more stress than I did an hour ago before the clock started sir. Yeah, 100% Once you set that time, that timer, it’s intense. 

Misbah Haque  54:33

Tell me a little bit about Kickstarter. And I like how it is cuz I’ve never used it myself. But how exactly does that kind of work?

Lachlan  54:40

So it’s a crowdfunding platform. It’s essentially the biggest crowdfunding platform in the world. There’s Indiegogo as well, but it’s not as big Kickstarter have done really well in the sense that they’ve created their own community with it as well as places like GoFundMe, but they’re just links or landing pages for people to donate money, or it’s Kickstarter is a community of people. Like entrepreneurs and innovators and stuff, they are creating these amazing projects. So that has hundreds of 1000s of users just just scrolling through the different projects as if it was its own social media platform to just see new things. So you might be really into tech. And so you just go to the tech section, and you just go to what’s trending, what’s funding that sort of thing. You might like that, I’ll back that. And, you know, eventually you by backing something, you essentially preorder it, and it’ll show up in your mailbox once the campaign is over. So I guess it’s a really cool way for businesses and startups to have their ideas come to life by people that are interested in it, and people may not know this, but that is what Tesla did. They created the model three, which is the newest car coming out the most affordable one they’ve ever brought out. And they basically did Kickstarter for the Tesla, the model three, they were like, Okay, so we’re bringing out this amazing car, it’s gonna cost you like 30 grand when it hits the market, if you want it to $1,000 to lock yours in and preorder it now. And within a week, I think they had close to a billion dollars or something. 

Misbah Haque  56:06

It was only $1,000 to lock it in?

Lachlan  56:11

To reserve your I mean, you’ll pay the rest of it when the cost, right. But to all your I mean, fundraising, essentially, off pre-orders, like you didn’t pay the full amount, but like 1000 bucks, you can pre order it now you can guarantee that you’ll get one when it’s released. And they made hundreds of millions of dollars, essentially, to find the obvious more, the more the steps, like the future steps of the car, the stuff that they may not have the cash flow for right now. So that’s what Kickstarter is, for us. It’s, you know, it’s getting printed in China, the book we don’t have yet we only have the digital version, in order to, you know, bring together tons of leather and cardboard and paper, stitch it all up, cost a lot of money. And they say, Okay, so the minimum amount of books you can order is like 1000 books, and it’s quite expensive. You know, it’s a lot, it’s a big investment upfront. And so, Kickstarter is a great way that we can just raise that investment through pre-orders to place that order straight away because we don’t want to put $20,000 on the credit card. It’s not a good idea. And it’s a good way to get, you know, the first batch shipped off to the people who want it as quickly as possible.

Misbah Haque  57:24

I mean, it’s got to be it’s also a cool thing to kind of be a part of like you were a part of Tesla’s first run, right? Or you were a part of the only run of the training journal, for example. It’s like, I don’t know, it’s a way to kind of filter down the people who really want it in a sense. 

Raph  57:43

And I think it’s also risk free, people don’t realize, but like you back it, and if you reach the goal, then you get your journal. If you don’t read the goal, you’d like you never actually they never take your money. Like you only take the money if it actually reaches the goal.

Misbah Haque  57:58

That’s a good point. Yeah, I was wondering how that would work.

Lachlan  58:02

So no one’s been charged yet. Put it away?

Misbah Haque  58:06

How many days do we have left?

Raph  58:09

Right now we’re 30 days left? And we’re like, 60% of the way there? 

Misbah Haque  58:17

That’s huge. I mean, you guys get a couple of gym owners to kind of get it distributed to their members. I mean, I feel like as well, you know, as a gym owner, or a coach like you providing that to your clients is definitely kind of a value add.

Lachlan  58:33

That’s one thing we wanted people to. We know a lot of gym owners listen to the podcast. And then we feel like this was when we initially created it, we thought, this would be a really great tool for members, you know, as gym owners ourselves. We knew that if you could give this kind of book to a client. I mean, we saw the demand there for the five minute journal, people still buy it from us today. Imagine what somebody would be like for someone’s training, like how accountable they would be, imagine giving your clients at the start of January training journal, and be like, hey, that goal we set. This is where you’re going to achieve in 100 days, like that’s going to increase retention massively, and they’re going to learn stuff along the way. You know, maybe you have clients that really struggled to understand programming and nutrition, they always ask you all these annoying questions like about the program nutrition? Sure, if they started reading through that book, they would have less questions about it, it would answer a lot of those questions for them. So it’s educating your clients at the same time. And it’s also keeping them accountable to a goal. I mean, it is a bit of an investment. You know, Jim’s going to buy 5025 journals. So I would just encourage them to see the interest from their members and say hey, look, it’s gonna cost you $40. For this journal, I can charge a membership fee now, I can add it on to your next bill. And that way you don’t have to be like a gym owner, you don’t have to front the money straight away and you can just order your large box of journals and then just hand them out. People have already paid for them. If you want to take the price out, they could make some money on it or whatever. I think it’s just a great retention tool and a great education tool for people’s clients. And I think gym owners don’t give enough back, don’t give gifts enough to their clients. We always write letters to our clients, we’re doing a, we’re doing a special dinner. For our clients that have been with us for three plus years. He has about 40 of them. So it’s doing stuff like giving back I think is really good for them as well. pays you back.

Misbah Haque  1:00:24

Absolutely. And I think at the end of the day to like results, right results is what people are kind of after. And if you can provide that to people. I mean, by giving them kind of this deadline, like, okay, there’s only 100 pages in the journal, you have three months, like, if you set up the structure and systems for people to get results, like, everything else kind of comes from that, right, like referrals and retention, all those things like you have to be able to kind of deliver on what you’re preaching in a sense. And from what I’ve noticed from being at revival strength is like, you have like the systems and the structure that are set. It’s amazing to see how, like, how important, how vital that is, to kind of continue to grow and to kind of feed the system to have happy clients, happy coaches, like it’s all connected. So I think that what you guys are doing is a very, like, simple, easy way to kind of do that is provide a system to provide a structure for people to get from point A to B. I mean, it doesn’t get any simpler than filling out one entry each day.

Lachlan  1:01:36

We really appreciate that.

Misbah Haque  1:01:38

So a couple rapid fires before I let you guys go. I got to ask Lacky a couple of these last time. But I want to get Raph’s thoughts on this one. So let’s say you had a couple of billion dollars. Let’s say you had a couple billion dollars, right? And you had a staff of 40 people. So these 40 people can be top performers in whatever it is that you recruited them for. So you know, time, energy and money is not really an issue. You have all the resources you need, and you want to do something with that. What would you do with it?

Raph  1:02:13

Most my answer? Do you remember? Misbah?

Misbah Haque  1:02:15

Your answer? If I’m not before I tell you, I want to get a revised version of your answer.

Raph  1:02:30

I’ll start with my answer. What I would do with mine would be I would like overhaul essentially like the food and nutrition. At least in Australia. If I could afford the world, I’d go ahead but at least in Australia, I would really like to see synthetic food and synthetic food with like the perfect macros and micronutrients. So like I find it I think it would be perfect if you didn’t have to kill animals, you could just have synthetically made steaks. And you could basically be like, This is how much Omega three I want in it. This is the fat profile. I want it to be delicious. And I would have that across all types of foods. So basically this Ebay is like it’s incredible Whole Foods of synthetic foods that just gave me the perfect nutrition. And it was delicious. 

Lachlan  1:03:16

It’s weird. I just created an app that would look exactly the same.

Raph  1:03:20

They’ve already started working on it and they haven’t made steak because they think one of the hardest things to make but they’ve made like maples and and I think like sausages synthetically it’s like crazy expensive so far it’s like how much it was but it was like $900,000 made but but it’s better for you and basically you couldn’t really tell the difference between that and make like like a mincemeat you couldn’t tell the difference so well so is coming to cook it like in a pen and shit. Exactly the same. Oh, well, I can’t tell the difference. And it turns out like mincemeat it’s a lot easier than somebody like steaks, texture, right. But yeah, it’s on its way.

Misbah Haque  1:03:57

It is crazy, dude. Isn’t it insane? Like, we’re living through a time where fucking synthetic food is going to make its way into the world. Like it’s not far right. It’s gonna happen in our lifetime. That’s crazy.

Lachlan  1:04:14

I’ll do my next Kickstarter. Synthetic I’ll send you a spec.

Misbah Haque  1:04:21

So Lacky. What’s your answer?

Lachlan 1:04:25

I’m gonna go down a slightly different path now. So I would have to know exactly how we would facilitate this. And yes, we could have like these centers around the world. But essentially anyone that was struggling with some kind of psychological disorder, so whether range from something like maybe depression, to maybe psychosis or PTSD or something like that, something where people like really controlled by their own mind A place where they could go to take plant medicines or psychedelics to alter their consciousness. And these are likely people that have never done this before. Because I would say if these people have done it a lot before, it probably hasn’t worked for them. But maybe maybe they just didn’t try it under the right context. But using altered states of consciousness to heal psychological disorders, because people that have never used them don’t understand how powerful they are and how and how much insight they can bring you about the world and, and how you view yourself and perspective, right? And essentially, I think it would be like a well, it’s natural, a lot of it. So I think if people didn’t have the stigma about it, and we could legalize it across the world, or whatever, or legalize it in the centers for whatever uses that the government allows, it would, it would help a lot of people. And they’re doing this kind of research already. They’re using it, they’re using psilocybin, and they’re using it, which is for people who don’t know, that’s like magic mushrooms. And they’re using MDMA to treat PTSD. And I know Mike Bledsoe has looked into this quite a lot. I think he’s starting a company to do it. I could be wrong on that. But they’ve shown a lot of great results, better results than just regular treatments with strength. So it’s got a lot of potential.

Misbah Haque  1:06:30

The other end of that, I think is like, the stigma that comes with that is, it reminds me of something Dr. Galpin said to me, our understanding is limited by the technology that we have to measure it. Right. So like, anything that we can’t measure through a certain technology is out of our comprehension. Like, it doesn’t make sense, right. But it’s like, over time, there’s been certain machines and shit like that that’s been developed that now allows you to measure different stuff. And so that’s where, like, you know, our understanding of science and shit is like expanded. And I mean, we’ve seen this kind of thing happen over the last 20-30, 50 years in strength and conditioning. You know, I feel especially in that space that you just mentioned, there’s going to be a lot that’s going to be coming out in our lifetime. Definitely.

Lachlan  1:07:23

All you have to do is listen to a Dorian Yates podcast that he’s done recently. And how he talks about himself. All Dorian, that was like the bodybuilder versus Dorian now. And you can see how powerful they are. Psychedelic plant medicines, so anyone that hasn’t or sitting on the fence of that sort of stuff should go and listen to that podcast. 

Misbah Haque  1:07:44

It was a listen to that one. That was good. That was a good one. It was really good. This is another one. I don’t think I asked you this last time, Lacky. But this goes to both of you guys who can each give a separate answer. But let’s say that you guys are business owners, right? So everything you have and you work for, like has all been kind of taken away from you. And you have to start back up from scratch to kind of get to wherever it is you want to go. Maybe it’s back to where you are now. But you only have $500 American dollars and a laptop. What would you do with it?

Lachlan  1:08:21

I think he did ask me that. But I think I had less money. He said $100…

Raph  1:08:30

You got 500 American dollars and a laptop and now I’ve got nothing else and I need to stop making money. Yeah. would just go back. I mean, probably the best money I ever made was when I was 17. I would just buy gym equipment from China and then resell it on eBay and Gumtree which is like Craigslist, and I made like $8,000 in a summer was the best money I ever made. And I could easily do that with….But I was 17 years old. 

Misbah Haque  1:08:59

17 year old. That’s like $80,000

Raph  1:09:03

I’ve had people telling on my to buy this shit. And then I just have like, a whole drawer full of 50s. I was crazy. I know I didn’t spend it. I just like, love the love the passion of it. That’s what I do. I just stopped buying and selling gym equipment. Yeah, offer something else. Maybe not do equipment. But whatever I could say on eBay was going for a lot better than on Alibaba

Lachlan  1:09:25

I had the I think the answer I had last time was I’ll give someone $400 for their best business idea and just put it out on Facebook. And so you have this post? And then yeah, 400 bucks, right. And then people have all these amazing ideas, but they’re too lazy to execute on them. Or they don’t have the knowledge X young because I mean, assume that we had all the knowledge from our previous businesses and stuff, right? Which is like totally, I mean, that is the most value there knowing what to do knowing how business runs and all the stuff we’ve learned. That’s invaluable. So all we need is an idea and I can just apply everything I know to that idea, I only have 100 bucks left over. So I hope, I guess then I’ll be scrolling through the list of ideas that will cost less than $100 to start. Or maybe I’ll just be like, hey, what’s the best online ID you’ve ever had online business, scalable ecommerce business you’ve ever had? I’ll give you 400 bucks for the idea. And to see what comes up?

Misbah Haque  1:10:23

I’m pretty sure. I think it’s like Daymond Daymond. John from Shark Tank. He does aside from Shark day, but I think he does something like this on the side where he pretty much gives money to people to test out their ideas on a very, very small scale, like, hey, go start an Instagram on your clothing line. And, you know, let’s see what happens. You have this much money to allocate towards, you know, making something of it, like, does it work or does it not? And I think he does that on a smaller scale with like, a shit ton of people who have these ideas, and just gives them a few ways to validate it in a sense. Morning Routine. I think I asked you this one. Lucky. But Raph, how about you? Do you have one? And if so, what does it look like?

Raph  1:11:14

Lacky and I have both been doing the lemon water as salt. But I’ll basically talk you through it. So I wake up, I will now actually, I go, and I weigh myself because I’m getting nutrition coaching. And I have to wear myself every day. So that’s actually been every day. Yeah, every day. So when I go to the bathroom, I obviously clear some extra weight when I first get there, and then I jump on the scale and weigh myself out my way into my fitness pal. And then I went and my lemon water was salt. So it’s like a tablespoon of salt. A teaspoon of salt, and I cut up a fresh lemon because my clay told us to do and actually has been really good. I have a full glass of regular water. And then I have a full glass of lemon water with salt. And then I drink it quite slowly for over five minutes. And I have a small ledge off the side of our kitchen. And I basically squat and drink it and I have a pull up bar right above my head there as well. And I alternate between hanging from the pull up bar and scrolling down drinking this over like probably like 810 minutes. And I just like to chill out and do anything else. And makes me feel way better. Because it sort of opens up my whole body for the day as well. And my flexibility and it’s like a nice 10 minutes to drink the water.  I’ve got a $12 pull up bar. It’s like there’s 12 Little ones that just you know, you can hang over a door. Yeah. And it just basically hangs over. Over the door into my…

Lachlan  1:12:45

You don’t actually plop on it. 

Raph  1:12:48

It’s a bit… It’s a very shitty plot. It’s like balancing on the side of a door. But it does the trick.

Misbah Haque  1:12:55

Would make me nervous. So I feel like a good way to kind of wrap this up. As you know, we started talking about the why behind training and how that’s kind of, it’s the root of everything, right? Whether you’re somebody who has competitive aspirations, or you’re just in this to like, look, good move. Well, whatever it might be. What about you guys? And you know, for each of you like, what is kind of your internal, why that gets you out of bed and continues to help you kind of train on a daily basis?

Raph  1:13:33

I would say. So this is the training specifically, right? I would say for training, particularly now, I’ve thought a little about it. But I would say it’s twofold. So number one, I get so much enjoyment out of my training, particularly when I feel like I’m improving at it. So I absolutely love training and doing training where I think I’m getting better and like my favorite workouts ever. But workouts where he just like really pushed me or was like, I know, there’s no way I could have done this x time ago. And I really enjoyed those workouts. So I guess, continuing to improve it is really important to me in my training. Regardless if I’m competing that season or whatever, I would still do it. And I think I still train really hard. And then also something I’ve thought about is basically my whole life is wrapped up in the fitness industry. So I’ve got the gyms and the podcasts and everything and I want to be like an inspiration to the clients as well as experimenting with everything I learned in my own training. Like I still want you know, I want my clients to come in and have like 30 wobbles and then be like, fuck, that sounds like a lot. I’m like, well I can do 150 in a row just based off that many like I remember a lot you’d be fun and that’s how I always wanted to be while I was still in the industry so I guess those two sides will motivate me to keep training and training hard.

Misbah Haque  1:14:51

Nice man. How about you Lacky?

Lachlan  1:14:53

So I’d say obviously the first one to Raph resonates with that a lot. Just always want To improve, and just know that what the effort you’re putting in is making you better. But even though I’m still pretty young, I still want to emphasize to people the aspect of being healthy and having balance in your training and taking that approach. It’s almost like if you decide to take that approach consciously people go, okay, like, so you don’t really care if you’re in good shape, like, you’re just gonna eat pizza, like, you don’t have to be that fit. Like, you don’t have to look that good or whatever. Well, that’s not true. Like, I think that people can be exceptionally fit and look really good and make a lot of progress with the priority, being healthy and balanced in life. And I don’t mean structural balance, I mean, balanced with spending time with your friends, eating, eating out, not always training. And then maybe also training. That’s not just in the gym, something we talked about changes stayed having balanced with like, Okay, I want to still have a good training volume, but I don’t want it to be all in the gym, I want to go play some sport, I want to run, I just want to move, I want to stretch because we get so wrapped up in the gym, because it’s our business. And you know, it’s the podcast, and it’s what we, it’s what really got us into fitness. But it’s not always that enjoyable. And if you lose the enjoyment, sometimes you just kind of lose the enjoyment of the whole thing. And that affects all the businesses and everything. So I still want to show people, you can have an exceptionally high level of fitness and continue to make progress and look extremely good with your priority being health and balance in your life. And you know, as well still throw down and compete as well in some local throwdowns. And still do still do well.

Misbah Haque  1:16:41

That’s amazing, I think. I think you actually asked me this last time, when we chatted, like his health and fitness a big part of we were talking about the values factor. That’s what it was, and like, oh, health and fitness must be like up there on the list. And then we got into a rabbit hole of like, why do I continue to train, I feel like since then I’ve had more time to think about it. And it’s evolved a little bit, but it’s also become a little more grounded. And for me, I think it’s definitely, health and longevity is something that’s at the top of my mind, because I had that lower back injury at a pretty young age that like, kind of gave me a flash into the future, right where like, I had pain getting out of my car, or like vacuuming and doing these day to day tasks. And I was like holy shit, you know, I have to go teach spin class in like an hour or go instruct this class. And like, fitness was my life as a profession, and not being able to move and do things day to day like that was a scary thought. So I wanted something definitely sustainable first. But the other part of it, I think I’d said last time was like, I view movement as like a vehicle to authentic expression, right. And what I mean by that is being able to take what you do in the gym, and then being able to be comfortable in any movement scenario that you’re thrown into. So I think I have this, like, I resonate with a lot of what Ido portal talks about, and like how he can you know, like Florio and like rolling and all those little movements that he can do, you can make it look so pretty and beautiful. Just like snatching or gymnastics. I think there’s it’s very fascinating to watch like those freestyle calisthenics athletes to watch like, break dancers. And to watch like jiu jitsu and martial arts. Like I guess for me, it’s I want to be able to have feel equipped to be able to do any of those things, you know, and like, be able to, let’s say, like a hip hop dance class or something, I want to, at some point, start to try, like I’m looking at classes and want to dig into it. And mostly, it’s because I’m so shitty at it. But I want to be able to use what I have in the gym in this completely random scenario. And I just feel like in our industry, like, there’s not many people that are like poster boys for that, in a sense, right? It’s like a lot of competitors and like, in one specific specialization, and for me, it’s like genuinely trying to see like, how do I take this out of this world out of this fitness space and apply it into something totally random? So yeah, that’s a good way for me to like, reflect back and loop up.

Lachlan  1:19:21

It’s important. It’s important that you constantly learn new things and skills. And then, you know, I think people that do CrossFit more and more as well, I think they get, they start to move worse, almost in a way they hit this point where they move really well. They look really good. And then they start to go on this slow decline where they do so much barbell cycling, so many getting upset, they start creating these imbalances. They start the shifts and stuff. They repeat the same movement patterns so much, I guess is why functional bodybuilding is popular because it’s changing things up, that they actually begin to move worse or they just get injured from the same movement patterns over and over again. So changing up I think it’s important for sure

Misbah Haque  1:20:01

I think it’s because it is constantly varied, it no longer constantly varies, right? It’s still within a box of like the same movements in a sense. And, you know, you’re going to have some plateaus or stagnancy when you do that, like, I remember, so like, I was never a huge outdoors guy, right. But recently, over the last couple months, I’ve started to like hiking a little bit more. And yesterday, I went on this, like, this hike that I didn’t expect it to take this long, because it was like a rough day, and I just wasn’t planning on going that long. But dude, it turned out to be three and a half hours of like, actual hiking, like, I mean, like steep hills, up and down, like I kept me like all my toes. And I’ve never I don’t know is different, like I felt my body worked in a very, very different way. You know, like my feet. We’re cramping up in different ways. I felt like I didn’t, like there’s certain muscles in my feet that I’d never use, like just squatting, dead lifting and stuff like that, that I now use walking on these uneven surfaces. So it’s definitely I don’t know, I think, if you can remain to stick with the essence of constantly varied being constantly varied, and not just be influenced by the sport itself, and what you’re seeing in the open and the games. You know, you could definitely continue to make progress. But it’s definitely something to keep in mind as the constantly varied aspect is like, don’t limit it to just a box of movements. Well, thanks so much for coming on. Where can we support you? Where can we learn more about you and point people to give us a lowdown.

Lachlan  1:21:42

So the Mind Muscle project on all the podcast platforms, wherever you get podcasts, my muscle project on Instagram and Facebook, and on YouTube. So we’re putting out more content on YouTube these days. And then if people want to learn about or pick up a copy of the training journal, it’s The Mind Muscle project.com/the training journal. They can find out all the information there and that’ll link them to the Kickstarter as well.

Raph  1:22:06

If you go to the website, now you can get a 10 page download of what is in the journal for free so you can just go and basically see what is in the journal? And get a taste for it. And that’s free to send to the Mombasa Project website.

Misbah Haque  1:22:21

Awesome, as well. I will get all that linked up in the show notes. Is there anything else that you’d like to leave listeners with?

Raph  1:22:30

Check it out. If you’re a gym owner, and you want to find out more about it, you can get in touch with us. It’s something we seriously believe in. And it’s something we say with all our guests. It’s something we do with our members. So I wasn’t like a disciple. We had an idea we had to give it a go. It’s something that we’ve long held belief for a long period of time.

Misbah Haque  1:22:46

100% Awesome, man. Well, thanks again guys for coming on. Had a blast chatting.

Lachlan  1:22:52

Thanks! It’s really good.

Misbah Haque  1:22:54

Thank you so much for listening, guys. I appreciate you taking the time tuning in and lending me your ears. Two things I want to leave you with before you head out. Number one, if you are a coach or gym owner, head over to airbornemind.com and check out some of the free resources we have for you there. Myself and a clinical psychologist are partnering together to create a course called “The Art of Connection Through Questions”. It’s something I’ve loved and studied and has fulfilled me for years. And to be able to finally put this together in a way that’s going to help other coaches and gym owners connect deeply with their clients is super fulfilling for me. So if that sits well with you, head over to the airborne mind calm and check it out. Number two, leave a review on iTunes. It’s the best compliment that you can give and it would mean the absolute world to me. But other than that, I hope you enjoyed this one. Until next time