Nutrition, Training and Staying Healthy as a Busy Business Owner | AJ Sloan

[00:00] Cold open

AJ: Having extra creatine for brain function is very, very beneficial.

AJ: They're going to the gym five days a week and they're not seeing any results.

Kane: That was probably the closest we got to losing everything. Like, everything. Closest to losing the house.

[00:12] Introduction

Kane: Hey, I'm Kane Tyler Smith, the founder and CEO of Smartfix and Hypotential. This is Unlocking Business, where we have real conversations around business, leadership, mindset and personal growth. If you've been getting value from these conversations, please take a second to like, subscribe and follow our channels. It helps us reach more people, bring on more guests and share more stories. Now, let's get into this episode.

Kane: Today, we're joined by AJ from Team Ecto. I've personally known you for around five years, and we've worked together, with you being my personal trainer, on and off during that time. It's hard to stay consistent. You work a lot with busy people who are trying to improve their health and fitness routine and mindset while balancing work and life.

[01:00] Nutrition or exercise: which is harder?

Kane: What's harder, nutrition or exercise?

AJ: Oh jeez, Kane, far out. So, it depends on where people are in their stage of their fitness, right? I would personally reckon nutrition is hardest, because it takes up way more time in the day than actual exercise. You can exercise anywhere. It's recommended to do like 30 minutes a day if people can do it, even if it's just a 10-minute walk. But for someone to eat consistently, or to have healthier meals, per se, that is what's going to be harder, because there's an element of knowledge and understanding of what food you put into your mouth and what's going to be better for you. But then something that's really good for someone may be detrimental to someone else. And we see that with so much information out there, which is why I would personally reckon nutrition's definitely harder, and we do way more education for my clients and the clients in the team around nutrition than we do around training.

Kane: I'd just say that because that's definitely harder for me.

AJ: Yeah, yeah.

Kane: Especially getting a bit older.

AJ: Yes.

Kane: It's a lot more preparation, hey?

AJ: Yeah, and we see people say they go to the gym five days a week and they're not seeing any results. Right? But you look at them and go, "Oh, well, what are you having for food?" And then they start rattling off the amount of takeaway they're having, or Uber Eats, something that's as easy as the click of a button now. Whereas it takes time to learn about foods. If you haven't been around it and you're just getting into it, like, "Oh, what should I be eating?", well, that's where you start to go, "Okay, small changes in someone's lifestyle for their nutrition is what's going to take the most time." Because like I said, anyone can train, right? The biggest issues people have when it comes to training is they might be injured or they don't know where to start.

AJ: Whereas with food, like I said, there's so much out there, so much information around have this, not this, do this, not that, this is bad for you, this is good for you. And we see trends throughout the years. I've been doing this for 12 years now, and 10 years ago people weren't even talking about some of the things they're talking about now. Or they've scrapped it. From keto to fasting to all these fad kind of diets that go in and go out. You've got Instagram influencers, all these people now as well, just flooding the internet with all this information. Don't even get me started on AI, right?

AJ: My gosh, man, ChatGPT or whatever you're going to be using, there's just so much information that goes into it. You're like, "Is this good for me?" Yes, no, maybe, who knows? So yeah, they say as well, abs are built in the kitchen, right? But like I said, back to the main thing, if you train five days a week and you're not getting any results, it's the nutrition that's really going to make you feel better, for one, just from a nutritional standpoint, and two, get you the results you're aiming for, to look better as well and to give you more confidence, depending on the person.

[03:50] Inflammation and fad diets

Kane: So with the amount of information that is online, because there's obviously overwhelming amounts of information, you mentioned influencers and stuff. They'll use things as like a buzzword or a fad, and inflammation is the one that seems to be popping up at the moment. What does that even mean?

AJ: So you've got so many variations of inflammation, so to speak, right? You can have it from an injury standpoint. You've got inflammation at the site of an injury. Let's say you cut your finger, all right? You probably see it in the trades a lot, people smash their finger or whatever it may be, or they cut themselves. You can have an acute inflammation response. It's a bit like exercise. You can have a positive inflammation response from training and exercise, where you're flooding the muscles. You have micro damage in the muscles when you train, and that creates this acute response of inflammation, which draws more blood flow to the area, and then that causes the good nutrients to go there and you get bigger muscles.

Kane: Is that correct?

AJ: When we have a negative effect of inflammation, we tend to look at that more as a systemic response. So from the system itself. Let's say something goes into the body and your body doesn't react well with it, right? So let's talk about gut inflammation. That's a big buzzword people talk about, like, "I've got gut inflammation. I'm inflamed. I feel puffy," and all this stuff.

Kane: Is that bloated?

AJ: Bloated, yeah. That's a GI kind of inflammation, so your gastrointestinal tract. We can say stomach to make it easy. Gluten's a big one. Gluten can cause inflammation if your system is unhealthy, right? So then people go completely away from these foods, because it's like, "I'm just going to cut all that stuff out to reduce this inflammation."

Kane: And that causes the fad diets.

AJ: That's where the fad diets come in. FODMAP is massive.

Kane: What's that?

AJ: FODMAP. It's a certain diet. I'm not going to really get into the acronym, because everyone forgets things. I'm not the smartest kid on the block. But FODMAP is basically an elimination diet, where you cut out certain food groups that have more potential to cause this bloating. What happens is, people who go on these things, they're really good initially to reduce this inflammation, because of the food that creates this acute and then chronic inflammation that's been around for long periods of time. They cut all this out, they lose weight, they feel good, but they've completely neglected food groups.

AJ: What people don't understand is that you have to have a slow introduction back into all these foods once your system and your health are back on track. Otherwise you're losing, and I'm going to use a big word here, biodiversity. So, the amount of bacteria within your gut. You've got good and bad bacteria. You've got neutral bacteria. But if you clear out entire food groups, you're going to lose certain bacteria from those food groups that are actually really beneficial to your gut and your overall health.

AJ: So then people who cut out all these things may only have 10 foods that they eat day in, day out, and everything they have from a social life aspect, from a work life balance, they feel bloated every time they eat things outside of those 10 foods. So again, it's the chronic use of these fad diets and cutting out all this junk. Then they try to have these things that their body's not used to anymore, because they haven't slowly introduced them. Right?

AJ: So again, from a massive inflammation perspective, they don't understand that. They just see this buzzword, inflammation. "Okay, cool. I'm going to get this gut health protocol. I'm going to have this detox cleanse." A three-day detox. They do a juice cleanse.

Kane: Juice cleanse. My gosh, yeah.

AJ: Juice cleanse. It's like, all right, so I'm having orange juice? No. They do these juice cleanses and they feel really good, but it's because they've cut out so much junk in their diet. But then they don't change their lifestyle components. So then let's slowly reintroduce some decent, good, healthy foods. Shameless plug, but the Mediterranean diet is probably up there with one of the better diets for a lot of people, because it's got a lot of foods and food groups in there that help reduce inflammation, based on the vegetable intake, the fruits, the nuts you're going to have, the meat. Sorry to the vegans and vegetarians, but there's obviously alternatives to these. It's basic, but there's so much diversity in that food group.

[07:50] Mediterranean diet and eating the rainbow

Kane: Right. So they talk about the rainbow colours, like purple and stuff.

AJ: Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. So vegetables, having a plethora of different colours of vegetables.

Kane: Plethora? What is...

AJ: I know other big words. It's the coffee, man. The coffee's got to be big. But you have a lot of these changes. There's not just green vegetables. You've got root vegetables or bitter vegetables. There's different food groups that vegetables can fall into, and they have different influences on the digestive tract, which can help promote, again, reduced inflammation. There's a big thing called antioxidants, all right? And that's where these vegetables come in. So some examples are cruciferous vegetables. They're high in vitamins and antioxidants. And that can be contradictory for people who are on low FODMAP diets, because broccoli is up there with one of those ones where it can cause some issues with the gut, which causes inflammation, and then they're going to neglect it.

AJ: But then they're neglecting some of the antioxidant properties that actually help with inflammation. So again, it's part of this circle that can potentially occur, and then that's where people start to freak out, like, there's too many issues going on. Nutrition is too overwhelming. "I don't know what I'm doing and there's no guidance." They don't do anything about it, they just continue to train, and bloating's normal. "I'm going to have this after I eat."

Kane: So can people get properly tested to know what suits their body? Like, how do you actually...

AJ: Yeah, so there is testing. I don't necessarily like it, and a lot of the educators I learn from say it's useful in a way where it's going to be dedicated and useful for that particular person. But there are ones where you can have things tested, like allergens. A big one is the types of DNA, where you might have mutations in certain genotypes or genes within your system that don't allow you to digest certain things, or your hormones are out of whack, whatever that may be. But that's talking about the 1 percenters. The rest of the 99% is your lifestyle components. What do you do on a daily basis to help your health and lifestyle? If you've done all that stuff and you've done everything right, that's when you start to look down those tracks.

AJ: People think they're gluten sensitive or gluten intolerant, or even coeliac, where they actually have an autoimmune response to gluten, and then they do the coeliac testing. A lot of people do the coeliac testing and it comes back, "Oh, well, you're not actually coeliac." And they're like, "Oh, why? I'm so afraid of gluten." They twist it into a fearful thing, because it causes that bloat, right, and then that inflammation. So there are tests out there to determine it, but it may not necessarily be that. People don't look at the broader picture, if that makes sense.

[10:50] Lifestyle before meal plans

Kane: So how would the general person even start, then, if they're not going to go down the path of getting those tests, and if they don't have a personal trainer or a nutritionist? How do they even...

AJ: Well, yeah, so it's going to start from a hierarchy. Everyone just pushes the supplements. We won't go into the supplements too much, because that's another big buzzword out there, and it's not a fitness podcast. But from a pyramid perspective, right down the bottom layer, it's education. So educating yourself around food. But again, that's where it's the hardest, because there's so much information out there. The next level up is lifestyle and habits. What that means is, before you even start to do meal plans and meal prep, macro counting, calorie counting, whatever it may be, focus on your lifestyle. Even if you just wanted to go off portion sizes, that's going to be a massive play.

AJ: You can go by different guides, like a fistful of protein, a palmful of carbohydrates, whatever it may be that you want to follow. Or even off a dinner plate: just have a quarter of it protein, a quarter of it carbs, and the rest of it filled with vegetables that you enjoy, and make them really colourful. So they're things you can just swap around, as opposed to jumping right into the deep end, feeling overwhelmed by all these things, asking for help, seeking all the things, or having AI write you up a meal plan.

AJ: It's like, all right, well, that's one way of doing it. That might be the way a lot of people do it, and it's easy to do. But if you want the education around why that's going to be better for you and for your long-term success, that's where people need to invest in their health, invest in their coaching, invest in understanding and knowledge, so that being healthier and fitter becomes more of their lifestyle. We're now living in a world that's super unhealthy. Even though there's such a big health craze right now, there's still such a super unhealthy side of things as well.

AJ: So for the general population, it's working on lifestyle, and that doesn't have to be food. It's like, can you just get up a little bit earlier and go for a 10-minute walk before you have food? Can you be exposed to sunlight? Not a lot of people understand sunlight and vitamin D and how that affects your whole entire system. So just moving more is a big factor.

[12:50] Morning sunlight and coffee timing

Kane: What's that sunlight thing? It's supposed to be first thing in the morning?

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Is it, hey? Who talks about it quite a bit?

AJ: Yeah, so it's just that early sunlight exposure. If you want to go down the whole environmental perspective, it's like, when do the birds start chirping and when do they finish chirping? You know? When the sun comes up. So you've got your circadian rhythm, and that's part of your body's internal clock. When you're waking up, your natural cortisol levels start to rise. You get good vitamin D exposure. You get your sunlight. Now, you're going away from this whole blue light perspective as well, but that's another topic. We've mentioned blue light before with you. But from that in itself, can you actually see the sunlight? I think it's getting harder in winter, because it's darker, and you know, there's people in England who only see daylight for four hours a day.

AJ: That's very rough. So that's where the education and the coaching experience come in for these people. They can start to look at supplements to build up... what's the word I'm looking for? They might be less adapted to it. So it's the vitamins and minerals they may be insufficient in. That's the word, insufficient. In certain macros, or micros more so. That's where supplementation starts to come into it. But they're already trying really hard with their lifestyle factors. What's another one?

Kane: Coffee when you wake up. You're not supposed to have caffeine within three hours of waking or something.

AJ: Supposedly. But I have it right now. I mean, I was up quite early this morning, before the sunrise and stuff like that, but it doesn't necessarily mean you can't. It just depends on the person. This is where all that information becomes dependent on the individual. Some people can have the coffee and they feel good. It gets them perked up and going for the day, and they don't have the crashes later, because their system is really good. Whereas people who bang down the coffee and don't eat breakfast, they get to lunchtime, have another one, and then they're crashing in the afternoon. Blood sugar levels might be an issue there, because they haven't eaten in the morning, and they haven't even had a decent lunch. And then all of a sudden it's like, "Oh, I wonder why I'm crashing at 2:00, 3:00." Then they have another coffee.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Right? That gets them going again. But now they're heading into dinner, and they haven't really had enough calories throughout their entire day. They get to dinner and it's like, "Cool. Here's my healthy food." But they're probably only ever eating like 1,000 calories a day. And then all of a sudden it's 6:00, 7:00. And then what happens at 7:00, 8:00, 9:00? They start craving the chocolate. The chocolate comes out. They've had a really stressful day, so they start looking for more, a packet of food or salty food. Some people crave salt, some people crave sugar. And then all of a sudden they've had an extra 1,000 calories after dinner from snacking, they're still high off the coffee they had at 3:00, and now they're struggling to get to sleep.

[16:50] The 10-3-2-1 rule before bed

Kane: I was going to say, I have so many questions. You're not supposed to have coffee after a certain time because of the caffeine. And exactly what you just said, I fall into that habit a lot, where I'll have a coffee at like 2:00 or 3:00, have dinner when I get home, maybe 6:00, 6:30, and then, yeah, what kills me is after that, we go and watch TV and then you pull out the popcorn and chocolate.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: And you're eating till maybe 9:00. But then you're not supposed to eat two hours before you go to sleep.

AJ: So, I think it was a guy called Dan Garner. I remember way back when, he used the 10-3-2-1 rule. And it was, I might butcher this, 10 hours before bed, no coffee.

Kane: 10 hours?

AJ: Right? Three hours before bed, don't eat.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: Right? Because your body needs time to digest. Now, the 10 hours for coffee is because of the caffeine half-life. They say if you have 100 mg of caffeine at 12:00, in 10 hours you're still going to have 50 mg of that coffee in there. Again, I might butcher the actual numbers, but that's the rationale for it. It's to make sure there's less caffeine in your system before you go to bed, right? The three hours before bed, not eating, is because of the digestion, and it allows your body to calm down. Two hours might be the...

Kane: No light?

AJ: Yeah, screens.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: And then the one hour is where you start your protocol of calming down, your bedtime routine. Maybe read a book, relaxation drills and stuff like that. Again, I definitely would have butchered those last two.

Kane: They sound right. They definitely sound right.

AJ: And again, if there's a Q&A thing, I can just pop it in there. 10-3-2-1, there are actual specifics of what it is, but that's roughly the rule I use with my clients as well. Obviously it depends on their situation. I've got a lot of fly-in fly-out clients who come through. Three hours before bed? They're getting back to camp at 6:30, 7:00, and they're going to bed at 8:00. So how can they be expected to have food three hours beforehand? Again, it really depends. There's information out there that doesn't really apply to them.

AJ: But it's about the easy digestibility of the foods they have before bed, or they may go for a walk after they have these foods to help with the blood flow, help with digestion, and get that moving before they go down. And then they can start to do more of their chill out, the breathing exercises. They're actually very, very powerful, especially if you're a really stressed person. They call it sympathetic and parasympathetic, or stressed and unstressed. Actually getting into this parasympathetic state, the breathing really, really works well there.

Kane: Is that breath work or meditation?

AJ: You could look at meditation as some breath work as well, but meditation would be more that kind of mindfulness, gratitude, that kind of thing. Which, again, for someone who really struggles mentally, it can really bring them back to, "Okay, cool. I've had a really rough day. Let me be grateful for certain things." It might be a 10, 15, 20-minute meditation period where that's their zone. They zone down, they focus on breathing, they think about the day they've had and the positives that have come from it, without letting that brain cycle. But then you've got people who can't even sit still for two minutes, and you're trying to get them to do some breath work. They're like, "Man, I'm already going, going, going." Right? There's a category of people there, but this isn't to diagnose or anything like that.

[19:50] Slow down and chew your food

AJ: Those people can still start with maybe five or six deep breaths before they eat, just to help calm their system down before they inhale their food. Which they shouldn't be doing, inhaling their food, because again, that's another digestion thing. So back to eating before bed, that's another big thing, but it can be applied to every time you eat. Slowing down when you eat. The workforce is terrible with it. You may get your 30-minute smoko, but I'm sure a lot of your workers are done in 10 minutes, 15 minutes. They just inhale their food, and then they're just chilling out for 15 minutes.

Kane: Eating while driving, man.

AJ: Yeah, eating while driving as well. You're stressed out about the road, you're inhaling food, and they're like, "Man, I didn't have time to sit down and digest it, to register that the food's going into my mouth." They're not chewing their food, so now you've got these larger particles of food going into your system, and that may cause that bloating later on, because your stomach's not designed to churn and digest, not necessarily large food volume, but large pieces of food. An example would be eating a steak versus some beef mince. You can look at beef mince as kind of pre-chewed, so it's going to be easy to digest. Again, red meat versus white meat. If you were to compare, let's say, a chicken breast versus chicken mince, or chicken breast versus white fish, the white fish is going to crumble a lot easier than the chicken breast.

AJ: So this is where the digestibility of certain foods comes in. If you're strict for time and you can't really sit down to eat your food, have foods that are easier to digest, and have the harder foods first thing in the morning rather than before bed. A lot of people have steak before bed, and they wake up in the morning still feeling kind of bloated. One, they've inhaled their food because they haven't cut it up fine enough. Mum hasn't cut it up for them, you know? That's a dig at my mum. She used to cut it up until I was 20. That's the joke in my house. And then they're just inhaling the food. So they might have a 200 or 300 g steak, and it's gone in 10 minutes. It's like, "Mate, where the freak did that go?" You just inhaled it.

[22:00] Why you're still hungry after a steak

AJ: And then their body hasn't signalled their stomach to actually relax down again, so it's still open. 30 minutes later, it's like, "Man, I'm still hungry." It's like, "Bro, you just had a thousand calories' worth of food here. Potato, steak and all these vegetables and stuff. How can you still be hungry 30 minutes later?" It's because your stomach is just fully expanded, and you haven't had that mechanical response where it's like, "Oh, now I'm actually getting full." There's this physiological response in your system. Then they overindulge. Now they're going to have more of the snacks afterwards, and then they're like, "Oh man, I feel gross now." Right? So it's this other cycle.

Kane: I didn't know that about steak, because I've always wondered. Whenever I do have a steak and veg, I am always hungry after.

AJ: Yeah. So if you slow it down... it's not so much about the protein itself, but if you slow down your eating and allow your body to understand that it's actually eating its food... From chewing, even from the smell of food, your digestion starts. You start salivating, and the saliva actually helps with the breakdown of food. So when you're eating, you need to chew to produce more of the saliva. Let's call that salivary amylase. That helps you digest it. And then that promotes more digestive enzymes being released from the stomach and from other organs to help break everything down.

AJ: So if you're skipping the crucial part of actually chewing your food, you're not only struggling to get a certain enzyme that's going to help you digest this food, but then you're expecting your stomach to do all these things. It should take three or four to six hours for all of that to start to clear, and then you can have your next meal. But then you've got all this other food that's still in your system.

Kane: So does it still do the job? It's just delayed?

AJ: More delayed, yeah. And it's working harder. That's where people are getting that bloatedness, or they still feel full in the morning, because their body has gone to sleep with a freaking steak sitting in their stomach that hasn't been properly broken down. Right? So yeah, I think a big thing is that people just need to slow down with their eating.

[24:05] Do people still enjoy their food?

Kane: I'm going to ask you this question. Do you think people enjoy food these days, or is everyone too rushed?

AJ: Well, that's the thing, right? You can look at it two ways. Some people, like myself, I'll have mince and rice in the morning for breakfast, and people are like, "How do you do that?"

Kane: I've actually had that before.

AJ: Yeah. It's not necessarily from an enjoyment point of view. I do enjoy it, but it's also goal related. But I also work in the industry. I've had 12 years' experience in this. My perception of breakfast is different, right? It's going to set me up for the day, depending on what I have. Sometimes it's just a protein and fat meal, again, depending on what I'm doing. Whereas I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who, because of stress and stuff like that, generally go towards food for that dopamine kick.

AJ: So if something doesn't taste nice or the texture's off or anything like that, they're not going to have it. And generally speaking, they'll go for what's going to taste nicer, or what's going to taste the same, so they don't have that texture that's yucky. Or they can't be bothered doing the 30-minute cook time that it may be, or even meal prep. They're not going to do that, because two or three days later, the food they have to heat up in the microwave isn't fresh.

AJ: People go for takeout because it's going to be the same thing every time, and it's going to taste way better than what they'd be eating otherwise. So then you've got these receptors in your brain that are like, "Okay, cool. I know what I'm having. I'm going to enjoy it more." Even though they're going to wolf it down. And that gets the brain wanting more and more of that certain food, whatever it may be, much like chips or sugar. You're going to constantly go for it, because you know it's going to taste nice. And you're stressed out of your brain, because that's what happens with stress. You lower the dopamine in those areas of the brain, so you want that feel-good taste. And because it's so easily accessible...

Kane: So easy.

AJ: Right. Yeah, you've got a chocolate and you're like, "Oh, I feel really good." And then it's like, "I actually feel really rubbish now."

Kane: Yeah, that's the thing. This happens with us quite often. Like if we get a takeaway, like we had Chinese last night. Obviously it's so tasty, so easy. Two clicks of a button on Uber and it's at your door in like 20 minutes. Smash that down. But then we always feel it after.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Maybe half an hour, 20 minutes after, when I actually go to bed. Your stomach feels awful. It's a bad cycle.

AJ: Sort it out, mate. We can sort it out. Again, to break that cycle, it's like, all right, can you recreate that and actually find the enjoyment in cooking? Make it a kind of game, like, "How quick can I prep this up, without cutting myself?"

Kane: [laughs]

AJ: Right? Between the vegetables, whatever it may be, the noodles you have. A chicken chow mein kind of vibe. You have the noodles or the rice with it, you have the chicken, make a stir fry. It doesn't have to be steak, vegetables and rice. Can you not make a stir fry out of it? However you want to cook it, make it enjoyable. Get your aromas going, the smell, all right? It is going to be a delayed dopamine fix, but that delay always feels better. All right?

AJ: You can look at people who are constantly on their phone. They're constantly flicking through, and it's so bad in today's society, because it's so easy to look at your phone and be like, "Okay, cool." Then 30 minutes later, it's like, "Oh man, I haven't done anything." And from a business perspective, that's the worst thing to do, because now your productivity has gone down the drain. You've lost 30 minutes, and now you feel worse, because, "Great, I need to work harder to get this 30 minutes done." Unless you're really efficient at what you do and you schedule breaks for yourself. But maybe that 30 minutes could be a walk. Then you get the blood flow, you get to go outside, again, the vitamin D exposure, the fresh air.

AJ: Brain stimulation, because you've got blood flowing after being stagnant all day, and now your body's going. Digestion again helps there. Blood flow to the brain, feeling better, stress goes down because you're outside enjoying the environment, right? But delayed gratification is where a lot of people struggle, because no one wants to do it. It's like, "Oh great, it's going to take a while. I want it now." And that's society: "I want it now." You see the generations now. "I want it now. I'm not going to wait for it. I'm not going to work for it." You know?

Kane: Mhm.

[28:20] Walking after meals

Kane: You mentioned before going for a walk after eating. I've heard that a fair bit as well. What's the...

AJ: The term is a postprandial walk. Basically, the idea is after you finish eating, you go for a walk, and that's just to help with the blood flow and circulation. Again, even posture when you're eating. If someone's crouched over, excuse me, they're compressing their stomach and everything. They're more inclined to get heartburn, because you're rushing your food down and everything's compressed there, rather than sitting upright, allowing the digestion to occur and letting your stomach fill up well. So getting you out of that desk posture, standing up and going for a walk, now gravity is helping it pass down. It's not a fast walk by any means. It's just enough to get the body stimulated, to pump the blood flow around and get blood to the system. And you're not training, right? Because with training, if someone eats 30 minutes or even 10 minutes before training, especially going for a run...

Kane: They get the stitch.

AJ: Yeah, they get the stitch. Running, or exercise in general, you don't want blood in your stomach. Again, it's a fight or flight response. You're not going to just stand there and be like, "Okay, cool, I'm not doing anything." Your body's going, so everything outside of your organs is going to the muscles so they can work. Whereas with rest and digest, we rest, we eat our food, and then we go for a nice walk outside, or walk wherever, even around the house if it's raining. Just try it. But yeah, that's the concept of it. It's just for that blood flow, to allow the digestion to occur a bit more, and it helps with the stagnation in general.

Kane: So how soon after you eat can you walk?

AJ: Yeah, pretty much straight away. Take five minutes to actually finish up your meal and relax, and then you're like, "Okay, cool. I'll get up and go for a little bit of a walk." Don't be like, "Ah, I smashed my food and I've got to go." Again, it's situation dependent. If you've got 30 minutes to eat and you take 25 minutes because you're actually sitting there resting and digesting, you've got five minutes before you get back to work. Take your time getting back to work.

AJ: Don't rush straight back into it, because all of a sudden that rush is going to cause a stress response where blood flow goes away from those organs. Again, much like exercise, it's a stress response. Exercise is a good stress response, unless you do it a lot, right? Then you've got the overtraining side of things, where you train five days a week, you're not eating enough, you're overtraining and under-eating. That's a big concept as well.

[31:20] Dinner time with young kids

Kane: What if you've got kids?

AJ: Kids is tough. Kids is tough. Yeah, yeah. I know. I've got two girls and a...

Kane: Dinner time now, I'm like...

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: No, not possible.

AJ: Yeah, no. And again, this is where easy to digest foods come in, depending on the age of the kids as well. I know yours are quite young. I've got a three and a half year old and an eight-month-old, so dinner time gets pretty chaotic. The Mrs does really well with it, and I do quite a bit of the cooking anyway. So to cook and then feed the kids and stuff like that afterwards, it feels like a rush job. Now, I have my meal prep, and she's getting on the train with that too, getting some meal prep stuff.

AJ: So it does take away that burden. I've got my meal, she's got her meal, the kids have their meal. But at the same time, if you can all coordinate together and actually sit down for the meal, especially with kids, you get some quality time there. As much as it feels like a burden, because it's stressful and rushed, that's only because we're making it stressful and rushed.

AJ: We can understand as well, from a mental perspective, that it's quality time. You're going to look back 10 years down the line, when the kids are growing up and they don't want to sit at the table anymore. So it's like, "Well, let's just enjoy this time with them." It may be stressful. "I don't want to eat this. I don't want to eat that." That's cool. You don't want to eat that, that's fine. They're throwing the bowl everywhere, and the dogs come and clean it up. But again, it's human nature. We're going to have those times where it's rushed and stressful, and it's a good thing for us to actually focus on our own resilience to that.

[33:30] Embracing the chaos at home

AJ: And I put my hand up right now. Having two kids, going from one to two, has been absolutely chaotic. My girl is very much like, "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, do this, do that, do that." And I like that. I've got two little pinkies for both my girls to wrap their hands around. They've got me wrapped around their little fingers so much, right? So when I'm trying to have a break and I'm getting frustrated because they're not doing what I say, I say, "Okay, well, they're only going to be kids once, right?" They're never going to be the same person tomorrow as they are today, because they're going to grow up. Who knows when the last time is going to be that they say, "Hey, Daddy, can you do this?" Right?

AJ: So back to dinner time, it's embracing the chaos. And if you've got a partner as well, try to be on the same page. It's going to be chaotic. Don't try to get one person to do both jobs, right? If you can, evenly split the job. And there's that big push now, you've probably seen the TikTok trends and stuff like that. You've got the baby boomers, Gen Z, Gen Y, and like, "These are the dads now, these are the mums now," working full-time and trying to be present at home.

AJ: It's a big list of stresses and burdens, but I think we've created that big list of burdens based on social media and what that person's doing and what this person's doing. "Oh, my parents never did that. I wasn't raised like that." Be your own person. Don't worry about what other people are stressing about. Enjoy the time you have with the family at dinner time, because like I said, you don't know when the last time is going to happen. All right.

Kane: You mentioned something earlier on about adjusting to your lifestyle, and I think everyone's is so different. With all these subjects we've talked about so far, some of them are just not possible. But as long as people have an idea or understand what the best practice is, they can do it as close as possible. Obviously, going for a walk after dinner with kids isn't possible, but chasing them around the house and getting them to bed probably factors in. It could be stressful, but you're not just sat there watching TV. You're still moving around.

AJ: Yeah, and that's so big, because as much as parents work full-time, whatever the chaos you get at home is, if the kids are running around, level up, man. Go play with them for that pre-bedtime stuff. As much as we try to routinise our kids, and it's great, we need routine. We personally have a routine at home, like dinner, bath, bed, or bath, dinner, bedtime story, bedtime. But if they're in that chaotic energy vibe, get it out. Enjoy it with them, play with them a little bit, but then understand, "Okay, cool.

AJ: We're going to slowly turn it down a little bit." And that's going to add into someone's lifestyle. So those of us with kids may do that, whereas people who don't have kids have more time to do other things. So absolutely, it's individualised. For some people that doesn't work. They might just be absolutely drained. You see that rule as well, where you walk in the door and your partner's at 10%, and you're at 10%, you're both at 10%.

Kane: Those memes where you walk in and your wife is screaming.

AJ: Bro, I swear it's never 50/50, man. They say if one person's at 40%, you have to be at 60%. I'm like, nah, man. Sometimes you're at 30/30 and you've just got to deal with being at 30/30. So that might be, all right, rather than running around chaotically, can we get some toys to play with and maybe do something different? They're still going to spend that little bit of time with you, and that's where the chaotic energy comes from as well. The kids just miss you. They just want to play with you, right? So can we do some story time? Get them to read a book, not by themselves, but with you. Play I spy. Man, my...

Kane: That's right. That's what we're doing at the moment.

AJ: Yeah, that's right. My favourite one is who can stay quiet the longest.

Kane: Sleepy lions?

AJ: Sleepy lions, yeah, yeah, yeah. Or bears asleep.

Kane: Who can stay quiet longest.

AJ: Yeah, try that one. See how long that lasts. No, that's good. But yeah, like you say, it's definitely individualised, and that's where, again, there's misinformation, because what works with one person wouldn't necessarily work for the next person.

[36:40] How much routine is realistic?

Kane: So how important is routine, then, in that scenario we just spoke about with bedtime? Because it's a hard one for me, because I am so routine-based. It's a hard question, but how far do you go out of routine? If they're overtired, overstimulated, home from school, after a nap, they're just going wild, it's dinner time, you've still got to bath them, you've got to do dinner, you've got to do book time. But then you should, or you could, take them outside and go on the trampoline. How much throwing out the routine is realistic?

AJ: Yeah. Exactly. It's very, very hard, and again, every family's going to be different. Every person's going to be different, and you can apply that to every individual out there. That's where individualisation comes in, whether it be a meal plan, exercise or routine. It's going to be different. Now, this is the hard bit, because we're humans and we thrive off routine. That's why everyone's diet goes out the window come the weekend, because they're not working. They don't have that routine. So what about a kid, right? They come home, like you say, overtired, overstimulated. All right, cool. Come home and they might just go to bed straight away. Again, this is not a two-dads podcast here, but you know what I mean? So, taking that into consideration...

Kane: [laughs]

AJ: It may be just, "Cool. Let's get them to bed." That's generally going to calm their nervous system down. If they're overstimulated from daycare, from school, whatever it may be, it might be a good shout to just get them to have a shower first. Man, I swear, my toddler, bro, she is a nightmare sometimes when she's back from daycare.

AJ: And the Mrs is like, "Just get her to have a shower." Bro, it takes 30 minutes just to get her in there to have a shower. And then it might be a five-minute job, but all of a sudden she's cool again. It's like, "Cool. Let's go have dinner now."

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: And then that might set her off, because again, she's so stimulated. She's like, "I'm not having that. I want this." And you're like, "All right, well, cool. This is what we're going to have."

Kane: That's true.

AJ: It just depends. That's not happening every single day.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: That's the issue. That's what people don't understand with routine.

Kane: It's like a baby sleep schedule. You know, if you're following that schedule...

AJ: Jog on, man. If that happens, it happens. One sleep outside of the schedule is not going to ruin two weeks of doing really well. Plus the amount of development that goes into it. I think another big thing people don't understand is that childhood development happens so rapidly that they're going to have these emotional fights with you, which just look like tantrums, but it's their way of trying to regulate their emotions, because they just have no idea what they're doing, right?

Kane: You know, the regressions.

AJ: Yeah. Progressions. You've got to talk about it as progressions.

Kane: Yes, but that's regression. That's backwards.

AJ: No, no. It's just a way to change it, because regression signifies, "Oh, that's a bad thing."

Kane: A bad thing.

AJ: But it's for them to develop, right? So you call it progressions. Like when you played sport, if you didn't do well, you might have to run a few more laps of the oval, but hey, the positive is that I'm going to build a better aerobic capacity.

Kane: Positive mindset only.

AJ: Yeah, positive mindset.

Kane: Positive mindset only.

AJ: David Goggins over here, bro. That's what it is. That was hectic. But yeah, when it comes to routine as a person, you're going to have a bad sleep. You're not going to be able to get up at 4:00 or 5:00am to do your morning routine. All right, what can you sacrifice out of that? What are the absolute priority non-negotiables that person has for the day? That gets done first, and then you slowly chip away. "Okay, cool. Well, if a meeting goes over and I'm 10 minutes into my lunch break, now I've only got 20 minutes. All right, what do I do? Do I smash the food down? Do I inhale it?"

Kane: Do I have food at all?

AJ: Yeah, exactly. Right.

[40:50] The flat tyre and 80/20 rule

Kane: With routine, though, I think I'm addicted to trying to follow a routine.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: If we bring it back to the gym, for example, and I know we've spoken about this heaps of times. If I'm not in there at 5:30, then my whole day's cooked in my head. I'm like, I don't know what to do. In theory, I should just go in there, start 10 or 15 minutes later and just push everything back. But for some reason, it's just such a mental hurdle that I struggle to get over. It's not the end of the world if I'm not bang on time.

AJ: Yeah. It's like peer pressure, right? The more you say no to it, the easier it becomes. But everyone's got a rubber arm. So in that case, it's, "5:30. If I'm there at 5:35, I'm not going to be able to get out of here by 6:30, so I'm not going to do it."

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: All right, here you go. If you have a car, right? You puncture one tyre. Do you puncture the rest of the tyres, or do you fix that one tyre?

Kane: Fix it.

AJ: You fix it. So what's the difference with routine? If you have one off-plan meal, or something that doesn't fit your routine, do you throw out the entirety of that day because of that one tyre that's been punctured?

Kane: Sometimes.

AJ: Right, that's the thing. But then you relate it to, "Well, okay, I'm going to fix the tyre."

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: So it's not the end of the world. That can get fixed. Let's say four tyres, four meals. If one meal goes off, the other three can still be really good. Right? So now we're starting to understand it. It's like, "Well, that's okay." You don't make it to the gym one day? It happens. Are you then going to throw out the entire week because you haven't made that one day? And then all of a sudden, "Oh, my three-day routine has turned into two days. I'm not going to do it." It's like, "Well, why not?" You can still go the other days. Best case, you can go another day.

AJ: That's okay. But it's also okay to do two. When people get sick: "Oh, I haven't trained." I'm like, "You probably need a rest. It's okay to rest." "Oh, yeah, but what about progress? I'm doing so well." It's like, "Yeah, but you've also probably been pushing yourself, and you've neglected some things, and now all of a sudden you're sick." So it's okay. It's okay to relax. "I've got kids. I've got gastro, diarrhoea, whatever it may be. Oh, I can't have bread. I've got to fit my meal plan." It's like, "Bro, you've got to do what you've got to do to get better."

Kane: Yeah, just survive for a week.

AJ: You'll be okay.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: All right? And I think, what's one day out of 365 days? There are going to be lots of different days where things are worse, but in the grand scheme of things, I like to use the 90/10 rule. 90% of the time, you're going to be really, really good. 10% of the time, you're going to have some things that aren't going to fit the routine. For the general pop, I like them to be more 80/20, because that gives them more of the social aspect. Again, you can apply that to...

Kane: What's that?

AJ: So, the 80/20 rule. Let's say general population, unless they're very goal-specific. This is where, we've talked about comp prep people, the people who get really, really good results. They're on the board, they're tracking everything they're doing.

Kane: Down to 1%.

AJ: Literally, if that. The 1% might be, "I didn't sleep an extra 30 minutes to get my recovery." Deep sleep, that kind of thing, right? But the difference is those guys get absolutely peeled, they look fantastic, and they're the ones who are really, really good, right?

[44:00] 75 Hard and the 80% year

AJ: As a gen pop person, I saw this the other day as well. You can go 100% for 12 weeks, right? And then you sweat it all off and then fall off for the rest of the 40 weeks. Fad diets. Fat January. Right, exactly. 75 Hard, right? It's meant to build really, really good habits, and it's a little bit extreme. I like to hear people call it 75 Medium Rare, right? So you're doing it, but instead of doing two sessions every day, maybe you do a gym session, then an outdoor session, a gym session, an outdoor session.

AJ: So now you start to build these habits, and 75 Hard is a good habit builder. Drinking more water is one of them, training well is another one, and just making that routine, okay? But if you do that for 75 days, then what does the rest of the year look like? If you haven't implemented the habits and lifestyle behaviours that it's supposed to build, you're not going anywhere.

AJ: So back to the 12 weeks at 100%. If you then only half do it the rest of the year, that's not going to work. But could you be 80% for the entire year? Absolutely. It doesn't look that hard, but you slowly break it down. If that's a year plan, it's like, well, all right, maybe for 10 months I'm going to be really good, and then for two months I'm not. That's all right. But can you break that down to weekly, even daily?

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah. So now back to the tyres.

Kane: It's not just December that you have off.

AJ: Yeah, it's not just December.

Kane: It's literally daily that you have an issue.

AJ: The best thing I've used with clients as well is, everyone worries about what they eat between Christmas and New Year. No one really talks about between New Year and Christmas. So, ooh. But again, that's one week out of 52, all right? I won't do the maths there, but it's like 2%, right? But that's unrealistic, okay? So if you look at the four tyre analogy, one tyre goes, you've got three there. That's 75%. That's pretty close to the 80% there. But then you're not 80% every single day. You might have a 100% day.

AJ: If your next day is 80%, your accumulation is like 90% there. That's really good. So if you have more days where you're doing really well, come the weekend, it doesn't mean you just fully neglect the weekend, because you can offset a lot of it with what you've done during the week. And then you've got the weekend warriors. Monday to Friday may be a really, really good routine, and then all of a sudden the weekend comes and everything's rubbish. They start again Monday. It's like, all right, but...

Kane: But even 80/20 on the weekend. If you're going out for a meal and a few drinks, that could be 20 or 30% of the day. Don't ruin your whole week for it. It's going to happen, but then the next day, try and get back on track.

AJ: Exactly that, and that's perfect coming from you as well, because you need to do that.

Kane: [laughs]

AJ: But in general, that's where people go wrong. The routine goes out of whack. They may have breakfast out, and then all of a sudden they pop the rest of their tyres.

Kane: "I'll just have Sunday off."

AJ: Yeah, "I'll have Sunday off now." They have a big weekend. Friday they've gone drinking, Saturday they've gone drinking. They don't even get any meals in on the Sunday because they feel rubbish. But then they come in Monday and say, "Oh, I weigh so much less." And it's like, "Yeah, because you didn't eat Sunday." Relax, man. You're dehydrated because you had a two-day bender. You haven't eaten for two days.

Kane: For a good reason.

AJ: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So again, it's all situation dependent. 80/20. If you follow that, wicked. It always breaks it back down.

[47:50] Intermittent fasting

Kane: Let me quickly ask about intermittent fasting, time restricted eating. What's your opinion on that?

AJ: Again, it depends on the person. Yeah, it's a fad for people who do it all the time, but it can be really good. People get really good results off the bat. Let's say you have three meals a day, and let's say 800 calories per meal, 2,500 calories in a day, all right? You drop one meal, and you're 800 calories down. You're still having 1,600 calories. You've created a deficit by dropping that one meal. So people are going to lose weight based on calories in and calories out. The downside is if you have a bad system. And that system includes, what are your blood sugar levels like, what are your energy levels like, are you brain foggy, have you got good energy output, have you got a good system in place, are you eating well, right?

AJ: People who do 16:8, so a 16-hour fast and an eight-hour window to eat, yeah, they may have reduced inflammation because their stomach has dropped down a lot. Their food processing and stuff feels good, and they maintain it because they feel good not eating. But in those eight hours, they're eating rubbish. They haven't got a decent food schedule. They may have too much processed food, too much sugar. They're having their alcohol in there, trying to fit it in. Which is fine, you can still have 2,400 calories in that eight hours if it's decent food. So you can still maintain and still get the benefits of the fast.

AJ: The downside is, bro, if someone's highly stressed out... I don't want to single out any sex here, but some females more so shouldn't really be doing it, because of their physiology and the way their cortisol spikes and how that occurs. So they're doing this intermittent fasting and struggling with brain fog and all these other factors that may go into it, lack of energy. But then they're having two or three black coffees, because, I know, it's not going to raise their blood sugar levels, but then they're going off caffeine to get that energy.

Kane: Yeah, true.

AJ: Whereas the fast is meant to give you that energy, because you're supposed to use different stores to get that energy going. So personally, with the coach I've been working with recently, my rest days have been fast days, where I'll eat in maybe a six or eight-hour window. But the backstory is that it's taken work to get me into a system where I can do that. It's hard, especially come the weekend, when the kids want me. So I change it up individually. "Okay, cool. Well, maybe I don't do a fast on one of the days where I'm home, not working." Maybe I'll do a fast like today. Other than an almond milk coffee, I haven't had anything, but I'm feeling really good, and the energy's there. I went until maybe 12:00 or 1:00.

AJ: But I can go that long because I've got the energy stores to do so. Right? So again, as a fad...

Kane: Is the main purpose that it cleans out your system? Because from the research I did, the main thing was...

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: ...it cleans out your system.

AJ: Yeah. Like I said before, it can take up to four to six hours for the stomach to fully process and get rid of whatever's in there, right? Obviously, inflammation would delay that response, okay? So if you've got a bad system, it's going to delay the response. You're going to have more of this systemic inflammation that may occur. Digestion slows down. But then during the 16 hours, where people feel really good, yeah, it does clear it out so you feel better. But there are downsides to it if you haven't cleaned up your diet. So again, this is where habits and lifestyle come into it. So many people go straight to it, and they haven't cleaned up what they eat around the fast.

AJ: And yeah, you'll see a lot of people lose their weight, and they'll continuously stay on intermittent fasting. They may get a year into it, and now you start to see some of their hormones start to take hits. This is what happens with chronic dieting. Chronic fad diets all have this response, where these things start to shut off, and people don't realise that. Things you do in your 20s catch up to you in your 30s, and people are like, "Oh, I used to do this in my 20s." It's like, "Yeah, but you abused your body." Obviously there wasn't enough education back then, but the 20-year-olds now, they have that education there. They just choose not to use it. Right?

Kane: I think at that age, it is hard to listen and follow instructions. I think most people probably do have the information, but it's just whether they actually follow it, because you can get away with it. And then you get into your 30s and you're like, "Okay, it's actually starting to affect me now," or, "I can't just have that cheat meal, because it makes me feel horrific for like 12 hours after."

[52:15] Motivation vs discipline

AJ: And this is the thing as well. People can change that, but they choose not to because it's too hard. And one of the things there as well is, people say you've got to be disciplined. But to be disciplined, you need some form of motivation first. I heard that from a guy, I forget who. I'm terrible when it comes to that.

Kane: Chris Williamson?

AJ: No, it was one of the coaches I know. He was saying everyone bangs on about discipline. "You need discipline. You're not disciplined enough. Your discipline needs to be there to make progress." He's like, "But someone just starting out may need that motivation to create better lifestyle patterns in order to have that discipline." And discipline is basically a habit. "I'm not going to have that dessert afterwards." That's discipline. Right? Or you could say, "I'm disciplined to get up at 5:00am to do my training and then go to work."

AJ: That's discipline. That doesn't happen overnight. That takes constant motivation. You say, "Cool. All right. Well, here's your four-week goal." Even one week. One week of motivation. "Can you do all these things? Here's your cheat meal." How do you use the cheat meal? Let's call it a refeed, right? Because a cheat meal implies they're going to have a whole day's worth of cheating. Let's have an off-plan meal that day. If you can do that, that's your motivation.

Kane: That's a reward.

AJ: Yeah, a reward. But then people get too accustomed to having rewards, and they're never going to get there. So okay, that's a good way of doing it. But then, can you be motivated by an external goal? Here's a date. "I'm going away to Bali in four weeks' time." Classic Bali stitch-up there. Let's clean it all up, feel really good, go to Bali, come back from Bali. The only thing is, they haven't implemented these habits for long enough. They go to Bali for a week, come back, and they've just gone backwards. They feel rubbish, they're trying to get back into it, and "I don't have the motivation."

Kane: Till the next holiday.

AJ: Exactly, right? So having frequent goals is a good way to do those things, but each time, you do need some form of discipline, which comes from saying no to things or just getting up and doing it. Because that is what creates the habits. You can't just be motivated to do it all the time. People think, "Oh, I don't have the motivation to train today." It's like, "Bro, it doesn't matter whether you have the motivation. Just rock up. And the more times you rock up, the better it's going to be." You can ask some of the top guys in the training industry as well: "How often do you feel motivated to train?" And they'll say, "Oh, man, maybe once a week I might feel really good and keen to train."

Kane: Sometimes some of the best sessions are when you didn't want to go in the first place.

AJ: Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You may do a little bit more of a warm-up, you're feeling really good, and it's like, "Okay, cool. I'm ready to do it."

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: So I've even forgotten the first question for that.

Kane: We were talking about fasting.

AJ: Far out, yeah.

[54:40] Black coffee and training fasted

Kane: That reminds me, there's a question I was going to ask earlier about coffee in the mornings. My interpretation of what I researched was, whether you're fasting or not, when you wake up, don't have a coffee. But then I assumed from other information that black coffee is an antioxidant, and it's also a pre-workout if you don't want to have a pre-workout, because you are fasting. So if you wake up in the morning at like 5:00 and have a black coffee, are there any benefits to that, or is that a bit...

AJ: Well, again, you're training fasted already. There are downsides to that, because you don't have any fuel stores in there. But the further education was, your dinner would have enough carbohydrates and good nutritional components in there to help you train the next morning. You may have maybe a creatine or whatever it may be that morning to help you train, and the black coffee can help stimulate that energy to get you going. Then your blood flow circulates through the system, you get going and you're ready to go. Basically, pardon me, having a black coffee isn't going to spike your insulin or your glucose levels, so it's still a true fast. That's where people go wrong as well.

Kane: What do you mean by that? Say that again.

AJ: So when you eat, right, your insulin spikes in order to get glucose into your cells. That's your blood sugar. When someone's doing an intermittent fast, what breaks the fast is basically eating, which causes an insulin response. A black coffee doesn't have the calories in it to elicit that. But then people are like, "Oh, what about a Monster and stuff?" Again, it depends. I'm in tune with my physiology and my nutrition and stuff, but I haven't personally looked that far into, "All right, well, what about a Monster? What about any of those?"

Kane: What is that word?

AJ: A Monster, like a Monster drink. An energy drink.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah, having energy drinks versus just having a black coffee, other than all the other rubbish that's in there. However, there are also ways in which coffee, depending on the bean, depending on how it's made and all those things, can elicit a different response, between an espresso and a long black. If you want more caffeine per mil, you're going to have an acute hit from just a shot of coffee, as opposed to a long black of 150 or 200 mil. Even if it's a double shot espresso, in a long black it's diluted, so the caffeine in that is not necessarily going to be like a shot of energy.

AJ: It's going to take time. You're having the water, you're digesting that, and you're absorbing the caffeine into your system. So I would say, rather than having a long black, just have a shot of coffee and go do your session. You're going to have energy anyway post session. But when you're fasted, you don't want to train hard, because again, you don't have the energy to train that hard. So there's going to be a change-up with your training, or whatever you may be doing.

Kane: That's very generic, but not a lot of people train fasted in the mornings. Most people usually eat before.

AJ: Again, it's situation dependent. I do know quite a few people who train fasted.

Kane: I've never eaten before training.

AJ: Yeah, but that's a lifestyle thing. I can't train first thing in the morning. I used to, when I was doing volleyball. We used to do early morning beach sessions, and you'd be like, "Man, I might just have a banana or whatever it may be." And that was 5:30 in the morning. We get a lot of FIFO clients and stuff. If someone's on site, they're not going to wake up at 2:00am to get their pre-workout meal in and then train at 2:30 or 3:00 to get their session in. So they might just go straight to the gym, crack their pre-workout and get on with their session.

[58:35] Fuelling early morning sessions

AJ: So maybe it becomes more of an intra-workout carbohydrate intake. Having some form of Powerade, or what I personally use, it's called highly branched cyclic dextrin, and that's basically a sugar that's easy to digest. But again, that's nuancey, right? So if you're just having some Powerade and stuff like that to get you through the session, sweet. Some people go lollies. Again, that's not really going to fill you up. But if you have rice cakes, honey, whatever it may be first thing in the morning, that might help, because it's not going to be a big meal and it gives you a little bit of energy.

Kane: Because you can't really eat a big meal and then go and train straight away, because...

AJ: Yeah. And this is why the meal the night before is so important, because that's going to help get your stores ready to go and train, especially the glycogen or glucose component there. The glycogen is what goes in the muscles, which helps you produce that energy. That's from the carbohydrates. There's also the way fat can be used as an energy store, and that's where a lot of people go with intermittent fasting, or keto. They're trying to get these fat stores running better for energy, as a more sustainable energy source, because they don't have that spike in insulin and then the crash later on.

AJ: That's where that goes. But for the question itself, do people train fasted? A lot of people do. A lot of people don't have the time to finish work and then go. Or they have the luxury, like myself, of working in the gym. I train best between 12:00 and 2:00, right? So I've already had two meals before then, and I'm ready to go from 12:00 to 2:00. I'll personally block out clients between those times.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: To get that training in, right? So yeah, you can train while intermittent fasting. There are ways to do it, and there are better ways to do it, based on understanding what your body needs and the energy that you need. But yeah, give it a shot. Have your shot of coffee. I think we've gone through it as well: make sure you have dinner beforehand.

Kane: Mhm. Yeah, I definitely had a shot of coffee for a fair while. At the moment, I'm in the habit of just having the pre-workout.

AJ: Yeah, it gets you through. But then that's because you're eating rubbish the night before, and then you're feeling like rubbish in the morning. You haven't had a good sleep. You're a bit sluggish and stuff. You're going to have this pre-workout to try to get your energy fired up, and then...

Kane: 200 milligrams of caffeine.

AJ: Yeah. And then you have this crash at like 9:00 or 10:00, and you have your second coffee, or your first coffee for the day, but you've already had 200 milligrams in your pre-workout. Then you're going to offset that with another coffee in the afternoon. Now you've got this cycle going. You have more rubbish food in the evening. It's like, where do you break that cycle? And it's always hard trying to do it first thing, because that's when I'm feeling the worst. So maybe you just need to go cold turkey for a little bit. Don't have that pre-workout, have a shot of coffee instead, and then get your workout in. But the pre-workout meal the night before is just as important. So even if that meal the night before is three hours before you go to bed, with an eight-hour sleep...

Kane: That's like 11 hours as well.

AJ: Yeah. So that's enough time for your body to actually digest, to get the carbs, the fats and all the energy stores out of your stomach and small intestine, absorbed, and to your muscles so you can use that energy the next day.

Kane: So that meal needs to be a carb-based meal, then?

AJ: Not necessarily. No, not necessarily. I think people overthink the amount of carbs you need for workouts, especially endurance or anything like that. Again, it just depends on the person. Personally, I've got high carb days, I've got moderate days and I've got low carb days, but I've been doing it for 12 years. I wouldn't expect someone from the gen pop side of things to understand that. Just have some carbs at night time with your protein, with whatever you're having. So it doesn't have to be a high carb meal. Ideally, a little bit higher carbs if you're going to train first thing in the morning, just for those carbohydrate energy stores. But again, it depends on the training and the intensity you're going to be driving the next day.

[1:02:30] The information jigsaw

AJ: But again, there's a lot of information. And there's another analogy I like to use. Everyone uses AI for something. They get all this information, and I like to think of AI, or the information out there, as all these different puzzle pieces, right? Plenty of puzzle pieces out there. You're trying to get all these things, and you're stuck with so many different pieces, and you don't even know the picture. That's AI. That's the information out there. There's overwhelming information on Instagram, whatever it may be, whatever you're searching up. You haven't even got the four corners of this puzzle yet. You don't even know the picture, right? So that's where a coach can paint this picture for you. Start with the corners.

AJ: If you've ever done a jigsaw puzzle, you start with the corners, then you find the edges, you put those together, and then you start filling in the picture on the inside. So you can look at the corners as your foundation: understanding and education, lifestyle habits. The sides: cool, can we eat well? Can we train well? Okay, cool. Now the picture starts developing, of what you want to achieve from your training, from nutrition, from your lifestyle. Rather than having a freaking mess going over there. "Oh, I can't find this piece." You've got a thousand pieces here, you're trying to find them, and you don't even know what you're doing. That's my little rant on that.

Kane: That's a good way to put it.

AJ: Information jigsaw, yeah.

Kane: Information jigsaw.

[1:03:45] Burnout, downtime and bedtime

AJ: I know. I'm sorry, I rant on, but again, it's because of the passion, I guess, and just trying to help out with health and fitness. And we haven't even touched on the busiest people, who need some form of routine when it comes to health and life, even from a stress perspective, right? If you don't do anything for yourself, you're burning the candle at both ends. That's where burnout occurs. I'm sure you would have hit that place, as successful a business owner as you are.

Kane: That's why it's interesting to talk about the kids and bedtime and routine. Because for someone like me, for example... We spoke earlier about gaming. For old times' sake, I used to do a lot of computer gaming, but now I don't even have the time. Once the kids are eventually in bed, it's like, "Cool. I've got an hour or two max to ourselves, just to watch TV." That's super important to me. So if the whole bedtime routine blows out, I'm like, "Oh no. Now I've got no time, and we've got no time together." That's where it's super hard for someone like me who is pretty busy.

AJ: Yep. And that's your downtime, right? I fully respect that, because I used to maybe do an hour of game time. But then I'm contradicting myself, telling the clients to get off their screens an hour beforehand. I might as well be doing work before bed. So I've flipped the switch now. I do work in the morning, when it's quiet and no one else is awake. It's hard, though, because the other night the little one was up three times and I was attending to her, because she only wanted Daddy. And then, out of routine, I didn't do the hour when I was going to get up earlier, because I was like, "Man, I just can't do that today."

AJ: So it's situation dependent. But for the evening, I think from a mindset point of view, it's changing the way your downtime looks. So yeah, for old times' sake, I'd love to get on a game. I'll game on the weekend, because I know Sunday I'm doing F1. My missus knows I may be groggy, because I've spent three hours gaming, something I want to sit down and enjoy. If that doesn't happen, it doesn't happen, right?

AJ: But on the times that it does happen, the kids go to bed, and the missus knows I can go and have a gaming session. She gets to go to bed early. We haven't been pestering her about whatever it may be. She has a good night's sleep, and then I come to bed and wake her up at like 11:00 or 12:00, you know, it's one of those. But that's my downtime there. At the end of the night, it's switching that mindset to, "Okay, cool. I may be home for three hours when I get home from work now. That's where I can be present with the kids, be present with the wife, going through the chaos together."

AJ: As much as the kids drain you, and you're trying to discipline them at the same time, "Don't do this, don't do that, do this," we're getting frustrated. We get more frustrated when those routines aren't met. So have lower expectations, because if someone has a high expectation that never gets met, they're always going to be stressed out about it. So lower the expectations of the kids especially, because they are kids, not adults. We have expectations of our kids like they're adults, like they should be listening. Man, they're kids. Remember when we were kids, we didn't listen half the time. So we should look back at our inner child.

AJ: That's one of those things, yeah? We are so busy, but we have these expectations of, "I'm going to do this after." It's always in the back of our head, "I need to do this after the kids." We're not present, enjoying the time we have with them. And you can almost start rushing for that thing. I'm freaking guilty of it. My little one would want to cuddle first and hold my hand, and I'd sit at the edge of the bed and go. That would take like 20 minutes, and I'd get super frustrated, because I was like, "I'm going now," and she'd freak out and I'd go back in there.

AJ: Now she knows as well, because over time it's actually quality time now. I'm not trying to rush the process. It may take five minutes, and that's a really nice time for me to spend with her when I put her to bed. And the baby too, I put her to bed every now and then as well. When I'm home, I like to do it, because some nights I don't get to, because I might be working those hours. By the time I get home, they're both in bed. So when I've got the time, I do that.

AJ: So for you, mate, if your expectations are so high that you've got the hour or two you're going to spend with the missus post bedtime and stuff like that, it's going to come. If it's 30 minutes that you guys get to spend together at the end of the day, that's better than not. And if you don't sometimes, that's fine. Those other days are going to be there. But just align that with her, so you both know. "Hey, why don't we watch a movie? Why don't we watch a show after the kids go to bed?" Or, "Why don't we do this after?" Or, "I'm going to go do this, are you okay with it?" "You go do that." But then schedule in certain nights.

[1:07:50] Sleep and recovery

Kane: Yeah, the scheduling part's important. We've definitely started doing that more, for sure. Same goes for routine, though. If you've locked in the hour to do something that's super important, and then that pushes bedtime... One of my questions was about sleep. I know you can go pretty deep into sleep, and obviously it's situation dependent, but like eight hours, nine hours, some people operate off...

AJ: Funny, yeah, that is really good. There was a guy who did an analysis over multiple studies, and he found the best amount wasn't actually your seven or eight hours, right? It's roughly around that. Again, quality sleep matters, though. It's around six and a half to seven and a half hours of sleep, right? The quality matters the most there. If you're not waking up refreshed, you haven't really had a good sleep. But then there are also physiological aspects that can occur. People who are generally the over sleepers, who sleep more, are more likely going to have the anxiety and depression. They've got no drive, no will, because they're staying in bed more and they're more tired.

AJ: They don't have the motivation, they don't want to do that part of their lifestyle. Whereas the under sleepers are the ones who are more likely to have the metabolic issues. That's where their digestion starts to go down, their recoverability, they're going to get sick more, and stuff like that. As much as the over sleepers will too, because they're not doing much. With under sleeping, that's where your metabolic syndromes occur. Your blood sugar levels, your digestion, your system in general starts to get shot, because you're not actually driving those repair factors from restorative sleep.

AJ: And when you look at fat loss or muscle gain, it's super important that your recoverability is there, and that's based on the sleep. Now, the 80/20 rule can still be applied to sleep. You may have a shocking three or four hours' sleep one night, and freaking, who hasn't when they've had kids? Even business owners. If they're driving off three or four hours of sleep day in, day out, they're going to hit burnout. And it's not uncommon for successful business owners to have hit that burnout, right? As much education as may be around them, you're going to have your startup year or two where it's just dog eat dog, where you're flat out, just smashing it out.

[1:10:00] Long hours in the startup years

AJ: I know my boss, the guy I work with... I call him my boss, he hates me calling him that, but he is. The stories from him when he started up Team Ecto were that he would sleep in his car to sort stuff out. And I'd seen him, he'd be there first thing in the morning and he'd be the last person there at night. And he's created the team that it is now. We've gone through a lot. I've been with him for over seven years now. And seeing the changes, from how in depth he's been with his business to where he is now, it's paying off. It's paid off, right?

AJ: He's been doing it 14 years, I've been doing it 12 years now. And seeing where he is compared to what I have, there are different values, different things there as well. I'm very family driven. That's why I wouldn't go as far as working crazy hours, as opposed to someone who's starting up their company, and this is their baby, and this is what they're pouring themselves into. So yeah, when it comes to routine and when it comes to your sleep, there are going to be areas where it's going to be neglected. But there are also things you can do to mitigate and manage that.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: And that's where the education comes into it, right? That's where having a coach may be beneficial, or just knowing what to look for.

[1:11:30] Training after a bad night's sleep

Kane: So it's going to be situational, I guess, because this was an actual question. If you do have that day when you've had a bad sleep, do you get up and commit to your routine, or do you sleep in to try and get that recovery? It's always going to be situational. Sometimes you might think, "I'm going to get up and go to the gym..."

AJ: Yep.

Kane: ...just to do the thing. But then sometimes you feel that cooked, you just don't get up.

AJ: Yeah, well, like I was saying, the little one was up three times a night, and it fully wrecked my sleep. There was only about four hours max, and that was broken throughout, because you're getting up, going back, getting up, going back. I didn't get up an hour earlier. I still trained the next day, but it was very pared back, just to get the body moving. So you're not trying to push a PB, like, "I need to make this work." It's like, no, no, no. Understand and be respectful of your body, and know when it needs to rest.

Kane: Keep the habit, but drop the workout for the sleep.

AJ: Yes. Yes, absolutely. That's big. Sometimes people are going to just fully drop that workout, and that's okay. That's okay, because if you've had multiple bad nights, your body's just not going to be there, and there's a greater risk of injury and a greater risk of illness from there. So you need to respect your body to do that. And again, labourers are the worst, because they're freaking intensive all day and they still want to go and train. That's wild. Their work output and stuff like that, they're going to need that sleep. If they have a bad sleep, they're going to work the next day, working a 10-hour freaking shift, or 12 hours, whatever they're doing, flogging themselves, because that's intensive labour.

Kane: And a potential risk of injury at work as well.

AJ: At work as well, yeah. And again, from a cognitive function point of view, for someone who's behind a desk... As much as you can't out-supplement or out-eat poor sleep, you can definitely still help with it. Creatine's a massive one. Creatine's super easy.

Kane: Yeah, yeah.

AJ: Massive. I mean, it's been around for years. We've always known it helps with cognitive function, but everyone's been using it for muscle. And that's for acute sleep loss. For people who are on three or four hours every single day and popping creatine, there's a ceiling effect, right? If you're constantly going on three or four hours and you're just trying to pop all the pills, you're...

Kane: Drinking all the...

AJ: Yeah, you're drinking all the coffee, having all the creatine and stuff like that. That's not going to help you with the three or four hours, right? That's where it's, okay, maybe you need to reassess what's going on here. Why aren't you sleeping longer? Are you constantly getting interrupted, or is it a choice? Are you going to bed at 12 and getting up at 4? Because that's a choice. Or are you interrupted, things going on, your mind's going a million miles an hour, you can't actually fall asleep, or you're struggling to get up? Right? So again, that's another topic in itself. But yeah, creatine's great. I had acute sleep loss when I had those three wake-ups, and I had extra creatine that day.

Kane: I've never heard this before. So what's creatine got to do with sleep?

AJ: So it can offset the negative effect that poor sleep has on cognitive impairment. If you feel brain foggy and stuff, like you're sleepy trying to wake up and your memory's just gross, having extra creatine for brain function is very, very beneficial. But like I said, it's for acute responses. It's not something to rely on every single day because you're having rubbish sleep. That's a habit you need to break out of, or a lifestyle thing that we need to sort out, if it's three to four hours of sleep a night. But yeah, as an acute response when you do have a bad sleep, it can help offset it.

Kane: Really?

AJ: Yeah. Give it a shot.

Kane: Never heard that.

AJ: There you go. Yeah, yeah.

Kane: I will give it a shot.

AJ: Yeah. People get worried about it because...

Kane: Mix it with pre-workout.

[1:15:50] Hydration, sauna and ice baths

AJ: Oh dear. Yeah, yeah. People get worried about it because it's like, "Oh, it's going to make me all fluidy." It's like, you should be drinking two to three litres of water a day minimum, right? But then people have zero to one litre. We see it on the consult form. "Is it one litre of water per day?" And you're like, "That's something you're going to have to fix first."

Kane: Yeah, okay.

AJ: Because if you're not hydrated, everything we've just said is negated. So again, that's from the habits.

Kane: Something I've been hearing recently, and I don't know whether it's more of a sales ploy for salts and Hydralyte and stuff, is that water's not the best for hydration. Is that...

AJ: If you're an endurance athlete and you're not replenishing your electrolyte balance, absolutely, water's not going to cover it. But someone day to day who doesn't sweat as much, they may go to the gym and stuff, they're going to get their electrolytes in anyway from their food.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: If you really wanted to go down that track, there's a massive thing about coconut water. You get good potassium in there. You can have salt in your food anyway, so you've got this potassium and sodium balance, and that helps with what's called an action potential. That's how your muscle is activated, right? But yes, absolutely.

Kane: Buy the pink Himalayan salt.

AJ: I mean, yeah, you create...

Kane: The Hydralyte stuff.

AJ: Give yourself a few cracks of that on your food and you're sweet, right? Again, I'm not saying go against medical advice if you've got medical issues. Doctors are going to be doctors, and if you're craving too much salt and they tell you to reduce the salt, it might be a thing. But then there's also contrary evidence around salt, that having more salt is actually better for you, kind of thing. But again, it depends on your blood pressure, your stress levels, whatever it may be. So take it with a grain of salt.

Kane: That was perfect. Good segue.

AJ: That's one of those things, right? So electrolytes can absolutely help with the kidneys and get your hydration up as well. Definitely if someone's sweating heaps and stuff like that. So the physical labourers absolutely need to replenish their electrolytes. Having a little bit more salt on their food, or actually having some electrolyte powder in their system, would be really beneficial on those days. Or they could get away with having a litre of coconut water while they're sweating, and then making sure their water is up there. But a lot of people are peeing frequently, so there's an imbalance going on. Your body's flushing something out, right? So you're not storing it. Unless they're having eight litres on site and they're sweating it all out, and it's, "Man, I haven't peed all day." If you're having eight litres of water, you probably need to replenish your electrolytes.

Kane: Yeah, okay.

AJ: Yeah.

[1:18:20] Sauna and ice baths

Kane: So what about the sauna, then? Is it the same kind of concept?

AJ: Yeah, well, they always say with sauna, a minimum of 500 mil to a litre of water when you're in the sauna.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: Kind of thing, right?

Kane: For half an hour?

AJ: Yeah, half an hour, yeah. Much like exercise. Two or three litres a day doesn't cover the 500 mil you should be having during exercise. Again, it depends on the sweat situation. In a hot environment, absolutely. And with your electrolytes, if you're doing it two or three times a week and you're an inactive person, you're not utilising those muscles, so you're probably not getting the same electrolyte imbalance. So again, it depends. If you take it and you feel better, freaking oath. If you take it and don't really notice much, you're taking it anyway.

Kane: Do you sauna?

AJ: I don't personally. It's not really in my routine. I have used it in the past for recoverability, much like contrast therapy, the hot and cold therapy. That's contrast, yeah.

Kane: My other question was ice baths.

AJ: Oh, ice baths. Yeah, again, it depends on what you're doing it for. The sauna can be good for recoverability, because it's going to cause that acute inflammation, which can help bring blood flow and all that stuff. It's going to promote more muscle hypertrophy, so it would be really good for building muscle. Whereas with the ice bath, look at it more as recoverability, to reduce inflammation. It's not the greatest for building hypertrophy, but it's really good for recovery for the joints and inflammation from that side of things. So yeah, again...

Kane: Like sports.

AJ: Sports, absolutely. It's used with volleyball athletes. I've got a few people I tell to do it. If they've got a game back to back on the weekend, let's say they've got a game Saturday night, doing an ice bath afterwards if they can, or in the morning before their game, come mid Sunday that's going to help reduce inflammation. It's going to help drive a little bit more of that recoverability for them.

Kane: Isn't inflammation there for a reason, though? Is that not...

AJ: So yes, and that's where acute inflammation is good for hypertrophy, because that's where you want to stimulate the muscle growth. But from a performance perspective, you need to be fresh to perform. If you've got inflammation, you've got DOMS and you're sore, your performance is going to be reduced. So this is the catch-22. Are we doing it as a performance driving factor? It's good for strength, because you're not going to feel as sore, and your strength is going to go up, because it's a different process. But for hypertrophy and building muscle, you need that swelling. You need that damage. You need that blood flow to the muscles for the nutrients to repair, build and grow from the training. But if you're sore, you can't sprint as efficiently the next day, or jump as efficiently the next day. So that's where recoverability and reducing inflammation to help repair is still going to be beneficial.

Kane: So if you're a bodybuilder, or a general population person who's just trying to build muscle in the gym and not playing a sport, does this mean the ice bath isn't really beneficial to them whatsoever?

AJ: The caveat to that is the ice bath can be really, really, really good for the parasympathetic nervous system. So that's your fight or flight versus rest and digest. If you're a very stressed individual, the ice bath can actually help, because you have to get your breathing under control. So this is where the hot and cold can actually be very beneficial, more so as a nervous system response than anything from a physically demanding perspective. Does that make sense? So let's say for yourself, if you were to do sauna, ice bath, sauna, ice bath or whatever it may be, that could help you, because you have to be calm. You have to get that response going, which will help drop your nervous system, drop your stress response, help your cortisol drop, help you be more relaxed, and may promote better sleep. And you're not as highly strung for the rest of it.

[1:21:30] Hot and cold contrast therapy

Kane: So why do you go from hot to cold, though? Let's say the sauna's for the inflammation side, bringing that on, but then you go straight into an ice bath to have the opposite effect. Why would you do both?

AJ: Yeah, again, I personally haven't done hot to cold. I hate hot cold, hot cold stuff. Put an ice pack on the back of your neck and you're going to get the same response as three minutes of the ice bath, from the vagus nerve, which is the parasympathetic nerve in your system. A cold pack on the back of your neck, getting the breathing going to calm you down, that would be good. But with the hot cold, again, I haven't really fully looked into it, other than people feeling really good and feeling better. So there can be more of a psychological benefit from it. I just know the information on the sauna, and the decrease in inflammation from the ice bath, so you put the two together and you've just got a good little round. Like, "This is my hour to myself." 20 minutes there, five minutes in the bath.

Kane: Contrast therapy. We went to a bathhouse that had saunas and magnesium pools and all sorts. I couldn't go in the ice bath.

AJ: And some people can't, because they can't get their breathing under control. Someone who's very highly strung or an anxious person, you wouldn't chuck them in there. They'll have more of a threat response, and they're just going to get in and feel worse afterwards, because that sympathetic stress driver goes and they're like, "Oh man, that was rubbish." But you can get them into the sauna, and that's where the heat comes in. They'll probably feel more comfortable in the heat, so that's going to help them relax a bit more.

Kane: Okay. It brings me back to the apprentice days of being in a 50 degree roof space.

AJ: That's it, yeah. That's why you do what you do now. You get other people to do that.

Kane: Yeah, I just go to the sauna instead. I watch a podcast or something.

AJ: Yeah, yeah.

Kane: I love the sauna. I've got one at home. Every second or third night, I just go in there for half an hour.

AJ: Does it help you sleep?

Kane: Does it? I don't know. I'm not sure. It's just more of a habit, and that's...

AJ: Time to yourself, yeah.

Kane: Yeah, it's more of that, for sure. I just lock myself in the box.

AJ: Because your lifestyle needs fixing, mate. That's what it is.

Kane: Oh yeah. And then I might have better sleep.

AJ: And then you might notice more of a change in that. Yeah. I've got people as well who now can't go without it, because it's more of a psychological thing. It's like, "If I don't have a sauna, I'm going to have a bad sleep." So you have that flip side of things, right? They do it so often, whereas we tell people to do it two or three times a week, 20 or 30 minutes in the infrared. Any more, and you may develop more of a stress response from the heat stress. So then you've got this double-edged sword, almost like a bell curve. You go, you're good, you're good, you're good, you're good. "Oh, you're kind of going too much now."

Kane: You could be literally cooked.

AJ: Yeah. Yeah, so you've got your sweet spot, and you find the sweet spot for you. It may be fortnightly and you feel really good. But some people who do it every night wonder why they feel groggy the next day. They feel yuck. They feel sluggish. They can have that heat stress. So yeah, there's a difference. You get all this information, and people just go, "You should go to the sauna every single day." And it's like, "Yeah, but..." I hate saying it, but it all depends. It all depends on the person and what's going to work best for them.

[1:24:40] The perfect lifestyle

Kane: What's the perfect lifestyle, though?

AJ: Oh, dude. Perfect lifestyle? Don't work, man. That's what it is. If you had all the money, you'd do whatever you want. Like that guy, what's his name?

Kane: Bryan Johnson.

AJ: I wouldn't have a clue who that is. What does he do?

Kane: Yeah, he's the Don't Die guy. The guy who does all the supplements. His whole life is about reverse ageing and longevity and that kind of stuff.

AJ: Yeah, okay. Yeah.

Kane: Red light therapy.

[1:27:00] Home water filtration

AJ: One of the biggest hacks, I guess, is making sure you've got home filtration.

Kane: Freaking oath.

AJ: It's a plug. Get your water filtered. It's massive.

Kane: How much so? Like water filtration, softened? Because obviously you can go pretty deep, like reverse osmosis.

AJ: Yeah, so we've got reverse osmosis just for the drinking.

Kane: Drinking, yeah.

AJ: But you do then start to lose out on some of the minerals, some of the good things your body needs, right? So that might be more for when I take my supplements. I might just use normal tap water that's been filtered as drinking water.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: Right? It's cutting out all the other rubbish, the lead, whatever it may be, that gets processed or whatever. Right? All the stuff that shows up when they drop the pill in and do that little test for you, and you're like, "Okay, this actually works." Right? A big thing we noticed when we got it was with our little one. We thought it was just baby rash at the newborn stage. There was that baby rash and stuff like that, because we were bathing her in non-filtered water. Terrible.

Kane: Cut that out.

AJ: Yeah, no, no. She's right. She's cute. She's fine. But then we got instant results, like two days later. When we were bathing her, it started decreasing the amount of the...

Kane: The eczema, or no? Was it just...

AJ: No, the typical response of, "Oh, that's just baby acne."

Kane: Yeah, okay.

AJ: I was like, how is that a normal response? If the skin is showing some form of flare, it's either what it's exposed to or what's happening in the digestive tract. What's happening in the stomach? Because your skin's one of the largest organs, anything it gets exposed to is getting absorbed into your system. That can be a segue into a multitude of other things, but just from having the home filtration in there, we noticed that change. And that can be one of the biggest hacks, because people are drinking tap water and feeling rubbish, or feeling bloated when they have tap water. Again, worst case, you're having bottled water. But that's another thing in itself.

Kane: Microplastics.

AJ: Yeah, look, again, you can go down the rabbit hole. You can go as deep as you want. Again, if you do the 99%, the 1% is, all right, you're getting there. But you could just do 90% and you're going to see better things. But that's just one of those things. You get whole house filtration, and your shower's going to feel better, your baths, your drinking, all that stuff is just going to feel naturally better.

Kane: We might have to cut this for a Smartfix ad.

AJ: I got you, man. Yeah, Smartfix. Yeah, yeah. I got you, man. Yeah, that helps, right? Just from a health benefit alone. And I remember the guy...

Kane: You feel it. We've got filtration with a softener. If I forget to put salt in the softener, which happens often...

AJ: Mhm.

Kane: ...I know when I'm in the shower, straight away, that it's run out of salt, because you can feel it. It's like a dry, weird sensation.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Your hair goes all weird.

AJ: It's more of a silky kind of...

Kane: Yeah, it's like a dry...

AJ: Yeah, yeah.

Kane: Rough, chlorine-y kind of feeling, like getting out of the pool.

AJ: Oh yeah, yuck. Yeah, yeah. And it depends on where you are in Australia. We're in Perth. When we looked up where we actually were, the amount of chemicals, and also from the desalination plant as well, you're like, "Oh man, that's actually in our water." It's pretty crazy. But yeah, so yeah, Smartfix.

Kane: Congratulations.

AJ: [laughs]

[1:30:50] Writing it down and breathing practice

Kane: That's good. Oh, we've covered so much. Motivation, routine, sleep, recovery, stress management. We could probably go deep into all that stuff, sleep and recovery. I do find meditation really hard. When we first started doing meditation, and we don't do it often, I think it was when Lauren was pregnant with our first baby.

AJ: Mhm.

Kane: And we went through, I can't remember what it was. It was the pregnancy thing where it was like...

AJ: Hypnobirthing?

Kane: Yes, that's the one. Hypnobirthing. And I got into it pretty hard with the pregnancy audio thing. It's quite funny, because obviously I was trying to be deep in business at that point, and Lauren was like, "This is working better for you than it is for me." Then we started listening to it at night to try and switch off a little bit. So I go through phases where sometimes we're really good and I can actually listen, but most of the time I can't.

AJ: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kane: I'm still trying to process thoughts, and I've got that in the background with our lavender diffuser going. I've got lavender sleep spray, blackout blinds. Obviously I try not to use the phone at night, but yeah, try. I think all you can do is try.

AJ: It is. And you've got all these things going on. As cheesy as it is, if you wrote down the things you have to do tomorrow, that's now in a physical form outside your mind. Especially overthinkers, they'll just go down this rabbit hole, right? Write it all down. You may have some clarity for five minutes after that. That's when you go, "Okay, cool. I'm going to put the tunes on," put on whatever it is that's going to take you into the meditation, and get your breathing going.

Kane: I think I sort of do that. It's not on paper, it's in the phone, which again is like, how do you win? But I do have a note, a to-do section in my phone, so I always try and put it in there, because my memory's bad. If I say it, I'll put it in there. Yeah, that doesn't really help.

AJ: Exactly, and that's the thing. As much as you're writing it down, it's not physical. Right?

Kane: Actually writing it.

AJ: Physically writing it down on paper, there's the effort required for you to write, rather than just using your thumbs and looking at a screen, which in the evening can be quite stimulating. You're looking at a screen that's not even the size of your computer, and you see a notification there. "What's that?"

Kane: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

AJ: Exactly right. And if you don't put on do not disturb, as soon as you have one notification on your phone...

Kane: Oh, it's...

AJ: Notification, notification, email. Yeah, right. And then all of a sudden you've gone through 10 minutes' worth of different apps, and you're like, "What am I doing again?"

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Terrible. So yeah, just write whatever pops into your mind. Once you start writing, it'll come to you, like, "Okay, this hasn't been done. This hasn't been done." Worst case, you can then just take a photo of it.

Kane: Yeah.

Kane: Hey, AI.

AJ: AI. Yeah, put this into your thing. It's really good like that now, right? There might be spelling errors or whatever it may be, but at least...

Kane: You know what you needed to do.

AJ: Right? So that's something. A lot of people don't know how to calm themselves down before they even get to the breathing. But at the same time, don't dedicate 20 minutes to it, because already you're going, "Oh man, I've got to do this for 20 minutes."

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Start, like I said, with five or six deep breaths. Anything from two seconds in, three to four seconds out. If you can do six of those, right? Or even just put a timer on. Put a timer on for one or two minutes.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: Do that. Because obviously you've got to count one, two in, and then three or four out, you actually have to focus on the breathing. Just do that until the timer goes off. If you actually stop thinking about the breathing in and stuff like that, that's a good response. Then move the timer further and further out. Now you're doing five or 10 minutes, like three weeks down the line. That's going to make you better. Your breathing's going to slow down more, because you can go from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state really quickly. You can breathe in for two or three seconds, even four, it's up to you. But ideally we want to really slow the breaths down to like six to eight per minute, right? So that's like a 10-second breath cycle. That may be two or three seconds in, six to seven seconds out.

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: If you try to do that off the bat when you're highly strung, you'll probably feel like you're passing out when you take four seconds out. "I need to breathe again." Because you're in that sympathetic state. So yeah, over time. Again, it's not going to happen overnight. So don't expect to be like, "I can't shut off for 20 minutes." It's like, can I do two or three minutes? Set the timer. Focus on the small breaths first. Yeah? Then the timer goes off. Otherwise you get to the point where you're like, "Ah, this is not working," and it's only been a minute. You look at the clock and it's like, "Two or three minutes. Oh no, I forgot, two more."

Kane: Mhm.

AJ: You're going to think about that more than you're just doing the breathing.

Kane: Yeah. Yeah.

AJ: So again, there's a lot there, but you can literally just program how to breathe.

Kane: Mhm. It's weird how there's a lot about breathing these days.

AJ: Yeah. Yeah. And that always stems back to the way society is now, highly sympathetic, stressful, always on the go. No one actually has time to relax.

Kane: Yeah. Time to breathe.

AJ: Time to breathe. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's good, man.

Kane: Mhm.

[1:35:30] AJ asks Kane about his diet

AJ: Let's turn the tables.

Kane: Let's do it.

AJ: So you, buddy. I've known you since you had, I don't know, maybe six or eight team members, and you've built up to where you are now, obviously going through your highs and lows. And I remember you came back to me previously, I think it was the end of last year or so, and you told me about how many issues you had in the previous year, how you had to cut a lot of people. I don't want to say cut, but you had to downsize quite a lot. At the start of your business, would you have seen yourself in the position you are now? And how did it come to fruition? Does that make sense?

Kane: So what, as in...

AJ: So you started off with six or eight people, however you started off. I know you did your apprenticeship with one person and you got the trade going from there. How quickly did you develop into where you are now, right? Would you have done things differently if you'd known about health and fitness right from the get-go, and invested in someone early on to help you through the juggle of life while also looking after your health and fitness?

Kane: Nah, it's hard. It's a hard one. I never knew how big the business was going to grow, so I couldn't have ever even thought about it. I'm trying to think. I don't even know how to start that. Such a big question.

AJ: It's a big question, so let's break it down. If you...

Kane: Me using a PT specifically through that period?

AJ: Well, if you could change a few things about your health and fitness back in the day, right? Did you have periods where you just fully neglected it?

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Would you have tried to implement some of these things to help you grow as a person, and also for your own health and stress management? Which we find a lot of people don't do, as CEOs and stuff like that.

Kane: For some reason, it's the easiest thing to just neglect. Especially diet. I think my diet's pretty bad at the moment, being so busy, which again is just an excuse, because it impacts everything. I do think I've always been pretty good with, not health, but fitness. With going to the gym, my routine, I've got the habits there from doing that. Sometimes I go through phases where I don't do it.

AJ: Mhm.

Kane: Yeah, diet for me has always been the hardest thing by far. That's why my first question to you was diet or exercise. I'm so glad you said diet, because I think a lot of it is preparation.

AJ: And now you obviously don't have much time to do your food and stuff like that. What are some tips that we've gone through when we've been coaching together, that I've said to you about diet, that actually helped out more, and that would help people who are time poor or don't like to cook?

Kane: I think when we first started with you guys, because one of your trainers trained Lauren as well...

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: I think the thing you guys have done, which was amazing, is the diets you give aren't just stupidly unrealistic, like broccoli and chicken and brown rice, that's it. I think it was the XO Crunch, where you can still have cereal with a protein shake, because then you're getting the extra protein in there and you're actually allowed to have cereal. It's not like Froot Loops, but you can have cereal. I can't remember what else it was, but the shake, for example, for me, that was amazing for such a long time. It's like 800 calories in the shake, and how much protein's in there? With the almonds, 30 g of protein, and you've got the almonds, the banana, the berries.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: So I was in a good routine for...

AJ: It was roughly 40 to 45 g of protein in that one shake, kind of thing.

Kane: I think it would be more, like 50 or 60 with the banana and everything. I think it was like 30 or 40...

AJ: Maybe with the almond milk included as well. Yeah, oh yeah, that's true. The amount of almonds. Again, it depends. To get your calories in.

Kane: It's like my soy shake, not a man shake. You have the cane sugar here, you've got that.

AJ: Yeah. Again, that worked out really well for you, because it was quick, convenient and there. So would you say as well, then, for someone who's time poor, quick and easy fixes are going to be beneficial? It's just about quick, grab-and-go options.

Kane: Yeah. For me, that's been... I'm not saying I do it perfectly now, because I still don't. The shake was amazing, and obviously the pre-cooked meals. I've been through probably every type of frozen pre-cooked meal, but the ones you put me on to, the Espresso Diesel Espresso Bar ones, they're the best ones I've ever had, for sure. So for me, that's so easy. I don't know how much protein's in them, but I get the extra large ones. So what, 50 or 60 g?

AJ: Yeah, I think they're between 40 and 60, depending on which ones you go for. Yeah.

Kane: So I almost don't really have to do much prep.

AJ: Yeah. Especially for the...

Kane: It'd make a bit of a difference if I did, but...

AJ: Yeah, but with how busy you are, we don't expect your partner to be doing all the cooking and prep for you for your own health goals. It's finding something that's going to be very easy for you to just grab and go, or click on selected recipes that align with your goals, especially for you, just to make sure you're eating better and decently. And those were like $15 a meal or so.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah, as opposed to spending $25 or $30 every click you're getting from Uber Eats and stuff. You can generally get two really healthy meals that were quite filling, when you got the extra large ones.

Kane: I got the extra large ones.

AJ: You've got to fill yourself up and stuff. So yeah.

[1:40:50] Downsizing Smartfix and staying positive

AJ: What about from a mental health perspective for you, man? It's such a big topic, and a lot of people talk about it, especially the men's mental health side of things. Getting quite personal here, but going through being a CEO and managing that, getting married, having kids, any real big lapses and stuff like that during the course of Smartfix, or even in the past couple of years? Because I know there have been some big changes that you've made.

Kane: Yeah. Yeah. Last year... it's actually men's mental health month, if you didn't know.

AJ: Wow, there you go.

Kane: Yeah, freaking there you go.

AJ: Yeah, there you go. It's meant to be, then, isn't it?

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Yeah, definitely last year, we hit a big speed bump and had to downsize the company by like two thirds.

AJ: Yeah, wow. Yeah.

Kane: So that's huge. That was probably the closest we got to losing everything. Like, everything. Close to losing the house. I had to sell two offices, and obviously I've told the story publicly.

AJ: Yeah, I did see that in previous ones. Yeah.

Kane: Yeah, that was probably the most stressful time, just from a financial point of view. I think I've got used to stress over time, going from me by myself in my Clarkson house to like 140 staff.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: 130 staff and a lot of revenue. You just get used to those bigger numbers over time. But yeah, when the house was on the line, that was pretty much as stressful as it's probably ever been.

AJ: And you would have found that was quite a big burden on you mentally, because obviously you're the provider, your kids are there, the house is on the line. What are some things you did to get yourself out of that?

Kane: So for me, I've always tried to not dwell on the negatives. I try and stay kind of positive.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Letting the staff go was hard, but as I've mentioned before, we did manage to help most of them find new jobs, because there's such a trade shortage in WA. So that was my saving grace, and it didn't crush me completely. But yeah, I just try to stay positive. I sold heaps of my nice cars and I sold two offices. At the end of the day, it was probably the best learning curve I've ever had, and we're in such a good position now because I've been through that.

AJ: Mhm.

Kane: There are so many things that are unteachable lessons. There are things people told me I shouldn't have done, and yeah, probably couldn't have. But I think it relates to your first question. I don't think there's any way I would be where I am now if I didn't have those failures or those lessons.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Yeah, people told me not to do things, and I'm like, "It sounds like it makes sense, but I'm going to do it anyway."

AJ: Yeah, and I can attest to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can attest that you're a very, very positive guy. Even from training you as well, there was never, "Oh, this isn't working," or, "This isn't blah blah." It's like, "Oh, we're getting somewhere with this." But you're very big on owning up to your own mistakes, and that's just from the training and nutrition. A lot of people would blame the coach for not doing it. Whereas you can see it in your business and the care you have, and what you've done to this facility, and obviously seeing it change. It's the first time I'm seeing this stuff, and you gave me the grand tour. It's like I could even live out of this place, kind of thing, with how well you've done it. And no doubt you've got some loyal and really, really good staff underneath you because of the way you've treated them.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: And you don't just sit back, relax and let them do the work. You still put your foot forward, and if there's an issue, you're making sure it's getting done. Very proactive, not just reactive. And I think that's why, like you said, you're in such a good position now as a business with Smartfix. So I think anyone who sees these podcasts of you has a lot to learn, or can even understand what they can adopt, from what you've done over the years you've been in the trade and what you've gone through. So yeah.

[1:44:30] Sharing the story through Hypotential

Kane: We're trying to share the stories, because a lot of people don't really talk about their stories, and I never had, until sharing with the fam.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Then I went over east and I've been doing networking, meeting other people. That's why we started Hypotential, which is a private network for tradies, and there's business coaching for tradies, because there's none in WA at all, which to me is mental. So we're trying to share our story for free via the podcast, and free information on the website. And then obviously there are paid memberships and stuff like that for people who want them, but we're trying to give out a lot of free information, and the podcast is that, in a way.

AJ: Like we talked about before, there's so much information out there. I myself have probably consumed tens of thousands of hours of content back in the day, like gym stuff, watching all the bodybuilders, and business. Oh, so much content.

Kane: Like what we were talking about, there's so much information out there, but then to have that direction... You've got this puzzle box, like you said before.

AJ: The little puzzle box? Yeah, yeah.

Kane: Jeez. So now it's trying to, okay, let's try and put things together, even for my own story. I've only started going on social media recently, and trying to explain my story, I'm like, it's so hard. The first podcast I went on, the Tracy Fryer podcast, have you seen that? Was that the one you watched?

AJ: No, not that one.

Kane: That was the first one I went on.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: And it's just different for me, telling my story. I listened back and I'm like, "I forgot about that," or, "I did a lot of things." Yeah, I've done a lot of things, made a lot of mistakes, and it's good to rewatch them and rethink about it, to then bring it back to the forefront of...

AJ: Your mindset, so you can make slight changes to make improvements.

[1:46:30] Keeping the team busy in the slow season

Kane: We're making like a 1% change every day within Smartfix, for the better. Even like we talked about with the studio this morning, we've moved it forward like a metre to try and get a better camera angle. Just those little things that we can do. So...

AJ: And then you even said, if the boys aren't busy, you're getting them to do more improvements and stuff where they can. I think that's massive as well, rather than, "Oh, you're on the hour, but you're getting paid not to work." You're proactive with that. They may not necessarily see it at the time, like, "Oh man, I've got other things to do, but my boss is making me do that." But in the long run, they'll be grateful for the knowledge and the experience, even just to be around you or the environment, to learn more things.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Rather than, "I've got nothing to do, I'm bored." I don't really want to be bored at work.

Kane: I know. I don't know how to say it in a nice way, but it also saves their job as well. With our business, it's so seasonal. Through summer, it's insanely busy with air con, then it drops off. April and May is our slowest time of year, every single time, without fail. So instead of us going, "Oh, we've got to get rid of half our electrical team," we won't. That doesn't make any sense, because we've got such a good team. So we'll make sure they're busy, whether it's coming here, making the lighting adjustments, installing extra data cables, or going to my house and doing those jobs. I think they do appreciate that, because we keep them busy. And we've been in it for so long now that we know it's slow. We tell them, "This is a slow time of year. We're good."

AJ: Yeah, yeah.

Kane: We're not losing too much money anymore. We're good. We'll lose a little bit of money, which is fine, because we can forecast now. We've got that much data that we can forecast. "We're going to lose X amount of money, and we know we're going to make it back." Then the rest of the year is winter and summer, and it's just...

[1:48:00] Loyalty and looking after your team

AJ: Again, that's straight from the proactivity as well. And I think all CEOs, business people and leaders will always make sure their team is fed first, and I think that's what my boy Dan does as well. He said there's always enough food on the table for every member of our team. If he needs to starve, he will starve. And I remember going through the whole COVID situation as well, he made sure we were good getting through that time, because of the investment he put into our team.

AJ: Not a lot of people would know that about him, and he's probably going to see this and be like, "What the freak is he even talking about here?" But again, it's just appreciation for someone who does really good things for his people. As much as people may not see it at the time. Like I said, I've been with him for over seven years. I know how he works inside out, his communication and everything like that, to where I know I'm good with him.

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: You know, so...

Kane: Loyalty is important, because that helps with staff retention.

AJ: Loyalty, absolutely.

Kane: You've been with him for like seven years. I've had people with us for eight years, seven years, five years. That's a long time to stay with an employer.

AJ: Yeah, I didn't realise that. But yeah, I've been in the industry for 12 years. My first four years were with one person, and then I haven't been without Dan since. So I've only been with two people in the gym, other than the little side hustles I've been doing at other gyms.

Kane: Which is good, because obviously he's happy with you doing that, which I think is important as well. We have guys who do jobs on the weekend and stuff, and it's life. You can't stop people doing that. It's just ridiculous. So I'm very realistic.

AJ: Yeah.

Kane: Yeah, I think so.

AJ: And I think that's another thing. If I'd stayed at the one gym the entire time, without working at another gym, like Iron Fit, that's where I'd work out of as a little side hustle on the side... Having that change of culture and the different people there as well keeps you entertained.

Kane: And you learn different things.

AJ: Yeah. I don't know how people gym-wise just do day in, day out, the same clients over and over. They don't have that variety across places. So yeah, very, very good there, and good for you for letting your employees do whatever they need to do, rather than being like, "Hey, man, you've signed a contract."

Kane: Yeah.

AJ: Yeah, so I think that's huge and really important, especially for the enjoyment side of things. But...

Kane: Cool. All right. Anything else? Thanks for coming on.

[1:50:20] Outro

Kane: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Unlocking Business. If you've enjoyed this conversation, please take a second to like, subscribe and follow our channels. It really helps us to bring on more guests and have great conversations. If you'd like to connect with today's guest, their details are in the description below. I'm Kane Tyler Smith. I'll see you on the next one.