Speaker 1: A good a team. You're bloody champions. Welcome to another
Speaker 1: installment of the You Projector's harps Craig Anthey harp alive
Speaker 1: from the thriving metropolis, Well not live, live as I speak,
Speaker 1: but recorded as you hear, I guess, from the thriving
Speaker 1: metropolis of Melbourne. Now today's guest I had on a
Speaker 1: long time ago. I don't even know. I should have
Speaker 1: looked it up. I probably should have had a re listen.
Speaker 1: But it was fucking two hundred years ago when we
Speaker 1: were just baby stepping the whole podcast experience, and now
Speaker 1: we're old, now we're old hands at it. It would
Speaker 1: have been a good four or five years ago, I think.
Speaker 1: Damon Hayhowe, Hi buddy, how are you?
Speaker 2: Eh mate? Great to hear your Ossie accent. I was
Speaker 2: listening to the show last night and the first thing
Speaker 2: that struck me was just, you know, seeing as I
Speaker 2: haven't been there for a few years, like, whoa so Australian?
Speaker 1: So yeah, good to hear you man. Which one we're
Speaker 1: listening to? Can you remember was it a solo one
Speaker 1: or was there a guest?
Speaker 2: It was the solo one and you said some pretty
Speaker 2: profound stuff that I found quite interesting, so it was good.
Speaker 2: It was the most recent one, sixteen eighty nine. I
Speaker 2: think it was.
Speaker 1: Oh good, I'm glad you listen. Thank you. Hey. So
Speaker 1: for my listeners who don't know who you are, which
Speaker 1: I would think at this my point in time might
Speaker 1: be the majority, give us a bit of a snapshot
Speaker 1: of who you are and what you do, and then
Speaker 1: I don't know, we'll see wherever the fuck we go.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I'm a guy who lifted some heavy weights
Speaker 2: and took off his clothes and flexed his muscles in
Speaker 2: front of some people, and they said, you're pretty good,
Speaker 2: and they handed me some trophies for that. And so
Speaker 2: then I went and somehow started a business teaching other
Speaker 2: people how to lift heavy weights and take off their
Speaker 2: clothes and flex their muscles. And people seem to like that.
Speaker 2: And then I started an organization to credit people who
Speaker 2: were professional at teaching people how to lift heavy weights
Speaker 2: and take off their clothes and flex their muscles. And
Speaker 2: then I built a piece of software that helps direct
Speaker 2: people lifting heavyweights and taking off the clothes and flexing
Speaker 2: their muscles, which allowed me to bail on Melbourne during
Speaker 2: COVID because screw that and live anywhere else in the
Speaker 2: world that I chose to. So that's my life story.
Speaker 1: And have you been in the same place the whole
Speaker 1: time or do you move? Like where are I actually
Speaker 1: don't know the answer to this question everyone. Where are
Speaker 1: you at the moment?
Speaker 2: Right now? I'm in my apartment in Tabilisi, Georgia, just
Speaker 2: south of Russia, where they've just had the elections, and
Speaker 2: I've been watching all of the really interesting NATO EU
Speaker 2: US interference in the election and all sorts of intrigue
Speaker 2: and stuff that you don't really hear about on the news,
Speaker 2: but you understand what's going on. And prior to that,
Speaker 2: I was in Dubai, So I've had a place in
Speaker 2: Dubai and I've been splitting my time between the two
Speaker 2: of them. Was in East Anbul and Turkey for a
Speaker 2: little while when I first left Australia and I absolutely
Speaker 2: love that place, just absolutely fab the city. Went to
Speaker 2: Serbia for a little while, and yeah, a couple of
Speaker 2: other places it's been in terms of living, It's been
Speaker 2: to Blasi and Dubai.
Speaker 1: What why to Bleisi? Like what where? How do you
Speaker 1: end up in Georgia? And I'm not Georgia, the state
Speaker 1: in America, Georgia, the country near Georgia, the small little country. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Basically it was you know when the COVID thing happened,
Speaker 2: and it was a case of I need to find
Speaker 2: a place where primarily minimal government fuckery and recently communists
Speaker 2: so they know never to go back to that bullshit.
Speaker 2: So as different to Australia and particularly Melbourne as it
Speaker 2: possibly could, and so to Bleisy, I mean, fascinating story
Speaker 2: how it came along completely corrupt. They didn't even have
Speaker 2: running water or electricity. Twenty four hour I was a
Speaker 2: day back in the late nineties. Guy came to power
Speaker 2: after a US coup and you know, view an EU
Speaker 2: and all the rest of it. You've got to take
Speaker 2: out the IMF loans, blah blah blah. And he said,
Speaker 2: now screw that, and he got a libertarian to interview
Speaker 2: the heads of every government department and they gutted seventy
Speaker 2: five percent of the government, just fired them all, closed
Speaker 2: down the departments, sacked the entire police force top to bottom,
Speaker 2: like overnight, you're all fired. You can't can't be rehired.
Speaker 2: We're going to hire a new police force. Went from
Speaker 2: one of the most corrupt and in opportune countries in
Speaker 2: the world to top ten in Europe in a space
Speaker 2: of two years. Was back to profitability and budget surpluses
Speaker 2: within the first twelve months, and they wrote into the
Speaker 2: constitution there are five taxes and you cannot increase the
Speaker 2: taxes without an actual referendum around the country. So this
Speaker 2: is just one of the freest countries in the world.
Speaker 2: You can as an Australian New Zealander, you can come
Speaker 2: here twelve months visa on arrival, no messing around with
Speaker 2: anything like that. If you earn your income overseas and
Speaker 2: you pay no tax locally. The government is so efficient
Speaker 2: it's not funny. The government's like no government I've ever
Speaker 2: dealt with in that there's one public service building. You
Speaker 2: go there for everything. The people are polite, attractive, they
Speaker 2: help you, they get everything together for you. It's it's
Speaker 2: it's just really free and easy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, fucking you should work for them. You're like
Speaker 1: the best pr This is terrible. But what is the
Speaker 1: population or do you know the population Off the top of.
Speaker 2: It's about four million, and Tbilisi, which is the capital,
Speaker 2: we've got about a mill a million and a half here.
Speaker 1: And how big is it, let's say, compared to I
Speaker 1: don't know Victoria. Geographically, it's pretty small.
Speaker 2: I guess it's a small ish country. I need to
Speaker 2: really look at the map to compare the sizes of places.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's bigger than some European countries and not
Speaker 2: as big as others. So it's probably like Victoria and
Speaker 2: New South Wales. Off the top of my head, I
Speaker 2: might be way off, but it's now the tiny, tiny country.
Speaker 1: That is so fucking interesting. See when you said ten
Speaker 1: minutes ago, what are we talking about? I said, mate,
Speaker 1: let's not plan And here we are talking about Pelisi
Speaker 1: and Georgia and my potential relocation out of Australia. See
Speaker 1: your mom and dad, how did you How did you
Speaker 1: find out about it? Like, did somebody talk to you
Speaker 1: and say, mate, you've got to check this joint out?
Speaker 1: Did we you just online fucking around going what's the
Speaker 1: best place in the world to live that nobody knows about? Yeah?
Speaker 2: When I mean when I first for me the COVID thing,
Speaker 2: COVID was just the last straw and I was really embarrassed,
Speaker 2: to be honest, and annoyed it myself that I hadn't
Speaker 2: seen the writing on the wall so much earlier because
Speaker 2: I was so miserable and so angry all the time,
Speaker 2: trying to run a small business in Australia and just
Speaker 2: always fighting the system, like, as you know, business is
Speaker 2: hard enough as it is without except the business part
Speaker 2: wasn't the problem. The problem was just fighting bureaucracy and
Speaker 2: stupid crap. And when COVID happens, like what the hell
Speaker 2: am I doing here? It's like it's the most expensive
Speaker 2: country in the world. The government is just absolutely out
Speaker 2: of control. I've had government officers say to me, we
Speaker 2: proudly we crush many dreams around these parts, and that's
Speaker 2: that was the attitude. What am I doing? So I
Speaker 2: went on to just full time. Where do I go?
Speaker 2: I got to get out of here. It was during
Speaker 2: COVID and that was the hardest part, so I was
Speaker 2: Initially I went to Turkey because at the time, people
Speaker 2: Turkey wasn't being a dick about COVID, and I could
Speaker 2: if I left Australia and went to Europe they would
Speaker 2: lock me up for two weeks. So I went to
Speaker 2: Turkey first. By the time I got to Turkey, it's
Speaker 2: if you come from Turkey, We're going to lock you
Speaker 2: up for two weeks. If you came from Australia, you'd
Speaker 2: be fine. So I wound up stuck. Yeah, I wound
Speaker 2: up sort of stuck in Turkey, which I which turned out.
Speaker 2: I absolutely love that country. Istanbul is just amazing. Anyway,
Speaker 2: I was. I was planning to go to a little
Speaker 2: country in between Spain and France, tiny little micro state
Speaker 2: and same sort of situation, no taxes if your income
Speaker 2: isn't isn't local, you know, minimal government, YadA, YadA, YadA.
Speaker 2: But I couldn't get in because it was trapped between
Speaker 2: Spain and France. So then kept looking around. Serbia was
Speaker 2: on the list, Malaysia was on the list, as in
Speaker 2: Kuala Lumpur I've been before and I like and Georgia
Speaker 2: was one of those countries where minimal government fuckery, no
Speaker 2: tax crap if you set yourself up right. Yeah, So
Speaker 2: it was just.
Speaker 1: Have you like, it's it's very rare that somebody is
Speaker 1: just gonna you know, like a lot of people think
Speaker 1: about what you're doing, and to me it sounds really attractive,
Speaker 1: but the chance of me doing it next to fucking zero.
Speaker 1: Maybe because I'm a big pussy maybe who knows, but
Speaker 1: like very few people will actually get up and go
Speaker 1: and do that. It's like you have a little bit
Speaker 1: of a global identity less than a national identity, and
Speaker 1: in a good way.
Speaker 2: I think, Well, I'm a Kiwi and so it's I
Speaker 2: think most of us unfortunately absolutely beautiful country and I'm
Speaker 2: a hugely proud Kiwi, but I wouldn't want to live there,
Speaker 2: and so Australia was already my second home. I've never
Speaker 2: felt any sense of displacement where other people have talked
Speaker 2: about travel before. It's like, I don't care where I am.
Speaker 2: It's a piece of dirt and there's people, and people
Speaker 2: are mostly the same everywhere you go in a certain sense.
Speaker 2: Most people are very nice and hospital foods different in
Speaker 2: every part of the world, but you know, the good
Speaker 2: stuff's always good.
Speaker 1: So yeah, So what do you do over there? Mate?
Speaker 1: How do you make No? Do you need to make dough?
Speaker 1: I don't know. Like, by the way, Damon and I
Speaker 1: haven't spoken for about five years, so like literally apart
Speaker 1: from this call right now, so I don't even know
Speaker 1: what he did. He could be a fucking trillionaire. I
Speaker 1: don't know. But are you still Are you still working?
Speaker 1: And if you are, what do you do? Yeah?
Speaker 2: So the software that I was doing when I was
Speaker 2: when we were chatting earlier years ago, that's still going.
Speaker 2: So that's been thirteen odd years now. So that's my
Speaker 2: source of income that allows me to leave and go
Speaker 2: anywhere in the world that I want to do and
Speaker 2: keep on working, you know, the laptop lifestyle, so to speak.
Speaker 2: But that said, one of the other benefits of TBLISI
Speaker 2: and one of the other things I was looking for,
Speaker 2: was just that lower cost of living than what you
Speaker 2: have to suffer in Australia. And you come here, you
Speaker 2: can get technically temporary residence, but you get residency in
Speaker 2: the country if you spend one hundred thousand dollars on
Speaker 2: a property and one hundred dollars yeah, yeah, and one
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars on a property. Here is a nice place.
Speaker 2: You know. The deposit on a on a on a
Speaker 2: on an apartment in Melbourne will buy you a good
Speaker 2: place in Georgia.
Speaker 1: It's I'll do even I mean, I don't know what
Speaker 1: it is, but it's it's. The median house price in
Speaker 1: Melbourne is it's around a million dollars. It's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it is now, Yeah, it's it's.
Speaker 1: It's it's and what you say, it's what and what
Speaker 1: you get for a million dollars is.
Speaker 2: Live in it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Some friends of mine who are not rich, they're just
Speaker 1: you know, a couple mid mid thirties to kids. They
Speaker 1: just bought a by one say where but out like
Speaker 1: out out out. I think they spent one point twenty
Speaker 1: five million and it's in their words, it needs two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty grand spent on it to make it nice.
Speaker 1: And it's not a palace. I mean, it's just a
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe three or four bedroom brick house
Speaker 1: from the eighties and it was like fucking hell like that. Anyway,
Speaker 1: let's not do the real estate thing. And so you
Speaker 1: moved by yourself. You didn't move with anyone. You didn't
Speaker 1: move with friends, family, partner or anything.
Speaker 2: Just you, not just me.
Speaker 1: Yep. So when you move to the other side of
Speaker 1: the world and you go to a place where no
Speaker 1: one knows you, obviously the world's a bit smaller in
Speaker 1: terms of connectivity these days, of course, yes, but are difference. Yeah,
Speaker 1: where do you start, like, what do you like Okay,
Speaker 1: now you're in Georgia. Now you're in this very small
Speaker 1: country on the other side of the world. Like language, culture, sociology,
Speaker 1: where do you live, fucking money, where do you start?
Speaker 2: This is the other thing is that it's it's so
Speaker 2: easy now.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like you want a place to stay, you go
Speaker 2: on Airbnb and you find a place to stay. English
Speaker 2: has spoken, you know, most parts of the world you'll
Speaker 2: find people who speak English. But everything's on apps. You
Speaker 2: want to travel, you use Uber or the local taxi app.
Speaker 2: Shopping malls are everywhere, supermarkets are everywhere. They've all got
Speaker 2: the same, the same shit everywhere that you go. You know,
Speaker 2: in Dubai you're buying Australian beef for the same price
Speaker 2: as Australian beef costs in Australia. In the supermarket, you know,
Speaker 2: it's the same. And gyms are the same everywhere. You know,
Speaker 2: there's Tbilisi's a small, poor country, but it's still I'm
Speaker 2: training on the same hammer strength equipment you know that
Speaker 2: you that you do anywhere else in the world. It's
Speaker 2: like they're gyms here are seriously nice, modern, Everything you
Speaker 2: could possibly want, you've got. You know, just jeans and
Speaker 2: all the usual American chain things are in every single
Speaker 2: country in the world, along with your Louis Vuittons and
Speaker 2: your blah blah blah. So it's and you know, the
Speaker 2: other thing is that it's connecting the internet. Here I pay,
Speaker 2: you know, my internet. I'm talking to you on right now.
Speaker 2: I think I've got about two hundred megabits per second
Speaker 2: and it costs me about unlimited, costs me about eight
Speaker 2: dollars a month.
Speaker 1: That is crazy. When you say I'm sorry everyone for
Speaker 1: gone down. I feel like this is a very self
Speaker 1: indulgent conversation because usually I'm very aware of the audience
Speaker 1: and what they might want to hear. But fuck it,
Speaker 1: Hopefully you're interested in what I'm interested in. Did you
Speaker 1: say before that you can buy a place for like
Speaker 1: a hundred grand?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. So I'm actually in a one of the
Speaker 2: landmark building of Tabilisi. It was built by the Saudi Arabians,
Speaker 2: and then the opposite officey tower thing to it, we've
Speaker 2: got Deloittees and Microsoft and all of those sorts of things.
Speaker 2: So this is the upper echelon building and I got
Speaker 2: in at a good time, but I got a one
Speaker 2: hundred and seven square me a corner apartment with wrap
Speaker 2: around glass, you know, all the mods stuff for one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty eight grand.
Speaker 1: God, God, what flora you want? What flora you on?
Speaker 2: I'm only on the eleventh floor, but you know.
Speaker 1: So you're living in You're living in a very very
Speaker 1: fancy apartment, which is.
Speaker 2: A beautiful apartment. Yeah, spectacular, beautiful building.
Speaker 1: Yea one hundred and sixty eight grand will buy you our.
Speaker 2: Brand new glass tower. There's a there's a beautiful restaurant
Speaker 2: on the on the opposite building. You go up to
Speaker 2: and you've just got three hundred and sixty degree views
Speaker 2: of the entire city all lit up. You can see
Speaker 2: up and down the river that runs through to Bleasy
Speaker 2: and up over the mountains. It's beautiful, you know, it's
Speaker 2: really nice.
Speaker 1: And how on earth is that country economically viable? Like
Speaker 1: that seems like that would be worth more than that
Speaker 1: to build.
Speaker 2: It would seem wages alone. So I mean, like I said,
Speaker 2: it's a poor country, but you need to look at
Speaker 2: where it came from as of only twenty five years ago,
Speaker 2: thirty years ago, where it was, like I said, they
Speaker 2: didn't even have running water or electricity. Twenty four hours
Speaker 2: per day, So they've come a long way in a
Speaker 2: short time, but it's still a country with it's still
Speaker 2: a poorer country. So I'm not saying that you'd want
Speaker 2: to be born here to a typical average person and
Speaker 2: that you'd live like a king or anything. But when
Speaker 2: you're coming from Australia, it's sort of like what you
Speaker 2: spend on your car parking will pay for a really
Speaker 2: nice apartment rental here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so have you made this is a dumb question,
Speaker 1: but have you made friends over there? Mate? Or is
Speaker 1: all your all your relationships primarily online or.
Speaker 2: Have you got a social network? Like I say, you
Speaker 2: make friends everywhere. Everywhere people are very much the same.
Speaker 2: I mean, you really feel that in Dubai you've have
Speaker 2: you been to Dubai or spend anything? No, no, no,
Speaker 2: oh dude, you have to go to Dubai at some
Speaker 2: point like Mars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I feel like I feel like Tblisi is
Speaker 1: probably more in my budget.
Speaker 2: Well, the other thing about Dubai. When I went to Dubai,
Speaker 2: I was so that the short version of the story
Speaker 2: was that I wanted to come to Georgia. I'd got
Speaker 2: an airbnb and I found out the day before I
Speaker 2: was flying that I couldn't go to Georgia without a
Speaker 2: special invite from the government, so I contacted the because
Speaker 2: of COVID, so I contacted the airbnb host and I said, mate,
Speaker 2: I can't come, and he's like, that's all right, I'm
Speaker 2: friends with Minister of the Interior. I'll get you a
Speaker 2: formal invite. Less than an hour later, I get this
Speaker 2: email through official Georgian government letterhead from the Minister of
Speaker 2: the Interior cordially inviting Damon hayhow to Tblisi is a
Speaker 2: special guest of the minister.
Speaker 1: So that is it's a wonder you don't have some
Speaker 1: kind of government position. You've been there a year, I
Speaker 1: should do.
Speaker 2: That was the first friend that I made, and he
Speaker 2: was just, you know, the most generous, hospitable, hospitable guy
Speaker 2: you could possibly imagine. Took us around to the Georgian restaurants.
Speaker 2: The restaurants for anyone who's a foodie, which you know
Speaker 2: Melbourne obviously people are. You would just absolutely well, you'd
Speaker 2: put on a lot of weight in Georgia. Let's just
Speaker 2: say that the food is incredible, it's cheap, and he
Speaker 2: would take us around to these Georgian restaurants and just
Speaker 2: feed us up like like the Greeks. Do you know.
Speaker 2: It's like if there's a spot on the table that
Speaker 2: doesn't have food on it, then someone needs to put
Speaker 2: food there very quickly.
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in your lifestyle, so I love this
Speaker 1: kind of this different, you know, kind of paradigm of
Speaker 1: work life lifestyle, working for yourself. So how many how
Speaker 1: many hours a day on average would you work? Do
Speaker 1: you reckon?
Speaker 2: I honestly couldn't tell you, because it's always for my
Speaker 2: entire working life, it's always blended in with life like
Speaker 2: they kind of intersect and they go together. You know,
Speaker 2: my hobby is going to the gym, but it's also
Speaker 2: my career in my life, you know. So the people
Speaker 2: that I speak to are generally most of my best
Speaker 2: friends are people that work in the industry and all
Speaker 2: the rest. So so I don't know workers there from
Speaker 2: the time I wake up in the morning and check
Speaker 2: the emails to the time I go to bed at night,
Speaker 2: and I do whatever I want in between. It's I've
Speaker 2: always seen work as part of life rather than you know,
Speaker 2: this is my work time and this is my free time.
Speaker 2: So I don't remember me.
Speaker 1: I remember hearing about you. You were like this fucking
Speaker 1: you were like this enigmatic character. You were like the.
Speaker 2: Dark into the extreme.
Speaker 1: You were like the dark overlord of the fitness industry
Speaker 1: or something, and you just like surround undered by mystery.
Speaker 1: And I'd never I don't think we'd ever really met.
Speaker 1: And then I met. I came to Recomp. Is that
Speaker 1: what your place was called? Recomp?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, And what a fucking amazing facility, by
Speaker 1: the way, just thank you. World class, beautiful, amazing, like standalone,
Speaker 1: incredible center in wherever it was in the city in Melbourne,
Speaker 1: and met you. I don't know if we met before that,
Speaker 1: but I definitely had a chat to you, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: this guy's a fucking champ, you know. Not that I
Speaker 1: feel like not that, not that I heard a lot
Speaker 1: of bad stuff. It was just like you were, yeah,
Speaker 1: this enigma and because you gave no fucks about keeping
Speaker 1: anyone happy. I was probably a bit of a people
Speaker 1: pleaser because I was fucking insecure and you know, the
Speaker 1: ex fat kid, and I wanted people and you were like,
Speaker 1: not not fuck that, he's a dickhead. That's good, that's bad.
Speaker 1: This is I'm like, fuck, this guy has got no filter.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of sexy. Well it is, it's fucking
Speaker 1: you know. It's like even challenging the status quo in
Speaker 1: the fitness industry in terms of I think we spoke
Speaker 1: about this five years ago, but qualifications and accreditation and
Speaker 1: all of that. You're like, it's kind of bullshit because
Speaker 1: you know, it's not really worth the paper it's written on.
Speaker 2: In some ways, Absolutely, yeah, and there's a there's a
Speaker 2: whole you know, Like I say to so many of
Speaker 2: the personal trainers at the time, you know, do you
Speaker 2: do you really think that the police are going to
Speaker 2: come and arrest you for exercising with a friend in
Speaker 2: the gym because you didn't pay a registration fee to
Speaker 2: Fitness Australia, Like, seriously, what are you talking about? You
Speaker 2: can't work without this thing?
Speaker 1: Who are they?
Speaker 2: You know? And it's always that case of if you're
Speaker 2: going to tell me something, I'm going to process whether
Speaker 2: or not it makes sense, and if it doesn't make sense,
Speaker 2: well I'm going to investigate it more. And if it
Speaker 2: turns out to be bullshit, I'm going to say it's
Speaker 2: bullshit because it's bullshit. And that doesn't gel with a
Speaker 2: lot of people because a lot of people live in
Speaker 2: a world of bullshit. They like to they don't like
Speaker 2: having their feathers ruffled. You should well.
Speaker 1: And I think also when when you're getting your information
Speaker 1: from people who have a commercial agenda or you know,
Speaker 1: then you're not getting you're not getting objective data, you know. So,
Speaker 1: And it was funny because I remember you telling me
Speaker 1: years ago, I think you were. You were saying, hey, mate,
Speaker 1: you know that that that not only can you I mean,
Speaker 1: of course we want people in the industry. You've got
Speaker 1: knowledge and skills and all of that. But you're basically
Speaker 1: talking about how how how worthless some of the accreditations were.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking, oh, he's got an issue, he's
Speaker 1: got And then I then I kind opened that door
Speaker 1: a bit wider, and I did a bit of my
Speaker 1: own research, and I'm thinking, yeah, it's like even some
Speaker 1: of those because I think some private businesses almost they
Speaker 1: almost try to present themselves as some kind of government body,
Speaker 1: when in fact they're just a for profit business. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like quite oh no, so that's just a that's
Speaker 1: just a private company to company which they have every
Speaker 1: right to make money and sell courses, but don't pretend
Speaker 1: that this is some kind of sanctioned or authorized government
Speaker 1: entity or something.
Speaker 2: But even even then, you know, my my contrary and
Speaker 2: view of things a little bit. It's that case of
Speaker 2: who the fuck are you to sanction anything? Like you know,
Speaker 2: you I've I've never met a bureaucrat or an academic
Speaker 2: who was particularly competent in anything that they actually did.
Speaker 2: They spoke a lot of shit, and they said that,
Speaker 2: you know, we make the rules for the other people
Speaker 2: who do it, but the people who do it normally
Speaker 2: hate them and are doing everything they can to work
Speaker 2: around the bureaucratic crap. And you know, I think I
Speaker 2: told you the story when we spoke last of how
Speaker 2: I tried to create a course and I went and
Speaker 2: did my certificate for and it was years ago, so
Speaker 2: I forget what it's called now, but.
Speaker 1: The workplace training thing, like that's.
Speaker 2: The one, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for the vocational training.
Speaker 2: And then a client of mine put me in contact
Speaker 2: with the lady who at the time was apparently the
Speaker 2: head of the vocational education department, and I said to her,
Speaker 2: it's like, I want to create this course for basically
Speaker 2: elite level pts. Who focus on bodybuilding style training, and
Speaker 2: I don't want them to just get the piece of
Speaker 2: paper based on the fact that they sat in a
Speaker 2: classroom and listened to some stuff and regurgitated into a
Speaker 2: you know, on an exam sheet and long and short
Speaker 2: of it. She said, well, you can't do that. And
Speaker 2: the example that she gave was she said, for example,
Speaker 2: you couldn't deny a double am QT a certificate in
Speaker 2: CPR even though it's physically impossible for a person with
Speaker 2: no arms to do CPR. This was the example given
Speaker 2: by the head of the department, right, And I'm like,
Speaker 2: what good is a qualification in CPR if you have
Speaker 2: no arms and you can't perform CPR. And she's like, well,
Speaker 2: you can be competent in it, but not actually able
Speaker 2: to do it. So it would be discrimination not to
Speaker 2: give him a certificate a qualification in CPR just because
Speaker 2: he can't do CPR. It's like, right, and she said,
Speaker 2: because if there was somebody else around with two arms,
Speaker 2: you know, they could explain how to do it. And
Speaker 2: it's like someone's going to be dead on the basis
Speaker 2: of this qualified person with no arms being there. Like,
Speaker 2: so you give a job to a person who's qualified
Speaker 2: in CPR but has no arms and can't actually perform CPR.
Speaker 2: They can be an ambulance officer, now can they? And
Speaker 2: that would be discrimination? So what is what are these
Speaker 2: qualififications worth anymore? So? I was looking at certificate three
Speaker 2: and nutrition and Certificate three and nutrition doesn't actually teach
Speaker 2: you anything about protein, carbs or fat.
Speaker 1: Right, what does it teach you?
Speaker 2: It teaches you about the dietary but the sensitivities of
Speaker 2: cultural needs and dietary things and how workplace health and
Speaker 2: safety around the kitchen and just anything other than actual nutrition.
Speaker 2: But you qualified and nutrition now and it's just I
Speaker 2: can't work with them. This, this is just crap.
Speaker 1: So what is the what's the state of affairs in
Speaker 1: terms of gyms in Tibilisi or in Georgia? Like, is
Speaker 1: there a fit this industry per se? Is there are
Speaker 1: there trainers?
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's personal trainers here and they're doing the same
Speaker 2: useless ship that all the personal trainers in Australia do.
Speaker 2: And it's it's quite funny. Actually, there's there's not a
Speaker 2: huge amount of English spoken in Georgia or some of
Speaker 2: the other countries that I've been either and every single
Speaker 2: gym I've been to, all of the platitudes up on
Speaker 2: the on the wall, all written in English. Oh really,
Speaker 2: you know, go hard or go home, and all of
Speaker 2: these sorts of things, And it's just it's just interesting.
Speaker 2: It's like none of the people here actually understand this,
Speaker 2: that it speaks volumes to how worthless the platitudes are
Speaker 2: always thought that It's like we even write these same
Speaker 2: things on the wall and countries that don't even speak
Speaker 2: the language.
Speaker 1: It is interesting, isn't it. I've always thought about and
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously you know, I was in on the
Speaker 1: ground floor, as you well know, with personal training, but
Speaker 1: I've always thought, sure were it's it's personal training is
Speaker 1: so like the actual job, like to do it well,
Speaker 1: to do it well, Like people don't understand to actually
Speaker 1: to actually do that role where you train people or
Speaker 1: work with people, consult, coach whatever, teach, educate in by
Speaker 1: all that shit where it is such a big job
Speaker 1: where you need so much knowledge, right because apart from
Speaker 1: the you know, anatomy and physiology and biomechanics and nutrition
Speaker 1: and energy systems, and you also need to understand the
Speaker 1: person in the body as well as the body. You know,
Speaker 1: and it's it's the I can't say who because I
Speaker 1: don't want to get anyone in trouble, but someone that
Speaker 1: I know very well. Their kids are doing the course
Speaker 1: at the moment, and let's just say that some of
Speaker 1: the shit that they're learning is so fucking so far
Speaker 1: from the market what you well, and it's just irrelevant crap.
Speaker 1: But the stuff, the stuff that they I believe that
Speaker 1: really really matters, and they're not being taught. But also
Speaker 1: part of the problem, damon, is that you know, and
Speaker 1: I'm generalizing this is not everybody, but you've got people
Speaker 1: in front of these students. It's teaching these students who
Speaker 1: don't work in the fucking industry and never have you know,
Speaker 1: and couldn't teach you how to do a squad a
Speaker 1: deadlift or you know what I'm saying. It's like.
Speaker 2: But this comes back to our discussion previously, and one
Speaker 2: of my biggest grievance is about the whole that industry,
Speaker 2: and it applies across most industries unfortunately. But it's the
Speaker 2: product that you think of as personal training, that you
Speaker 2: created with Harper's Fitness all the way back in the day,
Speaker 2: is not the product that the fitness industry is about
Speaker 2: the fitness industry is part of the health industry. They've
Speaker 2: changed that recently, but it's always been part of a
Speaker 2: health industry and it's a case of going. The majority
Speaker 2: of Australians are going to die of a horrible disease
Speaker 2: because they're completely and utterly sedentary, and all we need
Speaker 2: to do is get them off. They're ass for half
Speaker 2: an hour three times per week. And so the course
Speaker 2: that you'll learn it it doesn't matter whether you squat
Speaker 2: effectively or well. If you go and you do bad
Speaker 2: squats every single day, that's health and fitness. That's great.
Speaker 2: You're doing rat shit squats, awesome. You're doing ratshit squats
Speaker 2: with a polystyrene barbell. That's fantastic. You'll never go anywhere,
Speaker 2: you'll get bored and you'll quit. That's another problem. But
Speaker 2: we've got you active. We've solved the only problem that
Speaker 2: there is. So given the fact that they've got to give,
Speaker 2: as I said, you can give double amputees qualifications and
Speaker 2: CPR even though they can't do it, you get complete
Speaker 2: nafties going into the course. You're not allowed to fail
Speaker 2: anybody anymore because that would be discrimination. You're not giving
Speaker 2: them every chance to succeed. So that's literally the wording
Speaker 2: that they use. It's discrimination if you fail somebody, So
Speaker 2: you've got a water down the course to be the simplest, basic,
Speaker 2: most useless shit that it can possibly be, where that
Speaker 2: person can't harm a completely incompetent per So an incompetent
Speaker 2: person can't harm another incompetent person when teaching them to
Speaker 2: waste their time doing half an hour of any random
Speaker 2: crap that there is. So what do they teach them?
Speaker 2: They teach them basic rehabilitation techniques and boring useless shit
Speaker 2: that you and I know won't won't shed a pound
Speaker 2: or develop an athlete in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 2: But developing an athlete is not the point. And then
Speaker 2: the whole and then the bit that makes me mad
Speaker 2: is that the industry then goes around pretending that what
Speaker 2: it's about is creating athletes and athleticism and the ability
Speaker 2: to do good squats and enjoy these high energy workouts,
Speaker 2: and it's like, that's not your industry. You're not selling that,
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to do that, even except they know
Speaker 2: that the product everyone wants to buy is that everyone
Speaker 2: wants to be this high energy you know, ripped abs, muscular,
Speaker 2: all the rest of it. That's what people are buying.
Speaker 2: They're not allowed to sell it, and so it's just
Speaker 2: dishonest to its core, from top to bottom the course,
Speaker 2: to the advertising, to the product being sold by the gyms,
Speaker 2: to what's actually covered by the insurance. Everything about it's
Speaker 2: just a bunch of lies, and we know how it works.
Speaker 2: In the gyms. Eighty five percent non attendance is the
Speaker 2: goal because the gym couldn't possibly operate if all of
Speaker 2: the members actually turned up and use the facilities. So
Speaker 2: everything about it is just this grotesque ripof.
Speaker 1: I've said, I've spoken about that number before. I don't
Speaker 1: know where that came from, but I remember hearing that.
Speaker 1: The term I was I heard was active gym membership
Speaker 1: and it was fifteen percent, which meant that of the
Speaker 1: current members in most gyms in Australia, about fifteen percent
Speaker 1: actually went actually to the facility.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, because in any kind of depreciation on the Yeah,
Speaker 2: the other wouldn't pass if they all turned up and
Speaker 2: you couldn't get on all of the equipment, and they
Speaker 2: wouldn't be able to run the facility if everyone turned up.
Speaker 2: So they want eighty five percent non attendance. It's pay
Speaker 2: your membership, stay doll away. Yeah. Yeah, well, the facilitated
Speaker 2: if you think about it, it was like, I don't
Speaker 2: know if it was deliberate, but it's certainly facilitated by
Speaker 2: things like treadmills and bikes and all of those sorts
Speaker 2: of things. Like who the hell you and I have
Speaker 2: been training? I mean I've been thirty three years. You'd
Speaker 2: be around the same or longer. You know, would you
Speaker 2: be walking on a treadmill three times a week an
Speaker 2: hour for thirty three Hell no, who's going.
Speaker 1: To do that?
Speaker 2: You wouldn't do it for thirty three days?
Speaker 1: And dude, I started when I was I was fourteen,
Speaker 1: which is fucking forty seven years ago. I'm sixty one.
Speaker 1: It's ridiculous. But yeah, it's it's it is amazing. Let's
Speaker 1: get on something more positive. Yeah, no, no, it's all good.
Speaker 1: I love it because you know, it's it's true. And
Speaker 1: I try to get people to understand. You know, they
Speaker 1: are good and bad gyms, good and bad trainers, just
Speaker 1: like there are good and bad brick layers. They're good
Speaker 1: and bad bloody neurosurgeons. Right, it's not absolutely Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: there are great people and not so great people. But
Speaker 1: explain to people what your business is now, Like, what
Speaker 1: is it that you do now?
Speaker 2: Now is just the software. So before I used to
Speaker 2: have the gym, there used to be the anti aging
Speaker 2: medical business, and then also the registration business for personal
Speaker 2: trainers to be insured for actually being able to train
Speaker 2: people with heavyweights. And now is just the software. And
Speaker 2: the software is Recomposer, and it's it's an app for
Speaker 2: coaches to prescribe diet and training to their clients in
Speaker 2: order to alter their physique. So yeah, as of the
Speaker 2: last few years, that's been a bit of an uphill battle,
Speaker 2: which I won't get into because it's boring, but it's
Speaker 2: just been you know, we needed to rebuild it, and
Speaker 2: the rebuild didn't go so good, so then we had
Speaker 2: to rebuild it again and so a lot of money
Speaker 2: went flushed down the toilet and finally we've got everything
Speaker 2: back to where it started, except working much faster and better.
Speaker 1: So yeah, but you were you were really in early,
Speaker 1: an early adopter in terms of you know, getting in
Speaker 1: with with an app those years ago. Yeah, Now there's
Speaker 1: a fucking there's a mine field of apps isn't.
Speaker 2: There There really is. Yeah, the difference is so I
Speaker 2: actually I taught myself. My dad bought me a little computer,
Speaker 2: a little Dick Smith computer for my ninth birthday, and
Speaker 2: I just wanted to play games like any kid did,
Speaker 2: and my parents didn't want to spend the money on
Speaker 2: these games for me to be sitting there like an
Speaker 2: idiot playing games. So I taught myself algebra and programmed
Speaker 2: my own games. And because that's what you do, it's
Speaker 2: just you solve the problem. So I was programming from nine,
Speaker 2: just in basic. But then by the time I was twelve,
Speaker 2: I'd started to dabble an assembly language, which is the
Speaker 2: very low level code that runs on devices and things now.
Speaker 2: But I was a nerd into computers for a very
Speaker 2: very long time, and then I got into weight training
Speaker 2: and I came back around to it and work for
Speaker 2: some web development companies for a while doing systems architecture
Speaker 2: and such, and basically I had a staff member leave
Speaker 2: my business and take all of the company IP with them,
Speaker 2: so we had everything in spreadsheets and all the rest
Speaker 2: of it. And I was like, well, this is a
Speaker 2: very bad way of running a business. If there's going
Speaker 2: to be any sort of sustainability to it. So I
Speaker 2: designed this app as a tool for my company to write,
Speaker 2: create our programs and diets for the clients. Prescribe all
Speaker 2: of the weights, prescribe all the nutrition, measure their body composition,
Speaker 2: do all of the calculations for body fat from the
Speaker 2: skin folds, et cetera, et cetera. And it was designed
Speaker 2: to answer a business problem. I didn't go, I want
Speaker 2: to make money from an app and leave the country
Speaker 2: and live around the world. It was my business has
Speaker 2: a serious risk, and we've already got the systems in place,
Speaker 2: but we need to develop them on an online platform.
Speaker 2: So we did that and then I licensed it out
Speaker 2: to other people and it turned into a business where
Speaker 2: the way things are now is that you've just got
Speaker 2: all of these people out there going you need an app.
Speaker 2: It's like, what does the app do? It doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: You need an map, and everyone's got a nap and
Speaker 2: most of them are completely useless, and most of the
Speaker 2: apps out there when it comes to training and diet
Speaker 2: are I describe them as being like a shopping list
Speaker 2: app where you write down what you bought at the
Speaker 2: supermarket after you went to the supermarket. Completely fucking useless.
Speaker 2: You just why would you want to diorize what you ate?
Speaker 2: It's just sort of like, wow, now I've got a
Speaker 2: full list of everything that I ate to turn into
Speaker 2: a fat bustard. Awesome, what do you do about it?
Speaker 2: That's not the way that it works. It needs to
Speaker 2: be prescriptive. It needs to be a scientific experiment. You
Speaker 2: need to go I think if I eat this and
Speaker 2: I do this, that this will be the outcome. So
Speaker 2: I practice what I've written down, and then I measure
Speaker 2: and test whether or not my hypothesis was correct. And
Speaker 2: that's how recomposer works. It's we set a goal for
Speaker 2: a body composition. We write a diet which prescribes every
Speaker 2: gram of every food to eat it every meal, every day,
Speaker 2: and then the training program which prescribes every weight to
Speaker 2: lift it every workout, on every set of every exercise.
Speaker 2: And at the end of the week, you measure your
Speaker 2: body composition again and go did it work? And if
Speaker 2: it didn't, you go, well, how was the result different
Speaker 2: to what I expected? And therefore, what do I logically
Speaker 2: do to get a different result? He goes, this is very,
Speaker 2: very logical, but my god, you wouldn't believe how furious
Speaker 2: it makes people when you suggest doing things this way,
Speaker 2: like that's on scientific, that's not science and evidence based,
Speaker 2: and you don't need to do it like that. And
Speaker 2: it's like, well, yeah, actually you do. You need to
Speaker 2: measure and plan in order to measure whether or not
Speaker 2: your plan worked. It's like, no, you don't. You could
Speaker 2: just do stuff and eat stuff and it's fine.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, well, I think I think we're really I mean,
Speaker 1: I talk a lot about with my groups and my
Speaker 1: audiences and running a mentoring group at the moment, which
Speaker 1: is a ten week group. And we spoke last night
Speaker 1: about last night is tonight Tuesday? Yeah? Last night Monday.
Speaker 1: You know, the idea of your life being an ongoing experiment,
Speaker 1: and my life has been in some ways, My life
Speaker 1: has been an an equals one experiment since I was
Speaker 1: a fat fourteen year old, right, And here we are
Speaker 1: forty seven years later, and I'm still adapting and adjusting
Speaker 1: my protocol because my physiology changes, my needs, change the
Speaker 1: way that my body will respond to different stimuli, change
Speaker 1: what worked for me.
Speaker 2: When I am changes the Yeah, what's in the food
Speaker 2: that you ate this week is not what was in
Speaker 2: the food that you eight ten years ago.
Speaker 1: Fucking oath. And you know, so you go, you know, like,
Speaker 1: what used to work for me with three or four
Speaker 1: meals a day, what works for me now is too
Speaker 1: And when I say that, that's not a recommendation for
Speaker 1: anyone else. That's not I'm not saying you should. I'm
Speaker 1: saying here's what happens. When I ate three, I gain that,
Speaker 1: I go. It depends. I'm sure I could create a
Speaker 1: model at work, but for right now, I eat it
Speaker 1: about why bother?
Speaker 2: It's I can get this, So I do this, yeah.
Speaker 1: At seven am and seven pm aroundabouts, and it works.
Speaker 1: I'm eighty four kilos, I'm pretty lean. I'm probably under
Speaker 1: twelve percent. I'm quite strong. I've got enough muscle for
Speaker 1: an old fucker, and and things are okay, you know.
Speaker 1: And it's that that kind of tendency for people to
Speaker 1: trust and believe people who don't even know them, you know,
Speaker 1: when they go you should do this, this and this,
Speaker 1: yeahs based on fucking nothing I've.
Speaker 2: Had over the years where it's like someone goes to
Speaker 2: them just goes, oh my god, you look fabulous.
Speaker 1: What have you been doing?
Speaker 2: Your skin looks good, your eyes are your hair is shiny,
Speaker 2: and you've lost so much fat and you just look
Speaker 2: like a bundle of energy and so healthy and you're
Speaker 2: getting leaner, and da da da da da, what are
Speaker 2: you doing? They're like, Oh, well, we met this guy
Speaker 2: and we eat this food and we do this Tralia,
Speaker 2: you can't do that. That's completely wrong, that's not sustainable,
Speaker 2: that's not what works. And it's like you start, you
Speaker 2: literally started the conversation having noticed the evidence of it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, well, I think also, you know, obviously, when
Speaker 1: you talk about food, when you talk about exercise, when
Speaker 1: you talk about supplements, when you talk about health, when
Speaker 1: you talk about lifestyle habits, behaviors and protocols, there is
Speaker 1: a huge percentage of the population that is emotional about
Speaker 1: all of that or some of that hugely Now, and
Speaker 1: you think, damon, how many people have like, for example,
Speaker 1: I won't even say which, but they have their identity
Speaker 1: is intertwined with their training protocol, or their identity is
Speaker 1: interchangeable with their eating paradigm. I am a fill in
Speaker 1: the blank, right, And so when the way that you eat,
Speaker 1: or the way that you train, or even your fucking
Speaker 1: job for that matter, or your beliefs, when your beliefs
Speaker 1: basically shape your identity. Well, now you have made yourself
Speaker 1: essentially unteachable unless I am reinforcing your current thinking, which
Speaker 1: is confirmation bias, which is your own personal echo chamber. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is this is one of the dangers, and
Speaker 1: this is one of the practical realities and real world
Speaker 1: realities of you know, like, I've been working with bums
Speaker 1: and legs and bodies and micros and macros and minds
Speaker 1: and all that shit forever and I'm still learning. I'm
Speaker 1: still learning doing my PhD. I'm nearly done. I'm an
Speaker 1: exercise scientist. I've got a whole lot of shit and
Speaker 1: I probably know five per cents. May yeah, I know
Speaker 1: not five percent of what there is to know, and
Speaker 1: I'm constantly getting shit wrong and some shit right, you know.
Speaker 1: But it's such a it's such an emotional triggering, you know,
Speaker 1: shit I.
Speaker 2: First, yeah, you know, because I've I've never drank in
Speaker 2: my life, so sign sign never been oh good man,
Speaker 2: And well then you'd understand and you'd know this as well.
Speaker 2: How you'd go to a party or a bar with
Speaker 2: work colleagues or something like that, and how violently upset
Speaker 2: people get with you for not drinking, and it's it's like, my,
Speaker 2: my consumption of alcohol doesn't affect your enjoyment of alcohol whatsoever.
Speaker 2: I'm not judging you, but they feel judged. And that
Speaker 2: was what I felt it came down to, was that
Speaker 2: fact that nobody sees drunken disorderly behavior as an attractive,
Speaker 2: you know, positive thing to be doing with yourself. But
Speaker 2: so long as everybody else is doing it, it's okay.
Speaker 1: And then as as.
Speaker 2: Someone comes along who's just like I just don't want
Speaker 2: to do that, they feel very insecure and judged because
Speaker 2: they know they're partaking in something that to them, they
Speaker 2: know is not the way that they ideally should be
Speaker 2: behaving sort of thing. And that seems I've seen that
Speaker 2: mirroad over the years with the people who have that
Speaker 2: same problem with eating, and it's really it's been really
Speaker 2: interesting with the way that I do the food thing,
Speaker 2: where it's like a person comes to me, pays for
Speaker 2: a diet, and I say, the deal is this, I
Speaker 2: don't know what's going to work for you. I don't
Speaker 2: know what food allergies you have or anything else like that.
Speaker 2: I've got a damn good idea and I know how
Speaker 2: to fuel you for your weight training. But here's what
Speaker 2: we need to do. I want to give you this
Speaker 2: many calories at this percentage protein, carbs, and fats. You
Speaker 2: choose the food. We're going to build the diet together.
Speaker 2: You're going to tell me what you want to eat
Speaker 2: based on the options that I go are available to you.
Speaker 2: I only want you to eat it for seven days.
Speaker 2: You choose the food. You make it fit your preferences,
Speaker 2: your lifestyle, everything else like that. I just want my numbers.
Speaker 2: You do it for seven days, I measure you and
Speaker 2: we see if it works. Can you do that? You're
Speaker 2: just giving me three hundred dollars. You choose the food.
Speaker 1: Can you eat the food?
Speaker 2: And some very few people will go no, that's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2: But most people will just go, well, yeah, I'm going
Speaker 2: to give you three hundred dollars, and that makes total
Speaker 2: sense to me. I eat the food so you can
Speaker 2: measure what it does. A week later, they've already got
Speaker 2: visible feelable transformation and they're going, Wow, this is incredible,
Speaker 2: and you go, cool, let's make an adjustment. Okay, you're
Speaker 2: bored of that, will swap that out for this. That's
Speaker 2: the numbers. Seven days. I'll see you in seven days,
Speaker 2: will measure it again. It's amazing how little motivation is
Speaker 2: required in a person to do the thing when the
Speaker 2: thing just makes sense. And it's not you take away
Speaker 2: that judgment element from it. It's just you choose the food.
Speaker 2: Let's eat it for a week, measure what it does.
Speaker 2: That answers the question it doesn't work, we need to
Speaker 2: change it. It does work, Happy days, keep going.
Speaker 1: And I love the fact that you said. I mean
Speaker 1: essentially what you said. Correct me if I get it wrong.
Speaker 1: But I say this all the time. As well as
Speaker 1: what we're doing is we're taking a highly educated guess,
Speaker 1: but we don't know exactly how your individual physiology will respond.
Speaker 1: You know, because you and I could see ten guys
Speaker 1: or ten girls or whatever a mix and who might
Speaker 1: look and seem similar, and so we give them a
Speaker 1: similar protocol and we get different outcomes. And so that
Speaker 1: is why you know that an equals one. Well, let's
Speaker 1: you know, we've got a fair bit of knowledge, we've
Speaker 1: got a fair bit of research, we've got a fair
Speaker 1: bit of evidence under our belt. Let's I think this
Speaker 1: is a really good starting point. But let's do this
Speaker 1: and see what your body tells us because it's always
Speaker 1: going to tell us.
Speaker 2: Something exactly, and everything's relative too. So it's when you
Speaker 2: realize that you're not trying to achieve the This is
Speaker 2: not teleportation. We're not going to just eat the right
Speaker 2: food and then pop out a bed tomorrow morning with
Speaker 2: the hercules ripped physique that we've always wanted in our dreams.
Speaker 2: It's a process. So it's just like, well, let's start here.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a move in the right direction.
Speaker 2: We can be pretty certain of that. And you know
Speaker 2: if you get if you get one day into it
Speaker 2: and you're going to the toilet eight times, then it's like,
Speaker 2: give me a call, we'll fix the diet. Like, clearly
Speaker 2: it's not working. But chances are they're the foods that
Speaker 2: you like anyway and you want to fit in your day.
Speaker 2: It's like, let's just structure them a little differently, take out,
Speaker 2: you know, but also focus on the positive. It's also
Speaker 2: that we're eating to achieve something and you are doing
Speaker 2: it only to find out whether it gets the result.
Speaker 2: So you know, I'll say to clients, if you eat
Speaker 2: a pizza on Wednesday night, I'm not saying it's going
Speaker 2: to make you fat. It won't You might wake up
Speaker 2: the next morning looking better or looking Who knows the
Speaker 2: problem with eating the pizza on Wednesday night is that
Speaker 2: when I test you on Friday, I don't know whether
Speaker 2: the result was the diet or the pizza. Maybe you
Speaker 2: need to eat pizza every day or every Wednesday. I
Speaker 2: don't know, because you threw another variable in there. So
Speaker 2: just don't eat the pizza on this Wednesday so we
Speaker 2: can measure what the diet did. And most people go,
Speaker 2: that makes sense. You're not integrating me or telling me
Speaker 2: something that the evidence doesn't line up, because everyone says
Speaker 2: to me, if I eat the pizza, I get fat.
Speaker 2: But when I eat a pizza, I'm not fat the
Speaker 2: next day.
Speaker 1: So yes, it is. It is funny that, you know,
Speaker 1: when people kind of infer that, like you were saying,
Speaker 1: you know, with you not drinking booze and people being
Speaker 1: defensive or whatever, or that whole kind of you make
Speaker 1: me feel I find that a very interesting mindset. And
Speaker 1: I say to people when they say you make me
Speaker 1: feel like this, I go, so, I'm in charge of
Speaker 1: your feelings now, And I'd say that, you know, I'm like, dude,
Speaker 1: I'm not in charge of that that's just your individual response.
Speaker 1: And if I'm that.
Speaker 2: Was already there, I just triggered it.
Speaker 1: By the way the way that I live, in the
Speaker 1: way that I think, and my last dollar. My operating
Speaker 1: is on no level a recommendation. I'm just telling you
Speaker 1: what I fucking do. If you don't want to know,
Speaker 1: that's cool, you know, But what I can tell you
Speaker 1: is that it is in your interest to try to
Speaker 1: figure out what works for you optimally. Hey, mate, we've
Speaker 1: got maybe ten minutes. I want to ask you some
Speaker 1: kind of rapid fire questions because I think people will
Speaker 1: be interested in. Now I'm going to ask you a
Speaker 1: question and I want you to try and get an
Speaker 1: answer out in about one minute. You're a fucking chatty kathy,
Speaker 1: so that's.
Speaker 2: Going to be harkened to do.
Speaker 1: So let's see how we go. All right, one or
Speaker 1: two minutes of advice For people who are absolute beginners,
Speaker 1: they're listening to you and they're like, kind of makes sense.
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I know you could talk about
Speaker 1: this for an hour, but I don't know where to start.
Speaker 1: Just give me a fucking something, damon, give me a
Speaker 1: where to start so I can maybe open the open
Speaker 1: the door tomorrow.
Speaker 2: The body that you acknowledge that the body that you want,
Speaker 2: because I assume we're talking about body composition here, that's
Speaker 2: what they're training.
Speaker 1: For, changing their body, whatever that means to them.
Speaker 2: The body that you want is a superior physical specimenist,
Speaker 2: a superior athlete to the body that you currently have.
Speaker 2: That's the sole difference. It all comes down to the
Speaker 2: athletic performance. It's not about going and doing random bunches
Speaker 2: of shit as punishment or penance for having sinned or
Speaker 2: anything else. You've got to find something that actually interests
Speaker 2: you in terms of an athletic endeavor and legitimately try
Speaker 2: to get really, really really good at it. And if
Speaker 2: you can do that, everything else takes care of itself.
Speaker 1: Perfect all right, And I know this list is very long,
Speaker 1: but the most common mistakes and I know this, but
Speaker 1: across the board in general terms, the most common mistakes
Speaker 1: that people make with diet. Now, I know this is
Speaker 1: almost a stupid question, but go processed food.
Speaker 2: That's it. It's nobody got fat eating organic chicken and
Speaker 2: rice in any quantity. It can't be done right. The
Speaker 2: reason that we have so many people so fat is
Speaker 2: because of the source that they add to the chicken
Speaker 2: and the rice, and the obsession with flavor and the
Speaker 2: obsession with convenience. It doesn't matter whether you're talking about
Speaker 2: protein bars or pre workout formulas or anything else, whatever
Speaker 2: the hell they stick into food these days. These things
Speaker 2: that God did not put on this planet to be
Speaker 2: consumed by human beings, Whatever is in it, that's what's
Speaker 2: causing all the problems. Because wherever you go in the world,
Speaker 2: where where people don't eat that shit, they don't have
Speaker 2: any of the problems that we have. And that's the
Speaker 2: number one thing. Just eat natural foods. And it's pretty difficult.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, we're as a starting point, that's
Speaker 2: the primary thing. It would be before I even get
Speaker 2: to protein, carbs and fats. If you're eating shit, you're
Speaker 2: eating shit, and who knows what it's going to do. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I measure that. I've been measuring this stuff in
Speaker 2: people for decades and the difference that a little bit
Speaker 2: of shit makes is profound. You know, if you think
Speaker 2: a diet coke doesn't make a difference, I'm telling you
Speaker 2: it makes a difference.
Speaker 1: Really, what's diet coke? Do I have? The odd diet coke?
Speaker 2: Come on, again, I don't know. I don't know the physiology.
Speaker 2: I don't really care. What I can tell you is
Speaker 2: if I've got a person on a on a diet
Speaker 2: and a training regimen and we're going for just ultimate
Speaker 2: fat loss with muscle retention and it's just stalled out
Speaker 2: and they're doing that, you just pull that out and
Speaker 2: the fat just goes for weeks on the same diet,
Speaker 2: the same train, diet.
Speaker 1: Coke. Really, yeah, that's that is It's so interesting.
Speaker 2: It was fascinating because you know, I was one of
Speaker 2: the ones back in the day. I'm just sort of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: if you want to have that, that's fine, there's nothing
Speaker 2: in it. And then it's like, man, nothing's really working.
Speaker 2: Let's just pull that out and see if it makes
Speaker 2: a difference. Because these things always do and butter bang consistently.
Speaker 2: It's not like a some people can get away with it.
Speaker 2: And this is sorry, I know you said one minute,
Speaker 2: but a really interesting thing you'd find was going to
Speaker 2: Dubai and it actually threw me off my game in
Speaker 2: a big way. When I went to a gym, Binos gym,
Speaker 2: very world famous bodybuilding gym in Dubai, and the physiques
Speaker 2: in there are. I've been around probe as you. I've
Speaker 2: been around pro bodybuilders. I've had Big Rammy train in
Speaker 2: my gym. I've had the biggest and the leanest guys there.
Speaker 2: And these guys are freaks. These are the biggest, leanest,
Speaker 2: scariest like everyone in there. It's like I was the fattest,
Speaker 2: weakest and smallest of the women in Benos gym. Like
Speaker 2: they are just next level everywhere. And the training is
Speaker 2: absolutely fucking abysmal. We're talking lightweights with bad form, with
Speaker 2: long rest between sets. No one puffs, no one sweats.
Speaker 2: Occasionally you hear someone grunt or do something. It's just shit,
Speaker 2: absolute shit, And so you go to you look around
Speaker 2: and you're going, this doesn't gel like what's going on here?
Speaker 2: And you go, what it's got to be the drugs.
Speaker 2: It's not the drugs. It's the same drugs as everyone's
Speaker 2: using everywhere else. And there's you know, all the eighty
Speaker 2: kilo guys are using the probably more drugs than half
Speaker 2: of these guys, and these massive ripped guys. And then
Speaker 2: one day I see I start noticing every now and
Speaker 2: again a guy would come in with a great physique
Speaker 2: and a bunch of his friends. It'd be like, you know,
Speaker 2: natural national champion level kind of physique, nice round muscles
Speaker 2: and everything, but nothing too crazy or anything else like that.
Speaker 2: Never trained before. They're teaching him for the first time.
Speaker 2: And these are all Arabs, Egyptians, Africans, all of them.
Speaker 2: And the genetics on these guys is like nothing I've
Speaker 2: seen anywhere in the world, just absolutely freaking unbelievable. And
Speaker 2: you watch these guys pre drugs with physiques better than
Speaker 2: most of our top natural bodybuilders, and then they lift
Speaker 2: a few half fast lightweights, fucking around with bad form.
Speaker 2: No squats, no deadlifts, no bench press, is just machine
Speaker 2: everything with crap weight, long rest, no puffing, nothing, no effort,
Speaker 2: and you watch them transform, they grow muscle light they're
Speaker 2: on drugs, and then they put the drugs in and
Speaker 2: you just see them turn into probody and I'm just like,
Speaker 2: what the what the fuck is going on? This just
Speaker 2: throws out every belief I've ever had about drugs, training, diet, like,
Speaker 2: because they don't eat proptly either, They just eat whatever
Speaker 2: the hell they want. And then and then a few
Speaker 2: times I've seen one of these ginormous guys just lie
Speaker 2: down on the bench press with somebody else in there
Speaker 2: who's actually doing some serious bench presses, and they'll just
Speaker 2: casually bench press are wobbly five plates for a few reps,
Speaker 2: having never lifted a having never lifted a heavyweight in
Speaker 2: their entire life, they're doing Australian record bench presses with
Speaker 2: the worst, most ugly shouldered, destroying technique you've ever seen
Speaker 2: in your life, because they've never learnt to bench press it.
Speaker 2: And that's when the penny drops and you're like, it's
Speaker 2: still the same shit. These guys have these genetics that
Speaker 2: allow them to become world champion level strength athletes without
Speaker 2: putting any effort into actual strength training or actually learning
Speaker 2: out of strength train. They just fuck around with some
Speaker 2: weights and the body just grows muscle because for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: that that's how their DNA has said to you know,
Speaker 2: respond to very low levels of stress, and they the massive,
Speaker 2: massive guys are still every little bit as strong as
Speaker 2: you would expect. But these guys don't lift heavy, and
Speaker 2: when they try to, because they don't care and they
Speaker 2: don't really understand and they never lifted it, they hurt themselves.
Speaker 2: So then they tell everyone, well, I don't lift heavy
Speaker 2: because it's really risky and you get hurt and injured,
Speaker 2: and it's like, well, no, you just suck at it
Speaker 2: because you never actually learned how to do it, and
Speaker 2: you don't care because it's not hard and it's really interesting.
Speaker 2: And the reason I get into this is because this
Speaker 2: has permeated all of the training beliefs of everyone around
Speaker 2: the world that you don't need to put high effort
Speaker 2: into your training. You can lift light weights and just
Speaker 2: squeeze your muscles and you'll grow muscle the same. They
Speaker 2: look at what these unusual genetic anomalies do and they go,
Speaker 2: if I do what they do, I'll get the same results.
Speaker 2: You didn't even walk into the gym looking like them,
Speaker 2: you won't.
Speaker 1: It's it's like one of the things I see a
Speaker 1: lot in I try a little In fact, I trying
Speaker 1: a gym called Snap, which is one of my old
Speaker 1: gyms would which is now a Snap franchise, And you know,
Speaker 1: a good little gym, and it's got everything I need
Speaker 1: and it's you know, it's probably got a million bucks
Speaker 1: worth of equipment. It's not the bloody best gym in
Speaker 1: the world, but it's good for me. But more than ever,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing young, like more than I've ever seen in
Speaker 1: my life. In gym's young dudes coming in like at
Speaker 1: at four o'clock, five o'clock. Seventy percent of the clients
Speaker 1: are boys age between fifteen and twenty, like seventy percent
Speaker 1: of the people in the gym. And some of them good,
Speaker 1: some of them are you know, young studs. But the
Speaker 1: other thing that's happening is because they're watching so much
Speaker 1: shit online and they're watching fuckwits who do a set
Speaker 1: of dumbbell presses incline and then drop the weights from
Speaker 1: a great height. Right, But these guys are doing you know,
Speaker 1: incline presses with hud kilos each dumbbell or whatever. But
Speaker 1: then you get the young guys in the gym who
Speaker 1: are emulating their heroes and just throwing weights from four
Speaker 1: foot high. And then when I would go up and go, hey, champ,
Speaker 1: don't do that, they look at me like I'm the
Speaker 1: fucking enemy, the.
Speaker 2: Old rouch in the gym.
Speaker 1: Yeah, dude, what are you doing? And they're like what,
Speaker 1: I go, what are you doing? It's just it's not
Speaker 1: okay to just throw you weights from three feet I
Speaker 1: and nobody tells them it's and they just wants the
Speaker 1: shit on. Yeah, they mate, you're not a fucking pro bodybuilder.
Speaker 1: And and you know this, this floor is not the
Speaker 1: floor that they're throwing their way. It's different. And those
Speaker 1: weights they're not built for that, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh well, you look at Metroflex gym in Texas where
Speaker 2: Ronnie used to train, and it's like, you're going to
Speaker 2: make this gym look like Metroflex, like like an absolute
Speaker 2: ship hole where everything's you know, beaten up.
Speaker 1: Oh that joint, I've seen that joint. That's that's absolute chaos.
Speaker 1: All right. I just want to okay a couple more
Speaker 1: than we're going to wind up. And of course different
Speaker 1: people need different things. But putting aside drugs and putting
Speaker 1: aside peptides, what are the in general terms, what are
Speaker 1: the supplements that you think are okay these days? And
Speaker 1: I know it's a kind of a dumb question because
Speaker 1: different people need different things, but what are the supplements
Speaker 1: that are on your maybe list?
Speaker 2: Protein powder is the only one, really, protein powder, Vitamin C,
Speaker 2: vitamin D, you know, for people who are not getting
Speaker 2: out in the sun or using sunscreen. But that's about it.
Speaker 2: I've never been a huge supplement guy. Creatine creatine can
Speaker 2: be beneficial on a high carbohydrate diet, not the way
Speaker 2: most people think. I find that it prevents people getting fat,
Speaker 2: so fat on a high carbohydrate diet. But that's about it.
Speaker 2: I absolutely loathe pre workouts with all of the you know,
Speaker 2: basically amphetamine and a raspberry tever. Yeah, just absolutely terrible.
Speaker 1: Well, people don't understand either, by the way, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know if you know this story, you probably do,
Speaker 1: But do you know that my training partner died at
Speaker 1: the gym? They?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, you mentioned it? Yeah, I vaguely remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Mark Mark Lampard, who was a pro bodybuilder.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable for z yeah, beautiful physica.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, so he died for seventeen minutes, right,
Speaker 1: So Friday afternoon five years ago. I think it was
Speaker 1: the seventeenth of October, So the anniversary has just passed.
Speaker 1: His fine, now, everybody only he was but literally five
Speaker 1: minutes past five on a Friday afternoon, he went off
Speaker 1: line dead cardiac arrest and was gone, fucking gone for
Speaker 1: until twenty two minutes past five.
Speaker 2: And really shit, and it's minutes I come back from
Speaker 2: seventeen minutes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, very few people come back, and also very few
Speaker 1: people come back without significant brain brain issues, brain damage. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he was gone. He was literally dead for
Speaker 1: seventeen minutes. But this is just my theory everyone, And
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say which brand, but my theory
Speaker 1: is because he had nothing wrong with his heart, nothing
Speaker 1: wrong with all that. Let for one of a more
Speaker 1: technical term, plumbing of his heart, all these arteries and veins,
Speaker 1: and they ordered everything fine, right, no degeneration, no arteriosclerosis,
Speaker 1: no atherosclerosis, no reason in inverted commas to have a heart. Well,
Speaker 1: he didn't have a heart attack. He had a cardiac arrest.
Speaker 1: Now the day that he had that, he was out
Speaker 1: all day working in the heat. I think he was dehydrated.
Speaker 1: He was down at Lawn. He drove two and a
Speaker 1: half hours back from Lorn to the gym. He came
Speaker 1: straight from LRN to Lawn as a place to everyone,
Speaker 1: not the grass out in the front of your house,
Speaker 1: but l O r N. It's a coastal town. He
Speaker 1: was down there, drove back, dehydrated. He drove he drank
Speaker 1: something like two or three I won't say which brand,
Speaker 1: but caffeine drinks, probably the equivalent of eighteen or twelve
Speaker 1: coffee yeh, fucking whatever. And then he came to the
Speaker 1: gym and had some pre workout.
Speaker 2: Now, oh Jesus, yeah right.
Speaker 1: So he's probably got the equivalent of twelve fifteen coffees
Speaker 1: on board. He's dehydrated, So if you're dehydrated, you've got
Speaker 1: less blood volume. Your blood is thicker, so if viscosity increases,
Speaker 1: all this shit happens. And then he did twenty chins
Speaker 1: literally two zero chins and held his breath for every rep,
Speaker 1: and then he died or no fucking shock that he died, right,
Speaker 1: still he died, but yeah, yeah, he died. They died.
Speaker 1: I have an absolute fucking passionate dislike for pre workout
Speaker 1: because apart from the fact that there's just a central
Speaker 1: nervous system stimulant that puts an incredibly unnecessary load on
Speaker 1: your cardiovascular system, and kids are drinking it like it's water, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, not only that, then they're then they're just
Speaker 1: cranking out cortisole and adrenaline and not in a good way,
Speaker 1: and they're they're predisposing themselves to issues down the track,
Speaker 1: you know, and so bad.
Speaker 2: I just find it completely the opposite of to train effectively.
Speaker 2: You need to be focused. That's not focus, it's just
Speaker 2: pure panic. You just become you know, it's just manic panic.
Speaker 2: And if you're you know, if you're doing the last
Speaker 2: rep of any kind of pressing movement, it takes a
Speaker 2: period of time and it's like you're pushing with everything
Speaker 2: you've got, Like on the last rep of a squad,
Speaker 2: which we call an eight minute rep because you know,
Speaker 2: you die of brain death from lack of oxygen doing
Speaker 2: that last rep. That's just so slow. When you're totally
Speaker 2: off your head on these stimulants, that three seconds of
Speaker 2: actual time that a very very hard rep might take
Speaker 2: to grind all the way to the top feels like
Speaker 2: thirty minutes. You quit within a micro second of putting
Speaker 2: the effort in and just go, oh, I missed and
Speaker 2: I was trying, you know, it felt like you were
Speaker 2: trying for thirty second. You weren't trying for a third
Speaker 2: of a second. Because the brain's all scattery. And I've
Speaker 2: seen that many people they just miss their performances because
Speaker 2: they're so buzzy and wide and it's the wrong state
Speaker 2: of mind to be in for a properly intense workout.
Speaker 2: If you want to go for a run, probably a
Speaker 2: you know, great thing. Yeah, you're you're energized, and you
Speaker 2: just even then, probably you run too fast at the
Speaker 2: start and you tie yourself out too soon. It's it
Speaker 2: doesn't contribute to performance like I think people believe that
Speaker 2: it does.
Speaker 1: I agree, mate. If people want to find you or
Speaker 1: follow you, or connect with you or learn about your app,
Speaker 1: how do they get involved?
Speaker 2: If you search? Damon, hey, how you'll you'll find me everywhere?
Speaker 2: Not that active on the socials lately. Struggling with that
Speaker 2: a bit. But yeah, your.
Speaker 1: Last post, your last post on Instagram was twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: To say that you're not that active lately is like
Speaker 1: fucking saying I never.
Speaker 2: Instagram never never grabbed me, just like you know, Snapchat
Speaker 2: or anything else. It's just I don't know, it just
Speaker 2: never worked for me.
Speaker 1: So you're doing all right.
Speaker 2: I'm getting by anyway, So.
Speaker 1: Mate, I appreciate you. Will chat off here in a moment,
Speaker 1: but for the time being, thank you for this, Thanks
Speaker 1: for hanging out on the you project. Appreciate you. I'm
Speaker 1: glad you're doing great, so fucking fascinating to hear about
Speaker 1: your story, and good luck with everything moving forward man.
Speaker 2: Thanks mate, appreciate it.