Jon Mayo: 0:08
Well, howdy-dowdy everyone, welcome back to Be Relentless. Today’s episode is a special one to me because I absolutely love getting to sit down with someone again for the second, third or fourth time, as opposed to just the one and done conversations that typically happen. And today’s guest is Nick Hurf, who I last sat down with on episode 39, attainment and Attunement, back in November of 2021. So some time has lapsed since then and a lot of life has happened, and our conversation today involves us diving back into everything that’s changed over the last couple years, exploring parenthood through the lens of just becoming a father, and adventure racing, which he’s now number one in the country on, as well as his passion of watching, coaching and teaching as a sports director at the university he serves at and the business he started, apex Athletic Training. So it’s a fun filled, topic dense conversation in which we explore so many of the tools and mindsets that we often talk about and return to again and again, but in the light of how he’s living them and applying them in his own life and how it’s helping him to navigate a season of loss he’s currently traversing and working to build a future that is bright, life filled and exciting as he continues forward, and the thought to prepare us as we transition to the conversation is the quote that we’re rather fond of here at the ULA by Victor Frankel, which is between every action and reaction is a gap, and in that gap is our freedom and power to choose. So, without further ado, let’s jump on in. So what have you been up to? Your number one in racing? You’ve had your brand new daddy and that’s weird to say dad, yeah a bunch of great stuff, yeah yeah, yeah, juniper is our daughter.

Nick Hurff: 2:15
She’s super healthy, which is awesome. I got to spend like three weeks with her, which is great. My wife and I are going through a divorce. Unfortunately, she filed recently, so dealing with all that kind of stuff, but it was like we’d been counseling for a long time and she made the decision but so it wasn’t a complete shock. But, yeah, my daughter’s awesome, so working kind of through that. But outside of that, everything else is going really well, with all my coaching stuff, the university and my racing and just in general, mental health is pretty good, you know, given everything. So, like overall, life’s pretty good. Stay positive.

Jon Mayo: 2:56
And, of course, if there’s anything that you want to stay away from as we continue, we can continue. I’ll just follow your lead and veering away from stuff, but yeah sounds good. But what are you doing, like going through some of the hard things in addition to all the good, right Like? I’d love to hear more about your climb to number one in adventure racing and how your business is doing and your reflections on being a dad and how that’s changed things for you. And especially, I’d love to hear how you’re managing because I think it’s likely very intentional to keep your mental health at a place where you can say with a smile that’s pretty good despite yeah, yeah we can talk about all that stuff.

Nick Hurff: 3:37
I’ll naturally just omit some details from the divorce kind of a thing, but we can definitely talk like, yeah, that’s happening and all the mental health ways to try to stay positive and all. I think that’s good yeah.

Jon Mayo: 3:49
Cool. Well, I mean, we’ve one things we’ve been recording from the start and feel we’re already a good flow. So typically Brandon will pick a starting point and may have already happened, but it’s like it’s. I love it because it’s like very relaxing and it’s like, oh, we’re just chatting. Yes, precisely, we’re just catching up since the two years since we spoke and so we’re good to go and we’re having fun. Already we’re already in the dance. So where do you want to start? And like in all the things from we’ve already talked about season kind of overlay things, but like what is most foremost on your mind currently with the challenges and games you’re in?

Nick Hurff: 4:27
Yeah, so I was curious what’s going on with you. With any new things going on with you, oh?

Jon Mayo: 4:33
yeah, sure, so there’s a lot going on. New on our end With essentially it. We were very deliberate in setting up a much larger foundation that would align with our strategy and getting the business launched, which also worked to support a number of personal things between Kirk and myself and like he was being medically retired from the army, he was so walking through that. He walked through a pretty nasty divorce when we were starting to build the business. He’s happily remarried now to a wonderful woman. They’re inviting their first child into the world in the next couple months. So it’s like him doing that, moving from Europe, everything so like walking through those things with him and then also dealing with third parties. It took us a while, but we used that time. I was able to write and finish my book and publish that. The show’s grown and now everything’s being offered through a company called ULA Universe, which is our organization, with the goal of, as I mentioned earlier, helping people lead better lives, create value and build a brighter future, and we do that through a number of ways, like CC. Stamina is our performance energy supplement that we designed because it’s what we wish we had when we were serving and it’s in line with what we’re comfortable taking and everything like that. If you’re caffeine sensitive or adverse, it has a moderate dose, like two cups of coffee, which we’re talking about micro dosing and everything with that. But we want to put control in the person so they could determine exactly what they needed and then make it hyper portable, which is where that go pack I gave you comes in, so that you can slip it in a lightweight pack whatever circumstance Running vest or anything. Yeah, precisely, man. So it’s like that was like the first product that we realized we could really tackle and go for. And then I wrote the book. We have this podcast. Things have been really good and, like favors, been working for us in that our team we just welcomed our sixth team member yesterday Brandon was the first outside of Kirk and us joining as the podcast producer and we were able to welcome a bookkeeper yesterday. So it’s like the team’s growing and, yeah, the work and impacts growing. And then the other cool thing is what actually caused me to reach back out to you last. I think I reached out to you, yeah, this last week to send you another link as we launched the allies initiative, which is where we’re working, and our affiliate initiative. So the difference is that affiliates are like I’m an athlete or an influencer, I kind of have my solo thing and I want to rep the brand right Like traditional. And then the allies element is for like minded organizations who are pursuing ideals, purpose and significance to stand together and get to be like yeah, we agree, we want to build this type of future, want people to exercise sovereignty over their lives, we want people to be individually free. We love this idea, so that’s what we’re doing in our own organizations. So let’s come together and celebrate that right. And that opens up exposure and collaboration opportunities and at the end of the day, it can also have just the advertising effects and the affiliate benefits of making an income stream right. So, yeah, build a community Exactly. And the last thing, because it’s kind of thorough, but man, it’s exciting, like, it’s so much fun. We just welcomed our community growth director for initiative called the forge, and just over 200 days ago I started a group. There’s nine of us now and we call it the forge and each person essentially that’s in it like a sentiment invitation, and then they’re like yes or no, and the idea is like can we become the best version of ourselves possible as men right and how we do that is we have daily community together by contributing a vote of sovereignty over ourselves. And that vote I chose to be an active physical training because we’re physical bodies. If we do something, even 100 pushups, right With that day, no matter how much of a loss of it is. We’ve chosen to say no, I’m going to exercise control over myself, do something that verifies that I’m still in control of at least this response and vote towards being better tomorrow. And that premise has allowed a fun like okay, did you contribute today or not? Element. And then the conversations have rained, relations, like everything. You name it. It’s highly vulnerable, highly candid, sometimes kinetic conversation, but like we press into the emotional response, the mental response, physical response, how do we evolve? Right? And if you don’t contribute, you get excommunicated immediately.

Nick Hurff: 9:26
That’s awesome.

Jon Mayo: 9:27
Yeah, dude, and yeah. So, like, if you don’t contribute, the next morning I check and it’s like, all right, you’re done, and then you can earn your way back in and be subject to a vote for reentry, which is all. Just, it makes it fun Because, like, yeah, like I respect these guys, I want to be part of this. So, like you do this grueling four hour training session, like the last guy who had to earn his way back in did 300 waymakers, which is? Are you familiar with the man maker complex with dumbbells? Okay, Okay. Yeah, so the only difference is right, you do a burpee, but when you’re in the pushup position you do a pushup row. Once pushup row, the other side, pushup up to a like a clean it, squat it, press it and that’s one, okay so yeah. So he did 300 and shared and it took like three and a half hours and he shared the journey along the lanes like, and it was done. I was like all right time to vote. He’s like Jesus, like I’d really like the vote to go well and it did. But it’s just this fun opportunity because there’s business owners, darren Terry. He’s an ultra athlete as well. He does ultra marathons and he’s currently training to beat the speed record on the mantu incline in the Guinness world record for pull ups in a minute. So he’s just a lot. Yeah, he’s a savage and he’s run. He won the black toe run, Okay. Okay, I thought you may have an idea of that, since you’re in the ultra world though Colorado run right, I think it’s in Kentucky.

Nick Hurff: 11:01
Okay, I was thinking of something else.

Jon Mayo: 11:02
I texted you. I think we mentioned Leadville earlier, which he’s up there training right now, but yeah, in here. So they had the four, just this group of dudes who are working to be better and have candid conversation, explore and do that, but walk in community. And there’s about five of us from the original group and it’s now at nine and we’ve had four or five ex communications and. But what’s been really cool is how it’s been changing, like really aiding us to strive for more. Because even on like the low days, it’s like, okay, maybe I’ll just do the 100 push ups or maybe I don’t want to be as attentive to my kid as, or something right. And then you end up seeing someone contribute, like doing push ups with their kid on their back, right, and because that’s what their priorities are that day, and you’re just like, okay, I can do better. And so it’s starting to create, like that, accountability, yeah, accountability, and you don’t want to let the team down. Right, when you’re in a high performing unit or team, it calls forth more of you. Because you’re like, okay, I want to be successful, I want to win, but like I also don’t want to let my, my brother’s, down. You know, I don’t want to be the anchor that they’re pulling along. So it has this like cool thing and he’s going to help scale that and bring that to multiple people to start their own forges and we’re going to have that whole element and then, like, have the opportunity to have times together as well. So pretty excited to launch that here in the next 30 to 60 days. But that’s awesome. That sounds great. Yeah, if you’re interested, let me know and I’ll make sure you’re on the shortlist to learn about it. Yeah, definitely, I’m in Done. So that was a lot, man. That was a big update. But what do you think?

Nick Hurff: 12:36
That’s cool. It was great. Yeah, I love the. I love the community aspect of helping each other to become better. I think that’s awesome and the growth, the vision you have and the growth you have and the impact it’s going to have on people is going to be awesome. So I think it’s great. Yeah, thank you.

Jon Mayo: 12:59
Well, just to allow a little bit of context, because I really I’m like there’s so many cool things happening with you and some pretty painful challenges. I’m like very excited to hear kind of like how the last, how your climb went the last two years in adventure racing. If you could kind of restate what that is In like, yeah, I’m just, I’m over the moon for you, man. Congrats on being number one. Was it nation From the nation?

Nick Hurff: 13:26
Yeah, it’s power ranking. So they’ll take how you, they’ll take the results that you do and they have an equation for how many people raced in the race, how long was the duration of the race and then what did you rank. And then they’ll take I think five or six races per year. They’ll max it out at, take your highest results through them and calculate out into some kind of points. And yeah, I popped out number one, which is cool. There’s definitely people on the list I think are stronger races than racers than me, but just the way the equation worked and all those pretty cool. So, yeah, that’s for USARA, individual power ranking. So United States Adventure Racing Association. And then adventure racing is a ultra endurance sport that involves mountain biking, paddling and kind of trekking, slash running, and it’s all orienteering based. So you have a map and a bunch of points and you essentially do huge orienteering courses. The races I do generally last from anywhere from eight hours to five, six days in length. So I did a, yeah, I did races. So, like in May June, for example, I had a 50 hour race in Shenandoah. I was on a four person team. We took first we, I then did a five, five or six day race in British Columbia. We finished in four and a half days, so 108 hours. I was on a four person co-ed team there. We took six, then I had a took second at a 12 hour race in around the Knoxville area and then I took second at a 30 hour race in Northern Pennsylvania, kind of near the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania Gorge area, which is awesome and so, yeah, british Columbia, pennsylvania, all the areas are just super awesome. You get some real remote places and rugged terrain and I just love it. It’s awesome.

Jon Mayo: 15:19
So for that, and forgive me for not remembering, but I think it’s also cool because it’s been so long since we recorded Adventure racing isn’t one of the more popularly known adventures that you participated in, right, like people think Cam Haynes or Goggins for ultra marathons, but like it’s, this is essentially a triathlon event for max distance in uncharted territory, right, correct Yep, which is epic.

Nick Hurff: 15:47
On your three.

Jon Mayo: 15:48
Yeah, man. And so, like on the eight, 12 hours I already know those are, you’re just, those are more like the sprints, the sprint equivalents of them. When you’re looking at a five day race, do you just take like an eight, two, three, like a 90 minute cycle here, two, three hour cycle there of rest, or do you just push the whole time and kind of keep each other going Like how’s the team element come in?

Nick Hurff: 16:09
Yeah, so sleep strategy is huge and there’s variations in there, which is pretty neat. So when we were up there, one team, for example, they slept like an hour and a half over like four days and they were zombies for us. We slept, we did three hour cycles and we slept a little too much. We should have done two three hour cycles, maybe a 20 minute nap in the last like 30 hours. We did three three hour cycles and that was a little too much. We could have saved time. But yeah, generally most people do an hour and a half three hour cycle just because of the, you know, circadian cycle not really the REM cycle, yeah, but even getting a 20 minute power nap if you’re feeling groggy or tired is huge, especially when you hit kind of you have the S wave and C wave cycles and everything, and when you hit that like three AM to five AM window and you start to drone a bit, there’s times for that, especially the dangerous parts on the bike. Yeah, because you’re moving so fast, yeah, you’re moving faster, the risk of danger is high. One of the racers, like his teammate, woke him up while he was on the bike because he started to fall asleep not on my team, another team, and then the paddle is less dangerous, but very sleepy when you’re. We were middle of the night on a river. The river was flooded and it went down in level. So it was normally like 30 cubic feet per second flow rate and like when the race started, it was at like 300. And it eventually, by the time we got to that area, like two, three days later, it had reduced down but there was tons of just logs and trees, just dozens and dozens and dozens of trees all over in strainers and it was pretty dangerous. But it started to go slower towards the end so it got very less dangerous. But when it calmed down and you’re just in the headlight and you can’t really see much in your paddling, you start to drone out and get tired. So anyway, 20 minute maps will really pick you back up quick.

Jon Mayo: 18:06
Yeah, I understand the rhythm for like the 90 minutes right, for the half of the REM cycle Cycles in. You essentially can lift up in a much lighter sleep. I’ve heard quite a bit of data on like the 15 to 25 minute catnaps right, but it still doesn’t make sense to me mentally on how that works, to do such a supercharge. But if you do 30 to 45, you’re shot. I understand, because then you’re sinking into REM, but I don’t know the magic behind the 15, 20 minute cycles.

Nick Hurff: 18:36
Yeah, I’m not too sure either. I know it’s. You get some rest in there and then you bounce back. I think it has to do just. My understanding is you build a bunch of like metabolites building up in your brain as you’re awake, so like the denocene and all those other things build up which drives a sleep drive, and I think even in those like 20 minutes you can dump some stuff and not be so deep in that you can’t like restart the brain. That’s my unscientific, layman’s terms of what I think happens.

Jon Mayo: 19:05
Well, it’s better than nothing and gets the ball rolling. There’s Andy Huberman to go way deeper. So we have we have him in Google.

Nick Hurff: 19:12
Yeah, yes. And then Matthew Walker’s why we Sleep is great as well.

Jon Mayo: 19:18
Yeah, I’ve heard enough about that. I think it’s time I read it, yeah it’s a simple read.

Nick Hurff: 19:23
You can just have it next to your nightstand or whatever and just read five pages a night. There are little sections you can read, so you don’t have to read it all through.

Jon Mayo: 19:32
This would be an ironic thing, but does it help put you to sleep also beyond just the simple act of reading a paper?

Nick Hurff: 19:37
Yeah, I believe his. His introduction ended with something like and if you fall asleep reading this embed at night, that’s okay.

Jon Mayo: 19:45
He’s like, please do. That’s amazing. So the team element then comes in. You guys are just both like a camaraderie and a safety point. Then Is that like the primary reason why they have teams versus just solo events on the event racing or Like?

Nick Hurff: 20:01
why is it not just?

Jon Mayo: 20:03
yeah, so switching back to the adventure racing right. So we just worked through the rest cycles that you guys did and how that’s a constant like improvement thing. Right, Three hours was too much per buy three, but you described how you do two rest cycles and then 20 minute nap. But why are there like I imagine the eight hour event was probably so versus team? Is that the case, or are they always team events?

Nick Hurff: 20:26
you can do the At some point in multi-day length. A lot of race directors will not allow solo racers and Everything else you can do solo or teams. So yeah, the eight hour, the eight hour and the 12 hour I did solo. I’ve done up to the 30 hour. I did solo as well. I wound up kind of teaming up with a guy partway through in the night because the terrain was very, very Wet, sketchy and pretty dangerous. But in general you can do solos and there’s also a lot of teams do so in a single race. You may have Multiple one to four person teams all over the course and they’ll typically do the overall. So like, the rankings I gave you are just overall rankings but then also do like category ones to like you’ll see some more triathlon and stuff.

Jon Mayo: 21:16
Okay, okay. So it’s really Not. It’s it’s really pick how you want to engage in it and then race the clock against yourself. So it’s really like, can I beat myself? And then at the end you see calculations that kind of give you a fun metric compared to everyone else in Different current places. Okay, yeah, that’s awesome, that’s super cool. I remember you were like jazzed last time we talked about a specific mountain biking segment. That just stands out my mind like that there had been a race that you had recently done and you just were over the moon about this like extraordinary, extraordinary distance you did on your mountain bike. So I was like curious, yeah, how it’s evolved.

Nick Hurff: 21:56
Yeah, it’s cool. Just you can go further and further, is what it. You know. Yeah, keep pushing and pushing it further and further, and then it goes further and further. So now it’s like what I did before is not nearly as impressive to me personally is what I can do now.

Jon Mayo: 22:09
So, that’s, that’s the gift of continuous improvement. Right, and just driving for that is. It doesn’t like cat. I think it catches up in cycles, at least for myself I’ll. I’ll be working at something and just doesn’t feel like much, and then all of a sudden I’ll get like this Snapshot of looking backwards and see you kind of in a bigger picture. I’m like, oh my goodness, this is a huge job. But you know, I don’t always see it until those moments, so it’s like periodic.

Nick Hurff: 22:35
Exactly, yeah. And the other thing is, when you see where other people are at, you can be like, oh man, that’s awesome, I can definitely get there. You know, on the 50 hour as with we’re a four person team there’s a guy Jesse he’s was a monster on the bike. He literally towed a guy up multiple mountains. You know what I mean is wild, his strength, and it was just talking about his training, what he does, and it’s like I need to get there now, like new level is set that I didn’t realize was there, like I can get there. And Then I was racing with John Bergman. I don’t know if you know him. He won best ranger with Mike Rose one of the years, but him and I race frequently together. Yeah, we raise frequently together and he’s just a monster or ultra endurance guy. Running is his big strong suit and it’s awesome just to see where he’s at and just describe for that too. So definitely, yeah, looking at. I think the healthy way to look at other, the healthy way to compare yourself with other people, is to look at what’s the potentials that you can reach to and what are they doing there and how can you get there. You know what I mean, so it’s having respect for the process that they put into it and using that as motivation or reflection and evaluation Order to be there. You know what I mean. If you look at when you get jealous, that’s usually unhealthy and that’s usually mature, because you’re not respecting what they’ve done for it. And sometimes you look at where other people are and you see the sacrifice it takes to get there and you realize it’s not in accordance with, kind of like, your values. You know it’s like no, I can, I might be able to get there and when I could push to get there, but maybe it’s not worth the time dedication because I’d rather allocate it to family or this or that or the other.

Jon Mayo: 24:15
So well, I love, I love how you just described that, because the there’s a couple cool elements there that would be true in about for a while. So the first one is the time allocation. Right, you see, something like I don’t think this aligns with my values. I’m not willing to advocate like to allocate the time to it, versus I don’t have the time right. So already, that like radical responsibility element is very true and I’ve not heard it. So there’s a lot of discussion around. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday as opposed to someone else, right, because, especially when you’re starting the journey of Something, it may and, depending on where your mental state is like, if you’re starting the personal development journey of Creating like discipline and strength, right, it may be too much at that point in the game To do the what I’d say, the more mature analysis you just described, right, I’m like, okay, how’s this, this person’s here, how did they get there? What was the process? Respecting that work and what they did and seeing what you can glean from it to apply in your own pursuit, right, exactly, which is beautiful. And I think that until that maturity, when that perspective can be nurtured, that’s where I just now see it as like a one-two step, but until you can do that, you can just focus on okay, did I do better today than yesterday? And If I take this action will help me do better today than I did yesterday, and that kind of helps build that confidence To the point where you can see someone and be like wow, instead of writing it off as they have some gift, saying how did they do it and what can I learn from that? That’s just beautiful.

Nick Hurff: 25:49
Yeah, and that’s a good mental framework you brought up as well about comparing yourself to the previous day or your previous versions, which is awesome, and I think that’s where, when you can Redo so I’m thinking more physical right now and the mental is intertwined with it, but performance wise, if you retest on something.

Jon Mayo: 26:08
Mm-hmm.

Nick Hurff: 26:08
That’s great, right. So, like you know, the mountain Generally isn’t changing too much. If you go back to that same mountain and do the same thing, you can see how much easier it is or how much better it is, and that provides that perspective and motivation to go forward to. Yeah, in general, as long as it’s a healthy, positive mindset you have, I think that’s the best you know. Whatever the framework is, is a good way to go about it.

Jon Mayo: 26:32
Yeah, absolutely, since since we last spoke, I’ve oh man, time is so blurred, I think I was doing a ton of 5k’s back in November of 21 still.

Nick Hurff: 26:45
Yeah, yeah yeah, so.

Jon Mayo: 26:47
I’ve K today or something, I think yeah 5k day in a lift and some other things and that journey continued really beautifully. But now I’m Obsessed and fanatically loving Brazilian Jiu Jitsu no Gi, like submission grappling, and have been doing that for like the last 18 months to two years now and yeah, just over 18 months. And, dude, it’s been a gift because there’s a couple guys, one of them actually not because of this, but I think it did have some level of a factor. He ended up becoming a country neighbor to me. He like jumped from the city. They wanted land. We kind of Encouraged that heavily right, and now he lives eight minutes down a country road. So we trained three, four times a week. This morning I was hosting I call him it’s the iron wrench murder club. So we just Group of guys come over at 530 in the morning and do Jiu Jitsu. It’s epic, and especially in the winter. Like in the summer it’s sunshine, the birds are singing, it’s beautiful, we’ll like pull the mats out to the woodmine. But in the winter it’s like you’re cutting through a storm and you see this red glow and you walk in and there’s like death metal screeching or or like Taylor Swift is playing yeah, it’s, it’s one of the two and you’re like it’s five, five, five thirty in the morning. Sometimes we’ll start at forge thirty, right just to make it suckier. It’s like 20 degrees out, 10 degrees out, howling snow, and just walk in and you just like hear a body crunch against the ground. You’re like, oh, this is how the weekend will start. You know that was a. I’ve become obsessed with that and the reason I share that now is because talking about going back to the same mountain or going back to the same thing, right that the response loop, the feedback loop, is so short in a combat sport, because you can go like from week to week and train with someone say, they only shut, you only get a run into them every week, like I will Think about the roles I will end up dreaming subconscious, like they go into my subconscious when I just get destroyed, and I’ll end up like lucid dreaming about and just on repeat for a night or two until I understand the thing. And then the next week I’ll go and say, okay, did I actually understand the fix? And immediately I find out like either I’m able to beat the progression that beat me or I get broke off again and I go back and but it’s like able to be condensed down to the next day or the next week or sometimes even the next Rule, and there’s so much power and continuing to throw yourself against something that’s better than you or like indomitable, such as a mountain, right like that mountain’s not going to where, so you can throw yourself against it till you die and it’ll continue to stand. And yeah, seeing how you measure against that thing over and over and over again is it’s beautiful. I guess you can simulate that even with a bar, but it’s, it’s just so fun.

Nick Hurff: 29:37
So exactly that’s awesome, I get 40, yeah, 40.

Jon Mayo: 29:43
Yeah, man, we have like a Lot of cool, like buzzy words, you know, like yeah, you’re naming conventions are on point. Yeah, thanks, brother. Thank you, that’s awesome, yeah, but you got a forge forward and be relentless and create waymakers. but it’s like you could say it’s cheesy and I accept that, but it’s also just badass and awesome right it’s especially when you’re living it like when you have someone who Two years ago was sleeping off hangover and instead you’re laughing because of how shitty it is outside and you’re about to try To kill each other for two hours right, it’s like and and then you get home in the sun it’s just rising. You’re like, okay, this is actually kind of fun, this is like incredibly cool.

Nick Hurff: 30:26
Exactly. Yeah, it’s like 4 am In the middle of the night and you’re in, like you know, middle of nowhere out in the country, somewhere on like back roads and different things, and it’s just like what are you, what am I doing right now, like this is pretty cool, yeah like do you have those moments where you’re doing it and at the same time you’re like this is like so wild.

Jon Mayo: 30:46
Do you ever just start laughing when you’re doing it? Oh, yeah definitely.

Nick Hurff: 30:52
Yeah, humor is awesome. And then sometimes you get those just like sleep deprived humor as too. But um, but you know the sleep deprivation we’ve been. The more sleep, the more at least in my experience. The more time you spend in a sleep deprived state, the better you get at functioning in this, yes, pride state. But yeah, sometimes you get those like I Love the. The litmus is when you and somebody and another person are trying to communicate something and you hear what they’re saying but it doesn’t make sense in your brain what they’re saying and you’re trying to both talk and there’s just like words are going back and forth but nobody understands it’s happening. That’s when it’s like, okay, we need to, we need to take a map right now. We had that on. Yeah, what have been the last night on that race, so it would have been like night three or whatever, for I don’t remember. And, yeah, we came off. It was like three or four am. We just came off a big river up in British Columbia and it was. We were freezing because the water was just freezing. We had dry suits on and all, but if you don’t have the layers on underneath, you’re cold. So we come out and we’re packing up all the gear and stuff. One of the guys had to go warm up because he was just like you know, like a little hypothermic but super sleep deprived. You get everything set and two team members wanted to push through the next bike leg and get up to. Essentially what we’re doing was we’re in this super low valley along the river and we’re heading up I don’t know like 8,000, 9,000 feet to do this alpine lodge, and then hitting an alpine track was the next thing and we had to bring Snow shoes and stuff. And so they wanted to start that bike and go right away, and Myself and the other team may Disagreed because we had had we both had a lot more race experience and just a lot more sleep deprived experience. We could see where we were and he was the captain, so he listened to all sides and then made the decision like we’re staying, but we’re having that miscommunication issue, which is pretty funny. It’s just like, yeah, like words are not being comprehended on either side and we’re just like blabbing. Essentially, yeah, I love that part. And then the emotion starts to mix in there too and it’s just like yeah, all, right now I’m what.

Jon Mayo: 33:04
What I love is a, the more we like. So I’m thinking about two things and actively being torn in half between both ideas as we’re talking, which is funny. That’s why I’m like keep going quiet. So the first idea is we are so adaptive, right, you’re talking about like the more sleep deprived you are, the better you are at it, the yeah. The same is true of like I cannot think of an activity that that’s not a good thing. Think of an activity that that’s not the case. And even like drinking, because I took all of 22 off, totally. You know, like Dude, I hung out with a buddy I served with about I Just come off a period of not drinking. My dream been cut way back and he was still full force at the time, like at the pace I could keep up with or push even back when I was serving, and so it was like this big reunion thing for the two of us is super exciting. So he wanted me to keep up with him and I thought I was going to die. I was, it was killing me and, yeah, I’m grateful not to have honed that. But it is wild how I Think there’s certain things that are less age-driven and more Endurance stamina. In that event, adaptive Changes right, like if you stop moving, and typically like people do less activity physically as they get older, right, for whatever reason it they may, they may prescribe to, but If someone is like, maintains near or adaptive levels of activity From when they’re 20 to their 30, 30 to the 40, 40 to their 50, we see plenty of evidence that they are oftentimes Definitely wiser, but they maintain such a level of like Vigor right physically, as opposed to if you stop for a decade and then start to pick it back up. And that can be so many different topics, but yeah, sleep deprivation is definitely one of them.

Nick Hurff: 34:58
Yeah, and there’s you mentioned the drinking too. I’ve seen the same thing like when I was in college and my lieutenant years. I was the same way. When I hit triple C I stopped drinking pretty much because I wanted to focus on fitness, stop for like two weeks and then was like I feel Amazing and so I’ll still drink a little, but it’s, like you know, very rare when I do it’s intentional and and whatnot. But yeah, and then once in a while it’s like, leaving El Paso, one of our good rock climbing friends came over with a bottle to keel it, to wish us off, and it was like that next day was rough and it’s like, yeah, like five years prior that would have been nothing. But anyway, there’s really good science behind it too. So you have it’s very common general adaptation syndrome, gas, by Sealy, who is the researcher, and he did a lot of research on on all different ways. So he started with most was done on rat populations and he did everything from muscular adaptation using soulless muscle, calf muscles for, like, how they adapt to stress, and then also he also did with toxins and poison, so like, for example, giving a low dose of a poison where they get a little sick and recover. Then you give them a lethal dose and it’s not lethal anymore, whereas previously would have been lethal and doing all kinds of things. But you can look it up online and a lot of textbooks. It’s pretty much. Yeah, it’s like the fundamental principle and exercise science. And so you know you have a stimulus and the body comes down and as long as the stimulus isn’t so great that it kills you, you’ll eventually heal, recover and come back and then, based on there’s a lot of research on the type of stimulus, the intensity, all these things and how the recovery trajectory changes. And then where’s the optimal time to train, to then elicit the next one, to grow again, versus Train too soon. You have a heel, even though you feel good, your body hasn’t adapted more. So then you’re doing a bunch of training, but it’s too frequent, so your body’s not healing and adapting enough. Or you train too infrequently and so like, if you run once every two weeks you’re probably not going to adapt right, but if you run, you know, four times a day you’re probably just going to be spinning your wheels and not go anywhere, and so it’s really neat. But yeah, it works with toxins, all different kinds of seminates, the principle of vaccines, and all that too is just tons of adaptation that can happen in the body, which is pretty cool.

Jon Mayo: 37:14
And it’s also encouraging to think Okay, it may suck, but I can adapt to it, whether it’s learning the language and that’s like really frustrating because it’s not clicking, or it’s going like a. What are all those apps like couch to 5k, right? Yeah, it’s all based upon that progressive overload and continued adaptation. Uh, yeah, so no, that’s epic man in out. Are you with the same? Are you coaching the same team since over the last few years?

Nick Hurff: 37:46
I’m coaching a bunch of teams. So I I’m the director of sports performance at over in university. So we’ve 30 NC double and intercollegiate teams and I train and oversee about 24. I think I had a full-time assistant last year but what I do is I also have student coaches as well, so I train them and then I get the actual at the actual sports team coaches. I run certification courses and everything. So I pretty much without the budget of having a staff, can get a staff and Really develop a cool program. But yeah, same same teams that I’ve been working for the last several years and the longer I’ve been here. They didn’t have a program previously. It’s just me. Every, every semester is more buying from the students, more buying from coaches and teams and everything, which is awesome. So it’s busy but very rewarding.

Jon Mayo: 38:34
Well, I understand that. What’s your vision with it, with the program that you’re drawing? Because it sounds like you maneuvered your way to be able to Set up the conditions to do this and now you’re continuing to do that. So it sounds like there’s a little bit of a strategy game here. You’re playing and what? What’s your vision?

Nick Hurff: 38:50
Yeah, I mean the vision is to have a D1 sports performance Program at the D3 level, and so the D3 level we have less funding, smaller school, but to be able to build that experience where at most of the D1 levels you have a staff, you have interns, you have, you know, volunteers, all different stuff, and so the vision is to provide the services that they would get at a much larger institution, at this school and then so that’s kind of the vision Organizationally. But then the other piece is just developing the individual student athletes, and so it’s very motivating when you see changes. So one of our football players, one of our wide receivers, he Was really skinny when I first came here this summer. Like when he left over the summer he was much bigger than he was previously and he came back and he put in the work and he just looks like a whole different person, like he was just doing Sets, a five with hundred pound dumbbells and he’s like not that big of a guy. He’s just ripped right now and, yeah, put in the work, whereas before he couldn’t even do 50s before. It’s like two years later when he’s dedicated. The other, the other teams, you see cultural changes to like Women’s ice hockey team. They’re telling me when they check somebody on the ice They’ll all yell like we left right. It’s pretty cool, yeah, it’s wild. But then you see Confidence changes. The golf coach, women’s golf coach, two of our women’s golf players are very dedicated and they both talk about they’ve added like 20 yards under their drives as they’ve been coming here and everything he said. The biggest things are mental attitude. You know when, obviously, like you know when, when you Consistently work out and you improve your fitness, your capabilities, your physique, you have more confidence, right? The confidence on the sport of golf, where it’s so mental, has been huge for them and so a lot of it. Just that the ability to help other people is Huge and so looking at like how can I help other people is kind of that motivation when things get mundane sometimes You’re 10 weeks into the semester, you’ve been running the same programs for a bit and you’re seeing them adapt. When you can reflect on the changes you’re seeing and just how am I helping, who can I help today? That’s kind of that motivation to keep you going, which is cool.

Jon Mayo: 41:08
Now that’s excellent. So there there’s a I’m hearing a huge continuation of service and helping others, right, yeah, as as helping drive the day-to-day grind and them and combat the monotony. Is there a claim to fame, like the knicker flavor or brand that is imbued inside? Because there’s some like fitness, just like with dieting and these other things, there’s a million ways to slice the pie right, and there’s like a preponderance of evidence that better supports certain Approaches than others, but even those are still hypotheses, right. So it’s like largely, and Sometimes they’re pretty dang true, but there’s still the air that we could learn something that changes it. So, like, with that and having just this giant multi-tool to pull from this menu, what? What makes your program yours, you know?

Nick Hurff: 42:01
Yeah, I would say a couple things. Compared to the other D3 programs I’ve seen and observed we do some things that are pretty unique and maybe there’s other schools that do things similar. One thing is just the organization piece. So we go to scheduling. A lot of schools will just schedule teams for time blocks, right, and they kind of rack and stack who they want where. What I do is I pull from the registrar’s office all of the student athlete schedules, my work study and I sort and filter all the student athletes and I can filter in an Excel by day of the week, by Hour, and figure out what percentages of teams can make where and then the outliers we schedule at other times so we can really maximize throughput and Around all the schedules and the team practices and everything so we can get a higher volume of students through training at a time, which helps right. Another thing that we do for the actual physical training is we also we do weight room stuff. We also do speed agility conditioning things. I do nutrition work. So we have nutrition packets built out where we’ll calculate out the caloric need and estimate it and give them packets that have everything from Break it down into. We take this off of the Philadelphia Eagles. Something they did in the past was they broke it down by the function of the food, not the type of food. So it’s protect, fuel, build. Protect is everything from healthy fats to fruits and vegetables with any oxidants and polyphenols and how they eliminate Lot of different free radicals in the body and stuff. But and the fiber and all that. But we break it down simple and then as pictures serving sizes all that. So we kind of go above and beyond there. For actual training itself, the way that I break it down is I generally do two days of lifting per week. In the off season for football We’ll do three days of lifting and then outside of that they have the ability to do speed, agility, conditioning stuff, which is pretty neat too. It’s. We make a holistic program and then when we break down for most athletes we have the two days a week We’ll do block Periodization. So we’ll target certain adaptations for about a month at a time and sometimes a roll two months and so because I only have athletes 16 week semesters and then they’re gone, I’ll program them whether when they’re gone remotely, however, during those 16 weeks. Really, I only focus on hypertrophy and Strength and I do power intermixed in both of them. And so what we’ll do is we’ll do a block. That’s really a heavy day or hypertrophy days of strength or hypertrophy, and the other day is just explosive and accessory work. Accessory will do injury prevention, but what we’re doing is when you break out power, which is really the main adaptation for most of our sports. You’re looking at If you were to chart for some velocity On like a x y axis. Yeah, you have an inverse relationship, right. So the heavier the weight, the less Speed I move it with, right, and then the more, the more Light the weight is, the faster I can go. Well, powers around the middle of both. So to maximize power you need to move moderate weight Explosively and that’s really cleans and things come in. But you can do that in a variety of ways. So I, some athletes, I’ll do cleans. Most of them I don’t, because if you look at a clean, you’re really. I can do the same motion with a barbell on your back with 40% of one rep max. I can have you go slow down, explode up while I’m recruiting the same Weight with the same muscles at the same velocity, and it’s so simple up here. So what we do is when we do our heavy days, in our heavier hypertrophy days, in our explosive days, we’re working on that force production side and the velocity side, and so we’re extending that curve and we’re increasing power on the field, which is cool, and so that’s kind of the way we target that. Yeah, that’s why we target that and we don’t do a lot of Olympic lists, because I can do Variations that are much more simple. There’s not five different steps coordinating all of it. The advanced athletes I’ll do some Olympic lifts with, but, yeah, like most athletes, you can do simple things that hit all the physiological responses and we see much better adaptations very quickly, which is pretty cool.

Jon Mayo: 46:14
It’s kind of like the, the old adage I’d rather. I’d rather fight someone who’s practiced 10,000 kicks than someone who’s practiced one kick 10,000 times, like yep. But the same is true in in jiu-jitsu there’s like six really strong Places to attack from and submit someone right, kind of like six, the big six moves essentially, and it’s so tempting to go off and try hundreds of other subs and things like that. But, if you like, I’ve been refocusing this last month, working to prepare my training partner because he competes I don’t, as a very intentional decision, compete right now, but he does so like I tailor all of my roles to. How do we help him be more effective on the, on the competition mats and but like just the more focusing on this, on a few Strong, simple, foundationally straightforward moves, how much more effective and swift the, the subrate, becomes right. And it’s just another dimension of what you’re talking about ringing true for me. Because, also in training, I’m curious Do you guys, do you have your guys, do you deadlifts as one of your simple lifts, or do you prefer spots or do you do both?

Nick Hurff: 47:24
We’ll do both. Yep, so Well, if you have a strength block or even hypertrophy block, I’ll do. Yeah, I’ll do squats and deadlifts, but alternate weeks. So I’ll do squat one week, deadlift another, etc. And so you look at the strongest power lifters under, like Louis, louis Simmons, and them they would do. They would vary what exercise they do every single week and that’s just a typical conjugate style powerlifting thing. But yeah, I mean I’m recruiting for the most part the same muscles with heavy weight and I’m varying the load. And when you vary the way you do it, you see greater adaptations. Same thing with undulating Periodization. So if you vary the reps and sets week to week, you’re gonna see a greater Increase than if you do the same thing repeatedly, as long as they’re similar, right. So if you do like one week three by four, in the next week you do like Three by 20, like those are completely different things. But if you’re doing, you know, three by three one week, three by four, four by three, four by four, that’s a pretty cool way to build up to where, oh, the way that I was doing three by three, I’m not doing four by four a month later, which is cool. Yeah, that.

Jon Mayo: 48:32
I’m like a Neanderthal in this topic range compared to the depth of experience you have and over over time I’ve had. I’ve very intentionally simplified my training right to my training, very intentionally simplified my training regiment to support one Highly effective time utilization right just better return on investment and to I’ve adopted the very slow approach of and I’m at a time of needing further adaptation. So I’m just absorbing everything you’re saying, gonna experiment with a bunch of it, but I’m realizing I’m essentially plateauing at what I feel I can healthily continue to grow because I’m only Increasing by 2.5 pounds week and I’ve been doing that very intentionally. I feel like a five by five split, three by five, five by five split between dead lifts, log lifts and Hex bar lifts. Those are okay three I’ve been loving. But I think that I’m gonna vary up very Week to week different movements and have a more auxiliary injury preventing day each week, because I do three heavy days a week right now. So, okay, I’m thinking maybe going to two and doing that and then varying the movements. We’ll help maybe break this, the slowdown we’ve been experiencing.

Nick Hurff: 49:48
Yeah, and you can even Like let’s go back. I like to reference the conjugate stuff because that’s like easy for pure strength and just the method they use. Just Point some context. I would say for a lot of athletes you don’t need to use that method and it’s can be detrimental. But so you take the strongest, some the strongest people in the world who do these powerlifting. They’ll often do, they typically do a four-day break and they’ll do a heavy lower, explosive upper day off, explosive lower, heavy upper right. So they hit a heavy lower day and heavy upper day only once a week. Hmm and so with my athletes they only do one heavy day a week and on their heavy day They’ll usually hit heavy upper and heavy lower, so they’ll do like heavy squats and heavy bench or dumbbell bench or something like that, or incline and and when they do that it’s only once a week, but they get very strong Even hitting just once a week heavy on a body part, very strong and so yeah, so in general, yeah, and I don’t do conjugate with them, but in general I do know some coaches who do do it for for college athletes but just doing one heavy day a week is plenty to keep getting stronger. If you want to build muscle, then you know doing another day is good in there too. So really, two lifts a week is plenty and one heavy is good. It depends where you’re at, but you know, yeah, so, like if you were to do, let’s say, if you wanted more lifts, I would just focus on different body parts.

Jon Mayo: 51:25
Yeah, because what right now? So I train every day. Some Sundays are very light, very, very light, and then a couple of those days are like 30 minutes on the assault bike, right. So just good, really active recovery card, like cardiovascular strain kind of things, because I will, I do feel and realize I will destroy myself, other things. But yeah, the, my favorite means of training and this probably I don’t know if it has any science behind it, but by God it’s fun is we’ve created these things called combo meals where we’ll show up. We like to sip on a, an effervescent water. So that’s your soda, right? Yeah, you get a bubbly and I Don’t know why I just that’s what I have in my fridge and that’s what we drink. So we have that. But then we’ll start with like a hit, like heavy jump rope, like a weighted jump rope with Assault bike over 65 RPMs and you do 100 jumps and you do like around two, three of that, maybe some over the shoulders with the 130 pound sandbag once you’re warmer, and then a Rapid climb to working weight on whatever the the primary movement of the day is. So like, once we get the hit done, we’ll go into deads. We’ll do what the when we are right now and then, once we hit the working weight okay, you had your fries, you had your your what’s it called your appetizer, right? The teaser is done, so we jump on the mats and we’ll do five to seven minute rolls and then, as soon as the timer goes off, get up and hit a heavy like hit a lower and upward combo, so it’ll be typically like a moderate weight dumbbell press Like combination, where you’re going in, then flies type of a deal and then like deadlifts right or ring work and the hex bar, just as examples, right, and you’ll just hit the one set. No excuse for like drop weight if you can’t hold form, but just good form. One set hit that exposed that that power movement, right, and You’re already like your heart rates already jacked up and stuff. So it’s like you can feel your physiology Changing from like the flowing movements of jiu-jitsu, like the very intentional flow, to like becoming more For lack of better terms like rigid and intentional to then keep the proper stance to lift the weight, right, yeah, and and that like rapid succession shift is just so fun and we’ll do that for an hour, hour 15, and then cool off and and be done, but it has been intoxicatingly fun to train like that, but I want you to like roast it. Like what? What are you thinking when you’re hearing that man?

Nick Hurff: 54:19
The opening hit. You do hit hit circuit. How long is that for?

Jon Mayo: 54:24
Typically it’s between eight. It’s like six to 12 minutes. If we do like a quick cycle of a hundred jumps on the rope each and bike and switch, then we’re about six, seven minutes and if we do two rounds it puts us to about 12. Two to three rounds, okay, 12 to 15.

Nick Hurff: 54:41
Is that like a? Is that more like a warm-up kind of a thing? Or is that like you feel pretty tired after?

Jon Mayo: 54:48
Tired? No, but we’re panting and sweating, so like it’s, it’s a okay rapid warm-up to getting yourself already like Moist, like you’re sweating and breathing hard, okay and then okay, and then you mentioned power stuff towards the end.

Nick Hurff: 55:06
What does that look like?

Jon Mayo: 55:08
Yeah, so the power stuff is is mixed in with the rolls, so you’re do like a six-minute roll. Your rest from grappling is get up Thirst shoes on, do the deadlift and then the bench, and then another six, seven minutes on the mats and then Deadlift, bench, six, seven minutes on the mats, and we just cycle that for about 45 minutes to an hour after having done the warm-up. And, okay, we started about six months ago doing that and have been maintaining two times a week Very consistently. A few times will do three and We’ll change up the movements and do like, have fun with yoke carries or sandbag work for to just kind of keep things varied. But on, I feel, aside from the fact that I’m starting to plateau and I think it’s because I’m not, I need to like mix and squats and do a little bit of variation, because we’ve just been kind of on repeat and then adding 2.5 pounds. So I think it’s just a variation issue which I’m happy for you to challenge me on. But yeah, that’s how that mixes. So it’s just like this continuous fusion of different training styles. So you have to be like we’re very intentional in like watching each other, calling each other out If we see that we’re getting sloppy due to fatigue. Good, yeah, and early, or drop weight or change rep scheme if necessary. If it’s like man, we’re just dying, but it keeps you in this like really like third, fourth gear for the whole hour.

Nick Hurff: 56:38
Yeah, yeah. What I would say is when you do the, when you say power for the bench and deadlift, are you doing those explosively?

Jon Mayo: 56:52
Just I’d say like it’s a standard. It’s a standard pop up right, not like you’re trying to jump through it, but it’s a stand up and then a standard rep down, not bouncing it but kissing the ground, going back up. So just it’s more like even killed. Standard lift Okay, not a full out jump.

Nick Hurff: 57:10
Okay, yeah, what I would say is so, in general, if we’re looking at just building a workout, right, typically you obviously do a warm up right. So you’re making the physiology, you’re getting your body temperature up, your heart rate, respiratory rate, your priming the nervous system, then you’re kind of mobilizing all the muscles, all that stuff. So warm ups good. Then from there you typically would want to go into. If we say power is typically more in the field, is going to be more explosive, right? So like what I’ll have my athletes do is like three by three med ball slams and I would have them superset it with like dumbbell jump squats where I want them to get two to four inches off the ground so they can adjust the weight that they’re going. But so what they’re doing is controlling it down slow, exploding up, landing, controlling down, slow up and then land again right and three by three. It’s what that’s doing is a lot of the power is going to be neurological. So we want them fresh so they can fire everything as explosively as they can to get that again, a little bit of weight, but that speed throwing up From there. So you do some kind of power first. If you were going to do cleans. You would generally do your cleans first in the workout and focusing on targeting the form, right. And that’s also why to do cleans you don’t want to do more than three, four reps per set and typically you only do one to two per set because of all the delicate muscles. Once they fatigue you start to compensate and you’re likely for injury, right. So if you’re doing CrossFit stuff and you’re doing a bunch of cleans in a row, most of your professional strength conditioning coaches start to cringe a little bit with that. If you’re doing very, very lightweight, it doesn’t matter. You can do that stuff with very lightweight. But if you’re doing anything with decent weight, you want it to be for compound movements and power stuff. You want it to be to where you’re generally rested and you’re explosive as possible. So you go from warm up, power and typically you’ll go into your strength, which would be your complex barbell movements like bench squat, deadlift for example, and variations of those. Obviously inclines, dumb bells you were talking about logs, anything there. You’re going for strength, we’re going for strength, we’re targeting pretty much pure strength. So again, speed we don’t care about. What we care about is moving and controlling the weight and building on that force, velocity, xy axis. We’re really focused on that force and so there, that’s when we really would work on. If you’re doing hypertrophy muscle building, you would insert that and fluid strength and just add more reps on, essentially, and adjust the rest time. But we’re looking at about two to three minutes of rest time in between each set. When you’re doing warm upsets, building up, you can do whatever you want, but once you get to the working set, you want two to three minutes in between. If you’re going for a max out, you can go closer to five, but what that is is the. You have your Phosphogen Energy System, which is creatine phosphate. So it’s one of the three energy systems and when you do explosive stuff, like the jumps we talked about or the med ball slams, that’s what you’re using. When you’re doing strength and you’re doing only a few reps, that’s the energy system you’re using as well and that will last anywhere from about seven to 15 seconds and then it burns out and it takes about three to five minutes to replenish. So if you’re doing your explosive stuff, as long as you’re not hitting like kind of muscle failure, there you’re, you haven’t completely depleted. So two to three minutes is pretty common for the strength stuff in between. What that does is it allows you to recharge and now you’re able to hit heavier weight. So I’m hitting heavier weight, I’m getting much more volume load and I’m getting a greater hormonal response. So for strength, the hormonal response is really like testosterone that we’re looking at and for all the training you’re doing, that balances cortisol out and really helps you be more anabolic and builds that part and it really hits the neurological side. If, instead, you’re doing hypertrophy, which hypertrophy means muscle growth, what we’re looking at there is different. Right, we’re looking at 20 to 40 seconds of contraction time. Charles Poloquine from Canada, he passed away a few years ago but he trained all their Olympians into the mid 2000s and a bunch of their Olympians huge, great coach. But he would say 20 to 40 seconds in his writings and that aligns with everything else with it. But what you’re doing with hypertrophy is you’re getting you’ll hear time under tension. The contraction time includes blood flow to those muscles as long as the weight’s heavy enough, and if we include that blood flow for that amount of time, we’re getting growth hormone response, insulin growth factor, one response which then targets the muscles to grow more Separately. We’re also literally putting tension on the muscle fibers, pulling apart, and that’s where you hear about like damaging the muscle fibers so they grow better and they’ll split in different things. That’s hypertrophy, hyperplasia. So that’s what you’re looking at so generally. That would be stock next and then after that would be more of your accessory and conditioning stuff, right. So if you think about it, if I did a bunch of tricep dips and then went to bench, my bench is gonna suck, but if I do it, the reverse, like I can get that in. And the other part is when we’re getting that high heart rate for long periods of time or the hit stuff, we’re really now focused on our anaerobic energy system and that’s the heavy hand panting and all. We don’t have enough oxygen and that’s really where, if you’re tired and going through it, that’s okay, and so if you’re doing that stuff, then that’s kind of there. And so I would say if you structured it kind of more, couple of explosive things med ball slams are great, wall slams and stuff, some jumps or broad jumps and stuff up front, not enough to get tired, but take like 15 seconds in between each, then hit your core barbell type lifts with those rest times. Then I would then pack in all your other stuff you can mix together and if you wanna rotate between the mat into like dead lifts and stuff, just have them lighter and focus on the form. Everything you’re doing there is perfect because you’re mitigating risk and focusing on form. So all that other stuff you’re doing, keep the same and maybe stack those towards the end of everything. That’s awesome. That’s what I would look at.

Jon Mayo: 1:03:19
Yeah, now, that that’s great, because we humbled ourselves a lot when we started playing with this game, because I designed the work, the progression, as I described it to you, around the psychological benefits. I was thinking through kind of rapid movement to location you have to move something to gain entry. You find yourself surprised or you’re fighting, you’re doing a defense type response or offense type response, you clear that you have to move something else move again and the cycle repeats and it kind of creates this like psychological maelstrom that you just have to push through right and like the immediate things. Yeah, thank you for sharing that Cause. There’s like four things that I’ve jotted down that I’m going to adapt how we’re doing that on, but I think we’ll just make it more effective and safer based on our conversation, which is pretty epic. Who knew I was gonna? Thanks for the private consultation, dan, that’s it. Yeah, many times. Speaking of which, so not only in addition to being the director of sports, you are sponsored and you have your own company. So what? How do all three of those work and are they like lovers that don’t know each other, or do they have some synergy that helps one another?

Nick Hurff: 1:04:35
Some know about each other, some don’t.

Jon Mayo: 1:04:36
No, that’s good.

Nick Hurff: 1:04:37
Yeah, no, it’s good. I mean, at the university I have the boss I worked for, so the director of yeah, the director of athletics is awesome. His name’s Bill. He’s one of the best guys I’ve ever worked for. As long as you know, if you’re messing up he’ll hold you accountable. But as I’ve never had that issue because I’m professional and I have great results and I do well and it works well, so that’s great. And then I build it out and very effective and efficient there, and so then I’m given the freedom to, you know, do my other stuff too, which works well. And then, yeah, I have my own company so I do my own coaching, which is great. I do a lot of sports performance coaching over with all kinds of athletes power lifters through ultra endurance, everything Cause for my background. I have my master’s science exercise science. I teach at the graduate level at the university for evidence-based performance enhancement. I have my CSCS, which is a real big cert kind of in the field. It’s kind of the gold standard cert for strength and conditioning Couple other a lot of continuing ed in different courses and things like that. So, and the experience, so I can work with a variety of athletes I’ve worked with you know, Semi-Pro Rugby and soccer players through. You know I have consulted for a guy who just had the world record for the 50 Peaks, dave Ashley. I’ve raced with him for the race company. I have another guy, hunter Leninger, you can check out. He’s got a website. He’s set a bunch of FKTs and different things. He’s got real big goals. He’s 22,. He’s a stud. He was on some TV shows recently too, which is pretty cool. So I work with some high-end clients for the ultra endurance stuff, but I work with everybody and I love it. And then for the racing stuff, I’ve been working with Rev3 Endurance. So they’ve been I’ve been racing for them for about a year and a half now, which is awesome, so they’ll help cover a lot of my race fees and different things. I get access to a lot of their equipment, different stuff, and it works great. I’m getting into race directing with them too. So I’m gonna be running some events this year, which is pretty neat. And then I do coaching through them as well. So you can go to either the Rev3 Endurance page and get to me access, coaching and links, or through trainapexcom, so it’s train-apexcom Either one. Pricing is the same either way and, yeah, there’s ways to get a hold of me, but they all work well together and I build. The business part that I do is I do my coaching remote, and so what I do is video calls just like we’re on. So, depending on the package, you’ll get one to three video calls per month, 30 minutes each one-on-one, where we review all your training, build out your plans If you have busy lifestyle changes. So I work with some people work for some real busy corporate stuff where they’re traveling and changing. It’s like we sync every other week usually and we can then build out your next one two weeks, change it all around and maximize it. And so really coaching is two things. It’s that the services we offer is, one, you’re held accountable and two, it’s the most effective, efficient use of your time that molds into your lifestyle, and so that’s kind of what professional coaching does. But, yeah, that’s kind of how all of them go. So when I build it out and I do the remote, stuff works well, as I can do a video call from work. If I have a break, I can do it before work, after work and when I’m traveling for races and different things, I can do them from hotel rooms. I can always pull over on a road and stop at a Starbucks, and so it builds that flexibility into where I can offer high quality coaching in a way that molds into the lifestyle I have and allows me to do many different efforts at the same time, and so, yeah, it just kind of works well, just systems building, you know.

Jon Mayo: 1:08:20
Yeah, and that’s immediately what stood out to me when you said at the end, systems building, because you’re consistently doing that as the director of sports and you’re just making that same service essentially available to those who are interested through these other entities that you started or sponsored by, which is that’s very cool. I was curious how those were connected together. All right, I would love to hear more about the courses that you instruct on evidence-based performance enhancement, but to the layman who does not study that, what does that mean? As far as what?

Nick Hurff: 1:08:56
a course looks like, yeah, so what that course is. So, in general, if you’re gonna teach a course or learning, there’s gotta be an objective for it and why it makes sense. So what this is, this is for our masters of athletic training, master of science of athletic training. So an athletic trainer is a mix between like a physical therapist and like a first responder EMT, right. So they do everything from on the field first response to an athlete getting injured and then they help oversee their care and healing them and bringing them back and they’ll refer them out for surgeries or PT and different things. But then they do treatments and everything else. So that’s an athletic trainer. Just so we kind of can visualize what that is. What we do is athletic trainers are a lot of high schools and universities and you have sports performance and strength and conditioning is essentially the same thing. So what this course is is it introduces the athletic trainers to the whole world of professional sports performance, the concepts and how they are, because there’s a lot of differences between taking a healthy athlete and making them bigger, faster, stronger and taking an injured athlete and healing an injury right, and so there’s some similarities, right, general Adaptation Syndrome similar, but the methods that are used are very different for a lot of it, and so what we do is we enlighten them, educate them, teach them a lot of these core principles and a lot of practical application, so that way, if they don’t have strength conditioning, sports performance coaches like at a lot of high schools don’t. They’re growing more and more popular. Pennsylvania is big on it and North Carolina is very big on it, but a lot of states don’t have that. Now the athletic trainers know enough. Maybe they get a certification that can fill that role and help. But the other part is they also have an understanding of the differences and they can mold better into a collaborative environment, specifically at like university levels or even some of these high schools. They now understand that perspective and they can see what those coaches are doing and why, help out and might even be able to help run sessions and different things like that. So that’s kind of the purpose and so the way I teach it is. It’s a mix of both hands on lab work and everything from blood samples, a lactate thresholds and things like that to in the weight room safety stuff and plyometrics and all those great things and also theory of classroom based theory on how it works and programming, and we mix some nutrition coaching into it too.

Jon Mayo: 1:11:25
So it’s essentially okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So it’s in a world where even we’re joking a little bit ago there’s a million ways to skin the cat, right, what’s your flavor? You’re like, the evidence-based one, the one that has the best preponderance of data to support that it’s gonna work.

Nick Hurff: 1:11:43
Exactly, yeah, and what’s funny with that is when it comes to, like, elite level sports is where you derive things from right. So if, like, a big protein starts doing something and it works, like it slowly gets out, others start doing it and if it’s replicated elsewhere, then you know maybe it’s a one-off and it’s just like it, not actually correlated, but you see it spreading, it goes out, and then sometimes the science is behind it because they’re like, oh, why does this work? And they start trying to figure it out. But eventually you get to where, like there’s enough science and we know a lot of how the body works, that there’s certain things that if you want to elicit certain adaptations, these are the best ways to do it, which is cool. But sometimes with newer things and some of the cutting edge stuff, like the science is playing catch up, sometimes because nobody wants to reveal their secret sauce, which is cool.

Jon Mayo: 1:12:31
Yeah, it keeps it entertaining and that’s I’m familiar with when you are working with something that’s emerging and Working to allow its legitimacy to continue to grow and stand right. There’s a patience piece there and there’s also a risk piece because there has to be the humility to dear god. What if we’re wrong? Right, like what they do. So, and I was curious because in a lot of areas that are pushing the edge of understanding right, regardless of what the domain is physical fitness, supplementation, science, technology right, like we’re we’re seeing that a lot with AI right now we’re more and more people are being humble enough to say we don’t know what’s happening, but we’re trying to figure it out as quickly as you can. But, like with that, is there a good appetite in your industry to adapt? If there’s a realization that there’s a misunderstanding? Right, because typically the new thing you describe that arc, right, it’s okay. Is it being duplicated? Is it replicating itself successfully or is it a one-off? Like that makes sense, but something that maybe for the last 10 years you’ve been advocating and then you learn something like oh Dang it, this is not what we thought it was because of x, y and z. Is there an appetite to accept that, or is it typically like oh, go away. I.

Nick Hurff: 1:13:51
Think depends on the person. I would say in in the field, for the practitioners, we’re pretty open to changing. But a lot of times what we do is we Understand the background and we’re doing things that we know work and we see them working right and so often it’s oh, there’s this New thing that supposedly also works. Do I want to try it or not? And then you start trying it. You do see, with the Sports coaches, sometimes hesitancy for different things. So an example which I’ve been combating at the school Not really combating, I’ve been influencing at the school and getting a lot more buy-in are in season lifts. So a lot of times, athletes where coaches don’t want to lift in season because they’re afraid they’ll get sore. Well, at the professional level, they’ve been doing it for years and there’s great science behind it and, additionally, if you do it properly, you’ll never be sore and season from a lift because there’s specific methods you do that, eliminate it. The other part is with that is, if we double click is and go deeper is a lot of times, if they do want to lift, they’re like oh, I want to do lightweight so I’m not sore. Well, it’s like no, we want to go heavy weight because we’re doing less time under tension, less mechanical loading, less damage to the muscle fiber, so you won’t be sore. It’s more neurological, which recovers quick, and we’re gonna get a heavy. We’re gonna get a high testosterone and hormone response right. So instead we’ll do less reps over the workout and we’ll do higher weight. But we’re doing a weight that’s really at 77 5% of one rep, maxed like 80, 85, and so we’re doing it for a lot less reps than you normally would do. That wait for if you’re going for exhaustion. So they’re not tired, they’re hitting the levels they need to to maintain the strength, get the testosterone responses. But they’re listed like 20 minutes and they’re in and out, and so sometimes there’s hesitation on Not going heavy or even doing lifts in general. But it’s like if you give me one to two, even one day a week, for 20 minutes in the weight room, your athletes will stay bigger, stronger, faster through the season. Give me two days a week is ideal for about 20 to 30 minutes and It’ll be great. And the other part is Lifting before practice. So I have a lot of teams that I’ll get to lift right before practice and go out. Some teams want to do it after and that’s fine too, but in general, if we pair it with a practice session, you now have one training session and now you have 24 hours before the next thing you’re doing, as it goes to essentially Doing two days, and even though it’s not strenuous, it’s still like you could have more recovery time, and so that’s something that a lot of NFL, a lot of college teams They’ll pair their lifts with their Training sessions, which is cool. So I try to do that here, and Every semester I’m getting more and more teams buying in, and the teams that buy into it love it and they continue it, which is cool.

Jon Mayo: 1:16:42
So you, even within your own Universe, right in your own ecosystem, you’re watching the adaption flow, cross the teams, yeah.

Nick Hurff: 1:16:52
Yeah, yeah, one. I guess one thing that could that we’re seeing is a lot of NFL teams are getting away from sort of a couple years ago, are getting away from post game day lifts. So a lot of times they would do a post game day lift. So let’s say they have Saturday game or they have a Sunday game, monday would be their Lift day, tuesday would be their off day. Right Now a lot of teams are going into post game day off day and then lift the day after Two days later and it works better because, like, if the athletes are beat to shit, they’re not getting anything out of it and there’s be down, whereas if they just take that rest day it works better. And now also, after the game everybody relaxes more because the next day is off. Even the staff will relax more because now that staff have two days but the next day they can take a little more of a break and it’s low key and so now, like even just the stress levels are less and so that’s something that which helps a lot of. I think you’re gonna see that radiate down to college and it’s in some colleges. That’s gonna spread there and through the high schools in the next I think, 10, 15 years. But right now there’s a lot of hesitation because people have been doing post game day lifts for decades and they’re not gonna change so. But I think you’ll see over time that that’ll radiate out.

Jon Mayo: 1:18:09
Yeah, the shifting over to this window and Helping influence that change does take patience and the fact that you’re already looking 15 years out, 10 years out, it’s like you’re just plotting.

Nick Hurff: 1:18:22
Yeah, it’s like yeah, you can advise, but you can’t dictate in our field, because we’re essentially an enabler, you know yeah, that makes absolute sense.

Jon Mayo: 1:18:31
Yeah and then man, fascinating. So Pretty solid foundation. Recently, life changed pretty significantly in that you became a father. In juniper was born. How, yep, what. What are the what’s the emotion arc on that? Understand that there’s been other influences, but how? How has that changed you specifically, if you’re able to identify that?

Nick Hurff: 1:18:57
Yeah, it’s just being a dad and holding little girls awesome, yeah, and it’s really cool. And so, yeah, she was born. My wife and I separated prior to the birth. She wanted to move out to California, be with her family due to some things going on kind of long, extending things, nothing crazy and and, yeah, it’s created a lot of stress and then we’re now getting a divorce and so, yeah, that part has been the part, that kind of shadows some things. But I was out there for three weeks, got to spend a lot of time with Juniper. I’m gonna go out visit again and pretty frequently and we’ll figure out what life looks like as we go forward. But, yeah, I get in a hold a little girl is pretty awesome and it gives you a lot of reflection too, which is neat, and so I think trying to be the best version of yourself for your children is something that can be inspiring too, and so kind of taking In a perspective what that looks like and doing reflection, I think is super important.

Jon Mayo: 1:19:59
Yeah, I fully agree with that. Yeah, it’s been interesting because pressing into community has enhanced or saved my life, depending on what point you look at and who I’m in community with right and then becoming intentional, designing that. But my sons have been a incomparable source of motivation to fix myself and I fully get that. Well, that’s excellent to kind of press on what are your like? What are you looking at now at the horizon, right? And what’s beautiful to me to kind of just frame that question a little bit more is when we spoke last I I’m 99% sure you mentioned that you were wanting to become number like that. You wanted to top the charts in adventure racing. So it’s like that’s accomplished. Your coaching is growing. All these things are kind of clicking and driving and minimum progressing on the journey, which does have ups and downs, challenges and victories. Right, and when do you see this thing heading Like? What are your goals of the next like to the next horizon?

Nick Hurff: 1:21:10
Yeah, I think it’s. One is kind of taking a pause a little bit. As far as. So there’s two things. One you need to continue. So when life becomes challenging, right, you need to Focus on kind of the mental health aspect and yourself as well, and maintaining kind of positive trajectories and being flexible right. So a big part of that is In the near term. It’s also staying in the community and doing things that you love to do and Trying to maintain your life the best that you can right, so that way the changes that are happening are radicalized and you have you keep those things that keep you going right. So that’s one aspect. The other part is just looking at yeah, another part is just looking at what is the overall trajectory look like. So for me it’s just I’m keeping my training going, because that’s something that makes me better or makes me mentally sharp and just keeps me there, and Keeping the different things I’m going, but the business stuff I have going on the university, making sure I’m staying attentive to those, staying positive, looking how can I help other people with what I’m doing and keeping all that going, and then at the same time, it’s also being flexible and attentive to make sure that the way forward with you know, the relationship with my daughter and I and being as engaged of a father’s I can be is there as well, and so, and staying flexible so as life changes, I can kind of stay the course and fundamentals. Also, continuing to work on values, exercises and making sure you’re prioritizing your time and values and making sure that you’re staying true to that and yourself as big and so just kind of I say, staying focus, staying positive and Just trying to maintain the your lifestyle, the best that you can to stay the course.

Jon Mayo: 1:23:18
Yeah, that’s, that’s good, so, so what I’m hearing from you, then, is, at this moment you’re in you’re in a heavy stage of Maximizing the fundamentals, being incredibly intentional and what you allow to be cultivated right now, right and Endure, adapt and evolve until Yep, yeah, exactly.

Nick Hurff: 1:23:44
And then some specific things I’ve been doing is Really over. The last, like you know, probably the last, like six months or so since we separated was Reflecting and then also Trying to be intentional about the social community aspect, right. So One is getting out the races I love to do. I was already planning to do most of these, so like staying true to that and getting out and doing it, so I’m not changing things and that helps a lot. There’s a lot of stress relief, everything else with it. I enjoy it. But getting out in the community and interacting with other like-minded people is huge. Interacting with my family, spending more time with friends and family and keeping that engaged community around is huge. Working, working with a therapist is great, right. So generally working with therapists just day to day is normal, and then doing it when you have times of turmoil is great because you have a biased Bias, a non biased party that can get to know you and you can get to know your partner and who also has a background like psychological principles to just kind of check yourself, right, and so that’s helpful. So, like I worked with a therapist before for, you know, post-deployment to some PTSD type stuff, just to kind of like balance out and check on myself, and that was very fruitful, and so going back to that is good too. And then taking time, like there’s times to where you know it’s like, okay, I’m gonna go mountain bike tonight. And then it’s like, oh, you know what, I haven’t hung out with anybody in a while. My brother just hit me up like maybe I’ll go over there instead, and so maybe I do a quick 20 minute workout shower and then head over, as opposed to like an hour and a half. But that’s that trade-off of Okay, right now being intentional with Keeping a community around me, interacting with people, staying positive, still planning for the future and Working on that. And then the reflective piece like journaling is huge for me, like I enjoy journaling and I’ll do anything from reflecting on the day, writing about what happened, to random prompts like hey, like I’m Worried about this, like okay, let me work through it. Like what if this happens? What does this look like, right, what does that look like? And just working through stuff Helps to get thoughts out and now you can look at it and be like a little more objective, right? So it’s like, oh, this doesn’t make sense. Oh, no, that doesn’t work, or is that really what I’m thinking? Like that doesn’t that. That is an accurate you know and it kind of helps you to ground yourself as well. And so this has kind of been the big things is Trying to focus on all of that you know, and just the more intentional you are with your lifestyle, your values, how you’re building that and how you allocate your time in that community around you, like that has a huge impact on your mental health and your outlook on everything.

Jon Mayo: 1:26:30
I think that’s just like so beautifully said, and I cannot more emphatically high five with you On the things you just shared, man, because it’s like the entire premise of the book I wrote was Articulating essentially what you just said in that paragraph, right, which is why I made sure the book was concise and 80% of it didn’t make it. Because it’s like you have a stimulus and you choose a response, right, or you have the opportunity, choose your response before you act, right in like in that gap, what do you do and how do we focus there Consistently and bring ourselves back there consistently so that we can continue to plot forward? And how can we do that in community, with others who will help us in that and whom we can help serve in love? Right, and the One, one of the things you said specifically around journaling, right. It’s like that whole if the obstacles the way and Shamelessly I’ll plug if the obstacles the way, then we must be waymakers. It’s, it’s one of the fundamental principles. One is the subtitle of the book and two, it’s one of the fundamental principles of what we’re seeking to Cultivate and rise up and bring together through the ULA universe is those who either are Living how you’re living right now, how you just described navigating this right, like all those elements. They’re either doing that or they want to be doing that, or anywhere in between. And how do we come together, journey together, exchange tools and help each other as we try to find peace and find our way home right and, not to mention, create a future that’s worth living for our children? So, instead of throwing the baby out with the bathwater sometimes literally, and so it’s just like, yes, 100%, and it takes courage to do what you just described right, like when you sit down in journal or something that’s bothering you. That’s not necessarily fun and do you ever like? I get very Sometimes the worst anger I have to Process is when I’m forcing myself to face it like on a paper or screen in front of me. Yeah, it’s real.

Nick Hurff: 1:28:38
And because and it’s deeper, because you have to pick the words to match the emotions and the feelings you have. So like I printed out one of those little like 256 type of emotion flywheels where it goes from like general in the middle to specific out. Yeah, it helps me to One. I want to try to expand my vocabulary because I realized it wasn’t that great. And then to the accuracy helps to paint that much more clearly.

Jon Mayo: 1:29:06
Yeah, I’m thinking. I don’t think I have 250 words to describe emotions. I’m gonna print one of those out also. Yeah, that’s pretty cool Dude watching walking through life with my kiddos right now, because I have a nine year old, eight year old and twin Seven year olds, I believe six, seven year olds. I don’t think I’m a bad dad because I don’t remember their birthdays perfectly. So I could pencil it out and get it, but but they’re all. I’m immensely excited about them and proud of them. But I’m walking through, teaching them emotions and Like, well, what, what that do you mean? It’s like, well, we all feel things, right, so that that’s generic. But being able to with precision articulate the difference between sorrow and sadness or, you know, grief versus sadness versus loss, you know like I Don’t know why I gravitate to negative there, but like those things are like Excitement versus peace, right, like being able to navigate the intricacies of what they’re feeling. I’ve watched in a couple of circumstances I’m bored is the telltale sign. For me Is, especially if there’s a little bit of emotion. If I hear one of them say I’m bored and there’s some emotion behind it, that’s them. I’ve learned they don’t know what they’re feeling, they don’t know how to articulate what they’re feeling, so they default to bored, or that’s their primary one. So then it’s like an immediate flag of like okay, buddy, describe that boredom to me. And then it’s like a flare up, like F you what do you mean describe it and and uh, yeah, you know nothing. I said I’m bored. I’m like, oh Jesus man, like, all right, deep breath, let’s go for a walk. Right, let’s go do this, let’s let’s get out of her head and see if we can get to a point where we can gain enough articulation that hopefully I can Give you a word that clicks and gives you that relief. And it’s like it’s, it’s fun, because with them, when they get that word and I describe what that word means like oh, bud, I think that you’re grieving and and depressed because you lost this animal you’ve been caring for for the last four months. Yeah, and that’s causing you to just you’re in grief. And I explain the difference between grief versus like disappointment. And he’s like yes, dad, I’m grieving and you can see it kind of just melt off him, right. Yeah, like, like he melts into it and then he can actually process it and begin to move on and let it go, instead of Defaulting to anger or being you know, which is essentially the other response, because they don’t know how to do it. And yeah, brandon working in the background is awesome here to drop the emotion wheel into a chat, so that’s fantastic. But, um, we’ll include that in the, in the show notes. But that is like this, my like this hyper focused example of what you’re talking about with the journal and doing that work on yourself. It’s like, okay, what am I truly experiencing here? Because the better you define it, that the more you put on paper, selecting those words, as you mentioned, and the better we can like, define it, lock it down, describe it and be forced to stare at what we just created, because sometimes it can be surprising, right, what gets written out allows us, for myself at least, sometimes over the course of days or even longer, to have to live with that until resolution or understanding begins to click in, and it can be so iterative and exhausting, but necessary. So I get, I agree with you, but also want to see if that’s spun up any of your own experiences in a way that’s fruitful.

Nick Hurff: 1:32:28
Yeah, I mean no, everything you described is very accurate. One thing that comes to mind is I was listening to a child psychologist on talk somewhere and they were describing how, as a parent, helping your child to which I don’t have experience with yet helping your child to understand the emotions is huge, but then also allowing them to feel those and accept those and that it’s okay. They’re angry and they need to be angry and that’s okay and you can comfort them as they go through those emotions, as opposed to like getting angry at them for being angry. You can instead, you know, like I’m, why are you? You know you seem upset right now. Why are you upset? Like, well, I’m upset because I wanted the cookie. Okay, well, I’m sorry you want the cookie, but we do have to wait till after dinner. Like you know, you can help, be there for them in a supporting way, as they’re feeling me emotions, because they do have emotions.

Jon Mayo: 1:33:20
You know, absolutely, and it did be very candid and just throw myself under the bus where it’s necessary, right, because I also catalyzed for the growth. I wish I did that better and Not as in like, oh well, I’m just gonna continue. I’m actively working at continuing to do that better. It’s part of my morning meditation is Is responding better. Because when you walk upstairs and here’s just blood-curdling screams because four these, these boys are just being pumped full of testosterone because they’re developing, right, and they’re losing their minds and they’re absolutely wonderful, but there’s, they’re very prone to violence. Of action for dispute resolution, yes, and like in the last two weeks, man, we had a split open head that we had a tape up. We have like one of the best black eyes I’ve ever seen as far as just gnarly and it’s just like that’s constant, like I’ll hear something. But when you walk upstairs and there’s a hole besides your face in the wall and you’re like yep, what in the F is this? You know?

Nick Hurff: 1:34:23
Those are like I grew up with. I grew up with four brothers and everything you describe is how we describe. And yeah, it’s one of those things like what I said is like oh yeah, that sounds great like in reality. No way you know what I mean. Like it.

Jon Mayo: 1:34:36
Yeah, we’re getting better to be so like create a system right. The system is what’s saving me because I don’t. I Struggle every time those moments not to lose my absolute shit, but when I see it and I walk up, I’m getting better at and continuing to present to you that deliver, pause and saying lap. And what’s beautiful is because we live on some property out here we have about a third of a mile track that goes around the property that we’ve cut into the land and and I can just send them and I’ll just say like center block, lap. And I’ll look out there and they’re carrying a center block around, which is Also making them significantly more of a threat for me. But it’s beautiful, that’s playful. Little monsters, man, like the twins are little, kind of little, or compared to their brothers, and they’re lifting over their body weight with amazing form, comfortably and like moving at a hundred meters, and I’m just watching them like all the training, I do better be on point and I cannot stop because otherwise, when they’re 15, I’m done, they’re gonna take me. It’s fun, it’s just fun.

Nick Hurff: 1:35:44
That’s awesome.

Jon Mayo: 1:35:46
It, yeah, as they grow. It’s just this evolution of, it’s like this, the feedback loop, right, you can go back, test yourself against the mountain or the bar, the jiu-jitsu mat, whatever Kids give you that, typically in the most inopportune, uncomfortable and painful ways. Just like a feedback loop that like so, so, for example, just to bring it really close to home. Before I Became radicalized, if you will, on this relentless pursuit of I want to grow in who I am and live intentionally such that my life is creating value, allowing for the cultivation of a sense of peace for those who are around me, and like safety and unity that further Perpetuates growth and the creation of more right like before that became the focus. I just had to stop hating myself. But In pursuit of those ideals and as I was like kind of preparing myself to go on those adventures of like okay, how can I really daily grow? I was sitting outside and it was like eight in the morning I started with the kids wanted to do a fire. I was like, yeah, let’s do it seven, eight in the morning on a Saturday, and Like they brought out fake margaritas, right, because they wanted to drink margaritas with that. And they’re like, we just want to be like you. Dad and I was like it’s so awesome but it hurts so bad. That their emulation of dad Was let’s have margaritas together or let’s have a beer together, right, yeah. And so it’s like cute and that they want to be like me. But also it was like this knife in the gut of like what are you teaching them?

Nick Hurff: 1:37:25
with your actions.

Jon Mayo: 1:37:26
Yeah, and now they’re Pretending to run a podcast, write books and do business things and train and it’s a. It’s a healthier reflection and we still have a lot to learn and work out, but it’s just. It’s so cool to like play with these kids and See the best and worst of you displayed in the best and worst of them and then realizing that the only way to truly influence them is by fixing yourself so that they can watch the evidence of your actions play out and then choose what they want to emulate Versus. You know, I got me. It’s the same for us, right? If you have someone that you’re working with and they say one thing and do another, you’re like okay, and you write them off. It’s the same principle. And they do nothing but watch you. So it’s just wild. Yeah, correlation there, but good stuff, man. So, with all that, we’re in a period of adapting, overcome and grow and you know I’ve really enjoyed the opportunity to talk with you and, kind of as relaying the plane here, just want to give the opportunity for you to share again, because you had mentioned earlier, where people can continue to learn about your work, learn more about you and contact you.

Nick Hurff: 1:38:40
Yeah, we put stuff in the show notes. But if you want to get in contact with me, just go through the website, so train-apexcom or rev3 endurancecom, and go under coaching there, and then I’m on Facebook with Nick Herf and the same with Instagram. I’m not super, I’m not on Instagram often, so I’ll probably upload some more stuff soon. But yeah, those are kind of the places to to get in contact with me. Well and any party moments Now. It’s been a great time, so I appreciate your time and love learning.

Jon Mayo: 1:39:15
Absolutely, man. Let’s forge forward and thank you so much. All right, and that is the show. Thank you so much for listening. If you found value in today’s episode, please pay it forward. You can do that by liking and following the show, liking, following us on social media or sharing this episode With someone you care about. All of these things help more than I can put into words, and each action taken to help us spread the word is greatly appreciated. So, once again, from all of us here at the ULA and be relentless podcast, thank you for joining us in the journey as we seek to lead maximized lives.