Welcome to Red Beard radio. I'm Brian Keith. And if you ask me who I am, the answer, I give you his going to change depending on when you asked me that question, there was a time where I would say, ah, I'm Brian Keith and I'm a sword fighter. And there's a time where I would say, I'm Brian Keith, I'm a mountain climber, or I'm Brian Keith, and I'm a speaker and that context in which you ask me that question, really changes who I am when I answer you. And so we have this idea of
How we are related to what we're doing and how we are related to the body that were in. If you ask me in my mid-20s, who are you? And I sell my sword fighter, I was walking around in a sword, fighters body if you ask me, just after I got down from Mount Ranier for the second time, who are you? And I said, I'm a mountain climber I told you that from a mountain climbers body. Today, we're going to dive in more to this idea of the narrative that you're telling yourself how to find out what your narrative is and how to change it to go, become more of the person that you want to be.
And joining us in this conversation is Alexander. Juan Antonio, Cortez, you might know him from one of his many books on how to change your body and get more fit. He's prolific on Twitter and one of the people famous for saying, who train today who lost fat today and is challenging us on a daily basis to be more in tune with who we say, we are Alexander. Welcome to the show.
Thank you, Brian. That was a peck of the intro.
Well, one of the things I love to do here on red radio is interview people who
Who have done something 10,000 times and then say, what do you know about that? And when I think about how many people that are over 20,000 people on your email list of Brazilian people, following you on Twitter, a bazillion people about your ebooks that you helped people ask themselves, who do I want to be, and then you've told them take action on who you say you are and you've done that way, more than 10,000 times. So diving into this topic with you and pretty excited about, because you've helped so many people really realign with who they say, they
I want to be when I think about that realignment. I think one of the most basic ways we can look at it, is you tell a story to people about, you don't have to have the body, you're in now. You did what you did to get to the body or now, but you don't have to stay with it. And let's just start there with that Narrative of if I'm like, like in my case, I don't I can't do many pull-ups. And earlier this year, I work really hard on Pull-Ups for a while I got to where I could do 25 in a day which for me was a huge deal starting from zero in a day.
And then eyes in train them for a while and now I can't do 25 in a day anymore. So let's start off with that. How we create our bodies through our narrative and how you help people really change that narrative.
That's a good starting point. The body will always tell a story. Yeah, this is something that if I was to go back in time, I go back to let's say, like a when I'm going to adolescent like young boy 8 9 7, 8, 9 years old. Yeah, preteens I was always very enthralled with the idea of
Superheroes. A very common thing, obviously at that age for boys and as I've always always very impressed with what they look like. And I was an avid comic book reader at the time and the impression you get from someone that's heroic. He stroked archetypes. Its actions, of course, its characteristics, its personality. And it's also a look and all ties itself together. You cannot separate mentality from physicality. They are very much. Ideally one, the same, it's the same thing.
And then as I got older, I knew that I want to work out. I want to lift weights which I did and I want to look heroic. I want to have the look of being heroic and the same time I want to live heroically. I want to live life on my own terms. My Own Way in accordance with my sense of freedom and when I started personal training which was at this point, I'm 32 now I was 21 so it's 11 years ago when I started personal training, something you realize very swiftly is it train?
Night physical job. It's a psychological one and people's limitations that they have, they're not truly physical limitations. Their mental limitations, everyone's body has a story and most of what people think about themselves is self-limiting, so your self-limiting beliefs correspond with your self limiting, physical capabilities. And when you're trying to get someone fit, we say like I want to be healthy. I want to be in shape.
Chief, some kind of better shape. What are we really talking about here on one level? We're talking about physical qualities, of course, like okay, I want more muscle, I want to be stronger, I'd like less body fat, but what's the story behind that? The story behind that is you're changing, your Narrative of Who You individually are yourself. You're changing what you think about yourself. You are going to need to call into question your beliefs.
What do I think about me? And as you go through the process of training and it is a personal experience, you go to the process of personal training, what you run into is not just, as I said this week, all those physical obstacles, but you start realizing that your, your self-talk, your mindset, your stories, whether they be limiting what they being powering your personal history, you everything. You've grown up with
Any given time the body you are in is your entire life lips at that point. You are where you are right now because of how you lived, both mentally and physically and spiritually and physically, whichever way you want to slice it. So people during this process, what typically surprises them is that physically, it's hard, but mentally, that's where the struggle is.
Give me that. Sorry, I just I got a kitten yesterday and it's discovered Bells.
They couldn't standing in for our ego and our love of new shiny things. Instead of doing the hard work, we know we need to do to actually change ourselves to get the body that we say that we want.
Yes. That's can text me one of those. No, you know, it's funny when something went a molasses young, it has like that childlike attention span where everything is fascinating. But I mean, you can read
we relate that to be people's personal struggles injuries with Fitness, you know, very large portion of that is their personal struggle with being unable to focus
friend called exercise binging and he said that can heat it and I immediately signed myself. Oh no, I exercise binge and once you see there's no looking away from it, like, oh man, what if you, you know, only ate healthy food for a day or two, then you went back to eating crap. What kind of outcome? Would you expect? What if you only worked hard for a day or two and then you
Back to sort of slacking it as much as you can without getting fired. What result would you expect? But then I go and sometimes I do. I'll do a bazillion pull ups at a time where I just finished 75 hard, 75 days. No, rest days. Working out, everyday, and shockingly, I lost a pant size. I got I looked great and then send 75 hard ended. How often, how hard I have worked out? Well, you already know the answer, which is not nearly as hard as I was working out. When I was committed to an external narrative about. Do you want to be able to say,
That you did this thing, then you have to follow these rules. And then, once I finished this and I deserve a rest Alexander, I deserve a rest, which yeah, I did. But how long is that rest?
That's a good question. That's one of the issues with external motivation, not that it's a bad thing at all yet. Most of what motivates us rightly. So is going to be external. There's going to be the social validation factor for it and there's nothing wrong with that. But the big dividing line between someone who is let's say, like legitimately dedicated to the fit lifestyle.
They are that personal or they don't slack off. Ever what separates them from someone that sporadic? Well, that's their identity. Their identity is that they are a person who does these things and these are their habits. So, like, they are there within the practice of being themselves, someone else were, they want to model those characteristics, but they don't internalize them but you don't internalize them. You might achieve that goal and I know lots of guys have done so many 575 hardest, fantastic-looking me wrong. I know what people have done that. It's changed their life, but that's also a common problem with these extra
challenges. Like I'm going to do this for two and a half months. However long it is. You finish it all I accomplished something. But is this really who you've become or is this something that you did
for the sake of doing it to say that you did it? You'll have to
make a decision for yourself.
You use this word model versus internalized and I want to highlight that it brings to mind a story of when I was doing search and rescue and I was a casual search-and-rescue person. So I showed up, I trained some. I wanted some missions.
But there are some people part of the Mountain Rescue Unit that was associated, with the same group, I was in and those people were insane where they would, they were fit enough and skilled enough that they could be dropped off by a helicopter on one mountain and told, okay? There's some one-on-one mountain range away, go keep them alive, until the helicopter can show up. And if the helicopter doesn't show up, you ready to pack them out in same level of preparation and dedication. And one of those people I heard her talk once about how when she had time off.
The evenings from her day job. She would go and train more to get a little bit faster on the trails. And this is a person who is already a completely committed Mountain rescuer. And in her spare time she was training to get a little bit faster, Mountain Rescue and that's that internalized thing was, I looked at them and I said that is so cool. I want to be that person but then instead of putting in the Years, putting in the Reps of becoming an Immaculate physical condition, I
More. I was more of a tourist now, looking back. Now, the time, I thought I'm really committed, but looking back, I was not on the mountains, every weekend. I was not out, training on the trails on weeknights, the people who were there, the people who will save your, but if you get caught out in the mountains in trouble, I wasn't actually committed. I was modeling their behavior and feeling good about myself because I want to be that it was like trying on a piece of clothing, right? I didn't actually do the work to earn that.
Yes well I mean that's the that's the it
A tation game. Almost everybody
plays. Hmm.
I mean to model something is the path to becoming it. Yeah but that's not a straight path. You could mimic something you could imitate behavior and if that really is who you are, then that becomes what you do. And then you can't separate the two. But for a lot of people, like you said, we're sort of just trying things on. But Finn, this is one of those conundrums that you can play it Fitness. You can.
Try to be try to be fair. You can try to be dedicated and then you cannot be a, you can ignore it but then you're going to pay a cost for it which that's always the internal. Internal struggle for everyone. If we win, that's not fit which is probably about eight, nine percent of people. I know I need to do is I know it's good for me, I know this should be part of my life, but I'm just not feeling it because for so many reasons, whether it be mental emotional or physical, or just sheer laziness trying to get yourself.
Self to the gym to work out. It's not something that you get to do something. You have to do, it's an obligation and it's gradually hard and what you do you go you go in out of it, you select off and then you probably maybe you find me on the internet at age 40 and your eyes, like you know what, I need to get my key. I need to get my shit together and take this seriously. And then, you know, the process begins again hopefully for the last time which that's a very roundabout circular story.
But I mean, I mean, this is this is all stuff. What if we're going back to the streak laid back to the beginning story, they when I first started training people, like I said, I was 21, I realized, wow, this is extremely psychological. This is people's identity that you're struggling with, it's not just the exercise, the exercise is easy. You can write out of work out. Somebody go do this, it doesn't mean it's gonna become part of them and become part of your
destiny. So, how do we change that narrative? You've worked with thousands of people who have successfully,
he changed their self-image and then continue the activity. And you work with thousands of people who didn't, what's the difference between those people
the difference between people that change and people that don't, that's really the question we're asking.
If you are going to change your future, you have to change what you think of yourself in the present. You have to change how you think about your past. The past is always going to try to prove itself. So how are you have acted up into this point? You are probabilistic Ali going, continue going to continue acting in that way. So we sort of we get into these. You can like these strange Loops these recursive Loops where because this is who I was yesterday and the day before that and before that date for that is that will be who I am Tamara.
And that goes on on on, if you're going to fundamentally change who you are, you have to legitly visualized thinking to the Future and consider. Who do I want to become 5 years from now? 10 years, from now, what I want to be capable of doing, you have to create this future picture in your mind in your mind's eye and it has to be concrete, it can't be something that you're just playing out like, oh yeah, it'd be good to be a healthy and you know, be a moose emphatic. No it has to be defined.
And why do I want this? When am I going to look like? What is my life going to be? Like, when I hit this future State because now you're crafting a story. Now, you're actually tapping into your subconscious and we considering who you are and where you are going, what your destiny is going to be. And then, from that point, when you've established this sort of incantation of, it's not even like it's an idolized for here. So, it's almost like this Doppler, get this doppelganger version of yourself wearing. It's the, it's the better version of you, five.
Ten years from now. Once you've established that, you've actually really describe that out. Now, what do you do well? Now you work backwards in time to the present.
And then everything you do. Now, the present is creating that future for yourself. So you're going backwards and forwards, you know, through through that, that internal flow. And when you do that and now you actually have increased, the probability, you can put the odds in your favor, is it what you find is people who are successful with their with their health. This goes from like the champion level all the way down to like the
civilian level you could
say, people who are successful in changing themselves, they are just very basically very, very good at this visualization. As
X and Y, say it's a different life. I'm underselling, it's really an aspect of are very good. The power of visual change both in the mind and the body and the future. Like, they take that seriously. You can consider it a form of meditation. You could consider a Transcendent, you could consider it manifestation, if you want to, we're going to Manifest this. Okay, how we going to manifest it? We're going to think very, very, very, very deeply on what we're doing and what's going to turn ourselves? What's going to turn us into
Like we're going to dedicate time series time to that. It's not just going to be a passing thought to be something that we as I said you'll Dive Into the Depths on. I
love giving concrete examples so let me give an example and we're going to walk through this process and you're going to add any additional Alexander flavor to how I need to be thinking about this. I have been on two mountain climbs up to the top of Mount Rainier which is a fourteen thousand four hundred foot peak in Washington state, one of the tallest ones around in this area.
It's nothing like it's working thousand or in Colorado where there's a bunch of them around. It's about two miles of vertical. Gain to get the top, I did one as a climber, on someone else's team, I die let a rope team my second time, which was a medium level of responsibility. The top level of responsibilities, you're leading the whole climb. And if I said, I want to be the kind of person who leads a mountain climb, then I got a back up to there. And I got to say, well, who do I have to be physically and then I need to get really specific. I already have the vision.
Of being at the top of the mountain. Again, again, to look at the eight, people have led up there, so I got that visual. I need a backup. Okay, what physical level? Well, there's the, the halfway mark to get up is called Camp mirror. And I know because I've been doing this in this game quite a while. If you have can make up to Camp, Muir in four hours from the parking lot, in moderate conditions, that means you are in pretty good shape. Five hours means you're in, okay? Shape over five means you're not really in shape, the people who are serious to an under four hours, the people who are really serious too,
it in three hours and less, but there does, that's professional guide level. So I could say, I'm going to be able to make it up to Camp Muir back-to-back days and under four hours in moderate conditions, which is to say not a blizzard, but it's okay if it's rainy and snowy. So now I can say, okay, if I need to go two days in a row to get up to Camp mirror. Now, I can look at what specifically do I need to do to get there and how can I test myself before I even show up to that parking lot for two days in a row to test myself?
That's my very specific visualization for getting to, I want to lead a mountain climb on up Mount Rainier. What can I add to that to go and give myself a better chance of
success? So you described a lot of the external conditions of extreme physical aspect of like, I need to be able to do this in x amount of time or the qualities of being a leader. Since we're talking about, like, we're going to leave this Expedition, who are the people? Are you responsible for? What qualities? Are you actually role modeling for them? What are you going to say to them?
When they're on this, this legit me, this journey since he always looks great, it's gonna be very different from what you were just, you know, if you are a follower of it. Yeah, I mean that this that's definitely that's the internal stuff. That's, that's a subconscious. Yeah, those are the people I immediately liked
about in order to be mentally prepared. I've done I've LED some Mountain climbs before but I need to go do in the same season as we're talking about. So not the year before but the same season I need to lead climbs on at least two more basic mountains, where I'm responsible for everything.
And so I have done that particular experience twice right before I do this, because that's where the confidence comes from. And that's where the exposing any problems in my systems, my technical rope skills, how I talk to climbers, who are tired and emotional anything. I need to expose those problems before the big climb because Mountaineers actually dangerous. Most other mountains around here are not nearly so dangerous, is Mount Rainier. So I need to expose those and you're due to climbs and then in those I will, I will be developing the
Roped leaders which is the medium level of responsibility. They actually run each rope team. I need to develop. Who are those people going to be to help me do this Mission because I can't just lead a people that I have to have my two rope team leaders. So now you're going to be thinking about. Well, who do I have to be to go have good relationships with the two people? I need to do my Mountaineer climb. It's interesting. How the opens up this whole interpersonal. Where am I going to find these people? Will it be the same people I climbed with before? Will it be different people?
I do I want to go on their climbs to be an assistant leader underneath them so we can develop a really good reciprocal relationship and it opened up a lot more questions than just the my own physical fitness which is interesting.
It's a lot of questions and then you know within the with all those questions I hope he lets you know let's roam all that out. If you are you're the lead instructor your lead guide. What would you be doing right now?
Today, if I was serious about getting and we're recording this in
Tobar. The climbing season starts roughly April. If I was serious about leading a climate Rainier in this next season, the first thing I would do is I would set a date. The day would probably be in June. I would set the three-day climb window and then I would go about scheduling probably for climbs before that day in order to both get my final certification for my Climbing Club and I would also be wanting to be on a bunch of
Where I would have assistant leaders so I could find out who I work. Well with the last time I was leading Mountain climbs was a couple years back and the assistant leaders have worked with then may or may not be as involved now in the club. So I need to go both reintroduce myself to the club. As hey, I'm serious, I'm doing this. Here's him doing here's what I'm doing it. And then I would also which I'm already signed up for this by be teaching in the climbing class, to make sure that all of my physical skill sets. Like rope skills are exactly to the state-of-the-art what you ought to be doing.
That's the outward stuff. The inward stuff is, I would be getting off my butt and more often going for a hike with my, we have a weighted backpack. It's just a 30-pound weight in this pack but that's a really good approximation. Just do that for new three miles, maybe five miles, six days a week with some elevation that right there would be and starting that now. Six months before or more like eight months before the climb. That's enough time to take a generally in shape body and turn it into a mountaineering body at a basic
Ugh level like I would need from our near and to saying that out loud, it demands question. Why am I not doing this right? All these? This see if I care about it, if it's justify modeling and not internalizing then just talking about it. That's like oh yeah I want to go travel Italy, it's going to be fun and then you find some hotels would be fun, you know, you take a look at a picture of a drink, that'd be fun to drink then go back to watching Netflix
there's a term in training and exercise science actually called periodization
Hmm. And this is something that is very rarely talked about with like Journal Fitness because it's a little bit complex. But paralyzation, basically means planning out training. It means you plant training and you plan out training, according to the physical principles of the body
of a notation to impose demands. You
plan out, training in accordance with the application curve, for neurological coordination. They have Tatian curve for muscle, gain the application curve for
Cardiovascular applications. And if you really study Fitness on a let's say like a more scientific deeper level of you as a professional. You realize that most affects that we desire with our body, whether it be fat loss and muscle, gain our strength, or some combination thereof explosiveness. You can actually map out to quite a level of detail the rate of time that those effects will occur in those those results. You want reflect what's called results you can map out with a great deal of it.
Not me uncertainty, but accuracy how those results will happen. The time frame to expect for them to happen and you can do that in 12 week time span a six-month a nine month, 12 months, you can do that over actually 45 years at the highest level of support to take Olympics athletes will sort of plan out training Cycles in you know 12 to 23 or Cycles even like their preparation will be multi-year. That's something that's done every day. And when I learned about periodization years ago, that's something that I've
Taken with me and sort of the world of personal development that if you want to improve in quote yourself here, do you care about self-improvement? Okay, you know, you can actually plan out what you're doing. Can be like, does it little detail that we're talking about now? Okay, let's plan out the actual training schedule. Let's plan out the mental training schedule. Let's plan out, you know, all the people that we need to participate in this outcome, you can be, you can plot all this out and it's not a hard-and-fast plan. This isn't something is going to be pages and pages and pages and pages. But it can, it can be a page or two certainly.
It's a schedule to follow and it gives you that that proverbial roadmap towards that future goal towards your future self. If you don't do this, your likelihood of success. Not to say, it's going to be 0, but it's going to be hard to succeed at something that you have not properly prepared. For if you have, in fact, planned for like, what you're describing now to be the lead guide. Okay, well, now we sort of detail the old, we've detailed what we need to do. We know the factors of
Play and we'll probably find out more factories that we as we go into the process. So then this becomes. Well, let's start and, like, I said, periodization, when I discovered it, it really, it made me realize that most of what people do in life their attempts at bettering themselves. It's just throwing shit at the wall. Hoping something sticks. If you're really serious about it, you're going to take the time to figure out that Continuum before you embark on that Journey. But this all
leads us to how committed are any of us to what we say. We're
Headed to I'm looking right now at the book training for the new alpinism which as I was thinking more about how I would train I thought. Oh, right. I have a book written by mountain climbers. Tell the talks exactly about what you're talking about where they say, if you have a test that helps, you understand, where are you at on their scale of fitness? And then they say, if you're at this signal, if your two out of five Fitness level, do these things on these days for this many months until you can get to this level on the scale and now you can start your actual pre climb training. So they get very specific
but
Then I think about, well,
this is by Steve house and Scott Johnson for anyone who's into alpinism training for the new alpinism, the best book and the subtitle is a manual for the climber as athlete, utterly fantastic book. But here's the thing, I don't have to look at. Well, if I'm serious, about all this and I want to go do the climb in June. What am I willing to not do to? Go do this and doing this plan that we're talking about? The says, here's the you a one or two page. Here's what you're doing, okay? So I'm actively choosing
Not do other things. What am I not going to do and in nutrition? It's pretty easy to say, well, I'm going to not eat donuts. I'm going to stop drinking soda but we have to do the same thing with our time. Right? And I'm if I'm going to make the time and this was with 75 hard, I was home much less in the evenings because I'm embarassingly. Often time I didn't get my workout done in the morning. Had to get my workouts after work and side B. You know it's 9 p.m. I'm going to go out for a hike, you know, in the evening because I got to because I'm committed to
This thing but not committed enough to do it earlier in the day. So I end up not getting time with my fiance at the time.
So I guess my question for you Alexander is how do we manage our commitment level? When there's so many things we want to do this sound good but then we actually only have enough attention to drive a handful of initiatives forward.
This is the Eternal question of, how serious are you tip? I want to say, it's Tim Grover. He was a like, Michael Jordan's personal trainer, he has. He has a book, Jimmy, get book about winning and victory and he makes us very good point that when we think about,
Success in anything success is almost like its own Force. It's like fortune or it's like luck victories and experience that we arrived at and for those who have been Victorious they we know it feels like, we've achieved something you know we're filled with that Sensation that emotional state. It has it has it has a power that way but it's fleeting.
It's fleeting and it requires a cost every single day if you want to keep it going. So you need to make a quite unique, made me question you to make a choice? Is this the most important thing in my life that I'm going to say no to everything else to do this? Hmm, if you're on if you're in love with it, if it's something that you must have or to not have it, you could not live without it, you'll make that choice. If you're not, then you're not then, you know it's like a relationship that you're just not really feeling. I love you, but I'm
But in love with you. So maybe we should, maybe we should break up but we had a great time together, right? I don't know, that's a good analogy or not.
No, it's fantastic. And I think about, I think my grandfather right now who he were to Boeing for 30 years, never missed a single day at work. No sick days. He had his work, he had his family and he had sailing and if he was not at work and he was not with his family, he was sailing period. And now if the weather was bad, he was probably working on his boat because of course, sailboats are always falling apart.
But he didn't do well, he didn't Garden, he didn't go hiking, he didn't climb mountains, he sailed and he was just completely committed. And I see with my mountain climbing buddies, people who took the basic class after I did. I'm thinking of one climber Kimber Bell who's a one-handed climber born without a right hand. And she's now a celebrated ice climber where the companies make custom prosthetic. So she can go climb waterfalls, she's incredible, and she's completely committed to climbing and Fitness.
And I think, well, I admire the hell out of her and I think it was, I times I look at myself and I go, oh, I, if I was only a better person, I would be more committed. And then other times it's brought to my attention by my wife among other people. That I'm actually building a business here. I'm an entrepreneur where a lot of these people I admire, who are totally committed their employees in somewhere. Like, Kimber isn't kindergarten teacher. So, yeah, in the summer. Yeah, she's getting ready for school a little bit, but no, she's out there and that's what she is doing.
Because she knows who she is. And who am I? I'm red beard. This is what I'm doing and I also get to climb a little bit sale, a little bit Garden, a little bit, but I'm not a gardener first and foremost, I am my business first and foremost and so I try to be gentle on myself a little bit though. I'm also sort of bad of that because I see the people around me. Excelling from such Focus, such discipline. And I think, why am I not as good as they are?
That's not who you are.
I mean, this is, this is not a moral choice, you know, very often, people are themselves. We should try to morally. Arbitrate what we choose to do of like, you know, it's a fitness, for example, or something like what you're describing which requires extreme dedication. Like, am I, am I failing? Because my doing this, play it. Like I would say Eve created to reflect your own. Structural failure in your head. Hmm, you're already at failings, you're failing at something before you verbally committed to it, even though it's not really who you are in the first place. There's nothing wrong to say, no to
something that sounds like we could unpack.
Pack that sentence into a full-length book, keep on going, Alexander. I'm listening,
there's nothing wrong to say, no to something. We cannot be all things, you know. This is one of the, it's real VIP, antagonisms of tortures of people who are, let's say like generally intelligent and good at multiple areas. You may be not Genius Like Your autodidactic enough where it's like, you know I you know like full well that you could teach yourself to do, lots of different things, it could be physical, could be mental, you know, obviously most cases probably both like you.
The capacity to learn multiple multiple skills and then you see someone who's similar enough to yourself that you identify with him. It's like, wow, that person is so good at dot dot dot. I could be so good at dot dot dot. If if I was more like them like being what if you were them? You know, I would say for those people who truly identify with a particular passion that way, that's their nature, they have found a thing that makes them who they are and you can't negotiate with what your nature is.
You can Discover it you can experiment with it. You can't negotiate with it that it also
needs to be a full-length book. You cannot negotiate with your nature,
you can't. If you woke up tomorrow and said I'll just throw something out there. Yeah but I don't know what your background is music. Let's say like I want to be an incredible incredible guitar player.
If that was true your nature, you've already would have been that thing. You would have started playing guitar, 20 years ago. Now that's not to say that you couldn't get competent. Government are, maybe you take music lessons and, you know, five years from now. You're going to be better than 90% of people because they 90% people never taken lessons. But are you going to be top 100, the world world class? You probably not. But there's nothing wrong with not being world class at something, you know? If again, if that was your nature, you would already be that thing, you know? Someone
When we see people, who are exceptionally good, two areas that we are not, but we have some some possibility of skill rather than judge ourselves. Like, oh, like I failed because, I'm not as good as that person. I'm not who they are. Yeah, I could be though, it's not about can or can't. It's about who and who is not, you're making me think
that that's their nature. To question is more. It's not about how can I become great acts? The question is more. How can I discover my nature?
Yes, I've been working on that, my whole life. I'd first sword fighting. That was my nature for a decade of my life. Was that was really, I was so aligned and I hung out with other people who are completely aligned and, and even in that I have a particular body type and I was better at some things than other things. And I think we had a fantastic teacher and fantastic, senior Fighters around me to really help me understand you know oh don't do that. You're trying to play a game is if you're 20 pounds heavier it's never going to work or do this over here because that's what your
Type is right for you need to learn this skill. Use this tool and they helped coach me understanding here with this body. I have, which I can't change too much. Here's what I should go. Do
those are those are good teachers. I was so blessed. I mean this is something I have grappled with myself myself, for a long time with my career were, like I'm not passionate about Fitness, you know, like despite making a career out of Fitness like I'm not passionate about Fitness but I do love to teach yeah and I realized a long time ago.
Oh that regardless of whatever state my life is and I always want to be teaching something he and fitness is personal enough to me because I've served built my own personal freedom around. It it makes sense to continue on doing it if you suddenly took this away from me like it would bother me why. Because like oh I'm so in love with it. Like it's not about love you and really it's not love at all. It's more of a torturous compulsion. Like I have to be teaching explaining something. I have to be getting better at this in this yield.
My girlfriend, is this drives me crazy all the time. Anyone that's not only professionally knows this because I go through these periods of angst, were I'm so damn ably. Sick of Just Fitness everything, but at the same time, I have to keep studying. I have to it's obsessive, you've been completely obsessive and I'm always on the search for like better new and better information better teachers, but our mentors like it just it's never stops and I can never turn it off. Yeah, I realize it's like some point years ago. Like this is kind of my nature like I'm always in the state of this
Tune wind to continuously, prepare and reach higher levels of physical preparation and teach that to people. And it's when people do it. It's incredibly gratifying. I see it like Cal. Yes. Like you like, you've done, you've done something substantial, something real for yourself and what is very much, an unreal and simulated world like you've like you're no longer in the desert that way if you were to ask me like aw like you love it like I would never really use that word. Very super passionate about it. Like if passion is something that drives you crazy
sure.
Were like why like why not like if that's your definition of passion? And then you know like I try to I try to say lots of people in different fields and you know people who excel in certain areas who are Neal teach a little early level. Yeah. And I see something similar, like it's if you want Excellence excellence in something, it's not only about the enjoyment. It's a sort of this about the difficulty in this getting there and having, to continuously break yourself down and try to reach a new level. Does that feel good?
Not really, but does it make you feel something that you don't get anything else? Absolutely. So this feel this feels natural to you. It's something like yes, you will keep doing this and do this forever and you would never not do it. So I'd like to think that I found what I am natural at in the on that. I mean, that's the question for, I think, like you said for everybody, like you, can we find that thing? Yeah, that bring that brings us. Brings that quality out of ourselves and you don't find that unless you just you try different things.
That's like yes as I said earlier like there's no there's nothing wrong with trying, something feeling, there's no point in judging yourself more late, if you attempt something that's not for you, then it's not you and that's okay. Try something else,
I love it. We've covered at least five or ten full length book topics in this chat and for for folks who want to go read more about all the stuff you've created, all your courses on so many different topics. The place is Cortez dot sight Cor.
RT, e-- s. .S ite and then Twitter, Alexander is one of my favorite places to follow what you're talking about and that's Aja underscore cor Tes. Are there any other great places where people can follow your
work?
I do, I post like Photo essays a lot in fact on Instagram, which I think are pretty decent. Same as a Twitter handle Aja underscore Cortez but like those are three places the best to find me. Yo, obviously, to Twitter ice or consider like a super-ego Persona run amok, it's Twitter like a gun. It's hyperbolic and it, you were operating the simulation. And, yeah, I think people that assess my personality from that they always there. Always, maybe a little bit.
Eyes. When they actually hear me speak, they're like oh, this guy's actually he's pretty calm. You seems like, he knows what he's talking about and then the, the email list of the newsletter, I have my website. I have run like 35 thousand subscribers, but newsletters were actually will go into like extreme depth on various different topics. Some of which are finished related, a lot of which are more philosophical nature but like everything. Sure. We discussed here, they, that's where I'll actually like, you know, for this conversation I'll probably go back and reflect and like, let me
Actually right, you know, a thousand words or two about what I talked about and hopefully there's something in here that can be extracted. That's useful to the reader. Yeah, seeing on your email list here,
recent emails from you, include training for women short on time, but still want to get strong neck training. If you're over 40, you want to get fit read this. So, just a whole variety of just topics to bring people in and help them understand for wherever they are, whoever they are. If they want to change this narrative that they're living in.
You just keep on handing tools and breadcrumbs saying, hey, if you want to change, like, you just did your, your guide to intermittent fasting, which I've heard some people just with Incredible results from using that to, really change the bodies. Now that I'm past 75 hard, which what I did for that was, no, sugar, was my diet, no added sugar of any kind for 75 days, incredible results. I mostly wanted to get healthier in general, didn't care about fat loss specifically. But I lost the pen size and really leaned out my body from just all the information from
her. And my next thing is really to start looking at fasting. So I went ahead and got your intermittent fasting guide and I'm excited about really exploring that in a more serious way than I have in the past less of a casual way more of a okay. What's a six-month? Or 0 to 12 month investigation of this way of eating? What's that going to bring me? And really planning that out like we're talking about with planning out a program for that?
Well that's that's excellent. Yeah, that guy the free guide actually. I think it's pretty
Fault like the approach. I take to love. My work is see. I don't pretend to be profound when I come up with Fitness stuff. A lot of it to sort of organizing this organized knowledge by take something as her like a, how would you call it like a come like a surf? Someone I had a follower reference something mathematics like pregnancy. It wrong like combine a Torx. I've never said that word out loud. If we read
it basically works like Elementary School, our school out or something like that.
Yeah come in a Torx. It may see it's just a mathematical sort of like, you know, field philosophy where it's primarily concerned like with counting stuff properly. But you're counting for the sake of obtaining like an end result and you're dealing with like finite properties and finite structures and finally factors. But I he describe my work that way and when I went back and reviewed I'm like that's actually very good description since a lot of what I put together that are any other paid like the fitness programs. You know these guides they're not just workout programs. While I'm trying to do is take all the
Useful applicable pieces of like, Fitness information, that will have an actual positive effect when you apply them whether it be in, within a work out, whether it be diet-wise, whether it be a lifestyle, like what are things that actually work and where the steps of those things require and now that, you know what those things are? And I've explained to you. Like this is how you, this is how you execute on it. What you should get the outcome that you want and and organizing the very easy to follow fashion. I
think, once getting rid of distractions, I'm looking at your ancient Athletics
Book that I bought from you while back and you have chapter headings, like, physical, mental, and spiritual hygiene. So you're saying, okay, do this. And then you'll don't do that over there, and sometimes as a coach just the stop doing this thing, that's hurting you. That is what is required to make this space to get the things you want and you can't just shove the thing you want into unhealthy lifestyle. Just it's like I'm going to go in a marathon and then keep on eating dozen donuts a day. It doesn't matter. They ran the marathon. No one cares. You're still going to be.
Really sick from eating all those donuts.
Yes that was that guy who was actually a really enjoyable to right. I researched it last year during like the lockdowns. Yeah I wasn't I was in Thailand was researching it but
That that term, like the mental, physical spiritual hygiene. I got that from ancient Greek medicine where this does not translate perfectly into English, but there's a sort of phrase that I don't speak engine Greek. So like I couldn't tell you what was, but there was a phrasing that was used a lot of what I was researching, where the ancient Greek myths. And it did refer to a kind of like literal like lifestyle hygiene where, if you're being treated by a doctor, this is like an ancient doctor and he especially liked the Hippocratic School.
You're someone like the Roman position. Gal, who is most famous doctor Epocrates? They would go and they talk to you later interview and be like, all right, what are you suffering from right now, like why what's your overall lifestyle situation? And there's a there's this apocryphal story supposedly the Paw Cruces Hippocrates would ask his patients. Like, are you willing to give up what's bothering you before I give you any kind of record before I give you any kind of recommendation for treatment? Are you willing to give it up a lot of what exists? Actually, they of stoicism.
Comes from ancient Greek medicine, where, when they were treating people with Melancholia, like they see, depression, or laziness or anxiety, there'd be these mental principles of like, okay? Like what you're describing to me and you're willing to give this up, I need you to start being disciplined. So you need to start doing this every day, waking up. At the same time, you need to stop thinking about these things and focus on this. And I mean and today like in Psychology, this is, you know, and talk therapy and cognitive behavioural therapy, this would be something.
Be talked out over multiple multiple sessions and you really tried to drive into the person's motivation. And I mean, there's so many different ways you can slice psychology, but I found it really fascinating that are in time. Psychology didn't exist as a field. Your physical mental health or more or less can serve the same thing like they were legitimately believe to be the exact same thing. So there's no point in separating the first place. So the recommendations they are very prescriptive of the very practical. They're incredibly practical there, step by step. Here's what.
To do, here's what's not to do. And you are like, there were health clinics has existed. Then this is like 25, 30 years ago, you're suffering from depression anxiety, laziness your, whatever, their you're afflicted by something that's taking you out of sorts, all right? You're going to go here, you're going to be here for a week. You're going to be out in the Sun every day in the morning, you're going to sleep in these Chambers, you're going to have these dreams. You're going to talk to this priest. You're going to eat this diet and you're going to do these exercises and after a week at this play is you're going to come out and
You are feeling a lot better because you do the right things. It was quite incredible to research since I've missed was just, you know, something. I didn't know this existed at all. Yeah, I didn't know the ancient Greeks had this little. Hello medicine. This is over 2,000 years ago, but they did and there's actually pretty good historical records that there's a circle records and how to set bones and deal with sports injuries. The same thing I didn't know that it exists until I really researched it. So I spent all this time doing the scholarship and you know I put together an ancient, you know so ancient Flex guide like this is right.
I try to make the do the same thing and like let me make this is applicable and practical as possible. I don't want to get too Lost In The Weeds of like the philosophy of like their philosophies. We know why they did what they did. A lot of it didn't work works really well but yeah that guide was that kind was a lot of fun and he gave me a perspective to a modern medicine. Since we've definitely or mainstream medicine, is very much straight away from that practical outcomes method of treating people's.
Style and sing a concrete result. Allopathic medicine. Just doesn't work that way at all.
Yeah, that's a different podcast episode about
a whole different
topic. Well Alexander, thank you so much for being on the show and folks, AJ underscore CRTs on Twitter on Instagram and cor TSE. .S ite to go get all of Alexander's, books and courses. Thanks for being on the show, Alexander.
Thanks, bro, the great conversation.
