Unlocking Human Performance with Phil Wallin – Diesel Fitness, Health & Recovery for Professional Athletes | Athlete CEO #51
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Episode Summary
On today’s episode, Phil Wallin, owner & CEO of Diesel Fitness & Health & Recovery shares how the revolution of wearable technology such as the Whoop is fueling performance like never before.
The world of sports and investing is driven by analytics because the numbers don’t lie. Analytics provide answers to the most important questions:
1. What is valuable?
2. What drives performance?
3. Can it be improved?
Our community is constantly looking for the next edge. Yet, the one thing we have control over is still the most untapped: our human performance.
For the professional athlete, it is so important that your bank account is tied directly to your physical performance.
Yet, most athletes are still guessing when it comes to their health & performance.
“If you are not wearing, you are guessing. If you don’t understand the data, we can teach you. Is your career not important enough?” – Phil Wallin
Listen in as Phil breaks down the 3 Pillars of Health & Performance and the technology you need to gain the edge you are looking for.
+ Read the Transcript
Erik Averill (00:00):
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to The Athlete CEO Podcast. I'm your host, Erik Averill, and I am joined alongside my cohost and my brother, Brandon Averill. We are the cofounders of AWM Capital where we partner with our clients to unlock the full potential of their wealth for maximum impact. One of the things that we believe to the core at AWM is that the greatest driver of your net worth is your human capital. This podcast, The Athlete CEO Podcast, is all about how do we unlock that human capital. Each week, we bring you the tools, the tactics and the access to the best in the world at what they do, so that you can unlock your full potential. Today, we get the privilege to sit down with one of my favorite human beings, an absolute master at his craft, the owner, the CEO, the founder of Diesel Fitness and Diesel Health and Recovery. Phil Wallin. Welcome to the podcast.
Phil Wallin (01:06):
Hey, thank you, guys. So happy to be here. Such a great opportunity to talk to you guys. Like I said, here we go.
Erik Averill (01:15):
There we go. There's the dog pound, the dog mentality. For the listeners that are wondering what is going on, we will get into this attack mode. One of the things that I love, Phil, we've known each other for probably going on about two years now that we got introduced to you from this professional athlete industry that is on this pursuit to be best in craft, to be masters at their domain. They're always looking for the next edge of performance which brought us to you because you've got something cool brewing on down there in Tampa, and really, I would say with PGA players and MLB players and other athletes across the world. Can you tell us a little bit about Diesel and how you separate yourself from just one of the other performance facilities in the United States?
Phil Wallin (02:10):
Yes, absolutely. Diesel Fitness, like you said, it's a very special place. We're going on eight years running. If you come down here, like we said, we'll get into a dog mentality, but it's a lot of hard working-individuals in a nice environment. If you look at it and you look at Diesel itself from an outside-in perspective, the biggest thing that I think drives and separates us is our culture and it's built on that, the culture. People always are like, "Oh, good teams like the Patriots and these teams that win, the Yankees. They have good culture." What is culture? Well, I think it's built on a set of standards and the standards are high, their excellence.
Phil Wallin (02:52):
That's built on the whole group of individuals that walk in to Diesel day in and day out. They all believe in those standards. I think, eventually, when you believe in these of set standards and we'll get into what those standards are. Then the next thing you know, there's this vibe coming. Next thing you know, there's this belief. The next thing you know, they come into those doors and they just say, "Hey, there's something about it. I had little tingle right there." It just becomes something that empowers them to be better. I think that was built on years of that hard work mentality, that dog mentality, a little bit of just attacking. It's not so much attacking every day, we have to run ourselves on the ground. It's attacking more so with the knowledge, more so with that day-in day-out consistency, the little disciplines, the positive energy.
Phil Wallin (03:40):
It's those types of things that we do really well. If you go down by our dumbbell rack, you're probably not going to be really impressed with our weights. Most of them probably don't even weigh what they say, but they're close to it. Eventually, once you realize there, it's like, "We have the equipment, we have what we needed," but really the missing link between good and great is up here, all right? It's that power, it's that key there. I think Diesel Fitness houses our training facility. It houses a nice new smoothie bar. It houses everything kind of an elite level athlete or individual would need for their physical side.
Phil Wallin (04:14):
Then we created Diesel Health and Recovery. Just as last year during the pandemic, we just went right at it and said, "Hey, we're going to keep going with this dream, all right?" We opened up Diesel Health and Recovery right in the middle of it. That was something where like, in that time, people are like, "Gosh, should you do it?" It's like, "Yes, we should do it, all right?" If you believe deep enough, you're going to go. That's what allowed these athletes that end up being the elitist for a long time. They got to believe deep down day in and every day that they can do it.
Phil Wallin (04:43):
Again, Diesel Health and Recovery was built on that same desire and that same thing that we now preach a lot of our athletes, a lot of individuals that we are blessed to work with and help see where we can help insert knowledge, insert some accountability and really just help be a part of their team and that's what we really enjoy. That's what I enjoy, getting in the trenches with them, but Diesel Health and Recovery houses our physical therapy, our chiropractic [inaudible 00:05:08], manual therapy work and then also houses I think, Erik, and Brandon's favorite thing, which is our recovery center which is our cold plunge, our infrared saunas, our red light therapy, our compression therapy in which we then make all these nice creative, we call them regeneration scripts, recovery scripts, where our athletes can then spend in the offseason two to three hours.
Phil Wallin (05:32):
They can train, they can do their therapy and then they can always enter that recovery center, which is always a nice challenge, to help re-boost and re-amp them, so they can do the same thing or not the same thing, but the same effort level tomorrow and then the next day and then the next day. That's why this has become so like this is where we are in fitness with these wearables like these Whoops and Oura Rings. It's created the ability to teach people how to take care of their bodies better to where they can work harder, and then that little bit, "We're trying to get this much better, couple saves here, couple wins here. We're not trying to go crazy."
Phil Wallin (06:10):
That's why if we can use our analogy and we can use our consistency and we can use the data to help drive how we're doing things, next thing you know, our athletes are dogs that want to be always go and going, we can give them a bone, we can give them scripts that they can do day in and day out that's going to give them their performance, their consistency, their mindset that they can do and they can make these amazing things happen in their lives. I think Diesel Health and Recovery, Diesel fitness all encompasses here is just our inhouse place where we can basically bring people in, put some wearable measurable data on them and then basically start to analyze that data, look into it a little bit.
Phil Wallin (06:51):
Hey, depending on the athlete, the individual, what we want to do with them, then we create these game plans, these scripts, basically programs for them to start to learn their body, start to see the data, "Oh, this is this. This is that," next thing you know, these athletes are empowered because they're in more control of their lives, right? They're in control of their AM, their PM routines. They're in control of their offseason routines. Also, most importantly, they know why. A lot of the big thing that we think are different to answer that question overall is that we're not so much into just telling our athletes like, "I want to teach. I want to inspire. I want to give them the knowledge so that they can go do it."
Phil Wallin (07:32):
At the end of the day, it's like, "I'll be there in the trenches. You can call or text, whatever you want if you need a little fire," but at the end of the day, after a few months of work with these guys, I've had some guys I've been working with for a decade, those kinds of maniacs, but they also are very intelligent. If they ever stop their career and want to work over at Diesel, I want them because those guys know so much about their body. Because some of these guys like the Whoop itself, it's been around for four years or so, maybe five now, huge, but some of these guys we've been working with and some of my long-term clients, we've been wearing them since I think flopped off every time they threw a med ball. Now, it's [inaudible 00:08:06] and it's crazy, but the cool thing is it just was able to teach us.
Phil Wallin (08:11):
If you're open to learn and I think that a lot of us that are listening today probably have that growth mindset, we want to learn. When somebody can learn and then you can show them like, "Hey, Erik. Hey, this is your HRV. Hey, if we don't eat past 8:00 PM, two hours before bed, that's going to help increase that." "Oh, okay," and you're going to do it. Then the next day, you'd be, "Boom," and then your HRV goes up, you're like, "Oh, man," you're going to keep doing it. Then it's up to you to make those discipline choices when you want that HRV high or that, but those are the types of things that are fun.
Phil Wallin (08:42):
There's some accountability to it as well. You give these, "Hey, Erik, here you go. Here's some things you can do." Next thing you know, you can see these numbers and you're like, "Hey, oh, man. My HRV didn't go up." It's like, "Well, look it, all right? We are sleep performances. Remember, we got to stay this." What I'm telling you there is they can see. It's measurable. You can see it. You can see like, "I only slept six hours and 57 minutes average in March and my average recovery was 52%. Now, six months prior though, leading into that, my average recovery was 60% above and I slept seven and a half hours, all right? What happened was on the backend of the offseason, I had a little baby that was getting maniac. Life just took me over and I was being a little less discipline. I'll be honest with you. I was eating a lot of snacks late. I smashed my sleep that way which isn't good."
Phil Wallin (09:28):
You can see from there, I just learned. You learn and then I get back into April. I'm like, "Man, I don't want to have a bad month." I looked at my stats like an athlete. I look at my data stats. I'm like, "Hey, man, I want to do better." The last four days, Erik commented earlier like I've been averaging seven half to eight and a half hours, but I feel really good. I'm like, "Man, I'm back," but it's just simple discipline. That's the big thing that I think we do is we know that overall
Erik Averill (09:52):
I think that's awesome, and then I'll let Brandon jump in, but what I love to hear about you there as you went into it these very tactical things that you can do and so just orienting our listeners, taking a step back. One of the things that drew us so much to you and that resonates what we do at AWM is a lot of times we have treated, whether it's our health or our finances very fragmented, right? We know in the athlete community the strength and conditioning component has been this marquee focus. It started probably in the late '90s, early 2000s with Mark Verstegen and Athletes Performance Institute that became EXOS, how they're [inaudible 00:10:35] of the world and you have all of these unbelievable, functional fitness training centers which is fantastic that specialize with the athlete, but what we also understood is you're not just how you train.
Erik Averill (10:51):
I would love for you to expand on these pillars where you've talked about, "You know what? Here's what a whole approach, an integrated approach to health and performance are," and we think about it the same thing on the finances, right? Usually, people separate out their taxes, they separate out their investments and their insurance. What they're also doing is they're starting with how to optimize the money, the X's and O's, instead of starting with, "Who is the human being and what are the priorities that I want to achieve as a person?" That's why I would love for you to share with the listeners your guys' approach to your three pillars and why unlocking performance and health is far more than just training and then part B of that is the wearable technology of you guys were early to the party, you saw where the puck was going and I think we're probably just at the beginning. You've mentioned the Oura Ring. You've mentioned the Whoop. I know you guys are technology agnostic. I just love to hear your thoughts on that.
Phil Wallin (11:58):
Yes, absolutely. Those are great topics. Really, it's crazy if you look at the whole fitness field itself and this is where it's fascinated me and I've been in it. Bruce [inaudible 00:12:11], some of those EXOS, I was down at IMG coaching, I've been coaching strength conditioning for a long time since I was 19, 35 now, but it was the last couple years where I almost feel that I still love moving, I still love training, but I just felt my attention wanting to steer away to this little thing on my arm. Because I'll be honest with you boys, those listeners out there that know Whoop, when I put this thing out, I had zero REM and zero deep sleep. I average five hours of sleep. My HRV was 30. My resting heart was ... See, I thought it was fit, but I wasn't fit. I worked out every day, but I felt terrible.
Phil Wallin (12:52):
I was achy, I was tired, I had no energy and my intrinsic drive to be impactful to the world was not there. I was surviving and like, "Boom." What happens? Four years later, the dog was born, but the dog was always in it. I think I just l woke up. I put this thing up and you start to realize a lot of things. I think to answer your first questions, the pillars, we looked at them three ways. One of them, like you said, is training, all right? Your sets, your reps, your high intensity, low intensity, your energy system developed, your HR, your heart rates, all those things, your max heart rates. Baseball players, starting pitchers, we look at their heart rates during, we looked at them after, we look at averages within, but that's the training set, which I love. That's just one of three categories that we believe create that overall balance, that holistic lifestyle, that integrated approach.
Phil Wallin (13:46):
The other ones we'll look at a little deeper is lifestyle. That's the biggest one, I think. That's the one I think steals the show when it comes to like good and great. Oh, man, look at first round guys. We got a bunch of first round guys every year. They all come up, I agree. Then, eventually over year over year, the herd just packs and it thins and only a few guys get to the top. I'm like, "Man, what happened, dude?" Everyone's good. I'm over people telling me like, "Oh, this guy's good." Everyone's good, man. Great. I want guys that are going to be good for the next 15 years.
Phil Wallin (14:18):
Those are the guys I want because that's what I think strength is. That's what I think a dog is. A dog is somebody that gets beat, gets pushed down, gets knocked around, has a bunch of bruise in his face and he just gets up. We all saw Rocky in Rocky IV when he got knocked down twice by Drago. That's a dog, like "Boom, boom," just going. That's a short period of episode, you know, 12, round pot boxing, whatever it was, but we're talking about life. Life never stops. These journeys just keep happening, "Boom, boom." Whatever you want to use to mimic. If you're in war, I've never been in it, but you're getting blown up, you're getting attacked, but at the end of the day, how are you going to respond?
Phil Wallin (14:55):
Those things are built on, I believe, is your consistent lifestyle routines. Those are built on your discipline. That's where I love because I love the lifestyle, because this is where I can get guys to score, because they tell me how good they want to be, but then I start to just be like, "All right, cool. Well, seven hours of sleep. We start basically putting in different parameters." Our lifestyle overall means we look in to sleep, we look in to nutrition and we look in to how we're balancing all those components out and then we build basically looking at routines as well. Our whole goal with our lifestyle is to make sure that we're recharging our bodies through a proper sleep, not just like, "Hey," everyone always tells me, especially these guys, they're all skeptical on these wearables like, "Hey, man." I'm like, "How did you sleep?"
Phil Wallin (15:39):
Because I know why I'm asking that. I'm not faking it, "Oh, I sleep great." I'm like, "Oh, how are you doing?" because I don't see anything on them. Maybe he's got to do one. He's like, "Oh, man, I just sleep good. I always had it." "All right, man." Then I go into being like, "No, you're guessing, man. You don't know you sleep good. You just guessing. We need data feedback." That's the first time, it's like, "Are you wearing or are you guessing, all right?" That's just to throw in that wearables. We're like, "The wearables are here and they're giving you data, data that if you don't know how to use it, we can teach. That's what the education is, but if you're just naive to look at it, well, then you're going to get past though because this is why the dogs like it, because the lifestyle is built on discipline. This one is built on consistency, consistency in your routines."
Phil Wallin (16:23):
What we help people do is we help them build the routines, set the barriers within sleep, nutrition routines, AM/PM, what you're going to do pregame, however they want to get detailed and then we just start to use the data to watch it work or watch it or see what's going on, but as long as they know what to do and what the data is supposed to do, we can monitor it. Then when we see dips in these recoveries or don't see if we're in the offseason program, we're not seeing the gains we want, hey, we can go back and be like, "Hey, man, it's been two weeks. Well, I haven't put any weight on." It's like, "All right, man. Well, you slept six hours the last two weeks. I don't care how hard you work out in the gym. If you don't get the proper amount of sleep," and then let's break down, "If you don't get the proper amount of restorative sleep," let's break it down again, restorative sleep meaning REM and deep sleep, deep sleep is your hormonal. 97% of HGH is released then, REM sleep is your ability to heal the mind, the brain, the power of machine that makes you want to work every day, then like, "You're not going to put on weight."
Phil Wallin (17:25):
Then there's breakdowns of how you can improve your deep, how you improve your REM. That's another topic, but you can see how we build the barriers or not the barriers, we build the foundation and then we allow people to see it. As long as you can track it, you can improve it. Lifestyle itself is our sleep and nutrition. Nutrition is another thing. We talked about sleep a little bit. Nutrition, it doesn't mean that we're talking about cookie cutter diets, we're talking lifestyle. We're talking the ability to basically put yourself, basically optimize your overall hours of your day. If you look at nutrition in a factor of fuel and performance, I always say, "Guys, we don't want two times, we don't want to overeat before we train, or we work or doing our skillset while we get paid or before we go to bed. Two times that we don't want to blow ourselves up." I call that blowing myself up.
Phil Wallin (18:18):
Periodically, I'll be like, "Hey, man, Billy, low recovery today," and I'll look at him and be like, "Yeah, I ate a bag of popcorn and I stayed ... I just went bananas. "Yeah, I understand. You eat late at night. You can see some of those factors, but you can eventually start to really understand when and what to eat at those times." It's another way to use these Whoops. We use the Whoops all the time where it gives us the data factor of, "People always think it's like red, green, yellow. This is what it means. This is why," there's a lot of reasons why. There's a lot of variables. That's why it's a little bit tricky for people to understand it because it's like, "Hey, man, I slept eight hours and I'm in the yellow," and then eventually people get frustrated because nobody has an answer for them why they're yellow and they keep sleeping well.
Phil Wallin (19:00):
The next thing you know, they just put the thing off and put it in the corner. They're like, "It doesn't work." I'm like, Oh, my God, don't do that. Don't do that if you want to great because it works." At the end of the day, I tell people, "Just wear it." If you can do anything right now and you have one, just keep it on and then hopefully you get in touch with somebody that can give you some education on what you're seeing and why. Then next thing you know, it's like hook and a fish because again, that dog wants to know. Nutrition is another one that's fun. We talked about fasting protocols. Fasting is nothing more like water fasting, juice fasting. That means I'm like ... I came back, I traveled yesterday, 10 hours in a car and so I fasted for 36 hours. I ate Sunday night at 8:00 PM and then I didn't eat again until yesterday at 4:00 or something. My mass is a little off. I added somewhere in there, but that 36 hours, why did I fast, all right?
Phil Wallin (19:44):
I fasted for a few reasons. I know that when I eat, I have to divert my energy to digestion instead of focus. Well, I want to be hyper focused on the drive, safety first, but I also wanted to recover well because I wanted to come in yesterday like I did and hammer the day because I haven't been at Diesel for a few days. For me, that was my peak optimization, all right? That's me as Coach Phil. I use the same stuff, we use the same stuff with our coaches, the same thing we teach because I want to be great. For this podcast, I just told boys, I was like, "Hey, I trained already and then I had a set. I cold plunge the red light. I just jumped out cold plunge 10 minutes ago, I'm shaking," but that might be good clarity. That's what I felt I needed because I know my body. I know my system and I know my machine and I wanted to be at peak performance forever. It's cool where you can slowly start to learn.
Phil Wallin (20:29):
Fasting is a whole another topic too, but again, something where we found that when you ... Eating is great. You need to do it to survive, but you can almost go 20 days without eating. Not to tell athletes to stop eating, but it just says, "Hey, man, if we can look into windows at times where we can ..." Most of our athletes, they might have past 12 hours a day and most of that's sleeping. If you don't eat after eight, you eat again, at 8:00 AM, that's 12 hours. That 12-hour mark is when people are beginning to basically show signs of ... I think 16-hour mark, you get 100% increase in HGH. 24 hours, you get this thing called autophagy which is your body's regeneration system within your cells. 36 hours, it's a 300% increase in regeneration of your cells.
Phil Wallin (21:10):
These are things where you start to talk about how to optimize your day-in and day-out focus in terms of drive, your energy. This is stuff we're talking about. It's pretty deep. People don't understand this is okay because it's new, but we're basically able to drive this to them figure out what's best for our minds, our bodies and our performance. It's really neat. Nutrition is one. Then the last thing we talked about the lifestyle is those AM/PM routines. They always talk about control what you can, control the first 30 minutes of your day, control the last 30 minutes of your day. Those are two powerful times. Again, it's just like peaking for ...
Phil Wallin (21:45):
Right when you wake up, most of our guys, we had a talk to a guy yesterday. I was like, "Hey, man, what do you do right when you wake up?" He was, "I look at my phone, man." I'm like, "I do it sometimes," but that's not what we should do, but the reason is like, "Why?" It's like, "Well, why would I have an AM routine?" because the first thing you want to do is you want to wake up and you want to get your mind right. You want to spend a little bit of time on yourself because again, you're going to have to put the mask on or whatever. You're going to have to put the cape on, I call it. You have to put the leash on me, but you're going to have to put some on and go out and battle into the world.
Phil Wallin (22:16):
I was just talking about group of coaches out there, I was like, "Guys, we have the opportunity every day to impact people, to educate them on that. If you're coming here in Diesel not ready, you're falling below the standard. Chopitichop, boys." "I spend the five minutes in the parking lot, I was listening to Meek Mill for 10 minutes straight off." I'd be like, "You got to call him now." Too much gas in the parking lot. It's like whatever it takes to get you going, but I think it's always cool because a short one, a little mock game in your routine would be like, "All right, maybe I can get up and drink 20 ounces of water, right?" It's good to drink 25% of your water intake right when you wake up because we just didn't drink water for whole, hopefully, nine hours in bed.
Phil Wallin (22:55):
Nine hours in bed would be a good thing because a lot of times you're going to have 10% of being awake. That will give us maybe eight hours. Then you go and you go get some water. That's going to immediately get you to feel better, right? Because if you're groggy in good sleep, bad sleep, whatever it is, water is your friend. I splash some in my face too. I just do a little crazy splash. Then you do that. Then some days, it's like, I have the ability ... I usually read five to 10 minutes for gratitude, a little spiritual, get the whole mind feeling good on that [inaudible 00:23:24] side, understand why we're here, our bigger purpose. And then I might go into some stimulation.
Phil Wallin (23:29):
I might go into a hot cold shower. It's Florida. My shower is not cold enough. I'm going to juice it up, but at the end of the day, hot showers are an easy way to wake you up because, boom, you jump in there. Again, you go hot and then you go 30 seconds cold and then go hot, 30 seconds cold, move around. Next thing you know, you get out and you're like, "All right, all right, I can do this. All right, today's coming." Then from there, you might get out and you might do ... Some of our guys might go right in and they go grab a green tea, a cup of coffee, some athletic greens or greens of their choice, supplemental. Everyone has their thing they like. They have their chai tea, whatever it is. I'm not trying to change everything. I'm just trying to sequence and organize.
Phil Wallin (24:06):
Then you build this 30-minute routine and then it gives you what? It gives you consistency. When you wake up and you have that bad attitude, I wake up sometimes, I'm like, "Man, I don't want to be a dog. I just want to lay a bed," then we just know that all we got to do is get our foot on the ground and then we start moving. The next thing you know, 30 minutes later, "I'm back. All right, here we go." We can go and we can impact the day well. We can perform well. We can train hard. I can do everything we need to do to be the elite mindset. The routines thing is great and then the PM routine, why do we do a great PM routine? Man, sleep. Sleep is everything, man.
Phil Wallin (24:42):
It's one of those where ... I'll be honest with you, until I was like 29, I strapped this thing on, I didn't prioritize sleep once. Last weekend, I hung out with some family and they're like, "Do you prioritize sleep a lot?" I'm like, "Yeah, because it's super important. When I don't do it enough, I don't feel that great. I know that I'm probably not impacting people as well. I do. I want to prioritize it. To be honest with you, people are like, "Oh, man." I'm like, "Dude, I would much rather stay up late, eat whatever I want all the time and do that, but I'm making a disciplinary action to go to sleep because I want to wake up and I want to impact. I want to attack." I want people to be able to call me, who I work with, and be like, "Man, that fired me up. That was good."
Phil Wallin (25:19):
When I don't feel good and I don't feel energized, nobody wants to help anyone. That's why this world is running around with people that don't want to help each other. Let's just start with our minds and bodies there. The last thing we talked about on that pillar, we have training, we have lifestyle and then we have recovery. Recovery is fun. Recovery, we use specifically here is as our inhouse, we use whoop. It's got a great community platform, but it also has a nice database, a lot of data, all right? That's why we got to break it into what's important for each person. Everyone is different. There is a lot of data like I'm saying, so that's where it's like really for a lot of our guys.
Phil Wallin (25:53):
We'll take example like an MLB guy. They're used to data and stats, all right? Think of a Whoop as a rap soda or something for your throwing, for your pitcher. Spin rates, all this like that. Five years ago, or whatever, people didn't even know what that stuff was or 10, I don't know. That was new and everyone's like, "I don't like that stuff. I don't like it." "No, I got two of them out here and I'm not even a pitching guy, right?" Because it's really good knowledgeable data. Think of that and being ... Any pitcher is like, "Yeah, I use it. I got to know it because that's what everyone's going to duplicate. The whoop's the same thing. It's giving you data for your body. I don't know what else you want for that. We've never had data for our body. I've never been able to tell like, "Hey, man, Phil, your HRV, this and that, that's where that's at today."
Phil Wallin (26:37):
It's like, "Man, I've never been able to ..." It's basically like an engine in your car, you get check engine light on. Check engine red means you're in the red recovery. Check engine, that just means you're not going to die, your performance ain't going to fall apart. You need to figure out your lifestyle and stuff or, "Hey, you need to calm it down," or, "You need to go up." That's where we can pump the brakes, increase the gauge, whatever that is. Recovery itself, we look at three components, we look at HRV, we look at resting heart rate and again, we look at sleep. Sleep pops back up again because sleep is your overall. I would say if somebody was like, "Hey, how can I recover?" "The best sleep," because that's naturally the body's rhythm, all right? Sleep, it shuts you down.
Phil Wallin (27:11):
Then if they want to go deeper, I'd say consistent sleep routines, meaning get up between one hour, so I get up between 6:30 and 7:30 every day. There's obviously outlier days and then I go to bed between 9:30 and 10:30 every day. You have those consistencies. Well, the great thing about me is I'm pretty consistent. Now I travel probably, I don't know, I travel probably a week a month. I've been on the road a little bit, but man, when I'm home and I'm grooving my discipline, my mind is great, I can pull really good recoveries. Now with a lot of our athletes, they got to travel around a circus all the time. Then we got to start to regulate ...
Phil Wallin (27:46):
A lot of these guys, they become the second chip workers. They're getting almost bogged down with some of these things. They're just losing their energy because they're just not able to [inaudible 00:27:57] that circadian rhythm. That's where like some of the times, it's like, "Let's just lessen the damage, try to be around these times." Even just be like, "Hey, man. Try to wake up depending on whatever, between 9:00 and 11:00. You go to bed between 7:00. We're talking like, I don't know, 12:00 to 2:00 AM. You can see how it can mess things up in the sleep world, but again, we're just trying to optimize. We're trying to get a little bit better. That's where we peel back and be like, "Hey, man, if you know that you're better off getting up at 9:30 instead of 11:30 because you maximized your sleep and it's going to make you feel better, you're going to do that." That's a really-
Erik Averill (28:32):
Sorry to interrupt you right there because I think it's so many of our people listening are going through exactly what you just said. The MLB season just started. We know that games are 7:00 pm. They're not done until 10:00, 10:30. They've got to travel time zones. Just the truth is, in this world of sports, there's the stimulants to get you up, but then there's this protocol of, "How do I get myself down? I'm going to be on an airplane. I feel like I have to eat at night." Talk a little bit about that. I want to put it in this context, the thing, of course, where Brandon and I come from of owning a company where we're responsible for helping people manage their entire net worth and we talked about the best investment is your human capital.
Erik Averill (29:23):
If you can recover quicker and play more games, economically, what's an extra 10 games at your peak performance state? How many more home runs are you going to have? How many more strikeouts are you going to have? The investment is not just some nice analogy. It literally is, if you invest in these things, it will produce economic return for you as a professional athlete. Can you maybe just go hyper focus in these guys that are ending games at 11:00 at night? They're actually probably killing their recovery by taking the wrong type of whatever we want to call it, eating in properly. What advice would you give for the athlete, especially the position player who doesn't have the blessing of a five-day routine? They've got to respond and play the next day. What advice would you give them?
Phil Wallin (30:20):
Yes. You guys are smart individuals, you recognize that because the starting pitcher, yes, you have a little bit of luxury of understanding when you're going to battle and peaking for that day and knowing that you can eat earlier before the game starts and then not eat again once after 9:00 PM. Let's step back and be like, understanding like, "Hey, when we eat, we're digesting and that's going to take our focus away, but eating does fuel our body, it recovers, it repairs, it gives us energy," but what we found in the data is one of the top, I would say probably three factors of why people sometimes might get good sleep and they might train a balanced sleep, but they still have rough recoveries is that they're eating too close to bedtime or when they're supposed to be sleeping.
Phil Wallin (31:11):
Because when you eat too much before bedtime, your body's going to have to then be like, "All right, well, I can't go into deep sleep or REM sleep, which is our gold. That's where we make our hormones and feel good and repair because I got to process that steak and two glass of wine that we had on the flight and then we had a little cupcake too," or something like, maybe just sugar right in there that just zaps you. You can see that that's a major factor in is understanding the process because once you understand that, you're like, "Shoot," but it's like, "Okay, well, I don't want to not to eat because our position guys just played a game. They just fire around" but what we can do is understand, knowing if Erik was the shortstop for the Yankees and he woke up and he was at 36% recovery, anything over 50, I just check in and I watch it, "Okay, fine, he's probably going to be able to do everything again. Great.
Phil Wallin (32:06):
Then I might be like, "Hey, Erik, you're showing signs of some fatigue the last two weeks. I'll give you a report. Anytime you're under 40%, let's try to eat this type of food after the game." It might be instead of a steak or a red meat, it might be like, "Hey, if they have a fish and chicken option, let's go for a lean protein. Then instead of a high complex carb or processed carb, if they have some of that, let's just go with some nice veggies. You can always touch up on some sort of carb that's one ingredient like brown rice, quinoa, things like that. Just think you want to be more strict on your eating after the game, when the body is showing you that it was fatigued that day because then the next day, knowing that having a little less and better digestible more clean food in your body, it's going to allow it just to ...
Phil Wallin (32:59):
It doesn't have to be like go through this process. It can just burn it off and you can sleep better, increase everything restoratively, your REM and deep and then what happens the next day, Erik? You wake up and instead of being at 36 and below again because you're piled with all this food in you, which most guys do because we've been taught as humans to be like, 'Eat more for recovery,' sorry, not true, all right?" That's where it's like the next day, well, Erik knew he went to two for three, played great, had a sit, high strain. Then he hydrated well. He had a really good well-balanced meal. Maybe he had 50, depending on 40 to 60 grams of protein, really good carbs, great veggies, not too much oil and then fine, boom.
Phil Wallin (33:41):
Then he cut it off, not too much sugar. I'll give him a little bit, maybe once a half a cupcake, he can have if you played well, but then at the end of day, his recovery goes high. I guarantee it. Those are the types of things you tell people. We didn't break anything, but we just peel back a little layer. Now you know as a dog like, "Hey, man, I just got inserted this knowledge. If I tell one of my guys," he knows it, now it's up to him if he wants to have the two beers and whatever the steak option or whatever that option or snack and all the salted peanuts all night until 2:00 AM. I would say to answer your question, I would say what you're eating is important and then I would say that another thing we can look at is timing and I would say eat it as closest to the game time being over as you can.
Phil Wallin (34:24):
Don't wait until postgame an hour later. Eat right away, right? Eat smashed and spread, eat. If you're hungry and you're like, "I like eat," I'm like, "Well, eat. If you want to have two chicken breasts, have two, just don't have the steak, all right?" but then if you're in great recovery and you had a great game, you're in the green, maybe then you can allow yourself to have, be a little bit more flex on your nutrition. Think that it gives your levers like, "Hey, man, where am I at today? Cool. That just tells me where I'm at. Then you're going to maybe give me some choices. I know I'm going to eat after the game." It's just now telling you what kind you eat because the closer you eat towards bed, the more that body's going to digest and it's not going to be able to hyper sleep.
Brandon Averill (35:07):
I think that's fascinating too, Phil, because when we ... You've hit on a couple themes that I think are super important. We talked about this before we started recording, but it's the 10% to 15%. Somebody might go, "Oh, 10% to 15%," but we all know you made the point in any of our fields. Think about how massive 10% to 15% is. How do you even know? I think it's going back, right? Do you have the data? How do you know? Great example, you probably woke up, you saw my sleep score this morning. You're like, "What the hell did Brandon do? And I'm looking and I go, "You know what? I had the same routine two nights ago, good sleep score. Same routine last night." "Okay, peel back, what the hell happened?"
Brandon Averill (35:50):
"Well, I happened to be wearing a continuous glucose monitor. I saw my glucose was high all night. Guess what? I had a small little chocolate bar before I went to bed." That's sugar spike, right? It affects me certainly more than most people. However, it completely crushed my sleep woke up. Wife's like, "How did you sleep?" Well, Whoop tells me I slept like crap. You know what?" I think it's right but it all goes back to knowing the data. We've got a lot of clients that are super progressive. They've got the hyperbaric chamber. They've got the red light therapy. They've got recovery on lockdown. They'll go jump. You keep saying, "Recovery is fun," Phil, let's call a spade a spade here, brother. It ain't that fun when you jump in the cold plunge. I don't care who you are. I've yet to hear anybody be like, "You know what? This is it."
Brandon Averill (36:45):
They've got all these tools and it might make you feel good, but we're talking about the excess here, right? We're talking about the elite. If you want to be elite, you actually got to know what it takes. That's the one thing I think I learned from you and we do this in our business. We're all about measurables, but I never thought to try to measure the optimization of my human potential, so I could show up today, get my breathing exercises in that I heard on a podcast with Andrew Huberman yesterday. I got the extra little inhale right to get myself pumped up for this. Erik didn't know what was going on. I was all over the place this morning. I guess my question to you is just was-
Erik Averill (37:29):
He was alive, Phil, just a sidebar there. He woke up to the reality of performance.
Phil Wallin (37:36):
He was on and alive.
Brandon Averill (37:39):
I don't know what's going on, but I think I guess my question to you is, what do you tell somebody that is searching? How's the intellectual curiosity finding all the tactics possible because it is unique. It's a separator for Diesel? How do they learn this side of it? How do they measure everything? Obviously, the devices are great, but shoot, I wore the Whoop for a year before you take a look at my data and all that kind of stuff and I sit now for 30 minutes and I knew more in 30 minutes than I knew in a year, so I'd love to hear your advice there.
Phil Wallin (38:15):
I would say you nailed it with the knowledge. You kept saying knowledge and that's really it. Once you teach the right growth mindset, and a lot of the people that we work with in our circles on both ends, I feel like we have that trend of those people and it's really providing them that knowledge that's specific to them, so specific to Brandon, specific to Erik because there's some knowledge out there, that's not ... You're not going to really get anyone to bite on, but the candy bar thing, that's an amazing thing. That just fascinates me and it's awesome because really I'm like, "People don't even know. It's just such small things that are messing with their optimization. We're not too far off in mankind. We just need to know, all right?" I would say with anyone and that's for us, we're working really hard. On our end on building a lot of continual education for people in the wearables, we're working with some people.
Phil Wallin (39:08):
I'm continuing to give people the knowledge because once you give the right person the knowledge, it's like giving a hard-working farmer an, what do they use, like a pitch or something? He's going to crush it, all right? If you have the mindset, you have it, it's going to work. It's going to work for you. It's really a self-exploration of yourself. A lot of times, it's just finding the little things. To jump back to HRV, resting heart rate, the first thing we would do with any of our clients or any athlete that we decide that we want to be like, "Hey, let's team up and crush it and take on the world, is we educate, all right?" We give them that, "What is HRV?" I've said it six times and now all I want to do is tell you what it was.
Phil Wallin (39:48):
Really, you hear it all the time, but just think of it that's your body's nervous system. As a nervous system like your body as a whole, it's telling you, "HRV is balanced, all right?" so it's on, off, all right? It's more like a switch. Let's just [inaudible 00:40:05] that back. Let's say it's switch, all right? Here, it's an on and off switch. On and off switch works really well when our electricity is working, but if the electricity goes out or we get fatigue, things don't work as well. Our on switch might get caught on, our off switch might get caught off.
Phil Wallin (40:20):
At the end of the day, our on switch being on too much, HRV would be a lower HRV, all right? A higher HRV means that we are more in a balanced state, so we're not off, but we're just balanced. When I look at guy's HRV and explain it, I want to look at it, it's called heart rate variability, so it's your variability in your heart rates. Very lower HRV, that's all depending on you. Every person is individual to that. It's an individual factor, but there's definitely lifestyle things that can help you improve that factor and get it to go up. A lot of people are like, "Oh, it's individual to you." Yeah, it is, but you can improve it. [inaudible 00:40:56], all right? You'll be like, "We're stuck at 20." "No, you're not. We're going to get it going."
Phil Wallin (41:02):
That's a big factor in understanding that HRV, heart rate variability, on and off switch. When I see myself wake up and I usually average, I'm just making this up, if I average 100 and I wake up at 80, well, that I know that I'm probably more fatigued or stuck on. I need to basically add some more breathing, maybe I need to go to sleep, maybe I need to train, maybe I need to do it different, a nice walk or some meditation. It almost allows you to supply, "Hey, man," once you get in your own athlete and you talk to them a little bit, get their goals, get you questionnaire, you understand why they want to learn about the wearables, well, then you can start the feedback and be like, "All right, where your HRV is you're at 100. We want to maintain this, all right? We'll give you windows. Then if we see that your lower HRV, we'll give you training scripts," we call them. We use an app in which we can upload programs for the guys and they can just look at and be like, "Cool. All right, this is what I should do."
Phil Wallin (41:56):
"Follow this. Here you go." "I have a lower recovery under 50%. I'm going to do this breathing routine in my AM routine. If I'm above, I'm green, I might do something different." It's like, "When I have low HRV, I might do something different. When I have high HRV, I might do something different." It gives you a balanced attack. So many people think that work just means work, work, work, high intensity, crazy, but it's a balance. You get performance gains by stressing the body and then pulling back. Stressing the body, pulling back. Maybe stress, stress, stress, stress, pulling back. It's not even pulling back, it just means recovering, regenerating, sleeping well.
Phil Wallin (42:33):
I think the more you understand that factor, the more you can really appreciate what HRV. Overall, if I would say what HRV is, think of it as your overall number for your body's overall health and how it's running. If you're in the red, I talked about that earlier, if you're in the red, we're using our bodies as a car, that would be your check engine light come on. That's something where in that factor, you can see basically the red light comes on, "I need to do something in my car to make sure it doesn't blow up." We're not going to blow up as humans, but we might basically only have a shorter fuse that day of extreme focus and energy.
Phil Wallin (43:18):
If I'm a starting pitcher and I got to start tonight at 7:05 and I wake up at 20% red, that doesn't mean we're not going to be able to pitch a complete game, but that might mean like, "Hey, man, if you wake up low recovery, that's fine." We can change that HRV throughout the day. It's measured while we're sleeping, but it just tells us that throughout that day we might not want to get too revved up over enough. We want to be very crisp on our routines, keep our energy low and then when that time comes to really accelerate at 7:05, we're throwing bullets and we can fire away and we can play, perform as well as we need, and then boom, we're done and we can recover.
Phil Wallin (43:56):
It's then, again, another way you can utilize the data for each individual. I would say overall for your question, it's not as much of ... It's individual to the factor, but the biggest key factor is knowledge. Resting heart rate is another thing, a metric that we use. Resting heart rate is your body's, it's your overall health of your cardiovascular system, your heart. I think with that, that's powerful because think inflammation. Athletes all know, "Inflammation, inflammation, that's bad." It's your body's way of healing. Somebody with a high resting heart rate for me, it's a great factor because anyone out there in the world who wants to get fitter, healthier, perform better, let's try to get that thing to go down a little bit, all right?
Phil Wallin (44:40):
That's a great one because that's overall health. If somebody's eating poorly, sleeping poorly, not having too much sugar, not training enough or training too hard without recovering, you're going to see that factor, you're going to see that inflammation. The body is always going to be stressed, so you're going to see that resting heart rate be up. We always say, "Hey, once we get an athlete on board, we get any individual, we are shooting for under 50 and then we're shooting for under 45 and then we're going to shoot for 40. You get under 40, I'll give you something or I'll give you that, because now we're elite, because that's hard."
Phil Wallin (45:13):
I can get under 40m but I got to be crisp, I got to be clean. When I'm eating snacks late at night, I'm not sleeping enough, I'm staying up a little late, my resting heart rate jumps 42, 43, 44, really bad 50. I just ate everything. It's a fun, measurable tool, but it's important for all of us, health, performance, energy. You want to know why I have good energy? Because my resting heart is really low, so my body's just "fffff" so it's not sitting there be like, "Hey, man. Give me a second. I got to just move your arm and there's much, whatever in it." You get it guys. That's what we're trying to do.
Phil Wallin (45:48):
Overall, that's a long-winded question to the answer, but it all starts up here. It starts with educating your people, measuring it, creating the game plans. Then you have us, the coaches, your coaches in the trenches with you to be like, "Hey, this is this." We try to provide our guys within the weeks and once we start working with the guys, we try to touch base with them a couple times a week. Some guys, when they're in the offseason or whatever, we might be more frequent when they're playing and stuff. We just want to provide them knowledge. If we're providing them ... Some of my guys are like, "Hey, man, you don't have to always respond back to my text. They might be wrong."
Phil Wallin (46:20):
Then they know if they get me on the phone, they're like, "Man, I might not have enough [inaudible 00:46:23]." It's like just listen to what we have and you can look at it, but again, that's what the most powerful thing is. I think what we get good at was understanding the data and then understanding how to analyze it and then spit it back out to people, so it's actually useful.
Erik Averill (46:39):
This is so impactful. Where I want to transition is to, if I had to label this next conversation, this is real talk. This is the candor. This is when we're going to get into the environment in the dog mentality because here's one of the things we say all the time at AWM, you have to own your wealth. This is choice. You have to opt in. A lot of people talk about they want to be great, they want to be wealthy, they want, they want, they want, yet, there is a cost. There's a prioritization. You making the comment that, "Yeah, people recognize I prioritize my sleep," so Phil may not be fun at the end of the night, but guess what? He has clarity and intentionality of what Phil wants to accomplish in life and this is the thing is knowledge is absolutely one pillar of performance, but it's not enough alone, right? It's the knowledge plus the skillset. How do I take this information? We hear this all the time, "Oh, the Whoop, whatever. I don't need it, right?" or, "Hey, the Oura Ring is better than the Whoop."
Erik Averill (47:52):
If that's the conversation you're having, if you're listening to this podcast, it's not about what technology is better than the other. First of all, they're two different things. They measure HRV separately. This is about actually using information that you have to do something with. If you just go listen to this podcast or you listen to The Joe Rogan Podcast or you listen to The Tim Ferriss Podcast and then you actually don't do anything, you're not any smarter, you're not any better, you've just consumed information as entertainment. That's why masterclasses of venture-backed company making millions of dollars off of us watching things but not implementing.
Erik Averill (48:30):
One thing that you say, Phil, that I loved when we were just in Tampa over spring training was you said, "We figure out who are the dogs because then we will suffocate them with accountability," your standards of excellence and I think it's this, I can't tell you how many conversations we've had with guys being like, "Yeah, LeBron spends a million dollars on his performance team. Russell Wilson spends ...Well, if I had more money ..." If you're the major league minimum guy, you're making $575,000 a year, you have the money. It's just whether or not you want to prioritize it and make the investment into your career.
Erik Averill (49:07):
I think that this is the conversation, I think, is so important and this is coming from two washed- up guys that didn't make it, but from a financial standpoint or owning a company, you say this on another podcast that I love, "You're like a wild animal out in the in the wilderness. You're not at the zoo. Nobody's going to hand you your meal to eat. You got to go out and you got to attack it every day," and so there's this intentionality that says, "I have to have clarity of what I want to achieve," but don't kid yourself, there's a cost and there is a choice to opt in to doing things differently. I would just love for you to talk about that separator of what you've seen of the people that actually step in to greatness and achieve it because we have a lot of conversations that everybody says they want to be great, but then they don't invest their time, their money and don't make the lifestyle decisions to set themselves up for success. How do you guys approach the environment and the mentality of the people you work with?
Phil Wallin (50:18):
Yes. Man, you nailed it with the suffocating, suffocate with accountability. It's like we're not out here to ... We want everyone to succeed that we work with, but we just know that there's people out there that they say they want to do it. Well, there ain't no action. Then a month down the road, they're like, "I don't know. Why you're on me?" I'm like, "Why are you on me? I just listened to our combo, you want to be the best. You're saying this. There's a lot of people that want to be the top dog, all right? You telling me like, 'Through simple actions.'" That's why I love the wearables too because they give me data to where I can then I don't have to argue with people, I can show that and be like, "Here you go, man. That's why we're not having what we need."
Phil Wallin (51:08):
Then they look at me and then really quick, if they start to play victim, they start to show those types of mentality, that ego comes out. I just look at them and I say, "Good, I'm going to press on this guy," and I'm going to do that because I want them to win. I want them to be great. I know as a coach, nothing good is going to happen if I just say, "All right, yes." They've got enough guy saying yes, all right? I'm real. I'm going to tell you what I see because I'm a dog. When I told you the other day, was that, yeah, for the last eight years of Diesel, we had to fight like dogs, all right?"
Phil Wallin (51:36):
The whole dog mentality came last year during the pandemic when we had to get shut down. Everyone's going crazy. We had a lot of people who leave us. That's okay because the people that left us were the people that weren't supposed to be here, all right? Now we have this magnificent team. We spent the last year, 13 months, working tail in and tail out. The dog mentality came from those mildly guys, we picked up all these guys from all over that didn't know. They were from all over the world. The guy in Indiana, "Come on down, come on down." Give him good rates and say, "Hey, let's work," because the only thing we wanted over those guys is work.
Phil Wallin (52:05):
We realized the whole world needed something to morale around because everyone was just sitting there from scared words. You know what? We control what we can. Dog mentality came out. We control what we can, we work every day, hard every day. We did the hard stuff. We worked hard. We did the ice baths. We did the grid. We kept showing up. Guys, eventually after the first month, people are like, "Oh, when's the season going to happen?" That's at the second or third month. Nobody said anything. They just showed up to work. Next thing you know, we just started peeling back more data with guys. We started to learn more about how to help guys optimize, how to improve guy's power out, how to improve guy's physical comp, how to improve guy's mentality, but I'm so excited to watch the people that left here at Diesel. We had guys probably 20 guys here for a year. I'm so excited to watch them grow.
Phil Wallin (52:48):
Not all of them are in the big leagues, it don't matter. These guys got better as a human. These guys got better at character. These guys learn one thing, if you want to change something in this world, you have to start the work for it and you have to believe in yourself. Some of the belief comes from working, consistently steadily attacking. We always say keep attacking because when in doubt, I go to work, all right? I go to work. I work hard. I coach. I train myself. I freeze myself. I try to learn things. I try to hustle myself to the top and my team because nobody's guaranteeing us. I don't have a guaranteed contract from anyone, all right? If we all get lazy, we get sloppy, nothing good happens, all right?
Phil Wallin (53:26):
To answer that question from the top, that's why we're probably different because we're hungry. We're hungry. You're going to tell, if I ever not get hungry, you should fire me off the squad, all right? If you see me get off, get me out of there, but right now, I am hungry. We are hungry for success. We know it. We know it because we feel it right here because we know this little wearable has taught us a lot and we know that a lot of people had put on that wearable and taken it off. That's unfortunate, but the ones that are willing to put it on and then know that, "Hey, man, when we talk, we're just going to talk about standards. When you fall below, we're going to let you know. Then all you need to do is say, 'Yes sir.' Not, 'Yes, sir,' but be like, 'Cool.' I'm going to fix it. If we don't fix it, then cool. If we get red by sleep, cool, but as long as we want to keep getting up and keep attacking, we're okay with it because we know that failure teaches us everything."
Phil Wallin (54:09):
Again, that's why it's awesome when you work with the right guys, "Hey, man. Sleep's falling down." "All right, man. I'll try really hard." We're all not perfect. I think that mentality, that's how it blossomed, and now, it's like we're looking for the right minds, the right people that just want to learn and have a tool of accountability, not a team of, "Hey, man, I'm going to be on you and be your dad." "No, bro. I'm bro in your trek. I'm your dog that you know if you've got something going on, that you got a problem, if you need help, if your back hurts."
Phil Wallin (54:36):
You got somebody that you can trust and be like, "Hey, man. Let's look at things." That's what's cool about the wearables too and the whole environment itself is like when things go wrong, we have a plan. We can make a plan because we know, we can look at the data. We can see if like, "Hey, man, my shoulder's feeling fatigued." "All right." Well, mostly guys are like, "Oh, the muscles and balances and that."
Phil Wallin (54:54):
I'm like, "Hey, did you look at his last week of sleep, bro? He hasn't slept for more than five hours. He's whacked. Give him two days to fucking recharge and watch him grow. Don't pump him full of all the drugs. Give them some natural light." It's stuff like that. I always say it's like an insurance plan and a factor of when things are great and everyone's playing well, feeling great, it's very cool, "We're all in the green. Happy. We have a high HRV, low resting heart rate, sleeping great," but when times get tough, what do we choose? "We got to stick to the pack. We got to stick to the data. We got to get back to our routines."
Phil Wallin (55:24):
I always tell guys, when things get tough, jump on your routines again. If you don't have routines, well, you need to make some because I think Eric Thomas used to just scream out, "Routine. Routine. [inaudible 00:55:35]" I told you, I didn't even resonate until the other day, he came out with a rap song. I was like, "Oh, my gosh." I almost drove my car off the road. I was like, "That was amazing." But like, that was it. It's so simple, but some of the greatest speakers, motivators, that's what they're preaching. Now it's like, "If Eric had a Whoop on, he could educate on the Whoop, he can really get people to do those routines." That's what we basically do.
Phil Wallin (56:00):
The overall environment itself goes back to the culture at Diesel, but really the individual, you don't have to be a Diesel to be Diesel. Diesel is worldwide now because Diesel is nothing more than an attitude. It's nothing more than that dog mentality. Dog mentality means they're going to attack when tough times happen. They're not going to play victim. They're not going to complain about the weather. They're just going to go to work.
Phil Wallin (56:18):
There was one day we were training here and those 20 guys were like, "We'd train at 8:15 every day forever," and it was just raining. It's like 40 hours, but at the end of the day, we all just went out. First thing we did was on the ground court, we all just got wet. The next thing you know, that whole month was our best training, terrible weather, but every day kind of stuff. Then when you were done with it, you felt really good about it. The next thing you know, you look across the street and you feel. You're like, "Man, it's going to be hard to touch us."
Phil Wallin (56:43):
Next thing you know, you pack on one month, two months, three months. Next thing you know, you follow your routines. What do you start to believe in? Yourself, all right? That's when you start to take off. Dog mentality is nothing more than taking ownership of life.
Erik Averill (56:55):
Man, it gets me fired up and I think it's a good way for us to close out, is, I think, to the quote of, "Who we are precedes what we do and you're making a choice." All of us on this podcast, I know the audience, the thing that we love about this community is we are all on this journey together to be the best at what we do, to be masters of our craft and really to unlock the potential, not for the sake of unlocking potential, but to make an impact. That's defined to each individual, so it might be you being the best professional athlete. For us, it's how do we become the best advisor to partner with our clients to unlock the full potential of their wealth. For a lot of us, it's how to be great dads, how to be great moms, how to be better spouses and make a positive impact in the world.
Erik Averill (57:49):
We live in such a time that there is such a gift of knowing information, whether it's the data on how to optimize your energy and your performance that you've just heard about is we really have no excuse going forward. If you want to unlock that full potential, the human capital which is the greatest driver of your net worth, there's no better place to start than here with the wearable technology, with getting the plan, as Phil said, this knowledge, this information that you can implement. Phil, thank you so much. We appreciate you. For the audience, you can get all of this information at athleteceo.com in the show notes. We'll make sure Phil's information is in there. You should follow him on IG personally, Diesel Fitness, Diesel Recovery. We'll put it all in the show notes. Until next time, stay humble, stay hungry and always be a pro.