EP#43- Biohacking and Fitness with Johnny Tieu, Nike Trainer and Fitness Consultant

(gentle music) Fitness, health is accessible to everybody and it should be fully taken advantage by everybody. It's your responsibility yourself to make sure you're healthy and able to enjoy the rest of your life and make sure your family is part of all that journey, right? So no matter who you are, it doesn't matter the definition of athlete or not. Everybody is an athlete in their own respective ways. Welcome back to another episode of Everyday in Dorfense. This is it. This is the last Bali episode that I'm releasing as part of the series. It is super sad for me to think about how so much time has passed. We're now at the end of October. I can't even believe that it's been since June and July that I've been there and had that opportunity to become a yoga instructor, meet so many amazing people, one of whom you will hear from today, before I just kind of wrap up this series, I wanted to say how happy I was to be able to share all the wisdom that I learned while I was away and kind of take you guys along this journey that I had as best as I can through doing the podcast. This week I am so happy to have my friend, Johnny, to come on to the podcast, who you heard from at the very beginning of the segment. Johnny is a fitness consultant and trainer for Nike. We met through Aya, one of my other guests. If you haven't checked out her episode, you definitely should. She had so many amazing things to say in our conversation about the wellbeing behind giving back to others. But aside from Aya, who was how I met Johnny, we really hit it off in Bali. He's a fellow New Yorker, so you can imagine how comforting it was for me to meet someone from my hometown and get to see what it's like to ditch the whole corporate world, the New York lifestyle and live full time and work full time in Indonesia. Johnny has such an incredible story to share with you all today. In this episode we talk about how he started his fitness journey, what got him into fitness, into Spartan racing, what he does for work now as a fitness consultant, what it's like to be a Nike trainer. And I think the coolest part of this episode is the concept of biohacking, which we dive super deep into, talking about what biohacking is, how you can utilize different tools to essentially biohack your health and your life. And Johnny shares a lot of wisdom around some quick and easy health tips you can implement in your day-to-day life. I'm really excited for you guys to hear this episode, but before we do get into it, I have a brief message for my sponsor, Inker. Hi Johnny, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. Really, really interested to hear what we had to chat about today. And yeah, it's been a while since we last spoke over in Bali. It's, it really has. And I'm missing it every day, but I'm so happy we get to connect again virtually. How are things going with you? How is everything now that lockdown has been lifted? Last I was there, we couldn't really do anything. Yeah, so for those that are listening in, Bali had a little bit of a second or third lockdown where there was a massive spike in cases. And I think for the most part, being in Bali, we had it quite easy, per se, versus the rest of the world where we were still able to somewhat enjoy the beach, still be outdoors, but of course, still within reason we had to contain ourselves or the restaurants were in open. So it's a little bit of inconveniences, but I don't think there's anything any of us can complain about. But now being out of it, a lot of us that are living year really do enjoy the tightening communities that we're able to build out for people that actually do live here. And within this past couple of weeks, we can definitely see the influx of local tourism popping back in. So all the clubs, all the restaurants are back open. Everybody from all over Indonesia is all flying in. So it's been pretty busy. It's been the roads are getting more traffic again. But aside from that, can't really complain. It's still day to day stuff. They're going to for us to having fun in the beach and enjoying the weather as much as we can. That sounds perfect. Something that I missed out a little bit on, but that's fine. It gives me incentive amongst many others to come back. With your line of work, working as a fitness trainer, a Nike trainer, also working with other health businesses, a lot of your work also, your exercise occurred outside of racing in the Spartan races. And that's how your fitness journey began. But I'd love for you to talk a little bit more about the onset of your fitness journey and how you got into all of that and just taking us a little bit through the timeline of your interest in athletics and training and racing. Yeah, so I don't think growing up athletics was that big of a thing in my world. Unless looking back at it now, it really was. Because growing as a kid, especially being an Asian family, your parents just like study, study hard. But if you're going to go have fun, make sure you come back in time before the likes go out or something like that. So I think growing was a kid. I was always really active running around. I had more time playing backyard getting yelled at because I wasn't home in time for sunset. And that's when your parents get mad at you versus now kids get playing on the computer games barely even going outside. So I think I was fairly active as a kid, competed in like tennis, bowling, track and field stuff, mixed in nothing that I thought I was particularly amazing at. But things just kept active and like I just had fun with friends. And my career path moving into it was nothing even related to athletics. It was based on business finance. So I was investment banking for a bit and then moved myself into corporate finance into risk management into quality assurance. So like went through the corporate letters on that, shipped in different ways, just find my own area that I thought worked best for me. And then it wasn't until say five years in. I already knew by my first year that finance wasn't really, that there'll be all for me. It wasn't being fulfilled. I wasn't too happy. I was happy what I was doing. I was good at doing doing the job. But it wasn't something that was making any changes on anybody's life. So that struck me personally. And at the same time, I was still active within the health industries and the gyms, my local communities. I was always like running around doing stuff, helping gyms out with training clientele. So I had that interest that I kept on going on the side. And out of nowhere, I think my first competition I signed up for, which my friend just ag me. I was like, hey, why don't we sign up for this local 5K race in our local neighborhood? And ended up doing really well. I hated it during the time. I dreaded it. I was as painful but after you cross the finish line, your dolphins come in. You end up feeling elated. And I was like, oh, wow, that was great. I think it did better. And they called up my name for awards. And I was like, what did I win? And I was like, age group. I'm like, well, that's kind of cool. So that bit of affirmation and confirmation that might be pretty good at this if I kept on going along with it. So that was, I think, my first site into athletics being into more than just having fun with it. Maybe I can actually train to be better. And more and more races came about. I started tackling fun runs or some obstacle course races started becoming a big thing back in 2010, 2012. And that's when Spartan races, which is an obstacle course race, ranging from all sorts of terrains, the mountains, beaches, especially in Asia like volcanoes, could be any sort of terrains that's not just road, and you'll be carrying objects, running, going through barbed wire, jumping over fire, just going through walls, just different things as obstacles. So think about military food camp style with longer distances and you're paying to do it. So you basically started this out for fun. Because you realize that you placed in your age group. And then it just transformed into this whole passion, I guess, but obstacle course races don't seem really fun to me. Like going through mud, climbing up wall. That's really difficult. So what kept incentivizing you and pushing you beyond that initial affirmation of like, oh, yeah, I'm actually pretty good at this. Well, I think it wasn't so much of just being good at it. I've always enjoyed being active. And I think that was just another benefit of training a little bit harder. And I guess growing up, I always see my friends of different ethnicities doing really, really well. But I didn't feel like I was at the same fitness level per save, but not saying it was any sort of stereotype with different ethnicities, but it was just like, oh, maybe I didn't train hard enough, but maybe because I wasn't so focused. So then I was like, you know what? Let's put this into perspective. That's actually trying to push a little more and see where I can get from it. So it was like the fun of just sweat, enjoying being outdoors, but also having fun with the guys, like my friends around. Like just friendly competition with one another. There's like, hey, let's see who can do better, egging each other on, and just seeing what boundaries we can push and what new limits we can believe further push on ourselves to really see what we're capable of. The challenge was it was just something fun and different because during when they first got introduced to the majority of the sporting world, it was something that silly. It was like, you're jumping in mud, you're rolling through things. There's not the conventional races and competition, like running, cycling, triathlon. This is something that's coming from a left field, but it was kind of cool. It was unique. The wild factor was seeing photos of yourself just rolling around and trying to crawl through things. So it looks badass. And that's one of the reasons-- what we try to do is, oh, let's see, we can actually conquer this thing. Let's see if what is how difficult it can this really be. And the first race I did, it was actually in Jersey, in the local at Mountain Creek, local skivers, or actually I grew up. I saw pretty much every single trail in that mountain, and yet we're racing through it. So we signed up for it, not knowing what to expect. You see these posters, but there's not much information about it. And then I was destroyed. My body has never done any of that before, climbing up mountains, racing down the mountains, carrying like say 60 pounds on your shoulders, climbing certain things are going to certain distances. And I was like, what, what did I just put myself through? Why did I do that? I am shattered, but I think the crazy part with putting your body through the experiences during it, you'll hate it, during your question your life. But afterwards, where the adrenaline that subsides, actually the dorphins of the coming back into it, filling you up with like that sense of I can actually do better. Or how can I do better? Or what can I improve myself to help me reach the next level, not experience the same amount of pain. So I think just that idea of wanting to improve yourself to be better each and every time is that self-motivating fact it's to thrive on through. So that's actually what kept me going each and every time it's sad to compete. And that's where it brought me to where I am now. It wasn't about showing someone up and just racing my friends really just seeing how I can redefine myself and what actually is my limits. Right. And like you mentioned, you can push your body way farther than you think you can. Because our mind is the biggest barrier. And do you think that through your own personal experiences training that has really shaped your coaching philosophy now working to coach other people and also I'd love for you to talk a little bit about your relationship with Nike and being a Nike trainer. Like how has your experience training for these races and competing and getting super interested in fitness informed the way in which you train as a Nike athlete and coach other people. With anything, I think sports is one of the easiest ways to say we can overcome everything. We can overcome anything as long as you won't take on the challenge, right. Whether it's the work with with any projects you have, but any issues, these challenging, we, this is the cliche, right. We have to go through challenges to get better and stronger and whether it's physical, mental or any sort of thing related to life, work and family, it's true. We hate to challenge us. We don't like change. No one likes change, but in order to get better, we always have to go through that sense of change and adapt to it. And for me, I think that plays out not the great analogy with sports is that it's something you can see you see your body developing, you see your body changing, you see your mindset changing what's painful one day is not the next day. And this applies to everything, right, whether it's my work with my clients, my athlete, seeing them progress and have them train the way they do they know they hate the training during, but they also know the progress because they can see it day by day. So as to these like personal experience and provide for my clientele, my athletes, my clients to allow them to really fine tune their progression to let them see what's the stepping stone for them to really get themselves in the next level. And for me as a Nike trainer, so I represent Nike trainer, Nike trainer here for Hong Kong and for Asia. What we do is that where we help our clientele, the public to really educate them on what, how can we utilize these products provided by the brand to help them, you know, get them out the door, have fun really just utilize their body and make sense of, maximizing their potential and every which way possible. So not so much as in we have to push the product or we have to share something of course with Nike, I love their products or there's something that I stand by fully. And it's a brand that I would through and through stick with. And it's because of that I can share my honest opinion about a product. So even the product doesn't really help me in a certain way and might definitely will help someone else to help them reach their goals in a sense. But having that title as a Nike trainer is definitely is interesting because it comes with a certain expectation. But I'm glad and lucky enough to be part of Nike training group out here in Asia and the US I was introduced when Nike just by coincidence because I was running around Central Park and, and I was spotted for my skill set in running and being of a different diversity that definitely helped too because I was running up that hasn't been many athletic agents per se especially growing up in New York for me. So it was definitely changing up shaking things up, breaking out the mold to actually introduce some sort of what helped them on the scene within the Asian communities. Absolutely, and I know you've done a lot of work with that and I think that's so important because there needs to be representation of all sorts of ethnicities and genders and it needs to be a wide variety of different types of people that are represented in the health of the community. And I just think it's great that you're like really taking stride in that and the Nike training platform I think is so awesome. I remember like back in maybe 2014 or 2015 I downloaded the Nike app and it had like all the Nike workouts and the Nike training and it feels like you're being led by like a trusted source when you're doing those types of workouts, especially because the brand itself is so strong, the quintessential like sportswear company like the brand itself is so strong that I think a lot of people put their trust into Nike if they're training with them, but also they have a lot of loyalty as customers to Nike and its entirety. That's how I feel about it, but of course I could have a bit of a bias view. Like the point that you made about people, you know, using these products, but just to get outside, I know the outdoor voices is a huge proponent of that. It was actually founded as more of like an everyday athletic wear company and to get just regular people who are not necessarily like athletes or consider themselves to be athletic, but getting people to buy into this concept of everyday movement, everyday activity. And I think that's like somewhere you can even start, you don't have to be a Spartan racer to be active. You can start with small steps. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's the biggest thing right because fitness, health is accessible to everybody and it should be fully taken advantage by everybody because it's, I mean, we've spent all our time doing certain things focusing on our responsibilities, but it's your response with yourself to make sure you're healthy and able to enjoy the rest of your life and make sure your family is healthy. And you're not necessarily the rest of your life and make sure your family is part along that journey, right? So no matter who you are, it doesn't matter the definition of athlete or not everybody is an athlete in their own respective ways. It just comes down to just getting out and doing what you enjoy and taking small steps one with one step at a time. If you're not necessarily interested in athletics or exercise for the purpose of maintaining a healthy weight or feeling like healthy in your body, now there's like the Apple Watch, for example, where you can track the amount of steps that you walk every day and the amount of sleep that you're getting at night, there's all these metrics that you can look at to gauge your overall health, which may be more interest to some people than others. If they're not super interested in the amount of calories that they're burning in a workout, and I know this term is called biohacking and I love for you to talk a little bit more about biohacking because I think it's super interesting and you're also doing a lot of cool things in the space. I guess in the broad sense, biohacking is pretty much anything utilizing information technology, science to elevate your performance, elevate every single part of things that you can control that most people don't think about in order to make you the best form possible, best recovery possible, just getting yourself to that extra 1%. And because of all the technology we have currently, all this health science, sports performance science, all these different things we have accessible to us, it really takes a lot for each individual to understand what these products can do to help you with each and every day either performance lifestyle, sleep, stress relief, or even just work and everything in between. So the basic example of one sort of basic biohacking would just be data, having more data about yourself to understand what your body is actually doing, because say, you know, going back in time, we have all we know is how much we're, how tired we are and how hungry we are. Those are the basic things that we kind of look into, but now with data points and tracking watches say like Garmin's Apple Watch, as soon as any of these watches are the basic things that people can utilize for our health. Utilized for heart rate tracking for how much step they do, how far they run, how active they are. So this is just like an introduction of what say biohacking is because it's just giving you more information into what your body is doing now, but everything with biohacking, you definitely need to take a bit of a grain of salt because information is only as good as how accurate it is. So what we're going to see is also a major issue because we're still constantly trying to find a technology and different types of new innovations to make it as accurate as possible. So even for me, the things I utilize, it's a good gauge to track day to day, month to month, see what the trends are going, but they're not the end all be able to say, this is exactly how many calories you're burning. So I'm actually taking, this is how fit you really are, that's not I think the broader sense of what we're trying to track versus just finding the little things we can find to. So an example of things that I utilize for myself for elevating my performance and really understanding more my body would be like where my running. watch. You use that almost every single day. The track, you attract my heart rate, attracts my distance I run, the calories I burn, take everything with grain of salt, of course. And then the other thing I utilize is the oops trap. So it's considered a HRV monitor, so heart rate variability, it's heart rate variability is the differences between your heart beats. So normally people discuss about beats permitted, how many, how many beats you have permitted on a regular basis of your heart's high, low, but the more important thing that doctors really look into is the beats between each beat, how many milliseconds does it take from one beat to the next. That gives you more information about how recovered you are, how readily are you to to tackle anything that comes into place. So it's pretty much as your difference between your fight or flight sympathetic and paracetate nervous system. So this is useful for me, because it really keeps track not so much about how active I am versus how recovered I am and how ready I am to tackle the day. So I utilize this piece of data for sleep recovery. And when I wake up in the morning, it's the first thing I look at is like, okay, how recovered am I really? And this through months of of experimentation, I've noticed that it really is pretty helpful. Really does tell you on days like, okay, today, you should really take an off day. I've tried to not listen to it. And in the end of the buttoning me asked because it really does know more than I think I know. I know my body. I feel pretty fresh today. It's telling me I'm bad, but I'm pretty good today. And you can bleak to shoot yourself in the foot. So I think that, especially for people that are busy, people are type A personality or just high in athletes that always wants to be on the go, always wants to push, always want to work harder. There is just as much benefit as a recovery day, if not more than is on keeping active. So for people that are really on point, they want to constantly push, push, push, push, push, telling someone to rest is even harder than the tones of train. So something like this, where you have a device, some sort of giving you a secondary confirmation, it's quite helpful to give you an idea of, okay, maybe you should rest because if you don't, you might get injured or you might get sick or your body might break down a little more and you might not get the benefits of it. Other things I utilize is a, yes, thing I've been experimented a little bit, it's a continuous glucose monitor. So it's pretty much tracks, you should go level. That's exactly what I saw. I think it was like on your arm, or on your chest or something. Yeah, it's in my back my arm. Yeah, and it was like that reminded me of like I think sometimes like diabetics have like, like the insulin patches or something like that. And I was like, there's no way this guy is diabetic. Like he's in the best shape of his life. So that was the, it was this continuous glucose monitor. Yeah, so that's a quite new innovation for sports science. That's definitely a sense of biohacking because now you get, you get to read exactly what your sugar levels live sent to your phone or to your watch. So this is something that previously was not available unless you're a super high enoughly you're in a lab all time being monitored. And of course, they're reutilizing a product that's for health purposes for diabetics, making sure they're safe and the sugar levels now pushing for performance levels because how much sugar we can intake and how much we utilize is very, very important of having a healthy balance of where you go from training for pushing for recovery, right? So I think this is a very new helps tech science that's really pushing new boundaries. And there's a lot of measures of full. It's pretty much, it's a biosensor, but pretty much it makes you bionic in a sense because you have a needle constantly in you transmitting data to your phone telling you, this is how much sugar you ate. The second you drink a beer, the second you have a candy, you stick in your dinner, numbers change drastically. And that's something I think it's essentially the perfect example of biohacking. You are implementing something to understand your body, understanding that data set to help you have better performance or better sleep or better recovery, right? So that's a lot of things to unpack there. But it's it's very exciting times for us to have all this data sets and technology to really fine tune all these areas. I agree because on, you know, that one hand, now these technologies are becoming so advanced where you can really get real time data coming back to information that's updating about like your current state of being from a physical perspective, which also is probably affecting like the mental perspective, like your mental wellbeing. But at the same time, can it feel pretty overwhelming, just getting fed tons of information and not necessarily knowing how to analyze it and how to apply it to your life? Like I can see this feeling a bit black and wear, ask, so where does the line get drawn? So that's definitely the double edge sword with anything anytime you looks too much into data or trying to over analyze yourself, because all these products or all these things you're, you're especially technology based parts with data points, they're there to help you, but you also have to really, really understand it. So they can't, they're not just a piece where you buy it, look at it and be like, oh, I'm only minding we're going to get faster, better stronger, right? It doesn't work that way. You have to take this, take the data, understand it, he picked it, break it down, and really try to make changes in your lifestyle to help you achieve these gains, right? So just if your doctor tells you, hey, your blood pressure is going to high, you should do something about it, it's up to you to really at the same time, are you really going to help here? Are you really going to make these changes, right? So data is there, as a basic stepping stone. And the next part is you taking that data and really understanding as much as you can. Like, for me, I don't introduce too many things at one time, it has to be I'll sit down with something for maybe like six months to a year to really understand and unfold everything before introducing new product to my body, because being overwhelmed is a major factor, being stressed out by data as a major factor, just like saying, just like recovery strap, the whoop strap, right? For a lot of people looking at it, waking up in the morning, like, Oh crap, I'm in the red, which means you should be recovering today, you can stress you out and puts you in a bad mood and they completely throw you off mentally, right? But that's not the way you should understand the data. So of course, with biohacking with with more data, it comes with a grain of salt, and you have to have to be very, very intracurally aware of how you break that data down, just saving the sugar level, right? Like just because something shoots up out of nowhere, doesn't mean it's bad for you, that's what your body normally does. But of course, you want to be able to control these, these ebbs and flows, or where your sugar goes through. And of course, there also can be inaccuracy with data, which I've experienced day like random days, where that can stress you up like, wait, I've been eating the cleanest, I've been healthiest as much as I can, but yet, my numbers are completely off the charts. And that comes with false positives or just inaccuracy of data. So it's not so much of of having data is the end all be all is having data, but making sure you understand it and not be overwhelmed by it. Because if you are the type to be overwhelmed by it, take it a step back, you don't dive too deep into it. I guess an Apple watch is probably like the first step into getting into all of that, because it does have like, you know, the steps that you're walking, your heart rate, it's kind of, it's more user friendly to like the everyday person than maybe the whoops straps, I pronounce it. Yeah, it's whoops like recovery, there's like or a ring, there's a lot of different brands as a HR re recovery. But it's just pretty much telling you how much you're sleeping, how well you're recovering, and what can you do in your life to help you recover more? So that's the note that's one of the technology. Right. And now I mean, it seems like a lot of these top performing athletes are the ones that are testing out these products and using them, but do you envision there to be a future in which these products will be used more commonly in like the healthcare world and for people who don't necessarily have any health complications, but are really interested in these types of products or even for those that do have health complications like those who are diabetic or have heart issues or whatnot. I think it's we're trying to bring as always, as we get more and more advancements, they're trying to bring more innovations, everybody, but I think how acceptable it is still depends on each every individual. Because no one, I think most companies don't want to push it on people that don't want to adapt products because there's a lot of people that don't want to do that. But if you are interested and you want to learn more, those products are available to everybody. So everything I'm utilizing right now, they're mostly available to public, except minus the glucose monitor, they're currently restricted to certain regions based on health regulations and whatnot. But besides that, yeah, everybody's able to, it was not just top end athletes from the full gamut of anybody that's just starting off getting out of the couch or just competing at the top end level, everybody has access to these technology. But again, it comes down to understanding what your body needs or if you get overwhelmed by this data or not. Because in the day, you want these technology to help complement you in your training process in building a healthier lifestyle, but not detrimental in any way where you get overwhelmed by a stressed out or put you down negatively. It's just there as a secondary factor to help you reassure that you're going the right pathway or as they may be motivating factor to help you along the way. Right. And if you have the literacy to understand how those data points are connected, I think it actually can show how, for example, sleep is really crucial to our mental and functioning or physical functioning. And it can show the intricacies between like our lifestyle choices and how it affects not your, not only your training, if you're an athlete, but your day to day life, like how you're living your life day to day in the choices that you're making. Yeah, I think the most surprising thing I've learned through all these data track and I've gone through, the most basic one is of course sleep. Sleep is most important thing. If you don't get enough sleep, your decision making skills, your body re-election, your action and everything. We all know this is the cliche. You hear this over and over in general public, but yet we're all, we all men of us really get enough sleep. Let's just say that. Unless you force yourself to get like that proper eight hours of sleep or plus four, which most people do need more. Not even like good quality sleep. Like maybe you're getting the recommended amount of hours, but maybe it's not the best quality of sleep. And then if you work backwards from that, there are probably factors that are contributing to why you're not getting the good quality rest. So what I found out with my sleep tracking, anytime you drink any sort of alcohol, whether you're celebrating for friends with one beer, one one or whatever it is, your body will react differently. Even though you think you're sleeping, you're knocking out, the quality of sleep is garbage. It's so. Yes, the quality of sleep is not great. No, it doesn't have to be like three drinks in. You just take one drink and your body will respond completely different. And it's surprising that I that's the most surprising thing I've learned through technology that that has given me these different things, right? And other things people can utilize without just data set say biohacking can also be cold bath, ice bath, sonas, hot tubs, stuff like that, just changing body temperature. It's not data point driven, but the amount of recovery you do get, how deep to push you to sleep, how it increases metabolism, all those things is part of biohacking. Or how certain light effects, we know like, you know, we've been in modern times now your phone and it's blue light, there's like on the iPhones, they have that night mode, you can change it also, you have removes the blue light, but that actually does affect your how your body reacts and two different things, right? Some people that are really extreme at the biohacking world or athletic performance, they have their room in specific frequencies of LED lights. So specific red LED lights before they go to bed and that actually helps increase recovery, certain types of hormones gets pushed out and if you want to wake up in the mornings, they change it up to different temperature and there's companies that have all these products and they're really expensive because the frequency of LED is very specific. So that's why they can charge a certain amount. And then other things are like, in your bed, of course, if you're sleeping by yourself, you can control the AC temperature, but of course we all know sometimes temperatures fluctuate throughout the night and that can result in the different quality of your sleep. But then there's technology that does, they put, there's inserts in your bed that cools the bed and keeps track of where your temperature is and also monitor your movement in the bed. And that's also another cool biohacking scenario where you want to lower your bed temperature because the bed can be cold, but you have to sheet your bed. It covers over it. You're pretty comfortable, but that actually puts in your deeper sleep, your quality, REM sleep, the quality recovery, all those little things come into play. And so this is where the intricacies of the health science world or performance enhancement really gets deep. And this is where you're your major athlete, your Olympians, your top tier, anybody that wants to really get that milk that 1% out of every single thing they can do in their day. This is where they're maximized in the sense of, and not just biohacking but sports performance. And this is like the most granular you can get. And obviously, it can definitely get way deeper than that. I'm still very, I'm fairly, I'm still very like intermediate with what I want to do because of course all these things require a certain regimentation and also a schedule, right? And you have to be able to apply these things in a regular basis. But you know, if you're taking this recreationally or if you want to enjoy life, you don't have to get this deep down the rabbit hole. It just, it can just be bits and pieces of things you introduce yourself to see if you want to have just better sleep, better recovery and just overall better lifestyle. So it doesn't have to go that far in. I know some people do like Ben Greenfield, one of the other podcasters. I once in a while, I'll listen to some of this stuff, but he definitely gets deep deep in the rabbit hole where testosterone injection legal, legalized ones or certain growth hormones. So certain things aren't all legal, but it gets really, really intense where like that's really maximizing what can do for enhancement of sports performance or just human performance. Yeah. And that's like on the complete opposite end of the spectrum. So if you think that's really interesting and you're fascinated by the technology, but you're not an Olympian and you're not going to invest a ton of like a ton of money in all of that, what are some practices to biohack your life day to day? Like very low cost, doesn't necessarily require an Apple watch or a whoop strap or anything. Like what are some practices you can do to focus on different areas of your life to lead a bit of a healthier lifestyle? Yeah. So I guess removing the word biohacking, right? Because that's just that's just a terminology of people utilized. But just think about how can I make myself the healthiest way possible and build a better lifestyle that's sustainable to everybody. And the basic answers are things we hear all the time drink enough water, wake up and sleep around the same schedule time every day, properly have a cooler environment to sleep in, you know, no light and stuff like that. Eat healthy and just remove stress, right? That's like the basic things you can do for your body. They're free. There are things that everybody can do, but it's still up to you to rearrange your schedule and commit to it. And within say like a month of doing that, you'll notice a night and day difference of what your body can do, what your mindset, where your mindset, how much energy levels at and then how your body feels overall. After doing the yoga teacher training program for a month and just being in Bali for about two months, reflecting on that time, I realized now the routine that I was in and getting I got a lot of sleep in every night. I was going to bed early. I was waking up early. Like I was in sync with like my natural circadian rhythm was in sync with nature and sync with like the sunset and the sunrise and and I was eating really well and I was exercising and granted it felt kind of like this like euphoric environment where I had nothing to worry about and that was kind of like the one time in my life up until now where like I've been completely stress free because I've had no obligations and obviously like that is not the like the day to day reality and so how can someone maybe after going through a situation like that where they're on like one complete end of the spectrum like living their best life possible. How can you still bring some of those practices into like day to day normal life when you have a job and you're you're living on your own or you're you have like expensive there's just a lot going on like how can you bring that sense of calmness and sense of discipline and the the wellness practices that are practiced in the the most controlled for environment into the chaos of normal living. I think it's like exactly what you said it's just a sense of discipline right. Being out here in Bali with the chance that you have to really be being out here it's a definitely different world and we're lucky enough to experience that or being it but it's not for everybody but also it's not sustainable for everybody because we do have real life worlds and jobs and responsibly and families right. The best thing you can do is just have that distance yourself what are the things you value because not everything you can take we don't have 50 hours in a day we can do 101 things that we wish we want to do but it's really just maximizing the time you have. The difference in making sure that you have that set time of sleeping because it's asleep right but how much sleep you get you are in control of we have we all have 20,000 day but you are in control based on responsibilities you do have and making sure you get exercise and you are in control of that but it depends what your priority lies right because it's not something there's there's not one answer for everybody because of course some people have hectic jobs and need to work at many hours a day but if that's what's fulfilling you and that's what you think your priority is at then that's what has to be done but if you can just change your little things sleep get some exercise movement in and then getting some sort of of proper eating that's all we I think that's the most apple of thing you can do it's starting off with basic side there's not much more than that because it's just based on your schedule and your obligations that you have on a day-to-day basis and recognizing that that can change also I think really plays into this concept that our health is constantly in flux like our health from a holistic perspective or physical or mental or emotional health it's in response to what's happening in that environment at that time so it's good to put that into perspective and also like like we said in the beginning right your mind your bar we hate challenges we hate adapting but we have to when you do adapt you're going to get that much better at the same thing these are challenges in your life that you're going to have to adapt to and you're going to force yourself to make these changes or these specific regimentations to fulfill your bodily needs and if you can do that it's just going to get that much easier yeah and one other question that I have for you now you know you're still in Bali you're still out there living like the best life possible what are some of like your best health practices for me honestly the best thing I've done for myself being out here having the time to do so is really waking up before the sun rises and really seeing the changing colors I know I mean me being also a New Yorker I who wakes up in New York before the sun rises honestly unless the middle of winter and you have to go to commute and you're not going to enjoy seeing the sunrise but for me personally being out here in the island I will get up before the sunrise and see the sunrise see the changing colors brings the sense of wake openness and and awakenness to it and also I'll just try to get out there for sunset because I think one thing I learned is seeing the colors change really helps with the receptor light receptors in your eyes and puts you into better sense of your circadian rhythm, on a more scheduled basis. And it helps with my training and everything in between. But also, who doesn't enjoy a sunset when you're really good to see it? I'm just making the most of it, because I know-- I hope to be out here all the time, but I know at the same time when the world gets back normal, I might not be seeing making the most of the sunsets and everything. So I'm just taking it all in as much as I can. And between that and healthy eating, that's just the most sense of positivity. Well, this kind of ties into my next question, which is what I'll end with here, is what is something that brings you endorphins. And it can be sunsets, but I'm sure there are other things that also bring you a lot of happiness in your day-to-day life. The funny thing is that the one thing I didn't expect was walking around and just seeing the random dogs, and I'm just smiling to myself. That just brings me-- that definitely knows, bringing me a sense of endorphins. But also, I am a major runner. I do love running. I do enjoy my runs for the most part. And I like exploring new places consistently, whether it's in the island of Bali, whether it's all over Indonesia, all over Asia, back in the US. I think even in the concrete jungle, I enjoy the sense of running. And that definitely brings me endorphins, whether it morning, night or day, could be when I was a student, middle of the late night hours of 2am, I'm still out there running. That grounds me. It definitely brings me endorphins. It sets me up for whatever I'm doing. And yeah, I think life and running. The runner's high. I mean, I don't run long enough to be able to explore new neighborhoods and places on my runs one day, maybe. But that, again, requires consistency in training and discipline. But sometimes I feel the same sense. Even like a 20-minute jog or 30 minutes, you just need to get some movement in. Yeah, and it doesn't have to be long, right? Everybody runs at their own pace. And everybody can enjoy it. It's just slowing it down. Because everybody-- most people, when they think about running, they run too fast. Yeah, because then it's like crash and burn. Like you're so excited and you're going out there. And I've experienced that multiple times. And then by like the seventh minute, I'm like, I'm turning background. Well, thank you so much, Johnny. It's been so wonderful having you on the podcast. Where can my followers find your social media handles? If you guys are interested, you can always hit me up on Instagram. It's at Quack, like the Duck QUACK and my Latin TIEU. Instagram, I'm pretty active on that. Great. Thank you so much. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you for listening. And remember to like, rate, and review this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. Don't forget to keep spreading endorphins and find things that bring you endorphins every day. See you next time. [MUSIC PLAYING]