S2E01 · Byron Barry: A life of trial and error

My personal and business goal is to be just a little bit better every day. I believe everyone, especially normal people, have a story to tell. The Virtus podcast exists to help us all find small ways of consistent improvement by discussing the journey and experiences of each of our guests. Restart whatever you've got to do. Buys up, welcome to the podcast. Thanks mate, happy to be here. It's good to have you on finally. Yeah, it's been a long time coming. It has been a long time coming. First question for you, what gets you out of bed in the morning?

And I tried really hard not to formulate it to do it. I just, I love doing things, I love life. I like getting up. Whether it's most of the time I get up in the morning and the first thing I'm doing is unstuck in the dishwasher and getting shit ready for Rach and the kids. But yeah, do that and usually nick off to the gym and do something for me. And I don't know, I just like, what are you going to do, lie in bed for the rest of your life? Like, you're dead a long time.

You're someone that makes the most of each day and yourself. Yeah, I try to. Have you always been like that? I've always been really interested in being the best version of myself. I love learning, I just like learning new things. I just always have been fascinated, been really curious. Shits parents up the wall when you're a kid and shits your missus up the wall when you're married. But it's just something inside me that I get called a weirdo and that by a fair few people in my life. But I just like trying new things and trying to find little edges in what I can do for myself in all aspects of my life.

Where do you think that curiosity comes from? Before kids I would have told you that it was the way I was raised. But I've got four kids now and each one of them is built different. They come out and they're very different I reckon. There was already an innate curiosity there. But I definitely think the environment I had at home. Dad's got that sort of strategic outlook on things, he likes to break things down. Yeah so I think a bit of that fostered into me. And yeah having brothers that are a little bit inclined to be curious and push the boundaries.

And a cousin that spent a lot of time with us did the same. Yeah it was a pretty interesting childhood. What was it like growing up in the Barry household? Hectic. We were called the breaker brothers. We weren't allowed to go out to dinner. We weren't allowed to go many places to be honest. Go feral is not the right way to put it. We were just curious, we were polite, we were really nice mannered. But we just liked to see how things work and kids get excited, we were very excitable. These typical ADD sort of kids and very loud.

There's a lot of people around in the Barry households. How were you at school? I was a pretty good student for the most part. Primary school I was very very good. I sort of hadn't grown that self confidence to push any boundaries yet. So I listened pretty well and as I said I had a thirst for knowledge so I was always pretty keen to learn. I got all pretty good grades and stuff in primary school and in high school. I was really good with subject matter, I was just no good with homework. I'd rather kick the footy or play outside than do any homework.

So I always did pretty well with the tests. Just didn't do well with getting overall, doing any assessments or anything like that. So you switched on enough to do what you need to do in class, you just didn't have any issues doing the exercise? Yep. What did you want to be when you were a kid? I wanted to play AFL footy but I think a lot of us think that when we're younger. Footy was, you know, you'd understand you're naturally pretty good at most of those sports. When you're young you spend a lot of time doing it.

And yeah, I was always one of the better footballers in the team, one of the best at school, that sort of thing. So you always just expect, yeah, and you've got enough people telling you, oh you're a gun. So you just think that's logically what you're going to do. I didn't really have a plan B. I was actually really into computers and games and stuff during high school and I thought I wanted to be a computer programmer. And I was actually really good at it. But by the time I hit 18 I got into the uni course that I wanted to do and it looked like that's where I was headed.

And then just had that epiphany of why the hell would I want to sit inside on a computer all day? And went balls up. So it was AFL footballer then computer programmer and then third on the list was fiery. I wanted to be a fiery like me old man. But yeah, I went through the process, had some issues, I'd gotten too many demerit points on my licence. So that got canned and when I had the opportunity to go through it all again I sort of swung on that. And yeah, kudos to all the firefighters out there.

I think it's brilliant but knowing what I know now I could never do that job. Like my old man has PTSD and the stuff they've got to see, the shift work, the chemicals they've got to be around. It's such a dangerous job and not interested. That would be worse than sitting at a computer all day for what I want to do with myself. There's so many hazards involved in that job both physically and psychologically. It's mind blowing and hats off to them, especially at the moment. Bloody eyes. Like you see the stuff, you read any of the articles about what pollies are saying about them.

And it's just like, mate, if you only knew, it's so hard. And if I didn't know my dad going through everything, I don't think I would have been as knowledgeable about it all. But if I wasn't as knowledgeable about all the stuff that I sort of think about in a day-to-day basis about being the best of who I am. And that requires sleep. So shift work fucks you up. That requires not breathing in the shit that they're breathing in all the time. And then the stuff they've got to see like mentally, imagine doing that sort of stuff.

And not being able to talk, you can't talk to your family about that because normal people don't understand. As a special kind of person that goes through that stuff. Like all of our emergency personnel. Yeah, a lot of my brothers become a cop and I think he's mental for doing that too. Like we need him. We bloody need him. But all those emergency personnel, they definitely don't get paid enough for what they do. Tell me a bit about your AFL career as you were rolling through the end of school and then most of those years when it was kind of really high on your to-do list.

Yep. I was one of those guys that got invited to Sing Raise every year. Made the final group and then got cut in the final cut. Year after year it happened. And I definitely think that was, I didn't make enough impact on games. I definitely am better suited to a team that knows and understands how I play and who I am. So that definitely didn't help. And I didn't hit the numbers that they would have wanted running wise for my height. So knowing what I know now, there's things I could have probably done differently. But I just wasn't good enough at the time.

Yeah, that's exactly right. You don't know what you don't know. You can't implement stuff that you don't know about. So I missed out on Sting Raise, did it into league and whatnot through 18s. Played all my life at YC from under 9s to 15s and went to Seaford for a year. Played with some guys from school because we didn't have an under 16s team at YC. But then for 18s, went across to Coringle, trained at YC and Coringle and Seaford and Coringle butted me up the right way. I liked, Wayne Spence was the senior coach down there and really liked what he was sort of going about.

So ended up down there, played a few senior games and then had an opportunity to go down to Frankston and thought maybe this is my way in. Go play VFL. Almost got cut from there too. Only just scraped on. Played six years under Brett Lovett there and probably had some opportunities but again, probably didn't make quite the impact that I should have if I wanted to get drafted. You sort of play to your level and knowing now what I know, you've got to do more than what I did. It's frustrating when you start realising those things a while after you've been in those positions.

Yeah, yeah and I see it now with younger guys when you try and talk to them and we're all the same. You get very defensive when someone tries to give you feedback. It doesn't matter how they sort of say it. And I look at the things Brett Lovett used to teach us and tell us and at the time I'm like, he just doesn't understand. But then down the track you reflect on it and you go, fuck, if I had have taken that lesson 12 months earlier or like you learn it eventually. But if you had that right mindset, you could have learnt a lot quicker and been better for it.

And yeah, as I said, like you see that with the young guys now and you just know at some point it's going to click because like you said before, you don't know what you don't know. And if you could just go back and slap yourself around and go, hey, what about you do this? You're a young footballer listening. Just listen to your coaches. They're mostly right. Mostly. Mostly. And then back to YC. And back to YC. Bunch of flags, team of the decade, all the good stuff. Pretty funny. When I made the decision to come back, the last year I was at Frankston I played under Shannon Grant.

Now, brilliant footy brain, stolen a lot of his sort of drills and manipulated them to fit what I like. And he was really knowledgeable about the game. I just feel he didn't know the playing group that well. And he'd come from an AFL system where it's full time. They have the players there for all those hours. He tried to introduce a leading teams principal down at Frankston and he was keeping guys till 9.30, 10 o'clock at night. And when guys live all the way out in Druin and that sort of thing, it doesn't really work well.

So the actual culture down there started to fall apart. So I didn't enjoy that last year for the five or six years under Brett Lovett. Loved it. I was really, really loving playing that level of footy and didn't mind the commitment and that. And then when I didn't enjoy it in the last year, I decided, alright, well, I need a break from that. Go back to local, go down and play under the Uncle Bugsy down at YC. And G wasn't that a good decision. It was a great decision. So people often ask, oh, I won a few grand finals over here.

Seven flags. It's not bad. It's not bad at all. It's huge. It's crazy. It's crazy to think because I remember my first year, my first year under Bugs was I was 17. So it was 11 years ago, 2008, 2009. When were you, 2010? I came back 2010. Yeah. 2010. So I think I started playing as a year before you got there. Yep. Sounds about right. And then a year after I was back in Singrays and stuff like that. So I was only back and forward. But I can just like that year, remember BT pulled us aside one game and just like, what are we doing?

Like, why aren't we winning? And just like, so I'm sick of fucking losing. And then we didn't lose much for the next 10 years. So we need to have another one of those. We need to get BT down and just tell the story. Hey, we don't lose. It was an incredible run. Yeah. It's just crazy. And try and break down what created that success. But so many things have to go right. Like any one of those years we could have been pipped at the final post. Or any one of those years guys could have chosen not to put in the work in November, December time.

And we were just so lucky. Like there was so many people that did the right things to get that through. Yeah. That's the thing with any team success is it's so many things. It's not like justice player or justice training situation or whatever. It's a bunch of different things that need to go right. Yeah. And you'd clone Ash if you could and have a young Eamesy running around every time. But yeah, like you look back and you compare. I sometimes do. I look at all the different teams you had in the Seven Flags. It's like what team's going to beat who?

But then there's seven different versions of me too. Like what year was I better? 2020 probably. Yeah. Bloody ace. Just like a wine mate getting better with age. I think a big part of that, because I've obviously been lucky enough to play alongside you. So a big part of you getting better is just your hunger for learning and finding different things to tweak that performance just slightly. Where do you get all your crazy shit from? I love podcasts. That's why I'm stoked when you want to get me on here. But I just I love them just because it's a chance for you to get to hear the knowledge from the people that are doing the work.

I back when I was first at Frank's, I used to go to the library and hire books out. That's cool. Doesn't happen. That's not common. No, but like I'd hire. There's one book that sticks in my memory. I can't remember the author, but it was Functional Movement for Sports. And it's stuff that people were only just starting to do. And it was like really good. Like insight and that. But as I've sort of gotten older and growing up in the generation we have now, like with the Internet now, you get the information that isn't in books yet because books are being written and produced.

And by the time they come out, that information is three or four years old. You could have got access to it if you knew the researchers or you knew the people that were doing that work. And that's what I love about listening to the podcast. And I love it because you hear these random things or crazy ideas and it just gives me something to do with my little lunch breaks. And I go down a rabbit hole and I like to find out more information and I'll either look for the studies or I'll take anecdotal evidence and try it on myself because it works.

Yeah. Quite often, you know, when people talk to me about it, they, "Oh, well, why would you try that?" I'm like, "Well, it might work. Well, what's the downside?" Like, as long as I'm not going to cause… You missed game 40 because you were… I learned a good lesson. Tell us, in life. I'd been eating… Well, I was doing the carnivore diet when I did it, but I was trying to eat a lot of organ meats and I don't really like cooked liver. So what I was doing is I was getting fresh liver. I was chopping it up and freezing it and having it in little batches out of the freezer.

Now, the idea was that if you freeze it for longer than a week, it's meant to kill off certain microbes and the bacteria that should. You're still taking a bit of a risk, but it was alleviating that risk. I'd run out of the stuff that I'd frozen, so I decided to have some fresh out of the fridge, beautiful, cut it up, had it with my steak. I ended up with the squirts for about a week, lost about seven kilos, but the crazy part was everyone's going, "Oh, that's what you get for eating raw liver." You'd been doing it for a while?

Yeah, I'd been doing it for quite a while without any adverse effects. And a couple of days later, I went in to clean out the fridge because I clearly wasn't eating because everything was going straight through me. The kidney that I'd had in there, I had kidney in the fridge as well, was rat shit covered in mold. It was crook, and I'm like, "Hold on." That was sitting next to it. I didn't even notice it when I went to get liver. I'm tipping the liver was probably off, so it wasn't just from eating raw liver, although it could have been.

But at least you're having a crack and trying it and trying to figure out what does help and what doesn't. Yeah, and I'm a massive believer in bio-individuality. We're all different. We are all really different. So what works for one person is not necessarily going to work for others. And that's probably the worst side effect I've had through all my little different experiments. But there's been heaps of shit that I've tried and gone, "Oh yeah, that doesn't work." Yeah, good stuff. What are the things that you've held onto or kept doing because you actually feel like they make a real difference?

Can it be training? Yeah, there's a few. Nutrition-wise, I love fasting. It's become a big part of my protocols. It just gives me something that I can go back to as a bit of a reset. I do both extended fasts at times and intermittent fasting, depending on what my goals are. Intermittent fasting works really well for me. I like to consume a lot of food at one time. So you just shorten the window and shorten the calories you consume. It works well for me and I do it quite comfortably. I wouldn't have done it comfortably 10, 15 years ago.

But through all my experimentation, I did the Keto diet about 10 years ago. I gave that a bit of a nudge. I think we've spoken about it before, but I did it and didn't find a massive drop-off. There was definitely a little drop-off in performance and stuff, but it wasn't a massive drop-off. But then reintroducing carbohydrates after that, there was definitely a performance increase. So it's like, "Well, it worked. It did its job." But prior to doing that, I was eating the typical bodybuilder setup where I was eating five or six meals a day, that whole speed your metabolism up approach, and then all of a sudden after I did Keto, my appetite was severely diminished.

I could still eat the same amount of calories, but now if someone said, "You can't have brekkie today," I wasn't going to get hangry and lose my shit. I could just go, "Okay, I'll just eat more at lunch. That's sweet." So that gave me that ability, and then I went off and experimented with fasting after that. So that's definitely one that stayed in. What was the longest extended fast you've done? I've done four and a half days. That's tough. Yeah. What was it like? It was actually really, really good. It was hard because I was still working and being around guys that are eating and having forced meal breaks.

So that side of it was tough. I had a function on one of the nights, so that was tough to say no to the food. But physically, I actually felt pretty good. I started to run out. I suppose you'd say it just hit a bit of a wall on the fifth day. That's why I break the fast. And I had stuff there to break the fast with. That was the whole idea. But looking back, I think it was more electrolytes than anything else. I started to feel fatigued and just had no go. I was like, "Yeah, I'm starting to feel it."

Were you set on it being four and a half days? No, it was just open-ended. I was just like, "Well, I'll see how I go." I'd heard of a few people doing sort of a week, two weeks. I was like, "Well, I'm just going to see how I go." Prior to that, I'd done 48 hours. And I'd done a few 48 hours and then a training session. I got through the training session fine. So I knew-- Is there an appreciation for what we really need compared to what we want at the time? Obviously, that's going to impact your long-term performance.

But short-term, we don't actually need all that much. Yeah, it's pretty crazy what it does. I've tried to explain this to people that are really against it. Even if you're not doing it for the physical benefits, mentally, it makes you actually really appreciate, not just food, but it makes you appreciate the ease of how we have things too. When you watch people, when you're in that state, you're not eating, you know you're not eating, and you're looking at people around you and just the ease of which people eat. And eat without really being intentional or paying attention to what they're putting in.

I do that most mornings. I go out on coffee. You don't enjoy coffee the same when you have the same thing every morning. It's almost like that break from whatever you're doing, eating, training, footy, whatever, it gives you a newfound sense of appreciation for that thing. Yeah, it does, doesn't it? And I reckon it's been good to take that same mentality and you can apply it to other things, like you said. It's not just food. It's being able to hold out, and as long as you've got that goal, you can stick to it. With all

the different diets you've tried, things like fasting and different eating patterns and things like that, what's been the single or the couple of epiphanies that you've had around food and how we actually look at these things? One of the things that I think is underrated is appreciating it. It sounds sort of strange to say, but if I do it quite regularly, I'll have just one meal a day. You really appreciate that dinner. I always make a dinner when I do it. I'll get up, work, train, then come home and have dinner. And you really appreciate it.

When you cook it up and when you're fast for that long, you actually taste everything. It's not just shoveling food in your mouth for the sake of it. You actually taste everything. So you're more deliberate with what you're putting in and you're actually thinking about it more. I've been in that mode too where I've become obsessive about it, been thinking all day about my meal, and that's not a good place to be. But I actually appreciate it, and I don't think a lot of people do. I like now one of the things I'm trying really hard to do, and it's not always easy because we're always busy, but now I'm trying to slow down with every meal I have.

I don't eat fast anyway, but just making sure that's the focus. Like, "Hey man, you're eating now. We're not working and eating. We're not jumping in the car and speeding off to somewhere, shoving something in my mouth. Let's be deliberate about it." I've done different experiments with increasing stomach acid and playing around with trying to speed up metabolism, slow it down. I've done experiments around that, and I definitely think you feel better if you sit down, you stop, and you just eat. I think you just digest it better. I don't suffer from bad bloating or anything like that, but gas and stuff like that, if you're rushing stuff down, you definitely feel a lot worse.

Yeah, definitely. Just that ability to be able to stop for a second. Regardless of the eating part, very few of us. I was sitting just out front just before you got here with one of the boys, and we were just sitting there looking, and he goes, "It's nice to just sit." He's been working hard all day, and he's driven an hour to get here to train, and he's done his session, and he's just sitting there. It's like, "It's nice to just sit." I'm like, "You probably haven't stopped all day." He's like, "Nah, I haven't." Just that ability for us to be able to stop and be in the moment, as wanky as it sounds, like, just beat.

It's becoming a rarer and rarer commodity now, too, the ability to not be engaged. Now, I am listening to podcasts on my way to the gym in the morning. I'm listening to them on the way from the gym to work. I've always got something going on, but the gym I'm currently at, there's a duve light there, and that's why I started going there. When I'm in there, there's 15 minutes, pure silence. It's amazing where your mind starts to take you when you take your 15 minutes. I find that when you do a float tank not

too long ago as well, and using the sauna, if you switch everything off and just have your own time for a bit, it's amazing where your mind can go. I've tried doing mindfulness and stuff at home, and it's too easy to get distracted when stuff's around, but nobody does it. There's all that research coming out about how powerful it is for you. It's like, well, there's a reason, because we're all addicted to our phones. We're all addicted to it all. We're addicted to input. The podcast, music, talking to people on our phones. Most of us would spend time sitting down, watching telly, browsing Instagram, talking to someone all at the same time.

We don't find the time or create the space to actually have no inputs anymore. It's great having things like a float tank or a sauna for us to force it, but it's harder to do it wherever you are. One of the reasons why I love doing this, this is an input and an output at the same time, but it's an ability for us to sit here, look at each other for an hour, and just have a conversation. Which never really happens all that often anymore. There's always some form of distraction here or there. How often do you float tank?

I've only done it a couple of times and had to cancel my last one, so I'm due to go back in new. Mum got me a few for my birthday this year. Good mum. Shout out. Thanks mum. She won't listen to this. It's something I'm curious to explore a little bit more. I'm getting better at doing mindfulness stuff on the home front, but I still struggle. There's just always something, and I find when you get out of there, like this is brilliant, you can have a conversation, you've put an hour aside and no one's coming. But at home it's like oh, well I could quickly just go do that.

There's always something to be done, and your mind goes straight there. There's always more work to be done. And you do that work and there's going to be more stuff there, so maybe it is worth taking a half an hour or an hour or however long to chill out. That's what I love about float tanks is that no matter what, you've got an hour to yourself. I find it really interesting how I feel during it. Sometimes I fall asleep, sometimes I'll be so wired that I'm like this is the worst thing in the world. The hour feels like about six hours.

I've probably had maybe two or three of those. I would have done it 30, 40 times probably. But there's the falling asleep because I'm just cooked and that's my first time, I've actually chilled out for a second. Or there's the two wired, but then there's the one in the middle where you're in a good head space and you go in and you just, it's almost like in the darkness you just pull a thread in your mind. And it just unravels and you just follow it and you think about a hundred different things in the hour.

But you walk out just being like I needed that thought process to occur so that I could feel like I don't have anything else up there. Yeah, it's weird how it's going down your own rabbit hole isn't it? It's following your own thoughts and Sam, we don't get a chance to explore where they lead. When you spend time with yourself, you've got that many, like you said, input from everywhere, but you don't get a chance to really follow where that goes. What are your daily habits that you feel as though help fuel your curiosity or search for being better?

I definitely need exercise and that's, I'm lucky I work in a physical job so I can get that without needing to go to a gym or get up and go for a run. But if I have a lazy day on a weekend that throws me for a curve ball, I'll get sucked back into all sorts of poor behaviors, just addictive sort of behaviors. Whether it's scrolling through Facebook for 40 minutes without actually looking at anything. Like those sorts of things. So exercise is definitely one. I need to have a focus for the day. I generally

think about that and I get a lot of inspiration from the podcast I listen to or whatever I'm sort of working through at the time. It gives me something to focus on when I'm going about my day. Sort of break down how something's going to influence me or what I'm going to do with this new idea that I've got or how I can explore it. So I spend a bit of time doing that. Just gives me something to focus on. And the other one is sleep. If I, and I'm usually pretty good at it now, like the kids make it hard sometimes but definitely I don't charge my phone near the bed anymore.

Try not to look at that past a certain time. The aim is that I'm in bed by 7.30 every night but that's not always achievable. It's currently 8.08. And training doesn't make that easy either. It was gross having a little break pre-season. I was able to get into bed really early, put the kids to bed and then jump in myself. Got my little red glasses mate. Massive believer in them. People don't believe in that either. I love it. I definitely find I make a difference. The other thing is just the basic nutrition stuff. If I eat, and for me it's most carbohydrates, there's some carbohydrates I can get away with.

But most carbs, if I have them early in the day that throws me for a curve ball as well. So I do it around, I can do it like on a footy day. No problems there because I've obviously got a big session coming out. But even if it's oats or something in the morning, it definitely flicks a little switch in my brain and it makes me more inclined to eat more or crave more. But I've noticed it's not just food. I'll find myself creeping onto my phone and I'm assuming it's obviously some sort of dopamine issue there.

Then I'm just chasing something. But yeah, I'm very cognizant of it. Do you feel like all of your experimenting and learnings around all of the things, because you're not just a learner thing, but you're a learner thing and then do the thing. Do you feel that all of that just helps build awareness around what your body actually needs? You're much more on top of it. Like most people, you get an average person off the street and they're not going to have a clue how that food or that food or that food or that bit of sleep or that hydration difference or whatever, how that will actually affect them.

Whereas because you've had so much experimenting and so much trial and error, you can kind of go, okay, well, I know if I have that to eat, yeah, I'll feel great for half an hour and then I'll crash. Or if I do eat that thing, then I'm going to spend more time on the phone, I'm going to waste time later on and I'm not going to be as mindful as I could have been. Yeah, definitely. And like you said, it's one thing to have the ideas and I have all these different ideas of things I want to try.

And the reason I try them is because you do, you get feedback about how that affects you and some things, and I tend to do like all these sort of overlapping ones and go back and try different things. And I was talking to a bloke today just about the carnivore diet. I've done it twice and I love it, but it doesn't fit in with my lifestyle. So for me, that just gives me another tool as like a reset diet. So it gives me something to go back to when I want to experiment here, this is a way to go back to base.

But it's like that with everything, like I know I can fast if I need a reset, we can go back to that and then I can introduce stuff a little bit by little bit and you do, you learn. Once you know something that triggers you, like I said for me, like I know heaps of people that can eat whatever they want and doesn't change their behaviour, but I know for me it does. It does, it just makes it so much harder for me to say no to those addictive behaviours. And I can have them at night before bed, not a problem, I'll still put my phone in the other room, I'll go back, not a drama.

I can back load them then, there's just certain things that set me off and it's definitely things that spike that blood sugar that do that to you. But when you're experimenting with all these things, you just pick up on these little behaviours. Now I know that one, so I don't have to revisit that but there's other things sometimes you go, oh I wonder what it was. Because sometimes it's the fact that you've got bills to pay and you're stressed and you're not sleeping and it's like, oh is it, did I eat too much broccoli? No, man, it's the fact that you weren't sleeping.

But sometimes there's confounding factors that you've got to work through them, so you go back and you make the same mistakes again and you go, oh, those things marry up. Like health is multifactorial, as is performance. So if we're looking, okay I want to be as healthy as I can, which that's kind of like the first step to I want to perform as well as I can. If we're not, we notice with our athletes in here is that if someone's coming to an exam period or they've got that high level of output expected at work because it's coming up to Christmas time or whatever, that's going to affect their performance.

So then all of the things that have to change is we need to make sure they're getting more rest, we need to change what they're doing in the gym. And there's so many different factors that need to be altered because of that output or the inputs that are coming in, so when you understand that, when you know better, you can do better. It's kind of that next step, if you don't know, you don't know. When you know better, you can do better. And if you can find a way to measure it, I guess you just

do that by how you're feeling, and it's subjective, but you can ask yourself that ten times a day and go, okay, well what actually helped and what didn't? And then you know for next time what you need to do to move a needle, which is great. That's the thing, I've measured stuff in the past, I think back to when doing keto and you measure blood glucose and ketones and occasionally I pull out the glucometer and just do random tests and stuff, but I find sometimes that influences you too. I like to go off how I feel.

Now I have regular-ish blood tests just to make sure everything's not crazy out of whack, but sometimes I feel like that can influence things in the wrong way too. Yeah, it's just part of a battery of tests or of questions you've got to ask so that you get the whole picture. Because if you just go by how you feel and then six months later you get a blood test and everything's out of whack, then okay, well that lower level of performance or health that you've got because of that blood test is just your new normal now so you haven't realized that you're actually not performing it at the highest level.

So that's why we can use, like if we use things like blood tests and data that we get for whatever, whether it's performance-based or health-based, we can use all that to create that picture and go okay, well here's the lever I need to push or pull to actually change things. Yeah, those performance-based ones are really good too because it's one thing to say I feel bloody great and then you go to do a pull-up and you can't get yourself up. I could do 12 two months ago. You do have standards and it's just knowing when it matters and when it doesn't.

Fucked if I know, mate. There's science and art there and I'll keep throwing shit at the wall until some of it sticks. And that's what I really like about you is that there's an understanding that if it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't. Just move on to the next thing or put it in the toolbox for when you need it. Yeah. And that's the thing. Like I said before, there's part of me, I'd love to go back and just give myself, my younger self, here you go, here's all the tools, but I wouldn't have known how to use them back then either.

Like you make these mistakes and you learn and you grow and I'll keep doing it. Like I said to the bloke today, I'll keep doing it till I'm done. It goes, oh, it'll kill you one day. Well, it might, but it might mean that I get to play footy till I'm 50. Like who? I don't know. I don't feel, especially when guys, I get guys coming up to me all the time that like my age and oh, still going around again. How's the body? It's like, I feel great. I feel as good as I've ever felt.

Um, now that does require, I make sure I'm doing all the little things that I know work for me. I do like having me nice hot baths or me cold immersion or like I get up at three to go to the gym. If I don't do these things, I'm probably not going to maintain, but I like doing it. That's it. One of the best, one of the best questions I will ask if someone's doing something that's different, it's like, okay, well how's that working for you? And it's either what is or it isn't. And if it's not working well, okay, something's got to change if you, if you want to get to where you want to get to.

And if it's working well, then fucking keep doing it. Like that's where we get caught up in the, this diet's best or this way of training is the best or whatever. Well, like if it's working for you and you're moving well and there's no, you know, there's no side effects or there's no adverse reactions from it, then keep fucking doing it. And that's like, you follow some of these guys, like I really like John Berardi's take on diet and nutrition and stuff, but there's so much information out there. And what I've seen through doing stuff

on myself, some things work for some times and other things work for other times, but some things work for me that aren't going to work for others. And if you go, oh no, this is the best one. This is all you can do. Well, it really closes you out to all the other modalities out there. There's no diet, perfect diet. And like the diet that's perfect for you now is going to be different to the diet that's perfect for you in five years. And that's what we need to realize. It's what frustrates me so much about people that get so like go on a side for this kind of stuff.

Like you got the carnival versus vegans, fighting the vegans who are fighting the vegetarians who are fighting the omnivores that were fighting the people who love keto, fighting the guys that love paleo. It's just like you're all both right and wrong depending on what you're actually looking for. It becomes a religion to some of them too. People need identity and that's why people join groups and why people find themselves in an area that may be completely left of what is the norm because people love identity. They need identity and they need that thing to belong to.

But it's when that takes over. Yeah, that's true. I can see plenty of that. That's another thing that I like about Facebook, just the amount of groups you can be on and you do, you get the people that are way out, whether it's left or right, they're way out and the stuff they throw and then sometimes they'll give you something that's like, hold on, maybe that works. It sort of makes sense and it gives you another rabbit hole to look at and go down and it's good but we couldn't have done that 10 years ago when I was walking into libraries 15 years ago.

It creates unprecedented connection but then it levels out everyone's voice so that everyone has the same level of influence, obviously more followers and that kind of stuff. There's no background checks for the guy running the nutrition 101 group on Facebook and doesn't have a fucking clue what he's talking about. So true. So that's where it's dangerous and rather than teaching people this is the way to do things, what we should be teaching and learning when we're younger at school and things like that is, okay, well, how do we discern between genuine usable information that's been ticked off and then, you know, Joe Blow from down the street who's gone on a YouTube rabbit hole on Why The Earth Is Flat.

I love it. But that's exactly right. You just need a good bullshit meter, don't you? How do you teach that? How's your bullshit meter going? Because you obviously like love those rabbit holes and like chasing the... I love getting sucked in. I'll buy into a good conspiracy any day of the week but I won't implement anything that I haven't read the other side to. Yep. So when I was trying carnivore, the biggest thing everyone goes, "What are you going to do for micronutrients?" And that was why I was doing organ meats. Yep. But it was also one of those things that I did want to have a read and what is actually in there and what do I actually need.

It wasn't necessarily about, for me, it was just another experiment. It wasn't this is going to make me a super athlete or anything. It was just another one of those things. It was already one of those. If it's not going to do any irreparable harm, I'll give it a try. Why not? But you have to read the other side and that's where carnivore and vegans, that's a perfect example because they're so polar opposites. And if you go on and listen to anyone that's on one side or the other real deep, they will give you so many reasons not to try the other persons.

Then it's just a matter of working out, "All right, well, how much truth is there in that?" There's enough information out there that you can't just do a quick Google search. You've got to find reputable sources or use PubMed. There's ways of finding out, "Okay, well, that measures up," and then it's just working out. It's wading through the bullshit. Like I said, I can't think of any off the top of my head other than maybe the liver, but I've made heaps of mistakes along the way. I've tried stuff and gone, "Yeah, that was probably not the greatest idea."

I don't know why I thought that was going to work, but I think it's that risk versus reward ratio too. If someone goes, "All right, get these cardboard boxes, tape them together, and jump off the cliff," it's like, "Well, what if they don't work? Oh, you're dead." Well, that's not a really good risk, whereas if you jump off the couch, see if they work. Maybe that's worth trying, you know what I mean? I haven't watched any of it. I always suffer for a good fail video compilation, which most people are because of the way it is.

I look at that same kind of deal. You look at it, "Okay, risk versus reward. This person has done this thing. Even if you landed, it wouldn't have been that good, so why the fuck are you risking your legs or whatever?" Then you get something like, "Okay, that was really cool, and it's worth it." It's exactly the same with how we look at health and fitness and training and things like that. "Okay, well, I'm sure this thing could help, or it could put you back six months. Is it worth it? Probably not. This thing that could help will put you back a week.

Yeah, it's probably worth it because you can catch that back up, and then if it doesn't work, just try something else." That's pretty much the way I look at it. Yeah, but that variability for you is impressive in terms of what you eat and what you do because most people just find their thing and stick to it. I've found that my coachings had to develop so much over the last ten years because I found a thing that I thought worked, and then you find another thing that's meant to be the complete opposite that also works. "Okay, well, something's not right here."

It doesn't matter what the topic is, whether it's training or nutrition or world politics or global warming, it doesn't fucking matter. There's so much more to it than we realize. That's the thing that has frustrated the shit out of me, too. I did a health coach course a couple of years ago because I was like, "Oh, that's..." I'm super passionate about all that stuff. I'm like, "Oh, that'll be grouse." I'm like, "Pretty much all they taught, I already knew." But I'd seen other sides to a lot of the stuff they were presenting, too, that I knew worked.

So I did this whole course, and I haven't used any of it yet other than experimenting with myself, of course, but I thought, "Oh, that'll be grouse." But the more I sort of learn, the more I realize there is to learn. I'm never going to be finished learning. It's the best/worst part about it. You go down the rabbit hole, you realize that, "Okay, well, this rabbit hole that I thought was going to have an end has 17 other rabbit holes going on." Those rabbit holes have another 17, and it's just... Yeah. It's just like every door is a hallway with 10 doors, and you just go, "What the hell?

I thought I almost had it figured out." But you're right. People do. People get stuck in, "Oh, this is grouse. This works." And I suppose I've done enough now, just because I'm curious and I want to try shit. I've done enough now to go, "Well, all of it works and none of it works." It depends who you are, how you apply it, when you apply it, what else you're doing. So many factors. And does. Does obviously matters. And then, yeah. Yeah. And I'll keep doing it till I'm 150 and still kicking. That's it. The thing it should come back to is, "Okay, what are you trying to achieve?

Is it getting you there? Yes or no?" And then you can kind of discern what thing you actually need to push. Yeah. And I suppose with the more stuff that I've... At the moment, I'm playing around with microbiome stuff and having to play with that. That's cool. That's pretty interesting. But it's... I have a lot less risk now with some of that stuff, because like I said before, if it doesn't work, I just go back, reset, and start again. Like as long as I've... But the more I do, I find I've taken a lot of risk out.

Yeah. Physically trying different things. There's more risk involved with physical sort of stuff. But even then, as long as you reduce the risks and you're not going to break your leg doing something stupid. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's worth trying. Yeah, I think too hectic during 40 seasons. I've got to ask you, what's with the group you added me to about a month ago? All right. I... Because potentially a bunch of people that you're going to share this and they're going to be in that group. What the fuck is Byron doing? Kill him. Well, a post came up from Game Face about a month ago.

Yeah. If you have an idea for a podcast. Now, my idea for a podcast was I want to moderate people from opposing groups. And like I said before, vegans and carnivores are the best. But flat earthers and non are great. Regular people. Regular people. But I... Because I want to see those Facebook arguments in a room where people go at each other. And I want to hear the crazy shit. But I want to hear the real shit. And listening to podcasts. And it's awesome because Joe Rogan's obviously just released one where they're actually debating shit out.

It's been a really interesting kind of like progression with it. How it's gone. Yeah. It looks like it's going to keep progressing too from what I've seen, which is gross. But I was like, you always hear one side. And that's what I was starting to find. The more, like I said, I could take these ideas from what I've heard in the podcast and oh, how can I use it? And will it help me in any way? But then you hear something completely different from a professional that has as much sort of qualification for having an opinion on it.

That pretty much has the opposing view. And you're like, well, who's right? Like when you only hear one side of the argument, you believe them. When you hear that side, it's like, what happens when they get together? And that's what I wanted to see. And we're talking to a guy at work about it. He's like, yeah, that's grouser. He bought right into it. Then this game face thing popped up. I'm like, oh, I'm going to chuck my idea at them. Like it's one of those things that I had the idea. I'd love to see it, but I don't have a hell of a lot of free time to be like chasing it up.

And they're like, well, we love the idea. If you're keen, we'll get it happening. So the idea of the Facebook page was open up a page, see if I can see if I can find people that are going to throw ideas up of because I've got a list of the general sort of ones. But I'm like, there's got to be other stuff that I'm not thinking about that I can find people for. The hardest part of the moment is actually finding people that want to come on. The people that have been chasing up don't want to come on.

And they're not confident enough with what they're saying. I'm like, well, that's what you're going to get from a lot of keyboard warriors. Like they've got a chance to stop, think about, come up with their perfect argument back. I've got one of my rules is I don't argue on the internet. It's a very good rule. I made the mistake nearly three years ago. And it took up half my day just writing back and forth. And at the end of it, there was no resolutions. I was like, well, we both think the exact same thing we thought beforehand.

We both think we're right. This isn't going to work. That's what's been really interesting around the one that Rogan's just kind of release and it's going on. There's both of them are right in different aspects and both of them have been able to disprove the other on different aspects. And both of them realize that, OK, well, there's like you said, like we said before, there's a bunch of right answers and there's a lot of depends. And like I don't know, for me, the depends bit is almost enough. Yeah, like it's almost that answer is like it's OK.

Like I'm OK with finishing it there. I feel like it depends. Well, I've actually set up my set up my page and everything on Facebook for health coaching and that. It depends. That's what it's called, because it does. It depends. So there's nothing there's nothing on there because I put any content there. But that's exactly it. Like it depends on what you want. Like there's going to be a different diet if you're trying to bulk up or cut down. There's there's different reasons whether you need to be lifting or doing cardio or like what you're eating.

Like there's different goals for you. If if you got cancer, you're not going to be eating the same as someone that's trying to put on 10 kilos. Like there's different things, things for you. And I suppose that's one of the things that I'm still sort of experimenting with, too, because some of the shit that I do is experimenting with stuff that I don't know whether it's going to have an influence. You just taken professional's words for it, like things like the extended fasting, the autophagy benefits are meant to be great. But who really knows? Like, I'm not going to know that.

Like I could get to 80 and not get cancer. Or could it be nose fast? Maybe. Maybe not. You'll never know. Some of it's. Yeah. But some of the big ones are sleep. Sleep's the biggest one. Yeah. If you're not sleeping, probably. Yeah, I think we start to realize, like there's big rocks and there's little rocks. Like the big rocks are the sleep and the food and the hydration and the managing stress levels. And actually, those things are more important than training if we're trying to improve things like, yes, we need the training. But if we don't have those things first, then you're kind of wasting your time.

And that's one of the things that has been, I guess, shown to me or proven to me over and time and time again over the last 10 years of being a coach. And the last four or five years of doing this is just that if we don't have the big rocks sorted, then there's going to be a ceiling to how much we can actually move the needle. Yeah, you put a I'll put a post up a while back to the footy group, just about like trying out like a pre-workout because a lot of them take pre-workouts.

I'm like, well, I'm sure I can make a better one. Yeah. And I put it out and feedback was good. But you made such a valid point. Your comment was, well, if you're not doing everything else right, like there's no point to sleep doing this. You should pre-workout eight hours of sleep and a good meal. If you tick all those boxes, that might give you a leg up. But it's if you're not ticking all those boxes, it's yeah, there's no point trying something out of left field if you can't get the basics right. Yeah. But fuck pre-workouts off.

You don't need them. I am. Caffeine is one of the ones that I was taking before footy. And that's yeah, I think that's going now. Because I don't take pre-workouts before I do gym, before I train anything like that. Caffeine. It was really good for me because it makes me chatty. It makes me really chatty. So that side of it was brilliant on the footy field. That gets to know his opponent during a football game. I love it. It's so fucking fun. Oh, man. Some guys, like this is just some guys who I know who don't know you will just be like, what the fuck is he on about?

I still don't know. I've known him for 10 years. I love it. I just love it because people come down to watch that, like, know me and Bundy. And they're like, Bundy just frowns all the time, won't say anything to you. And you're just giving thumbs up and talking. Well, you've got to enjoy what you do. But we are different and we're all different. Yeah. And I guess that's like the crux of all this is no matter what you do, no matter like what die you choose, what sleep pattern you decide on, whatever, we're all different and you've just got to find the thing that works for you.

Yeah. There's no point doing shit that doesn't work for you. Exactly. Exactly. One last question for you before we finish up. What are you most excited for? Oh, Jesus. All right. Can I give you two? Yeah. All right. I'm short term. I'm really excited for the next 12 months, both like sports wise and family life wise. Right. Just going back to work next year. We've got a plan for kids with care and that. So hopefully we can start to make some headway with some of our debt. So I'm really excited to really knuckle down and have a good year on that front.

But also excited that there's a real chance for me to learn some stuff. We've got Gooch coming on next year and even Craig seems really knowledgeable. Already a couple of things have pointed out. Let's maybe go never really looked at it like that. So I reckon I'm going to get heaps out of that. And the other thing I'm really, really excited about is to see if I can hang around long enough to play footy with one of my boys. All right. That's that's sounds like a weird sort of long term go, but I reckon I can do it.

It's a really cool like, OK, well, this is what I want to hear. What needs to happen is reverse engineer from there. Yeah. Like it's so much. Yeah. Well, that's that's pretty cool. I think you keep looking after yourself while you are and keep finding those little gems in terms of performance and health. And I can't do it. Yeah. Yeah. God, our Henry style for me. Thanks for coming on. No worries. Thanks for having us.