#35 - Tony Cerullo

Tony Cerullo shares his story with the help of a special guest Co-Host Rick DeTata. This episode brings us a new topic we have not yet explored, which has to do with Gestalt emotions that form in early childhood and create the person in you who interacts in the world every day. His certification in Neurolinguistic Programming allows him to help people release their baggage and programming that create negative responses to everyday situations. In addition to this vast topic, Tony goes into his own personal wellbeing and how he makes the best of himself each day. Contact Tony at EmpowermentbyTony.com 

Tony is a Certified Master Practitioner of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), a Personal Coach, a Certified Hypnotherapist and a Certified Master Practitioner of Mental and Emotional Release Therapy. He returned to triathlon training in June 2023. The first events were in November and December where he won 3rd place in the Sun Devil Classic, which qualified him for the world championships for draft legal sprint triathlon in Spain. In his second triathlon, Anthem Holiday Classic, he won first in his age group and 12th place overall in the men’s division. His next events are February 24th and April 28th. The 28th of April will be his first attempt at a longer Olympic distance triathlon. Tony works out six days a week for between 8-12 hours a week which includes swimming, biking and running intervals and longer distances. It keeps him energized and healthy!   

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Transcript

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This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast. To help others in their fitness journey. It's all possible. It’s time to wake up. Here we go. Hello, everyone. This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast. We're here today with Rick DeTata my co-host. First time I have a co-host on the show. I'm really excited about the dynamic today. Our guest is Tony Cerullo who I guess I should tell you is my cousin. And I'm so proud of him and all that he's accomplished in his life and in health and fitness. Hey, Tony, how you doing? I'm good. Hey, thanks for the nice intro, Angel. Awesome. Hey, Rick. How are you doing today? Good. How are you? Glad to be here. I'm happy to be here, too, with you guys. This is exciting. All right, so, Tony, let's get started on you. Tell us about your background. I know that you're a pathologist. You also sent me information that you’re now a master practitioner of neural linguistic programing, which I've never heard of before, but I can't wait to hear about it. Let's start from the beginning, where you were born, where you grew up, and where you went to college. I was born in New York's old Patchogue, New York, and raised in Casper, Wyoming. So nice to you. My folks moved out to Casper. And if you've never been to Wyoming, well, it is a shock to the system. It's super, super cold. And the winter and the summers are nice. They're nice, but you wish it was a longer version. I grew up there and always had a desire to do something in biology. I wasn't really quite sure. I think we all kind of start off on a different port and just venture out in different areas. I think I was a marine by all. IGY was my first major interest. I ended up going on the pre-med track and realizing that I wasn't quite sure a doctor was quite what I wanted to do, but I thought health care was still pretty cool. So moved into med lab science and went on to get my master's degree in biology. And so I am a certified pathologist assistant. And what they do is examine all tissue that come out of the operating room. So it could be anything from, you know, a GI biopsy from a colonoscopy to a breast that someone has had were removed for cancer, mastectomy or colon. So I would examine all of those later in my career. I shifted into health care administration. So I'm an executive now, not a laboratory in Arizona, a major laboratory in Arizona. And I am over 30 hospital surgical pathology laboratories, as well as a large reference anatomic pathology laboratory that's literally a football field. LONG And as cytology flows, cytometry, really, and all service. So that's what I do currently. That's easy for you to say, but wow, it's an amazing bio you have there. But I mean, what do you do? You could could you change water into wine? To what else? Yeah, I can. No. Yeah, sure, I'm sure. You write hard enough. Let me ask a question. Explain what? Angel said that the neuro narrowly lost. Yeah. Does that mean you speak Klingon or something? What? What does that mean? Yeah. So we all have some struggles in life, and I think that trying to get to a place where we are function anything from a place of accountability. Right. And my wife now cherry plot, he is very adventurous and so she found this training in neuro linguistic programing and it intrigued me. And so essentially what it entails is, is looking at your subconscious mind, right? So from 0 to 10 years old, we are essentially trained in our behavior, from our experiences in our subconscious. So from 0 to 10, if you think about that, you're in a different kind of a wavelength. You're in what we call an alpha wavelength or a theta wavelength or in that time period. So that's why you believe in Santa Clause and cartoon ads are really cool and all that stuff. You're very impressionable at that time. So anything you learn at that point of your life really affects who you grow up to be, who, how you be in and specific instances. And what I like to call out probably has the most impression is any gestalt. So against all it is, if you have an experience attached to an emotion. So if your mom says to you when you you got a new toy, oh, you look more articulately happy today, you go, Oh, well, that's the first time I've ever recalled knowing what happiness felt like. So that moment is a good stall. The thing we have to be on the lookout for is negative emotion. So fear, sadness, grief. Any of those emotions, anxiety and the gestalt associated with them. So however, some fear that negative emotion is at the time and that you recognize it at the gestalt affects who you are and how you react to situations. Say you have a relationship and your significant other tends to want to leave you when you're in an argument or something like that. If you had an abandonment in that 0 to 10 age range, your subconscious mind has created a pattern and how you will react. And there are chances are there are trauma associated with that mental trauma. You may react really badly in that moment. A normal person would be like, okay, if you want to leave, but somebody with a lot of trauma would totally lose it in terms of their emotions, you know, be completely and proportionately sad or whatever in that type of mind frame. So what, Marilyn? GROSS That programing did is that helps people to get rid of baggage, that trauma. So there are certain tools that you can use that will really stop and that you will react more normally. It takes discipline, though. Everything takes commitment and time. And that is kind of in a nutshell what neuro linguistic programing does. Wow. So bottom line, you're saying cartoons are cool anymore. So at the center, getting rid of baggage And how would you go about doing that besides getting divorced? It's been if you can explain that real quick. I'm not trying to overstep you, but I'm just. Oh, sure. Go ahead. Those are good, great questions. I'm exactly what I had in my mind. So go ahead, Sonia. How do you deal with that? Yeah, I think that is the trick. So first the first step is you have to realize that there is a problem, right? You have to be accountable for yourself. The thing that I like to do is you're not affected by the outside world. Your perception of the world comes from inside. So you have enough inner strength to go, okay, I've got something I need to deal with here. It's not my wife, my sister, my brother, my mom. It's not my job. It's not whatever. It's me. I have to do the work. It's what I have control on. There is this phrase called cause and effect. All right, So cause and effect means if you're a cause, you're taking ownership for your life. You're the one that's going to be responsible. If it's a fact, you're going to be a victim, you're going to be in the blame state. You don't want to be a victim ever. You want to be at cause you want to take ownership, be empowered in your day to day life. So that's really the first step. You have to acknowledge you need help. You have to want to be empowered the next step. There are several ways to do it, but the way that we do it, narrow linguistic programing, it's called mental emotional release, which is I phrase that kind of a semi hypnotic type treatment modality or a timeline type therapy where you actually go back into your timeline of your life and you'll revisit events, feel the emotion surrounding that. And believe it or not, as I walk folks through this, it will separate the emotion from the event. So they'll see the event for what it is, if it's an extremely sad event. So, for instance, I lost a brother when I was seven years old and he was hit by a car and that caused extreme trauma inside of that I was probably incapable of dealing with when I was seven years old. So when I went through a mental or emotional release, I went back to that event and I was able to release the guilt. I had a lot of guilt associated with that and it was completely disproportional. And the first time I went through it, I was like almost a lunatic in there because I was so sad and so distraught from the recollection of that event. But I was able with some work, you know, and help actually from my wife. She's one that walked me through the mental emotional release therapy at that time I was able to release. Now I can deal with it proportionally if I go see my brother's headstone in Wyoming. Now, I may have some tears, but I'm able to deal with it in a good manner As to where before I would put up a big shield, I wouldn't have any emotional reaction. Like I would be like, Oh, there's a headstone, you know, or there's, you know, that's where Gene's buried. Now I have a much more healthy interaction. I'm able to experience the feelings, release them after I appropriately experience the emotion I should feel. So when I've ever lost a loved one starting from way back when. When my grandmother passed away, and also my grandfather and my dad, I didn't cry. Took a long time to cry. It's like, why? Why is that? Do you think there's something going on there? I do. You know, absolutely. And I think that when you are from 0 to 10, you were taught that sadness should not show a display of tears or I be strong. Yeah, be strong. Right. And so through through time, that has every time you experience sadness, that's recapitulated itself over and over again forever, that's built in it's muscle memory. It's just how you react. Yeah. Let me ask you one thing. So what do you do in a situation where a bad situation is more of a relief for you? For example, my mother was sick for years. You know, she was bedridden and we were we were caretakers for her. But when she did pass, it was like it was a relief. Thank God she's out of pain. And I never cried because it was always a preparation for this was going to happen one day. So how do you how would you account for that? Because I never did cry because it like I said, it was a relief for me that she she's finally out of pain. I had more of a happy moment for me that she's that she's she's not wearing a neck collar. She's not bedridden and and she's gone and then she's out of that pain, you know, because I used to visit her every day and we just terrible to see her like that. So how do you how do you is there something deep inside me that may one day come out? You know what I mean? That I'll have a release of of emotion later on. Possibly, Rick. You know that. That's a great question. I don't know that tears are always necessary to experience the emotion, right? So I would say we all do it in a different way. What I would say is I could run you through this right now is that when you have that moment of sadness, if you allow yourself to experience it, and then wherever resonates in your body, so say you have anxiety. I mean, some people feel like their throats cut off or they can breathe as well. Or maybe they feel like, you know, Archer, you know, things like that, you want to you want to be able to go, okay, I have this thought in your case, it would be the loss of your mom. I have this thought and then it generates an emotion. And so the emotion is going to be some sort of hormonal physical logic reaction. It's not going to be it's not a big secret. You know, if you have a situation where you're in fear, it's fight or flight. Right? You may have an adrenaline rush to me or whatever the whole trick is to in that moment that thought, oh, I lost my mom, why am I not crying? Where's the emotion? Is that emotion of happiness for her, or is I, you know, pure sadness? You can see and feel that in your body somewhere, as long as you allow yourself to experience that group, really, and feel it for a few minutes, that detaches the thought from the emotion and then you can eventually in 90 seconds is what the terminology or the thought is on this. So that's how long it takes for your body to to process through all the hormones that you may have accumulated during that time. Once those hormones slide you, then you are kind of through the event. The thoughts calm, the emotions go on, you process it in a healthy manner and you're fine. So I would say in your state, as long as you're confident that there's nothing else there and you're allowing yourself to feel that emotion and process through it effectively probably won't harm that issue. Yeah, I think your traumatic experience has blocked things out too, because I was a firefighter and I was at the fire station when she passed away, so I got the call. But she lived an hour and a half away from the fire station. Well, she was in a hospice and I would have talked to this day, I do not recall that hour and a half drive up the turnpike. One minute I was at the fire station and it's like the next minute I woke up, I was at her bedside. To this day, I do remember the hour and a half drive whatsoever. I just don't it's kind of like freaked me out that I could, like, drive 70 miles an hour for an hour and a half and not recall any of that. I guess just your mind blanks out at certain emotions. Jamal Yeah, that self-hypnosis you are in self-hypnosis. I don't know if you're familiar with that. I read about it. Yes, Yes. Yeah. You put yourself in a hypnotic state. Yeah. Like I said to this day, what you, what, ten years later, you're Angel. Yeah. And so putting yourself in a hypnotic state, is that because we're trying to protect ourselves from those emotions, or is it even, like, dangerous? You're driving. I can remember driving places, my mind being somewhere else, and it's like, Oh my gosh, how did I get here so fast? You know, it's a dangerous. That's a great question. Actually. It's not. Being the reason why it's non dangerous is it's not like you're asleep, right? You have driven a car so many times on the same roads repeatedly. It's like playing a musical instrument. If you guys are into that or if you I don't know what you what you do that you love to do A lot For me, I like to play the guitar. And if I learned a song and I know how to play it, I don't have to think about the chords anymore. They just I'm playing it and it just works. Same with driving a car. After a while, it's the same thing. So yeah, exactly what you said. Your thoughts captivated you to the point where that's all you're focused on, and that's a state of self-hypnosis. Mm hmm. Okay. That's interesting. And you teach people how to play responsibility for their actions and their emotions. Is that what you do? You teach that because in a world today, a world of the younger generation of entitlement and victimhood, everybody's a victim. Nobody wants to take responsibility for their actions, not just in society we live in. That's got to be hard to teach people that, you know, it's a desire for me that part of what I do, like take it off. It's more of something. I'll provide the family I meaning for you. You and Tik Tok videos are that. Explain some of these things. I want to do a lot more. But yeah, that's an area I would really like to expand it. Yeah, a lot of people don't know how or don't take the time to sit with their emotions just to be able to sit back and relax and stare out at the ocean or your garden and sit with your emotions and see what comes up. A lot of people don't do that. They're scared to do it. It's so important to just listen to what's going on in your your heart, your mind and your body. Absolutely. Mm hmm. Okay. Let's go back to mentors and inspirational people for you that brought you to where you are in health and fitness today. Wow. I really haven't even thought of that. Like, in terms of why do I enjoy what to enjoy? It was kind of a soul journey, honestly. When I was growing up, I played a lot of baseball and football and basketball. Of course, my parents helped to motivate me to play baseball and football and all of that. My dad coached me for a number of years, which was it was always great to have him by my side and be there for the games and practice. I think for me, in terms of endurance athletics, where I find the most peace, it was just a small challenge. It was something that was so painful. I think when I initially did it, I it was something I never really thought I wanted to do. I was I remember being terrified of the water as a kid. You know, I had a near-drowning when I was four on a lake or, you know, a friend of the family kind of pulled me out. I remember how terrifying that was. And I remember struggling just in swim lessons and deeper water and just being so afraid of of water in that respect. And so I was, you know, later in swim team in high school and really kind of just turned it around. So for me, it was about challenges, you know, challenging myself, seeing that you know, I had a cousin that was on the swim team or if he can do it, I can do it. I had a really good friend that said, Hey, Tony, let's join the cross country team. I'm like, Why would we want to do that? That's running. That's ridiculous. And I said, All right, I can I can do that. I want to do it. And so it was kind of motivation, right? That must be a gene that runs in the family. Yeah. Because the challenge is love, love, physical challenges. It's it's what's always kept me going and wanting more for sure. What about you? Eric has it been the challenge? Oh, yeah. I mean, I love the challenge. I mean, as I'm getting older, you know, at this point in my life, the challenges are becoming more painful. Like it's you tell you that physically painful, like I told you. And I, you know, I told Angel, when I go to the gym today, my routine is now I walk to the gym. Whatever doesn't hurt that day is what I'm the body part. I'm working. You know what I mean? Is not routine or. But yeah, I love a challenge because for me, if I challenge myself and I kind of give up on the challenge, I get really super mad at myself for doing that because what I went to flight school for the Navy, I mean, I had so many friends saying, You're crazy, you can never do that. And and there was no way it was no way I was going to feel like failure, which is not an option at that point because I wasn't coming home, my tail between my legs. So that just one aspect of the challenge of the challenge me physically, mentally, it could be there'll be a bunch of different things as all your child grows up. I think it's healthy for your mind to keep your mind going. All right. I agree. The Tony, how many triathlons have you been into? Yeah, this is an interesting story. So back in my late thirties, early forties, I decided to kind of start into triathlon. I had never done it. Open water. Swimming seemed like a fun thing. I had always been a good runner and a good and okay. So I'm not going to say I'm a great swimmer, a male swimmer. I can get by. I've never really cycled at that point. So I picked up a bike and started training. I was training for half marathons and marathons at that point just to try to be more healthy and better fitness, just awareness that way. And so I did a few back then, and then I dropped off. I literally life got the best of me. I had a lot of challenges at work. I didn't have neuro linguistic programing. I was very much a victim, trust me, very much a victim to manage my emotions and work and all and everything else ended up changing jobs a couple of times to higher level jobs. But they were still the still the same stress and the same craziness was always there. And I ended up, you know, going through a really bad divorce and ended up moving to Arizona. And just this last year, I have been with Sherri for six years now. And just this last year we got married over the summer and I said, you know what, I'm going to get back in the triathlon because I'm my health is probably deteriorating. My weight was high. I needed something that I love to do to keep me fit and kind of in a groove, you know, aligned of achieving goals, really out of that back to mindset more into an empowered mindset. And I started training. So I started training in June and for about two months I said, okay, it's time to sign up for my first event. And I signed up for Sprint Triathlon in November and then another one in December. And then this last one was over this past weekend, February 24, and another Sprint triathlon. And I have one more coming up April 28th, which is a Olympic distance, which is twice the length of the Sprint triathlon. And it has been so gratifying. I started off from my first triathlon. It was what you call a draft legal or means that you don't you can't use a triathlon bike. You have to use like a regular road bike. And I was able to place third in my age group and I qualified for the world championships for draft legal Sprint triathlon and was recruited for the world team for our age group. So it's great. Only real quick if you could, for our listeners who don't know exactly what a triathlon is, could you break it down real quick what exactly triathlon is? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I forget about that part. So, yeah, triathlon is swimming, biking and running in that exact order. And there are a bunch of different levels of triathlon. So sprint triathlons, generally the shortest that you can do and is half a mile swim well point five mile bike and five K, so 3.1 miles. And that all generally take really good professional seasoned athlete about an hour and you know I intake people up to 2 hours. I do mine in about an hour and one right now which I, I feel like I can get a little bit faster but that's generally the timing on that. The next distance is called an Olympic, which is twice as far. An Olympic triathlon is a mile swim, a 24.5 mile bike, and then a ten K, which is a 6.2 mile run. Then you get into your Ironman level, which you have a half Ironman and a full Ironman. Your Ironman is a 1.3 or hap Ironman as a 1.2 mile swim, de six mile bike and half a marathon, which is 13.1 miles and then a full ironman is 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and a marathon, which is 26.2 miles. Wow, that's a lot of work. Yeah, but it's about 15 between. Well, I mean, people I mean, the fast guys are probably around eight or 9 hours on a full triathlon Ironman. And then you'll have people finishing up to 17 hours on nonstop. Right now, triathlon for me is a two mile drive to the to the gym, a mile drive to Chipotle and then a mile drive back home. Yeah, that's an awesome trip. So, Tony, do you ever expect to advance into the next level? What's your plan? I don't know yet. I really right now, I want to I have a certain amount of time. I train about six days a week, about an hour a day on the weekends, all training to two and a half hours on Saturday and on Sunday. So Saturdays I'll be about an hour swimming and then about an hour and a half to 2 hours riding on my bike. And then I usually do a long run on Sunday, like last Sunday at 14 miles. And that was a bout of, you know, an hour and 50 minute run. And so, you know, with that, it's probably, I don't know, 8 to 10 hours a week training. You start getting beyond that or a half Iron Man, you're really like, probably you need to add another five, 6 hours on a week. And there now you're starting to run out of a time. So. So we'll see. I like the Sprint Olympic distance. I think that that's a fair amount to do and have balance in your life. I'm not sure that any more than that would be at this point at least a goal of my level. So the the sprint triathlons, it sounds like you you've done quite a few in a short period of time. Is that common with people or have you done like more than what most people do? I'm not sure. I, I think I'm lucky living in Arizona, as you guys, you know, in Florida, same kind of thing. You get to do things all year round. And so for me, I'm probably a little bit ahead of most folks. I do one every couple of months. Mm hmm. And you're 5101 52 in June. In June. Okay. So is your body saying to you right now, thank you for what you're doing or is it saying, Oh my God, what are you doing to me? For the most part, you know, it feels pretty good. I think running can be a challenge. You get a lot of tightness and strain from from running. I did lose about £25. So through all of this training. And so the lighter I am, the less things hurt. Imagine that, you know, that's just that's just how it works. So but I think swimming, I don't experience any issues at all. Similar with riding. I think running there are some inherent challenges I need about on day to recover, especially after a long run. Tony, What about your caloric intake and your protein intake? What do you do to prepare for these triathlons? I mean, I'm sure the day before your carbohydrate intake or you're actually just on your normal daily basis of your train every day, If you're working out every day, what do you eat? Yeah, that's great. So I'm a I'm a vegetarian and I do eat fish. And this just started probably a year, year and a half ago. So I'll have some fish every now and again. But I do have a very funny story for you guys. My my wife, she loves the keto diet. And so she was when I was initially starting this tri training, she was wanting me to do this. Tito a diet with her, and I found that I was getting some really strange pains during training and a lot of weakness and I couldn't understand why. And so I started doing research. I'm like, What is going on here? I mean, is this diet related? Is there something wrong with me? What? Why am I not doing that? Well, you know, in terms of endurance athletics. And so the research that I did pointed out how you break down. You guys probably all know this, but it's really interesting how you break down your your sort of nutrients as you're doing endurance athletics goes in this or you break down glucose, glycogen stores burst, then it goes directly to muscle and then fat. So what was happening was I was eating with a keto diet, high fat diet with very low carbs and you know, some protein. So I was basically going right to breaking down my muscle first. And so that was a detrimental. When you're doing girls athletics, you do have to have cards on board all the time. And then I never really fully understand that right after an endurance workout you have to have carbs within a half hour and you got to get them in your bloodstream quickly. So it could be an app or you can choose how things you don't want to eat cookies and things like that. The sugar, like in cookies he just mentioned, they're simple carbs, but when you eat like pastas and rice and oatmeal, those are complex carbs that are more beneficial to the body. Better fuel, obviously. Yeah. So I had to shift my diet. And then going back to your initial question, Rick, I try to eat after I do a long run or a workout. I want to eat an ample amount of carbs to replenish glycogen stores and I want to eat a fair amount of protein and whatever vegetarian form it is, you know, fish and tofu beans and rice to repair my muscle. So those are key critical components to my diet. Do you take a protein supplement at all, like a protein powder? I don't I don't do any of that food. No other supplements at all. I do take some vitamins, but really, no, I'm on long runs and on endurance athletic things. I'll eat gels, you know, Googles and things like that every about every hour or 20 minutes within a workout. I need to make sure I take one of those so that I don't go right. The muscle burn. You don't want to burn your muscle. Okay. Can you tell us about any struggles that you've been through, all through your health and fitness life, any struggles that you've had to go through and figure out and to get to where you know you're doing what you're doing now and doing it well? Well, this is kind of a good story. I always wanted to play baseball as an adult, and I lived in Colorado, in the Mountain West most of my life. There wasn't a lot of opportunity for that. So when I moved to Arizona, that was one of the first things I did was I looked for a baseball league because I love the pitch. I love to head the shortstop, second baseman when I was growing up, but I always felt like I wanted to do more baseball. I didn't quite finish up in high school the way I saw it, and I thought, Well, I want to play again as an adult. And so I was able to pitch and I do a lot of really interesting kind of strange injuries in terms of, you know, my arm and how it affected my joints very, very weird things you wouldn't think would happen. But I was great fun. But the thing that really made things super difficult was in one game I was playing third base and my pitcher threw a, I don't know, probably a change up and. The batter was anticipating it. And the batter, I mean, these guys are are big guys or some of them are ex-pro baseball players. I mean, I had a chance, guys, in this league that were around 90 plus. I mean, they're they're they're it's a very competitive league. And so he threw this changeup which was a slow pitch and the batter just ripped it right down the third base line right at me. And so I was pretty disciplined, a third baseman. So I stayed down on the ball and made sure I stayed in front of it. The ball right at my feet took a bad hop and there was no way it was coming at me. I like it 90 plus miles an hour. There is no way that I was going to get out of the way and it hit me right in the face and yeah, I lost three teeth and went through all kinds of implant surgeries and tooth replacement thing that lasted over a year. And so I ended up playing one more season of baseball, even though my wife was like, I don't want you doing that. You didn't do one more season. But I decided that, you know, at this point in my life, it probably wasn't worth it. And I, I got what I got out of it and it was very fun. But all fun things have to come to an end. Well, at least you got to play a little bit longer and you got to satisfy that part of you, but that competitive part of you where you wanted the challenge. Yeah. Yeah, It was awesome. Nice. Very nice. I want to talk a little bit more about preparing for a triathlon. I mean, you were saying earlier that you did start biking a little bit, but let's talk a little bit more about preparation. Okay? So let's say I want to I want to run a you know, I want to do a sprint triathlon. Did you hire a coach? Did you just take it upon yourself? What was what was your training regimen like? Well, I mean, people can hire coaches. I wouldn't say that that's about choice. If you're really unfamiliar with running or swimming or cycling in any way, shape or form, I would highly recommend some sort of a coach brochure. I didn't do that. I've been, like I said, swimming for pretty much my whole life and running for a lot of years as well. It's always been kind of a something I needed to stay healthy. Cycling was pretty new to me and I. I still feel like I have a lot of opportunity in the cycling area to learn things. I think it is funner, not funner. I mean, it's easy ish to you to jump on a bike and just pedal it and just battle it as fast as you can. But you have to learn how to, you know, order the gears and everything else. In terms of training, though, you have to be very disciplined. You cannot think that you're going to go out and do one day a week or two days a week and be able to pull off one of these events. So I think generally why you want to do is if you're not familiar swimming and you're not a good swimmer and you don't know how to do the Strokes, you need to probably get some lessons or work out in a pool. Your stroke. You got to learn how to do it and do it properly. Once you get that developed and yeah, you're going to star on at least twice a week swimming and you don't have to swim four miles the first time out in the pool. You can, you know, start kind of small between 500 and a thousand yards. So one pool length is 25 yards. Generally on a normal pool, you'll want to look online or get some help from a coach if you do have one on what a workout should look like initially and just and just follow a good swimming workout routine based on that cycling's the same way I have a peloton or indoor cycling great workout style with powers on training. I think powers on training is the best way to do cycling and you can do endurance levels, own three kind of work or you can move to more zone or zone five work, which it's more threshold. So that's where you're going to actually push your heart and lungs up to the next level. Running is the same way. I mean, if you have to run a lot, you're going to want to start with walk runs where maybe you run a minute and then you'll walk for 15 or 20 seconds and then you'll run another minute until you build up to continuous running. You know, start with a mile build up to you know, three, 3 to 5 miles. Right now my workouts are a lot more advanced than that. I like to swim at least 3500 yards every time I swim. So that's about an hour worth of swimming for me and I'll break it down into longer distance swims like a thousand yards, and the shorter distance swims up to the lowest is usually about 100 yards. You can work in your head in a pool or open water. So I'm doing that in a pool. Mostly it's just more efficient for me. I do need to start swimming more in open water. That was one thing I learned from the triathlon over the weekend, The water is 58 degrees and it was shocking and there was current in there. And there's a lot of things I didn't anticipate. That's me in the background there swimming. You know, you can see that. But it was a very difficult and so I do need more time in open water. That's cold water, 50 degrees, hypothermia. And that while I don't do cold water, I don't even like ice in my ice water. I mean, I just just not 50. It's rough, you know, I hear you that it was it was cold. It took your breath away for sure. Did you wear a suit, any kind of a suit? I did. I had a wetsuit on, you know, And you have to when it's waters are cold, you get in and you have to kind of prep yourself a bit, put your face and blow bubbles. Let yourself acclimate for about 5 minutes or else it's too much of a shock. You won't be able to breathe. A lot of people just drop out right at the beginning, if that's true. Shocking. Wow. And yeah, so even with a wetsuit, once that water goes into your suit, you got to take a few minutes to let it let your body warm up that water in there. It's shocking. I know I've done that scuba diving, so I know what that's like. And also the weight. You've got a little bit more weight with the suit. So it's going to take you longer than if you were in a pool to swim those swim those laps. Yeah. All right. So that's a that's something that folks need to really understand. I think probably the wet suit is like a life jacket. You know, you guys have the ocean out there, but in freshwater, you sink If you don't have a life preserver on to our solid water, you're more buoyant here. If you're in this fresh water, you will sink in. What a wetsuit does is that that keeps you floating. You don't even have to tread water in a wetsuit. So it creates a little bit more of an aerodynamic just position in the water. And you can go faster, believe it or not, in a wetsuit than you can without one. That's interesting. Okay. I never thought of it that way. Yeah, it's all freshwater out there. Yeah. The less body fat you have, the more muscle you have. You're going to take a lot quicker out of the body. Fat makes you a little more buoyant. And the salt in our salt water here makes you more buoyant too. So I'm never going to swim in the lake of 58 degrees, I can promise you that. But I'll probably go right to the bottom, you know, not even with a wetsuit, no. Yeah, but my pool by my house goes down to like an adventure time. And I'll go down to, like, I don't know, maybe 70. And now they get me home. But I can't do that. I don't like cold anything, you know? So I'm just not doing it, you know, I don't go into real Florida boy. Go. Even though he was born in New Jersey. Right. Right. Yeah. But I was that was three years ago. I mean, three years ago. That was that. That was was 50. I moved down here when I was 15, so that was worth It was 52 years ago. You know what I mean? So people still they could hear my New Jersey action still, I don't know how, but I was born in winter. I was born and my mother had to walk through two feet of snow to get to the hospital. And now I grew out of that real fast. You know, I don't do it. I anything anything under 70. I go in a coma, just I just can't do it, you know? I mean, so I'm definitely not going to Wyoming yet. Have you ever been to Wyoming? No. It's too cold all year long. But most of the year. But not all year long. It's definitely an experience. Yeah, I'm sure. So, Tony, with with all the stuff that you've been into, all your life with health and fitness, I know you've been an inspiration to your family, and I'd like you to talk a little bit about your son, Aiden, and his accomplishments. Super proud of Aiden, very young man. He has played sports as all entire life. He's been a traditional basketball, football, baseball kind of guy, played basketball and a baseball up until he was probably a sophomore and then sort of just started shifting. Actually, he played baseball through his junior year, shifting to football, and he was always much better football player than any other sport. But definitely one of those kids that walks out on the field and you want him on your team. He was one of the best players on every team. He ever on. And I'm not saying this because I'm his dad. He he's actually was really gifted athlete. I wish I had his size and ability to do the things he did. He was just very, very lucky. Never had to work at it. Just really good. And that and from a academic standpoint, that kid is he's smart, crazy smart. Never had a be is our entire life. I mean, he actually had one be it was in it was in band. So the teacher the teacher I think the teacher liked him very much. But anyway, he had great grades. He's in engineering right now, ISU. But what I'm very proud of him were being in the athletics was he was the starting varsity quarterback beginning his junior year of high school and brought his team for the first time in about eight years to the playoffs his senior year. They did lose their first playoff game, but he, you know, helped get them there and he ended up being the offensive player of the year for his football team and for that the region that we're in, the conference that we were in, as well as he made all conference for football and he had a bunch of records that he, you know, he created and whatnot. So very proud. He did he did get a full ride scholarship to a Division two school. We really didn't work on football scholarships that are hard for him, but he did get that full ride scholarship at a Division two school in New Mexico, and he elected not to go there because they didn't have an engineering program. So he doesn't really play any sports today, but he works out six days a week and he's about six to honor £90 and just very strong young man, very in shape. So they're very disciplined in the gym every day, very proud of them. Absolutely good looking guy. He's going to go far. You should be proud, Papa. He's a good guy. Where do you get that six foot two from there. When our family is there. Probably wasn't from the Italian side. Well, okay. Any questions for him, Rick, that you would like to ask? I'm still thinking about that. Noro linguistic program. Yeah, that took that, too. Yeah. Oh, but yeah, I'm still I'm going to do a little research on that because I think I find that interesting when you, you know, you talk about feelings and emotions and like I said, especially in today's world of entitlement and nobody wants to take blame for anything in their lives or it's always blame on the other guy. Self-responsibility is a very rare thing now. So I'm interested not just I want to do some research on that. So just an offshoot. So you guys know Tony Robbins is a proponent of neuro linguistic programing. So a lot of his teachings are based upon NLP and Dr. Matt James. This is where I got my training from. So if you look up Dr. Matt James, I think it's our dot com as is our website, you'll be able to get a lot more information about that. He incorporates energy work as well this thing called who and he's from Hawaii originally he's got a PhD in integrative psychology very very smart man. All of these things are based on our past behaviors and what we were exposed to. So have you ever heard anything about it's drawing lines and connecting lines on paper and it's supposed to focus your energies. I can't tell you that I was invited by some Russian psychologists. I believe that's recognized pretty well is what it looks like, if you could say it. Oh, wow. It's drawing lines of that. And it's my wife who just got into it now. It's very interesting. It's it's almost what you're talking about, you know, But it's it's a little different. I try to I don't have the patience for it, you know? I mean, it's the drawing lines and it's all part the psyche. The mind is everybody's mind is a different planet because everyone's got their own world inside their head and you never know what's going on inside. Somebody said, never, no matter how good. You know, I find that very interesting what you do. Yeah. Mastery comes from my it's not your own perception, but it's the perspective of others. And we in start living with a bigger world. It's your and get out of our own minds. It will transform your life and how you see everything. Well, that's where you see a lot of people I know Tell me I'm out of my mind. So it's just like, Throw that in there, Angel. But we like you just the way you are. Don't change a thing now, but we've all been through some kind of trauma, and we may have forgotten about the trauma, or we may have tucked it away somewhere because we don't want to deal with it. And finding a way to bring it up, bring it out and release it is probably the best thing that we can do with ourselves. And it affects our lives in a way that we never thought it would or. Sure. Great. Well, all right, Tony. So at the end of all my shows, I ask our guests to provide the audience with a goal in life and how to get there. Would you like to help our listeners with something like that, to inspire them to live their best life? Yes, I would say I don't want to make the goal too lofty right now because that's a lot of what people kind of how they make mistakes and how they get off to the wrong start. So make your goal attainable. So what I would say is if you do have a desire for fitness, make your goal something completely attainable. Do something that you know you're to have success at. So let's just start out with today. I want you to go out and I want you to have some sort of workout, whatever it is you want to do, that's easy. You can do it. Is it a lot? Is it a run? Is it lifting weights, riding a bike? Let's just let's make that your goal for today. One step at a time. Very good. Doing right? Yep. Well, thanks so much, Tony, for being on the show. I appreciate you doing this. Signing up and right away and coming out and talking to us. Me and Rick, really appreciate you sharing all your knowledge. You have a lot of it, and hopefully you've inspired others out there to go ahead and take that first step towards something exciting, making a change in their life so that they can feel better about themselves. Thank you for having me. This was an amazing experience. You guys are great hosts, ask great questions and love answering those questions. Laughs and thanks, Rick. Thank you so much for co-hosting. You did a great job. We'll do this again. Absolutely. A very interesting person. Tony's a great guy and it's great meeting interesting people. It really is. Especially in the area you have no idea about. You're always learning something when you talk to different people. So it was nice meeting you, Tony. Nice talking to you guys. Nice meeting you as well. Rick. Awesome. You guys have a great day. This is Angela Grayson from the Loving Life Fitness Podcast. To help others in their fitness journey. It’s all possible. It's time to take up work. Here we go.