“Keep that other little voice in there that wants to hurt you… keep him quiet.”—Laird Hamilton
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In Part Two of this interview, Mark and Laird Hamilton (@Lair
dLife) get into more specifics about training, recovery and nutrition. They also talk about the importance of proper breathing and using imagery. How it is essential to imagine a destination before you can actually get there. Both Mark and Laird are “watermen,” and air is almost everything when you’re in the water, so naturally proper breathing techniques are important.
Hear how:
- Laird credits a great deal of his fitness knowledge to Paul Chek
- Laird was doing “Paleo” before it had a name.
- While it is useful to have some fear, it is essential that positive and negative thoughts are mostly in balance but with positive always a little bit ahead
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We’d love your feedback, please leave a rating and review.Transcript & Shownotes
Hey folks. Welcome back to the Unbeatable Mind podcast and part 2 of my interview with Laird Hamilton. Laird was so interesting, we talked for so long that I decided to separate the interview into 2 shows. In the first, we talked about Laird’s childhood, his early years pushing the limits in big wave surfing. And innovating new techniques such as tow-in surfing, paddle boarding, hydrofoils and more.
Now in this episode we’re going to continue to talk amore about that, plus the mindset of big wave surfing. Overcoming fear, training for extreme ocean sports and nutrition along with a host of other cool and fun things.
So I hope you enjoy the 2nd part to this fascinating interview. Now at the end, I make sure to ask most of the questions that the tribe had via social media
And finally, before we get started, remember our mission to do 22 million burpees and to raise $250,000 for veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress. Now I won’t be able to do that alone. I need help. Personally I’m committing to 100,000 burpees and $10,000 donated to the Courage Foundation. I’m doing mine in 300 burpee chunks. 300 a day.
Find out more about this audacious but important initiative at www.burpeesforvets.com. I need your help. Join us in this important mission.
And enjoy the podcast. Hooyah.
Start
02:03 Mark: We have these skills I call the Big 4 skills that we teach in Unbeatable Mind and my sense is that you use these. So I’ll run down the list and then let’s talk about how you relate to these.
The first is breath control. Controlling the breath so that we can control our physiology and clear our mind.
The second is positive self-talk or internal dialogue.
And the third is imagery and visualization which we’ve already addressed.
And the fourth is… I call it “task-orientation” but essentially it’s deciding… discerning what’s the most powerful action you can take. The smallest, most powerful action you can take right now. That’s going to lead toward victory.
These come straight out of the Navy SEAL playbook.
How do those resonate with you?
Are you… I know you’ve studied breath control with Wim Hof so let’s start with the breath one.
Laird: Well I was already… I mean, obviously–and no one knows better than the SEALs–when you’re dealing with water, it’s all about air. So I mean, I think for me growing up I think I was rescued more times than I could even tell you. I used to wash out to sea when I was like, 5 years old and get rescued by the lifeguards. I’d do that a couple times a week.
I’m just saying… And people go, “Aren’t you scared?” And I go, “Yeah. But I was scared so often so much when I was younger that I think you kind of get…” you’re kind of like okay. The fear level goes away at a certain point because of the exposure to it.
And so the relationship between breath and water is–there’s air above, and there’s none below. So it makes you really breath conscious.
So when I’ve had exposure in different breathing techniques. And just am so breath conscious. Used to do hypoxia training without even… before anybody even told me it was called hypoxia training and they had a formula for it.
I would do breath holding while I was doing most cardio activities. Intermittently. To symbolize or a way to connect to what you’d be going through in the ocean. And what you go through.
And so that became more and more prevalent as I began to understand breath work and just the relationship of oxygen and how our bodies use it.
And then what you can do with it, right? So then listen, you get dealing with pain when stuff’s broken. Whatever’s going on. It’s all about the breath, right?
Women are breathing when they’re giving birth. It’s just all about breathing. And I always talk about the priority of living. It’s weeks without food, days without water and minutes without air. Which one is important?
And then trying to work on some of those skills using that to calm you. How do you use breath to calm you? How do you use breath to speed you up? How do you use breath for recovery? How do you use breath for sleep? How do you use breath for performance?
Cause I’ve been involved in a fair amount of endurance stuff and it’s all about your breath. Your rhythm. The breath rhythms and all of those things are all…
That’s a whole subject just in itself…
Mark: For sure. That’s an entire week-long seminar.
Laird: Absolutely. Or longer. It’s a life-long seminar.
Mark: You know I’ve been practicing breath primarily… In the water, I was a competitive swimmer. So face in the water, you’re not breathing, just like you said. Face-out, you are. And you’re controlling your breath.
And then when I got into the martial arts, before the SEALs, we practiced all sorts of really interesting breath training. And I started to experience just exactly what you’re talking about. How the breath can be used for projecting power, or for healing…
Laird: Kiai.
Mark: Helping internal energy and it is potent medicine. For sure.
Laird: It’s so overlooked. It’s one of the most overlooked things because it’s so convenient. It’s so in front of you. I tell people that one of the most profound things anyone can do for their health, their happiness is…
I have a theory, actually, and you might appreciate this. I believe that our body is so ingenious that it tricks people to be cardio crazy just so that we breathe enough. So it’s like… I think it’s the reverse world where some people are just, you know, cardio freaks. They just have to run their thing every morning. They gotta get their spin bike, or why is there such a giant cardio, massive cardio kind of frenzy? A group of people that are like that.
The body’s like, “Hey, I want that air. I want that oxygen so I’m going to get you to do these activities for me so you breathe hard enough.”
Mark: Yeah. You know, I like that. Cause it’s not just oxygen. You’re breathing in life-force. Prana.
Yeah, so you’re right. That’s feeling that energy and it feels good. And they say, “Hey look, that’s dopamine.” But the reality is you just…
Laird: (laughing) Did a lot of breathing.
Mark: Yeah.
Laird: For sure. In Hawaii that breath of life. So that’s “aloha.” Is the breath of life.
Mark: Oh, no kidding? I did not know that.
Laird: Yeah. Well, “ha” is the breath right? And so they talk about the breath of life. “Aloha.”
Mark: Aloha. I love that.
Mental Management
08:07
So moving on, what about mental management? What’s the role of self-talk and internal dialogue for you? How do you deal with that and how do you manage that?
Laird: Well of course, you… and I spoke about it. About this wave that I… A famous ride that I had in Tahiti that brought a lot of attention to it. Because of it was… we broke a barrier in what was ride-able.
But I talked about the internal battle I was having during the ride with the two… with the angel and the devil–or the halo and the forks. And it’s a little bit like a battery. You got the negative pole and you got the positive pole and their necessity to create the energy. But who dominates?
The main thing is you just let the… as long as the positive’s finishing a point ahead every time, you’re going to be good.
Mark: (laughing) Good to go.
I love that. We call that “Feeding the Courage Wolf.” You feed the Courage wolf, you’ll starve the fear eventually and it’ll be quiet and just curl up in the corner.
Laird: Amen. Yes.
Mark: That’s cool. And imagery. Do you actually visualize your rides? Or how do you use imagery in your training?
Laird: I do. I use imagery in the rides. In the waves. Seeing the wave. And because the ride itself you really don’t see yourself riding, so it’s more important to see what you’re going to ride and then become…
And then you’re kind of become part of that. But I spoke a little bit about it too. About understanding and using imagery to help you see the results of things. To be able to use that and to materialize the results of things by seeing it. And go all the way through to the point where the epiphany happens.
Mark: It’s already happened.
Laird: Yeah, exactly. You’ve already… you’ve seen it in your mind, because the thing is that once you see it then it can manifest itself from there, you know?
If you don’t see it in your mind, it’s not going to come out. And that includes where you’re going to be, where you’re going, what you want, where you want to be. All of that stuff. That’s all…
Mark: Whether you’re on a wave or building a business, or trying to get into the military Special Ops…
Laird: In your life. Where do you see yourself?
Mark: It’s funny, my classic story around that is I visualized… before I even… 9 months before I ever heard from the recruiter for the SEALs, I visualized myself graduating from BUD/S and I did it every single day.
You’d appreciate this. 20 minutes of breath practice and then I would sit and visualize myself having already become a Navy SEAL. Having graduated BUD/S. Even down to the day, the hour of the day. The look on the face of the guy who gave me the trident who I didn’t even know.
And it’s not a quick thing. For me it was about 9 months where all of a sudden I felt a sense of total certainty. That it was a done deal. That I had already won that, you know?
So visualization is crazy powerful.
Laird: And I always tell people, I go, “You don’t arrive at a place that you first didn’t set out to be.”
Mark: Right. If you can’t see the destination, you don’t know where you’re going.
Laird: Yeah, well you don’t just show up and be like, “Look where I ended up.” Like, no. This is… you either didn’t know where you were going–that’s why you ended up in a place that you’re surprised about. Ort you saw where you were going to go and then you end up…
And I think for a lot of people that’s what happens. I think they don’t… in their life even, they don’t see where they’re going to go. They don’t have an idea of where they want to go, so they don’t… And those that do, go there. And those that don’t sometimes arrive at places that they don’t want to be because they never had a spot that they wanted to be or that they even saw.
Mark: Right. Well said.
Training
14:29
Mark: About 10 years ago… maybe not 10 years ago–about 8 years ago or 7 years ago I had this guy named Mark Visser come to SEALFIT headquarters. He’s an Australian big wave surfer and I guess he’s well known for Jaws at night with neon on or some crazy thing like that.
Laird: Yeah.
Mark: Little bit of a gimmick, but still pretty ballsy, you know?
And he wanted to train with us. Want to train with SEALFIT and blah, blah, blah. And he made it through 7 minutes of our workout.
And I swear to God, we were like, “Are you serious? What’s going on here?”
And I realized that he just didn’t train with functional fitness, weights and everything. He was doing bow suit balls, balance type stuff…
And I’m like, “I don’t know how you can be a big wave surfer and train like that.” I know you’re training program’s a little different. Cause I know you’ve worked with guys like Brian Mackenzie and you do high intensity interval training with kettlebells and take them underwater.
What’s your training plan like? How do you prepare to stay physically on your game?
Laird: I think I have a short attention span, so I have a tendency to like variety. And it goes through different cycles. I go through…
First of all, I always feel like I always need to be in better shape no matter what shape I’m in. I start with that.
So no matter what’s happening, I have a certain expectation. I developed the pool training technique around lifting and swimming. Because I guess as an ocean swimmer–I call myself an ocean swimmer because I can swim in some ugly water. But the monotony… if you have me get in the pool. I’m going to have the limp fin like the killer whales at Sealife Park. I’m going to flip over and sag.
So laps are not one of my things. And so I developed a whole program around swimming with weights and using weights underwater and that kind of created an intensity into swimming that really kind of captivated me.
But I’ll do some… I’ll do yoga. My versions of yoga. I’ll do callisthenic stuff. I do a lot of thermal regulating. A lot of heat and ice stuff.
Lately I’ll go through little phases. I’ll do a lifting phase in the summertime where we’re lifting weights. I’ll do breath work… I’ll give breath and using breath while doing stuff its own kind of space in training.
I’ll do circuit stuff. And my wife Gabby has a program called “High X” that’s a wickedly intense thing where you’re three minutes on… usually bouncing between 2 different exercises every thirty seconds. Then you get thirty seconds to get to the next station. You got like, 15 stations.
And so that kind of stuff I train with this guy Don Wildman who’s the founder of Bally’s health clubs. And he’s a lifting nut. So I’ve lifted with him before.
I dance between lifting because sometimes I feel like I want to lift and be stronger. And you always admire guys all beef from lifting.
But then whenever I do that, I find my endurance is… I’ll gain 20 pounds and I’ll cut my endurance by 20%. It’s like…
Mark: Right. It’s really hard to find a balance.
Laird: It is. It’s a tricky dance of, “Okay, I gotta be flexible. I gotta be swimmer. I gotta lift.” So I’m playing around in all that stuff trying to work on stuff… trying to either work on injury stuff, or things that are… or things that are created by doing too many repetitive motions that you’re trying to… whether it’s flexibility or asymmetrical strength. Or whatever that is.
And just being open. I think for me I really like to just do new stuff. I really do enjoy being a student. And I never come with an attitude about thinking that I know things. I think I’m always coming in wanting to be a beginner and be open and…
I can take anybody and kick their ass in something I’m good at, and they can take me and kick my ass in something they’re good at. And always come in with that attitude.
Training for me is just I’ve made it… it’s part of my life. It’s what I do. And so it fits into my business, and… I’ve been doing lately some kind of callisthenic stuff in really hot saunas. So in this really hot environment do pushups and burpees and Hindu squats, whatever… Just bodyweight stuff and just finding that that really hammers you pretty good.
I’m a glutton for punishment. I think I have a sickness in me where I like to hurt myself like
I’ll do things that… the only thing that I am cautious of is trying to really not injure myself while training. Unless your training is your sport. Which for some people it is their sport. For me it’s just a mistake I really can’t afford to make. Or really don’t want to make. And so I don’t want to go… and then you have to let your ego kind of keep you in check. You always want to grab more weight and do more stuff. But that’s where the injuries…
Better to grab lighter weight and do more reps. and bigger ranges of motion. But then again, it’s the ego thing. Try to keep that other little voice in there that wants to hurt you, keep him quiet.
Mark: No I love that. We say you have to check your ego at the door. And we love team training because teams can hold each other accountable. An injured teammate is not a good teammate.
Laird: No that’s bad. That means you’re doing more. (laughing)
Mark: Right. And I love… the SEALs training serves the mission. It’s not… I had a Crossfit gym for 10 years. I finally closed it down. But we moved away really quickly from the whole CrossFit mindset of competing for the sake of fitness. It’s got some good stuff in it. It pushed you harder, but then it became and addiction for a lot of people.
And a lot of people getting hurt. So…
Laird: yeah, and that becomes the ego thing. And that becomes the challenge. And listen, if it’s your sport? I understand. The guys are, “Hey, it’s my sport. I’m going to bang this much. More than you. More reps. More weight.” Whatever. And that’s your sport, great.
But if it undermines your health then I have to question the validity of it. I think a really good philosophy at least I try to implement into anything that… any training that I participate in is that it has to be scalable. So if you can’t have old people and kids do it–some version of it–then I question the validity. Then I question… because, you know, again is it training for life? Or is it training for this weekend?
Cause I’m looking at training as something that I’m going to do for the rest of my life. So I gotta do versions of it and do things that don’t undermine it. At least that’s how I…
But how I… like this time of year when it’s my season I really don’t train enough. Because I’m kind of waiting around the ocean and my focus is on that.
And I don’t know if other professional athletes feel it, but I feel like at the end of my season, I’m kind of the most out of shape.
Yeah, cause in one way it’s like maybe I’m in the most shape to ride giant waves and be in the ocean that way.
But at the end, I haven’t been in a real routine of fitness that I get like in the summertime, when it’s not my season. It’s almost like guys are probably in the best shape for their sport right when the pre-season’s over.
Mark: That is very similar to a SEAL before deployment. You got 12 months. You’re just cranking. You got plenty of time to train hard every day. 3, 4 hours.
And you go into deployment, and you’re doing missions every night. And by the end of deployment you’re out of shape and beat up and exhausted. No sleep, and…
Laird: Oh yeah. Destroyed I would imagine. Destroyed.
Mark: Yeah. Absolutely.
Laird: Taking a couple months to recover.
Mark: For sure. At least 2 or 3 months.
Recovery
23:43
Mark: And so that brings me to the last couple training, routine related questions, but what about recovery? I know you are a big fan of ice baths. What do you do for recovery and how important do you think that is?
Laird: Well I have a friend named Paul Chek…
Mark: I know Paul…
Laird: So years ago I went to see Paul and I was excited. Knowledgeable guy. I’m going to have him assess me and he’s going to give me some radical fitness program. It’s going to be awesome.
So I went to see him and he measured everything that he could measure and a few things that he probably couldn’t and at the end of the week of assessments and this… And saliva and urine, and stool, and how long’s you forearm? Ad how long’s this? And what toothpaste…?
Talk about comprehensive. So at the end of the thing I go in there and I’m like, “Oh awesome. I’m going to get this incredible fitness thing. And so I sit down with him and he goes to me, “Well, the first thing I want you to do is I want you to get marbles. And I want you to put them on the floor when you sit down on a couch.” Which for me was like–I never sit down on the couch. He goes, “And pick them up with your feet and put them in a bowl.”
I go, “Okay.” He was wanting the dexterity of my feet. He was like, “Hey you have to make your feet have better dexterity.”
And then he goes, “And then the other thing I want you to do is I want you to rest one day a week.”
And I went, “‘I want you to rest?’ You want me to rest? You want me to rest one day a week?”
And he’s like, “Yeah. I don’t care what you have to do to make yourself rest. Do that. So that you can get to a point where you can actually rest.”
And so after that I began to realize the importance of really nurturing the system. And really giving the respect–the honor that it’s due. And really making it like, “Hey, I’m so quick to run out and exhaust myself and beat myself down. Why wouldn’t I be so quick to nurture myself and try to take care?
And so I started to take days and go it’s going to be a rest day. And some… even the rest days, there’s always something, but in comparison with the other days, it’s a rest day. And get massaged, and do other things to nurture your system. We have… and I wouldn’t begin to compare it to what you guys go through. But we have a kind of a Post-Traumatic thing that we go to when the surf is very giant.
We weren’t really aware of in the early days and it would lead to depression and some other kinds of things, that we… in the beginning, we weren’t conscious of. And in the beginning we could go and do a pretty good spiral given what we’re doing. And I said I wouldn’t compare it to someone in war… but we became aware of it to the point where we went “Okay. Well now we gotta eat good, get really good rest, and kind of nurture our system and that.”
And that really kind of dampened the effect of it. It really made the effect of it go away. So I… again… I give recovery… I’ve been giving a lot of heat just given a lot of the research lately. I really have been using the heat a lot.
I do heat and ice combo as well. A lot of contrast stuff.
Mark: Do you do infra-red sauna?
Laird: You know what, I have the infra-red right now as well coming into my place in Malibu. We’re getting all three wave lengths. So if somebody reached out and they’re making these saunas that make all three wave-lengths and so starting to do the heat.
I mean, obviously breath work is a huge part of recovery. And sleep too. Again, you know, sleep… I was just listening to Doctor Cruz talk in a podcast just recently about how melatonin is created in the retina of your eye when you look at the early morning light. And the used later on when you sleep.
So I’m always trying to learn. I drink Chaga tea at night. Again those are all… my diet and most of my lifestyle is kind of around recovery. Like it’s like all the hydration, being properly hydrated… like all of these things.
Because recovery is performance. At the end of the day, people don’t realize, recovery is performance. Why do steroids work? It’s because it makes you recover quick so you can right back and do it again. It’s… I’m not using that saying I use that or that that’s a form of recovery, but that’s connected to… that recovery is performance at the end of the day. If you’re recovered you can perform. If you’re not recovered, you’re performance is going to be compromised.
Mark: Yes. It’s like the Yin and the Yang. After you do you have to be. And recovery is the being part.
Laird: Absolutely. Essential.
Mark: The integration and whatnot.
Laird: Yeah. Essential for longevity, performance… I mean, you see the difference when you’re fatigued. How well you perform. And the problem is when you put yourself in situations of risk, then the consequences are greater, so you become more concerned about not being compromised.
Mark: Yeah. No, I agree. I think you’re right. Recovery is hard for on-the-go Westerners. We like to do-do-do-do-do, you know what I mean? And then–just like you said–even taking one day off, you’re like “What!?”
Laird: Absolutely. Well the doers that are doing want to do it all the time. The people that don’t do, they don’t do anything anyway and they’re not gonna.
But the fact is that the guys that are on the roll, they’re… they don’t want to… they think that that’s somehow–that that extra day is going to get them something out of it. Not realizing… even if you’re lifting heavy you understand you can only lift certain body parts and give yourself at least 3 days of recovery. So that’s proof in itself, you know?
Mark: I’ve been teaching yoga to the SEALs–candidates I should say, not SEALs proper–but they’re all filtering into the force now. But I’ve been teaching it since 2007. And the only thing I had to do was basically stop calling it “Yoga” and stop using Sanskrit terms. And then they’re like, “This is awesome!” It’s like, “Yeah.”
Laird: (laughing) Absolutely. Because of the block. There’s a block. So everybody’s like, “Oh man, I gotta get more flexible. I need to stretch.”
I’m like, “Okay, yeah. There’s a term for it but we’ll just call it stretching and becoming more flexible.”
Mark: (laughing) Exactly. Moving with the breath. How’s that? That’s awesome.
Nutrition
32:18
Mark: And then nutrition. Are you ketogenic, or do you follow some of the ketosis protocols at all?
Laird: I do. I think again… cause I get asked about it. I have a superfood line which is some stuff that I’m making with high nutrient dense stuff. But I’m… Listen, I wanna be a diesel truck. I wanna be able to just you could throw anything in there and it’ll burn it.
A little water goes in your gas, it’s not a problem.
I don’t want to be too souped-up because there’s a fragility with the race car. If the things a little off… But I have a high-fat diet. And my cravings are really… I always say you crave what you feed. But the fact is that I crave fat because I consume a lot of fat. So I’m a high-fat consumer…
Mark: And what types of fat? Where do you get your fat sources?
Laird: First of all, I can eat macadamia nuts by the truckload. But I get it from anything from raw dairy stuff–like raw butter, and other raw dairy products when I can find them. But I consume… I have a good raw butter source, so I’m always having raw butter. And then coconut oil. Red palm oil. Olive oil. All the good ones that I know of.
And then I’ll get good meat fat too. I like good… I’m not a vegetarian by any means, and but I like exotic. I like diversification in vegetables and fruits. I don’t eat a ton of fruit because of the sugars. And I’m pretty conscious about avoiding most high-sugar stuff.
I mean, listen, Paul Chek years ago–again, another one of his influences. Which I’ve been in a way kind of eating “Paleo” or however you want to call it. Whatever the term is– for more than 20 years. And it was because I had already done it.
Growing up in Hawaii, we eat a lot of real diverse foods because we have all these cultures. Filipino, Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese.
And then you have a lot of stuff from the land. So you grew up eating a lot of exotic stuff and you’re used to it. Whether it’s fermented this, or organ stuff or whatever weird fruit, vegetable… and so I was already kind of in that ability to eat those weird things.
And so but what Paul said one time he goes, “The three white devils. White flour, white sugar, white milk. If you can’t pronounce it, don’t eat it. And if it wasn’t here 10,000 years ago don’t eat it.
So listen, I used that as a philosophy. I go, “Okay, here’s my philosophical approach to eating or nutrition.” And I’m not a big fan of supplements–supplementation. Maybe a few isolated ones. I prefer trying to extract it from whole foods.
I like to try to get stuff from it. And I think now, with the lack of…
Mark: You mean like micro-supplementation like vitamins as opposed to a whole food like Laird’s food or an Ample or something?
Laird: Yes. Exactly. I mean supplements like vitamins and stuff that are isolated. That you’re body’s going, “Hey, what is this stuff?” I’d rather find it in some leaf or root or some other whole food form.
Mark: Right. That makes sense. Man, that awesome.
I’m looking at the time. We’ve already been going for over an hour so we probably better wrap this up.
Laird: Okay. I’ll eat lunch then.
I do love Turmeric though. I’m a big fan of Turmeric. My friends farm Turmeric here and it’s called Olena in the Hawaiian culture…
Mark: It’s good for recovery right? And for inflammation?
Laird: Gut health, too. Like the Indians have it in all their… the Indians in India have it in all their food. And they have no intestinal diseases of any kind. And they attribute that to turmeric. So turmeric for gut health, inflammation, it’s some pretty amazing stuff.
Mark; What about Omega-3? You probably get that from fish, but if people don’t have fish…
Laird: Yeah. There’s some nice… I would eat some Alaskan salmon tablets or whatever. Something like that for Omega-3s. If you just don’t eat fish. I eat so much fish that I get it there. But I don’t supplement that too much if I can help it. I just kinda have a little bit of a resistance to it right now.
Maybe it’s just the phase I’ve been in… I’ve been through times when I was had a fishing box that I carried around with the 25 different things you were taking every day. And I kind of grew away from that.
The problem is when you do that stuff, and then you don’t feel any different. And then you stop doing it and you don’t feel any different, you’re kind of like, “Okay, well maybe I don’t need to shove all that stuff in my body.”
Mark: Yeah. I’m with you.
The other thing is the stuff runs out. And then you’re like, “Oh shit. Now I’m down to zero again. And I have to go shopping.” It’s a pain in the ass. But eat good food.
Laird: Yeah. Eat good food. And again, variety. I think that’s a huge thing. The diversity in your food is critical like in your training.
You think about training the same way. Hey, diversity is going to bring you things that you need.
Mark: Yup. Absolutely.
That’s awesome. So where can people find your Laird superfood?
Laird: My Laird superfood is “lairdsuperfood.com.” Right on my site. That’s the best way to order it.
I basically that whole project started around this creamer recipe that I was using. And now we’re developing other products. And my love for coconut.
Cause coconuts… I grew up eating coconut, and the coconut tree is such an amazing plant. And you can use it at all different times. There’s all different… You can use it as laxative when it gets sour. You can use the milk. You can use the oil. The young coconut is some of the best electrolyte, endurance beverage you could ever have. It just goes on and on. So I love the coconut.
And then, again, always whole food, you know?
We also have a bunch of creamers. I have some hydration products. Some of the hydration products I have are amazing. The creamers are amazing.
I’d say my one real… I don’t know if it’s a bad habit… but my one real fancy is coffee. And I love espresso. So I have really good, high-quality coffee beans as well. In fact, I had a little limited edition of stuff called “Rocket Fuel” that had twice the caffeine of any other bean out there.
But then you put it with a bunch of fat and it time releases it anyway, so it’s not like you get all revved up and then you crash.
Mark: Yeah, so you do the Bullet-proof coffee in the morning? Your own version of it?
Laird: Yeah. Yeah, I’ve been doing that a long… again Paul Chek… again, ahead of his time. We were putting ghee in espresso and then the Bullet-proof guy came out and we were like “That’s why it’s doing that.” Cause he had all the science on it. And then we started applying with some other recipes like with red palm oil and coconut oil and some of these other things. And again I love… I had two fringe habits. One of them was espresso, and the other one red wine. And I gave the red wine back to the French. And stuck with the espresso.
Mark: (laughing) Yeah, the side-effects from the red wine are a little bit more extreme. So…
Laird: Yeah. Not worth it.
Mark: Still working on that one myself. It is not worth it, yeah.
Laird’s Projects and Kokoro Camp
41:02
All right, Laird. So folks can find you… Your website is lairdhamilton.com. Is that right?
Laird: Yeah. And we have XPT is another good place to see some of the fitness stuff. So you can go to xptlife.com. That’s a good place.
I have a Laird Apparel. I have an apparel project and just a couple other fun things I got going out there as well. But just always… I’m trying to keep myself excited.
Mark: (laughing) Well, sounds like you’re doing a good job.
Laird: It’s working. It’s working.
Mark: It’s working. So keep up the great work. You’re a great example. I super-appreciate that. Course let us know if we can help you out anyway in the future.
And we stand by. I wanted to offer you an invite to our 50 hour Kokoro camp if you want to taste Navy SEAL training. It’s a Hell week simulation. Non-stop. For 50 hours. I think you’d probably love it, and crush it.
Laird: Where do you do that?
Mark: We do it here in California. Out at a place called Vail Lake. Course in the ocean. We’re in the ocean for about 8 hours, once of the nights. And rucking in the mountains. It’s a non-stop suffer-fest, but it’s done in a team environment where the whole idea is to connect at a much deeper level.
People experience extended flow states that last like 6, 10 hours sometimes. Because you’re dealing with all these different elements. You’re so far out of your element, you know what I mean? You’ve lost touch with… Everything you thought was normal goes away and so you have to click into a whole new mode of being, you know?
Laird: Yeah, speaking of that… Somebody, a friend of mine that does… my friend, my business partner in my creamer business–the superfood project actually is a… he invited me to do the Baja 1000. So I went down there to do the Baja 1000 with him, and he goes, “Yeah, you can do one of the legs with me. It’ll be great.”
So I go down there and then he goes, “Hey, you want to Ironman it?”
And I’m like, “Uuh, what do you mean?”
And he goes, “Well, we get in the car and then we’ll just switch every once in a while. But we won’t get out the whole time.”
And I go “Well, sure.”
So I…
Mark: (laughing) Be careful what you ask for, right?
Laird: Yeah. So we were in the car for 46… Almost 50 hours or something. And we were… But after 37 hours, we were hallucinating. We kept seeing Pancho Villa behind the cactus out in the middle of the desert.
But it was like what you were saying, we were in a flow state. In another dimension. (laughing)
Mark: Yeah, totally. That hallucination… that happens all the time in Kokoro camp and it’s pretty cool.
So let me know if you want to do it. Invitation’s there. Look forward to meeting you…
Laird: What’s the dates on that? Maybe you can send me that stuff?
Mark: yeah, I will. I’ll have Allison send you, or have her connect us… we run them 4 times a year. First one’s next weekend which is obviously not going to happen for you.
But it’d be fun to do that some time. It’d be fun to do that and put a camera on it. And maybe get some media out of it. It’s a pretty amazing event. People come from around the world to challenge it.
Laird: Well I’d love to just… Yeah. Get a couple of my buddies that I want to suffer with to come up to.
Mark: Absolutely. (laughing) Share the wealth.
Laird: (laughing) Always. What are friends for?
Mark: That’s awesome. Right on.
Thanks so much Laird. Really appreciate your time. And Hooyah.
Stay focused and…
Laird: Aloha. Aloha.
Mark: All right, folks. You heard Laird Hamilton. What an incredible guy. What a cool conversation. Super-stoked to have you guys get to hear that and hopefully we’ll see Laird out at Kokoro camp.
So we’ll see some more of him. And go check out lairdhamilton.com. Check out his Laird Superfood. I’m going to do that myself.
And his apparel line. And just Google the guy and you’ll learn all about him. And also the documentary. It’s fantastic.
So that’s it for today. Stay focused. Train hard. Do the work every day. And develop that Unbeatable Mind.
Hooyah.
Divine out.
