Silvercore Podcast 162 JTF2 Secrets to Optimal Wellness: Mastering Longevity, Mindset & Peak Performance

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Travis Bader: [00:00:00] Recently some friends and Silver Core Club members have reached out to me about doing a Live Silver Core Podcast Club event. They asked my thoughts on this, and I'll read you a text message that I sent. It says, I want the Silver Core Podcast live event to support the mission of the Silver Core Club by helping people deepen their connection with nature, build confidence in the outdoors and in life, and foster a sense of community among like-minded individuals.

The podcast serves as a platform to share inspiration, positivity, and real world experiences centered on growth, resilience, and personal development. For the live event, I'd like it to be revenue neutral, attract a strong and diverse audience, and provide meaningful value [00:01:00] to attendees through engaging content and opportunities for connection.

I also want the event to offer clear benefits to any participating club partners who align with our values. While the format of the podcast can be wide ranging, every episode is rooted in themes of positivity, grit, and growth, and I want the live experience to reflect that same spirit in a way that it's welcoming and impactful.

So here's my request to you. Is that something that you would be interested in attending or even being involved with? Let me know on social media, or you can email me podcast@silvercore.ca. Another really fun Silver Core Club thing is the Outpost, and that's the Private Silver Core podcast that comes out every single week, and I'm seeing more and more members taking advantage of that.

If you're not aware of the Outpost and you're a Silver Core Club member, just log into your portal and you're gonna have a unique RSS feed that's [00:02:00] specific for you. You can download that, plug it into most major podcast platforms, and every single week, you're gonna be getting short form key takeaways to deal with the outdoors, with resilience, with all the different things that the Silver Core Podcast talks about, but in condensed ways, as well as some behind the scenes with some of our guests and myself.

Now, without further ado, let's get on with this episode. The last time we recorded together for the Silver Core Podcast, it was at his kitchen table. Since then, he's launched the collective with Chance Burs and cranked out hundreds of episodes, one a day for a year. Before that, he was a JTF two operator, a world champion, 24 hour solo mountain bike racer, and a high performance coach.

With over 15 years of experience, his insights on wellness mindset and pushing limits are hard earned. And his podcast, the Collective, is a veritable goldmine of practical wisdom. Welcome back to the Silver Corp [00:03:00] podcast, Sean Taylor. 

Shaun Taylor: Thanks for having me, Travis. It's always a pleasure to hang out with you and have deeper conversations on any subject that, uh, fascinates both of us.

And, um, it has been a little while since we did one of these, but it feels like we spend a fair bit of time on the collective together. So I appreciate you coming over and supporting us on our podcast, uh, chance Burs. And I always love, uh, having you over for your, uh, insight and, uh, the way you view the world, uh, to some degree is something that I've always treasured.

So, thanks for having me on. We'll see what, where we go with this 

Travis Bader: one. I really appreciate that, and I love the collective. There's gonna be links in the description for anybody who hasn't heard of the collective or, uh, wants to learn more about it. You'll see the website where you can download it, where you can watch it on YouTube.

Uh, it, it really is something special. For this episode, I was [00:04:00] really excited. So it all started essentially from an Instagram post. Sean, you were just giving her on your mountain bike and you filmed yourself just flying up the mountainside on your mountain bike. And people are like, just looking at you at amazement, like, holy crow, you got the turbo water, or what?

And, and then you film yourself afterwards and you're just kind of talking to yourself through the process. And what struck me was one of the people who commented on that post, and he says, serious question with all the new quote, load management around performance. Have you done anything differently for recovery as you continue to push hard as you've aged asking for a friend Winky face?

And of, of course, to me, I am 46, turning 47, and I've got a plethora of injuries from not having properly taken care of myself and my mindset's shifting. And when I read through what you have here, and I'll just kind of high note it, you're saying, you know, top of the [00:05:00] list sleep, not just quantity, but more correctly, quality, kneeling macros, hydration supplementation, stress management mindset, routines, being comfortable in intensity, et cetera.

And you go on. And so I thought, holy crow, I mean, somebody with your background and your both trial and error in your research and seeing what works. Anybody who's got just half of an interest in wellness, physical, mental, emotional, longevity is gonna get a lot out of this podcast. So, um, I am, I'm stoked.

I'm really excited to get this conversation rolling. 

Shaun Taylor: Right on. You know what, Mike, what is interesting is that that video that you're referring to is a video that. You know, that's the kind of stuff that I do on a regular basis. The how hard I ride or how hard I train or how hard I engage in life is generally speaking, [00:06:00] in a daily practice.

And I don't think too much about it because I've just been doing it for so long and, and I, quite frankly, I'm reluctant to put up videos that show me like deep, deep, deep into the hurt locker. Uh, because I don't think everyone needs to see that on a regular basis. But more importantly, I never, ever, ever want anyone to misconstrue or misunderstand the intent of why I put any videos up on Instagram.

It's not to, uh, demonstrate how hard I can go or how deep I can go, um, because to some degree that makes me feel like, um, uh, I'm flaring out or that I'm trying to, I'm dressed to impress, as it were. Um, and I don't care for that, um, feeling. Uh, I don't like to have anyone misunderstand anything that I'm doing on social media, so I don't put those kind of videos up on a regular basis.

I. But [00:07:00] after I put that video up and I started getting the comments, I thought, man, I should have been doing this sooner. I should have illustrated to others how freaking hard I train, or how deep I go, or how much in the hurt locker, or I put myself in willingly in order to experience the growth that I like to see in my life.

And so the video was kind of like almost a casual, um, effort to just put something up on my feed. But then when the comments started rolling in, and I believe, uh, the comment came in from Sergeant Hazzard, uh, and then of course you jumped in on that comment and said, uh, you know what you said? I thought, man.

I should have done this ages ago because look at the dialogue that is going on now, uh, that I could have addressed ages ago, because the reply that I gave to him, I typed that out in like 90 seconds with like mm-hmm. Almost no thought. And, and I hit send. And it was just kinda, uh, classic [00:08:00] case of I'll just try to be a little bit helpful in this moment.

Tap, tap, tap, and hit send. And that was it. And I never thought much more about it until you hit me up. And, and I realized that I have been underserving in this area. I certainly could have addressed this a long time ago, uh, given a lot more value, uh, in these matters. And thanks for picking up on that comment and engaging in this.

And now look at where we're at. So that's well done on your behalf. So thanks. 

Travis Bader: Well, I guess it's a fine line between, you know, people will look at social media posts and thinking someone's being braggadocio or they're, they're just showing off, or are they leading by example? Are they showing what they do on the daily and providing a framework that other people can look at and say, Hey, that, that might work for me too.

And I think you have a framework that could work for a lot of people. Not everybody, not everyone's gonna have the mindset or the, um, uh, the ambition to [00:09:00] follow such a framework, but maybe they might modify it. And, and when I talk about this framework, so Craig Weller, Jonathan Pope. W wrote a great book, building the Elite, and it's just this bible of information.

And I was talking with Craig and I'm like, okay, Craig, I don't know if you heard this one before, Sean, but I I brought you up. I said, uh, so you, you work with a lot of, uh, listen, be good or bad. Well, we'll find out in a second. Um, they said, you work with a lot of high performance athletes, a lot of, um, special forces, both individuals in special forces or who are trained to be in special forces to reach their peak optimal physical, mental, emotional, uh, value.

And I said, well, you and I, we, we know Sean, what advice would you give Sean if looking at what he does, if you wanted to make a few tweaks here or there? And Craig's [00:10:00] response was, I wouldn't be able to make any advice. I can't, I can't find any areas where I'd be picking away at what Sean does. So, so, um, for somebody who does it, some 

Shaun Taylor: Craig, but he, he, he could have, 

Travis Bader: he 

Shaun Taylor: could've done 

Travis Bader: better than that, I'm pretty sure.

Yeah, no, I, I ribbed him. I said, look, you took the easy way on that one for sure. But, um, but you do, you've, you've got a process that you put in place and I'm sure it wasn't by accident. And, uh, I thought maybe if, if we approach it, I sent you over just 'cause I was having a little conversation with AI here.

I. And, um, figured if we kind of approach it from, uh, five different points, if we looked at sleep, the foundation of wellness, stress management, the invisible weight, uh, nutrition and macros. Of course, I learned what macros are now, so that's good. It's more than just macaroni, um, hormonal optimization, uh, routines and mindset.[00:11:00] 

So if we looked at sleep, 'cause that was where you started, can you tell me, uh, what you do for sleep, what role it plays in, in your life? Sure can. 

Shaun Taylor: So before I dive into any further material that will, uh, engage in throughout the pro this podcast, um, I just want to state the, oh, I, I should state a few things.

Uh, first of all, I am not a medical professional, so anything that I say, if I make any recommendations or if I have an any opinion on anything, it's always worthwhile doing a cold eye review on anything that you hear, hear with someone else, with your doctor, or with a naturopath or whoever you get medical advice from.

Always check in with someone else who has some form of professional designations. The second thing is the, um, things that I've learned throughout my life are an n equals one experiment. [00:12:00] And so I've treated myself like the. The lab rat as it were, where I have deeply considered Sean. And then through that process, learning everything about me as much as I can.

Uh, I then try to apply it within anyone that I've worked with in the past. Uh, either as a high performance coach with athletes or anyone that I have any dealings with. I try to pass on my n equals one to them, but always with the provision that this is your n equals one. Now you need to pay attention, much like I'm going to describe throughout the rest of this podcast.

So there's a couple of things to think about medical. And, uh, uh, a professional medical opinion. And then of course, you are your own and equals one. The next thing I'd like to say is, uh, because I, this, this podcast came together in, in fairly short order over a couple of days kind of thing. Um, I, in [00:13:00] preparing for the podcast, in fact, I prepared more for this podcast than I prepare for my own podcast.

So what's going on there? But, uh, as I was preparing for this podcast, I thought I would, um, start capturing some of my thoughts, my opinions, my ideas, my processes, protocols, as it were the n equals one of Sean. Throughout my life, that has taught me quite a lot in respect to what works for others as well.

So, uh, as I just mentioned to you before we went live or before we started recording this show, what I did do is I've got, um, a document here that is about when you condense it down into kind of like the size of a standard issue book that you would read, uh, this afternoon kind of thing. It's about a 70 page book, and so it's pretty solid.

There's a lot of information in there that I feel would be extremely helpful to, well, literally anyone who reads it. [00:14:00] And so, um, uh. I, I, I need to segue into also, currently I'm writing a book or co-writing a book with my very good friend, a friend of ours, of course, EB Levo. And, uh, we're several chapters deep into that, uh, process right now, and things are going exceedingly well.

I'm really stoked about that book. So what I've just described is not that kind of a book. It is not in competition to that book. It is not really a book per se, other than it's a really valuable resource that I should probably make available to the general public. In fact, maybe as a general offer, I'll throw this out there to your audience.

Uh, I'm sure Travis, you can find a way to use this book as a resource, however you feel, uh, maybe, uh, within your inner circle or whatever the case is. We can talk about that, uh, once we're off the recording. But I'd like to make that available to you for [00:15:00] your general purposes as well. 

Travis Bader: It sounds amazing.

That sounds amazing. 

Shaun Taylor: So with that in place, um, as I said, uh, I created quite a bit of notes and each, each of the topics that you had suggested that we cover, I I dove down pretty deeply into each of these pillars, if you will, and the first pillar being sleep. And so, um, as, as I said in my comment on Instagram, I feel that sleep is the most important thing a person can focus on for their overall, not just longevity, but their physical performance, their mental performance, their sense of ease with who they are.

As a human in this moment, a lot of it is driven by sleep. So with that in place, the importance of sleep, I'll just throw some context out there right now to establish how important sleep is and how I learned [00:16:00] this over multi decades of not getting good sleep and then getting good sleep and realizing the delta between those two positions.

So of course, as a young man in my first military career, a lot of my career trajectory was, um, driven by a lack of sleep. The, uh, it was a fairly robust pipeline that I was in, and that pipeline required not a lot of sleep. And I'm not talking about in selection courses or in, uh, any form of, uh, testing as it were.

This was just the day-to-day regular. Tempo typically had you always lacking sleep, now lacking sleep, how much lacking sleep? Um, that could be anywhere from, uh, only getting five or six hours a night all the way through to, well, just no sleep for some days. And if you got an hour or two here over the period of three [00:17:00] or four days, then that was bonus.

That was gravy. But back, back then, as a young man, I simply accepted those terms and conditions of that lifestyle. And so there's, there's a cost to that. Nothing is free in life. And so that lack of sleep or poor amount of sleep, or poor quality of sleep, which I'll get into momentarily, really had a impact on me, has an impact on everyone.

If you're not getting enough quantity, that's a thing, but if you're not getting enough quality, that's a whole different thing. So if you choose to go to bed at whatever time and you think I'm gonna get seven hours sleep, you wake up seven hours later and think, oh, that was great. I got seven hours sleep off to have a great day.

That may not be the case because those seven hours. Are determined as to how you'll feel [00:18:00] the next day based on quality of sleep. And so there are a number of sleep cycles that ebb and flow throughout the night. Uh, I'm not talking about now a circadian rhythm per se. I'm talking about the regular ebb and flow as you move out of light sleep to rem sleep, to deep sleep.

These various phases of sleep are critical for you to be able to, uh, consolidate memory, consolidate, thought, remove, brain fog, uh, human growth hormone release, and various hormonal releases and et cetera, et cetera. A bunch of science that actually have in the, uh, small book that, uh, I'm gonna send to you.

Uh, all of these things impact us, uh, while we're sleeping. And we don't, we don't realize how much impact that is until we wake up in the morning and we throw our leg over the bed, [00:19:00] step onto the floor, stand up and think, oh, I feel a bit groggy. Oh, I didn't sleep that well, but I slept seven hours. Why is, why am I dot, dot dot?

Why am I not 100%? And so sleep as a whole is quite a complex subject that. Requires constant tweaking in order to be optimized. I'm not gonna get into the real deepness of, uh, the details of the science, but suffice to say that, um, it, it is a process that is not well understood, and more importantly it's not focused on enough in the sense of optimizing it.

Travis Bader: Yeah, I can see that. I mean, when you're looking at optimizing sleep, I've got a Garmin watch and I was using it to help track my sleep. I was told that it's not really the most accurate. I recently picked up this, uh, aura ring [00:20:00] to try and track sleep a little bit better. Oh, I see you halfway there too. And it's, uh, it seems to be a heck of a lot more accurate than what the, the Garin Watch is doing, and I'm still trying to make heads or tails outta some of the information in there.

But it's funny, some nights like I'll get four and a half hours of sleep and it, but it says it's, I did well, I could do better on length of time, but it says all my other metrics I did really well. So I've got efficient sleep in there. And I was concerned because some nights I get very little sleep.

Maybe I gotta be doing something. I'm working hard to get more sleep. My challenge has been a four o'clock wake up, it seems. And I remember about half a year ago, year ago, I mentioned that to you and you immediately you said, oh, that's liver. I think that's what you said it was liver. I'm like, what? Hold on.

And then we didn't expand too much more to that. So, um, what does that mean when you say someone's waking up in the morning and you say That's liver. What does that mean? [00:21:00] That's a great question. 

Shaun Taylor: So I'll, I'll back it up a sec and talk about the a ring. Uh, because I've been wearing mine now for I think about eight years.

Hmm. And so, um, this is my third ring. This is the newest generation Aura ring. And, um, and I was one of the early adopters of Aura when they first came on the scene. And, uh, prior to the Aura Ring, I had other devices. I've been, um, considering data as a, generally speaking, a data scientist to some degree. Um, I've been thinking about this subject since, oh, I don't know, maybe 25 years ago when I bought my first co quote unquote smartwatch, which was a Polar watch.

They were the very, very first com public or uh, retail public company that provided this. Incredibly, uh, uh, useful at the time, uh, algorithm called [00:22:00] HRV, uh, heart rate variability and Polar, uh, got the license from another small company that I'd, I'd started eyeballing on the side looking for all the secret sauce, uh, tools, tips, acts, tricks, um, back in the day.

And, uh, so I bought my first Polar. And at the time, HRV was pretty much misunderstood because the science was so emerging or evolving that, uh, no one really had a kind of a generalized opinion as to whether it was even good or not. And so I, I engaged with HRV way back in the day, and like everything I've done, and I've already mentioned, n equals one experiment.

Um, I treat my life like an n equals one. And so once I bought that polar, it was less about what the internet said HRV is, or what polar [00:23:00] thought HRV was. It was precisely for me what it meant to me, not to them. And so the, the tools that we have, the AA ring or the polar. Watch way back in the day. They are useless.

In fact, they can be detrimental unless you treat them as a tool to learn about yourself at a deeper level by almost just isolating yourself from the rhetoric or the opinion or the, um, what, what, um, aura will tell you. It means you have to almost read between the lines of what the data is presenting, but really what's going on inside of you.

How, how you feel that relates to you, how you think that relates to you, how you see it relate to you as your day unfolds. And so if I wake up in the morning and, and I, [00:24:00] uh, check my aura ring using the app on my phone, it might tell me that I got six hours of sleep. And it might tell me that I got 45 minutes of deep sleep and an hour and 12 minutes of ram and the rest was light and I was interrupted in my sleep pattern two times for five minutes here and 10 minutes there.

I can take a look at that data and think, huh, but then I set it to the side and I reconsider what it actually means. I try to synchronize up the data with my feels as I stand up. Am I clearheaded as I walk to the bathroom to brush my teeth or whatever the case is? I. How are things unfolding? The moment that I wake up until the moment that I come down, grab my glass of water, pound that stare into the sun as per the huberman and all of the, the various sequences of events that I'll talk about, of course, as the podcast unfolds, I am [00:25:00] constantly checking the external world metrics against my internal world understanding.

And my internal world understanding is a database that I have refined daily for fricking coming up on 60 years. And so it isn't just guesswork for me anymore. When I see my aura data, I know what it means, not, not what the ring is telling me, but what I know it means to Sean, his n equals one. And so for you, relatively new to the, um, the, the science data collection game, I will say for you and anyone it, what you need to do is establish that relationship between the metrics of the world and the internal feelings of your n equals one life and synchronize those two so that they generally [00:26:00] kind of align themself to some degree, if that makes sense.

Travis Bader: It does make sense. So I, I probably know the answer to this question. I. But given the fact that you've been tracking these things for so long through the Ora ring, do you keep some sort of a spreadsheet or some sort of matrix where you correlate how you feel in the day with what the results of the, these wearable devices give you?

Shaun Taylor: I do. So every, every metric that I track is, uh, established within some sort of software, uh, where I can discover the deeper trending or the historical trending of, um, a, a, a tool like the URA ring. This ring in and of itself is worthless unless you take the time to understand how it applies to you specifically as an n equals one.

Now, the, the trap or the trappings of these kind of things is, um, you, you'll buy a tool, whether [00:27:00] it's Aura or Garmin or whatever it is. Whoop, it doesn't much matter what the tool is for tracking your sleep. It, it, it can't tell you who you are. It can't describe precisely what happened in the night. What it, it can do is track things like your body temperature, your respiratory cycle, your, um, your heart rate, whether it is in light sleep, deep sleep, REM sleep.

It can tell you a bunch of things, but then it will interpret. Those things into, generally speaking, sort of a simplistic, uh, delivery of information. Uh, something along the lines of, wow, it looks like you didn't sleep that well last night. Try and sleep better tomorrow. And so, um, these, these simplistic sort of overviews are good for someone who's initially getting into the data [00:28:00] tracking world.

But what you, what we all have to do is dig deeper than that or think deeper than that. Not just accept the simple, almost casual observance of the software, but apply these software observations to how you feel. How it has impacted your life today in context of what it told you yesterday and what it told you a week ago and what it told you a year ago, and start forming a pattern.

So all these tools, any tool that you use to metric your life, whether it is counting pushups, however many pushups you did today, if you put that in a software or in a spreadsheet to kind of evaluate what did you do today? How did you feel today? How can you do it better tomorrow? These kind of things are only valuable if you can gather data for a long enough [00:29:00] period of time that you can now start forming a pattern, not just a data pattern, but an in felt pattern.

So to me, and you've heard me say this, uh, before Travis, that in my life I like to pattern recognizer, pattern recognition has allowed me to survive and it has allowed me to thrive. And so without pattern recognition, um, I feel that there's a huge chunk of improvement that a person is giving away by not deeply considering the long-term patterns of life.

I'm talking a year to two, to five to 10 years worth of pattern recognition. How am I doing now? Versus me 10 years ago. These are the kind of patterns that I'm talking about. 

Travis Bader: So I'm, as I look at patterns in my life as they apply to, let's say, sleep specifically, [00:30:00] I know about 17 years ago, I, so building my own business, uh, young family stress associated with all of those things, being ent, an entrepreneur.

And about 17 years ago, a great deal, more stress plopped in my lap, and I noticed it greatly affected how I slept. And I would essentially not be sleeping, and I would hear everything that's happening around me, even when I did have those, uh, rare times when I was sleeping. And so I started wearing earplugs to block it out, and I could still hear everything that's going on.

My senses were a bit heightened, my brain's going crazy. So I would take, uh, gravel or, uh, diamond ate and, uh, to try and knock me out. And yeah, it gives you a bit of a sleep, but you don't feel great the next day. I mean, sure you were sleeping, but I, it didn't feel like I was actually properly resting and I wasn't tracking any of the stuff that these wearables, uh, do at that point.

And then I started, okay, I didn't like that because I don't want to have some [00:31:00] sort of. A, uh, a drug that I have to take in order to sleep. And so I thought, well, melatonin, that's supposed to be natural, right? And now I'm seeing research on melatonin that it's, uh, bad for you. It's like a, it messes with your hormones.

So I, I came back, when I look at, uh, these measurables establishing a baseline and, and tracking where these things are different, it comes down to, um, for me, ensuring that my external environment matches kind of what my internal environment is. And if I'm living in, quote unquote the concrete jungle, if we can call latner the concrete jungle, which if, which it feels like it to me, but, uh, um, I, I don't sleep nearly as well as I do if I am out in the bush or if I've in a place where there's, um, external matches a bit more.

So I've touched on a few things, but, uh, more specifically, I guess, um, what sort of patterns have [00:32:00] you recognized that lead to, uh, better, more restful sleep and, um, when it comes to, let's say supplements, uh, are there things that a person can take, like, I dunno, magnesium, I think, is supposed to be good that will assist in a, in a better, more regulated sleep.

Shaun Taylor: Yeah. So, you know, in order to answer this question like yourself, you were given context by stating that there was a period of time when you weren't getting much sleep and, and you felt the obvious downside or the negatives to or sleep. Hmm. And so I think that's really important that anyone who listens to this takes a moment to think, okay, I feel the way I feel right now based on the kind of sleep that I'm getting.

How would I feel if my sleep was way better? And until you experience that way better, this conversation is almost like a neutral conversation. It's almost inert. It almost has no [00:33:00] value until a person takes the time to think about, I could be 10 times the person I am if I just dialed in my sleep more.

And so I know this to be true because I'd stated earlier, the, in my first career, the tempo was such that sleep was a luxury to some degree, more so than, um, you know, an obligated thing. But as I continued on in my other careers, um, I had lots of moments where I still wasn't getting good sleep because of my career demands.

But. On top of that, I'd like to throw this other layer that I was also dealing with that was really impacting my sleep detrimentally. And that is I was having a lot of nightmares and, uh, I didn't realize the, and, and I was having nightmares every night and, and I was getting terrible sleep because of the, so I was working super hard, getting to bed [00:34:00] super late because the work had to be done then getting up super early because the work was still there.

And then in the time that I was in bed, my sleep was disrupted by, I didn't have good sleep hygiene, which we can talk about shortly. And I was just dealing with nightmares. And so the nightmares that I had are a result of PTSD. And um, and I had those for over 20 years until I mentioned to my family doctor that I was having nightmares.

Um, uh, I, I just kind of thought it was a normal thing. I didn't talk to anyone about it. And, uh, I just kind of put up with it. And it's not like I had tons of conversations with tons of friends and saying, Hey, do you have nightmares every night? How many do you have? And how, how bad is it? And this just wasn't a conversation that I'd ever had until Right.

I talked with my family doctor and it was just a casual mention. And so, uh, we found a way to sort of reduce those levels of nightmares. And then I started applying way more sleep [00:35:00] hygiene and way more focus on quality of sleep. And so. The amount of sleep, as I said, is one thing, but the quality of sleep is a whole different thing.

And so these sleep hygiene protocols are, you can Google sleep hygiene or perhaps, um, in the, in the little book that I just wrote about, uh, this subject, you'll find out a lot more about sleep hygiene protocols and then supplementation for sleep. So I'll start with sleep hygiene first. Certainly one of the things that I try to control, whether I'm in my own house or whether I'm traveling, is make the room as cold as possible.

If you can get your room to, um, like kind of chilly, uh, that's good because that promotes, um, for, I'm not gonna get into the biological reasons, but that promotes a deeper, faster, uh, way of sleep, uh, slipping into your sleep, [00:36:00] um, noise, distractions, any noises that are going on throughout the night. If you're in the big city and you're used to all of the train noises and bus noises and taxi noises, that's okay.

You're used to it. But that doesn't mean that your body isn't recognizing those noises and responding to them all the time. And so you may feel like, well, I'm just used to big city noises, but, but as, as, as cavemen, we don't. Uh, we can't just say, oh, that's a taxi while we're sleeping. What happens is we're momentarily awake because of that taxi horn.

And so I wear earplugs every night, uh, whether I'm in my own house or whether I'm traveling and if I'm traveling overseas in an area that I think is a bit dodgy. I'll still wear my earplugs, but I'll put other measures into place to make sure that it's not that much of a concern for me. Same thing with an eye mask.

Every night I wear an eye mask, a [00:37:00] blackout eye mask, and in our master bedroom we have, uh, blinds that pull down to reduce the light as well to the degree. Controlling light to the degree that if I wasn't wearing an eye mask, a, a little, uh, maybe a digital, uh, alarm or a digital clock next to the bedside table, it, it's oriented away from me.

So it's facing away from me because even with your eyes closed while you're asleep, light from these kind of a device can, the short wave can penetrate through. The eyelids still hit the receptors of the eyes as you're sleeping and indicate that there is it's time to wake up. Those early signs of light will start to pull you out of various sleep patterns.

And so controlling for noise, controlling for temperature, controlling for light is critical as far as I'm concerned. Now, as part of the sleep hygiene protocol, uh, when [00:38:00] it comes to as bedtime approaches, of course, you can start reducing all forms of electronic devices. And if you can't control your electronic devices, then certainly you should have a blue light filter in place, like on your phone or on your laptop.

If you like to, uh, wind down with a little bit of a movie or some YouTube or some Netflix or whatever the case is, you can reduce the light that is blasting from your laptop or from your TV or whatever the case is. When, when I'm going to bed at night, um, as I'm heading upstairs, I turn all the lights off in the house and, and it, this is just a little routine.

And, and believe it or not, all these tiny little routines add up into a pattern that helps you believe or helps you understand, or literally puts you in a place where you're ready for sleep. I kill all the lights in the house, and then from the main floor, I walk upstairs through two flights of stairs into the master bedroom [00:39:00] in pitch black, open the door, stealth in like a ninja, stealth right up to my bedside table.

I put my earplugs in. I put my night mask in, uh, on, and, and I slide into bed, uh, as quietly as I can, so as not to disturb my wife. But all of that is stealth. All of that is in the pitch black. And so I appreciate the idea of stealthing up the stairs silently and flowing in a way that isn't janky or jerky or disconnected from the moment.

And so that simple process of ninja in my way up into bed is a way for me to like become grounded and aware or present in the moment as to what I'm doing in the moment as I head to bed. And so this, these tiny little subroutines that I have in the way of sleep hygiene are really important, [00:40:00] uh, little protocols that help, um, sort of build out the infrastructure.

Of preparing to go to sleep or having a good night's sleep as part of the sleep hygiene protocol, I suppose we could talk about supplementation. And so supplementation isn't something that you can, um, a a minute before you go to bed, reach over, grab a little pill, throw it down your throat, and head off to bed, and bam, you're having the best sleep ever.

These are things that you can do throughout your day, but certainly specific to sleep, I feel that magnesium is extremely important. There's a couple of forms of magnesium that I use. One is magnesium, three innate, and one is magnesium bisg glycinate or mag magnesium glycinate. Um, the, the glycinate I can use on a daily basis throughout the day for whatever purposes.

And magnesium is a really useful compound because there's over [00:41:00] 300 biological processes that require, uh, magnesium throughout your day. Uh, so magnesium glycinate or bis glycinate is something I will use irrespective of sleep. But then, uh, for my sleep I might use magnesium three anate, which is, is. You know, helps cross over the blood brain barrier.

Uh, it's also more of a cognitive, um, magnesium. And so without getting into too many details, I will say that magnesium, those two forms are something that I take, uh, almost every single day. Um, in respect to melatonin, as you mentioned, I'm not actually that much of a fan of melatonin. And if melatonin is used, it is an acute or is it is used precisely and temporarily to offset something like jet lag as an example.

Mm-hmm. Uh, and I would say use it as a cautionary [00:42:00] basis because it can, uh, interfere, interact negatively with your, uh, endogen or with your inbuilt hormonal system that creates the melatonin for you mm-hmm. Uh, throughout your life. And so it's, it is something like a two to three day melatonin at very small doses, which the doses I put in the handbook that I'm gonna send you, um, this is something that is temporary.

And is only used as a quick fix for a acute problem, as it were, something like traveling across multiple time zones into another country. But it's nothing that anyone should rely on. Um, there's a, there's a number of other things that you can use nutritionally. Uh, certainly one of them is try not to eat two to three hours before you go to bed.

Now, there's a whole variety of reasons for that, uh, to do with how the gut brain, um, [00:43:00] connection works or the, the mind gut connection. And of course, how if you've got a big old steak in your belly, uh, that you ate five minutes before you went to bed, there's some blood shunting there and there's some processes that have to stay busy throughout the night to work on them, et cetera.

Whereas those processes are better used to help clear out some metabolic waste and are better used to blah, blah, blah. Things that I talk about in this little book, um, these, these choices that we make, um, I will say this as kind of a universal statement in respect to this topic. The choices that we make throughout our day should be driven by setting us up for the best sleep ever.

And so at some point in the day, we all have come to that point where I wouldn't mind a snack. It's 10 o'clock at night. I wouldn't mind a bag of Miss Vicky's. It's 11 o'clock at night. I wouldn't mind a [00:44:00] Twinkie, whatever. These choices where we have those little snacky moments where we have those moments of, I wouldn't mind a bit of comfort.

I wouldn't mind a bit of calories. I wouldn't mind a bit of, I'm bored, I need to eat. Mm-hmm. These choices are, as far as I'm concerned, the pivotal moments in our day where we either capitulate to, I'm bored, I want to eat, or more correctly, we stand up strong or fortify our position and realize, no, that isn't gonna serve me well.

I'm gonna make the right choice and I'm not going to eat that two to three hours before I go to bed. Because A, I know, physiologically speaking, that's the right call. But maybe most importantly of all, mentally I know that I am freaking optimizing to the max. That sense of I'm doing everything right, goes a long way to understanding who [00:45:00] you are throughout your life.

So these daily little giveaways where I'm, I'm just gonna eat a bag of chips 'cause I'm hungry. These little giveaway moments are the things that kind of make us backslide mentally. We know it's not right what we're doing, but we'll still do it because to some degree we're being lazy and it's that I.

Kind of not, not giving up to the laziness of the moment. It's being strong in understanding that what's right for you is something that is a little bit harder to do, a little bit of discipline, a little bit of adversity, if we can call it that. Hmm. Those are the right choices because even if you go to bed feeling a little bit of hunger and a little bit of boredom, uh, good because you have set yourself up over the long haul to realize that you're better than that.

Travis Bader: Mm-hmm. It's funny, whenever I go to [00:46:00] bed feeling hungry, I don't wake up feeling hungry and it's, it, it, it's weird how that works, but I could, like, let's say I'm out in the bush and I had very little food and I've been pushing hard and I'm like, man, I'm sure hungry. I wake up the next day, I'm like, I'm good.

I can go again. So did I really need that extra food? Was it really something my body wanted it Sure. The, the, uh, face mask is interesting. I use the earplugs, use 'em every day, have for years. I could still hear everything that's happening. Uh, when the kids are young, I could hear them making noise. Even with the earplugs in, it's, it's funny how your body just adapts to these things.

Uh, face mask, I think I'll give that a shot. I, I got blacko blinds in the room. But, um, uh, I think, I think that makes a big difference. 'cause I, I will notice that the second that the light's out, I'm out in a tent, lights out. It's time to get up, light goes down, time to go to a time for me to go down. So I, I gotta imagine that, uh, it would play a big role.

Um, 

Shaun Taylor: it is [00:47:00] interesting. Uh, so if you, what we're talking about is removing your sensory receptors. So, you know, hearing's gone, vision's gone. Now you're embedding still. So we're, we're removing our sense senses, as it were. And ultimately, what, what we are as human beings is we're sensory organisms. We understand the world around us through our senses, and we, our consciousness, or our mind, or our spirit then, you know, interprets that and does what it does.

That's a whole different podcast. But in respect to the census, once you strip out the hearing and the vision, what I've found. Is as I'm laying there in bed, uh, even when I'm asleep, if, if someone gets up, like my son this morning had to get up really early to go do, uh, work, um, and to catch a bus to go to work.

I, I felt [00:48:00] him moving in the house. I didn't hear him. I didn't see him, but I felt him moving in the house. I felt the vibration of him moving in the house. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so as he walked across the floor, I could feel the almost imperceptible motion of him moving. And if not for that, stripping away of the, I'll call them really loud sensory inputs of vision and hearing, then my sense of vibrational feeling would be duller or wouldn't be as refined.

And so, uh, as I said earlier, and I didn't want to get too deep into it, um, because there's many ways that you can be in a foreign country and still wear earplugs and an eye mask and still be okay. Mm-hmm. Um, there's a bunch of physical things that you can do to sort of control that environment. But one of the things that I have and at my available, uh, as one of my tools that I've developed over years [00:49:00] is my sense of things when I'm asleep.

Is quite refined. And so it's not that I can feel the butterfly flapping through the air, you know, 12 blocks away, but what I can do is I can feel when someone walks up to the door in a hotel and, and like just pushes against the door handle. It's hard to describe and I don't always feel it. It's not like it's magic, but it is, it is a sensory tool that has developed over decades based on stripping out all of the other, uh, extraneous, uh, stimulus as it were.

Travis Bader: I, I know what you're talking about. I, I feel it as well. It's, um, and I think it, a lot of it comes down to trusting your gut feeling and then, and then checking afterwards was my gut feeling correct? And then you build that baseline of, okay, uh, what I felt actually was something and you, [00:50:00] and you move forward.

I, I use that as a technique to, uh, be present and to calm down. Mm-hmm. And I've used it, I've talked about it before. I use it with my kids, uh, when they're growing up and they're, something's happening. They're completely overwhelmed and they're feeling really activated. I'm like, okay, just take a deep breath.

Right. Just sit here for a moment. Tell me what do you hear? Well, I don't, I don't hear anything. Okay. Keep listening. What do you hear? Oh, I heard, I heard a car outside. Okay, good. Now keep listening. Do you hear the fridge? No. Well listen until you do. Oh, there it is. I can hear the fridge. And as they start minutely looking at these little things, it calms them down.

And it's a trick that I use with myself. And when I'm, and I don't know, it's probably as old as anything, uh, but it never sunk in to me to use it for sleep. People talk about counting sheep as a means to be able to, uh, fall asleep, and that's an [00:51:00] age old sort of thing that they talk about in cartoons. And everyone's, everyone's seen that one.

For me, I don't learn things normally. It's like trying to hit the baseball. I couldn't hit the damn baseball. Keep your eye on the ball while I'm watching it. I'm keeping my, until somebody said, watch that baseball until it impacts the bat and leaves, oh, now I can hit it. Right? I thought I was doing it, but somehow somebody says, or I learned.

Um, if you're having a hard time falling asleep, uh, concentrate on very minute things. For example, if you're, uh, walking out the front door, imagine yourself what it feels like when you grip the handle, if you're barefoot, what uh, what the concrete feels like, what the stones feel like, what the green of the wood looks like, and try and concentrate on these tiny, tiny little things.

And I found that to be a useful tool for me anyways. If I'm in a state where I just can't fall asleep, that's what I have to do to shut my brain down and, and move into sleep state. [00:52:00] 

Shaun Taylor: So I'm gonna jump into that, but I, I wanna make sure that before I jump into that, that proceeding it, the things that will cause these kind of issues in bed where someone is just laying there and can't go to sleep or is just laying there ruminating or is just laying there and, you know, just fidgeting.

Before that happens, make sure that any stimulants that you've got in your life. As an example, if, if you drink coffee, like I'm drinking world class coffee right now, um, the half-life of caffeine is five to six-ish hours, depending on your own unique physiology, uh, how you process caffeine as a molecule.

So if you're having caffeine later into the day, well congratulations, you're gonna have a disturbed sleep cycle. Uh, for myself as an example, [00:53:00] my rule of thumb is I cut coffee off from noon onwards. I try not to drink coffee after 12 o'clock in the afternoon. And my coffee consumption, which I have limitless ability to, I, I, if I need coffee, I'll just go and roast some more coffee.

Mm-hmm. And it's not for lack of coffee. My issue is I love coffee. I love the taste of coffee. I'm less focused on the stimulant aspect, the stimulant properties. I'm more interested in the beautiful notes of coffee. And so I still. Limit myself to just two cups of coffee every day. And by two cups, I mean two small cups or one large, the collective mug.

So that's all I have for coffee in my day. And if I was to drink coffee in the afternoon, again, that half life of caffeine molecule is problematic Also from a stimulant basis, um, I'd like to shift into, [00:54:00] you know, it's not a stimulant, but it is sometimes used to help with sleep, and that is alcohol. And alcohol is problematic, uh, when it comes to sleep quality.

Um, as an example, uh, early on, uh, when I was first got my earing, I started analyzing all of the aspects in my life as to the upside downside in respect to the data. And over a very short period of time, it was easy to see that alcohol had an extremely negative impact on sleep cycle. And so bam, there goes alcohol.

And I don't touch alcohol at all hardly ever anymore since then. And so, uh, same for my wife. Uh, she wasn't much of a drinker either. Maybe a glass of wine from time to time, but she was tracking her sleep with the neural ring and bam. Cut out alcohol completely because of the downside or the negative impact on sleep.

Just sleep alone, nevermind all the other [00:55:00] factors. That was enough to cut alcohol out of. Uh. Our lives. And so stimulants or, or these substances that we put into our bodies all have impact and not all of them are upside. So you have to consider these kind of things, uh, for sure. Further to that, since I'm talking about stimulants, as it were, I'd mentioned magnesium, we talked about melatonin, but there's many other, uh, things that people will use to help support their sleep.

And that may be altheine or, or sour cherry juice or, um, there's a variety of different things that I mentioned in the book, but, um, certainly one of the things that gets tossed around is, um, herbal, uh, ergogenic such as ashwagandha. And so, um, you know, or, or reishi mushroom. Now reishi as a whole, I'm, [00:56:00] I'm kind of positive on, but ashwagandha as a whole, I'm not that positive on.

And the reason for that is because ashwagandha is quite a unique, um, uh, compound or is, is quite a unique impactor because not everyone responds the same. And so again, if, if you hear me mention ashwagandha and you think, oh, that, that might help with my sleep, be cautious because ashwagandha as the example can have.

Problematic, um, outcomes for individuals who are on other medications or who are, uh, have some sort of mental, um, not instabilities, but have some sort of mental struggles that, uh, negatively interact with ashwagandha. There's a whole list of things that I mentioned just using ashwagandha as the only example of how you've gotta be careful with these kind of, [00:57:00] almost, um, almost safe feeling herbs that aren't that safe depending on who you are.

So, as an n equals one experiment, you have to pay attention to how these things may impact you. So if someone's casually throwing out advice, like, yeah, just take ashwagandha, bro. That's the moment that you pause and go and do some research or talk to a naturopath or to a doctor, or to friends who have experience in that area and, and, and value those other opinions before you start pounding ashwagandha carelessly.

Travis Bader: I think what you're touching on here will naturally segue into the next one, which is stress management, the invisible weight, because alcohol like you, I, it doesn't have much. Place in my life. And I found that the day after drinking alcohol two days after, three days after, it was still [00:58:00] affecting me as it affected my outlook, my mood, my stress.

Like I'd find I'd be more irritable than I would if I hadn't had any. And that's even just a couple of drinks. And I'm not gonna say no one should ever have alcohol. It's terrible. I've, I've heard people say that I do think there is something to be said for a social aspect of going out and, uh, perhaps letting loose with friends that it, at certain times that they might not otherwise be able to experience that social aspect.

But by and large, I really don't see positives to drinking alcohol. And if you could find that same social, uh, aspect without the alcohol even better. Um, but the idea that, um, these different supplements like ashwagandha, like you say, well, it's is some natural occurring thing. Well, so's so's hemlock. So's nightshade, right?

There's a lot of things out there that are naturally occurring that really, really are [00:59:00] bad for you. But they're marketed. I think ashwagandha is marketed as a, uh, a stress management thing too, as well. That's right. 

Shaun Taylor: Yeah. What do you, what do you do to, uh, anti, anti-anxiety to some degree, that's a, it's a, it's a stress management, uh, herb, or that's how it's marketed.

Right. As, as all things are marketed, all things are labeled. Mm-hmm. Alcohol is labeled, and so, you know, I, I believe this to be true, that no matter what's standing in front of you, even you as an example, Trav, when, and, and we've had lots of conversations in the past on podcast, the moment that I'm in this podcast today, I kind of tear the label off of Travis.

Hmm. Like, I don't, I don't care for labels like this, so I'm, I'm not reevaluating you as a person, I'm simply observing you as the new person today in front of me that is called Travis. That is [01:00:00] quite, probably not much different than the last Travis I talked to, but it's still a new Travis because you've learned things since then.

You, you probably haven't gotten any, any taller, because that's probably not possible. But the, the, the idea being that when it comes to herbs like ashwagandha, the moment that someone raises that up in a conversation, I'll look at the person differently. I'll tear the label right off them and think, Hmm, uh, what I thought this person knew before they said Ashwagandha is now different.

I'm viewing the person differently in this moment because if they come across as a, basically an ill educated layman who's throwing out advice as if they're a medical doctor, well, guess what? I, I, I will categorize you in a different way in that moment then perhaps last time we talked, so. Mm-hmm. Uh, knowledge is power, as they say, but [01:01:00] knowledge is, is, um, also a potent disruptor to some degree.

Um, if, if someone gets super excited about their health journey, they're now on their own personal crusade to become the best version of themself, but this is day two of that journey, and they just walked into a naturopathic store and picked up a bottle of ashwagandha and, and the clerk says, Hey, good choice.

That's gonna solve your life's problems when you walk out the door with that bottle. If you start regurgitating in your, in your honeymoon phase of excitement of now you're on your path to glory. If you start talking about ashwagandha as the holy grail of supplements to anyone who will listen, you effectively almost become like an ambassador for the thing that you don't understand.

It's pretty typical for, it happens in everything. Uh, Brazilian jujitsu as an [01:02:00] example, as a new white belt. If, if someone's been on the mats for like a week or two weeks and they, like BJJ, all of a sudden they are the biggest proponent of BJJ. They will tell anyone about the, the upside of BJJ, but they don't understand the downside yet.

Mm-hmm. They don't understand anything yet, really. And so these, these labels that get put in front of us that try to tear them off and re-understand them for myself with an n equals one sort of perspective. 

Travis Bader: I like that. You know the saying, no man enters the same river twice because he is not the same net.

He's not the same man and it's not the same river. And I'm also reminded of, uh, do you remember that old show with Patrick McGuin called The Prisoner Magan? McGuin 

Shaun Taylor: Mcgon? Didn't he do, uh, what other movie did he do? Um, art movie, uh, series. [01:03:00] Back in the day. That's right. Um, the, oh my goodness, it'll come to me anyway.

I know him from, 

Travis Bader: from, and I always remember as he's driving in at the very beginning, there's this sign, or as they go into, um, wherever the colony is, I think it's supposed to be Australia, but wherever that colony is, that they're all held prisoner on, they have this sign there that says, uh, questions are a burden unto others.

Answers are Aris under oneself. And, uh, when you, when you start looking at removing labels, yeah, the more questions we ask, we're burdening somebody else. But the more, the more we accept the answer is true, the less that it opens our mind up to what other possibilities there might be. So I, I like that idea of removing that label each time.

And I think that's really strong advice for anyone looking at any of these supplements to dig deep, remove that label and say, why, where, where's it coming from? And is this gonna work for me in my situation? [01:04:00] But I continue. 

Shaun Taylor: Wasn't he also in the Saint way back in the day? Wasn't he in that series as well?

The Saint, anyway, that's, he may, I'll figure that out later. Yeah. The good old saint. So the, uh, when it comes to stress as an example, yes, of course there, there's many biological processes. There's the HPA axis, uh, the, the hormonal interaction, uh, throughout our day, throughout our sleep, throughout our lives, uh, all of these things are well understood from a science perspective.

But what they aren't well understood is through the n equals one perspective. And so you can, you can spend the rest of today picking up a, um, a, a, a biology book and better understanding how humans work at a biological level. But that doesn't mean that it directly applies to you what it does mean. It's, it's a loose framework of how you work.

But now it's for you to understand the [01:05:00] details of the n equals one experiment called you. And so these general rules of thumb, I'll call them these s science-based rules of thumb of how the body works. They've been established a long time, but you have to understand how you work with the science. And so there's no escaping.

There's no ignoring, there's no pretending that the HPA axis, uh, won't have a downside if you don't understand it and don't control for it. And so, as an example, if you want to, if you wanna leave your house right now and start running and, and not stop running for another four and a half weeks, not eat, not sleep, not drink, there's downside to that.

The HPA axis will get involved, your hormonal panel will get involved. Lots of things will get involved at a biological level. But how it impacts you Trav and how it impacts me and how it impacts any of [01:06:00] the listeners is unique to them, to us to, to me. And so I understand how I work at these biological levels because I understand the broad science, but I also understand the experimenting with Sean aspect, the n equals one experiences.

And so, uh, I'm just gonna throw out some terms right now that will help with this subject of stress resilience. So stress resilience is an example. How you become resilient to stress is you face stress and then you learn how to manage stress. Your body learns how to manage the stress, your mind, your emotions.

You learn to deal with stress, but it is not a. Free ride. It is not a no cost aspect. As you're learning to build your stress resilience, there is cost to that. And unless you're managing the cost by [01:07:00] applying some recovery protocols and other things that will get into the, you're, you're now backsliding rather than growing.

And so, as an example, cortisol is a problem for anyone who is deeply engaged in stress, uh, resilience building or is facing a lot of adversity on their regular, in order to improve their stress resilience, cortisol will start slowly impacting your physiological optimization to a degree where you may not understand while you feel so bad.

But it is the hormones that your hormonal panel, this hormonal soup within you that is constantly running every millisecond of your life to try to create homeostasis or try to create a balance within your life. Every, every aspect, every little variable, every little impactor [01:08:00] that that hits you from all the 360 degree angles, they all have cost.

If you are out there driving hard in whatever you're doing, whether it's your work life or your personal life or your hobby life, if you're working really, really hard, pushing the pace, there's a cost to that. And so that cost will come in the sense of your HPA axis, or to offset that cost, you could improve your sleep.

So now here's the, here, here's where we put things together. So if your stressors in life are not well managed or you can't manage them and your sleep is terrible, now just those two things alone have almost a inflationary or have a double dip bad sort of impact that both though both things are were controllable by you, you haven't controlled for them, [01:09:00] and now it's not just like twice as bad.

What it is is a bunch of things bad because those two, stress and poor sleep exacerbate themselves to a degree where it should start to be notable, but it doesn't become notable. If you're not forming a pattern, you just act. Simply accept that every day you wake up feeling worn out. No energy, no spark in life.

You feel like drudgery day after day life shouldn't feel that way. And there's reasons why it shouldn't feel that way, and they are all controllable. 

Travis Bader: Do you, do you meditate? Do you have a process for, um, sort of emotional, mental regulation for, for stress management? 

Shaun Taylor: For sure. Uh, so I maybe now's a good time to separate the two worlds that I, uh, I [01:10:00] like to think of that I operate in.

There's the external world and there's the internal world. And I truly believe that our internal worlds, my internal world that I have is not just the foundation of how to live a good life, but it is literally my life, the internal world. If I am a peace, if I'm stable, if I'm functioning well internally, then the external world is quite easy.

But if my internal world is not settled, if I am not applying all of my inner work, then my external world doesn't fall apart. But it shows signs of cracks, of fractures, of not going as well as it should. And so my inner world, when it's good to go. Assures me that the external world is gonna be good to go.

And so how do I maintain a, a, a, a good inner world? Mm-hmm. Well, first of all, I'm, I'm literally doing it right now. [01:11:00] I am very present in this moment. I, I don't know what I said a second ago, and I don't know what, I'll say a second from now because I'm not concerned about that. I am comfortable with podcasting enough now after hundreds of them, that I just simply slip into this moment that we're sharing together, this conscious sharing moment that I don't have to sweat the details of what's gonna happen next.

'cause I'm so centered and grounded right now, and I know that sounds like maybe boastful or whatever, but I'm so centered and grounded right now that I feel very at peace inside, which reflects externally to the world as I'm doing okay. And it's all very manageable. And I quite like my external world.

That's how I feel about things when my inner world is good. And so how do I get my inner world? That good? Well, I couldn't, when I first started [01:12:00] podcasting, and as you know, you, you saw it yourself when, when people started asking me to begin podcasting. Oh my goodness. I was so reluctant. Mm-hmm. And of course you were in my kitchen when, uh, when you came out to Roslyn, and that was one of the first sort of, I would say, big podcasting moments that I had.

And I was sweating bullets. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. And maybe, maybe externally it looked okay, but internally I was in turmoil. And, uh, I, I didn't know how podcasting worked. I didn't know what I was supposed to even be doing in the moment. I didn't know what I was supposed to deliver.

There was a lot of, not just unknowns, but there was a lot of personal doubts. Like I, I, you know, how bad my imposter syndrome is, but like, it was warp factor three bad in that moment. And so I just wasn't settled. I wasn't grounded, I wasn't centered. Hmm. And so, [01:13:00] though, I though, before podcasting, I understood mindfulness.

And before podcasting, I understood meditation. And before podcasting, I understood a lot of things academically, and I was applying a lot of them in my life. But podcasting as a. Um, we'll call it a crucible, for lack of a better term, has obligated me to refine things several hundred podcasts later, so that this, this moment that we're in together right now just feels like a normal extension of my life.

That is a normalization or a pattern structure that I've created for me to be able to offload all of the, um, mechanics of things, offload all of the details of things, and simply trust myself to exist in this moment peacefully and calmly, and let it unfold. That's mindfulness to me [01:14:00] now, and the mindfulness that I understand today is different than the mindfulness I understood two years ago, as an example.

So yes, mindfulness is a huge part of my life right now. I said this to someone just the other day, the I, I'm seeking a existence in life where I only exist now, not, not 10 minutes ago, not 10 minutes from now. Those things are inconsequential to me. That's what I'm trying to seek is way less about if this than that, and more about the right now, of the moment, man, it makes things way easier for me.

But that took a long, long, long, long time, and I had to baby step my way into it. Like grabbing 10 seconds of mindfulness here and 15 seconds of mindfulness there over a period of years until now. Uh, I don't always manage to do it, [01:15:00] be present all the time, but when I'm in my flow state, like now, this flow state is not only good for me, but it is actually appealing.

Like it's, it's, it's something that I really love. I love the flow state. Mm-hmm. I, I love it on my mountain bike. I love it on the bj j mats, but I love it in these moments where I can simply almost drop out of my ego existence as, as weird as that may sound to some listeners, and simply be with you in this moment without sweating the details.

So mindfulness is very important to me. Meditation is also important. I do it every day. Typically first thing in the morning, uh, I'll get out of bed, drink my water, stare at the sun, sit down in my chair, take a moment and drop into some meditation from, from an external perspective, from the outside world.

Uh, an outside observer looking at [01:16:00] me. They might just see me chillaxing in a chair and maybe doing whatever. But what I am engaged in in that moment is a deep practice called meditation. Meditation is what I would define as the functional structure or the discipline of a framework, discipline of applying a process to get closer to being mindful or being present and grounded in the moment.

So again, meditation is not necessarily mindfulness. Meditation is the practice to move you more towards mindfulness. That's a loose framing of the subject. So, to your point or your question, a hundred percent meditation is a part of my life, and it doesn't require like statues and candles and, and someone dinging bells.

It doesn't require any of that. I can meditate. I can go for a ride, uh, later [01:17:00] today, flow across the planet in a mindful state, get off my bike, sit on a tree, log and drop into some meditation out in nature, or standing on a log on one leg. I. Meditate. The meditation is the formal structure to get me back into the moment of being mindfully present as I stand on the log.

And so those two things play together well. But ultimately I believe that the, the overarching theme should be seeking to be more mindful. I hope that answers your question. 

Travis Bader: It does. And one of the big takeaways that I see in that, that I like how you, uh, touched on how the internal affects the external.

So you have stress that's happening. Is that an external stress is at an internal stress? Well, prob probably. It might be both, but probably the biggest portion of it's gonna be an internal mindset or perspective. And some people are really smart [01:18:00] and they can learn from other people's mistakes or they can listen to a podcast like this and they can just leapfrog ahead years in their journey of becoming mindful and being present and shifting their perspective on what might be ailing them or stressing them in the moment.

Other people like myself, not so much, they have to learn through the school of hard knocks, and they actually have to go in and, um, experience things over and over until you start figuring a better way, a better way through it. But the, um, and I've always wondered, you know, people say you manifest your destiny.

Okay. Yeah, yeah, sure. I get it right. I've heard this a lot and what a man thinks he will do. Okay, sure. Uh, but there is some sort of secret sauce to that. There is a reality to that, to what you think and what's going on in your head will actually manifest itself physically around you. And whether that's because you thought of something you vibed, you got on a frequency and things unfolded in that fashion, or whether it's [01:19:00] because our brains are really good at kind of piecing things together.

If afterwards you look at it and you say, oh, it's because I vibed that this ended up happening. I think the end result of how you feel and how your external world feels around you, it's gonna be the same. So doesn't matter how you want to ascribe to that thought process. Really addressing mindfulness, uh, shifting that perspective.

Like, okay, I'm doing something hard right now, but what's hard for me today isn't gonna be the same of what was hard for me yesterday. What's hard for me yesterday is no longer hard. That's easy. It's like that Homer Simpson quote when Bart got caught out naked and everyone's laughing at him. He's like, this is the worst day of my life.

He's like, Uhuh, it's the worst day of your life so far. Right? Um, I, I like how you separate that. 'cause I, I think, uh, having a perspective shift will really help people When it comes down to the stress management, what is it that's stressing me? [01:20:00] What control can I have or is it that I have no control and I shouldn't be stressing about this thing, the universal unfold as it should.

So, 

Shaun Taylor: you know, let me throw out an example. Uh, we were talking about sleep earlier and the rumination of, or maybe someone's laying in bed, they wanna go to sleep, they can't go to sleep 'cause they're thinking so much about going to sleep, whatever the case is, half an hour later they're still laying there staring at the ceiling.

Or if they've got an eye mask on, they've, they're just laying there thinking about the same thoughts over and over again. I wish I could go to sleep, uh, a thousand times. And so, pattern interrupt the what, whatever your routine is being, whatever your pattern has been up till now, if it isn't working for you, gotta do it a different way.

And so, as you said, the idea being what you ascribe to or what you, what you believe to be right. How the world works, how your life works, [01:21:00] how this all works. If you believe the, that's how it's works, but it isn't working for you, then find a different way to make it work. Mm-hmm. And I would ask anyone right now to just for the moment, put aside your disbelief about what I'm gonna say.

I'm not suggesting that this is right or wrong, I'm just saying put aside your, your disbeliefs and just hear me out and then maybe you can use it later. Tonight or in your own life years from now, when you lay down in bed, there is one way to think about things. And, and, and it's this, the, if, if we all exist in a field of consciousness that is in real time, so you can't control the past or the future.

We simply all exist. Now, as you climb into bed, you lay down you, you can't shape the future and you can't shape the past that's gone by. You only have the moment as you lay there in bed. And if you kind of think of it abstractly [01:22:00] as you, you have personal agency, but you have no control of this moment, this moment that we're in, it is simply the universe unfolding.

And if you accept that the universe is unfolding and you can't control the way the universe unfolds, it's just gonna unfold. It takes sort of the pressure off you of thinking that you can control this game all around you, which you can't. You are simply a participant in a game that you have certain personal agency in, but you can't make the impossible happen.

What you can do is you can give up to what's happening. Mm-hmm. You just simply have to accept that things are going to unfold the way they unfold. So with that in place, as you lay there in bed, you know that you can't solve. Tomorrow's problems as you lay there in bed that night, you've just gotta simply accept that you need some [01:23:00] sleep so that you can deal with the day tomorrow.

You can't deal with it now. You'll be dealing with it tomorrow. So give up tomorrow and simply be in the moment that night and chillax, because you can't control tomorrow. Just let it unfold. Let your sleep cycle initiate. Don't keep asking yourself the same questions or working on the same problems that won't be solved that night.

They'll be solved tomorrow. Don't worry about all the past mistakes that you made throughout the day or the day before they are gone. Just simply accept that you're existing right now. The universe is unfolding. You're a witness to the universe unfolding. And just be okay with that. Now you find a way to just drop into sleep and do better the following day.

That's your job. Get some sleep, do better tomorrow. 

Travis Bader: I like that. I, uh, [01:24:00] had a, uh, so when I got married, people are writing in the registry a bunch of well wishes and, uh, different ideas. And one person, a number of people, put the tried and true, never go to bed angry. And one person wrote in. Don't be afraid to go to bed angry.

Sometimes things look better in the light of day. And sort of like with your, uh, what problems are we gonna solve right now in the dead of the night? Maybe it's okay to, maybe we'll just go to sleep right now. Don't try and control this one. It might look better tomorrow. 

Shaun Taylor: And you know, by the way, I'm going to, I'm gonna throw a curve ball at you.

Just like you throw the curve ball on, uh, the collective podcast from time to time, you, you're a person who likes to quote Viktor Frankl. Yes. And so, um, you know, that's all about context. So as you climb into bed with your tiny little problem of your car has some sort, has a flat tire that needs to be changed tomorrow, you know, now you [01:25:00] don't get any sleep because you know you've gotta change the flat tire tomorrow in context of how big of life's problems can be in context of Viktor Frankl's problems in a concentration camp, like our problems to some degree are minor.

When we contextualize them against. Really, truly big problems. And so these things as we climb into bed can be exacerbated into, you know, the car won't start, is now the new Mount Everest of the night. And you're trying to climb Mount Everest in your mind when really all it is is just a flat tire. Mm-hmm.

And so how we build things up in our lives, or more correctly, how we crush them down into non-important factors, that's kind of a secret sauce, as it were. 

Travis Bader: Well, what about, uh, nutrition? We, uh, [01:26:00] touched a little bit about on it with, uh, not eating before sleep, but, uh, nutrition for your daily life, for longevity for, um, uh, operating at your, your optimal.

How do you approach that? 

Shaun Taylor: Well, I'll give it in the simple terms. You know, when we're talking about macros, really what we're talking about is protein, fats, and carbs. And so first point of importance is protein. So I always try to hit my daily protein intake, fats and carbs. I can screw those up, but I cannot screw up protein.

Mm-hmm. Now, of course, I don't screw up fats and carbs because I've been at this game a long time and I understand how important they are. But first, in order of priority, much like sleep within our lives is super high priority. Protein is super high priority. Now, I'll talk about two things. The amount of protein and the timing of protein.

So the amount, [01:27:00] generally speaking, I try to get two grams to 2.5 grams of protein per lean body mass. So as an example, I weigh, um, I'll do it in pounds for anyone in pounds. So I weigh 170 pounds. Right now, my lean body mass is about 160 pounds, so I'm stripping out any additional fat, as it were. And the reason I say lean body mass, it's important because if I had an extra 200 pounds of fat on me, that sort of isn't, isn't really a great equation to run your protein needs off of.

So lean body mass, now I've got 160 grams of protein. I need one gram of protein per pound of lean body mass. If it's in kilos, then it's two to 2.5 grams per lean body mass. Now that's an amount of grams of protein I need each day. [01:28:00] That can shift depending on how much output I have in a day. So my bare minimum.

Is that if I go out and I do a really destructive workout that really tears up my muscles or really creates a lot of hurt locker on me, then I'm gonna increase my protein for that day for a couple of days, by the way. But generally speaking, my baseline as suggested, I always hit it. Now, timing with protein, I believe you need to get about 30 grams of protein per meal, per feeding.

And so let's say you only eat three meals a day, now you're at about 90 grams of protein. Where does all that other protein come from? As an example, Sean needs about 160 grams of protein, 150 grams depending, so I'm short on protein, so I'll have to supplement throughout the day, either through protein powder or supplement through snacking [01:29:00] that is protein driven.

And so there's many ways to do that. I'm not gonna describe all the various foods or the combinations of beans and rice and all of that good stuff that's for you to, uh, take into consideration based on how you've. Normally eat and what your budget is, but I've found invariably that I have to take on some form of protein powder.

Now, the protein part powder that I would take on, I'm not gonna mention any brands, but there's many ways to slice that down. It could be whey protein isolate, it could be whey concentrate, it could be caffeine, it could be vegan protein powder. There's many forms of it, and it's quite a science to being specific about which one works best when, but forget about all of that for right now.

Just understand that nearly every single person I talk to doesn't get enough protein. And I mean like line a hundred people up [01:30:00] against a wall and maybe only one of them is getting enough protein that day. And if you're running a protein deficient life. It is negatively impacting your entire lifestyle.

And so protein is critical. Next fats, there's many forms of healthy fats. In the book that I'm gonna send you, it talks about how you can get those from food sources such as like avocados or olive oil or coconut oil, or these various types of things, nuts, seeds, and et cetera. But, uh, you can also supplement that with things like Omega-3 fish oil or et cetera, et cetera.

So you can get it from natural sources or you can get it from supplementation. Either way. Fats are important, not just for how your body works physiologically, but for your freaking brain. Uh, and again, that's discussed in the book. And then finally, the, the last piece is carbs. Carbs are important of course, as a, as an athlete, as as a ultra [01:31:00] endurance athlete.

Or someone who, who rides long period of time or anyone who has any sort of long term. You know, when you go out hunting Trav, uh, if you're out multi hours, well that is a car preferential. Uh, activity. And so there's a number of reasons, biologically or physiologically, why carbs are important in these kind of, uh, endeavors.

But again, that'll be discussed in, in the little handout that I'm gonna shoot your way. Carbs are also important, um, to take into account your hormonal profile. So, as an example, when I was coaching athletes, uh, around the world for my male athletes, I would have them do carb refeeds at least once a week and buy refeed.

I mean, like really push their carb intake that day in order to offset some of the, excuse me, hormonal damage that may have occurred through all of the stressors. But for my female athletes, I would [01:32:00] ask them to do two refeeds per week simply because of the specifics of the female hormonal pattern, how important it is, or how negatively impactful it can be.

If a female athlete who's pushing really hard isn't getting enough carbs, and so protein is, is non-negotiable. You gotta, you gotta hit your bare minimums. Fats are something that you inject throughout your day, and then carbs is something that you use, like a lever or a modulator all the way up to a 10, all the way back to a three on a scale of 10, depending on how your day has gone, what you are gonna do later that day.

And. How to set yourself up for the following day. That may be like a big hunt or a big effort. And so carbs are modulated depending on the day's needs and the days upcoming. I hope that makes 

Travis Bader: sense. It does make sense. [01:33:00] So, uh, I've, I've heard people talk about cutting carbs out altogether because they're trying to lose weight or some ketogenic diet, and I've also heard people say that protein shakes and these mixes aren't really the best way to be able to get protein into the body, like maybe I think amino acids, I, from my layman's perspective, and I have done very little, uh, research on there, but do amino acids somehow convert into a protein?

I, I've heard chatter about both of these. 

Shaun Taylor: Well, so, you know, I'll, I'll refer back to generally what I said at the start, and that is I'm an n equals one experimenter. And so, um, you know, when I started getting into ultra endurance racing, like that was back in 2007, my wife will attest to this. She came in one day and she said the only thing I was missing was a white lab coat because I had a variety of different powders all over the kitchen counter.[01:34:00] 

And I was like on a scale, mixing them into little capsules, my own little specific boutique, uh, supplementations that I was creating. And based on my own curious mind and my, um, my desire to better understand context on my n equals one. And so what I had done is I had purchased a bunch of isolated amino acids where I was, you know, of course your branch chain amino acids are critical, but then some of the other essential, uh, aminos, I was taking amino acids, isolating them, and combining two or three aminos into a cap, and then playing around with those to see if it would improve my vision, imp improve my hearing, improve my all kinds of things.

And so I played around with supplementation and with food for so long, the, I have dialed in Sean, but for anyone who's listening to this right now, [01:35:00] you could do the exact same thing. But what it does require is some curiosity and it requires some intentionality as to. Your n equals one experimentation.

These things were, you're dabbling with this and dabbling with that and not really paying attention to its impact or its long-term sort of pattern that's worthless to me. These are little band-aids that you're spending money on and never learn anything from the moment that you take on anything. Like, if you start playing around with, uh, amino acids, they're expensive and they should be treated like, um, oh, it's time to start paying attention now and developing the pattern on this stuff.

Hmm. Stepping back from the specifics of that, I'd say that in my opinion, this is just a general opinion for any general listener. Unless they have really specific needs for certain amino acids, I'd stay away from that [01:36:00] particular trajectory. You're better served to buy a high quality, uh, whey protein isolate, preferably something like a New Zealand whey protein isolate because the New Zealand, uh, cattle or milk is, doesn't really have a lot of growth hormone and it's, it's really clean grass.

It's really yada, yada yada. So get yourself a high quality whey protein isolate that has a really good amino acid profile on any jug of amino acid that you buy, or, sorry, uh, protein that you buy. You'll see an amino acid profile on the label now. Interesting side note, you can buy really good, uh, protein, and then that protein manufacturer can do what is called amino acid spiking.

So they will insert aminos into the jug in order to bump up the profile. So it looks really appealing to the, um, the [01:37:00] purchaser. And so like anything, when you're out there at a, if you're buying a car, you should never just walk onto a car lot and say, I'll take the first car that I see. What you should do is be in a, in whatever store, looking at the supplementation with your smartphone and just checking out is this generally suited to my needs?

And how I've done it in the past is, um, something that is certified for sports. So as an a competitive athlete, I never wanted any product in my body that was spiked or was adulterated with some trace elements of steroids or whatever the case is. I wanted super clean food that was reliably certified so that it wasn't negative to my body.

It didn't make me feel like I was cheating. Mm-hmm. So there are ways that you can do that. There are brands, there [01:38:00] are standards here in Canada and North America around the world that meet a competitive athletes. Needs to stay clean. And if you are buying that kind of a product, then generally speaking, it's a high quality product.

It's where you start getting into relabeled brands that may be coming from other countries that aren't quite as tight on, uh, standards that you're ingesting things that quite frankly you don't know anything about. 

Travis Bader: It's, uh, it's a good point you're bringing on about, um, competitive athletes needing to stay clean.

And there's a lot of, uh, negative chatter. In the past I've seen about, um, testosterone replacement therapy or testosterone supplementation. Years ago I worked in a, uh, in a gym and you could, you could see the people who were abusing the, uh, the steroids and the te testosterone. But recently there's been a lot of, [01:39:00] um, I've, I've noticed a shift in the way that's approached.

And even in your response in that Instagram post you mentioned as you're getting older, you had blood work done and there's some TRT at a very mild dose that you're looking at. That's interesting to me, just from the mindset shift of so much negativity, always growing up, testosterone's bad. You never want it to, this new way of thinking of, well, hold on a second May.

Maybe it's not as bad as we're saying, and maybe there's a way to be able to use it in an effective format so people can live. A, well, a well-rounded, fulfilling life. 

Shaun Taylor: So this is a great subject that we should probably just take a few minutes to dive into a little bit based on my own personal experience, of course, all of my research, uh, over the years and having dealt with athletes who are sensitive to these kind of subjects.

So my stance on, [01:40:00] um, steroids or any artificial or an endogenous aid or anything that is, um, I'll, I'll call it not natural, for lack of a better term, um, I was never a fan of it. Um, as a competitor, I always wanted to be standing on a start line, looking to my left and right, and knowing that everyone's competing cleanly or more correctly, I will say competing on a level playing field, Hmm.

That's really important to me. Fairness is a central tenant of my life. Things have to be fair in order to evaluate myself against someone else. And so if I step up on a start line and I'm clean and I'm stepping next to someone who isn't clean, as long as I feel like I'm, I'm doing it right. Mm, it's now on them that they have to deal with their own nonsense rather than me have to worry about their nonsense.[01:41:00] 

So, as a competitive athlete, like competing at world championship levels. I always wanted to make sure that I didn't feel like I was cheating, for lack of a better term. Mm-hmm. However, I'm not competing anymore in anything, uh, at a high level. And so I switched to TRT when I was 59 and a half. Now, interestingly enough, that number is important.

59 and a half, because right about the time I was 56, 57, my family doctor was telling me, Sean, you're your, your testosterone levels are concerningly low. And I just looked at her and I said, Andrea, I wanna make it to 60. I'd set this arbitrary number in my head where I thought, I'm just gonna make it to 60.

I'm gonna stay clean till I'm 60. I just wanna earn it myself. Mm-hmm. I had this number that I'd put in my head many, many years ago, and at 59 and a half, my family doctor finally said, [01:42:00] that's it. You know, you gotta get on it. And I said, okay. And so the moment that I did, I just shook my silly head and thought, man, I should have done this ages ago.

Not because all of a sudden I realized that, uh, I turned into like Captain America or anything like that. What I was doing was gaining access to the amount of testosterone that I need for my lifestyle that supports my needs, the way I like to live my life. And so my levels were super low. I. The moment that I jumped on TRTI am now on, I don't mind giving my values for anyone who's listening right now as sort of context, I self-inject subcutaneously twice a week and uh, I try to do one on Tuesday and I try to do one on Saturday.

And so I self-inject 0.35 milliliters of [01:43:00] testosterone recipient eight, so 0.35 ml, so a total of 0.7 ml per week, which if anyone knows anything about anything, that's a really low dose. Mm-hmm. And so I wanted to use the various very lowest dose I could in order to feel the way I wanna feel and perform the way I wanna perform and recover the way I need to recover and sleep the way I wanna sleep, and have the libido that I want to have, have the energy that I feel is important.

Certainly as a man, testosterone is effectively fuel energy. Mm. And so I wanted to have all of the things that I wanted that I had kind of forgotten. That is normal. Um, I wanted all of that back, but I didn't want. An extra milliliter of testosterone that would make me feel like now I'm taking advantage of the [01:44:00] system.

Mm-hmm. Now I'm into an area where I'm focused on taking more testosterone to have bigger muscles or et cetera. Mm-hmm. Like, I'm not interested in the aesthetics of my body. What I am interested in is the performance of my body. And it just so happens that my lifestyle, uh, as, as some, some dudes who track me on ig, friends of mine, people who pay attention, they, they've said, dude, you're looking like kind of jacked.

You've got some muscles. You're doing that whole thing that's got nothing to do with testosterone. That's got everything to do with every single day. I'm freaking hammering on things. And so mm-hmm. What I do in this, in the shadows, in the background that is out of sight of the internet, is fricking pushing the pace.

Like I am pushing my body hard and the resulting outcome is I've got muscles, but it's not because I'm in front of the mirror [01:45:00] flexing. I'm not, I'm not lifting or I'm not functionally training to be aesthetically pleasing. My life is all about performance rather than aesthetics. And so the muscles that show up are just a result of my lifestyle.

Um, not a result of all the bicep curls that I do. 

Travis Bader: So when you started the, the TRT, how long did it take to start noticing positive results, uh, that week? What really and what, what were the positives and are there cons to it? There 

Shaun Taylor: are, so the positives for me were, bam, sleep was improved. Uh, attitude. My sense of, um, like my positive drive, uh, positive outlook on life was improved My sense of, um, being a man, as crazy as that sounds Hmm.

Was improved. My libido increased. My wife is thankful for that. [01:46:00] And so just saying, I mean, it's a, it would be wrong if I didn't mention it because I mean, it is thing for sure, for sure. Yeah. And so, um, within the first week, right away I was like, oh, I had forgotten. That's what Testone feels like. 'cause I had been so medically, chronically low.

I. For, for so long that I'd forgotten what like that little feels like. Mm. Now when I do this, that could be misconstrued as all of a sudden because I'm taking a little bit of testosterone. Now all of a sudden, I'm all agro. I'm all voiding, raging out. That is so not the case. 'cause again, the amount that I'm taking is quite low.

It gives me enough drive that my, my testosterone supports my lifestyle that I've had all my life. That sort of sense of [01:47:00] aggressive purpose, that drive that will to win, that will to create an outcome that, as you mentioned, Trav, that you know, manifestation of the life that you want while testosterone is actually a manifestor of the life in front of you.

If I see something now that I wanna make happen to some degree, and I mean a small degree, like all things, the sleep, the food, the this, the that, and the, the TRT, all of these things are synergistic. It's not just one thing makes it all happen. It is all things make it happen. And TRT is just that extra little nudge for me to target, lock something and think, oh, that's done.

That's already done. And that could be something in the future weeks from now. But I, I know that when I target lock it, it's done. So that had kind of started to slip a little bit as I entered into my [01:48:00] fifties, late fifties. And it's not that I wasn't producing outcomes, it's that I didn't have that same target lock on things.

And so I'll even go so far as to say that to some degree TRT reduced some brain fog that I had going a little bit of, um, lack of clarity as it were. So it did many things within that first week. Now looking back at it, I guess I've been on almost like two years now. Over that period of time, I have better refined my understanding of it.

I, like I said, I've dialed in my dosing so that it's the absolute minimum that I, I want to use. Uh, I haven't explored anything more. I, I never entered into TRT as an experi experiment to see how much can I take per week versus how little can I take per week. I always started with low and slow and as I low and [01:49:00] slowed my way up, I settled in at 0.7 ml per week.

And that works for me. It works. Hmm. Physiologically, but perhaps more importantly, Trav. It works psychologically because I, I know that like my performance is to some degree natural. My T levels are just out of the low range now, and I feel like that's what I deserve, and then my outcomes are a result of my performances.

Travis Bader: Why do you, why do you think they're low? Just an age thing. Declined genetic. You put used it all up when you were younger. 

Shaun Taylor: I used it all in my first career. Uh, I think that, uh, there's many things that, uh, impacted my testosterone level for sure. Age is a thing. I mean, as, certainly as men, uh, as we get older, these things start, uh, dissipating.

But without a doubt, I've [01:50:00] been super hard on my body. I've been super hard on my life. Um, and even in my casual time in my sports or in my hobbies, not career wise, but just simply sports or hobbies, like I go hard. I mean, I did 30, 24 hour solo mountain bike races at a world championship level to, you know, I just, I had a hard hobby.

And that hard hobby is like, there's, there's collateral damage, there's cellular damage, there is long lasting damage to all of these things. I'm not just talking about free radicals, I'm talking about like. Just ironic injuries that you pick up along the way that over a period of time start impacting your hormonal profile.

And so there's many things in my life that have, uh, diminished testosterone, not least of which was sleep, of which I was getting terrible sleep. So all of [01:51:00] these things add up over time. And as a man in my fifties, I just found myself at a point where I couldn't deny the blood panels that I was getting from my doctor, and I couldn't deny her medical advice, and I couldn't deny the research that supported the decision that I chose to engage in with TRT.

So on that note, for TRT, it's super important, I think, not just as an athlete but as a human, that at least once a year you're doing a full blood panel and preferably a, a full blood panel with a hormonal panel attached to it so you can better understand your free testosterone, your total testosterone, your estrogen, your blah, blah, blah.

All of the things that are important for you as a human being to be optimally set up. You again, like the aura ring. If you don't have an aura ring, now you're guessing as to what your [01:52:00] sleep. Quality and quantity was same with when you wake up in the morning and you're tired. If someone says, if you take a blood panel and hormonal panel, you'll have metrics.

Why wouldn't you do that? That's creating a baseline understanding of who you are today versus who you were 37 years ago. And so these things need to be tested and, and, and patronized throughout life. 

Travis Bader: So w with the TRT, once you're on it, you gotta stay on it because your body stops producing its own testosterone, from my understanding.

Similar. So when I was late teens, early twenties, I started getting a receding hairline and I'm like, oh no, this is terrible. I would, I thought it was supposed to happen when I get really old. And, and so I, I go to the doctor, I'm like, what can I do about this? I'm like, well, we could put you on this. I forget what it was.

There's some expensive medication and, but they, you can also buy this other medication, which is basically the same thing, but it's marketed for something else. You can cut 'em up into fours. And I said, [01:53:00] okay. Um, but how long do I have to take it for? Well, for the rest of your life. Okay, well what happens if I stop taking it?

Oh, well all the hair that you would've lost up to that point will just fall out. I'm like, I'm not taking this stuff for me, it didn't make sense. I'm gonna lose my hair. I gotta suck it up and figure it out now, uh, while I was young and, um, because I just knew I'm gonna find myself in my later years in a situation where I'm not gonna have this stuff and I'd have to deal with it then.

Is it similar with testosterone? So you gotta keep taking it. Uh, and if you stop taking it, is there gonna be like a massive, um, issue? 

Shaun Taylor: So, um, I, my understanding is, and this is based on research, based on Tonga, lots of people, my my belief is that once you're on it, that's it, you're on it. Hmm. Uh, certainly at my age anyway, over a period of time, the testosterone that I'm injecting, um, basically [01:54:00] derails, for lack of a better term, derails the natural production within your body.

And, uh, effectively you're now reliant on injecting testosterone, uh, every week, which I accepted when I started the process, I, I thought about it and I was like, okay, well, you know, I guess I'm gonna be self-injecting for the rest of my life until, you know, someone invents the nano robots that, you know, get injected into my body, and then they take care of everything.

Mm-hmm. But until then, I'm gonna be self-injecting. Now it's a bummer. Like, I don't like sticking needles in myself. It's, it's no bueno. But I'll say this, the, the, the option is either do it or don't. And if I don't, then my quality of life is diminished. And so I want an optimal life, particularly for anyone who's listening right now, once you're in your sixties.

You can see the horizon when you're in your thirties. [01:55:00] Yeah. Don't see the horizon. You don't see the, uh, light at the end of the tunnel, as it were. But in your sixties, you do, you, you've had enough time to look backwards and, and gain wisdom. The clarity of wisdom, but you also realize that you're now in a phase of life where the end is approaching.

And so what, how, how much of a quality of life do you want in that last phase? Well, I want maximum quality. I want to be always optimal. I wanna be doing spinning back kicks on a tree log after hammering on my bike for four hours. That's what I want to do. 'cause that pleases Sean. And that is kind of critical to this conversation over decades.

I've put myself in a position where I'm used to performing and I'm not talking about performing little things. I'm talking about performing big things for me. And so these big things don't just, [01:56:00] they don't just appear magically. They are things that I've spent decades building up to. Now that I'm in the position that I am where I have certain expectations of myself, but more importantly, I love the life that I've created and I love doing the things that I do.

If, if someone says to me, all that stuff you love doing, I. We're gonna take that all away from you just because you're freaking old. Or you can take two shots per week. Where's the shots? I'll take it. Yeah. Because I'm too deep into loving life to not do something like that. I mean, you're almost giving up the opportunity to live, not just the life you love, but maybe even deeper love for the life that you don't even understand yet until you take some TRT.

So all that to say that there is upside downside to TRT. It should be something discussed [01:57:00] with your medical doctor. It should be something that you do some self-research on. Talk to some friends, and if you're listening to me right now, understand that it, it can be a significant game changer if you fall within the category of it's a good idea for you.

So 

Travis Bader: give 

Shaun Taylor: it some thought. 

Travis Bader: What about peptides? I've heard people talk about them. Are they? Um mm-hmm. I, I think in Canada, they're kind of a gray sort of thing in the states. They're, um, I, I think they're, uh, regulated and accepted. Um, I, it's just come on my radar when I started researching all of this stuff for the podcast.

Shaun Taylor: Hmm. So, um, you know, about seven-ish years ago, I, I, I banged myself up pretty good on the BJJ mats. Uh, it was a, almost a chronic injury. Uh, some muscle issues and whatever, some tearing and, um, and I wasn't sure how to address it. And so I started looking at [01:58:00] peptides, which were kind of a emerging trend at the time.

Uh, I learned about something called BPC 1 57, and, uh, for anyone who is new to peptides, BPC 1 57 is fairly well known. There's a number of different peptides out there that can, um, create a, a number of different responses within the body. So I'm not gonna say I did self-inject BPC 1 57 for a period of a couple of months, because that may or may not be appropriate, but I do understand BPC 1 57 for a couple of months.

And what I will say is I found that it didn't provide the, um, outcomes that I was hoping for. Um, and in context of something like, you know, TRT as the example, I found TRT to be a way more efficacious or, or a much more, um, impactful modality or, [01:59:00] or, uh. Inject into my life. 

Travis Bader: So all of this kind of boils down into the last one I have here, which is routines and mindset, the glue that holds it all together.

Um, can you talk a little bit about your routine and the mindset that you have that's been employed throughout your life for the special forces for elite performing athlete to where you are right now? 

Shaun Taylor: Sure. I, I think that it's important for me to, first of all establish the, my life Before, when, when I was in high school, I was a skinny, underperforming kid.

I weighed 135 pounds. Uh, before I joined the military, I didn't think I amounted much. And, uh, throughout my military career, I, I learned that that was completely untrue, that I could amount to anything that I wanted to amount to, because the process that the military taught me, or what I [02:00:00] learned in my military career was it's for me to use the tools that I've got, this body, this mind, this spirit.

It's for me to use it in ways that produce outcomes. And so the military taught me how to do that. And, and then once I left the military tree, not as a skinny underperforming kid anymore, I had certain expectations of myself, we'll call them tier one expectations, for lack of a better term. I was introduced to the awareness.

That I am capable of nearly anything. Now, that sounds a, like a bold claim, and it sounds braggadocious, and I would never have believed it when I was in my twenties. But as I moved into my thirties, I started adopting that tier one mindset. I came to the realization that if I want it to happen, it's freaking done.

It's just whether it's important enough to me. If my why is strong enough, if, if for the following [02:01:00] reasons, dot, dot, dot, I have to save the planet, consider me saving the planet. Hmm. And so, um, I was taught how to do it. I came to believe in how I'm capable of doing it. And then from that point on, it was simply a matter of me learning how to do it through supporting structures, through better sleep, through better nutrition, through better et cetera, things that we've talked about.

And so, to some degree, um, all of this stuff doesn't amount to anything. NN none of the stuff that we've talked about amounts to anything unless you start believing in yourself. Unless you create a why within yourself, a reason for existence, a reason for listening to this podcast. If you're at this point in the podcast where you're starting to think about some of the things that we've been saying, all of it is easily engageable.[02:02:00] 

Once you accept the idea that you're on this planet for a purpose, you ain't just here to exist, you're here for a reason. And that reason is for you to start understanding. And also, it's important that that understanding isn't fixed. So what you think you're here for listening to this podcast right now is right now, but a year from now, you can be a completely different person.

You can apply some of these things that we've been talking about, and you can be, again, comparative to now. You could be twice the person that you are and that twice the person that you are will have new goals, new ideas, new reasons for your existence. And so that has been my way over the decades. It has been a daily refining process that looks at life holistically or [02:03:00] synergistically as all of these various elements that I can control are all being controlled by me for a purpose.

And without a purpose, you don't control anything. You simply accept rather than control. And so my why is strong, my understanding of the things that I appreciate are strong. Why I'm here is strong. And so that makes me want I. To control all of the variables, to optimize all of the variables so that when I do this, it's freaking with velocity, it's with intentionality, it's with intensity.

And if I was getting poor sleep or I was eating poorly, or I was thinking poorly, or if I didn't understand what box breathing is, or if I didn't understand what psychological or physiological size are and all the little tips and tricks and tools that I picked up along the years, [02:04:00] if I didn't have a strong why, none of those things would matter.

I'd simply just be existing in life and then I would die. And that isn't enough for me. And so to kind of conclude all of that commentary, I'd say that, as I said earlier, my inner world drives the external world. And the more peaceful you can be in your inner world, the more you can understand your reason for being in this world.

The sooner that you can ize your outcomes, the the sooner you can like start shaping the fabric of the world around you. If you think that you're a prisoner of the world, you just haven't learned how to be the be the jail. 

Travis Bader: Yeah. The orchestrator, the, yes. That's right. I love it. Sean, is there anything that we haven't talked about that we should talk about?[02:05:00] 

Shaun Taylor: Yeah, there sure is, but I know that we've gone long on this because, you know, because of my way, uh, I, I probably dove a little bit too deep into some things and not deeply enough into other things. And so there's quite a list of things that I would love to talk about. But I know this is probably been a bit long.

So what I will say is, um, this subject, longevity fitness in, in your later phases of your life or how to be a better performing human being overall holistically, is a massive subject that we have. Covered some of it, but not all of it, that's for sure. I think it's probably best if we don't dive into all the other things that I have in mind, and I'll simply rely on the crutch, as it were, of hopefully the book that I'll deliver to you.

Like, uh, at the moment this podcast is done. You'll have it in your hot little hands, then you can choose what to do with it, uh, within [02:06:00] your own, uh, sphere of influence. 

Travis Bader: That sounds amazing. So there's gonna be links to the collective in the description here. They'll have links where people can find you on social media.

If people listen to this, have questions, by all means, throw it up into the comments. And we still have one more thing to record for the outpost. Just a very short, kind of deeper, more personal, a bit more intimate that's not shared with the general public and the outpost is something that's there for the Silver Court Club members.

Sean, thank you very much for being on the Silver Core Podcast. 

Shaun Taylor: I always appreciate hanging out with you.