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Feb. 11, 2019 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:03:12
Joe Rogan Experience #1244 - Colin O'Brady
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colin obrady
01:40:13
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joe rogan
20:55
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Speaker Time Text
unidentified
Four, three, two, one...
joe rogan
Alright, we're live.
What's up, man?
colin obrady
What's up, dude?
joe rogan
What's hilarious, folks?
I have to tell you this.
I did a podcast earlier today, and he said, wow, it's your second for the day.
He goes, impressive endurance.
Do you know how fucking ridiculous that is for you to say?
This is a guy who walked across Antarctica.
How many days did it take you?
colin obrady
54 days.
joe rogan
By yourself.
colin obrady
By myself.
joe rogan
Trekking across the fucking frozen tundra.
colin obrady
That was an endurance feat of its own.
Yeah, just back up.
joe rogan
No, that's a real endurance feat.
I'm just sitting down talking to people.
Oh my god, you talked already for two hours.
How do you do it?
colin obrady
Two more hours, here we go.
joe rogan
Crazy.
colin obrady
Yep, yep.
joe rogan
Dude, what the fuck were you doing?
colin obrady
Just getting back, actually.
Still practically have the snow on my shoes.
Yeah, I got back about a month ago.
54-day journey.
First person in history to cross the entire continent solo.
Unsupported, so no resupplies throughout the thing.
No aid, no wind, kites, nothing.
Just me dragging a 375-pound sled across Antarctica.
joe rogan
I can't believe it only took you 54 days.
Yeah.
It's so big.
Look at Antarctica on a map.
How long do you think it would take you to walk across America?
colin obrady
Well, so we usually look at Antarctica on a map.
This is hilarious.
I show people a picture of Antarctica.
You're a smart guy.
You probably know this.
But usually people see it on a map projection because then it gets flat, right?
It's actually circular.
So I went from the edge of the Ron Ice Shelf via the South Pole to the Ross Ice Shelf.
So basically, kind of a diagonal across through the center and then back to the other ice shelf.
joe rogan
What do the flat earthers think about your traversing this area?
This is what you did.
This is how you made it.
colin obrady
There it is, exactly.
joe rogan
So you went to the center of the fucking earth, basically.
unidentified
There it is.
joe rogan
You went to the top of the pole.
colin obrady
Yep, bottom of the earth, you know, standing down there holding everyone up on my shoulders.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
Wow, so you were at the South Pole and then you trekked over to the ice shelf on the other side.
colin obrady
It's funny you say about the Flat Earthers though, because all jokes aside, I've been getting a lot of trolling on my Instagram page from the Flat Earthers.
I've got guys going like, oh, I was doing this speech the other day.
People are super nice, come up in the Q&A afterwards, want to shake my hand, take a picture or whatever.
And this guy walks up with this real earnest look on his face and he's like, so I really wanted to ask you, how was the hole?
And I was like, excuse me?
He was like, you know the hole at the center.
And I was like, give me a little more.
He was like, you know, like when you got to the edge.
And I was like, oh man, you're really asking me this question right now.
We were talking about this.
I didn't quite know where to go with it.
I was like, yeah, at least I didn't see the edge and the curvature kept going and I made it to the other side.
joe rogan
It is such a strange thing to believe, but people do.
People think people are trolling about that.
It actually started out.
It's another 4chan thing.
Did you know that?
Well, I'm sure there was probably somebody who believed it before that, but it started off, people were trolling on 4chan, and then eventually people just started actually going, hey, I bet it is flat, and then they started believing it, and videos, YouTube videos popped up.
colin obrady
There's another YouTube video someone linked to me the other day, and I thought it had a few hundred views, but it had 28,000 views, and it was all these guys debating, like, Colin proved that there's not a wall.
Like, the wall, there would be Game of Thrones at the edge of the world, there's this whole I bet there's another 28,000 people.
joe rogan
It's proved that Colin never actually went.
colin obrady
Of course.
joe rogan
He's a New World Order shill.
colin obrady
Well, the other funny one was that we got a bunch on the Instagram page.
I'm out there alone, completely by myself, but I wanted to share the whole story through my Instagram to share the journey with people, inspire others to do whatever they want to do.
And I kept being like, well, I mean, he's not out there alone.
He's taking pictures.
I was like...
The film crew.
I was like, guys, have you never heard of a tripod and a timer?
joe rogan
I've never watched Survivor Man.
colin obrady
Exactly.
So some funny comments along those lines.
joe rogan
So your sled was 300 and how many pounds?
colin obrady
375 pounds to start.
So basically, food and fuel was the main weight.
So people, I called my project The Impossible First.
That's sort of what I named the project because several people had tried it.
joe rogan
That's it right there?
colin obrady
Yeah, there it is.
unidentified
Oh my god.
joe rogan
So not only are you walking, you're dragging this big ass Heavy sled.
colin obrady
Yeah, yeah.
Fuck, dude.
So people have tried this, you know, going back 100 years to Ernest Shackleton saying if it was possible, and then the last few years some really experienced polar explorers have given it a shot, and one guy actually died less than 100 miles from the finish line because of, you know, lack of nutrition and some challenges with the weather and things like that.
But people called it, you know, people after that were like, it's impossible.
And the reason people thought it was impossible was because, you know, You can't get resupplies, meaning if you fill your sled with food, at a certain amount, you actually can't drag the sled anymore.
So the whole math equation really was figuring out just how much food and fuel I could put in the sled.
The fuel melts the water, so it melts the ice into water, essentially.
And that equaled to 375 pounds.
And to be truth, I could barely pull it on the first day.
One hour into getting dropped off, I'm dropped off completely alone out there in Antarctica.
I planned this project for a year, you know.
And I get dropped off, and after about one hour pulling a 375-pound sled through the snow, it's minus 25 degrees out.
I'm crying.
I'm literally crying, and the tears in my goggles are starting to freeze.
And I'm like, oh my God.
So I pick up my satellite phone.
I call home to my wife, Jenna, who also creates and plans all these projects with me.
And I'm like, babe, I think we named the project the right thing, The Impossible Verse.
Yep, it looks like it might be impossible.
It's impossible to keep going.
So I'm one hour into a thousand mile journey pulling a sled, told everyone I'm going to do this and I'm already having those doubts pull up.
But fortunately I was able to get a little bit further that day and 54 days later made it to the end.
joe rogan
How far did you get in the first day?
colin obrady
Well, it's funny because we just showed the map.
It starts on an ice shelf, which is basically the frozen sea ice.
And there's an edge of that that's where the continent starts.
And so I have a waypoint on my GPS that marks that.
So the plane that drops me off actually dropped me off on the ice shelf before the continent starts.
And my first waypoint was kind of like the actual start.
And so one hour in, I haven't even hit the real start.
So when I call her on the phone, she's like, because she knows the route, and she's like, well, how far are you from the first waypoint?
Which is where the actual start is.
unidentified
And I'm like, it's.63 more miles.
colin obrady
She's like, it's half a mile?
You have a thousand more to go.
Like, get to the first waypoint, you know?
And I was like, okay, okay.
So I, you know, rallied myself, got to the first waypoint, and then finally got in my tent that night and just kind of took a deep breath.
I think I was just overwhelmed by the magnitude of it.
I mean, imagine being a speck in the middle of Antarctica alone, these crazy temperatures, you know, all the excitement, but fears of the journey ahead.
Um, and 375 pounds on my back when the sleds, you know, when the snow is deep to loose snow makes 375 pounds, even, even heavier than if it's like light, you know, icier consolidated.
So yeah, it was, it was a rough start to say the least.
joe rogan
Did you do any sort of test run pulling the sled anywhere else?
colin obrady
Yeah.
So the training element of it was pretty cool.
I actually set a few other world records previous to this in the mountains and things.
We could talk about it if you want.
But the last years I really committed to this project, I decided to obviously start training specifically for this.
I needed to put on about 20 pounds of muscle.
I'm usually 6'165", pretty lean.
I had raced triathlon professionally for a number of years and realized I needed to be a bit bigger because I was going to lose so much weight.
And I found an amazing coach in Portland, Oregon, where I live, this guy named Mike McCastle.
I don't know if you've ever heard of him, but I know you've had David Goggins on your show, I take it.
So Mike actually surpassed David's pull-up record.
Mike did 5,804 pull-ups in 20 hours.
I think Goggins did about 4,000, which are both insane to me.
So he's in another 1,000?
Mike was wearing a 30-pound weight vest, too.
unidentified
No!
No!
colin obrady
Yes, just to add insult to injury.
Mike McCastle, absolute legend.
joe rogan
Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
He did 5,000 fucking chin-ups with a weight vest on?
unidentified
Dude, I barely can do 10. I'm right there with you, man.
colin obrady
I've got some other physical strengths, but the pull-up department is not my strong suit.
joe rogan
That is fucking insane!
colin obrady
Get this, too, just because I gotta big up my band for a second.
That's his fourth road ride.
He also pulled an F-250 truck 20 miles across Death Valley in a harness.
unidentified
So I'm trying to look for the best guy to teach me how to pull heavy shit.
joe rogan
Oh my god, you got the guy.
colin obrady
I found the guy.
I was like, damn, this is the guy.
joe rogan
I just love that there's people like that out there that just make you feel like such a pussy.
Oh my god.
colin obrady
And the greatest thing about Mike, you know, big, strong, jacked dude, but like super soft-spoken.
He's like, yeah, I did those pull-ups.
It was cool.
unidentified
He basically fucked with that record so hard.
joe rogan
He could die and like come back to life and live a whole nother life and no one's ever going to do it.
colin obrady
Yeah, so anyways, my training, he was the guy.
I went to him, trained out of this gym in Portland, where he trains out of, and he got me bigger, he got me stronger, but he also did all sorts of badass, crazy stuff.
I mean, this is a physical challenge, but it's more of a mental challenge than anything.
So he had me, you know, my hands in ice buckets, doing planks to get my heart rate jacked up, and then he'd be like, get out of the water!
Then I'd pull my hands out of the ice buckets, do, you know, a seated squat against the wall, but then he would hand me Legos, And so my hands are frozen.
My feet are in ice buckets now in a plank.
My heart rate's, you know, 190. And he's like, put this Lego set together.
So the dexterity of my fingers, the mental acuity to pull this all together.
There he is.
Look at this guy.
joe rogan
What a fucking savage this guy is.
colin obrady
Yeah.
joe rogan
And he did that for veteran suicides?
colin obrady
Yeah, exactly.
So he's got really, really important missions behind all of his projects.
He calls them 12 labors.
And over his life, he's trying to set 12 world records in various things.
unidentified
Jesus Christ.
joe rogan
There's people that are just, they're just designed different.
colin obrady
Yeah, yeah.
So he's the man, but like this crazy training he came up with for me that was like the ice, the water, the mental acuity, all of this was like, he was like, yo, you're going to be in Antarctica.
If your tent blows away when you're pulling it up, you're dead.
Like the stakes are that high.
50, 60 mile per hour winds.
Right.
Absolutely crazy.
joe rogan
Did you ever have an issue like that?
Where you thought the tent could blow away?
colin obrady
I think, I don't know if you have it.
There's a clip on my Instagram I posted a few days ago of me setting up the tent in a minus 80 degrees out.
60 mile per hour winds.
It's pretty gnarly.
But yeah, I mean, there was one time when the tent almost did blow away from me.
There's this one, there's one other one.
This is me getting in the tent looking like an absolute disaster when I get help with audio.
But that's me.
That's me.
unidentified
Whoa, you're pulling ice out of your ass.
colin obrady
I got caught out in a massive storm.
And I just...
So hard to get the tent up.
unidentified
I didn't know if I was gonna be able to get it up or I was gonna have to just keep walking.
Jesus!
colin obrady
I'm in the tent now.
unidentified
Hoping these tent poles hold.
Man.
colin obrady
That was really intense.
joe rogan
How do you stay warm in that tent?
colin obrady
So, average temperature is about minus 25, minus 30 in Antarctica.
But like I said, when the wind jacks up, I don't know if there's that other clip of me setting up the tent, but if you get a chance to see that, it can be about minus 80 outside.
It's hard to wrap your mind around that, but I've tried to put it in perspective by saying I could take a cup of boiling water and throw it in the air and it immediately turns to ice.
That's the temperature we're dealing with.
Yeah, this is me trying to keep the tent poles together.
Usually you'd have someone else to hold on to it, but I'm alone.
I'm completely alone out there.
So this is me struggling.
With my tent, just trying to keep it up.
I've got it tied down to my sled there, just battling, battling the winds.
And like I said, the stakes are high.
If that blows away, I don't have a spare tent.
I've got no extra weight in my sled to hold spare stuff.
So it's do or die, quite literally, in a moment like that.
joe rogan
Did you have a patch kit?
colin obrady
I had a couple things repaired.
A sewing kit, a patch kit, stuff like that.
But if the tent itself or the tent poles ripped apart, pretty much done.
joe rogan
And also, you have to set up your tripod and film this.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
And then press stop and go back inside.
And how are you keeping these batteries juiced up?
unidentified
Are you using solar?
colin obrady
No, this is the film crew, man, that was following me around.
That right, the Flat Eye film crew.
joe rogan
Yeah, near the ice wall.
colin obrady
No, it was basically I had to keep the batteries warm by keeping them right against my skin.
So I'd keep the batteries right against my skin.
My body weight would keep it warm.
And the second I wanted to take it out, I'd pull it out real quick, hit play.
And then it would, you know, usually last a minute or enough to get a little clip or something like that.
You couldn't just let it run, but then it would, you know, completely freeze.
Even a full battery would be, you know, on zero battery by pretty quickly.
joe rogan
Were you using solar panels to charge it?
colin obrady
Yeah.
So one crazy cool thing about Antarctica at that time of year is it's 24 hours of daylight.
And so the sun never sets.
So even when I'm in my tent in the middle of the night, eye mask, earplugs to kind of pretend like it's nighttime, but 24 hours of daylight.
So solar panels, keeping everything charged, cameras, phone batteries, all that.
joe rogan
And are you traveling with...
colin obrady
Are you using GPS? Yeah, so I had some waypoints, the GPS waypoints that kind of led my path to the South Pole, etc., but mostly actually using a compass.
So I'd look at my GPS maybe once every week or something like that, just to get the bearing.
joe rogan
Because of the juice factor or...
colin obrady
It's actually just easier.
So I basically had like a harness in front of me that would have my GPS or my compass kind of off my chest, more or less, because some of the clips we saw, the sun's out, but actually more than half of the time, the clouds would come in.
So it'd be just complete and utter whiteout.
I couldn't even see one step in front of me.
And so I'd actually have to just stare down at my compass, keep it on this bearing.
And so imagine you can't see anything, can't see one step in front of you.
I'm pulling a 300-pound sled 12, 13 hours per day out.
Not listening to anything really can make dead silence and just staring at this compass bearing all day long.
joe rogan
Damn, dude.
Are you going crazy at all?
colin obrady
I mean, the mental side of it was by far the most interesting side of it for me.
You know, I have a lifelong endurance athlete, but really kind of an exploration into the mind is what it was for me and why I was curious about it.
So spending all this time in silence, I've done...
joe rogan
Yes.
colin obrady
So I've done a couple of these 10-day silent meditation retreats before this, which is 10 days, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, kind of dove into that piece of it, but 54 days alone in Antarctica in complete silence was next level of that, for sure.
unidentified
God.
joe rogan
Damn, dude, that is so fucking impressive.
I just can't believe that you did that.
Now, when you're looking down and it's an utter whiteout and you're looking at your compass and you're dragging this shit behind you, are you doing anything in your mind?
Are you singing songs?
colin obrady
What are you doing?
There's a couple different things, but really what ended up happening is I started to be able to trigger these flow states.
So, you know, as a lifelong professional athlete through different capacities in my life, you know, I've tapped into that.
You know, I was a swimmer when I was a little kid, so swimming laps in a pool, sometimes I would, like, kind of just tap into this, like, timeless space where, you know, maybe 30 minutes would go by in two minutes or something like that.
But I never really knew how I got there.
I just would sometimes tap into it, sometimes not.
You know, the zone, flow state, whatever you want to call that.
But in Antarctica, I went in with this sort of intention of exploring that space in my mind.
And so as I got more and more into these whiteouts, into these compasses, staring at this compass, staring at this expansive landscape, I started to find ways to actually trigger that flow state in my mind.
And so it got to the point where I could, for several days at a time, be in this deep flow state.
You know, my day was about 17 hours every day between getting up, boiling my water, getting out of my tent in those crazy conditions, packing my sled, dragging it for 13 hours, setting my tent back up in these storms.
But I got into this sort of sequence of being so present with each step, each next sequence, that it ended up being in this really timeless, spaceless place in my mind of true high performance that was almost like the most deepest, peaceful, meditative state that I can possibly imagine.
It was very profound and beautiful to get there in my mind.
joe rogan
Wow.
Now, are you boiling this water in your tent?
Like, how are you doing?
colin obrady
Yeah, so my tent, yeah, so kind of a slightly different white gas fuel stove, so not the canisters where you could throw away a bit of gas that you could refill the stove, but a stove with fuel.
Basically, the way my tent was, you saw the outer layer of the tent there.
There's actually an inner part that's a tent, so that there's a vestibule where basically there's snow inside the doorway, but not outside, outside.
So I would shovel that snow from inside of the tent vestibule into my pot and be able to melt the water that way.
I drank about six liters of water every single day when I was out there.
It's just a lot of snow, and it takes a few hours to melt that.
But people don't realize this, Antarctica is actually the largest desert in the world.
So it's actually very dry.
It doesn't snow very often, but when it does, it of course never melts.
And the South Pole is at 9,300 feet.
So not only am I in this desert, but I'm at altitude doing this thing.
unidentified
Oh my God.
joe rogan
Did you train at altitude?
Did you use one of those tents to sleep in?
unidentified
No.
colin obrady
Yeah, so this gym that Mike and I train at is called Evolution Healthcare and Fitness in Portland.
They actually have an altitude room there.
So it's not even a tent, but they actually have a full room where you can, you know, it's got rolling machines, it's got treadmills, it's got all that simulated up to about 14,000 feet.
joe rogan
How big is the room?
colin obrady
It's about 400 square feet high still.
It's big.
I mean, it's not like huge, but it's big enough.
Yeah, it's like a proper room.
I've been in some of those tents before.
When I was racing triathlon many years ago, a lot of people were starting to sleep in those tents, but a lot of people have a hard time in them.
They get warm and stuff like that.
I know a lot of fighters use them as well.
But yeah, it was pretty cool to have a full room that you can actually be in and move in properly to simulate some of the high-intensity stuff.
Yeah.
joe rogan
And so it would take you hours every day to make your water?
colin obrady
Yeah, I would say I was boiling water for about three, four hours per day.
So about an hour or two in the morning, hour or two in the evening.
It takes a lot of energy to boil, you know, frozen snow when it's that cold out.
So I had to carry a lot of fuel.
That was the other really heavy component of my sled.
unidentified
Yeah, that's what I was going to say.
joe rogan
That's like hundreds of hours of fuel, right?
colin obrady
Yeah, so I took about 17 liters of fuel.
So that's what I have, six gallons or something like that.
joe rogan
Wow, how'd you know that that was going to be enough?
colin obrady
I did some practicing beforehand.
In 2016, I did another world record project where I climbed the tallest mountain on each of the seven continents, the seven summits, as well as went to the North and South Pole, but much smaller polar expeditions, a week basically crossing the last degree of latitude.
And so in those expeditions, I was on Everest during that time, Denali, etc.
All of that in 139 days.
But I did that, and that kind of helped me get a sense of it.
But honestly, it was also best guess based on talking to people, different experts in the field, you know, diving into that.
But you never know.
Is it going to be enough or too little?
unidentified
I don't know.
joe rogan
How much did you have when you finally got to the end?
How much did you have left?
colin obrady
So my final push, I actually, I woke up on the morning of Christmas Eve, 24th of December this past year, and it looked, I was 77 miles from the finish.
And I'd been going at that point, at the beginning of the trip, I was only going 9, 10 miles per day.
Towards the end, I started going about 20, 25 miles per day.
So I said, you know what?
Like, I'm about three days out.
And then I thought to myself, maybe if I could push really hard these next two days, I could do it in two days, like two 15 plus hour days, like really get into it.
And started looking at my fuel and food supplies and like they were pretty low.
I had enough fuel, a few liters of fuel, but I actually only had about a day or two of food, like real substantial food left.
And so I woke up, and I was like, alright, let's go for this.
And in the actually deepest, talk about flow states, that was the deepest flow state of my life.
I woke up, and one hour in that day, it's Christmas morning now, I wake up, and I'm just locked in.
And I just came, I didn't tell anyone back home, didn't tell my wife who was tracking me, they had this GPS tracker where they could follow me, but I was just, in my mind, I was like, you know what, not three days, not two days, I'm going straight for it.
And so I did a final 32-hour continuous push on day 54, and 77 miles straight, dragging my sled all the way to get to the finish line in one continuous push.
No music, no nothing, just like in my head in this crazy flow state of, I don't know, high performance.
And it was a crazy final push to get there, but made it right before the food and fuel ran out.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
colin obrady
And then there's no one there, of course.
You cross the finish line.
You're like, done this.
No one in the world's ever done this.
Applause.
Nope.
Audience of zero.
joe rogan
And so what do you do when you get to the end?
You said, hey, I'm done.
Come get me?
colin obrady
Yeah.
joe rogan
How long does it take for them to come get you?
colin obrady
It took me a week to get out of Antarctica totally.
It took actually me four days to get out of there.
But there's a crazy other component to this, which is no one in the world had ever done this before.
And like I said, a few really talented people, some of the best explorers in the world had tried recently.
One guy died.
And it just so happened there's a really specific season when you can attempt this, but another guy was attempting this at the exact same time as me.
A British guy who's equivalent of a Navy SEAL, you know, British Special Forces.
The living most experienced guy in Antarctica has actually pulled 3,000 plus miles in Antarctica now on various expeditions.
And so we got dropped off one mile away from each other to begin this thing.
And obviously, I was the first.
I did win this race head to head.
And at the finish line, I waited for him for a few days because I wanted to congratulate him because he did ultimately finish.
But you can only imagine...
I went back to that first hour where I was like, it's impossible.
It was also like, it's impossible.
And Bo, by the way, this Navy SEAL dude who knows more about Antarctica than me, he's off and going.
I can see him in the distance just like leaving me in the dust.
But fortunately, after day six, I caught up to him.
You know, I waved to him in this weird like passing of the torch moment like I was passing him and then I never saw him again until I finished and I finished about 70 miles ahead of him, about two and a half days ahead of him.
unidentified
That's gotta suck for him.
joe rogan
Imagine, he's like, I got this motherfucker.
colin obrady
I brought it home for America, man, you know?
unidentified
Thank you.
joe rogan
Appreciate that.
We all appreciate that.
But still, that's got to suck for him.
colin obrady
Yeah, so I actually, even though I finished and the first thing I could have kind of wanted to do, I haven't had a shower.
I haven't, I actually, to save weight so I could get as much food and fuel in my sled, I brought no extra clothes, no extra pair of underwear.
Like, literally, no extra pair of underwear, no extra pair of nothing.
joe rogan
Where are you shitting out there?
colin obrady
Everyone wants to know this, so let's just get it on the table.
Thank you for asking.
Basically, I describe that vestibule situation.
So one side I cook in.
If the wind is calm, I get out of my tent, dig a hole, and go shit in a hole, basically.
But when it's real windy, like those storms I just watched, you're going to get frostbite if you try to bend over and pull your pants down when it's minus 80 out.
So in the vestibule of my tent, not the side I'm cooking on, but the other side where I'm still inside covered, I dig a hole in there.
That was my morning routine.
Get up at 6am, start boiling my water on one side of my tent, and it's not glamorous.
unidentified
It's not.
colin obrady
Not a pretty thing.
Actually, to me, this is very cool, but also not glamorous.
Within one degree of latitude of the South Pole, so the last degree of latitude, 89 degrees, the South Pole is at 90 degrees.
It's basically 69 miles or 60 nautical miles circumference around the South Pole.
Antarctica being as pristine as it is, they have all these laws about environmental conservation, which to me is amazing, being someone who just loves and is a great steward of the land.
They actually say you can't even leave your human waste in holes here.
Even though there's nobody out there, they're like, we want this to be a completely protected area.
And so, yes, usually my sled was getting lighter most of the time because I was eating food every day and burning fuel.
But in that last degree of latitude to the South Pole and crossing it, I was shitting in a bag.
Wrapping it up and putting it in my sled and having to carry it with me.
joe rogan
Wow.
That shows discipline.
colin obrady
It shows something.
joe rogan
A lot of people have been like, yeah, yeah, yeah, put it in a bag.
Fuck you.
Crazy assholes.
No one's up there.
Who cares if I take a shit up there?
colin obrady
It was tempting, but I grew up going out in the outdoors.
It just says leave no trace principle that I really love, and particularly Antarctica.
One of the things about Antarctica, it's one of those places where, imagine you've traveled far and wide in your life, and there's a few places, at least in my mind, where you can't put it into words until you've stepped off of it.
And for me, this is my second time in Antarctica.
Both times, you know, this big cargo ship basically lands you on the continent and then you get in a smaller plane to get dropped off to where I needed to start on the edge of the continent.
But both times stepping off the plane, I'm just shit-eating grin ear-to-ear on my face because I just am like, whoa, what is this place?
Even the second time seeing it, I felt like my cheeks were sore because I was just smiling so big of just the pristine beauty, the blank canvas.
I mean, you look out on the land and you're like...
Human footprints haven't touched 98% of the continent, something like that.
I mean, it's untouched.
And so, shitting in a bag, if I had to do that to do my part to keep it that way, I did my part.
joe rogan
How many bags of shit did you drag?
colin obrady
At the end, it was about...
I reused the bag.
unidentified
Oh!
colin obrady
One per day for that section is about 120 miles.
It took me, I don't know, a week or so to cover that distance.
So, yeah, added weight to my sled rather than subtracting.
That was the middle part of the journey, right around the 30th and 40th day.
joe rogan
Now, how did you calculate your nutrition?
colin obrady
So the nutrition journey was actually fascinating.
And to be honest, in my opinion, people said, well, how come other people died trying?
Or why did other people not be able to do it?
Because one other guy ran out of food.
And so when I was looking at this journey, you know, again, we were calling it the impossible first.
Like, how am I going to make the impossible possible?
And I thought that the nutrition piece of it was going to be huge.
I actually, my dad's an organic farmer in Hawaii, like whole food health and nutrition has been a big part of my personal journey.
And so I found a company that was really in it with me.
So it's a company called Standard Process.
They're a whole food supplement company really involved in chiropractic and acupuncture.
And I presented them with this and I said, hey, what do you guys think?
Is there a way to figure this out?
And they're like, well, we have 20 of the top doctors, nutritionists, food scientists on our staff in this innovation center around nutrition come in the lab with us.
And so...
They'd never done this with an athlete before, but they were intrigued, and so I actually went and did a years-long worth of, you know, 100-plus blood tests, VO2 max tests, all this fitness testing all around my physiology, and they created, ultimately, a custom food solution as a bar form, essentially, called the columbar that was all whole food ingredients.
It was no, you know, chemical derivatives or anything.
It was, you know, coconut oil, you know, seeds, nuts, you know, all these different pieces of macronutrients as well as micronutrient blends that I needed, but custom-tailored to my physiology.
And that was the bulk of what I ate.
I ate 7,000 calories per day.
I was burning 10,000.
So even at 7,000, I was losing about a pound of weight almost to my body.
So that's why I needed to get bigger.
But these column bars just burned super efficiently in my body.
It was the perfect blend of everything.
So eating the same thing every single day for 54 days may have gotten a little bit boring, but my body was actually pretty dialed in.
joe rogan
Wow.
Now, when they did this and they made these custom bars for you, how did you know how many calories you're going to be burning while you're pulling this 300-pound sled?
Was it dependent upon the conditions, like if the snow was more packed or icy?
Yeah.
It would be more difficult if it was soft, right?
colin obrady
100%.
So, I mean, we had to use our best guess, honestly.
We had to just say, let's use our best guess.
Like I said, a bunch of smart people, smarter than me, were in this room, all these doctors, these PhDs around this, and we had to make some assumptions.
And ultimately, they were like, okay, you're going to burn 10,000 calories.
Let's get you 10,000 calories in these bars.
And we started running the weight on the sled, and we're like, that'll be a 500-pound sled.
Like, we can't carry that.
So it's this equation of, like, can you make the sled light enough to pull?
Yeah.
If we can get the nutrition right, how efficiently does that burn in your body?
How much can your stomach absorb?
joe rogan
So you're hungry the whole time?
colin obrady
More or less, yeah.
unidentified
Fuck!
colin obrady
I was ready for a big fucking meal.
I got done, that's for sure.
What's the first thing you ate?
The first thing I ate when I got back It was a big burger, but you might call me lame for saying this, but I'm just going to say it because it's the truth.
What I craved was salad, man.
What I craved was just something, because I'd eaten this, you know what I mean?
I've been eating this freeze-dried field, this chunk of columbar, which got me through, but it was something green and alive, and so I had this big salad with avocado and salad.
I had a big burger, too, but then, of course, I eat, my stomach is shrunk, right?
I eat this big meal, and I'm like, oh, my stomach kind of hurts.
But emotionally, I was like, I'm back in the real world, baby.
So it was like, I ate everything I could get in my hands.
I went to a buffet, it just was like, my stomach was hurting, but I was like, I'm not going to stop.
And I just started eating like, whatever, croissants and bread, just all the things.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
I would imagine your body would, like, you're probably craving all that life, like, live things, green, leafy vegetables, fruit.
colin obrady
It's weird to say, I mean, like, I'm from Portland, Oregon, you know, it's a pretty green part of the world up there in the Pacific Northwest, and not even just the food component, but...
There's nothing alive out there.
There's no animals.
On the coast there are, but in the interior, I didn't see any animals.
I didn't see a bird.
I didn't see nothing, right?
And so, not only...
I think as humans, we're kind of wired to see things living.
I mean, even here in LA, a bit of a concrete jungle.
But you see trees on the street.
You see the ocean.
unidentified
Squirrels.
colin obrady
Yeah, whatever.
And so, to not see anything alive for 54 days, it was like, wow, I want to smell fresh air of the trees.
I want to eat a salad.
I don't know.
That's where my mind got to was...
Kind of coming back to reality in that way.
joe rogan
Man, so when they're constructing these bars for you, and this is all based on your body and what burns well with you, how do they, in terms of how many calories, what's the best food in terms of weight versus calories?
And is there some foods that are heavier but don't have as many calories?
Yeah.
colin obrady
Yeah, so I think, I'm going to get the numbers pretty close to right here, but I think fat, of course, of the macronutrients, we got protein, fat, and carbs, right?
Right.
Fat is the most calorie-dense of them all.
joe rogan
And you have to make sure these things don't freeze solid, right?
colin obrady
So that was one of the, it was minus 25 in my sled every single day, so it had to actually be edible while frozen, essentially, because it would be too hard to re-warm them, because this was the food I was eating outside of my sled.
unidentified
Oh!
joe rogan
So it's frozen too?
colin obrady
Frozen too, but actually where the workaround happened, where their mastermind was, they were like, you actually need this macronutrient blend to be about 40 or 45% fats because I needed high fat food to stay alive out there.
And so they basically pumped it full of coconut oil, which ultimately, if you see coconut oil on the shelf, it's not a liquid, it's actually a solid, but it doesn't freeze like rock solids.
So having that much coconut oil in it allowed it to, we actually had to get it shipped down frozen because if it didn't freeze, it actually kind of got like flat.
And so they put it in these freeze-dried packs, shipped it down to Chile, had to do this whole customs thing to import it.
It was like a whole like crazy logistical mess.
But got that done and it actually held up so that it was enough fat in there that I could actually bite off chunks of this rather than, you know, there's plenty of stories of guys in these cold places breaking teeth on cliff bars and things like that.
So the column bars were good while frozen.
I should have brought you one, Matty.
I should have brought you one to try.
joe rogan
So it's mostly like a lot of fats and seeds and nuts.
colin obrady
Seeds and nuts.
And then the other thing is that they, like I said, their bread and butter at this company, Standard Process, is they're a supplement company.
But it's all whole food derivatives.
organic farm basically vitamins and so they actually intermix like probiotics and magnesium and like beet extract and all these sort of plant derivatives as well to give me the phytonutrients I need that's not giving me the calories but that's really me that and I stayed healthy the whole time I got super worn down I got super skinny you know all that kind of stuff but I actually stayed you know I never got sick you know that was healthy that was my other question What was the plan if you did get sick?
joe rogan
Was it just to wait it out in the tent?
colin obrady
Wait it out in the tent.
joe rogan
You're not in contact with anything though, right?
colin obrady
So I had a couple of things.
One is I had my GPS, which I was paying the satellite every 10 minutes.
joe rogan
What I mean is life forms.
colin obrady
Oh, no, no.
joe rogan
Bugs, flu.
colin obrady
No, no, no.
Yeah, so that part of it, there's nothing out there.
So basically, if you get a bacteria, you've brought it out there.
So the actual idea was more or less to get out there healthy rather than you can stay pretty healthy in terms of bacteria and stuff.
Of course, you can get pretty worn down and sick and the cold or flu-like symptoms or any of that.
joe rogan
But any virus you have is something you had when you landed.
colin obrady
Exactly.
Because, I mean, there's nothing out there.
joe rogan
And are you, were you concerned about that?
Because, like, I would imagine, like, the anticipation leading up to it is a little stressful, and sometimes your immune system can get run down.
colin obrady
Oh, 100%.
You know, of course, it's fun to recount the epic parts of these journeys, or my other, you know, world records, climbing Everest, or this summit day, or this push, or whatever.
But anything that's this long duration, this was 54 days, the world record I did in 2006 was 139 days.
Like, the boring answer is, like, how did you do it?
It's like, well, like, I washed my hands really good when I went to the airport and I didn't eat this food off the street.
Staying healthy, if you can't get that right, it doesn't matter.
joe rogan
Yeah, man.
Imagine you're on the flight, headed out there, and some dude next to you is sneezing.
Oh, yeah.
Motherfucker.
colin obrady
There was a couple of times.
When I raced triathlon many years ago, I raced in something like 25 countries all over the world, different places, and there were three or four times I can remember.
I remember one time I flew to the Philippines, this place called Subic Bay, gearing up for this big race, and sure enough, the night before the race, just like...
Diarrhea like crazy, puking my brains out.
So I jump into the swim, swim in the ocean.
It's a milestone.
I'm feeling like shit.
But I'm like, I'm going to try.
I flew all the way to the Philippines.
I got to do this race.
Sure enough, I get on my bike and the bike course went right next to my hotel.
And I just had no power.
And I was like, yep, I'm turning off.
And the Filipino guy's like, no, no, you're going the wrong way of the course.
And I was like, nope, I'm going to my hotel room to shit some more.
unidentified
Basically.
colin obrady
So yeah, one bad burrito, one bad this can ruin any athletic performance.
joe rogan
If you have diarrhea while you're pulling a 375 pound sled in Antarctica.
Oh my god.
colin obrady
That's not a pretty moment.
That is not a pretty moment.
Plus with the one pair of underwear, that makes it even more.
So, yeah, staying healthy was super key to all of this.
But, you know, all things considered, I mean, my body, of course, got banged up some, but, like, I came back, you know, relatively healthy, and I think the food and nutrition was a key part of that.
joe rogan
Oh, it has to be, but it sounds like you really did it wisely.
Like, I mean, that's so cool that you had that company behind you that organized the food and nutrition.
colin obrady
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Good Lord, man.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Now, were you trying to put fat on before you left, as well as muscle?
colin obrady
Yeah, so with Mike, you know, the goal was to put, you know, I put about 10 to 15 pounds of muscle on, and then another 5 pounds of fat on top of that, just knowing that I was...
Only 5?
Total was 20 pounds total, but, you know, between fat and...
The last few weeks, I was, you know, basically, I'd been lifted, you know, I'd gotten strong and all this, didn't want to wear myself out too much, you know, stressing my muscles, because I was about to undergo this.
And it was where I was just putting calories in.
So I'd, you know, eat dinner and then Jenna, my wife, would be like, what are you going to do now?
And I'd be like, should I be sitting there just eating like a pint of, you know, coconut bliss ice cream, whatever it was, you know, putting calories in just to put some fat on there because that just burned off me immediately.
I mean, it was gone, so.
joe rogan
Yeah, so you must have been shredded by the time it was over.
colin obrady
Yeah, I was pretty...
There's actually...
I don't know if I'll pull it up, but there's a photo on my Instagram that kind of shows a little bit of the before and the after body shot.
But I... Yeah, I was very lean.
But it was...
Honestly, it was also scary.
Like, in the end, I think I held up pretty well.
But you're out there by yourself.
You've got no context.
And so I started looking down at my legs halfway through this journey.
Yeah, there I am.
So before and after.
joe rogan
Not that much of a difference.
unidentified
Yeah.
colin obrady
Yeah, the light's not great.
joe rogan
You definitely look a lot more lean.
I wouldn't even say a lot more lean.
colin obrady
Yeah, so it's about 20 pounds different, but my mind's played tricks on me more than anything.
I looked down at my waist about halfway through, and I was like, holy shit, I'm falling apart here.
And I actually started getting in my own head about, am I losing too much weight?
Am I not?
But when I actually weighed myself afterwards, like 20 pounds, we thought it could have been as much as 40 pounds.
So, you know, only losing 20 pounds, all things considered.
Like, yeah, like you said, I don't look that, other than that really cool beard that I grew.
joe rogan
So you were ready to get gaunt.
colin obrady
Yeah, I mean, we had planned for that.
We had planned for that.
And like I said, I started out, I started out about 165. I put myself up to 185 to leave, and I finished at 165. So I actually finished way more near my sort of natural, fairly lean weight for my height.
joe rogan
So, perfect plan.
colin obrady
Yeah.
There's plenty of things that went wrong, but that part of it, yeah.
joe rogan
It seems like you kind of planned out for things going wrong.
colin obrady
Yeah, I mean, this was in one way as a solo effort.
I mean, I was out there by myself walking across this, but this was a massive team effort from these guys getting behind me, all these doctors, you know, all the different people I have supporting me, you know, my wife and then what she does with all the media and our non-profit news of many things.
A lot of pieces go into making this thing happen, so it was a team effort for sure, big time.
joe rogan
That is so amazing.
Now, at the end, you get there, you're done, but there's no one there.
So what do you do?
You make a phone call?
colin obrady
Yeah.
joe rogan
Yo, I'm done, come get me.
Do they know where you are?
Because they're tracking you, right?
colin obrady
Yeah, so what was kind of crazy was that crazy last push, right?
It's this 32-hour, you know, non-stop push.
And so what happened is it's Christmas Day when I start this push.
And so my whole family, I'm actually, I have five older sisters, big family, you know, I'm the baby of the bunch and they're all together in Hood River, Oregon at my sister's house.
And they're thinking, cool, Colin's like getting close to any of his project.
We'll track him.
And every day they track me on my GPS. It pinged the satellites every 10 minutes.
So people, all my Instagram followers, anyone could actually follow the progress in real time.
And they were used to seeing me stop at about 12, 12 hours into the day.
So, 12 hours into the day happens and they're like, okay, maybe he's going another hour.
13 hours, 14 hours, 15 hours.
They're like, what's going on?
16 hours.
My whole family's not normally together, but they're all together because it's Christmas Day.
Finally, 18 hours into this push, I finally stop and put up a waypoint because what happened was I ran out of water.
Even though I said I'm not stopping, I was like, I only had three liters of water after 18 hours.
I need more water.
So, I at least have to put my tent up to boil water inside.
unidentified
Yeah.
colin obrady
So what I do, it's now midnight.
I start at 6 a.m.
It's now midnight.
I've been going 18 hours.
Midnight in Antarctica is, with the time zone I was staying on, was 7 p.m.
on the West Coast.
So it's Christmas dinner.
I finally call in.
It's my mom, my sister, my wife.
Everyone's on the phone.
They're like...
Oh my god, you did 47 miles today.
That's your best by like 15 miles.
Incredible.
And I was like, no, no, no.
I'm not stopping.
I'm actually just boiling water for an hour to continue back out for another like 14 hours to finish this thing.
They're like, what?
The weather must be really good.
Wow, you're feeling so good.
And I was like, actually, it's the worst weather of the entire trip because this...
Massive ground blizzard blew.
Like, hour 16 of this push, it was nice.
Just this ground blizzard, which is it's not actually snowing, but it feels like it's snowing because it's so windy that the snow is blowing around everywhere.
But I was locked in such a deep flow state in my mind that even setting my tent up in this crazy storm, even getting inside, 18-hour push, I was just like...
Nope, I've got this.
And it felt like for me when I reflect on that moment, Jenna even says this, you know, she talked to me every night and there's clips of me crying, there's clips of me having doubts, you know, there was ups and downs to this whole thing, but she was like, you sounded the most lucid I've ever heard you.
And she's watched me high perform and other things.
She was like, you were locked in.
And so instead of her going like, Maybe you should sleep and get some rest.
She was like, I trust you.
I believe you.
Go for it.
She could just hear it in my voice.
It was a crazy thing.
For me, I'm 33 years old now, and it really felt like a culmination of my entire life in a lot of ways.
From the swim practices as a little kid to...
Burning this crazy fire that I overcame.
We can talk about that if you want.
I raced triathlon professionally.
All of these moments, the meditation practice, the family, the support.
All of these things were stacking on each other to kind of lead to this final culminating moment.
And I had to pull on lessons from each phase of my life to be that locked in.
But I found myself just kind of in that moment, in that flow state, being able to get up out of that Hour 18 and say to them, actually, I'm going back out in this crazy ground blizzard.
I got another 14 hours to go to finish this thing.
And so that was 32 hours and 77 miles later, the final push to the end.
joe rogan
Now, what did you wear in terms of like a base layer?
Was there a concern about you sweating while you were pulling all that weight, especially initially when it was 375 pounds?
unidentified
Yeah.
colin obrady
So, you know, one of the famous lines that, you know, people who have been in the polar environments will say is, if you sweat, you die.
And, you know, it's maybe a little bit of hyperbole, but it's not far from the truth, which is you start sweating and you stop for even 30 seconds, your clothes are literally freezing to your body.
And so it was this crazy kind of balance of being able to pull the sled, get your heart rate elevated enough to keep your body warm.
But not too warm that you were sweating.
And so any second I would start sweating, I would strip layers off.
So there was times, especially when there was no wind, it'd still be ambient temperature, minus 20, minus 25, but I would just have like a thin Gore-Tex jacket on and one base layer.
That's it.
Were you wearing merino?
Merino actually itches my skin, although it's really good, but for me, I'm a little bit allergic to it.
So I wore synthetic fabric.
joe rogan
Do they have a synthetic that completely mimics Merino in terms of the way, when it's moist, you still stay warm?
colin obrady
Yeah, so Merino, honestly, Merino is amazing fabric for that reason.
Unfortunately for me, like I said, it just irritates my skin.
joe rogan
It is so funny that you could suffer through all that, but you can't have itchy clothes on.
colin obrady
Little Merino wool is going to make me feel that.
No, but, so I use a synthetic, but it's crazy.
joe rogan
What company are you using?
colin obrady
I was using Mountain Hardware Base Layers, and then actually my outer layers was this Norwegian company called Bergens of Norway.
They don't sponsor me, but they actually, believe it or not, the Norwegians know a thing or two about being in the polar environment, and so they've designed a really good jacket and pant that's actually really breathable and really good, and then I sewed a fur ruff onto the edge, so a wolf fur ruff on the outer side of the hood.
unidentified
Wolf?
colin obrady
I think it's wolf, yeah.
joe rogan
Wolf fur.
colin obrady
Wolf fur.
joe rogan
I thought you were saying wool, but then I was like, it sounds like wolf.
colin obrady
You know more about this than me.
I hope I don't annoy your audience.
I am not a big hunter myself.
I've never done a lot of that, but yeah, it's a wolf fur.
joe rogan
Well, they know how to survive in the cold.
colin obrady
Yeah, exactly.
joe rogan
Now, the base layer is a synthetic.
What is the material that it's made out of?
colin obrady
The base layer is, yeah, it's a synthetic, like a polypropylene, something like that.
joe rogan
And so when it sweats, it dries quickly, is that the idea?
colin obrady
Yeah, so as it dries quickly, but the idea was just to not get it wet, so basically strip down as much as possible.
But literally, I'd go from that, and then of course I needed to eat and drink every, whatever, 30 minutes or whatever, actually more like every hour, so I'd stop.
So I'd stop, and the front of my sled I had a huge puffy down jacket, like a massive Michelin Man, huge puffy down jacket.
So even if you're stopping for a minute to drink water, before even trying to do that, boom, put the big jacket on, because that's how cold...
Or how cold you can get immediately from stopping.
I mean, it's just so much colder than when pulling the sled.
Your heart rate stays up and keeps you pretty warm.
joe rogan
I would imagine, like, your hands and your feet, too.
That would be a real issue, right?
The small digits?
colin obrady
Yeah, I mean, you know, frostbite's real, for sure.
Hands outside of gloves.
That's why some of the stuff I was doing in the training of getting my hands with the dexterity.
You know, you have to tie all these knots with big gloves, mittens on.
You can't take your gloves off for any sizable period of time.
If you look back on a lot of my photos, I've actually got tape on my face over across my nose and my cheeks.
joe rogan
Yeah, I saw that.
colin obrady
And that's because I started getting tiny little bits of frostbite on the bottoms of my nose and on my cheeks because I'd wear a full face mask, buff, everything, but even, you know, tiny little, you know, one, you know, needle prick of wind on your face throughout the day in that cold, it's going to turn into a cold injury.
And so I started getting a few cold injuries on my face, nothing, you know, too bad.
joe rogan
Do you grease your face up or anything?
colin obrady
Mostly the tape and then I had a little bit of like Vaseline or like chapstick type of stuff on some of the bad areas.
The one thing actually that I did that I'd never done before would actually worked well was a tip that I got which was my fingers started cracking really really bad from the cold and so they were like really painful and I actually was pouring putting super glue into all of those basically little micro cuts on my fingers which when someone told me that as a trick I was like really but It turns out it's actually a really good trick, so it's kind of super gluing these cuts on my fingers back together, and that actually worked reasonably well, all things considered.
I mean, all things considered is the operative word, but it worked.
Yeah.
unidentified
Wow.
joe rogan
So, you're wearing, what about your eyes?
colin obrady
So I'm wearing goggles, but funny enough, I had a couple of fancier, nicer ski goggles with me.
But yeah, there's the tape on my face right there.
But yeah, that's actually just like the normal K-team tape, like a physio tape that you'd see athletes wearing.
And I just had it in my repair kit.
It wasn't meant for this purpose, but I was like, what do I have that I could put on my face to block it a little bit better?
Hmm.
But I had those goggles on some of the time.
But actually, the goggle that I wore the most was one that you might use for motocross.
Because it has like a plastic face mask over the front of it.
Because the wind, when it was blowing, it would just kind of blow around.
So sometimes I had this fleece stripped over my face, but it would blow too much.
And so I had this more plastic face mask.
So that's the one you can see.
Look how frozen it is on the inside.
joe rogan
That is so crazy!
Oh my god, man.
colin obrady
And then this neoprene mask underneath.
So I had double face mask, double tape, anything to just keep me warm.
joe rogan
I would never have suspected that it was so high above sea level there.
colin obrady
Yeah, yeah.
So you've got whatever it is, 9,300 feet at the South Pole.
joe rogan
So it's basically just like elevated ground, but it seems flat.
colin obrady
Right, but I started at sea level.
I'm actually going uphill all the way to the South Pole.
So for the first 40-some days, I pulled that sled uphill completely.
joe rogan
You're freaking me out.
That whole thing freaks me out.
When you were freaking out an hour in, and you hadn't even actually hit land yet, what thoughts were going through your head?
Were you thinking, man, I need to get someone to fucking rescue me?
colin obrady
I mean...
It definitely, you know, those moments of doubt, this is on Everest.
joe rogan
Oh, this is a different one.
We'll get to this.
We'll get to this.
colin obrady
Yeah.
You know, what's going through my head was these moments of doubt, for sure.
But one of the things for me, you know, to be honest with these projects that I've created...
I love pushing my own limits.
I love finding the edges of my own potential, all that kind of stuff.
But I also now really enjoy building these projects that I can share with other people.
I do this nonprofit work where there's 30,000 school kids tuning into this project and using this as curriculum in their classrooms to learn about climate change, to learn about weather, atmospheric pressure.
That's a really cool project like that.
And then just sharing it with the world at large.
People going like, this is impossible.
I mean, how many guys do you know that's like, one day I'm going to do this cool thing, but they like never do it, right?
Right.
Actually going after that and sharing it away was like, you might not want to walk across Antarctica, but you probably have some hope or some dream or some goal that you want to accomplish in your life.
Fucking go and do it.
Get after it.
And so, for me doing this, it's funny, I've started to think of myself less as an athlete and actually more of as an artist.
And my canvas really is just endurance sports, but creating these art projects in the world that I can create and share with people through storytelling to hopefully inspire them to do that.
So, what was I thinking in that first hour was, you know, I don't want my art project to blow up right in my face, but more so, this was bigger than myself.
And that's really what kept me going forward.
It's like, I can't let these kids in these public school classrooms think that I quit after the first hour.
These are other people that are driving inspiration from this, hopefully.
I want to do this for this larger purpose.
And honestly, that's what really kept me going forward through the really hard times, was that connection to a larger purpose of what I want to put out in the world and that ripple effect of positivity.
joe rogan
That's awesome.
And then, of course, you have a giant team that prepared and helped you.
You don't want to let them down as well.
colin obrady
Yeah, you know, it's a lot goes into it.
So get into that starting line and having that doubt.
But I think, I mean, on one level, it's also, it's a human element.
It'd be easy for me to come in here and tell this story like, you know what, Joe?
Like, I'm the biggest badass in the world.
No one's walked across Antarctica and like, I did it, even though these people died trying, whatever.
Like, those are the facts of the situation.
But like, the truth is, man, like, I'm human.
I have the wave of human emotions.
I've figured out how to tap into my mind in a way to do these things, but I still experience fear.
I still experience doubt.
I still experience the ups and downs, but I have a way of actually being able to repurpose or refocus that energy into positive forward momentum.
I think that's what the difference is.
But I believe...
All of us, all of us humans have the capacity to do this.
Like you're looking at me, I'm like a pretty like regular like size, regular looking guy.
But I think, you know, the muscle between my ears is what separates the difference and it allowed me to do this more than anything.
joe rogan
You don't seem to have the darkness that I usually see in people that do things like this.
Do you know what I'm saying?
I've met a bunch of people that have done some fucked up things and they all have some weird darkness.
colin obrady
Yeah, you know, I hear what you're saying.
I think for me, a lot of this strength comes from a dark moment in my life.
You know, right after college, I was traveling around the world.
I had no money as a kid growing up, you know, working class background, painted houses every summer, but always dreamed of traveling the world.
So I was like, one day I'm going to travel the world.
So I finished college, buddies of mine are getting like real jobs and Whatever, Wall Street and things like that.
And I was like, you know what?
I saved up $10,000 over the past six years.
I'm going to take a surfboard and a backpack and go see the world with my life savings.
And so I went and do that.
I'm 21 years old.
I go to Fiji.
I surf through Australia, hitchhike through New Zealand.
I end up in Thailand.
You ever been to Thailand?
joe rogan
Yeah.
colin obrady
Yeah, of course.
So you're familiar with how much fire and fire dancing and various crazy debaucherous things that happen over there.
So I'm on a beach in rural Thailand and I decide to jump this flaming jump rope.
And unfortunately it goes terribly wrong for me.
The rope wraps around my legs and ignites my entire body on fire to my neck.
And, you know, in an instant, my life changed.
You know, fortunately for me, the water's edge, the ocean, was 10 steps away, so kind of instinct takes over, and I dive into the ocean, which extinguished the flames.
My body's on fire to my neck, but not before.
About 25% of my body is severely, severely burned.
So my clothes were on fire.
But mostly we got severely burned was my legs and feet.
And so I'm in a place, I'm on a beach.
There's no hospital on this.
I'm on an island.
There's no hospital.
Instead of an ambulance ride, I'm on the back of a moped driving down a dirt path.
You know, I'm in a one-room nursing station, literally like the size of the room we're sitting in.
They're like, this is our sort of hospital.
It's like one bed.
And I'm just completely devastated.
And so they put me under eight surgeries over the next week in the middle of nowhere, rural Thailand.
joe rogan
Eight surgeries?
colin obrady
Yeah, and basically, there's a cat running around my bed every time I come out of their quote-unquote ICU. There's a cat running around my bed and across my chest, and the doctors are literally saying to me, in the broken English, they're saying, hey, you'll probably never walk again normally.
You're probably never going to walk again normally.
Yeah, there's a photo of that.
I think if you click over on that to the second one, it actually shows, you know, there's what the legs look like.
So, you know, I was, and that's that photo there with those legs, that's actually eight weeks after I was burned.
So that, believe it or not, that's like, it's starting to look a little bit better.
All things considered there.
So, as you can probably imagine, I mean, just the darkest time of my life.
I've been, you know, an athlete.
I swam through college.
I thought of myself as a physically active person.
And here I am, like doctor, saying, hey, you know, 22-year-old kid, like, you'll never walk again normally.
To me, the hero in this story, which is maybe why you don't see the darkness in my eyes and it's more the light, but my mother is really the heroine of this tale, which is she arrived to my bedside around day five, flies all the way over to Thailand, finds me.
Are you a parent?
I don't know.
Do you have Yeah, I don't have kids yet, but I can only imagine as a parent what it's like to walk into a hospital room and see your kid halfway around the world in this state, nothing you can do.
And she admits now that she was crying in the hallways, you know, pleading with the doctors for good news, like he's going to be alright, right?
He's going to walk.
She's crying.
Every time she walked into my hospital room, she walked in with a smile on her face.
And there's this air of positivity of being like, okay, Colin, this is bad.
What do you want to do when you get out of here?
Let's set a goal.
Let's get out of here and do something positive.
And I'm like, mom, are you crazy?
The doctors say I'm never going to walk again normally.
My life as I know it is over.
Just in this really dark place in my mind, but she just kept at me day after day with this positivity.
And I finally closed my eyes and I just pictured like, what am I going to be?
And I closed my eyes and I had this visualization of myself crossing a triathlon finish line, which is not something I'd ever done before.
I'd swam in college, but I'd never biked or run competitively, nothing.
But I was like, you know what?
The able-bodied me sometime in the future is going to be not only walking again, but doing a triathlon race.
And so I said it to her.
I said, my goal is to race a triathlon one day.
And instead of her looking at me going like, well, I said set a goal, but maybe something more realistic that doesn't require you to be running, she was like, great, let's learn about it.
Pulls out her computer and just literally starts reading me like, triathlon races are this.
They're this far.
They're this distances.
I knew nothing about the sport other than it just popped into my mind.
It's something I thought I maybe wanted to do.
And so, that's what I focus on.
I literally have this photo of me with a Thai doctor.
My legs are bandaged to my waist, and the Thai doctor is looking at me like crazy, but I'm lifting these 10-pound barbells in my hand going, I'm training for a triathlon now.
The guy's like, you're in Thailand in a hospital, and I'm telling you, you're never going to walk again normally.
And so, you know, flash forward, you know, two or three months, I finally get released from this Thai hospital.
joe rogan
You were there for three months?
colin obrady
Yeah, yeah.
joe rogan
Oh, my God.
colin obrady
And when I got released, I still hadn't walked.
You know, I'm in a wheelchair.
I got carried on and off the flight back to Portland, Oregon, land back home, and, you know, still bandaged up.
And my mom, you know, says to me, I wake up the first morning back in my parents' house, my mother's kitchen, the house I grew up in, and she looks at me and she goes, Alright, Colin, now I know you've got this big triathlon goal, but today your goal is to take your very first step.
And so she actually grabs a chair from our kitchen table and places it one step in front of my wheelchair, and she says, today you need to somehow figure out how to get out of that wheelchair, take one step, and step into the chair in front of you.
And I'm looking at it like, I don't know if this is possible.
But three hours later, four hours later, I'm still staring at this chair and I finally work up the courage and strength to get out of this wheelchair, take the one step, and get into that chair in front of me.
joe rogan
And is the problem that because of the burnt skin, it's not flexible?
You can't move it?
colin obrady
No, it's a good question.
So basically what happened with the burn is it burned me so deep that two things happened.
One is there was ligament damage.
So ligament damage to my ankles and knee joints.
And then the way that the scarring in the skin is healing essentially over these mobile joints, they don't think I'm going to regain full flexibility, full range of motion essentially in my legs.
So they're not saying you'll never walk as in you won't be able to stand up at all, although that was like extremely painful, but they just didn't think, you know, be a magazine walking around without being able to bend your knees or your ankles with like full mobility So it just was like, you're not going to be able to have that back, basically.
So sure enough, I take that first step, get in that chair.
The next day, my mom doesn't take it easy on me.
She just moved this chair five steps away.
The next day, ten steps away.
You know, every day, a few more steps.
Not to go on and on, but basically, 18 months after, you know, getting released from that hospital, I find myself in Chicago.
I finally, you know, took a job in finance, just trying to get out of my parents' basement, like, get on with my life.
I'm 23 years old.
Like, yeah, I got to get, like, a real job, get out of my parents' basement, you know, move to Chicago, take a job in finance, and, uh, Try to get my shit together, basically.
And I honored that goal.
I said, you know what?
I'm going to sign up for the Chicago Triathlon.
I live here now.
Joined a local gym.
Knew nothing about the sport still.
I'm asking random guys at the gym, like, anybody here race a triathlon?
I'm in a spin class.
How do you...
How do you take your shoes off and run afterwards?
How does it even work?
Ask these questions.
And sure enough, through that process, I trained at this gym, signed up for the Chicago Triathlon, ended up racing the race, crossed the finish line.
And to my complete and other surprise, I didn't just finish the race, but I actually won the entire Chicago Triathlon, beating 4,000 other people coming first place.
unidentified
What?!
joe rogan
Your first triathlon?
colin obrady
You won?
joe rogan
Wow.
What kind of training did you do to prepare yourself for that?
colin obrady
I mean, like I said, I had been a collegiate swimmer, so I was a Division I swimmer.
Swam at Yale University, but then the biking and running was completely new to me.
joe rogan
Did you have anybody show you how to do it, or did you just start running and biking?
colin obrady
Yeah, I literally walked into this spin class.
joe rogan
So you didn't actually ride a bike, you spent?
colin obrady
So I went to the spin class and met a guy, and he was like, oh, I've done one triathlon before.
So he took me out on a couple rides with his buddies.
I had this steel frame bike.
I didn't know all these carbon wheels and aero helmet, all these fancy triathlon type of things.
I didn't know much about it.
And literally for a summer, I just kind of asked people some questions.
And what's funny about triathlon, I don't know how familiar you are with this sport, but In a race like the Chicago Triathlon, there's more than 4,000 participants.
And so, unlike a marathon where everyone just starts at the same time, you actually have to start in waves, like 100 people every five minutes.
And I was the 39th wave of 53. And so, I dive into Lake Michigan, and there's people that already started like two hours before me, and there's people starting two hours after me.
And so, when I finished the race, you know, I swim, I bike, I run.
It was Olympic distance triathlon, so it was a mile swim, 25 miles bike, 6.2 mile run.
I crossed the finish line.
I don't still know I won the race because, like, people started before me, people started after me, and they take the cumulative time at the end.
And so I, like, my grandma's there because she lives in Chicago, like, gives me a big hug.
Like, I'm so proud of you.
You weren't able to walk again, and here you are finishing triathlon.
Let's go get lunch.
And so I, you know, grab my wetsuit and my bike.
My grandma and I sit down to have lunch, and as we're walking back to the car, she's like...
Do you want to see, like, what place you came in your age group?
And I was like, sure, like, that would be cool.
Like, let's go see how I did.
And we wander over to, like, the scorer's table.
And the guy's like, I'm like, oh, you know, I'm trying to figure out a place.
What's your name?
I was like, oh, I'm calling a break.
They're like, we've been calling your name over the loudspeaker for the last 20 minutes.
I'm like, oh, why?
Did I, like, do something wrong?
And they're like, you won.
Like, my age group?
And they're like, no, you won.
Like, the whole race.
It was just this surreal, surreal moment in my life.
I mean, it was wild, but for me, in that moment, what I thought back, I was like, it was cool to pat myself on the back, like, holy shit, I just did this crazy thing.
But it was more so, going back to your initial question about the darkness versus the light, at least in my journey, was I was like, wow, this was a sliding doors moment.
What had happened had my mom not Come in with this air of positivity and force me to set this tangible goal.
Like, I'm certain my life would be nowhere where it was today.
But then it's not, I wasn't like, oh, wow, I'm some superhuman freak that can do these things.
I was like, wow, humans, all of us, we all have these reservoirs of untapped potential inside of us and can achieve extraordinary things when we set our minds to it.
And so what it did for me is just spark this curiosity, like, well, what else can I do if I set my mind to it?
So sure enough, it was a Sunday when I raced the Chicago Triathlon.
I coincidentally met, who became a huge mentor and influence in my life that afternoon, a guy named Brian Gelber, who ended up being my first sponsor.
And he said to me, you won the Chicago Triathlon today?
Do you think you should maybe do something about that?
And I was like, yeah, but I've got a job and I don't have any money.
I would need a sponsor.
He's like, I'll be your first sponsor if it's something you want to take seriously.
And so, literally, that was on a Sunday.
Monday morning, I walk in and quit my job.
Immediately.
joe rogan
Oh my god.
colin obrady
And two weeks later I'm living in Australia training triathlon full time and ended up racing triathlon professionally for the U.S. national team all over the world for the next six years.
Wow.
What a crazy story.
It was a crazy moment.
joe rogan
And what happened ultimately with the injuries that you sustained from the fire?
colin obrady
You know, all things considered, that was January 14, 2008. So it's just over 11 years ago now.
And I, you know, I ultimately have been pretty all right.
I mean, I've got some scars, but it's pretty faint.
I was able to gain back most of the full flexibility in my legs.
If you look at my left foot, it's where the worst, worst burns, but where the rope really just like sat on my foot for a long time must have.
That's still pretty thick with scar tissue.
When I'm in the mountains, when I'm in places like climbing Mount Everest like I did, pulling across Antarctica, all the things, I have to be really aware because my skin regulates heat not in the best way.
Heat and cold, it's still not like normal skin.
joe rogan
Because of the scar tissue?
colin obrady
The scar tissue just carries the heat a little bit different for some reason.
I guess I don't know exactly why.
joe rogan
Is it not as porous?
colin obrady
Yeah, it's not as porous.
joe rogan
Because it's covered over.
colin obrady
Exactly.
And actually, in the early days, for the first five years, I don't get this so often anymore.
But in the first literally five years of this, if I bumped my legs into like a table or someone just bumped a chair into me, nothing, like lightly, I would usually get a little cut there.
So it was just super fragile.
It was almost like glass skin kind of with not the same sort of flexibility that you normally have.
But 10, 11 years on now, I would say it's pretty much 100%.
I mean, the things I've done with my legs and body in the last 10 years, I think, prove at least that my body's doing all right.
So I feel extremely, extremely fortunate to have recovered as well as I did.
And, you know, more than anything, I attest that to, of course, the physical ability for my body to recover in the way it did.
But I think that, at least for me, started with the mind, started with that positivity of my mother and the duration of the many different things I've done since then.
joe rogan
And you said you sustained ligament damage to your joints and your knees?
colin obrady
Yeah, so there's basically, again, I'm not, my anatomy, I have other skills, but my full anatomy is not, I'm not a doctor, let's put it that way.
But yeah, basically the ligaments, particularly on the backs of my knees, so I don't know exactly what that ligament is that goes through there.
That was really jammed up with the scar tissue.
So I wasn't able for a long time to fully bend my knees and flex them in the full way.
And the same thing in the ankles, whatever that ligament is that goes sort of basically, not your Achilles, but the other side of your foot, basically.
That part was just so much scar tissue had formed where the skin was healing around that.
And from the damage to the ligaments, it wasn't sort of being able to fluidly flex in the way that you normally would see a foot.
Imagine not being able to point your foot, basically, if you're putting your leg forward out, back like that.
joe rogan
Yeah.
colin obrady
For a long time.
So I was kind of dragging my feet around that first year.
Wow.
joe rogan
So did you have to just push through the scar tissue and break it up?
colin obrady
Yeah.
I mean, there was a lot of, obviously, PT. A lot of...
joe rogan
Massage?
colin obrady
Massage.
I'll tell you a funny story.
It's funny.
I haven't thought of this story in a long time.
I don't know if I've ever told this story, actually.
So when I got burned, I'd been traveling by myself in Thailand or around the world, but I actually met up With my childhood best friend, his name's David Boyer, who actually married my sister and they have two kids.
So my childhood best friend turned into my brother-in-law, which is pretty fun.
But anyways, he had actually been with me when I got burned.
So those first five days in the hospital before my mom got there, he was with me.
And was a saint.
You know, we're both these scared little 22-year-old kids, and he's, like, trying to do his best to, like, look after me, and he's freaked out.
But when I get back to Portland, his mother, who was kind of a second mother for me growing up, her name's Kate Boyer, she obviously was like, wow, this could have been my son, just as it had been, you know, her son, you know, it kind of felt, like, protective of me.
So, she comes over to my house one day and she goes, you know, I've been doing some untraditional healing work.
Would you be open to that?
And I, at this point, was like, I'll take anything.
What do you got in mind?
And she was like, well, I've been working with this pranic healing shaman.
Do you want to check that out?
And I literally was like, I was like saying yes to everything at this point.
Like, I'm looking for any way to recover.
And I was like, well, what is it?
And she was like, well, they don't even touch you.
It's just light healing.
And so, I go to this basement house.
I'm in Portland and I meet this guy and he's sitting there with a bucket of salt in front of him and he starts, he doesn't touch me at all.
He's just like waving his hands in front of like my body and my heart and he's like looking really intensely at my foot and I sit there for like an hour.
The guy never touches me, nothing.
He's just like looking at me, waving his hand in this and he's like, okay, I'm done now.
And I'm like, okay, what did you do?
And he was telling, I opened up this chakra, I opened up that, I did this, but what I mostly did was I put this force field of white light around your left foot.
And I'm like, I mean, I'm down with some untraditional stuff, but I was kind of like, uh-huh.
Cool.
Like, thanks.
I appreciate it.
And I was like, what's this bucket?
And he was like, this is the salt bucket that takes the negative energy away from your foot and your leg and puts the negative energy in there as I'm bringing in this light.
And there's this pranic healing.
And he's like, so you have this light blue force field over your left foot right now, which was the worst burned part of my body.
He goes, I would recommend not showering for the next couple of days as you might wash off the force field.
joe rogan
What jail is that going in now?
unidentified
Yeah.
colin obrady
So I tell this story with a total smile, cheeky smile on my face, because that's funny, I haven't thought of this story in a long time.
But I will say this.
The next day, I walked further than I had the rest of the time.
So you want to call that placebo, you want to call it whatever.
I emotionally wasn't fully bought in on the pranic healing, although like I said, I am into a lot of alternative modalities.
joe rogan
God, I wish it was true.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
I wish it was true.
I met a lady at the comedy store once told me she does Reiki healing.
She kind of rubbed her hands together and waved them in front of me.
I'm like, what are you doing?
She's like, do you feel that?
I'm like, I don't feel shit.
I don't know what you're talking about.
colin obrady
So that part, I don't know if it worked or it didn't work, but the combination of the amount of people in the hospital with the physical therapist, with my mother at home, with Kate Boyer taking me to the pranic healing, a culmination of all of those things somehow did work.
Unlock the scar tissue and allow me to make a full recovery.
I mean, it was a lot of hard work for, you know, a year plus to get back on my feet, but I got there.
joe rogan
Well, I'm sure there's something to be said for believing or at least having positive thoughts about your healing and making sure that you look at it in terms of like, this can be done, but...
I'm very skeptical of the salt man.
colin obrady
Like I said, the salt man, take it for what it is.
Like I said, I'm telling that story not as an advocate for pranic healing necessary.
But I will say, agreeing with what you just said, there is something about that.
There is something about being wrapped in the positivity that I was with my mother in that moment of just being like, hey.
Like, let's get through this.
Let's figure this out together.
Like, let's focus our mind on something.
And a lot of, you know, even as I go through Antarctica, you know, how did you do that?
Like, you know, people ask me this question, like, are you a superhuman?
And I'm like, yeah, I'm a superhuman.
And so are you.
Like, that's how I feel.
Like, we all have this capacity in our minds to unlock all sorts of things.
I mean, if you want to paint pictures, compose music, start a business, you know, sit in a warehouse and do a podcast, whatever it is you want to do.
You can fucking do amazing things.
And having that belief does add up to that.
I mean, that's step one, in my opinion, is visualizing that and believing it.
joe rogan
And on the flip side, having a negative self-worth or a negative opinion of what you're about to do or a negative thought about the future can also manifest all sorts of terrible results.
colin obrady
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
joe rogan
I mean, placebo effect is a real thing.
We know that, right?
We know that if you really do believe that you're going to get better because of some sugar pill they give you, there's a tangible result.
colin obrady
100%.
joe rogan
If you really believe.
colin obrady
Yeah.
joe rogan
So if that salt guy...
The thing about all that stupid shit is, if you believe it, it actually has an effect.
There's a lot of healers out there that...
At least on paper, are totally full of shit.
But if you believe in these assholes...
colin obrady
Yeah, that can make a big difference.
joe rogan
It's very slippery.
The human mind is such a slippery thing.
colin obrady
I mean, and I'll go back to my own experience, and again, I don't know how ephemeral or out there you want to get, but I'm out there in Antarctica, 54 days, alone.
Like, I'm telling you I'm doing this for this bigger purpose.
I feel like I'm tapped into that.
And like, legitimately, there were moments, at least for me, whether I'm manifesting that in my mind, whatever you want to call it, that I am actually feeling energetically uplifted by the people pushing me on.
Like, there were days that were incredibly hard where I would sit there and I'd be like, oh my god, I don't know if I can do this, and I'm done like, boom.
Like, I would get over, I would hit with this sort of larger purpose, this larger outcome, and Again, I'm not a super religious person.
I was actually raised on a hippie commune.
I come from a pretty untraditional background, but the energetic field, whatever you want to call that, or if that's just the belief in something, the power of that, I felt the strength from those moments.
There was moments when my body switched from kind of being negative, oh my God, another hard day out here, oh my God, it's minus 25, to tapping into those flow states.
Again, I don't have perfect words for that.
You know, I'm starting to try to build my vocabulary around that.
But that energy, I think it just derives from what you're saying.
If you start to believe it, if you can believe like, hey, there's a larger purpose in this, or hey, this blue force field's gonna heal my foot.
There is something that if you can originate that positivity in your mind that I think can give us incredible amounts of strength and then we can tap into something greater.
joe rogan
Well, I think there's definitely something to what you were saying about the untapped limits of the human potential and that there's most people barely scratch the surface of that and if you really firmly get into that zone and believe you can do things that people just...
They really don't have any idea what they can do if they have to, because people are rarely pushed to their actual limits.
colin obrady
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's been said many times before I say it, but that idea that growth happens outside the comfort zone.
And one of the things that I've personally thought about a lot in this space is, you know, I got severely burned in this fire.
Well, I chose to jump the rope, so I chose to be a knucklehead 22-year-old kid on a beach in Thailand, but I wasn't like, God, I want to get severely burned today.
Like, that happened to me.
Right?
Which forced me through this intense, tragic moment.
But from that, I was able to learn of this sort of untapped potential inside of me because of the outcome, because of winning this triathlon.
But what I realized is that it's hard to choose that path often.
It's hard to push yourself outside of those boundaries.
But things that are, you know, quote-unquote forced on you, I mean, let's look at something that half this population essentially does.
Give birth, like childbirth, natural childbirth.
It's been happening since the beginning of time, and that's an incredibly intense physical manifestation of the power of the human body.
I mean, I can't even imagine, obviously, what that would look like, nor will I ever be able to experience that, but that's incredibly powerful.
Or times when people, you know, are forced to go through a cancer diagnosis and have to go through radiation and chemo and, you know, facing the mortality and all this sort of stuff.
People get through those, but oftentimes these tragedies have to be forced upon us for us to do them.
And so my exploration now with my creative artwork, I call it, with these expeditions, these world record projects that push my body and mind, it's me choosing to step into those moments.
It's me choosing to put my body and mind in these intense moments because of a deep curiosity of like, what are the limits of human potential?
What are my limits?
What are our limits collectively?
And can my physical expression of this inspire other people to innovate, create, and do amazing things in the world and in other modalities and canvases?
joe rogan
Well, that's one of the weird things about people doing extraordinary things like what you did is that you absolutely will give other people fuel to accomplish things in their life.
Inspiration is so critical for human beings.
I mean, I draw upon it from so many different sources, from David Goggins and a bunch of my other friends, my friend Cameron Haynes and a lot of other people that are endurance athletes and different people that I've interviewed on this podcast.
But there's something that happens when you realize that people can do extraordinary things that makes you believe In the potential, not just in that person, but also in yourself.
colin obrady
Absolutely.
I mean, you know, Gog is a great example of that.
I've never met him, but, you know, I've personally derived inspiration from that guy.
I mean, he gets out there, you know, you can't run 100 miles.
Like, I'll show you I can run 100 miles, you know?
And he's pushing his body to extreme ways.
Or, you know, I love what he says about the 40%.
You know, I think about it a little bit different in my mind.
But, like, what are those limits?
I mean, I don't know if it's 40% or 50%.
joe rogan
People quit at 40%.
colin obrady
People quit.
People quit.
That I can't voice comes up, and he's proven it so as many other people of actually when you say I can, actually when you don't stop, you get stronger.
And for me, in my own story, in my own journey, I think that final day, that final 32-hour push proves it.
Three days before that, you know, I'm videotaping all this.
I'm trying to capture as much content to be able to share with people of this crazy, weird place that's in Antarctica by yourself.
And like, day 49, day 50, like, I'm literally crying into my GoPro being like, I'm running out of food.
I'm exhausted.
I don't know if I can keep doing this.
I'm just like, worked, right?
But sure enough...
I don't say I can't.
Was that 40%, was that 50%?
That's that moment when I wanted to quit or I should have quit.
But then the strongest, most amazing moment of my entire athletic career that spans decades happens three days later because I kept pushing.
It's not like I rested for three days and pulled that off.
I never took a rest day in 54 days.
I pulled my sled 12 to 13 hours every single day.
And on the last day, it was the strongest as possible.
So I think it proves if we can push through that I can't moment, no, it's not going to work, that you can get there.
And unfortunately, we talk about 40% with Goggins.
I actually think a lot of people quit at 1%.
They're sitting behind their office.
They're like, one day I want to travel overseas.
Or I hate this job.
I've got this great business idea.
But I'm Immediately, they're like, but I can't.
Like, I've got no money to start this business.
I've got no this.
Like, when I first set off my first world record in 2016, 2014, I sat with Jenna in my house, one-bedroom apartment with a whiteboard, and we're like, I'm going to see if I can set the world record for the Explorer's Grand Slam, something fewer than 50 people in the world have ever done, and I'm going to be the fastest.
Climb Everest, climb Denali, climb Kilimanjaro, North Pole, South Pole, back-to-back.
I hadn't climbed a bunch of mountains.
It'd be pretty easy to say I can't.
Oh, and by the way, we have no money to do this.
We have no platform.
I have, like, 200 Instagram followers.
Like, I mean, I've got...
Nothing.
But we just sat there and we're like, no, instead of saying I can't, let's say I can.
What's the first step to that?
We literally get out our laptops and we're like, we want to build this big media campaign where lots of people follow and get press.
We know nothing about it.
We have no background.
Google, what's the difference between marketing and PR? I mean, we are literally asking Google the most basic of all basic questions.
unidentified
Wow.
colin obrady
But, you know, we continue to say, like, let's get coffee with our one friend who knows something about this.
We should probably get a website.
How does one build a website?
And it goes on and on like this.
joe rogan
How long ago did you start this journey?
colin obrady
So that was 2014 when we dreamed that up.
So the world record was- That was five years ago.
Yeah, so to see if I could set the world record for something called the Explorer's Grand Slam.
So it's climbing tallest mountain on each of the seven continents, seven summits.
joe rogan
And before that, had you done anything like that, or had it just been athletics?
colin obrady
So I grew up in Portland, so I grew up in the outdoors.
But I mean, to go climb Everest at Denali, sort of thing, no.
The short answer is, I mean, I climbed a few mountains.
It's not like I'd never been in the snow before.
I'd wear crampons.
I had zero experience, but not even close to the experience that you would think one would need to do that.
joe rogan
And to just break world records doing it.
colin obrady
Not just do it, but be the fastest person to ever complete it.
Like I said, it ended up being 139 days straight through to climb all those mountains.
Didn't...
I think we had to clip up a second ago of something on Everest.
But yeah, I mean, to do all of that, it started from this place of not, of believing I can.
And then, you know, again, it's fun to talk about the epic adventure, but for me, it's actually fun to talk about what happened behind the scenes of that.
Because what actually happened, like, people applaud our success now.
This is me.
joe rogan
This is you walking.
colin obrady
In Everest.
Walking across a ladder that's about a 300-foot hole of crevasse on the other side of it that you have to go through on your way up the Mount Everest climbing route.
joe rogan
And so your crampons are clicking and you're hooking them on the ladder as you walk across, and if you fall, you die?
colin obrady
Yes.
unidentified
Okay, great.
joe rogan
Fuck, man.
Watch this again.
This is so awful.
It's so awful to look at.
Because you're basically just walking this tightrope on...
Let me hear it.
Listen to that click.
Folks, I implore you to go to the Instagram page so you get the full freak out.
colin obrady
Look how those...
joe rogan
They're tied together too, those ladders.
colin obrady
Yeah.
joe rogan
Tied together.
colin obrady
It's rickety as could be.
It's a 300 foot cavern over there.
joe rogan
Oh, fuck all of this.
unidentified
Yeah.
joe rogan
Jesus.
And you're looking down because you have a GoPro on.
colin obrady
And we cut the sound off at the end there, but at the very end I go, whoo!
Because there was 50 of those ladders, but I was cheering every fucking time I got across.
I was like, yep, one more down, whoo!
joe rogan
You did that 50 times?
colin obrady
In the Kumbu, I actually go through that section a couple of times.
It's a very dangerous section of the mountain.
But yeah, I went about 50 of those ladders, so...
joe rogan
When you went through Everest, did you see the bodies?
colin obrady
So, I fortunately didn't see any bodies up there.
joe rogan
Fortunately or unfortunately?
colin obrady
Fortunately.
I mean, I'm not like trying to see dead bodies, you know, but they're more prevalent on the climbing route on the north side.
The day that I did summit, three people died on the day that I summited.
joe rogan
Fuck!
colin obrady
When I, yeah, when I, so, to set the, I mean, to talk about Everest, I mean, for me, it was major setbacks.
It was the eighth of nine expeditions in this sequence, so I'd done a hundred days of other expeditions leading up to Everest to do this Explorers Grand Slam world record.
I'm trying to climb Everest.
I'm exhausted from a hundred days.
I just come from the North Pole before that Kilimanjaro, before that, you know, Elbris, all these other mountains.
And then I make my summit push on Everest.
I'm not climbing with a guide or anything.
It's just myself and one Sherpa who I met climbing in Nepal the year previous when I was training for this.
And so it's just the two of us.
And we climb up into Camp 4. So Everest has, you know, four camps.
There's base camp and then there's camps progressively higher on the mountain so you can get your body acclimatized.
And we get up into Camp 4. Have you read the book Into Thin Air by John Krakauer or anything about No.
There's a famous book that's written about it where 11 people die and right in this moment it's called the death zone where you enter above 26,000 feet the human body basically can't survive for long even with supplemental oxygen and this massive snowstorm and windstorm blows in like kind of out of nowhere and we're trying to push for the summit it takes us two and a half hours just to set up our tent and get inside and we know like it's over like we're not we're not going to summit Everest like in this storm there's no way so we just survive the night and Wake up the next morning, still getting pounded by this weather and actually have to climb back down the mountain.
So climb back down the mountain all the way to camp too.
And they're like, well, that's probably it.
You don't usually spend a night out in the death zone and make a second attempt.
And you've already tried all these other mountains.
You're 100 plus days in this journey.
And I was like, man, I want to see if I can get back up there.
And this other guy who I met on another team had some supplemental auctions.
So I had to use some of my supplemental auctions.
So my supply stores are limited now as well.
And so, he says to me, And we decide we're going to go for the summit.
We call back down to base camp.
What's the weather forecast?
And they're like, well, it's the exact same forecast we told you before.
It might hold, in which case you'll be fine, or it might turn into what you guys just survived.
And if you're not near your tent and you're up on the summit ridge of Everest, it's going to get pretty bad.
And so we kind of go back and forth.
Should we go for it?
Shouldn't we go for it?
We just decide to go for it.
But this crazy thing happens, which is, you may have read about this or heard of this if you know much about Everest, but basically, no one climbed Everest in 2014 or 15 because a huge avalanche killed 16 shorepers in 2014. The mountain was closed.
And in 2015, there was a huge earthquake in Nepal that shut the climbing season down.
So no one's even climbed the mountain in two years.
But all of a sudden, because of these weather delays, I end up there and there's 100 people going for the summit on the exact same day.
So basically, traffic jam on the worst fucking place to be in a traffic jam possible.
So Pasang Bodhi and I, we go, okay, let's figure out how to climb this thing.
And we leave camp.
You know, there's a photo that I took for leaving camp.
There's all these lights going up the side of the mountain.
And it's because there's one rope that everyone works to put in.
So everyone's using the same rope.
And all of a sudden, we're behind 100 people.
And if you stand there, wind chill minus 40 degrees, we're going to get frostbite.
We're going to not be able to make it.
And so Pasang Bodhi and I look at each other and we go, let's unclip from the rope.
And so we actually decide to unclip from the rope, climb up all the way to the balcony from the South Call, the death zone area I was mentioning before, up to about 28,000 feet on rope.
Because we actually think it's more dangerous to climb roped behind all the people than it is to risk a fall.
joe rogan
Right, you don't know those people.
You don't know what they're like.
colin obrady
And people are, I mean, you're on Everest at 28,000 feet and people are walking, I mean, one step per minute sometimes.
I mean, it is brutal.
And so, I mean, I'm walking maybe two steps every 30 seconds, but I'm like Usain Bolt, like, flying past these people.
Yeah, this gives an example of like, so you're in it, like the world, the worst place in the world to be, you know, in a traffic jam, as you can see here from this photo I posted that day, but But anyways, I get up to this edge and finally it's too steep.
It's too dangerous for us to be unclipped from the rope any longer.
We're like, we're just going to have to clip in and settle in behind.
You know, we'd pass like 50 or 60 people, so we're in a much better place than ever.
I still have this one big puffy coat.
It's actually the same puffy coat I used in Antarctica, the big like Michelin man coat.
And I'm like, we're going to slow down.
I better put this big jacket on.
And so, I take my jacket off, I undo my gloves real quick to put this big jacket on over me to warm myself up, and I look down, and my right hand is black.
Like, just black as black can be.
And I'm like, holy shit, like, telltale sign of frostbite.
Like, oh my god.
Same thing, we've got school kids following along, we've got family fun, the whole thing, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm going to lose my right hand.
Is Jenna still going to love me?
What's my family going to think?
And then, I don't say anything to Pasang Bodhi, I jam my hand back in these big gloves, and I go, okay.
And I don't recommend this thought process, but I go, well, if I'm going to lose my hand anyways, wouldn't it be cooler to lose my hand but also have summited Everest?
joe rogan
How black was it?
colin obrady
I mean, it was black.
Like this can of coffee?
Yes.
Really?
I mean, it was black.
joe rogan
Did you take a picture of it?
colin obrady
So the sun was just below the horizon, so it was like dusk.
And I look down at this point, and then the sun comes up.
So I jam my hand back in this glove.
And I don't say anything to Pasang Boat.
I'm like, let's keep pushing for the summit.
So we go for the next three hours.
And the whole time I'm like, oh my God, I'm such an idiot.
Like, I'm going to lose my hand.
My hand's frostbitten, this and that.
And so we get up and we're about 30 minutes below Mount Everest Summit.
And it should be a beautiful moment for me.
Like, since a little kid, I dreamed like, summiting Everest would be like the greatest accomplishment of my life.
Oh my God.
And I'm thinking like, just in this dark place.
But I also haven't taken a single photo, basically.
And I'm like, well, I got to get like a photo or a video of, you know, the famous Mount Everest Summit.
So I pull up my GoPro to shoot a video.
I shoot this short little video which kind of shows this crazy exposure that I'm on, like one side 5,000 feet down into China, on one side 5,000 feet into Palm, this tiny little knife-edge ridge.
And of course, I have to adjust my gloves again.
This is from The Summit.
And I pull my GoPro out, have to mess with my gloves, put it back in, and I look at my hand and I start going, waving my arms in the air and go, Pasang Bodhi, my hand's back!
My hand's back!
And he's like, what are you doing?
It just so happened that the glove warmers in my gloves, the chemical hand warmers, had broken open and the charcoal and the copper filings of the chemical hand warmers had dyed my hand black.
joe rogan
Oh, jeez.
unidentified
And my hand was completely fine.
joe rogan
Oh, God.
colin obrady
And so, yeah, this clip here, if you play it from the top, it's me reaching the summit.
That's Pasang Bodhi right there.
joe rogan
So when...
colin obrady
On the summit of Mount Everest.
unidentified
Top of the world.
No words can describe.
colin obrady
Wow.
joe rogan
Did you experience any discomfort in your hands before?
colin obrady
So, again, we're talking about a lot of this podcast has been about mindset, which is one of my favorite topics.
And just like we said, you can convince yourself that the salt man is fixing your foot.
Yeah.
I'm on Everest.
I'm at 28,000 feet.
My brain's not working very well.
I know that the weather's coming in bad, that people are going to get maybe frostbite based on the forecast.
And I look down and I see my hands black.
Where does my mind go?
It's not like, oh, let me think about this.
My hand warmer must have broken open to this.
It was weird because I didn't feel my hand getting cold.
My hand feels fine.
But I'm on Everest, my hand's black.
That means, you know, in my brain, I'm like, I have frostbite.
So it's just like, it's a weird thing where you can take your mind, like, a lot of this, the positivity of this.
My mom went to the negative immediately, like, your hand's gone, it's frozen off, like, the end.
Oh, Jesus.
joe rogan
What happened to the people that died?
Were they on the rope?
colin obrady
Yeah, so unfortunately that day, the weather actually did get pretty bad later in the day.
So fortunately, I was able to get down before the weather got too bad.
But the people that died that day, one slipped and fell down these ropes over on Lhotse, which is the adjacent mountain, but sharing some of the same ropes on the same route.
And then two people died from altitude sickness.
So basically, either running out of oxygen up there and not being able to get back down to their tents.
I think those people actually did get carried back down to their tents that night and then died in the tents that night.
So...
It's called cerebral edema, which is basically your brain fills with fluid from being at the high altitude and not getting enough oxygen.
And it's a killer up there.
And one of the crazy things about being up there is you read about it, but you really can't rescue somebody very easily up there.
I mean, to carry a human body down to rescue them is nearly impossible.
And I kind of always thought in my mind, if I saw somebody lying on the ground, I would summon the energy to pick them up.
And I was actually coming back from the summit And I was on the South Summit, so just below the Everest Summit, you know, at 28,800 feet or something like that.
And this Brazilian woman who I'd met in base camp named Tice, who I've, you know, become friends with here in Nepal for a couple months.
You start talking to people, getting friends with other climbers, whatever.
And I see her lying on the ground with her head, like, leaned back and her oxygen mask off to the side.
And I'm like, oh, my God, like, this is the moment that I most feared.
Like, somebody who I know is lying here on the side of the mountain.
And I think to myself, I've got to pick her up.
I've got to pick her up and somehow, like, carry her down this mountain.
And I lean over to grab her and I try with all my might to do anything and I realize I can't move her six inches.
Like, I'm completely exhausted.
Muscles aren't working.
Brain's not working.
So, I do the only thing I can think to do is I just wrap her in my arms and I say, Tyce, like, if you can hear me, it's Colin.
You need to get up.
You need to get your oxygen mask on.
You need to start moving.
Like, please get up.
Please get up.
no response she was climbing with a sherpa another guide right next to her and they were like look like we're having trouble with her oxygen mask but we're gonna fix it like it's gonna be all right and i was like just kind of going through this intense moment like what do i do how can i help and it's as weird as you know i'm not proud of it necessarily to say but like there was nothing i could do like it's just the most helpless feeling in the world where you want to help the common person a friend i mean this person might be a friend but if any human being is lying on the ground in the snow you're like i want to help this person get down this mountain and
And I was just so close to on my limit up there in the summit, there was nothing I could do.
Fortunately, she was not one of the people that passed away that day.
Her team did get her oxygen mask on her, and she actually made it to the summit and back down safely.
joe rogan
Wow, so she went up?
colin obrady
She ended up going up from there, which to me is like another whole crazy part of that story.
But it was an interesting lesson for me in like, you know, you hear these stories, you can't move bodies up there, there's nothing you can do to rescue.
And people have been criticized for not, you know, doing these crazy rescues when things have gone wrong up there.
But it really hit home for me how hard it would be to move somebody down that mountain from that altitude.
And so when you're up there, unlike Antarctica, I was actually alone, and Everest, like I said, was a pretty crowded day.
You're essentially alone up there.
If you can't keep putting one foot in front of the other up in the death zone, there's not a whole lot that you can do.
joe rogan
So the three people that died up there, did they leave them there?
colin obrady
I'm not sure with those specific people, because sometimes you can get a large team of people to slowly lower people down.
In a weird way, it's actually easier to lower a dead body than it is to lower a live person, because a dead body, you don't have to worry about breaking bones and things like that if you're lowering someone over rocks and things like that.
So I actually believe those bodies are no longer there.
but there are quite a few bodies still on the mountain, and particularly the north side, the Chinese, so you can climb it from two sides, the Nepal side, which is more commonly climb where I climb, but the Tibet side, the Tibet side is known for having a lot more of the body still actually on the climbing route, for sure.
So, but for me on that, I mean, that day in a crazy way continues on because I got back down to camp four, and I'm thinking I'm gonna sleep for the night rest and come back down the mountain.
It usually takes a few days to get back down the mountain.
At this point, you know, I've only got one more mountain to climb to finish my world record, the Explorer's Grand Slam.
And I was about two months ahead of schedule.
So if I had climbed Denali in the next two months, North America's tallest mountain up in Alaska, I was going to set this world record that I was.
And so I called back home to Jenna and I was like, I made it.
Like, I made it.
And, uh, earlier in the day when my hands had gotten frozen, I had actually had, uh, uh, heated boot warmers.
And so I had turned the heat in my boot warmers up as hot as possible.
So I'm like, if my hand is frostbite and what would my feet look like?
So I cranked those up as hot as possible.
And so Jenna's like, Hey, like, how are you doing?
Like, you all right?
We've heard some reports over social media.
That's been a really hard day up there.
Like, I'm like, yeah, I'm all right.
Like no frostbite, no injuries.
Like I'm good.
And I was like, well, actually, um, I, uh, I burned my feet.
And she's like, oh, frostbite?
Like, how bad is it?
And I was like, no, not frostbite.
I actually burned two, like, silver dollar circles in the bottoms of both of my feet from turning my boot warmers up too much.
And she's like, wait, let me get this straight.
Like, you climb Everest, you don't get frostbite, but you burn yourself?
She was like, you, your feet, fire, like, just like, this is a bad situation.
But then she goes on and she was like...
She literally said, the next thing she said to me, I will literally never forget in my life.
But she goes, so you're in your tent, right?
You took your boots off and everything.
You're curled up in there.
I'm like, yeah.
And she's like, well, I actually need you to put your boots back on.
And I'm like, excuse me?
Like, I just, what?
Like, she was like, yeah, so we've been doing some calculating back home.
And it just so happens that if you can get to the summit of Denali in the next week, you can set not one, but two world records.
And I was like, well, that sounds nice, but I'm below the summit of Everest.
How the hell is that going to work?
She's like, okay, put your boots back on down now.
Climb all the way back to base camp.
There's no time for you to sleep, but a helicopter is going to take you to Kathmandu.
No time for a hotel, no time for a shower, but an evening flight is going to take you to Dubai, to Seattle, to Anchorage.
And instead of having three weeks to climb Denali, you'll have three days.
But if you can do all of that, you'll set another world record.
Like, ready?
unidentified
Go!
Jesus.
colin obrady
So I was in disbelief, but knowing better than to disobey not only my amazing wife, but the planner and logistics expert in running the background of all this, I sure enough put my boots back on, wiped the slate clean, and found myself, you know, just 100 hours after standing on the summit of Everest, I found myself over in Alaska trying to push up to the summit to try to set the two world records and not just the one.
joe rogan
Whoa.
Now, what kind of recovery does your body need when you exert yourself like that?
colin obrady
Yeah.
joe rogan
Climbing Everest, I would think that your body must...
You had to be in some kind of state of shock or...
colin obrady
I mean, completely.
There's some clips of me on Denali in those next few days where I'm just absolutely trashed.
Like, I'm like, barely eyes open.
I'm going to try to push for the summit.
I'm going to do this.
The one benefit, I would say there is one...
Most of it's not a benefit, but I'll keep it in the positive.
The one benefit is usually in the high-altitude mountaineering, you need to acclimatize.
So your body creates more red blood cells when you go up into the thinner air to allow you to breathe oxygen better at the higher altitudes.
A mountain like Denali normally takes three weeks to climb because you're coming from sea level and to get up to 20,000 feet, you can't just get dropped off there.
If you or I right now got dropped off on the summit of Denali, we would pass out in a matter of minutes, right?
But because I'm coming from Everest at 29,000 feet, it puts Denali into perspective, not from a technical mountaineering standpoint, because it's still a very dangerous and very challenging mountain, and in a lot of ways, a harder mountain to climb than Everest, technically.
But 20,000 feet, my body can handle the rapid ascent a little bit better.
If I can muster the energy to do it, the physiology of my body is actually in a better place to climb higher, faster, if that makes sense.
joe rogan
No, it does make sense.
But man...
So when you're done with this, how long did it take you to just feel like a normal person again?
colin obrady
Yeah, so I was on Denali.
I ended up summiting in three days and setting, so the Explorers Grand Slam was the seven summits plus a North and South Pole, but the second world record was just the seven summits by themselves.
So even though I went to the poles, I still set the speed record for the seven summits as well.
So seven summits, 131 days.
And the Explorers Grand Slam 139. And then I returned to Alaska and then home to Portland.
And honestly, it was a good six months until I felt normal again, at least.
And I'm definitely, like I said, I'm only about five weeks out from Antarctica right now.
I haven't really taken a lot of rest of recovery.
I've been on the road still doing various things and I'm nowhere near recovered.
It's going to take a long time to get back.
So these exertions, I love them.
I love pushing my body but the cycle of high performance is also knowing how to recover, recover well, good nutrition, all that and it takes a long time.
That one took six months and I would imagine this Antarctica recovery is going to take a long time as well.
joe rogan
Now when you say it took six months, are you monitoring your physiological levels?
What are you monitoring and how do you find out where you're at?
colin obrady
Yeah, so I started to do a lot of blood work actually early on in my triathlon career.
Actually early on in my professional triathlon career, I mentioned I moved to Australia not long after turning pro and coming out of the gate with this win.
And I had the opportunity to go train with some of the best triathletes in the world.
There's actually, you know, a couple of world champions, a group of 15 of us, a couple of world champions, a female Ironman world champion, a couple of Olympic medalists, I mean, some of the top people in the world, and I'm this, like, up-and-coming professional triathlete.
I think it's so cool that I'm training with the best guys.
It would be like a guy that just gets into the UFC and all of a sudden he's training with the top contenders, the title guys.
I wanted to really roll hard with them.
So I was training super hard to try to keep up with the best guys.
training that were true world-class level and i'm starting out was just too much for me and so it crashed my entire system my testosterone um dropped to that level of a 90 year old man i mean i was like had no testosterone on my body and you know went through some serious overtraining which as you know like it that's no joke um learned that lesson the hard way and that was one of the you know darkest moments of my athletic career but it's also been a net benefit for me as i've gone you know that was back in 2011 or whatever and these prod
these world record projects have been in the And so I learned from that, taking it way too much and not learning how to recover.
To implementing things.
So your question about what did I monitor?
You know, resting heart rate is one that I monitored a lot.
Heart rate variability as well.
As well as certain blood levels, of course, around the whole endocrine system, the testosterone levels, the, you know, different hormone levels and things like that.
So coming back.
I do blood work ahead of time, then come back, just with standard process with the nutrition company, they did all this blood work on me.
So, when I left Antarctica, before flying home, you know, the next place I had to go actually was to New York to do the Today Show, which was a whole weird thing after being alone in Antarctica to have those type of TV cameras in your face.
That's a whole other, like, weird Twilight Zone moment.
But before I even did that, I flew to Charlotte where their Nutrition Innovation Center is and did all my blood work.
And so we can have basically this longitudinal study of my blood work to understand it.
And so I monitor all that and figure out what I'm deficient in, what I need, where my heart rate's at, and basically a lot of inflammation in my body and needing to kind of rid my body of that and fully recover.
joe rogan
So when you're coming back from all these summits and all this time at altitude, what has actually happened to your body that causes you to be really depleted for six months?
What's happening other than the fact that you were at high altitude, low oxygen?
What's taking place?
colin obrady
So one of the things that happens at high altitude that you don't really think about too much, which is your body's not getting...
So the air actually has just as much oxygen in it as it does at sea level, but the air is less dense.
So that means as you breathe in the air, you're literally getting less oxygen into your blood.
joe rogan
It's less dense.
So there's less nitrogen in it?
colin obrady
The pressure changes.
unidentified
Oh.
Right.
colin obrady
So at the high altitude, it's actually the pressure that's changing.
joe rogan
So it's not less oxygen.
colin obrady
There's just as much oxygen, but in a less dense form.
So in the same volume of breath, you're getting less actual O2 into your blood.
joe rogan
And what are you getting?
colin obrady
At the higher altitude.
I guess it's carbon dioxide.
Is that right?
I'm not a doctor, like I said.
All I know is you're getting less oxygen.
You're getting less oxygen in your body.
So what ends up happening is your muscles, of course, need oxygen to perform.
So normally, when I'm in my most elite physical shape, I have a resting heart rate during a professional triathlon career of like 35, getting out of bed, 38. Low enough that if you weren't a professional athlete and you went to a doctor with a heart rate of 35, they'd be like, oh my God, you're going to die.
There's something wrong with you.
But that's also a key marker of elite health performance.
You know that, of course.
But...
What happens is your body's getting so little oxygen, even as your blood is acclimatizing, you're sleeping with a resting heart rate at altitude on Everest at like 90, 100 beats per minute.
So, you know, that's pretty elevated heart rate 24 hours a day, and in my case, for 139 days straight.
So essentially, your heart is just like, even at rest.
And so, what that does to your body in terms of, you know, it throws your hormones around.
Obviously, you lose body weight, body fat, body composition changes.
All of those things really shift and happen in a pretty intense way.
So, coming back, like actually just getting your heart rate back down, getting your, you know, parasympic nervous system to just relax and stress-free and all that kind of stuff, it takes a while for sure.
joe rogan
So what do you do to help yourself recover when you come back?
Is there specific kinds of food that you eat or supplements that you take?
colin obrady
You know, I'll start...
There's a few different things that I find to work well.
One, sleep.
I mean, I think that sleep in our culture in general is really underrated.
I think, you know, if you...
Go in the corporate world and everyone's like, I pulled this all night or I work 120 hours a week, I this, I that, or whatever.
I'm telling you a story about pushing through the night and going 32 hours straight.
There's a time and a place for big pushes without sleep, but we are not built to do that sustainably in any way, shape, or form.
So in my training, when I'm training for these things, I prioritize sleep.
I prioritize taking a nap, the same thing when I'm recovering.
So really making sure I get that sleep is, for me, the most natural way to recover.
On top of that, Soft tissue work.
I'm a huge believer in massage as well as chiropractor.
I've been going to a chiropractor since I was a little kid.
And to me, that makes a big difference just to have everything in alignment, everything kind of, you know, working well, efficiently in my body.
And then, yeah, supplements, you know, definitely reducing inflammation.
So, for me, gut health is huge.
So, getting those probiotics, getting the right stuff in, you know, it's easy to have, you know, that leaky gut or things where you're not getting your nutrition absorbed properly.
And I think we all in various states, you know, deal with that.
You know, the standard American diet for sure leads to that for a lot of people.
So getting that nutrition clean and right.
So yeah, sleep, rest, recovery, nutrition.
And then, you know, I've definitely been taking a lot of supplements through my life.
I err more towards the whole food supplements these days, but I find...
Things like turmeric that really reduce inflammation.
And magnesium definitely helps a lot.
So there's a few things that I take daily.
But really, I think sleep and a clean diet goes a long way.
I've messed with some cryo before.
I find that to be pretty good.
I didn't do that a lot, but I've done that in the last couple years a bit.
So various things.
But yeah, for me, sleep, diet, nutrition is the key to recovery.
joe rogan
And what kind of foods do you eat?
When you say eating clean, do you have a particular way of eating?
colin obrady
I'm recently doing more of a pescatarian diet, so I've mostly cut out meat, although I was raised that way.
My parents have been vegetarians forever.
Well, I should say pescatarian, so they eat some fish, but no chicken, no beef, none of that.
For me, I've actually, even in Antarctica, there was some, in my freeze-dried meals, there was beef and chicken and stuff like that, so it's not something I've cut out of my diet.
Oh, so you brought freeze-dried meals as well as bringing those The Columbars was the main thing, but at every dinner I had one freeze-dried meal at the end of the day that was an extra thousand calories.
joe rogan
So you poured boiling water in a mountain house?
colin obrady
Exactly.
Yeah, it was a company.
It was Alpine Air, but same thing as a mountain house, basically.
So it was rice, noodles mixed with chicken or beef.
But when I say eating clean, I mostly mean just eating whole food stuff.
Not eating processed crap, refined sugars, that kind of stuff.
I mean, I'm a normal human being, so I'm guilty of that as anyone from time to time.
I'm just grabbing the easiest, closest thing.
But, like I said, my dad's an organic farmer.
My mom and my stepdad started a chain of natural foods grocery stores when I was a kid.
So I was really raised around, you know, in the sort of hippie co-op days of the natural foods movement, which of course now with, you know, Amazon owning Whole Foods has tipped a lot more to the mainstream.
But, you know, that was what I was raised around.
And, you know, eating, you know, quinoa, rice, kale, you know, those kinds of things.
Healthy things.
You know, whole food nutrition has gone a long way for me, particularly when I need to recover.
joe rogan
Now, do you mess with CBD at all?
colin obrady
It's not something I've done a lot of.
I hear amazing things.
I'm definitely not opposed to it at all, but I haven't tried it.
What's your experience been with that?
joe rogan
I've been experimenting with it for the last couple years.
It has a pretty profound effect on alleviating soreness, especially joint soreness, and it also makes you feel good.
The word is that it alleviates anxiety, which I don't suffer a lot of, but it just makes me feel relaxed.
colin obrady
Do you take it orally or do you use it topically?
joe rogan
I take a dropper.
It's like a dropper.
I take whatever they say to take, I take five times more than that.
unidentified
Yeah.
colin obrady
Do you take it at night?
joe rogan
I take it during the morning and I take it at night as well.
I just always feel like I'm running my body at redline and running my brain at redline so much.
So whatever they say you need, I just double it for almost everything.
colin obrady
And do you feel like, obviously it doesn't have the THC effects of it, but do you feel like in a...
joe rogan
No.
colin obrady
No, nothing.
Clear-headed, clear-minded.
joe rogan
Yeah, and my THC tolerance is so high.
It doesn't really...
But some forms of it have a small amount of THC, and I think there may be some sort of synergistic effect that happens with the THC combined with the CBD that helps people even more, because a lot of people that have pain...
Particularly chronic pain, they experience a lot of relief from THC, from just smoking it or vaporizing it or using edibles.
So I think that the CBD with a little bit of THC might have a better effect.
A lot of fighters say that.
colin obrady
Sure.
No, I'm interested in trying the CBD for sure.
Something I should definitely try.
Do you find that it gives you like a sustained, like is it relief when it's in your body, like a masking relief?
Or do you feel like it actually is like curing the root cause of that inflammation or anxiety?
joe rogan
I don't think it's masking at all.
I think it's alleviating the inflammation.
It's a very healthy thing for your body to eat.
Obviously, there's a bunch of different oils that will alleviate inflammation.
Different essential fatty acids and fish oils are very good for inflammation.
I think anything that you can take that helps your body mitigate inflammation.
Inflammation seems to be a gigantic problem with just...
Not with pain, just with pain, but I think also with anxiety.
I think it's entirely possible that feelings of discomfort, you know, like when you see people that are anxious, they often look bloated to me.
They often look like, ugh.
I think it's just an overall sense of unwellness, you know, and I think that a poor diet exacerbates that and a good diet can alleviate some of those symptoms and I think that CBD is a big part of that.
colin obrady
A hundred percent.
I mean, yeah, I'm interested to try that for sure.
I've definitely, that inflammation, even for me coming back from Antarctica in this quarter of recovery phase, what's weird is like you saw how lean I got then, but my body, I think, because it was so depleted of food source, is now actually almost trying to put fat back on my body of kind of storing that.
So actually, my body composition feels weird to me right now because my body's just trying to figure out where the hell I'm at, and I think a lot of that comes from Yeah, I like it because there's...
joe rogan
Gel tabs are fine, but I think it's unnecessary.
Your body's absorbing the cover.
Just go right to the oil.
I just think it's the best way to do it.
But I'm a big fan of curcumin and turmeric as well.
I think those are really good.
colin obrady
Have you tried ashwagandha or any of the mushroom teas and stuff like that?
joe rogan
I do take this stuff actually that I have right here.
This wasn't a plant.
Lion's mane mushroom elixir.
I love this stuff.
colin obrady
Yeah.
joe rogan
I take this all the time.
I make a tea out of this.
It's really nice.
colin obrady
I've messed with like the cordyceps and the ashwagandha as well to kind of reduce some of the cortisol like emotional or hormonal balances type of stuff.
joe rogan
Cordyceps is fantastic too for endurance.
colin obrady
Yes, 100%.
Yeah.
joe rogan
We have an Onnit product called Shroom Tech Sport that has cordyceps, B vitamins, and a bunch of adaptogens.
It really has a big impact on me in terms of how hard I can push in the gym.
I take it about an hour or so before I work out.
Let your body absorb it.
It just really has a real effect.
It doesn't give me a jittery thing either.
colin obrady
Yeah.
joe rogan
It just gives me more energy.
colin obrady
Just kind of take it an hour before it kind of primes your body for that.
More oxygen uptake.
Is that kind of the idea behind cordyceps?
That's what I've been told.
joe rogan
Yeah, it came out of high-altitude herders.
They noticed that when the cattle were eating certain mushrooms, they had more energy.
And so that's how they started experimenting with this stuff.
They actually grow it on caterpillars.
unidentified
What?
joe rogan
Yeah.
unidentified
How does that work?
joe rogan
So strange, man.
See if you can find it.
Cordyceps mushrooms grown on caterpillars.
colin obrady
I'm picturing like this room of caterpillars with like carrying around mushrooms on their back or something.
joe rogan
It's real freaky.
It's real freaky.
But apparently the way they farm it, that's the way they farm it.
They actually grow it on caterpillars.
unidentified
Huh.
colin obrady
That's fascinating.
Yeah.
unidentified
Fucking weird.
joe rogan
It's expensive shit.
colin obrady
Yeah.
joe rogan
But like there it is.
colin obrady
Oh, wow.
joe rogan
Like how fucking strange.
colin obrady
So those...
At the bottom there, that's the caterpillars and that's the mushroom growing out of their heads or something like that.
joe rogan
I'm like, thank you, I'll take that.
And they snip that shit off the caterpillars.
colin obrady
Holy shit, that's crazy.
joe rogan
Fucking weird, man.
Yeah.
colin obrady
Well, apparently it works.
joe rogan
Well, it does.
Yeah, it's, you know, there's so many benefits.
I mean, Paul Stamets, who's been on the podcast before and I can't wait to get him back on again, but he's a mycologist and it was one of the best podcasts that I've ever done in terms of like really explaining the benefits of different fungi.
colin obrady
and different mushrooms and how many different nutritional benefits you can derive from them I mean I can't agree more I just Just the whole food nutrition from many different levels, whether it's mushrooms, turmeric, these full plant derivatives, I mean, to me, they go a long way in their pure form, for sure.
joe rogan
Yeah.
What do you drink?
Do you drink a lot of water?
Do you drink fruit juices?
Vegetable juices?
colin obrady
Mostly water, to be perfectly honest.
I do usually start the day with a smoothie of some kind, so usually it's got fruit in it.
Obviously fruit.
Another thing I put in there is I've been using this stuff that...
Actually, the company's standard process is just coming out with it, but they let me try it ahead of time.
It's going to make this slow-release glucose, so it's a protein powder, but instead of giving it that glucose spike like you would from a refined sugar or something like that, it's kind of a long-burn, long-chain glucose.
I don't know the full chemistry of that, but I find it makes a big difference.
Rather than kind of just getting that sugar spike early in the day, it actually kind of gives the slow release of energy, and that was actually in the column bars as well, and I really like that, particularly for endurance, because If you start taking the goo packets or something like that, you get that spike of 100 calories.
You get that quick, boom, burst of energy replenishes your glucose source.
But this, I feel like, just is a much slower, cleaner burn and it lasts longer.
For anaerobic stuff, maybe you need that more explosive power or whatever, different things for that.
But for some of the low heart rate, zone 1, zone 2, long grinding type of stuff that I do in the mountains or pulling this sled or whatever, I find it's really good for stuff like that.
joe rogan
Now, what scares me about people like you is, how old are you now?
33. Okay, you're very young.
colin obrady
I'll take that.
joe rogan
This is what I'm worried.
I'm worried that you've already done so much crazy shit that you have to push past the crazy shit you've already done.
And you've already been on Everest.
It sounds like you were kind of like...
You weren't on death's door, but you opened the front gate.
colin obrady
Yeah.
joe rogan
You opened the front gate.
You were on the lawn.
colin obrady
Yeah.
joe rogan
You were on death's lawn.
colin obrady
Sure.
joe rogan
You know?
unidentified
Right?
colin obrady
No, absolutely.
I mean, like I said, the people literally died that day.
Yeah.
joe rogan
What are you going to try to do next?
This is the question.
Do you have some crazy shit in your head right now?
You're like, okay, now I'm going to the moon with a fucking balloon.
colin obrady
You know, it's funny.
It's twofold.
It's an interesting intersection.
I appreciate that you call me young.
I'll take that all day long.
joe rogan
Well, I'm 51, so you are young to me.
colin obrady
Well, I guess in athlete terms, right?
joe rogan
You're in the peak.
colin obrady
Yeah, the peak for endurance athletes, and it's fun to be here.
here but i also think it's a moment in time where uh a little bit of a little bit i'll say i won't give myself too much credit but a little bit of wisdom meets also athletic performance a moment in time where i've had enough experience enough setbacks ups and downs and success of course with the world records and things i have but to really take stock of what's important to me and what i've realized more and more is i'm super curious about pushing the limits of my own potential 100 we've talked about that i love that but i actually don't think of myself so much as a risk taker or an adrenaline junkie get the fuck
I'm not just bullshitting.
When I think about it, these things are really methodical.
Yes, I understand.
They're practiced.
Not to say there's not risk.
You saw me trying to set up my tent.
That tent flies away.
I'm screwed.
I'm in a bad way.
What would you do?
joe rogan
Would you run after it?
colin obrady
I mean, no chance.
Fuck.
Yeah, you know, you hit the ejector button on the call the plane and hope they can find you type of thing.
And even that's like, in a storm like that, unlikely they're going to get there.
But for me, what I'm honestly most excited about next, yes, I have some other projects that I'm marinating in my mind.
Do I have other expeditions?
Sure, I haven't.
They're not fully crystallized enough to announce right here, unfortunately.
But, you know, I've got some ideas.
is, but more so like I'm excited about, you know, sharing what I've learned.
Like I said, that wisdom meets high performance of actually having an ability.
Now, like I said, when I started this, I had, you know, my friends following me on Instagram and I'm starting to have ability to share this story.
People are asking for me to, you know, take interviews.
I'm writing a book right now.
Lots of my learnings going into that kind of stuff of really, really having an ability to pass this on.
Cause for me, as fun as it is for me to push my own limits, like I, what really inspires me, what really fires me up is when, when I get emails or notes from people like, Hey man, I watched you cross Antarctica.
I haven't been to the gym in five years.
And like, I've gone every single day since then.
or I'm trail running now.
I started that business.
I never said I was going to star or whatever.
And so having an ability to have a moment in time when I can share some of my learnings with the world and meaningful different contents, that really excites me.
I love the opportunity to do that.
But man, for sure, there's some other events on the horizon as well.
But yeah, it's not just about one-upping the next thing.
I think that that's a losing proposition in the long run of always trying to do the bigger, badder, craziest thing because When the stakes are, like you said, the razor's line between life and death, you keep one-upping yourself enough, you don't make it to the end of a long life, unfortunately, and I'm not trying to have that be the end.
joe rogan
Well, it sounds like you've already broken world records.
You're in this weird place where you've accomplished so much that in order to accomplish other things, if you're going to take it to the next level, it really has to be truly life-threatening.
colin obrady
Do you have any recommendations?
Do you want to come on the next one with me?
unidentified
Quick!
joe rogan
Quick now!
unidentified
Move into the next stage of life that doesn't involve risking your life.
joe rogan
I don't know.
You seem like a nice guy.
I don't want anything to happen to you.
colin obrady
Give me some wisdom.
You've got almost a couple decades on me.
If you were whispering in the ear of your 33-year-old self, how about this?
You've had an interesting path.
If you were whispering in the ear of your 33 self, what would be some advice that you would give yourself that you'd be happy that you lived out over the next 20 years?
joe rogan
Well, I mean, obviously life experience, when you have life experience, learn those lessons, become a better person, be better at communicating, be better at everything you do.
But the problem with what you're doing, and it's not a problem, but in this context, is that you're pushing these incredible endurance records in nature, and particularly in cold weather.
And this is, what's stunning about these things is that you're risking your life.
It's not that it's just difficult.
Like, running in ultra-marathon is incredibly difficult, right?
colin obrady
For sure.
joe rogan
But what you're doing is not just incredibly difficult.
You're doing it in these incredibly harsh environments, and particularly in Antarctica, you don't have any relief, right?
No one's going to help you.
Like you said, your tent blows away.
You might very well be fucked.
colin obrady
Yes.
joe rogan
Very much.
colin obrady
You are.
joe rogan
I don't know what you could do that would one-up that.
The problem is you're one-up...
Margin of error.
You're in this very strange sort of stratosphere of one-upitude.
colin obrady
Maybe it's, you know, we take a page out of the Bruce Springsteen Glory Days song and just, you know, kick my feet up and talk about the glory days for the rest of the time.
joe rogan
Well, you don't have to do that.
But the thing is, I mean, don't listen to me, man.
Do whatever you want to do.
Obviously, you're going to.
You're not going to listen to me.
But...
You could apply this sort of mental fortitude that you've demonstrated and this ability to push through things, you could apply it to anything.
It doesn't have to be these physical feats of risking death in frigid cold temperatures in the middle of the fucking nowhere, or literally at the bottom of the planet Earth.
colin obrady
Yeah, I know.
And to me, that's actually, that's why it's exciting.
Because for me, yes, are there some other physical expressions that I want to have in the world?
For sure.
And I have some ideas, like I said.
And it's not necessarily trying to one-up the next thing.
But it's also why it's exciting to me.
The lessons that I try to learn, that I try to share with other people, like you said, are universal lessons.
But they also, if I revert them back to my own self, are also universal lessons in my own life.
So like you said, it's like, hey, what's the next thing I'm super passionate about?
If you I have the confidence to sit with a whiteboard with no money, no resources, no background, an incredibly supportive fiancé at the time, now wife, who's down to ride or die with me and go into this with me.
And we created what we did.
We did something that people literally wrote about and said, this is impossible.
People have died trying this.
You can't do this.
And we've achieved it.
It gives me confidence.
Not that I can do some other crazy physical thing, but it gives me confidence like, cool.
I want to start a business that makes millions of dollars.
Cool.
Let's figure out how to do that.
Let's do the equivalent of writing into Google.
What's the difference between PR and marketing?
Let's do that.
As I do a ton of public speaking now, write this book, the things that I'm doing, that's super fun to share those with the world.
I'm having a lot of fun doing that and actually sharing the universal truths and the wisdom that I've learned that I think can be applied different ways.
It also goes to, now I get to have the fun of applying those in all of those other different ways of my life.
You know, for me, I think that the future is bright, particularly if I don't, I don't really think of myself as this endemic core outdoor athlete.
It's very easy to put me in that box.
It's very easy to say, like, cool, so you climb mountains.
You're a mountain climber.
I'm just like, but four years ago, I'd never really climbed mountains, but I happened to do something in mountains.
Well, I've never been in the polar region.
That's why this British guy was looking at me like, oh, ha, ha, ha, young boy.
I've spent all this time in Antarctica.
You'll never survive this.
And, like, not only did I survive it, but, like, I finished first.
Like, I beat him.
joe rogan
How many days did you beat him by?
colin obrady
Two and a half days.
unidentified
Ha!
colin obrady
But like, I'm not sitting here going like, you know, I'm fascinated by Antarctica.
Would I like to go back someday?
Absolutely.
But I'm not like, Colin O'Brady, the polar explorer only.
You know, it's like, what else can I explore that actually presses me?
I mean, I love to learn.
I love to learn about the mind, explore that.
There's so many different ways to express that, that I'm just excited about the future and holds in lots of different verticals.
joe rogan
Well, listen, I think you could fucking do anything.
I think it's very clear what you've already accomplished.
You could literally do anything you want.
But I want to see you live.
colin obrady
Yeah, me too.
joe rogan
How about this?
How about you break some crazy endurance running feats?
How about that?
Break some ultramarathon feats.
colin obrady
Because it feels a little bit safer.
joe rogan
Yes!
unidentified
Yes!
joe rogan
The worst thing that's going to happen is you're going to get really fucking tired.
But you can live.
colin obrady
Maybe the next thing is, I mean, maybe I'm not the funniest guy in the world, but what do you think about comedy?
Why not?
Should I get back out there on the stage?
joe rogan
Listen, if you can communicate and you can make people laugh, you can make a group of people laugh, you can do stand-up comedy.
It's just a matter of taking steps and figuring it out and writing stuff out.
I mean, you've got a lot of fucking stories.
colin obrady
For sure.
joe rogan
I mean, just how about getting on stage in front of people and telling people that you're the first person to cross Antarctica on foot?
52 days.
Like, what in the fuck?
colin obrady
I do a lot of that.
I enjoy that.
I love public speaking.
I do a lot of that.
Corporations, kids, everything.
joe rogan
But that's too easy.
Well, trust me, I do it.
You could do that.
colin obrady
It's fun.
No, I have to say, I gotta give a shout out.
You definitely don't remember this, but I actually have met you once before about seven years ago in a tiny little comedy club.
You did a bit out in Portland, a small little venue.
I'm sure you do way bigger venues now.
unidentified
Is that, um...
colin obrady
It's called like Helium?
joe rogan
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, that place is great.
colin obrady
And at the time, it was funny.
I was thinking about it when I was driving over.
I was like, what was this bit?
And you were doing this bit about, hey there, Delilah.
Oh, damn, that's a long time ago.
unidentified
Wow!
colin obrady
That's what I most remember.
But the reason I was there actually was when I first started training for triathlon professionally, I started training with this guy named Phil Claude who was training a couple of UFC fighters at the time.
You remember this guy named Mike Pierce who fought in this?
joe rogan
Yeah, sure, yeah.
He's a Portland guy too, right?
colin obrady
Yeah, Portland guy as well.
And so, I didn't know a lot about MMA. I still certainly am not as well-versed as you are, but I got in this gym.
My coach was like, hey, you're going to start training with these MMA guys.
And I was like, you know, what?
Like, I'm a skinny little triathlete.
These guys are like, you know, brawlers.
But I was, man, what was I impressed?
Like, talk about a multi-sport, true multi-sport, right?
unidentified
Yeah.
colin obrady
All the different disciplines.
I don't have to tell you this, obviously, but I was blown away by how strong they were and became good buddies.
And Mike said to me, he was like, hey, man, I'm going to this comedy show.
This guy named Joe Rogan's going to be doing his comedy.
Come listen to him.
So, you know, you made me laugh back then.
So, mad respect.
And, yeah, it was fun to see into that world a little bit.
joe rogan
Well, thanks, man.
I guarantee you could do that.
But if you still want to do endurance things...
Like, please do something where you're not going to die.
That's just my request.
colin obrady
You know, I made it back here safe and sound.
So yeah, the goal, I mean, like I said, the goal is not to keep one-upping myself.
I mean, I think that's...
joe rogan
But is that part of the danger of this kind of endeavor?
Because you really have one-upped I mean, you've done some crazy one-upping, man.
colin obrady
For sure.
Like I said, I think that if I only thought of myself as a professional athlete, and that was my identity was tied up in that, I think we see that across the spectrum of professional athletes in general, of people just going, hey, I'm a pro athlete, and the second I'm not, even if they banked millions of dollars as an NBA player or something like that, their whole identity disappears with the feet of athleticism.
I read a really interesting article today that I was really compelled by, actually, which was a story about Kevin Durant that was on ESPN.com this morning, and it's about him and his business manager and a couple other guys that have kind of gotten around him and like, dude, you're like one of the best, you know, basketball players in the world, MVP, but he's already thinking about all the various things that he's doing, you know, in his life.
And what I loved about that article is they were like, you know, SportsCenter back in the day used to be guys, you know, hitting home runs, dunking basketballs, which of course it still is that, but they'll intersperse that with like, Kevin Durant just made a venture investment in this company, or they're growing this watermelon water brand, or they're this or that.
And so, I think sports, particularly with the growth of social media, with story time, with media, with content, with all the other ways we can share the insights, which isn't just the game, which isn't just me in the arena pulling the sled, But it's actually a way to connect with people, whether that's in the sense of Kevin Durant making incredible venture investments in companies, or that's with storytelling that actually reaches universal truths with people.
I've got a single mother from Nebraska reaching out to me and saying, hey, I don't care about mountains or the outdoors, but I'm going through some hard stuff in the middle of the country being a single mother, and your story connects with me.
Thank you for giving me the inspiration to keep pushing forward.
So for me...
It extends beyond just this athlete in this arena because we have all these other ways to storytell, to create content, to be involved in businesses and things like that.
So that's where my mind's at next.
It hasn't fully crystallized into the most concrete of plans, but the ability to explore all these different mediums and just having sort of the sports be the catalyst for growth in that way is what I'm really passionate about.
joe rogan
That's awesome, man.
And whatever your plans are, I have 100% confidence in you.
You're an inspiration, man.
Thank you very much.
colin obrady
I appreciate it.
Thanks, brother.
joe rogan
Really appreciate it, man.
And tell everybody your Instagram, how to get a hold of you on social media.
colin obrady
Yeah, follow along.
It's just my name, at Colin O'Brady.
Also, my website is just my name, colinobrady.com.
Got a list on there.
Like I said, I'm working on a book.
There's lots of juicy details that I haven't shared yet.
So if you're interested in that, pop your email address in there.
We'll keep you posted when that comes out next year.
But at Colin O'Brady or ColinOBrady.com.
Come say hi.
joe rogan
Beautiful.
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