Hey guys, what's up? It is codes here from the left train perform podcast during today's episode. We are going through a Q and a episode. Now I did put a post out a couple of weeks ago on my social media platforms, being at coach underscore Kobe's ko bes on instagram and facebook is performance functional training And I ask you guys, my listeners and followers a to provide me with some questions which I will answer on the podcast. Now I've got about 15 questions and I've answered about 10 questions over the last couple of episodes but I found it difficult to keep my answers short and sharp. So I'm extending the Q and a session over three episodes now in today's episode, I'm going to be answering a number of questions, a couple of serious ones and a couple of fun ones. The first question being from someone who has basically been kicked in the balls by life and need to get back on track. The second question is a little bit of a fun one. The third question is, who are some of the most influential people that you've met throughout your life?

And the fourth question is a little bit of a fun one as well. So let's get this episode underway. So the first question comes in from Brandon on my facebook page, I just quit contracting overseas for four years and I've worked with both you and rob morgen during my time in Puckett finding work stateside hasn't been good for me and I'm going through a rough break up as a result, I'm mentally and morally diminished and I know exercise has been my saving grace in the past, but right now I just need something to walk me back from the edge to feel normal again as a former operator slash soldier, how do you deal with this and how do you get back into greasing the groove first of all, mate? Um this is a tough position to be in and I feel for you um but it is also a position that a lot of blokes tend to find themselves in. So um first of all reaching out and speaking up is uh you know, congrats to you, that is a very difficult thing to do.

Um you know, as blokes, we tend to try and figure things out on our own. But what I will say here is that there are blokes that have been in your position and have done, you know, have gone through the same things that you're going through and experiencing right now, so thank you very much for reaching out and you know, posing this question to me because I've definitely been in this position before, where things aren't going to plan and You know, coming off breakup and um a change in work and career and life trajectory and all that type of stuff and it can be a shitty place to find yourself in. Um so what I would say here is that I am an ambassador for Swiss eight, which is a proactive mental health program designed to allow people to structure in and schedule the most important things in their life and I'm an ambassador for them because one I'm a veteran and there are veteran owned operated business um and they're a charity that are providing this high quality information to particularly veterans.

Okay guys that guys and girls that have gotten out of the military gone through that transition process and kind of lost their way a little bit. So Um there eight pillars of health and wellness are sleep, nutrition, time management, discipline fitness, personal growth, mindfulness and minimalism. And I've actually gone through a 10 part miniseries covering off on each one of those topics and I book and that miniseries with an interview with the founder, Adrian Sada, who basically started SWISS Eight because one of his best mates ended up committing suicide and they were talking about, you know, starting this program where they could get veterans that were struggling to go to a farm and you know, just be around the boys and have a few drinks and go hunting and fishing and all that type of stuff. And unfortunately that didn't work out the way that he wanted to, his mate took his own life and he started Um this app Swiss eight.

So you think about Swiss say the app like a netflix account and under each one of those pillars of health and wellness, those eight pillars is content provided by veterans. Okay, so under the fitness component, I have a training program on there and basically what you do is you schedule in the important things of the day. So for example if you want to get up at six o'clock in the morning, you want to get some training in before you go to work, you'll schedule in, you'll go on to the fitness component and then you'll see my training program, you'll schedule that in for say 6 30 that training program will take you through um you know all the exercises um sets, reps, rest periods, et cetera and have you training for an hour, then you might go on to the nutrition component and that's going to have you know, some excellent meals, meal plans, good ingredients, very simple meals that you can make with minimal ingredients, um etcetera etcetera. Then you might have some mindfulness through the middle of the day at lunchtime, you schedule in some mindfulness work.

And one of my mates, Tristan Rose has provided a lot of high quality content around the mindfulness aspect and then there will be some tools around building discipline and time management and all that type of stuff. So you can schedule in what's important for you throughout the day and I find that this is a it's a big game changer for a lot of people who do have a change in Korea where they have a purpose, they have a direction, they have something that they're working towards and then all of a sudden they're not doing that and they kind of lose their direction, they lose their identity, they lose their purpose. So just reinstalling those um those things, those structures that you were doing when you had a job when you were performing at your best, I think that's super important. So I just spoke about Tristan before and he actually bookends the other end of the 10 part miniseries where I conduct an interview with him and he went through, you know, he deal, he dealt with his own demons and he we discussed in detail, you know, some of his darkest days and that included having the barrel of his rifle in his mouth about to pull the trigger.

Um and you know, kind of having this um big moment where he took a step back and he saw the broader picture and you know, it just got him thinking about things a little bit differently and um you know, that helped him come back from the precipice and we discuss many of the different tools that he used to get himself back on track. And that was one seeking help, but to you know, understanding that nobody's coming to help you and that if you want to change something, then you need to change something. So um that's a big point that I want to make here is that you need to look back at a certain time in your life where you were happy with the person that you were and you were happy with, you know, the direction that you're moving and everything that you're working towards, so find the identity that you want to be your baseline, okay? And I'm sure there's been, you know, an identity, a persona at certain times of your life where you know, you're very happy with who that person was and what that person was doing, okay.

Now look back at that time and then ask yourself, what were you doing then? How are you showing up day to day? How were you excelling in the things that you're choosing to do on a daily basis? All right, look at the structures, look at the routines, look at the discipline, look at the time management, look at, you know what you're doing with training, look at what you're doing with nutrition, Look at what you're doing with personal growth, all of those eight elements, those eight aspects of the Swiss eight principles, okay. They all come into play with living your best life. All right, so look back at a time where you're happy with who you are, what you were doing and simply start looking at adding in those small pieces of the puzzle on a daily basis. Now, a word of warning here, don't do everything at once, okay. It is impossible to do everything at once and when people are motivated, they try and do everything at once and they make these wholesale changes okay, that never works, motivations awesome while it lasts okay. But just like happiness.

It's fleeting. It comes and goes, right. So um, you know when it's there absolutely use it, but you need to rely on structures okay. And those structures for you might be as simple as getting out of bed at a certain time, it might be as simple as you know, drinking an extra couple of liters of water a day. It might be as simple as adding in some vegetables throughout the day. Okay. Prioritizing what is the most important thing? Just look at everything in your life and go, what's one thing that I can do today that's going to shift the needle or it might be what's one thing that I can stop doing today? That's going to shift the needle, okay. And then start doing those things consistently or not doing those things consistently for a long period of time. Okay, Once you can do that for A week to two weeks. Solidly and consistently, then go down the list. All right, what else can I do or not do? That's going to shift the needle in the direction that I want to be moving in. All right. Now, another excellent resource that I'd recommend is a podcast by the instruction sold separately team, which is actually the Swiss eight crew, but that's the name of their podcast and they did a great episode with a guy named Barry and episodes titled Bush Wall Barry.

And this was a guy who was a rhodesian soldier and he's now a psychologist and he talks about the lessons that he learned going through life and you know, talking to um operators, soldiers, veterans, um that have transition from, you know, living that high stress, um you know, go hard lifestyle into being a civilian and trying to transition back into the civilian space. So that's an excellent episode that I'd recommend. Then I'd recommend listening to the Jamie O'donnell interview. Now Jamie O'donnell is one of my mates and he also has his own podcast called the life livers Academy. And I was a guest on his podcast a number of months ago when the lockdown restrictions kicked off. Um but I interviewed him recently and he's a wealth of knowledge, He's worked in the fitness industry, but he's also a performance coach. There's many things that I took away from his episode and I learned a lot from him as well. But one of the biggest things that he said was this to build self belief, you have to do what you said, you're going to do, you have to keep the promises that you make to yourself.

And if you do that you build self confidence and self belief very quickly. If you don't do that, you destroy it really quickly. And um you know if you are someone who is constantly making promises to yourself about what you're gonna do and and then you're constantly breaking them to yourself. It doesn't matter how many times you walk through the door with your shoulders back man, you don't believe anything that you say you've negotiated too hard with yourself, you've let yourself down too many times and so you need to build momentum the other way and that starts with small things. It starts with things like if you say you're going to go for a run every day, then you put your shoes on and you go for a run every day and if you're going to eat healthy, you know, like you don't need to see these big audacious goals, but you need to start keeping small promises to yourself because that then creates momentum the right way and there's many other great lessons to take away from that particular episode with Jamie O'donnell. So hopefully that gets you back on track mate, um shoot me a DM let me know how you're going bro. The next question is a little bit of a fun one and it's a three part question that comes in from at Macron's muscles mindset on instagram and the owner of that business is Cat your knickers, who is one of my friends and has also been a guest on this podcast.

So if you haven't listened to my interview with Cat, I highly recommend going back and listening to that interview. She opens up about some of the food relationship issues that she's had in the past. And a lot of the tools that she's dealt with to basically overcome five of the seven eating disorders that she's had in her life as well as um the tools and techniques that she uses to deal with. The last two. Our food relationship issues and body relationship issues that she's currently dealing with. So her question is what night is best for steak? Um so cats been in Thailand numerous times and she was actually a guest coach at Tiger muay thai for a couple of months at a time. And as one of my friends we would go out for dinner and in Thailand the red meat is not very good or if there is good red meat then it's expensive and it's imported from Australia. So once a week we would go out and have dinner and we would get steak and it would typically be on a Wednesday.

So um bit of a funny story here, every time we communicate, it's typically via memes or jokes or very direct communication. So an example of one of our last messages, she wrote, how you doing Wednesday adventure start and then she writes Perth hot cat, black work, busy training, fun life, good and I replied adventure, Wednesday weather good yesterday, grand final today, hungover training, surprisingly good, excited adventure. And every now and again she get a random message from her on a Wednesday, simply saying Wednesday dot dot dot and my reply is steak night. Her next question is how should stake be cooked? Now? We all know that steak should be cooked kind of medium ish. You know, maybe one or two. Either side, maybe, uh, medium rare or medium, well done.

If you're eating steak rare or you're eating it well done, you're probably a psychopath and you probably need your head checked. And the final question that she sends in is, who sings the song? My neck, my back. Uh, good question. I don't know. Um, I have no idea. And it's not something that I want to fill my brain with. So what I would say, however, is if anyone has any awesome one hit wonders, please send them through to me at coach underscore codes so I can add them to the amazing one hit wonder playlist that cat started when I last saw her and we've been progressively adding some amazing songs over the years. So send those bad boys through, please. The next question comes in from Pete Southwell on instagram. I met Pete a couple of years ago when I was actually guest coaching at titan fitness in pu ket Thailand ah and his question is, who are the most influential people that you have met throughout your life. These are the people that you just become a sponge around to learn everything you can from them.

Excellent question. Um, I've had many influential people in my life. So the first person who had a massive impact on my life was obviously my mother now she had me when she was young and I'm the eldest of six kids, and that was the three different dads and my step dad was a fucking asshole. He was an abusive piece of ship and he beat my mom, he beat me and you know, she was strong, she was resilient and she did whatever was best for the Children, and sometimes that was at the detriment of her own health and wellness, I don't know my father, so my step dad was that father figure for me, so I could say that he was an influence on my life simply because he was everything that I didn't want to be. I've spoken about this in detail on Jamie O'donnell's podcast when I was being interviewed by him. Um I left home when I was 14 and moved to Darwin, started working up there and I had many influential people in my life then, um particularly males, because I didn't have a good father figure.

So I had a number of older dudes that took me under their wing and kind of taught me life lessons on how I should live my life and how I can be a good man. Um so one of those guys was one of my rugby coaches and I played for the Northern territory under sixteen's rugby team, we went down to Sydney played in school boys competition, And Colin Snowdon was one of the coaches that took that team and he was an awesome dude. Um he played for the Palmerston Rugby Club when I got back to Darwin, there was no under 18s competition, so he actually got me down to play for the Palmerston Rugby Club And all of those guys at that club, I was a 16, 17 year old kid playing for that club and there was many amazing guys um that took me under their wing and again kind of guided me through that period of my life. Um unfortunately I found out earlier this year that snuggle passed away due to a heart attack.

Um so that kind of hurt a little bit. Um from there I moved down to Sydney and I was in Sydney for a couple of years on a rugby scholarship and one of the guys that I worked with, I worked at cannot hire, I worked at a higher company and one of the guys in the workshop Simon, he was a good dude and again, he took me under his wing and I stayed there for three years, worked in that job and he taught me everything that I needed to know to excel at that job and again, be a good man, be a good person and be a good worker and kind of gave me a really solid work ethic. Um then obviously a number of people within the rugby club that were influential on my life uh heap of mates have been quite influential on my life as well. One guy in particular will remain unnamed because we both joined the army together. Uh I got posted to Darwin, he got posted to Townsville and he's now a commando in the Special Forces operations group. So I moved back to Darwin with him and put in my application to join the army.

And I lived with his parents and him for a couple of months whilst we're going through that process. We bought motorbikes, we worked together, we trained together, we played rugby together, we went out on the piece together, we had a really good time and he's still a good mate of mine to this day. Uh Once I joined the army, then there was obviously a number of people that had a big influence on the man that I became, particularly the guys that were working, that I was working with my colleagues, um and the snipers, the reconnaissance soldiers, and the snipers, the, you know, some of the best soldiers in the battalion that again took me under their wing and um you know, taught me everything I need to know about being a really fucking good soldier and bringing out the best in myself in the Pursuit of Excellence. Uh I had a leader in Afghanistan Nick Perriman, I've spoken about him in one of my previous podcast, the effect of your environment. Um he was an amazing leader. Once I got back from that deployment in Afghanistan in 2011 had another rugby coach who was very influential on me as a player and as a leader and he taught me many many things um on how to be a really good team player and how to be a leader within a group environment, a team environment.

And we built an amazing culture and ended up going on three years undefeated, winning the Premiership all three years. And again, many, many players in that group that had an influence on my life. The next big influence on my life was actually my ex girlfriend, Lauren. So I met Lauren once I got back from Afghanistan, I discharged from the army because we weren't deploying anymore. And she was moving back down to Tasmania and I ended up following her down to Tasmania to give the relationship a chance. And we built a really good lifestyle and we worked for 8-9 months every year and they went traveling for 3-4 months every year and it was an incredible lifestyle. Um and she helped me through that transition period from being a soldier to becoming a civilian again. And that's a very difficult process for a lot of guys because they obviously don't have that regiment. They don't have that regime. They don't have that structure. They don't have that schedule and they kind of lose their purpose because I was with Lauren, she helped me through that process and you know, as a boyfriend, I did a lot of things wrong.

Um I did a lot of things right and I learned a lot from that relationship. Now it seems like a fairly weird thing to say that my ex girlfriend had a big influence on my life, but it's true ah and you know, people get weirded out that I'm still friends with my ex now the reason I left Tasmania and I left that relationship was simply because I wasn't getting the opportunities that I wanted. I was running my own pt business and strengthen conditioning business and we would travel 3 to 4 months every year and we just close our businesses down and then go travel and then come back refreshed, ready to kick back into work and you know, she played a massive part in my life and again, people think it's weird that I'm still friends with my ex, but I think it's weird that you know, someone can play a massive significant role in your life and be the most important person in your life for a long period of time and then you end up hating them and not speaking to them ever again and you know, we had an adult conversation and decided that our underlying values and the direction that we were moving in life, we're no longer aligned.

So we had that adult conversation and decided it was better off for both of us to go our separate ways in, you know, the pursuit of what we wanted to do with our life and the direction that we wanted to move in. So she had a big influence on my life and I'm grateful for that. I'm grateful for every single person that has had an influence. Then I've had a lot of people who have had an influence on my life that I've never met before. And this is through courses, this is through books that I've read, this is through um, you know, learning through studying through research, um podcasts and things like that. So the biggest point that I can make is that anyone can be an influence in your life, whether that's to be a better person, whether that's to grow and develop as a man, whether that's to grow and develop personally and or professionally. Uh there's lessons that you can learn from everyone in your life and there's been so many people that have shaped the man that I am today that have had an impact on my life and the person that I want to be, whether that's what I wanted to be or whether there were traits that I didn't want to be part of my personality.

So if you're willing to learn from everyone around you, then you can look at every single person in your life as having an influence on who you want to be or who you don't want to be. The final question comes in from Bart Samet, who is one of the old army boys And his question is, what's your thoughts on the first karate kid movie Now? I haven't actually seen the karate kid uh and the group thread that I'm in with army lads, they would pay me out and give me a heap of ship because I haven't seen the movie, but going back to what I was talking about before when I was growing up, I actually went through a period of six years where I didn't have any electricity or running water. So a lot of the childhood movies that a lot of people my age grew up with, I never actually got the opportunity to see them and it's not something that I've seen in the years since, so I don't really have any thoughts on the first karate kid movie. If anyone, I think it's a movie that I must see, then please let me know and I will actually make the time and effort to watch that movie.

That's it for me today guys, hopefully enjoyed today's Q and A session. Stay tuned for the next episode of the live train performed podcast piece