A new podcast on why Joe Rogan is a horrible example to follow when it comes to health & fitness advice. The man has basically destroyed his body in the last several decades.
If you opened this article, you probably know who Joe Rogan is - he is the most popular and successful podcaster of today. He is the most well known as a comedian and as the UFC commentator.
Joe Rogan is no joke and he is a legit martial artist and fighter. A BJJ and Taekwondo black belt with a competition background in taekwondo. He is known for having some of the best kicks in the entire world especially his side kick and spinning back kick.
Rogan is also a serious and certified fitness nut being in excellent shape muscle and performance wise while having experience in almost every health gimmick out there.
Due to his popularity and background in health & fitness, he has become one of the biggest authority figures in the field. People look up to him and consider him a friendly mentor - people follow his lead and are influenced heavily by what he promotes.
We started listening to Joe Rogan 10 years ago when he was mainly doing podcasts with Duncan Trussell and Brian Redban - back then his advice was cutting edge and he was doing a lot of things that were not popular at the time.
With Joe Rogan, the problem is not really what he does (he does countless good things) but how he does it. His strategy and mentality towards health & fitness is some of the worst out there.
He is living proof of his health & fitness strategy - he has fully torn ACLs in both of his knees, had many spine surgeries and neck surgeries to just name a few.
He has also been open about his steroid use for decades and lately he is also using peptides according to a recent interview. I'm afraid he has lots of internal issues as well which he hasn't opened up about.
Either way, this is not what health & fitness is about. It's not about destroying your body to the point of almost no return. In a different time and age, Joe Rogan would barely be a functional human being.
Only today, in the modern age he has maintained his functionality and health thanks to stem cells and countless surgeries. 100 years ago he probably couldn't even walk considering his knee and neck conditions but he definitely wouldn't be able to walk or train properly.
Where does this problem stem from? It's all about the mindset. Joe Rogan subscribes to the same mentality the late Louie Simmons (who also completely destroyed his body from head to toe) subscribed to: "go hard or go home".
We subscribed to this same mentality years ago but without sufficient recovery, lack of respect for the body and lack of self-awareness we also started to destroy our bodies step by step. It took a big step back and lots of humility to accept that the path we were on was not the right one.
7 years ago, we completely changed our training methods and turned our lives around. We started to truly respect the body and take care of the body instead of abusing it according to our insecurities and will.
This is what these people do: they ultimately punish their bodies and themselves for no reason. Their results are not certainly better than ours but they do destroy their bodies 100 times more than we do.
We use barely any supplements apart from occasional vitamin C and zinc and absolutely zero performance enhancing drugs. Yet, it's very hard to find more athletic and functional guys than Eero in any gym or dojo out there pound-per-pound.
Ultimately, it all boils down to a lack of self-trust and self-love. Maybe you are like this as well. For some reason, you have this urge and need to constantly prove yourself and also damage yourself. We certainly did.
You don't walk in harmony with yourself mentally or physically because if you did, you wouldn't train and live the way you do. If you loved yourself, you wouldn't abuse yourself this way.
Me and Eero are working on our first book that covers all of our breakthroughs and understanding of the human body both in training and lifestyle. The book has progressed nicely and will be published this year.
The upcoming book will contain two books: THE BOOK OF FIRE (training) and THE BOOK OF WATER (lifestyle and diet).
Until then, I highly recommend joining The 10 Commandments of Universal Strength Training. It's 100% free and highly praised. It will guide your training in the right direction.
You will learn a lot about the universal laws behind training without forgetting the ego and mindset.
Take care.
I will definitely buy your guy’s book. I would be willing to pay a bit more for a physical version, though an exclusively online book would be cool too.
I really am coming around to your way of thinking. I think that you offer a good counter point to the person that you mentioned Jocko Willnik who I think takes the idea of self discipline to such a great degree. I’m currently doing your health and fighting Qigong course and I think this discussion dovetails a little with that in the aspect of the proper way to do the Golden Bell. Maybe this isn’t the forum to ask this question but I’ve had trouble getting a definitive answer. Should the Golden Bell training be done indefinitely or should it be cycled with some lengthy periods of rest? Also I’m guessing you don’t think trt is healthy correct?
“No pain, no gain” is without doubt, as you say, the worst mindset out there. It is the opposite of self respect, health and longevity. And as we go deeper into this twisted philosophy we notice that the self-imposed suffering is an underlying current in our whole consumerism-based society. The way most people train is just an expression of the mentality of the collective; and it is bound to change thanks true re-searchers like you both, Eero ans Samuli. Thanks for sharing this all!