231. TJ Dillashaw: On Biohacking, Longevity, Injury Recovery and Life After UFC

25:15And it's helped me a lot throughout my career. And like I said, it's also got me in some trouble. It's why I can't lift my arm to the sky and I need a reverse shoulder replacement, things like that. But without it, I don't think I would have became a world champion either.

25:29Gary Brecka:Well, you suffered through a lot of injuries, you know, during your career. I mean, I know that you fought with two blown out shoulders. You know, you were doing stem cells, you know, early on in your career, you know, to try to preserve as much of that, you know, time as you had. And I wonder if you'd talk a little bit about that. like what were some of the things that you were doing before you really had your arms around biohacking and, and you know, you had your own supplement line and you really dialed in. Um, what were you just doing as a competitive athlete and with that kind of shoulder pain, um, you know, first fighting through it and training through it, but how were you able to compete at that level?

26:09Gary Brecka:Do you think it was the stem cells? Were you doing regular rehabilitation therapy? Like what were you, what were you doing? Both all the above. Um, it's a good story for you. So, again, I'm coaching the Ultimate Fighter. It's 2016. And at the end of the season, there's a coaches challenge. Where me and Cody Garbrandt were the coaches, and we have to do a challenge against each other. And whoever wins this challenge, like, we win, like, 15 ,000, and then we win 2 ,000 for every one of our fighters. So it's fun, right? It's like gambling out there. So we're playing tetherball, but it's in the winter, and it's above a pool on a gymnastics balance beam.

26:44I'm on a balance beam, he's on a balance beam, and we got to play tetherball. okay and the first one to get to 20 or 10 whatever it was wins and if you fall off the balance beam you have to get up and get back on the balance beam as fast as you possibly can before he hits

26:57Gary Brecka:it to the end oh because he can just keep racking up going you're not there right it's like it's like when you're a kid on the on the playground you're hitting and it's over their head and you just keep going yeah yeah i actually remember my that i'm kind of dating myself because we used to play tetherball yeah me too i don't think anybody plays tetherball anymore i don't know if they do There's a whole generation going, what the fuck is that? Yeah. Yeah. So I first, well, I had my first shoulder surgery in 2004 during wrestling, but, and that was 2004. And then I re-injured it playing this tetherball game.

27:28I fell off and I tried to catch myself on the balance beam so I can get back up as fast as I can before I let him score. Yeah. I'm very competitive.

27:35Gary Brecka:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I don't want to lose at anything. I don't care for playing Monopoly. Like there's nothing I want to, there's nothing I want to lose that. Right. so I'm like and I dislocate my shoulder out the back no it's subluxes though so it goes out and goes right back in um I didn't think anything of it it was like whatever finishes the game and then afterwards my shoulder was hurting um I tried doing stem cells here in the state well to get so me and Cody were coaching ultimate fighter at the end of the fighter we're supposed to fight each other for the world title I had lost my belt which was just burning me because I shouldn't have lost the fight it was a split decision lost against Dominic Cruz that still to this day i feel like at once i wanted my belt back so bad i'm fighting cody garbrandt at the end of this show and i blow my shoulder out like i can't afford to get surgery because if i get surgery i'm out for a year and a half two years like a year just to get back to what i need to and then obviously get back into fight shape again right so i do all my research trying to figure out like wait what are like the kobe bryans doing in the world to to preserve themselves or whatever it may be to these other alternative medicines to keep me in the game without having to get surgery.

28:43And I find stem cells. And so I go down to Panama for the stem cell, Neil Reardon's stem cell Institute. He's like the godfather of stem cells. That was my first, first treatment. Amazing. Held me together. I had intra-articular and also intramuscular stem cells that then I was able to do as much bands as I possibly could to kind of encase my shoulder,

29:06Gary Brecka:in concrete right like i knew since the capsule was probably stretched or torn well i need the muscles to kind of i had a full tear right i had a full tear so i knew it's not going to just like grow back like stem cells are going to grow something that's not there right um but all my other like my delts and also my other they have four rotator cuffs like and their muscles as well i knew my other ones really need to be as strong as possible just to kind of like encase that thing a concrete so it wouldn't sublux again um it would sublux here and there but it did a lot better job of being able to like strengthen those it sped up my recovery a lot um and even more so i met a very influential person at the panama instance place and he got into like testing cells all over the world and we found out the bio accelerator placed on a meta ian had by far the most powerful cells um the biggest competition out there actually their viability of their stem cells were zero compared to what a bioxcellerator was wow so i knew that's where i needed to go so from 2017 to the end of my career bioxcellerator held me together in multiple facets my shoulders down there yeah my l4 my l5 discs were bulging and i had to get those like to reabsorb which helped with that um i had arthritis in my hand did they put you under and do the thing oh yeah yeah that's the way to go because those inner articulars are not fun yeah and then and then the soreness afterwards is no joke either you know like the for a few hours afterwards you're like oh this isn't this isn't so bad and then the next day you feel like a truck ran over your shoulder but then they then they absorb and they they really get to work from what i've been told maybe you can help me with this is that like usually if it hurts more after your injection it's because you have more inflammation there and it was like going and working it was doing its job oh yeah right like if you inject your knee which i've had a massive knee surgery too it was like very painful um in my understanding was because it was working it was doing what it needed oh yeah the more damage the more inflammation the more inflammation the more pain okay so you know that's it it's it's a great sign that it's working it's just not fun to go through it yeah i had the same thing not not quite to that extent at all but i had a torn uh bicep tendon uh not completely torn but a torn bicep tendon and i had it injected and we've done a lot of injections in the nfl alumni association with professional athletes and and they are game changers man i mean i don't know professional athlete alive today that if they weren't facing a similar injury wouldn't be thinking about stem cells exosomes those kinds of things and even things i didn't realize that were going to come from it that happened too like again i wasn't treating my body the right way before i met sam and wasn't eating the right kinds of foods and so i'd have psoriasis outbreaks wow and when i went down to uh bioaccelerator and i got the iv stem cells like my psoriasis would go away right you know like yeah because you know these are um you know not to steal the podcast but they're our skin is not just a barrier it's a it's a gateway and we use the skin as a secondary route of waste elimination very often i mean this is why you get the cold sweats right i mean when you're when you have a fever and you're and you're actually um you know sweating sometimes you're actually freezing cold and you're still sweating that's your that's your liver using the skin as a secondary route of waste elimination.

32:17Gary Brecka:And if you look at eczema and psoriasis, there's certain classes of bacteria that are very often tied to being absent and people that have those. And stem cells are excellent for those topical inflammatory conditions. So, yeah, so that's good. It has a systemic effect. Even if you inject it into the shoulder, they're going everywhere. They're going into the bloodstream. They're going everywhere. You're breathing them out of your lungs. They're actually really good for your lungs. Now, if you do an IV of stem cells, about 80 % of those, or if you do exosomes, will actually come out through the lungs.

32:45Gary Brecka:okay you'll breathe them out and and so it's really good for your lungs you know interesting which is a you know part of that competitive sport too yeah but um so you get you you you get the stem cells you come back you win another championship yeah i win the world title back yeah wow yeah with two blown shoulders yeah well yeah that was the first one and then throughout my second camp i tear my super so i tore my super spinatus in both shoulders and a little bit of partial labrum tear and bicep tendon tear a little bit of everything in my left and my right was a super spinatus just where it's always somebody crank it and just wrestling grappling and jujitsu wrestling is always i feel like the sport that hurts me it's a very intense sport um you get yourselves in these leverage positions to where like striking doesn't do that to you but jujitsu and wrestling do like you know and they're accidental like i'll shoot a double leg and my arms over my head and a guy's sprawling on it and puts a lot of pressure on a joint that's not supposed to move that way.

33:42Gary Brecka:Right, right. So yeah, I mean, just wear and tear from wrestling since I was eight year old through college and then, you know, more so as being a professional. Yeah. Listen, there's what I share on this podcast and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here, but my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this, you're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak, and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart.

34:13Gary Brecka:You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast segment. So that world-renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human Community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory. This is what works in the real world.

34:44Gary Brecka:The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than$100 a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP and step into your ultimate potential. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. So I want to get to two highlights of your career. You know, one, because I, the first one, because I think that this will really benefit my audience, you know, when you're facing adversity and you basically at the height of your career, you know, you use a PED to cut weight and then they pop you and you get a two-year suspension yeah and then i i know that you talked about what a low point you hit immediately after that and i wonder if you could talk about that a little bit like is it was that the because your identity had been stripped from you were you worried about the public persona because you immediately took responsibility owned up to it um and and stood tall and said i'm not mad that i did it um here's why i did it and you know these are the rules of the game and i violated the rules of the game and i'm going to take this suspension i'm going to come back stronger but but after that i think you went you went maybe to a dark place yeah i mean it was hard not to you know being a champion of the world was going to drop a weight class so i was fighting 135s i was going to drop to 120 i did drop to 125s to try to get a second belt um submit my legacy you know make more money all the dreams you're chasing and i went full full-blown anemic um wow like i was my hematocrit was in the low 30s like i'd wake up i'd be cold i wouldn't want to train i was like a fraction of myself and so i started taking an anemia medication which an anemia medication has erythropoietin in it to help you produce more red blood cells and i was told that it would be out of my system in time and no matter what it was the wrong choice to do what i should have done was backed out of the fight but again my delusional optimism brain was like no i got this i'm gonna to get it done like got myself in trouble and and um i just knew coming out and hitting it and admitting to everything i did was going to be the best for my overall health and my stress and my well-being to where if i feel like i was hiding from things it was just gonna pile on um so i feel like just admitting to it was the best way to get it get out and get it out taking ownership and saying yeah um but i did go to that very very bad dark place like you said my identity was like stripped for me and like everything that I had accomplished in the past, like that's the worst part of, of failing a drug test.

37:26Isn't the two year suspension is that what everyone thinks the years beforehand got you there. Yeah. Like everything I did was just in my mind destroyed. Like it was like, Oh, he's been doing this his whole career.

37:40Gary Brecka:Yeah. And, and, um, you know, you saw it did a very good job and you saw it as very, very strict. They show up to your house at six in the morning all the time and drug test you. I got drug tested like, I don't know, almost a hundred times in a year. Cause I was a champion. No kidding. Yeah. All the time. A hundred times in a year. I got drug tests and all these are like, uh, you can go and look them up and what, what they, what they, when you get tested, I would get drug tested days back to back. They did drug test me on Tuesday. Then they drug test me on Wednesday. And you don't know. No, it's completely random.

38:09There's an app on my phone. I have to tell them where I'm at 365 days a year. It could be Christmas and they can show up and drug test you. hasn't happened but they could right um but they always collect an a and b sample the a sample they test right then and there the b sample they keep for any instances like mine that came back and so i've been drug tested since 2016 on they went back and retested all my samples and to make sure that this wasn't happening beforehand so even though they did that and it's public it's still like the public guy is going to beat you down for it right and that's the but that's why it works right no athlete should want to go through that and it was a very very dark place um i'd say for the first like six months i just wanted to like bury myself and like drink and like not have to think about it did you stop training oh yeah well i got double shoulder surgery when i got suspended oh so not only was i like well i got some time off i might as well just get well my identity was stripped for me i got surgery on my left on my right shoulder and then eight weeks later got one on my left shoulder as soon as i was able to get out of a sling i got one on my left shoulder So, you know, eating pain pills and being suspended wasn't the best choice, but I wanted to get back to being myself.

39:18Gary Brecka:Wow. Yeah. And so talk about the walk back because, you know, walking out of that hole. It takes a strong mental fortitude to be able to do it. I feel like a lot of people maybe would have got broken and just did something else. but I think that mental toughness that has turned me into a champion has also got me back into the line. And I also felt like I had to do it, right, because I was being questioned so much. It was like I have to come back. I have to come back and improve myself, yeah. So there's a little bit of that that fired me up as well too, like wanting my identity back, wanting my self-purpose back.

39:57Gary Brecka:Because two years is not that long of a time when you start thinking about dual shoulder surgery. If you stop training and let yourself get out of shape a little bit, maybe you were drinking, you were taking pain medication, you know, you were in kind of a dark place, but then you have to, from that ground zero, back into the octagon is not that long of a timeframe, maybe a year, right? And so where was your family in all this? Like, were they like, hey, TJ, it's okay if you don't want to go back? Or was your wife like, you're a world champion, I want to support you all the way? Like, what other support systems did you have going on?

40:33Gary Brecka:Or was this just all inside of TJ's head? mostly it was inside of my head but i do have a rock of a wife that is supportive we've been together for 20 years now all through my like wrestling career she's seen like all of it um she knew my mindset she knew i was that was never a question if i was going back that was just like she knew that right yeah she knows my personality she knows my mentality like i don't i don't shut off i don't i don't stop right um so that was nothing but she's always been a rock there to support me and uh that's what i felt the worst about my situation too was like not only that it affected me and how bad it hurt me but it hurt my coaches it hurt my family hurt my training partners like it gave them a bad yeah yeah because they're they're all on this journey with you too yeah yeah so the ripple effect of that was made me feel really really bad as well too and I took a lot of like uh extra just punishment on myself for that too you know but luckily I've had a great support system great coaches um my family my family is the most supportive family in the entire world I mean, that's awesome.

41:34They live in Northern California, seven hour drive to Fullerton where I wrestled that. My dad would finish work a little bit early as a contractor, drive all the way down to Fullerton, watch me wrestle, drive home that night because he didn't want to miss work the next day. Seven hours? So 14 total trip just to watch me wrestle a dual match. Oh my God. My dad's good. That's where I get it from. Like, yeah, my dad's a very intense hazardous how.

41:58Gary Brecka:Yeah. Hazard. I see where the hazard comes from now, dude. Yeah. um yeah that's a that's a hazard on the road even if you're sober yeah um so um so we'll brighten the mood now a little bit because i i want to talk about you know the the transition to where you are now you know i know first of all i know dana thinks the world of you and i think the world dana and um you know he's he's actually doing a documentary um you know yeah with you can we talk about that yeah okay yeah he's doing a documentary with you about um you know life after fighting and I think this is awesome because I've always been, I've always watched those shows growing up, like the one hit wonder and you're like, oh yeah, I remember that song.

42:41Gary Brecka:You never heard from them again and professional athletes and actors, A-listers, those people that have been very, very in the public eye. You always do wonder what happened to them after achieving that level of fame, stardom, whatever you want to call it, notoriety. um so what made you choose longevity wellness you know supplements because i know you have your undergrad was in kinesiology but you've talked about how you didn't learn anything there you actually learned it in the real world probably learned most of it from sam um you know what what was that direction about i mean what what made you say this is this is the next career path for me it's like i'm disrupt i i want to disrupt the supplement industry or i'm just not happy with what's out there i'm starting to you know pull back the layers of of what's really on the market and i realize how many charlatans and how much garbage is out there and i want to change that game like what was that about yeah um i told you this when i first got here and started checking out your i mean i'm very jealous of your longevity center that you have here and all the tools you have because i've been made fun of for what i have i got a hyper berry chamber the red light the sauna the e-watt like i have it all as well too but you just you're blowing me out of the water.

43:54I was very jealous of it, but.

43:55Gary Brecka:And you, and you want a hydrogen, uh, nano bath today. I do. Yeah. I'm, I'm giving him a hydrogen nano bath. It's going to be awesome. Um, but something I've noticed anecdotally from just training in my experience is that chasing peak performance and longevity go hand in hand. And if you treat the body the way that it was intended to be treated and you recover the right way, you eat the right foods, you supplement the right way, your performance is so much better. And the way you feel is so much better. And I noticed that by meeting sam calavita and training in his garage um and when i retired from fighting it's a great story too when i first met sam he came to vegas and i had all these supplements on the counter and they were and they were all garbage like really someone i was sponsored by and i'm promoting it i'm saying like what do you mean these are bad he's like stop taking these instantly he's like what do you mean he's like they're horrible for you like packed with sucralose and artificial sweeteners and things I didn't know about.

44:49Gary Brecka:Right. And he made me throw all these away and turn me on to the good supplements that were made naturally and organic and things that I needed. My whole style, my whole life changed when I was eating salmon. That was a big part of it. So when I retired and I had felt so much better from the training I did and the supplementation I was doing, I knew that that's what I wanted to chase. That's awesome. When I retired, it was kind of like, what am I going to do now? Right? Like same ways when I got suspended, it was kind of like my identity was taken away. Like, what am I going to do now? I needed to put my energy towards something.

45:21And the lifestyle that I was living and longevity and health and wellness is what I wanted to continue in. And so that's where Wild Society Nutrition started.

45:28Gary Brecka:Yeah. I love your stuff, by the way, man. My son and I eat your ribeyes constantly, the dried ribeyes. Yeah, the caveman eats. Yeah, I take them on planes. I take them with me everywhere. Yeah. Yeah, so. And I tried them first at that SproutsCon. Yeah. When I met you at SproutsCon and my son had been taking them for a while. And he's like, Dad, you got to come over and meet TJ Jalashaw. And I knew who you were. And he's like, I've been eating this stuff. I love this stuff. And now I'm like, I love it too, man. I take it on the road. Amazing. I love to hear that because that's why I built it. Not only, I mean, I built it for everyone, but also selfishly myself.

46:02Gary Brecka:Yeah. Right? Like products I wish I would have when I was competing to strive for peak performance. our cave mayonnaise that we're talking about is a 20 ounce grass-fed ribeye in sea salt that's all it is that is so awesome in a bag yeah we slice it really thin we air dry it we put it in a five ounce bag and uh we said it's crazy how well it's doing dude it's it it is it really is and i'm not i i've got no uh affiliate link with you guys or anything but i will tell you man they're they're they're amazing thank you i mean talking about traveling i mean that's the selfish reason why i created them like i had to do a lot of traveling for business or when i was fighting and i can't eat in an airport no no no there's no way dangerous place in the world it's it's insane like i can't buy a water that's not in a glass and it's not in plastic transportation secretary uh uh sean duffy's trying to change that right now he just got a lot of flack for it too they just announced that they were going to um add extra breastfeeding stations for women they were going to put playgrounds in for for kids to get the zoomies out in airports and and turn some of the bars into gyms and shower and changing facilities and people went nuts and i was like dude, I would much rather fly next to somebody who had just had a workout and a fresh shower than some dude that had four beers and a basket of fries.

47:12Gary Brecka:And if you're a breastfeeding mother, I mean, you got to go into a public restroom, kind of hide in a stall right now. Why wouldn't we give extra places for that? And playground for kids to get the zoomies out. I walk by these vape booths and smoking booths and there's like six bars between when you get out security and get to your, get to your, you know, get to your gate. What are the top three reasons why I prefer a vertical cold plunge versus a lay down tub? Well, I've used both. When you're in a vertical position, your body naturally regulates your breathing better. So if you're holding on to the sides and you're in a vertical position, you can just focus on your breath work and you can stay calm.

47:50Gary Brecka:A lot of people feel more calm when they're in a vertical position than when they're laying down in the water and think they might slip under the water. So when you're vertical plunging, You're fully immersed faster. You can focus on recovery, inflammation reduction, and you're not struggling to just stay in a lie down position. Your body floats in an awkward way sometimes. So it's just a more efficient, comfortable experience in my opinion. It takes up way less space too. It has a smaller footprint. So you can put these on your patio, your garage, your bathroom, your locker room. You can really put it anywhere.

48:17Gary Brecka:I've got one on my balcony. I've got two in my bathroom. So this is why cold life is my favorite cold punch on the market. So click the link below and you can order yours today. Make sure you get the ultimate human version. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. So I love that the genesis of this, because, you know, if I was to sort of summarize a lot of the guests that come on my podcast and they, they're the most impactful, very influential, passionate, purpose-driven people, it's always the people that solve the problem in their life. They don't necessarily have to be the most qualified.

48:50Gary Brecka:You know, there's some of, some of the soccer moms that I've had on my podcast have solved problems like Lyme disease and, you know, um, you know, on the journey with jelly roll and he conquered drug addiction and alcohol addiction and being 510 pounds and, and this, this overwhelming sense of self-hatred. So what, what would you say is the, the problem that you, you saw that started this journey? Yeah. Um, learning that the products I was being paid to talk about on my social media and felt, ended up feeling really bad about it, that I'm promoting something now that, and even, even after I found out about it, I was getting paid to talk about it and I kept doing it because I was getting paid.

49:28It's like, I felt so guilty about that. So then once I retired and I didn't have these sponsorships, it was like, I'm going to create something that I know is good for you. Um, the reason why I rolled out into Sprouts first as well too, like a lot of professional athletes will build a product. Again, I built these stuff for myself and we'll get into why I built them. But like, I wanted to roll out into Sprouts first because a lot of professional athletes will slap their face on a brand and then release it on their website. I mean, I could be building this in my garage.

49:55Gary Brecka:Same thing happens in my space. A lot of people, some of them that I look up to, they get to the top of the mountain, they just become a prostitute for every product or service. Yeah, and then there's like, especially in the supplement industry, you could be building this product in your garage and selling it. Like the way that it's not regulated is insane. You were talking to me about protein powders at the Sprouts Con, and I forget what you said to me, but I remember it blew my mind. I actually wrote it down. I meant to talk to you about it on the podcast and I forgot what it was, but it was about like the scam and how they can artificially inflate the protein content.

50:28Gary Brecka:Oh yeah. You know, on, on the label. And I didn't know about that. Tell me a little bit about that. Cause I found it fascinating then. Well, how much is actually like usable and bioavailable? And like only like, you know, sometimes some of these products are only 20 % what actually is in the product. And until you're doing third party testing, what they say does not like, you have no idea what it is. somebody's like wow it's 30 grams of protein but really it's 10 yeah it's got 10 and and there's a lot of that out there um so multiple reasons i built this is so chasing peak performance and simplifying some products um sprouts was a great partner to partner with i didn't sell one product online first i went straight to retail well that's what i went that's a different strategy wow yeah i went straight to sprouts first which obviously your property how did you get them to carry your stuff just because your name yeah okay yeah the the name and the marketing i was going to put behind it um and sprouts is a great partner they have this innovation center to where they give like new brands a chance um because they are in tune with like what's popular right now what's healthy for you yeah my son sells his hydrogen tablets there we met at sprouts con and it was i've that was the first time i'd met a whole team yeah you know from behind sprouts and they really do have an awesome team and they're very intentional about what they're putting on their shelves for the for the public which i like to yeah they're they're they're a great brand i hope they continue to explode oh they will they're they're growing really really well um and the reason why i wanted to go into sprouts because they have a kill list of ingredients you can't have within your product and live within their four walls wow like you can't have artificial sweeteners you can't have preservatives things like that that you want to avoid anyways so you know when you're shopping at sprouts you're shopping somebody is we wish our fda would do that for us right exactly yeah but that's cool and so that was a bit bring bring a lot of validity to what i was building rather than me just slap my face on something something online i could be building my garage and who knows what's in it another point was that we went straight uh third party testing from the get-go for every product we've made has been by informed choice informed sport so you know that what's on that nutritional effects panel or something facts panel really is in there um and we test all heavy metals all that stuff right so good man and being as very transparent as possible that means a lot man yeah yeah no it means a lot to the consumer and i think i think the the general populace is becoming more woke to these things i think the pandemic did us all a failure yes you know we realized hey maybe our government elites don't have our best interests at heart and i think they do now um in this current administration but you know in the past maybe not so much and and also we just can't trust everything that we read and hear out there so i I think people follow people and not brands too.

53:09Gary Brecka:So just knowing that your heart's behind this and you develop this as much for you as you did for them. And my seven-year-old son, like, you know, if I'm giving it to my seven-year-old son - Is he smashing the ribeyes? Oh yeah. He's like, when I get, so it's been hard for us to keep Arcade Man Eats in the house because it's selling so much. Like I have to stay in front of production and everything I'm building is going straight to Sprouts, like onto our website. So when I bring it home, he smashes it. And it's always been a battle to like, I'm really into my diet I'm really into performance and so it's always like I'm trying to feed my son the same way and I always want to increase his protein content he's growing really good for his brain and it's like that's the easiest hack for me is to give him caveman eats because he loves it and he'll mow it and there's 95 grams of protein in one bag that's so good and he'll eat half a bag that is so good he'll eat dude maybe that's gonna be his nickname you know yeah caveman Dillashaw there we go I like it he'll be the new guy he'll be able to turn into the caveman in front of the bag yeah that's awesome yeah and so um what's what's uh like a typical now that you're more woke to longevity and wellness um you've got this brand out there which i'm sure you're pouring your soul into oh yeah what is it what is a typical day look like for you now i mean you're clearly you're keeping yourself in good shape yeah i i ran this morning i can't you and i ran the same route yeah we should have run into each other i know uh i can't not work out like it's my happy place It's what I do.

54:34It's like, and now knowing about longevity and taking care of, taking care of yourself, it being active is very, very important. Um, so trying to squeeze that in wherever I can, you know, it might only be 30 minutes. I think I've heard you say this, like snacking on exercise, right?

54:49Gary Brecka:I use that term all the time. Uh, to where like, I might only have 30 minutes at lunch. Cause I'm in between calls and like, I'll get a little workout in or, and I'll do multiple of them throughout the day, but they're little, or maybe I'll just go for a walk after a dinner with my family, like finding little windows to be able to work out, um, to where I used to, that's all I did. Yeah. Right. So my life is very busy now. I remember towards the end of my career, telling my wife, man, it'd be nice to retire one day and live a normal life. Well, now I, I would go UFC fighter. I would, I would love to go back and kick people in the head again.

55:23It was way easier than it is running your own business and be an entrepreneur. You have to be very mentally tough being a ceo and founder of your own brand and running it because there's fires every day you're putting out like you always feel like the company's on the verge of like being destroyed you're like nervous about it because there's like logistics problems like showing up to sprouts in time or manufacturing problems and until you become completely vertically integrated and control all pieces you're relying on so many other people yeah and the ball gets dropped still your brand though man and like if if my product doesn't show up and say my k-mayonese doesn't taste the way that it's supposed to taste that's on me even though my manufacturer is the one that messed it up and like that just like stresses you out to so much

56:06Gary Brecka:you know yeah i told my kids early on you know because my son owns h2 tab my daughter's launching a uh chemical free skincare line awesome my youngest wants to launch a chemical free active wear line which i'm super supportive of i mean having my kids close proximity to me is the greatest blessing of my entire adult lifetime i mean there's nothing better than being best friends and kind of on the journey with your kids. So cool. And your son is learning more by observation than he is by what you teach and tell him. You know, their eyes are a lot more open to what you think. And like seeing dad in the grind is that's, you know, that itch is going to get planted in him too.

56:43Gary Brecka:But, you know, I told him, you know, when they wanted to start their own business, I said, it's great. I mean, just don't start it for the wrong reason. Just remember, you're never going to own this business. It's always going to own you. Yeah. Because, you know, if you're a good entrepreneur, your reputation in that business means everything. 100%. And so talk to me a little bit about, and this should be great for your business, you know, this documentary that's going on with, is it Paramount? So it was going to be released this year. But now with the whole Paramount deal, we're going to wait until next year.

57:17Gary Brecka:Okay. Just because. So it's on the shelf. It's on the shelf right now. It's already been recorded. they followed me around for like seven different days um all the way out to like meeting with venture capitalists in new york to sprouts con to um going into sprouts and going to my manufacturing and show them how the process is made to formulations and um my office at home my office in orange county you know filmed like all that um this all started because dana is a very very passionate entrepreneur like i think that's his first love i know he's got the UFC and everything, but like he loves entrepreneurship and building something and making it, turning it into something successful.

57:52And we just got in touch. I probably stayed in touch with him more now since I've retired than even when I was fighting and just kind of filling him in on what's going on with my brand. And it was a joke because I heard he was like teaming up with First Form and excuse my language, but I said, yo, fuck First Form, you know, I was like, just joking. I know Wild Society is not big enough yet, but we did, we did some numbers of the sales we did in april and we're just getting started and like that same savage i was in the cage is the same savage i'm outside the cage and i'm gonna get this done i'm gonna make it success successful and i'm gonna turn the supplement industry upside down well he loved it it resonated with him he's like this is awesome gave me a great idea and i was like awesome what's the idea ghost me for like two years he'll ghost you'll be like hold tight or something like that and you're like no dude i don't want to hold it so like my brain's going he's like i got a great idea he's like oh maybe i'm gonna partner with you see this and that and like he goes to me for like two days and like 10 30 at night he calls me like two days later it's like hey man i want to create a documentary of what you're doing what success looks like after retirement um and still being on that same grind that you were as a fighter now as an entrepreneur and so that's so cool they

58:58Gary Brecka:followed me around filming it you know and if dana says it it it happens he's not just like uh yeah i think we'll do this documentary it sounds like a great idea kind of guy he's like oh no we're going to do a documentary where it's i mean it's happening yeah um he doesn't uh the thing i love most about him he's very black and white like you know exactly where he stands but talk about a guy whose word you could take to the bank if he tells you that he's going to do something there's a hundred percent chance he's gonna get done we were sitting here at our my kitchen table a few months ago and uh with his daughter and and my son was here and he started talking to my son cole about um the great world race you know he ran seven marathons on seven continents in seven days and he was like wait what the fuck he ran a marathon in antarica and then africa and then australia he's like when you do documentary on this he goes do you want to do it do you want me to do it and cole goes i want you to do it yeah of course yeah he literally picked up the phone right then and called his team and and now it's now it's underway and oh it's so cool he's uh we're meeting with the documentary film crew and uh yeah he's he's he he's either all gas or all break i mean there's no sort of in between so that's awesome and i think that's going to have a huge impact on your on your career it is just kind of sheds light on what i'm building and why i'm building it you know i've always talked about like i'm building products that i wish i would have had when i was competing you know like my concentrates that are grass-fed and we added organic mushroom complex to it to deal with um i'm not only athletic ability but reducing stress and cortisol and my longevity protein that's you know got creatine whey protein isolates collagens lactoferrin urethanae like and listen to you man i love this yeah and just the reason why i created what i did and in the benefits behind it and k manny's been able to take it on the road and like most of the pro like i'm on a very high protein diet you know high protein good fats lower carbs like good carbs um i've been wanting to put on size but i'll put on lean size and it's been fantastic for that but most of my protein i get is from the food i eat why we created k-manis 100 i think you get it from whole foods exactly but it's nearly impossible sometimes when you're working hard or you're working out hard to you know get the um nutrients you need right away right right so the like the longevity is the isolates we created like i can drink them while i'm working out and i get you know the rapid absorption of amino acids and proteins and things that i need for uh protein synthesis and um just thought about chasing world championships and that's what wild side nutrition is that's so awesome so where do you see this brand going you're going to continue the you have an online presence now yep um you can continue to go after the retail channel yeah i love retail specific channels too like uh especially around the natural sector um we're looking to roll out into whole foods here in the beginning of 2026 we're in sprouts um gnc has actually been a a massive um help for us as well too gnc has trying to turn around what they've been known as in the past and only like putting out like weight gainers and products that have artificial they still have that yeah they want that longevity but yeah so our like our longevity product is solely at gnc right now yeah because they want a whole longevity section that's you know they want people like the times are changing people are becoming people like you people yeah and they're educating like me educating me and educating the world on like what we should be eating and how we should be treating ourselves and the GNC's like seeing that trend.

1:02:27Gary Brecka:Yeah, totally agree, man. I'm, I'm, I'm really excited for you. Well, uh, so I have a group of, um, followers that call my VIP group and they're the only guys that I, and women that I let know what guest is coming on the podcast before they come on. So I want to take you into a room with them. I do a private podcast with them. I want to, they have a whole list of questions for you. Um, but, uh, if you're interested in becoming a VIP, just go over to theultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP and you can sign up to be a VIP today. You get private podcasts, you get Q &As with me. You get all of my protocols, including becoming the ultimate human version of yourself.

1:03:03Gary Brecka:And maybe I'll even negotiate a discount for TJ's, for some of those yummy ribeyes. Love it, yeah. But before we go into that room, I always wind down all of my podcasts by asking my guests the same question. what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human i've heard your podcast so i had a little bit time to think about this coming i did i knew it was coming um but for me it's the pursuit of excellence mentally spiritually and physically um i just i just need to be chasing something i need a sense of purpose um i know that sense of purpose purpose keeps me going um keeps me motivated when i'm motivated for something like greatness can happen and i want that excellence all the time I mean, I want that excellence to rub off on my son or my family and maybe people that follow along on my journey.

1:03:52Gary Brecka:Yeah, TJ, Dillashaw, I wish you all the success, man. Thank you. You're moving the needle in this world. I really appreciate you coming on the Old Town Human. This is amazing. Thank you. And until next time, guys, that's just science.