Andy comes from modest beginnings. At age 14, he started lifting weights and immediately knew it would be a part of his life from that moment on. He has created a career that allows him to be a Scientist, Teacher and Coach. He is a Professor at California State University, Fullerton and Director of the Biochemistry & Molecular Exercise Physiology Lab. He has worked with elite professional athletes for over 15 years. The list includes NBA All-Stars, MLB MVPs, Olympic medalists, NFL Pro Bowlers and Hall of Famers from multiple sports. His mission is to provide the world with free & accessible high-quality, accurate, and entertaining information that will inspire and improve the human condition by enhancing the understanding of human performance, nutrition, health and well-being.
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Brett Gilliland
Welcome to the Circuit of Success. I’m your host, Brett Gilland. Today I’ve got Andy Galpin with me. Andy, how you doing? My man?
Andy Galpin
I’m doing amazing. How are you?
Brett Gilliland
I am doing great as well you’re, uh, you out in California today? What part of California you at?
Andy Galpin
Yeah, I live in Southern California in, uh, long Beach.
Brett Gilliland
Long Beach. Very nice. Well, thank you for being with us today. And, uh, uh, as the intro says, obviously you’ve, you’ve got, you’ve built an amazing career and, uh, you are a world leading expert man. I feel, uh, very blessed to have you on the Circuit of Success and so, uh, appreciate your time. But if you could maybe just give us a little lay of the land, Andy, what’s made you, the man you are today and, and kind of help getting you to where you’ve gotten.
Andy Galpin
Yeah, sure. I guess you want a little bitof the background is.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
Is that where you’re going?
Brett Gilliland
Yeah. I always say people don’t just wake up and become a doctor, work with athletes, do all the things that you’re doing, man. There’s a backstory there. And it’s, it’s my job to figure out that backstory.
Andy Galpin
You got it. So I was born in the Pacific Northwest, so in a, in a pretty small community, farming and logging, things like that. So I played every sport, uh, growing up. And then of course, like everyone I grew up with, I did every other job you could possibly. Do so working at grocery stores and pumping gas and hang in the summers and, um, cleaning stalls and things like that. Right. That’s just, yeah. Everyone I grew up with, that’s just what you did. Um, I was fortunate to actually, I went and played college football. From there, I got a degree in exercise science and was able to take that and I got a job down at Tempe, Arizona at a place called Athletes Performance. This was 2004. 2005, something like that. And, uh, at that, at the time that facility had probably over 200 professional athletes, Hall of Famers, number one draft picks, like very, very high level NFL major baseball guys. So I was there for about half a year and I realized like for sure I didn’t wanna be a strength and conditioning coach was like my full-time job.
And um, so I went then back to school and got my master’s degree in human movement sciences. And obviously I wasn’t competing in football anymore. But I then started competing in, in weightlifting or Olympic weightlifting, as you may, you know, see it in Olympics. Mm-hmm. Um, competing in combat sports and jujitsu and MMA and things like that.
Um, then went, got my PhD in what’s called human bioenergetics. It’s like a fancy way of saying muscle physiology and metabolism and things like that. I continued to work with athletes, um, continued to train and compete in the combat sports. And then, uh, 2011 I came out here to California. Uh, started my lab, which is called the Biochemistry and Molecular Exercise Physiology Lab, and then eventually took over the Center for Sport Performance out here.
So, um, since then I, I’m in the last, you know, 11 years or so, I’ve been, I’ve been doing that, which is three really major components. So Component one is I run that research center and we will study anything. Uh, and disseminate that information we think can enhance human performance. And this is anywhere from breathing techniques to, uh, you know, what types of training are best to, uh, taking muscle biopsies and looking at molecular and cellular and genetic components, um, of muscle growth and development, whatever it needs to be.
Um, the other part is then I teach in the areas of sports nutrition, uh, at the graduate level, um, advanced muscle physiology and human performance and things like that. And then I have worked with, uh, professional athletes, you know, for a long time now, and, um, I’ve worked with. Saw young winners, MVPs, all pros, all stars, Hall of Famers, gold medalists and Olympics, silver medalists, world champion fighters in multiple major sports, et cetera.
So probably, I don’t even know how many at this point, um, but a lot of them and including. Currently the number one player in the world and four major of the major American sports. So…
Brett Gilliland
Dang.
Andy Galpin
That’s the big picture. A little bit of where I was and what I do now.
Brett Gilliland
That’s awesome, man. Well, there’s a lot there, right? Cause you don’t just become this person that’s working with all the, the people you just mentioned and, and so there’s a lot there. So if, I mean, if I were to follow you around the last 10 or 11 years. Before we get into the exercise fitness side of things and maybe the mindset, let’s talk about what were those, what was, what was Dr. Andy Galpin doing as that low? When were you, when you started, how old were you when you started professionally working? Was that late twenties, early thirties?
Andy Galpin
Uh, it was, yeah, it was, uh, finished my PhD at 27. Okay.
Brett Gilliland
So, so I went back to your 27 year old self. I mean, what am I seeing now to get you to the level? Cause there’s a lot of people that can go get their doctorate and do the things that you did at school. I shouldn’t say a lot, but there, there are people that can do that, but not many of ’em have taken it to the level you’ve taken it to. So let’s talk about that.
Andy Galpin
Well, there’s, I think there’s a couple of ways we can go about this question.
One of ’em was, so maybe not actually what you’re asking, but I get asked a lot, which is kind of like, how, how do you get into these communities?
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
And how do you get these breaks? Right. How are you. Advising for these giant companies, how are you getting these, these contracts with these massive athletes?
So that’s kind of like one,
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
Which I’d be happy to answer. Um, and then the other question is sort of just like, what was it, what did it take, you know, in those first couple of years to get tenure, to get promoted, uh, and to go forward? So is there either one of those two you’d prefer?
Brett Gilliland
Let’s go with number one first and then we’ll come back to number two. So basically the same. I like that. It’s exactly what I was trying to ask those two questions.
Andy Galpin
Great. So, uh, the reason I actually started the conversation with where I come from is because I think it’s important people understand that I, I don’t come from, I’m not born and raised in LA. My dad wasn’t in professional sports and so I had, I don’t know anybody growing up that had a PhD.
I didn’t know what a PhD was. Uh, for sure. Even as an undergraduate, I had no idea. I could not have told you the difference between a master’s and a PhD. Um, not that people don’t have success where I’m from. It’s very, very rare to get up, but people aren’t surgeons and, uh, I didn’t know anybody famous growing up.
I didn’t even know anybody who’d met anybody famous , like, other than maybe like you went to a Mariners game and Joy Cora was walking around and you got to wave at him or something like that.
Brett Gilliland
Right, right.
Andy Galpin
That was it. Right. So I can, I can give you a hundred examples of this, uh, throughout my career, but I’ll give you a couple. And it directly answers the question, right? It’s just like, how did you get these breaks? Well, what I told you is I did my undergraduate and I played football, and then I started working in Arizona with professional athletes. I didn’t tell you how I got that job, and that is this. So I was an undergraduate, and I actually remember being on recruiting trips and asking sort of like, what are you interested in academically?
And I was always like, you know, hey, human performance for performance, and like, this program didn’t exist. So they were always like, oh, okay. Public health and like athletic training. And I was like, no. Like , no. But that’s all we had. So even our exercise science theory, it was really just the exercise of public health and like, how do I get people out of obesity and stuff, whatever.
There was nobody there focusing on human performance really. So I remember, I think, I think probably as a senior or junior, um, one of the faculty members was, you know, sort of like, Hey, I wanna set up a booth out front.. We have blood pressure screening so people can come by, we can check their blood pressure and start teaching people the importance and hey, early signs of, you know, chronic disease, et cetera.
And she’s like, does anybody wanna do it? And I was like, fuck yeah, I’ll do it. And she was just like, great. And she’s just like, You know, you wanna do this type of stuff. And I was like, absolutely not. I could not be less interested. Like, I’m so…
Brett Gilliland
You could care less.
Andy Galpin
Hate it. He’s like, do you know how to check blood pressure? And I was like, absolutely no idea. I was like, great. But he’s like, you want help? Basically, he’s like, why are you doing this? And I’m like, if you want help, I’m in. Like, let’s do it. It doesn’t matter. Right. That’s just, that’s just where I come from. Just like,
Brett Gilliland
Yeah, work. Put on the work boots.
Andy Galpin
Hey, a hundred percent. Right. It’s just like, take your shot. So I did that and I sat there in the core cold Oregon rain and just nobody came by and I didn’t do anything. It’s just like…
Brett Gilliland
They didn’t even wanna do it. You didn’t wanna do it. They didn’t wanna do it.
Andy Galpin
Nobody. I’m a college football player. I’m trying to get a degree. In an area that I was grossly under prepared for, by the way, like coming from the academics in my high school. You know, I didn’t have the free couple of hours, but I did it anyways.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
Well a year or something goes by and she called, emailed me and something was actually, probably saw me in the hallway. You didn’t really use email much back then. And she’s just like, Hey, um, one of our former alumni is working up at Adidas and Adidas’s headquarters is in Portland. And um, they have an opening for somebody to run the corporate wellness gym. Do you wanna do it? And I was like, fuck yeah. And she’s like, do you have any, any, do you wanna know how much it gets paid?
And I was like, Nope. Like I, I’m in, it was like, great. So I was driving, leaving my house at like 3:15, 3:30 in the morning to drive all the way up to work or up to Portland to open up the gym by like six AM. And then get that done to get back to practice. Typically started at like two, about three, but you gotta be there early, whatever.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
So I’m like, okay, I’ll do that shift. And I was minimum wage probably. If if anything it’s just like, okay. And so I was up there for a while and uh, I started getting early cuz where I’m from, my dad worked in road construction and we worked in the farm. So it was like if your shift started at 7:00 AM if you got there at 6:50, you were for sure gonna get fired.
That you’re absolutely gonna get fired, right? Yeah. Like no chance. So I was just showing up like a half an hour early, just like way, and I like, I have a long drive. What if I run outta gas, like all these contingencies rights just to make sure I was never late. So all because of that, I was always way early.
Well, what I noticed is people were there in the gym waiting to get in. I’m like, damn, there’s these people here. Like, so I’ll just let ’em in. And they noticed that they’re just like, they got really excited and so they ended up just like treating these people super well. And then there’s nobody in the gym.
So I was basically like personal training them, even though I wasn’t like supposed to be.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
So I’m just like hustling on these people. Well, it ends up being like two of them just worked in this smoothie shop or something on campus, you know, or to get their workouts in. But the other, like four of ’em were on the executive team.
I didn’t have any idea who was who or anything, and I just was just treating everybody like they were CEO. Right. Um, it didn’t take very many months for one of the guys to be like, Hey, we have these associates in Arizona. I think like, you know, we put in a word for you, I think that’s where you should actually be.
Like, they knew I didn’t wanna be a corporate one, personal, right. But I was just training them as best as I could. So I was like dope. So that’s how I got that opportunity and that was a really tough spot to get down there. This is the only facility in the world like it at the time. So I, I guess the reason I’m saying is like I come back to, how did I get that break is because I sat in the rain and checked blood pressure doing nothing I wanted to do with no time I had, how do I get that next break? Cause I drove an hour and a half every day, you know, for minimum wage. Probably lost money after I paid gas.
Brett Gilliland
At three in the morning.
Andy Galpin
At three in the morning. You’re like, that’s how I got those breaks. And I could tell you every single story that I have about the next biggest break, the next biggest break. It’s always, it’s, it’s the same. Over and over again. It’s just different pieces.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah. It’s amazing. Isn’t, I mean, I think, and I’ve said this numerous times, for some reason, this is a theme coming up lately, it seems like, but how many, um, people, they, they only wanna do something if it’s gonna benefit ’em immediately.
Right. I think that’s the world we live in. And it’s like, I, I think of the grind I used to have as a young financial advisor 21 years ago, and you know, they said make 40 phone calls while I was making 75 to a hundred. Right. And it sucks calling people. Nobody wanted to talk to you. Especially then people answer their phones.
Cause there wasn’t caller id. They, you’d say who they are. Boom. They’d hang up. I mean, it was terrible. Right? But that’s the grind that we gotta go on. Whether it’s business, it’s fitness, it’s investments, whatever it may be. That’s the stuff that we gotta do every day. And, and so what I’d love to spend time on is that, optimum, um, kind of what I’d call optimal performance, right?
So let’s talk the mental side and then maybe the physical side as well, uh, on what you’re doing. How are you helping people, these, these MVPs, if you will, be at the peak of their performance and use the lens of the business man, woman that’s driving down the road? Listening to this right now.
Andy Galpin
Yeah, you got it. So actually this works well because, you know, I’ve had the professional athletes, but I also have a company called Rapid Health Optimization. And that is specifically for non-athletes that basically want the, the athlete treatment. So I’m gonna describe to you what we do with the athletes.
Brett Gilliland
Rapid health. What was it?
Andy Galpin
Optimization.
Brett Gilliland
Optimization, okay.
Andy Galpin
This is the exact same model that you go through. Um, and we have, we have been doing that for quite a while, um, with,
Brett Gilliland
I promise you he didn’t put me up to this. For those of you listening, this is a legitimate question.
Andy Galpin
Yeah. Um, this is exactly what this company does.
Brett Gilliland
Okay.
Andy Galpin
Uh, here’s what we do. We like the general philosophy is this, uh, I want to give people extraordinarily high levels of precision with whatever they’re asking ’em to do. That way we don’t waste time. There are infinite things you could do or might help or help a little bit, but what are those three to five things that we call performance anchors?
So these are things that are holding you back and dragging down your ship the most. If I can find those and pull those out, And then get outta the way, you’ll start taking off, right? You’ll hit speeds you’ve never reached, and you’ll do it with less friction, less resistance. It’ll be easier. That’s what we’re after.
So in order to do that, we have to do an incredibly detailed analysis to figure out what those things truly are. Uh, people will sometimes refer to these as things like, these are root causes rather than symptom. So we’re going after solutions to solve problems, not cover up symptoms. And when we do that, then we just get outta the way and physiology takes you to unbelievable levels.
Um, so what we do is we have a a two step process. Step one is what we call decode. So this typically takes us something like 60 days and we run giant experiments on you. And we wanna know four primary things. I wanna know every single thing that goes in your body. Every food you eat, where you get your water from, what type of toothpaste you use, where’s your shampoo coming from, everything that goes in your body.
Number two, everything that comes outta your body. Saliva, stool, urine, blood, more blood. So more blood after that. A little bit more blood when you’re done with all that blood, sometimes hair. Anything else we possibly need. Step number three. How that all makes you feel. So we use a, a bunch of scientifically validated questionnaires and a bunch of other things I’ve used in my practice for a long time.
And then the fourth component there is how you perform. So we want actual, the actually test performance. So we’re gonna see how your body functions. We’re gonna track a whole bunch of things. Um, this could even include doing things in your own home, in your own bedroom. So there are cases in which we want to dive extremely hard into sleep with, uh, another company called Absolute Rest.
They can come back and talk more about this, but this is a full grade clinical sleep study done in your own bedroom, in your own house. This is full eye scanning, brain tracking, or uh, eye tracking and brain scanning, full environmental analysis of your bedroom. So this is any of the dander or allergens or pollen in the air.
This is any organic. Uh, compounds coming outta your mattress or formaldahyde or mold or any of these things. Right? So we’re we’re..
Brett Gilliland
You’re doing all this from, you’re in California. Sorry to interrupt. This is amazing. So you’re in California. I’m here in, you know, St. Louis. You’re doing this through me. I hire you guys and, and that’s how we’re doing it.
Andy Galpin
Yeah. We show up, we come to your house.
Brett Gilliland
Oh, you physically come to my house?
Andy Galpin
Yeah. Yeah. We’re gonna send a scientist to your house. To run that whole thing. We’re gonna send a phlebotomist to your house or, or your gym, or your office, or like, tell us where we’ve got people all over. You know, it’s just like, Hey, I’m in here. And, okay, great. We’ll meet you there. We’ll send us somebody, we’ll take the blood for you. I mean, you gotta do your own stool sample. Not gonna take that one for you.
Brett Gilliland
Right. Thank you. I thought that was gonna be part of your job duties, but maybe not.
Andy Galpin
Hey, now you’ll get a, you’ll get a scientist. You know, to your house, uh, um, with a sleep study for sure. To run that thing and then for the other stuff. Yeah. We’ll send a phlebotomist to your house and just take care of everything.
Brett Gilliland
Wow.
Andy Galpin
I told you this is the built, like this is the a hundred million athlete model, right? It’s like, yeah, we’re not gonna have you drive to seven Labs and set Lab Corps appointments like. No, we’re gonna handle all that stuff for you and like someone’s gonna show up and take care of it and you’re gonna go back to work.
Brett Gilliland
Is this like an annual fee or one time fee? A monthly fee? How do people, and you don’t have to get into the numbers right now if you don’t want to, but how, how does that work?
Andy Galpin
Yeah, generally you, well, there’s sometimes some payment options, but it’s, yeah, it’s a one time fee and then typically it’s an eight month program.
Brett Gilliland
Okay.
Andy Galpin
So typically, depending on your schedule, more than ours actually takes us about two months to get all the information and then we generally need about six months to correct everything.
Brett Gilliland
Okay, so there’s, and be correcting. You may say, Hey, this is your mattress is terrible. Get a new mattress. Cause this stuff’s coming out of it. You’re using the wrong shampoo for your blood type. I mean, whatever.
Andy Galpin
Yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah. This is, I mean, probably not that second example, but close.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah. Okay.
Andy Galpin
More like, uh, hey, you need to focus on stress management. You need to actually, like your biggest problem is you’ve got this fungal overgrowth. You’ve got this micronutrient deficiency. And then your cardiovascular fitness isn’t sufficient, but your actually problem is your legs strength isn’t good enough. You don’t have enough muscle and you’re actually, um, have, uh, known toxins exposure. So we gotta get that cleared out or whatever. So we try to boil it down to something like two to five things. Know what happens is once we complete that decode, then you get put on that optimization plan, which sometimes again, it takes two months. Sometimes.
Brett Gilliland
Okay.
Andy Galpin
Five to six months, and then you have a dedicated coach for the entire thing that, that runs you through everything. And then what’s most important for, for the athletes, what’s most important for your listeners too is, um, the reason why this thing takes five months and reason you have a, a weekly coach or unlimited coach, really talk, call ’em anytime you want is because we can’t just dump all that on your plate right now.
So in addition to all those solutions, we build them out in the order you need to accomplish them such that it’s realistic. So we’ll say like, Hey, you’re gonna do this phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four, right? And it’s like eventually roll it out. So by the end of the five months, so like for example, the mattress thing, you kind of said. That actually might be on our list, but we might say, Hey, like that’s our fifth priority, so let’s get to that month five.
Right now you’ve got this thing that’s gotta get cleaned up in your blood. You’ve got this other thing happening and your, your brain focuses down your sex. Your sex drive is way off. You’re, uh, you know, any number of things, right? Um, brain fog is there. We gotta do A and B to clean those up. Then we can get to, I don’t like the water filter you’re using in your house, but right now you can’t get through your day without crashing in the afternoon.
We’re gonna fix that with this here first, or whatever. So,
Brett Gilliland
Wow.
Andy Galpin
It’s all built out in order, in a system for you. So you just sort of have to show up every week, um, and, and follow whatever your coach has on, and then by the end of the five months, everything will get taken care of. You’ll be, you’ll be on a new level.
Brett Gilliland
So that’s amazing. What, and what are you finding then in those, like is there a common thing that you’re seeing in today’s world for those people that want peak performance? And that may be somebody that’s a, you know, police officer driving down the road. It could be a sales rep, a stay at home mom, dad, whatever it may be. Are you finding common themes?
Andy Galpin
So the way that, uh, our, our solutions come in really six general areas. So area one is physical fitness and survival capacity, which is like your fitness, exercise. Area number two is stress management. Area three is sleep. Area four is nutrition, area five is supplementation. And then area six is what we call X factor.
So that’s anything else that didn’t fall in one of those five categories. So the question is, what are the more prominent ones that we see? Unfortunately, there is no like ones, cause some time it’s entirely X factor. Sometimes it’s entirely comes down to sleep. Sometimes it’s entirely about you’re eating a good diet, it’s just not, not right for your body.
And then we just make some dietary changes and like, holy shit, everything went away. Away.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah
Andy Galpin
My skin cleared up. Um, like those rashes and psoriasis are now gone. Like all we do is change my diet a little bit. Sometimes it’s, you know, specific supplementation. A lot of times because supplements are so easy, people can actually get themselves into problems because they’re taking sort of weird combinations.
That aren’t right for their body. And so we actually can get you on one that’s more precise for your body and then just everything goes away.
Brett Gilliland
Okay.
Andy Galpin
You know, all the bad stuff. Um, sometimes it is exercise related, sometimes it’s breath work. Uh, it’s just, it really sort of depends. There is no common themes. What I, what I can say is we oftentimes get people who are like, I’m pretty health conscious. I’ve actually been spending a lot of time the last couple of years and a lot of. I feel a little bit better, but I’m not really totally sure. You’re like, oh, okay. You just don’t have precision. That’s the problem is like you listen to this podcast, you tried this, you heard this from your friend, you tried that, but you don’t have any idea of whether or not that was actually the right thing or if it’s, if it’s counteracting something else or making something worse.
So that’s the part where people are just like, man, there’s too much going on here for me to figure all this stuff out. And so we just say, look, gimme two months. Give me two months and we’ll get all these things figured out for you, and there’ll just be no more guesswork.
Brett Gilliland
Which is amazing. Right? You’re right. I listen to podcasts, they’re like, oh, you gotta take this vitamin. And it’s like, well, I don’t know. You haven’t done my blood work. You don’t know if that’s good or bad for me, right?
Andy Galpin
Oh boy. Like, don’t get me started on that , but yeah. Yeah. Like I can’t, I can’t tell you how many, um, you know, what we’ve been getting a lot of lately is a lot of TRT rejects. So a lot of people who get so excited about T RT and I get it from either their friend who’s a doctor or just like a a thing, and then it works amazing for six weeks or eight weeks or four months, and then a year later they come to us and they’re just like, I feel awful.
We’re just like you. You cannot play. Even it’s just like a little bit of DHEA, just like a little bit of, little bit of this. I just took a little, I just took what, and they, and they just train wreck themselves so they feel awful. Um, so we’ve been getting a lot of that one for interesting, some reason lately.
Brett Gilliland
Interesting.
Andy Galpin
Because it’s, yeah, they just hear it on stuff and they’re just like, Hey, testosterone’s so important. And all of us are low on testosterone. They hear all these things. So just take a little bit. It’s safe. It is safe. It’s not like dangerous. But if you don’t really understand the complexity of the system then you just start running into, all you’ve done is is like we said earlier, like you’ve kind of covered up the symptom, but you didn’t figure out, well, why is your testosterone low to begin with? Yeah, that’s the problem. So that’s what we do is we figure that thing out and then we solve that problem, and then it just doesn’t, it’s just not low anymore.
You don’t have to worry about cycling this on top of that and then taking the next one and then take the next one. And just always kept, you got told me you get shit to do.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
You really wanna make sure you’re worried about all that stuff all the time. Just get it all solved and let physiology take care of everything and get outta the way.
Brett Gilliland
I’m glad I asked the question, man, that that’s, that’s phenomenal. We could probably stop the podcast there and just have everybody just call you up and, and get it done. Right. and say there’s the podcast, ladies and gentlemen.
Andy Galpin
I dunno if you realized you’re just like five minutes in, you’re gonna gimme a 20 minute promo for my company. There you go.
Brett Gilliland
Exactly. Yeah. You had one question and the whole podcast and uh, Andy’s now just.
Andy Galpin
Pitch. Pitch, pitch, pitch.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah, exactly. No, but, but you know what, man, it’s not a pitch because you’re, you’re absolutely right. Like you can see this sticker here on my microphone. Future greater than your Past is helping people achieve a future greater than your past.
That’s what we do as our firm. That’s what I do personally. That’s when time stops for me, man. It’s just, I can talk about this stuff for hours because the point of this podcast is to help that person. One, I don’t care if one person listens to this. And we just helped that one person. Man, your goal was met. My goal was met, we helped them achieve a future greater than your past. And so it’s not a pitch when you’re really serving people. Um, but let’s, let’s do, give them maybe some if, if, if you’re even open to this high level type things, cause obviously you’ve not done my blood work or anybody else’s and all the other two months worth of work that you’ve done.
But if I follow, let’s just pick on you. If I follow Andy Galpin around, what am I seeing? No miss items that you’re doing every day, without fail.
Andy Galpin
Yeah. So there’s a couple things to say here. Um, I’m gonna directly answer your question, but I need to give it a little bit of context first. I promise I won’t go too long.
Brett Gilliland
No, you’re fine.
Andy Galpin
Major, major mistake people make is worrying too much about optimization. And here’s what I mean. Uh, imagine a bowling alley or a bowling lane rather, right? You’ve all done bowling before with the bumper on the side, right? And everyone will come in and say, I gotta throw my bowling ball directly down the middle. Right? I gotta go make sure, and I’m, I’m trying to improve making sure that bowling ball is optimized, being on the optimal path because I don’t want to hit the bumpers. Okay, fine. And you’re so concerned about making sure your bowling ball is on the exact right spot on the lane. You could also reduce your chances of hitting the side by just widening the lane. And now everything, even if it is 10 or 15 or 20% off, still is optimal because it’s still nowhere near the bumper.
Brett Gilliland
Hmm.
Andy Galpin
That’s exactly what we have to pay attention to. That’s what we call resilience. So I don’t wanna make you what we call Precious, which is like you have to do 15 things every single day in order to have a good day. I want you to be far more resilient. So I, I love morning routines. These are fine, but people become a victim to these things so quickly that we have to go. No, no. You’ve actually just become super sensitive. So now if you don’t have your specific 20 minute routine this and five minute this, and this, and this and this, all of a sudden you can’t fucking function, right?
You’ve become really, really, really precious. So we have to make sure two things, there’s optimization and then there’s adaptation. On the other end of the spectrum, you cannot get both at the same. So what we wanna do is work a balance. Um, so when you ask about like, what are the, whatever things I do that are non-negotiables, I don’t have any of them for that exact reason.
There are certain things I like to do generally, but I, I, I make sure that I’m not a victim to having to have a specific daily thing. Um, exercise is obviously very high on my list, but I do not exercise every single day. Now I would like to, but sometimes I don’t want to, sometimes like I wanna sit, I wanna sit on my couch and watch the entire Master’s Tournament.
Like that’s what’s gonna happen, right? I’m gonna watch nine hours of golf today. Like what? Oh yeah. Like my wife’s just like, how?
Brett Gilliland
Yeah, exactly.
Andy Galpin
I justify it, right? Cause I’m like, well, I’m trying to watch blah, blah, blah. Cause I got, I got a bunch of guys on tour right now.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
Like several that are always in contention, right?
Brett Gilliland
I love it.
Andy Galpin
Um, but she’s just like, but really, did you have to watch every single shot of their six hour round?
Brett Gilliland
It’s for work honey.
Andy Galpin
For work honey. I’m like, you haven’t seen the kids? Ah, that’ll, yeah, they’ll be anyhow. Um, so yeah, my day is better. I’m more productive, happier, all the things when I exercise. Some days I don’t worry about it. I love all kinds of things, but I also need to be in a position to where, um, like for example, a couple of weeks ago I was in Montana hunting for a week. Like, I need to be as good then as I am here, right? Which is just like, I didn’t have a chance to wake up. I didn’t gratitude journals. It’s like I got up on a few hours sleep, I hiked my ass for six hours. Like I had, I didn’t get to optimally hydrate, I didn’t get to like, it’s just like you still need to have a great day, right? I don’t wanna have a headache and brain fog becauseI didn’t, you don’t wanna be there, right? So the same thing is with sleep.
Some people have big problems creating their sleep routines and you’re like, oh, I sleep optimally. And you’re just like, wait a minute. You have to have this, this, this, this, this, this. And you had to have this two hour routine. What happens when you travel? Oh, I sleep terrible. Of course you do.
Brett Gilliland
Right?
Andy Galpin
You made yourself super, super sensitive. Like you can’t do it that way. That’s why you sleep like shit on the road. It’s cause you’re too precious at home. That’s why. So, I didn’t answer your question all, but that’s like, I’m very careful about those things.
Brett Gilliland
Well I think it’s real though man. Cause I, I asked that question a lot is even on the day. Cause there’s, there’s plenty. What you just said. I totally connected with man. There’s plenty of days. And trust me, I’m, I’m a guy I journal. I do have my morning routine, like, you know, from exercise to my journal. Whatever it may be. And that’s for me because I know I win the day and it causes less stress. I’m happier and healthier and more productive when I do that. Right? So I know that works for me. It may not work for everybody else. Um, but I think what you’re saying is you’re just being real, right? You’re just being truthful and to your, to use your word, precious. I mean, that’s the thing that sometimes we do, we get so focused on being perfect. That it can screw the whole rest of the day up. And then you beat yourself, you beat your ass the whole day. Not good.
Andy Galpin
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Or it’s actually not even you, it, it’s actually a thing. Right. So you actually do feel worse.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
On those days. Okay, great.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
So what I encourage people to do is, is to develop a, a routine that they know makes them feel tremendous. I just don’t want you to use it every single day, and I want you to actually practice sometimes intentionally not using it.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
And that’s, that’s how we end up in a really, really good spot. Right. So, um, so yeah, like what I generally do in the mornings up, I’m always going to generally try to do some sort of movement. Um, hydration is there. I’m also gonna be spending kid time, no question. I try to protect those times as much as I possibly can. I refuse to do work and podcasts and stuff in the morning, like hang out with my kids for a little bit. Um, and then I’m sort of off and rolling, right? And you’re gonna train at some point throughout the day. I don’t train in the mornings. Um, I’m gonna see my kids in these other various spots, so like, I kind of anchor things around that. Like basically if I can get movement and I can get my kids stuff in the rest of the day, can can work itself around.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
And I have specific little things I like to do. Like, um, I actually find that I generally like to do some sort of human interaction. It’s early as possible meeting wise, which is counter what a lot of people will tell you is like, protect your mornings for creative times and stuff like that. I actually kinda like to get those done outta the way first, and then I feel like that gives me actually a pretty good amount of energy. And then I want like three hours of nobody, nobody around.
Brett Gilliland
So isn’t that funny? Again, I think this is important because I’m the opposite. I don’t, I don’t wanna have a meeting first, first thing, but that late morning at, you know, that 10 o’clock, that 10:30 for me, I love my meetings in the middle of the day, so I like my morning open my afternoon. But I think what I’m, what I’m hearing is you and I probably spend a lot of time testing that and knowing it, and then just committing to it and being okay with it, right?
Andy Galpin
Yeah, a hundred percent. Like I actually, so the reason I like it for myself is I tend to have a huge burst of solution in the morning, and I actually wanna dump that to somebody, you know, I’m just like, Hey, boom, do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and I don’t want all these things to type it out, so I just fired off to somebody. What do we have to do today? What do we have? Update on somebody overnight. Different time zone. This outfit needs this. Got it, got it. Got. And I like all these things done. And then I can go do the stuff I have to, cause I feel free because all those things are taken care of. People are off, they’re doing their stuff.
Brett Gilliland
Yep.
Andy Galpin
Everybody’s taken care of and now I’m good. As opposed to sitting there like trying to be creative and trying to write or read or do whatever. While I’m like, man, I wonder who, what X athlete’s doing. Like they needed this thing. Are they okay? What’s their weight at? You know, how did they feel last night? We tried this experiment. How did it. I, I, I, I can’t focus. I wanna know those answers. I wanna give ’em, do what they’re doing, get off, and then get going. And that’s, that’s done within a half an hour in the mornings.
Brett Gilliland
I love it.
Andy Galpin
And I’m off, I’m off for rolling, so.
Brett Gilliland
So can you just gimme some feedback if you can? Selfishly here. So I, I try to do weights three times a week, cardio twice, and then what I call mobility. It’s like a golf thing I do, it’s called golf forever actually. It’s awesome tool. And, uh, so when you hear that three times weights, two times cardio mobility, one time, how do you feel?
Andy Galpin
Okay. Okay. It’s, it’s, it’s okay. Um, I would probably push, obviously I wanna know more details when you say weights, I wanna know what kind. And when you say cardio, I wanna know what kind. I would probably say that’s not enough cardio. If I had to, without knowing anything about you more than what you’ve heard on camera so far. Um, I’d probably say three. Three conditioning. Two Lifting. Generally. Conditioning.
Brett Gilliland
Okay. So that’s, uh, interesting. So the three cardio to, uh, one lifting.
Andy Galpin
I just think people generally under serve. Um, there’s lots of different types of conditioning and it also needs to be dosed more frequently. You can get away with dosing strength training, um, a little bit less frequently. You cannot get away with not doing fitness, not for very long.
Brett Gilliland
Okay.
Andy Galpin
So it would, again, it would really depend on what you’re doing in those workouts.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
So some people kind of like lift weights and they’re doing a pretty good, like if you’re doing like in a circuit fashion and your heart rate’s elevated, sustained for a long time. Then you might be good.
Brett Gilliland
Yeah.
Andy Galpin
If your cardio is 20 minutes on the StairMaster or your cardio is a 20 minute walk, then it’s like, this is not cutting it here.
Brett Gilliland
