Transcript of How Peak Performance Drives Business Growth - Oliver Anwar

Welcome to the Proven podcast, where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. Today's guest, Oliver Anouar, is an executive health coach who's helped people from Amazon, Meta, Shopify, you name it. He's helped them elevate their bodies while still running global empires. He goes through in this episode and breaks down exactly what supplements you need to take, exactly what your workout program should be, everything. It was an amazing conversation. I can't wait to share it with you. The show starts now. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the show. Oliver, thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me, man. Really excited for this.

For the four or five people who don't know you, who are you? What do you do? What's your claim to pick?

Yeah. My name is Oliver Amwa, and I'm an executive health coach to some of the top leaders in the world. We've worked with executives Amazon, Meta, Tinder, Shopify, Accenture, one of the biggest news anchors in the US as well. We're really about optimizing people's health so they can make their health a competitive edge when it comes to business and everything they do in life so they can dominate.

I love that your approach isn't just about getting healthy. It's so that you perform more effectively and you create better results. Because what people don't understand is if you're exhausted and you show up to the office, it doesn't really matter. This is more about doing that, performing at a higher level here. And oh, by the way, you're also going to get in really amazing shape as well as a side effect of it.

A hundred %. And what we really focus on, it's that idea of performance over everything else. And the great thing about when you focus on performance is your business top line increases, you become a better leader. But as a byproduct, you're healthier, you turn up more present, like spiritually as a person, you feel better. And that as a byproduct helps other areas of your life as well.

Yeah, I think you're the only trainer I've ever heard that talks about bottom line in the first couple sentences when you're talking. It's a very different ball game. You're also someone who's driven by very specific metrics. Before you even start, you're like, I'm going to go after bloodwork. We're going to talk about bloodwork. These are things you need to do. Most people don't do that. Can you walk me through that?

Yeah, absolutely. So when people run a business, everyone's data-driven, right? And they focus on everything that's going on with the numbers. But when it comes to health, for some reason, people don't approach it in that granular, precise way. So The way we want to look at things is, okay, what is your internal blood work saying? Because everyone's got a different genetic makeup. Everyone's got a different environment or level of stress. They're going to be affected by different things. So when we do a comprehensive blood test, we focus on four different areas that we call this. And if anyone's got a pen and paper, they should note this down now because this is some free game that I hope you all like. So number one, you've got your cardiovascular and metabolic health. So you're looking at your blood pressure, your triglycerides to HDL ratio. You've also got your blood sugar levels as well. So all of these metrics are going be very important when we're looking at that side. You've then got your hormonal and nutritional balance. So think of this as your testosterone levels, your thyroid function, your vitamin and mineral deficiencies. All of these are going to drive things in your body that are going to help you perform.

You've obviously got your strength and physical thickness. One of the big things now is VO2 max, your strength and flexibility, those play big things. And obviously your sleep quality and stress management. So we take these four pillars or four areas of testing. And these are the key markers if you're an entrepreneur or executive that wants to perform at your best. Now, typically a doctor will say to Oh, well, just check your BMI or make sure your cholesterol is not too high. These are very basic metrics when it comes to performance. I always say to people, Well, as a CEO, you're a Formula One car, right? And you're optimized to win. So if you want to optimize to win, you've got to treat your body like that and really dive into the granular metrics that are going to help drive that.

Got you. For those of you who are playing at home, vitamin means vitamin for us American listeners.

Oh, sorry, guys. Yeah.

So as you're going through some of these things and you're hitting them, There's lots of metrics that you touch that other people don't normally touch. If someone comes in and they've got insulin resistance, for example, and their BMI is a little high, how does that change? Because getting the data is one thing. How does that change how you train people once you have that data?

It's a really good question. I think the main thing is around the supplementation needs of people. So supplements are a billion dollar industry, trillion dollar industry. It's crazy how much money is put into that. But most people are flying blind when it comes to the supplements that they need for their body. And there's one test out there called a lipoprotein A, which is basically a marker for heart disease, and not many people test for this. So I went and did my bloods about six months ago and got a lot of testing done. Everything was completely optimized. The one thing was my lipoprotein A was not optimized, and this was due to a genetic disposition that I didn't know that I had. It's hereditary in my family. So I started taking a supplement called Nacin. And this Nacin gives you these hot flushes when you take it. But this can actually reduce the impact of lipoprotein A by 40 % if you take the right amount for a certain period of time. And my mind was blown because number one, I didn't know that I had this issue with someone that was pretty healthy and was optimized.

And secondly, I didn't know that there was this amazing supplement out there that could actually reduce that likelihood of a potential heart disease or heart disease risk by 40 %. So again, it's very specific and granular, if that makes sense.

Yeah, it does. It's funny because we just found out that I've got some mold toxicity in me because I grew up in South Florida, so there's a lot of mold. The one way you get out of that is you do IR. You get into it for red sauna and you do that. But unless I had spoken to a professional, they're like, You take Nia Nia as quickly as you possibly can. I was like, Really? They're like, Yeah, you need to have open it up. You need to have a detox out. But most people don't even, A, know where to get these tests or how much they cost. So if you're going in, you're like, Hey, I need this barrage of data, which as entrepreneurs and founders, we get barrages of data every single moment or every single day, and we throw temper tantrums if we don't get them. But we don't do the same thing for our body, which is just wild to me. So how much of the test do you recommend them all? Where do you get them? How does someone actually implement this as quickly as possible?

Yeah, it's a great question. So for a lot of guys that have their health insurance, if they have any maybe issues health-wise, a lot of stuff can be covered through insurance, which is a good thing. So that's good. But also you can get things done privately. There are companies out there called, you probably heard a function before as well. They're very famous right now. But you can just go to a lab and as long as you've got a list of things to do, they can price things up. And you can get these done from anywhere from $150 to $500 for of the tests and you can bundle the pack. So when you look at it on the grand scheme of things, is $500 going to be that much when you're looking at the top performance that you're looking at or years of your life that you're going to gain back? It's a minimal amount to pay for the level of insight that you're going to get from it, if that makes sense. Yeah, it does.

How frequently do you want to take these tests? Say you come in, month one, you get it, you find out that you're a dying flamengo and everything's going to fall apart. When do you then go get another test?

For most tests, it's between three to six months to get them done. Now, what I'd recommend is if there's specific issues with something that's quite high. So for example, like me, my lipoprotein A is pretty high. I would probably want to get that done every three months just to get more of a benchmark of, okay, is this improving short term? So I can then look to improve that. But if things are pretty healthy and you're not too bad in a lot of the areas, I'd say every six months to do that. Typically, most people, they do an annual physical, which is great. It's better to do once a year than it is to let it go by for years. But I think the older that you get and the more serious you get about it, every three to six months is typically what I recommend.

And if someone comes in and they have something with protocols and supplements and all that, how quickly will they start seeing results? And what's realistic? Because we grew up in an age where I want to take a pill, and then all of a sudden I'm seven feet tall and I can duck a basketball and all that. That's not going to happen, kids. If you're running in this situation, what's a realistic timeline? If you're like, Hey, I'm going to start supplementing. I'm going to start doing these training exercises. How quickly do people start seeing results?

It's a fantastic question. We have to manage expectations a lot when people come to us because they'll be like, I've been running my company for the past 10 years. I've not been exercising. I've been training. I want to get the body and health I want in 30 days. And unfortunately, it's not always that quick when you've been beating yourself up for that long. But to give you a direct answer, six months, typically, we find is a great period of time to get great results. And to give you an example, we had a founder come to us who was a nine-figure founder, huge company. And a lot of his markers, I'd say about 40 % of them were in the red. And it was due to the fact he'd had extra body He didn't have as much muscle mass. He wasn't doing the functional activity he should have been. He wasn't outsourcing his nutrition and automating that, which we can go on to. And yeah, he just wasn't in the place that he wanted to be. And one of the biggest things for him was he wasn't getting dreams at night. That was one of the biggest red flags for me because your dreams at night are the deepest part of sleep that you need, and that's your rem sleep.

And this is where your brain and cognitive function comes back. And if you're making big decisions as a founder or anybody in life, you want to keep your mental capacity at the top of your game. And he was realizing, hey, I'm leaving so much on the table. I'm still running a company worth nine figures. Imagine how much I could be doing if I could fix this. So we put him on the protocol. And within six months, all of his markers were in the green, £30 down. He had way more energy, more focus. And the biggest thing was, he told me on one call, I'm starting to have dreams again. I'm starting to actually have these things happen. I was like, Well, that's a huge breakthrough because you're actually in a place where you're healthy now. Sleep apnea have dropped and things like that. So yeah, I would say for a lot of people, like a six-month mark, if you're on something structured, is where you can make a lot of meaningful progress.

You mentioned a word there that I haven't heard before. It's called... I'm not pronouncing it. Sleep? I don't know what sleep is. I'm not a sleeper.

I have no idea what sleep is.

I'm someone, personally, because, again, I built multiple companies, I've been multiple exits. We always go into the idea of sleep just doesn't matter. I'll deal with it later. I've abused my sleep for an exceptionally long time. When you run into that, and this is just me being selfish, how do you fix that? How do you start reversing that? Other than There's certain hygiene that you need to do when it comes to sleep. Hey, set your clock every time, turn your internet. In my house, free trip for everybody, you know those little things that you have that turn lights on and off? Yeah. In your house? Yeah. I have the old-fashioned analog one that's plugged into my router. At 9: 30, it will turn off all of the internet. It's my house. It's a non-negotiable, and it won't turn back on until 7: 00. Because what I was doing was I was going in and I'd sit there and I'd play on it. What I've done instead is I put that literally in a locked box It's like, I cannot get to it. It's a non-negotiable. So if something's really bad, I can go to my phone, but I force the internet to go off.

So I know those basic things. What are some of the things that you found that have radically improved sleep?

Fantastic question. And just before I go into that, What we always preach up to our clients, and the main message we have is that sleep is the foundation of everything. And people will say, is nutrition the most important or is exercise the most important, or supplements the most important? The number one is actually sleep. Because if you think of a house, It's built on a foundation. Sleep is your foundation. And if you don't have that, everything comes falling down. And you know this, right? When you have four hours sleep, you don't want to eat healthy, you don't want to train properly, you get irritable, and everything comes crashing down. So we obviously like to say that sleep is the number one. When it comes to specific things that you can do with sleep, lifestyle optimization typically has had the best ROI for people reducing their sleep apnea. So people will come to us with sleep apnea or sleep issues. And losing weight, building more muscle, actually getting a good amount of sunlight each day, and all of these things, they seem very basic, but these actually have a huge ROI when it comes to not having issues with sleep.

There's also alcohol consumption as well. And alcohol consumption obviously impairs your rem and deep sleep as well. And that's why people struggle in the middle of the night and wake up and stuff like that. It's because of the fact that the alcohol is imparing their sleep quality, which is a huge one. Also, marijuana use can do that as well. And there's a lot of controversy around marijuana, right? And we have entrepreneurs that have taken it to relax and to sleep. But again, that has such a big impact on that rem sleep as well, that you might think that it's helping you relax at night. But the second and third of the consequence of that is you're not getting the rem sleep that's going to allow you to perform at your best. Those ones are huge. From a supplementation point of view, magnesium glycinate is one of the best supplements that you can actually take to aid in sleep quality. And if you follow a lot of the biohackers now, they're very much on this magnesium train. Number one, magnesium. A lot of the soils that our food is created in are fertilized with a deficiency in magnesium.

When we're under high amounts of stress, we deplete through magnesium. When we drink coffee, we deplete magnesium. So the majority of the population is actually magnesium deficient. So just getting that in can be great. The reason why glycinate is so good is the glycine actually helps you with falling asleep and help you hit that latter stage of sleep, that deep and brem side of sleep. So taking a magnesium glycinate can be great. But one of the big that we found is actually coupling the magnesium glycinate with a form of glycine powder alongside it. Now, when you take the compounds individually, they actually have more of a profound impact on the body, absorbing it, the utilization of it, and that leads to actually a better impact. So Those two little supplements there can actually have a big impact.

I love that you're sharing all this. For those of you who are playing at home, this is not medical advice. These are just podcast. Of course, yes. Please go talk to a doctor, enter at your own risk, all the other legal stuff. Don't do stupid. We're just sharing information. A hundred %. This is very educational. This is just us talking. So please understand that really quickly. From there, you mentioned red flags before. What are some of the red flags that most of us aren't looking at that are terrifying?

Yeah, and specifically to sleep or to health in general.

To everything. When you get reports back from someone and all of a sudden you'll get it back, you're like, Oh, my God, he's a Penguin, or whatever it is that comes in. What are the things that hit you that you're like, Uh-oh, we need to talk about this?

Yeah, the biggest red flag that we see, especially in color, like male executives or male clients we work with is testosterone levels. Testosterone levels are one of the biggest things that impact performance as an entrepreneur. Traditionally, people think, Oh, testosterone is me running around as macho as possible, chatting from the rooftops and doing crazy things. But the truth about testosterone, it's one of the biggest drivers of brain fog. So the biggest symptom of having brain fog is the fact you've got low testosterone. Now, when we apply this to a business context or a personal context, it's that fuzziness. You can't make decisions. You're not as decisive, you're not as tenacious. And there was actually a 2023 study that came out where it basically said that those people with higher testosterone are less likely to compromise in regards to the opinions of others in certain situations from a prosocial leadership leadership point of view. So typically people that have lower testosterone from this study are more likely to be more agreeable, that are likely to be more of a pusher. If you're in a leadership position, you've got to be decisive. Maybe you're building something that not a lot of people are going to believe in, and it's your willpower and your drive that's going to take that forward.

Having that testosterone as optimal as possible is going to help that drive forward. So that has a huge impact, but it also has an impact on just general mood, irritability as well, and the motivation to want to do things. If people say, what's the motivation metric that you should be looking at. Testosterone is a big motivation molecule, right? Because if you've got high levels of testosterone, you've got the drive and the energy and the focus to want to do things. But when it's lower, you've not got that. And if you put that into a business context, if you're working 12 hours a day and your testosterone is not optimized, well, maybe you're getting four hours out of the twelve that you're actually optimized. Whereas if you can get that testosterone in a good place, you've then got that baseline of energy throughout the course of the day that's allowing you to perform your best, which could be millions of dollars to your business each year if you're looking at it in that ROI context.

Got you. So twelve hours a day is like a light day for most of us entrepreneurs.

Light day, yeah. If you're having a light day, yeah.

I'm just being honest. It's 16 hour days are normal. I love the people like, I don't want to work 9: 00 to 5: 00. Congratulations, you work 5: 00 to nine. Enjoy Exactly, yeah. That's the renownment. It is what it is. When someone comes in, they've got low T, and they're running that hurdle, there's a lot of controversy around testosterone being injected versus doing it in a natural way. There's people I know who have done it just by sit down, do squats. Do squats as much as you can every single day. Get your legs, build the muscle mass up. That will start rising on its own. There's other people I know who do inject. The long-term ramifications of that is something that, again, I spent eight years in the hospice watching people die. So I'm very like, Oh, if I wasn't bored with it, I don't want it. So don't put it in me. Now, with the exception of stem cells, that is a completely different podcast that's coming up. So when you're coaching your clients and they have low T, because for whatever reason, be it their age or whatever the other factors that come into play, what are the ways that you advise your high performers on how to do this?

A hundred %. No, it's a great question. And firstly, there's a lot of controversy around that in regards to if you are taking testosterone as an injectable, it is a synthetic substance that you're putting into your body. As much as people want to say it's just testosterone, well, it's not the natural testosterone that your body is producing. So the way an REthos is always let's try and fix the low hanging fruit first. How do we do this naturally to ensure that we can max that? And We've had clients that have gone from 250, 300 up to 700 by literally using the approach that I'm going to share. So I think the first one, again, being boring is going back to that sleep quality. Now, one of the biggest impacts of chronic sleep deprivation is your testosterone can actually drop significantly. So if you have four or five hours of bad sleep, you can have testosterone of five or 10 years you're senior. So for example, if you're a 35-year-old entrepreneur, you've got bad sleep and things like that, you could have a testosterone of a 45-year-old. Or if you're a 45-year-old, you have testosterone of a 55-year-old.

So you're aging 10 years just from the fact that you've not got that sleep dialed in. So that number one is a big one. And I'm going to go back to this again. Body composition is such a big one. And again, going back to that test, and one of the first things we do is a body composition test to check your visceral fat levels, your lean muscle mass, because the more that you can bring that body fat down and build as much lean muscle as possible, that's going to raise your testosterone levels naturally as well. Another huge thing is around alcohol consumption as well. So alcohol consumption really does reduce that testosterone down. And specifically for busy executives, it's a tough one, right? Because there's a lot of business dinners that you're going out to. There's a lot of social events that you've got to go to. So it conflicts a lot with the lifestyle that you're potentially living. But there has to be a way in which you've got a way to control all that, whether that's using a specific alcohol that's a bit better for the body, reducing the frequency in the amount to increase testosterone.

So that can be really big. There's also foods as well. So when it comes to testosterone, you want to ensure that you're eating foods that have a decent amount of fat in as well, just to help with raising that level of testosterone naturally as well. So cholesterol isn't always bad when it comes to that as well. That can be really important. Then from a supplementation point of view, it really is recommended things around Zinc, which is one of the biggest ones, magnesium. These These ones will have an impact on testosterone. There's also some controversy around ashwagandha. There are some people saying that it can be good. Other people feel that it helps with testosterone. The two big things that I've seen personally is actually taking tonkaali as a supplement, which is like a herb, and that really does help with naturally boosting that testosterone up. So especially if you want to go from that mid-level up to 700, that can actually really help you give that boost with those lifestyle integrations as well, which is an interesting find from what we've done. So, yeah.

Love it. When it comes to supplements, are all of them created equal? Are there some brands that are better versus not brand? Again, this isn't sponsored. I never take sponsors. But what are the paradigms here when it comes to supplements? Are there better ones? Are there the worst ones? What is the stuff you recommend and what should someone's daily take be? Even if you've never been tested, you have no idea and you just want to say, Okay, I'm going to get the ball rolling today, what should people be buying?

100 %. So just from a quality point of view, I'll tackle that first and then go into the specifics. So from a quality point of view, typically what we find is the supplements that are more regulated and actually a little bit more on the premium side tend to have a bigger ROI. So just because they've gone through more rigorous testing, it's also the fact that the way the body absorbs those supplements is probably a lot better just for the fact that they're a higher quality. So that's a really important thing to first dissect. The second one is, what should people start with as a baseline? Well, typically we find that creatine is a fantastic supplement, and there's a lot of news out there recently about creatine. Was it Royal McElroy said he was taking 20 grams of creatine a day, which I don't think there's that much research actually, specifically around that now. There's starting to come out, but it's not really been peer reviewed. But for most people, 5 to 10 grams of creatine a day are going to be great. What this is going to do is obviously help you reduce body fat if you're training, because you're going to be training at a higher intensity, have more strength.

But there's also the cognitive impact as well. You're able to actually get more focus. There's a lot more research out there to show there's more neurological benefits to having creatine. So again, creatine is one of the most tested in the world. If you go on to examine or PubMed and search creatine, it's one of the most research supplements out there. It's also really, really cheap. So again, if you don't want to spend lots of money, but you want the best bang for your buck for the money you're going to spend, then creatine is 100 % up there. For sure. Sorry.

Which brands are you looking at? I'm going to hold you back to that one. Oh, sorry.

Which brands? Okay. I have to get... I've got a list of about five. I could pull them up, but I don't have them off the top of my head. That's all.

Please, but I don't mean to take the time because I think people are guessing all the time. We're going to go We're going to go on this side or we're going to go on that side, or we're going to buy the cost, or all these different things to say, Oh, maybe I'll get it here or get it there. But having someone, because again, your clients, you are not cheap. And your clients are these high performers, and you're paying for access because most people on the planet will never get this to you. So being able to come in and say, Hey, I want to get that very specific brand, maybe it's Thorn or Thorn or whatever it is, and say, This is what I'm supposed to get. This is what I need to buy.

It's going to be important. 100 %. So the top three we have, you mentioned the first one already is Thorn. They're very, Very good, very high standard. We've also got pureformulas. Com. They're also great. And then designsfahealth. Com. Those are the top three that we find. I believe they ship in the US and Canada as the ones to go to. So if you're looking at premium top level, your platinum level, then Those are the three that I would personally recommend.

Got you. And then someone goes and they buy those, which, by the way, any of those brands, if you just want to send me free stuff? Thank you. So you go to those brands, and then you got to start building your stack. So for those of you who know what's going on at home, a stack is the stuff you take throughout the day. So there's a morning snack, there's an evening snack, there's a midday stack, and it just depends on what your needs are. What do you break down? Listen, I don't know you, I've never met you, you've never had any bloodwork. This is your stack. Here's creatine, go get some creatine. And are all creatine the same? Because there's creatine, myohydrate, and there's a couple of other ones.

100 %. So firstly, on the creatine, definitely go with creatine monohydrate. So that's typically what we find is the best one to go for. I'm going to break down a list of maybe ones that we can look at when we're looking at focus, energy, and longevity. So number one is vitamin D3. So what this is going to do is help with testosterone support and immunity. That's great. We've got B12 as well. So a lot of entrepreneurs we found D3 and B12, they're very deficient in. So the B12 is going to help with brain health, also energy production. Another great one, if you're somebody that's quite stressed and you want to learn to relax and focus more, L-theanine is a great one. So you can actually couple this with your morning coffee, have a coffee, pop an L-theanine. It's better than popping another type of pill, right? And you do that and you get this smooth, focused energy. And if you're doing a deep work block in the morning, then that can be great. There's also ashwagandha as well. So this helps with stress management, cortisol control, which can be awesome. You've also got ronda rhodesia.

So what this is, I believe it's a Russian supplement. I'm not 100 % sure the origin, but there's a lot of research on this for mental resilience and fatigue resistance. So a lot of Russian athletes are actually taking this as a legal supplement for them to perform. So that can be great. And then obviously that final one there is magnesium glycinate that we've covered. So again, that helps with sleep quality, muscle recovery, and just general performance. Those are the ones that I actually personally take as well. So I'm standing on my words with these as well.

I'm actually curious what your stack is, but maybe we'll get you to email both the lists over and we'll give it to everybody and have them at the end of the show. Sure. Normally, when people come in and people are going to want to know supplements and how many they should take, should they just follow the bottles or should they recommendations or what do you think?

Yeah. So it can be specifically. For example, if someone If you've got a very big deficiency in omega-3, for example, they might have to take a little bit more than the recommended dose for that. And again, I don't want to just generally blanket what that should be for somebody. But this is why bloodwork is so important. If people have the access to do that, get that bloodwork done, because if you know how deficient you are, you then know how much I EU or whatever it is of the dose that you need to take per day. So it is very individual. If you know, for instance, you do have a specific deficiency somewhere, then upping that dose a little bit can help with that. But again, I don't want to give medical advice right now. Again, it's very specific to you as a person. So yeah, a lot of the time they can help. But again, if there's deficiencies, there has to be that increase to help counteract that.

So yeah, I think off camera, we're talking about the best medical advice. Go do as much crack, cocaine, opium. Have fun, go A hundred %. It fixes everything. When people tell me they have a problem with their computers, I'm like, your computer's thirsty. Put in the toilet for a little while. It'll never give you a problem again. Obviously, we're being smart asses. Okay, so with that said, now let's get into diet because there's every diet found on the There's vegan, and there's keto, and there's paleo, and then there's people just eat cardboard, and then there's all these different things all over the place. When it comes to carnivore versus vegan, versus where do you sit? We're like, Listen, this is what works the best. This is what's going on, or is it dependent on what your goals are?

100 %. It's a great question. And the cop-out answer is every diet works, right? Which is to a degree true. But more specifically, what we've seen work really well is more of a whole food diet engineered towards a Mediterranean diet. And there's a lot of research out there to show the Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest. And when you look at people that have lived the longest, and sometimes you look at them and they look the happiest, it's Mediterranean people. And it's quite funny because the Mediterranean lifestyle is People are going out, they're smoking, they're sometimes drinking a bit of wine. And these guys are living for thousands and thousands of times, right? For years, they've been living. Exactly, right? Yeah. So it's crazy. But again, it's not down to the smoking per se or down to the drinking the wine. It's the fact that they do have a lot of healthy fish in their diet. A lot of their food is organic that they're cooking. It's a lot of wholefoods. They're getting a good amount of protein, a good amount of vitamins and minerals. And again, this aligns with that wholefoods-based approach because the foods that we've had for thousands of years that weren't processed, that our ancestors were living on.

Science has advanced a lot since then, and there's a lot of things and changes you can make. But typically that baseline of, okay, was it healthy? Was it from the Earth? Was it minimally processed? With a good mix of... And this is why I'm not strict keto, strict vegan, or strict with a certain diet, because if you get all of these balance of nutrients within your body, typically it's going to give your body everything that it needs to perform at your best. Do you need to control the portions of that? Do you need to have an idea of, okay, specifically for you what you need? Definitely. But if I was to just say, typically what is the best? That Whole Foods and Mediterranean diet is really, really good for optimal health.

I'm going to add in there, and this has nothing to do with you, Oliver. For you guys out there who are learning into this, sauerkraut. Please take sauerkraut. And just don't take two cups of it. I was taking two cups of it, and I was wondering why my My heart was hurting, the doctors I couldn't be doing. Pay attention to the things. Sauerkraat has been an absolute game changer for me as far as just my gut health and my biome health and literally getting things moving. But that'll be TMI for another show. So we've got the supplements under control. We got the We've got the work under control. We've got the food under control. What are your thoughts on intermittent fasting? And is it different for males versus females?

Yeah, fantastic question. So intermittent fasting, I've changed my opinion a lot on intermittent fasting over the years. So I used to be intermittent fasting quite a lot. Now, one of the things with fasting that happens is obviously stress hormone gets released when you're fasting. Now, again, I want to contextualize this. If you're somebody that is maybe hugely overweight and one of your biggest challenges is restricting your calories throughout the course of the day and you need to restrict that eating window, your priority number one should be, how can I restrict the calories as efficiently as possible? Because you being very overweight or obese is the biggest detriment to your health. So I would say if that works and you can reduce your food down through that, then great. Now, what we found typically with a lot of the CEOs and executives we work with, intermittent fasting doesn't always work. Because what happens is as a CEO or an entrepreneur, stress hormone gets spiked in the morning straight away. Your employees are doing some crazy shit. There's some fires to put out within the business. There's lots of things going on. So this spike happens. And what we found works is having a protein-fueled breakfast.

So this could be whether that's a protein shake or some eggs with some smoked salmon or something that's protein-based in the morning. So they've got a bit of food in their stomach actually prevents that spike in stress hormone. And that actually allows to have a bit more of a consistent hit of energy throughout the course of the day. So again, it's individualized to the person. But I'd say if you're in a very high stress environment or you got a high stress career, try having some breakfast in the morning, maybe protein-based if you're sedentary, so you're not eating too many carbohydrates. That can actually really help with the results that you want to get.

Yeah, we were talking about this before we started recording. The first trainer I ever worked with gave me advice. He's like, You need to be racist. If it's white, don't put it in your mouth. No carbs, no sugar, no right here. Just don't put it in your mouth. It's not a good idea. He goes, You want to keep that stuff out of there? Again, I spent eight years in a hospice watching people die. Sugar is pure cancer. Sorry, sugar industry, Kavali. It's absolute toxic poison. It's rat poison. It's how I've had every doctor explain it to me. Sugar is rat poison. It is what it is. Now, let's get into the next part, which is exercising. You're going to run into people who... We don't have a lot of time. We jokingly said this before that a 12-hour day is a light day. It just is what it is. Until you reach a certain level of success, until you have automations, until you have the systems in place, you're going to grind. I tell people all the time, you want to make seven figures, really simple. Just put your head down and keep smacking it to the wall.

Sooner or later, that wall will come down. It just it is what it is. You can do it through brute force. You'll never get to 8, 9, 10 figures by yourself. You can't. It's just too heavy of a lift. Now, that will change with AI. We will have our first billion dollar industry that's made off of one employee. It 1,000% will happen. We're not there right now. As of 2025, we're not there. It's coming, and it'll be interesting, but we're not there right now. When someone is a limited amount of time and they're focused building their empire and getting the things rock and rolling and dealing with employees. What are the things? How do you fit in a training program? And then obviously, the follow-up question is, what training program produces the best results?

A hundred %. So one of the things that we do for our busy executives, we say you want to train to be strong, fast, and mobile. So it's not just one dimension of fitness that you want to look at. So you want to look at, okay, strength and power, the O2 max in conditioning, and then mobility and longevity. And you can actually split that up into three days, which is great. And the CEOs are extremely busy. We say, just do three days a week. If it's 30 to 45 minutes, 90 to maximum 120 minutes a week, follow this structure. So day one would be like a strength and power. So you'd focus on deadlifts, pull-ups, squats, a lot of your main heavy compound lifts. That's there to build that muscle and build that strength for your body. That's really important, especially when it comes to longevity, fighting off disease, things like that. Then the pillar number two is obviously VO2 max. So VO2 max is basically your aerobic capacity and what you can do and a conditioning level of stuff. And you obviously You know this as a triathlete and what you do. But the great thing about this is the higher your VO2 max, again, that helps you with how long you live.

And also it helps with bringing down that rest and heart rate. And heart rate is, again, linked to that longevity, right? So things like sled pushes, rowing machines, if you want to hit a boxing bag, assault bike sprints if you don't want to injure your knees, things like that. That can be a great day to workout. And then day number three would be that mobility and longevity. So you can do some things with resistance, kettlebell swings, Jefferson Curls, things like that. But also So it's more like hip openers. If you sit at a desk a lot, you want to ensure that you've got that hip mobility. That's really important. And then just some static stretching as well. And then when you look at it from these three dimensions, you've got strength, which is longevity and muscle retention, VO2 max. That's that energy, that cardiovascular energy. And then mobility is that pain-free movement and injury prevention. So you're hitting all angles with this at like 90 minutes a week. So if I was to build a plan for busy people, it would look like that.

So I'm not going to let you get away with just saying those broad things. How many sets? How many reps? What are the things? Let's get into Let's get granular.

I like it.

If we're going into it, there's this idea that you should go till failure, which is adorable, and then you're going to hurt yourself. What is the way that you should be doing it? Then when it comes to one of the training that I love to do, it's just something called HIIT Training, I love it more like I could possibly tell you. The way that I integrate it is I integrate my cardio with my strength training. My rest in between the sets is just nonexistent. I'll constantly go through one set of my body. If I'm doing pull-ups, I'll then in between When I rest for my pull-ups, I'll do squats. It's different parts of my body that I'm working through, but those are my rests. When I'm resting from squats while doing pull-ups, then I'm resting from pull-ups, I'm doing squats. The muscles are resting, even though I'm not letting my heart rest as much, which condenses my workouts, which makes me very happy because workout is not fun. It's like running a triathlon. They're not exciting. It's a mental game. When you do this, are you a fan of hit? And then what are the sets and what do you normally do when you're doing this?

To answer that, when you do the strength and power sessions, the way that we recommend that is maybe you should take a little bit of rest between your set. So think of this as more, not a bodybuilding split, but more of like, okay, I want to maximize this day for how strong and powerful can I get? Now, if you're jumping between exercises, you're not going to max out, and not that you need to max out, but you're not going to be able to progress your strength, because what's going to happen is your body is going to be so fatigued, you're not going to be able to hit those next sets with as much effort. Now, when it goes to the VO2 maxing condition, 100 %. If you can have more minimal rest, great. You get that heart rate up, that aerobic conditioning is going to come through. But when it comes to that strength and power, try and give yourself a minute, two minutes between sets. That might mean that you do less sets, but when you're doing those sets, they're going to have a higher ROI because you're going to be able to lift heavier, you're going to be able to progress more.

And that's the key when it comes to, okay, what should I do when I look at the principles of my training? How do we get more done in less time? So doing that is more weight, typically, right? If we're doing a set that takes 30 to 45 seconds, if we can do a heavier weight on that, that's going to progress our strength up much more. When we look at your maximum conditioning, if we get less rest in between that for a conditioning point of view, that's going to help you get through more work in less time, which helps with that increase in of intensity. So that would be my answer to that, if that makes sense.

It does. But when we do sets, how many sets should you do? What weights should you be at? Like 80 %? Where should you be?

Good question. So you should try and lift, probably I would say between 75 to 80 % when you're doing resistance. So you don't want to be completely maxed out because you want to give yourself that little bit of leeway in case you need to bring the weights down and lift safely. But then you want to progress on that. So if you're at 80 % of maybe what your maximum will be, that can be a good level of set. Now, when we look at reps, anywhere from between 5 to 20 can work when it comes to reps, if you're looking to increase your strength. But typically, if people are doing 20 rep sets, they're going to be in the gym for hours, right? So typically trying to do somewhere that's like, anywhere between 5 to 12 can actually fit that really nicely. We find like 5 to 8 can be good for people because it's really building that strength. You're getting used to that extra weight. It's less time to do it, but you can push a a little bit more weight. So for resistance, that can be good. Anywhere from 2-3 sets can be really useful.

But the key metric here in that principle is we need to find a way that we can progress each week. So whether you're doing five reps, whether you're doing 10 reps, whether you're doing eight, how can we get more workload or more volume done in that session to help our body progress and get stronger?

So when you're increasing, I understand that you're doing incremental increases. Do you do incremental increases every week? How long do you let your body get used to that? Because there's this idea that you should be 10 % better every single week. I'm like, Oh, you're going to down. So how do you break that up?

Really good question. So if you're somebody that's new to training, it should be quite easy for your body to do linear progression. Now, what linear progression means is if I go in and I do a bench press this week at 100 pounds, well, next week, you should actually be able to do a little bit heavier. And you should be able to add more weight to the dumbbells you're using, the machine you're using, the dumbbell, because your body is quite desensitized or detrained. So the stimulus that you give it, your body is going to respond really well to that. And just like in business, there's that curve, right? They call it the law of diminishing returns. The more advanced that you get, it gets more difficult to make progress because the bell curve goes around like this, right? So when you get a bit more advanced, this is where you're going to have to maybe do things like your drop sets, right? Or maybe have less rest in between your sets because you need to find a way to push your body to give you that different stimulus that's going to allow you to progress. So this is where these double drop sets work, these supersets can really work, changing up the rep range.

So doing a pyramid set where you do, okay, maybe we do five reps on this set, eight reps on this set, and then third set, we do 10, because your body needs to find a way to adapt because it's not going to change if you've been training for a long period of time. So someone like me that's been training for nearly 10 years, I have to do so much to get that increment or level of progress, right? But it's part of the game. The more advance you get, you've got to be a bit more tactical in regards to what you do.

Got you. When it comes to cardio, are you recommending people walk on a daily basis, not walk at all? What do you recommend?

A hundred %. Walking on a daily basis, if they can. One reason is it's one of the lowest impact forms of exercise that you can do. So if you're somebody that's like 40, 50 pounds overweight, which can happen, your body is carrying around a 50 pound weighted vest, right? So if you're going in there to try and do burpees or squats. And this is what kills me about these trainers that you see in gyms. They're making somebody that's 50 pounds overweight do 100 burpees. It's like you're trying to torture the person or you're trying to actually help them make meaningful progress, right? So you got to meet people at their level. Walking is great for everybody. If you can get that zone 2 level of cardio in, that low-intensity walking, it's going to help reduce the fatigue in your body. But it's also going to help you with that mental side of things. If you've been in an office or you need to get that blood flow going, walking is great. So anywhere from 8,000 to 10,000 steps a day is great. Now, 10,000 is that blanket number, but if you're extremely busy, it can be difficult.

So if you can get to that 7,000 to 8,000, then great. That could typically be maybe a 30-minute walk a day. I recommend you get a desk treadmill if you can. That's That's a really good hack for people in a standing desk that will have a huge ROI. So walking is definitely a big one when it comes to cardio, for sure.

So when you run into these things, you've got to run into some issues that were extreme. Just like, Oh, my God, what the heck? Again, high performers, high results. They're crushing it. When you're under that environment, you say, Okay, here it is. Here's an extreme example. Then how did you fix it?

Really good question. Extreme in what way do you mean?

This was Oh, my God, this person's in trouble. The test results came back, the blood work came back. Like, Okay, he's going to die in 37 seconds. What was the most extreme those? And then how did you reverse that or give a solution to that?

A hundred %. We had a client come to us who was a busy CEO. He's about 45 years old, family and kids. And on the first call that we had together, he said to me, I've got this stress buildup in my neck, and every time I turn my neck, it's this excruciating pain that I get. And he was getting out of breath very easily. His sleep was terrible. So we actually got a test. We did some bloods, and then we found that his blood pressure was 212 over 96. So he was actually on the verge of having a heart attack due to all of this amount of stress. And one of the biggest things that we actually found for him, number one, was actually walking. So walking a lot during the course of the day helped him drop a lot of weight to do that. We also got him into some resistance training to start. And this was just in this home gym that he had. So that helped him a lot. And then actually transitioning that into a little bit more of a hit-based workout. So as he got fitter, started to do more of that cardiovascular stuff.

Now, what happened is he got down to 130 over 70 in just six months, which was crazy. And he dropped over 20 pounds, got his sleep back into a good place. But it really just came from those small habits and then increasing what we did to then bring that health back into where he wanted it to be.

Is there ever a time that you do recommend the synthetic stuff, be it testosterone peptides, any of that stuff? Is there any where like, Yeah, we need to inject you with some magic sauce. Is there ever a time that you run into that? And what are those times if they are?

Yeah, 100 %. This is a great question. So we have a client recently who's been working with us, and he's working with us for about three months. He got his testosterone levels checked, and he was about 100 for his testosterone, which is incredibly low. And he was on this 1400 calorie diet and he was training and he was saying, well, Oliver, I can't lose weight. I can't seem to build muscle. He's like, why? I'm like, well, your testosterone is probably the lowest that it's ever been. And what's What's happened is because you've been eating at such a low amount of calories, your metabolism has now dropped. So your body is not responding to that combined with the low levels of testosterone. So actually for him, we had to refer him to our concierge doctor because he was in his 60s. And actually the best method for him is to probably go on to some TRT or something injectable for him because we've done all the lifestyle changes, all of the supplements, we've done all the Tonka Ali, we tried to optimize his sleep and his diet, and we tried to do everything, but it wasn't working.

And that's where something clinical like that can be really useful to do. And he's in his late '60s. He's running a business. He's been beat up a lot of his life through working so hard. It's like maybe this is the right time for him to do it. And again, not medical advice. We've referred him to our MD who does that stuff, but he felt that that was the best scenario for him. In those very extreme cases, those synthetic things that you mentioned can actually be life-changing and actually save people's life.

What are some of the results you've seen? Again, not just physically, because we get that. But most people, again, they don't correlate physical health with wealth. They don't understand that it's a direct correlation. Because I tell people all the time, they say time is the most valuable thing you do. It's absolutely not. 100,000% not. There are people who had polio who were paralyzed from the neck down who had 90 years. Trust me, they did not want more time. They wanted more health. So health is everything. Health is wealth. That's an expression everybody knows. But most people don't understand that the level of fitness you're in will also dictate how it changes your pocketbook and your bottom line. When you've run into those situations, what are some examples that you've seen with that?

Yeah. Just to actually break that down individually, we call it the three metrics of, you could say health when it comes to pushing things forward. You've obviously got the physical side of things, which is physically how you appear as a CEO. If you're walking into a boardroom, you're 50 pounds overweight, you're not feeling as confident, that side of things is very difficult because if you've been around a lot of wealthy people and rich people, sometimes people can be very judgmental of the way that you look. You could be very successful. To give you an example, we had a client who was speaking at a conference, and again, he was running a $100 million business. And he texted me when he started working with me. He goes, Oliver, my talk was five times better than everybody else, but I look 10 times worse. He's like, I need to fix this. And just from that physical side of things, you can deliver a great speech, but you can't buy that presence. That presence gets given to you from the way that you look. So that's a big part of things. The second one is the internal health.

So if your testosterone is low, if your inflammation is really high, if your triglycerides to HDL ratio is really bad, that causes a physiological effect on your body internally, which shows up in your energy levels, in your focus, in your decisiveness, things like that. And then thirdly, it's a bit deeper than this, is like that spiritual level that you have with yourself. And I think this is the most important. If you're somebody that's hugely successful in business, you've made millions of dollars, you look at yourself as a winner or your identity as a winner. You've probably been to all the top schools, you You're top in your class. The reason you're a CEO is because you've probably done more than a lot of people and you're a winner, right? By your results. But you look at yourself in the mirror and your health's not there. Spiritually, you look at yourself, you're like, well, this is a bit of an internal conflict and a bit of a mismatch because I'm up there with my career, but I'm down here with my health. It's like, am I a winner or am I a loser? And I speak to so many clients that tell me this, and that's one of the big anchors for wanting to change is that internal conflict they get spiritually with their identity, if that makes sense.

So Yeah, we've had guys that have gone from 5 million up to doubling their revenue to 10 million just from making these impacts. But I'd say it fits between those three buckets there. That's the impact that health has on your ROI. It's those three areas of your life, if that makes sense from that rambling I've gone through.

No, it does. It absolutely does. So I think as we're wrapping this up and we're going to start tracking it down, if there was one thing that you said, Listen, if I never talk to any of you guys again, here's the one thing I wish you guys would all do right now, just whatever it is, what would be that one piece of advice you would give everybody?

The one bit of advice I would say to people is try and get your body fat percentage and your muscle mass to a healthy level. Now, the reason I say this is because a lot of the problems that you're feeling will get fixed by having less body fat and having more muscle mass. We look at it from an appearance point of view, but also from an energy point of view. Your sleep is going to improve. Your day to day habits are going to improve. You're going to be less reliant on stimulants and other things to get yourself through the day. You're going to have longevity to live longer, which means the quality of your years is going to improve, but so does the length of your year. So a lot of these fall into that bucket of, okay, if I can just really fix that body composition, a lot of my health issues internally with the bloodwork will actually be shifted from doing that. So that would be my number one bit of advice to a lot of people.

What is the fastest way to radically increase your body, your muscle mass?

Resistence training.

So a lot of people don't know what that means. What's the specific resistance training?

Yeah. So I would recommend going and doing a full body resistance workout three times a week. So you could do a full body on Monday, full body on Wednesday, and full body on Friday. Now, the first list of exercises, I'd maybe do four to six exercises, depending on the time. The first three should be focused on compound movements. So what they are, are things like your squat, like your deadlift, like your pull up, or variations of this that you can do on machines or whatever you've got access to. You can even do that body weight, because this gives you the most bang for your buck. And what I mean by that is multiple muscle groups trained per exercise. So instead of just doing bicep curves and training one muscle, if you do a squat, it trains so many muscles in your body. Again, a high ROI in your time, which is the key thing for, I know the guy is listening. And then with that, you want to throw in some isolation movements, again, that are more high ROI as well. So maybe one or two muscle groups are trained with that. This can be dips, this could be Bulgarian split squats.

They could be like a bicep or Zutmann curl, which does your biceps and your shoulders. That can be really great. And progressively train with that. Now, if you couple that with a high amount of protein and a good amount of sleep, you will build a very good amount of muscle in a short period of time. So that is typically for people that are time-pressed, what I'd recommend.

So when we talk about protein, is it like 0. 8 grams for every pound? Or what do you recommend as that correlation?

Yeah, so it actually is 0. 8 per lean body mass, so lean muscle that you've got. So a lot of people say, Oh, it's one grand per pound. So if you're a 220 person, you should have 220 grams of protein. That's typically on the bro bodybuilder side. The actual science is 0. 8 per lean muscle mass, so it's not even one gram. But again, you're probably going to get a better ROI if you over eat on protein. So this is why it's like if somebody has a higher protein amount, as long as you're not getting any issues with your kidneys or your digestion, eating more protein is probably going to have a higher ROI in your life than eating more carbs or fat. So again, prioritizing protein is good and a higher amount is great, but just try and split that up consistently throughout the course of the day. Now, the reason being is because your body can only metabolize around 30 grams of protein at a time. Now, a big myth that people say is like, Well, I ate 50 grams of protein. I've lost 20 grams of protein. I can only do 30.

Well, the truth is, it just means your body is not metabolizing it right now. So if you eat, let's say, 50 grams at lunch, your body metabolizes 30, and then that extra 20 grams is then metabolized throughout the rest of the day. It still gets utilized, but just from a digestion point of view, that can be really useful. That's definitely a tip for people.

When clients come to you, what is the onboarding process? What do they normally do? Do they call you? Do they show up at your house? What do they do?

Yeah, really good question. So everything we do is online and remote. So we typically do a performance audit first, which is a call to get people onto the call. And then once we've done that and they've joined the program, we do a rigorous health audit and onboarding. So what this looks like is booking them in for their health test or if they've done some recent bloods with all the metrics we need going through that, get them booked in for a DEXA scan. So this measures bone density, viscerial fat, their muscle mass, and then doing a full lifestyle audit with that. Now, from that, we then actually build out a customer approach based on their biomarkers, based on the viscerial fat, based on if they've done some VO2 max testing as well, and then structure it around that. And we have partners with lots of labs all over the US. So whichever city you're in, whether that's Vegas, New York, Los Angeles, we find somewhere local, you can get that done. There's even home labs that you can get done as well. And then we get those tests back and we can start building out that structure.

So that's what it looks like to get started, if that makes sense.

Perfect. Two more questions. Sure. When it comes to VO2 max, what is the best and fastest way to radically increase your VO2 max?

So you've probably heard of this before. It's a 4 by four training. Have you heard of this before? Like the Norwegian training? Yeah. So again, this can be quite torturous for people. So a lot of our clients don't like it if we give them this type of training. But again, things like sprints can be good, assault Things can be good as well. Just trying to get that heart rate up as high as possible and make it maximal. But what I always say to people is sustainability is really the number one thing. And most people fall off with their health because they're not consistent and they don't like what they're doing. So if I'm torturing someone with a a 4x4 and they stick to it for a week, I'm not helping them, I'm not helping me or my business by making someone hate it. But typically, that training could be really good. But again, if you want to optimize for sprints, a salt bike, rowing, all of those can be really good.

Let's save people some Google time here. Explain what a 4x4 is to them.

Oh, a 4x4 training. Okay, so 4x4 training. So with the 4x4 training... One second, I've had a mind blank. It's okay.

No, it's all right. So 4x4, for those of you guys who are not playing at home, it's one of those things that you will invent new curse words as you go through it. So just please understand, if you're doing 4x4 training, you will hate your trainer. I remember the first time I ever met the guy who created P9dx, a guy named Tony Horton. Tony is a great human being. The first time I met him, I'm like, Oh, good. Now I can curse at you in person. And he started laughing. I go, Dude, I have cursed at you for years because I did P9dx multiple times. So when you're doing a 4 by 4, it's creating this. It's like box Everything as well. So everything's done in a very specific way. So 4 by 4, go for it.

Yeah. So it's basically where you're doing that 4 minutes of work with 4 minutes of rest as well. So again, that could be high-intensity interval training, typically that is. So it could be sprints, it can be a boxing bag as well, things like that. And then once you do that, you do four minutes of an active recovery. So that can be just resting if maybe your fitness level isn't as high. But also you can do like that four minutes of maybe skipping or something if your fitness level is a bit higher, a walk and things like that. Sprints can be a good one where you sprint and then jog, sprint, then walk, those kinds of things. But this really does improve the O2 max and can be done with various activities as well.

For those of you who are just going to try out 4x4, the four minutes of going almost as with everything you have will be followed up by four minutes of throwing up and sitting on the floor crying and wondering why you're doing it. Oliver, I really appreciate. You get a ton of knowledge and a ton of information to people. If people want to track you down and ask more questions, what is the best way for them to get a hold of Absolutely.

So if you guys have got any questions from the episode, you can reach me via email. So it's Oliver@fitnessforentrepreneurs. Com. My website is nice and easy, fitnessforentrepreneurs. Com, if you want to see what we do. And I'm also very active on LinkedIn, which if you just search Oliver Amouar, you'll find me. Same on X as well. Those are my two main platforms there. And you can connect with me on those channels.

I appreciate it. Thank you for giving very specific advice instead of being vague.

Thank you, man. I appreciate the prompts on the granular level of stuff that we needed to do. So a lot of Thank you for the guys there. A hundred %, man. I like it. I like it.

I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

You too, man. Appreciate it.

All right. There you go. That was a bunch of information about the idea that work-life balance doesn't always happen, but we can still find a way. That there are simple specs and simple hacks and simple things that you can use that are proven to create radical success. And that's what it's about. Again, Proven podcast, guys. It's not about what you think. It's about what's been scientifically proven and has creative results. I hope you guys enjoy it, and I'll see you guys in the next.