Joe Rogan Experience #1244 - Colin O'Brady

1. 0:00 – 15:00

   Four, three, two, one.…

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:02

      Four, three, two, one. All right, we're live. What's up, man?

   2. COColin O'Brady0:09

      What's up, dude?

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:10

      And I see... What's hilarious, folks, I have to tell you this.

   4. COColin O'Brady0:13

      (laughs)

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      I did a podcast earlier today, and he said, "Wow, it's your second for the day?" He goes, "Impressive endurance."

   6. COColin O'Brady0:18

      (laughs)

   7. JRJoe Rogan0:18

      Do you know how fucking ridiculous that is for you to say?

   8. COColin O'Brady0:22

      (laughs)

   9. JRJoe Rogan0:22

      This is a guy who walked across Antarctica. How many days did it take you?

   10. COColin O'Brady0:26

       54 days.

   11. JRJoe Rogan0:27

       By yourself?

   12. COColin O'Brady0:27

       By myself, yes, indeed.

   13. JRJoe Rogan0:28

       Trekking across the fucking frozen tundra.

   14. COColin O'Brady0:32

       It, that was an endurance feat of its own. Yeah, just back, uh-

   15. JRJoe Rogan0:34

       Now, that's a real endurance feat. I'm just sitting down talking to people.

   16. COColin O'Brady0:38

       (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan0:38

       "Oh, my God, you talked already for two hours. How do you do it?"

   18. COColin O'Brady0:41

       Two more hours, here we go, yeah.

   19. JRJoe Rogan0:43

       Crazy.

   20. COColin O'Brady0:43

       Yep, yep.

   21. JRJoe Rogan0:44

       Dude, what the fuck were you doing?

   22. COColin O'Brady0:47

       Just, just gettin' back, actually. Still, uh, still practically have the snow in my shoes. Yeah, I got back about a month ago, 54-day journey, first person in history to, uh, cross the entire continent solo, unsupported, so no resupplies throughout the thing, no, no aid, no wind, kites, nothing, just me dragging a 375-pound sled across Antarctica.

   23. JRJoe Rogan1:06

       I can't believe it only took you 54 days.

   24. COColin O'Brady1:08

       Yeah, it was-

   25. JRJoe Rogan1:09

       Why did... Why... I mean, that's... It's so big.

   26. COColin O'Brady1:11

       (laughs)

   27. JRJoe Rogan1:11

       Like, look at Antarctica on a map.

   28. COColin O'Brady1:13

       (laughs)

   29. JRJoe Rogan1:13

       Like, how long do you think it would take you to walk across America?

   30. COColin O'Brady1:16

       Well, you got... So we usually-
2. 15:00 – 30:00

   Um, there's a couple…

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:00

      you're looking at your compass, and you're dragging this shit behind you, like, uh, d- are you doing anything in your mind? Are you, like, singing songs? Are you ... What are you doing?

   2. COColin O'Brady15:10

      Um, there's a couple different things, but really what ended up happening is I started to be able to trigger these flow states. So, you know, as a lifelong professional athlete through different capacities in my life, you know, I've tapped into that. You know, I was a swimmer when I was a little kid, so swimming laps in a pool, sometimes I would like kinda just tap into this, like, timeless space where, you know, maybe 30 minutes would go by in, in two minutes or something like that. But I never really knew how I got there, just would sometimes tap into it, sometimes not, you know, the zone, flow state, whatever we wanna call that.

   3. JRJoe Rogan15:39

      Mm-hmm.

   4. COColin O'Brady15:39

      But in Antarctica, I went in with a sort of attention about- intention of exploring that space in my mind. And so as I got more and more into these whiteouts, into these compass- in- staring at this compass, staring at this expansive landscape, I started to find ways to actually trigger that flow state in my mind. And so it got to the point where I could, for several days at a time, be in this deep flow state. So, you know, my day was about 17 hours every day, between getting up, boiling my water, getting out of my tent in those crazy conditions, packing my sled, dragging it for 13 hours, setting my tent back up in these storms. But I got into this sort of sequence of being so present with each step, each next sequence, that it ended up being in this really timeless, spaceless place in my mind of true high performance that was almost like the most deepest, peaceful, meditative state that I can possibly imagine. It was, it was very profound and beautiful, uh, to get there in my mind.

   5. JRJoe Rogan16:29

      Wow. Now, are you, are you boiling this water in your tent? Like, uh, uh wh- how are you doing it?

   6. COColin O'Brady16:34

      Yeah. So my tent-

   7. JRJoe Rogan16:35

      Using a Jetboil?

   8. COColin O'Brady16:36

      Yeah. So a kind of a, a slightly different white gas fuel stove, so not the canisters where you could throw away but like gas that you could refill the stove, but a stove with fuel. Um, basically the way my tent was, you saw the outer layer of the tent there, there's actually an inner part that's a tent so that there's a vestibule where basically there's snow inside the doorway but not outside-outside.

   9. JRJoe Rogan16:54

      Mm-hmm.

   10. COColin O'Brady16:54

       So I would shovel that snow from inside of the tent vestibule into my pot and be able to melt the water that way. Um, I drank about six liters-

   11. JRJoe Rogan17:02

       Wow.

   12. COColin O'Brady17:02

       ... of water, uh, every single day, um, when I was out there.

   13. JRJoe Rogan17:06

       That's gotta be a lot of snow.

   14. COColin O'Brady17:07

       Which is a lot of snow, a lot of ... And it takes a few hours to melt that. But people don't realize this, Antarctica's actually the largest desert in the world. Um, so it's actually very dry. It doesn't snow very often, but when it does, it, of course, never melts, and the South Pole is at 9,300 feet. So not only am I-

   15. JRJoe Rogan17:21

       Oh.

   16. COColin O'Brady17:21

       ... in this desert, but I'm at altitude doing this thing. (laughs)

   17. JRJoe Rogan17:25

       Oh.

   18. COColin O'Brady17:25

       So ... (laughs)

   19. JRJoe Rogan17:26

       Oh my God.

   20. COColin O'Brady17:27

       (laughs)

   21. JRJoe Rogan17:29

       Did you train at altitude? Did you use like one of those, uh, tents to sleep in or-

   22. COColin O'Brady17:33

       Yeah. So this, uh, this gym that Mike and I train at is called Evolution Health Care & Fitness in Portland, um, they actually have an altitude room there. So they-

   23. JRJoe Rogan17:41

       Wow.

   24. COColin O'Brady17:41

       It's not even a tent, but they actually have a full, a full room where you can ... You know, it's got rowing machines, it's got treadmills, it's got all that simulated up to about 14,000 feet.

   25. JRJoe Rogan17:49

       How big is the room?

   26. COColin O'Brady17:50

       It's about-400 square feet, high ceiling?

   27. JRJoe Rogan17:53

       Oh, okay.

   28. COColin O'Brady17:53

       It's big. I mean, it's not like huge-

   29. JRJoe Rogan17:55

       But it's a room. Yeah.

   30. COColin O'Brady17:55

       ... but it's big enough. Yeah, it's like a proper room. I've been in some of those tents before when I was racing triathlon many years ago, a lot of people were starting to sleep in those tents. But a lot of people have a hard time in them, they get warm and stuff like that.
3. 30:00 – 45:00

   Yeah. …

   1. COColin O'Brady30:00

   2. JRJoe Rogan30:00

      Yeah.

   3. COColin O'Brady30:00

      And so to not see anything alive for 54 days, it was like, "Wow, I wanna, like, smell..."... tree, fresh air-

   4. JRJoe Rogan30:06

      Right.

   5. COColin O'Brady30:06

      ... of the trees. I wanna eat a salad. I don't know, like that's where like my mind got to-

   6. JRJoe Rogan30:09

      (sighs)

   7. COColin O'Brady30:10

      ... was kinda coming back to reality in that way.

   8. JRJoe Rogan30:12

      Man, so when they're constructing these bars for you, and this is all based on your body and, like, what burns well with you, how do they, like, uh, f- in, in terms of, like, how many cal- what's the best food in terms of weight versus calories?

   9. COColin O'Brady30:30

      Yeah.

   10. JRJoe Rogan30:31

       And is there some foods that are heavier but don't have as many calories?

   11. COColin O'Brady30:34

       Yeah, so I think f- I'm gonna get the numbers pretty close to right here. But I think per hour, fat of course, of the macronutrients we got protein, fat, and carbs, right?

   12. JRJoe Rogan30:44

       Right.

   13. COColin O'Brady30:44

       Um, fat is the most calorie dense of them all. Um-

   14. JRJoe Rogan30:47

       And you have to make sure these things don't freeze solid, right?

   15. COColin O'Brady30:50

       So that was one of the ch- like it was minus 25 in my sled every single day. So it had to actually be edible while frozen essentially, 'cause it would be too hard to rewarm them, 'cause this was the food I was eating-

   16. JRJoe Rogan30:59

       Oh.

   17. COColin O'Brady30:59

       ... outside of my sled. So it actually-

   18. JRJoe Rogan31:01

       So it was frozen too?

   19. COColin O'Brady31:02

       Frozen too, but actually wh- where we, where the workaround happened, where they kinda, their mastermind was, they were like, "You actually need this macronutrient blend to be about 40 or 45% fats," because I needed high fat food, you know, um, to stay alive out there. And so they basically pumped it full of coconut oil which ultimately, you know, does... You know, if you see coconut oil on the shelf it's not a liquid it's actually a solid, but it doesn't freeze like rock solid. So having that much coconut oil in it allowed it to... We actually had to get it shipped down frozen because if it didn't freeze, it got, it actually kinda got like flat. And so they put it in these freeze-dried packs, shipped it down to Chile, had to do this whole customs thing to import it. It was like a whole, like, crazy logistical mess. Uh, but got that done and it actually held up so that it was enough fat in there that I could actually bite off chunks of this rather than... You know, there's plenty of stories of guys in these cold places breaking teeth on Clif bars and you know-

   20. JRJoe Rogan31:49

       Oh.

   21. COColin O'Brady31:50

       ... things like that. So, uh, the Coln bars were, were, were-

   22. JRJoe Rogan31:53

       (laughs)

   23. COColin O'Brady31:53

       ... e- good, good while frozen. (laughs)

   24. JRJoe Rogan31:55

       Breaking teeth on Clif bars.

   25. COColin O'Brady31:56

       I should've brought you one, man. I should've brought you one to try.

   26. JRJoe Rogan31:58

       Yeah, I wanna try one. So it's mostly f- like a lot of fats and seeds and nuts-

   27. COColin O'Brady32:04

       Seeds and nuts. And then the other thing is that they, like I said, their, their bread and butter at this company, Standard Process, is they're a, you know, a supplement company, so... But it's all wholefood derivatives, so-

   28. JRJoe Rogan32:12

       Mm-hmm.

   29. COColin O'Brady32:13

       ... organic farm g- basically, uh, vitamins. And so they actually intermix like probiotics and magnesium and like beet extract and all these sort of plant derivatives as well to give me the phytonutrients that I need. That's not giving me the calories but that's giving me the-

   30. JRJoe Rogan32:27

       Right.
4. 45:00 – 1:00:00

   Oh. …

   1. COColin O'Brady45:00

      was a tip that I got, which was my fingers started cracking really, really bad from the cold. And so they were, like, really painful, and I actually was pouring, putting super glue into all of those basically little micro-cuts on my fingers.

   2. JRJoe Rogan45:11

      Oh.

   3. COColin O'Brady45:11

      Which, when someone told me that as a trick, I was like, "Really?" But turns out, it's actually a really good trick. So I was just kind of super gluing these cuts on my fingers back together, um, and that actually worked reasonably well, all things cons- I mean, I was (laughs) s- all things considered (laughs) is the operative word. But it, it worked.

   4. JRJoe Rogan45:26

      Yeah.

   5. COColin O'Brady45:27

      Yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan45:27

      Wow. So you're wearing the... What about your eyes?

   7. COColin O'Brady45:31

      So I'm wearing, I'm wearing, uh, goggles. Um, but, you know, funny enough, you know, I had a couple of, you know, fancier, nicer ski goggles with me, um, but, uh, yeah, there's the tape on my face right there. (laughs)

   8. JRJoe Rogan45:43

      (laughs)

   9. COColin O'Brady45:43

      Um, but, uh, but yeah, it's, like, that's actually just, like, the normal KT tape, like a physio tape-

   10. JRJoe Rogan45:48

       Mm-hmm.

   11. COColin O'Brady45:48

       ... that you'd see, like, athletes wearing. And I just had it in my repair kit. It wasn't meant for this purpose, but I was like, "What do I have that I could put on my face to block it a little bit better?"

   12. JRJoe Rogan45:56

       Hmm.

   13. COColin O'Brady45:56

       Um, but I had those goggles on some of the time. But actually the goggle that I wore the most was one that you might use for motocross, um, because it has, like, a plastic face mask over the front of it.

   14. JRJoe Rogan46:06

       Mm.

   15. COColin O'Brady46:06

       Um, 'cause the wind, when it was blowing, it would just kind of blow around. So sometimes I had this fleece draped over my face, but it would blow too much, um, and so I had this more plastic face mask. Yeah, so that's-

   16. JRJoe Rogan46:16

       Wow.

   17. COColin O'Brady46:16

       ... that's the, that's one. You can see, look how frozen it-

   18. JRJoe Rogan46:19

       Jesus Christ. (laughs)

   19. COColin O'Brady46:19

       ... frozen it is on the inside.

   20. JRJoe Rogan46:20

       That is so crazy.

   21. COColin O'Brady46:22

       (laughs)

   22. JRJoe Rogan46:22

       Oh my God, man.

   23. COColin O'Brady46:23

       There, and then, like, this neoprene mask underneath. So I had, like, double face mask, double tape, like, anything to just, you know, keep me, keep me warm, uh, get a lot-

   24. JRJoe Rogan46:32

       I would never have suspected that it was so high above sea level there.

   25. COColin O'Brady46:36

       Yeah, yeah. So you've got whatever it is, 9,300 feet at the South Pole.

   26. JRJoe Rogan46:40

       So it's basically just, like, l- elevated ground, but it seems flat.

   27. COColin O'Brady46:45

       Right, but, uh, I started at sea level.

   28. JRJoe Rogan46:46

       Right.

   29. COColin O'Brady46:46

       So you got, I'm not only at, like-

   30. JRJoe Rogan46:48

       Oh my God.
5. 1:00:00 – 1:00:46

   Section 5

   1. COColin O'Brady1:00:00

      wasn't like, "Oh, wow, I'm some superhuman freak that can do these things." I was like, "Wow, humans, all of us, we all have these reservoirs of untapped potential inside of us and can achieve extraordinary things when we set our minds to it." And so what it did for me is just sparked this curiosity, like, "Well, what else can I do if I set my mind to it?" So sure enough, it was a Sunday when I raced the Chicago Triathlon-... coincidentally, um, met, who be- became a huge mentor and influence in my life that afternoon, um, a guy named Brian Gelber, who ended up being my first sponsor. And he said to me, "You won the Chicago Triathlon today. Do you think you should maybe do something about that?" And I was like, "Yeah, but I've got a job and I don't have any money. Like, I would need a sponsor." He's like, he's like, "I'll be your first sponsor if it's something you wanna take seriously." And so literally, that was on a Sunday. Monday morning, I walk in and quit my job- (laughs)

Episode duration: 2:03:33