The Hard Way With Joe De Sena

"It's that important. It's like, basically you approach recovery as if it's like your most important workout of the week, but you do it everyday, probably," says Nicole Mericle.   Spartan Up Endurance Series host, Johnny Waite, talks with Nicole Mericle about her recovery from tearing her ACL, and how we can find the mindset to recover and come back better than before. In this episode you'll learn...

"If you're not so confident or you're not where you want to be, there are skills that we can develop to get there, so, don't worry," says Craig Siegel, Founder of Cultivate Lasting Symphony and The Host of The CLS Experience.   Today we talk with Craig Siegel about how you can develop skills and tools to replace limitations with possibilities and opportunities. In this episode, you'll learn: Confi...

Are you doing future you any favors? Dorie Clark, author of "The Long Game" talks with Joe De Sena, founder & CEO of Spartan, about the value of thinking long term and taking time to think strategically. Dorie Clark has been named one of the Top 50 business thinkers in the world by Thinkers50. She is a keynote speaker and teaches executive education at Duke University. She is also the Wall Street...

"...To know that it's okay to fail, basically. Because if you don't fail...it's okay to not always succeed, because if you succeeded all the time, then you'd have no reason to try harder," says Matt Segal, professional climber.   This week's classic episode will help you find the advantages in failure in all aspects of life. We look to Howard Chang and Matt Segal to give us their knowledge. In thi...

"The work should not be on the individual to figure out how to be healthy. We should show up for them to show them, in all ways, how to be healthy. Whether it's movement, whether it's eating, whether it's sleeping, whether it's-- you know, if you've got to see a doctor, then why should you have to see four different specialists? And then, have to like, navigate this very difficult system to get al...

Success through Failure - that's the name of Jim Harshaw Jr's podcast, he and Joe De Sena (founder & CEO of Spartan) examine attitudes toward failure and the power it can have in your life. Jim also shares his 4 part framework - a framework he discovered was in place in all of the most successful periods in his life.  The episode ends with a candid discussion between Joe and Jim about how they eac...

"He said, 'No, no. Not to my boss.' I heard him say it. I said, 'Hassib? Is that you?' He said, 'Yes.' I said, 'Can you help me?' He said, 'What I can do to help you?' So, I gave him three names, let them look, because nobody knew I was there. Two hours later, they told me that I was lucky they didn't find anything on me, they have orders to release me," says Karim Jaude, who escaped Lebanon in 19...

"I had done enough to know, like, okay, there's nothing to prove here. I either push forward because I love this, and this is what I am meant to do, or I stop. There was nobody that was going to be like, 'Yeah he couldn't cut it as a doctor,'" says Marcus Filly, 6x CrossFit Games athlete, expert fitness coach, and founder of Functional Bodybuilding. Today, with Marcus Filly, we look into the prepa...

What can Spartans learn about high performance from professional baseball? Brandon Guyer spent seven years as a Major League Baseball outfielder, now he coaches athletes and he's trying his hand at Spartan Races. In the Spartan Up podcast interview, he tells Joe De Sena (founder and CEO of Spartan) how he got to that elite level and his advice for you.   Guyer spent seven years as an elite profess...

"It's a snowstorm and they had already run 10 miles in the morning, they had skied all day, black double diamonds. And they were going out, it was dark, freezing cold, and they were going out for another 10 mile run! And Prefontaine was like, 'Ah, Frank, maybe we should just do 5,' and Frank's comment was, 'No one in the world is training harder than us right now,'" says Mike Sandrock, author of R...

"That's a culture that not everyone's cut out for, and that's okay, right? So that happens in organizations. Not everyone's cut out to be, necessarily, in this particular culture. But let's talk about it honestly and you know just keep everyone's dignity intact along the way," says Ralph Rajs, COO of Forma Gym, and long-time friend and business partner of JC. We're back with part 2 of our intervie...

"How much can I experience and not just, you know, 'I saw the hotel lobby. Cool.' I want to be able to experience stuff. And being physically fit and capable allows me to expand that world so much more," says Ralph Rajs, COO of Forma Gym, and long-time friend and business partner of JC. Ralph came on the podcast to drop some knowledge on how he lives his life and how he keeps it going, even in his...

"We use a term all the time, 'balance.' I don't like that term. Life isn't about achieving balance, it's about integration," says now Major General and Chief of Chaplains of the United States Army, Chaplain Solhjem. This week, we have another classic episode with a couple of the highest respected people we've had on the podcast. General Stanley McChrystal and BG Chaplain Solhjem tell us how having...

Today we take our quest for resilience to the next level with data-backed insights from George Bonnano, Professor of Clinical Psychology at Columbia University where he heads the Loss, Trauma, and Emotion Lab which has studied resilience in the face of extreme adversity for 25 years. He's the author of the new book "The End of Trauma: How the New Science of Resilience Is Changing How We Think Abou...

"I'm telling you, that's one, the way we just did that-- if we could snap our fingers and get every single human walking the planet to listen to that one, the world would be a better place,'" says Yancy Culp, co-host of the DEKA Series Podcast, about the awesome podcast you're about to dive into.   Spartan Up Podcast, DEKA Series hosts Jarod Cogswell and Yancy Culp talk about how you handle life's...

"We're gonna check in on my wife and see if she's happy. Happy wife, happy life...hope she's home! Or somewhere that I can reach her!... Uh oh… She's happy, she's just not available!" says Joe De Sena as he calls his wife, Courtney. She picks up the phone, "Hey there!" and Joe asks, "Hey, are you happy?"  "Me?" "Yeah." "I'm happy!" "Alright, I'll see you later." "Wait, where are you?" "I'm just si...

"We're gonna check in on my wife and see if she's happy. Happy wife, happy life...hope she's home! Or somewhere that I can reach her!... Uh oh… She's happy, she's just not available!" says Joe De Sena as he calls his wife, Courtney. She picks up the phone, "Hey there!" and Joe asks, "Hey, are you happy?"  "Me?" "Yeah." "I'm happy!" "Alright, I'll see you later." "Wait, where are you?" "I'm just si...

You make decisions about your health every day - from nutrition to medication, to whether you should go out and race on an injured knee or ankle. Joe De Sena, founder and CEO of Spartan,  interviews Dr. Talya Miron-Shatz, author of "Your Life Depends on It: What You Can Do to Make Better Choices About Your Health." Dr. Miron-Shatz shares three simple essential questions you need to ask your doctor...

"So for all you leaders out there, let this pull you to the edge of your seat.  When you pull up to work, or when you get ready to hit 'play' on the Zoom, or go live on the Zoom or Google Hangout, you need to say, 'Wait a second, am I ready to win the caring game, today, with the people that are helping make me and this organization look good?'  And if not, you better take thirty seconds and say,...

Coach Frank McKinney, one of the first Black college rugby coaches in the US, says "I didn't get into coaching to win games.  My thing is to make young men better."  It turns out those are also the ingredients of a winning team.   Joe De Sena, founder and CEO of Spartan, interviews coach Frank McKinney and critically acclaimed filmmaker Thomas Morgan about the new film "Scrum" and the incredible s...

"'Let's go for a walk, you know, let's go for a run.' And whatever she could do, if she couldn't run, she'd walk. If she couldn't walk, she'd do something else. And she always put an adventure on her calendar so that when she was going through her chemo, she wasn't just a cancer patient, she was a mountaineer in training, or she was, you know, training for her next adventure race or ultra run," sa...

"Before I ever went to Mt. Everest, I saw every single YouTube video you could possibly imagine about that mountain, what I'm in for, right? All these dead bodies, all these other things, right? Like, how do you do this?" says Mark Pattison. Mark Pattison has played professional football, is an Executive at Sports Illustrated, and the 1st NFL player to climb the Seven Summits. In this episode, you...

As parents, it's the ultimate question. Today Joe De Sena, founder & CEO of Spartan, talks with his friend Ilias Diakomihalis about building mentally strong kids. Ilias' son is wresteler Yanni Diakomihal a 2021 US World Team member and was the 2020 Pan American champion, 2019 US Open National Champion and a two-time age-group World Champion.   https://www.spartan.com/10Rules Joe De Sena's Parentin...

"The original goal was to try to become the first NFL player to ever climb the Seven Summits, and when that got pushed out a year, I said, 'You know what? I'm going to double down. And I'm going to not only go up and climb Mt. Everest, I'm going to come back down, and then I'm going to go up the other side,' which is Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain in the world. And, at the end of the day, tha...

When it feels like all hope is lost, how do you come back? Heard of the "Varsity Blues" college admission scandal? Have you asked yourself what happened next? How a family recovers? What's next after jail after losing his career? That's what Joe De Sena  and Gordon Caplan talk about in this second half of their interview. Gordon Caplan was one of those parents, and he tells Joe De Sena (CEO & Foun...