How to Run 100 Miles Per Week: Holistic Ultramarathon & Endurance Training Secrets from USA Running Champion

Nick Urban [00:00:07]:
Are you a high performer, obsessed with growth, and looking for an edge? Welcome to MINDBODY Peak Performance. Together, we’ll discover underground secrets to unlocking the full potential of your mind, body, and spirit. We’ll learn from some of the world’s leading minds, from ancient wisdom to cutting edge tools and everything in between. This is your host, Nick Urban. Enjoy the episode. What does it really take to become an ultra human? Today, we’re with team USA, ultra runner, and 2 time national champion, Anthony Kunkel, as he reveals his unconventional secrets to becoming an ultrahuman. From high powered PEMF devices to creative enhancing nootropics, evolution inspired eating cycles, and everything in between. Anthony challenges dietary myths and explores how anyone can build strength and endurance by syncing with their natural biorhythms.

Nick Urban [00:01:18]:
In this episode, we discuss the concept of metabolic flexibility and seasonal eating, then we go on to natural movement and resilience, how to practice mindful biohacking and smart substance use. I ask Anthony if and how he overcomes the potential long term drawbacks and dangers of ultramarathon running. Naturally, we also discuss the trending topic of electrolytes and hydration and how Anthony approaches that given that he’s doing so much training every single day, all that and much more. Since I don’t really introduce him and talk about his accolades much during the show, I figured I’d share a little bit about our guest right now. Anthony Kunkel is a 2 time USA ultra running champion as well as a USATF national champion in both the 100 mile and 100 k distances. As a Team USA runner, he’s earned podium finishes across a range of sports, including snowshoeing, trail running, road running, and sky running. Known for his dedication as a student of the sport and the human body, Anthony combines his athletic achievements with passion for exploring endurance training, human potential, and alternative health approaches. He’s also behind the Ultra House, which is an endurance athlete commune based in Durango, Colorado, where he guides athletes in understanding the intricacies of peak performance and human physiology.

Nick Urban [00:03:07]:
You can find the show notes for this episode and links to all the resources we discuss at mindbodypeak.com/thenumber183. And if you have a problem with shirtless men, you might wanna stick to the audio version of this podcast because Anthony was shirtless in the video version. I should have joined him, but I didn’t. So just wanted to give you a quick trigger warning. Alright. Without further ado, sit back, relax, and enjoy this podcast interview with Anthony Kunkel. Anthony, welcome to the podcast.

Anthony Kunkel [00:03:45]:
Yeah, man. Glad to be here.

Nick Urban [00:03:48]:
Let’s warm up today with the unusual nonnegotiables you’ve done for your health, your performance, and your bioharmony.

Anthony Kunkel [00:03:58]:
Oh, I think I think one thing that I’ve realized only in comparison to everybody else, I guess, like, not so much that I thought that I had secret sauce, but simply that I realized that no one else is doing it is living living in a small mountain town is more valuable than I think even the people willing to pay whatever. Our cost of living index on housing is, like, more than 2 and a half the national average here in the states. So it’s like, clearly, people understand there’s some sort of value, but I think it’s deeper than than we would realize. Just having this kind of, like, very attuned with natural lighting and, what I would be okay saying is a low EMF environment, but in reality, it’s not too much the EMF I’m worried about as more of that as a proxy to the fact that I’m not, you know, surrounded by a dozen other neighbors in an apartment complex and and, a bunch of city lighting and and whatever. It’s you know, you can see the Milky Way from my front torch with all my lights on.

Nick Urban [00:04:57]:
We will get right into that. But for people who have not connected with you on Instagram like I did a while back and aren’t familiar with you and what you do, how do you describe your lifestyle?

Anthony Kunkel [00:05:09]:
A kind of crunchy bohemian seeker of some sort of truth within my own lane. I think a small gem of truth with a capital t is a a life well spent. And that’s that’s brought me some success in the endurance world, or maybe the success in the endurance world has brought me to that conclusion. It’s probably a little bit of a dance between the 2. But, I mean, I’ve I’ve represented Team USA under the International Olympic Committee for a 100 k road running. I’ve embraced abroad a bunch of times. I’ve won a couple of national championships. I’ve made some serious waves despite not living up to my own potential and my goals, in in the obstacle course racing community more recently.

Anthony Kunkel [00:05:53]:
Kind of just being disillusioned with the the ultra world and and is this really all there is and and what else can I do? And also being drawn to something that before I’m done and used up I mean, I’m 32 now. Before I’m totally done and used up, I’d like to at least use something that is innately pandering to my own talent set. And so with obstacle course racing, that’s kind of something where I’m effortlessly better than a lot of people despite not really training specifically for it. So that’s kind of the definition of talent. Right? And so that’s yeah. I mean, that that’s a good summation of where I’ve come from. I mean, loosely where I’m going and then sort of who I am now.

Nick Urban [00:06:33]:
You mentioned something in passing, and I wanna expand upon that. And and that was 100 kilometer endurance racing, which is about 60 miles give or take, and that is running. And that is something that very few people do in comparison to the worldwide fitness community. What’s that been like for you?

Anthony Kunkel [00:06:52]:
Well, I think we’re all we all kinda gravitate or at least at some point in your life, intermittently in my case, you gravitate towards things that you’re good at or things that come smoother to you and kind of the the balance between staying in your lane and just doing what God decided or the universe decided that you’re good at along with also finding a realm to to push yourself constantly. Yeah. I mean, I think I think as a young kid, I was better at the end of season, you know, 10 k turkey trots than I was all season long at a 5 k cross country race. And so I kinda figured there would be some sort of future in that that realm with me, and and I was at a perfect timing and place to to kind of be exposed to the idea of the Badwater 135 mile race and, like, 24 hour races on the track and that sort of thing. And so I’ve always kind of been spiritually drawn to, well, if I just went far enough, then it would be kind of this aesthetic aesthetic point of view of if I just stripped everything away, then it would be nothing but me and God. And if then then I would know some sort of, like, answers or something. And I think, unfortunately, that that wasn’t so clean and and glamorous as as it could have been. I think I kinda found a lot less out there than I thought there was, and and maybe that’s a point to dive into a little bit.

Anthony Kunkel [00:08:11]:
But I don’t think it’s inherently different than running for 15 minutes on the treadmill. I really don’t. It’s the you can have the same levels of of bliss and love and light and the same levels of, like, cramping or mental ups and downs and that sort of thing. It’s it’s all just relative to your own level of fitness. I I don’t think there’s anything inherently different about someone who’s a £100 overweight running a 5 k versus someone who is who has given up their entire life. Like, you know, your nutritional freedom and your your friend circle and your your training and your morning routine and your sleep and your your social life. If if you give up all these things, your version of running a 5 k at a £100 overweight might be running a 50 miler in the mountains. And so I I really do think it all scales perfectly and that it’s not some magic thing that I would have hoped it was at, like, 18.

Anthony Kunkel [00:09:01]:
That’s really a founding principle of my approach to all this stuff at this point.

Nick Urban [00:09:04]:
Yeah. And so now you’re pretty far along your own journey. How do you go about training for ultras? Because that is, like, I’m sure a very different world than training for a 3 k or 5 k or something very short like that or even, like, sprints, 100 meters, 200 meters, that kind of stuff. Do you have a an approach that you found works best?

Anthony Kunkel [00:09:27]:
Yeah. Peep people that are running, like, you know, 90 seconds or less, it’s that’s a that’s a totally drastically different sport. That really is, like, the sport of running, Whereas the endurance world lends itself much better to this kind of esoteric approach of of the spiritual and the mental and the emotional and then putting all these things together. If only because you have so much more time to think about it, which can be great. You know? I mean, how how great is it if you’re gonna win a race? You’d probably rather win the race for, like, 6 hours than win it for 6 tenths of a second or, you know, even longer potentially. And so it does lend itself to some more esoteric stuff like that, but it it means the training is a lot less highlight reel worthy, especially in my case. I’ve I’ve always kind of gravitated towards the the long aerobic tempo work. So, you know, it might be 5 or 6 miles at just a brisk pace, which might be a 145 heart rate with how fit I am.

Anthony Kunkel [00:10:21]:
It’s it’s like that’s not that’s not even really a workout worth worth talking about as opposed to somebody that’s doing shorter stuff where it’s like you’re going down to the track and you’re just you’re you’re building localized muscular endurance, and your aerobic system is kind of going along for the ride because your legs have to learn how to run real fast for for 10 seconds or 45 seconds or what what have you. So a lot of this is just building structural integrity and hoping that especially as I as I try to kind of extend myself into the longer realm, you know, the next the next a race is a 24 hour obstacle course race. You don’t have to be fast. You don’t need a whole lot of finesse, although the shock and all is kind of fun still. It’s just a matter of how bulletproof you can be. So the training is all orbiting around that, which really, again, it’s hard to tell chicken or the egg if if I’m drawn to this stuff because I’m wired this way or if I’m wired this way because I’ve been dabbling with this stuff. But the draw to okay. How do I train just for this war of attrition? It’s really, really fascinating to me where it no longer matters about, like, b o two max and even things like running economy are are very secondary or worse, you know, or lower on the totem pole to things like just how how how structurally sound can you be 6 hours and 12 hours in and just the ability to stay moving.

Anthony Kunkel [00:11:36]:
So the training is it’s like how compromised can I get while still being able to find joy? Because I think it is a mental approach. It it’s my it’s your brain that you’re training, and that’s not this woo woo, like, gritty sort of, you know, mastery over the body. It’s like mastery with the body. It’s it’s how how can I still find joy and bliss and lightness and fun even though I’m a little wrecked? And so my my day in, day out is is getting into cold water until I’m cold, getting into the sauna until I’m hot, hydrating as much as I possibly can because I’m not going to during. So it’s, you know, it’s 2 liters or more fluid in in the mornings before I take off from my run. And that’s like mineralized, you know, I I like Redmond salt because it’s from, you know, the next state over it’s it’s basically local salt and it’s it’s got a deep, deep, full, you know, mineralizing spectrum to it. I’ve been I’ve been playing with Black Lotus Shilajit just because I’ve I’ve played with that with Shilajit for years years, and I’ve always had my concerns because I’ve been to the Himalayas of, like, if you’re wronging people in the Himalayas with the land, I’m gonna come for you. So it’s like knowing those guys and and trusting a source for for high end Shilajit’s been really cool.

Anthony Kunkel [00:12:47]:
So this kind of mineralization angle along with the movement and the hot and the cold in the morning, I think sets me up then. But all of my stuff, I’m I’m slowly seeing it as a way to it’s like flexibility training for every system in my body. Just like you might stretch something through a full range of motion. I think if you stretched your thermic system to it about as cold as you can comfortably get to about as hot as you can comfortably get, and then hydrate as hard as you can, and then dehydrate almost as hard as you can. And you do that on a regular basis. You’re you’re really building a robust system, and that’s also allowed me to work around some mechanical issues that I’ve had just from doing this for 15 years or what have you at this level. So, that’s kind of the the, like, morning routine, hot, cold, fascial maneuvers. I’m I’m a huge advocate for the human garage.

Anthony Kunkel [00:13:35]:
They’ve spent thousands of out man hours and a bunch of money to make all their stuff for free. So I like to say they’re the human drive is gonna burn down the medical system without lighting a match. They’re just gonna make everybody their own doctors, and I really, really like that angle as someone who’s kind of done that model in my house of, well, I’ve amassed all these fancy toys and these protocols, and I would like to share them with people. And so doing that system and that all really feeds into itself because it really is this kind of open source, you know, striving together, competition, like, life striving together. And instead of instead of fighting each other for scraps.

Nick Urban [00:14:11]:
There are a lot of things I wanna explore. We around what you just mentioned. The first being your approach to the actual, like, physical training itself, and you mentioned that on your daily runs that you’re doing, you’re not actually doing ultras or really long distances most of the time?

Anthony Kunkel [00:14:30]:
I think it’s much better to go 20 miles and have some pace work in there and do it without fluid and do it without nutrition. And I know some people hear that and get a little bristly, but I’m telling you, dehydration is about to have its time to shine. I think that there’s there’s perks of again, it’s it’s not dogmatic. It’s not I’m never gonna drink water again. It’s not I’m never gonna eat a carb again. It’s how do I get to the point where I can do I can sustain my life on nothing and then I can crush food and and regenerate myself and and, you know, onboard 2 liters of fluid in a 30 minute period without just peeing it all out. It’s it’s how do I develop all that? So, you know, there’s there’s no way around it. I’m doing all that elaborate morning routine stuff, and I’m doing a 100 plus miles a week if I’m training.

Anthony Kunkel [00:15:14]:
I mean, even that doesn’t really feel like training. It’s kinda just a side effect of living. How I like to live is is 100 mile weeks. And so that that lets me get away without or it it encourages the fitness without needing long, sexy highlight, real long runs of just the day in, day out volume. So I I would advocate more for people to do 50 to 70 miles a week before they worry about anything, track workouts or or any kind of subtle anything beyond that. It’s like you gotta put in the base work.

Nick Urban [00:15:42]:
Gotcha. Okay. So you are putting in a good amount of miles, perhaps not more than 20 in a day most of the time, but it sounds like you’ll fluctuate, and you’ll have, like, some shorter days and some longer days.

Anthony Kunkel [00:15:54]:
Yeah. I mean, I might I might do 20 or maybe even, like, 24. My my longest single run this training block will probably be 29 or maybe just make it around 30. And I might do that 2 or 3 times, but those are very rare. And that’s only because this next race is is gonna be more than a 100 miles. But that said, I might do 20 in the morning and then go out and do 6 or 8 or more in the evening. So it it it does add up a little, you know, a little sneakily in there. And I’ll be a little over a 100 this week, but next week, that’ll be, like, 140, maybe a 160 miles in that week.

Anthony Kunkel [00:16:32]:
So that that’ll be running 13, 12 times in that week. So 2 times a day more more often than not, and a lot of just, like, 12 to 15 mile runs that don’t really take anything out of me and that I that I’ve kind of acclimated to.

Nick Urban [00:16:49]:
Wow. That’s a lot. And, obviously, you’re having to recover between your sessions. Are you at all concerned about the theoretical blunting of the beneficial adaptations that are caused by long exposure to cold therapy mostly, or is that a nonissue because you’re needing to recover and be able to perform for your next run?

Anthony Kunkel [00:17:13]:
I think it’s sort of a nonissue. I think for the the average person listening, it’s it’s 99.9% a nonissue because, one, they’re not aiming at the Olympics. 2, they’re probably not doing enough training to elicit all that much hypertrophy anyway, and it’s the hypertrophy that you’re blunting, not so much the endurance gains. I would add to that. The reason that I do my cold exposure first thing in the morning is that my body has had a full 12 plus hours to kind of handle any inflammation. Really, like, 14 plus hours to handle any inflammation or acute response to the exercise that I’m doing. And so I’m not I’m not someone that’s doing crazy cold exposure right, you know, right after my my most muscle building session of the week. And I’m also not really trying to build muscle right now.

Anthony Kunkel [00:17:57]:
I’m I’m I’m trying to build some functional strength and that sort of thing. I mean, I am probably £10 heavier than than optimal marathon weight right now, And that means I’m perfectly at optimal 24 hour also, of course, race weight. And so, yeah, I don’t I don’t really need to to mess with things beyond that. But the other thing that I would add to all this is the average person is not capable of getting themselves that cold. That’s kind of something that, me and Ben Greenfield have kind of BS ed about. When you see the studies like that where, oh, it wants hypertrophy. It’s like, okay. If you’re working that hard in the gym to really get a a strong, hypertrophy dose, you’re probably too exhausted to then chase the dragon in a cold plunge.

Anthony Kunkel [00:18:40]:
Like, the average person is not they’re they’re not ready to to face the music like that to actually get their muscle temp to drop. So I don’t know if that’s if that’s hype, but I do think one way to overcome that is to hear your cold first thing in the morning when it sucks the most, but it sets your day off to just be alive and wonderful.

Nick Urban [00:18:58]:
Yeah. And there’s and the research around that also shows that the precooling before you train, if anything, it can have a net positive impact on, like, ergogenic performance.

Anthony Kunkel [00:19:08]:
Yeah. Or even during, you know, cooling vests and and, yeah, it doesn’t have to be an ice plunge, which is kind of a pain in the ass. But the sort of palmer cooling and cooling vest and that sort of stuff, that’s that’s really, really intriguing to me and something that I’ve played with just just dabbled with a little bit. But, yeah, I use my sauna space every single day. So, you know, near infrared light, 0 EMF, 0 flicker, and and red light that I’m just bathed. And I like to say that I’m 1% red light by weight at this point in my life. And recently, I just I just posted yesterday or, you know, a story yesterday, this this monstrosity of a machine behind me. I have a I have a pulse pulsey EMF, PEMF machine, probably, like, square behind me there.

Anthony Kunkel [00:19:50]:
And, man, I’m 60 days into the thing, and I love it. I’m I’m just starting to find the protocols that I would recommend to other people in kind of how to use all the different toys and adapters and everything. But the PEMF is if there’s 2 things we know it does, it reduces pain when pain is the problem in and of itself. Like, you know, a broken bone, maybe it helps healing. There’s a lot of evidence for that, but it’s like, you know, it in the end of the day, if pain is the problem in and of itself, it’s gonna help that. And if sleep is a problem, it’s gonna help that. Those are two things alone that I don’t know how we’re not talk screaming it from the rooftops. You know? It’s like, that’s enough.

Anthony Kunkel [00:20:25]:
So everything else be besides that that maybe even I’m noting at this point is kind of up for debate, but that level of of just those two things, really, really cool tech. So I I definitely feel very privileged to be in the position that I am to play with all the toys that I have and and be able to scratch the curiosity. I went to school for exercise science and kind of got jaded by the whole thing of sitting around and waiting for peer reviewed literature that’s that ends up validating what athletes have known for maybe 20 years. And so, I’m happy to be in the position that I am where my standard is not peer reviewed literature, and it’s just kind of does it quote, unquote work or does it not quote, unquote work? And then my own definition of what that means can can change season by season or based on the demands of the event. But my recovery tools, cold cold water, sauna, I’m a big, big fan of anytime I can find something that’s a stressor to my system, but that nets me positive, it’s awesome. So things like resveratrol might fall into that category. Maybe curcumin related things might fall into that category, but certainly things like sulforaphane or saunas or hydrogen, things like heat and even red light, people don’t really talk about. But that’s that’s a youth stressor.

Anthony Kunkel [00:21:39]:
That’s a that’s a that’s an additional stress to your system. It’s just your body loves it. And so it’s kind of like sulforaphane is a fun example of that, of the carnivore community says, well, that stuff’s trying to kill you. This is the plant’s defense system to make you not eat it. Yeah. That’s you’re definitely right. But then the people that say this is a miracle and it’s gonna cure cancer, it’s like they’re probably right too. Because what what you see is these things are poisons, but the dose makes the poison.

Anthony Kunkel [00:22:03]:
And these things are are things that perfectly click into your own genome and can activate, like, nRF 2 is an interesting pathway of anytime pretty much anytime you’re eating poisonous plants and that you don’t die, you’re getting nRF 2 activation, which can bump up glutathione and all kinds of fun things endogenously, so within your body’s own system. So anytime you can find things like that, that’s that’s the jackpot to me. If if it can add training effect instead of taking away training effect while also making training more fun and more blissful, then it does not possibly get better than that.

Nick Urban [00:22:37]:
Yeah. And I agree with you on the plant defense compounds because if you look at a lot of the medicines, they’re they’re derived from botanicals and fungi and everything. And then also, you look at caffeine, nicotine. These are defense molecules that help protect the plants from predators, yet they’re so widely used, and they’re there’s a good amount of research behind both of them showing they do have beneficial effects. So just to say because it defends plants from getting consumed that it makes it a bad thing, it’s a bit shortsighted.

Anthony Kunkel [00:23:08]:
Yeah. For sure.

Nick Urban [00:23:09]:
You mentioned that minerals are a big part of your morning, and minerals in Shilajit, which is a great source of all the trace minerals, 8085 plus trace minerals, humic acids, fulvic acids, all kinds of other stuff. Why are you focusing on that specifically in the mornings? Because you didn’t list a 100 different supplements when you mentioned that. You’ve mentioned electrolytes, water, and different forms of minerals. Why?

Anthony Kunkel [00:23:33]:
In that same tract of building a robust system, you know, gets gets you a body that can do both. Like, get get you a body that can that can onboard half a half a gallon of water and not have bloating or distress or anything like that, and then be able to go do a 20 miler on nothing. That has a lot of appeal to me if only as kind of a primal pageant show event of of this is something that a human body should be able to do. You should you should be okay doing these things. You should be okay in a a time of feast and a time of famine. And so to amplify that, you just can’t drink water. I think I think it’s it’s less that these things are magic and more than if we were constantly drinking dirty, raw, like, living for lack of a better word or a less woo woo potentially sounding word. If we were drinking some some more raw water that had some lights to it, I think we’d be getting all these things on a regular basis if we were eating dirty plants.

Anthony Kunkel [00:24:32]:
Yeah. I think if we were doing raw stuff, dirty plants, maybe dirty animals, maybe dirty ourselves. But, yeah, I think I think there’s a million ways we could be getting this otherwise, but I think we are I think the modern world does seem to to deplete us an extra amount and also not replenish as much as it could. And so it’s high in salt is an absolute superfood. And and kind of in that first category, we discussed of a non negotiable of whether it’s whether it’s Redmond salt. If you live in the Southwest US or Celtic salt or what have you, the Irish sea moss, like I’ve been, I’ve been playing with, I just, I love the company. I love the idea. It’s always hit me as such a gimmick.

Anthony Kunkel [00:25:18]:
Sounds like sea moss. Like, this sounds like someone discovered algae and and just clung to one benefit or okay. Well, there’s actually 92 minuteerals in there. That means there’s hardly any of those minerals until you start adding, you know, 2 grams every single day. Okay. Well, now this isn’t 0. And the realization that certain things like boron can have an outsized effect on what you’re doing. I am a little more cognizant of things beyond just salt, but it’s like, if you’re not if you’re not on a high end salt, you’re missing out massively.

Anthony Kunkel [00:25:46]:
And I tend to think of it in terms of you’re spending the sodium. You have a certain amount of sodium to spend every day, which as an athlete, it might be 6 or 8 or 10 grams of 8,000 milligrams of sodium for a day. But if you look at something like my salt is barely over 40% sodium, meaning it’s almost 60% trace minerals. That’s not so trace when you’re consuming 8, 10, 12 grams or more of your high end salt. Then it makes a little more sense that a couple pinches of of iris sea moss. And I really love the the team behind survival moss is just adorable and impossible not to love. And so a little little shout out to them. I’ve been playing with with their stuff for a while.

Anthony Kunkel [00:26:29]:
It it certainly seems to do me some good. Interestingly, when I first started playing with it, if I if I put it in my morning water, I seem to be a little more crampy during the run, and I wonder if it wasn’t inhibiting with, like, sodium absorption or balance or my body figuring some things out. But I’m someone that if I don’t get side effects from something, if I abuse it, then I tend to think that it’s not giving me effects anyway. So I’ve kind of advocate for the for the less than savory things if you’re really soaring close to the sun like I tend to do. So I think a high end salt, good clean water, rather rather that’s filtered or spring water or whatever you can get your hands on. Just some concern for trace minerals is is a good place to start no matter who you are. I’m not sure how much of it is like crazy hippies talking versus how much of it is is legit. But the idea that your silica depleted, you’re you’re supposed to be mostly water.

Anthony Kunkel [00:27:22]:
Most of what isn’t water in the human body should be silica. And a lot of us that’s like unless you’re in the health care, beauty care world, silica is not even on your radar as a thing. And then you pick up every beauty skin, hair, nails product, and it’s it’s loaded with silica. And it’s like, okay. Why why do we need to eat glass so that my hair grows better? I’m just I’m confused. And again, the realization that if you had mineralized natural raw water, you’d be getting a solid amount of silica. And how easy is it to have diatomaceous earth? And maybe they’ll even help you, like, cleanse parasites and aluminum and and some other things that you might have, which that would be awesome. I mean, I’m someone that’s chasing demons 24 hours a day.

Anthony Kunkel [00:28:01]:
If you’re telling me that’s something that I can do can may maybe I I’m I’m hopeful that I have a parasite just so I can get rid of it and then feel even better. So, I played with a little bit of diatomaceous earth, and I think that’s helped my hydration levels a bit. I think the the fascial maneuvers of, like, counter rotating and breathing and, like, pumping and pushing and pulling on on my skin and my joints and and, like, locking one thing and twisting and treating my body like a billows and imagining a bunch of different layers, almost like you have 3 or 4 wet suits on over your system and you’re trying to slide them all over each other. All of that goes into the same bucket of of hydration where you need to run. You need to hydrate. You need to dehydrate. You need clean water. But all these things are helpful for additional things.

Anthony Kunkel [00:28:46]:
And a lot of it’s very, very easy to get. And especially if you’re eating very clean, your diet could very quickly become very low in salt or in sodium. And so the amount of salt you might have to put into something to then get, you know, call it 5 grams of sodium a day, which is about the point where your all cause mortality starts dwindling. I guess that’s 5 grams of salt. That’s hard to get when you’re not eating packaged food. And so if you’re eating clean, you might wanna take a look at at how much salt you’re getting or how much sodium you’re getting and consider that stuff. But for me, it’s it’s about that range that I’m aiming at. How how depleted can I get? How full can I get? How empty can I get? And things like diatomaceous earth, high in salt, Shielajit, which you feel instantly.

Nick Urban [00:29:32]:
Yeah. One really fantastic resource on the topic of salt, which, by the way, is not, as you know, the same as sodium. Sodium is one part of salt, one constituent within it, is a book called The Salt Fix, and it really dispels a lot of myths around how much salt we should be consuming, especially if you’re on a low carbohydrate diet because then your insulin levels are low, your kidneys excrete more sodium, and along with that go the other minerals and electrolytes. So, yeah, that’s a really good resource for anyone who is concerned about salt to look into. Okay. Now I’m curious about, like, the since you’re obviously very involved in the health world, what you’re doing, if anything, to counteract some of the longer term potential issues of chronically high cortisol or things that are associated with, like, really long distance endurance at, like, maximal intensity.

Anthony Kunkel [00:30:25]:
I think there’s a few things that I do that are applicable to anybody. Like, I’ve I’ve mentioned fascial maneuvers. It’s impossible to do 15, 20 minutes of fascial maneuvers where, you know, your hips are pointed one way, your head are pointed head’s pointed the same way, your shoulders are pointed the other way. Counter rotation, like, wringing out a wringing out a towel, basically. It’s impossible to do 10 to 15 minutes of that stuff intentionally and still have elevated cortisol. We’ve we’ve seen some salivary cortisol tests, and it’s it’s pretty freaking compelling, like, more compelling than almost anything else. I’m not someone that finds benefit in things like ashwagandha or things that shut down cortisol. I would love to get a a a series of of cortisol tests to myself to test some things before I make any wilder of accusations, but I’m convinced based on 15 years of being a pretty serious athlete that I am just a naturally low stress person.

Anthony Kunkel [00:31:20]:
I’m definitely there’s kind of 2 people that end up at the top of athletics, and one of them is a little more predominant in the endurance world. And that would be the version of people that’s kind of restless and manic and has to move and has a has a compulsion to do things. And then there’s less common in the endurance world, but more common in the strength world is the kind of what I think of in my head is the greyhound archetype of someone who will stand up and do tricks and and go ham for a few minutes or a few hours, and then is totally content to just lay in their bed for the rest of the day. Knowing which type of person you are is is helpful. And I think that saves me from a lot of stuff that I would otherwise have to concern myself with is that, unless I’m prodded out, I’m totally content sitting still, reading a book, sitting on the pulse, watching a movie, eating steak. It’s been worse. Whereas a lot of a lot of my closest friends, because they’re in the endurance world, kind of always buzz. You know, they they idle at 70 miles an hour.

Anthony Kunkel [00:32:19]:
And so, that can get them into a lot more trouble than than someone who’s wired a little more, I don’t know, relaxed like I am or or low energy like I am. As far as, like, long term arrhythmias and the things that happen to your body as your system ages and turns into beef jerky as an endurance athlete. There’s not a whole lot that I’m doing intentionally for that. I I kind of think as long as I have a reason to be alive, I’ll keep living. And because I’m, you know, mister biohacking in a lot of this space, I I’ve I’ve been able to go to like, my next conference is the is a 4 m and the American Association For Anti Aging Medicine in Vegas. It’s like that’s that’s kind of a stretch for someone who runs in circles for for a living. And, yeah, it it’s kind of all in the same bucket, really. And so one thing that I’ve taken away from, like, the biohacking conference where people are openly trying to live to a 120 or a 150 or whatever their aspirations are is that if you have a reason to live, you’ll probably keep on living.

Anthony Kunkel [00:33:21]:
And if you don’t, then you won’t. If your only reason is because you’re afraid of dying, then that’s that’s a whole fill that’s a that’s a conversation right there. That’s not the end of the conversation. That’s the start of the conversation.

Nick Urban [00:33:32]:
Yeah. In the model of health, I learned the very first most important thing to do is have a north star, a reason for whatever your goal is, whether it’s putting on £10 of muscle, dropping £10 of fat, it’s living beyond a 100. If you don’t have a North Star reason why you’re doing this, and it’s really, I guess, the inverse polarity, it’s you’re running away from something instead of going towards something. You’re already setting yourself up for failure or to be sorely disappointed versus the person who is doing it because they want to achieve something, to accomplish something, to support someone, to help the world. That is a very different, not just mindset, but energy with which you approach that destination.

Anthony Kunkel [00:34:17]:
It really is. I don’t think people talk about that enough. I think we’ve we’ve successfully glorified the grind and the the the guts, grits, and determination as they say in the Leadville world. And I just I don’t think that’s the only answer.

Nick Urban [00:34:34]:
Yeah. And then more on the other things, like, I know you’re doing a lot of different things that offset the potential increase in all cause mortality or arrhythmias or other potential issues. But when it comes to something like osteoporosis or sarcopenia later in life, are you adding other types of training or other biohacks to offset those things, or are they not really concerns of yours at, like, this stage?

Anthony Kunkel [00:34:59]:
I don’t think they are. I mean, maybe maybe that’s the luxury of being in my thirties. But I also think it again, that’s one of those things where I think, man, I’m killing myself as fast as I possibly can with this lifestyle, or I’m living as fast as I possibly can is how I tend to think of it as, like, you know, if if I’m living I’m living with the average 9 to 5 person as much as many memories as they’ll make in a year. If if I’m making that in the average a week, then it’s like, who am I to even live for all that long? Like, what what am I gonna be doing for that long? I’m not I’m not setting out to offset any of that stuff, but I do strongly believe that a lot of the things that I’m doing and that I’m drawn to have the side effect of doing that. You know, the the pulse PEMF, man, the the literature on that stuff, and I’m, I don’t know, 1200 pages deep in in reading about about PEMF, particularly high power PEMF. That’s the hard part. I I was totally dismissive of all that stuff because I tried it. I didn’t feel anything.

Anthony Kunkel [00:35:58]:
My data didn’t change. There was there was just it seemed gimmicky. And I thought, well, maybe it’s good for people that are never grounded. People that are bombard with e m with with EMF, with, like, dirty EMF. Maybe they’re gonna suddenly get magic responses that I’m not because I’m in natural water running down the mountains once a day. And so I was kind of open to the possibility. There were things that I don’t know. Boom.

Anthony Kunkel [00:36:22]:
I mean, I tried Pulse, like a high, high power where it’s fully giving you lightning bolts and can really can really reset your system. Oh, man. I’m on the Kool Aid now. Now I’m looking at, like, the bone density for my teeth and my head and my my wrists and my, you know, my hips and my my back health and things that I would have never had the luxury of concerning myself with because I’m just too swamped chasing just monomania, just chasing the performance that I would sacrifice anything on that altar. It’s a nice bonus when you realize the thing that you should do for your performance is also the thing that you should do for your health, your wellness, your longevity. I don’t know if that’s enlightenment, but I’m open to the idea that it is. So when you suddenly realize that your short term hedonism is perfectly aligned with your long term, longevity or just optimizing your ability to give back to the world. That sounds like enlightenment to me.

Nick Urban [00:37:14]:
I also like that you’re not necessarily training physically for like, you’re not doing weight training to put on muscle to offset these things, but you’re using other technologies and tools to help offset and to build overall health. And as I see it, that’s gonna drastically outweigh any potential bone density loss that is caused by excess, like, very long distance running, and it’s gonna build other aspects and facets of your health too.

Anthony Kunkel [00:37:41]:
Yeah. I mean, you look at, like, a Smithsonian exhibit with a bunch of 200000 year old skulls. Like, they all had awesome bone density and perfect teeth and stuff. It’s like, you don’t have to be a crazy conspiracy theorist to think we’ve probably fallen off of things. Like, all the cool stuff that we have access to, all the toys and supplements. And the fact that I can get an avocado here in Durango, Colorado, 365 days out of the year is insane. Like, I don’t even need to know what conditions are involved in growing bell peppers or exotic sweet potatoes. I can just go acquire them for, like, $2 a pound.

Anthony Kunkel [00:38:19]:
It’s it’s kind of insane to think that I might not be the fittest, strongest, fastest, most robust version of a human that that could possibly walk the planet. That kind of stuff actually kinda bothers me. I wanna I wanna be a freaking specimen, and it’s like, I just don’t see my ancestors as brittle boned, fragile critters. I just I just don’t I have a hard time wrapping my mind around that, and I don’t feel that, like, in my own person here. I don’t I don’t think we made it 3,200,000 years as as bipeds with narrow hips to to fall apart and and succumb to things like, whatever, osteopenia or depression or any anything. I I I think these are all very physical driven things, and I just don’t I don’t feel a lot of that in my body, and I just trust that that’s gonna do things. And then maybe the maybe the toys will at least offset modernity and at least bring me back to that sort of state that I really believe is our birthright. I think we’re supposed to be balanced and symmetrical and and, like, you know, forthright.

Anthony Kunkel [00:39:28]:
I I really think that this this forward center of mass is the natural state of a human a human body. And so, yeah, I think leaning into that is a lot easier than trying to invent a purpose for yourself.

Nick Urban [00:39:42]:
Anthony, walk me through some of the other tools and biohacks and technologies and supplements that you have in your arsenal.

Anthony Kunkel [00:39:50]:
The only thing I haven’t I haven’t really touched on that that’s a major tenant of of what I do and what I what I like to see people do around here is carb cycling and not being dogmatic with your food. You know, I I did, like, a 100 hours carnivore. It’s like, well, that’ll that’ll maintain my gut health. I have a lot of good things in my gut going on that I wanna maintain with plants and fiber and and compounds like that, but I’m not so dogmatic that I’m not willing to to give that up for a short period of time. I think the in that same feast and famine model is where my low carb approach fits in. And I’ve been doing low carb for performance for as long or longer than anyone you can possibly find. I think significant significantly longer than most people you would think of in the space. And so, there’s there’s a few secrets in there, but they’re hard mentally to stomach for people.

Anthony Kunkel [00:40:46]:
It’s it’s so much easier to say this is my religion. This is the truth. I got shredded when I stopped eating carbs, and I’m never gonna eat a carb again. Sugar’s killing you, blah blah blah. It’s much harder than that to be able to come over here and say, okay. I’m not gonna eat any appreciable amount of carbs while doing a 100 plus miles a week for, like, 2 or 3 weeks. And I’m gonna kinda feel flat and dead at the beginning, and then I’m gonna start feeling good. Then I’m gonna feel even better than baseline.

Anthony Kunkel [00:41:15]:
Then I’m gonna start trickling in carbs and feel even better than that. And it’s like, part of that is where it seems like performance deviates from health and wellness. You know, for longevity, I would probably sit at 75 to a 100 grams of carb a day because that 25 grams gives me wiggle room to not have to worry about, is my salad dressing loaded with carbs? Is my, you know, am I worried about counting carbs in, like, a tomato or something? And then the other 50 to to 75 grams a day is so I can have 2 potatoes and not have to worry about that. Like, that seems like a trivial amount or like a like a banana in some low carb baked goods that’s almond flour based and mildly Stevia sweet. It’s like that sounds like freedom to me while also having enough metabolic flexibility to nuke fat when I need to, and I have data to back that up. So I think the the one thing that we haven’t touched on at all, because I I think I’m almost blind to it at this point if I don’t sit down and think about it on purpose, is the carb cycling. I think in that same vein of of flexibility and and building the most robust range that you can. I’ve recently been toying with this idea that or not even toying with.

Anthony Kunkel [00:42:25]:
I I guess I’ve come to the realization that I’m ready to realize is wrong as soon as I can, but I haven’t yet, is that the middle path is not it’s not temperance. The middle path is not choosing neither left nor right. The middle path is both. The middle path is it’s wide, not narrow. The middle path is not being a reasonable person. And if there was one thing that’s kind of, like, coming to the surface as I’m just kinda riffing here, middle middle of the training block here, it’s that. It’s that you you need to be able to lose £10 of water weight or, you know, 10% of your body weight in water and not actually die. And then also replenish that through your gut without an IV because your your your skin, your hair, your nails, your bones, or your blood are so mineralized that they can just, boom, take in take in that fresh clean fluid.

Anthony Kunkel [00:43:20]:
I think the the low carb angle gets very dogmatic and, like, you know, religious esque of people that are just like, they got they got God’s honest truth, and they know all the answers because this is what fixed them 6 months ago. And it’s like, I I just I don’t buy it. I think it’s about flexibility. And I have I have some pretty cool lab data showing that I can still burn metabolically, you know, textbook acknowledged impossible numbers for fat metabolism on 300 plus grams of net carbohydrate a day for, like, weeks. Because the the base that you get, no one will ever study that. We’re 20 years away from studying that, and by then, the world’s gonna be so metaversal and VR that we’re not gonna worry about human body stuff anymore, I’m convinced. What we can see with athletes like myself is once you get that fat adaptation, you can abuse simple sugars or carbs or tubers or whatever you want for, like, weeks. As long as you have a winter or a summer or some season when, you know, the buffalo would be available and the berries wouldn’t be, or the berries would be available and the buffalo wouldn’t be, or take your pick of of proverbial or semi literal options here.

Anthony Kunkel [00:44:26]:
You should have in that feast and famine model. I think that’s something that I’m like I said, I’m I’m almost blind to you because I’ve been doing it for so long. But the ability to operate on very, very small amounts of carbohydrates, like, functionally, what people would think of as 0 carbohydrates for weeks while training heavily, I think is one more thing just like effortless movement. That’s effortless metabolic movement to my mind is not having to fuel the system and being able to go. That’s free. If you if you didn’t have to put gas in your car or didn’t have to oil change your car, that’s free driving. Whereas the second you have to pay insurance and you have to put gas in it, you have to you have to fix your chipped windshields. Like, that’s not free anymore.

Anthony Kunkel [00:45:06]:
That’s that’s not free. And your body’s the same way. I think you if your intent was less and this is why I finally broke and started a school community. If you’re in what if your intent was effortless, free, blissful movement instead of, like, I hate myself and I just lose £10 of fat. Or, like, man, I really want, like, those, like, me medial pec striations. Damn it. And it’s like, I just I want I want I want I want. It’s like, what what if instead it was, I want to experience or I am or I have the potential to, and you chased it from that point of view, and you really courted that version of yourself.

Anthony Kunkel [00:45:42]:
That’s what it all comes back to for me. And if you can’t choose to eat 400 calories in an hour, then then your gut is weak. And if you can’t choose to eat 0 calories an hour for for an endurance event, then you’re you’re at you’re at the mercy of whatever’s at that aid station or these modern stancy sugar supplements.

Nick Urban [00:46:04]:
I’m with you on that. I saw something about Tour de France cyclists consuming 300 grams of carbohydrates a day and staying in a state of ketosis. So, obviously, if you’re active, you’re training, and you’re metabolically flexible, you can do things that otherwise defy conventional wisdom. And to me, health is the ability to adapt to your environment, your circumstances. So if that means plentiful carbs and no protein one day, so be it. If that means hours of dehydration followed by full rehydration, and you can do both of those, that’s a good sign. And the more fragile you are, the harder life becomes, the more AC you need just to survive, the more climate controlled everything, the more you you don’t know how to go out and do anything. If Internet goes down, you’re in trouble because then all of a sudden you’re you lost access to chat gpt telling you how to make a simple repair.

Nick Urban [00:46:59]:
All these types of things make us more fragile humans.

Anthony Kunkel [00:47:02]:
I love it. Definitely.

Nick Urban [00:47:04]:
And, yeah, it does come back to what you let off with about why you’re doing something and with your goals around fitness or beat anything, if you’re chasing it from a mindset of scarcity, I need this so that I can feel better on myself if I drop these £10, and I’ll look better in summer, and people will come up to me and start more conversations, whatever it is. That’s very different than, like, I’m gonna do this, enjoy myself doing it, find a type of movement that I like. And as a side effect, a side benefit, I’ll drop some weight. I’ll put a muscle in the scale will look different.

Anthony Kunkel [00:47:38]:
Yeah. I mean, something something that I drive with anyone that wants to hear what I have to say is we’re the only sentient being that suffers. Like, you don’t you don’t see a migrating bird and think, man, Canada is so far away for this goose. Like, that must suck. And it doesn’t. It probably feels good. It do you know? You see your dog running around, and it’s like he grabs a sniffer. It’s like a it’s like a magnet yanking his little snazzle up into the air, and it’s like, what would a human even look like if a human just human? You know, a cheetah doesn’t think, god, these gazelles are getting faster every day, and a gazelles doesn’t think, man, these cheetahs are getting more threatening every single day.

Anthony Kunkel [00:48:15]:
They they don’t they don’t whatever. Like, metacognate or whatever whatever the they don’t think about thinking, but, also, they don’t suffer as a result of that. And I think if we could tap into more of that, we would be so much more infinite and so much more loving. And, you know, what what if you could just play? I think we can. I think we have to re remember or re re re remember or something in there.

Nick Urban [00:48:40]:
Are you currently aware of or using any ergogenic performance enhancing substances, any peptides, any something as simple as, like, amino acids or creatine or something more advanced? Just anything in general?

Anthony Kunkel [00:48:55]:
Yeah. Seasonally, freaking everything. I love it. I’m a kid in a candy store with all this stuff. It’s it is that same striving for, you know, what what’s gonna help me meet God? It’s like I don’t really care about winning races. If if I had anything left to prove, I’d if I was proving it to anyone other than me, there there’d be nothing left to prove, I think. But, yeah, the the academic curiosity of you look at some of these things and it’s undeniable. Like Nitric oxide.

Anthony Kunkel [00:49:22]:
Great. Maybe it’s good for for for for aerobic performance. Maybe it’s good just for a pump in the gym. Maybe it’s good for antiviral activity or, you know, bumping HTH up through things like citrulline tends to tends to show a bigger human girl form on response to exercise. Like, that’s kinda cool, but it’s also very nerdy and academic and not something you need to experience. But you tell me that nitric oxide is in a freely reversible equation with nitrous oxide inside of the blood brain barrier. Alright. Now I’m interested.

Anthony Kunkel [00:49:53]:
I’ll play with creatine. I’ll play with citrulline. I’ll play with carnitine. I have I have logic behind all these things. I’ve I’ve played with a a handful of peptides in the past. It always kind of struck me as a little gray zone area. It’s but then then, of course, like, WADA or USADA or whatever, cracking down on the most safe, reasonable peptides like BPC 157 while leaving the more, like, ergogenic things that I would never play with, totally still fine. It’s like, it’s such a crapshoot.

Anthony Kunkel [00:50:27]:
It’s such a wild west out here. The biggest thing to my mind is that I don’t wanna do anything that makes my goals a moving target. It’s for me, if I think I can do a 125 miles at world’s toughest Mudder, which is a massive course record and enough of a bold statement that gets me hate. It’s not that I think that I’m 10% better than anyone else or that I give a about winning. It’s that I think the type of person and the type of performance that I would have to bring on the day to do that many miles would be absolutely transcendental and awesome and would be a fun personal experience. Now the second I add something like EPO or HGH or something outright mildly performance enhancing or severely performance enhancing, that moves the goalpost of what meeting God would be as far as my own race goals. And it’s not really about race results anymore. Thankfully, I’m I’m at the point in my my career, quote, unquote, that it it doesn’t really matter.

Anthony Kunkel [00:51:23]:
It’s more about who I am and and what I’m doing than it is the the performance outcomes, which is kind of bittersweet, I guess. I I like the, you know, required to kill people for a living kind of you know, it it’s nice to know that you have to end someone’s dreams to feed yourself this month. That’s that’s kind of a vibe for a a 20 something, I think. It’s not enlightenment clearly, but it’s definitely establishing one end of the the middle path, if you will. And so the absolute pinnacle, the top of my of my hierarchy here is things that let me train more with less effort and amplify the effect of the training that I’m doing. So there’s a lot of things that you could make a dose vitamin c or vitamin e or resveratrol and or ice baths like we touched on a little bit. And, yeah, those will let you train more and maybe train with less effort, but they will blunt the effect of your training. Or there’s this magical little category of things that are actually stressors to your bodies to your body, like sauna, red light, sulforaphane all come to mind as direct assaults to your system, but that your body loves and thrives on immediately.

Anthony Kunkel [00:52:36]:
And so they make training effort more more enjoyable while also piling on the load of of the training that you’re taking. And so they they amplify the effect of the training that you’re doing while also making you more able to enjoy or just, you know, more able to complete the training that you’re asking of yourself. So, molecular hydrogen, like, drink HRW is pretty cool. Or if I could swing it like a proper, like that dude, the h two water expert. That dude’s got a pretty cool hydrogen water set up for in home use. I would aspire to something like that at some point. Simple person. But there’s few things that really fall into that category of of supreme stuff.

Anthony Kunkel [00:53:21]:
Everything else beyond that, it helps, but it’s more of, like, shoring up health and wellness than anything else. It’s nothing that’s that’s big and and sexy outside of I mean, the the most fun you can have is nootropics. That nootropic space has been ignored almost entirely by people outside of, like, executives. But if you’re an executive and it helps you do an 18 hour workday and stay productive, dude, guess freaking what? If you’re an athlete that’s gonna be out there for 24 hours, that stuff is gonna make your life so much better. So I’ve been deeply vested in in Wokeo, Revelation Nootropics as the years have gone by because every time they drop something new, it’s like, this is the best thing on the market, and I love it. And we’re kind of in the process of trying to amp up an already perfect product right now, which is crazy. I’ve been trialing it restlessly against everything else in the market because my concern is not for the welfare of my sponsors or for making money. So at this point in my life, it’s for having the coolest experiences that I can.

Anthony Kunkel [00:54:25]:
And so I’m not willing to be loyal to a company if it means having less of a cool experience. So I just ripped through the top 3 competitors to Apex by Wikio. Man, the best you can get is, like, 60%, which subjectively feels like you know, if you could have 60% of the boost from your daily coffee, that’s not even worth that’s not even noteworthy. Subjectively, that’s, like, 1% of the above baseline. And so the nootropic space is probably the easiest thing to love in this sort of ergogenics as far as, like, an acute thing goes. You know, you take a you take an essay by Wikio, which is their kinda full stack nootropic. It it keeps me up at night, which I’m happy about. Right? Like, it it’s it’s a 15 hour effective life in there, and it is boom.

Anthony Kunkel [00:55:12]:
Flow state on demand. You forget that you’re a person. You forget that you’re gonna do something again later. You forget that you’re training. You just hit the splits and take it down, and it is the coolest freaking thing that you can play with. So there’s a little bit of, like, highlight real stuff like that. Again, I I tend to forget about because I’m more worried about how do you optimize your sleep and wakefulness and how do you just get out of pain. Because if you’re in pain, it doesn’t matter.

Anthony Kunkel [00:55:38]:
Everything else is is a detail. I mean, how how quickly does your world shrink when you have a toothache? Right? How quickly does your world shrink when you have a when you have back pain? Your world is very, very, very small and focused and miserable and bleak. And and so you have to get out of pain before you start worrying about how to get rowdy. But as far as getting rowdy goes, I think I got that figured out.

Nick Urban [00:56:01]:
Yeah. Wow. Okay. I’m looking at the Wikio nootropics right now, and there are a couple ingredients in here I’ve never seen, like fl66 and

Anthony Kunkel [00:56:12]:
Yeah. The 2 things are their own proprietary you you ugoroics. You I forget what the phrase actually is, but 30 tropics. I mean, their their central nervous system micro capitalization of your central nervous system, which is, I think, the the proof that that’s not a total nonsensical throwaway phrase like marketing spin is you get afterglow from it. So, yeah, you get amped and you have an awesome workout and everything’s great and you never come down from it. But even if you miss sleep later that night, if you’re a slow metabolizer for things like that, like I am, which is an awesome talent to have in in the endurance world, you still feel lit the next day. So the, like, afterglow, the the lack of comedown, and if anything, the the afterglow the next day after is proof that it’s not rotting your brain away to my to my mind and my subjective experience and is, in fact, probably helpful. And so the idea that most endurance athletes think of a cup of coffee as the only kind of nootropic or, you know, maybe lion lion’s mane or, like, some methylene blue or something.

Anthony Kunkel [00:57:14]:
It’s like, those are tinker toys. Those are those are Lincoln logs, man. Like, there there are so many cooler things out there to play with. And so that’s that’s a space that I really enjoy occupying. That’s one more thing where, yeah, I can get an affiliate sale out of somebody, and they’re gonna be a customer for life. But cooler is that they’re gonna hit me up with a DM and say, dude, holy this stuff is awesome. I’m like, yes. This is the life that I wanna live.

Anthony Kunkel [00:57:39]:
This is the day to day. If I could design a perfect day, I’d have a DM every single day from somebody saying, this is freaking awesome. I was like, right? It’s great.

Nick Urban [00:57:47]:
Anthony, you’ve mentioned flow state a number of times so far. I’m not sure if you’ve come across this, but from some of my other friends who are involved in endurance, they’ve mentioned that some people will use cannabis or hemp without THC to help blunt some of the pain that can decrease performance and as well as, I think it’s LSD to enhance beta oxidation or fat burning, your ability to tap into your own body fat for fuel. Have you come across that?

Anthony Kunkel [00:58:15]:
THC is okay. It’s a it’s a fairly bespoke drug for, like, a 100 mile foot race where you just have to survive. Because if you look at the limiting factors for a 100 mile race in the mountains, it’s boredom. I don’t like running anymore. It’s pain. It is uncomfortable to do so. And it’s nausea because you’re choking down calories when you just have to to stay moving. It’s like cold.

Anthony Kunkel [00:58:41]:
It’s the middle of the night. Whatever. THC perfectly addresses all 3 of those. So as far as, like, grunting it out and just finishing, it makes a lot of sense that people will use THC. I don’t really like to use it for performance at this point. I have in the past, like, take a, you know, 2 milligrams or 3 milligrams of liposomal sort of quick in, quick out, and just hop on the red mill immediately or just go out for a run immediately. So it’s like, I’m I’m on the uplift while I’m out there. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense given other options for like, I think Kratom does a better job.

Anthony Kunkel [00:59:16]:
It it’s more analgesic. Like, it it kills pain more. It’s more uplifting in the same way. It’s hunger suppressant instead of giving me the munchies, which, you know, for 99 times out of a 100 and a half, I don’t need to be crushing more calories than my body wants to. My body does a pretty good job of you know, I have an obese person’s hunger for sure. Like, if you think if you think I’m just nice, like, I’m I’m just I’m just disciplined or something, it’s like, no. I could if I had a box of Lucky Charms in this house right now, family size or giant, giant’s bigger than family, I think, I’d crush it right now. No questions asked.

Anthony Kunkel [00:59:49]:
I’d find some justification, and I’d crush it. The munchies, I’m a high responder too, so that that kind of makes me avoid that. LSD, on the other hand, though, perfect. The perfect drug for endurance. I don’t actually know what I think of the beta oxidation argument. I don’t know if that makes sense or if maybe I’m already tapped out. It’d be fun to get data and not too complicated to get data if I know somebody with a with a or some, you know, some quick, metabolic cart alternative that wants to let me dose up one day and not the other day, I’m I’m doing it’s probably 10 ish mics, but with my experience, I think it actually makes me more sensitive instead of less. And I’m doing that every 3 to 4 days right now.

Anthony Kunkel [01:00:30]:
So because of where I am in my training block and because a lot of my stuff is skill based, so I’m, like, learning how to transition my body weight through obstacles. I’m learning how to be more efficient on a on a micro scale, like carrying a heavy sandbag that weighs what I weigh, that sort of stuff. I tend to think that that’s helpful for that. And so it’s it’s less than any drug is perfect for all uses, which is one more thing that kinda makes me bristle with THC users. It’s like they think it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread, and it’s it it makes everything better. And it’s like, well, nothing makes everything better. You know? That instantly makes me suspect. So that sounds more like an addiction to me.

Anthony Kunkel [01:01:08]:
There’s so many things. I have a course on my school called taking drugs like an adult. It’s and it’s kind of diving into all these concepts of well, okay. Let’s agree you should have 0 tolerance or almost 0 tolerance to everything all the time. That’s a perfect world. Like, that’s again, that’s that sounds like enlightenment to me. If I can take a substance and know exactly how it’s gonna make me feel, and it’s gonna make me feel better for the task that I have planned for the day that will make me the happiest, most productive, most valuable person that I can become, and it can do that every single time, that’s awesome. That’s perfect.

Anthony Kunkel [01:01:40]:
Now if I do that 4 times a day, it’s not gonna do it every single time.

Nick Urban [01:01:43]:
If I

Anthony Kunkel [01:01:44]:
do it twice a week, maybe it will. If I find the minimum effective dose and do it once every 3, 4 days, boom. Done. I can do this iterably for the rest of my life. I think it is important while we’re on the LSD topic. Volumetric dilution is where it’s at. So I have a little a little, like, glue blocked vial. Sometimes I’ll put fuller foil around it if I know I’m gonna travel with it, and I will dilute what I know is is LSD, LSD 25.

Anthony Kunkel [01:02:11]:
And I can now it’s sensitive to heat, so you’re never really gonna know if this person thinks they’re giving you a 100 mics. It might be a 125. It might be 75. Thankfully, it doesn’t matter. You take what you have, your your known ish amount. You put it into a known ish amount of fluid. You get a guesstimate for what a dose would be, and you take that dose. And, you know, in my case, I want 5 drops to be the lightest possible dose.

Anthony Kunkel [01:02:34]:
I want 10 drops to be a moderate dose, and that that lets me titrate the exact level. And then once every 3 days or once every 7 days, I can try a different dose and see how it affects me for the rest of the day. I can journal it. I can log it. I can be very meticulous and know that as long as I’m keeping that in the refrigerator, that dose is gonna hit me exactly the same every single time. Seven drops is 7 drops is 7 drops until that container’s gone. And then I have to recalibrate with the next bit, but that will last me months months months with that sort of use on a very humble amount of of substance. It doesn’t get better than that.

Nick Urban [01:03:09]:
Anthony, we’ve been rolling for a while now. I’m gonna let you go. If people want to check out your work, your school community, come visit you over there if that’s an option or to work with you in any capacity. How do we go about that?

Anthony Kunkel [01:03:24]:
Instagram’s the easiest. I mean, realistically, you can drop me an email for all that matters. Ultrahousedgo@gmail.com. That’s easy. You can show up to my house. 535 County Road 204, number 12 b. You can show up here at a at a 8:30 in the morning, 340 days out of the year or 330 days out of the year. I’m home.

Anthony Kunkel [01:03:44]:
I do a morning routine. It’s exactly the same, and it’s glorious. And so people can come here. I’m I’m not looking to run this like a business. I’m looking to share all the cool toys and experiences that I have. I live in a world class area that has to be really expensive to scoop by on, and I would like to solve that for people so they can all kind of experience what how how great Durango is. I’ll probably have another camp. I won’t have another camp before late January, early February, but I’ll have my snow down camp, which is the biggest festival in Durango.

Anthony Kunkel [01:04:16]:
It’s the most Durango week of the year, and I like putting on a putting on a camp there. We’ll do holotropic breath work and be reduced to a big crying pile of humanity altogether and do a bunch of runs together and do morning routines together and partner up fascia maneuvers and be able to really dive into that. It’s it’s a life changing experience, and, I’m kind of coming to the end of my period where I can do everything that I wanna do on $0. Now with the point where, I’m offering free fashion maneuvers for anybody that wants them. I’m offering my morning routine for free. And then if people want some deep, deep work with me 1 on 1, they’re welcome here for the full day. We’ll do cold. We’ll do sauna.

Anthony Kunkel [01:04:54]:
We’ll do deep hydration with the DE, the salt, the the shilajit, the whole everything that I do and endorse, I’ll dose you up with some methylene blue. If you’re open to it, you can take a a Bliss by Wikio, which involves some psilocybins. And then we’ll do we’ll do some integration where you walk, you journal, you know, you breathe in the fresh mountain air, and that’s that’s a high ticket item in my world. You know, for for the average affluent person, it’s a cup of coffee. So it’s you know, hopefully, we can both be happy with this, and then we’ll do some work on the table for some deep sascial maneuvers, a proper organ reset. It’s another thing you can see up on my Instagram of of what what kind of some of this experience looks like.

Nick Urban [01:05:33]:
Well, thank you so much. It’s been a joy chatting with you about your entire world, both performance wise and outside of that, and how you’re sharing everything with others who are lucky enough to visit you over in your neck of the woods.

Anthony Kunkel [01:05:49]:
Yeah, Nick. We gotta get you out here at some point.

Nick Urban [01:05:52]:
Absolutely. Well, Anthony, thanks for joining the podcast. Until next time. Thank you for tuning in to this episode. Head over to Apple Music, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and leave a rating. Every review helps me bring you thought provoking guests. As always, you can find the show notes for this one at mindbodypeak.com/andthenthenumberoftheepisode. There, you can also chat with other peak performers or connect with me directly.

Nick Urban [01:06:28]:
The information depicted in this podcast is for information purposes only. Please consult your primary health care professional before making any lifestyle changes.