Sydney: The word optimization frequently comes up in interviews that you do. Making the most of your time, being really efficient. How you maintain such a deep spiritual and philosophical outlook on health, while also focusing on optimization? Those two things feel like they're at opposite poles.

Joe: It depends on how you look at optimization. For me, optimization starts within the philosophical or spiritual framework of how I view work, how I view existence, how I view life. Wellness, to me, is a revolutionary act that allows you to remove yourself from this fluff. You should use optimization to create a workflow where instead of viewing yourself as a product, you view yourself as a piece of art. If you place optimization within that framework of self-revolution it becomes a little different.

Sydney: It becomes way more humane. Where does optimization of training lead into a flow state?

Joe: That's all training is, in my opinion—it’s a creation of a flow state. So, there's a sweet spot within training, within life, within running: it’s consistent action of learning where you're getting feedback, whether you're getting it from your body or your coach, and then applying it to the next session. That session is not so far outside of your comfort zone that it's destructive, and it's not so easy that it's not really challenging at all.

For instance, if I have a game, my game should always be a little bit easier, in theory, than the practices. That's why you have training camps—that's why you go through these tough moments. I think training, both within the physical and mental realm, helps you in dealing with the hardships in life as they come.

In that sense, everything's training. It's those small moments in the morning where I'm like, "Okay, hold up. I'm not just going to hop on my phone ‘til I sit and breathe for five to 10 minutes.” Can I optimize these 10 minutes so I get into contact with me? That's how you optimize your training.

Sydney: Is it uncomfortable for you if people equate your work with optimization in a more robotic sense than what we just talked about?

Joe: I don't know how people equate it. I hope people understand that you're not taking care of yourself so you can work. You take care of yourself so you can serve, and there's a distinct difference between those two things.

Sydney: Do you want to explain the difference?

Joe: You serve your community. You serve your family. Of course you serve yourself so that you can feel good. But you don't do it to work. You don't do it just to be a cog. I get it, people still have to work, but I want people to free themselves. I want people to run because that's an act of freedom. I want people to reclaim their physical wellness, their mental wellness, their emotional wellness, their spiritual wellness. Take care of yourself so we can figure out a way to take care of each other in this world.

Sydney: Something that I read mentioned that when you start training new clients you try to build a lot of trust, because there's vulnerability in wanting to get better— which I believe. Could you talk a little bit more about the vulnerability involved in training? It seems to be misinterpreted by most people that vulnerability is weakness and that it’s counterintuitive to the aggression needed to get better physically.

Joe: You can't even tap into that special aggression unless you've been fully vulnerable. You've got to be fully vulnerable to something that you believe in. When a client comes to me, it's sometimes very difficult because they think something's wrong. I don't want you to think there's something wrong. I want you to take pride in the fact that you want to do something better, and, of course, be better for yourself.

Being vulnerable is the greatest act of strength, because you’ve got to look at yourself and you’ve got to say, "I want to work on this. I'm going to have somebody critique me, encourage me and help me move forward." But you’ve got to let it all go.

Sydney: Listening to you talk, I’m realizing that you're trying to create behavior change rooted in empathy, rooted in understanding, vulnerability, kindness, and self-awareness. How far along in your career did you start to more consciously employ that perspective in your work?

Joe: I don't think it's ever not been a part of me. I’m one of seven kids. My dad's an integrated holistic MD. My mom's an immigrant from Trinidad. Esoteric household, religion-wise. And incorporated physicality has always been a component of my upbringing.

What I began to see is that if you don't have a physical understanding of yourself then there's going to be a disconnect. If you have dominion over your physical health in a certain way, you should use that to galvanize you in other areas. It's an onboarding ramp. In college, I was humbled by a lot of experiences, especially through injury, and I realized a very toxic, alpha dog mindset just didn't make sense. But I also began to see people that had never played sports before just had a skewed view of reality that didn't make sense. They didn't really understand teamwork, sacrifice, or pain. When you've dealt with traumatic situations and really experienced pain, that totally changes who you are as a person. Then, I argue, you either become exceedingly selfish, or it's impossible for you to be selfish at all. And for me, it became a situation where I realize it's now impossible for me to be selfish. I started to realize that people could have an awakening and understand greater wellness if they were guided along through some core principles, first starting with their physicality.

At the end of the day if I can be a light in the world, and continue my mom and dad's legacy, that’s what’s important. That's why I like the Ocho System: One Can Help Others, Others Can Help One. I think you can create an infinite feedback loop if gratitude is grounded first in the physical experience.

Sydney: Switching gears for a second—you have a marathon in 14 days.

Joe: Fuck. You're right.

Sydney: Most people would be in taper mode right now. I'm not going to assume that you're following best practices. What are you doing right now?

Joe: Best practices are different for every person, I guess. I don't train in a typical marathon manner, so I wouldn't expect the lead up to the marathon to be the same thing. My body will be alright, I just need to figure out what's up with my mind. So, I'm just going to take the next two weeks to work on that. I'm not tapering per se, I'm probably going to actually start running a little bit more to get my body used to it. I'm doing a marathon in December, also, so I'm looking at Chicago as a jump start for what I want to do then.

Sydney: A lot of what I read you talk about with training is focused on continued growth for a long period of time. I'm curious if you change your approach when it comes to training for a discrete goal, like a marathon.

Joe: There are different tactics that I put in through different periods of the training. I think that's the biggest thing that people mess up on, because we're hit with so much information but nobody's actually telling us how to implement it. With my training I want to go from theory to practicality to individuality. If something sounds good, that’s all good and fine, but what's actually the proper dose, when do I need to do it, how does it affect me, when is the proper timing? Optimization is nothing more than being able to go to a class, learn, and then be able to apply it. I think that same thought process could be applied to life.

Sydney: There's a couple myths that I would like for you to dispel. The first one is this idea that in order to be creative—and I mean creative in the broadest sense of the word—you need to be unhealthy. What are your thoughts on the romanticization of the unhealthy creative?

Joe: I think we all deal with unhealthy habits that we don't like to talk about, because it doesn't paint us in the best light. That's why it's important to be healthy, because when you have healthy habits, you can deal with the unhealthy aspects of what it means to be great. When you want to push yourself to certain limits, there are inherently unhealthy aspects that lead to higher performance. When I want to perform it's not always healthy. Sometimes I have to pull multiple nights where I get little sleep, but it'll probably lead to a higher performance. You have to look at those consistent conflicts.

The question is, can you balance those unhealthy aspects of your life with other healthy habits that allow you to create a wholesome person? Life is inherently unhealthy. Life is killing you. But if you have healthy habits then your body regens and hopefully creates something that allows it to put up with the stress of life.

Sydney: The other myth is the positive thinking myth. You don't use the wellness rhetoric that a lot of people are using that's really fluffy and meaningless—"Oh, just live your best life.”

Joe: Exorbitant positive thinking is not the way that most people have solved issues. I'm more of a fan of being pragmatic. You hope for the best, but you work for what's real. But a lot of people just hope for the best without working and that decreases your motivation because your brain thinks you've gotten done what it is that you're constantly yearning to do. You have to envision things going positively but also envision the roadblocks that may be ahead—then you can mentally prepare yourself for how you are going to respond to that.

Sydney: Mental contrasting.

Joe: Yeah, mental contrasting. In college every time before a game I would sit there and meditate, envisioning myself running specific routes and, of course, catching the ball. But then sometimes I would envision me dropping a pass, me missing a block. Then you have to ask yourself, "How am I going to respond to that? What did I actually do wrong?" Nowadays, especially because a lot of people haven't played a sport, they get hit with something bad and then they just give all that shit up, instead of saying, "How can I be resilient? How can I bounce back?"

Sydney: I agree with you. On most days I find deep satisfaction by personal growth gained through tactics like that. But, some days, I'm filled with existential dread and I can’t help but think adulthood is characterized by so much self-restraint. Similarly, something you mentioned in an interview about being a vegetarian is that it is a chosen asceticism, a controlled renunciation. So, my question for you is, with all this focus on discipline and self-improvement, when do you feel free?

Joe: I feel free when I'm running down the street without pain. When I'm sitting on a plane in the air and realize that I'm hustling health and people believe in me, and I've turned a wellness dream into a livelihood. I feel free when I can go to sleep at the end of the day and know the work that I've put in is good work.

It's a difficult question because this whole thing is nothing more than an experiment. I never got into this because I was like, "This is what I want to be". No—I got into this because I'm just trying to heal my body and heal my mind.

I think in terms of the Next% mentality, that next great step in human evolution and fitness is really going to be figuring out how we optimize the mind to overcome the stress that the body experiences. I don't think we take the mind into consideration enough with our fitness strategies. So, that's something of interest to me—upgrading the human iOS. Through the lens of running or training or whatever, how do we take the next great step that allows us to function at a higher level?

Interview: Sydney Allen Ash
Photographs: Caloy DeGuzman