Biohacking Your Mind, Body and Soul for Optimal Performance

Biohacking Your Mind, Body and Soul for Optimal Performance

Ameer Rosic ֬Tuesday May 6th 2014

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Mind, body, soul. Take care of these three and you can achieve optimal health!

Want to get lean as possible and strong as FUCK? Lazo Freeman has the one, two punch when it comes to creating the ultimate body you want. It’s all about combining hard work, proper diet and a balanced lifestyle. None of this bullshit stuff where people say “you only need 15 min a day” That is complete bullshit.

You must work hard for your goals and in the end you will be rewarded.

In today’s Podcast, Lazo and I discuss how you can biohack your mind, body and soul for optimal performance

Transcript (Listen to the Full Podcast Here):

Ameer: Hey, Lazo. Welcome to the Optimal Health Show. How are you doing, brother?

Lazo: I hear you, man. I’m really good. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Ameer: My pleasure, man. You and I, we started talking awhile back and I started looking at your stuff and I was like, “I have to get him on the show.” The first question that I have for you today is, in your humble opinion, what do you think an alpha male is?

Lazo: What is an alpha male? That’s a very good question. There’s five to six different traits to make an alpha male or the mindset of it is.

One of it is, protect of loved ones. I would say that definitely has to be an alpha male.

Another one is the ability to walk away. It’s not the whole quote “never give up”. Sometimes, it’s better to give up at the right moment. That could be relationship. That could be some business venture.

Whatever it is, it’s knowing when it’s time to walk away from that negotiation. Same with relationship.

To be right correctly. What I mean by that is, if you’re angry, feel the anger and then try to transmit it into assertiveness. From assertiveness, you can take it into well-being. You can take that into the gym.

You can take that into your work. It’s not to ignore it.

Especially when we live in a culture, especially now, nobody likes conflict in any kind of way. There’s all this beta-male with this passive aggressive nature of the masculinity as well as the femininity. Trying to avoid certain situations as opposed to getting into the emotion and feeling it out and riding it through.

Another trait would be, being able to lead yourself and lead other people. That’s definitely a big one. If you can’t lead yourself then you shouldn’t be able to lead anybody else.

And just being a cool person. Experiencing different things and having your own interpretation as opposed to being an advocate for everybody else. That, to me, is alpha because you’re standing on your own two feet.

Ameer: Do you think that alpha realizes that he or she is an alpha? Or that’s not the case?

Lazo: Do you mean, in a sense like engineering alphas? Like you’re not an alpha and how do you become one or do you…

Ameer: No, no. Say like you are naturally are one, do you know you know that you are an alpha? Or that takes intuition and trial and error to discover that that’s the type of character of a person who you are?

Lazo: It definitely has to come from… It’s back to… I’m definitely interested in the anthropology of hunting and gatherers and tribes and how we were in the past and how a young boy becomes a man.

That’s the first part. Becoming a man. Once you become a man, the idea is, you become an alpha.

There’s always that rite of passage. It’s fortunate for me, my parents – especially my father’s KurdishIraqi and he’s a very alpha strong figure. I’ve always had that as a model as it were.

But my biggest thing is, break that bond of hands so I could have my own leadership and I won’t be in his shadow. Is it nurture, is it nature? I don’t really know. I just know it from that environment I was

growing up with where I had a very strong alpha male father. It was easy to adopt. It was just breaking that bond and re-forming [Inaudible] [03:16] with him as it were.

Ameer: Do you that, in the long run, it benefitted you more that your father was really tough on you or was it the opposite that you had more mental and spiritual roadblocks?

Lazo: To be honest, probably at a time, it was annoying and it was a great bond. But looking at it now, with a bit more of my own life experiences, it was one of the best things. That probably helped in an indirect way. Then entry that formed my own interpretation of leading myself, my body, my business, the people around me, my community… So I would have to give thumbs up to my dad.

Ameer: Talking about body, in 2007, you won the Musclemania in Miami. Now, explain a little bit about that. What is that?

Lazo: Musclemania is this competition for body builders. I was competing here in the UK and I decided to compete in the States. There’s not a lot of sunshine in London. Freakin’ cloudy. [Inaudible] [04:20] great bodythere’s no way to enjoy it. So I was like “fuck it, I’m going to Miami Beach, off to the residentsand have some fun with all the hard work that I put in.”

Three years into training, I was into body building. That’s when I did that show. I won the show prior to it. Done mistakes in terms of hydrate in making your sodium right, timing nutrition, getting your recovery, all that stuff. Great experience.

There was four hundred competitors in different fields. Fitness, figure, so forth. Lot of fun and it’s a lot of learning in terms of your body.

Anytime you try to build more muscle, it’s a different game that you always have to play. Your own nutrition. Your own carbs. Back then my low carbs would be two hundred grams. But when I first started training my low carb rate would be fifty grams. It’s interesting to see how, what you do to get certain physique and to get to the next level is almost a different strategy.

Ameer: Let’s talk about nutrition. What was your nutrition, back then, for the competition?

Lazo: One thing that helped me put on a lot of size was wasting so many greens. I had greens for breakfast. I had greens for mid-…

Ameer: What do you mean by greens? Are you talking about powders or actual vegetables?

Lazo: Vegetables, man. Asparagus, broccoli, spinach, brockets, kale. You name it, [Inaudible] [05:45] so much of that stuff. It’s really because you need to be able to get rid of all the extra protein you’ve eaten to maintain that muscle and to grow that muscle.

As far as getting to the of alkalines in your body. [Inaudible] [06:00] alkaline diet, which is great when you’re going through… say, your body needs to be more alkaline and your body has to be at PH seven point two, but when you’re having proteinmeal is just going to be rather acidic.

I would never drink any water five minutes before I eat and five minutes after. I refuse. But for now, even when I got threshold, I never drink any water. Just out of habit. Some people think I’m tight. I don’t want to order a drink. I want my PH level to actually be acidic.

Anyway, outside of that, I want to make sure it’s more alkaline because your enzymes work better. Your system’s better. You feel better. Emotionally, you feel a lot better when you’re more alkaline.

So when I started incorporating beans, I know there’s a bigger shift in terms of muscle mass. That was interesting. I did the whole process where I had so much protein and I wasn’t really seeing the results.

Incorporating the beans into my diet, again, literally, I always make sure asparagus was in the evening, spinach was during the day, broccoli in the morning. It had its own routine.

I had so much of it. My shit was literally green. I’d taken loads now. It was just funny.

Ameer: Were you cooking all your vegetables or eating some raw?

Lazo: I slightly steam them because you can’t really digest some of those cellulars. You want to break it up so that some of the nutrients are there but not to the point where you kill the nutrients. Probably thirty seconds to a minute, slightly steamed.

Ameer: What were you consuming for carbs back then?

Lazo: Yams, sweet potatoes, brown rice. That was it really. That was my carbs.

Ameer: Were you fairly low carb? You mentioned you were doing fifty grams for low carb back then.

Was that standard?

Lazo: 2007 was two hundred grams.

Ameer: Oh two hundred grams, okay.

Lazo: I should put a bit of carbs in terms of when you’re having complex carbs. There is a [Inaudible] [07:50] on that. Not as much as white rice and pastas and so forth. That was my low carb days. My high carb days would be four hundred to six hundred grams. I usually do that when I do my leg workout.

Ameer: Would it be every day or every other day? Like you just mentioned, you timed your high carb days with the heavy workout days?

Lazo: Yeah, basically. So I could fuel those workouts. It comes down to, if I was going to prescribe anybody, if they have a weak body clock, and you really want to really destroy physique. You can’t destroy your body every day for seven days. You have to pick, especially as a body builder, what parts of your body that you have to bring up because it’s not like that one body part is the whole thing has to flow. You have to decide right.

My shoulders are weakest in terms of how my body looks. Therefore, I’m going to make sure my high carb days are my shoulders and really go for it. And then you time yourself. Like my chest is overpowering so I’ll make sure I’ll do seventy percent of what I used to do.

Just manage how much work like it’s easy to go over body and just keep hitting it and you’re really going to bench press, you have to scrape chest or your shoulders is just out of place or your arm’s out of place.

I would actually… percentage… you know what, I’m only going to do seventy percent or sixty percent or I might not even do that workout because it just doesn’t look right.

The body is not all about vanity. It’s not the functional or the fitness. It’s all about looking a certain way…

Ameer: You’re literally molding your body to a certain shape that you want to.

Lazo: Precisely.

Ameer: Were you taking any supplements that really helped you out?

Lazo: I’m a big fan of glutamine. I probably overdose with glutamine I would say. If anything else, I also take a glass of milk fizzled, clean out the liver, sync and magnesium is a big one, vitamin C, vitamin D, etc.

I would always do myself in in separates. I would always take multivits or whatever. Probably shakes of protein. I’m a big fan of them. I’m never a big fan. I was sponsored by EAS and I was sponsored byUSN, but never a big fan of protein shakes. I’d rather get solid meals into the body.

But I do know for an average person, you’re just trying to fill up the… and it’s kind of hard to fit in these meals if you’re working. Sometimes, I was traning clients so that I could fit it into my schedule. Protein shake is a supplement and not a substitute. That’s what I would say. If you can eat a meal, eat a meal. If you can’t, fair enough then you.

Ameer: What’s your take on branched-chain amino acids and creatine?

Lazo: I’ve had good results with creatine, usually, I would say. When I first started off, when I won The Body-for-Life, I did use quite a bit of creatine and I used Cell Tech at the time, I had high levels of sugar. I definitely would say, if you’re going to have creatine, make sure you have some juice drinks you can get it into your system.

Get it into the glycogen. Get it into the muscles as loaded so you can actually lift heavier. In 2007, when I was competing in Musclemania, I didn’t really use much creatine. I think I was getting from all the beef, the steaks I was eating, the chicken breasts… I was getting plenty of it from my actual meals when I have the budget. Definitely body building and budget goes hand-in-hand.

Ameer: That’s a fact.

Lazo: But branched-chain amino acids, that’s great. If you can get a good source branched-chain amino acids and stack them in, I would say, definitely. I wouldn’t say you’d need X amount per day.

If you’re feeling like you’re under-recovered, that’s when you take more of it. I always went for how my body felt than anything else. There’s no such thing as overtraining, just under-recovery. So if you’re feeling eased in the catabolic, then that’s when you want to take your rest days or take two rest days, or if I could take a vacation, whatever so your body is back to switching its hormones where it is.

I know, in such a competitive scene, some of the guys, they would over-do it or they over-train or they over-diet and they fuck up their metabolism. That’s the last thing you’ll want. You don’t want your adrenals to go out. You don’t want your kidneys to go out. You don’t want those other things. It’s harder to look a certain way.

My advice would always be to listen to your body. It’s your friend. It is your guide. What works for you is slightly different for somebody else’s. You can take someone else’s program or routine and just adjust it to your lifestyle.

Ameer: How often are you training right now?

Lazo: Now, with two different types of businesses, not as much as I’d like. But thank God I put all those hard work years ago so I don’t have to train as much. To be honest, twenty minutes I just blast it out and it’s okay. I’m not looking to compete in anywhere anymore anytime soon so it’s not that like agility and power and ring training, all that kind of stuff to just give my body a little bit more ability for competing.

Just twenty minutes. That’s all I need now.

Ameer: What type of workout is it?

Lazo: There’s three types of workout I have. One of them, I call it conscious neck training. This is a great one. I call it the “Mr. Miyagi”. This is what I get all my clients to do. One of the clients, for three weeks, I call it the base camp. I don’t care about sets. I don’t care about reps. I don’t care about how many sets we do. All I care about is “can you make that rep more intense than the previous?”

With just the angles and the bicep curl, if you do this, I guarantee in a month’s time, you just copy this routine, if you put your elbows in front of you so your shoulders is not taking the load of the bicep curl, you snap your wrists slightly back so your lower part of your biceps working as much as your forearm. As you curl up, you don’t go all the way to the top where it’s resting on the elbow. You slightly come up forward and when you get there, you flex as hard as you fucking can. You really flex those as if you want the biceps to push towards the ceiling. You carry that weight all the way down.

The idea is, “can I use my mind to make that rep more intense than the previous?” I’ll just practice that as much as I can. That creates two things. That creates neuro association with the muscle and it gets you in tune with how your body feels as it does that movement. You should get quite a lot of growth. I usually do those kinds of workouts when I know I have time to recover as much in terms of nutrition because I’m flooded with work but I still want the right stimulation. It’s perfect for that. When I am in a better place, in terms of stress levels, because stress makes you fat, don’t get stressed or else you’ll get fat. If you don’t have a common place in your nutrition or in your training, then I’ll start really, really heavy and bring the weights down. I ‘ll do one warm up set. I know my body pretty well so as not to injure it.

So I start with my heaviest weight and just drop the weight down and hop like you do at circuit. Its seven minutes to one body part. Seven minutes for another body part. If I want to do something else, I’ll take twenty minutes. It’s as heavy as you can go. It’s the shock factor.

I call that similar to sprinters. If you see a sprinter, that moment when it says “on your mark, get set, go, that moment, he’s actually firing all this muscle before the “go”. It’s the anticipation. That’s the fast switch muscle. If you see a marathoner, when he runs, he tries to get off the line very nice, very softly.

A lot of it is, when you’re doing it internally, in terms of explosive movement, to a track that a fast switch muscle to fire a lot more. That’s, again, not a type of training routine.

If I’m training with the boys, then it’s going to be the whole body building, forty-five minutes, pyramid sets, sprint from low to high, just pushing each other. That kind of workout.

It’s usually just three I do. It depends on my lifestyle. In the moment, twenty minutes but it’s like a slow feeling exercise. I know it gets my growth, keeps muscle hard, I know I don’t need that much new strength for recovery because I’m not ripping the muscles out to pieces.

Ameer: What are you doing right now for recovery? Just general stuff like sleeping, proper nutrition, is there any extra stuff that you’re doing?

Lazo: Meditation’s a great one. Two things in that one. You take the emotion out of your body. Again, because I know I’m stressed out, I need to get the stress out because that’s internal.

It’s the idea of being the biochemist of your mind that defunct systems in your head. I’m trying to go.

I’m making all these phone calls. I’m trying to get this work done and all these deals. That’s all that stress does.

It’s important for me to take all my emotion out of my body for a while through meditation just so it can neutralize and stuff. My technique to that, it’s called gratitude. You’re thankful for things. It’s kind of like a reset button in that space. That’s one thing I do.

Another is, lots and lots of water. Just volumes of water, I make sure I drink. Good night’s sleep. Good sex life, too.

Ameer: That’s something overlooked and not too many people talk about. I think it’s really important. I think more people should be open about it. You have a healthy, sexual relationship with your partner.

Lazo: A lot of frustrations by that. People ask me, “man, what’s your diet?” My diet is very cynical. I want to be anabolic most of the time. The only time I’m going to be catabolic is in my workout.

But there are other things in life that makes you catabolic. It could your sex life. It could be your business. Whatever it may be, it all compounds. My yard stick is do I wake up in the morning and have a boner? If I don’t, I know my testosterone isn’t where it should be. That’s usually my measuring stick. Am I waking up with a boner?

Ameer: That’s literally your measuring stick.

Lazo: Yeah, literally. It’s a great tool It gives you direct insight into your hormonal balance. If you’re not getting that, then there’s something going wrong with your nutrition, stress level, or just some personal stuff that you need to deal with.

Ameer: Now, when dealing with personal stuff, I know, you’re really big into psychology. Why is that so fascinating for you?

Lazo: Thinking is the language of the mind. Feeling is the language of the body. When you store your emotions in your body. If you feel low, you feel it in your heart. If you’re scared, you feel it in your gut.

There’s all these feeling.

These feelings have a signature of biochemistry. I studied biochemical engineering and I remember my teacher at that time, he said “life is biochemistry”. You’re just a drug set. You’re a drug chemical that’s in there. So your emotions, are going to affect some of that biochemistry, and if you’re playing the same emotion over and over and over, it becomes redundant and it causes breakdown. It causes degeneration. It causes issues with your endorphins or your testosterone or your growth hormone and all these beautiful chemicals that make you feel good.

The idea is to try to feel good most of the time. I don’t mean try to force yourself. Like “I’m going to have a positive mental attitude.” No, no. Embrace whatever it is. Figure it out. Transmit it or transform it. Use it to your advantage as it were. That way, naturally, you can take care of your hormonal levels in your body.

Ameer: You mentioned, twice already, about transmuting your energy. Go a little more in detail about that.

Lazo: If we look at negativity… Let me bring it back. This is like to your alpha, with the individual.

Individuality, if you look at the word individuality, meaning there’s two sides. The positive and the negative.

If I were to say to you, “Ameer, I’m going to give you one point two million dollars,” what I want you to do is give me the positive side of the magnet. I give that to you. All you have to do is cut the magnet and give me the positive. You won’t be able to do that because you’re always going to get positive and negative. That’s the way the magnet works.

The idea behind that, if you want magnetism in your life, you need to embrace both sides. But the problem with overriding any emotion with just trying to be positive, doesn’t work because you might embrace the negative to convert it into positive. The word “transmuted”, we look at the spectrum of negativity. From what I said earlier about anger, if you’re angry about something, whatever it may be; or someone did something to you, whatever it may be; that anger, you can turn into assertiveness.

Once you decide, “what are my boundaries in life?” The reversal is we’re angry because we have a false expectation of what life should be like or we’re injecting into somebody else or we just haven’t set what our boundaries are. That anger is actually giving you feedback, “I may need to set some boundaries, maybe to myself regarding how I want to live my life or to somebody else”.

Once you realize it, you’re like “I’m going to turn that into assertiveness by communicating that with somebody else or communicating with yourself,” and be like, “No, I am going to do my workouts in the morning. Fuck this shit. I’m going to re-do this work tomorrow. I’m sick and tired of feeling depressed or exhausted or not having the body.” Or whatever it may be. It’s turning that into assertiveness. Using that anger to fuel assertiveness.

The bi-product is well-being. You feel good because after a certain period of time, you see the results but you haven’ faulted back into yourself or that you managed to gain through due diligence and the sweat equity to see it through that you’re going to feel good. We all want to feel good. That’s what life is all about.

The other side of that spectrum is anxiety. I love anxiety. Whenever I feel anxiety in anything, or a kind of fear, I know I need to basically go into that space and absorb it. For example, I’m feeling the anxiety to talk to a girl. There’s fear. That’s the girl I need to be talking to because if I do that, I’ll have more confidence from actual practice.

If I need to be in a public place and speak to people, if I feel that anxiety, I actually feel that emotion.

That’s what I need to do. If I don’t feel anxiety, it’s not worth it. You’ve already been there. You’ve already evolved. What that gives you at the end of it is confidence. That confidence you’ve achieved to that state like competency.

That’s what I mean by transmuting. There’s always another emotion you could take into.

Ameer: Is there any daily ritual or practices that you can really do on a day-to-day basis to benefit your transmuting of energies?

Lazo: Writing in a journal is one thing I used to do a lot. You write down your emotions…

Ameer: You said right now, you “used to do”. You don’t do it anymore?

Lazo: Now, because it’s in my head, I do it very quickly. Okay, that’s this reason. You start developing a very pragmatic program in your head and where to take this. Not to ignore it but to actually take it, to use it as fuel.

A big one I would say is, again, the whole thing with the gratitudeness, I ‘m not saying be thankful for the great stuff that you have. But actually, if you look at the challenges in your life, the obstacles that you have, it’s like “how does that serve you?” If you can list how that serves you in some way, that’s actually giving you something. Again, it’s going back to, it’s not ignoring fear. Fear will always be there.

It’s the paralysis that it gives. That paralysis creates stagnation.

You go into other areas where you ignore it. It might be drugs. It might be alcohol. It might be procrastination. It might be sleeping. It may be whatever it might be. It’s being able to deal with it.

If you can deal with it, you’re like “I’ve got self-worth to see whatever is true.” It really does come from all the training. That’s what allowed the body then in a lot of working out because it teaches you to go to failure. It teaches you like, actually ,you go into a gym and you’re like, “I don’t really feel like to workout because of all those bollocks.”

But it helps you to the actual movement of energy from that lower state to a higher state, there’s no way that you’re going to be able to deadlift X amount being negative. There’s no way like depressed or sad. You have to feel empowered. Then, that empowering feeling, you can take that to anything you like. Your relationships, how you want to see the world or your business. It’s a beautiful thing.

That’s why, I think, most people who, especially for men, we’re not designed to be sitting in the office, we’re not just to hang around, we’re designed to spend this strong hormone called testosterone, and use it in a productive fashion.

Ameer: Keyword: productive. Exactly.

Lazo: You can just jerk off and that’s not very productive. It’s one of the two, right?

Ameer: That’s right. Now, what’s your take on coaching? As an alpha male, we’re always looking to become better versions of ourselves. But a lot of people have this negative, stigmatic viewpoint of coaching. “I don’t need coaching. I can do everything myself.” In my personal, humble opinion, I think the more coaches you have, the more success you have in life.

Lazo: Tiger Woods has a coach. Michael Jordan has a coach. To say, “I don’t need a coach…” I think the problem with men, or some of them, it’s just that ego… We think we can fight one of us and we think we’re amazing of women. It’s just this ego and we don’t want to help each other out. That’s not an alpha.

An Alpha is actually somebody who helps another one out and to be helped, too. I have mentors. I will always have mentors in my life. I will always have people who are going to be my eyes and ears. I will have coaches in any industry or in any part.

So it’s ridiculous not to have a coach. It’s probably the most important thing you could invest in your life is yourself to have a coach. Also, to be able to coach someone else. It’s a beautiful experience.

Ameer: What would you say was the most beneficial coaching decision you made in your life?

Lazo: As a coach or from a coach?

Ameer: From a coach.

Lazo: Mike Harris, he wrote this book called Find Your Light Bulb, he’s the most humble man on the planet. Really, it’s a great book. He was one of my mentors and he said, “When you’re pitching to anybody, you really want to make sure that they tell you that it will never work.” [Inaudible] [26:40].

Because if they tell you it will never work, they actually help you design the floors that you haven’t seen.

They actually help you design the program or the business or the idea. They’ve actually given you the details. It’s coming form that place of openness where you want people to criticize.

Obviously, you’d have your filter. Someone’s going to be a douche and say shitty stuff. You ignore that individual. That’s really helped me a lot in terms of seeking for advice that whoever will be critical to thedecision making process.

Ameer: If you had to summarize, what would be your number one Optimal Health Tip? Lazo: Number one Optimal Health Tip. It’s not going to an amazing one but it’s one that I get my clients to fall in love with working out is breathe.

Time your breathing. If you’re going to go on treadmill for ten, or twenty, or thirty minutes, all I want you to do, every step you take, make sure that you have your breath in and your breath out. That’s all you want to focus on.

This is the problem that people have in training. If I were to take you, Ameer, into a swimming pool, I put your head down in the water and just held you there for three, four minutes, your body will fight for its life to come back up, right? Because you have seventy trillion cells and they want oxygen.

What I don’t understand with someone who works out, they could get to breathe. They have seventy trillion cells that need the oxygen to survive. What they’re creating is this feeling of anxiety to the work or “I don’t like working out.” You know why? Because you’re not getting enough oxygen. By not having enough oxygen, you’re not going to have endorphins. When you’re not going to get your endorphins, you’re not going to get addicted to the workout.

That’s what you really want to do, to get addicted to the workout. Hence, you, myself, [Inaudible] [28:24] every time I’m breathing. If you really want to enjoy the workout, get your breath in. Your exhalation and your inhalation as you’re pushing forward or you’re relaxed. It’s one of the two.

If you can do three weeks with just focus on breath work, you will see the next two, three years of training will improve massively. I’ve even trained people who aren’t kind of advanced. I’ve had clients who are slightly advanced and they don’t even get their breathing right. So yeah. Oxygen.

Ameer: I love that. Lazo, I want to thank you so much for coming to the Optimal Health Show. Where can people find more information about you?

Lazo: You can find me on Facebook, Lazo Freeman or on my website, lazofreemanexc.com. It’s more of a brochure site. I’m working for something in the future as lazofreeman.com with a bit more information on blogs and so forth.

Ameer: Right on, brother. Well, thank you so much and have a great day.

Lazo: Oh thank you, Ameer. Appreciate it, man. Pleasure.

Ameer Rosic

Ameer Rosic is obsessed with health. A Registered Holistic Nutritionist, Functional Diagnostic Practitioner and Functional Medicine Practitioner, Ameer has spent years empowering himself with knowledge about optimal health, and now his passion is to share that with you! From interviews with top health experts to fitness and nutritional advice and more, Ameer Rosic can help you live a life of optimal health!

Discover more at www.ameerrosic.com.

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