Brought to you by Orange County Personal Training

Here's the transcript of my recent audio interview with Zach Even-Esh on Fitness Mindset.

When it comes to using your mind to get the body you want no one tells it better than Zach.

Chris McCombs (CM): All right, this is Chris McCombs from Orange County Personal Trainer and Positively Fit Personal Training. I am here with Zach Even-Esh of UndergroundStrengthCoach.com and www.RealManFitness.com. You guys are in for a real treat tonight.

I interviewed Zach a few months ago for a book I was working on, and let me tell you I was just blown away by this guy. He just gave the most no B.S. cutting edge content, wanted nothing in return, just came from the heart. This guy's passionate. This guy knows so much about mindset. He is awesome.

 

Zach, how you doing, buddy?

Zach Even-Esh (ZE): I'm ready to rock, Chris. Thank you for the good intro.

CM: Awesome, bro, awesome. You deserve it. Hey, Zach, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

ZE: Okay. I'm located in New Jersey and right now things just keep on getting better and better. I am literally two weeks away from getting the keys to my first gym, which has been a long, long time in the making. Most of my focus as far as hands-on training is with a lot of young athletes and collegiate athletes, and I also do a lot of coaching internationally with combat athletes. And I'm tending to get a lot more consulting with people in the corporate world, especially men who are trying to kind of improve their mental toughness through hard training and proper nutrition and just changing their lifestyle.

So I'm getting a bit of variety of clients now, but my goal is always to just improve success through people and that's something that I'll always be committed to. So I like when people are driven, coming to me with that want and that need, and I basically help them step it up a notch and get them there.

CM: How important is mindset when it comes to getting the body you want?

ZE: Mindset, it's the engine, it's the motor for everything, whether — for whatever you want, body or not. But the people that attain optimal fitness and are able to maintain healthy lifestyle and be consistent and put forth the effort, you'll notice that mentally they're very sharp, they are tough, they have no problems being committed to things. And it's something that's been trained.

The mind has to be trained more than the body and that's why the more we get into this call I'll get into a lot of different ways that I train the mind or I help my clients train their mind because you can work as hard as you want and eat as good as you want, but if the mind is not in the correct zone or in the correct state, literally you'll be putting up roadblocks to results; you won't get results. When the mind is in the correct state things happen so much easier, things just start rolling so effectively it's like magic. I kid you not. We're going to get into it; it's going to be fun.

CM: So what can people do to get their mind in that state?

ZE: There's a lot of different things. And I'm going to tell you what, everybody that's listening to the call, some of these things may work for them, some of these things may not work for them. Emotions are what really drive people to get to a certain point of doing what they want. People that really want to take massive action are tired of being in a certain point or a certain stage of their life. People that are overweight, when they want to make the change they really need to get absolutely sick and tired of feeling and looking the way they do. Somebody that wants to be extremely successful, they are somebody that just refuses to be anything less than at the top of their game, no matter what it is, whether it's something in life, or whether it's their physical body or their internal well being.

So here's some of the most powerful things I do and they're simple to do; and as John Harricharan says, he's the creator of the Power Pause, he says, "It's simple, but it's not easy." And the reason why it's not easy is because people always self-sabotage. So the things that I like to do that easily get people going is we do read — I don't like to call it "self-improvement," but they are self-improvement books. I found that simply reading two to five pages sometime during your day — I find I like to read it at night because going to sleep with positive thoughts improves your sleep patterns and just puts you going to bed, finishing your day, on just a way higher note than if you're watching the news or doing anything like that.

So you've got to fill the mind up with things. And it's been said in such a way that you're basically overflowing yourself with — you're filling yourself up with goodness so you're always feeling fulfilled. And the way to do that is just constantly feeding the brain. So you would think of — if somebody wants to get in excellent shape physically they would do exercising on a regular basis, physical exercise.

The mind has to be done the same way, so you want to immerse yourself and surround yourself with as many things that uplift you and starting making you feel like this is the natural way to live, because most people — not most people, but a lot of people that I've run into before they started getting into the correct state, they feel comfortable being pissed off and they feel comfortable being — they say, "I'm really not –" Put it this way, they're like, "I'm really not happy if I'm happy." They feel better when they're kind of pissing and moaning and groaning about things.

Me, I love to surround myself with positive people, with people that are always setting goals, with people that want more. I surround myself in environments that are more conducive to that. I constantly listen to audios in my car that put me into that state.

And one thing that needs to be done is you just have to take one small step to start getting in action. So at night it might be reading that two pages a night of a powerful book, and it could be any of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, something from Tony Robbins, we've got some other books you and I will talk about later, anything from Joe Vitale. Those books are extremely, extremely powerful. Mark Joyner. They help put in a state of mind and they open up your mind into a world of creativity and into a world of imagination and believing that things are possible.

Whereas most people are thinking "realistically," we're always feeling like we could accomplish more, and you stop saying things like "I can't imagine having that, that would be impossible," or "that would be impossible to have that." When you start reading powerful books on a regular basis, listening to powerful audios, removing the garbage from your life such as watching the news — I don't watch the news. Ever. Any of the stuff that's on the internet, I stay away from that. Anything that's going to be going into my mind has to be something that's going to be on some sort of level that's going to be lifting me up. And that starts to become the norm.

So it takes practice. Everything takes practice. If you do this not so regularly, you don't get results; and that's the thing that stops anybody from getting results. When people say, "How come I don't results from the workout program?" I could break it down into two very simple things and it would be, number one, consistency/effort; and then number two would be nutrition, and that would also be consistency with the nutrition.

Once people start working hard on a regular basis and eating quality wholesome foods on a regular basis, results come big time. And when you combine that with a powerful mind that's always in that state of creativity and creation and allowing prosperity to come forth, man, you become such a powerful being. So if you apply those same principles to training your mind, consistency and effort, it becomes very easy to mold yourself into a powerful person.

And that's how all of these people that we look up to got there. A lot of them were rock bottom, too. They had to dig the bottom of the bucket but they got to the point where they were really just — Joe Vitale was homeless; he was poverty stricken. And then you had Jack Hanfield who was making like $8000 and change per year as a teacher; he was tired of that, he wanted something different. People have to want something different. When you want something different and you just open up your mind and allow things to come forth to you, that's when things start to work.

So real simple stuff if we just want to kind of chunk it down, reading something every night or every day or some time during the day, and I'm telling you just two pages; that's the minimum and you can take it as much as you want. Maybe it's a chapter a night. Two pages is all you really need to kick start something really powerful.

Stop listening to the crap on the radio. Get yourself some of these books on audio. You can convert your car into a mobile classroom and you can give yourself so much education by listening to the books on audio through your car. And I do that all the time and I make a lot better use out of my time through that, I find that I'm just more creative by listening and exposing myself to these audios, and that's just a real simple way to start getting things rolling.

And as we get into this call more I'm going to explain that having a powerful mind is one thing. But when you combine the mind and the body together in that powerful state, you're infinitely more productive than if you're just one. They definitely go hand in hand.

CM: Awesome, man. I do a lot of meditation and visualization affirmations, just little things that I've played with on and off through the years and I've gotten tremendous results with these things. You doing anything like that?

ZE: One thing that I used to do is I used to sit down and try to visualize and really feel for my future. But I'm going to — here's where people are really going to be able to relate to me. Because I'm so insanely busy right now between making transitions from not working a regular job, into my business, and combining them both; I'm extremely busy and anybody who's listening to this call is going to be able to relate to this.

It is very difficult for us in today's society with the way we're so engrained with working so much and being in a rush, we have a hard time relaxing. So sitting down and trying to get some quiet time for yourself and trying to visualize for more that three minutes, the mind starts to drift and shift into thoughts such as, "I've got to finish this project" and "I wanted to watch this show," "I've got to work out," or "I have to check my emails," or "I have to get back — I've got to get back to Chris; I have to return these phone calls."

The mind starts to wander and that's why I was turned on to a guy named John Harricharan and he has something called the Power Pause. And it's basically where you do these things one minute at a time anywhere, any place, any time. And he said what you've got to do is get yourself in a state of mind of — and he goes — I know it sounds rude, but you have to say, "I don't give a damn about what's going on around me." And you have to feel good about giving yourself. So you give yourself one minute and you just kind of create a blank screen, close your eyes, and the most important part he said, and from what a lot of these successful people say, it's not really visualizing but feeling what it's like to be where you want to be whatever your goal is. So you feel the success, you feel great when you're envisioning how you want to look or how it's going to make you feel, or how it's going to improve your life, your relationships, your work, your family, anything you do.

That's why feeling good is extremely important, and that's why I spoke about exposing yourself to so many powerful things, because it puts you in that state of just feeling great. When you're watching the news or surrounding yourself with your friends that complain on a regular basis and always try to shoot down your ideas or try to stop you from doing something, that brings you down and that's what you want to stay away from.

So things that I like to do, I don't do the visualization as much but I used to be in a mastermind group with a group of people, and now that I'm not with the group anymore, what I do is I write down my affirmations and I write down things that I want to achieve. Writing down your goals or things that you want to achieve in the immediate future, such as one month or a few months from now, is really, really powerful, because when you start writing things down your mind starts — you feel like when you're writing things on paper there's really no rule. You can kind of create whatever you want and you don't feel like, "I can't really do this, I can't really do that." So when you start writing things down and sharing these things with yourself and possibly putting yourself in a mastermind group or a supportive group where people are sharing their future goals and their wants, things can get extremely powerful.

So now that I'm doing things alone, writing and reading are some of the top things that I do to keep myself into this. And I'm sure as we get more into this people might be saying, "Well it sounds like he's got everything into gear and he's got this whole system down." But I was not like this when I was younger and it took me a long, long time to get like this, and the way I got this way was regular training of my mind. And now I don't consider it training of my mind, now it's just like food for my mind. I prefer to be this kind of person and to always be in this state, so I always do these things on a regular basis because without them I don't feel normal. I'm lost without reading a few good pages every night or writing down what I want to do and just believing and feeling what I want.

There's nobody in this world that can tell me, "Zach, you can't do that." I've heard that a million times about everything I've done and I've transcended all the stuff people told me I couldn't do. And people on this call, if they could follow the steps that we start going through and just take one piece of advice, they'll transform big time.

CM: Is there something you can do to switch your state? Like say you're not in the best energy, you're kind of in a bad mood or a little cranky or something. Is there something you do to switch your state? Do you use the Power Pause, or what do you do?

ZE: I take action to doing something immediately. You have to do something because everybody's — we're all human. We're not all going to have these great days, but it's about how you react to what happens to you. Now you've got to take action if you want to put yourself into state. So if something's not going my way I'm going to take some sort of action to make it go my way.

So let's just speak about — you and I are pretty much in the same business. Let's just say things aren't going so well with products or things aren't going as well as I expected with sales. Well what am I going to do? Am I going to focus on what's not happening? Or am I going to focus on what I want? So I'll write down some action plans and I'll at least take one immediately. That's the minimum thing you have to do, one action. Because once you start taking action you get into that state, you get into that zone.

So let's say it means I've got to send somebody an email or make a phone call to make a contact. I start feeling better about the fact that I'm getting a little bit of extra promotion out there and putting some — putting more energy out there. And what happens is, now I'm in state. All right, I made that phone call. Now I'm going to follow up with somebody else, make another phone call. Then I'm going to write down some more ideas. Now I'm just going to maybe tweak this part of my project and make it that much better.

So what have you got to do? You just have to take action towards the goal that you want. Stop focusing on what you don't have and what you're not achieving and take action towards what you want, because as you take action — it's the same way as when you shop for a car or for a house. You wanted that house but it didn't work out. The next house you checked out is even better than the last one. It always works out that way because now you're attracting that good energy by putting yourself in a state by taking action, by putting out the good vibes.

Anybody could relate to this, whether they've done it themselves or they've seen friends do this. That person that's always whining and complaining and focusing on the crap, that person always has more crap coming into them. The person that's complaining about their weight or complaining about not working out, they tend to get more and more out of shape just because that's what they focus on; they're not focusing on the solution or taking action. The person that complains about not having any money in their bank account, they're probably always going to be that way until they take some sort of action to do it.

You could think positive as much as you want or focus on what you want, but if there's no action involved you're not going to get where you want to be. You've got to take action, and I say "you've got to get your hands dirty." You've got get busy with it.

CM: Speaking of focusing on what you don't want, I know when you were a kid you used to focus on getting your bike stolen a lot. What happened?

ZE: Back when I was in elementary school, and even in middle school, but in elementary school this was when BMX and freestyle biking was so freakin' popular and our area was getting crazy with bikes getting stolen from people from neighboring towns. And I had this bike, my first new bike that I had worked my tail off with a paper route and every time I got paid I just spent more money on my bike, some how, some way. But I was always saying to myself, "Man, I'm probably going to get my bike stolen."

So we'd be riding our bikes and if we'd stop at a pizzeria I'd put my bike upside down and I was always running to the window looking at my bike, checking it, just constantly on my mind. I couldn't stop worrying about my bike getting stolen. And then six months later my bike, which had brand new wheels on it and tires, got stolen, and it was because I just could not stop thinking about it. I believe that I literally just finally attracted that situation into my life; I just kept focusing on it.

And even to this day when I look at anything that has gone wrong, if I kept focusing on bad things and couldn't get my mind off it, those things just seemed to downward spiral. So now I know, when things don't go my way, I know that I can turn it around by focusing on what I want and taking action. I think that's what separates a lot of people. They just don't want to take action and it means that you're going to be uncomfortable. You're going to do stuff that you're not used to, that maybe you don't like at first, but once you take that first step things start changing. Now you're changing the world and now your world is changing. But the action and the mindset, they've got to go together.

A lot of people, they just don't take the action. They talk, talk, talk but they follow up with a lot of excuses. You've got to cut the excuses out and you have to keep things very simple. Just do one action step towards whatever it is you want. So if we want to take action towards perfecting our body, it could be one little step such as eliminating all juices and sodas throughout the day and just making it water. That's one step, but it could be a really big thing. Maybe on the lunch break it means doing some sort of 15 to 20 minute interval walk or jog. Or it might mean cranking out x number of pushups certain hours throughout the day.

It's called chunking; you do these little things and then soon you're starting to do all these little things throughout your day and now you become kind of like this machine that's just able to transform life and mold it into the way you want it. And it starts small. Just like have kids, begin in preschool and move on through elementary, middle, high school, college, graduate school, post grad. So this is the same way we need to train our mind. We start with little things, we chunk it little by little, little by little, and now it becomes the norm. Now it feels normal to always focus on what we want and to always take action when we want something to go for us; and if something's not going well for us we know how to react now. That becomes the norm and soon your entire day and entire way of being becomes that of creation and achievement and always knowing that you could get whatever you want.

And that's when you become a really, really powerful person and that's when you start to feel like, "Man, this is some crazy stuff," because you're in control of your life. You can change the way you look, the way you feel, where you live. You could do it all. You're not like those people out there that are setting so many limits for themselves, because the blueprint is out there. There's millions and millions of successful people who are doing it and that means that we can do it because it's been done by so many people before and many of these people have certainly started from below where we are, or from where somebody who's listening to, they know of somebody who was in much worse shoes and gotten themselves to an even better place. So it's out there; the blueprint is out there. It's no secret anymore. It can be done.

CM: Yeah, I like that you talk about action. That movie The Secret has been pretty popular now and I think a lot of people mistook that message thinking that you can just kind of sit around feel good about your goals and know they're on their way but you don't have to do anything. And I think a lot of people kind of misread the message that came across in that movie. I think action is key; I know it is for me.

Let me ask you about something. What can someone do, someone who's new to working out, and all they have is negative feelings associated with working out? I mean, just the pain, how long it's going to take, all that kind of stuff. What would you say to them, to someone who's just starting that path and any thought they have about eating the right foods and working out, it's all negative; what would you say to that person?

ZE: Usually those people are trying to do too much at once. When you get thrown into something and it exhausts you and beats you up and gives you nothing but discomfort, that's not fun, and fun is what people like to have. So you've got to focus on doing anything that's fun. Whatever's fun for you, do it.

Now we can take this to the next level and say, "Well what if they think all exercise sucks and nothing is fun?" Then I say you've got to have a coach and/or train with a partner or a group of friends, because when you're training with other people or you have a coach, you're now more responsible. And to get very successful at what you do, you need to assume 100 percent responsibility for everything you do. It's nobody's fault that you feel or look or live the way you do; it's all you. And that's kind of where we could get in people's face. We're responsible. Nobody forces us to eat the way we do. Nobody forces us to live the way we do or be in — we could take whatever action we want to change things.

So I think that the reason why I am able to exercise for so long and other people can as opposed to why other people can't, is because people that do it easily is because they love it. And it's become a regular part of their life so much that if we took it away from them they'd just be so out of sorts it would really make them crazy. To me, exercise is my medication. It's the place where I lose myself and find myself. But it always has to be fun.

So you've got to think of — whoever's listening — what things do you love to do and who do you love to be with? Find somebody to exercise with and go and do it in places that are enjoyable for you. If you don’t' want to work out in a gym, don't work out at a gym. Find places to work out at local parks. Maybe you want to go surfing, maybe it's just biking, maybe you just like walking. I don't care what it is; move your body. I know there's all these rules out there that says walking is so good for you, you've got to lift the weights, got to do this, got to do that. Man, if somebody's just starting out, just move your body. I don't care what it is, just get out there and move the body because that is what the human body is meant for, meant for movement.

And we're all supposed to be strong and fit. We're not supposed to be out of shape. We're not supposed to feel bad about everything and feel negative and feel like it's a struggle. That's not the way life's supposed to be unless that's the way you want it to be. So step one, do it and find a way to do it on a regular basis and that means you've got to have some sort of schedule of priorities. You can't expect to follow your workout schedule if you put it on last. You may have to wake up 15 minutes earlier. You may have to cut your lunch break in half and work out on your lunch break.

I'm as busy as anybody is but I don't skip workouts. I go out on my lunch break and I do lots of pull ups and push ups. If I have a longer lunch break I can find my way to my gym, or to my house where I have a gym, or to a local gym and get in a 15 to 30 minute workout. If I've got to work out at 10:00 at night, it's tough but I find a way to get there. But I make working out fun. I play the music I want. I train in the environment I want. I train outdoors whenever possible so I can breath in the fresh air. And my workout partners, if any, are always upbeat people; never do I let some complainer/whiner come near me during a workout, it's just not going to happen.

When people work out, that's their time. Be selfish. Make it the best time that you can have for yourself. There's nothing wrong with being selfish and you have to be selfish to be healthy because you've got to give yourself, you've got to take care of yourself, and other people won't want you to do that because it takes time away from them. So it's not something that you want to do.

CM: Why do you think some people struggle with nutrition, man? This is a common scenario, a guy's hitting his workouts, he's doing his cardio, but he can eat good four days in a row then he blows it for three days. Then he eats good for two days and blows it for a week. And he's good all week and blows it all weekend. What do you think causes that and what can that guy do about that? That's the most common one I know, man.

ZE: Yeah, without a doubt. One thing is — that keeps it simple — is I've found that when I was always most successful with the way I ate is I didn't have a lot of variety. It was pretty much a set program, almost, with the same kinds of foods just kind of mixed and matched. So it was basically not allowing myself lots of variety. And it would be the egg whites and oatmeal for breakfast, chicken or some sort of meat with veggies and light carbs throughout the day, and tons of water. And just not allow yourself to have tons of variety because when you're offering yourself all this variety it's easy to eat out of convenience.

And I was definitely doing that once we had our daughter. You just get so busy you allow yourself to eat out of convenience as opposed to having your foods prepared beforehand. So I found that the best way to do that is try to stay as consistent as possible for as many days as possible, then allow yourself a "cheat" meal every three to four days. Some people do a whole cheat day. They'll go for five or six days in a row then have a whole cheat day because they say that cheat day — they end up hating the food afterwards and they're sick to their stomach and they don't want to look at it.

But the times — and I'm going to say this and it's so simple, but not easy — when people are really lean and in their best shape as far as nutrition wise, when you ask them what they eat it's not a lot of variety. It's like the same stuff over and over mixed and matched. And I personally love those foods like chicken, rice, veggies, baked potatoes, any sort of red meat, lots of fruits and salads, eggs, oatmeal. I could eat that stuff all day, all night, I love that stuff. I think people associate such a negative connotation to eating clean like that. You have to love the taste of eating good. You've got to really love it and you've got to keep it simple and basic, don't try to complicate it. And eating clean is not easy, especially if you're hanging out with other people who don't do it, it's always easy to follow suit.

CM: What would you say to the person who struggles to make it to their workouts? They're either too tired, too busy, whatever. You've got five minutes, or whatever, to motivate them to get them in the gym. What would you say to that person, right now, who's deciding whether or not they should go to the gym and he's about to blow it off? Zach, what would you say to that guy?

ZE: There's always time to workout. And what happens is it's easy to skip at first. But once the — I've been running into a lot of people that either my wife graduated high school with or I graduated high school with, and I'm shocked. I mean, they look like they've been swallowed by their bodies the weight they've put on. And people think that working out requires an hour or 45 minutes.

Here's the bottom line, five to ten minutes of intense exercise is better than nothing, and that's taking action. And once you get into state you're going to want to do an extra five minutes. But you could get very powerful workouts within 10, 15, 20 minutes. Today on my lunch break I think I worked out for 20 minutes and it was a tough workout. And it's really, really a regular thing with me now that — with our daughter and everything, and being so busy, that my workouts are on average 15 minutes. When I have more time I'll get workouts that are 45 minutes, sometimes an hour. But I prefer fast, intense workouts.

People that are going to skip workouts, you know, this is definitely the discipline. Everyone's too tired. The people that aren't too tired are the people that have created the life they want where they don't have to work as much. You've got to make it a priority. And you know what? It means finding a way to do it before you get to the point of too tired. And I've found that most people, once they get home and sit down, that's it; they can't get up.

So that might mean that on your way home from work you stop at the park, throw on your running sneaks, maybe do some sprinting, you do some body weight training, some picnic table training. Maybe you do a pickup game of basketball that lasts you like 20 minutes. Do something before you get to that place or that point where you're normally saying, "I'm too tired," because that could also become quite routine and quite habit. And you don't want to get to the point where it's too late to turn around and all of a sudden your regular way of life is eating like crap and not moving.

So the way I do it now is, like I said before and I'll repeat this many times to people, I'll find ways to chunk down my exercise a lot of times. So several times throughout the day that might mean walking to the playground right up the street when I have a break and cranking out 20 pull ups and maybe 20 or 40 push ups. By the end of the day I could have done way over 100 push ups and about 75 pull ups. What if I did — I could have skipped out or gotten home "it's too late."

I always tell people another way you can do that is if you're watching TV, every time a commercial comes on, 20 squats, 20 push ups. Within a half hour of commercials you'll have done 100 — or within a half hour TV show with the three or four commercials you have done 80 to 100 squats and push ups. That adds up. You could get it done in a short amount of time. There's not rule that says exercise has to be done for this amount of time, this many days a week. But you've got to be consistent with it, that's it. It takes discipline.

People like us that work out, we love it so that stuff's easy for us. People that struggle with it, you've got two choices. You could allow yourself to stay the way you are and make excuses, or you could take the stand and get sick of being the way you are and say, "F this, I'm changing. I'm going to freakin' make this happen." So you've got to take a stand and it requires mental toughness.

Physical training, hard physical training, promotes mental toughness. Training your mind will help you improve the training of your body, so we're putting together an entire blueprint. And now as you and I are talking more, here's where we start realizing that train the mind and it helps you train your body more. You want to train your body because you know the two together are powerful. Train your body, go through some challenging physical work, and now your mind becomes tougher and you don't sweat the fact that you're tired and you know you've sometimes got to push through it because unfortunately for many of us, that is the situation that they're in there. They're too tired on a regular basis, they are too busy. But guess what? You've got to find a way to make it work. That's it. No excuses. You make excuses or 100 percent responsibility for yourself.

CM: I want to talk a little bit more about that link between our mind and our body, but I want to ask you real quick — I've seen footage of you getting a whole body workout just using a picnic bench, man. People that don't have access to fancy equipment and all they have is maybe their backyard or their living room or the park down the street, what's some stuff they can do?

ZE: There's infinite body weight movements that we can do. Yesterday I had a seminar, I took people through about 20 variations of push ups and about 15 variations of pull ups. You've got a million and one push up and pull up variations, body weight squats, lunges, jumping rope, just short distance sprints. So if you're out on your street you could sprint from one telephone pole to the next, then walk to the next one, sprint to the next one, walk, spring. Or you could sprint to a telephone pole, drop down, do push ups.

Anything in your backyard that you can pick up, man, you can — I know in L.A. they call it the concrete jungle and the backyards are pretty small, but if you can get to the park you can work on sprints, you can do all sorts of body weight training off a park bench. You could do push ups with your hands elevated or your feet elevated. If your feet are elevated you could walk on your hands left to right. Or if your hands are on the park bench you could walk left to right. You could do step ups on park benches, back foot elevated lunges. You could do jumps onto the park benches. You could do the dips off of the park benches. I mentioned the sprints. Bring yourself a jump rope. You could have a back pack with some books in it to make it a little bit more of a weighted backpack, so if you wanted to do push ups to make it harder you do that as well.

Using body weight exercises are great and gymnasts have proved to us that all their body weight training has developed the most desirable physiques out there. I mean, people see how lean they are, they're ripped, they really have just beautiful symmetry. Everybody looks at gymnasts in awe and what do they do? Lots of pull ups, lots of push ups, lots of dips. They do a lot of jumping. So instead of us doing cartwheels and all kinds of jumps that might be playing basketball for 15 minutes or it might be jumping rope or jumping on and off park benches to work explosive legs. And even if you're not an athlete, you can move your body like an athlete and jumping rope is a phenomenal way to start.

And a lot of these things it's like, man, people might say, "That's what I did back in my old days from my gym teacher. Back then I didn't like that." But body weight training feels good because you can always modify the movement to make it easier, to make it harder. And I love it because it's your go-anywhere gym and it just makes you feel a lot more connected when you're just utilizing your body. And like I said before, working out for me is like a place where I lose myself and find myself. I love training at parks because I breathe in the fresh air and I use my own body and it just feels like I'm really doing something powerful and great for myself, for my body. So I feel like that's my meditation, giving something good to myself.

CM: So it seems people really are only limited by their mind and I guess their knowledge, huh?

ZE: Without a doubt. You could always, like you were saying before, what if somebody says they're too busy? There's no such thing. There's no such thing. Would you ever say you're too busy for your wife or your husband, for your kids? No, they would never say that. You want to know why they'd never say it? Because it's important to them. They've got value on it. They wouldn't say that. And if something's important to you, you'll find the time to do it. That's the bottom line.

And that's why you've got to get tough with yourself. You've got to get tough with yourself. You can't allow yourself to make excuses because excuses basically are giving you the freeway to failure. It's basically saying, "I'm allowing myself to quit. I'm allowing myself to fail." And you don't want to get into the habit of doing that. Ever. Ever.

CM: Can you get a little deeper into the link between our mind and our body?

ZE: You know, it all starts with the mind. Once we can get somebody into the right frame of mind and assuming 100 percent responsibility, the body's going to follow suit.

And I always give the story of when I was younger. My training was body builder style training; that's what I loved to do and I still have a passion for that style training. But I went through periods of time where I had ups and downs. I used to get really depressed when things weren't going my way and I just couldn't dig myself out of the hole.

And I remember my freshman year in college I was just in a long streak of depression. It must have lasted a half year. And I remember training hard, which is what I always did; I never had a problem training hard. I still loved working out but I didn't gain any muscle, I wasn't getting any stronger, I was eating great, but nothing was changing with my body until I woke up one morning and got so fed up with being basically a loser who was always focusing on negative and being a big baby and just letting myself sink and sink deeper and deeper.

I said, "F this. I am not allowing myself to just be such a loner and be down at the bottom of the bucket all the time." And once I made that decision to create a powerful life and to be — to just have great days everyday, man, I went from — I must have been weighing 182, 184 pounds. In like two weeks I was up to like 196. I had gained like 12 pounds and my strength level skyrocketed.

And if you ask any scientist, exercise scientist, they'd say, "There's no way you're gaining 12 pounds of muscle and all that strength in two weeks." That's like a pound a day. And guess what? I wasn't doing anything different training-wise or eating-wise. I trained the same; I was training three or four times a week, I ate five or six times a day pretty much the same foods. The only thing that changed was me refusing to be negative. And when I changed my attitude about that and I made that stand my body transformed. In that two week period it skyrocketed.

Most people gain 12 pounds of muscle it takes them three, four years to do that, unless they're a beginner. I had been training since I was 13. I was 19 at the time, I think, and that's proof positive it all comes through the mind. But I had to make that stand and I never went back. That was about half my life ago. I'm 31 now, 19 then. So that was 12 years ago I was really — I got to the point where I was like, "You know what? It's time to make sure that I'm living." Because back then I call it "existing." I spent six months of my life waking up, going to sleep, going through the motions, but nothing great came about until I put my mind into it. And now I know how the mind works and I get better at it every day.

CM: You've mentioned some books. We're going to change subjects here in a minute but I want to go over your favorite books, CDs, DVDs, just spit off as many of your favorite ones as you can.

ZE: Right now I'm reading a really cool book; it's called The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferriss, and it's a phenomenal book. I only picked it up Saturday night and I had a seminar on Sunday, but Sunday night I picked it up and I was reading it until 1:30, 2:00 in the morning. I had to wake up at 6:30 the next morning but I was so fired up reading it. And what I do is I've been reading a couple pages since then. I get the audios to these a lot.

I of course have the movie The Secret, and also the audios because I play them in my truck. The Success Principles by Jack Canfield, I have the book and I have the audios. Anything with Joe Vitale; I've go so many of his books and I listen and read anything he puts out.

CM: That guy's great.

ZE: Yeah. His energy just really fires me up. Stuff by Randy Gage, I really like what that guy does. He gets in your face and really changes the way that you think. I like what Matt Furey does with his zero-resistance and psycho-cybernetics; that stuff's amazing. And I listen to a lot of audios with Matt Furey. I've picked up stuff from eBay about these guys, straight from their websites. Mark Joyner has a book called Simpleology; it's a really, really cool book and it takes you through steps of — action steps.

And all these books really — they improve your productivity. The thing I really like about Timothy Ferriss's book The 4-Hour Work Week is number one, I stopped checking my email so much. Normally when I work I'd have my email on and I'd always check it. He emphasizes getting to the point where you check it once a day. I woke up this morning, I had my breakfast. While I had my breakfast I was working on a project instead of my normal email checking. Then I checked my email quickly at work today and then I'm going to check it again tonight. So I'm just checking it twice.

And also not just the books, but I always like to hang out with people that are into being creative and productive. So a lot of my friends here, we don't hang out as much as we used to because a lot of them kind of think I'm crazy so we're on totally different pages on my wave thinking. And it just makes it tough to — you have these people that they think you're crazy, but to me this is my reality. This is how I make things happen.

So those are the books and as far as just people I hang out with, that is always a big thing. I'm trying to think of anything else. I've got so many books from Joe Vitale. I'm looking here at my library, a lot of stuff, The Attractor Factor, Meet and Grow Rich. Oh, of course Bob Proctor, he's awesome.

And there's a program that I watch on the internet. It's called The Success Training Network. It's a monthly subscription and you get regular — it's like a TV casting and you can just do it on-demand. Brian Tracy's on there, he's really cool.

CM: Yeah, I've seen that.

ZE: Yeah. He's another guy, I don't think he even graduated high school. Brian Tracy didn't even graduate high school. Then you've got Bob Proctor who used to be a fireman and was pretty much just working to wait for his pension. So you see all these people out there that have achieved greatness and have people following them all over the place and they started in the lowest places. And all the guys that I speak to on a regular basis — Dax Moy who put out The Magic Hundred, I love.

And Alwyn Cosgrove has been a huge influence to me. For anybody listening, he's a guy that's a world renowned fitness expert, but mentally this guy beat cancer twice. And every time I speak to him, he reminds me of "the way to live" and what's important. And he really helped me get back to doing — basically said to me, "You've just got to do what you love because when you do what you love, the joy and the money and everything comes together." And recommended a book to me, I got it up here, it's called Do It!: Let's Get Off Our Butts and the guys name is Peter McWilliams. It's a pretty kick-ass book as well.

And I like to do that. I always read a few books at the same time, but right now everything's on hold while I'm reading The 4-Hour Work Week. It's a tough book to stop reading. I'm always thinking of it.

CM: Yeah, I heard the audio the other day, man. That's mind blowing, you know?

ZE: Yes.

CM: Systemizing and outsourcing.

ZE: Yes. Systemizing, outsourcing, and also not really focusing so much on making millions and millions, just doing what you love and stop saying that "I'll do this when x, y, and z are there." Things can always get done now. And that's what people do with exercise; they do it with life in general. "I'll start exercising on New Years." "I'll start exercising when spring time comes." "I'll start exercising when tax season's over and I'm not working so much."

If something's important to you, you've got to take action immediately. You can't wait for it — you can't wait to do it tomorrow. That's my philosophy. And anybody who's successful knows that immediate action has to be taken towards something if it's to get done at all, or to be successful at.

CM: You got any good time management tips for people who — they want to make a little more time to get their workouts in? Anything that works for you? I know time management's been really key for me.

ZE: I think that you have to stop doing stuff that wastes time. I don't really watch any TV except on Sunday night I watch Soprano's and Entourage.

CM: Yeah, me too, man.

ZE: Yeah. I find ways to work out when most people are kind of not doing stuff. So on my lunch break I find time to eat quickly and get a workout in. Although, yeah, I would prefer to have a relaxing lunch, I'll have a small lunch and I'll work out instead of doing other stuff. I'll come home for lunch breaks. I might have to chunk my workouts down, so maybe I don't get a full blown 20, 30 minute workout in, but maybe in the morning I get two sets of pull ups and two sets of pushups. Then throughout the day I'm near that playground at work. When I have a break I crank out more pull ups and push ups. Then I come home that night and maybe what I'll do is some heavy dead lifting and I'll be done in 10 minutes from heavy dead lifting. So my work was being done throughout the day. I chunked it down and I looked back and I'm like, "Man, that's how I used to study in college." I could never for all this time; I used to chunk it down.

So short, very fast workouts, keep everything intense, and find ways to utilize your free time. Five or ten minutes is good. Ryan Lee has the Quatro Fitness workout. You can work out in as little as four minutes or you could do 12 minutes of it.

But people that say they don't have time, we took people through three-minute workouts yesterday using body weight and one kettle bell, and they were — I mean, they were hurting. And then I did the same thing with sandbags. I could do the same thing with body weight and any sort of elastic tubing. They just did an exercise for 20 seconds — they did a Tabata Protocol which is you exercise for 20 seconds, take 10 seconds off, 20 seconds on, 10 seconds off.

CM: Oh, yeah, yeah.

ZE: It's so easy. What if we had a jump rope? Jump rope for 20 seconds, rest for 10 seconds. Push ups for 20, rest 10. And then at the beginning of every minute you always do it with the jump rope. So you do jump rope to push ups, jump rope to pull ups, jump rope to squats, and then go through that two times. You get in phenomenal, phenomenal shape from doing that.

And I think people think exercise is a lot harder and a lot more complicated than it is. Well I always say — I know all these exercises we could do, but guess what? Push ups, pulls ups, squats, those things make it easy. You know, Herschel Walker, when he was playing football that guy had this tremendous physique and all he did was push ups, sit ups, jumping rope, and he sprinted with a tire strapped around his waste and a rope. And so this guy did four different exercises yet he was built with this body that anybody would have admired it was great.

And like I said before, gymnasts, they do push ups, pull ups, sits, and all kinds of jumping which would be squat movements, so jumping rope for us. It's a lot easier than people think but — or it's simple, it's just not easy. For me it's easy because I love it. There's no stress or difficulty involved with working out whatsoever. Take exercise away from me, I'll be a crazy man, I'll be a real crazy man.

CM: Me and you both, man. Hey, what's it mean to be a real man?

ZE: This is something that's near and dear to my heart because I created RealManFitness.com with this in mind. And it hit me hard through reading some older books on physical culture from late 1800's, early 1900's, and the emphasis was always saying, "Man should be strong. Man should be lifting heavy weights, he should be able to move his body, protect his family."

Now I look at men and — I got married two years ago, a lot of my friends have gotten married recently, and they just fall apart. I mean, they look like crap. They just let themselves go. Men — I don't want to generalize with men, it's really everybody — but men, they're supposed to be strong. They're supposed to be fit. They're supposed to look good. They're supposed to be able to carry all their kids on their back and carry their wife or whoever, whatever it is. They're supposed to be able to change a tire. Man, I see men, they can't even do one good push up. They can't squat without pain in their knees and in their backs. That has to change. That has to change.

Men have an obligation towards being strong, fit, confident, and success achievers. And women should be on the same lines. But I can't stand seeing men that just stop taking care of themselves. I see guys, they get married or get engaged, dude, I've seen guys gain 30 to 40 pounds in a year; that's not cool. That is not cool. If you don't care of your own body, if you don’t have your health, you've got nothing. You've got nothing. That's why you have to prioritize your health and your fitness, because if you don't have your health you can give to your family, you can't give to whoever. You can't give to yourself if you're just falling apart physically. You've got to make sure that you're always fit. That's the bottom line.

And the problem is, it doesn't just start in the mid-20's or late-20's, now it's starting in elementary schools. But men, focusing on men, we look back in the day to the men from the early 1900's or mid-1900's, they all did a lot of manual labor. They were all strong. They could all do things and they had lots of — a lot more physical energy than we do today. So men have to start changing the way they think about themselves. I don't want to hear, "I don't have time. I don't want to do it." Men need to be tough, without a doubt. You've got to be tough and you've got to be physically and mentally strong; they go hand in hand as we now know.

CM: Zach, as always, this has been awesome, man. We really, really appreciate your time today. What would you leave our listeners with?

ZE: As I said before, take action. You've got to take action. That's how all things start. Once you — that saying is, "You'll miss 100 percent of the shots you never take." That's absolutely true. How do you know what's possible unless you do anything about it? Don't talk about it, do it. Don't be — I always say, "Don't talk the talk. Walk the walk." You've got to get it done. You've go to take the jump.

And that's why I've been feeling really good because people interview me a lot and they always ask me what to do, what to do. And said, man, I was always giving advice to people and starting training businesses. And I was like, man, I've been running my business kind of on my own outdoors, and I was like, "That's it. I'm going to take the jump and open a gym, take the risk." So it's all about taking action. Every day should have lots of action steps and if you're not taking action, don't expect anything to happen.

So if it's one word and one message: massive action. Get your self uncomfortable. You're going to feel comfortable feeling uncomfortable about the action you take, and that's how you know you're on the right track.

CM: Hey, Zach, what are your websites again?

ZE: Go to UndergroundStrengthCoach.com and RealManFitness.com, and through that there's a lot of sub-links that people could check out, some of my individual products and things of that nature. And free newsletters, free e-books are available to you then.

CM: You guys, Zach Even-Esh. Again, this is Chris McCombs with Orange County Personal Training. Thank you very much for listening and have a great day.

ZE: Thanks, Chris.