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Speaker A: Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Colman Ruiz. Coleman Ruiz is a former tier one Navy SEAL special operator. I think it's fair to assume that most of you have never heard of Coleman Ruiz before, and in fact, it was part of his former life job description to be largely covert, such that only his family and friends really knew what he did for a living. He is, however, now living as a civilian and the reason I invited Coleman on this podcast was essentially to tell us his life story, which of course includes his time in the SEAL teams, but includes so much more that I'm certain is of value to everyone. Today, Coleman shares with you his remarkable journey from childhood through his teenage years into the military, and some of the things that happened during his time in the military, which then informed of his post military civilian life and what it is to be a father, a husband, and somebody who has experienced tremendous loss at various stages of his life, as well as tremendous triumph. Indeed, if ever there was a life that could be framed within the context of the so called hero's journey, it is the life of Coleman Ruiz. Coleman Ruiz life is one that embodies focus and pursuit, family and friends and love, all the things that we think of in terms of having a rich life, but also one that includes many unforeseen tragedies, many unforeseen challenges, both internal and external. Coleman also shares with a rare and extraordinary degree of vulnerability the extent to which challenges in life, both external and internal, have helped shape him as a human being. What follows is a discussion that everyone, male, female, young or old, and regardless of position in life, is sure to derive tremendous benefit from. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Betterhelp. Betterhelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. I've been doing therapy for over 30 years. Initially I started therapy because, well, I was required to in order to stay in school. But eventually I just decided to keep doing it because I found it to be very beneficial. There are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First of all, it provides a rapport with somebody that you can trust and talk about all issues with. Second of all, they can provide support in the form of emotional support or directed guidance. And third, expert therapy can provide useful insights that you wouldn't have otherwise had access to. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy as important as working out one's body in the gym or through cardiovascular exercise. And with betterhelp, scheduling and doing therapy becomes extremely convenient. They can match you to a therapist that can provide those three things, excellent rapport, support and insight, and they can do so on a schedule that matches yours. If you'd like to try betterhelp, go to betterhelp.com huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com hubermandhenne Today's episode is also brought to us by Maui Nui Venison Maui Nui Venison is the most nutrient dense and delicious red meat available. I've spoken before on this podcast and with several expert guests on this podcast about the fact that most of us should be seeking to get about 1 gram of quality protein per pound of body weight every day. Not only does that protein provide critical building blocks for things like muscle repair and synthesis, but also for overall metabolism and health. Eating enough quality protein each day is also a terrific way to stave off hunger. One of the key things, however, is to make sure that you're getting enough quality protein without ingesting excess calories. Maui nui venison has an extremely high quality protein per calorie ratio, such that getting 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight is both easy and doesn't cause you to ingest an excess of calories. Also, maui nui venison is absolutely delicious. They have venison steaks, they have ground venison and they have venison bone broth. I personally like all of those. In fact, I probably eat a maui nui venison burger pretty much every day, and occasionally I'll swap that for a maui nui steak. And if you're really on the go, they have maui nui venison jerky which has 10 grams of protein per stick at just 55 calories. If you'd like to try maui nui venison, you can go to maui nui venison.com huberman to get 20% off your first order. Again, that's maui nui venison.com huberman Today's episode is also brought to us by eight sleep. Eight sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need to get sleep, both enough sleep and enough quality sleep. When we do that, everything, our mental health, our physical health, performance in any sports or school, etcetera, all get better. And when we're not sleeping well or enough, all those things suffer. One of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is that your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees in order to fall and stay deeply asleep. And in order to wake up feeling refreshed, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. One of the best ways to ensure that happens is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment. And with eight sleep, it makes it very easy to do that. You program in the temperature that you want at the beginning, middle and end of the night. You can even divide the temperature for two different people. If you have two different people sleeping in the bed and it tracks your sleep, it tells you how much slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep you're getting, it really helps you dial in the correct parameters to get the best possible night's sleep for you. I've been sleeping on an eight sleep mattress cover for well over three years now, and it has completely transformed my sleep for the better. If you'd like to try eight sleep, you can go to eightsleep.com huberman and save $150 off their pod. Three cover, eight sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com huberman and now for my conversation with Coleman Ruiz. Coleman Ruiz, welcome.

Speaker B: Thank you. Very excited to see you.

Speaker A: It's great to have you here. I'm guessing most people are probably not familiar with Coleman Ruiz. So let's start at the beginning. Where were you born? What was the context of your home life? And maybe let's get up to maybe elementary school, middle school, and whatever top contour or deep details you want to get into, we're all ears.

Speaker B: Okay, I'll bring us up to 7th grade, because I would say that was probably the first big inflection point in my life. I grew up in, I was born in New Orleans, in a suburb called New Orleans east, we call it, and have an older sister, two younger brothers. My dad was a welder. My mom was a dental assistant. And we had a couple of boxers and the dogs. And we had a very modest, very modest upbringing. I won't over dramatize it, but, you know, admittedly, you know, sometimes we got cheese from the lady across the street who didn't want her welfare cheese. And it was one of those, you know, I could tell my parents were fighting for every nickel, but it was great. I mean, my cousin grew up across the street from me. He's exactly my age. We had that at least some of my memory, Andrew, of it was. It was very pleasant. I learned later that you forget a lot of things in your childhood that were unpleasant. But my initial memories, when I started thinking about this kind of thing and, you know, as you and I have discussed getting professional help, and you start to learn a little bit more about your childhood. But I remember it being very pleasant. You know, you've told me about your background in skateboarding and stuff. You know, we skateboarded the neighborhood. BMX was a big thing when we were kids. It was very much a rat the streets upbringing. There was a park behind the neighborhood. We would cut through the fence and go, you know, this kind of thing. I played football and baseball, and very normal in that regard. I went to the neighborhood school, and then in 6th grade, I went to what was my high school, but it went fifth through 12th, called Holy Cross High School in the lower 9th ward, which that spot is now vacated because the school, I went back after Hurricane Katrina, the whole school had to be moved. And I went there in 7th grade, and it was a hellacious start. I mean, it was detention after detention, you know, fistfight after fistfight, and damn near.

Speaker A: Were you the instigator of those fights?

Speaker B: Probably some. I definitely fell in with the wrong crowd initially in that 6th and 7th grade years, and I wouldn't say it was so extreme that, like, it was complete mayhem. But I was definitely on, you know, problem situation number whatever, when my parents were called in, and it was kind of the last straw type thing, and I got cut from baseball. My grades were fine. I was always a pretty good student. It was just teenager shenanigans. And then I went out for wrestling.

Speaker A: Can I just pause you for a second? So, on the violence part, I have a little bit of experience with this, but violence can come from trying to protect others, instigating it can come from the wildness. Just trying to see what it feels like, experimentation and any number of other things, all the way to pure sociopathy, which we know you are not and weren't. Do you recall feeling something inside that inspired this? Was it for attention? Did it feel good afterwards? Can you recall what it was about?

Speaker B: I think it was the wildness thing, Andrew. Honestly, it wasn't. I mean, I believe I don't have a malicious bone in my body. Like, we all have that in us. Obviously, my profession later in the military, you know, I was able to activate that, and I feel like I still can. And I was certainly able to in sports, which is why that 7th grade year was really pivotal. But even now, it's even funny you ask about the wildness, because let me put it in movie terms. Like, one of my favorite movie scenes of all time is in the movie the town, when Ben Affleck walks in the room. Jeremy Renner is the, you know, his partner, essentially. And he walks in the room and he says, we're going to hurt somebody. I can't tell you where and I can't tell you when. And he pauses, and Jeremy Renner takes maybe a three second pause, and he says, whose car are we taking? He doesn't even ask. You know, he's just. They're just wild and excited about doing something wild. I don't promote, like, going to hurt somebody. Of course.

Speaker A: Sure. Were you the Affleck or the renner? Affleck. Excuse me? Or Renner in that I was.

Speaker B: I feel like I was mostly the renner. Put it this way. If you have some good idea this afternoon, like, let's go fucking try this. I'm good. I'm ready. And I think it's just exciting, you know, I hate rules. I hate being told what to do. It's one of the things that was so frustrating about the military. The rules are in place for a reason. They're written in blood. I get all that, but we're so constrained sometimes. I think that was just all coming into fruition that 7th grade year. And I enjoyed going wild. Like it was just fun. And frankly, we weren't. These fistfights and this trouble wasn't like going to get some kid. Those other kids wanted the wildness too, you know, and so. But the school didn't want that. And then I went out for wrestling that year, and I could put it all into the wrestling room, and it was awesome.

Speaker A: Before we talk about wrestling and why it was so meaningful as a channel for you, a little bit of neurobiology, or else I wouldn't be Andrew Huberman. There's a really interesting phenomenon that one observes in both animals and humans, which is that somewhere around adolescence when the hormone surge begins. But even before that, there's a phenomenon called dispersal. It's very different than fighting per se, or sexual activity per se. It's a literal dispersal from one's home environment or an animal is a nest in which animals and humans, and we're animals, after all, start foraging new environments in a very, as you point out, chaotic way. It's not organized. It's a little nuts. And biologists and neurobiologists in particular have observed changes in neural circuitry that drive this. So some of it's hormonal, but a lot of it is the brain taking all this input that one has been exposed to, sun, earth, food, others social interactions, and starting to essentially throw the different paints, the different colors of paint together and just trying things. Some kids are more prone to this than others. Certainly has a hormonal component. Boys and girls tend to do this differently, but they both do it. And psychologists and neurobiologists see this as a fundamental shift in our underlying circuitry. So just a little bit of food for thought, to put what you just described in context with that said, tell us about wrestling.

Speaker B: I mean, Andrew, in many ways, like I said, that was the first inflection point. It was like immediate, I mean, immediate uptake. Within a week, I knew this was my thing, maybe the first practice.

Speaker A: What do you think it was?

Speaker B: So when I was younger, my aunt and uncle, when I was like seven years old, they started taking me to road races, and I'm sure just running races, 1 mile and five k races when I was really small kid, for you to run, to run with them. They were into the road racing thing back in the day when it was brand new, you know, the eighties. I'm 48, so I was born in 75, so I was seven, you know, eight years old at the time. And I was into, like, obviously, can I win this race? I just. The pain of the effort was so comfortable, and then it's kind of silly, but, like, I won the PT competition at, like, the Boy scout staying in Audubon Park.

Speaker A: T is physical.

Speaker B: Yeah, physical training.

Speaker A: Physical training.

Speaker B: And so I won, like, the whatever when I was young and boy scouts or something, and then it just snowballed. Then I was just like, the physical activity still today is. I mean, if someone said, what are you really in love with? It's. It's that. And so when I walked into the wrestling room, it was so extreme compared to anything else I had ever done. Football, baseball, whatever, I never really liked any of those sports. I played them all, but I didn't like them. And always, my dad wrestled in high school and college, and we were always rough and tumble in that regard. And I even have a couple of buddies in the teams who obviously were college wrestlers. There's a lot of wrestlers in the teams, and people would always joke about how we're so handsy, our hands are always on each other, and that was just a thing for us. I loved the close contact. I love the fight of it. What I really love about combat sports, cause I boxed in high school between wrestling seasons, was the respect.

Speaker A: Tell me more about that.

Speaker B: You just don't have. There are some, of course, like, you can see guys hyping it up and doing their thing in UFC these days, and that's totally fine. But for the most part, if you have fighters of any type, like in a setting when they don't have to do, you know, the stuff for tv and whatnot, they respect each other because. And they respect the effort and because you know, what it takes and you know, how hard it is to face another man in the middle of a mat with no equipment and nowhere to run and no timeouts and no one to tap in. That's extremely, you know, and it may not seem like high school wrestling is extreme, but as you just mentioned, something about, you know, development when you're 14 and you're facing another, like, that's the first time. Is someone trying to take your life? No, they're not, but it feels that way. And then you go and you put in all these hours of training, and you don't eat during the week, and you run stadiums or you run levees and, you know, fireman's carries and all of it while you're not eating and making weight and you're in the sauna. And it's just a very tough thing to do, combat sports. And I love the respect that it engenders between the people who do it.

Speaker A: I think it was Sam Sheridan who wrote a fighter's heart, an excellent book. And for anyone, male or female, any age, who's interested in the human spirit, I recommend a fighter's heart because it's about the different fight sports, but it's really about the path of self discovery that occurs in various martial arts. And as you said, especially boxing is very gentlemanly. You touch gloves, you start, then the bell goes off, you go to your corner. Sometimes people lose it, bite off people's ears and things like that. But for the most part, the sport is very structured. As you were doing this, what was happening with school? Did it help your academic studies? Did it keep them more or less the same? And how did your family and your peer group view what you were doing? Were you considered strange for liking wrestling so much? I mean, you're dieting, you're a young male dieting for purpose of sport and performance. You're sitting in saunas, you're running wrapped in plastic bags. All this. I mean, a good friend of ours who was also in the SEAL teams said once said to me, he said, you know, wrestlers are different. And I think he meant different in quotes.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's true. You know, school, my grades immediately went up, Andrew. It was like, oh, my gosh, the discipline of all of it. My grades were always better in wrestling season than out of wrestling season.

Speaker A: Interesting.

Speaker B: Like, when I was cut loose out of the structure, then it wasn't good. And, you know, between 7th and 8th grade and all that, I didn't have any crazy shenanigans going on. I wasn't gonna get kicked out of school, whatever. I was doing normal stuff for the age.

Speaker A: So the fight stopped.

Speaker B: Totally. Totally. Cause I could put it into. I could put it into the wrestling space, you know? And I think I grew up, obviously, in New Orleans, and I think, you know, down there, it's baseball, football, basketball. Wrestling is not. I mean, I was lucky to wrestle in college at all because it wasn't like Iowa was looking to recruit me. You know, they have plenty of people to recruit and they don't need any Louisiana wrestlers. Although Daniel Cormier grew up, like, north of the lake. He was four years younger. I was telling this to somebody, we don't know each other. I'd love to meet him. Super impressive athlete. We heard that, hey, there's some kid up in the North Shore, I think is where he grew up, whooping everybody's ass. His name's Daniel Cormier. And then, you know, obviously the rest is history, but the sport is not big in Louisiana, which is all to say that we were kind of a unicorn. We had. It was very odd. At my high school specifically, we had one coach, his son, either national runner up, his name was Willie Gatson. Willie passed away. I think his son ended up at Iowa State, and within the last five or six years was either a national champ or a runner up. Willie. When I was in 8th grade, Andrew Willie was at my high school. Like, I have no idea how Willie Gatson ended up in New Orleans, but we ended up with this cluster of wrestlers at that time, with the right coaching, and a few kids were going to junior college and coming back and wrestling in college and coming back. And there were three or four guys. I remember specifically in 8th grade, because I started, at least in the junior high ranks, I started to take off my second year these guys would abuse me in the wrestling room. They were seniors in high school. I was 112 pounds or 132 pounds my freshman year, and they would just. In my 8th grade year, and they would just abuse me.

Speaker A: Define abuse.

Speaker B: In all the legal, normal wrestling ways. Like, there's the wrestling gets broken up, obviously, by weights. You got the heavyweights on one end of the room, the lightweights on the other end of the room, and the young kids stay with the young kids for the most part. And a few of these guys would drag me down to the varsity end, and I would wrestle with the middleweights, and they would beat the shit out of me. And eventually you get to the point where you're like, fuck this, I have enough, you know? And that's when sort of things started to turn. But I think that wrestlers are different. And my peer group, one or two of my really good friends wrestled, but most of them played other sports, and so. But in every sense of the word, life got better for me because of that sport. It changed my life.

Speaker A: So you wrestled all through high school?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Yep.

Speaker A: At that point, were you discovering relationships, girls? Were you partying? Were you a drinker? Used drugs?

Speaker B: No drugs. I mean, it's New Orleans, right? It's like one of the things that was tough. I'm glad I got out of the city, frankly, because it was party time outside the season. Yeah. Girls, girlfriends, normal stuff in that regard. Lots of drinking, lots of rat in the streets, you know, in those days, in the nineties, but you kept it.

Speaker A: Inside the lane line, so it sounds like no drunk driving, no arrest, a.

Speaker B: Little bit of that, but not. Nothing crazy in that regard. I think I understood the consequences, and I really cared about my career. I really wanted to wrestle in college. My grades were excellent, my SAT scores not so much. But I started winning really fast. And, you know, my last two years in high school, I was 89 and o and I almost won my sophomore year. So I was runner up in the state my sophomore year. I always joke with the. With the boys. All my boys are way better athletes than I ever could think about.

Speaker A: Your sons.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And when 8th grade, I made varsity, and it was like, 8th grade? Yeah. And I lost, like 75% of the matches, you know, but you just grind it out, and it's how I got into naval academy, which is a whole nother story, but I.

Speaker A: So let's talk about that. So you finished high school.

Speaker B: Mm hmm.

Speaker A: You head to the naval academy. Why the naval Academy?

Speaker B: There's actually a crazy story behind this, which maybe we'll circle back to. But the summer. Gosh, I had forgotten that this started in 7th grade, too. The summer between my 7th and 8th grade year. My grandfather was too young to join the navy, and he wanted to go to the naval academy during world war two. And he lied to the recruiter, and he got into the merchant marines. His, I'm pretty sure, first cousin. My uncle and my cousins are like first cousins once removed. My uncle Jim Therrell was at a family reunion in Mississippi, which we were at, and he didn't mention the naval academy. Family reunion ends. They all go home, and he starts sending me naval academy paraphernalia. I knew nothing about the military. And I just thought about it, you know, and he would send me stuff, you know, you didn't. We didn't have the Internet. Right. He was sending these booklets.

Speaker A: And you don't like authority? No, I've not been in the military, but I've done some work with y'all, and there's a lot of hierarchy and authority.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. The truth, Andrew, is like. It was just. It just seemed exciting. I wasn't really thinking about the implications as 18 year olds, you know, it looked very exciting to me. And having gotten some professional help in the intervening years, what I really think was a big part of it was my parents got divorced my senior year in high school, and the family unit just blew up. Right. And so it also represented an escape. You know, get out and go. Get your life out of New Orleans and just go. Just go do something.

Speaker A: Were you a part of that? Obviously, you were part of the family that got divorced. Was it chaotic? Was it controlled? You and I are the exact same age. We're both 48, born in 75. Back then, it was a lot less common for people being. They called them broken homes back then. Nowadays, I don't think they call that. Everyone just cites the statistic that more than half of marriages end in divorce, as if perhaps to normalize it. But that's more than half. Do you recall feeling distraught about that? Or was it just kind of the natural consequence of something you had observed a long time, like, oh, that kind of makes sense.

Speaker B: No, it was a shock to me. It wasn't a shock to my older sister. I just remember this was the thought at the time, this is, like, seared in my brain. This has nothing to do with me. That wasn't, like, some sophisticated view. It was mostly, fuck this. I'm not dealing with this. I have my own life. They're gonna have to do what they're gonna do. Meaning my parents. I'm getting the hell out of here.

Speaker A: Not a bad mindset for a kid at that stage. If it had been four years younger that might not be the best mindset but as you're heading off to college that's a reasonably healthy mindset as opposed to getting enmeshed in the what happened and this and that. Can I ask you at that stage you're 1718 years old at that point. Were you journaling at that point? No, no. No journaling, no introspective work, zero. No school psychologists, no thinking about or talking about your feelings. It's wrestling. Naval academy social things. School sats like very standard. We're almost like talking like a superficial list of what happens at the end of high school in 1996.

Speaker B: And Andrew it's a the word superficial and I carried this forward for years which I'm sure we'll talk about here in a second. Those binary focus areas like I was literally just going after them at full steam stronger, faster, more intensity with zero introspection. No excavation of the psychology of anything, just full steam ahead like let's go.

Speaker A: No meditation, no breath work zero.

Speaker B: Which was not adaptive in the long run.

Speaker A: We'll get to how that played out in the long run. But nonetheless you got into the naval Academy didn't first.

Speaker B: So I applied. I get, you know, my uncle's doing all this stuff. Anyway I applied and I didn't. I still have the letter, the thanks but no thanks, you know you're not qualified.

Speaker A: How'd that hit you?

Speaker B: At the time it hit me kind of like everything I did when that age when it didn't work out admittedly Andrew it was like there's gotta be a way around this like shit has to work out but it feels terrible, right? Like you have a moment of what do we do? And my kids have heard the story a million times. My wife was a blue chip swimming recruit for navy and so she was into the naval academy when she was at the beginning of her senior year of high school, right?

Speaker A: What's a blue chip?

Speaker B: I mean my understanding of blue chip is like you are at the very top of the list and the coaches put you straight into the admission cycle saying nobody else gets in until this person does.

Speaker A: So they wanted her, they didn't want you.

Speaker B: Not only was she a blue chip and I was. And I got the no, I guess. Well the wrestling coach called me a couple of weeks after my no which is now in May. I'm about to graduate from high school.

Speaker A: I'm not accepted anywhere you only applied one place.

Speaker B: Actually two, which you may bust out laughing when I tell you what the other one is, because no Internet. I got a mailer in a pamphlet from Stanford, the wrestling coach. I didn't know what Stanford was. I had no idea that the college was even prestigious. I didn't know they had a wrestling team. I filled out the application and wrote the letter thing and I sent it into Stanford and of course, never heard back from them. But I applied to two places, Stanford and the US Naval Academy.

Speaker A: Well, for those that follow wrestling, nothing.

Speaker B: Get into either, right?

Speaker A: That's a great story. And I'll just briefly mention that a few years ago, there almost wasn't a wrestling team at Stanford. They had plans to cut the wrestling team despite having a NCAA champion at Stanford. But the power of people gathering and petitioning works. Wrestling and a few other sports that were being cut from the curriculum were spared.

Speaker B: It's amazing.

Speaker A: Or rescued.

Speaker B: So happy to see that.

Speaker A: Yeah, so that. So it. Stanford does have a wrestling team.

Speaker B: So the coach. The coach back to like, how I ended up getting in, I appreciated my college. Coach called and he said, I'm recruiting. I have one more spot at the prep school, which is in Newport, Rhode island. I'm recruiting another kid from Pennsylvania. If he takes that spot, then I don't have anything left. And we were exploring going to prep school and stuff like that, oblique ways to get in. And he called me sometime in May, like right around graduation, and said, can you be in Newport in July? That kid went to, I think he went to Lehigh and I went to the prep school.

Speaker A: So Newport, Rhode island?

Speaker B: Yeah, in Newport for a year.

Speaker A: It's a nice place.

Speaker B: That's great.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And so you wrestle for. I mean, you do school, you know, you're ahead. You're in. West Point has a prep school and Colorado Springs has a prep school. And so we joked that my wife was first person in our class, accepted, and I was last, which is highly possible, actually.

Speaker A: I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge our sponsor, ag one. By now, most of you have heard me tell my story about how I've been taking ag one once or twice a day, every day since 2012. And indeed that's true. I started taking ag one and I still take ag one once or twice a day because it gives me vitamins and minerals that I might not be getting enough of from whole foods that I eat, as well as adaptogens and micronutrients. And those adaptogens and micronutrients are really critical because even though I strive to eat most of my foods from unprocessed or minimally processed whole foods, it's often hard to do so, especially when I'm traveling and especially when I'm busy. So by drinking a packet of ag one in the morning and oftentimes also again in the afternoon or evening, I'm ensuring that I'm getting everything I need. I'm covering all of my foundational nutritional needs. And I, like so many other people that take ag one regularly, just report feeling better. And that shouldn't be surprising because it supports gut health. And of course, gut health supports immune system health and brain health. And it's supporting a ton of different cellular and organ processes that all interact with one another. So while certain supplements are really directed towards one specific outcome, like sleeping better or being more alert, ag one really is foundational nutritional support. It's really designed to support all of the systems of your brain and body that relate to mental health and physical health. If you'd like to try ag one, you can go to drinkagone.com huberman to claim a special offer. They'll give you five free travel packs with your order, plus a year's supply of vitamin d. Three, k, two. Again, that's drinkag one.com huberman so you're in Newport. Does that have a portal to the naval Academy?

Speaker B: Yeah, if you graduate prep school, you're straight into the naval Academy. Like, they fully expect you to be there the next year.

Speaker A: When junior year rolled around and senior year rolled around of high school, didn't anyone pull you aside and say, hey, you might want to, like, apply to a few other places. You might want to consider what you do if this doesn't work out, what did they assume you were going to do? They just head into the city of New Orleans and bus tables.

Speaker B: Zero guidance. Andrew really, like, from my high school, and I think the ecosystem I was in, like, people just didn't really know how to do that, you know, how to apply to schools. I mean, my parents obviously helped when I applied to the naval academy. But when I look at the system that kids go through now to go, you know, their process to find the best college experience. I never had one conversation with a guidance counselor about what to do. I just didn't. I mean, I just got very lucky. A few people, my high school wrestling coach intervened, I think, at some point and called the Naval Academy to speak to the coach to say, you should give this kid a chance. But they didn't know who he was. You know, I'm so lucky and so fortunate that I ended up where I ended up. It's why I took it so seriously. Like the focus with which I applied my time in high school, I took that to ten x degree when I got to Newport because I knew this was my chance.

Speaker A: There's something magical to that. I can relate to that. So you're in Newport and describe what a day was like. Is it all wrestling? You're taking general education classes like one does in the first two years of university?

Speaker B: Yep. So the way the prep school is set up for the naval academy is they're basically teaching you the first semester of the naval academy. So you take calculus, physics, chemistry, I think you take an english class, etcetera, and you go through, like, a pretty hellacious first couple of weeks because you're away from the flagpole where no one can hear you scream. You know, you're up in Newport, you're not in Annapolis where everyone's watching and you do a couple hellacious weeks for an 18 year old who's never been in the military before.

Speaker A: So you're in the military, technically, if.

Speaker B: You go to this, you're actually enlisted in the navy.

Speaker A: Okay. So they own you to some extent.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do. And then you do.

Speaker A: You're wearing uniforms, you jogging in the morning, you're doing salutes and marching.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker A: You're bugling. They're doing taps in the evening.

Speaker B: All of it.

Speaker A: Got it?

Speaker B: Yep. And you live. There's 300 people at the prep school. It's distributed basically amongst folks coming from the fleet. So guys who did four or five years in the military somewhere, and they're coming into the naval academy from the fleet, and then athletes and then sort of a mixture of other folks who need a little extra school. Right. And so. And then you do a full school year. You're competing. It's basically a red shirt year. That's not a red shirt year. I competed up and down the east coast against, you know, all the other prep schools. And you finish that year in May, and then, you know, you're done with the preps. The prep year is fine. It's a little bit of a shock when you're 18, but it's fine.

Speaker A: Always been curious about these military schools and the people that go to them and what happens to people there. Did you have any sense of patriotism prior to arriving at this prep school? And did that sense of patriotism. I'm talking like, love of country, understanding the history of our country and its position in the international landscape. Are you thinking about that stuff. Are they feeding you that, or is it really wrestling? Get through the march, shower up, go to the next thing. Is it very, like, plug and chug?

Speaker B: No, no. The feeding of. And I really appreciated this. The feeding of those concepts starts when you get there. But I was deer in the headlights, and, like, I didn't think about my life in this way at all when I was headed there. I mean, what you get very early because the school very quickly starts to bring really high level, accomplished people, colonels, admirals, whatever, generals, to expose you to this people. I do remember sitting there within weeks, like, this is way bigger than I thought it was in terms of how serious this situation is, you know, and how serious this ecosystem of people take this, because I didn't have. My dad wasn't an admiral. He was a welder in New Orleans. You know, I didn't understand the bigness of it.

Speaker A: One of the reasons I asked this is that various times throughout my life, I've had this experience of, like, seeing people close to me doing incredible work. You know, like, when I was a postdoc at Stanford, I had Nobel Prize was given that one week to the guy next door to me.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: So you see him in the morning and you're hearing it on the radio. And obviously, I didn't have that kind of stature or talent in science. I think I'm a good scientist, but good enough to. You'll get tenure at Stanford. But then there are levels within the game. But there is something very special to the experience of having people close to you physically and in the same ecosystem, as you described it, achieving amazing things. I also saw this in skateboarding. I mean, there were a lot of, let's just say, failures to integrate with normal life. But there were also some guys that I grew up with who started companies and set world records and had their pro models. And then if you zoom out from that and you go, wait, I'm in this community. It changes oneself view about what's possible. So I think that's what you're describing. And I think it's such an important thing for people to experience at some point, even if the goal isn't to be at kind of world scale, for people to realize that the town they grew up in, the family they grew up in that context, can expand. So do you recall being at this prep school and kind of third personing yourself and thinking like, well, I'm Colman Ruiz. I'm from New Orleans. I went from this to this to this. The way you've been describing it, and I'm here, and they're like, I'm around some incredibly impressive people, and I'm here. Like, once you make that recognition that you're there, a whole bunch of things can open up.

Speaker B: No, I actually came at it from the opposite way, and this has been a hard thing for me my whole life, and I have to watch out for this perspective is, I felt like every day I had to wake up and earn my place there. I was never good enough for myself, ever. So next day up is a restart to prove myself again on whatever standard I'm picking that day. Right. Looking back on it, I realize it was somewhat arbitrary because it was just day by day. I didn't think. I'm coleman ruiz. I made it here. Look, I'm part of this ego. I was afraid. Like, mike Tyson talks about being afraid every time. I was afraid every day, and I fought for, like, a position in this place every day. Now, that was adaptive in some regard, right? Very, because to me, it was, let's go. Like, today's another new day, and it's 100% all in the full go. I hope everybody's ready.

Speaker A: Did you ever recall falling asleep at night and thinking like, well, like, I.

Speaker B: Had a good day.

Speaker A: I had a good day, or I'm scared, you know, they're gonna discover I can't keep up, or I can't keep up all the time. So a lot of fear. I mean, yeah, a lot of fear all the time.

Speaker B: And some of it I do. I genuinely know and believe now, Andrew, that it was well intentioned. Like, I wanted to do a good job for the group, whatever group I was in, my platoon, my squad, in the case of the prep school, you know, that first experience. I mean, I was talking about this with. With my wife the other day, just because stories come up, you know, we had a 25th reunion at the naval academy and this kind of thing, and I was a really good runner for my group in high school, like, the people I was around. I ran cross country when I was younger, and anyway, I did. I suppose I'm going the other. I sort of did have some level of confidence in my ability, and then I got there, and, like, all these college cross country runners are like, my son is now just crushing me. And I think, sadly, because it was just sort of in me that fed my fear like shit. I thought I was better than this. Clearly, I suck. I have to get to their level. So I did have a very well intentioned excitement around. Just do a good job with the people you're around. There's something fun to that and wild, you know, as we spoke about. But I was operating out of fear for decades.

Speaker A: But there was a I need to get to their level statement in there. It wasn't. I can't keep up. I better find a different path.

Speaker B: No, no, no. I knew I could. I knew I could get to their level with enough work, you know?