EP 974: Rich Hernandez - Record-Breaking Conquest

Tom Rowland Podcast — Episode 974: Rich Hernandez

In this episode: the planking journey from two minutes to a four-hour world record, 3,000 consecutive push-ups, Goggins’ cookie jar and 40% rule, pixel planks on America’s Got Talent, and the road from MIT and Yale to full-time hard things — in the exact words spoken.

00:00 · Cold Open

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Rich Hernandez: I'm Rich from do hard things three six five, and this is a Tom Rowland podcast.

Tom Rowland: Rich Hernandez, do hard things three six five. What's up, man?

Rich Hernandez: What's What's going on?

Tom Rowland: I am happy to have you here, man. I'll tell you what. I I, I I don't know how or why I have missed your content, but I just came across your channel. I mean, how long has your channel been out there? Do hard things three six five.

Rich Hernandez: It hasn't been out there very long. 09/19/2023 is when I started the journey. And by the way, you're not alone. When people find me, they're like, wait. Why don't you have a 100,000 followers? Why don't you have a million followers? And I say, you know what? I'll find my people. I'm not worried about it.

02:20 · 3,000 Push-Ups, 4-Hour Planks, and the Book That Started It

Tom Rowland: Oh, you're gonna get there, man. You're gonna get there. You're doing incredible things. I mean okay. So just because I want to make sure that everybody understands what we're getting ready to talk about here. You've done 3,000 consecutive push ups in one session. And so when I say 3,000 consecutive push ups, that's not touching your knees. That's not touching anything. You're in a remaining in a plank position doing 3,000 consecutive push ups and push ups mean something to this audience. We do the 10,000 push up challenge every every year, so we have a lot of push up people here. You did 8,700 push ups in a single day. You've done a four hour plank. You completed David Goggins' four by four by forty eight Challenge five times. You did the Camino Santiago pilgrimage in Spain, except that you carried all your family's luggage with you on the trail. It's not enough to just do the trail. You carried all your family's luggage. That's amazing. That's awesome. You run your age on your birthday. You ran 42 miles last year. You'll run 43 this year. You climbed Mount Whitney in one day and held a one hour plank at the top at the highest point. You've done a rim to rim to rim at Grand Canyon in a in a day twice, and cactus to clouds. I don't know about that. Cactus to clouds, hardest day hike in America five times. You, random, but you have the record for the most number of core power yoga sculpt classes in one day, which is nine. I don't know what that is either. You did 1,776 non stop sit ups. I'm assuming that was somewhere around the July 4. You did a thousand pull ups in one session. 9,000 reps of push ups, pull ups, and sit ups. That sounds fun on tax day. And, that's pretty amazing, man. You've done so many of these things. So, what why are you, why are you possessed by this by this demon that makes you do all these things? What is this? I mean, I wore my Goggins shirt because I know I know what drives you and you have a you have a story about Goggins and I have a fondness for David Goggins and the like. Cameron Haynes, Truett Haynes, all all of these guys. I like to do hard things too, but I'm fascinated with what makes what's what makes you tick, man.

Rich Hernandez: I I I think we're all cut from the same cloth, to be honest. And and to be honest, I've always had this this thing in my in my belly that knowing that this was a path that I was gonna go down. But it it actually took David Goggins and his book, Can't Hurt Me, to get me down this path back in July. I think it was 2019. I read the book and there was something about the book that that just resonated with me. Because all my life, I've always been athletic, but I've never leaned into it as much as I did. I would always try to push and be excellent, and there was always something that dragged me back. It was either work or friends saying, hey, why are you at the gym on a Friday night? You should just come out and and drink some beers, just hang out. And you know what? Society kept me average for the longest time. And when I when I just said, you know what? Put I'm I'm putting my flag down September 19. I'm committing to doing hard things every day. And by the way, that was a year and a half ago. I haven't taken any rest days. And if you look at my Instagram, you look you look at my pin stories up top, I put a daily story where I just summarize in bullet points, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop. This is what I did for the day. If you go and you pick a random one, you will see it was a hard day. On average, I was probably putting seven hours of of some type of workout in the beginning. Now, I do more like five hours because of the social media thing. But, hey, I get after it every single day. But it did start with Goggins showing me the way. I did run with him, and we could talk about that a little later if

06:12 · Life Before Goggins: Kept Average for the Longest Time

Tom Rowland: you'd like. Of course, we will. What tell me where you were, like, before you read that book. Describe your life, like, where you were, what you're doing for a living. Like, you say society kept you average right before you read this book. Tell me, where were you before you read the book?

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. Quickly. My my background, I have a I have an engineering background, went to MIT for my undergrad. I always knew the I always knew the the the message of putting in hard work. For me, it was in academia. I had good parents that really, really drove that into me, that told me that education was the most important thing that that we could get. You know, my parents immigrated to this country. They don't have educations. They I don't they they have middle school educations, but because of their messaging and then staying on top of us, all three of us, my sister and my brother and myself, we all went to MIT. So, I learned the value of hard work, putting in the work, but it it it it translated really well to academia, and it translated really work really good to to the jobs that I had as an engineer. And then and then working more as a business guy, business strategy, and then a chief of staff. But it never really translated to to me holistically, trying to be the best version of myself, not just from, do I have a good job, do I make good money, but do I am I proud of myself? Do I like the way that I feel? Do do I like the way that I look? Am I strong enough to be a good protector and provider for those around me? Am I a positive force for my community? And it all started with with that focus and that obsessive focus for me to be the best version of myself. And so, in July 2019, when I read the Goggins book, it set me down that path. And for the next five years, I I I kind of had spurts, these three or four or five months spurts where I would do really well, and then I would regress. And then I would get a little chubby, and then I'd get a little lazy. And then skipping one day at the gym, all of a sudden became skipping three weeks at the gym. And because of all these learnings, all these setbacks, I said, you know what? For me, I have to do something every day. And so, with do hard things, I preach a very simple message that applies to everyone. It's one, do something hard every day. And by the way, your hard, different than my hard. My hard today, very different than my hard a year ago. Right? Number two, focus on getting 1% better because a lot of people, they they're gonna watch this podcast, they're gonna get really, really amped up, they're gonna say 3,000 push ups. Alright, let's go. And they're gonna try to go do a thousand, guess what's gonna happen? They're probably gonna get injured and they're probably gonna have a setback. And so I really preach saying, Hey, just focus on getting 1% better every day. And you might not get there, but if you strive for 1%, you might get half a percent, you might get one and a half. But over time, and this is the most important part that I preach, is you do number one and number two for a long time. Like, that's it. And that is the equation for success I found with everything that's related to to to to physical feats, to business, to life, and actually, what it comes down to is really the hardening of the mind and and really building that daily discipline muscle.

Tom Rowland: So you're in this place where you're you're very inconsistent before you read Goggin's book. You you understand the value of what of of hard things and doing hard things, but you're just not actually doing them. What is what changes when you read that book? What about what was it about that book that that you really connected with? With?

Rich Hernandez: I think that the book specifically gives you very specific tools that if you listen, and this is one thing that has come with age, I I if someone who's an expert is telling me something and says, these are the tools that I use, now I say, alright, game on. Let's go. You're the expert. Like for example, I tried out for America's Got Talent two weeks ago. Why? Because this guy, the Balance Guru, shout out to the Balance Guru, he's a connection on social media. He says, Hey, you're the best athlete that I know and you should go on the show. And I said, What? To do push ups? And he says, bro, we'll figure something out. And he convinced me and I said, you know what? Everything about this says I shouldn't do it because I'm scared and this is way out of my comfort zone, but you're the expert and if you work with me, I will do it. So I did it. Whether I'll get a callback, I don't know. But I did the thing.

10:51 · Pixel Planks and America’s Got Talent

Tom Rowland: What did you do? What what is the thing you did?

Rich Hernandez: There's one thing that I do that's kinda like an artsy thing but it's very endurance based is I hold the plank and with poker chips, I spell messages as I'm holding this plank. So for like Saint Patrick's Day, I spelled Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And so for America's Got Talent, it's

Tom Rowland: the same Tell tell them for Saint Patrick's Day, not everybody saw it. So for Saint Patrick's Day, what did you do? I saw it.

Rich Hernandez: So so I call these things called pixel planks and I just spell messages and it usually takes an hour. So I'm holding a straight arm plank for an hour. And on top of that, I'm positioning all these chips so that it spells something like, do hard things three six five or or on MLK on Martin Luther King's day. I spelled a quote, a very powerful quote from Martin Luther King. You know that quote where he says, if you can't fly, then you run. If you can't run, then you walk. If you can't walk, then you crawl, but you need to be moving forward. I did that on MLK. So on Saint Patty's day, because I have a daily push up challenge, I said, well, what if I just did one push up for every chip that I placed? And so on that day, I did 380 push ups and using black, white, and green chips, I I drew a four leaf clover and the words Saint Patty's Day. I thought it was pretty cool, and I thought it was very different.

Tom Rowland: It's pretty cool. Yeah. And so that's that was your talent on America's Got Talent?

Rich Hernandez: So I did something like that but obviously they don't have an hour for me so Right. It it was two minutes of me shuffling all these chips. Some of them what they didn't know were UV coated. So they're I'm like, I'm spelling something and I'm acting nervous and I'm like, oh, no. What what does that look like? And by the time I'm done, I hit it with a UV flashlight and it spells a g t for America's Got Talent.

Tom Rowland: Oh, wow. So did did you have those marked some way that you could tell which ones were?

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. Yeah. I had a I had a little marker, but they couldn't tell.

Tom Rowland: And so was that your idea or the or the balance guru?

Rich Hernandez: It it was my idea, but, but balance guru definitely helped me kinda like fine tune it.

Tom Rowland: I mean, you never know where that goes. You might get on the show or you might get on one of those you might hit their social media. I mean, that could be that could be really big.

Rich Hernandez: But what I did also because, you know, I'm mister dohart thinks three six five. When I was waiting in line, do you think I was gonna wait there with my hands crossed? No. I was holding a plank. I plank. I plank in line. I plank in line for an hour.

13:15 · The Cookie Jar, the 40% Rule, and Taking Souls

Tom Rowland: Of course, you did. So of the of the tools that that David Goggins writes about in his book, he's got a cookie jar. He's got a cookie jar. He's got a

Rich Hernandez: cookie jar in there.

Tom Rowland: Yep. Which are the ones that that you started to to think, maybe I maybe I'll incorporate that. Like, which are the ones that that were the first and the easiest for you to incorporate and understand what he was talking about?

Rich Hernandez: Okay. So there's three big ones in that book. Obviously, the cookie jar the cookie jar is is him saying, you gotta you gotta get all your accomplishments and put them in a cookie jar so that the next time that you're facing a challenge, you're you remind yourself that that you are actually a badass, that you're actually a person that can take on this challenge. And so one example for me is, I was and and I can talk about an example and I'll talk about the three tools. But when I was doing the Grand Canyon where rim to rim to rim, you literally start on one side of the rim, you go down all the way across all the way to the top top of the rim, North rim, you come down all the way back and you come come up a different way called bright angel. Well, I'll tell you, when I was at the foot of bright angel, every cell of my body was saying, you can't do this. You can't do this. Just bring out your little bivy, just get in your little shelter, sleep for two or three hours, and then we continue. And then I remembered the cookie jar. And I said, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. You're gonna tell me that you just ran a 48 mile challenge with Goggins, and you can't hike 53 miles out of the canyon. And there's something about that that my mind just sort of reoriented itself and said, alright, let's try this one foot in front of the other. And you just focus on putting one foot in front of the other. And before you know it, ten minutes in, you start feeling that momentum again. And then an hour and you're like, all right, we got this. And so that, the cookie jar, the reason the cookie jar works for me and affirmations have never worked for me is that affirmations when you look yourself in the mirror and you say, I am powerful, I am great. Those are good and you're putting out good energy but they're not rooted in anything real, anything that's real to you. For me, I use this all the time now where I'm, I'm climbing Whitney and I start getting these negative voices that say, Why are you doing this? Hey, Rich, turn around, go home. Hey, you're gonna get hurt. I pull something from my cookie jar and all of a sudden, it quiets that voice and I do the thing. So that's one of the tools. Tool number two, that's a very good one, is the 40% rule. And he says, when you're when you're when you feel you're gassed out, when you feel you're done, you're actually at the 40% mark and you got 60% more to give. And that's a really good, like, memeable thing that's just top of mind. Whenever I hit a wall, I go, yeah. Actually, yeah, we got more in the tank. And, and the third one, the third one deals with the negative energy and I still use that from time to time, but taking souls, like sometimes you need to get energy from somewhere and sometimes you gotta take it from other people. And and, that's a good one. You know, I really believe in in all every interaction that one has, you can use the carrot or you can use the stick. Right? You can use the positive energy of visualizing yourself having that the the set of ribs, maybe the beer, whatever at the finish line of your marathon. Or you can look at the person in front of you and say, you're gonna let that person beat you? I'm gonna take that person's soul. And so I use these tools, every single day. I can honestly say I use these three tools every single day, and they're inspired by the goat, the master, the the man himself, Goggins, the hardest man on earth. You know?

17:07 · The Planking Journey: From Two Minutes to Four Hours

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. Yeah. That that book was really, really good. I, I wonder, like, when you when you start doing these, these extreme challenges and you do something that you didn't really think that you could do. And and this this certainly applies to a lot of the audience that that listens to this show because we like I said, we do this 10,000 push up challenge. A lot of people had never done 500 push ups, and they end up doing 10,000 push ups in a month. And and it's a big accomplishment for them. The next time I noticed that they do it, they do it in twenty five days, and then they do it in twenty days, and then they do it in fifteen days. And then, you know, people are completing this thing in in, you know, seven or eight days now. And these are people that I've been in touch with for a number of years, and they they some people, they did the 10,000 push up challenge. And then they said, well, it was so great that month that I've done it every single month since. And that's three years ago. And so they they've started this thing, and they've they've done it. But I, in my own experience, there have been some some things that have been accomplished, and they have forever changed the way that I think about almost everything. And I'm wondering if, like, you have, like, an anecdote or a story where you accomplish something. And in my experience and in what Goggins talks about, it basically reprograms your brain. And it reprograms your brain to where now you don't look at anything the same way again ever for the rest of your life. And that's part of the cookie that's part of what the cookie jar is. Right? But sometimes the way the brain works, you tend to forget that for a few minutes, And those are really important minutes, and then you reach back in the cookie jar and you go, no. I did the rim to rim to rim, and, you know, I've done that twice. Like, if I can do that, I can definitely do this. Right? But I wonder if there's a if there's a story about the first time that you accomplished something that you didn't think was possible and what that did for your own mind.

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. Absolutely. I got I got so many examples, but I I'll talk about the planking journey. So the planking journey, you know, this just came out of me being at a gym and saying, hey. Let me try to hold a really long plank. And it was October 2023. And I said, you know what? I'm like mister do hard things now, so let me try to do something hard. I held the seven minute plank again. We're doing the straight arm plank version. I know there's a lot of people out there, a lot of trolls too that say, that's not the real plank. It's a plank, guys. There's there's actually a world record for it, and I'm gonna get it next next month in April. April. You get What

Tom Rowland: are they saying it? What are you what are they saying is the real plank on your elbows?

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. They call that the the abdominal plank, but the elbow plank, low plank. There's low plank, there's high plank, there's side plank, there's a lot of variations, guys. So the one, you know, because I gotta put it out there. There's a thing called the straight arm plank. It's also a front a front leaning rest position. It's also the top of a push up. That's what I'm talking about. So I did a seven minute plank, and I thought it was really good. And by the way, during that, everything was burning. I was sweating, my shoulders were burning, I was shaking, but I did it. And I said, well, what if I just increase this every Friday? And so that's what I did. Every Friday, I tried increasing it by one minute. So next week, eight minutes, same thing. I'm shaking, I'm burning, my mind's trying to talk me out of it. My mind is very good at trying to talk me out of it, but I say, no, This is what I'm doing. So this keeps on going. I do seven, then eight, then nine, then 10. And always having the same conversations in my head, but we're getting it done, never failing. I take it all the way to twenty seven minutes. Right? So I've been so twenty seven minutes. So twenty weeks of planking, really pushing every single week, every single Friday. And then a buddy says, Hey, it doesn't look like you're trying to fail. Why don't you try to fail? And I said, Hey, Dom. That's a good point. So I started bumping it up by five minutes. So I went from 30 to 35 to 40. You know, it always same experience. I would always get the pain, the shoulder burns, the shaking, the voice trying to talk me out of it. And I kept that going until I got to a hundred minutes. And then at a 100, I'm like, well, that's kind of like two hours. So then I jumped to two hours, then two and a half, then three, then four. And by the way, guys, Tom, guys who are listening, this happened every single week. Every single week, I was trying to push my boundary. Right? But I wish I had the graph so I can show you, but that graph is what I wanted.

Tom Rowland: Got it. You can pull it up.

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. You can pull it up. Yeah. You can pull it up. Yeah. But essentially, that graph is how I see when things start clicking. There's an inflection point that usually happens. And in my experience, it usually is around the five or six, five or six month mark where all of a sudden, you know, you've been trying to lose weight and it's not working. You're gaining a few pounds or you're losing a few pounds. But if you stick to the equation, you trust the process and all of a sudden, five or six months, it just all falls off. It all just slides right off of you. Right? Yeah. That's that's the graph right there. I get

Tom Rowland: Everybody can see it but me. Okay. Oh, there it is.

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. Of course, it's got the breaking bad because I like putting like green screen stuff and making it a little fun. Yeah. But you could see that somewhere around, when was it? It? Was it was it like March? I think it was March time frame when I started adding the five minutes so that the inflection point changes and then all of a sudden, bam, it just becomes a hockey stick. Right? Bam. Yeah. And so in the course of ten months, if you look at that, for half the time, I was getting better, but I wasn't getting that much better. And then all of a sudden, everything got unlocked and boom boom boom boom boom four hours, which by the way is the unofficial world record four hours.

Tom Rowland: So why'd you stop at four hours?

Rich Hernandez: I'd I'll be honest. I'll be honest, there are some changes that take longer. If you talk to any rock climbers, for example, that use their hands a lot, the tendons, the ligaments, there's a lot of other supporting structures that take on the orders of months to years to adapt. So I didn't wanna be I say this all the time. Do hard things is not about doing stupid things. It's not about doing dumb things and not about doing do it for the gram things. Right? So I was smart about it. I saw the signs of maybe potentially getting carpal tunnel or that. I started feeling sensations, So I backed off of it. And instead of doing four, five, six, seven, eight, I said, let me turn this into reaching out to community. And that's when I started really doing the weekly community planks where I hold one plank, one hour every Friday morning, and I invite people to join me on the second mat that I have placed next to me.

Tom Rowland: That sounds

Rich Hernandez: So I'm still I'm still planking, but, you know, I said, I don't need to push the five or six or seven hours. Let me get the official Guinness record first, and then I'll do whatever I want.

24:06 · What Planking Does to Body and Mind

Tom Rowland: The plank is is, it's a fantastic exercise. What do you think all that planking has done for you physically?

Rich Hernandez: The core, man. The core. I mean, you could probably pull up a diagram to see what muscles are engaged but it's really good for the shoulders, really good for the arms, really good for the core. But the best muscle that it works is the mind. It's that Yeah. It's that voice. It's that voice that that tells you to quit. The more you do the planks, the more you do the long planks, the quieter that voice gets. And it doesn't just get quiet for the planking. It gets quiet for everything. It gets quiet for, hey. I'm gonna jump in the cold in a in an ice bath. Hey. I'm you know, things come up in life, and all of a sudden, you just become a more resilient person because of this.

Tom Rowland: Do you find that, you you get the same kind of quieting of that voice when you're when you're running versus the plank, or is the plank just better for you for that?

Rich Hernandez: I think it's they're all cousins, to be honest. Yeah. I think they're all cousins. That's a good question though. I haven't really thought about that. I think running for me, I get more into a zone, I think. I get more into what do they call that? It has a name.

Tom Rowland: Flow state.

Rich Hernandez: Flow state. Thank thank you. Yeah. I get more into flow state when I run and I get really good ideas. In fact, I carry these little notebooks, waterproof notebooks

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Where I

Rich Hernandez: just write ideas down. It's the best thing you could do. For the planking, I just start having really hard conversations with myself. I don't feel like I get into a flow state. I just feel like I grow a lot, and I'm working out that muscle that's in the mind that tries to get you to quit.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. There's something about moving and thinking that I don't know. For me, it's it's the very, very best. If I had known that in school, it sounds like you were a much better student than I was because you went to MIT. I went to University of Alabama. They barely let me in, and so they wanted me to leave. But, anyway, if I had if I listen to a podcast or I like to listen to books when I'm running long distances or something, and I can remember those things so well. Even driving. Like, even driving, like, if I listen to an audiobook, I can listen to it. I can remember a lot of things. But if I'm moving when I listen to it, walking, running, rowing, on the ski machine, something like that for an extended period of time and I'm listening to something, I can retain a tremendous amount more of that information than if I was sitting there reading it, in a in a, you know, in a chair Yeah. Sitting there. And I think that's one of the re I don't know what that is. That probably somebody out there is like, oh, that's put three letters behind my name. I don't know what it is, but it made it very difficult for me in school. And had I known that you could just walk and listen to these things, I would have probably done a lot better.

Rich Hernandez: But Let's get let's get Huberman on that. Yeah.

26:56 · SEAL Fit Kokoro and Mark Divine

Tom Rowland: I guess. I don't know. When I, my experience with a long plank is that I was getting ready for an event called Seal Fit Kokoro. Do you know what

Rich Hernandez: that is? No. So

Tom Rowland: there's a guy out your way, Mark Devine. He's a retired Navy Seal. He's in when I did it, it was in Encinitas, and, the comp the company is called SealFit, and Mark Devine is, is the the in charge of that. But you can go out there and do this forty eight hour event with retired Navy Seals or real active Navy Seals, actually, and it's supposed to be a snapshot of hell week. It's supposed to be, you know, not the whole thing, but guys like you and me that are not in the military. I don't know. Were you in the military?

Rich Hernandez: No. I was not.

Tom Rowland: So I wasn't either. But guys that are like you or me that are curious and find it interesting and have a lot of respect for, you know, the SEALs, you can drop in and do this. And it's also, for someone who is getting ready to go to BUDS. This is a great kind of precursor and make sure that you you're you're ready. And they do a lot of the things that they do in BUDS, but it's not the same thing. It's just a forty eight hour thing. But, anyway, when I was getting ready for that, he dropped a video right before that. And and I knew you were supposed to do a lot of planks, and you need to do a lot of push ups, and they would put you in front leaning rest, you know, at at all times for extended periods. So I was doing these extended planks, what I thought was an extended plank. And then I watched this video, and he's got this, the class right before me. And he he puts them all in in plank position facing each other, and he just continues to walk up and down the middle for forty five minutes. And at the time, I was like, oh my, forty five minutes? Forty five. I mean, are you serious? And all these people did it. Right? They weren't prepared for it. They didn't know. But because they were asked to or made to, they they did it. And they were all sweating. It was exactly what you what you thought. But Then I was like, oh my god. I wanna do a forty five minute plank. So I started, you know, working on longer and longer planks. But when I got there, we didn't have to do a forty five

Rich Hernandez: minute plank. But you know what's crazy about that is is alright. So I have a I have I do some live streaming, and I invite people to to do push ups with me, right, worldwide. It's on Wednesdays, Instagram. Anybody can call in. We split the screen, and you do one set of push ups with me. And I have some guys that have become monsters. There's this guy from France who was in bed one time scrolling. He was just scrolling in bed and he's like, oh, wow. This is interesting. And he got out of bed and he called in and he did 40. Shout out to Great Gaines. He did 40 and he's a strong guy. Right? And this guy threw the course and he drank the Kool Aid. He listened to me. He sees me as a good coach, as a good mentor. He kept on showing up. He joined this last Wednesday and I ended up getting another big influencer, Boojah Boi. Shout out to Boosha Boy. He joined. And I had these four guys in this room and the guy leveled up to a thousand. He hit a thousand nonstop push ups three months ago.

Tom Rowland: That's without touching that's without touching his knees or anything, like staying in a plank position and doing a thousand.

Rich Hernandez: Staying in a plank position. Stay in a plank position.

Tom Rowland: That's incredible. Because during these, during these, you know, 10,000 push ups this year, I did a thousand push ups a day or over a thousand push ups a day. So I finished in, like, seven days, I think. So but I was doing a thousand, but certainly not in not in one go like that. I've never tried that. Until I saw you do that, I didn't even know that was a thing. Like, you're supposed to even try to do that, so I'm gonna have to try. But, you know, a thousand I mean, a few years ago, it's like what you write here is that your heart today is not not the same hard as a year ago. And so I remember the first time I did the 10,000 push up challenge, and I was like, man, 300 push ups a day. That's a may I mean and I was sore and tired. And then, you know, you do it for a few years, and then the next thing you know, it's like, I'll just I wanna get this thing over with as fast as possible. I'm gonna I'm gonna do more than a thousand every day. And Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it just it's just like, I've I did it last year. I did it last year in ten days. So this year, I'll do it nine. Then next year, I'll do it in eight. The next year, I'll do it in seven. I don't know. But, I mean, that seems like where you're going. But what I find interesting is is that you're able to do all this. So what do you do for a job? Like, you're working out for six hours a day.

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. Real really quickly, can I show you this this prop? So I I'm I'm very high-tech in how I keep people's PRs. I just scribble them down here. So when people hit a PR, I cross out their last PR and then I put their new PR. Right? So this guy, great gains. And, again, it goes back to this concept that I'm telling you that when it hits, when the limiter breaks, you're capable of so much. It's a struggle fest when you get to that point. Now, great gains made it look really easy on Wednesday, but let me read you his his his PRs on a week by week basis. I don't think he skipped any weeks. So he went from 40 to 55 to 69 to 75 to one fifteen to one fifty to 300 to 400 to a thousand. See, it's not it's not a linear process. It's not a linear process. And I think a lot of people, they end up giving up somewhere in between. And they say, I've had enough of this, whatever. But if you stick to the process, there's something that that breaks in your mind or I would say the opposite. It's something that gets fixed in your mind where all of a sudden you see what you're capable of and it's crazy because, you know, I'm an engineer. Right? So the hardware is the same. There's something that happens with the software that just changes and then all of a sudden you're using everything way more efficiently. And and and this also is not just for guys. I have a girl, shout out to Steph. She when she first joined me, she was doing less than 20 nonstop push ups. She's a petite Latina girl. This last time, yesterday or two days ago, she did a 130 nonstop push ups. Wow. And, again, not a lot of time in the in the in the course of three months.

33:00 · Haters, Negative Comments, and Turning Them Into Fuel

Tom Rowland: One thing I think about all the time with the with the physical world, like, if you're if you're involved in the physical world, what, you like to work out, you like to do these endurance events or challenges or things like we're talking about, I find it incredibly applicable to the rest of my life. Like, exactly what you're talking about about if you do something long enough and you're trying to improve a little bit every single day, and then all of a sudden, the something breaks, and and it's not it it it it's not in a straight line. It hockey sticks up. That could be said for running a business. That could be said for parenting. That could be said for almost anything. Like, where else in your life have you seen that happen?

Rich Hernandez: In in everything. In everything. It's even getting back into reading books. I got pretty lazy at some point. And when I started running again, reading again through a a a 75 hard challenge, a lot of people know that challenge.

Tom Rowland: Finish that. Yeah.

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. Shout out to Andy Purcella and FirstForm. I think it's a great it's a great challenge. When I started reading again 10 pages a day, it was really, really hard for me. But then you do it, you do it every day, you do it every day. By the end of seventy five days, you're like, okay. I have momentum now. And and even in that little silly example, it's like, look. I'm I'm an academic guy. I went to MIT, but then I stopped reading and all those muscles atrophied it. And And the way you get started again and it's it's what I preach, it's you gotta build momentum. You just gotta take small steps and you gotta crawl, then you walk, then you run. There's a lot of people that get excited about running a marathon and I tell them, woah, woah, woah. Just just put on your shoes today today. Don't look up any training plans. Just put on your shoes today, go for a walk. Like, that's it. And that if that feels good, do it again tomorrow. Go twice around the block. And keep on doing that. And then when you get a week from now, alright, then we start adding the light jogging and then all that, and then you start looking at training plans. But you gotta just start building momentum. And it's the same in business. We could talk about examples in business too, but that's just these are two very, like, simple, tangible examples that that are very real to me.

Tom Rowland: That's what I I have a group of guys that work out with me every morning, and, a lot of people come. You know, my my pet peeve about the whole thing is if somebody says, you know, I wanna come out and work out with you guys, but I I need to get in better shape before I come out there. Like, dude, that's what we do. That's what we do. Like, if you show up, you're gonna get in great shape. I promise you, man. I promise you. It this is the fastest way to get in good shape. But that's that's I don't know. Maybe that's an excuse or something that that people people, you know, use, but I hear it a lot.

Rich Hernandez: We we all have built in excuses. I mean, we wanna be in comfort. I think about this a lot. And and society's built this way, we're built this way. We're we're we're designed to be very hard, very strong, very capable people, but there's something about society that makes people weak and it gives them a lot of outs. And it's very easy to be average. Society makes it very, very easy to be average. That's why you have to surround yourself with with people. You gotta have a tribe of of go getters. You gotta be you gotta be friends with me, for example. But but but there's something about getting in the arena. There's a quote that I love saying. I made a video about it, but Teddy Roosevelt's man in the arena. If you haven't if you haven't listened to that speech, listen to it. But he basically says, it's much better to be the person in the arena fighting the fighting the fights, fighting the battles. Sure, you might get beat up. Sure, you, you know, you might you might die, you but you might also be the victor. And it's way better to be this person having these experiences fighting the fights than just to be the critic in the stands who's never experienced that yet seems to be very critical about your every move. These are the people that that see the push up videos and they go, bro, you don't you don't have full range of motion. What are those half pumps? Guys, my range of motion is pretty damn good. Okay? But young but young men come to me. A lot of young men DM me and they say, hey, how do you deal with trolls? Because I put stuff out there and, you know, they show me the videos. I go, yeah, your form could improve but who cares? Like, if these people that are commenting aren't doing push ups on their profile, their opinion does not matter. Now if David Goggins tell them

Tom Rowland: you don't tell them to record to to to read those negative comments into a a recorder and then listen to them while you're doing push ups like David Goggins?

Rich Hernandez: That's a good one.

Tom Rowland: That's what he does.

Rich Hernandez: Yep. Yep. I'm gonna listen.

Tom Rowland: I'm gonna turn that into fuel. Yep. It's awesome. It's awesome. But but dealing with dealing with negativity is is, you know, that is that is something that, that do people will need some advice on. What do you what do you say about that? Like, what is your advice? Don't listen?

Rich Hernandez: That would be fuel. You should listen, but like I said earlier, everything is fuel. Positive? Great. Fuel. Girlfriend broke up with you? Good. Fuel. There I was at the gym, six months ago when I was still at a gym. I'm not at a gym anymore, but I was doing pull ups and I was gonna do a thousand, right? Sets of seven, seven EMOM every minute for two plus hours. And I was really struggling, and then all of a sudden, we had a guy who doesn't like me very much. He came into the gym at the same time. I'm like, Perfect. This is all I needed. He's watching me. This is easy work now and I got it done. So everything is energy. Everything should be harnessed to forward movement. I'm not saying ignore all the bad stuff. You should acknowledge it. And by the way, if criticism comes from people that are very good that know what they're doing, like if Goggins comes and tells you like, Hey, yeah, you should do this, you should do that, but he probably won't because he understands what you're doing. It always seems to be these haters. It always seems to be the people that have nothing going on in their life or there's just a lot of negativity around them that always have the loudest opinions. And the more that I do on social media, the more I see these patterns. It's like these people say two syllables. I'm like, yeah, you're on that camp. You know what? You're not my people. I'm not for everybody. And when I when I mentor these younger men, I I I tell them, like, hey. You gotta learn out how to how to how to cut out the noise and focus on the thing you need to focus on. It's a skill.

39:23 · MIT, Yale, and Corporate Strategy Before Content

Tom Rowland: So let's get back to what you were doing before, you read this book. What were you doing for a living before?

Rich Hernandez: I was, so just to walk you through the quick career, electrical engineer, computer science, I worked in the aerospace industry for a defense contractor, working on, space based products. So I was actually an engineer, highly technical, working on all these things that we don't talk about, but I was kind of in the mix. I did that for five years. I got a master's while I was doing it. Northrop Grumman was an amazing company. They paid for my education. And then I ended up getting my MBA, my master's of business administration at Yale University. It's one of the top business schools in the world. And after that, I worked for Emerson Electric, a big conglomerate. They're a a Fortune 500 company, more than a 100,000 employees, and I was doing strategy work there. A part of their leadership development program. First, I worked for the the chief technology officer, Randall Ledford there. I was his right hand. And then I worked for one of the the executive VPs who was next in line to be the CEO of of Emerson, and I did kind of business strategy type of work, strategic planning, things like that. And then I ended up moving back to Los Angeles, leaving Emerson because, I had some family situations that came up with my parents, some medical related stuff. And for me, family's really important. So all the kids actually ended up moving back to Los Angeles just to be closer to the parents, and everything's good. Everything's good. There were just a a couple of scares there. And then now that I was in LA, I started working for technology companies here, so tech startups. And I worked for a few, some, one of them that was in the financial technology sector, trying to disrupt, the real estate finance space. I worked for augmented reality company. And then the latest one, I worked for a a mobile games company called Scopely, which is, an amazing company. Make a lot of good games like Monopoly Go, Scrabble Go. And then they're now gonna acquire the company that that made Pokemon Go. So they're a they're a very big player in the space. And I was the chief of staff there, so I was the the right hand to one of the co CEOs of the company. So I I was involved with a lot of things at that company and it was a really good experience there.

41:47 · Going All In, Getting Outside, and Lockdown Absurdity

Tom Rowland: So how do you go from all of that to what you're doing right now?

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. The company, Scopely, ended up getting acquired. So so there was just a good opportunity for me to focus on on other things. Again, Scopely was an amazing company. The the CEO that I worked for, amazing experience, but I had to take care of some of some family related, issues. And and then this idea of do hard things kinda came up, and I and, you know, I'm I'm trying to I'm trying to make money, do consulting projects while I'm trying to to get after it every single day. And I'm still trying to make that transition. I wish I could do do hard things three six five full time. I do have one sponsor, fire dot c x. It's, it's through a guy that I used to work with. We know each other through a business relationship. These people are incredibly smart. They're trying to, they're trying to do amazing things in in the crypto investing space.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm.

Rich Hernandez: Really good people. And so I I do have one sponsor, but I I I probably need to do a lot more so I can do this full time.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Is that what you wanna do? Like, you wanna do this full time. And so doing this full time would be just spreading your message and being kind of a an influencer in in that way? Or is it more important? Like, I I also noticed that you're already, like, mentoring people. So, like, would do you see this if you if you build up your account, do you see it kind of as a coaching kind of thing or more of, like, inspiration and influencer? Like, where do you see it going?

Rich Hernandez: It's it's a good question. I have a I have a really good vision in my head about it. Look, I could probably partner up with three or four CEOs and be a chief of staff, personal trainer type of person to these people and I'll cover my costs and I'll be comfortable, but that's not what I wanna do. I wanna be able to impact millions and hundreds of millions of people because I've learned a lot of things, just like you said about you in school and there's things you wish you would have known when you were younger. I want to grab people by their shoulders and just shake them and say, Hey guys, this is actually, I wanna demystify all of this. It's not that complicated. And by the way, it's not for everybody. If you wanna be exceptional, let me show you how because I can tell you I am exceptional. And by the way, some people when I first started to do hard things, a lot of friends, a lot of people close to me, they're like, this seems like a this seems like a a ego based thing. Like, it looks like you're just trying to show off to the world. And all these people, they've come around now and they get it. But you have to understand, I have to be doing exceptional things. I have to be the guy who's doing 3,000 nonstop push ups. I have to be the guy who's running 53 miles through the Grand Canyon. I have to be the guy holding a four hour plank because if I wasn't, why would they ever listen to me? Right? Mhmm. And so I have to do that. So one of my my pillars is I have to be exceptional. I have to get after it every day. The minute I'm not getting after after it every day, I think my message of authenticity, I think my message of of getting after it every every day just goes away. So I'm doing that regardless. Number two, I I want I'm creating more content that I think is very helpful for, for younger men, specifically. I get a I get messages on a daily basis of young men that are just saying, hey. You're you're, you've convinced me that I need to go run a 10 k. Hey. I'm starting to do this. Hey. I've lost 20 kilos. Hey. I'm I'm getting better. So there's kind of creating content to motivate and inspire people. And anyone who follows me, the first thing that happens when they open their Instagram, their YouTube, they're like, fuck, man. Rich is getting after it again. I think I gotta get after it. And I love that. And the third thing is I started a community called First fifty and it's on school.com. I built it on school.com. I have, like, 80 members right now. But the whole idea is that we do a fifty day challenge where we just focus on working on the fundamentals. We choose a diet. We stick to it. We drink our water because three quarters of Americans are severely dehydrated, not just dehydrated, severely dehydrated. We work out for fifty minutes every day. I help people figure out what that means. And then we get outdoors for twenty five minutes for a variety of reasons, right, for vitamin d, for there's these studies that say if you go out, I think it was a study of, University of Michigan that says if you go into green spaces three times a week just for twenty minutes, it has the equivalency of of taking antidepressant drugs. Like, you guys can go find that study, but there's a lot of positive effects that happen when you go outdoors and you move outdoors. And so What

Tom Rowland: if there was another what if there was another study that said if you go indoors for the rest of the time, you you have clinically you you have clinical depression. I mean, we have a lot of outdoor people here. This is basically a fishing podcast, but the fishing that we do is pretty active, you know, like, we

Rich Hernandez: Yep.

Tom Rowland: Pull a boat and, it's it's it's not your sit under a tree with a bobber kind of fishing. It's pretty active type type fishing. But a lot of people that are into the outdoors are listening and and that's that's definitely known. That was something that was really really weird with the whole shutdown during the during the pandemic is that people didn't go outside.

Rich Hernandez: It made no sense. Here in Los Angeles, they there's a famous one where where the police or the the, yeah, basically the law enforcement went out to bring in a paddle boarder that was not wearing a mask, who was just out, out Manhattan Beach away from everyone and

Tom Rowland: the safest place you could possibly be.

Rich Hernandez: Exactly. Here, they closed the trails. You couldn't go to any of the trails. They were literally locked up, taped up. You couldn't go to the beach. You were not allowed. It was crazy times.

47:49 · Coaching the First 50 — for Free

Tom Rowland: Yeah. It really, that really was a strange, strange thing when when vitamin d is probably the most important thing for you, but and and also getting out. So, when you, when you build this, do you think that you didn't mention the coaching. Do you think that you'll be doing the coaching, or or is the first 50 kinda what you're considering the coaching?

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. I'm a I'm a big fan. I do have these these people that I've taken under my wing, and I do I do spend time with them. I spend more time, but I feel like the, kinda like the one to many, like, building community. Because in this community, it's not just me chiming in, and, of course, I'm in there. I'm giving advice, and I'm helping people out. But there's other people that that that have the similar passion to me who have who who have a lot of knowledge. Like, there's this guy who's a a Chidi. A Chidi, shout out to you. He's in there. He's a certified personal trainer. He's got he's he's, you know, he's a he's a machine on his own and he's in there and he's helping people out too. It's not like I'm paying him. He's just part of the community, and people have questions, and he's a good dude. And by the way, I don't make I don't make any money off of this. I lose money on this, on this hopefully, one day I'll make money on first fifty, but I'm losing money every month. But I do have

Tom Rowland: some thoughts. Do you have involved in that?

Rich Hernandez: It's 80 people. 80 people.

Tom Rowland: 80? Wow.

Rich Hernandez: Yeah, yeah. But it's open to anyone. Go to school.com/firstfifty,first5zero. Or just go on my socials. It's linked

Tom Rowland: there. Man, that's awesome. And and you just do that for

Rich Hernandez: free? I do. I I strongly believe in adding value to the world. We'll figure out how we make money later. But I I'm very passionate about trying to ensure that everybody becomes the best version of themselves because they don't know it, but tick tock, tick tock, time is going by. And I don't it would be so unfortunate if the next Hussein Boltz, for example, like right now, shout out to Noor. I have this 16 year old kid who, I'm not going to call him a kid. I call him a young warrior. I always refer to him as a young warrior. He shows up to my Wednesday pushup livestream and he can do more than 2,000 nonstop pushups. He's 16. He's 16. Wow. And so I want to create a platform for these people to get better. And guess what? He's getting better because he's working with me. He actually told me, he's like, Rich, I'm coming after your 3,000. Oh my good. I'm gonna be at 4,000. Good.

50:16 · Hard Things That Aren’t Physical

Tom Rowland: That's awesome. So here's a question that I bet nobody's asked you. And I ask myself this a lot because I also enjoy enjoy the physical challenges and the doing the hard things physically. And doing hard things every day, I understand that. I I respect it, and and I'm subscribed to it. Not to the same level as you, but I am definitely subscribed to it. And then there's a lot of people who will say, you know, you need to be uncomfortable every day. Okay? So I see this in Goggins. I see it in Cameron Haynes. I see it in you. I see it in me. Is that when someone says, be uncomfortable, immediately, you kinda go, okay. Sure. I'll do 4,000 push ups, or I'll I'll try to set the pull up record, or I'll go for a 50 mile run, where I wonder if you've if you ever thought this because I kinda do think this. I'm kinda thinking, is that uncomfortable? Like, at times, it's physically uncomfortable, But isn't that really, like, your comfort area? Like, would it be more uncomfortable to make a make a hard phone call? Or would it be more uncomfortable to go to the junior college and take Japanese at night when when you're around a bunch of kids? I mean, like, do you ever think about that? Like, are you really gravitating to uncomfortable or are you kind of just doing things that are comfortable until they're not comfortable? Like, you do you understand what I'm saying?

Rich Hernandez: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I I for me personally, this is the reason I tried out for America's Got Talent. Right? So when I'm

Tom Rowland: There. Yeah. See, that's hard.

Rich Hernandez: That's a perfect example. It's it's I'm doing the physical thing, but I'm doing it in something I'm way not comfortable. Every fiber of my body was saying, why am I doing this? Even when I was out there waiting in line, even when I was in the waiting room, even when I was in with the other contestants, even when I was in the small room where, by the way, I happened to be the last person in my group to audition. So, yeah, talk about the nerves, the build up. Even then, my mind was trying to think of excuses for how to get out of this. And and I had to remind myself, it's like, no. We do hard things. And that just doesn't mean the physical thing. It means everything else. 1,000

Tom Rowland: So tell me this. So tell me this. Like, when you do that and every fiber in your being is telling you to get out of there and don't do it, what does that do for you?

Rich Hernandez: Growth. That's it. There's growth. I know from experience that there will be some growth and probably some unexpected growth in some areas that you never expected. And now I trust that process and I trust that instinct. There's an instinct that says don't do it, but then I have an instinct that says, oh, because I don't wanna do it, I should do it. Right? But trust your instincts. Obviously, if it's gonna put you in some sort of dangerous situation, if you're gonna fall off a cliff, then you trust those instincts. But if

Tom Rowland: I just think that it's interesting to talk to a guy like you about it because the way that you describe that is exactly the way another person would describe their first session with a personal trainer, or the first time they've ever walked into a gym, or the first time that they're gonna go see a dietitian about their weight or Yep. Something that is so small to you, like, some that that is so comfortable now that you've done all of this stuff that I I just I I I think sometimes that, like, the the extreme feats definitely, kind of land with certain people and certain people that need to hear that, but I think other people are like, a thousand put I couldn't even do one push up or I wouldn't even know what to do. I wouldn't even I've never even seen a push up before. Right? And I think that it's interesting to hear you talk about the way that you felt at America's Got Talent and how uncomfortable you were and that it led to growth because that's exactly the same uncomfortable state that a lot of people get in with even the thought of exercise. You're gonna go swim at the at the YMCA for the first time. People are terrified of that. Absolutely. If they're if you're not used to a gym setting, if you've never been to a gym before, if you didn't have a school when you were a kid that that taught physical education, Now it's like, now you find yourself you're 40. You're out of shape. You know you need to do something about it. But the thought of going into one of these places that you see other people go into is terrifying. Right?

Rich Hernandez: I I agree. I I agree. And my only advice to anyone listening is to say you gotta lean into those things. And and if you if you're impressed by anything that I do, anything, education background, the the physical feats, anything, that's the best advice. And I think same with with Tom, if you're impressed by by your your podcast host here, it's lean into it. And what's the worst that can happen is somebody points, somebody laughs, okay, whatever, there's growth.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah. But it's interesting, like, you know, I think that that's I think that for some people, they they don't see they don't even see how incredible what you're doing is because they've never even gotten into the first part of the physical thing to understand what feel what what 10 push ups feels like, what a 100 push ups feels like, a 3,000, like, that is so incredible that it it it it is too incredible for some people to even understand what what that is. And then they think, oh, it's easy for you. Right? Yeah.

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. But this is also this is also why I think it's so important with what I'm doing and how I'm doing it. So I am building community. So so it's not just about me. Right? If it was about me, I would be I would call my my channel the human machine or something like that's what that that's what Balance Guru says. I'm like, hey. What do I call my act? He just said he says, just call it I am the human machine. But this is Do Hard Things three six five. It's more than just me. Right? And so in these forums, like, in the planking, the community planking, people are seeing firsthand that Steph has gone this this petite Latina girl has gone from two and a half to one hour. People in my push up forum are seeing that great gains in Gino. They've gone from forty and fifty to 810 and a thousand. Right? So people are actually seeing it and the the message that I keep on pushing and I'm very embracing. I say, I don't care if you come in and you do five push ups with me. I don't care. I want you to show up. I want you to be the man or the woman in the arena. Keep on showing up because that's where the growth is. It's something that I try to push as a message, and I think people are getting it, the people that follow me. But you're right. People that just come on my profile, they're like, oh, yeah. This guy's superhuman. But I may I I try to make it a point to talk about my journey and my experience because I tell people, I tell Gino, I tell Great Gaines, I'm like, you guys can do what I do. I'm just further along in the process than you are.

57:32 · The Goggins Effect and the Science of Mental Toughness

Tom Rowland: Mhmm. Yeah. Do you think that, with with, like, David Goggins and how much he's talked about it and people, you know, studying what he's what he's been able to do, people like yourself, he he has inspired, I mean, certainly, there were lots of people that were really getting after it before David Goggins, and there are gonna be plenty of people that get after it that don't read his books and and don't need to read his books. But there is something to the fact that it was written down. It was very popular, and people started looking into it going, I wonder if there is, like, a scientific, you know, like, Huberman studied that. Like, it makes doing hard things makes a certain part of your brain develop differently than if you don't do hard things. And I want do you think that there's gonna be, like, more study, especially with your background at MIT? Do you think that this is interesting to the scientific community, like David Goggins and what you're doing and what other people are doing, what Truett Haines is doing right now, like, pushing to the point to where it's not a physical challenge anymore. It's a mental challenge. Like, do you think there's gonna be more study on that in the future?

Rich Hernandez: Abs absolutely. It's a it's a no brainer. I think I think, people are waking up to the fact that that that these things are are are net positive. And and I think it's one of these things that it's, people always think that by by like me, for for example, people say, Rich, you're only one person out of 8,000,000,000. Like, like, who are you gonna influence? Right? And it's like, no. I think we're all nodes in a system. We're all connected. What is that saying about seven degrees to Kevin Bacon, seven or eight degrees? I forget that.

Tom Rowland: Six degrees. It's almost six degrees of separation.

Rich Hernandez: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

Tom Rowland: Now I'm questioning this now I'm questioning the 3,000 push ups, son.

Rich Hernandez: I was gonna say

Tom Rowland: There's really 2,000.

Rich Hernandez: I was gonna say Alabama over here fat checking me. No. No. I got it all on video records, so I'm I'm good on the 3,000. But, but, yeah, we're all connected. Right? So it's the butterfly effect. It's it's I think these things take time to trickle through society. So obviously, Goggins was one of the big kind of impulses to the system, and I'm carrying the torch from him. Guess what? People I'm influencing people directly. Guess what? There's a there's a girl who follows me. She's almost at every one of my live stream. This 11 year old girl, she was 10 at the time, Lily. Shout out to you, Lily. But Lily, I thought she was trolling me. At at at some point, I'm like, this is some old dude that's just, like, trolling me. And then and then she got on camera once and, and I'm like, okay, it is a it is a 11 year old girl. But this girl, for example, she, she's like, oh, I'm doing pull ups with you guys. Oh, I have 70 pull ups. Oh, I'm planking. She started with like seven minute planks and then she got to doing the hour, this 11 year old girl doing an hour long plank with me. And guess what? She's having an impact on her family because now she forces her parents to work out with her and her sister to work out with her. And she sent me this nice message. I wish I could pull it up. But it was about a month ago and she goes, hey, Rich. I just wanted to let you know that, I'm a lot more active. I used to sit in bed and just scroll on my phone. And now, all I wanna do is I wanna do planks, I wanna do push ups, I wanna do pull ups. And so, here's an example where it's trickling and people are waking up and people are The best way, the best teacher, the best And by the way, I used to be a person that would try to tell people what to do and say, Hey, hey, brother, you need to do this. Hey, sister, you need to do this. That never worked. People don't like being told what to do. Instead, I kind of flipped that and I said, you know what? I'm gonna be the best example that I can be. And when they come with questions, I'm gonna be the most knowledgeable person that can teach them how to do it. But I'm not gonna be one of these people that's going around pointing at people. Hey. Hey, bro. You gotta fix your your, your form on your pull up. Hey. You gotta you gotta hold the dumb no. No. No. It's like, if you have questions, come to me, but I'm gonna be the best example that I can be. And that's the way that I'm gonna influence people around me, my family, my friends, my community. But I think the science will follow, like, if the science is gonna follow because obviously, human human resources. That science. What do you

Tom Rowland: think comes out of that science? Like, will we develop better better military people? Will we develop better athletes? Will we will we just be a harder society? Like, what what happens when we learn what happens when you develop that part of your brain and what it takes to develop that part of your brain, or will it just be kind of a curiosity?

Rich Hernandez: You know, I I I think in general, we would we're gonna have a much better society when when people take accountability for their actions, when people feel they have a sense of agency, when people have a sense of of being financially independent, physically fit, not dependent on the medical systems, not dependent on the financial systems, trying to be have agency. When you have agency, then all of a sudden, everything, You don't you don't become a participant in life. There's a lot of people that what do they say? NPCs? Have you heard that term? So Mhmm. NPCs is like this meme that people use. It's a non playable character. It's the whenever you play video games and there's just a person in the back who's just kind of just not he's not a main character and he's just, like, floating around saying things. I I feel like a lot of society are NPCs right now. They're being told what to what to do, especially during the shutdown times like, hey. Don't question anything. Hey. Do this, do that, do this, do that. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And people just are non playable characters. I think the more that people take care of of their temple, the more that people take care of their mind, their body, their spirituality, then they're not just participants. They're actually playing the game, and we end up having a much better society as a result, in my opinion.

63:29 · Murph Every Monday, Daily Burpees, and 333,975 Push-Ups

Tom Rowland: Yeah. So as far as, like, a couple of a couple of things I I wanna ask you before we finish up. First of all, do you think at this point in your in your physical journey that your workouts are more for your body or for your mind?

Rich Hernandez: For the mind.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah. I do too, personally. I mean, I think that you you maintain like, at your at your level of fitness, do you think that you're improving physically, dramatically, or are you making gains, like, mentally? Like, which and I look at that, and I'm like, you're definitely making gains. I'm definitely making gains mentally, big jumps mentally where I'm 56 years old. Like, I I still set PRs, but Nice. Nice. They come a little they got they're not as frequent as they once were. But they're still there. I set two this week, actually.

Rich Hernandez: And Nice. Which ones?

Tom Rowland: Well, I had you know, so I do a lot of CrossFit, and so there'll be different workouts that will that have a name and that you'll do over the years. And so I did this one called Jeremy. It was a overhead squat and burpee. It's twenty one fifteen nine with 95 pounds. And that one, I did way faster. And there was this other one at the beginning of the week called Morrison, which is fifty, forty, thirty, twenty, 10 kettlebell swings, medicine ball, you know, med ball, wall balls. And, what was the third thing? Oh, kettlebell swings, wall balls, and box jumps. And so you do 50 of each, 40 of each, 30 of each, 20 of each, 10 of each. And so I did that, and and I hadn't done that workout since 2018 and came in at more than two minutes faster than I had done it before. Nice. And so that's really great when you're 56 years old and you you you're like, woah. Wonder what happened? Like, it felt pretty good today, I guess. Or I might have felt terrible that day or something. I don't know. But you do it faster. And and it's nice just to see progression, and I like to see progression. I like to log all the workouts as that I possibly can and then have a history of them. And I'll do like that about the CrossFit workouts is that they have a name and and that you can go back and see, oh, I've done this particular work out exactly this way 28 times. And, yeah, I've gotten a little bit faster each time or it's gotten a little bit heavier each time. And you see that progression. And when you see the progression, you tend to get inspiration, motivation out of it just like your just like your your plank thing. Exactly.

Rich Hernandez: I do a I do a CrossFit workout. I do the Murph. I do the Murph every Monday. I've I've been doing it for a hundred and five consecutive weeks every single Monday.

Tom Rowland: Did you see the dude that did it every day for a year?

Rich Hernandez: No. No. I haven't.

Tom Rowland: There you go. I just put it okay. You're gonna write it down in your little book, aren't you? There you go. I see it. I see it. I'll I'll send you I'll send you his his, thing is Jimbo. He he he was a guy that did hard things every day, and he had a great, I'm not following him on that account. Let me see if I can find it. But he did he did Murph every day for a year, and then another another one he did, a hero workout every single day for a year.

Rich Hernandez: There there are two challenges that I'm taking on this year that I'm doing every single day. One of them is I'm adding one burpee for every day of the year. So today's day 80.

Tom Rowland: I love that.

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. That's great. I'm doing 80 burpees today. So it's probably 81. And so it sounds simple, but it gets really hard, the compounding effect. And then the harder one is I'm doing a push up challenge where I'm doing one set of push ups, one set of nonstop push ups, except I add five reps for every day of the year. So you start January 1, five, then ten, then fifteen. Where will

Tom Rowland: you be at? 38365.

Rich Hernandez: It's gonna be a 825. No. But that's not the hard part. I can do that. The hard part is that the day before I did a 820, the day before that I did a 815. And so if you add up all the push ups just for that challenge of doing 333,975 push ups this year. Just with that challenge, not counting

Tom Rowland: And those are consecutive push ups.

Rich Hernandez: Consecutive push ups.

Tom Rowland: That's amazing, dude. I had That's a hard question. I had Kevin Cullum on the podcast, and he did a million you know, he was do you know who he is? He he did a million push ups.

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. Yeah. He popped into my livestream the other day.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. He's a cool guy, man. And this other guy's name, you're gonna wanna know him. His name is Jim Bobrowski on, on Instagram. And he did he's the guy that did three sixty five Murph. And then before that, he did he did, he did Murph every day for three hundred sixty five days consecutive of Murph. And then before that, he did a hero workout every single day for a year. And then he took a break. He started, like, running, like he started doing, like, ultras or something. But he Nice. He's like, okay. I'm gonna move on to something else. Nice. So the other question I was gonna ask you the the is, I I noticed that you write these things down as soon as you get an idea, like, oh, three sixty five Murph. I never thought about that, and you wrote it down immediately. So two questions. One, how do you find something hard to do every single day? Where do you get your motivation or your inspiration, I guess? It's really inspiration.

Rich Hernandez: Well, right now, I'm kinda forced to do certain things every day. Okay. With

Tom Rowland: the burpees and the My burpees. And then push up challenge. Yeah.

Rich Hernandez: A little yeah. A little point on that. Like, I like having systems. I like having routines. Routines are incredibly powerful. Right? Because if I'm doing Murph Mondays and I already have a hundred and five weeks of doing it, guess what? Am I gonna am I not gonna do it on a 106? Like, my dad was in a hospital with pneumonia a few months ago, and those were those were ten very hard days. Did I do the MRF? I did the MRF. It doesn't matter what's going on in the world. We get it done. So this is the power of having routines. So in 2025, I have to do my burpees. I have to do my push ups. Full stop. That's it. It so I'm a big fan of that. I think momentum, to answer your question, I think momentum gets me through a lot. Momentum just puts me down this path where I say, well, I gotta keep on doing x, x, y, and z. Right?

Tom Rowland: You've come this far to just come this far.

Rich Hernandez: And it's about and now it's more about well, now I'm an inspiration to a lot of people, so now I can't slow down. I can't stay the same. I gotta keep on pushing, so that's what I'm doing.

70:00 · Notebooks, Three Takeaways, and Accountability

Tom Rowland: So the other question I'm asking just out of curiosity, I carry a little notebook around with me too. It's over there. But I find myself writing down in it a lot, but I don't really find myself going back to it and looking through it. But I find that the just the act of writing oh, here's here's one right here. Yep. Yep. Just the act of writing this stuff down in in the notebook helps me remember it so much better. Like, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna need to remember that. I write it down, and then I close the notebook up, and I have drawers full of these notebooks that I've never really gone back through. Do you do that, or do you, like, look back through them all the time?

Rich Hernandez: I I try to be good about looking through them. I'm trying to find this book, but there's this guy. I wanna say his name is I'm not gonna mess up his name. Hold on. Let me tell you. It's, the book is called Getting Things Done, and he has a very simple very simple method. And I used it when I was, like, doing project management and business and whatnot. But very simple thing he says is like, you gotta have some some place where you put your ideas. Like that's step one. You gotta collect all your ideas and it could be like the silliest idea, like, oh, I forgot to buy milk. And you seem like you're forgetting to buy milk, like for three days in a row. Right? Just put it in your notebook, right? The next super important step is like sitting down and actually triaging, right? Saying like, oh, this idea, was it a good idea? Do I need to do it? Okay, good. Let me put it here. I'll do that on Monday, blah, blah, blah, blah. That triaging step is, like, incredibly important for me at least. So I do go through my notebooks, and I do say, like, oh, that was a dumb idea. Let's just get it out. I had to write it down, but or if there's something that says, that's something that I can just do right now. Oh, I forgot to call my brother. I go, let me just call him right now. If it's just gonna be like a two minute thing, just call him right now, get it off, cross it off the list. But if it's a bigger project that you just can't do in the moment, then you say, okay. Gather my donation clothes and drive them to the donation center. Let me do that on Saturday. Let me put it on my calendar. So for me, translating all the the inbox to, like, a calendar, incredibly important for me.

Tom Rowland: Mhmm. Yeah. Yeah. So what do you think are, like, three things that people can take away from from what they see you do and apply to their regular life?

Rich Hernandez: I mean, can I can I just say do something hard every day? 1% better. Do it for a long time. But honestly, it's it's what's super important is action, and it's action now. Right? If you believe what I say that these things take time, that compounding interest, like the money in your bank account, the money in your retirement fund, it it becomes the hockey stick, then guess what? The only thing you can do to to realize all that gain is you gotta start today. Like, that's it. Don't even think about it. If you're if you're still listening to to this story, literally throw on your shoes, go for a run, do something. Action is incredibly important. And for me, I had the opportunity to to get the social media name, do hard things, full stop, just do hard things. But three sixty sixty five was super core to everything that I do. It's you have to do something every day. We've all been there where, like, I wanna run a marathon when I was in my early twenties, and I signed up for one. I paid for the registration, but for some reason, I didn't do it. And guess what? I convinced myself that I would do one, and I didn't do one for ten years. Right? And it's one of these things where if you don't have a persistent, persistent get after it mentality, you'll never do these things. And what is, like, the worst thing that can happen? You're on your deathbed saying, oh, I could have done this. I could have climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. I could have built this beautiful house and you didn't do any of it. Like, what a life. That's not the life you want. So action is incredibly important. Even if you don't have a good plan, just doing something and then figuring it out all later. Like, okay, great. I want to lose weight. I don't know how. Get your shoes, go for a rock. Like, that's it.

Tom Rowland: Do you think that, in some cases, people would do better to to get a coach or is it fine to or a coach or a group or a mentor or you or something? Or is it like, if you don't know how I find people just kind of like, a lot of people that are that are looking at getting in shape or losing weight or doing something very, very uncomfortable to them because they may not know how to. There's, like, paralysis by analysis. Like, oh, I need to do it just perfect where I like your idea of just, like, just do something today, man. Put your shoes on and go for a walk, go for a run. But I also wonder, like, in your opinion, if if there is, like, another way, Like like, to to put some pressure on yourself by joining a group or to put some pressure on yourself to where you say it out loud that like like you did with your with you're gonna set the world record. Right?

Rich Hernandez: So you've

Tom Rowland: now announced that out. You've now announced that, and now you're

Rich Hernandez: gonna have to

Tom Rowland: do it. You're gonna have to do it.

Rich Hernandez: On a Tom Ledwin podcast.

Tom Rowland: I do not doubt that you will. But, like, for other people, like, if they said, I'm gonna lose 40 pounds by September 1 to their friends. Man, they've done that that came out of their mouth, and they said something. And they said it to somebody that they care about. They care about their opinion, or they announced it on social media, or they they did something to where that they they they said that this is gonna happen. They're going to do this. So now they're gonna be held accountable by all these other people, even if it's on social media, all these people that they don't even really know. But they're doing it to hold themselves accountable. What do you think about pressure like that? Applying press applying pressure to yourself like that?

Rich Hernandez: The the people that are in my first 50 community, the people that are actually actually doing the work, they do really well because why? Because there's a sense of community. There's a sense of accountability because I have people, the first thing they have to do is they have to introduce themselves in the discussion board like, hey, I'm so and so, and you could share whatever you wanna share, but step one is just saying, like, hey. I'm part of this. I'm gonna take it on. Step two, we do these check ins. And when people aren't doing their check ins, people in the community kinda write, like, messages to these people like, hey, Daniel. What's going on? What's so 1000% agree. It's good to have people around you. It's good to say that you're gonna do a thing. And maybe you're wrong. Maybe you're too ambitious with trying to lose 30 pounds by September. But guess what? Putting it out there is the first step to to getting down that path. Because if you go down if you say I'm gonna do this, and then you join a community like First fifty or Seventy Five Hard or something like that, or I don't know what what, Tom, what you would, recommend either. But but you get in there, then someone like me might say, like, hey. Have you thought about maybe scaling back your goal? Hey. Have you thought about this? And you're gonna start finding people, but if you're just sitting in your apartment, if you're just sitting in, on your farm and you're not interacting with anyone, and it things are not gonna change. Like, you should put it out there. Try to get a friend to join you on the journey. It's good to have an accountability partner 1000% agreed.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. And so for for people listening here, you could be that accountability partner for them, I mean, for the most part or your community. Right?

Rich Hernandez: Absolutely. On First 50, absolutely on a personal level and on social media. People DM me all the time. People love love checking in with me. On the live streams that I do, I do live streams on YouTube and Instagram. And I I love it when people come in, my regulars come in and they give updates and then people celebrate the updates. I had a a kid who just went out to to, to Academy and he was just very proud of his numbers. He was trying to get ready for all these standardized tests and he was always coming in and saying, hey, guys, I could do 800 now. Hey, guys, I just ran 10 kilometers and people celebrate it. So having a place where where people are acknowledging you and it feels good and you're not the only one, there's a saying that says, Iron sharpens iron. And guess what? If you surround yourself with other people that are getting after it, then, you know or or on the other side, if you're hanging out with people that all they wanna do is just chill, watch football, eat pizza, drink beer, like, no judgment. Right? But if your goals are different than that, then maybe you don't surround yourself with people like that. Maybe you surround yourself with like minded interest.

78:19 · Crabs in a Bucket, Books, Movies, and Where to Find Rich

Tom Rowland: I saw this great video the other day on Instagram, and it was this teacher of a looked like kind of a middle school, maybe maybe a junior high school. And he had this girl stand up on this stool. And he said, here, help me up on top of that stool. And so she grabbed his arm and she was pulling and pulling and pulling and he's like, it's really hard, isn't it? She's like, yeah. And he grabbed her arm and he just goes, watch this. And he pulled it like this and she fell off the, you know, she got pulled right off the stool. And he was like, that was his that was the analogy. He was like, look how much easier it is to get pulled down than it is to pull someone else up. Yep. And and then he was like, look at your friends. Like, look who you're around. It's much easier to to, you know, be at the top and get pulled down by negative negativity.

Rich Hernandez: Crabs in a bucket.

Tom Rowland: Right. That's exactly right. But there's no negativity around where around, that what you're doing. I love it.

Rich Hernandez: There's a there's a really, really good book that I need to plug. Grant Cardone's Be Obsessed or Be Average. He talks specifically be because of this, exactly this. And he says, you know, I'll I'll give you the ten second summary, but he just says, everybody has an obsession. You might as well point that obsession towards something that's gonna make you the best version of yourself, make you a lot of money, all that stuff that you care about. And he says you gotta you're gonna acknowledge that that society is gonna try to pull you down and he he kinda tells you why and how and why society works this way, but he's like, society is trying to make you average. People don't like people that stand out. And so you gotta know this going in. But all I can tell you is harness your inner obsession, get after it and guess what? Like, don't worry about all these crabs in a bucket because they will happen. It even happens my mom doesn't like when I talk about this but even my mom tries to keep me average. Why? She says, Oh, Mijo, why are you gonna go run the Grand Canyon? You might get injured. So she comes from a place of like, Hey, I care about my son. I don't want him to get injured. Comes from a good place. But I'm like, Hey, mom, I'm trying to be exceptional. Like, you gotta understand that. And with her, I carry my Garmin so that, you know, she can track me, she sees all the breadcrumbs, but that appeases her but at the same time I'm like, Hey mom, I'm trying to be exceptional, I'm not gonna do dumb things but I'm not saying stop stop telling me these things, but just understand I'm still gonna do it.

Tom Rowland: Nice. Alright. So real quick, you mentioned a couple of books. Three books that come to mind that you recommend people reading.

Rich Hernandez: Can't Hurt Me, David Goggins. That's, number one. It will light a fire in your belly. I like, Jocko's book Extreme Ownership. It's one that reframes your mind if you're in a leadership position where it says, like, instead of saying, Hey, it's their fault, their fault. No, the ownership starts with you, it stops starts and stops with you. Those are two really good ones. And the third one that I just mentioned, be obsessed or be average. I think that's a good one of reframing and saying, like, hey. It's okay. You have permission to go do whatever you wanna do and be obsessed about it. And that's a book that helped me a lot, especially with the things that I'm doing. I got a lot of people coming at me from the professional side saying, hey, Rich. Like, how is this a good career move for you? I have friends that are like, Hey, you should come get drunk with us instead. You know, it just comes from all angles. So this is a book that really helped me with saying like, No, I'm comfortable in my own skin and this is what I wanna do and that's what I'm gonna do. And here we are.

Tom Rowland: What are a couple of movies that come to mind that give you inspiration when needed?

Rich Hernandez: Inspiration? Yikes. I haven't thought about this one. I mean, sometimes I play like Gladiator when I'm on the treadmill, and check this out. Check this out. You're gonna like this.

Tom Rowland: Do you wear that while you're running on the treadmill watching Gladiator?

Rich Hernandez: Only for special events.

Tom Rowland: That's pretty sweet.

Rich Hernandez: Yes. Comes from comes from England. It was handmade. I bought it on Etsy from, people that do good work. So that's one movie. I love the movie The Matrix. I think The Matrix, go rewatch it now with everything that's happening in the world and you will see that that you guys have to break free from The Matrix. You got you got to take the red pill. There's just a it's just so good. It's not inspirational. It's not motivation. It's not what you're asking me, but that's one of my top movies. What's a and then I like Interstellar, but that's just for different reasons.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Cool. Well, tell everybody again, how they can go be in the first 50, how they can follow you, how they can join your push ups on, on what days those are. Felicity.

Rich Hernandez: I think the I think the easiest thing is just to follow me on YouTube and Instagram. That's at DoHardThings three six five and I have everything linked there. So

Tom Rowland: Awesome. Awesome. Rich, man. Dude, we gotta get together someday. I, I'd like to I I'm gonna come on your, on your, Instagram, do do push ups with you sometime. Oh.

Rich Hernandez: I don't

Tom Rowland: know if I can do a thousand, but No. I'll do what I can.

Rich Hernandez: I would love that. We're we're doing Wednesdays, 7PM Pacific, dance to standing time. I've been holding that time. Even when I was driving through Albuquerque, New Mexico, I literally stopped at a McDonald's parking lot. I put the little magnetic holder up on a on a post, and we did the push up live stream for two hours while I was in the parking lot of of a McDonald's.

Tom Rowland: 7PM Pacific time. That's a little after my bedtime. What's the morning one that you do?

Rich Hernandez: That one is planking. That one is planking. But, hey, maybe I got an international group. It turns out I'm pretty big in India. A lot of my followers are from India. Shout out to you guys. So I think I'm gonna try to have two different live streams going because people really like the push up live stream. People love it.

Tom Rowland: Yeah. Push ups are all plank. I need to do an hour plank. That would be awesome challenge for me. It'd be fantastic.

Rich Hernandez: Let's go.

Tom Rowland: Alright. Hey, man. I really appreciate you coming over and, and telling us about what you're doing, what makes you tick, and, you know, you're doing great things. Really great things. I really like what I see and and, good for you, man. Keep doing it.

Rich Hernandez: Yeah. Really appreciate it. It was, thanks for reaching out. I was I was a little surprised because I looked at your list of guests and I'm like, are you sure you got the right Richard Hernandez? But, I'm glad I'm glad you invited me. I'm very happy to be here.

Tom Rowland: Absolutely, man. Absolutely. We'll do it again. Alright. Thank you. And, next time we do it, you're gonna have about 800,000 followers. I think you will. Alright. Go go follow do hard things three six five. YouTube, Instagram, those are his big platforms. And, just if you're not gonna just go follow Do Hard Things, just go do something hard. Do something easy. Put your shoes on. Go out the door. Take a walk. If nothing else, get outside. Alright. That's it for today. We'll see you next time. See you.