Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 1021 is a conversation with Jonathan Godbout, a 21-year-old strength coach from central Massachusetts who competed on four seasons of American Ninja Warrior and reached the national finals three times. He is now training to break the 24-hour Murph world record by completing 21 Murphs in a single day — 40 miles of running, 2,000 pull-ups, 4,000 push-ups, and 6,000 air squats, all in a 20-pound weight vest.
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Murph is a CrossFit hero workout done in memory of Navy SEAL Lieutenant Michael Murphy, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2005. One Murph is a one-mile run, 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, 300 air squats, and a second one-mile run, performed while wearing a 20-pound weight vest. Most people do it once a year on Memorial Day. The pull-ups, push-ups, and squats can be broken into smaller sets, which is the version almost everyone uses.
The 24-hour Murph record is the most Murphs completed inside a single 24-hour window, and the number depends on which ruleset you accept. Jonathan Godbout says he started training believing the mark was 19. He later found an Australian attempt that reached 20.15 Murphs, documented through an article and Instagram posts rather than an official Guinness ratification. Other published Murph endurance records sit in the 16 to 17 range under stricter verification. He is planning around the highest number he could verify.
Twenty-one. That is his stated goal in this episode, chosen to clear the 20.15 mark he found rather than to just tie it. Twenty-one Murphs works out to roughly 42 miles of running, 2,100 pull-ups, 4,200 push-ups, and 6,300 air squats, all completed in a 20-pound vest inside a single 24-hour period. He plans to make the attempt in the fall at his CrossFit gym, after using the summer to train through the heat.
Godbout works backward from the clock. Twenty-one Murphs in 24 hours means starting one roughly every hour on the hour, which leaves about 50 minutes of work and 10 minutes of rest per round for eating, hydration, and logistics. He builds the training around volume tolerance rather than peak speed, drawing on a background of stacked endurance challenges: 10 Murphs in 10 hours unweighted, a 10K on either side of 1,000 pull-ups, 2,000 push-ups, and 3,000 squats, and climbing the height of Mount Everest on a staircase over three days.
It comes from a rule the current record holder gave him: during the attempt, each Murph has to feel like about 70 percent intensity. Godbout turned that into arithmetic. If his working pace during the record is a 50-minute Murph, then 50 minutes needs to represent 70 percent of his capacity, which puts his all-out effort at roughly 35 minutes. He has already gone under 34 minutes weighted and around 27 minutes unweighted. He is candid in the episode that this is a rule of thumb, not exercise physiology.
A partitioned Murph breaks the 100 pull-ups, 200 push-ups, and 300 squats into 20 rounds of five pull-ups, 10 push-ups, and 15 air squats. An unpartitioned Murph requires finishing all 100 pull-ups before starting any push-ups. Partitioning is significantly easier on the muscles because it spreads fatigue across movements, and it is the standard for essentially every Murph endurance record attempt. Godbout will partition, and he holds himself to full range of motion on every rep: chin over the bar, chest to the ground, and hips below a wall ball target on squats.
Jonathan Godbout has competed on four seasons of American Ninja Warrior and advanced to the national finals in three of them. Before that he appeared on both seasons of American Ninja Warrior Junior, finishing third in the first season as a young kid. He is from Sterling, Massachusetts. He now coaches other ninja athletes full time, and he credits the sport with giving him an unusually broad athletic base: body control, power, balance, grip, and mental composure under pressure.
According to Godbout, most of them do not, and that is the gap his business fills. Roughly 70 percent of his coaching clients are competitive ninja athletes, including a men's world champion across the two major ninja leagues and the women's champion of American Ninja Warrior, Addy Herman, who started as his client and now coaches alongside him. His argument is that ninja is a technical sport, so athletes default to spending all their training time on obstacles. Raw strength, structured programming, and injury resilience are what actually separate finalists.
Tom Rowland Podcast Episode 1021 with Jonathan Godbout is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, and iHeartRadio. The video version is embedded at the top of this page.
I found Jonathan on Instagram, through the account for his coaching business, Adaptation Through Perseverance. What caught my attention was not the world record attempt by itself. It was that he was posting the training honestly, including the parts that were not working.
I have done three Murphs back to back on my birthday. I know what the third mile feels like with a vest on. Twenty-one of them in a day is a number I cannot really hold in my head, and I wanted to hear from someone who can. What I did not expect was that a 21-year-old would have already thought harder about the psychology of hard things than most people twice his age.
Press play in the YouTube player at the top of this page to hear the whole conversation.
Jonathan started this the way most people would, aiming at a number he found online. The record he trained against for months turned out to be wrong, and the correction came from a source with no video, no Guinness paperwork, and no fanfare — just an article and a couple of posts from a guy in Australia. What he decided to do with that information says a lot about him. He could have taken the easier number. He explains why he did not, and what the extra Murph actually costs him, in the first few minutes of the episode.
I ran the math on air during our conversation and it stopped me. Twenty Murphs is 40 miles of running, 2,000 pull-ups, 4,000 push-ups, and 6,000 air squats, every rep of it under a 20-pound vest. Jonathan is going past that. The number that gets people is the pull-up total, though the one that worries me more is the mileage, because 40 miles of running is a hard day on its own before you add anything to it. Hear how he thinks about which piece breaks first.
The single most useful thing in this episode is not a workout. It is a method. Jonathan takes a vague piece of advice from the record holder — the Murph has to feel like 70 percent — and converts it into a specific, testable training target using nothing but division. That is a transferable skill that has almost nothing to do with fitness. He walks through the arithmetic step by step, including where he thinks the logic is shaky. Listen to that section of the episode.
Jonathan was on American Ninja Warrior Junior before he could drive, and he took third in the first season without really knowing what he was doing. Four adult seasons and three national finals followed. What I wanted to understand is what that sport actually builds, because ninja looks like grip strength and nothing else from the couch. His answer covers body control, power, balance, and something less obvious that shows up when he is 14 hours into an endurance day. Watch the player above for that part.
About 70 percent of Jonathan's coaching clients are competitive ninja athletes, including a world champion and the women's American Ninja Warrior champion. His whole thesis is that these athletes are already excellent at the technical side and are leaving something significant on the table. Most of them spend every session on obstacles. He argues that the ceiling is set somewhere else entirely, and that almost nobody in the sport is training that way. If you compete in ninja or coach someone who does, this is the section to hear in full.
Before he posted anything online, Jonathan had already climbed the height of Mount Everest on a staircase near his house over three days, done his own unsupported Ironman around his neighborhood without training for it, and completed the David Goggins 4x4x48. My favorite is the one he calls a bad idea: he added a mile of running every day until he hit 26.2. The last week of that is brutal in a way you can feel just hearing him describe it. Press play in the YouTube player above.
Jonathan announced a challenge that substituted 100 muscle-ups for the pull-ups, handstand push-ups for the push-ups, single-leg squats for the air squats, and replaced both miles with the World's Toughest Mile — a lap of burpee broad jumps, a lap of walking lunges, a lap of bear crawls, and a lap of running. He got about halfway and called it. Then he made a video saying so. What surprised me most was the response he got, which ran opposite to what social media usually does. Hear how that landed.
The pushback Jonathan gets is not about his times or his rep standards. It is that changing Murph at all disrespects the man it honors. He takes the criticism seriously, which is not what I expected from a 21-year-old on the internet, and he still disagrees with it. He also has a clear position on the people who pile onto endurance athletes over squat depth in a clip from rep 2,847. His answer on where the line sits is one of the more thoughtful things in this conversation.
Jonathan brought up something I had never considered. Plot every marathon finishing time on a graph and you get sharp spikes just under three hours, four hours, and five hours, with smaller ones at the thirty-minute marks. Everyone in those clusters will tell you they ran as fast as they could. He thinks that is not quite true, and the conclusion he draws about goal-setting cuts in two directions at once. I pushed back on part of it. Listen to how that plays out.
This is the question I have been circling for a while and I put it to Jonathan directly. When I say I am going to do something hard, it is almost always physical — a long swim, a hard event, a big training block. I already know how to prepare for those. I know who to call and what to buy. That might make it the opposite of leaving my comfort zone. His response reframed the whole thing, and then he named the part of his own life that genuinely scares him. Press play above.
Listen to the full conversation: Apple Podcasts · Spotify · or watch in the YouTube player at the top of this page.
Jonathan will tell you that stepping into a gym for the first time is probably harder than anything he is doing with a weight vest on, because he likes the vest. What actually frightens him is the coaching business he has been building for about two years: LLC paperwork, business taxes, charging people money, and the recurring thought that all 50 of his clients could quit on the same day. He is honest about the imposter syndrome in a way most people only get to years later. Hear that section in his own words.
The day after we recorded, the thing I kept coming back to was not the record. It was the arithmetic. Jonathan took a piece of advice that could have stayed a vibe — make it feel like 70 percent — and turned it into a number he could chase on a Tuesday morning. Most of us never do that step. We keep our goals soft enough that we can never quite fail at them.
The other thing that stayed with me is how much of this he was doing before anyone was watching. Everest on a staircase. A marathon assembled one mile at a time. No posts, maybe a screenshot of his WHOOP data. He only started sharing when he realized it connected him to other people chasing the same kind of thing. That is close to the opposite of how social media usually works.
He is 21. He has already figured out that the point of doing something difficult is what it hands back to you afterward. I am 57 and I am still working on it.
Press play in the player above, or grab Episode 1021 on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Adaptation Through Perseverance (ATP) · ATP Fitco · American Ninja Warrior · American Ninja Warrior Junior · Addy Herman · Lieutenant Michael Murphy · James Lawrence (the Iron Cowboy) · David Goggins · the 4x4x48 challenge · Ross Edgley · Rich Hernandez (Do Hard Things 365) · Enrique Zapata · Mike Holland (MindBody Energy Movement) · Roger Bannister · SEALFIT Kokoro · GORUCK Selection · WHOOP · Sterling, Massachusetts
Jonathan Godbout is a 21-year-old strength coach and endurance athlete from central Massachusetts. He competed on four seasons of American Ninja Warrior, reaching the national finals three times, and appeared on both seasons of American Ninja Warrior Junior, placing third in season one. He holds a degree in physical education and runs Adaptation Through Perseverance (ATP), a personal training business whose clients are roughly 70 percent competitive ninja athletes, including a men's world champion and American Ninja Warrior women's champion Addy Herman. His endurance résumé includes 10 Murphs in 10 hours, the David Goggins 4x4x48, climbing the height of Mount Everest on a staircase, and a self-organized Ironman. He is currently training to break the 24-hour Murph world record with 21 Murphs in a single day, with the attempt planned for fall 2026 at his home CrossFit gym.
Tom Rowland Podcast — Episode 1021: Jonathan Godbout
In this episode: the 21-Murph world record attempt, four seasons of American Ninja Warrior, the math behind a sub-35-minute Murph, Everest stairs and the 4x4x48, the challenge he failed halfway through, and starting a coaching business at 21 — in the exact words spoken.
Jonathan Godbout: I'm Jonathan Godbout and this is the Tom Rowland podcast.
Tom Rowland: Okay, cool. So now if you got about an hour, we'll just kinda go through your story and find out what is driving you to these incredible things that you're doing. So, Jonathan, what's up man, how are ya?
Jonathan Godbout: Doing great today. Thanks for having me on.
Tom Rowland: Ha I'm pr I'm proud to have you on, man. This is it's incredible. So just to just to set the scene for who you are and what you're doing and why you're here, we we talk about fitness a lot, mostly fitness in the in the way that it helps you in your everyday life, but also some of the things that I've talked about a lot on the podcast are challenges, things that that you set purposely. That you don't think that you can do currently, train up for those things, complete them or not, and then take that those lessons that you learned, either the way that you completed it, the preparation, or the failure, take that back into your regular life and how that helps you in business and life and leadership, in your relationships with others, all types of things. And that seems to be what you're doing. So just to set the scene for for My audience, you are currently training to break the world record Murph attempt. And a Murph is a one mile run, all of this in a twenty-pound vest, a one mile run, one hundred pull-ups, two hundred push-ups, three hundred squats, and then you run another mile. And so in order to do this for the world record, I think that it's nineteen in twenty-four hours right now. That's what my shows. But You're looking at twenty. So to do that twenty times in twenty four hours is an incredible accomplishment. could you tell us like some of the other things that you've done that would lead you to believe that you could do this in twenty four hours?
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah, I just wanna clarify one thing. I also thought that it was nineteen when I initially started training for and posting about this. I since found an article and like a couple Instagram posts about someone who did a little over twenty. so I thought it was the same one as you, and I think there's more content out there about that attempt. But I found some guy from Australia, like him and his friend, did it and got a little bit over twenty.
Tom Rowland: Whoa.
Jonathan Godbout: like there's no video or anything. It's not like an official attempt in the Guinness Book of World Records. but I'm gonna take his word for it. So I gotta do he got twenty point one five. there's like a certain amount of pull ups and push ups and squats that he had like into the twenty first. so I'm going for at least above that, but twenty one is gonna be my goal. And that's all within twenty four hours. So it's gonna a long day, for sure. It's gonna be a long day.
Tom Rowland: Wow. So that would be if you did twenty, by my calculations, that is where is that? It's gonna be you probably know right away, what the totals are on that. I've only done three in a row. Here it is, right here. Yeah, so it's forty miles of running, two thousand pull ups, four thousand push ups, six thousand squats, all in a twenty pound vest. That's pretty impressive, man. That's for twenty. So you're gonna have to do even more than that.
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm. for mileage and yeah. Yeah, well I haven't done yet. so one thing be impressive if I do it, right? one thing that I did like specifically this was a couple of years ago, like before I even knew that this world record was a thing. close to Memorial Day, me and my friend did ten in ten hours unweighted. so that definitely
Tom Rowland: Ha ha. Yeah, of course.
Jonathan Godbout: means something to me. Like it I know that I can go for a pretty long time and like pull-ups and push-ups and squats don't tire me up. I also did a challenge way back where I did a 10k run on either side and then a thousand, two thousand, three thousand of pull-ups, push-ups, squats, and that was unweighted. so the that second one ended up being a little bit more because instead of ten K's on either side it was like just ten total Murphs but unweighted. So yeah like I've been kind of building up to it over a while. and then this just kinda seems like the obvious next thing to do to push myself on the fact that no one has ever done it before. super cool to me.
Tom Rowland: It is. Now there's another element to it also is that you can do a Murph partitioned or non partitioned and so partitioned would mean that you would break it up. I typically do it five pull-ups, ten push-ups, fifteen squats. but a non partitioned would mean that you would do the whole hundred pull-ups before you move to the two hundred push-ups and then you would complete those before you move to the squats. do you have a way that you're planning on doing any of these?
Jonathan Godbout: the partitioning it is easier and that's the way that pretty much all of the like endurance records have been attempted. so yeah, breaking it up five pull ups, ten push ups, fifteen squats for twenty rounds, that'll get you one Murph. and then repeating that however many times. Yeah.
Tom Rowland: So this is it's quite a quite a quite a goal. So why why what is it about these type of events that drives you? Like why do you even want to do them?
Jonathan Godbout: It's a great question. It's something I'm probably still trying to figure out. one thing that I do want to make clear is I've been doing these for a long time before I was even posting about them. so on, you know, I've been this world record of trying to break the 24 hour Murph is the first one that I've honestly like posted about online, which is why we're here today. So like I'm really glad that I'm doing that. that way I get to connect with cool people like you. I also like connected with somebody who's attempted the record in the past, somebody who's done like variations of Murph endurance records. So like it's really cool to put stuff out there and get connected with people in like such a small niche. that's really cool. But I have done tons of endurance challenges before ever posting about them. Maybe I'd post like a screenshot of my WHOOP stats after, or just like a picture of me laying down on the ground and was like, just did this.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan Godbout: But yeah, some of those things I've done in the past, it's like hard to remember all these random challenges. I climbed stairs, the height of Mount Everest, that took three days just like up and down a set of stairs until I reached 29,032 feet. I like attempted an Ironman, but I didn't really train for it. I just did it like around my kind of neighborhood and like state, I guess, because you gotta go a while. what else have I done? I did the David Goggins four by four by forty-eight challenge. Which is where you run four miles every four hours for 48 hours. so you don't get much sleep and you just have to like, you know, every three hours you just get up and run again. what else? that this one was this was a bad idea. I last November I added a mile of running every day until I got to a marathon. So like on day one of the challenge, I ran a mile, day two ran two miles.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah.
Jonathan Godbout: All the way up to I ran twenty six point two miles, just did the extra point two on the twenty sixth day and then called it. but that week was brutal 'cause it was like twenty five miles, twenty four miles, twenty three miles. horrible. bad idea.
Tom Rowland: Bad idea. Maybe you should start. You know, I I've done the one where you do a burpee and you add a burpee every day for a hundred days. And the same kind of thing happens is like, you know, it's like, man, ninety eight today, ninety nine tomorrow, a hundred, which doesn't sound like that much, but if you've been doing it for a hundred days, it gets kind of old. But then we did it one day, one time again, and we started at a hundred and worked our way down. And boy was that easier.
Jonathan Godbout: Okay. Yeah, right. Every day it gets better.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, every day every day was getting a little easier instead of a little harder. But those are those are incredible. So y I wanna tie this back to what you do for a living. So you do a couple of things for a living. You're a ninja warrior competitor, right? And you've had
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah. Yeah, that's not something I necessarily do for a living 'cause that doesn't make any money, but I do like doing it.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well you've had some success there, like three times in the in the finals, is that correct?
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah, so I I've been on four seasons of American Ninja Warrior. I made it to the national finals three of those times. And then way back in the day, when I was super little, I was on American Ninja Warrior Jr., which is like the kids' version of the show. so they had seasons one and two of that. I was on the first two. I actually got third on my first season, which was super surprising. I didn't really know what I was doing. I just like got third, which was cool. and then second season I didn't do as well. But yeah, like I've done pretty well on Ninja Warrior. been super cool.
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm. Wow.
Jonathan Godbout: go out there, kind of feel like a celebrity for a week and then go back to my normal life after. but again, an opportunity to connect with so many cool people who do it.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. So what is your regular life?
Jonathan Godbout: so I live in central Massachusetts. I live with my girlfriend and another couple. We like rent a house together. this is like I'm in I turned our garage into a gym. everyone was cool with that, which is good. and I'm a fitness coach, like I coach group fitness, and then I run a personal training business, which is the one behind me. Adaptation through perseverance. That's what it's called, ATP.
Tom Rowland: Okay. Yeah, well that's how I found you on on Instagram, through that account. and then so are you you're also doing some like adaptation through perseverance. That's that's the the tag. I'm wearing one of my favorite shirts today, Seek Adversity, which is kind of similar. Like you should you should try to do difficult things. It seems like that's what that's telling me. How do you how do you like coach your clients
Jonathan Godbout: Mm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: not physically but mentally, like in mindset and trying and ta teaching them lessons that you're learning from these challenges and from this training that you're about to that you're undergoing right now. How does that how does that translate into like a regular person doing regular things, just trying to be better at their job or their life or their be a better dad or a better mom or a better leader in their business? How do you see that that's translating for you and your clients?
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah. So I will say mainly the group of people that I train are competitive athletes. I would say probably like seventy percent of my clients are people who compete in Ninja Warrior. and I'm helping them with kind of building the strength required to really excel in that sport. because so many ninjas just focus on like technique, they do obstacles. It is a very technical sport, but you need to be strong in order to do well. so I train pretty much the he won the world championships and like the two prominent ninja leagues for men and then the women's champion of American Ninja Warrior. she was originally one of my clients and now she's the second coach in ATP. But I I mainly train Addy Herman. Yeah, she's super cool. Get her on the podcast. Yeah.
Tom Rowland: Wow. What's her name? Addy Herman, I saw her. A associated with your account. Yeah. and so you're you're but but you're still even at that level, at a at a championship level in any sport, in any activity, whether it pays or it doesn't pay, there's a mindset component and you're learning lessons that honestly they're not because they're not pushing to set a world record in the Murph. They're not pushing these endurance challenges
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: Well, I don't know if they are or not. They probably are to to r okay, well Okay, but so so what what I like to dig into is first of all, just like you, I try to figure out like why I like to do these things. And so I've never tried what you're trying, but I did one time funny story, I was riding around in the car with my daughter in the back and she was a little girl at the time. She's probably I don't know, what, six years old.
Jonathan Godbout: They're not no no they they all think I'm crazy for it.
Tom Rowland: something like that. Enough to carry on a conversation and and think clearly and communicate with you. And so I'm I'm driving around and I'm thinking, she kept asking me what I wanted to do for my birthday. Like c can we have a party for you or something? And I was driving around and I thought, you know what I wanna do? I said, Hannah, I got I got an idea. I w I know what I'm gonna do for my birthday. And she said, Okay, cool. What is that? And I said, triple Murph. And she said, What is that? And I said, Well we're gonna
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah.
Tom Rowland: Run a mile, do a hundred pull ups, two hundred push ups, three hundred squats, run a mile, and we're gonna do that three times. And she said, Dad, no one is gonna come to your birthday party. Well, it was great. It was one of my favorite things I've ever done. but you know, we've done three a couple of times. we've had a couple of people do four, and that's just in a row, you know, as fast as you can possibly do them. I've never thought about doing what you're doing, which is
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah, it sounds like a lame birthday party. What kinda idea is that?
Tom Rowland: Whew, talk about next level. That's I mean, ten in ten hours is incredible. Trying for the world record is is really incredible. But I kind of wonder like why I'm drawn to these endurance events or endurance challenges, or maybe not even endurance challenges, like why I'm even drawn to to do these things. And I see that it has always had a direct correlation. I've always relied on those things like David Goggins talks about the cookie jar and reaching in the cookie jar. You've already done these things and so when things get hard, you can reach in the cookie jar and you can find one of these things. Like I did three Murphs on a Saturday one time. I can do this, like this is I'm gonna make a difficult phone call. If I can do that, I can do this, right? But I just wonder what your perspective is. Like why y I'm sure you have a lot of self reflection when you're running all this all these miles and you're doing all of these things, it's a great time for for reflection. I wonder if you've come up with any any ideas of why you why you're drawn to this.
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah, I feel like at least in the challenges I've done up to this point, I have aged years in the couple days of doing these challenges. mentally, yeah, maybe physically too, because they're probably like damaging to the body.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Mentally. Yes. Yeah. They pr at this level they are.
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah, but but mentally is what I mean. Yeah. You learn so much about yourself when you're just like in the thick of it, in just doing a hard thing. a lot of times like I have people supporting me on these challenges. you know, somebody who would run a couple miles with me when I was doing that, like adding a mile a day challenge, when I was walking up stairs at the height of Everest, like friends would come. It was outside. It was like near a dam by my house. So it was like a pretty tall staircase. and it was at a park. And like some friends would come and walk up a couple with me and keep me company. so that's really cool to see like people supporting what I'm doing. but no one's gonna do Everest with me. No one's gonna do the marathon with me. so yeah it's it's a lot of time by yourself just thinking but sometimes not thinking. just kind of zoning out, being with yourself, being with nature, learning to be comfortable with that.
Tom Rowland: And then when you Do you keep a journal?
Jonathan Godbout: No, not really. like for for fitness training or for like thought?
Tom Rowland: No. So do you just kinda keep a mental Well, I'm just kinda wondering about like like a couple of the things that that I've done. I went and did this this Kokoro, SEALFIT Kokoro course. It's a fifty hour course with Navy SEALs and they it's basically like a snapshot of Hell Week. It's it was an incredible i event. I would encourage anyone that is drawn to things like this to look at it as something to do because you learn a lot about leadership and and and yourself.
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: And it's a just this incredible opportunity to to train with these people, like not just the Navy SEALs that are there, but the other people that show up and sign up and pay to do something like this, they're all like of the same they're cut from the same cloth, right? But I did a when I got back, they encouraged us to write an AAR, like an after action review. And in that they they had some questions you're supposed to answer, like what's the
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: main takeaway that you learned here and you know, what could you do better and what what you know, just different questions that are there and then you kinda find yourself just writing. And I did one for Kokoro and then I also did the GORUCK selection. one I was successful in, the other I was not successful in. Kokoro I I made it through I I feel not no one makes it through easily, but compared to the other one, much easier. And then GORUCK Selection is a similar event, 50 hours. And I did not make it through that one. And so I also wrote it wrote an after action review. And I find myself going back to those after action reviews and just kind of reading what I what I wrote. And it's interesting, the lessons that I learned and then to realize, you know, maybe maybe you're just going through a regular day, and then you realize, wow, I learned this lesson ten years ago when I did that event. And now it's part of my everyday way of thinking. It's part of what I do on a regular basis. And it's just like now it's in my DNA. And I didn't even realize where I've learned it until you read back through some of these things. And I just wonder if you're if you're kind of keeping track of lessons that you're learning, things that you're doing and and maybe even what is the most effective thing that you're conveying to your clients.
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah. yeah, you know, I the other thing I do is I play music. So I write songs. And that's helped me that's kinda like my journal is the songs I write. Haven't written too many recently, but those are all things that I'm super proud of. and maybe they're not direct lessons I've learned from a challenge, but like the evolution of my
Tom Rowland: Okay.
Jonathan Godbout: thinking and how I'm able to convey that. Like if I look at songs I wrote years ago compared to now, like I definitely see a more mature and like experienced, gone through some stuff and come up stronger on the other side. And that's kind of where I got the name of the name adaptation through perseverance. The idea is like in order to have positive change, you need to go through some adversity, like do something hard and come out You know, and come up better for it on the other side.
Tom Rowland: How did you originally did someone kind of show you this world when you were a kid, your parents or somebody? Like or or did you just kinda just start doing hard things?
Jonathan Godbout: It's good question. so one of my friends, his name's Evan. His dad introduced me to James Lawrence, the Iron Cowboy. Have you heard of him before?
Tom Rowland: yeah. I tried to have him on the podcast, it didn't work out. it was right in the middle of when he was doing his documentary that ended up on Netflix. I need to reach back out to him 'cause he was interested in doing it, but it just wasn't the right time for for him with with the documentary coming out. But yeah, the Iron Cowboy, that dude's also a beast.
Jonathan Godbout: Really. Amen. Mm. That dude is awesome. He's crazy. but yeah, I mean, just the thought of somebody being able to do a hundred and one Ironmans in a hundred and one days. And and also the fifty fifty fifty too, which was the fifty Ironmans and fifty states in fifty days. Like what a logistical nightmare that must have been. and just to have it be so chaotic and just like, this is the work we gotta do, gonna travel and then show up every day and do it. Absolutely incredible. So that something that really wowed me. I I honestly may have done the four by four by forty eight, the David Goggins challenge before that. So I was I was c already kind of into it. when I was in high school, like applying to college, I really wanted to go to one of the three service academies, so like West Point, Navy or Air Force. so like was kind of in the David Goggins universe, like seeing what he was doing. Didn't get into any of those schools, so ended up where I am now. Not in the military, clearly. but, you know, I think Murph is a good way to honor those who serve. My grandpa was in the military. he's awesome.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. That's cool. so let's talk about your your training a little bit, like how you're how you're preparing for this because I saw something on your on your Instagram this morning when I was looking at it. So you're I saw a couple of posts and you were trying to get a sub thirty five Murph. And then I came across a post and it was like why you're trying to get a thirty sub thirty five minute Murph, which is good time. but the reason why you you said in your video is that
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: Another person that you were listening to was talking about maybe it was somebody that had already done a Murph. I I'm not or a Murph challenge. So can you explain why you're why you're trying for a thirty five minute Murph and why that's an important time?
Jonathan Godbout: Th this is the guy that has the record from Australia. Yeah, so the guy who has the world record who did that twenty and change murphs said that Murph needs to feel easy to you. Murph needs to feel like 70% intensity. And specifically like doing Murph in the time that you plan to do it when you're doing the challenge. I'm kinda like adapting what he's saying based on like being relevant to me. But i it needs to feel easy, it needs to feel like seventy percent intensity at the pace that you're going. So I I'm kinda mathing it out and I'm like, okay, I wanna do Murph probably every hour on the hour. is gonna be the pace I need to go at. I'm sure there's gonna be things that go wrong. Maybe I'll need a longer break like way later in the day. But if I gotta do around twenty one Murphs and there's twenty four hours in a day, like I should be I should be going pretty much every hour on the hour, at least for More than ten. Like throughout the whole beginning of the day. So I'm kind of working backwards now. I probably want ten minutes of rest in between each one. That feels like a good amount of time where I can like eat something, go to the bathroom, like logistics. and there's gonna be a lot of that after after every time. And there's gonna be eating and going to the bathroom between Murph. Because you gotta eat a crap ton food and you gotta stay hydrated. So, you know, so now I'm looking at like fifty minutes is around the time I wanna do my Murph. And he said that you want your Murph to feel like 70% intensity. so like a pretty objective way to measure that is just doing it in seventy percent of the like do thirty five is seventy percent of fifty. I'm mansplaining this, but you see how I got there. So it's like in order for a a 50 minute Murph to feel like 70% intensity, my peak or 100% should be 35%. That's how got there. it's not the most like science backed, you know, doctors and exercise physiologists said that this makes sense. but it's a fast time and it means that I'm like super competent and skilled in the thing. and then I can like focus on building work capacity from there.
Tom Rowland: So where are you on the thirty five minute Murph?
Jonathan Godbout: I got it. I did it in like thirty I got sub thirty-four the other day. weighted. and then I I did a unweighted one for time. I it was funny on Memorial Day. I started right at midnight. So I said I wanted to like the first Murph finisher of twenty twenty six. so I just did it unweighted and did it as fast as possible. And I got I think like twenty-seven something on that.
Tom Rowland: Okay.
Jonathan Godbout: Like whatever. I don't know. I feel like i everyone hates on Murph time, so like how good were your squats? Like they were parallel, I think. They were Murph squats. Let's be honest. But like when I do the challenge, I I do care about it being fair, to an extent. Like I'll I'll squat to a wall ball, like butt hits the like wall ball every time, like to make sure I'm getting proper depth, like chest to ground on push ups, chin over the bar on the pull ups and like you know, measuring the exact distance on the run. Like I'm I'm not trying to cheat this in any way. I I do think that people can go a little bit overboard on like being a stickler about stuff. like with Yeah, like with with James Lawrence doing the 50 50 50, I think there was like a tornado or something and he did like one of the bikes inside. He did use an elliptical on one of the marathons, which like, yeah, that's probably cheating, but like let's not let it tarnish the entire guy's reputation. Like
Tom Rowland: You you think so?
Jonathan Godbout: You couldn't do this, like to anybody. Like no it's just absolutely crazy what he's doing. And for him to go and just like talk about his accomplishment and people say like, well you did, you know, days thirty four and thirty five inside. It's like shut up, dude. Like nobody cares. He did one of the hardest things ever. Let him have his moment. You know what I mean? So there's a there's a fine line, at least is what I think.
Tom Rowland: that's that's the way I think that that social media works. I w in looking at at your stuff this morning I came across another accomplishment and these guys had done a marathon, then they did a thousand, two thousand, three thousand on the pull ups, push ups, and squats, and then they ran a second marathon. so it was a marathon murph is what they were calling it. And there was a clip that could have come from any
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: part of the three thousand squats. And their squats were a little short. They were a little short. You know. They're doing three thousand of But and they had already run a marathon, right? And and the comments were like, Okay, no rep on everything. You you guys and but I like the way that they came back and they were like, okay, well next year I hope that you'll be here to keep us accountable for the squats, you know, when we do this again next year. And
Jonathan Godbout: Of course they were. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tom Rowland: i you know, is silent. It i nobody says anything at the at the end. But that's that's kind of the thing. So you're you're posting a lot on on social and you have a I I like your approach a lot. because you tell it exactly how it is. Like you you posted that you were gonna do this incredible thing, which was you were going to do a Murph. I can't remember how far you're gonna run in the beginning, but then you were going to do a hundred muscle ups. This is after you had already done three Murphs. you're gonna do a hundred muscle ups instead of the pull ups, which makes it a billion times harder. I mean i i maybe five billion. I don't even know that you could math how much harder that makes it. But then you were describe what you were going to do there.
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm. Yeah, have you heard of the I I misspoke in the video. I reali I like didn't realize it was called a different thing until after. It's called the World's Toughest Mile, is what they call it. So it's you go on a track. The first lap you do burpee broad jumps. like in HYROX, you can only progress like on your forward jump and then you have to go down for the the like chest to ground. And then the second lap you do walking lunges. The third lap you do
Tom Rowland: Yeah, right. Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Godbout: a bear crawl and this I looked like an idiot going around this track. Like it was in public. Like I'm just out of school and there's people running around the track and I'm like on all fours bear crawling they're running the hell is this guy doing? and then you run the fourth lap. So that was the mile. So I sub I was gonna substitute the first and last mile of Murph with that, which takes like forever and is super hard. and then yeah, muscle ups, handstand push-ups, and single leg squats. So 300 on both sides. I got about halfway through, ended up having to substitute. I could do the muscle ups. so like with my ninja warrior background, like I can they were hard for sure, but like I can kind of do muscle ups all day. handstand push-ups though, super hard. So like I I did a couple, I was just like, this this can't go. Like I just cannot do them. it's just like down on my head, can't push up. Like there's there's nothing else I can do at that point. so I was doing like pike push-ups instead.
Tom Rowland: Mm-hmm.
Jonathan Godbout: which is close. on the single leg squats I started out like just kinda like having my hands like on a pole like for balance, but like totally pressing up through my legs. and then towards the end of it I'm just like grabbing the pole and just like pulling myself up. Just 'cause like if I was just using it for support and balance, I go to press up off one leg and I just fall over. Like I just can't do it. so yeah, I got like halfway through and just called it. So yeah, it was a challenge that and I've I've failed challenges before. I've tried stuff and it doesn't work out and yeah, that's how it goes. But like
Tom Rowland: you're very open about that on on social media. You you you you're like, Okay, well I told you about this thing I was gonna try and you're gonna be very disappointed I failed miserably. which is it's just a refreshing it's really quite refreshing on on social media to see someone admit their failures because social media is almost exactly the opposite of that. They only show you most people show you, you know, the the best version.
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah.
Tom Rowland: of whatever it is that they're trying. So that's pretty cool. Has that how have the I don't know, I don't know if i if it even matters or if you even pay attention to it, but the the the comments, the the sentiment out there when you have that approach ap as opposed to look at what I just did kind of approach, what what's the difference in the comments?
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah. the video of saying you guys are gonna be a little disappointed I didn't actually do this. no one seemed to really care. it was like a refreshing level where people were just like, like, okay, sounds good, makes sense. it's a normal thing to do to set a goal and and fail it. Like that's super normal. People do that all the time. so that's normal. People don't really care about that. when you say I'm gonna go do this crazy thing, people are like, I got some that were saying like this is disrespectful to the veterans, like this isn't Murph. And and like I I get that there's like there's an authenticity and like you know, Murph is Murph and like we do Murph to honor those who like made the ultimate sacrifice. but I don't know. I I'm just a guy who wants to challenge myself and I feel like I'm doing something that know, I d I guess I just don't understand how me doing like a more challenging version of Murph is disrespecting any veterans. And like to be on your phone commenting that to some guy you don't know seems a little silly.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, but that's social media. It's silly. The whole thing's silly.
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah, that that's that's how it goes. It it makes me not want to do it to an extent because like I I'm not a social media guy. Like I don't I don't have tons of followers, so I was very surprised that you found me. but yeah, like I could just I could kind of care less about social media for that reason. but it it gets you to connect with cool people in your niche. Like Connecting with you and those couple people who had done like the similar challenges. that's cool. So I want to keep doing it for that reason.
Tom Rowland: Well, I'm gonna connect you with a couple other people that I've had on the podcast that I've been very impressed with. One is Rich Hernandez. Have you ever run across this guy? His his handle is Do Hard Things 365. Push up guy. Yeah, he's amazing. It's incredible. He can do he can do like four thousand push ups in and never leave the plank position. And and he'll show
Jonathan Godbout: yeah, that guy's awesome. He he can do so many push-ups. How can he do this many push-ups? I don't get it. Like Yeah. It's incredible what he does.
Tom Rowland: a time lapse of him doing it and you can see that he never puts a knee down, he never does anything except push ups. He just continues to do push ups. It's incredible. But like you and like so many other people that are that are accomplishing these these incredible things, if you ask him, he will tell you that it's just progression. It's just he doesn't miss a day and every day is slightly harder than the day before. Like he just adds
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm. Mm.
Tom Rowland: a push up or adds a mile like you're doing. He adds something every single day. But then he also has I mean, you know, cut from the cut from a different cloth is definitely him. he's he's he's got a mindset that he wants to do something and he is going to do it. And so I I was telling him about that every February we do the ten thousand pushup challenge and he'll do ten thousand pushups in 30 days. And if you've never done that, it seems incredible. But Rich is like 10,000 push-ups. That's cool. I think I could do that in a day. I'm going to try to do that in a day. So he did the 10,000 push-up in a day. He did it in a day. You know, he's just he's just looking for more challenge. And he's looking, I think that one of the things that that really drives him is he's he's really not doing it for himself. He's doing it
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's what I was thinking. That's absolutely insane. It's crazy.
Tom Rowland: like you because he wants to help other people realize that they have limiting beliefs or l help other people realize that literally anything is possible. And just because no one else has done it doesn't mean that you can't do it or it can't be done. Like if you look at, you know, the the mile, the history of the mile, as soon as as the benchmark was broken, lots of people broke it. But for that first person to do it, Roger Bannister,
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: It was really, really, really difficult. People are like, his heart's gonna explode. Like if you look back at at the the magazine and newspaper articles, they're like, This is a dangerous attempt. And now you have high schoolers doing it. And
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah. Yeah. It it's absolutely crazy. Like so one thing that I think is really, really interesting is if you looked at like a kind of like a line graph of people's marathon finishing times, there are spikes around all of the like whole numbers. So pretty much around like three hours and around four hours and around five hours, there's like these big spikes of people all finishing right around those times.
Tom Rowland: Interesting.
Jonathan Godbout: And then around like 3 30 and 4 30, there's like smaller spikes. And then like around the 15s, like there's little spikes too. and everyone would claim that, I'm just trying to run this marathon as fast as possible. Like I'm just trying to get out there and get a good time. but we run at these arbitrary times, because that's like what we set our mind to and what we think we can do. So someone had this number in their mind, like, okay, I want to run a sub four hour marathon and they'll run like a three fifty nine. And it's like, woo, you know, I did it, which is absolutely awesome. but it's not just I'm gonna go run it as fast as possible. It's like we and it it's I'm not saying that it's like a limiting belief that like I wanna run a sub four hour marathon, like that's awesome. But at the same time too, it's like you probably could have run a sub three fifty two marathon.
Tom Rowland: Yes.
Jonathan Godbout: you just didn't think to do it because it's not a whole number. It's not like a nice number. Do you know what I mean?
Tom Rowland: Man, yeah, do I know what you mean? Yes, I know what you mean. Big time. But it it it
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah. It's it's like how one point nine carat diamonds are way less expensive than two carat diamonds or something. You know what I mean?
Tom Rowland: Right. Right. But but it's also it speaks if you look at it a different way, it speaks to the power of setting the goal and it speaks to the power of getting exactly what you have have set. Like if you're trying to run a sub four hour marathon, there's probably like you say, there's probably a ton of people that are at like three fifty nine and then less people that are at three forty nine. like way less.
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: Because they're on pace, they're gonna do it, they're gonna make it, and and that's what they set their mind to, and that's what they're gonna do. It also is where they trained. They trained for that. So everything is kind of coming into into play exactly like they thought it was. But like what I'm fascinated with what you're doing, what David Goggins has done, what Rich Hernandez, that's other guy I'm gonna introduce you to, Enrico Enrique, what's his last name? Zapata. Enrique Zapata. He he is in Mexico City. He set the twenty-four hour well, he's trying to set the twenty-four hour, the twelve hour, and I think there's an eight hour or a four hour Guinness Book of World Records for pull-ups. And he's he's got he's got two of And he he's he's an incredible guy. He is an incredible guy. And he's also doing this in Mexico City. It's like eight thousand feet. he considered doing it somewhere else.
Jonathan Godbout: Mm. no, not the pull up record.
Tom Rowland: But you know, the pull up record is very competitive. Incredibly competitive it's
Jonathan Godbout: Pull-up record is nuts. Every like freezy. I am, yeah, definitely picking a less competitive world record. But like, sure, maybe I'll break the pull up world record one day. But man, the pull up world record is insane. It's absolute crazy.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah. But I wanna hook you up with these guys because I mean you guys you're you're the same. I mean you're you're you've got the same mindset, you've got the same intentions to like Enrique was he was an overweight alcoholic that was in terrible shape and he got in better shape and now he's like I'm gonna I'm gonna set this as a goal for myself that I can come from this place and end up here So I can show everyone that they can do the same thing. It's not that he wants to do it because he wants to hold the world record. He's doing it for a much larger purpose. He's doing it and that's what Rich Hernandez is doing. And that's it's it's just very cool to see that people want to to help other people. Like Mike Holland, do you know him? I've also had him on the podcast. He's got something called mind body energy movement and he does these
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm. Well, I actually I listened to that one with you guys. Yeah.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well he's got he's got like this this kind of Tai Chi kind of Qigong mix of exercises that he does in the morning. They're very easy to do. Very easy to do, but they get the blood flowing, they get people moving, and his goal is to help a million people. And he's driven by helping a million people. And therefore he's not driven by what he can do, he's driven by this larger purpose. And that's what I see with with that whole group of people, you you included, is like you're doing this like partly because you like to challenge yourself. But it sounds like you also want to show people that what's possible. Like what y what
Jonathan Godbout: A hundred percent. I I think that like the The mind can get itself into a hard place. If that's true, the mind can also get itself out of a hard place. And I think that the mind follows the body in a lot of ways. So if you make the decision to do something hard with your body and challenge yourself, that teaches the mind that it can get itself out of a hard situation too. so Yeah, and that's like that's why I feel so strongly about the words adaptation through perseverance is because the only way to adapt, grow, evolve, change in a positive way is to go through something hard and you'll come out stronger for it on the other side. I I really do believe that. Have you heard of Ross Edgley, another endurance athlete? So
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Yeah. That dude, what a beast he is too.
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah. What yeah, exactly. so he's probably like my favorite kind of ultra endurance guy as a role model because he has this interesting approach where he has some fun, I feel like. Like he's just a little lighthearted about Like Iron Cowboy, he's a pretty serious dude. like I think he means business. Goggins for sure means business. Like he's a serious dude. and I think that can that definitely works for people. Like I think some people need that. some people need that push where it's just like, do hard things, rah-rah, rah, yelling. but I think some people just wanna kinda like laugh a little bit and enjoy the process too. And like that's what I'm drawn to more. So yeah, these challenges are hard and they're grueling. But at the same time too, like let's have some laughs, let's have a little bit of fun with it. I don't wanna be out here saying like I am just a freak of nature athlete guy, like I run marathons, I eat nails for breakfast, like this whole thing. like I wanna have some fun with it. yeah, these challenges are kind of silly. but I like doing And I do think it's really inspiring for for other people because people just you you can do more. You can you can always do more and people just kinda sit around and are mediocre and it takes someone doing something a little crazy to show them that they can take that next step.
Tom Rowland: So I'm fifty seven. I've been training like this since I was a high school wrestler. And as the the longer that I train, the more I realize that at this point I'm training my mind more than my body. You ever feel like that? You're probably not there yet. You're young. How old are you? Twenty one. Okay.
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. A hundred percent. Twenty one. Yeah.
Tom Rowland: That I thought you were a little bit older than that, but that's that's that's very young. you're my daughter's age, or actually younger than my daughter. but to to I mean at when when you're doing twenty Murphs in twenty four hours, how much more can you train your body? Like how much li I mean seriously, like what
Jonathan Godbout: Ha ha Mm. Maybe twenty four. Twenty four would be cool. right, yeah.
Tom Rowland: I mean well thirty would be cool. But I mean like at at what point like are you like do you transcend that and you're not training your body anymore, you're doing something different. Like and and like I think that Goggins talks about it a lot and other people have talked about it a lot that that you know when you're when you're untrained, you know, going to your first yoga class is a challenge. And you made it through and you have this feeling like I did something that I didn't think that I could do. And then, you know, as you get in a little bit better shape, maybe that same person, you know, tries a CrossFit class or something and and it just seems when they walk in there, they see people clean and jerking and doing muscle ups and they're like, There's no way that I'm ever gonna be able to do those things. And they get encouragement and they go in and they're like, Well, w y yeah, no, not right now, you're not gonna be able to do those things. But a year from th then Maybe they're getting their first muscle up and they're like, I thought this was a complete impossibility. But they got the right people around them, they got the right coaching, they got they they stuck with it and they were able to do something that they thought was previously completely impossible. Maybe it's running a marathon, maybe it's doing something else. But as you get in better and better and better condition and you have more and more like experience and your body is capable of of these hard challenges.
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: it's harder and harder and harder to get that initial response of like, that's something I didn't think that I could do, and I did it, and I feel great about it. An athlete of your caliber still wants that feeling. Like it's that's a feeling that is hard to replicate. Like you saw something that was that seemed completely impossible. You did the preparation work and you stuck with it and you
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah.
Tom Rowland: accomplished it. That's as valuable to you at this level of your physical life as it is to the person that did their first CrossFit class. But it's just harder and harder and harder and harder to get to that point. You gotta do 20 Murphs. Like you know what I'm saying? Like it's it's a hard thing. And so for somebody that that has never run a 5K or something to look at the things that you're doing, sometimes it seems like it's like
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah.
Tom Rowland: That guy's just crazy. No, it's not that. It's he's he's chasing the same feeling that you are. Like that feeling that you have when you accomplish something that you didn't think that you could do, or that seemed really impossible, or that no one else in the world has ever done. You're chasing that just like they are. It's just harder and harder to get to. And and progressively harder as you get in better shape and you do more things, and now you got to do
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah.
Tom Rowland: The craziest thing, like what you're doing, or what Rich Hernandez is doing, or Enrique Enrique Zapata is doing, like all of these people are they're not crazy. They're in fact they're they're completely sane. They're just willing they want that feeling of encouragement and and accomplishment so badly that they're willing to do what it takes to get there and not sit in mediocrity like so many people do, of just, okay, well, that's enough. Right?
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah. One way I've heard it phrased before, which I absolutely love, is happen to life. Don't let life happen to you. it it's kind of silly, but like you can literally and I feel this so strongly too because of how young I am, but you can literally do anything. like anyone e even if you're like stuck in your career, like Go start that business or go like you thought a couple years ago that running a 5K would be cool. Go try to run a 5K. you know, one of your friends speaks Spanish and you wanna like go to Spain with them, like learn a little bit of Spanish. you know, your friend plays an instrument and you could make a band with them, like learn how to play the guitar or something. Like just you can do so much and get out there and learn new things. And people just people just won't, but learning stuff and improving is so much fun. where like if I want to improve in the context of fitness, like yeah, I gotta go to do something crazy. But if I wanna improve in the context of music and I don't know how to play the piano, like I can just kinda mess around with the piano over a couple of weeks, probably get pretty good at it and that'll feel cool. so I love like newbie games in all different disciplines of life. It's just so much fun to improve at stuff. So just try something new. You'll get so much better at it so quickly and that's fun. You know?
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well that's that's kind of the the the one of the big takeaways from the Navy SEAL courses and any time you talk to any of those guys, one of their core tenets is one percent improvement every day. And they don't say where you need to get that one percent. But you're gonna become a one percent better person. You're gonna improve something one percent every single day and you can do that. And if you chart a course, like, okay, well, I don't play the piano at all. So if I could learn how to
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: do chopsticks, that's one percent better than the day before, right? So now you have at least one little thing. You don't even have to continue down that road. You could find something else that you could do. But it's the one percent better every day. And over time, that is so incredible. Like it's always like the the two boats leave the harbor and they're they're going at the same it looks like they're parallel to one another. They're going on the same heading but they're one degree apart.
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Tom Rowland: And if you go and you know, out hundreds of miles, now those boats are hundreds of miles apart from one another. And it's the same it's the same kind of thing. Here's a here's something I wanted to ask you and you did a nice transition into it. but I sometimes wonder, like I'm always like thinking, I'm gonna get out of my comfort zone and I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna run a marathon now or I'm gonna s you know, s do some long swim or something that I don't normally do.
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm.
Tom Rowland: but then I started to think, those are all physical things. And those physical things, they all teach me something, and it's all good, but I'm wondering if like the physical world is actually my comfort zone. And so when I decide that I'm gonna launch into this challenge of yeah, I'm gonna do an Ironman or I'm gonna do this, actually that's my comfort zone. Even though I've never done an Ironman. Like, I already know like what that preparation's gonna look like. I already know what the dedication to that schedule is going to be. I already know like people that I could talk to. I already know where to go buy the bike. I already know all these things. I just haven't done it. But that's kind of a comfort zone. Whereas learning Spanish, learning, you know, Japanese and then taking a trip to Japan, that's so out of my comfort zone. Or like, I don't know, doing something else different that doesn't have a a physical component and you're doing with music probably. you know, that's another part of your life where you are probably I don't know, you're probably very competent musician, but do you ever think about that? Like looking at other things that are totally out of your comfort zone. Like, because that's how people feel when they walk into a
Jonathan Godbout: Mm-hmm. Sometimes.
Tom Rowland: a gym for the first time and they've never ever done a physical event in their life. They've never been on a team and they walk in there and they're like, This is not for me right here. This I've never seen anything like this. Like I kind of feel like I need to be gravitating to those kind of things sometimes.
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah, that is an amazing point. because it it kinda like brings fit people back down to earth a little bit more. yeah, for me to say I want to do this crazy challenge and it's gonna be so hard, no one's ever done done it before, like rah-rah rah, still probably easier and more in my comfort zone and like more my thing than somebody who's never been to the gym for the first time, like actually stepping in the door like that. legitimately might be harder than what I'm doing because I like what I'm doing. I enjoy it. Like I would probably do it anyways. even if and no one's pushed me to do this. Like I feel like doing it. but I think like an area in my life that is genuinely out of my comfort zone has been starting my own business. it's been an absolutely crazy adventure. Like I I've been doing it for maybe like a year and a half to two years at this point. And it's like becoming very close to being my main thing.
Tom Rowland: Mm.
Jonathan Godbout: like I still coach fitness because that's like stable and like go somewhere, interact with people, do that. so I do that like a couple times a week. But it yeah, it's been completely out of my comfort zone and honestly pretty scary too. like I both my parents are teachers. I actually went to college for physical education. so like I'm certified to teach phys ed in a school if I want to. and then I got out of college and I don't know, realized that wasn't what I wanted to do right away. I'm young, I'm gonna go take a shot at this thing. That's completely out of my comfort zone. And it is really scary. you know, asking people for money in exchange for personal training gives you this like imposter syndrome of like, you know, why are they You know, I don't even know anything. Like I I don't know what I'm talking about. How could I ever help someone with their fitness? And then like I realize like, I went to school for this and I'm certified and I like have a lot of experience. Like, yeah, it does make sense like when you actually think about it objectively, but like you can get in your own head and just like, Yeah, do I you know, am I deserving of this? Like, yeah, how do you open an L L C like how do you pay business taxes? Like, what if All my clients quit. I have like 50 clients. I'm can like every day I'm like, what if they all quit on the same day? Like it it just it's completely out of my comfort zone. It's very scary. but it's what I want to do. And like having a thing in a business is like, I don't know, something that I just I I just have so much energy and I just need to channel it into a thing. Previously it's been songwriting.
Tom Rowland: Mm.
Jonathan Godbout: but like I've gotten off that a little bit and now I just like I don't know, work on my app or like write people workout programs or like it just I need to channel my energy into something and given that I don't have a child and I don't have a dog, it's like my business is like my surrogate child right now.
Tom Rowland: Well, I'm one hundred percent certain that you're going to be quite successful with it. I you're gonna you're gonna do great. You just it's just like everything else. I mean, y when you have those problems with lack of knowledge, lack of experience, whatever, you got this cookie jar of all these things that you've done and while they're not business oriented, they do tell you that you can do anything.
Jonathan Godbout: Thank you. Mm.
Tom Rowland: And and you you definitely can. so I'm a hundred percent certain that you're gonna be successful. Maybe you pick up some clients here. how would people get in touch with you if they wanted to to have you write some programs for them?
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah. Yeah, my Instagram is ATPFitco. adaptation through Perseverance, the name on it. but like the username, ATP Fitco. that's where you found me on posting all about my Murph journey, training for that, try to be as authentic as possible. but yeah, mainly looking for either if you're super fit or if you got a friend who's super fit and wants to become even more fit, push outside of their comfort zone and challenge themselves. I'd be the guy for that.
Tom Rowland: What about the ninja warrior specific stuff? Are you training people? Like you said that's part of what you're doing with high level ninja warrior competitors right now, right?
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I train like some ninjas individually and then I work with like some gyms too, like doing programming for their team, which has been super cool. but ninja is just I'm so grateful that that is the sport I started out with because it is like everything athletically. It it crosses so many disciplines, it's body control, it's power, it's balance. its mentality. it is like such a diverse skill set that you need. That gave me a great athletic foundation. but you just need to be super strong for it. and a lot of ninjas don't know so much about like exercise science or like how you actually need to train and like build muscle and build strength and stay healthy and stay balanced outside of just doing a bunch of obstacles all day. so helping with that has been cool.
Tom Rowland: That's cool, man. Well, I've enjoyed hooking up with you today. I'm going to after this is over, I'm gonna hook you up with you know, create a text thread with with some of these other guys. I think we have to talk to Enrique Zapata on WhatsApp though. but maybe email. Maybe we can do it on on email. but I definitely want you to to to meet them. I think that Enrique, you know, when you move from you know
Jonathan Godbout: Okay.
Tom Rowland: ten Murphs to twenty Murphs and you're doing a thousand pull ups, no two thousand pull ups instead of what a thousand pull ups. Have you do you ever have problems with your hands tearing and and have you had that yet? I mean probably with ninja stuff you do.
Jonathan Godbout: s when I my hands are my hands are pretty durable. from ninja, that's like the sport where like in gymnastics they use grips and stuff, like rock climbing is actually like easier on the hands. it's like mostly fingertip stuff. my hands have been sufficiently beat up, they're pretty they're pretty leathery. I will probably rip during the challenge, but nothing I'm not used to. It happens. Yeah.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. Well there you go. Well, anyway, we we'll we'll I want you to meet these guys and they're they're gonna want to meet you. So anyway, thanks for coming, man, and good luck with your new business and and with this w wh when are you gonna try this, Murph?
Jonathan Godbout: probably in the fall. I wanted to do it my birthday. funny enough. I I don't know why like doing a bunch of fitness on your birthday is a thing that people want to do. Clearly it is. but it'll probably be super hot. so I'm just gonna take the summer to train and then probably do it in the fall when it's a little cooler.
Tom Rowland: Yeah. And do you have a place that you're you're considering doing this?
Jonathan Godbout: Yeah, think I'm gonna do it at my CrossFit gym. I when I came to them with this idea, they were like, This is the coolest thing ever. Like picked up on the vibes right away. They're like, We'll keep the gym open for you all day. We'll have people here for like at least one person doing every Murph with you to make sure you're safe. like we'll have a snack table. We're gonna bring in like a massage therapist and like they're like, like there's a doctor who's a member here, like they might, you know, know like how to keep you safe. Like maybe we should have them around. just like a hundred percent nailed it right out of the gate. so they're awesome. they've been helping me with it and supporting me, which is super cool. so like the community around that is just awesome. and then like social media too is a thing that I'm kind of newer to. but I like Forgetting about the hate comments and the people who are just like scrolling on their phone saying mean things to other people, it gives you the opportunity to like connect with such cool people who like you never would have been able to meet otherwise. So I overall think it's a pro, not a con. it's awesome. So yeah, community.
Tom Rowland: Yeah, well, it's really cool, man. It's really cool. So good luck to you. I'll be following your journey and we'll stay in touch.
Jonathan Godbout: All right. Thanks so much, Tom.
Tom Rowland: All right, thank you. Okay, cool. I'll hook you up with these guys here.
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