Jerzy is a kind and brilliant man. He happens to also be an absolute legend in the Olympic lifting world with one of the most interesting stories you'll ever hear!

The Happy Body program will teach you everything you need to know to be your own coach. It establishes exact scientific and testable methods and goals to engineer your own weight loss and fitness within precise time periods.

Ben is a return guest, friend and legend in the fitness industry.

Little bit about Ben; he was accepted into six medical schools, but opted to instead attain a master’s degree in exercise physiology and biomechanics, after which, in 2005, he leapt hardcore into the fitness world, partnering with physicians and opening a series of personal training studios, gyms and physiology and biomechanics labs across North Idaho and Eastern Washington, and eventually being voted as America’s top personal trainer in 2008.

While building his empire in the brick-and-mortar fitness industry, Ben competed as one of the top ranked amateur triathletes in the world, completing over 120 races and 12 Ironman triathlons while racing for the elite Team Timex multisport team, winning gold medal for the USA in long course triathlon, and leading squads of swim, bike and run enthusiasts in guided adventures through Hawaii, Thailand, Japan and beyond.

Eventually, Ben became the father of twin sons and pivoted into media, writing, speaking and consulting, launching one of the world’s first fitness podcasts, becoming a New York Times bestselling author of “Beyond Training” and 13 books, designing and creating the Christian Gratitude Journal , and starting a blog that now reaches over a million rabid fans each month. During this time, while making a name for himself as a relentless self-experimenter and biohacker, Ben became a professional obstacle course racer, completing the coveted Spartan Delta, training with the Navy SEALs, competing across the globe in open water swims, mountain runs and adventure races, winning multiple USA bowhunting competitions, and appearing on the planet’s toughest reality TV shows.

Daniele Bolelli is a writer, martial artist, university professor, and podcaster. He was born in Italy and currently lives in Los Angeles.

Hopefully you know Dr. Mercola by now.

First and foremost he is an osteopathic physician, also known as a DO. DOs are licensed physicians who, similar to MDs, can prescribe medication and perform surgery in all 50 states. DOs and MDs have similar training requiring four years of study in the basic and clinical sciences, and the successful completion of licensing exams. But DOs bring something extra to the practice of medicine. Osteopathic physicians practice a "whole person" approach, treating the entire person rather than just symptoms. Focusing on preventive health care, DOs help patients develop attitudes and lifestyles that don't just fight illness, but help prevent it, too.

His website, http://www.mercola.com/ is one of the most popular websites on the internet for your optimal health related question. 

It was a special honor to bring his perspectives to ALIGN!

Joe De Sena
Founder and CEO, Spartan Race

Joe De Sena - the founder and CEO of Spartan Race, the world’s leading obstacle racing company – has demonstrated his entrepreneurial drive since his pre-teens. From selling fireworks at age eight, to building a multimillion-dollar pool business in college, to creating a Wall Street trading firm, and now the world’s fastest growing sports movement, De Sena is a living definition of the word entrepreneur.

Following a successful career on Wall Street, De Sena moved his family to Pittsfield, Vermont to operate an organic farm, a bed and breakfast, and a general store for hikers. It was here his passion grew for ultramarathons, adventure races, and endurance events; and thus the idea for the Spartan Race was born.

With more than 200 events in 30+ countries planned for 2017, Spartan Race has more than 1 million global participants offering open heats for all fitness levels and ages, as well as competitive and elite heats. The company has more than 5 million passionate social media followers, health and wellness products, and two popular NBC television series, making obstacle racing one of the fastest growing sports—and lifestyles— in the world. As a leader in the sport, Spartan Race is the first obstacle racing company to feature timing and global rankings.

Joe’s message of inspiration and personal transformation, combined with his status as a two-time New York Times Best Selling Author of “Spartan Up” and “Spartan Fit.”, makes him a popular keynote speaker and public figure.

Throughout his lifetime, Joe has competed in any extreme sports adventure he could find, testing his mental and physical endurance against nature. Joe turned an interest in endurance racing into a passion. His racing resume is the stuff of legend – over 50 ultra-events overall and 14 Ironman events in one year alone.

About Dr. Jack Kruse

In 2006 Christine began speaking professionally to colleges. After writing books and spending so much time with 20-Something’s, she became a millennial expert and was mentored to begin speaking about generational diversity in the corporate market. Today Christine leads seminars and workshops to audiences around the country. She has spoken to over 100,000 people at colleges, personal growth events, conferences, and corporations. Christine has appeared as an expert on The Today Show, CNN, ABC, CBS, FOX, E!, Style and PBS, as well as various local television and radio shows, speaking about generation diversity, millennials, resilience, leadership, life balance and “Expectation Hangovers®” – a phenomenon she identified and trademarked. She is also a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post and Cosmo.

Currently she hosts a top-rated podcast on the Podcast One Network “Over it and On with it” where she coaches callers live on the air. She is also the co-host and relationship expert on TLC’s The Spouse House. Christine leads four retreats per year, runs a yearly Personal Mastery online course, hosts a membership community, and works privately with clients.

Nora Gedgaudas is a widely recognized expert on what is popularly referred to as the “Paleo diet”. She is the author of the international best-selling book, Primal Body, Primal Mind: Beyond the Paleo Diet for Total Health and A Longer Life. She is also the author of the best selling ebook: Rethinking Fatigue: What Your Adrenals Are Really Telling You and What You Can Do About It.

Nora is an experienced nutritional consultant, speaker and educator, widely interviewed on national and international radio, popular podcasts, online summits, television and film. Her own popular podcasts are widely listened to on iTunes and are available for free download. She maintains a private practice in Portland, Oregon as both a Board-Certified nutritional consultant and a Board-Certified clinical Neurofeedback Specialist. Her latest book Primal Fat Burner was released in January 2017 by Simon & Schuster (Atria).

Andy is a tenured Professor in the Center for Sport Performance at CSU Fullerton. He was born and raised in beautiful Rochester, WA and is a die-hard Seahawks, Huskies, & Mariner fan. RIP Sonics. As a youth, Andy played every sport at his disposal, excelling at Football, Basketball, Baseball, and Track & Field. While not playing, he worked at grocery stores, gas stations, hay fields, blueberry farms, and in the road construction business. It was during this time he discovered Strength & Conditioning. 

Andy took his limited talents to Linfield College to join their Football team and pursue a degree in Exercise Science. While he experienced great success in both (2004 National Championship and 2x Captain and immediate inductee into the "All Ugly" Team), the true reward of this time was the meeting of lifelong friend (Doug Larson). The two fed each other's pursuit of knowledge of human performance and led them to attend the University of Memphis for the Masters degrees in Human Movement Sciences. A bit of luck and excellent faculty mentoring led Doug and Andy to meet Mike Bledsoe and the man formally known as "Barbell Buddha" Chris Moore - all of which later led to the creation of the #1 Health & Fitness Podcast in the world Barbell Shrugged. It also marked the start of Andy's competitive Weightlifting (culminating in his 7th Place finish in the 2007 National Championships), Mixed Martial Arts, and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu careers. 

Esther Gokhale (Go-clay) has been involved in integrative therapies all her life. As a young girl growing up in India, she helped her mother, a nurse, treat abandoned babies waiting to be adopted. This early interest in healing led her to study biochemistry at Harvard and Princeton and, later, acupuncture at the San Francisco School of Oriental Medicine.

After experiencing crippling back pain during her first pregnancy and unsuccessful back surgery, Gokhale began her lifelong crusade to vanquish back pain. Her studies at the Aplomb® Institute in Paris and years of research in Brazil, India, Portugal and elsewhere led her to develop the Gokhale Method, a unique, systematic approach to help people find their bodies’ way back to pain-free living.

Gokhale practiced acupuncture and taught posture, dance, and yoga in her Palo Alto wellness center for over twenty years. The Gokhale Method continues to grow as qualified Gokhale Method teachers now teach the method worldwide.

Gokhale's book, 8 Steps to a Pain-Free Back, has sold over 100,000 copies and has been translated into eight languages. In 2010, Gokhale hosted the nationally televised program Back Pain: The Primal Posture Solution (available on DVD).

Gokhale has taught at corporations such as Google, IDEO, Varian Medical Systems, and Facebook Inc. She has also presented at conferences including TEDx(Stanford), Ancestral Health Symposium, Weston Price Foundation Conference, and PrimalCon.  She continues to speak with physician groups including Stanford, PAMF, UCSF and has consulted for the trainers of the SF 49ers and several Stanford sports teams.

In May 2013, The New York Times featured Esther in an article giving her the title, “The Posture Guru of Silicon Valley”.

Esther Gokhale lives on Stanford University campus where she raised three children with her husband Brian White, chairman of the Math Department.

Awards:

1978 Dean’s honor list at Harvard University
2008 Foreword Silver Award for best health book
2009 Nautilus Gold Award for best Pilates/Tai Qi/Yoga/bodywork book
2009 Ippy Bronze Award for best health book

I’m Jay Ferruggia, and I’ve been helping guys become the strongest version of themselves since 1994.

You may have seen my work in Men’s Health, Muscle & Fitness, Maximum Fitness, Men’s Fitness, Fast Company, Huffington Post, LiveStrong, Muscle & Fitness Hers, Shape, Entrepreneur, Details or on ESPN or CBS.

You know how group training is the big thing these days? I was doing that in the mid 90’s.

The hardcore, underground warehouse gyms that are so popular nowadays? I had one of those back in ’96.

Training like an athlete? Flipping tires, dragging sleds, pressing logs, using rings? Been doing that for 20+ years with my clients. Long before it was popular or on TV commercials.

What you may not know is that I have struggled with all of the issues I discuss on this site.

Over the course of my life I’ve been physically and mentally weak, skinny, fat, sad, depressed, insecure, painfully shy, socially awkward, crippled with anxiety and indecision, struggled with addiction, and have gone broke on more than one occasion.

Overcoming those obstacles took many years and a lot of hard work.

I read over 500 books.

I attended countless conferences and workshops.

I hired coaches and mentors.

I cut out the negative deadbeats in my life.

I slowly eliminated one bad habit at a time and replaced it with a new one.

What I learned after all that is that Thoreau, Da Vinci and Bruce Lee were right.

Simplicity is the key to health, wealth and happiness.

Learning to apply the 80/20 rule to everything and forgetting the rest.

Because the reality is that most things don’t matter. It’s just noise and meaningless nonsense that distracts us from living the lives we want.

Life is simple really, but we insist on making it complicated.
– Confucius

Hunter Maats is a friend and sincerely one of the most intelligent people I've come across. This conversation spans a variety of topics from how to think more effectively, where our perceptions come from in the first place and lots of old dead guys perspectives on various matters of the sort. Desfruta!

Being an athlete doesn’t stop when you exit the arena, field, or court. Being a competitor is a lifestyle, a lifestyle that Jason Khalipa knows well. As Jason struggled to balance training for the CrossFit Games, fatherhood, fitness entrepreneurship, coaching, and maintaining his business, he soon realized he needed to reevaluate his approach to life. 

It is now Jason's approach to life to wholeheartedly focus on the present without fear of reevaluation.

Jason has competed in the CrossFit Games on 8 separate occasions. Competing as an individual for 7 consecutive years, and wrapping up an 8th year as a team competitor, Jason is no rookie to the sport of fitness. Throughout his CrossFit Games career, Jason has only placed outside the Top 10 once, has won every Regional competition he has participated in, and he won the Spirit of the Games award in 2009. Not only has Jason held all podium positions at the world championships, but he was also named to Team USA 3 times.

Born in the Phillipines, Callen spent the first fourteen years of his life overseas in countries like India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Greece and Saudi Arabia, before moving to the U.S. He went to high school in Massachusetts and earned his B.A. in History at the American University in Washington D.C.

Bryan Callen has spent the last 17 years in Los Angeles fighting traffic because that’s where he seems to find the most work. (Bryan Callen is also writing this but making it seem like someone ELSE is writing this by referring to himself in the 3rd person) Callen got his start as an original cast member of MAD TV. He then went on to play numerous roles on the small and big screen including, “Old School” “Bad Santa”, “Sex and the City”, “Entourage,” “Californication”, “7th Heaven,” “King of Queens,” “Stacked,” “Las Vegas,” “West Wing,”“News Radio,” “Significant Others,” “CSI,” “NYPD Blue,”“Suddenly Susan,” and “Frasier.” He recently finished a two season character arc on USA’s“In Plain Sight”

Callen is not a famous actor but sometimes people look at him and scream “Bilson, ” since that’s the character he played on several episodes of CBS’s “How I Met Your Mother.” His most recent TV role was Captain Frank Dashell, leader of the Undead Task Force, in the short lived but critically acclaimed MTV comedy, “Death Valley”. He’s been recognized for that role exactly 4 times but who cares since he’s been recognized over one million times (I’m guessing) as EDDIE, the Middle Eastern owner of a wedding chapel in a little movie called THE HANGOVER. Not to mention his role as Samir, in HANGOVER II where he played basically the same exact character only Samir had thick, curly, hair and darker skin which is actually a good look on Callen considering his Irish/Italian heritage has left him with a ruddy complexion and thinning, mouse-brown hair. His most recent role on the big screen was in the Lion’s Gate drama WARRIOR where he did an excellent job playing himself.

Between acting gigs Callen spends his time power lifting, taming lions, vanquishing evil and making people laugh as a stand up comic. That’s why he can currently be seen on SHOWTIME performing a stand up comedy special called MAN CLASS.

BIO

About Carl Paoli

Born in the U.S. to Swedish parents and growing up in Spain, Carl Paoli learned from an early age how to connect to and be conscious of others. Carl's childhood passion and enthusiasm for physical activity lead him to explore many different sports such as snow boarding, skiing, wake boarding, water skiing, karate, among others. It was his love for gymnastics, however, that would greatly shape his definition of hard work and determination.

Carl soon rose to become an elite gymnast in Spain where he trained and competed for over fifteen years. Throughout his gymnastics career he received many accolades, including a National Gold Medal for Vault. Carl studied Environmental Science at Universidad Miguel Hernandez and specialized in Genetic Engineering and Coral Reef Ecology. After university, Carl returned to the U.S. to pursue his career in marine biology.

Carl's mind was never far from his appreciation for sport and fitness, and he reentered the world of gymnastics in 2004 in San Francisco. He now works as a Strength and Conditioning Coach and runs his own practice called Naka Athletics, which specializes in all level physical preparation and representation of action sports athletes. 

My Story

Two years ago I had an awful lot going on. Some of the symptoms listed here I only recognise with hindsight, and many are so common that some people regard them to be normal, I know now that's just not true.

Symptoms

• Gas, diarrhea, painful bloating, belching
• Poor cognition
• Mild depression
• Caffeine dependency and weird food cravings
• Chronic fatigue, poor recovery from training
• Chronic insomnia, tired in the afternoon and wired at night
• Sugar cravings that persisted after eating sugar
• Sleepy after eating
• Non-existent libido
• Seasonal and cat allergies
• Extreme sensitivity to bright light
• Nagging injuries with no known cause
• Cold during the day, sweating at night

I'm lucky enough to have PPO health insurance provided by my employer, so after an extended period of denial I booked an appointment with my primary care physician. Unfortunately this kind of doctor can only help with symptom relief, and each and every visit ended with the prescription pad. Can't sleep? Take some Ambien. Got allergies? Here's some Allegra. Low iron? Try this supplement. Never once did anyone I visited ever question why I had these problems. The situation came to a head shortly after visiting the gastroenterologist. By this time I’d spent a fortune in deductibles on tests and each time the result would come back with confirmation of what I already knew. It was like I somehow had to prove a point before the doctor would believe me. I drew the line at the colonoscopy, a risky procedure that would almost certainly lead to a prescription for an anti-inflammatory steroids.

The words colonoscopy and steroid had clearly caught the attention of my now wife Julie. The gastroenterologist didn’t really question my diet, and being a food scientist, Julie refused to believe there was no link between my symptoms and diet and set about scouring the literature for a solution. Soon after, and luckily just days before I was to return to the gastroenterologist, she found a body of research that turned out to be life changing. At this point we’d both enjoyed some health improvements through a year of eating a gluten-free Paleo diet but this new body of research, known as the Autoimmune Paleo Protocol, took us to a new level. Within a few weeks I felt so much better, and occult fecal blood and C-reactive protein tests came back normal.

The solution always starts with food, but as it turned out that was only half the solution. Inspired by the huge improvement in way I felt eating AIP I developed a voracious appetite for research. I felt empowered, suddenly I realised that genetics were not the only underlying root cause, and that the answers were really out there waiting to be discovered.

Learn more at Align.nbt.ai

Dr. Belisa Vranich is a renowned clinical psychologist, public speaker, and the author of Breathe: The Simple, Revolutionary 14-Day Program to Improve your Mental and Physical Health (St. Martin’s Press/Hay House).

As founder of The Breathing Class™, Dr. Belisa has taught and lectured nationwide on topics related to dysfunctional breathing patterns and stress. Unique in its straightforward approach, The Breathing Class™ addresses both physical and psychological problems related to oxygenation that is out of balance, and teaching people to breathe in an anatomically congruous way that maximizes balanced inhales and exhales.

I’m an emotional healing coach, international teacher, world traveler, and curious student of life. My work is intended to empower people to empower themselves to live more meaningful lives.

I run a very busy one-on-one client practice (most sessions are via skype) where I’m fortunate enough to work with people everyday on healing their hearts, resolving self-sabotage, and stepping into their true power.

I also lead retreats around the world on different healing and personal empowerment themes for like minded and like hearted people to come together and learn, grow, and heal.

I also make videos. I’m very active on my YouTube channel, where I regularly release videos to help people help themselves. I also make comedy videos known as my 'Ultra Spiritual' series. Aside from the entertainment value of these humorous videos, they also carry important underlying messages (at least I think so, but I’m biased because they’re my videos).

And if the formal credential side of things is important to you, I hold certification as a Holistic Coach Advanced Practitioner through the Holistic Coaching Institute in Columbus, OH. I also served as a faculty member for the C.H.E.K. Institute from 2006-2013. Most importantly, I have red hair, blue eyes, a caring heart, and a warped sense of humor.

http://awakenwithjp.com/

Intro Music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBYOdN-3qmg

Travis Brewer is a fitness ninja and entrepreneur on a mission to spread positive energy through movement. His dedication to movement has led him to become a finalist on the hit TV Show American Ninja Warrior on NBC, perform on the TV Show Shark Tank on ABC, as well as a World Callisthenic.org Champion of the “Battle of the Bars” competition. He is certified as an instructor in Animal Flow, Arco Yoga Fitness, and was requested as featured parkour instructor on The Tim Ferris Experiment by Tim himself. Beyond teaching, Travis enjoys motivational speaking and performing acrobatics. He has been invited to speak on popular health and fitness podcasts, performed at the largest fitness expos in the world, at the halftime show of an NBA game, and the circus group Luccent Dossier. Travis’ other great passion is philanthropy and inspiring others to move toward their passion. He is a leading expert on the new Deepak Chopra app, JIYO; a personal wellbeing companion. 

http://www.travisbrewer.ninja/