Transcript #473 How to do a Championship Detox and Manifest Your Health Goals with David Holloway

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1. Find out what’s in store for this Myers Detox Podcast with David Holloway, leadership coach and championship NFL player, joins the show to talk about how to change your mindset to be a champion detoxer. David goes over so many amazing tips on how to set up goals for your health, and how to manifest the things you want in life. He also covers some amazing health strategies, and how elite athletes approach mental and physical detoxing. If you’re looking to improve your life and begin to manifest the things you want, this is a can’t miss episode!
2. Learn more about David, and how he used mindset techniques to become a professional athlete.
3. Learn about how you can change your mindset so that you can start having the health that you want.
4. Find out about some of the detoxes elite athletes are doing.
5. Learn about some of the mindset techniques you can use when you have a set back or feel discouraged.
6. Hear some of David’s entertaining detox stories that he experienced along his journey.
7. Learn about one of David’s best techniques for getting to where you want to be.
8. Find out where you can learn about David and work with him.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Hello everyone. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers. Welcome to the Myers Detox Podcast. And today, we have David Holloway on the show, and he is a mindset and leadership coach. He was a championship NFL player, and he has a lot to say about how to set up your mindset to be a champion detoxer. And it’s really important, I think, to have the right mindset for health, to have the right goals and how to set your goals and how to manifest what you want in your life. And that pertains to your detox strategy and your health strategies as well because I think for so many people, they think they want to get better, but they don’t really set goals for that, or they want to achieve something, and they just are maybe directionless or just not really as focused as they could be.

  And I think the same principles to achieve what you want in life also pertain to detoxification. So we’re going to be talking about how to set your goals and manifest them. And this is coming from an NFL champion whose dad was an NFL champion and who else’s grandfather was as well. So this person knows about winning and how to achieve and how to create the right mindset, and how to set your goals. So I wanted to have him come on to discuss all that. He’s going to be talking about how champions also do detoxes physically and mentally, and we also have some really entertaining detox stories for you as well. So stay tuned for today’s show with David Holloway.

  And I know you guys listening, you are concerned about your mental health, you’re concerned about maybe trauma that you’ve had in the past and how that’s affecting you. Maybe you have done everything for your health, or you are eating an amazing diet and taking amazing supplements. You’re just doing everything possible for your physical health, and we still aren’t feeling well. So I created a masterclass called the Emotional Detox Masterclass that goes into how emotional trauma and how childhood development trauma promotes physical health issues. And the research is fascinating on this particular subject, and I found myself at a certain point having amazing physical health, but I just woke up just feeling blah. I just woke up not feeling my best, mentally not feeling happy or joyful, and just felt like there was another level that I could reach, another rung that I wanted to climb in my physical and mental health. And doing emotional detox work, trauma work, and childhood development work really got me to that next level. So check out this masterclass at emo-detox.com. You won’t regret it.

  My guest today, David Holloway, he’s an all-star frontline competitor, and he’s traveled over half a million miles, inspiring many Fortune 500 companies with his underdog story of overcoming adversity and winning at the highest levels. Today he brings peak performance practices to leaders who are committed to an extraordinary feature, giving audiences a look into the future of highly successful world-class competitors who will consistently outperform the competition.

  And David utilizes and shares smart life lessons from his walk-on and NFL experiences to transform thinking within organizations and inspire championship teams. And turning around underperforming teams, peak performance, and building championships is something that he’s done firsthand as well as grown up around. So you can learn more about David and his work at davidholloway.com. David, thanks so much for joining the show.

David Holloway: All right. You’re very welcome. Thanks for having me. I know we’ve been playing this for a while, it’s been a long time. So let’s get right into it. So go, go, go.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Is that we’ve been planning this for 10 years?

David Holloway: Yeah. I mean, man, this has been a long time coming. We met a long time ago, I remember, at Sean Stevenson’s event, and we hit it off, and we planned to do so much, and then we lost touch, COVID a little bit, but glad we stayed in touch and happy to be here to serve your listeners.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Great. Yes. So why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about your background and your expertise and mindset and leadership and championship football and all that.

David Holloway: All right. Well, my background is pretty unique in that I’m a third-generation pro athlete. My dad played professional football for the Patriots; I love all of you Patriot fans out there. And my grandfather on my mother’s side played for the Bruins, the Big Bad Bruins, in the seventies, won two championships. He’s the real superstar of the family but, sadly, passed a couple years ago. But I grew up in this championship environment where by default, they just got lucky to be around all these amazing people that were at the top of each of their sports at some point in another. Are you talking about Bobby Orr, your or Bo Jackson, or the Patriots that played in the 85 Super Bowl and the collaboration with them? I know it’s a ton of the Chicago Bears, guys. So growing up, it was a pretty unique environment when it came to sports and athletics.

And when you’re in that world, a lot of people look at it as what they remember in high school or jocks. But let me just shift some of the energy a little bit to share with people that it is a sports entertainment business, and if you’re not making money, then you’re gone. So it’s very cutthroat where only less than 1% actually make it. So you can imagine the physical rituals, the physical detox, the mindset that I grew up around that naturally just rubbed off. As everybody knows, in the environment, we’ll get into this a little bit. Your environment plays a big part in how you respond, how you react, and what vibe and energies in the air that all line up to set yourself up to win.

And that’s what really a champion world-class athlete champ who’s living a championship lifestyle, what we call is doing that. They’re always setting up to win. They’re always curious about self-improvement and getting better every single day. That was an environment that I was very, very lucky to grow up in. And when it comes to leadership and getting alpha men, at a young age, usually as an athlete, you’re between 20 and 30 years old, and you’re getting paid a ton of money. You talk about egos, you just talk about divas, you talk about people that are just probably the hardest people to get together and move in one direction. You learn a lot of tricks about leadership, you learn a lot about human communication, and there are so many different skills that translate through all different parts of life that are involved when we talk about championship lifestyles.

And that’s what a little bit of what I came to share with you guys today is those peak performance practices, some of the mindset tricks, and some powerful reminders because listen, at the beginning of the year, we have all these New Year’s resolutions, and you hear about it, the new year, new me and all this to where it’s almost you don’t want to hear it anymore. But when you’re talking about living a world-class lifestyle, it’s something that doesn’t just come up on New Year’s. It comes up over and over and over again as the year goes on and that you have, and that’s what being part of a championship team is all about. Because yes, we got together and played and did stuff on the field for sports entertainment, but outside of the ice of the court, the arena, we were all, not all, but most of us in that tight community were friends, and we continued to help each other off the field, off the ice, off the court. We got to know each other’s families, and we became and lived this championship lifestyle even away from sports.

So when we talk about the things we’re doing today, I want everybody here to really understand that this is more than just a resolution. This is more than just another mindset hack. This is really a championship lifestyle that I want to share with the world. And now that’s what I do. Actually, I’m a motivational speaker, and I go around the world teaching some of the peak performance practices and what it’s like to be inside a real championship environment that I got lucky to be around. But again, they taught me that gifts aren’t really complete. All the luck and the gifts I was given it’s not really complete until I share it with other people. So I’m happy to be here and do some of that today.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Great. Yeah. So I want you to share some of your tips about mindset because I think when it comes to detoxification, there are a lot of changes that people have to make in their choices and really limiting drinking, going to bed earlier, eating a better diet, doing a lot of detox protocols and spending a lot of time and money doing that and really making a big shift in their health either to prevent health issues, or they’re looking to reverse a diagnosis that’s being caused by toxins. So it can be a big lifestyle change, a big learning curve. So can you talk about how people can improve their mindset and be maybe a little bit more excited about the gift that they’re giving themselves, which is the gift of health?

David Holloway: Yes. I can speak to that, and I’ve had plenty of experience in doing that because when you are a world-class athlete, your body is your business. You have to invest time and energy into it, and you have to seek out other experts in your field. And it’s something you’re always doing. As I said, you’re always looking to set yourself up to win. When it comes to mindset, when it comes to taking anything on that, you feel like it may be overwhelming or maybe a big task; the first thing I would say to do is to get a journal. And I invite everybody to keep a log of their progress, of their goal, whatever that is, and keep track of where they are now. It’s almost like if you were going to work out and I was your trainer, the first thing we would do would take a picture of you, let’s say in a bathing suit picture, right, front side, back, we get the real idea picture of doing that, and we put it in the journal, so we know exactly where we are. We’re not lying about it; we’re not scared to take accountability.

Yes, it might not be where we need to be, or we want to be, but this is where we’re at right now. This is the bottom line. So we would do that, and next, we would say, “Okay. Right, where you’re at one to 10, so we have a number, so we’re keeping track.” And now the next thing is where do you want to go? Where do you want to be? What’s the end goal? Not for the summer body, but how do you want to feel? Do you want to feel lighter on your feet? Do you want to finally start rehabbing the ankle injury? Certain things that are just going to make you through your day-to-day just feel better so you can bring more joy and energy and you can share more of the gifts.

So that’s how we would start, and we would break it down. And I was going to get into this question later, but I’ll just say it right now. One of the key questions you want to ask yourself when you’re starting anything major after where you are, exactly where you want to go, is to ask yourself the question, what’s the tiniest, smallest, simplest step I can make right now that’s going to give me progress to where I want to be? Because when we’re talking about the human body, we’re talking about human nature; things can’t be rushed if you want to do it in a healthy way. If you want to really do it in a detox way, if you want to live this championship lifestyle I’m talking about, you know it’s going to take a while. You know you have to have discipline and patience. So those are the things that can really help you start off.

And with the journal, you keep track of that. So every week, or at least every month, you’re writing down your numbers, and you know exactly where you are. So you have clarity. And let me rewind a little bit to the second step; the question is, where do you want to be? That is something that a lot of time really needs to be spent there. And one of the steps I teach all over the world now, one of my top steps is called properly crafting a vision but is that that’s really architecting your bigger future, and you really need to sit down with your journal. I invite you to do this, get your journal, get into an environment that you know can have no distractions, pen, and pad, and just brain dump exactly where you want to be, how you want to feel, what the environment’s going to be like.

And you want to spend a lot of time there, and a lot of people miss on that because when you have a promised land, a vision in the future that’s so clear and real, that if I jump through into your life and ask you tell me exactly what your bigger future looks like, what does it feel like? What do you see? Bring me into the motion picture of that. A lot of people can’t do that. And a lot of people, when you ask them what their bigger future is, they just shrug and say, “I don’t know.” Or they give a very vague answer.

And what’s the significance of all this? Why spend even more time journaling and crafting the vision of your bigger future? The reason why is when you have something so clear and so powerful, it will literally pull you towards it. And when you have that future pull towards something, it’s easy to get excited about it. It’s easy to put in the time and the energy and make sure that you’re not skipping things, or if you do miss something, you already have a daily schedule in the future where it’s your missed daytime. So you can be on track and be on your A-game to get to that goal.

And I’ll tell you a quick story. When I was at the University of Maryland, when I first started my athletic journey, you would’ve thought it would be great. Roses, you got this championship lifestyle around all these amazing Hall of Famers, Stanley Cup, and Super Bowl. It’s easy for you. Most people would think that death is wrong. They didn’t care. I don’t know why they should have, but they didn’t care. So when I first started sports, people said I was too small, I was too slow, I didn’t have what it takes, and didn’t have my dad’s size. He was about 6’8, and I was 6’2. You don’t have your grandfather’s athleticism, his toughness. Maybe you should try something else. Just quit because athletics is just as not in your future. That’s what I was told. And it would’ve been nice if it was 1, 2, 10, or even 50 people.

I got rejected. Listen to this, I got rejected by over 850 division-one colleges. I mean, you can think of the worst college out there for sports, and they didn’t want me either. It was just, “No, David.” That kid’s book No, David. It was just not at all. They just didn’t think I was good enough. And it wasn’t just the 850 colleges; I did the math on this. There are over 10,000 scouts that go out and look out and evaluate talent. They didn’t think I was good enough. Walked at the University of Maryland; I was on six teams, and I couldn’t even get into practice. They didn’t allow me to eat with the team. I had to run off to campus and run back while eating my food. I got laughed at for having a triple-digit number. I was given clothes by the equipment manager that had holes in them and mismatched socks.

I mean, it was awful. What kept me going through all that. When I started doing well two years later, one of the best in the country, now getting recruited by NFL teams, and all these people were wondering where I came from. I told them the secret was because everybody asked, “How did you get here?” I told them, “The secret was me crafting, architecting my bigger future.” The vision I had was so clear; I could see it even in the beginning. If I closed my eyes, I could see exactly where I was going to be, what I was going to do, and what I was going to help Maryland do in the community, not just for me. And all those things came true, but none of it would’ve come true if I didn’t have that future pull. And it’s biblical even, and I’m not very religious, but in every religion, clarity, vision, those things will always pop up.

And in the Bible, the tone of the quotes is without a vision that people shall perish. And I looked that up. I remember parish; really, my favorite definition of it was just you begin to fade away. And I really feel like there are moments in my life where when I didn’t have that future pull when I didn’t have that bigger vision, I didn’t spend time with my journal and pen and pad thinking of exactly what I want. Those are the moments in my life when I felt like I really was perishing. And the analogy I use is life handed me a ticket to go sit in the stands and watch the game of life being played over here on the field while I just sat and wasted time in my life I can sadly never get back.

So one of the reasons it’s such a mission of mine to share this and to let people know the power it has is because I went through it on my own. Even with the great family legacy, I had to do this on my own. And this is the number one thing that carried me to that promised land. Because when it’s that clear, now I remember I don’t mind getting up at 5:00 AM and working out before anybody else is even up. I don’t mind going out to seek out other best in my industry to take time to do that because I know the future is going to be so exciting, something I crafted, not anybody else, that it’s coming my way. And the faster I do these things, the faster it’s going to come. And when it did come, it was wonderful. It was great, a little weird because everybody went from walking right by me and who was this loser from the sixth team and laughing at me too, now giving me all the respect in the world.

And it was the same people on both sides. So it became a little strange. I didn’t expect the story to get as big as it was, where people were dropping out of their college to come to the University of Maryland to try to duplicate that. And then on to the next level, we’re talking about professional sports where I helped turn the Arizona Cardinals, one of the worst franchises in sports history, around a year and a half after I got there. They’re in the first Super Bowl in franchise history and something I’m very proud of. But it also again reinforces the power of you sitting down in your environment with nobody else around, no distractions, and really listening to your heart. Anything that comes out, I call it a brain dump; just write it down, and don’t get in your own way. And as we get older, we lose a little bit of connection to that.

And part of my job, one of the reasons I’m here, one of the number one things I want to share with you guys today is to sit down and reconnect to that vision a little bit. Here’s how I invite you to do that, the smallest step, write it in your calendar. One of my mentors always said that it’s not real unless it’s on your calendar. So just write it in your calendar vision time. And it doesn’t have to be long. I tell people three, “Start with 300 seconds,” that’s five minutes. Anybody can do that.

But it has to be scheduled. And a lot of times people, they say vision, they think it’s a little woo-woo where I’ve lost so much connection. I have kids, I have all these responsibilities, and they never take the time to really schedule it. So you’re challenged today because, without challenge, there is no change. Your challenge today is just to do that right in your calendar so you can reconnect and figure out exactly what you want. So you’re not in the stands of life. And then someone who comes around and asks you the question of your exciting future or why you are so excited to get this done, you could tell them exactly why.

Dr. Wendy Myers: And if you put that energy out there, you put that energy onto the universe to God, ask God what you want, and you are specific, you’re going to attract that in.

David Holloway: When you put that out there, you naturally attract yourself. When you have a vision that’s clear, it filters out a lot of stuff. So it makes your job even easier because you know exactly where you’re going. So now when you start to stray, you know, can’t stay there for long, or you can block out all the distractions that come in because so many of people that say, “I don’t have time,” which is the number one excuse or they feel like that so much is coming at them, it’s because they need to spend a little bit more time with their vision. And then guess what, like you said on the way, you attract so many other people that can help you on your journey that almost magically seem to pop up at times that let you know that whatever you’re putting out there is doing the right thing by attracting them.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yes, absolutely. And I think people also get what they focus on. You have to say no to many things that you may want to be doing. No to partying on Saturday night or not to that glass of wine every night or doing things you don’t want to do, like coffee out of us or whatever to detox and help your liver, repair your liver, what have you, or eat salads more. And it takes discipline, and you have to really know what you want for sure when it comes to your detox, your health, or whatever you’re trying to achieve.

David Holloway: And clarity will help that become so much easier. Who wants to get up and do two or three workouts a day before anybody’s even up? I don’t want to do that. But when I had my vision in place, now I make a big difference. Stance or you’re on the field, you’re in one or the other. And I’m not perfect. As I said, I’ve been in both, and I still go back and forth and navigate because clarity and your mindset are always something that has to be continually worked on.

Dr. Wendy Myers: So let’s talk about detoxing physically and mentally. So what are some of the detoxes that you and other professional athletes are doing? Because I see a lot of people do infrared saunas for quick recoveries, like cryotherapy, again for reducing inflammation, and there’s just all kinds of stuff I’ve read that a lot of pro athletes are doing these days.

David Holloway: Absolutely. And technology is getting better and better and is becoming easier and easier. Some of the things, and I wrote down a list of things that I did. In Arizona, there was a place called Stretch to Win. You go there if you’ve never heard of it, you basically lie down on the massage table, and they stretch you for 60 to 90 minutes. The first time I did that, it was amazing. I know all the people out there and all the benefits of stretching and hydration and stuff, but here’s a little list of what I did. So to win, I did that. Blood work, I would do that often where they would send the blood into a lab, they would break it down to a cellular level, and they would tell me the vitamins, minerals, all the things that I needed to get to baseline, things that were too high or dangerously low.

Massages all the time. That’s an easy one. Sometimes I would do it twice a week. Ice baths were a big one that all over sudden the Wim Hof and breathing is getting popular. That’s been going on for thousands of years. So there’s nothing new. Salt baths, I do float pods where I got introduced to those in Arizona too, where you sit in the little pod, and you have saltwater, so you’re floating. And not only do you get the benefits of the antioxidants in the water, but you also get the benefit of no pressure on any of your joints.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah, I love the float tanks. I just found a place here in Tulum that has a float tank. I’m so happy because magnesium soaking through your skin is so essential for detoxification. The sulfur, the magnesium sulfate, you get all kinds of sulfur for detox. It’s so good.

David Holloway: Absolutely. I love it. Now, anytime I fly to Arizona, I go straight from the airport to the float pod; the jet lag almost doesn’t even feel it. It’s amazing. And now I’ve gotten to the point where I could almost, well, I’ve fallen asleep in them, which is wild to think about, but another one to do, chiropractors, do that all the time. So I also did tai chi. So you learn and investigate, and you study all these different movements and all these different detoxes, and you figure out which one works best for you when you’re an athlete because you hear about a lot of them. And just like anything else, I’ll easily be the Guinea pig and test it on myself. And I tell people, you want to give it. For me, at least when I was doing these, I gave myself about three months.

Now I’m going to go all in for three months with this. And if I feel better, if I notice a difference, or if I’m starting to notice some change, whether that’s my mood, whether that’s how I feel, then it’s something that I know I need to keep doing. And if it’s not, then maybe I need to try something else or add it a different way. Because again, when you’re in this world, world-class competitors, you have to do everything you can to take care of yourself. But I think even as athletes after sports are over, it’s important to continue to do some of those things and not let yourself, just because you’re not playing anymore, lose that lifestyle.

So those are some of the things I did physically. The tai chi and the breathing really helped me mentally also. The ice bath helped me mentally really anything because so many people want to separate mind and body, but they’re really connected. You cannot do something to your mind and not have an effect on your body and vice versa. You cannot do something to your body; they work together, and they communicate with each other. So even though a lot of these were something physically you have to do, there are so many mental benefits that happened also.

And listen, we played a violent game, so we have to take extra care of our body so it can last as long as possible because in football, any main physical sport, you’re old at the age of 30. I mean, you’re like ancient. I mean, unless you’re a kicker or quarterback who could play and they don’t really have to get hit, you’re an old man at 30; you’re one of the veterans. So you have a short window, and in that window, you’ve got to do everything you can. And these are some of the things that I still continue to do afterward just to maintain that healthy lifestyle. No, I don’t have to lift as many weights when I go and work out, or I don’t have to get massages twice a week, but I still make sure those are in my routine, my daily rhythm, for my own health mentally and physically.

And I think the last thing I want to add in there when you talk about your own mental health, one of the things in where we met at Sean Stevenson’s event, one of the things he always talked about was taking control of your inner dialogue. That inner voice that, for a lot of us, is still the juvenile, a little kid. It could tell you all these mean and nasty things, even if you’re doing well, your inner dialogue can tell you, you suck 50 times a day even if you are climbing that ladder or you’re not good enough or why you’re wasting your time, whatever it is. And those are the moments and times where he really gave the awareness before.

Before I met him, I wasn’t even aware of taking control of your inner dialogue and how important that was. But when you can do that and start talking to yourself like a best friend, then mentally, you’ll be so much sharper. And that translates down because think of if we talked to and gave advice to, let’s say, a best friend that needed it, if he came over and said, “Hey, I’m going through this tough time, can I get some advice?” If we spoke to that friend as we speak to ourselves sometimes when we need it. Probably wouldn’t have too many friends if you were being really honest. So when you’re that hard on yourself, it takes a toll after a while.

So one, he said, one of the things that are part of his legacy that I’m happy to pass along is to start treating yourself a little better, start having more grace. Because when you have that friendship with yourself, and you’re in so much more control of whatever life throws at you, all the challenges, all the adversities, it becomes so much easier when you have you on your side. And I remember when he first told me that, it was like because I wasn’t even aware of that. And in any breakthrough, that’s the first step. It’s just awareness of what’s going on.

So mentally, you’re talking about world-class competitive champions, we’re talking about the highest level, you’ll find people when they achieve over the long term, have a very positive driven inner dialogue. And that comes from being aware of it and treating yourself like a best friend. And it also comes again from having what? From having that clarity to that vision because when you see that coming, a lot of the negative stuff you could brush off your shoulders because something so much more is coming that you architected.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yeah. And can you talk a little bit about when people get discouraged when they get tired, or they have a setback, or how it is best to deal with that feeling like you’re just tired, or you feel hopeless that you’re not going to meet your goal?

David Holloway: I’m talking a lot about lifestyle and championship and highest levels, but make no mistake about it. Champions, Super Bowl champions, Stanley Cut, world-class athletes, everybody goes through moments of doubt. Everybody goes through moments where they feel fatigued, tired, or just feel like they can’t do it anymore. And one thing I’ll say to that right away, and that is it’s so important when you’re chasing certain things to not do it alone, to have a workout partner, accountability partner, a friend with that you have a dialogue about what you want to accomplish, someone who’s on the same road as you are. Because with my sport and my family sports, it was a team game. So if somebody had a bad game, their home life wasn’t going well, they were going through a divorce, or something major was happening that took a lot of time and energy away from them; the team would rally together and raise their level, so the other person would be able to be a human because everybody thinks this road to success is going to be some straight upward line, but it’s really not.

It really looks like a bump and then another little bump and then another. And sometimes, in that bump, you could dip down again. It’s more like a rollercoaster and any success if they show you their path. Just like I shared a little bit about mine in the beginning, I started off not getting recruited by everybody. Getting laughed at by everybody. Being 16, I couldn’t even get into practice. That was my start angle in the opposite direction that I wanted to go. So it’s important to know if you’re in one of those moments now, that’s life.

One of the great older speakers that I love to listen to is Les Brown, “It is this thing called life,” he always says, and it just reminds you that we’re humans on this journey, and there’s always going to be ups and downs. And when you have good dialogue, and you’re tired, you’re not feeling it, don’t get down on yourself, be a best friend, and uplift each other. Okay. You’re having a bad day, or you’re having a bad moment. What are some of the things we could do right now that can help slowly reverse things?

Or is this a period of time where you just need to rest and tell everybody no, again, that’s why it’s important, like you said, to have a not-to-do list because there are certain things that if we just keep adding on to our plate, we become overwhelmed. Anybody would become overwhelmed. So when you have your not-to-do list, when you’re telling people no, when you’re listening to your body and have a good inner dialogue, it becomes so much easier to do some of the things that are hard to do for a lot of people and know that, that’s normal.

And again, what I said in the beginning, find a community, find a teammate, find a championship team. Nothing is impossible, team if you will; that is there when you go when you need some cheerleading because everybody inside a championship team, when you’re living a championship lifestyle, understands that it’s going to be ups and downs and when you have big dreams, big goals or big visions, you’re going to have fatigue moments. And those are the moments where we can lean on other teammates to help us get through that. I can’t stress how important that is to find somebody else that’s going on in the journey you are. They can make it so much easier, and they can make it so much more fun.

Whenever I had a workout partner in the off-season where if I was getting up early at 5:00 AM when nobody else wanted to if I could find just one person or two people to do that stuff with me to make it fun, to challenge me, to uplift me when I was feeling tired, I didn’t get the best sleep, where they can bring more energy and just pass that on to me. Very important. And it makes it much, much easier when you find that team.

One of the reasons why on my end, I just started inside the Holloway huddle where I go in every month, we meet for an hour on Zoom, and we just do that. It’s a check-in point for people. It’s other people that uplift each other. I’m teaching a personal development on a peak performance topic where people have their journals, they’re doing the check-ins, and we’re championing each other. So we’re all marching forward together because those communities are so important to build, especially when you’re going on a journey, whether that’s detox, whether that’s trying to improve your relationships, whatever it is when you’re clear on it, and you’re serious about it, you’re going to need help from other people. And as champions, real champions are never afraid to ask for help. A lot of people think that makes people look weak. It’s the opposite. Asking for help allows you to remain strong.

There are so many people that I call on when I feel like I’m frustrated or down to a certain area to again help get me back on my A game because people are counting on us, and they need us on our A game. Our team needs us on our A game, business team, family team, friends teams, a lot of people that when we take championship self-care detox when we’re living this championship lifestyle, doing the work behind the scenes, journaling, nobody’s watching, that’s when the championship lifestyle comes into play. And that’s what really helps uplift everybody.

Dr. Wendy Myers: And I think it’s okay to give yourself a break. I think people become depressed about being depressed or depressed about being still and not doing anything or not working on their goals or not working super, super hard or skipping a workout or whatever the case may be. And people just need a vacation sometimes, and they need downtime to be more productive and healthy and to refocus their vision and their goals.

David Holloway: As an athlete, I totally agree. If nobody else told you, let me, David be the first one to tell you out there if you need breaks, you’ve got to take them for yourself and other people. So many people are givers, and they give to other people and forget to take care of themselves. That leads to burnout, which leads to depression. And that’s not something we want to do. We’re talking about championship lifestyles and detox. It’s okay to take breaks. And in our industry, we have the season and the off-season. The off-season you’re talking about professionally goes from January if you don’t make the playoffs all the way till summertime.

So even if you are, you have at least three months off, so you have plenty of time to break. And when you’re hard charging all the time when you’re on the grind, and you have thousands of people who want your time and energy, you have to take a break, and yet it’s not that dramatic living this lifestyle now, there’s not that many people cameras aren’t in your face all the time, but there’s still moments in life where it could be overwhelming. You’re not in control of everything. One of my mentors always says, “You have to control the controllable.” Your mindset, how you’re feeling, the breaks you’re taking, certain things you’re writing in your calendar, all the things we talked about today, you’re in control of. And when you’re living a championship lifestyle, that’s the best you can do is control what you can control and never be afraid.

The best athletes in the world and the highest achievers in the world, everybody takes breaks, everybody gets in moments where they don’t feel like they were as good as the people said they were, or they go through little moments where they do feel sad and depressed. That’s normal. That’s not something that you should beat yourself up for. So nobody else has told you; you’re hearing it from me. Third, a generation of world-class athletes, somebody they said shouldn’t even do it.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Yes. And can you tell us about some entertaining detox stories that you’ve witnessed or experienced along the way?

David Holloway: Yeah. I could tell you some of them. I don’t know how entertaining this will be, but these are the first that comes to my mind. I remember I hate needles, so anytime I had to do blood work, they knew to bring me to the side because I’d almost passed out 20 times. So here this is a big macho NFL linebacker. Just when a needle comes out, I start sweating. We had to get our blood drawn, and the phlebotomist, she went through my vein out into the other side, just saw this little purple patch here, and I immediately sweat started coming down, and they were like, “Get him over to the table now, so he doesn’t fall.” It was much bigger then. So it was a lot harder to control if I just fell. That kind of story happened often. When I was getting my blood drawn, when they did it and sent it to the lab, they had to take 13 vials.

So I wasn’t scared in the beginning, but I started getting a little lightheaded as bottles like 10 and 11 got stuck in my arm. So just part of the weird journey. I remember an ego journey; I’ll take a little ego journey I had. One of my mentors in Arizona is a guy by the name of Joe Polish. I know you’re familiar with Joe. I would go into his office, and above his office was HPS. This place in Arizona, it’s a really cutting-edge health place. Tom Incrodon is the doctor there who introduced me to a lot of this stuff.

Anyway, I was in Joe’s office, and he was like, “Hey, come on. This is just a random day.” He said, “We’re going to go do Pilates.” And at that point, I was 21 and 22 years old, and I was making a lot of money. Things were going well in so many areas of my life; I developed an ego, and the ego was, “I’m this big macho linebacker; what am I going to do? Or what if somebody sees me doing Pilates and all this? What I thought back then was these girly workouts, it’s just, I’m not going.” I was like, “I’ll stay; here you go.” But he was persistent, and I was like, “You know what? Fine, I’ll do this. I’ll try this.”

Dr. Wendy Myers: It kicked your butt, didn’t it?

David Holloway: I’ll leave details out about how bad my butt was kicked after that. But what it did for me was it took me back on track where I was like, “Listen here, you don’t know it all. There’s so much more to learn, and there’s so much more about your body and living championship lifestyle and doing the detox that you don’t know right now, and you just got your kicks because you thought you were too cool for school.” And I remember that was just a funny moment. And as soon as I finished that, I was like, “Never again will I look at something and say I’m too good for that, or I’m better than that, or this isn’t for me.” And that led me to try all these other things, whether that was tai chi or the Shaolin training.

I did boxing, and I did MMA. I used to look at one of the most famous and arguably the best football players ever, Jerry Rice, the receiver for the San Francisco 49ers. He did ballet when he trained in the off-season. And Lynn Swann, another great grace-will receiver, did ballet. And before that moment, it just looked so feminine, and I wasn’t aware I didn’t have the breakthrough or the training. A lot of times when you’re younger, when you’re going through a journey, even if you’re new on the journey, there’s so much that you might not know and so much information out there that might be overwhelming. Again, it all goes back to your foundation of where you are, where you want to go, and how much time you are spending there. If you look at any area of your life where you’re achieving, you’re doing the things you want to do, and I guarantee you’re spending time there.

And that’s one of my mission journeys again, to reconnect you to the vision of your bigger future. And when you have that in place, all these little steps of when you’re fatigued and me getting my ego, having a mentor there to bring me out of my shell, to get me back on track to an A game, all that stuff lines up. So it’s not something that I take lightly. I feel like crafting a vision and spending time with it is one of the most important life decisions that you can make. And I know I’ve brought that up over and over again, but it’s something that I’m serious about, and I really want to reconnect you to that if you haven’t before or in a long time.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Fantastic. So is there anything else that you want to add that maybe you haven’t mentioned about mindset or manifestation or leadership or anything of that nature?

David Holloway: I guess there are questions that I want to just review. I guess that we went over. This is going to help you a little bit with movement. The first question is one to 10, where are you? Always get to know where you’re at. And then the second question after that I want you to ask yourself is, how do I increase that by 1%? World-class athletes, world-class competitors, you’re never going to get to a hundred percent. We know where we’re at now, and we know taking these little steps, getting better every day, how we’re going to improve by one. So many people try to take everything on at once, and it’s overwhelming, and you’ll burn out. And when you try to be a perfectionist, that also leads to burnout.

So again, give yourself grace with how fast you’re moving and what your numbers are, but also give yourself grace in being okay with improving it by 1%. If you’re getting 1% better, and I forget what the math is on this, you can do it. One of my mentors said if you’re getting 1% or 0.001% better every single day, at the end of the year, you’re over 300% better. So little by little, these little steps become a reason. So that’d be the second question. How do you increase it by one? And the last question we went over earlier I want to remind you of is what is the smallest, tiniest step I could take right now that’ll give me momentum, that will give me progress towards the goal? So those three questions will help you with your actions. Everything else with the mindset starts with the foundation of who you are and what you’re all about.

And I guess that that’ll lead me to answer your question a little more clearly. Anything else mindset-wise? One of the things is to remind people when you know people join inside my huddle or I go speak to them, or I’m doing a half-day training, whatever that is, I always remind people of their foundation, of all the people that it took for you to be there, for me to be here and to remember all the giants of shoulders. The shoulder we stand on, the shoulders of giants, all the people that came before me all the time, love, and energy they invested into me. I feel like another mindset trick that keeps me hungry, that keeps me wanting to continue to hunt my greatness, is knowing the fact that so many great people and all my successes can be attributed to them and to so many other people. And I feel like we’re honoring them by living this championship lifestyle. And I believe we’re honoring life by living this championship lifestyle.

When you’re growing, and you’re reaching to the best of your ability, increasing by one, doing the work behind the scenes, knowing where you’re at, taking the pictures, working on your inner dialogue, when you’re doing those things, I feel like you just honor life more. You’re giving back to something that, that’s the question that nobody can really answer. It’s why we’re here; what’s it all for? Why should we even be doing this? And the question I’m asking you is, why not? If we know that these things are going to help improve our lives, yes, for us, but also I want to remind people to never forget where they come from. Never forget who they come from and the people that are still here, people that might have passed on that invested in you. And when you do all this work, I feel like you’re honoring them and in, by doing so, honoring life.

So I know that was a little deep, but it’s something that I think when we’re grounded in our foundation, allows us to really understand why it’s so important that we continue to challenge ourselves, that we continue to do the learning, that we continue to seek out other mentors and teams that could help us win. Because when we rise, I love the analogy, when you’re in the water, and you rise, one boat rises, the water rises, all the other boats rise, and I feel like that’s the best way to do life. That’s what I was taught. Being a third-generation world-class competitor champion, being around this championship environment, championship lifestyle, that’s what I would say to you.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Very fantastic. Well, David, that was so good, and I think everyone needs a reminder from time to time about setting goals and going after your goals, and not getting so down about setbacks. People can just really beat themselves up if they’re just not constantly on the path to improvement or whatnot. So thanks so much for coming on the show, David, and why don’t you tell us where we can learn more about your work and what you do, and how to work with you.

David Holloway: Absolutely. Well, thanks for having me. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for listening. To find out more about me, you just go to my website, davidholloway.com, and there you can find out exactly what I’m doing. Social media wise, it’s @DXHolloway, you can find me on Instagram and all the other social platforms, and that’s where you could find me. If there’s a question that you have that I could help you with, there’s some connection that I could make that you feel would help; if I could be part of your team or if you want to join my inside-the-huddle membership, you could find that on my website where we meet every single month or on social media. Just ask me a question @DXHolloway; I’ll do my best to get back to you because I feel like when I go on any show, and on a podcast or go speak to people, no matter how many, I always tell people the way I was taught is that once we’ve huddled up together and come together and shared this life together, we’re teammates for life. I’m here to help you even after this is over.

So I encourage you to take advantage of that. I’m not someone who shows up and leaves. I’m somebody who sticks around and who wants to see people succeed, who believes in them no matter if we met before because I believe in the power of the human spirit. I’m here to give you powerful reminders, and that’s one of my purposes as I continue to hunt my greatness and continue to honor all those who came before me and honor life itself, this thing called life.

Dr. Wendy Myers: Awesome David. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, and everyone, thanks for tuning into the Myers Detox Podcast. I’m Dr. Wendy Myers, and it’s just such a pleasure every week to bring this show to you and experts from around the world to help you upgrade your health and your life. So thanks for listening every week.