Joe De Sena - The Spartan Way: Eat Better. Train Better. Think Better. Be Better.

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DEDICATION

This book has been a culmination of all the experiences and people I have met throughout my life. I want to thank my family, my dad, mom, aunts, uncles, cousins, and close friends. I would be nothing without my wife and the four beautiful kids she brought to us. I also want to thank all of Spartan. The employees, contractors, and all of the community that inspire us to be better.

THE SPARTAN SECRET: THE 11th PRINCIPLE

Good news and bad news.

Youre about to learn the Spartan Way. The time-tested principles that have transformed the lives of millions of men and women around the world for thousands of years. Youre now starting your own journey.

Before you go, I have a piece of advice for you. Theres one more bag to pack for your trip. Frankly, you cant succeed without it. Its indispensable. It was brought to my attention when I was presenting these 10 principles to a special forces group in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. A hand went up in the back of the room.

Havent you forgotten something, Joe?

I had. It was obvious to me in that moment that if theres a single most important secret to transforming your life, this is it. And Id forgotten to mention it. You might also understand why I and so many forget this most critical principle to achieving success.

Youll find that secret here: life.spartan.com/secret.

Human beings thrive on challenge. This has been true for hundreds of thousands of years. It was certainly true for the ancient Spartans. The legendary Greek warriors built the first democracy and one of the finest of militaries on the foundation of a rigorous training program known as the agoge . This system turned boys into fierce and loyal fighters through a strict moral code and physical ordeals designed to develop endurance and pain tolerance.

Challenge drives great accomplishment. Ive seen it transform lives. But most Americans are way out of practice. We rarely challenge ourselves anymore. Instead, what do we do? We constantly try to make our lives easier, which only makes us weaker and we whine about even the most minor inconveniences. Think about it: You drive a half mile for a quart of milk instead of walking. You swallow mostly processed, heat-and-eat food because youre too busy to cook a healthy meal. You spend more than half of your waking hours sitting. One-third of us are obese. Diabetes is now a worldwide epidemic. Avoiding anything a little bit challenging and uncomfortable has turned us into plush-toy versions of ourselvessoft, overstuffed, and passive.

That seems pretty pathetic to me. So I created Spartan with the goal of ripping 100 million people off their couch cushions. To take action and start living instead of being passive observers.

Look, life is tough. Youve just gotta be tougher. You cultivate resilience by facing challenges, not by ignoring them and hoping theyll go away. There are no shortcuts to get to anyplace worthwhile. So my question is: Are you just gonna lay there with Doritos crumbs on your shirt or are you the kind of person who gets knocked down but gets back up?

This book, like every Spartan Race, is a rebellion against a life of passivity and softness. It is a rebirth of grit. And it kicks off by forcing you to identify a purpose for your life thatll ignite a fierce, unstoppable passion in you.

This books purpose is to teach you how to apply the ten timeless principles of the Spartan Lifestyle. If you master these, the next time youre up against the wall, youll find a way to push through. Youll see. The Spartan Way is the ultimate recipe for success. Itll help you embrace adversity and beat any difficult challenge to a pulp.

Tackle it. Own it. We ALL need it.

The heights by great men reached and kept

Were not attained by sudden flight,

But they, while their companions slept,

Were toiling upward in the night.

H ENRY W ADSWORTH L ONGFELLOW , THE LADDER OF ST. AUGUSTINE

Chris Davis weighed 696 pounds when we met. This guy would get winded walking from his car to his desk. He was eating eight Egg McMuffins per day and drinking two 2-liter bottles of Mountain Dew. Thats 2,832 calories before dinner. Chris was not going to live very long. And he knew it.

Gastric sleeve surgery helped him drop 290 pounds, but he wasnt out of the woods. He still weighed four hundred pounds. And then he got into a horrific car crash. This was back in 2012. His vehicle flipped end over end twice, struck several other cars, and shut down Interstate 85 outside of Atlanta. Amazingly, he walked away with nothing more than a bad seat-belt burn and leg bruises. Surviving the accident gave Chris a second chance at life. It was time he woke up and did something about his weight. So I called him and invited him to come out to Spartan HQ, our seven hundredacre farm in Pittsfield, Vermont.

My wife Courtney and I had created a home for our four kids in Vermont, but wed also built a farm to promote the Spartan lifestyle and obstacle races that my company puts on around the world. In Pittsfield, we have a two-story red barn for training, a Bikram yoga studio, a general store, pasture-range and free-range cattle, mischievous goats, and a mountain with fifty miles of rugged trails. Its an ideal location to challenge people to push their bodies and expand their minds. Those people include elite endurance racers and the kind of supermen and superwomen who have twenty-plus Ironman races under their belts. But they also include mortals like Chris who are in desperate need of a change.

Chris was grateful for the invitation. His employer granted him a leave of absence. With his familys blessing, he drove alone from Atlanta to Pittsfield to spend six months with us. When he arrived, Chris said he had a dream: He wanted to fit into one airline seat when he left and to get ready for the Spartan Ultra Beast, our twenty-six-mile race that contains more than sixty obstacles. Thats what he told me. But I knew this man was really in a fight for his life.

Youve just signed up for twenty-six weeks of hell, I told Chris. Give me your car keys. The only way youre going to succeed is if youre stuck here, so I need your keys and all the money you have on you.

He handed over the keys and his money. In exchange, I handed him a forty-five-pound sandbag. It would become his constant companion throughout the Spartan X training schedule I put together for him. The mental and physical challenges of Spartan X are based on the ten Spartan principles in this book. My job as Chriss instructor was to ignite a bonfire under his ass.

The first day, I had Chris up at 5 a.m. for a ten-mile hike up our mountain carrying his sandbag. We repeated the hike at 5:30 p.m. Same sandbag. It took us hours. Chris was shattered. Hed never walked so far in one go, let alone while hefting a heavy sandbag. Back at home base, I showed him how to toss the sandbag. Then I made him to do it again. And again. And again. His arm and back muscles screamed. Sweat ran in rivers down his chest. His face contorted in pain, but he was feeling something else, too, something that he hadnt felt in a very long whilepossibility.