When I was eight years old, I can still remember Christmas Eve as a little boy. I would lay in bed praying for God to take me. As an asthmatic, having to suffer from asthma attacks and not being able breathe is something that I couldn’t live with.
My struggle with Asthma
I was a thin, pale child with dark circles under my eyes. It wasn’t a picture of good health. An asthma attack could be relieved by a visit to the hospital and an injection of adrenaline. We didn’t have any inhalers or other asthma medications until the 1950s. Two weekly allergy shots were my only option.
As I was going through school, there were many times when we were required to write class papers on a topic that was important to us. To learn the latest research and studies about any new medication or prevention for this horrible condition, I always did my asthma class paper.
Seven years later, my first year at High School was my first year as a fullback and starting linebacker for the football team. I was 5’11” and 150 lbs, so it was no surprise that Friday nights were brutal.
I was the fastest player on the team and played fullback. I ran 65 yards and raced through the defense to score a touchdown. Then asthma set in and a defender was able catch me just before the goal line. It changed my life.
I had to do something
After the football season was over, I was determined to find a way to stop getting punched every game. I had to become stronger and bigger. In those days, it was difficult to find gyms or fitness centers. The Gentleman’s Gym was the only gym within the region, located fifteen miles away. It was a mix of a weight and boxing gym.
Although I was initially a bit intimidated by the fact that I was in a gym with bodybuilders at the beginning, I soon found a way of increasing my lung capacity and gaining weight. My body had transformed to the point that I was 185 lbs by the time track season arrived in spring. Mission accomplished…to that point.
Leo Stern is the best bodybuilding coach in America. I was determined to be bigger, stronger and faster. Leo was Bill Pearl’s coach, a five-time Mr. Universe.
Leo wrote training workouts for me to increase my lung capacity and to strengthen my full-body fitness. He was paid $20.00 each 6 weeks for my workout plan. This would be equivalent to $195.00 today. These workouts were three times per week and lasted 3 hours.
The summer after, I traveled to California with my uncle and trained in the same gym where bodybuilders train. This was before Arnold Schwarzenegger became famous for bodybuilding.
Transforming Adversity into Opportunity
My asthma was a blessing, despite all the misery and pain it brought to my life. I turned the challenges that were presented to me as a young man into a never-ending quest to improve my health and to be a better person.
I don’t know where that curiosity and yearning took me. It led me to a Division I scholarship for collegiate football, and the passion to compete in all sports.
I became an instructor and learned to fly airplanes. I raced Formula One outboards and tunnel boats. Super stock class was also my favorite. Flat-bottom inboards were my main focus. Speed was something I enjoyed, and the boats that I raced could reach speeds of around 100 mph.
I will admit to having a bad high-altitude takeoff. I had to land the plane on a grassy field and flip a 100 mph race boat. After crashing into the bottom of the boat, my leg was broken and my plane had scratches. Unbelievable, isn’t it?
It’s time to push the limits
This tells you something about me and my passion for pushing the boundaries. From 1977 to 1982, my passion for strength training drove me to open the 3 first Nautilus fitness centers. Nautilus was the best in fitness equipment at the time. College football teams would visit Arizona to play at the Fiesta Bowl and use our gyms as training facilities. The first aerobics studios opened in Arizona were named after Jane Fonda.
My greatest goal was to be an Olympic bobsledder out of the Arizona desert. This was my journey that began in 1976 at Innsbruck’s Winter Olympic Games. I was walking the bob during the first two-man competition. I stopped at one curve to take a closer look. I was speaking English to the man in front of me via a 2-way radio. His name was “Providence.”
John Fell was the head of the US Bobsled Federation. I said that I would be interested in a chance to try out. I could be a good fit with my experience in Division I football as a flight instructor and driving race boats at over 100 MPH, which I have.
John Fell stated that the International Bobsleigh Federation would conduct its first bobsled driver training program in Innsbruck this November. He gave me a list with the required physical fitness tests and had them signed off by a track coach. I was selected as one of the four US athletes a few months later.
This was the good news. Unfortunately, I was responsible for my entire travel expenses to Innsbruck in Austria.
Innsbruck was a great place to train. My panicked first two runs down the run resulted in me crashing both times. A Romanian Olympic bobsled driver approached me and asked for my American jeans.
We walked down the Bobrun together and he marked the Ice to show me the exact places to enter and exit each curve. He got my jeans and gave me a pair of warm-up trousers. American jeans were expensive in Europe that time and I just paid for my first lesson on bobsled. Not a bad deal at all.
After 10 days of training, there was a 32-team race. We came in second. Later that winter, at the North American Championships I was again second and was awarded Rookie Driver of Year. Two National US Teams were selected during my bobsled career.
My first year in international competition taught me that speed and the importance of the start (the first 50m) were crucial. My goal was to make track and field a more popular sport in America by recruiting Olympic and All American Track & Field athletes, Lee Evans, John Lenstrohm and Charlie Wells, as well as decathletes Pete Moosbrugger, Mike Cox, and Olympic Track & Field athlete Herman Frazer.
Our team was the first US Bobsled Team that included black athletes. This opened the doors for Herschel Walker and others to follow. After a collision at the US Olympic trials that left my 4-man team injured, I was able to miss the 1980 Olympics. Later that night, NBC National TV aired the crash.
Many opportunities opened up for me during my bobsled career. My team was blessed by Jesse Owens, who is the greatest and most well-known athlete in track and fields history.” He was a great help in raising money for travel and sleds. Jesse arranged for the German Olympic Committee to help us with housing, cars, and time spent training on German bob runs.
I was also President of the Arizona AAU at the time. We were the first US bobsledders to be invited to compete in DDR East Germany along with 16 other national teams. This was the most difficult training session in the entire world.
Putting My Health Front and Center
After the competition, I began to feel joint pain. This may have been due to multiple bobsled accidents, a bad raceboat crash, or football injuries. It was easier to focus on what I could do for a longer and healthier life, as well as how to alleviate my own joint and muscle pain.
Lester Packer, Ph.D., was one of the speakers at conventions on nutrition. He is known as the father of free-radical research. His passion was oxidative stress, which is the main cause of most degenerative diseases. He also wanted to know how antioxidants could help reduce free radical damage. Dr. Ken Cooper was the man who introduced aerobic exercise and wrote the book “Antioxidant Revolution,” in which he described a program for antioxidant prevention. I was inspired by these experts to strive for better health.
Euronutrition was my first company to develop premium, bioavailable nutrition products in the European medical community. It was founded in the late 1990s. Doctors would ask basic questions at the German medical conventions that I attended, such as “What are phytochemicals?” “What are Catechins?”
Dr. Michaela Doll was the head nutritionist at a German university. She became interested in our formulations and asked if it would be possible to write books about them. She wrote several books on our products, including ones that covered joint pain, inflammation, anti-inflammatory, pH balance, and other topics. Many of these books became bestsellers.
The Birth of Xendurance
My curiosity about reducing lactate came up while researching the pH balance of my body. I was and still am a competitor. It is good for athletes to reduce inflammation. It is possible to increase an athlete’s performance by reducing lactic acid and muscle injury naturally.
Not just for athletes, but for everyone who wants to live a long, healthy life. Extreme Endurance is the result.
Juergen Sessner was a clinician and trainer who had performed over 7,000 stress tests on athletes. He became our third-party test subject for Extreme Endurance for our US company Xendurance. This first clinical study published in English showed a remarkable reduction of lactic acids and an enormous increase in aerobic threshold.
We didn’t stop there. Since 2008, Xendurance has conducted over 13 clinical studies on Extreme Endurance and helped thousands of athletes reach the podium in nearly every sport. Extreme Endurance has also been shown to have many other wellness benefits. It is something I wish I had when I was trying to improve my human performance, health, longevity, and overall performance.
Now, the skinny asthmatic kid who wanted to die that Christmas Eve realizes how important it is to have good health and to live a life full of passions. Our primary mission should be to promote overall wellness and to drive towards it.
