362. 🔥The 40-Day FORGE (Revisited)🔥

0:00:04 – Jeff Pelizzaro
The 18STRONG Podcast, episode Number 362 Revisiting the Forge. Welcome back to the 18STRONG Podcast. This week we’re going to highlight an episode that we did, episode number 335, where we talked about the 40 day forge. The reason we’re doing this is we’re about ready to hit the new year and we know that a lot of you are out there working on what’s my resolution how am I going to change what I did this past year and become a better version of myself in 2024. We know that the 40 day forge is a program that we’ve been doing for several years. We’ve had hundreds of golfers go through it and it’s a mental and physical challenge and program that’s going to help you not just get in better shape, but work on building your habits, building your resiliency and, ultimately building your self-confidence in you becoming a better, stronger version of yourself, which ultimately plays out on the golf course. So enjoy this episode that is a revisited version of 335 on the 40 day forge.

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Now let’s get to this week’s interview. What’s up, guys? Welcome back to the 18STRONG podcast, where we know the stronger we are, the better we play. And for those of you that have been listening to the 18STRONG podcast for a long time, you notice this episode. The beginning already has a little bit of a different feel to it, and that’s because we’re going to be doing something different on today’s episode. We’re going to be talking about the 40 day forge. You’ve heard me talk about this before and I wanted to lay out the rules, the specifics, the details of the forge, because I’ve had a lot of people asking questions about it, wanting to learn more, or they want to pass it along to somebody else that they know is going to benefit.

Now, for those of you that maybe this is your first time listening, maybe somebody introduced you to this episode or sent it to you, or maybe you just stumbled across this not really knowing what to expect. First of all, 18STRONG is a golf lifestyle fitness brand where we are all about helping you become the strongest version of yourself on and off the golf course, and today’s episode, specifically, is a little bit different. Normally, I either interview somebody or we talk about a specific topic regarding golf and fitness and lifestyle and interviewing different people and experts in the world of golf, but today is just going to be me and I’m going to be talking about the 40 day forge, which is a program that we started at the beginning of 2022 and is not just a physical challenge but a mental challenge that many people have now completed, and so I wanted to give more details for everyone out there that has more questions Now, I want to also let you know that this is a program that is completely free. We don’t charge anything for this. There’s no upsells, no downsells.

This is something that we are doing because we know the 18STRONG crew is constantly looking for ways to better themselves and, in my personal opinion, there’s so much stuff out there that we all get caught up too much in the not knowing what to do. Thinking we need more information, thinking, we need to learn more thinking. There’s a bright new, shiny object that we haven’t found that’s going to get us where we want to go faster, whether that be our golf game, whether that be our fitness, whether that be our diet, our nutrition, all of these things. But I have personally found over my own experience in the fitness world my own personal fitness, exercise, golf, as well as my experience with hundreds, if not thousands, of golfers in person and online that what we’re all missing is not the what to do or even the how to do. It’s simply the fact that we aren’t doing anything. We aren’t accustomed to finding one thing and sticking to it for a long enough period of time and committing to that, and so that’s what the forage is about is sticking to a commitment and keeping these commitments to yourself. You’re going to hear more about this throughout the episode, so this is how this episode is going to go.

I’m going to do my best to answer as many questions and go through the details. There’s basically four parts we’re going to go through today. First is how and why this program came about, because I think that helps explain a little bit of not just the background of it, but why it’s so important and emphasize how impactful this can be to you and to the people around you and why this isn’t just another fitness challenge or diet challenge or cleanse or anything like that New Year’s resolution. The second thing I want to do is I want to go through the exact rules of the forage and why each of these rules was picked, what the specifics are and even ways that people either try to cheat or kind of rationalize the rules or maybe clarify a few things that people have had questions on. The third thing is I want to give you some suggestions Once you decide that you are going to start the 40-day forage, some suggestions for you to get the most out of the program, because the last thing we want to do is have you just mail this in and just kind of go through the motions and not get the full extent out of it. And then, lastly, I’ll talk about maybe a couple frequently asked questions and really what you can expect over the 40 days and what you can expect to accomplish by the end of the 40 days, so you get a better picture of what that can look like 40 days from now. So, first of all, we call this program, the 40-day forage.

Obviously, as a golfer, you’ve probably heard the term forged before. Forging versus casting. You hear that with clubs all the time, but forging is basically the process of taking a solid piece of metal, sticking it in a blazing hot fire and then banging it into shape. Now they use heavy fancy equipment and machinery to do this, but even going back to the black smiths of old with knives and swords and those types of things, they would take a piece of metal, they would stick it in a hot furnace and they would bang it into shape to sharpen it and smooth it out. And ultimately, that’s really what this process of these 40 days is meant to do is to sharpen your edges through a series of repetitive challenges that are ultimately going to make you stronger both on and off the golf course. And I want to clarify that if you’re here, you’re obviously likely a golfer, but if you are here for the intention of just dropping a few strokes, that’s not what the 40 day forage is about. In fact, the 40 day forage has a couple of golf components in it, simply because we know that our audience is basically made up of golfers, but this is not specifically about getting you to swing a golf club better. It’s way, way more than that.

So just as a little background on how this whole thing came about first of all, we have to face the fact that golf is not necessarily really a sport. That quote, end quote requires you to be in the greatest physical condition. Right Now we’re seeing athletes on the PGA tour, we’re seeing these guys that are coming out and they’re basically physical specimens now. But that doesn’t mean that all of us require incredible athleticism and physical nature and to be in great shape to play a game of golf. We’ve all played with the guy who is very out of shape, overweight, old, has banged up hips, knees, whatever, and can still play a pretty decent round of golf. So it’s not about that. We realize that golf is not a life or death sport, right?

So it’s kind of really easy to get by out on the golf course just being in okay shape, and it really kind of gives us the okay to be a little bit lazy with our focus, with our nutrition, with our diet, and we simply start to expect and accept the fact that as we age, we are supposed to have achy joints and we’re supposed to gain some weight and our club head speed is supposed to go down and all these different things I’m supposed to not really look that great with my shirt off, these kind of things and we just assume that’s kind of normal, right. But let me ask you, is that just what you’ve been telling yourself? Because I know that I have found in the past myself telling myself that these things are okay. I’ve been telling myself in my early 40s and it’s okay for me to kind of let these things go a little bit. But that is exactly why we’re here, because, at 18STRONG, we don’t believe that you have to accept that. And so the Forge is here to challenge that narrative that you and I have been telling ourselves and prove that with some direction, some serious commitment and daily action, that you don’t have to tell yourself that same old story, that we can change this right now. You can put yourself on a different trajectory.

And, like I said before, I don’t believe that we should fall into the trap of these mantras that we tell ourselves that I don’t have time, I don’t know what to do, or here’s a good one I’ll start it tomorrow, or I’ll start it next week, or I’ll start it after the Masters, or I’ll start it January 1st, all of these things. Well, this is your opportunity to prove to yourself that all of that is BS and that you aren’t going to put it off any longer, and so, hopefully, you’re going to stop searching and you’re going to start doing, because it’s not about not having the right program, it’s not about not knowing the right diet, it’s not about all of these things. It’s about not having the discipline and not having the habits. And so the way that you find discipline is by putting yourself in situations that require discipline. The way that you build habits is by forcing yourself into situations where you need to build habits, and you do them and you commit to it, and that’s what the Forge is about.

Okay, real quick. For those of you that are new here and don’t know me from Adam, don’t know 18STRONG or haven’t listened to a show before, I just want to give you a little bit of background on what we do here. Nothing to brag about, anything that we’ve done, but just so you have a little bit of context of where we’re coming from. So my name is Jeff Palazero. Again, I’m a golf fitness professional. Went to school for physical therapy. Had my Masters in physical therapy have been named the past three times. Golf Digest top 50 golf fitness trainer in North America, wrote a book called the Golfers Guide to a Buggy-Proof Workout, and we’ve had the longest running golf and fitness podcast, which started back in 2014. That’s what you’re listening to right now the 18STRONG podcast and we’ve had a chance to have incredible guests on the show PGA tour major winners, some of the best medical and fitness advisors to the PGA tour, some of the greatest instructors in the world and many, many more people even outside the world of golf, all under the guise of helping all of us get better, both on and off the course.

18STRONG was founded by myself and my cousin, ryan. Ryan and I have been best buddies since we were little kids. Ryan is more in the marketing world and is very good at the online stuff. My expertise, obviously, is with the physical and fitness and medical side, and so we combined forces years ago. But most importantly, myself, ryan, we are both guys in our early to mid 40s. We love the game of golf and we are here to not just help you guys but also help ourselves along this journey.

I’ve got kids, I have a wife, I run a business. I grew up playing soccer, I didn’t play golf, but now golf is a huge passion of mine and so I obviously want to get better at that. But even more so, I’m constantly on a journey, just like many of you are, to feel as good as I can, to look good, to be strong and to play golf as well as I can. The only way that I can do that is if I keep my body healthy, keep my body moving well, and that’s going to allow us to play the game for much longer. So everybody talks about growing the game. You know, grow the game. I want to lengthen the game. I want to lengthen your game so you can play for the longest amount of time possible as well as you possibly can. So that’s really kind of where we come from, and so I created this program.

Ultimately, it was kind of selfishly for myself, and it happened over the course of a couple of years really, but in many ways, I needed to create this program for you, the 18-strong crew, in order to hold myself accountable to doing this as well. So again, this is not a quote-unquote golf fitness program. This is not a weight loss challenge. This is not a nutrition challenge. This is not a cleanse. Ultimately, this...