243 – Jeff Seckendorf

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welcome to another edition of the Art of Living Proactively and I’m thrilled to share a captivating conversation with Jeff Seckendorf in today’s show. Jeff is an accomplished adventurer and avid athlete pursuing astonishing accomplishments after 60. He aims to attempt a grueling one hour track cycling record in the 70 to 74 age group in just a couple of years time.

You’ll hear how Jeff taps into tenacious training and techniques to build the physical and mental strength needed for this daunting feat. We discuss how he structures his training regimen for optimal performance without injury. And he also coaches scuba diving, bringing a transformative approach to certification.

His customised coaching model aims to create better divers and better lives. Listen to learn how Jeff is pioneering this innovative methodology. And in our lively discussion, he shares his perspective on living purposefully and proactively. Discover how he continuously seeks and seizes opportunities guided by his vision, yet remains flexible, pivoting when one door closes.

So join us for this uplifting episode with the dedicated and dynamic Jeff Seckendorf. Please subscribe, leave a review on your favourite podcast platform, share this episode with friends so they can be motivated by Jeff’s mindset, and don’t forget you can see it on YouTube as well. Now, let’s get started. welcome to another edition of The Art of Living Proactively. My guest today, Jeff Seckendorf.

[00:01:40] Tony Winyard: How are you doing, Jeff?

[00:01:41] Jeff Seckendorf: I’m doing great. Great. Great to see you Tony.

[00:01:44] Tony Winyard: we’re in San Diego today. Have you always lived there?

[00:01:49] Jeff Seckendorf: I’ve been here for, I’ve been in Southern California for about 20 years.

I came through the film industry, so I was living in New York, moved here, worked for a while, and then exited the film industry for a second or third career.

[00:02:06] Breaking the US hour record

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[00:02:06] Tony Winyard: Jeff recently, he attempted to break the US Hour record in cycling for the 70 to 74 age group. for a start, there’s no way you look anywhere near that kind of age,

[00:02:17] Jeff Seckendorf: Well, actually that record attempt is coming up in a year and a half.

[00:02:21] Tony Winyard: all right.

[00:02:22] Jeff Seckendorf: So I’m still training for it at 70, but yeah, I turned 68 yesterday, so we’re calling it Jeff, 6.8.

[00:02:30] Tony Winyard: Wow. Okay. I love it. so let’s start from there then. Have you been cycling a long time?

[00:02:35] Jeff Seckendorf: I’ve been cycling all my life. But competitively only since I was around 50, so maybe for the last 18 years or so I’ve been racing. I raced on cross country skis as a kid. I’ve been a competitor all my life in different sports. But then in my early fifties, I’ve found triathlon.

[00:02:56] Tony Winyard: Okay.

[00:02:56] What Jeff learned from triathlons

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[00:02:56] Jeff Seckendorf: And and what I learned in triathlon is I love to run and hate to swim. it was a short-lived three or four years of racing triathlons. and then on my 60th birthday, I decided no more running.

[00:03:10] Tony Winyard: Okay.

[00:03:11] Jeff Seckendorf: I just got, I got to 60 running my whole life and never got injured. And I’m like, everybody I know is their knees are screwed up, their hips are screwed up, whatever. So I just said, all right, I’m just going full on bike.

And then somebody introduced me to the track. and a velodrome, which we have here in San Diego and another one an hour away in Los Angeles. and, I just love riding my bike on the track. So that became my sport is track cycling. And I know in the UK it’s also a huge, huge thing. you’ve got velodromes all over the place.

You have this hugely famous velodrome in Manchester and yeah.

[00:03:45] Tony Winyard: there’s a few directions we could go from what you’ve just said.

I want to go back a little bit. So you’ve mentioned that you started doing triathlons at the age of 50. Did something happen health-wise that made you start doing that? Or how did that all come about?

[00:03:57] Jeff Seckendorf: No, it was just seemed like a natural thing. you, a lot of my life and career and all of that has been just following the serendipity that comes with, oh, that looks like fun. Let’s try it. And, I was looking to spread out from the bike because I’d been on the bike my whole life and I have friends who are, Really committed ocean swimmers.

And I thought, well, that might be fun. So I did a couple of ocean swims, ’cause the ocean is just, 10 minutes from my house. And, I didn’t hate it at that point. And, and I’m good on the bike and I was a really good runner. And so it seemed like a natural thing. Let’s just try it. So I got a coach and I learned how to do it and I did pretty well, in my age group in triathlon, at least here in San Diego, where it’s a huge sport.

We were always racing for third because one and two was almost always taken by pros who got old, right? Ex pros who just aged up into my age groups and these are guys who were beating me by 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and it’s but then three to six positions would all be really tightly packed.

So it was always a race for third. I did pretty well getting a bunch of thirds, But it was fun. And then as, like I said, I just never really liked to swim and which is funny ’cause I’m an avid scuba diver. But, and then I decided to stop running and it, somebody took me to the track one night to watch the races and what I saw was a group of really happy people talking, joking, sitting around the infield. And then they’d jump on their bikes and they’d race for six minutes or eight minutes or something like that. They’d finish the race, they’d go back to the infield and have some fun and joke around and I thought, oh, that’s my sport. so I, got very involved in the track.

[00:05:42] Are there many people in the 70-74 age range?

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[00:05:42] Tony Winyard: And so at the age, you mentioned that you are competing, well, you’re aiming for this 70 to 74 age group in a couple of years time. Yeah. is there a lot of people in that still cycling in that age group?

[00:05:53] Jeff Seckendorf: Oh my God, yes. Yeah, it’s just not slowing down. And these records, so the hour record is how far can you ride your bike in an hour? It sounds like the simplest thing to do, and it’s one of the most complex and difficult things you can do in cycling, but you know, every year people are just attacking these records.

Right now in the US, the 70 plus hour record. Is farther or faster than the 65 plus hour record.

[00:06:20] Tony Winyard: Okay.

[00:06:20] Jeff Seckendorf: and all of my friends who are aging up are always like, oh crap, these people are fast. this is a goal and it’s a good goal and,I’m gonna chase it with a vengeance and I have another, 18 months when I, or 19 months when, because you race in the age of your calendar year.

[00:06:39] Tony Winyard: Okay.

[00:06:39] Jeff Seckendorf: So my birthday’s in May, but all of this calendar year, I’m racing at my current age. So starting January of 2025, I’ll be racing at 70. And so anytime after that I can try the record. I did have this idea that I should do one in December and one in January if they’re the same. And I’m ready and try to get ’em both, but we’ll see what happens.

I’m just, it’s a project to, to chase this record.

[00:07:02] How much training is involved?

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[00:07:02] Tony Winyard: So how much training does it involve? Are you cycling every day?

[00:07:07] Jeff Seckendorf: I’m doing something every day. I’m probably on the bike five or six days a week, maybe 15 hours, something like that, a week. and very structured. I have this amazing coach. I get structured workouts. I do them religiously. I don’t miss workouts. I hit the targets, I hit my numbers, and One of those believers, that process begets outcome. So if you do the process, the outcome becomes inevitable. So we’re on a target for, this next past two years and this next year and a half to hit this number at this particular time. So it’s basically a two year peaking process to get there. but it’s all about structured training. it’s, none of my training is random.

It’s all very focused and precise, which doesn’t make it any less fun.

I have a personality that really rises to this whole idea of, my workout’s on my calendar. I write it down and put it on a piece of tape on my bike, and I go out and I do these workouts and I love it.

[00:08:16] Tony Winyard: So are the workouts short and intense or, how do you do

[00:08:19] Jeff Seckendorf: Oh, it very, everything, very, it’s a structured process. yesterday I had a moderate hour and a half today I’ve got, a strength workout on the bike, which is, these very short bursts of high power. tomorrow I’ve got like a two and a half hour road ride.

Friday I’m racing. Sunday, I’m racing. So it’s all kind of this, there’s a method to the madness that I happily don’t have to understand. For me. I can coach others just fine, on the bike and fitness and so on. But coaching me, myself, yeah, we need an external genius for that one.

So would you be keeping track of things like your V02 max and I’m keeping track of, basically power and heart rate.

VO2 max. I’m a mortal. I’m not a elite athlete. I didn’t come through those ranks, so some things you can only change slowly or not at all.

So I don’t too much worry about the things I can’t change. I just worry about the things I can change, which is get stronger, don’t get injured, and work really hard.

[00:09:21] Will you compete in the centenarian decathlon?

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[00:09:21] Tony Winyard: Okay, so you’ve got these goals and as you say, you are gonna go for that record in a couple of years time. So I’m wondering, are you also further from that, if a couple of decades from that, are you looking, for example, to compete in the Centenarian Olympics? Are you familiar with that?

[00:09:38] Jeff Seckendorf: I am, I would love that. I would love that. Because, it’s like last man standing or last woman standing, right? I. If I can make it to 85 on the bike, the field diminishes every year. we’re having our 50th high school reunion this year, and I’m thinking we shouldn’t wait.

We should better do it now because, it’s gonna be a smaller group. yeah. So I, my intent is to just continue the training, the record runs. See what happens. and it, it’s funny, Tony, it’s super hard. this is not for the faint of heart because, and this is not to blow my own horn at all, but the, these events are really difficult.

you’re out there, it’s almost like a one hour sprint. So the physical training is probably only 20% of it, right? The mental training is the other. 80% or Yogi Berra said, Baseball is, what’d he say it was? 90%?

[00:10:41] Tony Winyard: Is it perspiration and inspiration.

[00:10:43] Jeff Seckendorf: 90% physical on the other half is mental or

yeah. and I think that’s it, right? So my biggest barriers are overcoming the mental aspects of,being able to go harder than I think I can go

not quitting.

[00:11:00] Tony Winyard: So you mentioned just now that you coach other people,

[00:11:03] Jeff Seckendorf: I do.

[00:11:04] You coach people?

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[00:11:04] Tony Winyard: in what capacity are you coaching other

[00:11:06] Jeff Seckendorf: So my, my real day gig is that I own a scuba certification and training agency, a company called U T D Scuba Diving, and in that company, So this is a scuba certification and training agency of the 20 or 30 or 40 in the world.

What we were able to do in that, because you know our bureaucracy is, you’re basically looking at it, is that we created a coaching model for training scuba divers.

This was a really interesting thing where we took a four day transactional class and we used the exact same model that I’m using on the bike. So we call the students. Clients and we call the instructors coaches and we give the SCUBA students this long structured process on becoming either a new scuba diver or a more advanced scuba diver using the coaching model.

So that’s been a really interesting thing, is to develop out this program that is a mirror program to endurance athletics, but for something not specific to endurance athletics. So that’s been cool. Then within the scope of that, I’m also a U S A certified cycling coach. So we also have a fitness component in there if they want it.

So I coach, amateur athletes, and I coach low, medium and high level scuba divers. and a little tiny bit of business coaching, but not much.

[00:12:32] Why did you feel a new approach was needed to train scuba diversTony Winyard?

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[00:12:32] Tony Winyard: And so why did you feel there needed to be a different approach to teaching people scuba diving?

[00:12:39] Jeff Seckendorf: So that’s a really good question. What I know from the bike is when I look at my whole life, work, family, marriage, relationships, business relationships, all of that, the bike makes me better, right? the commitment to training, the commitment to living a lifestyle that’s full of, health and fitness and super hard work that makes me better in all the other aspects of my life.

Not just on the bike. The bike becomes so such a tiny part of it. When you look at, well, I’m doing all this hard training, but it’s not all for the bike. It’s also I can be a better small business owner, a better, grandfather, a better husband, a better friend. So one of the things we do with the scuba coaching program is make sure that it instills lifestyle elements.

Sometimes it sneaks up on people. ’cause we don’t market this, we don’t say, okay, we’re going to put you in a scuba coaching program and your life is gonna get magically better. This works best when people discover it on their own. And so being able to take a coaching model and your coach, you understand this either in sports, some educational thing like we do in scuba diving or in business, which is a very common

thing. Now what we know is that, like on the bike coaching doesn’t just make you faster, it makes you better. In scuba diving. Coaching doesn’t just make you certified, it makes you better. In business coaching doesn’t make you just more efficient, it makes you better, a better manager, a better, more efficient worker, and so on.

In the scuba thing, we were just looking for a way to make people better, not necessarily just make them certified, which is what the scuba model has been forever. and we’ve been doing it now for a couple of years. It’s been incredibly successful. And, but we’re a small company, right? We’re a small scuba training agency.

So my goal, my, my dream is that this program gets copied. There’s no trademarks on it. There’s no. Copyright on the concept. I want it to become a more mainstream model. I want people to copy it. I’m happy to be first, but you know, I want everybody knowing about this model, and the only way that’ll happen is if it gets ripped off.

I

[00:15:14] You said this will make people better, what does that mean?

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Tony Winyard

[00:15:15] Tony Winyard: did the PADI training many years ago for scuba diving, and I’m interested when you say that your training is to make people better, what do you mean by better?

[00:15:27] Jeff Seckendorf: Better in life,

[00:15:28] Tony Winyard: Okay.

[00:15:29] Jeff Seckendorf: better in scuba diving, but better in life. So one of the things about the training you did in scuba diving is that it was very fast. You probably had a weekend or two weekends, and basically all you can do in that timeframe is they taught you how to use the gear and hopefully not kill yourself.

[00:15:46] Tony Winyard: Yeah. Well, I’m still here.

[00:15:47] Jeff Seckendorf: You’re still here, which is awesome. what we’re saying is that using the gear, which is all you can really teach in a weekend class, is only like 5% of it. learning how to dive, learning how to breathe, learning how to manage your body in the weightless environment, learning how to, be kind and sensitive to the environment.

All of this is, there’s so much more to scuba diving than putting on a tank and a regulator and going under water and kicking up the coral and scaring the fish and swimming away from your buddy, and all the stuff that happens in normal recreational scuba training. We teach the opposite of all of that.

we teach a model where people are never touching the bottom. They’re neutrally buoyant, they’re kicking efficiently, they’re using their breathing to control themselves in the water. Basically, they’re diving their body instead of letting their body dive you.

[00:16:41] Tony Winyard: Okay.

[00:16:42] Jeff Seckendorf: yeah, so we’ve just decided to rework the model.

we can do it, right? We’re a small company, we don’t need, we don’t need a million students. To be profitable. it’s been a really interesting run to, to see this model start to take in and dig in and to see people’s excitement on how the rest of their life is going as they get into any, a model of any structured training could be a sport.

It could be education, could be business. you know when you start training, when you start coaching business leaders,

hopefully they become better business leaders, but hopefully they translate that into their lives, right? So they become better humans.

That’s really the goal.

[00:17:29] The coaches also learn?

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[00:17:29] Tony Winyard: And if I’m hearing you right from what you’ve described so far, not only is it better for the people that are actually learning it, but it sounds like it’s better for the people that are teaching it as well.

[00:17:40] Jeff Seckendorf: Oh God, yes. Oh my God. Yeah. Well, you again, you know that as a coach, right? We have, there’s this very common saying in education that when the student learns 10 things, the teacher learns a hundred. there are a million models at this, right? the martial artists say you start learning when you get your black belt.

it, the farther you go in your path to mastery, whatever that mastery is, my goal is always that it ends in teaching, right? we look at students and clients coming into the U T D SCUBA program and one out of 20 I see come in and say, oh my God, you’d be an amazing instructor. let’s tickle that path a little bit. Let’s see if that’s something that interests you and let’s see if we can get you on that path. and your goal becomes not so much becoming your own personal best, it becomes making, guiding others to become their personal best. And that mindset of.

Let me take something I’m good at and help other people get good at. It also is part of this thing of better. I think becoming better means you get to share it. Becoming better means you get to guide others. Becoming better means you get to be, a competent and efficient guide or coach or teacher or instructor, whatever it happens to be.

it’s one of my goals in coaching that we make new coaches. Not everybody’s cut out for it. I have, clients who I’ve brought this up with and they’re like, no, not interested. Don’t wanna do it. Working on my own thing. and that’s, awesome. But then we also have clients who say, never thought of that.

Let’s explore it. And that guides people into this ability to say, well, I can make my path solid and how can I make others’ paths solid.

[00:19:24] Do you have many coaches?

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[00:19:24] Tony Winyard: So do you have many coaches teaching your method?

[00:19:28] Jeff Seckendorf: Well, every instructor, yeah, hundreds. Hundreds. They’re not all coaching, but they’re all able to,

[00:19:35] Tony Winyard: and are they mostly around your kind of location or is it geographically spread

[00:19:39] Can you do this remotely?

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[00:19:39] Jeff Seckendorf: this company is very strong in Europe and Asia, and moderately strong in the us so we’re scattered everywhere. and and it’s, as you went through your training with an agency called PADI you can go through your training with an agency like ours called UTD Scuba diving, or there are dozens of others in the alphabet soup of SCUBA training agencies.

So

most people walk into a dive center and say, I wanna learn to dive. They don’t care what the agency is that is going to give them the certification card.

[00:20:09] Tony Winyard: Yeah.

[00:20:09] Jeff Seckendorf: So we’ve just come up with a training methodology that we think is better or different enough that it gives people a choice. Do you want to train in this method or do you want to train in this method?

And if you don’t know, and you walk into that shop, most of our instructors guide you to this training method that we’ve developed, whether or not it’s coaching or a transactional class. Because again, we’re conscious of the environment, we’re conscious of team diving, we’re trying to be safe, and so on.

[00:20:39] What does proactive mean to you?

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[00:20:39] Tony Winyard: This, the podcast is called The Art of Living Proactively. what in comes into your mind when you think about being proactive and health?

[00:20:50] Jeff Seckendorf: I think it’s pretty much exactly what I just said. It’s to me, proactive living is always saying yes. Something comes up, gets in front of you. Say yes first, right? If you say no, that just shuts the door. If you say yes and it doesn’t work, well that’s okay, but you gave it a shot. So living proactively to me is seeing opportunities where they may not be obvious, seeing opportunities where you may have a vision of something that’s clear, but there’s a spur.

A left turn off that, that looks really interesting, that maybe you explore that a little bit. So you use opportunities to find opportunities that lead to opportunities. And then you’ve got this wonderful,track of living, really interesting stuff. And they don’t all have to be successful and they don’t have to last forever.

again, we have people come into the scuba coach. I had a guy come in for a month. Yeah, no, it’s not what I expected. I wanna leave and we’re like, awesome. Great. Door’s always open if you want to come back, but hopefully you’ll learned enough that this is not for you. Find another direction.

there’s that line about, when one door closes, 15 windows fly open. So when you bump into that closed door, just take a, it’s, it’s metaphor time. Take a step back. And look and see what windows are open. If this didn’t work, try this. If this didn’t work, try this.

where’s the spinoff of the thing that didn’t work? And then of course, I think part of it is also know when to say, when.

I don’t really believe in quitting while you’re ahead, but I think you should definitely quit while you’re behind. if something’s just not working for you, find something else.

looking through your podcast series, everybody has a different version of what proactive living means, and you do also, I’m sure. but mine is really about, dig the opportunities, love the opportunities, and never close a door on something that might be fun, even if it’s small.

you don’t have to, like cycling has taken over my life. In a lot of ways, right? I have, it’s basically one of my several full-time jobs. don’t have, it doesn’t have to be that, it could be gardening. You do two hours a week, but you know, I’m not much of a gardener.

My wife planted a vegetable garden this year for the first time, and she’s walking in the door with two little tiny cherry tomatoes. It’s look at these beautiful tomatoes, and there’s two, and they weigh like a gram each. And, but it gives her so much joy, to go out there and to water and to take care of them and prune them and pick them.

It’s it’s a purposeful thing for her. It’s costing us way more than just going to the store and buying some tomatoes. But it’s, there’s such beauty in it and such joy and love and what she’s doing in this very small little window,

which stacks on top of her career and she’s a cyclist also and so on.

it doesn’t have to be this massive thing. You don’t have to cure cancer or fly to the moon.

You just have to do something that helps one other person, I think.

[00:24:08] When did you develop this attitude?

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[00:24:08] Tony Winyard: Do you think, have you had that attitude for a long time or was it, when do you think it, there was a sudden point where that kind of developed.

[00:24:17] Jeff Seckendorf: No, I think I’ve been blessed with that concept forever. whatever career moment I’ve been in, I’ve always had a teaching element in it. I spent 30 years in the film industry, had a pretty successful career before I retired from that. And of those 30 years, I spent 25 of them also teaching.

Workshop programs, mentoring programs, things like that. So this has been part of my life forever. and now with cycling again, there’s no point in me just doing it on my own.

that’s the, why climb a mountain? Well, because it’s there attitude. And I think that, if you’re gonna climb a mountain because it’s there, you’re missing so much that you can do to help others.

Find purpose, find reason, find a, something interesting or some other spinoff that they didn’t know about that makes their life better, which in turn makes others’ lives better.

It’s a circle.

[00:25:09] As people turn 60 they get scared of injury

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[00:25:09] Tony Winyard: The impression I have is a lot of people as they get older, especially once they pass 60, and 60 seems to be a real mental barrier for some people. They are then scared off by doing things such as cycling because of fear of injury or whatever. what would you say to, and I’m guessing you are coming across people who are that sort of age and maybe they haven’t considered cycling.

do you come across people like that and, how would you talk to someone who maybe does have a fear of being injured at, in they’re 60, 70, or whatever?

[00:25:41] Jeff Seckendorf: that’s a good question because one of the things in coaching is that you’re not the fitness police.

You have to be open to bringing people into a program where they are, which means if you bump into someone who’s just not ready or not able, then you just have to say, okay, well cool. But if you run into somebody who has a spark of interest and this

project, whatever you’re bringing to the table, be it cycling or expanding a business or whatever is just something they hadn’t bumped into prior. And you can open their eyes to, well, here’s an a way to explore this newer vision of yourself,

then maybe you can try it. which doesn’t mean, I’ve been on a bike for

50 years, right? I didn’t just come to this Thursday and say, oh, I’m gonna go break an hour record. Although there are people who do that, it’s rarely successful. so I think a lot of this, to answer your question, because this is like one long tangent, is you have to address people where they are and people have to be ready to make some

proactive engagement into whatever they’re about to start. Otherwise, you’re just forcing your vision on someone else. and you know from kids, you can’t tell them anything. Because they, I have a 12 year old grandson who just, he knows everything and we know nothing and we exist with a tremendous amount of fun in that environment.

And it’s fine. Oh, you don’t know anything. I was like, the other day, what’s TikTok? And he’s oh, you don’t know what TikTok is. It’s no, I don’t know what TikTok is. tell me what TikTok is. Train me, educate me. So we try to give him opportunities to teach us, to open the door there and say, well, I can help somebody else, even though it’s my crazy grandfather.

[00:27:42] Tony Winyard: I guess what I was getting at is, I think a lot of people, once, when they reach 60 and above, they well and understandably have much more fear of injury and yet it’s so important. Well, it’s more important for that age group to be doing regular training in strength and many other areas of physical exertion.

[00:28:00] Jeff Seckendorf: Yeah, so to be very specific about that question, get a guide. Get a coach, go in with a idea that I need to increase my fitness, I need to increase my strength, I need to not be injured.

[00:28:17] Tony Winyard: And I think the key there is find the coach who sets that as your priority. I’m in the gym.

[00:28:23] Jeff Seckendorf: I cycle through a personal trainer. One or two cycles a year. And the, he’s a good friend of mine. I’ve been with him for years and years. And I go in for six or eight weeks and I come out and I go back in. And it all starts with on both of our ends, right? Me as the client and him as the coach, it’s okay, we’re gonna start slow and we’re gonna build up again, and we’re gonna go backward first, and we’re gonna not get you injured.

I’m going to lift 10 pounds, five. Kilos less than my normal weight that I could lift because I’m gonna get 99% of the benefit and I’m gonna get 30% of the chance of injury. So that, it’s that risk reward thing on injury that is, is tricky. And if somebody comes to me and says, Hey, I wanna ride a bike and get stronger, but I’m scared to death of the road, it’s well, great.

Start on a Peloton. start on a home trainer. Start on the track where there are no cars. and no brakes, but that’s a different story. and do something only tiny bit outta your comfort zone, not, miles out of your comfort zone. And then all of a sudden things become manageable.

’cause you get into these small bite-sized pieces, which are much easier to manage and much safer to manage. and, it does. These things don’t have to be risky. They don’t have to be risky. I spent a long time as a competition aerobatic pilot flying little single engine airplanes, straight at the ground at 200 miles an hour.

And it, it’s not risky If you are in control and you understand the limits, your limits, the airplane’s limits. it’s just another thing to do carefully, diving’s like that. Also, I’m a well-trained cave diver

[00:30:09] Tony Winyard: Okay.

[00:30:10] Jeff Seckendorf: I don’t find that risky,

but I’m way within my limits, of training and of comfort and, pushing slowly and so on that.

so I think, you’ve asked me the same question twice, which means I’m not either paying attention or I’m just saying whatever I want, but I think that,Do exercise, do train, get a coach, don’t get injured. and the way you don’t get injured is to start out with that as a priority, and then you can move as far as you want.

[00:30:39] Is scuba diving maybe more suited for older people as less exertion is needed?

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[00:30:39] Tony Winyard: would I be right in thinking, so going back to the scuba diving. I haven’t done it for a long time, but it would seem to require a lot, a much lower level of fitness, certainly than the cycling. So therefore, would it be much, in some ways, a better form of exercise for older people?

[00:30:56] Jeff Seckendorf: Yeah, I don’t think scuba diving’s exercise, I think it’s anti, it’s anti exercise, right? it’s more like tai chi than

[00:31:04] Tony Winyard: right.

[00:31:05] Jeff Seckendorf: But it’s funny because also with scuba diving, you have to be able to carry all that junk around,

right? So you do need some level of strength. And we advocate strength training all the time because most of the injuries we see in scuba diving are back injuries, like picking stuff up or walking on a boat with a tank on, things like that.

but it, once you’re in the water, the idea is anti exercise. You’re trying to keep your heart rate as low as possible, keep your breathing rate, consistently steady and. Because you have a limited air supply.

so I don’t see scuba diving as a way to move yourself to fitness, but I do see scuba diving as a way to move yourself into a fascinating world of recreation.

It has to be with, if you’re gonna use it as fitness, then the strength in endurance and all that comes from other stuff. Bike, run, swim, all that.

[00:31:52] Is there any breathwork training included?

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[00:31:52] Tony Winyard: And so would you in the scuba training that you do, is there any sort of, breath work at all?

[00:31:59] Jeff Seckendorf: It’s funny you said that. We have one of our instructors who is actually developing a breathing class for us. We haven’t done it yet, and we haven’t incorporated yoga and all that other stuff because, we’re still a bit mainstream. but it is a good idea and we haven’t pursued it. she brought this to our attention last year and we haven’t actually done anything about it yet, but I do think it’s a good idea.

[00:32:20] Tony Winyard: yeah.

[00:32:21] Jeff Seckendorf: Yeah.

[00:32:23] Tony Winyard: We, if people wanna find out more about you, and I’m guessing for doing something, for the two things you do for the cycling and the scuba diving, it has to be face-to-face. It’s not something you can do online. And so I’m guessing people will have to come to you if they’d like to take part in some of this.

[00:32:38] Jeff Seckendorf: on the scuba coaching thing, we have a model that works really well, long distance.

[00:32:42] Tony Winyard: Okay.

[00:32:42] Jeff Seckendorf: So we bring people into the program. Their coach can be anywhere. We manage all of the academic training, the critiques on pool sessions, things like that. And then we get them to a local instructor,for the in water training.

So it does work really well as a long distance program, which is another reason I think it’s unique. You can work at home and get 80% of it done. Then you just jump in the water with a camera and a buddy, and we critique that. You’re not tied to somebody else’s schedule and things like that. yeah, no, it doesn’t have to.

Same on cycling. my, my coach lives in, in, Colorado, and I see him in person twice a year. But, we communicate almost daily.

[00:33:24] How can people find out more about you?

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[00:33:24] Tony Winyard: And so where, what website would people go to if they wanna find out more about either of those?

[00:33:29] Jeff Seckendorf: for Scuba it’s simple. It’s utd scuba diving.com, U T D as in Unified Team Diving, which was the original name of the company. utd scuba diving.com. And to learn more about what I’m doing and me, we have a website called theinstituteofpurpose.org and it takes everything we’ve talked about, since we started,this conversation.

And it packs it into sort of an, overview of how to live with purpose, how other people are living with purpose, get some guidance on what you could do. it’s basically content about living with purpose. 30 second clips from people about what they think their purpose is, and slightly longer videos, five to eight minutes on

hearing other people talk a little more in depth about what they consider to be their purpose. And I think, this purposeful living, which is another way I think of talking about proactive living, right? it’s just living purposefully and people do lose purpose all the time. Lose a job, quit a job, retire from a job, and all of a sudden that job was your purpose.

kids go off to college, you’re now an empty nester. So you get that purpose is gone.

[00:34:42] Tony Winyard: Yeah.

[00:34:43] Jeff Seckendorf: you become a care partner for somebody who becomes ill or injured and your purpose has to change. Some people get in that scenario and have to leave a job and they’re like, my purpose is taking care of one person, which I love, but that’s just not doing it for me.

So then you have to reset your purpose, whatever that is. and so that’s why we did the Institute of Purpose, and it’s been a really fun, passion project to actually get this content out there for people to say, well, we, there’s two of us who have created this company. We both have done a ton of interesting stuff, and we can bring that vision to guiding other people to live a purposeful. Or in, in your case,a proactive existence that helps people. And when we talk about purpose, we always talk about it in terms of you don’t have to help a million people.

[00:35:32] Tony Winyard: You don’t have to cure cancer. There’s people all over the world working on stuff like that. But can you help one person?

[00:35:39] Jeff Seckendorf: Can you guide two people? Can you do something that makes one person say, oh, that’s cool. Maybe I’ll try it. Or a vision of it, or a version of it. Then I think you’re, you’re living with purpose or proactively.

[00:35:56] Tony Winyard: and as you say, just helping one person by helping one, one person, and the thanks you get from that is so rewarding.

[00:36:03] Jeff Seckendorf: It’s huge. It’s huge. Yeah. It’s not anything about,

you don’t have to be global. You can be micro and it works just as well.

[00:36:13] Favourite book

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[00:36:13] Tony Winyard: Yeah. Yeah. Changing the subject. Jeff, if,I’ve primed you for this before, so now’s the time. So a book that’s really moved you for any reason. what comes to mind?

[00:36:24] Jeff Seckendorf: somebody recently, like really recently, like a couple of months ago, suggested I read a book called Quit. By a woman named Annie Duke. So you may remember Annie Duke, she was a world-class poker player, but she’s a really interesting researcher, psychological researcher. And poker is the purest place where know when to hold them, know when to fold them, all that

[00:36:49] Tony Winyard: stuff.

[00:36:50] Jeff Seckendorf: So she wrote this book called Quit and it is the psychology of quitting,

[00:36:54] Tony Winyard: right? So this was, Offered to me by somebody on my coaching team because as I’m learning about the mental aspects of cycling, one of the things that I have to overcome was, okay, right this second I’m going full gas

[00:37:10] Jeff Seckendorf: it’s too hard, I’m gonna back off. And what I’m learning and had to learn and I’m learning every day, is how not to back off. How to not quit. But this book is, it’s one of the most interesting reads I’ve ever done. ’cause she really discusses the psychology of quitting, staying in, knowing when to stay in, knowing when to quit.

And it’s not about poker. she brings in poker analogies once in a while, but it’s about business, life, sports. It’s a fascinating book. and I’ve recommended it to so many people now. So it’s quit by Annie Duke, d u k e.

[00:37:49] Tony Winyard: Have you read any of her previous books?

[00:37:51] Jeff Seckendorf: I haven’t, I just realized she’s written two or three other books around this subject and they’re next on my list.

[00:37:57] Tony Winyard: I can’t remember the titles now, but they are excellent. They really are.

[00:38:01] Jeff Seckendorf: No, she’s a brilliant writer and has a way of explaining, and it was fun. when I did quit, I listened to it. I, it’s on some eight hour drive and she read it. there’s even a tighter personal connection. You get to the end of the book and you feel like, you know this woman.

[00:38:15] Favourite quote

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[00:38:15] Tony Winyard: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Well, Jeff, we’re about to finish, but before we do, quotation, have you got one you really like and why

[00:38:23] Jeff Seckendorf: Yeah. Years, decades ago I saw this written on a board at a workshop program, and it was billed as a anonymous japanese quote and it goes, "Vision without action is a daydream, but action without vision is a nightmare". And I think that’s wonderful, right? It really sums up my vision of structured training.

It sums up my vision of think before you act, but be sure to act

[00:38:53] Tony Winyard: right because thinking gets you nowhere without the action. So vision without action is a daydream, and action without vision is a nightmare.

That’s a really good quote. Jeff. It’s been a pleasure. So thank you for taking the time to come on the show and yeah, best of luck in everything you do.

[00:39:11] Jeff Seckendorf: yeah. Grateful for it. And it was fun to meet you and have this conversation and, I hope people find it interesting,

[00:39:17] Tony Winyard: Cheers, Jeff.

Tune in next week for an enlightening episode with Dr. Tom Gedman. An impressive GP who is pioneering preventative health care. In our compelling conversation, Tom eloquently explains his ingenious blueprint for proactivity. This multi-faceted model masterfully merges medicine, lifestyle changes, supplements, and cognitive behavioral therapy techniques. Tom talks transparently about how this approach can empower people to take control of their health destiny.

You’ll hear Tom’s insightful driving metaphor about grasping the steering wheel of your life, rather than drifting aimlessly. And how being proactive means anticipating obstacles ahead of you. Discover how Tom is revolutionising GP appointments. He’s trimming ineffective small talk to give clear, concise lifestyle guidance in seconds. Then referring patients to his Blueprint lifestyle groups for in-depth education and support. So don’t miss hearing about Tom’s unique blend of qualifications, combining conventional medicine, functional medicine, and advanced psycho therapy skills. This gives him an unfair advantage when tackling chronic diseases. So join me next week for an uplifting and educational episode with the pioneering, Dr. Tom Gedman. Please subscribe to the art of living proactively on your favorite podcast app. Leave us a sparkling five-star review. And share this episode with friends. I appreciate your listenership. And look forward to seeing you next time.