Youthful Aging Secrets Podcast
Join Ricardo Vasquez who inspired by the death of his dad, Ricardo Luis Vasquez, decided to do his best to optimize his health and share what he's learning and doing with anyone who wants to do the same. Interviewing experts in their respective fields like Doctors, scientists, and others in the health space plus "super agers". People who are aging gracefully and look, feel and/or perform way below their age. My job is simple, to dissect the habits, rituals, routines, wisdom and knowledge from my guests as best I can. I really hope this makes a difference in your life.
Youthful Aging Secrets Podcast
#12: Forbidden Secrets To Staying Young At 78 With Frank Gilfeather
🥊 Ageless Boxing: Frank Gilfeather's Secrets to Staying Young at 78 | Youthful Aging Secrets Podcast Episode #12 🥊
Join Ricardo Vazquez as he dives into the life and longevity secrets of Frank Gilfeather, a 78-year-old boxing legend from Aberdeen, Scotland. 🇬🇧 In this episode, Frank reveals his tips on:
💪 Staying healthy and active
🥗 The importance of diet and exercise
🚫 Why he avoids processed foods
⏳ Frank's minimalist approach to training
🧘♂️ How he manages stress and recovery
Don’t miss this inspiring conversation that proves age is just a number!
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Imagine being 78 years old but still hitting the bag like a pro. Meet Frank Gilfeather. Born into the world of boxing in Scotland, raised in the grit of the Granite City.
Frank Gilfeather:When I was a kid growing up, there were virtually no processed foods, no packaging. There was never any packaging. Everything was wrapped in a piece of brown paper.
Ricardo:His commitment to training and discipline is as relevant now as ever.
Frank Gilfeather:My dad used to say if you're going to do it, do it properly. I look around at the obesity problem and the obese kids and I feel like going up to parents and say, please, you're killing your child. Please get a grip and sort yourself out and show a good example to your child.
Ricardo:And when asked how he does it, Frank's answer is simple.
Frank Gilfeather:How can you be so quick with your hands and your footworks, greg? How can you do that at 78? I wish I had the answer. I don't go any other way. That's the only way I know how to do it. And if somebody said to me me, oh, I could just slow down about it.
Ricardo:Frank's journey is an example for all of us to stay active regardless of age.
Frank Gilfeather:I'm lucky I could do what I can do at 78, and if I could do it at 80 then I'll strive to do it and keep doing it To watch or listen to the episode with Frank Gilfeather, visit youthfulagingsecretscom.
Ricardo:Click on podcast, choose your preferred platform and find episode 12. What's up everyone. Welcome to Youthful Aging Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, ricardo Vasquez. Today's guest is Mr Frank Gilfeather.
Ricardo:Frank is a living legend from Aberdeen, scotland, known not only for his remarkable boxing career as a fighter and coach, but for his dedication to health and fitness. At 78 years young, he was raised in a boxing household and Frank honed his skills from an early age, going on to represent his country in the ring and later becoming a respected voice in sports journalism and community mentorship. Frank's lifetime commitment to physical activity and his insights into the importance of movement, discipline and resilience have kept him sharp, strong and vibrant well into his senior years. In our conversation, frank shares invaluable insights into staying healthy and active throughout life. Here's a sneak peek of what you'll learn Frank's philosophy on diet, exercise and avoiding processed foods. Frank's refreshing approach to managing stress and building resilience. Old school boxing wisdom that you can apply to your own life. How Frank stays in incredible shape at 78, frank's minimalist diet, sleep habits, training routine, thoughts on supplements and more.
Ricardo:I'm absolutely honored to have shared a couple of hours with Frank and I learned a lot. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to quickly share something with you, which is my free 5 Health Hacks newsletter. If you're someone who wants to live as healthy as possible for as long as possible, but don't always have the time to listen to every podcast episode or keep up with the latest health and longevity research, then this newsletter is for you. Each week, I send out a quick, actionable newsletter featuring an inspiring quote, a summary of the latest podcast episode, a breakdown of a health topic backed by the latest research, a few of my favorite discoveries and recommendations for that week and a question to get you thinking deeper. It's designed to be read in the time it takes you to enjoy your morning coffee. If you're interested, please head over to youthfulagingsecretscom. Forward slash. Subscribe to join for free. Now let's get into this episode Introducing Mr Frank Gilfeather. All right, welcome Frank. How are you?
Frank Gilfeather:I'm very well, ricardo. It's great to talk to you. We are on the other side of the world, from across the Atlantic and Toronto. It's great to talk to you. Are we at the other side of the world, from across the Atlantic and Toronto.
Ricardo:That's right. So from Toronto to Scotland.
Frank Gilfeather:Scotland. Yeah, To the northeast of Scotland, to Aberdeen, which is called the Granite City, because virtually all the buildings are made from granite.
Ricardo:Wow, that's awesome. You know it's funny. I used to have a a principal out in. Is that what you guys call them for? School the principal? Yeah, as well, head head teacher, that's right.
Ricardo:Yeah, he was from scotland oh and he had come straight from scotland, like he, he had the hard, the thick accent and everything and I was, I was, I'll be honest, I was scared of him. I was a little kid and he used to yell at me and this one boy because we were, we were honestly, we deserved it, we were little little assholes like, but anyways I I remember he used to make us laugh too. Um, so, so frank I I want to. I want to first of all thank you for for coming here and, um, taking the time. I know we had some difficulties earlier but we made it happen, so I'm really happy about that. And I just wanted to ask you first if you don't mind kind of sharing your backstory, specifically how you got into boxing and all that jazz with growing up and related to that. If you don't mind, just kind of want to understand your backstory.
Frank Gilfeather:Yeah, well, the boxing thing is because, uh, I come from a family of boxers. Uh, my dad, who wasn't really a boxer because he had a he had an injury playing football or soccer, as you call it, um, and he um from the age of 19, um, he had this injury, which was never rectified 100%, because he ended up with one leg slightly shorter than the other. The reason for that was because when he got that injury, there were no antibiotics, there was no penicillin, so he spent a year in a cast down his leg and he struggled after that, but he overcame it. He never. He ran a boxing club. Then he ran another one when that one ended, and so, over decades, he ran several boxing clubs. And so, over decades, he ran several boxing clubs.
Frank Gilfeather:And so, and I had two older brothers One is 11 years older and another one was nine years older and they went to the boxing club that my dad ran. And so, when I was about four years of age, I would go along too, just to be part of it, and so, soaking up all this kind of atmosphere, age, I would go along too, just to be part of it, and so, soaking up all this kind of atmosphere, the sweatiness and the smells and you know the sounds of a boxing club. It kind of got ingrained into me and so that's how it all started. My two brothers boxed. They were champions. I kept going and going and going and won youth championships and senior titles, boxed for my country and so on. But the beginnings came when I was about four and so this was about 1949, 1950. And I just started going along to the boxing club. I guess it was ingrained in me so that was in my DNA and I just took to it and I loved it.
Ricardo:So right from the beginning. So it sounds like like you said it's in your blood. Yeah, you were born to do it regardless.
Frank Gilfeather:Well, when I think about it now, it just seemed a natural thing for me to do. I didn't feel awkward or weird in a sport that didn't suit me. It just suited me. And the principal reason for that is my dad, who couldn't call himself a coach, but he was a teacher, and we would just sit and chat often, and even after I'd boxed in different tournaments and so on, we would analyze what went right, what went wrong, in a kind of measured and civilized way and he would point out the reasons why do we do this, why do we do that punch, why do we deliver that punch or how do we avoid punches? That was the main thing, of course, the defense.
Frank Gilfeather:And so I kind of learned listening to him and he would talk about the old fighters and the people he'd seen and all that and it became just part of us and all the people who used to come to my house were all connected with boxing. So it was a boxing household. You know, the talk was about not so much about the big fights or anything like that, it was about what's happening with this amateur boxing club or that one, or where are we boxing next week and have we got boys on that tournament next week or where are we traveling to all that stuff? So I was growing up listening to all of that uh between my dad and other people, uh within additive boxing, and and so it's. You know, I just became part of it, you know right, yeah, so what's what's interesting is okay.
Ricardo:So I I think we talked about this off camera but how I found you was I. I have a different channel and and I follow pretty much. If you look at my channel, it's almost all combat, and then there's some odd stuff that I'm interested in, like just weird stuff. But but, uh, I I follow a lot of boxers or boxing coaches and then wrestling, and I just love the art of combat and I've always been into that same, like you. I was born into that.
Ricardo:And so I came across you and I was really impressed because you were hitting the bag. And and then you know, let's start from the beginning. You're, you're 78, right, yes, so forget about the age. Just just the way you were hitting the bag in and of itself was impressive. But then I found out you're 70. I was like what the hell? Like I'm turning 40 in a week and I don't know if I can hit the bag like you hit the bag. So I'm like it's kind of that really impressed me. And so back, so I'm like it's kind of that really impressed me. And so then I I was like I gotta follow you on my other channel, which is this one, and while this, this particular podcast, is all about youthful aging, in other words, you know, aging gracefully, health, longevity, all that kind of stuff, I thought it was still a great fit and I I love boxing to begin with, but with that said, what role do you think boxing played as far as your health and and fitness is concerned?
Frank Gilfeather:well, it was extremely important, and the reason is because it was different. Once we're back, we're talking about a different age now. Uh, when I was a kid growing up, there were virtually no processed foods. There were no fizzy drinks Well, there were, but nothing on the scale that we have today and nothing of the variety that we see today and no microwaves. So therefore, no easy-to-eat food, you know, and no packaged food, no packaging. There was never any packaging. Everything was wrapped in a piece of brown paper and so you didn't have that obstacle, and it is an obstacle.
Frank Gilfeather:And I see young kids today who are clearly overweight, and certainly in the UK there is a major obesity problem. I think the figure is something like 50% of the population are overweight to some degree. And so you know, when you go and see these kids and they're walking around the supermarket with their parents and they're picking up all the stuff that's salty and sugary, and potato crisps, chips I think you call them and all that kind of stuff, chocolate bars and you could bang, I could see these kids overweight and they couldn't be on their own. But I could bet all the money in the world that if I went round to the next aisle and followed them round to meet their mum or their dad, they would be exactly the same. So I think, while nobody we didn't have to be told don't eat this, don't eat that, you know why it wasn't available, right? So what I'm trying to say is that we now face obstacles as a race. We face obstacles in food and, of course, the easier the manufacturers make it, the tastier they make it, the more attractive they make it, the more we buy into it. So I would I don't know, maybe getting off the kind of questioning here, but we never had that in those days.
Frank Gilfeather:So I trained from an early age. I trained nonstop and as I grew older I trained more non-stop. As I grew older I trained more. By the age of 21, I was sick of boxing and I gave it up. I fought a couple of hundred fights. I'd boxed 17 times for my country. I'd boxed all over the UK and Europe and Ireland. It gave me a great insight into other countries, other ways of life, other people, and for me that was the bonus. You know that I won titles and contests and so on was important? Obviously it was, but boxing gave me so much more and it actually opened doors for me Because in those days amateur boxing in the UK was a big deal.
Frank Gilfeather:So in the 60s, for example, the BBC had a contract with both the governing bodies in Scotland and England to cover live all their internationals at home. So one week it would be England against the USA and next week it would be Scotland against Switzerland and so on, and so there was a big audience and many of us at the time became household names. So football was the big sport, but coming up a close second was boxing and amateur boxing as well. In fact the major newspapers in Scotland all had boxing correspondents. So when we went abroad to box in Denmark, bulgaria, italy, wherever they came with us, and Denmark, bulgaria, italy, wherever they came with us that was the importance of it. So it made many of us kind of well-known and that was good.
Frank Gilfeather:The problem with that is that some of the younger guys same age as me would get kind of carried away with that. So that's what you've got to keep. You've got to keep your feet on the ground. I was always told that by my dad. You know I'm really weight of that. So that's what you've got to keep. You've got to keep your feet on the ground. I was always told that by my dad. You know I'm really proud of you. You've done so well.
Ricardo:But remember, don't get carried away. And was your father like you in your age? Was he still coaching, still very active in that as well?
Frank Gilfeather:No, I wouldn't say so. I mean he ran boxing clubs for you. He gave his heart and soul to amateur boxing right and therefore he gave himself to. If you like, you could call him almost like a social worker, because he opened up his club, he persuaded young boys to come from the community to this focal point which was the boxing club and therefore he kept them out of trouble. He kept them away from crime, petty crime, kept the police at distance and gave these young guys something to believe in, something to make themselves, proud of themselves, and that was important. So I think you were sweet to me and to my dad. Now my dad was six weeks off his 99th birthday when he died. But he was a good living man. He never smoked, he never drank, never gambled. He lived a good living man. He never smoked, he never drank, never gambled. He, he lived a good life and he gained so much back to whatever community his boxing club happened to be in at any given year.
Frank Gilfeather:You know we had to move around for various reasons, whether the lease on the gym might've been up and where you know the owner of gym wanted the premises. So you would, you would start a new boxing club and he did that all the time. Many people would just say, oh well, okay, fine, we'll forget it. But of course, by the time I was 16, I'd run out of opponents in my age group in Scotland. So my club at the time my father had given up by then. My club at the time, my father had given up by then. My club at the time had said to the governing body would you allow him to box seniors? Now, seniors in those days meant you were 17 years and older. Nowadays it's 19. But you could be 17, you could be 30, you could be 35. You are a senior. And that was it. So they said to me yeah, you can box seniors now.
Frank Gilfeather:And so I started, at the age of 16, boxing seniors and I started to beat the hell. These were experienced guys and I never thought about anything at that time and I can't. The thing, the time and I can't. The thing is this I was a boxing man and I was a boy, right. So I'm boxing 24, 26-year-old, 27-year-old, and you know it was tough.
Frank Gilfeather:But what was kind of drummed into me was the technique, the skill of boxing. Don't take punches unnecessarily. Sometimes you have to have a real bash, you have to have a go, things are tight, but generally speaking, it's all done with the science, it's all done with the brain, and that's what was instilled in me throughout my career and, of course. So I had all these contests, all the travel, all the sometimes difficult fights, and at the age of 21, I thought, well, I think enough's enough, and I would concentrate on my job as a trainee reporter, newspaper reporter, and that was great fun, and so that was like a new beginning for me and for that.
Frank Gilfeather:And so I went into television and radio, and now I've written a couple of books and a play, and so I kind of keep reinventing myself. So this bit on social media is all about that. Not only am I reinventing myself, I'm reinvigorated by this, and now that I've got into it, one of the things that began to really annoy me was looking at social media. Boxing coaches, charlatans, in my view, was looking at social media boxing coaches Very bad.
Frank Gilfeather:Charlatans, in my view, and I would think, wow, these people are being listened to and they're being watched and they're delivering absolute rubbish and you know it's bad, and I don't like the fact that young people maybe want to be boxers are listening to this and they're getting all the wrong information. So that's kind of that's kind of spurred me on to keep going in this journey. I love it.
Ricardo:I have a. I have a quite brought up a question. There's a lot of these guys now on Instagram and things like that, where they line up their students, yeah, and they just punch them, oh my god, and and and they're hitting them in the head like and and. Some of these are like pretty hard shots. You know, and personally I've. I feel like I've been blessed and I'm lucky I was never exposed to that. I grew up with the same mentality that you you're talking about, which was like the whole objective is to number one don't get hit. Yeah, and hit, but like don't. Number one is like do not get hit if we're, if we're talking about wrestling, or do not get taken down or pinned. You know, know, nowadays it seems like, oh, we're training them to get hits. Like what are you talking about? You can't just listen. I'm much younger, so you know you've forgotten more than I could ever know. But do you agree that this is stupid? Yeah, like it doesn't make any sense.
Frank Gilfeather:It doesn't, of course, right. So think about things today. Of course, right. So think about things today. We see men who have come through boxing careers or rugby or you know NFL and you call that stuff, and we see them today and what they end up getting. Now, not all of the time, it's difficult to generalize, but what many of them end up getting is dementia and Alzheimer's. Now, when I was a young boy growing up, I'd never heard of these words. Nobody had. They hadn't been invented. We saw the old guys who used to come to the gym and coach and help and just watch the sparring and so on, and I would hear the slurred speech. I would see the way they walked sometimes and we just called them punchy. Way they walked sometimes and we just called them punchy.
Frank Gilfeather:So these were the guys who came up the hard way in the 20s, 30s and 40s, boxing in the boxing booths. Have you heard of the boxing booths? The boxing booths were the fairground boxers, right. So the fairground would come, the fair would come to your town for a week and a couple of weeks and part of it would be a marquee and outside there'd be a kind of a walkway where there'd be five or six or seven boxers and a guy in the middle going come on, come up and challenge any of these guys and you pay money to challenge them. If you beat them you will get X number of pounds or shillings in those days. Because we're talking about this? Because these booth fighters were doing that for money, because they were poor and underprivileged. But from the booths came world champions. Benny Lynch, the great Benny Lynch, the flyweight champion of the world, started his career in the boxing booth, sleeping with the horses and the traveling figures and taking on all covers, all sizes, all weights. And he was a flyweight, he was an eight stone, and so he came through that, but so too did many, many others. Now, when I was growing up, there were old coaches used to go around. There was a lovely old man called Freddie Tennant, who I go now. He must have lost count of the number of fights that he had in the fairgrounds and also later in the halls, in the boxing halls, and Freddie would tell me that he would walk. He would think nothing of walking 15 or 20 miles to join the boxing booth so that he could get extra money. And so that's how you know.
Frank Gilfeather:Boxing came from the streets. It came from people with poor backgrounds. It's not so much like that now. Many of the amateur clubs are based in underprivileged areas within their own towns, but that's where it came from. So these guys who now today run boxing clubs, open them up every night for the kids to join and come in and keep fit and box and learn how to box. These kids, these boys, these men are the heroes and they should be celebrated because of that. They're the social workers in our community. They're helping the police keep crime off the streets and these are the guys who should be lauded and praised for what they do. They're helping the police keep crime off the streets and these are the guys who should be lauded and praised for what they do.
Frank Gilfeather:So you know, boxing plays a major part still. I'm surprised to say this, I'm surprised to hear myself saying this. It still plays a major part within our communities, when, in fact, 30 years ago, I thought boxing was finished because of the medical aspects of it. So if people are starting to get dementia and it's partly because they boxed or they had the ball playing soccer, which is what's happening today, all I would say is well, I saw that growing up because we didn't have the name dementia at all times, but it's a difficult, tough, hard sport and it takes a great deal of heroism and courage to step into that ring and face somebody at the other side who's trying to hurt you right?
Ricardo:yeah, absolutely, and so it really gets me upset when I see videos like that and you know I can. I can appreciate the entertainment value or whatever, but aside from that, it's like to me it's these sadistic coaches who I I don't think. I find it hard to believe that they don't know better, because the information's out there and I don't see them getting hit and I think they're just abusing these kids and it's like man.
Frank Gilfeather:Yeah you're talking about. I think I know the ones you're talking about and I think I'm right in saying that wherever they are, they're all the Indian subcontinent. The ones I've seen are, and some guys have kind of stood there with their hands up in the air and the coach will not tell, or either face or body, and it's excruciating. What I cannot understand is why anybody would allow themselves to be subjected to that.
Ricardo:Well, sometimes these guys hang upside down and get kicked in the head. I'm like what the hell am I watching? And these guys are supposedly it's supposed to be preparing them to take a shot. It's like that's actually doing the opposite. It's making it so because you know anybody that's far who has been around that the more often you take hits, the less you can take like, the more you get knocked out, your brain shuts off much quicker. So of course it doesn't make any sense. It's like you're, you're and you know. I don't want to see these kids in their later in life. Hopefully, hopefully, they're okay. Some people, for some reason, can get all life hopefully they're okay. Some people, for some reason, can get all the punishment and they're fine. And some people get concussed once or twice and they're never the same again.
Frank Gilfeather:We were in Ireland once in County Notting Hill way up on the west coast, and there was a guy in part of our team it wasn't an official Scotland team, it was just a little select from our district. We went over there to box. We boxed four times in two weeks it was basically a holiday and one of the guys in our setup who later became my coach and and one of my closest friends, dearest friends, he's now there. He's named Jim Monroe. So he boxed that night and he got knocked out. They carried him from the ring. There was a doctor in attendance. They carried him from the ring into this communal changing room where all the boxers were, but it was part of a church hall or something and there was a snooker table in one side of the room. So the doctor said just lay them on the snooker table, they'll be fine. So this is how primitive we're talking about around 1960. So they put Jim on the snooker table, they'll be fine. So this is how primitive we're talking about around about 1960.
Frank Gilfeather:So they put Jim on the snooker table and about an hour later he jumped up and he said when am I on? And we said you've been on. And he said when are you on? He said, well, you were on, you were knocked out, and he couldn't believe it. He couldn't take that in, he'd already been in the ring and been knocked out. Now, I have never experienced being knocked out, and bizarrely and kind of weirdly, I've often thought I wonder what it would be. I wonder if I could experience that, just to know what it's like. Of course it's nuts, I wouldn't want to, but I often wonder what it would be like. But you're right. So when I look at the top professionals, even the best ones, the number of punches they take to the head is frightening it really is frightening.
Frank Gilfeather:And I cannot imagine for the life of me that when they retire, in 10, 15 years after they retire, 20 years after they retire, of course they're bound to be affected, of course their mind is bound to kind of slow up and their speech perhaps becomes slurred. And from that point of view it would be very difficult to defend boxing against an organization like the British Medical Council or something like that, the British Medical Association, because you know they have the evidence. My big surprise now is that despite them having a strong lobby politically in the last 20, 30, 40 years trying to get boxing banned, they never managed it. People are always coming forward, but at an amateur level of course it's much more safe. There is no accent on the financial aspects of boxing and what it can make for a promoter or a TV pay-per-view station. That's a different kettle of fish In the amateur game. It's pure, it's more pure.
Ricardo:Right, yeah, I mean, I personally believe that boxing and all combat sports do more good than harm and I don't believe you should be able to tell people what they can and can't do if they know the risks and they're getting involved. I just think that the awareness that's coming out more and more and more coaches are more careful now. You know, I've seen, I've gone to gyms where I could see the changes in the way they spar and the drills and and almost much more preparation time with defense, because they're respecting the science Right. So I think it's headed in a good direction. But there are some countries where maybe they just don't have the information or they're just not there yet, and it's to me it's sad to watch um, but I want to. I want to switch gears a little bit and I want to get into a mindset. You know, and you know like you, you seem like you're a very healthy man and you take care of yourself. What's your mindset around health and longevity and you know, just keeping yourself healthy, and where did you learn it?
Frank Gilfeather:I didn't learn it. Really I'm lucky, I'm really lucky. I think I'm almost a fluke of nature. My dad Marnaccio he was almost 90 when he died, just a few weeks from his 99th birthday Never smoked, never drank, he never gambled. He was basically a good man, right, you know, a lot of integrity. He had humility and all that kind of characteristics that you would like to see within a person, certainly within a friend and somebody that you could go to.
Frank Gilfeather:I mean, I remember my house used to be full of people who had problems and they would come to my dad and he was almost like a counsellor and he would sit them down and they either had drink problems or gambling issues or whatever, and he would sit them down and we'd have to leave the room and he would talk to them and just kind of get them through things. And so there was a kind of coterie of people who did that on almost an ongoing basis and you know, I always thought that's incredible. You know he's not prepared to turn his back on these people and say, look, you know, don't bother me, I'm too busy. He wasn't prepared to do that. He was always prepared to say, look, don't bother me, I'm too busy. He wasn't prepared to do that. He was always prepared to say, yeah, come and sit down, let's have a chat, have a cup of tea. And so he was my role model. He was my hero, and I never set out to be like him. I never set out to be like him. I never set out to be this kind of fitness guru who is full of good health.
Frank Gilfeather:I can't pretend that I'm like that. I'm not. I'm just a lucky guy who is able to do it. People have said to me how can you punch so strongly? How can you be so quick with your hands and your foot works great, how can you do that at 7 to 8? I wish I had my answer. I don't know any other way. That's the only way I know how to do it. And if somebody said to me, oh, just slow down a bit, I can't, you know, if I'm going to do it, let's do it properly. And maybe that's kind of throwback to what my dad used to say If you're going to do it, do it properly. If not, boxing is too dangerous not to do it properly. So get out.
Frank Gilfeather:So, as far as the kind of healthy, I'm lucky I have a wife, sharon, who cooks me fresh food every single day. Now what I've found is we've kind of morphed into this in the last I don't know couple of years, no more than a year. I would say to her you know what? Where was the last time we had red meat? I can't remember the last time I had red meat, yeah, okay, well, I'm not a big fan of red meat anyway. But sometimes I used to think, oh, I'd love a steak. Then when you had a steak, you'd think, well, that wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. So I eat chicken. But the big thing is I now find myself kind of edging more and more, just by default, more than anything else, because my wife cooks this stuff and it's brilliant Vegetarianism. So I find that I have a meal and I'll say that was brilliant, that was really delicious, you know, but there was no prawns in it, there was no chicken, there was no beef but no pork, it was just vegetables, but it tasted fantastic. So I've now come to learn, ricardo, that for a dish to be delicious, does it have to be, does it have to contain meat, does it have to be? Does it have to contain meat? Now I was saying that I'm probably now 80, 85% vegetarian. But it's just happened by evolution. It's not happened because we've designed it that way and thought, right, we're not going to be vegetarians. It's just happened that way. And I think more and more my wife will put down food and realize there is no meat in there and she'll know that I'm loving it.
Frank Gilfeather:So I'm lucky, I've got it in my DNA. My dad was always a fit guy but he never, he never trained because he had this kind of injury that when he was 19 and what, and before there were there was uh, antibiotics and all that and. But he was never fat, he was never overweight, he was well built in a barrel chest and he, he, uh, he. He was just a good looking guy and I'm lucky that I inherited those genes from him. So I'm not standing up and saying look at me, how great am I at 78? I'm not. And what I'm saying is I'm lucky, I could do what I could do at 78. And if I could do it at 80, then I'll strive to do it when I'm 85 and keep doing it. If I slow down, it doesn't matter. I have no injuries, I have no joint problems, and so if I'm that way inclined, then I'll keep doing it.
Ricardo:That's awesome. And so on the topic of diet, for example, could you walk me through, like a typical day of what you eat and when, like when you start eating, what you eat, what you drink, if you don't mind, okay, sure.
Frank Gilfeather:For a start, my wife's got a big deal about water, how much water we should drink. Having a glass of water would be the last thing that enters my mind. You know why so, and I think, okay, next thing then drink that. But what she does now well, what she mainly does the water will come in part of diluting juice or some kind of thing that makes it taste better for me. I think water's boring, so I never and even in the gym I see all the kids drinking water. You'll have a break, and I coach them. I said you know we'll have a break now and they'll go to their water bottle. I don't have a water bottle.
Ricardo:Like me right here.
Frank Gilfeather:And they're all light. Everybody's like that now and I think that's wonderful. Because of what I know about the consumption of water and how necessary it is, that's wonderful. I can't get into it. I drink diluting juice and that kind of stuff. That's when I get my water. So let me tell you about my day in terms of food. Every morning is the same and that kind of stuff. That's when I get my water. So let me tell you about my day in terms of food. Every morning is the same.
Frank Gilfeather:I have toast with and it's brown seeded bread, and it took my wife years and years and years to get me onto that brown seeded bread. For me it was cardboard but I'm on it now. Now I have been on it for several years. And on the bread is I have apricot jam. I love apricot jam, right, and a cup of tea.
Frank Gilfeather:And then mid-morning I will have a cup of coffee which we made in our filtered coffee machine, one cup. And then after that I'll probably have around about lunchtime, early afternoon, a fruit salad with yogurt. So it'll be grapes, banana, tangerine, anything like that, and a couple of dollops of yogurt. And then we have our main meal, which is very often it's pasta, we'll have some chicken, sometimes rice, vegetarian dishes baked in the oven, that kind of stuff. We'll have that no later, at the very latest 6 o'clock, but usually by 5 o'clock, and then I have nothing to eat till breakfast time the next day. That's made a big difference to me. I think that that whole 16 hours, or whatever it is, dieting throughout the night, fasting, has improved my health and my mobility. Perhaps Would I be able to do what I do if I wasn't on that diet, probably, but this is what I'm doing now in terms of eating has enhanced what I'm able to do, I feel, and so it's made a huge difference. So maybe that's a secret.
Frank Gilfeather:Certainly, the fasting between, you know, five o'clock or six o'clock till eight o'clock or 8.30 the next morning, is fantastic, and I would, you know, I would edge people in that direction, certainly people of a certain age who think they're couch bound and they're not moving and not walking and they're not going to the gym.
Frank Gilfeather:At least, please cut and this is the other thing cut out the rubbish, cut out the fizzy drinks, cut out the salted snacks, all that stuff, chocolate bars, all that stuff that doesn't exist in my diet because, apart from now and again, if I'm in the supermarket and I see, well, let's have a bar of chocolate. But you know, I can't remember the last time I had chocolate, maybe six weeks ago, something like that I very occasionally have a bit with a cup of coffee in the evening, so that with that evening meal my cup of coffee would be there. And I'm not trying, you know. So I'm not saying. I'm saying, francis, what I'm saying is I will happily have with my evening meal a glass of red wine. So, if you like, it's a Mediterranean diet I'm trying to follow, without actually going down that road, but I know when I look at it, well, this is a Mediterranean diet and it's working for me. So that's how I do it.
Ricardo:That's really cool. Just curious, when's your birthday? My birthday December 30. Oh, it just passed. Yes, happy belated. I'll remember that December 30th I was going to say did you have cake?
Frank Gilfeather:No, I don't want to isolate. Do you know what? There's a thing about my birthday? Because it falls between Christmas and New Year and nobody ever remembered my birthday.
Frank Gilfeather:It was going so soon when I remember vividly the day I was 21,. And you know when I remembered when I was 21? I remember about lunchtime, 1 o'clock in the afternoon, and I don't know what made me. Something clicked in my mind. I thought, well, I know, it's my birthday today, I'm 21. Oh, my God. And then I thought, and then, 30 seconds later, I right, let's move on.
Frank Gilfeather:So for me and this annoys my wife and she'll say well, we've got to get birthday presents for Paul and for Stephen or Lucy or Catherine or children. I go, okay, fine, she goes. Well, where's your enthusiasm? And I'm well, okay, fine, it's a birthday. But it was no big deal for me growing up, and I think, partly because of the era that I grew up in, nobody had donated black presents, and then partly because my birthday fell between Christmas and New Year Paul Monet, of course which was the day after my birthday when everybody celebrated Moorure into the new year. So nobody ever remembered. Sometimes they would think about it a couple of days later and say, oh, it was your birthday a couple of days ago.
Ricardo:That's funny. So, aside from your diet it seems like more Mediterranean-style diet and the intermittent fasting do you take any supplements or any medication? Supplements, anything like that, zero, nothing.
Frank Gilfeather:I've got a big deal about that. You know a big thing about that. My dad never took a pill in his life. Headaches if he had a headache, we never knew about it. If he was in any way ill, sick in any way, no matter how minor, he never took anything. And nor did he tell us what if he was feeling bad or unwell or a headache or whatever. And so I followed that route, because I never take pills or supplements. Never take pills or supplements.
Frank Gilfeather:And you know one of the things, ricardo, while I'm on that subject, I've had approaches from companies who manufacture supplements and protein pills and all that stuff that they do and vitamin pills and all that, saying to me we can send you this and we can send you that, you know, looking for a mention on my channels and I would just say don't bother, because I would just put them in the bin. They mean nothing to me. Now I'm not discounting that and I hate the thought. You know I wouldn't like everybody to think saying, oh, what does he know better? I know nothing about it. I'm not trying to be some kind of expert. These supplements, these vitamin pills and all these things might help people. I'm sure they do, but for me I'm not interested and I've never taken them.
Ricardo:No, Interesting as far as like prevention or maintenance and things like that. Do you believe in regular checkups or just checking your blood, your levels, to see am I good on this vitamin or that, or do you just go by how you feel or how do you approach?
Frank Gilfeather:that that's exactly what I do. I never meet the GP for goodness knows how long I mean. Last time I met the GP several years ago, she said you've got the thinnest file in our practice. She said what? It was, something that was a near problem or something I had, and so I've never. You know, I listen, I'm lucky. I'm not. You know, I'm lucky.
Frank Gilfeather:Imagine a guy at my age and I get comments and questions on Instagram and TikTok saying oh, have you had problems with your shoulders, with your elbows, with your hands? And almost, I'm almost at the point of saying I'd love to be able to say yes, and this is how I overcame them. But the bottom line is, the honest truth is I never heard any of these problems. Okay, when I was boxing, I burst a couple of knuckles.
Frank Gilfeather:At some point, I think I broke a finger, a pinky, once. I can't remember how I did that and that was it. But I've never had any, and the only time I've ever been in hospital was to have tonsils out when I was 19. So I'm lucky. What can I say? I can't offer you any kind of miracle cure for anything or say this is what you should be doing. All I can say is this is what I do, and if you were to replicate what I do, you might be lucky, like me, and not have the issues that many 78 and old people do right, interesting, um, that, yeah, that's really fascinating that definitely there's a a component of good genetics, for sure, which is, I guess you could say, luck or fate.
Ricardo:Um, and speaking of luck or fate, do you, do you believe in? You don't have to answer this, but do you believe in a higher power or a god or some sort like that? Do you? Are you a religious man or a spiritual man? By any means?
Frank Gilfeather:I, I, uh, I was raised a catholic and, uh, I would go to mass every sunday, uh, with my dad, and it was terrible, it was, was boring, because, as you're a kid, you know, I kind of fell away from the church for years and years, but I never gave up on it, you know, and even today, well, up until maybe a couple of years ago, my wife and I would go to Mass or a Sunday morning. But then you know, know, if you miss a couple of Sundays and you kind of get back into the habit, you need to be fully invested in it. Do I believe in a hundred power? I'm coming round more and more today to give you the answer. Not particularly, but maybe I'm hedging my bets, maybe I'm saying, well, maybe there is one there. I mean, all our family grew up believing in a God and believing there's something out there.
Frank Gilfeather:Now I came to the conclusion many years ago that for me, god was your conscience. I don't know if that makes sense to you, but for me it meant if you follow your conscience and try and do good things you know, and help other people, then that makes me feel good and it makes me feel like, okay, I've done something good. It may not necessarily be a God there, but my conscience is telling me what's right and what's wrong and what. How can I help that guy, how can I help that person? And it's just things that I can't give you specifics. But stupid things. Stupid things in the supermarket. So there's an old woman in front of me at the checkout and I'm waiting, and so the checkout woman says, yeah, it'll be such and such, you know £10, £61 or whatever. And the woman's going and she pulls out. I'd have wrote £8. And she said I didn't think it'd be so expensive. And the woman said oh well, we'll have to get. You know, we'll have to see about this, we'll have to put the goods back and all that. And I thought why bother, you know? So I just said to the old woman take your shopping and disappear. And the checkout woman said what do you think you're doing? I said I'll just pick that up, and so I didn't do it for praise or anything like that. But what I'm seeing is that comes naturally to me. And why does that come naturally? Because it's the kind of thing my father would have done.
Frank Gilfeather:And I hate when there's an issue and there's been some where I've kind of come across on the streets or whatever, where people turn away from others who are maybe in a difficult situation or in trouble or whatever, and so how can you do that? How can you turn away? Okay, I get it now where the streets are filled with dangerous people, but they're not all dangerous and I figure I always take the view. Once you try to speak to people and reason with them and see now this is the key for me try and see their point of view, then things become easier. But if you go head on with somebody and it's like I have one point of view, you've got another and you're wrong and I'm right, if you go down that road, my view is you're not going to get anywhere. You know I disagree with you. I could sit in somebody. You've got your point of view. You're not going to change my view. But I accept that you have a point of view and you are perfectly entitled to have your point of view. Why not? We're in a free society, freedom of speech is everything. And you know I'll tell you a story and I don't know if it's any use to you.
Frank Gilfeather:I wrote a column for the evening paper here in Aberdeen. For 20 years. I used to work many years ago as a reporter there, but my career moved on and on and on. They came back to me and said do you write a weekly column? It was an opinion column, right. And there was an issue two or three years ago where many girls in Scotland were complaining that they were having their drinks spiked when they were out at nightclubs and so on. And so I wrote a column about this and I said well, the way things are, you know, no matter who you are, you have got to take responsibility for your own safety. Right, perfectly, in my view, perfectly reasonable stance to take. So if you're going out as a young girl, please be safe and take responsibility for your own safety. Don't expect somebody else to help you. So the upshot of that one was that a member of parliament here from the Scottish National Party instantly wrote a letter and tweeted it for public consumption.
Frank Gilfeather:I wrote a letter to the editor of the paper, calling from my head and saying that I was victim-worn, and I said okay. So the editor phoned me. He's in a panic because this woman's an MP and he said you've got to apologize. And I said for what? Well, I think you've crossed the line. He was using her language, by the way. I said in what way? He said well, that bit where you said you know, people have got to take responsibility for your own safety.
Frank Gilfeather:And I said to him who takes responsibility for your safety when you're out at night? And there was radio silence. He couldn't answer and he said well, I still think with you. Anyway, the bottom line was I said I'm sorry, I can't apologize for that. Why should I? But so this woman was trying to get me the sack, this MP and you've got to be. My dad always told me whatever happens, be true to yourself, whether you write the role in other people's hearts, if it's in your heart and in your mind that you're right and you've examined all the arguments then just be true to what your beliefs are. So, going back, is there a higher power? Perhaps Am I convinced?
Ricardo:100. No, I know, I like, I like that story, um, and I, I see where you're, where you're coming from, so you never did apologize. I, I agree with what you're saying. By the way, I I don't think you meant it. Uh, the way the lady was trying to make it seem like you did and.
Ricardo:And that's what I hate about these. They they virtue signal. You know, they try to, they try to almost pin you in a corner and it's like this is what you meant. Yeah, you're. It's like. No, that's not what I meant. I meant that.
Frank Gilfeather:You know, the other thing is, this is the editor I spoke to and I said I just call him out on this. And I said, right away, I said did you read the column? He said no. But I said but it went in the paper. So who read it? He said, well, the sub-editor read it. I said the sub-editor thought it was okay to go out. Yeah, so it went in.
Frank Gilfeather:So what's the big deal? I said you're running scared because a member of parliament didn't like what I'd written and instead of standing up for me and saying, well, that's his opinion, that's why we pay him to write this column, you know. And I said publish the woman's letter and let's see what the readers think. Anyway, they're running scared and and let's see what the readers think. Anyway, they're running scared and I don't like that. I think you've got to start. In my view, this woman was almost bullying. You know, sack this guy or we've got to kick up a stink. And they caved in to her. Anyway, I'm still here, yeah, well, you know it's unfortunate, but that's something that's happened to many people.
Ricardo:They caved in to her. Anyway, I'm still here, yeah, well, you know it's unfortunate, but that's something that's happened to many people with this whole cancel culture, and you know we should be able to have opinions even if they're not an opinion that you agree with. It's what starts a good conversation when you start to offend people.
Frank Gilfeather:That's when it gets difficult. And if you set out deliberately to offend or not so much offend, but insult people, I don't hold anything with that. I think you have to be called out if that's what you're intending to do. If you're setting out a matter of opinion which is not designed to offend or insult somebody, that's fair enough.
Ricardo:Right. So with respect to on the same thing of the higher power or whatnot, when we're talking about we talked about mindset and your beliefs, it seems to me like you're a pretty and we have a very limited interaction. But it seems like you're a pretty and that this is. You know, we have a very limited interaction, but it seems like you're a very even keeled person like you. You don't, yeah, fly off the handle really easily. You seem quite patient. Yeah, uh, is that a good assessment of you? I know we we don't know each other that well, but it seems like you're a pretty, um, level-headed like you. You think things through, you don't just-headed, you think things through. You don't just react. You like to think Is that a fair assessment of you? And perhaps your father, which you seem to have been impressed?
Frank Gilfeather:I think you're absolutely right. I took that from my dad. My dad had a short fuse sometimes, but then he grew up in very difficult times. He lost his father in World War I. The man died when he was just six when his father was killed. So even at the age of six, with a mother with three other sons so there were four sons and he was a level-headed guy and he was a strong character of a man. Even at the age of six he had to accept some responsibility within that house, whether it was, you know, running errands or seeing to this or doing that for his mother or whatever. And he devoted to his mother, my grandmother devoted to her, to her dying day. He would go and see her two or three times a week. He would take us a couple of times a week after mass every Sunday and we'd go for lunch. She was a focal point for all of us. Am I level-headed? I think so and I always. You know I quote this.
Frank Gilfeather:This maybe sounds a bit corny, but there's a great poem, which you'll probably know, called Ish by Rudyard Kipley, and it kind of takes you through the question if, if this, if that you'll be a man, my son. So it's his father talking to his son about all the different things he should or could be doing. There's one line which says if you can take triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same, you'll be a man. My son Now, they are imposters. People fight. You know, if you have this triumph oh, look at me punching the air. You know gloating, touch and fury stuff. You know demeaning people, being disgusting in their behavior. That's, you know, that's the triumphalism which I dislike intensely. Then the other thing was you have a disaster in your life. You've got to think well, I can get over this. It might not happen tomorrow or the next day or next year. I can get over this Triumph and disaster. There's somewhere in the middle which you can. If you can treat those two imposters just the same, then I think, if you think in that way, then you'll get through your difficult times and there will be absolutely no need for you to be a kind of blowhard and the kind of people that we see in boxing today, all this nonsense that you see at press conferences and weigh-ins and head-to-head I think I saw on the news earlier on you say you're head-to-head smack-eating jerk.
Frank Gilfeather:What Do people, you know, are we stupid enough that that's going to make us want to see them fight? I just want to see them box. I don't want to see all this nonsense. Oh, I must buy a ticket for that, or I must go into the zone and pay for a view to see that fight. Because look at them, they're crushing heads, they're arguing it's show business, it's professional wrestling. Wwe, that used to be, and so, or WWF, the two organizations didn't they, and so that's what we're going back to, and I don't like it. I think boxing in its purest sense lies in the communities, lies within the amateur boxing clubs.
Ricardo:I agree with you. I don't like it either, but the truth is, controversy sells, sells, and it's this drama that they, they create and the negativity that comes with it. It does sell, and it's unfortunate, because, now, the best fighters are not necessarily the most popular, and the most popular fighters are often the ones that are the most disrespectful or the loudest, or they, they get arrested on the weekends and they, they say all kinds of nonsense, and it's unfortunate I it's, it's, it's, uh, you know. It's unfortunate because it drowns out the ones who are more humble and quiet and that really have talent. Yes, the same thing applies in mma and uf. If you watch ufc or any of that, you see these, these like larger than life personalities, are, like you know, like conor mcgregor. He's a phenomenal athlete, phenomenal, uh, fighter.
Frank Gilfeather:He's not the best though, but he's the most popular, and it's because of that same showboating and loud and obnoxious and well, that's probably true, uh, Ricardo, but my take on it is this it's a turn-up for me, Right, and I First, the overriding feeling I get when I see the Conor McGregors and the Tyson Furies and these kind of guys is I hate them. You know, I think there is absolutely no need for you, and I might argue with you that the public are now. We're treating the public like kids, like idiots, and rather than saying this is the big fight, you might go back to the great days watching and reading Ridd Magazine and watching big fights where the two protagonists walk down the aisle, no music, no flashing lights, no thumping bass music. They get into the ring. The ring announcer takes three minutes to announce it's the heavyweight championship, it's between so-and-so and so-and-so and the referee is so-and-so. Now you've got Michael Buffer and these guys who are the ring announcers taking 10 minutes to get around to honestly naming the fighters, because you get everything.
Frank Gilfeather:The ring announcers taking 10 minutes to get around to honestly naming the fighters Because you get everything. What they're wearing, these colour shorts yeah, we could see that. We've got eyes. We don't need to see what he's being told, what colour shorts he's wearing. They weigh in at this. Well, that's fine. We need to know that the judges are A, B and C. We don't need to know who the judges are B and C. We don't even know who the judges are, you know. The next thing is you'll be getting the judges addresses and their phone numbers, their inside life. It's crazy. It goes on and on and on.
Frank Gilfeather:Meanwhile, somebody who's paid I don't know what they pay for these fights, how to go and watch them live, but if I'm there, I'm just I've paid. I don't know a thousand dollars or whatever they pay, and I'm there, I've paid. I don't know $1,000 or whatever they pay, and I'm ringside. I just think come on, just get on with it. I've been waiting months for this contest. Why drag it out for another half hour? You know, let's get on with it. That's what I loved about the old boxers the Sugar Ray Robinsons, Rocky Marciano, Joel Lewis go in, do the business out, and there was no big TV deal in those days. And this is the thing, right, Professional boxing nowadays is dictated to by the TV networks and promoters.
Frank Gilfeather:So here's my question what's happened to the British Boxing Board of Control, the WBO, the WBC, the WBC, all these random some of them are random boxing organizations who are getting, I don't know, 3% of the gate money, 2% of the TV money or whatever, and what they've effectively done is just step back and say to the promoters on, you, go, do exactly as you please, and there is no kind of ruling over what they're doing. Nobody's stepping up to say you can't do that, we need to do it this way, this is the way we want it. They're just taking the money, stepping back and allowing the promoters to run the show.
Ricardo:Yeah, yeah, it's a different time, for sure, and and you know, I'm, I'm I can appreciate both sides of it, but I definitely see where you're coming from too, because sometimes, sometimes now, the fights start late and I'm like, oh man, I'm going to fall asleep by the time they even the co-main event starts. So, frank, I want to ask you what? What do you do? For you know managing stress and that, if you have any, how do you any tips for people like how you manage stress? Or you know, life always has its ups and downs, right, there's going to be good times, bad times. How do you, how do you navigate that, the tough times, the overwhelming emotions and things like that, because that's important for health, right? So I'm just curious how you, how you, navigate through that you know.
Frank Gilfeather:Well, that's an interesting point. Um, listen, um, I, if I was, I used to, I used to say to everybody I refuse to recognize stress Right Now. That's a very glib statement because and I'm not trying to say everybody should be the same as me. What I'm saying is somehow I don't suppress it, but I keep it within myself and I don't see it's anybody's problem or anybody's business. I've never discussed stress with a close friend or anybody like that. My wife is my closest friend and we would discuss things if we had problems over whatever family issues, I don't know financial issues, anything like that. I think the key for me is I don't let stress get on top of me, because I think it's a downward spiral and it's unhealthy. That's easy for me to see, because I can manage stress and I'm trying to put myself into the shoes of people who find it difficult to manage stress, and so I guess what I'm saying is if you have a close friend, they've got to be really, really close. I have lots of friends. I have no close friends now. My closest friend died about a year ago, but even then I would never discuss such personal stuff with him. Now that's just me. I find myself sounding terrible here him. Now, that's just me. I'm finding myself sounding terrible here Sometimes, some kind of conquering.
Frank Gilfeather:Why we say to people with stress is try and get some physical activity into your life. If you cannot, if you're a certain age and a certain physique, that's never going to happen. If you're a certain age and a certain physique, that's never going to happen. You know what I used to say to people, to kids. I once wrote a play for the theatre in my native Dundee Dundee Repertory Theatre. That was a famous repertory theatre because it spawned the careers of people like Edward Fox and Glenda Jackson and Vanessa Red Gravel. They all started their careers at Dundee Rep. So many, many more. Brian Cox, a good friend of mine from succession, and Brian and I were at school together different schools but the same age and we first encountered each other at Dundee Rep. We went to see a play and he was in it in a small role, he was only 16, and I was terribly jealous and we kept in touch.
Frank Gilfeather:But the stress thing is, if you can't be physically active, in other words something that will relieve your stress or help a bit with it, then do you know what? I hope it's easy for me to say this is terrible. I'm trying to get my head around this. Write things down, write things anything. Write things about yourself. Write things about your family. Write things about your past life. Write things down. If you've got a laptop or a PC, write things about your past life. Write things down. If you've got a laptop or a PC, all the better. But if not, get an old book and write things down and that may, I hope, alleviate some of the stress and tension that you're feeling, and it's a great therapy.
Frank Gilfeather:I always found writing's a great therapy and you would get stuff out and you'll feel good at the end of it and you'd feel things large, you know, and you learn stuff about yourself. You can dredge up stuff in your mind that you'd forgotten about. Wow, I remember that. So write about your family.
Frank Gilfeather:Write about your own life preferably about your own life and tell yourself the story of your life and where it's going and where it's been and the difficulties and the people that you met and the people you knew and the bad guys and the good guys. For me and I'd love to you know what I'd love to hear some feedback on that thinking and also I'd love people who take that advice from me to get back in some way to say that helped me. That's like winning the world championship for me. If one person came back and said you know what, that was a great show you gave us. I went away and I wrote down about my childhood, about my brother, about the people I knew, the people I lost and all that. It's a wonderful therapy writing.
Ricardo:I totally agree with you. By the way, I can give you some feedback. Number one I believe in exercise as a form of, you know, self-therapy. I think it's really important and, uh, I'm a big, uh reader and writer. I, I write a lot, right, I write for work, I write for everything, but I also write my thoughts and I've been like that for a long time and I think it it's very, very helpful yeah.
Ricardo:Because if you keep it all in your head, it's stuck there in a sense and I feel like when I write it's almost like I'm bleeding on the page. It's like I'm able to organize my thoughts and I get it out, and then if I go to sleep I wake up with clarity. Sometimes it's like an epiphany.
Frank Gilfeather:That's interesting, ricardo. One of the things that I struggle with just now is getting off to sleep Right, oh, okay.
Ricardo:I was going to ask you about that.
Frank Gilfeather:Not so very long ago, I could sleep on a tightrope and nobody would get me waken. I loved sleeping and what's happened recently is apparently because of this school scenario, of the uh, social media stuff, I, I go to my bed and I'm in the middle of writing another book uh, this time a crime novel, right, and I was so lazy I put it to the side and I go back to it weeks later and I forget about it. I said, oh right, I must go back. And then I go, maybe I'll try something.
Frank Gilfeather:So my brain flits from thing to thing and I go back at night and I'm thinking all right, what have I got? I've got Ricardo on a podcast. I've got this to do. I've got to record some videos and what am I going to say there? And I have to write this thing that some guys ask me to write 500 words, and I'm doing my own. I've got to redo my own podcast. I need to fix up guests, all that stuff.
Frank Gilfeather:And I find out how my mind is racing and I try to get myself to just cool my jets and say hang on, you know, just try and go to sleep. Eventually I get to sleep, but if I'm waking up at one point during the night, try and get back to sleep. It's not because I'm worried about anything. It's because I want to be in order. I want to be kind of, make sure that everything's in place the next day and I know what I'm going to be doing. So, from that point of view, this whole kind of thing about my reinventing myself one tip top and instagram has been a nightmare it was funny I was.
Ricardo:I was gonna ask you that. That was my next question, like how, how do you recover? What do you do for recovery, which includes sleep, and you know you, you obviously do a lot and cognitively you're sharp. So I know you're, you're going and then like right now, over there, it's what?
Frank Gilfeather:uh, oh, it's nine nine something, 9, 15, 9, 20, yeah, yeah, and I'm sorry, I'm keeping you but you, this is like you're this.
Ricardo:You've already talked to several people. We had our delays earlier, which was well over an hour. You're training, you're you know. So how do you recover from that, even when times where you're struggling to get to sleep, and what's your secret or what's your routine? Well, my routine you know, do you sleep a lot? Do you sleep a lot or?
Frank Gilfeather:Well, no, I just want to say that you know, sometimes maybe I've eaten, at 5 o'clock, say, and I like to show six-o'clock news bulletins coming up. I like to watch six-o'clock news bulletins for half an hour and then I'll shake my head in my wish I'm going to have a nap and I just lie down on the couch and you know what? You could throw hand grenades in my living room and you would wake me. I'm completely above you and, Mindy, that's my problem. Shana keeps saying to me listen, if you didn't have that nap, you would get the sweet. So I've tried it right, I'm not going to, and I feel myself needing it sweetly. No, no, I'll fight it and I'll watch a documentary or whatever, and then we'll go to bed and it's made absolutely no difference.
Frank Gilfeather:I'm still thinking how do I get to sleep? So I don't know, I do not. I do not for 30 to 60 minutes late afternoon or six o'clock later, and that's great, I get the best sleep I get. But on the other hand, I don't know. Sunday night I've still got some kind of sleep problem. I don't. I eventually get a sleep and then in the morning, try and get me up early, and it's virtually impossible. Actually, we're off early tomorrow to a place called Elgin to do a seminar up there, and that kind of spurs me on. I'm thinking, wow, I'm looking forward to this, I'm just the luck of God.
Frank Gilfeather:I'm just lucky there's not so much going on in my life at this age, that's beautiful when.
Frank Gilfeather:I look around and see some people my age thinking, well, they've given up and they're maybe in care, and it's terrible. I just wish, and I hope, for future generations, that we look at what we're doing now and learn lessons from what we shouldn't do as much as from what we should be doing. And I look around at the obesity problem and obese kids and I feel like going up to parents out in the street when I see them walking with their obese kids and I feel like going up and saying please, you're killing your child, please get a grip and sort yourself out and show a good example for your child. And because this boy or this girl is going to suffer and it's going to probably die much younger than they should, and so I would love to get that message over. And, to be honest with you, the comments on my videos are such that I'm getting the message through.
Frank Gilfeather:I get so many messages from people who are of a certain age who say you know, I haven't been in the gym for years, but you've inspired me to go back to the gym. I'm going to go back and I am back and I take my friends with me. We're going three times a week and we're doing this and my answer is I'm proud of you. Don't overdo it. Make sure you're all everything's done within your own limits and don't push it too much, otherwise it could have an adverse effect. So this is the big deal for me. If people are A acting on my advice on boxing, that's great, and B if they're actually going back to punch the bag even though they're useless or whatever, that's a big plus for me. That's why I love to hear.
Ricardo:Well, you're certainly an inspiration for myself as well, and I mean that because I look at that as, oh, this is what's possible and it's a target to aim for, because most people their goal is they want to retire. I don't believe in retirement, you know. I don't even know what that means. Like to me it's I never want to stop pursuing something. Right, you might want to switch careers, sure, but you never could just say, oh, I'm done, I'm just going to do nothing all day, like no, that's where you die. So I look at how you are. It's an inspiration, and I know for a fact that there's tons of people that would hear your words or see you doing what you're doing, and they're just like I've got to get my ass up. I'm like I've got to get moving, I've got to get pushing, it's all up there. Yeah, well, that's what I'm taking away mostly from you is you have a very strong mind. I think you got it from your dad.
Frank Gilfeather:Your barrier is up there, not your body. Your barrier is up there If you get over that first hurdle which is up there, which is saying, nah, you don't want to go to the gym, why do you want to do something nice on TV or have a beer or whatever? But if you can't overcome that barrier, you've got no chance. I agree If you say, right, I'm going to go and do it. And then at the end of it you think, well, I wish I hadn't done that, because I'm sore, I'm tired, I'm aching, I'm not going back. That's your next barrier is to overcome. Go back. You hated it. Yeah, because you haven't done it for 20 or 30 years. Go back. Yeah, because you haven't done it for 20 or 30 years. Go back, go back, keep going back. You know what, in a couple of weeks, three weeks, four weeks, you'll think, wow, I'm glad I did that.
Ricardo:And it's given me a new lease of life 100%. And on the topic of sleep, how many hours of sleep would you say you do get, once you finally get to sleep on average?
Frank Gilfeather:About eight.
Ricardo:Oh, so you do sleep a lot.
Frank Gilfeather:Well, lots of it is interrupted. But I was going to say to you earlier my wife will get up in the morning and she knows now. She said you're not a morning person, are you? And I said no, and maybe it's going back to my boxing days when my coach used to knock on the door at 6 o'clock in the morning and say, right, I'd be ready to do three miles, four miles of running with heavy army-style boots on, Not the army-style boots that you wear now, but the ones what we call tackerty boots. They were all tacks and heavy. You know metal studs at the bottom, Heavy boots like the coal miners would wear and we'd go around. Maybe that's a throwback.
Frank Gilfeather:I'm hopeless in the mornings, Absolutely useless, and if I get requests for things like this podcast and so on, I'll say yeah, I can make it kind of late morning, early afternoon, because I'm better At night time. I can go on for ages. My first book I wrote, and it was a ghost written book of a football soccer manager I wrote and I did it. I wrote every night till 2 and 3 in the morning because that was when I felt at my best. So maybe my body clock, maybe I should have been a night shift worker in a previous life and my body clock seems to be all better accented towards, uh, nighttime that's funny.
Ricardo:So, uh, on the end do you still have some time. I have a few more questions, okay, sorry, sorry, I could talk to you for hours, man, this is, this is awesome. Um, so, on the topic of exercise, obviously you big believer in exercising. What do you do for exercise besides?
Frank Gilfeather:well, you tell me, everything you do that falls under the umbrella of exercise well, everything I do is in the boxing gym, although I do, I like to walk. I mean, I'm not saying I go and walk. In the better weather in Scotland we go out to Royal Decide right, which is towards Balnor, where the Queen. In the better weather in Scotland we go out to Royal Deeside right, which is towards Balnoral where the Queen lives. We go out there, we drive about the place. There's a castle there out towards that, called Crathus Castle right. So we go out At weekends, we go out there and walk I don't know three miles around the estate of Carthage Castle, and we'd do different ones, but mainly that one. Or we'd walk along the River Dee, which is one of the most famous salmon fishing rivers in the world, and so we would maybe walk three, four miles and that would be a little bit of exercise. But my main exercise is in the gym. So when I go to the gym to shoot my vinyls and so on, I still think so you're thinking well, okay, let's run each type of time, let's do the videos. We'll knock off three or four videos, maybe more, maybe seven or eight videos, and that's kind of short burst.
Frank Gilfeather:On a Sunday, for example, I go to the gym and there's a big turnout there. We've maybe got 20 boxers and they have sparring and so on. But I would do a lot of what they're doing and so I would do skipping three rounds. I would do three lot of what they are doing and so I would do skipping three rounds. I would do three rounds shadowboxing, three on the punch bag, and then I don't spar. I wish I could.
Frank Gilfeather:So then I do my exercises standing exercises, various exercises and then floor it. I'm on my back, I'm doing sit-ups, I'm doing press-ups, I'm doing all the kind of stuff that I've done since I was a kid. Really, people have moved on. They've welcomed back See these young guys. They're all doing very different stuff that I try to keep up with. I can't. Maybe 80% of the time I can keep up, but it's killer. Next, the time I can keep up, but it's killer, for the next day I can only get on my bed. So I try. I can't do what they do, but I can go some way towards that and so that keeps me. So I'm in the gym two or three times a week and I'm doing all that kind of stuff and the stuff that you see on video, which is quite exhausting.
Ricardo:Right. And in the winter, when it's colder, do you still walk at all, or no, those days you don't go walking.
Frank Gilfeather:Generally speaking, yeah, we still go walking.
Ricardo:But if it's raining or snowing.
Frank Gilfeather:It's not snowing so often these days, but if it's raining, of course, then we wouldn't. But yeah, we still drive out and park the car and the way we go on our walk and it's terrific. I mean, it does a lot and that's what I say to people. I've said that on the videos. I said I'm not telling you. You join a gym or go to a boxing club. If you can and you want to do that and if you can afford it, fine.
Frank Gilfeather:The boxing clubs are, you know, dirt cheap. You can, you know, you just pay two or three pounds, five pounds at the most. But, and you can't, there's no need for you to join, uh, a gym, a membership gym where you're paying. You know, I don't have any canadian dollars a month there's no need for that because the the gym is on your doorstep. Now I did a lot of videos in different parts of my city, down at the beach, at different spots, different scenic spots throughout Aberdeen. In the city centre they have a thing called Union Terrace Gardens which just spent 40 million pounds on renovating and making better. I go there and I could skip and shadow box, you know, early on a Sunday morning, even at nine o'clock on Sunday morning.
Frank Gilfeather:There's nobody there. So there are places your back garden. What's wrong with doing some stuff in your back garden? Just ruin stuff, you know, and you're. If you're thinking along those lines, maybe to join a gym or join a boxing club, no matter what your age is, start off in your back guard. Get some movement going, get some shirra boxing going, stuff that will make you tired, stuff that will exhaust you but will get those endorphins going and make you feel good.
Ricardo:I totally agree. I tell people that all the time now when they approach me or they ask for advice and I say you're overcomplicating it. I think you first just want to develop the habit, and so this might sound stupid, but I do believe in starting small, because you want to get the habit right and so even I tell them, even if you just pack your gym bag and you put your shoes on and you just get in the habit of doing that and then going to the gym, literally walk in and walk out, or if it's not the gym, whatever it is, but get into that routine of every day doing this at this time and over time it just becomes a part of you. It's an identity. Like if I miss my, if I miss my workouts whether it's at home, at the gym, it doesn't matter, as long as I do something.
Ricardo:If I miss them for more than a plan like unless I planned to take a week off if I miss more than a week, I start to go crazy. I'm like I I I get irritable. Like I miss my body is like what are you doing? I need to get back. It's almost like an addiction.
Frank Gilfeather:Well, it is. Well, it's a habit, it's a healthy addiction. And nothing but good can come from it 100%.
Ricardo:Like you said for me, I was in and out of trouble doing stupid kid stuff when I was younger and and the gym exercise and martial arts for sure kept me out of trouble, of course, because I didn't want to let my coaches down, I didn't want to let my teammates down, I didn't want to let my training partners down. I knew like, oh, I gotta meet them tomorrow morning. So when my back then, my friends at that time were up to no good, they were like, oh, I gotta meet them tomorrow morning. So when my back then, my friends at that time were up to no good, they were like, oh, come out. I was like I gotta sleep and I gotta be up early because I can't let this guy down, because this coach is gonna kill me if I don't show up on time and I don't want to do 200 push-ups, you know yeah, you're right, you're absolutely right.
Ricardo:Yeah, it definitely saved my life in many ways, so good that's why?
Frank Gilfeather:you know? Because you know we, I've seen it hundreds of times where you get boys 14, 15, 16, they're coming to the gym, they're training, they're doing well, some of them are becoming potential stars and then you find, oh, where is, where is he? He hasn't come back. Oh right, he's missed out, maybe he's ill. And we go by and he hasn't come back. And why hasn't he come back? Because his friends are saying I don't want to go to the gym, we're going down to meet some girls or we're going to go to a club or whatever. Come and join us. And he's kind of pooled between them.
Frank Gilfeather:Now I came across one recently. I was filming I better not say where or who this guy is, but we were filming at a boxing club and I was doing a seminar and I was at a boxing club and I came across this guy who was well trying not to identify. Identify him. He was a big fella tall and he was 16. He might have been 50, can't remember, but he was extraordinarily tall for his age and he was not exceptional, but he was very, very good as a boxer and had great potential and he was giving it everything. The night we were there and his dad was so proud. Dad was so proud of him and he said, oh, he's completely bought into what you're teaching and all that. And I could see that.
Frank Gilfeather:And then, lo and behold, so here we are. What? Six months or whatever down the line and his coach contacted me and he said to me do you remember so-and-so? And I said, yeah, of course he said he hasn't come back. He said he was starting to come in in recent weeks and taking too long to come out of the gym, come out of the changing room, kind of delaying entry to the gym, killing time. So he didn't have to do the work and we kept saying come on, what's keeping you? I'll be there in a minute, that kind of stuff. And then he just stopped coming and I said how old is he? And the guy said 16. And I said, well, you know why? And he said, yeah, I know why. Because all his friends are saying come on, don't go to the gym, come with us, we're going to have fun tonight, we're going to do this and we're going to do that.
Frank Gilfeather:And when that comes into the equation, then you've just got to say, okay, that's life, you know, that's, that's what kids do. You can. You can go and say look, you know, don't do this, you, you'll have a better life if you continue what you're doing. And my hope is and I'm going to leave it a few weeks I'm going to reach out to this kid and say, look, get back to the gym and just do it for me, and maybe by then he will have had his hit, if you like, of going out with his pals and having fun and enjoying himself. And he'll maybe say, okay, right, it's not all it's cracked up to be. I can still go out with them and such and such a night, but I'm still going to go to the gym seat actually. So that's when you lose them. That's the age group that you lose them.
Ricardo:Yeah, for sure, that's when I strayed in, but luckily I had a good coach and those things helped me out a lot. So, Frank, I think we can wrap it up. But I do want to ask you a question. As far as you know your biggest tips and we kind of touched on a lot of different things but if you could say the most important thing that you feel it is for somebody who's pursuing health or wants to improve their health, if you could say what, what do you feel is like the most important? If there is something in your mind what do you mean?
Frank Gilfeather:the end product, the healthy fitness thing? What do you mean? Yeah, yeah yeah, sorry.
Ricardo:Um, as far as, like, health, for somebody who wants to improve or optimize their health, um, you know what? What do you think is really the most important thing?
Frank Gilfeather:the, the foundation well, the foundation, of course, is do everything in moderation, right, if you like a drink, do it in moderation. If you don't smoke, if, if you smoke, forget it, give up smoking and all this vaping stuff that goes on. You know that's only leading you down a path which is going to end as an all-through road, as a cul-de-sac, where there's nothing at the end of it for you but bad health. So you've got to give up that Now. Now I know that that's e for me to say, because I never smoked and I'm not a big drinker. I mean, I'm going out with a group of journalists, colleagues, next week.
Frank Gilfeather:Eight of us go out about three or four times a year we have dinner, and we have, we have a few glasses of wine and we exchange our stories. That's about the limit of my alcohol intake, you know, in any given year, for example. So if you're able to say, you know, guys go to the pub, they're drinking a place of beer, and I don't try to say that you know they're bad people, they're not bad people. What I try to say is can you not see that without physical activity in your life, you are being diminished? If you have physical activity and therefore, in my view, mental alertness, how else are you going to live your life? But in a good way, and if it makes you feel better and you can see a difference, if you're sitting there and think well, I've been doing this for six weeks. I've given up smoking, you know, my drinking has been cut back, moderate stuff, I'm walking, I've joined a gym or whatever I do physically, it will change your life and it will change your life for the better. But what's most important, more important than anything else, it will prolong your life. If you, you know, if you keep down a path, while smoking, drinking, poor, eating, as much as anything, as bad as anything, all that stuff, then your lifestyle will come to a conclusion earlier and your life will come to a conclusion earlier. Your life will come to a conclusion earlier than it might have had you been looking after yourself. So everything in moderation. Look after your body, keep your mind sharp, read, be aware, be aware of what's going on around you in the world. Have opinions, but make those opinions informed opinions. Don't just go and kind of rabbit stuff, fake news from any of the social media challenges, and believe in that. Ask questions, go and examine things. You hear my thing? The other day come up and a guy sent me a TikTok and it was one of these. What do you call that? A screen save TikTok. And it was to tell me that such and such a football manager in England had quit and I thought it's funny, I haven't heard of that. And I thought, oh, that's funny, I haven't heard of that. And I read through your website. So no, I'll tell you what. It was a big name TV star in the UK has died and it looked great. It was from. It wasn't a TikTok, it was BBC News website. And I went wow. So I immediately went on the BBC website. I could see it nowhere, but this person, you know, believed it because it was on social media, right, but we're getting off it. We've gotten off this subject here and I'm sorry about that.
Frank Gilfeather:Ricardo, it's all about moderation. Hold back with any overindulgence. If you overindulge in anything, then make it a one-off, or make it every now and again, once a year, and that's about Easter, as we used to say in the Catholic church. So make sure that you pull back. Make sure you gauge your own behavior. If you're thinking, wow, I went sore head hangover, I'm not going to do that again and try not to do it again. You will do it again, possibly, but keep everything kind of even keel no highs, no lows in your eating or drinking or your lifestyle. Keep it on an even keel.
Ricardo:I like that my dad used to say that a lot, everything in moderation. Absolutely Okay, frank, I think we're good. I got something coming up, but I I really want to thank you for your time, but before I do that, do you have anything? I'm going to include it in the show notes and everything, but do you have anything that you you want to promote or you know where can people find you first?
Frank Gilfeather:of of all. Well, they can get me on Instagram, which is FranksNobleArt. All written out one word FranksNobleArt. That's on Instagram. On TikTok it's at Gilfeather, g-i-l-f-e-n-e-t-h-e-r, which is lowercase. And what I'd quite like to tell you is this and I've got a BM, I've worn it about when I came back to training in the gym after the pandemic and so on, and I found that all the young boxers were wearing sparring gloves on the pouch back.
Frank Gilfeather:I thought these are nice because they look great. Every company in the world, every sports company in the world, has got boxing gloves and they're all different colours and they're very attractive. A company sent me three pairs worth about $500. And I thought, well, these are lovely, and they wanted me to wear them. And this was the early days of TikTok, before we really took off and took off on Instagram, and they said, well, maybe you can wear these on the bike. And I said, okay, fine, no big deal, I'll wear them. And I tried them. And I tried them two or three or four times and I started.
Frank Gilfeather:I was waking up in the middle of the night with sore fingers here, right, and then I came to realise I'd sink it through it's eight gloves. The thumb is fixed to the main part of the glove by a little piece of elastic which is in here, and so what that meant was you push your hand in the glove, the thumb goes in there, the fist goes in there and they're so rigid that you can clench your fist like that, and what I'm saying is not really Right. That's the imperfection.
Ricardo:Can't make a full, really right so you're like.
Frank Gilfeather:So I think, why have you, why can't I? And it's because of this this is a new thing to me so I tried to hurt my hands. I had to ditch them and I went back to my old bag mitts. So the old style bag mitts were kind of limited padding here, but no padding in the thumb, and that allowed me to do that and that therefore allowed me to punch with the knuckle part of the glove, which is the proper way.
Frank Gilfeather:So I'm thinking all these young kids, because the gloves are dictating where their hand should be, are punching incorrectly and that's why you've seen this kind of punching, because you can't get the hand turned, so they're punching like this. So I thought this is no good. So I think how do I prove? On the old style bag mitts, well, I decided let's get something made and I got some samples made and I made a better padding here, eight ounces, and I had the original bag mitt thumb, which was no padding, and it meant I could do that and it changed everything and so, okay, I tried them, I liked them and I started making them, and the upshot is that I can't begin to tell you that we get orders from every corner of the world.
Ricardo:That's cool yeah.
Frank Gilfeather:Toronto is a big market, and Montreal and also right across the state and Far East Tokyo everywhere. So people have kind of caught on to this and thinking he's actually right, this is what we need. We don't need these pyrotechnics. That's my plug.
Ricardo:I love it. I'm going to try those out. I want to order a pair from you.
Frank Gilfeather:Well, you should have a look on the website. Get them there. We can't keep up. In fact, we're waiting for a new batch to come in on February 17th and they're virtually all spoken for, and then after that, another batch and we're going to bring out a white pair and a black pair and they style the vintage looking. The brown ones are vintage, they're brown cowhide and, honest to goodness, I'm getting people from boxing clubs all over the world saying this has changed my way of training that's really cool.
Ricardo:I'm I'm actually gonna grab a pair and then, uh, I'll communicate with you guys so I can get in on the next batch, and then I'll make some videos on it and shout, you guys out for sure please do that's what we want. I hit the bag for my cardio as well, sometimes as a finisher or whatever.
Frank Gilfeather:I'd love to see that video when you get the gloves now I got.
Ricardo:Oh yes, for sure. I'm a little nervous. Now I'm going to be like my technique and everything yeah, but it's not just good yeah, no, no for sure.
Ricardo:Yeah, frank, that's awesome. I will definitely include all that in the show notes and everything, and we'll be in touch very soon. And I I really want to thank you again for, uh, taking the time to do this. You didn't have to, um, you know, um, I, I know you're a busy guy and you guys gave me a, a shot to talk, so that that really means a lot to me and I hope we can do this part two and a part three and, who knows, maybe meet someday anytime, happy to do it.
Frank Gilfeather:Ricardo, thank you very much. You've been a great host and I've loved it. Thanks again.
Ricardo:Okay, take care, frank, bye. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to like, subscribe and leave a comment and, if possible, leave a review. Forward it to your friends and family. Your support really helps the podcast grow and I'm grateful to each and every one of you. Remember to sign up for my free 5 Health Hacks newsletter at youthfulagingsecretscom. Forward slash subscribe. I wish you good health and I'll see you in the next episode.