I Survived 24 Hours With The Real Life Aquaman

I flew all the way to Mexico to Tulum, enjoying a 100% random movie that has nothing to do with this video, to meet this guy. There we have him. Welcome to Tulum. Get up here, let's start. This is your home. It's my home. Welcome to the treehouse. I mean, he lives in a paradise, he is jacked, has multiple underwater world records, but how can he afford this Aquaman lifestyle and how did he build this superhuman body? Maybe even better than the Aquaman from the movies. I don't know if you mind being called like that. No, I understand that Jason Momoa could be my older brother. So I am following him for a day to see if he can teach me what he does and get deeper than I ever thought I'd go. I'm not the biggest fan of the water. That feeling when you are underwater, you hold your breath and you need to go up. There's no oxygen and I just feel stressed. I saw that what you were doing. I was like, this guy seems so relaxed underwater while having no oxygen. I want to be like that. Not Aquaman, but Aquaboy with a really bad 10. And Tavi says he can add one minute to my breath hold easy. I guarantee you will see a difference. The first step, what we're going to do is breath hold with no guidance. We're just going to see what your baseline is. Prepare yourself mentally however you want. Three, two, one. Official top. Big breath in and hold your breath. And without any practice or tricks, I can hold my breath for... Breathe. No, very good baseline. So two minutes and five seconds. Oh, damn. That was longer than I thought. I saw you swallowing a lot. Try to avoid swallowing. But now, can we get this number a lot higher in just a few minutes? We're going to make you feel really uncomfortable. Okay. Holding my breath hasn't gotten easier. I just tolerated better. I can decently push through some physical not nice feelings, but this sounds quite hard. Lay down again. Exhale everything out. Everything, everything, everything. Don't cheat and hold your breath. The goal of this is not about the time. It's about getting you into a very uncomfortable feeling and fighting through it. I have to breathe in and out heavily right away. Recovery breath. That got uncomfortable fast. And I have to do this four more times. And exhale everything out. Because I was actually holding my breath longer each time without me noticing it. And exhale. No cheating. It's not about the time. Recovery breaths. Exhale everything out. The only thing stopping you is going to be your mind. Colors coming back to your lips. Very good. One more cycle. And then we're going to try the max breath hold again. Exhale. And breathe. How long can you hold your breath? I'm just under seven minutes. Seven? What is a good score for me today, now? I think you might be able to get over three minutes. I hope the results of this test will give me some confidence for tomorrow. Take a final deep, deep breath in. And hold. And put yourself to sleep. You got this. Keep going. Relax deeper. Relax even deeper. Keep it closed. Keep the neck closed. Bring your chin down. Bring your chin to your neck. Breathe. I feel very relaxed. I think that's normal. Relaxed. I have no clue how I did though. Like I have zero clue because I'm just so focused on just my heart rate. So your baseline was about two minutes. Yeah. You held your breath three minutes and 30 seconds. What? That's crazy, bro. New personal best. You're doing a 10 meter dive. It's only about 20 to 30 seconds. Oh. So now the fear is gonna stop. Ah, that makes a lot of sense. You did very well. Good job, brother. Thank you. So the next morning, we drove to a pretty hidden location without breakfast. But I did meet a local. We arrived at this mythical place where I will go deep. And here I also met the underwater cameraman, who basically has the hardest job here today. This looks crazy. We have a camera in there. It's an a7IV from Sony. This device looks insane. This is to float because the camera is super heavy. You can see. Okay. Yeah. I won't drop it. I'm extremely strong. The gear is not the problem for epic shots. It's gonna be me. This is a custom-made suit for you. Custom-made suit. This is your logo. This is my diving logo. Tulum is one of the most beautiful places ever. So I can't wait to see where we're gonna dive. No food in my system. Let's dive. We've got an L and an XL. Am I an L or an XL? Am I big enough or no? I'd say XL. I'm not gonna reach through there. Reach through your legs and grab the tail. Oh, there is a tail. Bring it to the front. And putting on this wetsuit is already a workout. I'm sweating so much. It's insane. All right, guys, subscribe. Ready to jump in? I'm ready. How are your ears still alive? A lot of people in his comments are asking the same thing. Freediving equalization is one of the principles, one of the foundations. So what that means is equalizing pressures. You're descending. The water pressure is pushing them inwards. You have to keep them neutral or positive as you descend. That's the concept of equalization. So try blowing your nose with your nose pinched. Yeah, I do this, especially in airplanes. And with every pull to start, you're gonna equalize. How dangerous is it if I don't do it properly? I mean, I've had every freediving injury you can imagine. Burst my eardrum at 55 meters. It's a very unforgiving sport in the sense that here you can die. Let's try to not die today. My first real step to becoming Aquaboy. No turning back now. But what is the goal? Well, Tavi gave me a pretty insane goal yesterday. I think you'll get to 15, possibly. The goal is to get to 15 meters deep. And of course, back up. And to get there, Tavi has a plan. Step one, we're getting ready for the first dive. I will have to follow Tavi, pull myself down a rope that has weight at the end that keeps it down and equalize my ears every meter, which you will see me do a lot. Let's try step one. So how did you feel? At first it was scary because I was like, I need to go up as well. I still need to go up. Trying to believe that you can actually do it. Step two, go deeper. A three meter dive and back up. I did it. But Tavi told me not to stress. Enjoy it. I should easily be able to do three meters. So just stay calm. And that's what I did. This felt amazing. I feel like I'm getting better with every time I dive. Next is five meters down and up again. You're doing very well. Yeah. Ears are good? Ears are good. All right, let's go a little bit deeper. I kept thinking about going up. I hit the five meter mark with my fingertips. But how am I supposed to hit 15 meters if this is already hard? When you focus more on how you feel internally, when we stop at the bottom, you can have a little look around. That's when you can kind of enjoy the view. Tavi set up an extra step for me. To make the unfamiliar feel familiar, I have to go down, relax, wave at the camera, and then wait for his countdown. And this gave me so much confidence. That went insane. That went so well. I could stay on the water so much longer than I thought I could. And then Tavi doubled the distance to 10 meters, which reduced my confidence by half. I hit 10 meters, but there was something wrong with my ears. I couldn't equalize. The last pop was harder. So it would just... Not freak me out, but it was a little bit like, okay, it's not popping. It is going to get harder to equalize. Yeah. So before we can go to the next step, I had to repeat this dive, focusing on the pops and staying calm. And at 12 meters, something interesting happens. Now we're getting close to something called neutral buoyancy. So the next one, if you get to the bottom, if you turn around and take a moment, let go of the line and let's see if you start floating up or if you start sinking down. Okay, that's cool. So this is a big question I get all the time. How am I able to stand on rocks and cliffs underwater? Once you go past 10, 12 meters, you're actually sinking instead of floating. So many people think your videos are fake. So let's see what happens. And I started sinking fast. You let go of the rope and what did you notice? I let go and I was sinking. As you descend, the air in your lungs, the air in your sinuses, everything compresses. At 10 meters, your lungs are actually half their size. No way? Yes. That is crazy. The 15 meter goal that looked impossible in the beginning is now here. But this achievement is not the finale. Tavi thinks I can go deeper. It's a five-story building. Five-story building. What's the next thing? I first need to get comfortable at 15 meters. And I got so comfortable that we even shot the intro at around this depth. I'm spending 24 hours with the real one. All right, next round. Before this 20 meter dive, I am breathing in as much as I can. Just trying to stay calm and get enough oxygen in. My mind is all over the place. Equalization, grabbing the rope, everything Tavi has taught me. And I am not feeling that usual fear of the deep right now. But that long way back up is what scares me. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Official top. I completely filled. So what happened on this one? You turned early? Yeah, I know I can do it. It still felt good when I got up. It just got to my head, like 20 meters is insane. Try to forget the depth. Look straight at the line. Don't look up and just keep feeling the line. I'm right there in front of you. Only think about the next pull. Not further than the next pull. Stay present. But I know I can do this. And that this was one of my only chances to get there. Let's do it. The fact that Tavi completely believes in me the entire day already makes me 100% believe in myself that I can do it. It feels like this man has the knowledge and calmness of 100 lifetimes. But he is only 35. It all made sense when I learned about his life so far during the first meal of the day at 5 p.m. Let's see what Aquaman eats in a day. Usually I'm fasting 16 to 20 hours a day. So this is going to be breakfast. Breakfast at 5 p.m. I mean, I'm hungry. You're hungry? Yeah, yeah, for sure. How many calories do you eat in a day? With maintenance around 3,500 to 4,000 a day. All right, well, let's order. I assume you eat a lot of protein. I try to stay above 200 grams a day. Especially on days I'm going to dive and go to the gym. And his workout in this heat is brutal, as you'll see. I will have what you have. For now, I'm going to have a Cobb salad with an extra order of chicken. Start with some protein and then I'll start adding a little bit more carbs. Sounds good. I just came in from the Red Carpet event, premiere of Mission Impossible in Mexico City. I was there with Tom Cruise. He's going to be implementing freediving stunts into his films. Gotta teach him some stuff. So unfortunately, I didn't have time to do my grocery shopping. I do eat a very clean diet in general. And when I do have diving days, I burn so many calories diving. He definitely does not have the body of a freediver. They are normally very streamlined and do not have an insane amount of muscle mass. It is not, per se, a good thing for freediving. It does burn oxygen quicker and your CO2 levels rise faster. So how did he end up here and how can he afford this Aquaman lifestyle? I was doing cliff jumping. I got up to 15 meters and I was in Costa Rica and I was doing a backflip off of a waterfall. Unfortunately, I hit a rock. So I shattered my foot. I couldn't walk for about eight, nine months. So the only form of cardio I could do was swimming. So that pushed me into the water. I saw divers going down on breath holds and I'd watch them from the surface and go, what is that? I found an instructor who's my instructor to this day. He's also holding the camera, making a lot of the films that we make. I fell in love with it, rapidly progressed. I'm in 80, 90 meter range, getting up to 100 meters in depth. So your goal is 100 meters? I'm almost there. There's a very interesting drink in front of me. I've never had this. What is this? So this is jamaica with passion fruit and pineapple. And jamaica, I believe it's called hibiscus. Oh. But before all this, he lived in Mexico, moved to the Netherlands for a football career, then built one of the biggest fitness companies while being in university. He competed in bodybuilding and even became a DJ with his own record label, performing at Tomorrowland. I played at Tomorrowland. I reached a high level. I released on spinning records. You're traveling. You're not sleeping. There's a lot of illegal substances around you, which is tough for someone like me that was trying to balance a healthy lifestyle around it. Got a little more serious about the competing in bodybuilding. I thought, OK, I'm going to give it one go, trying to qualify for the Mr. Olympia. I got third place in the European Championships. I was very close to getting there. But on that journey, I realized bodybuilding is not healthy. You know, you have a vision of what you think something is like. And it wasn't that, right? And even when I built my business, we had close to 100 influencers at our peak, had 30, 40 employees in our headquarters in the Netherlands. And I realized that I had built this amazing company, but now I was responsible for so many people. I became too much of a CEO and I started to lose the love for that trajectory. I just realized what I would love. I realized what I want. And now I can take a direction that's more aligned with who I am. And that was coming here to Tulum. The most important thing that I'd like to share with people is you are going to be happier earning less income, living a simpler life than you are being somewhere that doesn't align with you. But for someone who has already done it all, what's next? I love living life. I think that's also why the next step that I'm getting into writing films, writing scripts, the more human experiences I can have, the better I can write characters, the better I can take the perspective of different people. We'll have you at the red carpet. Wow, that looks really good. We're having a chicken Cobb salad, low carb in essence. So I'm going to get a little bit of the carbs from the drink. All right, bon appetit, bro. This is very healthy. This is really good. And I have to say, I am starving. Food definitely tastes amazing after 20 hours of not eating. Let's stay in shape. Let's get that workout in. Let's get a pump. Is this your main gym? I try to come here as much as I can. But, you know, when it's 35 to 40 degrees Celsius, it gets a little bit hot. I can't wait to actually put these weight plates to the test. So what does he do to get that Aquaman body? What's your normal split? Shoulders and arms, chest and biceps or triceps, depending on what I had done the day before. Back and biceps and legs I split into front and back. Five times a week? Five, six times a week. I prefer to do more days and less intense so that the muscle soreness is not spilling over to my diving days. Let's do some shoulders and arms. They can definitely use some work. I tend to focus more on the side delts and the rear delts because when I do chest, that already hits the front delts a lot. And we're going to do some variations. Try to keep up with Aquaman. Just get things moving. Full range of motion. Completely up, completely down. Okay. How long are your workouts normally? Between 45 and 60 minutes. For the first set, I don't push all the way to failure just to get the joints a little warmed up. You go completely up, completely down. Full range of motion. So we'll do a warm-up set. Then we'll do three working sets. And on the working sets, I'm not even counting the reps. I'm going straight to failure. Another thing you can do is slow down the negative to the point where you fail faster. So you've always trained to failure. Safe failure. I've been very lucky not to have any major injuries other than breaking my foot, jumping off a waterfall. And yeah, I mean, I'm not the biggest guy in the bodybuilding world, but the hypertrophy is definitely there. Yeah. I find it more beneficial to fail with less reps than to try to do more reps. So for me, failure is when I cannot control the negative anymore. Your heart rate shoots up fast here. It's warm. Now I'm going to do another variation. So we're going to do side raise, 45, flat. So we're actually going to be changing the angle after each rep. I find that this really gave my shoulders a nice kind of 3D pump, 3D look. And it just makes sure that I'm hitting all the heads. Yeah, yeah. Makes sense. And we're going to failure. Oh, getting stung. And here? I'm definitely feeling this. So now we're going to start integrating at least one exercise for front delt. Okay. This one I have not seen before or done before. It's also a good one to get mobility in your shoulder, especially for freediving. You want to be able to reach straight up. I am being eaten alive here by mosquitoes, I believe. Compound movements like this, they tend to make sure you're not generating imbalances in your physique. If your tricep was the weakest link in this movement, you would have to do more reps for your shoulders or you'd have to lighten the load. You're only as strong as your weakest link when you combine things like this and that's going to balance out your physique. I'm feeling pumped. I feel the pump coming. So this is a bit of traps, a bit of rear delt again. Oh, that is a very controlled negative. Training in this heat is no joke. You can train here, you can train anywhere. I'm used to the Netherlands, so that's that weather. There you go. And then slow down. My face says it all. Let's head over there, do some face pulls before you pass out. The people that work at this gym are kind of hairy. Lots of cats here. The owner, Katie, she rescues them. Oh, these are rescued cats? Yeah. So now we're going to do some face pulls. Don't drop it on the cat. This is one of the coolest gyms I've ever been to. Okay, let's load it up. Let's see how this works. Let's do it. Let's get as many reps as it takes to get to failure. Slow down the negative even more if you want to fail quicker. Now we are going to hit one of my favorites. We're going to put our hands all the way at the top of the dumbbell and we're going to really focus on the rotation. So that's really going to hit the peak. That's actually a really important function of the bicep. Something I learned from Arnold. You're also sweating a lot. It's hot. Luckily, I have a Gymshark shirt that's covering my amazing 10 lines. And Gymshark has one of the biggest sales right now. 50% off the entire website with an additional 10% with code STEN10. Make sure to not miss this. And you can check out my favorite items in the link in the description. Tricep extensions, of course. Nice and slow. I just have to mention, look at that weight. Straight up bags of stone. Yes. Come on. Same thing. Powerful contraction. Slow negative. Working out in the jungle gym with the sun going down. What else can you ask for? Well, a 20 meter dive. Let's finish what we started. In 24 hours, we did so much. Dove deeper than I ever thought I could. Ate amazing food. Did a crazy workout in the most insane gym I've ever seen. I feel like I truly lived like him. 15 seconds to official top. I can do it. Let's do it. Let's go. 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Official top. Congratulations. Thank you so much, man. New PB. 200 meters. Is 20 good? Very good. This was honestly one of the scariest but also most magicalizing things I've ever done. The craziest experience ever. Wow. Welcome to my world. Welcome to your world, man. This was beautiful. Did it. You did it. Today, I really got to see who this Aquaman really is. He is Tavi, who has probably an even more interesting story than Aquaman. He let go of an insanely successful and busy lifestyle to find out what type of life he really wants to live at that moment. He changed his life around many times. He is not afraid for change at all and really likes a chance. He's probably one of the best in the world to let go and move on to something else and do it extremely successfully. So while teaching me to become Aquaboy, I not only got my 20 meter record but I also learned to let go. Let go of this suffocating feeling underwater and to just enjoy it. Subscribe to not miss the next adventure. We just hit 10 million subscribers and it's a crazy place to celebrate this because you might recognize this. I can't share that yet but what I can share is the way we're going to celebrate 10 million subscribers is by transforming 10 random subscribers and you can apply right now with the first link in the description. This is going to be the most insane transformation series on the entirety of the internet and also I just really want to thank you guys for making this entire life possible, this entire journey. It's just insane. I never knew it was possible to do this together with friends, family and you guys. You guys watching every single episode. I've been doing this for a long time but we have exploded the past few years and I feel like this is just the start. Make sure to subscribe to this link and hit that bell and don't forget to apply because who knows it's going to be you who I'm transforming. 10 of you.