David Herrera is forty years old. He became a two-time state champion wrestler in Utah, which ignited a lifelong obsession with understanding how to push the human body to its ceiling. That led to powerlifting starting in 2012 — an 800-plus pound deadlift, a 700-plus pound squat, a 430-pound bench press, multiple world records — and a culminating meet in 2020 that still places him in the top 100 pound-for-pound all-time across all weight classes. Along the way he hired the best coaches in supplements and PEDs, studied every training adaptation available, and then encountered Dr. Jack Kruse's work — which connected the internal environment he had been optimizing to the external environment that governs it. The result is a coaching framework built on three inputs (light, water, magnetism) that he applies to athletes, shift workers, performance seekers, and now a high school wrestling program in Wyoming that he is physically rewiring with UV panels, infrared, green light, and 55-degree training temperatures. Get his wellness guide Nature's Power, join his Skool, or reach out for coaching at david-herrera.net and solarathlete.com. Part 2 is coming soon.
This episode went long. It was worth every minute. David Herrera may be the most practically dangerous person I have had on this show — not in the conventional sense, but in the sense that the information he is sharing has the potential to transform the physical environments where grapplers train, compete, and recover in ways that no supplement program, no PED cycle, and no coaching methodology alone can match. He is actually doing this. In a high school wrestling room in Wyoming. Right now.
What David brings that nobody else in this space is currently putting together so specifically for grapplers is the complete stack: the powerlifting and sports science background that teaches you how to train the internal environment, the Jack Kruse framework that teaches you how the external environment governs all of it, and the engineering mindset that turns both into an actionable system you can implement in any gym — with incandescent light bulbs as the cheapest possible entry point and a full UV/infrared/green light/cold environment at the other end of the spectrum. Part 2 is coming soon. It is going to go further. Follow David now so you are there when it drops.
From Two-Time State Champion to World Record Powerlifter: The Environment Is the Drug
David's origin is wrestling — two-time state champion in Utah, a sport that he does not call a sport. He calls it a martial art with rules to keep people from getting seriously hurt. The discipline, sacrifice, and mental constitution it demands built the framework for everything he learned later about pushing the human body to its outer limits.
Powerlifting starting in 2012 gave him the laboratory. Multiple world records across an eight-year career — culminating in a 2020 meet that still places him in the top 100 pound-for-pound all-time. To get there he hired the best available coaches in supplements and PEDs, studied every training adaptation, and learned the first principle that governs everything else in his current work: the environment determines the outcome. Not the drug. Not the supplement. The environment.
"You can introduce the same drugs into a very high-level athlete who is in a crappy environment and you will literally get no result, or even a wrong result. The environment dictates the outcome, number one."
— David Herrera · @DavidHerrera1119 · @thesolarathlete · solarathlete.comWhen he encountered Dr. Jack Kruse's work, the internal environment optimization he had built for powerlifting connected to something more fundamental: the external environment of light, water, and magnetism that governs the internal environment at the cellular level. His coaching framework now operates at both levels simultaneously — and the high school wrestling program he is currently building in Wyoming is the most complete physical manifestation of that framework that exists anywhere in the grappling world right now.
The Real Testosterone Protocol: Why Your TRT Clinic Never Tested Vitamin D
The vitamin D to testosterone cascade is the clearest illustration David offers of how the conventional medical model misses the sequence that nature has already solved. Most people in a TRT clinic have low testosterone and low vitamin D. The clinic tests the testosterone. It does not test the vitamin D. It does not explain the cascade.
Here is the cascade: UV light hits the skin and the blood vessels near the skin. The cholesterol floating in that skin and those blood vessels — which is meant to be there — converts to pre-vitamin D. That pre-vitamin D fills the vitamin D bucket and then converts to L3 and T3. Those molecules then convert to sex hormones, including testosterone. The sun is not making vitamin D as an end product. It is using vitamin D as a step in a longer manufacturing process that produces your entire hormonal profile.
"If you get put on testosterone replacement therapy, the first thing I want to see is what was your vitamin D status at that time. If it was in the 30s or less — that's common — you are by default going to have lower sex hormones. It's literally telling you that you don't get enough sunlight of the proper wavelengths to initiate that cascade."
— David Herrera · @DavidHerrera1119 · @thesolarathlete · solarathlete.comThe immune system connection is equally precise. Vitamin D does not modulate the immune system — the UV light action that produces vitamin D does, because the immune system's B cells live in the skin and the T cells live in the gut-associated lymphoid tissue. Neither responds to a swallowed vitamin D supplement in the way they respond to UV photons reaching the skin. Vitamin D is correlated with a better immune system, not a cause of it. The action is the cause. The supplement is a measurement, not a mechanism.
His practical instruction for the 40-year-old grappler who has been prescribed TRT: before accepting the prescription, spend twenty to thirty minutes outside with your shirt off at midday for thirty consecutive days and test again. What you are doing is called cholesterol sulfation — and it initiates all of the downstream hormone production the TRT was meant to replace. It does not work for everyone and some people genuinely need the clinical intervention. But the number of people who need it is significantly smaller than the number currently receiving it.
The Blueprint: How to Transform Any Grappling Room Into a High-Performance Light and Temperature Environment
This is the section that I believe has the potential to change the physical reality of grappling rooms across this country sooner than most people expect. David is not theorizing. He is implementing this exact protocol in a high school wrestling room in Wyoming right now. The cost of entry starts at an incandescent light bulb. The full protocol is achievable by any gym with the motivation to do it.
"This is a training effect you don't even have to train. You just change the environment slightly. The more of it you can do, even if it's a little bit, it will help."
— David Herrera · @DavidHerrera1119 · @thesolarathlete · solarathlete.com- Temperature: 55–60°F (13–15°C). Turn the heat off. In Wyoming, that is literally free — you stop burning fuel. In South Florida it is more challenging but worth pursuing. At 55 degrees the training room becomes a passive cold exposure environment. Every training session at that temperature is simultaneously conditioning the nervous system for discomfort and willpower, stimulating biophoton production, raising dopamine, and activating the mammalian physiological responses that amplify energy production and immune function. Research confirms: doing something that makes you mildly uncomfortable consistently makes the willpower and discomfort-management center of the brain physically grow. You do not have to train that. You just change the temperature.
- Infrared light — the non-negotiable base layer. Standard modern gym lighting is stripped of infrared and UV and heavy in blue, which produces oxidative stress simultaneously with the training session. Every piece of light infrastructure that produces heat produces infrared. Incandescent light bulbs are the cheapest possible entry point — if your gym can be outfitted with standard sockets, this is a twenty-dollar upgrade that begins the protocol immediately. Fluorescent tubes from tanning beds carry both UV and infrared. Dedicated infrared panels from EMR Tech or MyGreen provide the most targeted delivery. The principle from John Meadows applies here: you want to dig the smallest hole possible so you can step out of it the next day. Eliminating the oxidative stress from blue-heavy lighting is digging less of that hole.
- UVA panels — 360–380 nanometer range, approximately $1 per watt. A 100-watt panel covers roughly a 20x20 room. Two panels cover a 40x40 floor. UVA at this wavelength activates photo-repair mechanisms and can be used at night with minimal impact on melatonin production — making it the appropriate light for evening training sessions. At the end of practice, ten minutes under a UV panel is David's protocol for skin infections. Ringworm, fungal issues, any recurring skin problem that plagues grappling rooms: consistent UV exposure at the end of practice clears it. He expects the skin infection rate in his program to drop to half or less of the prior year's baseline.
- Green light — 530–540 nanometer range. This is the piece most people have not heard discussed in the context of training. Green light at 530–540nm is the wavelength that charges melanin most efficiently. Every organ in the body, every tendon and ligament, every layer of skin contains melanin — the black substance visible when you clean any animal is melanin surrounding every organ. It is collecting energy and retransforming it into the tissue systems that require it. The Substantia Nigra in the brain is a massive melanin structure — green light therapy has clinical research behind it for migraine headaches, which makes sense mechanistically because you are charging the primary energy collection structure in the brain. For grapplers: tendons, ligaments, and organs all respond to green photons the same way. Green light panels distributed throughout a training room are charging connective tissue recovery in real time while training is happening.
- Combining cold and light: the equinox effect. David uses the deer in spring as the most precise analogy for what this combined protocol produces. A deer in late winter has nothing to eat. It is cold and the sun has returned. It lays in the snow in the sunlight — getting cold exposure and UV/infrared simultaneously — and by May that deer looks completely rebuilt: healthy skin, healthy coat, about to give birth. That repair happened with no food. It happened because the combination of cold exposure (which raises biophoton production) and UV/infrared (which initiates photo-repair) produces maximum regenerative output. You are creating the equinox effect in your training room every session.
- For evening sessions specifically: infrared + UVA only, minimal visible LED. In the Wyoming program where training runs to 4–5 PM in winter (after dark), the protocol is: all infrared, UVA panels, and only enough standard LED to prevent color disruption. No blue-heavy fluorescents. This turns on rest and repair, modulates the immune system, and minimizes melatonin suppression from an evening training session — which is normally one of the primary ways that jiu-jitsu and wrestling training at conventional evening hours undermines the recovery it is supposed to be building.
- Dopamine amplification and faster skill acquisition. Cold exposure and the combined light protocol both raise dopamine — the pattern recognition neurotransmitter. For a martial artist this is the direct performance output: faster pattern recognition means recognizing in real time that someone is attacking at a particular angle with a particular pressure and identifying the counter before conscious processing has happened. You are training that system to fire faster by training in an environment that keeps it amplified. The Russians jack up oxygen in Olympic training facilities for exactly this reason — you want the training demand higher than competition so that competition feels easy. David's protocol is the same concept applied to the light and temperature environment.
The Mammalian Dive Reflex: Why Getting Your Face Into the Cold Changed Everything About the Practice
The ice bath section is where the conversation got personally interesting because it validated something I had noticed empirically without understanding the mechanism. For years I was getting into the ice bath, dunking my head once, and sitting up — and getting the benefit but not the full benefit. When Nathan Siles told me to get in to my bottom lip and hold it there, I noticed the practice changed: I lasted longer, my hands stopped hurting, and the session felt fundamentally different.
David's explanation of why: the mammalian dive reflex. When cold water contacts the face and the carotid arteries in the neck — specifically that zone from the chin down — the body initiates a systemic response that switches the nervous system from sympathetic (fight or flight) to parasympathetic (rest and repair). Heart rate slows. Vasodilation occurs throughout the extremities. Blood flow increases everywhere the cold had been constricting. The willpower that was being consumed by the discomfort gets freed up because the flight-or-flight response has been shut off.
"The mammalian dive reflex turns on vasodilation — blood and even a pump, as if you were working out. Your hands won't get cold anymore. You've turned that process on correctly. You are amplifying mammalian superpowers."
— David Herrera · @DavidHerrera1119 · @thesolarathlete · solarathlete.comThe minimum hold for the reflex to fully engage: thirty seconds. It initiates within ten. The full systemic response requires the thirty-second threshold. The reason the hands stop hurting is not psychological — it is physiological vasodilation reaching the extremities as part of the reflex response. It took me seven to eight years of consistent ice bath practice to figure this out. David explains it in three minutes. This is the gap this show is trying to close.
For grapplers specifically: the mammalian dive reflex can be exploited on the mat. The face is accessible in certain positions. Understanding that a short breath hold with face immersion (or even face exposure to cold) can trigger the parasympathetic switch in the middle of a scramble is the kind of edge that sounds small and produces outsized results in a match.
Red Light Only Before Sunrise: Why the Sacred Hours Before Dawn Are Not for Stimulus
David's morning protocol is the counterintuitive element in this conversation — because his background in high performance might lead you to expect an aggressive morning training session. The opposite is true. His morning, in the pre-sunrise hours, is deliberately low stimulus, red-light only, and focused on cognition and planning rather than physical activation.
- Wake at 5 AM. Red light only. No blue, no UV, no overhead LEDs. Red light in the kitchen while preparing food. Red light during any computer work. The melanopsin receptors in the eyes and skin — which are the blue light receptors — are not activated. The body wakes into alertness through the previous day's correct inputs rather than through artificial stimulation.
- Bone broth or warm tea as the first input. Protein and amino acids in a form that requires minimal digestive work. No caffeine in winter — not because caffeine is the enemy, but because the body coming out of a correctly executed rest cycle is already alert enough without it.
- The Daylight Computer — infrared-backlit tablet. David uses a device with an infrared backlight rather than a blue-LED backlight for all morning computer work. It is visible outdoors. It does not activate the melanopsin system. Programming, client work, planning — all done on this device in the red environment before sunrise.
- The hours before sunrise are for introspection and planning. David is explicit that this is a sacred period in human biology — the time of highest mental clarity, most available cognitive capacity, and deepest capacity for self-examination. Any true martial artist slash warrior needs a plan. This is when you formulate and review it. Disrupting that window with aggressive stimulus (cortisol-spiking training, blue light, high-intensity activity) wastes the most cognitively valuable period of the day.
- Sunrise: step outside for 5–10 minutes. Nasal breathing cardio — 20 minutes on an elliptical facing the sunrise. If it is cold outside, the cold exposure is simultaneous with the morning light. The tone for the day is set: planned, grounded, and now photonically calibrated. Execute.
The hack for the 6 AM jiu-jitsu coach — which is my situation — is the one David made immediately practical: blue light blocking glasses. If you are coaching before sunrise rather than training, wear your Biospectral yellow lenses. You are minimizing the melanopsin activation from the fluorescent gym lighting while your athletes train. It is not perfect. It is a significant mitigation of a situation you cannot fully control.
Exposing What's Behind the Veil — Part 2 Coming Soon
David's answer to what staying dangerous after forty means to him is the one I want to kick off Part 2 with — because it opened a door we did not have enough time to walk through in this episode. He is forty. And his answer was not about training or recovery or even biology.
"Staying dangerous means exposing what's behind the veil that controls everybody. A martial artist is not just a soldier, not just a defender. It is a person that highlights how everything works together and where the control structures are — and what part of that you want to be."
— David Herrera · @DavidHerrera1119 · @thesolarathlete · solarathlete.comPart 2 will cover Bitcoin as a decentralized layer in the framework he just described, the full implications of training environment design at scale, and whatever other directions the conversation takes — which if this episode is any indication, will be worth the time. I am already looking forward to it. If you watched this episode and have specific things you want us to dig into, reach out to David directly at david-herrera.net or through his Skool community at solarathlete.com.
The Light Protocol for Grapplers Who Cannot Change Their Gym
David's gym is getting UV panels, infrared, green light, and 55-degree temperatures. Most of us cannot change our gyms yet. The Biospectral Luca Nero frames — yellow day lenses on the computer, phone, and under LEDs, orange lenses after sunset — are the minimum viable intervention for the grappler training in a conventional environment. I wear mine every day. The full-spectrum broadband light bulbs launched October 1st. Code JOSHBUTTON for 15% off at biospectralsystems.com.
Fuel the Environment. Fuel the Engine.
David's framework makes it clear: food is downstream of the environment. But when the environment is right, the fuel source matters more than ever. Lineage Provisions — highest quality grass-fed protein from regenerative farmers — is the standard. Code JOSHBUTTON for 15% off at lineageprovisions.com.
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@DavidHerrera1119 · @thesolarathlete · david-herrera.net · solarathlete.com
Instagram: @DavidHerrera1119 and @thesolarathlete. Wellness guide Nature's Power, his Skool community, and direct coaching are all at solarathlete.com. If you own a gym and you want to implement any part of what he described in this episode — reach out. He shares this information freely. Part 2 is coming soon.
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