Facing The Ocean A New Challenge

The night before his first Ironman, Dr. Bobby J Grossi got in the ocean for a practice swim. It was the first time he'd ever swam in open ocean water in his life. His heart rate hit 185bpm. He couldn't finish 500 meters . He sat on the beach and almost called his daughter to tell her not to come to the race.

He started anyway.

In this premiere episode of The Iron Dentist Podcast, a 52-year-old dentist and triathlete opens up about the panic, the preparation, and what happened when race day finally arrived — including a marathon bonk that cost him his goal time despite months of structured training with coach Tony Washington.

And then he draws a line straight from that experience to your dental practice — because the gap between being prepared and being willing to fully execute shows up in the operatory just as often as it does on the course.

This episode is about the plan. What it is, why it matters, and why having one isn't enough if you won't trust it when it counts.

Transcript

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So it's the night before my Iron Man. I got in the ocean for a practice swim, and it was the first time I've ever swam in the ocean in my life. I want you to understand what that means. I had trained for months. I followed Tony's plan to the letter. I had swam hundreds of thousands of meters in a pool. I was by every measurable standard prepared for this race. And then and I had never once even been in the open ocean water. I swam in open ocean waters in the lake and fresh water, but never in the ocean. The day before a 2.4 mile ocean swim. So I got in and within minutes, I don't even remember, like, I don't even know how many, but it feels like it felt like seconds. My heart started racing to 185 beats per minute. And I know that number because I was wearing my goggles that had my pulse on it in 185. I wasn't swimming hard, I was actually barely moving, and my body was gone into a kind of primal override, if you will, that had nothing to really do with fitness and everything to do with just fear. I was literally almost paralyzed. The water was moving, there was no black line on the bottom, I couldn't even see what was beneath me. And my brain decided to do without consulting me, uh, uh basically decided that I was gonna die. I couldn't even finish the 500 meters. I had to find my way back to the shore. So I remember sitting on the beach and I generally considered calling my daughter who was flying to watch my race and telling her not even to come. Don't even get on the plane. Like there is no race, there's no way I can do this. I cannot do this anymore. And at the time, I'm 53 now. At the time I was 52 years old, I was a dentist, I've ran a practice, I make decisions under pressures every single day. I had three crumble cookie franchises. I had a medical lab, I have a dental lab. I've been in rooms where the stakes were high or even the margins were error was small, and I've always performed. And I sat on that beach soaking wet, heart still hammering, and I cannot see a way through this to the following morning. Good news is I didn't call my daughter. I went back to the hotel. I laid in the dark, I kept praying, please let me get through the swim. And then the next morning I remember I stood up on the beach with 2,000 other people, and I waited for the cannon to go off. This show, this podcast, is about what happens when you build something big. A race, a practice, a version of yourself that you have to stand at the edge of it and actually do it. Not in theory, in the dark. With a heart rate of 185 and your daughter's flight already booked. Welcome to the Aaron Dentists Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Bobby Grassi. I'm a dentist, a triathlete, a husband, a father. I am a uh business franchise business owner of three crumble cookies. I own a medical lab, a dental lab. I've been practicing dentistry 25 years. I'm a big biohacker, a triathlete, as you just heard. Someone who has been generally humbled by both those things at various points. I've completed in a half Iron Man's and full Iron Man's. I train with my coach named Tony Washington. I've run a dental practice and I'm 53 years old, which means I'm doing all this at the time of life with most people who are scaling back. And this is what I find the fact more motivating than I probably should. This show exists because these lessons I've learned in the endurance sport and the lessons I've learned building a dental practice have started to feel like the same lessons. About planning, about systems, about what happens when you're prepared but still terrified, about the gap between the ready and being willing, about why the structures underneath your efforts matters as much as the effort itself. Every episode in this journey, we're gonna take one idea from the triadline or Iron Man and one from Dentistry and hold them next to each other until they ultimately illuminate something useful. This is episode one. We're talking about the plan. What is it? What does what it does, and crucially what it can do for you when you're sitting on the beach in a wetsuit, wondering if you had made a catastrophic mistake. So let me tell you the whole story. A year before the full Iron Man, I did a half Iron Man. 70.3 miles. And it was honestly a mixed experience. There were moments when the training that where the training showed up exactly what I needed it. And there was moments when I felt like and I was navigating in a language I most understood, I mostly understood, but hadn't fully learned. I finished and I was glad I done it. And something in me, some part that apparently doesn't know when to stop, signed up for the full. But I can remember in my journey of the half of doing it, getting back to that run again, knowing the run was what's going to give me. At first I thought it was the bike. Then I thought it was the swim with 2,000 people swimming over top of you. But I always tend to bog down in the in the in the marathon part. I was exhausted. I wanted to do six hours. I did six and a half hours in that time. It was in Frankfurt, Michigan. So then the full Iron Man training block was the most structured thing that I've ever done in my athletic life. My coach Tony built the plan, and every week had a purpose. Every session fit into a larger architecture, and I and I followed it, really followed it, even on the days I didn't want to follow it. 5 30 in the morning, 10 o'clock at night, running businesses, being a husband, being a father, being a training. I followed it in a way that I haven't been disciplined enough to do on my own before. So what I had not done in all these those months was swim in the ocean. I had trained in a pool, I swam in open water, but I've never trained in the ocean. I had done open water sessions in a lake, but I've never been in the ocean. And the race, my Iron Man was an ocean swim. 2.4 miles of neti pot in the nose ocean swim. I found this out, really confronted it the evening before the race. During the practice swim that the organizers put on the athletes to get comfortable with the course, I got in the water and I immediately understood that I'd made a significant oversight in my preparation. This ocean is not a pool. This ocean is not a lake. The ocean moves. There's jellyfish, there's other fish, it has currents and swells and darkness beneath you that your body reacts to on a level that has nothing to do with training or logic. My heart race went up to 185 beats. I wasn't sprinting. I was barely keeping myself afloat. My nervous system had taken over and had one message. Get the hell out. And I remember making it back to shore. I couldn't compete, complete 500 meters at this time, and the race the next morning was 3,800. I did the math. It did not help. I remember sitting on the beach for a long time and I thought about my daughter. She had a flight book. She was coming to watch my race. I had my phone in my hands and I thought I should call her right now. Tell her not to come. Tell her there's no way I can do this race, that I misjudged this. I'm 52 years old and I get, I can't, I got it over my head. I literally am freaking out. I drafted the conversation in my head several times. I can feel the relief of not having to find out what happened tomorrow morning. I didn't make the call, and I'm still not entirely sure why. Part of it was stubbornness, part of it was backing out, felt worse than failing. And part of it, I think the most honest part was the plan. Plan sitting in my training log all those weeks, all those sessions, having to tell my wife I failed, having to tell my kids I failed, not even trying. And what lessons would that really would I have taught them? The structure didn't disappear because I had had a brag des brag practice swim. The work was done. The only question was whether I was going to show up to find out what is what it all amounted to. So then I hit the race morning. I can remember hitting the race morning. I stood on the beach, the canoe went off, I got in the water. The swim wasn't as hard as I thought. I actually got calmed down. I can remember praying to God the night before, like, just get me out of the water. I kept saying, just get me out of the water. I won't pretend otherwise, but I did finish the swim. It was the slowest swim I've ever had in my life. And I don't know really how I finished. I think there's a version of autopilot that only athletes or activates when the alternative is unthinkable. I got out of the water, I got on the bike, and then the bike, Tony's training has showed up on the bike in a way that still makes me grateful. I had legs, I had pacing, I put the power watts in, I had a plan for the nutrition, and I executed it. By the time I got to the run, I had every reason to believe that this was going to go well. And then I bonked on the marathon. Not because I felt fell apart physically, because I had, I held back mentally. Somewhere in this accumulated weight of that day, the practice swim, panic, the sleepless night, the emotion cost of just getting to the start line, I lost my willingness to push. I was scared of blowing up completely. I was scared of not finishing, so I played it safe, too safe. I left time on the course, I missed my goal, and I knew in real time it was happening. I could feel the gap between what the plan had prepared me for and what I was actually asking for myself. I did cross the finish line. It was amazing. I finished in an Iron Man, and alongside the genuine overwhelming pride of that, I carried the quiet, clear awareness. I can remember my daughter holding the medal up, and I still posted on my Instagram stories every single day saying, Oh my god, you did it, you're an Iron Man. When that was absolutely amazing to me, I can remember crying, and I still cry thinking about it to this day. But the gap between being prepared and being willing to fully commit is what this podcast is really about. What I want you to understand is it shows up in the races, it shows up in treatment rooms, it shows up every time you've done the work to be ready for something and then the found reason to hold back at the moment it counted. I think most high-performing people live in the gap more than they admit. I know I do. When I was racing at 55, 52, and why my coach matters the most to me, I want to say something specifically to anyone listening who is in their 40s or even 50s, or consider whether the body is still capable of something like this. It is. But you need to understand that the rules are different, and you need to need a coach who understands that from the inside, not just the textbooks. Recovery at 52 takes longer than it did at 35, full stop. The margin of error and pacing and nutrition is narrower. The hormonal environment that used to be quietly support your training and your mood and your sleep is operating differently. And even the mental game, the internal voice that questions whether you belong to a race like this, tends to be louder than when you're older, when you're older. Because you have one more invested in the outcome and more to lose if it goes wrong. Tony Washington, my coach, is a similar age range to me. I always say, never take advice from people on out where you want to go. So I hired a coach. That was my age range. This was not a coincidence. It was me choosing to work with him. I didn't need someone who could theoretically describe what training in your 50s looked like. I needed someone who had navigated it personally. Who understood the specific anxiety of doing something ambitious in the stage in their life? Who could build a plan around the body and life I actually have, not the one I had 20 years ago. There's a kind of coaching knowledge that only comes from the shared experience. Tony didn't just prescribe workouts. He understood why certain weeks need to be easier and that training allowed, allowed, uh load along with suggest. He understood that a dentist running a practice has a particular kind of cognitive fatigue that affects training capacity in ways that don't show up in the heart rate monitor. He built the plan around all of it. And the plan and the reason I got to the start line physically intact, even if the practices swim nearly ended everything the night before. If you're over 50 and you want to do something like this, find your Tony Washton. Someone understands your body at the age, your life and your stage, and your specific version of the fear that will show up the night before the race. That relationship is not a luxury, it is a plan behind the plan. Let me explain how Tony structures a training session because the model and the foundation of dental practice parallels I want you to make, and it's worth understanding properly. The approach is called periodization. The deliberate division of your training year into phases, each with a specific purpose. You're not just accumulating miles, you're building fitness in a particular sequence because the sequence matters as much as the volume. Phase one, base, long, steady work and low intensity. You're building the aerobic engine, conditioning your connective tissue, establishing the foundation for older athletes. Tony was clear this phase is non-negotiable. The body of 52 needs their runway more than the 30-year-old does. Skip it, and the build phase breaks you instead of developing you. Phase two, build, volume and intensity increase, race simulation sessions, brick workouts, bike straight into run, threshold interviews, threshold intervals. You're applying stress to the foundation you built and the adaptations compound. This is also where your sleep and nutrition become critical for the older athlete. Tony monitored both. Recovery doesn't happen by accident at this age. It is built into the plan. And then there's obviously phase three, peak, short, sharp, high quality, volume drops. The goal is to arrive at a race day with maximum fitness and the nervous system that's fresh. You cannot get fitter in the race week. Tony drilled this. Your job as the final two weeks is to rest well and trust the work. Phase four, taper and recovery, back off, sleep. Let the body consolidate months of adaption and after the race, whatever the result, recover fully before the next cycle begins. For me, this wasn't optimal. The body at 5U2 will take the recovery, whether you plan it for it or not. Tony just made sure I planned it. Now, and here is where I want your full attention. Does the structure sound familiar? Because I'm going to argue that the best dental practices run exactly this model. Most of them don't just know it yet. Here is what I see in dental practices that feel stuck. And I include my own practice in this various points in my career. There are running without phases. Every month demands the same output. There's no bass, no build, no peak, no taper. Just a flat, unvarying line of effort stretching from January to December, year after year until something, the clinician, the team, the culture quietly breaks. We've all been there. Think about the practice swim moment. I had done all the training. I had the fitness, but I had missed one critical thing in my preparation. I have never practiced in the specific environment the race was going to demand. The ocean. The ocean was the gap between my plan and reality. In the equivalent in dentistry is the gap between having the clinical skills and having the systems that let those skills show up consistently under pressure at scale. The base phase for a practice is systems and team. It is the unglamorous work, refining your new patient workflow, running team communication trainings, updating protocols, strengthening the infrastructure, everything else else sits on. It doesn't generate revenue this week. It generates the capacity for growth next quarter. Skip it, and when you try to build, you'll build on cracks. I've done this. The cracks eventually show. The build phase is growth, new services, expanding capacity, marketing associates, deliberating planned, stress applied to the solid foundation. This is where practices without base work fail. They hire before the systems are ready. They expand before the experience is reliable. They launch new productions before the team is trained to support them. It is, it's the triathlet who skips base training and goes straight to race-pace intervals. The body isn't ready for what is being asked of it and it breaks. The peak phase is your race season. For most practices, this is autumn. The schedule is full, the team is humming, the patients are engaged. This is when you execute the comprehensive cases you've been planning. This is not the time to introduce new workflows or trial new equipment. This is race day. Run the plan and you already have. And the recovery phase is the one I will make the strongest case for, because the most neglected and the most necessary. It is a deliberate decision to step back, consolidate, and let the team breathe before the next cycle begins. Take the holiday. Reduce the schedule in January. Let people recover. Here's what the marathon taught me about this. I bonked not because the plan failed, but because I didn't trust it at the moment mattered. I held back when the plan said push. And dental practices do this consistently. They have the systems, they have the plan, and then they critical, and then that critical moment they override it with anxiety. They discon discount the treatment plan before they even presented it. They undercharge because they're not sure the patient will say yes. They hesitate in exactly the moment the preparation earned them the right to be confident. Let me make this concrete before we close. Because one thing the practice swim panic taught me, besides never skip open water acclamation, is that when your mind is overwhelmed, you need a system that runs without you. Tony gave me a pre-race checklist. Physical, written, sequential, and non-negotiable. Race mornings, regardless of how I felt, and after the night, race morning was not my most composed moment. I went through every item wetsuit, goggles, helmet, buckle, bike computer, charged, nutrition loaded, race belt on. Every time in order. The checklist is what operates when your brain has the only things going on. Which one race morning it always does. The new patient examination is exactly this: a written sequential, run it identically, every time protocol that does not vary based on the day you're having or the patient in front of you. Extra row exam, intra roll soft tissues, paradontal charting, occlusal assessment, radiographic review, carries risk, medical history, every medication, every relevant systemic condition, every item, every patient in order. See, the experienced clinician is pro paradoxical. The most at risk of shortcoming is this, because competence creates the illusion that you can skip steps. You can't. The checklist protects the patients equally on your best day and even in your worst. This is what that that's that's the whole point of a system. It works independently of how you feel when you show up to use it. I didn't have a checklist for my race nutrition during the marathon. I winged parts of it. My execution drifted from the plan to exactly the moments when discipline mattered most. I pay for it when the time of the course don't let your practice pay for the same mistake. Your challenge this week is to map your practice years into four phases. Base, build, peak, recovery. Be honest about your what you find. If every month looks the same, if there's foundations work and no recovery, and you've been in perpetual build mode for years, that's your marathon bunk, waiting to happen. Not a dramatic single failure, a slow erosion of energy, that edge that you won't even notice until it's already cost you more than you can realize. And if you're someone who's sitting on a metaphoric little beach right now, prepared for something, terrified of it, wondering if you should make the call or back out, I want you to think about this. The fear and the preparation can both be true at the same time. You can be ready, but still scared. The plan doesn't eliminate the fear, it just gives something to hold on to when the fear arrives. My daughter did come to the race. She watched me finish. And the moment I am most proud of, more than the finish line, more than the medal, is the moment the night before when I put the phone down and I didn't make that call. Because showing up when you're not sure you can is the whole point of the race, of the practice, of all of it. The next next episode, we're gonna go back into the water. Probably this time. Episode two is called Swim Smooth, and it's about airway, breathing, and why the thing that nearly ended my race before it started connects directly to see, correct connects directly to the one of the most under un underserved areas in dentistry today. I'll see you there. Share that with someone who might need to hear this, a colleague, a training partner, someone who is sitting on their own beach wondering if they should make the call. This show grows through the word of mouth, which is a as a dentist, we know is the most powerful referral system that there is. Until next time, train smart, plan with attention, and when the fear comes, and it will come, don't make the call. Just show up.