Dads AF 2.0: a complete rebuild for SpoFI alumni ready to go deeper

Session 0: Foundations night (March 18)

Before we build anything, we tune the instrument. Session 0 is the night everyone shows up, gets their bearings, and takes stock of where they actually are. Most men trying to become better fathers are doing it while running on a depleted system: sleep debt, chronic dehydration, sedentary patterns, and food that’s quietly undermining their mood and patience. We name that honestly on night one.

We cover the four foundations — hydration, sleep, movement, and basic nutrition — not as a lecture but as a baseline check. Every man completes a simple self-assessment and leaves with one specific commitment for the week ahead. Then we walk through the seven-week arc, set expectations, and establish what brotherhood in this cohort is going to look like. This is also when the “name and one word” opening ritual begins — a practice that carries through every session.

Week 1: Finding your unique purpose

We start here because everything else depends on it. Using frameworks drawn from Robert Greene’s Mastery and a tool called the Five Frames of Mind, you’ll trace the thread back to what you were wired for — what lit you up before the world told you who to be. Your frame might be the Builder, the Connector, the Pursuer. Knowing it changes how you show up as a father, not as an obligation but as your actual self. This is one of the most grounding exercises a man can do, and it sets the arc for the entire six weeks.

Week 2: Physical health and longevity

Here’s a number most men haven’t sat with: on average, men die five years earlier than women — and spend more of their final years in poor health. That’s not fate. It’s largely behavioral. Week two opens with that honest conversation, then gets concrete and measurable. We’ll establish your personal baseline across five biomarkers that research — especially from Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia’s Outlive — consistently link to how long and how well you live: grip strength, dead hang time, VO2 max, bodyweight benchmarks, and waist-to-height ratio. You’ll leave with a movement protocol built around Zone 2 cardio, resistance training, and time under tension — designed to fit a real dad’s real schedule.

Week 3: Neuroscience of habits

This is where behavior change science meets identity. Drawing from James Clear’s Atomic Habits, BJ Fogg’s research on tiny behaviors, and current neuroscience on how new patterns actually take root, we’ll audit the habits already running your life — and rebuild from identity up.

The core insight: every healthy choice you make is a vote for the man you’re becoming. That framing changes everything — especially for men who’ve already started redefining their identity in Dad2Dad.

Week 4: Mental and behavioral optimization

This is the deepest week — and by design, it uses a flipped classroom format. You’ll get primed with short content pieces throughout the week before you arrive, so the Wednesday session is integration and practice rather than introduction. We’ll unpack dopamine dynamics using Huberman’s research and Anna Lembke’s Dopamine Nation: the difference between baseline and peaks, what addiction does to your reward system, how to recover your drive.

We’ll talk about the anterior midcingulate cortex — the part of your brain that literally grows when you do things you don’t want to do — and why embracing discomfort is the actual mechanism that builds willpower. And we’ll name something directly: if you’ve done hard work around substances or recovery, the science covered this week applies directly to that work. You didn’t just build character. You built brain structure. We’ll practice Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) together in the room, because some things have to be experienced before they can be believed.

If you only fully engage with one week of content, make it this one.

Week 5: Nutrition and gut health

We’re not going to give you another diet. What we’re going to give you is a single organizing framework — the NOVA classification system — that makes food decisions simple without obsessing over every meal. Developed by researchers including Dr. Tim Spector and informed by Michael Pollan’s foundational work, it breaks food into four groups based on how processed they are. The north star: eat mostly from Groups 1 through 3. Minimize Group 4. That’s it.

We’ll dig into the gut-brain connection — the 500 million neurons in your gut that directly influence your mood, patience, and ability to regulate — and why high-fiber foods and fermented foods create measurable changes in how you feel, sometimes within days. The 80/20 plant-forward approach we explore is flexible enough for birthday parties, road trips, and a fridge full of whatever the kids didn’t finish.

Week 6: Social and emotional well-being

The final week brings everything home — and it opens with the most important finding from the longest-running study on adult development ever conducted. The Harvard Study of Adult Development tracked the same men for over 80 years. The single strongest predictor of health, happiness, and longevity wasn’t wealth, career achievement, or physical fitness. It was the quality of close relationships. Researcher Robert Waldinger has spent decades distilling what that means for men — and we’ll bring it into the room.

We’ll talk about how non-verbal communication shapes what your kids receive from you in ways you rarely notice, and what relational accountability looks like when it’s working. We’ll engage the Great Morani Analogy — drawn from therapist Terry Real’s conversation with Masai elders in Tanzania.

A Morani warrior elder described the difference between a good warrior and a great one: a good Morani is fierce, capable, and a protector when the moment calls for it. A great Morani possesses all of that — and also knows when to lay down his sword and be tender. The greatness is in the wisdom to know which moment is which.

That’s the masculine wholeness we’re after: not hard or soft, but skilled. And we’ll close with one of the most important distinctions in the program — the difference between responsibility and shame. Shame keeps men stuck. Responsibility sets them free to move. One builds men. The other just keeps them circling.