What if the ceiling on human performance and longevity is much higher than we assume? Amanda McVey has built a career answering that question with technology, research, and a refusal to accept conventional limits. In this episode of Escape Your Limits, Matthew Januszek visits the Bulletproof world — and comes back with one of the most forward-looking conversations the podcast has produced.
Amanda is VP of Upgrade Labs, operating out of the Beverly Hilton — the location widely recognised as the birthplace of biohacking and Bulletproof Coffee. This episode is an inspirational story for athletes, entrepreneurs, and anyone who wants to understand what serious investment in human performance actually looks like.
About Amanda McVey
Amanda McVey leads Upgrade Labs, the world's first human upgrade centre, based at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills. As part of the Bulletproof family — the brand that gave the world Bulletproof Coffee and helped bring biohacking into the mainstream — Upgrade Labs operates at the leading edge of what is possible when technology and pioneering research are applied to human performance and longevity.
Her approach is driven by a never-say-quit attitude that permeates both the facility she leads and the philosophy she represents. Upgrade Labs brings together cutting-edge technology and rigorous research to help clients — athletes, entrepreneurs, and everyday people alike — access a version of themselves that they may not have thought was within reach.
Amanda's work is a practical demonstration that the principles of biohacking are not reserved for elite performers. The tools, the protocols, and the mindset she describes in this episode are applicable across a wide range of people and goals — making this one of the most accessible and immediately useful conversations on the podcast.
What Amanda McVey and Matthew Januszek Talked About
- The world's first human upgrade centre demonstrates that biohacking has graduated from fringe concept to serious, facility-based practice — and the results justify the infrastructure.
- Longevity is not a passive outcome of healthy habits; it is an active pursuit that benefits from the application of specific technologies and research-backed protocols.
- Bulletproof Coffee was the starting point of a movement, not its destination — the Bulletproof family's current focus on human upgrade technology shows how far that original insight has been developed.
- A never-say-quit attitude is not a cliché in Amanda's context — it is a design principle for how Upgrade Labs approaches both individual client programmes and the broader challenge of advancing what is known about human performance.
- Athletes and entrepreneurs face similar performance challenges — peak output, recovery, and cognitive clarity — and the same biohacking tools that serve one group are directly applicable to the other.
- Technology-driven wellbeing is not about replacing effort; it is about ensuring that the effort you put in is supported by the best possible recovery, measurement, and optimisation systems.
- Pioneering research in longevity consistently shows that the gap between biological age and chronological age is far more malleable than conventional medicine has traditionally acknowledged.
Why This Conversation Matters
The fitness equipment Matthew Januszek has built through Escape Fitness is designed to help people perform better — and the conversation with Amanda McVey sits right at the intersection of that mission and the next frontier of what the industry can offer. Understanding how technology, research, and a performance mindset combine to extend human capability is directly relevant to anyone designing the gyms and programmes of the future.
Matthew's work with Escape Fitness USA and the LIFTS Podcast with Mohammed Iqbal of SweatWorks is constantly exploring how the fitness industry can serve its clients more completely and more intelligently. Amanda's vision of the human upgrade centre — where technology amplifies the work people are already putting in — is a compelling model for where the entire sector is heading.
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About Matthew Januszek
Matthew Januszek is the co-founder of Escape Fitness, the functional-training equipment brand he built from a UK startup into a global name supplying many of the world’s leading gyms, studios, and hotel fitness spaces. Following the separation of the UK and US businesses, Matthew’s focus today is Escape Fitness USA and the next chapter of the brand in North America. He hosted more than 300 episodes of the Escape Your Limits podcast and now co-hosts the LIFTS Podcast with SweatWorks founder Mohammed Iqbal, covering the business, science, and technology shaping the fitness industry. Explore more interviews and episodes on MatthewJanuszek.com.
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