Early sports career:

Denis started his successful journey with rowing when he was 14 years of age, and by 17 he went on to become Junior World Rowing Champion in Coxless Pair in 1989 Szeged, HU together with Iztok Čop, they continued next year for another Junior World Champs in pair again in Auigibelette, FR, and joined experienced couple (Mujkić, Prešern) Olympic medalists, in the same year to row in the Coxless Four for the Senior World Rowing Championships in Tasmania 1990 to finish in 7th place, still then as a juniors in open competition.

In 1991 together with Iztok Čop, firstly dominated pair competition locally (then still Yugoslavia) as first year seniors, so being sent to World Rowing Championships as the best pair to Vienna, still under Yugoslavian flag, despite independence declaration of Slovenia on June 25th 1991.  As a rookies in open field pair competition they nearly swept the competition and finish 2nd, only after famous 5x Olympic Gold medalist Steven Redgrave and Mathew Pinsent.  They proudly displayed colors of then newly formed country of Slovenia on the medal ceremony, which stirred International Governing Body of Rowing (FISA).  It was finally was tolerated, but back home awarded with medal of honor from the President of Slovenia, as a great display of patriotism and courage.

1992 First Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona for independent Slovenia, lots of pressure on Slovenian athletes to show the world, there is new country on the map.  Denis and Iztok went straight on for the bronze medal in Pair (2-), and thus be written in history as the first Olympic medalists for independent Slovenia.

1993 another bronze medal in pair (2-) World Rowing Championships in Račice, CZ

After Denis went on to study engineering at Brown University in Providence, RI USA, where together with fantastic Bruno crew, become 2x national collegiate champion in the open class of 8+ (Eight)

After returning home Denis joined (Klemenčič, Janša, Mujkić) to row in Four (4-), and finished 4th in the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games.  One year later in Lake Auigibilette again 4th in World Rowing Championships

Business career:

Denis started working in late nineties with his father in small engineering firm Basing, designing machinery for heavy industry.  He expanded business to 30 engineers strong design team, and designed furnaces, rolling mills, continuous casting equipment in steel industry, together with global solution providers likes of Siemens, VAI, Concast.  Most equipment was installed in industrial countries like Russia, India and China.  At home they installed and supervised rooftop of the national basketball sports Hall in Stozice, Ljubljana, where due to unpaid work, company had to close down.

Later on he co-devolped small design hotel on the lake Bled, along with exclusive restaurant and later amended 6 more small villas into exquisite tourist complex of Bled.

His passion for healthy eating inspired him to start a small Zaživ Vegan Burger restaurant, later expanded to Ljubljana as a Bistro for students and tourists.

From 2009-2013 he was President of Rowing Federation of Slovenia, and inspired the team for another Olympic medal in London Olympics.  In 2011 Bled hosted very succesfull World Rowing Championships, where Denis was also Vice president.

Personal development:

Denis was curious about hidden possibilities of our bodies since early age.  He was practicing yoga, became vegetarian in late teens.  Then discovering methods to improve his athletic performance, through bioenergy, mental preparation, meditation, autogenic training.  He pushed his body over the limits in many of the competitions, and proved that intense mind work, can help achieve athletic performance higher than experts estimate and anticipate.

After sports career, he continued successful career in business.  He started investing his time, money and effort in learning principles behind psychology of performance, internal drive, and wining altitude.  He studied body-mind connection through electro-magnetic field (aura) around human body, and access of deeper unconscious levels of our minds.  He found proven possibilities to stimulate physical body performance through bioenergy therapy.  With deep study and practice of hypnosis, NLP, hypnotherapy he also proved how we have very deep access into our unconscious mind and autonomous body functions.  Thus being possible to manipulate basic and primal body functions mentally, like heart rate, digestion, immune system response.  Methods has been lately expanded and upgraded with new discoveries and scientific proofs of such possibilities.  One very revolutionary concept is cold exposure, established and perfected by Wim Hof, the Iceman, which proven to restarts and boost immune system.

Denis, believes in healthy life style, and promoting vegan diet in recent years, as he practice it himself, and sees major advantage over vegetarian diet.  More and more people realize that there is no path to health without healthy plant based diet.

He merged all his knowledge and experience into Z4 Protocol, which can be lifestyle in it’s light form or full blown effective healing process in it’s normal fully fledged form.

He follow what he preaches, and is helping many people in need, mostly in need for health.  He’s passion is to stimulate “lost cases” patients, when they visit retreat program as a last hope, and then get revived, and literally get their lives returned.  Many believe it’s a miracle… but he says it’s just a knowledge applied properly.

Family life:

As he is perfectionist personal development, he also still believes in ultimate relationship, and perfect family.  Even philosophically he always promotes family to be basic cell of nation and only guarantee for future of civilization survival.  Father of three sons, they enjoy sports, nature and mental challenges.  In his constant pursue for life-time partner he only found his true love later in early forties and is now married to Martyna.  They teach together Bioenergy healing and run couple retreat programs, to help other couples overcome struggles in their relationships.

“As a successful entrepreneur and 1992 Olympic medalist I am always searching for cutting edge solutions which help me in my life goals.”  – Denis Žvegelj 2006

“Denis was born a “dreamer”… since young age had these ideas we all thought impossible, so we normally just smiled at him, after we figured it was impossible to convince him to stop or it’s not a good idea or it’s impossible… Yet he shocked us many times after 16years of age, with his achievements and modesty about it” – Ivan Žvegelj (father) in 2009