Barbell Shrugged - The Gift of the Coaches Eye, Gear vs. Raw Powerlifting, and Crossfit’s Advancement of the Sport of Powerlifting w/ C.J. Murphy — Barbell Shrugged #374

Episode Date: January 26, 2019

C.J. Murphy (@tpsmethod) is the owner of Total Performance Sports and the creator of the Total Performance Method and the Total Performance Method for Powerlifting (tpsmethod.com). His gym was featured as one of America’s 20 Best Gyms – twice. Murphy is on the Advisory Board for Men’s Fitness magazine and Muscle and Fitness magazine. C.J. has almost 30 years’ experience as a coach, athlete, and certified nutritionist. Murph is a retired Strongman competitor and former National Powerlifting Champion.   In this episode of Barbell Shrugged, we talk with CJ about the difference between powerlifting federations and the personalities that are attracted to them, the evolution of women in powerlifting, how Crossfit benefited the fitness and strength industry, the benefit of RPR for performance, and why no one cares how much you lift if you’re not a good person.   Enjoy!   - Anders and Doug   Episode Breakdown:  The gift of the coaches eye, gear vs. raw powerlifting, and Crossfit’s advancement of the sport of powerlifting   ⚡️0-10: Gear vs. Raw lifting ⚡️11-20: The difference between powerlifting federations and the personalities that are attracted to them ⚡️21-30: How to make any situation work for you   ⚡️31-40: The broken old man mode and nutrition for powerlifting ⚡️ 41-50: CJ’s competition history and the culture of his gym ⚡️51-60: The collection of dope powerlifting gear in CJ’s gym ⚡️61-70: The evolution of women in powerlifting and the good Crossfit did for the fitness and strength industry ⚡️71-80: The gift of the coaches eye ⚡️81-90: Creating a higher standard for what is normal and an intro to reflex performance reset (RPR) ⚡️91-100: The benefit of RPR for performance   ⚡️101-110: No one gives a shit how much you lift if you’re not a good person ⚡️111-120: How to raise a good kid and parent as a team ⚡️121-133: The TPS Method     ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs-murphy ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Shrugged family, we are back for another episode. Saturday, Shrugged. Getting to hang out with CJ Murphy today. We were up in Boston right before we went to the Strong New York event and walked into CJ Murphy's gym. And holy crap, there are a ton of strong people in there. I literally was going to the bathroom and overheard a conversation of two dudes, one of which was trying to squat 750 that day, and another guy was trying to squat 800. That's a lot of weight. I can't do that. That's almost double what I've ever done in my entire life. That's ridiculous. I think that this conversation is hysterical.

C.J. Murphy has been around weight rooms his entire life. He's been around powerlifting his entire life. He knows all the big names in powerlifting. And it is incredibly cool sitting down and just having a conversation with somebody that is so deep into a world that you know very little about. Additionally, I was sitting in a barber seat. Doug and I walked into C.J. Murphy's office, and he has four bass guitars hanging on the wall and two completely badass-looking barber seats,

and we just set up shop. I hope you enjoy the episode. I think it's awesome. I had a blast hanging out with CJ. And I think you're going to learn a ton about the powerlifting world, how CrossFit has affected powerlifting, and how cool it is to see how many girls have found the barbell and what he's doing to kind of push the female side of powerlifting and doing a lot of cool work. Once again, make sure you take a screenshot, tag me, hit the hashtag go long. I'm at Anders Varner on Instagram. I can't wait to hang out and shoot me a DM. If you have any questions, comments, all the fun things. Let's do this.

Yeah, he lives right down the street from us, so we actually went to the glute squad hangout like two weeks ago. There is so much ass in that place. It is stoop. You know, like, I assume you're really good at what you do. I think I am. And I did hear a guy in the bathroom say he was going to squat 600 today. Yeah.

I know he's good at what he does because when you walk in, there's ass everywhere. And his only job is to create ass. Right. So those guys, too, we don't train them. They train themselves. They have a couple of coaches. There's a few coaches that are big online coaches with their with their federation and um are we recording now yeah we are recording we haven't technically started the show yet but we've answered and then we'll start but they um

i like to leave this stuff in i don't i don't give a fuck they're all strong as balls but they're all complaining that they're hurt and banged up all the time and i've you know you try to give them tips and you can't give tips to people that aren't receptive. But I like them, and they're good kids, and they're good members. And they're typical of their generation in some ways and not typical of their generation in other ways. But, like, they all have a couple of little technique issues that if we could clean it up, they wouldn't be hurt.

And the kid that said he's going to squat 600 probably squats 675 in six months. Yeah. They do the cock thing with their neck, you and that's that's just fucking no good you know they're reaching for big cock you want to run away from the cock you know what i mean so you want to get that you don't and it's no good um and a couple other like one of the guys uh he was doing it and he's's pretty receptive to some help. So I'm like, dude, try this, right? So I did a little technique thing that I did with him,

and then he almost lost his balance when he stood up with the same weight a minute later, and he came up to me the other day and goes, dude, I put 50 pounds on my squat in the last three months, and he's already a 600-pound squatter. Yeah. And I'm like, what was the program? He goes, no, it was the technique correction you gave me. Nice. So I kind of wish that they would just let us help them, but they're young.

There's one 600. That seems interesting. I would not have expected that people that trained at this gym, or even this kind of gym, just wouldn't want help from you, the person who owns this kind of gym. It's unique to a federation. Certain pilots and federations do certain things, and certain people believe that if you're a multiply coach

that you don't know how to train raw lifters, and that's just fucking stupid, right? Because multiply people train raw the majority of the time. So I would argue that a multiply coach knows more than a raw coach because he knows both. A good one does. You know what I mean? And a lot of the younger crowd thinks that, well, we lifted this federation,

and they lifted a different federation, and the technique is different. It's a fucking squat. You go like this, and then you stand up, and you look at the lights. Are they white? Okay, then I did it right. It's a fucking squat, bro. You know what I mean? So it's not your technique isn't unique to a federation.

It's unique to whether you're raw or whether you're in gear because an equipped squat is completely different than a raw squat. If you try to do a raw squat technique in gear, you're not going to do it. You're going to fall forward. Your knees are going to dump in. It's a totally different lift. It's a totally different exercise. Just like an equipped bench is different than a raw bench.

It's a different technique, different muscles are used. But when we train raw, we train like a raw lifter yeah you know so i think the resistance comes from that where there was i had a former employee that i fired because he's a anyway uh he started this thing in here that the multiply guys don't know how to coach raw lifters because he was trying to do his own thing and branch off and uh he put some poison in the building, which is one of the reasons why he was terminated. But there was a little rift created, and they were somehow convinced that that was. Are you guys associated with a specific federation

or way of doing things in here or just get strong? Just get strong. It says on the website, we don't give a fuck where you compete as long as you do. But everybody is competing in here? Nope, nope. So that's the unique thing is so when we started, we started. Do you want to just start talking about it?

Oh, yeah. We're rolling. Because that kind of goes into what this is. You got far enough down the line here that we're rolling. Oh, I didn't know if we were going to do any intros or anything. Yep. We already did it. Fuck it.

Fuck it. In my personal intro, I will make sure everybody knows where we are. Rock out, cock out. Who you are, why you're here, and why this is already interesting enough that I don't need to tell them that. Welcome to Barbell Shrug. All right. So when we started, we started in 900 square feet in the back of my friend's karate school.

I was teaching boxing, kickboxing, and Muay Thai for him. And I was doing personal training at a couple of different gyms. And he calls me in, and he said, hey, listen, there's an auction going on. Somebody passed away in the auction off some gym equipment. Let's go. So we went and we looked at it. We bought a bunch of shit. We bought a power rack and some barbells and stuff.

And we put it in the back of the gym. And he said, this is just for me and you and a couple of other guys. Okay. I'm like, yeah, no problem, bro. So then I come to him a couple weeks later, and I'm like, listen, is it okay if I just take my personal training clients and bring them in here? He's like, yeah, but it's not going to turn into a powerlifting gym or a strongman gym and blah, blah, blah.

And then fucking two weeks later I bought a monolift and stones and fucking shit was on, right? Just a little bit at a time. Is it weird if we bring a monolift? Is that weird? It's a small piece of equipment. No one will notice. We want power lifts.

The place was only 900 square feet, the room we were in. It wasn't much bigger than this office. So imagine we had a power rack, a monolift, a glued hand bench, a reverse hyper, a full rack of dumbbells, a platform, three heavy bags hanging from the ceiling. We had Atlas stones lined up against one fucking wall. There'd be people hitting bags and fucking squatting. I don't know how

nobody died, right? But, you know, so then we primarily lifted APF. But it wasn't because we were married to a federation. It's because, you know,

25 years ago, there wasn't that many powerlifting meets around the world. Now there's a fucking, there's three meets every weekend all over the place.

Back then, you had to pick up PLUSA, find a meet six months away, and then travel to it. So we lifted primarily APF because that was the better federation. It was APF or ADFPA, which is now USAPL. ADFPA? Yeah, I think it was ADFPA. Anyway, USAPL turned it from a different federation. I think it was ADFPA. Anyway, USAPL turned it from a different federation. I think it was ADF paint.

And that was all raw lifting. And, you know, pretty much nobody lifted raw back then. Everybody lifted in gear. So we lifted APF. Yeah. And so a lot of people, so you could say that we were married to APF, but we weren't. If there was another federation around, we would have gone there. And then as things started making their way more into New England, we've lifted in the Alphabet Super Federation.

So we're not married to one, but we do lift. Our team lifts primarily with RPS. And the reason is Gene's a friend of mine. He owns the federation, and he runs a really, really outstanding meet. And another meet promoted by the name of Jamie Madda, Jamie and Megan, they do most of the New Hampshire and Maine-Vermont meets. And they just put on such a well-run meet, and it's lots of fun. The music's blaring, and they play the kind of music we want to listen to.

You know, different federations do different stuff. That's actually something that I, of all of the strength sports, powerlifting is probably the one that I'm the least, that I've never done. What separates all of them? You said you bring up the music, the gear, no gear. Like, what kind of separates, I guess, if there's three major ones, what are the differences in the three? I think it's the personality type is drawn towards a certain federation.

Yeah. You know, you get guys like me, the West Side type guys, the fucking beard, shaved head, goatees, tattoos, fucking riding Hollies, and chopped up fucking motorcycles and cars. We're like, we're going to go in and fucking smash weight and listen to metal. I saw your car outside. That's not a quiet car that you start up.

That's a sick car. It makes noise. You guys want to go for a cruise? Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. It's a badass car. It's the very first thing I said when I turned to the parking lot. What is it? It's a 1968 Coupe de Ville. It's not quiet when you turn it on, and I haven't even heard it turn on yet.

It's got two cherry bombs underneath it, and you can hear it a block away. It's 472 cubic inches of Americana. It's a badass ride. Yeah. And it runs like a brand-new car. Start that motherfucker up. You drive it from here to California and back. It runs like a new car.

Come and hang out with us. Next time you see it, it's going to be different. We've got some plans over the winter. The front's chopped. I've got to chop the back. At some point, we're going to chop the top. I don't know if you know what that is, but you cut the roof in half and you bring the roof way down.

So we've got some plans for that thing. But the federations, different, I think, personalities are drawn to different federations. So the primary federations you see around here are USAPL, and that tends to be a lot of the younger crowd and the raw lifters and the single-ply lifters. And what I see is the bulk of participants in USAPL are college-age kids, maybe a little bit older, but that's the bulk of it. And they tend to be – I don't want to talk like bad about people,

and I'm not talking bad about them, but they tend to be a little bit higher educated, possibly a little bit more analytical, not to say that people in other federations aren't educated or analytical, but that's, you know, you kind of see that crowd there. You go to like an RPS meet and you're going to see recently there's a surge in the raw lifting all over the place, right? So you're going to see recently there's a surge in the raw lifting all over the place, right? So you're going to see some carryover of the same people. But the bulk of the people that you see at that are going to be more into different, you know, it's a little bit more in your face, a little bit more metal. And then there's SPF, which isn't too big around here. It's kind of the same as RPS.

And APF is kind of the same. And then there is USPA starting to make some inroads up here. And that's just a kind of a mix of people. I've only been to a few USPA meets. But, like I said, we tend to lift RPS because APF kind of died out around, American Powerlifting Federation, they kind of died out in this area. And then Gene was working for the IPA, and the IPA is now defunct, but he was running IPA meets.

And we were friends. Gene's the first person to bench 1,000 pounds, Gene Rischleck. So he was running really good meets for IPA, and then they kind of went defunct, and he started his own federation, RPS. And they have raw and multiply and single-ply, so they cater to everybody. And they're a very lifter-focused organization. They want the lifters to have fun. They want them to have good judging and have a good time at the meet

while still being able to lift and compete. Some of the other federations are a little bit too rule-oriented. It's not that complicated of a fucking sport. You just pick it up. You stand up with the squat, fucking squat to depth, and then stand back up, and then the bench. You take it out, and you lower it down, and you press it up, and if your ass doesn't come off the bench, it's a good lift.

If it's a deadlift, you just stand up, and then you put it down. And there's so many rules in some other federations, it's almost no fun. Like, you know, getting caught on a technicality because you didn't take the thumb loop off your hand on your wrist wrap. Come on. Did that give you any more go on the squat? Was it always powerlifting for you as the emphasis like since day one like how did you get into it i think i got into it the same way as everybody else did

you know that was i don't know six seven years old watching world's strongest man on my world of sports and you see franco running the fucking fridge on his back right and now you're like man i want to be the strongest motherfucker in the world right so i always wanted to be strong so i started with the 110 pound dp weight set made out of concrete in the basement in the world, right? So I always wanted to be strong, so I started with the 110-pound DP weight set made out of concrete in the basement in the big poster, you know, doing everything fucking wrong. And then this is funny. When I was, I think, as a freshman in high school,

so what are you, 13 years old, 14 years old? Yeah. A chain of gyms called Living Well. We called them Living Hell. They opened up around here. And they were just fucking awful, man. They were like, did they have ballys? Yeah.

So you know how ballys, like the sales force, and they just tormented you? Living Well was the same way. I think Living Well may have actually reorganized and turned into ballys. I'm not sure. But they signed an EFT contract with me. I had to go open a checking account when I was 13 fucking years old. They let me join the gym. So I started lifting there.

It was all bodybuilding, reading bodybuilding mags. And then there was an article on powerlifting, so I started lifting there. It was all bodybuilding, reading bodybuilding mags. And then there was an article on powerlifting, so I started reading that. And I was like, ooh, I want to get into that. Because there was no strongman around here. Nobody did that back then. It was only on TV. Yeah. And so I started reading PLUSA and started reading Hatfield's books.

Because there was no internet. Right. There was no internet in fucking 1981, you know. Or there was, but we didn't have access to it, right? So it's kind of the same progression. You start with bodybuilding, then you get into strength. And then one day a buddy of mine called me up, and he said, I'm running a strongman show.

And he was a pro strongman at the time, and there was no strongman shows in mass. And like I said, there was no internet, so you couldn't look it up, so you didn't even know if it's around. He said, I'm running a strongman show. You want to do it? I'm like, fuck it, I'll do it, bro. You know, whatever. And I signed up for it, and then fuck it.

That's how we started. Isn't it strange that you can go through your whole life, like as a kid, learning how to do this thing without the internet? Nobody for the rest of time is going to have a... Figuring shit out on your own. Yeah. How the fuck am I going to pick this up? So, I...

I don't know. No one fucking taught me how to do it. We had to figure it out ourselves. I'll just... Maybe if I keep my back straight, I'll try and tighten my abs up. That'll help. It won't hurt that next time, right? So, I had this exact conversation.

Why'd you hurt your back? No one taught me how to do it. I didn't know. There was no internet. Jerks. Stupid kids now. So easy. One billion YouTube videos later, they all have the answers. There was no internet. Jerks. Stupid kids now. So easy. One billion YouTube videos later, they all have the answers.

They want to go compete? All they got to do is Google it. There's an event every weekend you can go to. Right. Back in the day, it was just, I don't know. I got to pick this rock up. Let's see what happens. Right.

That's the first draw man contest was that. We showed up, and they told us what the events were, so we were practicing the events. And we got there, and they had to change some of up and they told us what the events were so we were practicing the events and we got there and they had to change some of them because they didn't test the ground. We were doing everything on an asphalt driveway and we got there and it was in my buddy's trucking yard and it was all that

loose stone so the arm-over-arm truck pull we couldn't do because the truck was stuck in the stone so they had to change an event. And then there was another event. I forget what it was but they couldn't do it because the equipment broke and they only had one piece and a friend of mine started manufacturing stuff and he brought it to the cell, so we threw a super yoke in it

and nobody fucking complained. Nobody complained. We just went through the lift heavy shit. We didn't give a fuck, right? And now people call me when I'm running the show, what's in the goodie bags? Who fucking cares what's in the goodie bags? You're here to lift, right? But on your point that you were just saying about figuring shit out,

I had this conversation yesterday. One of my old coaches was here to train. He trains now. He's not coaching anymore. He's got a different – it's a long story. Life, family, blah, blah, blah, right? But he still trains with us at 12 o'clock. And he asked me, do you think – we should have brought him in

because he's great with conversation. Do you think that if you had access to the information now that kids have access to now that you would be a better lifter than if you came up the way you did? And I'm like, I don't know. Would I be a better lifter? And then he said, do you think that you're a better coach now because of the way you came up versus the way kids came up now? And I said, well, I don't know. I think I'm definitely a better coach now because we had to figure out everything because we did everything fucking wrong.

I tell everybody, I made every fucking mistake going, so just learn from my mistakes. I'm not perfect, and I don't know everything, but I know way more than you do because you haven't lifted a weight in your life, and I've done everything wrong. There's also a piece, though, that we played. We were playing in the gym all the time. I still feel like I go to the gym and play, and that's were playing in the gym all the time i still feel like i go to

the gym and play and that's really important in the learning process it's not just like kids now you go on there like like fuck i need a program no you kind of do but you kind of don't you do and sometimes you want to be sometimes you just show up and have fun with your friends a lot of people see who can lift the most yeah a lot of people choose not to experiment because they're just going to wait to go look it up. Yeah. Right. There's a downside to that.

Yeah. It's great that you can go look it up. Yeah. But there's a downside that you don't get the experience because you choose not to because you can just go look it up later. Yeah. So I feel like even going through a very long time where I had a program all the time and then it was like man i miss just going and having fun and just seeing what's possible like maybe i don't have to lift with my feet directly under me or the pull-up doesn't have to look exactly there's a lot of ways to go experience the gym that don't have to be so

structured and perfect the way some smart person tells you and when there's no internet there's no way to learn you go play right and that's the point that we brought up after that said you know and he's like would you be strong or as strong i said well you know i think i may have been a technically better lifter but i don't know because i always sought out the people that knew what to do like you know when i was young there was a group of power lifters that happened to be world champions at the gym i trained and i was the guy that said hey you guys show me what to do like fuck you rack weights for us like all right but then I rack weights and then they taught me how to do shit but part of that

point was that when we were young you know we'd write a program out and we'd start following it but then it's like if it's a nice day out and like what do you guys want to do we're supposed to do dynamic squats and then this and then this and it's like fuck it let's just go lift stones for three hours you know what I mean but you would never program somebody to go lift stones for three hours or what are we going to do today well we're supposed to do you know five sets of eight and then blah blah blah like fuck that man let's just max and see who can kick each other's ass yeah and there's a lot to be said for that but i think there's also a lot to be said we're not knowing what strong means like when you're picking the stone up,

you didn't know that that was maybe 10% of the strongest person. So there was never like you just continually tried to get stronger for yourself because you didn't have the slew of information of people where you knew that 225 was the best snatch or 315 is like you should be able to do that. It was like, well, I'll just keep picking this one up until it's light, and then I'll go pick the bigger one up. Go pick another one up.

I don't know where I'm going. I have no clue. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing. I just keep getting better. So do we not follow a program or do we follow a program? I think you have to follow a program. Yeah. Sometimes you need a break.

You know what I mean? But to point what you were saying is that one of the things that I always did is I compared myself to, you know, I wanted to be a successful powerlifter, so I wasn't looking at what they were doing at local meets. I was looking at the top ten rankings in powerlifting USA. So if there's a guy in the 308s that's squatting a grand, and back then that was like hen's teeth. A grand squat was a huge deal. Now it's not, you know.

But if there's a guy in the 08s that's, you know, in the top 10 with a 900 pound squat, well, fuck it, man. I got to squat 900 pounds. That's it. You know what I mean? And then I was fortunate enough to about, I don't know, 20 or so years ago to hook up with, with, with David elite. And those guys became my peer group. And so now I'm comparing myself to my peer group, even though those guys are way better lifters than I am. Um, so I it's, it's, that better lifters than I am. So that wasn't the thing for me, and that wasn't the thing in our gym. We didn't compare ourselves to the locals. We compared ourselves to the best in the world.

And, you know, like one time Sven Kalsen came over. It's a culture thing. You create a culture. Travis Mash talks about that all the time. You create a culture of excellence. Travis Mash has these little kids down there that are just fucking mashing weights. Animals. I'm like, what's wrong with these kids?

Nothing. This is what happens here. 14-year-olds are supposed to squat 500 pounds. I know that 315 is strong. Right. 405 is average. Right. Just what it is.

We've got girls that squat 315. Yeah. You know? Not big girls either. Yeah. I've got a 148 that squats 400 and change. I've got a 132 that squats 440 i think yeah well there you go i don't do that so the 132 she benches almost 300 um so but anyway i'm saying

like about the the crazy shit and like i used to bring sven over from norway uh once or twice a year and he'd stay at my house and we'd train. And we were warming up one day. We were doing rack pulls from the ankle. And me and Bobby, my trainer partner, get up to like seven-ish. And I almost collapsed on the floor after I pulled that. You know, from the ankle is the worst fucking position. It's hotter than off the floor.

And I was like, fuck that, man. I'm good. And then Bobby pulled it. And he's like, I'm fucking good. And Sven stood up. He goes, I'm just fucking warming up, my friends. And we're like, oh, fuck. He ends up pulling like 950 or something.

So we had to go and try to pull another five pounds. I almost died. But that's the kind of beat yourself into the fucking ground mentality where had we followed a program constantly, would you be as strong? I don't know. But had I followed a well-structured program, would I be as injured? Because I'm beat the fuck up. I've torn everything off.

I got a torn bicep tendon on this side from a month ago, and I just tore, we don't know what muscle, but this was all eggplant purple. I tore something in this arm, not in the gym, but I mean, I've torn everything. So would I be less banged up if I followed a proper program 100% of the time? I don't fucking know. I mean, these days I don't really follow a program specifically,

but I follow, like, a template. A guideline. Yeah, like Westside famously has their, like, week-long template about how they structure their workouts throughout the week. And, like, having the mental model or framework on which you can hang your exercises so to speak but but knowing that if something is hurt or if you're banged up like how to switch out exercises or switch out set and rep schemes where like you're accomplishing the same goal but you're not you're not just following something completely blind is a really good idea as far as longevity right so i'm a huge believer in a program

obviously because i sell programs, but I've always followed a program for the most part, but I've also deviated from the program. I've followed all my programs with deviations. With deviations, right. So, you know, I think a program's important, but I agree. I think that sometimes you, none of my clients don't do this. Sometimes you've got to do what you feel like doing. We've mentioned Westside a couple times, and Dave, did you ever train with Louie at Westside?

No, I've never trained at Westside, but I got really great secondhand information from my friends that train there. Yeah. I've never met Louie. I've spoken with him on the phone and Louie's like this fucking dude, man. Have you ever met him? Ever talked to him? Yeah, I've met him three or four or five times. Louie's like one of these dudes. He didn't fucking know me from a hole

in the wall and I called him up and he spent 45 minutes talking on the phone. I hear he picks the phone up every time. This is 20 something years ago. He's Louie. He's Louie. He's Louie. That's all. He lives in a different world.

He does. You just found Joe Rogan. Go listen to the interview he did with Rogan. I did. Oh, there you go. That's great. He's not on this planet. Louie is fucking awesome.

That guy literally only cares about how much weight you can squat, deadlift, and bench, and making sure you do dynamic day. Dynamic day is awesome. Yeah, he's an interesting human being. Louie's we gotta go meet him again well i'll meet him i'm actually totally shocked to hear you say that you've been in the game for a long time like you probably know a million people in the industry and in the sport of powerlifting to to not have ever met louis simmons seems seems really unlikely well it's it's it's it is unlikely but it's not and the reason is um i wasn't able to travel for a long time.

The family and work, you know, I was working a full-time job because I had to with some family medical situations to keep a roof over the family's head. So I started the gym as a way to do a lot of things and one was to you know do what i wanted to do but uh it's it's a i don't want to get into that side of the story but there was there was you know there's some some family medical issues and i had to remain uh working at the sheriff's department for a lot longer than i wanted to um so working at the sheriff's department 40 hours a week as a full-time deputy and then running the gym 40 hours a week 40 plus hours a week i a full-time deputy, and then running the gym 40 hours a week, 40-plus hours a week, I wasn't able to travel. So what I started to do is I'd find people in the industry that I wanted to learn from,

and this was before anybody was doing seminars. I'd fly them out, and that's how I met Dave. I called Dave up, and I'm like, hey, you want to do a force production seminar here? And he did, I think, his second or his third force production seminar at my place. And him and I hit up became friends uh and then you start meeting more people through the industry by bringing them out so I wasn't really able it wasn't that I didn't want to travel to go meet Louis I'd love to but I just wasn't able to until recently I started being able to do more things and then you know owning a business I always say I have a great team but for a long time I didn't have like I was afraid to leave the building for a day for fear that it would fucking burn down.

You know, I'd come back from a day off. I'd be like, what the fuck? You were supposed to do this and blah, blah, blah. And now the crew that I have now, like, I'll walk out of my office and, like, they're doing, I don't know. I don't even know what they're doing. They got ladders out and they're fixing something on the roof or they're moving the gym around or they're doing all kinds of stuff. And I'm like, what are you doing? They're like, don't worry about it.

We've got the place under control. And they got the place under control. I could leave for a month and the place would be running. Obviously, I'd be backed up with my own stuff, but I wasn't able to do that before, and now I'm able to do it. So maybe at some point I'll get to go meet Louie. But I have been out to a lead a shitload of times, and Louie wasn't there at any of those times.

But, you know, being involved with that crew, I think I got a lot of really good secondhand information because I wasn't there. But those guys trained at Westside, and I got a lot of stuff from Dave and Jimmy while they were at Westside. Like, what did you guys do today? Oh, we did this. I'm like, come on.

That's what you did? Yeah. That's not what's in PLUSA. He goes, fuck that. We did some other shit today too. It was awesome. We did this. So I got a lot of great first-hand, second-hand information from them.

So it's kind of like I may have possibly met Louie in my brain, but not in the real world. You've absorbed enough. I've absorbed it. And I don't claim to be an expert on what they do by any stretch of the word, but I was able to get some really good information from people that were outstanding lifters there

and develop some really good friendships with those guys. So what was the motivation behind you've been a gym owner for 20 years now? 20 years, yeah. What was the motivation to have your own gym that you're spending time running versus just continuing to train at a gym? To get Richie to stop nagging me to take the business over from him. So Rich Angelo was one of my best friends, father, brother, best friend, mentor. And I worked for him teaching boxing, kickboxing, Thai boxing at his place.

And he always said, at some point, I want to have you take over the business. And I was like, I don't want to own a business, dude. I just like coming in, training a couple people, getting my paycheck and doing my thing. And he kept saying, you got to own your own business. You got to do it. And I'm going to have a business, dude. I just like coming in, training a couple people, getting my paycheck and doing my thing. And he kept saying, you've got to own your own business. You've got to do it. And I'm going to have you take it over. And this went on for a couple of years. And then when I realized that I wasn't able to retire from –

I wanted to retire from the Sheriff's Department at 10 years because that's the way the pension worked. You invest into the pension system and you get health benefits. If you're in the system 10 years, I was going to leave and then, you know, try to make a full-time job of personal training at other facilities. And I had just kind of started bringing people in at that point and doing most of my training in the back of the gym in that little room we set up. And Richie said, why don't you take it over? And I was like, you know what? Fuck it, dude. I'll take it over. I never really wanted to own my own business. And I just kind of took it over as a hobby.

And the rent was so low, you couldn't fail. You know what I mean? The rent was like $500 a month. So we charged $50 for kickbox, and 10 people covered the bills. Everything else is gravy. And then it just grew, and it grew, and it grew. And it got to the point where it was so big, Richie said, why don't we find a bigger building?

And I said, okay, we're going to find a bigger building. So we were looking for a bigger building, and then he decided that he kind of wanted to get out because he was already doing it for 20, 30 years at that point. And he's like, do you want this building? I'll sell you this building at a really fair price and you can have it. But the whole place was like 2,000 square feet, and I didn't think that was big enough. Looking back, maybe I should have stayed there and just kept it 2,000 square feet, and I didn't think that was big enough. Looking back, maybe I should have stayed there and just kept it 2,000 square feet with all the issues that we've had with the different locations and a couple of the buildings being

just fucking money pits. But I said, you know what? I'll just find a place. I'll go myself, and then you can sell this for premium money. And so that's how we moved into our own building. I moved into a 7,000 square foot location right next door and then he flipped that building for an ass load of money because he paid shit for it.

And then he got out of the business and then he just kept doing his thing with real estate and such. He's passed now. He died in a triathlon. He was qualifying for the Worlds, for Team USA in, I think it was Lake George. Excuse me. He got kicked in the head and drowned.

That's actually his trophy. He did one of my Strongman shows and won the first one. And those pictures are all his. His wife gave me those, the ones up on the left, the Ironman. We're in his old gym. Did you ever read those, Milo, growing up? Did you have access to all those? Yeah, we just talked about them.

I got them all. I got, I think, every issue. I got them all. Yeah, yeah. I got, I think, every issue. It was like almost a pamphlet. Yeah, they lost me when they switched the format to the magazine style. It wasn't the same. I like the old books that were like eight inches by six inches or whatever they were. Yeah, I had like a 10-foot stack of them in my bookcase at home.

Yeah. But so we moved into our own building at 7,000 square feet, and that was an interesting endeavor. I'll just leave that at that. Fun side note about Milo. Milo. I didn't even know about the mythical character carrying the – Shut the fuck up.

I swear to God I knew about the magazine, the strength magazine, before I knew about the guy carrying the cow up the hill. Really? Yeah. And then I heard about that and I was like, oh, that fucking makes sense. I'm an idiot. how did that happen well i uh just i guess i didn't really know about my what is it greek mythology yeah they didn't teach you that in school school's a difference that's a very i didn't learn in school i had a strength coach that had milo yeah i told you what it was yeah

i only knew about mythology in school yeah i did not have that class i only knew about the magazine or the pamphlet or the book, whatever it is. And then many years later, somebody was talking about, I was like, I wonder if we could just create a program where people do heavy lifts every day. They'd be really healthy. They would have full body strength. It would be really healthy. They would have full body strength. It would be very functional. And they were like, oh, like Milo carrying the calf up the mountain. I was like, oh, more than the magazine?

It's like, I thought. And then you feel like a total idiot because you're the only one in the room for how many years that had that wrong. We all feel like idiots about something. What does your training look like nowadays? Me? I'm in the broken old man mode uh i trained west side for the majority of my training career uh and then i incurred a fairly substantial knee injury um at the sheriff's department i needed a reconstruction and then two more surgeries on it after that um and uh i started the west side

strongman hybrid years and years ago. I was the first person I know that did that. There's an article up on Elite with the original template on it. And then I switched off of that. I took a break from competing in Strongman because I was just too fucking banged up with, you know, most of the injuries didn't come from lifting, but they came from other stuff.

But the knee surgery really prevented me from doing a lot of stuff because it was pretty bad for a long time. I couldn't do much. But that's all healed up now. So then I switched over. I did some different style. I've tried pretty much every type of programming you can do. I've run everything for, you know, I try to run at least six months.

But I always went back to Westside. I always went back to Westside, conjugate style training. That worked the best for me. But now I wasn't able to bench an empty bar without, like, crippling, searing pain for a while. I wasn't able to walk properly because of a hip issue I have related to the knee surgery. Some complications from the knee surgery caused some hip jack up. So basically what I did for a while is I'd just walk around the gym and say, well, I'll try this and see if I can do this today.

Well, that didn't work. I'll try this and see if I can do this today, and that didn't work. And then things started getting better with, you know, I've tried every voodoo, soft tissue, doctor, whatever you can do to try to get the hip better. And a couple of things really worked, but RPR, reflexive performance reset, is what really made the difference in it. And we can talk about that a little bit if you wanted to.

Yeah, I was going to say, what is that? We've never talked about that on the show. Yeah, we'll go into that in a second. But the RPR allowed me to start walking again, which my primary concern wasn't lifting anymore and it wasn't competing anymore was being able to walk from the car and not look like a fucking victim going down to the store um but i've since returned to lifting i'm doing a little bit and i'm trying to be smart

about it uh so what i'm doing now is i'm running this template uh of my own programming that i was following pretty well until i tore this bicep and then I couldn't do it. But I'm going to go back to it where I'm taking a movement and I'm changing the movement every week for whatever it is. So let's say I squat on Monday. Next Monday, I won't squat. I'll maybe do a good morning. And the week after that, maybe I'll do farmer's walks. As long as it's a lower body exercise. I try to rotate the exercise every week.

I'll rotate the movement, not necessarily the exercise. On press day, I'll bench one day, maybe floor press another day, maybe overhead press another day, maybe log press another day. I was back to competing and bench only for a little while, and then things just started to flare up again. So I said, just take a break from that just try to do this so what i'm doing is i'm doing more and less one rep max stuff no more than a heavy triple uh threes and fives for the most part of the main exercise and i'm so i'm rotating exercises every rotating movements every week um and i'm doing a lot more high rep stuff than i ever did which i find it seems

like common sense but it just didn't you know i'm thick as a brick so yeah i think we've all been there yeah i think i think as you get older um the higher rep stuff is better for you uh so i'm doing a lot of accessory work in in uh like i won't go less than eight reps, but I'm doing sets of 30, 40, 50, 100 reps on stuff that doesn't really build a lot of muscle and make you too strong. But it's keeping me healthy and keeping me mobile. 100 reps. It sucks, dude. It fucking sucks. It's like a whole training session to me.

Yeah. Not even. I'm at a 50 total and I'm out. Fuck that, bro. Nine reps would be a whole training session for me before. Yeah. I pick a whole, not even, I'm at a 50 total, I'm out. Fuck that, bro. Nine reps would be a whole training session for me before. You know, so I'll do like, if it's squat day, I'll throw the briefs on and I'll set a box height that's right above where the pain would kick in in the hip. So it usually like a 15 and a half inch box would be what I would train for, for a

meet. So I'll go like 16 and a half, 17, which keeps me out of the pain range. I'll throw the briefs on, and I think the heaviest I've taken is I took 455 with like four chains on each side a couple of months ago. There's an Instagram video of it. It moved pretty good. And that's not heavy, but, you know, that's nothing, you know. But I couldn't squat. I couldn't sit in the chair two years ago and get out of the chair. As just a, for a general conversation, what were your max numbers?

My best squat was around 800. My bench was always pitiful. It was 510. And my pull was 710. You know, back then those weren't bad numbers by today's standards. They're, you know, they're awful. But it's like the five-minute mile. Yeah.

I don't know. By today's standards, they're awful. But it's like the five-minute mile. Yeah. My best squat at a meet, I think, was, you know, everybody says you always remember your lifts, and I don't remember a fucking thing about it. I couldn't tell you what I had for breakfast. I think it was 725. It's on the board out in the gym. I think it's 725 was the best squat at a meet. But I've done almost 800 in the gym to a box and off the box.

So that's not really your best squat, but we train on a box. So if I can squat 750 on a box in the gym to a box and off the box. That's not really your best squat, but we train on a box. So if I can squat 750 on a box in the gym, I should be able to hit that in the meet. You know what I mean? And the bench was always really bad. I had a torn labrum in my shoulder forever from jiu-jitsu. Don't do MMA. That's the one that I want to get into. It's not good if you want to be injury-free, but it's very fun.

No, if you tap when you're supposed to tap, you'll be injury-free. I think I'm old enough now to know that I don't want to get hurt first and foremost. How old are you? 35. Oh, you're fucking young, bro. Well, yeah, but I've been hurt, and I've done all the dumb shit. No, do more dumb shit. I don't know.

Do fucking more, bro. But being hurt sucks. It does, but you're still young enough where you can bounce back from it in like two weeks. I don't know. Throw a little growth hormone in there. Fine. Yeah. It makes everything better.

So back to the training, it's just I'm doing now stuff to keep myself mobile and preserve muscle mass, basically, because at 50, I'm not going to put on a lot of muscle mass. And a lot of it too was weight loss I just dropped 85 pounds fuck that's crazy yeah less now than I am in high school I graduated high school 225 I'm 220 but I was in the

08's forever and it was a chore to keep that weight on so then I said I'm just going to tighten my diet up. What does that diet look like when you're at max weight? I love this conversation. I love how much you guys eat and how absurd the calories that go into your – I'll give you a little taste. We will pull up to the McDonald's, try it through.

It always starts at McDonald's. Where can we get free steroids? Go to McDonald's. This can we get free steroids? Go to McDonald's. This is straight truth. Can you put some extra hormones in that Big Mac, please? Can we get a little extra tea in that burger, please? Vitamin T. The lowest quality meat with the highest hormone level.

It's not fucking meat, bro. No. It's meat product, but this is true on my son's life. Me and the kid Kevin, I was saying, we were talking about the kid I was talking about yesterday with those intelligent questions on whether he'd be a good coach. And this kid Steve that used to work for me, he's the funniest motherfucker you ever met. We would get done training, and we would get in the car, we'd go to McDonald's, and we'd pull up to the drive-thru, and they'd be like, what do you want?

I'd be like, three bags of burgers, please. And the first time,'d be like, what do you want? I'd be like, three bags of burgers, please. And the first time they're like, what? Get three of the biggest bags you have and throw double cheeseburgers off the dollar menu in there and fill them up. And they're like, huh? So they give us a bag, you know, big fucking shopping bag. Yeah. One each.

And we'd sit in the fucking car. We'd eat fucking 25 burgers. Just hammer them. You've got to finish eating the bag on the toilet because those things are coming right the fuck out as soon as you're done, right? Oh, man. Eating was a chore, dude. Yeah. You know what I mean?

And it was always. I always thought eating was a chore for me, and I was trying to get to, like, 195 and then cut to 185. But people are there, like, 280 trying to get to 320, and that's a way different story. I'm just going to throw this screen up because you'll see some pitches popping up on it. Yeah, eating was –

A.J. Roberts used to host one of our shows and was working with us for a long time, and he had very similar stories. Yeah, so – Smashing cheesecakes on a day to day basis. You name it. Fast food every day. I mean, you name it. Constantly. And I convinced myself that i was eating clean because i'd eat three or four good meals a day but then you know fucking half a dozen choco tacos on the ride home and uh you know whatever

and uh you know i went from sometimes i was a really fat disgusting 308 and sometimes it was somewhat jacked 308 and uh when i decided to stop competing i said he's gonna'm just going to get this fucking weight off because I'm going to die of a stroke. I think that's why a lot of really competitive powerlifters get out of it because it's like – I mean, Louie talked about, like, conditioning. Like, I barely want you to be able to get to your car. Barely. Because that's too much. I mean, when I was doing Strongman, dude, I was fucking big.

And I was somewhat fat, but I was in shape. Well, strongman's different because it's actually, there's a big conditioning component to it. Yes, powerlifting, you just want to be at a certain level of GPT. Strongman, those people are freaks. Freaks. Dude, if you've got to do a medley, it's going to take you a whole minute. You've got to be in good shape.

Yeah. Yeah. Was it Eddie? Eddie Hall. Yeah. That guy does not have a lot of body fat on him, and I think he just went into the keto thing. Yeah.

His peck is not going to work anymore. And dude is shredded. It's crazy what he looks like. Are you talking about Terry Hollins? I thought it was Eddie Hall. Didn't Terry Hollins just drop a ton of fucking weight? It may have been him, but I thought it was Eddie Hall. You said Eddie Hall on keto, and I was like, what, really?

I said his peck is not going to work anymore. Yeah. Yeah, what's the word with that? Well, that's what they say if you go on keto for a long time, that it affects your voice and your Jimmy doesn't want to go up. I got you. I don't have any experience with that, but I've heard that from a lot of people. I haven't heard that from any people.

Yeah, I've heard that. I don't know how true it is, but that's, you know, I've had a couple people telling me, dude, my prick doesn't work anymore. Eat a sweet potato, bro. It's medicine at this point. I'd rather eat a sweet potato and have a little bit of fat around the waist than be ripped with no peck of

soy. I got my priorities fucked up, though. I don't think you do. Did you compete much in Strongman? Yeah, I did a couple. And you competed at the same weight class in Strongman as in powerlifting? Yeah. Yeah, I was definitely a lot leaner and better shape in Strongman.

Definitely. Was it harder to do that? You know, I don't know. Well, in Strongman, there was no weight classes back then. Oh, that's just what you were. It was Strongman. Then you leaned out. Yeah, now there's weight classes.

Like when I was promoting Strongman, I did it for about 18 years, we started the novice division. I took that from boxing, right? So boxing has a novice class. We can go in, get your feet wet. So I talked to the people that own NAS, Dion and Willie, and said, why don't we start a novice division in Strongman? It's one and done.

The weight's a lighter, you know, and you can get in and try a show out and see if it's for you. And the very first novice show was one of my shows and it was a way for people to try it out. And, you know, we had weight classes of lightweight and heavyweight. 230 and under, 231 and over. And now there's fucking 52 weight classes

in Strongman. Get the fuck out of here. Come on. You know what I mean? It's not the whole everybody gets a trophy thing I'm not cool with. I like the lightweight and heavyweight. I'd even stretch it to light, middle, and heavyweight. I kind of wish powerlifting would go that way. You know, it's like boxing.

Boxers got 52,000 fucking weight classes. Here's an idea. Under 220, over 220. Fuck you if you can't win. You know what I mean? That's just me. And when I started strongman, there was no weight class. You just did strongman.

And if you couldn't lift a weight, that's too fucking bad. And I was always the smallest guy there. I was 6 feet tall, 300, 310, and I'd be going up against guys that were 6'9", 370. They're pretty good, but obviously the guy that's fucking 6 inches taller than you is getting that stone up onto the 16-inch box better than you are because he's got the advantage, but nobody cared. Nobody complained. You know what I mean?

So, I don't know. Does that answer the question? Do you ever get a chance to go to any of the World's Strongest Man competitions in person? No. Again, it goes back to the travel thing. I was asked a few times. Sven asked me to go with him a couple times,

but I never had the opportunity to go. I just couldn't do the travel. Between both jobs, you know, try to get time off. I can't tell my boss at the sheriff's department I need a week off to go fucking help my buddy out in fucking Malaysia. The world's strongest man. You know? I'm going to go pick some rocks up. You got this under control for me, right?

I told my old captain, this guy right up here, there's a picture of him. I said to him one day he needed me to stay and do something uh somebody was whatever something was going on and he's like uh i need you to uh to do this and it was like 2 30 and the shift ended at three i'm like bro i gotta get to work i gotta be at work at quarter of four he's like you got one fucking job kid i'm like so asking for a week off to go to malaysia wasn't gonna happen you know um and then having one income for the household, it's kind of tough. Everybody's like, oh, you're rich, you own a gym. I'm like, yeah, okay.

Yeah. Sure. Yeah. All right. How many incomes do you have at your house? Two? All right. I got one, you know.

Let's talk about your gym a little bit. Let's talk about my gym. This is a dope spot. It's fucking sweet. Yeah. It is sweet. I mean, you got everything, a fucking total meathead, whatever you want in a gym. You got a weight lift in the area.

You got a power lift in the area. You got kind of a general strength training area. It's not too clean. It's got like that. It's clean enough. It's clean enough. It's sanitary. It's sanitary.

It's got that underground, like rough, like hardcore feel to it, which every real lifter fucking loves. Yeah. It's not a feel. It's what it is, bro. Yeah. And this is the cleanest spot we've ever had. The other places were all just old.

Like my last location was an old, nasty mill building that we couldn't clean it. It was fucking disgusting. It was awesome. Yeah. But, yeah, the gym, we have – it's 10,000 square feet, and I thought it would be big enough because we came from 40. So we started at 900. We moved to 7,000, and then we went to 40,000 square feet, and I thought it would be big enough because we came from 40. So we started at 900. We moved to 7,000, and then we went to 40,000.

4-0? 4-0, 40,000. Oh, really? Four floors. Holy shit. That's really big. I think we were the biggest gym in the state for a while. That's a whole long story that we don't even need to discuss.

Yeah. You were talking about high overhead or money sucks or whatever you said earlier. It was the money. Now that makes sense. It was this thing like we're in the 7,000 square foot location and my landlord was a fucking scumbag. I'll tell you his name. You'll assume me, but he was a piece of shit. He's the guy that like if you're from the neighborhood and somebody says, who's your landlord?

And you say his name, they're like, oh, that fucking guy. Come on. You got to deal with that guy. He made a handshake deal with me that he would sell me the building after my five-year lease was up at an agreed upon price and once i signed the lease he came in drunk every day he's like oh hey i'm probably gonna have to violate your lease because there's a soda can in the parking lot and you're not keeping the property i'm like fuck you i just put a roof on the building and two bathrooms and and 10 tons of ac and blah blah blah so we had to move out of that building when my lease expired because he said, I'm not renewing your lease.

I'm going to kick you out. You're a tenant at will. And then he really was a piece of shit. And then a Gold's Gym vacated, violated their lease and moved out of a building. And the owner was a friend of a friend. And he knew that I was looking for space. So he was a really good guy.

He gave me the 40,000 square foot space to get me in for the first year at what I was paying for the 7,000 square feet. He was a good guy, you know, and then he made me a reasonable offer on the thing, and, you know, you've got to front that money for that space out of your savings, and then you don't have any fucking savings anymore. And then we were five years in there. But you paid for that whole year?

I paid the same rate that i was paying 7 000 square feet for the first year and then it went up to market rate i gotcha gotcha i went to market rate but that's the market rate charged me fair rent you know it wasn't he didn't gouge me yeah it was like 11 bucks a square foot or something which is pretty good for back then and then um sorry we renewed our lease there for a second five, at which point I would have started to recoup that money that I put in. And we got notification that he sold the building, and we had to get the fuck out. How do you even build a gym like this in 40,000 square foot?

It wasn't like this. The first location was like this. The second location was like this, with the exception of the upstairs had a boxing gym at the second location. So we were like 3,500 square feet downstairs, 3,500 upstairs. The 40,000 square foot location, we had totally changed the business model. So the first floor was 40 Nautilus machines and 50 pieces of cardio and a 3,000 square foot group X room with 40 classes running a week.

Actually, the first floor was the boxing gym. The second floor was that, and the third floor was this. When you move from kind of like this powerlifting, like heavy weightlifting-focused kind of grinder gym to now we've got a bunch of Nautilus machines, how do you feel about that? I hated it, but I had to pay the bills. Well, yeah, but I know, but you move in there was it was it did you were you like okay this is

just like part of what we have to do or we're it was a lot of resistance from the staff too they're like that's not us i'm like well if we don't move into this building we're out of business because there's not one other location that we can go there was no property available yeah you know so we kind of had to change the business model but we put into the marketing we're like you know if you want to just make some progress, stay on here, but if you want to take it to the next level, go up a level. So the building was kind of funny because the fourth floor, people were deadlifting 900 pounds and dropping it on the floor.

I had a weightlifting crew in there. There's a guy snatching 400 pounds and dropping it from overhead. We actually blew the side of the building out. The fucking side of the building fell out, right? And the landlord didn't blame us because he hired a team of engineers to come in and make sure we could do it. So we built platforms to the engineer's specs. And this is kind of funny. He goes, that's not going to work, dude.

That's not going to suck up the weight. And he's like, yeah, it is. And he said, listen to the engineer. I'm like, all right. So we ended up rebuilding the platforms about eight inches higher than he wanted us to. And they ended up helping. But we blew the fucking side of the building out. So that fourth floor, it wasn't awesome when it happened there was a hole in the building

like the wall just fell into the parking lot fell out onto the sidewalk side yeah fucking wall fell out bro um so so i understand dropping the weights on the floor but wait how did the wall on the side of the building fall out like vibration wall no the vibration of the platforms oh okay the platforms want i said that we needed at least a foot of rubber on the platforms to absorb the um you know the the weights dropping and the engineer said no i'm not a fucking engineer i have common sense though yeah you know what i mean um so going from that to this was easy easy because we never wanted to be that. This seems like it fits you. It's us.

Having a bunch of Nautilus machines, I could see you walking through there and just being like, what the fuck did I get myself into? I gagged every time I walked into the first floor of my building. Just like disdain for the people that were on there. Fucking hated it. Oh, how was your day? Wasting your time. Some guy trying to lose some of this.

Yeah. How do I lose this thing on the side? Get the fuck off that leg curl machine. Put the newspaper down, you fucking retard. Get up and exercise. You got a bunch of cool stuff in here. You were showing us earlier. You got one of Fred Hatfield's squat racks that he gave to you.

Yeah, yeah. So we've got a lot of really cool stuff in here. Like I was saying, the gym is 10,000 square feet, and it's broken up into four sections. Each one is about equal in size, 2,500 square feet. So the lobby, warm-up area is like 2,500 square feet. There's some cardio equipment, a whole bunch of kettlebells, some jump boxes. And in that area, there's a multipurpose room, we call it. It's got some swaying mats for MMA.

It's got a couple of heavy bags, and we do some yoga and shit in there. And multi-purpose room we call it. It's got some swaying mats for MMA. It's got a couple heavy bags and we do some yoga and shit in there. And then we have the personal training room. It's got, for lack of a better term, a CrossFit rig but it's from Elite FTS so it's pretty heavy duty. It's got a couple of glued hand benches, a full dumbbell rack, a whole bunch of bars and a couple

of platforms. We do most of our group training in there. TPS method and TPS method for powerlifting. And then the main gym has two other components 2,500 square feet of nothing primarily nothing but elite fts racks and benches um and i got fred's rack and then we have another 2,500 square feet which is split with turf and weightlifting platforms and some strongman stuff and we have the outside training areas too that we talked about. Yeah, so Fred. Fred's, again, a mentor, a close friend.

Hit me pretty fucking hard when he dropped. For people that don't know who he is, who is that? Dr. Fred Hatfield. He's the first person to squat 1,000 pounds. He forgot. Remember in Lethal Weapon when they said this is endo and he's forgot more about dispensing pain than you or I will ever learn? Fred Hatfield forgot more about getting strong than you or I will ever know in our entire fucking lifetime. He was a brilliant man, sports science researcher.

Really cool. The WWF contracted him in the, I think it was the early 90s. I don't know if you guys remember the WBF, the Bodybuilding Federation they started. That was during the steroid scandal with the WWF. They created this Bodybuilding Federation, and they wanted them to be drug-free. So they hired Margie Pasquale and Fred Hatfield, and I forget who else, to do the nutrition. And they funded a study. And Fred's nutrition actually got people the most ripped and the most jacked, his nutrition plan.

So he was a legit dude. Aside from the strength, he was just a smart nutrition plan so he's he was a legit dude aside from the strength he was just a smart dude all over yeah but he was a good dude he's a really he took me under his wing i met him one time in a issa certification seminar um i had already been certified through issa uh and they called me up but they needed somebody to what they do they call it facilitate where you go to the seminar and you help the the professor uh for lack of a better term you check people in and all that bullshit. And I'm like, okay, how much are you going to pay me? We don't pay for it.

I'm like, I mean, I can't do that. I've got to cancel clients for the weekend and come do it. They're like, well, we'll give you a certification. I'm like, I already have one. They're like, yeah, we'll give you another one. You just got to pass the test. I'm like, I don't know. They said, well, Fred Hatfield's going to be there.

I'm like, what? Okay, I'll go. The guy that got me into weightlifting, the guy whose books that I've been reading my whole life, the guy's the reason that I signed up to be with the ISSA, is going to be there. And I ended up meeting him there, and we hit it off. And then I did a shitload of seminars with him.

And we became really, really good friends. I would call him fucking five times a week with questions, and he would call me up and break my fucking balls, and we'd get together a couple times. He was just a great, great guy. So he called me up one time in our first location on Broadway. I brought him up here for a bunch of seminars, too. It was really cool.

We had Hatfield seminars here. The young kids probably don't know who he is, but if they don't, they should Google him. He was an amazing, amazing lifter. So he called me up, and he's like, he makes equipment, too. He had an equipment company, Sports Strength, and it was really, really well-designed shit. And he calls me up, and he's like, hey, you want a power rack? I'm like, I don't know, Fred.

I don't really have any room for it. You've been to the gym. It's kind of full. He goes, well, you want a power rack? I'm like, well, how much do you want for it? He goes, nothing, you fucking asshole. I said, do you want a power rack? I'm like, well, if it's free.

I guess I'll take it. And I don't remember where he was living. I think he was living in Pennsylvania at the time. And he's like, I'll be up tomorrow at 6. I'm like, you don't want me to come get it? No, I just got a new truck, and I want to go out, and you're going to buy the beers. I'm like, go fuck yourself, dude.

I'd rather pay for the fucking rack than buy you beers. So he shows up at 6 the next day with this power rack, and he's like, this is out of my house. I just moved to the new house, and it doesn't fit. I'm like, wait, this is yours? I thought he was giving me like a leftover rack or something from the company. And he's got a bunch of safety squat bars in the bed of the truck too, and most of them were prototypes for ones that never went into production. So I got some really cool safety bars that were his uh and they're not in production but it was uh it's his rack and it's like it's a piece of weight lifting a piece

of strength training history you know he's a legend and it's his and uh it's fucking awesome it's a really well-designed piece and it's super cool and uh it cost me a lot of money for booze that night a lot of money for booze you have. I'll tell you that much. A lot of money for booze. You have a couple of his bars too, right? Yeah, I got a couple of his safety bars, some that were his in the house and some that were prototypes. And those were like I had no idea he was going to bring those. What's a safety bar cost, $400 or $500?

The rack went for $2,000 at the time. He gave me about $2,000 with the rack, $2,000 with the shit. Didn't want to penny forward. That's the kind of guy he was. You know what I mean? I just want to give it to somebody I know is going to use it and treat it right. I'm like, I'll fucking treat it right, bro. We unbolted the power rack that I had, fucking cut it up, put it in the scrap bin.

Because back then, steel was cheap. You know what I mean? What am I going to get for a power rack? A hundred bucks? Fuck it, I'll cut it up and throw it in the garbage. And now, power racks are thousands of dollars. And he gave me this brand new shiny powder coated rack and we put it right in the gym the next day. And we still got it.

That's close to 20 years ago, you know, and it's still going. It's fucking awesome. We got a lot of other cool shit out there too. Basically any specialty bar you can think of we have. I think the only bar we don't have is Louie's Bar that's got the springs on the end of it that you, I forget the name of it, but it's a bench press bar and it forces you to stretch the bar apart.

I think that's the only one we don't have. We've got a ton of band bell bars. Those guys are really cool. They gave us a couple of bars to use and test out. Have you tried those? I haven't. The bamboo bars? Oh, the bamboo bar.

The kettlebells and the bands on the outside. The spring bar I haven't, but the bamboo bar I have. I've never even heard of the spring bar. The spring bar, I think that's the only specialty bar we don't have that's worth it. But the band bell bars, they gave us a bunch. They're really cool people. I got a ton of bars from Elite. I mean, we got everything.

We got logs, fucking you name it. I have a three-inch axle made, which is kind of cool. This guy, Joe Cedroni, he's passed now. He owned an equipment company down in the South Shore of Massachusetts, and he made a lot of custom equipment for me. Because now you can go online and you can order thick bars and pinch blocks and all this shit that nobody that it's available but 25 30 years ago that stuff didn't exist so i had this guy joe he'd make me a bunch of stuff i have all kinds of like i said thick bars and pinch blocks and grip apparatus and crazy one-off shit and um i called him up and i

said i want a three inch bar he's like you want a what i'm like i want a three inch thick bar i want it kn, you want a what? I'm like, I want a three-inch thick bar. I want it knurled and I want it to revolve. He goes, I can't do revolving, but I can do non-revolving three-inch knurled. I'm like, I'll take it. So we had Fred up. So I went down to pick it up. And I show up and he's like, you can't have it. I'm like, what the fuck do you mean I can't have it?

He goes, it's too much of a conversation piece, people. It brings everybody in. They talk about it and they ask me about custom making stuff for them. I'm like, well, make another one. i asked you to make this one because you can't have it so he comes up and he sets up an equipment table at hatfield seminar and he brought the bar with him and uh i get him in the corner i'm like you know you're not leaving with that bar he's like oh come on i'm like fuck you joe how much is it you're not leaving with that bar he's like all right so he sold it to me and uh so that's kind of a cool piece and but now you can get three inch bars now but people thought i was out of my

fucking mind but i had that made um so yeah well there's just so much shit out there i don't even know what to talk about i got a little bit of everything but yeah if it's a piece of strength training equipment and it's a legit piece of strength training equipment and you need to use it we have it and if we don't have it, you don't need it. So earlier you were talking about the guys that weren't really excited about taking your advice, we'll say. Do you actually have a team, though, that you coach that competes and all that? Yep. We have a team of raw lifters.

Most of them are girls. There's a couple of guys. It's really weird. We started the program, TPS Method for Powerlifting, because we always just, you know, the coaching the lifters was really mostly with our crew. And then if people came in with personal training, the lifting crew was always just the guys we trained with and the girls we trained with. And we had a whole bunch of girls in the TPS Method program,

which is an adult strength training program that we run. It's got an assload of people in it. And they said that they wanted to try powerlifting because they'd been to a couple of the meets. And, you know, we'd be lifting and they'd go to the meet. Like, we want to do that too. There's me at 308 right there up on the screen. There you go. Oh, yeah.

Right on. What are you squatting right there? Do you know? I don't know. A lot. No, that meet I had to lower all my openness because the last week before training i tore muscle in my forearm so i think that was like 700 it's hard having to lift all the weights i had to lower my deadlift open to the 500 and i barely pulled it my hand opened up on it um i was going to open it like 6 30 6 40 but anyway um so a bunch of the

girls asked us um if we would would train them for powerlifting meet. So I said, well, fuck it. Why don't we just make a team? So we opened it up to males and females, but it seemed like only girls signed up. It's cool that girls powerlift now. It's really cool. It's really cool. When did you start noticing that?

I mean, girls are always powerlifted, but I think— Well, it's kind of cool for them to do it now. I think over the past six, seven years, it's really exploded. Right? Because our girls, one, two, three, we're here three, four years. Probably about six years when we started it. So it's mostly girls. And we have a few elite totals out of the program, which is, you know,

that elite totals, that's the highest qualifying total you can get. It's not the highest total you can get, but it's the highest level of a total, right? Right. We've got a couple of girls that qualify with elite totals. We've got a couple of pro totals from the program, which is a little bit different. So to take an ordinary person that just started lifting weights

and get them to an elite total is pretty cool. Very cool. You know what I mean? Because you go to all these meets and, you know, I don't give a fuck about Wilks. Everybody talks about Wilks now, right? I care about your total. And if you talk to any of the old school guys, we care about your total. Do you have an elite total?

No? Shut the fuck up. Don't talk shit. I don't care what your Wilks is. And that doesn't take anything away from anybody that's lifting. It's awesome that you're lifting, but if you don't have an elite total, don't talk shit. And you find the guys that do have elite totals, they don't really talk any shit.

They got there. Their total backs up their shit. If you don't have it, you're just grasping. And Donnie says, Donnie's all over Instagram with this shit all the time, right? Donnie Thompson. Yeah, Donnie's great. A buddy of mine calls him Bipolar Bear. You might want to cut that out.

I've never met Donnie, but he's very good friends with my friend Mark. But Donnie talks about the same shit, and I completely agree with him. Is that Mark Bell? Botley. I don't know. Spud Inc. You know Spud Inc. equipment? Yeah, I do.

Maybe. The yellow straps. Oh, okay. Spud. There's me again. Boom. Fucking torn forearm muscle with my lowered deadlift opener by fucking 200 pounds. Anyway, I didn't quit, though.

I got up there and embarrassed myself with a 500-pound deadlift. But, no, Donnie talks about the same thing. And the total, it's all we care about. What's the total? What was always your favorite event in Strongman? Strongman? Yeah. I don't know.

I liked them all. I was pretty good at the log. I always had a good press. I was really good at the tire, and I was really good at the log. I always had a good press. I was really good at the tire, and I was really good at stones. So it's probably stones. There you go. He's showing us a tattoo of him lifting stones on his forearm. With the dog head.

Yeah. The dog head. I didn't see that piece. It's got a bulldog head on it. Oh, yeah. Right on. Probably stones. Stones are just fucking cool, man.

Do you know what I mean? What are you doing? I'm just going to pick this big rock up and throw it. What? You're going to pick that up? I'm going to throw it. I always enjoy picking some Stones up. Stones are cool.

Yeah. We did Stone Fran at the first CrossFit Games, not CrossFit Games, the first faction games competition we ever did, like in 2011. Pretend the interviewee doesn't know what that means. Stone Fran, what's that? Yeah. Well, I was about to explain what it was.

Sorry, bro. My bad. So Fran is a crossfit workout where you do barbell thrusters and pull-ups. Do you know what that one is? I've heard of it, but I don't know what it is. I've heard of Fran. It I don't know what it is. I've heard of it. It's a front squat into an overhead press for the thruster,

and then you're just doing pull-ups on the bar. And so we did stones instead of barbells. That sounds like it sucks. It totally sucks. But we were doing stones instead of barbells, so it's basically just like stone on the ground to shoulder and then just like get the stone slightly above your head and then drop it on the grass. That sounds awful.

And so people were using tacky for the stones, and then they were trying to do kipping pull-ups with tacky on their hands and just like completely just tearing all of the skin off the entire palm of their hand it was the worst fucking idea ever crossfitters bad did you ever know when the crossfit thing hit um i think that's we talk about girls getting into powerlifting. I think a lot of that – maybe I shouldn't say a lot of it because I don't really know the answer, but I feel like a lot of that because coming from the CrossFit world, it seemed like once people kind of got burnt out on the CrossFit thing, it was like, I just really like lifting weights.

And they either went to powerlifting or they went to weightlifting. And they were like, I really like the lifting weights part, but I don't want to do all the conditioning. Conditioning sucks. And then powerlifting became like a really viable option for people that just like to lift weights. Did you see a lot of that growth? Yeah, we see a ton of it from CrossFit.

I think CrossFit did a lot of really – so if you look back at my blog from a long time ago, I just fucking shit all over CrossFit because I was just – there was so many bad boxes open up with so many bad fucking coaches. It offended me as a professional coach that you could go take this weekend and people thought you were an expert and now you're

fucking blowing spines out. So I think CrossFit did a lot of really, really good for the fitness community and for fitness in general, but I think there was a lot of bad done for quite a few years, and I think they've kind of gotten away from that now, and it's not like it was.

And also by growing and being an adult, I realized that I probably just shouldn't bash other people. Fuck it. Don't worry. We've all been there. We've all been there, and that's RPR. We'll talk about that too. So I think CrossFit's done a tremendous amount of good in a lot of ways,

and they had their point in time where they did a lot of bad, and I don't think they were doing it intentionally. I think it was a byproduct of overexpansion. It grew up so fast. It's hard to control a product that grows that fast. So we did see in powerlifting, specifically around here in RPS, a shitload of CrossFit people entering meets. And it would be awful because, like, I don't like to give advice to people that didn't ask it,

but I would just walk up and watch them in the warm-up room, and they'd be missing warm-ups. You don't miss fucking warm-ups. You know what I mean? And then, so they miss a warm-up. Like, you got a girl that's squatting fucking 185, and both knees are touching together, and her back is round like a fucking C in the warm-up room. she's going to open at 225 and i'm like and you just you just know you know what i mean that they're going to blow it out and miss it and we saw that all the time um and it's kind of made me think like i wish that they would have locally at least sought

out somebody to say hey can you guys show us how to do this? There was a few CrossFits that actually hired us to do seminars for them for Strongman and Powerlifting, which is totally cool. We did it, and we were happy to do it. They were awesome about it. But I don't think – like I'm not going to bring somebody to CrossFit games. You know why? Well, one, you don't care.

I don't know a fucking dick about CrossFit. Yeah, it's not even slightly on your radar. Right, so I'm not coaching football. You know why? It's not on your radar. I don't know how to fucking coach football. You know what I mean? I don't know how to fucking coach football,

even though I did coach my son's five-year-old flag football team. It's like football at five years old. All they could do is run around and fucking not catch the ball with their face. You know what I mean? But so that's what it is. It's also because you don't have a two-day football cert. Right. They have one, though, I think.

I think it's a one-day. There's definitely parents paying for the five-year-olds to go to that cert. Well, bro, I'm telling you right now. Johnny's going to be the best flag football player in the world. Coach and five-year-olds. We set up the camp. Coach and five-year-olds in flag football, all you got to do is keep them from eating the grass. That's fucking about it, right?

But, no, so we did see a huge influx into power lifting from CrossFit, and that's awesome. And we saw some in Strongman, too. But what I found is I think the CrossFit people that went to the Strongman did a little better at Strongman than they did at power lifting. More conditioning-based. More conditioning-based, but also it was a fixed weight. So they didn't have to figure out attempts and figure out open i mean powerlift is not that fucking complicated but there is some knowledge that needs to be had to

do it you know what i mean one thing when i was training with aj was he's a fucking beast he as soon as he saw us lifting just coming straight from Westside to my gym, it was like, oh, you guys don't know how to lift. Like, we knew how to lift, but we didn't know, like, Louie Simmons how to lift. It was like instant changes. I guarantee you guys 100%. It was like somebody had, like, a really good bachelor's,

maybe, like, a master's in lifting weights, and then, like, the doctorate showed up. And it was like, no, no, no, no, you guys have been doing it all wrong. Like, it's okay, but this is how you really actually deadlift. This is actually how the levers work. He knew nothing about Olympic lifting, really, but he knew how to do that. Like, it was like 315. I like good, better, and best versus all wrong.

Yeah. You know? It was interesting when he showed up because he – No, I like good, better, and best versus all wrong. Yeah. You know? It was interesting when he showed up because he... No, he's a smart dude and he's a beast. He got everybody

dialed in very quickly. 100%. He knows his shit. I would guarantee that if we took you outside into the gym, I would show you something about

whichever lift you picked that you don't know. Yeah. But I would think doing this for 30 years, I fucking better be able to do that. You know what I mean?

Yeah. But maybe not. If you train with AJ, AJ's probably taught you pretty fucking well. It's like a year. I mean, I just tried to get him to lose weight. He came to me right after he was, what, weight 320 or something like that. We had him set up to do a seminar here. We were going to do it.

We're hanging out with him this weekend. Tell him I said hi. We will. We were supposed to do a seminar here called Out of the Box. My buddy Mike came up with the idea that we get some CrossFit people that are pretty famous, and we bring them in, and we do a seminar about CrossFit, but how to think outside of the CrossFit box and apply more strength training to it. And AJ was on the panel, and nobody signed up to it because that was in my bashing CrossFit face. And we should have probably just not mocked it.

What year was that? Oh, I don't know. What year is it now? 18. 18, so 14. Maybe like 2008, 2009. Something like that maybe. Maybe something like that.

That was way early in the CrossFit day then. Yeah. It was like when AJ first went over. Maybe it was 2010. I don't know. No, it was like 12 when he came to us. Maybe it like that. That was way early in the CrossFit day then. Yeah. Yeah. It was like when AJ first went over. Maybe it was 2010. I don't know. No, it was like 12 when he came to us. Maybe it was 12. 12, 13.

Could have been. Yeah. I don't know. It's all like one big fuck. Remember I told you I don't remember anything? Well, yeah. They all just flow together. I just know it was at my last location, Vine Street, when we first went in there around

that first time. Yeah. There was some really cool stuff training with him just because he came from such a different world, and his eyeballs had been trained in a way by the best that exists. So that when he walked in, he just saw things in the gym differently. You had a very elevated conversation with somebody with a completely different mindset and set of eyes to how things should be done. You have to have that eye. And it was very cool. You have to have that eye. And it was very cool.

You can't teach the eye. Yeah, like, we may have had the same really high-level or, like, a very high-level CrossFit eye, but then he brought his, like, west side eyeballs in, and, like, that conversation just, like, came into the gym, and it was a really cool year of learning. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure.

It was a lot of fun. I think with the eye, the coach's eye, we talk about it all the time you you have it or you don't and you can develop it but if you have somebody like we we have an intern program here and uh we make people intern with us for jesus fucking four or five months before we let them coach and it's a written tests and practical tests and in-service training and all kinds of shit yeah and uh most people fail because they just don't have the eye we can teach them all the book stuff but then they'll watch it lift and they just so it's just time it's so hard no i don't think it's time i think i think it's i think it's a gift um i think you i think that any attribute can be developed speed can be developed

strength can be developed but if you're not naturally fast i don't know if you're ever gonna be as fast as fucking somebody that's really fast naturally. Like, I was never strong. I'm fast. I'm fucking, in my day, I was fucking blazingly fast, but I'm not strong.

I'm weak as shit. So I was only able to move weight because I was fast. You know what I mean? And a fucking 48-inch box jump. You know, that's fast. Yeah.

And I tried to develop my strength, and I wasn't able to. I think the eye is the same. I did, but not to, you know, you look at other people. Some people are really fucking strong, but they're not slept. They grind the lift out.

You know what I mean? When did you start lifting weights? 1979, 11. Yeah, that's how you get an eye for lifting weights. I don't know, bro. I don't know. You may be, but I kind of. You've just seen it so many times. I know.

I just kind of. So many times. Do you think you genetically have an advantage to lifting weights? No, to being able to analyze things visually. No, I know, but there's no gene in your body that's like, that guy's going to be good at lifting weights. You were 11. That guy.

The thing is that you're both right at some level. I agree with you about this conversation. You start somewhere on the spectrum. Well, I'm definitely on the spectrum. I just love this conversation to play devil's advocate on both sides. Go ahead. You go. You start somewhere on the spectrum. You start in the 35th percentile or the 90th percentile or whatever it is,

and you can move along the spectrum only so far in each direction. so if you want to be the fastest person in the world you have to start in the 90s and then develop yourself to the best right but if you start in the 35th percentile you can get way faster but still the guy who started in the 90th percentile is going to beat you without even training yeah like that's the i i know what you're doing and i i i know but i agree with you but i disagree at the same time because I've seen it in here. I've had people that have been in gyms their whole fucking lives, and we try to teach them to be coaches, and they just can't do it. Yeah, I think about all of that stuff and the way your parents move around your house. That teaches you athleticism.

You're just watching when you're a little kid on the ground. Not my parents. That's how you become an athlete. If your parents walk like shit yeah you're gonna walk like shit yeah so you learn what movement looks like and you are right like you have to be somewhere on the spectrum but like i it's a real i love that because i that conversation is awesome because it's like i feel like when somebody walks into a gym and they see somebody do a snatch and they're like what the fuck was that monkey fucking a football yeah like how in the world did the bar get above his head do you wait they pulled under it you didn't pick it up

that's weird and when i look at it when doug looks at it probably when you look at it or other movements it's in slow motion. I can see all the pieces, but I don't have nearly the Bob Takano eye or Mike Bergner or all. It's all in slow motion if you see it enough. Right. The coach's eye can be honed, but I think you have it or you don't. Do you know what I mean? Like you see the basses up there on the wall, right?

I am the world's most okayest bass player, and I've been playing since the 80s. You do have three beautiful guitars up there. They're pretty fucking cool. But, like, I'm not very good, and I've been playing since the 80s. I can play the notes, but I can't make the music as much as I want to. You know what I mean? When you take some – like, my son, he sat down at a piano for the first time with his piano teacher, and he was playing some fucking tunes right away.

He has a gift. And his piano teacher's like, bro, this kid's got a gift. And he's like, does he get it from you for playing bass? I'm like, have you ever heard me play bass? He didn't get it fucking from me. But so it's kind of like the same thing. Some people are musically gifted. Some people are math gifted and, you know, whatever.

Some people are born with big hogs. I wish I was one of them but uh no it's it's i think that that eye is a gift that you have and that can be developed and if you don't have it you can you can be the coach like me as a base player you can be the world's most okayest coach i'm also the world's most okayest boss i saw that i like that i love that we're gonna take a break also the world's best dad on the wall i am the world's best dad according to my son okay as boss yep uh we're gonna take a quick break. You're also the world's best dad on the wall. I am the world's best dad, according to my son. Best dad, okay as boss. Yep.

We're going to take a quick break because I've got to go to the bathroom. Me too. We've still got a lot of stuff to talk about. Yep. Shrug family, make sure you get over to 30daysofcoaching.com. T-H-I-R-T-Y, daysofcoaching.com. I have compiled the best podcast articles, technique wads, all the information over the past six and a half years with Barbell Shrug leading the conversation in fitness and strength education. You're going to get an email every single morning about losing

weight, gaining muscle, CrossFit, getting stronger, getting better at the snatch, and clean and jerk, all delivered right to your inbox. 30daysofcoaching.com, T-H-I-R-T-Y, daysofcoaching.com. Let's get back to the show. Mark Botley texted me. Yeah, so Mike and I, we know each other through Rich, and he's a great dude. Yeah, yeah. He's one of those guys that has forgotten more about strength and conditioning.

Yeah, he's a solid dude. He's a solid dude, too. We kept – he was – you're married. Yeah. That feeling where you're hanging out with your friends at the gym, but it's also kind of like work, but you're really like you love your work because you're at the gym hanging out with your friends. My life is a bro-down. Yeah.

We're here in your office working. I'm working. I'm working right now. This is a fucking bro-down. It's my whole life. But when you're married and your wife knows that you really enjoy hanging out at the gym with your friends and it's work, and then you're like, oh, I have to work tonight. She's like, that means you also have to go hang out with your friends.

So we showed up like 10 minutes late, car rentals, traffic, whatever, last night. He was like getting ready to walk out. We were like, oh, we're here. He was like, oh, I got to text my wife. And he was like, I got an hour. Let's knock out the hour let's make it good so we went like an hour and 20 minutes and i was like even after you've been married like 40 years do you still have that weird piece of guilt where you're like i'd kind of rather be here right now he didn't go home no he was like oh yeah you keep it

with you forever he's like you're never going to get rid of that guilt you either have to decide i'm going to call it work even though she knows i'm hanging out with my friends or i'm just gonna go home and do the right thing tonight but he's like that that weird gut feeling of like oh she knows i'm just with my friends and i'm having a blast i'm supposed to not be having this much fun yeah me and mike had a cool conversation when he first got the red Sox gig. And he was saying, how's the gym going? Blah, blah, blah. It's going pretty good.

How's your boy? I'm like, my boy's great. How's the kids? And blah, blah, blah. How's the Red Sox gig going? And he said something. It came up that somebody was coming to the gym for a seminar. And he goes, yeah.

I had my son there. My son met him. He goes, you know, and your son thinks that's completely normal, right? I'm like, yeah. I think it like was, oh, was it? I might have had a bunch of guys from a lead out like Kroc and Tate and Wendler and a bunch of those dudes, Cosgrove and Farrugia. I think it was then.

And, you know, my son's used to being around like people. Andre Milanochev, like my kids met Andre Milanochev, right? It's just a dude to him. And Mike was saying the same thing. Mike goes, yeah, my kids think it's completely normal to be sitting in the Red Sox dugout at practice. I'm like, how fucking awesome is that for your kids? We were just talking about that.

So we just interviewed Ben Bergeron, and he has won the CrossFit Games as a team. He's got one of the top three of the top ten athletes are his. He's got a couple thousand people following his training programs. And it's like, do your kids know that greatness is something that is very common in your household right now? Like, they're just absorbing this as normal. They're going to find other people

and be like oh yeah my dad was dot dot dot and they're gonna be like is your dad famous like no he's just regular guy my son hangs out in the gym my son thinks it's normal if we go to a show um i'll just shoot a quick text and then somebody comes out and lets us in the back door and they throw a backstage pass on us you know so it's a bunch of my friends work in the music industry so they get us in and uh like we went one year to see drop kicks at the house of blues and he's used to just walking in the back door you know what i mean and so drop kick murphy's drop your murphy's boston boston fucking right bro um fucking right kid it's uh my buddy wasn't doing, my buddy is the sound man for them and another friend of mine

is the tour manager and like I don't like to ask. You know what I mean? So I bought tickets and my son's like are we going in the back? I'm like no we're going to wait in line like everybody else. He's like oh what the fuck. He didn't say what the fuck but he's like we're going to wait in line. I'm like

we can't just go in the back door. I'm like, well, we could. We can only tap that button so many times. Well, no. As soon as I walked in, my buddy Grizz had told me. He was like, what the fuck? You bought tickets? I'm like, come on, dude.

I don't want to go to the well too many times. He's like, you're an asshole. But my son thinks that shit's normal. You create your normal. You know what I mean? So I always try to tell him, like, if you wake up every day and you shit excellence, your normal will be different than someone else's normal. You know?

And you've got to take pride in your product, and you've got to take pride in yourself. And you guys know all the shit I'm talking about. I'm not telling you something you don't know. We're hanging out with you right now. I suck, dude. I'm just a fat kid from the projects. That's all I am. Earlier, we wanted to get back to touching on the RPR thing what is that so RPR is um

it's a gift that JL Holdsworth gave to me um and that is the best way that I can describe it um so I've done every treatment there is to to try to get my body better and um I think RPR has made the most difference in the way I move and feel in pain reduction, but also it's made me to – it's allowed me – it allows you to be the best you you could be. It sounds corny and it sounds cult-like, but they're not selling you anything. Right? What does it stand for again? Reflexive Performance Reset.

I'll go into all that. Yeah. But what it's done, I think for me personally, aside from eliminating, or not eliminating, minimizing pain in the hip and allowing me to move better and warm up better and perform better, is it's allowed me to

not lose my fucking mind and get out of the car and punch somebody's head in a red light. And not you know, everybody be like, oh, fuck it, here comes Murphy. He's in a bad mood. You know, I'm not like that anymore.

And I don't want to go back to being like that. But, you know, would you change anything about your past? Probably not because then you wouldn't be the person that you are now. You know what I mean? So RPR is Reflexive Performance Reset. And it is, I'm going to try to think about the easiest way to explain it. I'm a level two certified RPI practitioner. J.L. Holdsworth started this with Caldeets.

And it comes from Be Activated. Have you ever heard that? So Be Activated is a system that's very similar, but it kind of, you need to go to a Be Activated guru to do it. And they don't want people to be able to do it to themselves. um you need to go to a be activated guru to do it and they don't want people to be able to do it to themselves they want you to go to a practitioner and jl went to be activated and spud and um that mark botley they went to it and jl saw so much value in this and he also saw that i can't do this to an 11 year old girl in my soccer program because i'll get arrested and get fucking put in jail. Um, so he kind of figured out a way to take this, be activated and turn it into a system that the athlete or the person could do on themselves in about five minutes a day.

Uh, so what it is, it's a lack of a better word, a lack of a better term. It's a nervous system reset, right? Um, they don't understand why it works, but we know that it does something and we know that it works and it's immediate and in a lot of cases it's drastic. It's primarily centered around breathing, but then it goes into other things, right? So nobody will argue that diaphragmatic

breathing is good for you, right? Unless you're a fucking idiot, right? So you want Devil's Advocate that one on me? No. Come on! Come on, dude! I was hoping you'd be like, well, you should be chest breathing. It's way better for you. In through your mouth, right? So you want devil's advocate that one, Obi? No. Come on. I'm right with you. Come on, dude. I was hoping you'd be like, well, you should be chest breathing. It's way better for you. In through your mouth, right into your chest. As many times and as quick as possible.

And really fast and shallow. So nobody will argue. You should be hyperventilating 24 hours a day. 100 fucking percent right before you go to sleep. So nobody is going to argue. So if you take this and if RPR does nothing for you, nothing, but it gets you to be a better diaphragmatic breather, it's worth every second that you put into it, right?

100%, yeah. So it's a nervous system reset, but it starts with breathing because breathing is the most important thing that we can do. You can go without food for a while. You can go without water for a while, You can go without water for a while. But how long can you not breathe for? Not a long fucking time. Not a long time, yeah.

So what it is, it's a series of things that you do to your body, rubs and presses on different points. And it starts – there's so much information in my head, I can't organize it into a cohesive thought for you right now because I want to spit it all out at the same time. So what it does is, I'm going to use JL's analogy, right? The nervous

system controls everything, right? We don't know fucking shit. JL Holdsworth, you guys know who he is, right? I don't know him. So JL's one of the strongest human beings in the fucking earth. He's a Westside guy. He's on Team Elite. He owns a couple places in Ohio in the sport athletics and he's brilliant. There's Spud right there, that fat bastard. He's on Team Elite. He owns a couple places in Ohio in the spot athletics, and he's brilliant. This bud right there, that fat bastard.

It's my stunt double. That's a great picture. That's a good one, too. That's a good one, too, yeah. I figured you guys would pull something to talk about on the screen. There was three rather large powerlifters followed by a girl in bikini. By Pamela Anderson. Is that who that was in bikini. By Pamela Anderson. Is that who that was?

I was reading underneath it. It said hepatitis C. I'll have some of that. That's why. Sign me up for that. Yeah. Sign me up. The demotivational posters.

So, RPR, it unlocks the nervous system. It allows the nervous system to better communicate with the muscles in the body and makes things do what they want to do. So if you talk to a neurologist and you ask them a question. I've spoken to my wife's neurologist. She's got MS. He asked a question. I asked him a question about it. I'm like, why is it doing this?

He goes, we don't fucking know. I'm like, but? You don't fucking know. You're a neurologist. He goes, we don't know everything about the nervous system yet. I'm like, but you've got like a 400-year degree in it. You see people all day with it. It's just that the neurologist will tell you we don't know everything about the nervous system, right?

So that's one of the things that I'm okay with about RPR because if the neurologist don't know about it, then how the fuck does JL know? Do you know what I mean? But we just know that if I do something on you right now, and I'll do it after we're done if you want, you'll see an immediate difference. It's fucking amazing right so rpr allows the nervous system to better communicate um with the rest of the body to so we all have compensatory patterns right and when we go into a compensatory pattern something's not going to work right so if you if your breathing is off and your diaphragm

is all jacked up um and your hips are tight and your psoas is tight, something's going to compensate for that tight psoas, right? So that's an injury waiting to happen. That's a fair assessment? Yeah. Right? So what RPR is going to do is it's going to go through zone 1, zone 2, zone 3. Zone 1 is breathing, glutes, and psoas, and that's primary, right?

And then we unlock that area. And then we go to zone 2, which is more often, and then zone 3 is the furthest parts of the body, right? So JL uses the laptop analogy, right? So if you think of your body like a laptop, right? You have the keyboard, and you have the software, and then you have the battery, right? So we'll think of the keyboard as the muscular system, right? So if the keyboard has like a broken M and a broken Q, you could probably type out a cohesive email

that people could understand, right? So if the keyboard's fucked up, the body still works, right? And then you look at the software as the fascia and the connective tissue, right? So if there's something fucked up in the fascia, you get a jacked up tendon, and the fucking fascia's all bound up, right? That's like software with the corruption in it.

Microsoft Windows has some kind of fucked up thing, and it's not working right, but it probably still works works but it doesn't work well right yeah you take that battery and you short that battery out what happens nothing nothing works without the battery the nervous system's battery right so everything that we know about the body right except for the nazi shit has been done on a cadaver right what's missing in the cadaver, right? What's missing in the cadaver? Electricity. Electricity. Exactly.

Electricity, which is the word I was looking for. Very good. I'm here with you. I'm like this. We're like this. Talking shit earlier. Now we're on the same page. Fucking same page.

You said that was going to happen, you fuck. So what RPR does is it allows you to get rid of the compensatory patterns by allowing the nervous system to better communicate with the muscles uh that's a super dumbed down way to say it and there's the majority put it this way of all the people that i've exposed to it that have done it properly not one of them has said fuck i bet in your community of really really strong people that are very tense. You touch them with this thing, and you are the magician. Kind of. You are the problem solver.

You become the guru. Kind of. So the people that – you can't get anybody to buy into anything, right? I mean, you can, and then they tell you when you go through it, like, this is like the pilot trick we use to get people at the seminars to buy in and say, well, fuck, this works. There's some shit we can do. There's like an archipost thing you do, and there's like an anti-rotation drill we do. It's really cool, but it's actually effective, but it makes people go, fuck, what is this?

Yeah. You know what I mean? Boom. Like to kind of back up a little bit, JL went to the Be Activated seminar. He's like, bro, you got to – he calls me. He's like, bro, you got to find out. He's got this voice that's fucking worse than mine. He's like, bro, bro, you got to fucking find out about this shit.

This is sick shit. Fucking I can't even describe what I just learned. And then Spud calls me up with this southern accent. Hey, son, bitch. Me and JL just went to this fucking thing, and it was fucking sick. I'm going to tell you. So, like, this is two motherfuckers. Like, they're two big savages.

Like, Spud's like an 1,100-pound squad. JL's got one of the still to this day one of the highest all-time totals. He was one of those dudes that could pick up and clean the inch dumbbell when nobody else is picking it up. He's a beast, right? But they're also two of the smartest guys I know, and they're two of the most solid guys that I'm friends with. So if they tell me something's legit, I'm not questioning them.

I question almost anybody in the world. There's a handful of people I don't question, and they were both like, this is some shit, and you've got to learn about it, right? So then JL calls me up and he goes, listen, I'm doing this thing. It's RPR. It's a new thing I'm putting out. It's based on the Be Activated stuff I told you about. I want you

to come out to Ohio and take the seminar. I'm like, bro, I can't. I just can't come. I get this and that. I just can't get out. I wish I went, but the kid Jeff that i said wanted to crash today he's the coo the coo for rpr now jeff went out and he came back and he did rpr on me and showed me how to do the wake-up drills and he beat the fuck out of me there's a coaching log on the lead about this like he legitimately beat the fuck out of me for an hour um and i was like

shit i'm sold on this shit. This is amazing, right? So then he showed me how to do the daily wake-up drills, and I did them for about nine months before I really, because I wanted to evaluate it and see if I wanted to put it into our programs. And I was seeing tons and tons and tons of results from it. And then I had JL out to do a level one cert here. And what I found is that I was doing everything wrong. And what they tell you is that you can still do it wrong and get a benefit.

But when JL came out and taught me, you know, not that Jeff didn't teach me, but I only did it once with them. And, you know, you make mistakes, you fuck shit up on your own. Like, I wasn't doing it hard enough. They want you to do what's called minimum effective dose, and I wasn't going quite to it because you can't really, like you can't do ART on yourself, right? You know, you can't do Graston on yourself.

It's similar. And for somebody that doesn't know what they're looking at they're like oh you're doing self-grasting not really but um so when jl came out and taught me really how to do it well on myself i saw a reduction in hip pain of i don't know 40 50 percent almost overnight and uh i was walking with like a like a drop foot for a while oh wow you were there no no i was like like you know dragging yeah like i was walking like this everywhere and within two three weeks maybe a month of at jail coming out and doing the seminar teach me how to do it on myself i was walking normal i was getting out of chair and i started squatting again i was like what the fuck

is this yeah everything right and i also did a lot of stuff from some AccuMobility stuff. A guy named Brad Cox is a genius. He's a local guy. Have you heard of the AccuMobility balls? No. No, they're like a lot of people call them a glorified lacrosse ball, which they're not. It's like a half round with a base.

I have seen them, yeah. Oh, gotcha. So you do a lot of stuff with them. But Brad paired up a lot of basically ART movements with the balls, and they're amazing. So you do a lot of stuff with them. But Brad paired up a lot of basically ART movements with the balls, and they're amazing. So I do a lot of that, and the RPR was a big difference in things. But so – I'm trying to go back around. I'm a firm believer that RPR has benefit for everybody, no matter what they do.

But in terms of performance, it will, like, for example, if we take you and I'm holding my arm up over my head and it's not fully extended, right, and we find out that this is the range of motion that you have in your shoulder and then I do some RPR on you and I get it here instantly. Will you be less resistant to injury in a snatch now? Oh, yeah. Right?

So it does things like that. It gives you more mobility, and it's not changing anything in your body. It's allowing your nervous system to communicate better, right? There's a lot of stuff that they have in there, a lot of research they have. We have two nervous systems, right?

Sympathetic and parasympathetic, fight or flight, and rest and digest. It allows you to get from one to the other quickly, right, and effectively, and then back to the other one. So let's say that you're going to go do an attempt at a meet, right, squat, snatch, whatever it is. Who cares, right? You've got to get all fucking jacked up for that, right?

And if you're not able to get out of that fight or flight nervous system, it might take you 10, 15 minutes to recover. You may not be recovered for your next attempt right yep rpr gets you as soon as you're done you're right back down in there you're chilling every one that's really smart that we talk to talks about this rpr well not the rpr but getting your body as quickly back to a parasympathetic state, one of the – Ben Pekulski was, like, massive bodybuilder, 11th at Olympia. And it's one of his biggest things. Like, as soon as you stop lifting, you should go meditate for five minutes. Just sit on the couch and close your eyes and breathe.

Get back to the chill. Go to sleep. Yeah. Absolutely. It's like all bodybuilders are so mellow except for that, like, hour and a half that they train. And then they go into super chill mode. They're super chill mode as they walk into the gym. But you can't digest food. You can't grow muscle. You can't do anything when you're in that stressed out, sympathetic state.

You know, the implications this has for tactical personnel is ridiculous. Right. This is the difference between a missed shot and fucking a properly placed shot. I've done some work with the local police department. Two of my friends run one of the regional SWAT teams, and it's just a scheduling thing, but I'm going to expose the SWAT team to this because, you know, half a dozen of my buddies are on the regional SWAT team.

One of them's one of my best friends. Another one's one of my really close friends. And, you know, if these guys are going out and they're doing a forced entry into a house, and you're here, and there's a barricade suspect with a hostage, and you're like this, and you've got to take that shot, what if you shoot that fucking kid? The RPRs, you're much more. So the implications that this has to people in all different walks of life,

but even you take sports performance out of it, the immediate improvement in sports performance. I had one kid. He's a pro strong man, and he was training. He's a fucking beast. And he walks into the gym, and he asked me, what are you doing? I was going through my wake-up drills, doing my breathing. He's like, what are you doing?

I'm like, well, I'll just do it with you because I wanted to see. I didn't tell him what it does. I didn't tell him anything. I said, it's a new way to warm up that a buddy of mine taught me, and I've been using it exclusively. It gets me warmed up really quick, and I feel great afterwards. He said, well, fuck it. I'll try it.

I said, what are you doing today? I forget what it was, but he goes, I've got to do some medleys. And his medley was like 350 per hand Fama's, like a 900- pound yoke back down the turf and then like a sled drag with i don't know how much something stupid like fucking 800 pounds on it so he's doing some sick medleys right and this kid's a pro and he's a pretty good pro right um he's a lightweight pro but he's still a pretty good fucking pro right so and he's a beast and he's really relaxed really chilled out except for when he's competing you wouldn't want to be

within 20 feet of him because you're like, fuck, that's not the same person, right? Yeah. Sorry. Don't call me. I'm doing a fucking Bob Bell shrugged interview. Skinner can show up any time. Every fucking day.

So we did the warm-up. I mean, we did the RPI wake-up drills, and then I'd let him go, and he came back in the room afterwards, and he's fucking covered in sweat, and he's fucking panting, and he's like fucking... I'm like, how'd it go, dude? He goes, well, it went really good.

My recovery time between sets was really short, and I felt so good that I did an extra medley today. And I'm like, how'd the medleys go? He goes, my times were faster. I'm like, that's because of what you did pre-workout. He goes, what did I do? And I told him. He's like, what the fuck was it?

So I told him what it was. I said, you want to come down, we'll teach you more about it. And you keep adding it in. Whether he kept it in or not, I don't know. But it was interesting that this kid at this high of a level, he did an extra medley. But I didn't tell him what it was. and didn't tell him what it was going to do because then you're kind of skewing the results of the experiment, right?

Right. But so everybody that I've exposed to it that has given it a shot and tried it has had amazing results with it. We put it into the programs. It's a mandatory part of all the warm-ups now. And we came up with a warm-up that includes a little bit of RPR and then, depending on squat bench or deadlift day, or squat press or deadlift day, depending on

the program, they'll do some lower body dynamic stuff and movement prep shit. And we get them to do a whole body warm-up in nine minutes, and everybody feels like they're warmed up better. And a lot of them don't understand what they're doing or why they're doing it. We just tell them, this is what you do. And then we give them the wake-up drill sheet and we have them do it other days at home. The ones that do it love it. And the ones

we don't have a very high injury ratio anyway. But I feel like the incidence of injuries that are being reported, I haven't had one in a while since we've implemented it. So can I say it's because of it? I can't because I don't have any scientific data on it but i have anecdotal data right so we have a super low injury rate um but we've had no injury since um other than like somebody dropping a fucking plate on the foot that's nothing you can do about that if you're an idiot you're an idiot right um so i don't know if i really explained it that well if i was all over the place but it's it's basically a neurological reset and it allows your body to communicate better with itself um do you have any videos online where people can see some of this done so no and yes um they don't want you to put I mean you could probably google it and find something on youtube but we have video shot on it but they're in our on my tpsmethod.com the

member website we have permission uh to use them on the site because it's only for members and it's part of the program. I have a couple of articles written on it, on Elite FTS. If you just Google C.J. Murphy RPR, the articles will come up on Elite FTS and my coaching logs. But it's much more – it's explained in a much more coherent way rather than me just puking shit out at you with all these thoughts coming out no i think it's i think it makes sense it's but find a way to get

inside your body yeah calm down yeah reset your nervous system so everything fires properly your muscles yeah active tissue everything works better and you recover faster because you're faster you have access to your parasympathetic, which is how you rest and digest. Rest and digest and grow. And get more jacked. That's kind of like the key to a lot. Yeah, you can't get jacked if you're stressed the fuck out. You can't do really anything because your body is fighting the external.

Yeah. And, yeah, most of the time the external, though, is just stress that we put on ourselves. Yep. Yeah, most of the time the external, though, is just stress that we put on ourselves. And I would imagine, I've never been a 308-pound power lifter, but the amount of food, the amount of inflammation, the amount of stress that your body is under all the time, any time you are able to actually go into your body and calm it down and get it into the parasympathetic is like a breath of fresh air every single time. Well, Spud says if he knew about this, he's confident he would have tore his quads

with the 1107 squad at the WPOs. If you look that video up, it's fucking horrifying. I think it was 1107. And so the other thing with this is – It's a computer reference, by the way. That's JL's. It's JL's. I wish I didn't make that up.

JL came up with that one. When we were talking about Boyle and a couple of other people, I said he's a good dude. And I know I said that a couple times. I don't give a fuck how smart you are. I don't give a fuck how strong you are. If you're a piece of shit, I don't want to talk to you. I care if somebody's a good dude. Like, I don't know how strong you are, but you seem like a good dude.

I don't know how strong you are. You seem like a good dude. You know what I mean? You guys could be fooling me and you could be pieces of shit, but you don't seem like pieces of shit. It would be hard to fake it for two hours. Only off air. Right? What's that?

I said only off air. Right, only off air. That's why we like to talk to people for two hours. You can't fake it for two hours. I can. I can. As soon as this mic goes off, I'll be like, you fucking guys suck. No, but so I care more about whether somebody's a good dude or not.

You know what I mean? Or a good girl or however you know what i mean or a good good girl or whatever however you want to put it and i think i can honestly say that i was a asshole for a long time and i didn't want to be an i just was an i was angry didn't know how to deal with i had a job that i hated i hated working at the sheriff's department um you know it wasn't the criminals it was the administration but you know you take all that stress away, and you go to work and somebody's slashing a fucking knife in your face, and you've got to bring that shit home.

How do you deal with that at home, you know what I mean? How am I going to pay the fucking bills, man? I got one income. So I was just a fucking asshole, and the RPR has allowed me to not be an asshole anymore. Like, I'm not an asshole anymore. I mean, I'm still a dick, you know, I'm a wiseass and stuff, but, like, I don't blow up at people. I don't get stressed out. I don't yell. I. I mean, I'm still a dick. I'm a wise ass and stuff, but I don't

blow up at people. I don't get stressed out. I don't yell. I don't blow my cool, lose my top. So the RPR has allowed I think me to become a better dude. And that's it's allowed me to be a better father. I got some things going on. Everybody's got some things going on in their personal lives

that are somewhat high stress. There has to be a way to presence yourself and be where you're at instead of focusing on. Yeah, right here, right now. Yeah. Right now we're just talking weightlifting. Right. So you've got to enter the next matrix and be there and be able to handle that problem. Well, I'm even going, this applies with the training.

The RPR works in the training, but, you know, we're talking about weightlifting. This is a strength training podcast, right? But when we really get down to it, like, what's more important, strength training or being a good person? Not being a piece of shit is way more important, right? Oh, yeah. And weight training and strength training

is the thing that's driven my whole fucking life. Yeah. My whole life, right? When you judge people, their worth is based on how much they can pick up off the ground. Right, and it's not. That's a weird one. It's not. Takes you a long time.

Well, maybe not a long time, but that's like a part of the growing process. In your opinion, what makes a good person? What makes somebody a good dude? I think loyalty, honesty, trustworthiness, dependability, not being a phony. I think those are pretty important things, right? So I don't know if you guys are loyal. I know you're not punctual, right? No, I'm not.

We haven't been all day or yesterday. Who knew the Mass Pike was so hard to get around? I did. But, no, so, like, you know. I to get around. I did. But no, so like, you know. I have good intentions. I know. You weren't late on purpose. We texted.

Right, you did, right? There you go. So it's, you know, is someone a good person? So, you know, integrity is what you do when no one's watching. You know what I mean? Right. I heard one time that you are what people catch you doing. That's a good one.

Yeah. That's a good one. My son got caught behaving at school one day. That was a thing his old school did, so he got a little award. He got called up. He was caught behaving well. And I'm like, what the fuck does that mean? Do you know what I mean?

So they caught him. So it's kind of funny, kind of the same thing. Caught behaving was really cool. But, yeah, but yeah no being a good dude being a good person if there's so many different things but I think it comes down to like you know you you know I try to treat people the way I want to be treated and I always said I did that but I didn't do you know what I mean I thought I did um and so there's a lot of different kinds of strength right and this is something that's i've always believed in that indian body mind spirit thing right but it never really got past body do you know what i mean or spirit right because you have to have the strong spirit

the strong mind have the strong body but i didn't apply that to anything other than the gym um and you know different obviously other things you apply it to, but not so much as now. So there's a lot of different kinds of strengths. And I know some people that can't lift a lot of weight, and they're the strongest motherfuckers I know. Because, like, you don't know what this dude's going through. Well, you might because you guys are boys. But, you know, somebody walks in the gym tonight, and don't be an asshole to people because you don't know what that motherfucker went through today.

His dog might have died. His kid might have fucking brain cancer. You know what I people because you don't know what that motherfucker went through today. His dog might have died. His kid might have fucking brain cancer. You know what I mean? You don't know. It's just even like driving and you see somebody laying on the horn and you want to lay right back. And you're like, whatever that person did to react that quickly and like flip me off for something that seems pretty small. They got something going on. Bro, I'll tell you right now.

They're snapping so quickly, you just go, I'm going to let you win this one. Yeah. Because you're definitely caring way more about this than I am. So you won. Enjoy, sir. I was the guy that got out of the car and punched you with the red light. Yeah? Before cell phone cameras were around.

Wouldn't be, wouldn't, it's, that's no way to go through life. You can't do that shit anymore anyway because you go to jail because everybody's a fucking pussy in 2018 America and they're snowflaking. They get triggered about fucking nothing. Nothing. Lighten the fuck up, America. Everything is not.

Seriously. There's no way to be. I think that the RPR has really allowed me to become a better person inside. Yeah. And that's more important than how much weight I can lift. But it's also allowed me to go back to lifting, you know, what some people would consider a lot of weight but my peer group doesn't. Like, Spud will call me up.

He's like, how's your shitty bench, bro? Did you bench fucking 315 today? I'm like, fuck you. You know what I mean? I love to bench 315. So how many kids do you have? One. And how old is that?

He's 13, and he's 6'3", with a fucking almost a 14 shoe. Whoa. He's a giant. Wow. Yeah. So what have you done, and what do you continue to do to ensure, as best you can, that he's a good dude? Well, I think when it comes to people, I think there's nature and nurture, and I think you can be born and be an asshole and nothing that you can do.

Because I know some kids that were born into good families, and there's a couple of them in the same family, and one of them is just a piece of shit no matter what they did. And I know some other kids that were born into piece-of-shit families, and they ended up being good people. So I think a lot of that is in you. But I think when it comes to raising kids, it's twofold. One, kids are just like dogs no matter what you think.

So I know a whole lot about a couple of topics, and training dogs is one of them. With a dog, you tell it what to do, and then if it doesn't do it, you correct it gently, and you have it do it but you can't let that you can't tell a dog sit sit sit sit sit sit sit because then you're training the dog to sit on that 10th one with the yell and a lot of people don't know that you watch people that have their kids and like knock it off knock it off knock it off knock it off and then they scream at them to knock it off and then the kid doesn't knock it off and then

they just stop telling them the kid does whatever the fuck they want right so you have to have consistency i'm not telling you to fucking physically correct your then the kid doesn't knock it off, and then they just stop telling them. The kid does whatever the fuck they want, right? So you have to have consistency. I'm not telling you to fucking physically correct your kid, right? That doesn't work. I had the fuck beat out of me my whole life by my mother, and I did what I did despite that. I wanted to be a good person despite that, right? So I don't believe that you should hit your kids. I don't think there's any value whatsoever in that.

I think it's counterproductive, and it gives the wrong message. It just sends that. It tells them that you're more powerful than them and somebody more powerful than you can abuse you for that. What I mean when kids are like dogs is dogs want to do what you want them to do. They just don't, you just don't know how to tell them what you want to do. So you've got to tell them what you want them to do, and when they don't do it, you gently correct them and show them,

and then once they do it correctly, you praise the fuck out of them right doesn't matter how good it is how small how big kids are the same way you can't let something slide you and with a dog you have to be 100% consistent because the first time you let that dog not stay it ain't gonna stay no more do you know what i mean yeah so you gotta you gotta keep on top of them but you have to keep on top of them without yelling and screaming uh and it's it's a reinforcement of positive behavior and a correction of negative behavior. So I think that's one thing. And two, I think that you have to,

if you're, you know, you have to pair it as a team. You both have to be on the same page. So one thing that we never, even if we don't agree with what the other one says, we don't talk about it in front of him and we come to a decision. So a lot of times it's like if he wants to do something, well, I'll talk to your mother about it. Or she said, I'll talk to your father about it.

And then we'll talk about it. And sometimes she wins and sometimes I win if it's something that one of us doesn't agree on. But most of the time we have the same opinion because we want what's best for him. So I think you have to lead by example and not disparage the other parent in front of the child. And what you do and the way you present yourself and the way you behave, they see whether you think they do or not. You know, so I see with my son, like he's never said, well, one got i got assaulted by somebody and i had to

defend myself and he was with us when we get attacked on the street in boston i get stabbed like 15 times with a pen um but that's different um that's not the same as punching somebody's fucking head in but you know he's seen he's heard stories and you don't think about like me my friends we always tell the story So he hears that and I wish that I never said those things in front of him because he knows that you can't do it, but I know he wants to punch somebody in the face. I wish I never said those things in front of him. You know what I mean?

But you got to be consistent. You have to give that. And it's not an act. You have to just behave the way someone's supposed to behave. So they pick up everything you do. Do you know what I mean? So if they see you going to work and putting forth the best product that you can put out every day, coming home, not beating your wife, not fucking yelling, not having fights, talking things over like a human being and coming to a reasonable decision, you know, holding the door for somebody. They see you behave like that.

They absorb all that. And I think that's how you do it. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, he might grow up to be a fucking serial killer, but I don't think he's going to. You know, I think he's – everything I hear is that, you know, his school teachers and everybody says that, well, he talks too much.

Well, geez, where does he get that from? He fools around too much in school, but he's got good grades. And they say he's very polite, he's very respectful, and he's a joy to have in class if he just wouldn't talk so much. But I can't fault him for that because he gets that from me. Do you know what I mean? Have you noticed that the RPR thing has helped you be a calmer, more present, just better at your delivery? Like how has that kind of affected the parenting side? Drastically.

Yeah. Yeah, drastically. Were you much quicker with him back in the day? Yep. And the problem with him too, though, is he's always been a giant. So, you know, you've got a three-year-old that's six inches, eight inches taller than the other three-year-olds. And as they grow, you forget that he's five or four because he's so fucking big. And you just see this monster in front of you.

You think, like, he should be able to be doing more than he is. And then, you know, you'd be a little quick with him, a little short. His body's three years ahead and his brain's right where it's supposed to be. No, like when you went to school, like in first grade, he was the size of the third and fourth graders. Yeah. He's like when you went to school, like in first grade, he was the size of the third and fourth graders. Yeah. He's giant, you know. He's almost 6'4". He's like 6'3", almost 6'4". He's a fucking monster.

Is he going to be 7 foot? The doctor says that he thinks he's going to be like 6'8", 7 feet. It's like Teresa's kid. It's fucking crazy. I look at him, he can barely walk, but he's like 3 1⁄2 feet tall or something. It's like, you can't walk, but you're half my half my size so you're doing you know when they give you the little cards at the hospital and they take the two baby feet they put them on it like that yeah his cod it was one foot going the other way i swear to god um but yeah the rpr has definitely allowed me to

to communicate better with everybody but i think with my son yeah i think our relationship may have been a little bit strained uh a few years ago um when when some stuff was really at its peak and it was hard to not bring that home yeah you know what i mean and not and things in the house and um being short too too frequently and not yelling at him i don't yell at him i don't hit him but short and like, what the fuck? Come on. How much of that process do you think is kind of turning that, like, locus of control onto the internal locus of control?

Like, this is me. I need to get better as a person. I feel like a lot of anger, a lot of it comes from focusing on, like, the external of I don't have that or this person did this to me talk about road rage or something they did that to me i need to go get them was there ever a moment of like i need to become a better person oh yeah yeah but nothing did it until you found this yeah nothing did it yeah um just did it and this i wasn't even doing this for that i was doing this to make my hip feel good yeah um but i just kind of noticed and i called jl up i'm

like dude is this like normally because it's totally completely normal it happens to everybody that does it i'm like and i noticed it would spud um spud changed he was always a pretty relaxed kind of guy but he'd get jacked up pretty quick you know um but he's very different since he started doing it in a different a good way you know what i mean um so i asked jl like is this a normal part of the equation where you you basically turn into a better person he goes yep but we don't tell a lot of people that because then they think you're really selling them a bunch of hokum yeah you know um so yeah i think it i think it's definitely changed my ability to be a better father um drastically yeah which is as i say when people ask me what is rpr the first thing i say

it's a gift jail gave me and it's it's i mean i get goosebumps when i tell people it's a fucking gift yeah and people think sometimes like this kid's fucking nuts you know he's nuts he's like he's it's like a cult he's and i'm like, it's like a cult, but we ain't buying nothing. You don't have to give us your money. Well, there's a lot of. You know what I mean? It's hard for weightlifters a lot of times or powerlifters, whatever it is, because we spend the first 20 years of our 15 years of our weightlifting careers

from 11 for you, 13, 13. And it's how much of a meathead can I be so I can pick this up? Fucking right. If I'm not completely angry, like snorting something right before the lift and screaming at the top of my lungs with heavy metal, rap. DJ Maxx F. Put the right song on. Yeah, like all of that, like I won't be able to pick the weight up.

So you hardwire extreme stress into your nervous system, and you have to find a way to get out of that. And oftentimes you would like to find that earlier, but you're kind of scared you'd be a pussy. And then you don't realize that that's actually like a really cool sign of strength that we talk about absolutely not in the gym is to be able to look inside and find that thing where you can become actually the person that you would like to be knowing that i'm not really that person right now all i'm good at right now is just lifting weights

and to whatever gets you to that point is is right and some of us the only thing we wanted to do is be good at lifting weights yeah you know what i mean and that's still it's not the only thing i want to do but i still hope that at some point i could be good at lifting weights because yeah i don't know it's lifting weights is awesome it's fucking awesome it's so awesome it's so awesome dude it's like that's dude. It's like the best thing in the world. That's why we came to Boston to talk about lifting weights. So fucking awesome. But this is something that, you know, taking the, I don't want to say spiritual side of it, out of it, but it's something that RPR will make you better at fucking lifting weights.

Yeah. It will make you able to turn on and get fucking jacked up really fast and get all fucking psyched and going to smash the fucking weight and then go, all right, I'm good. When's my next set? When's my next attempt? So it does that, and it makes you more resistant to injury. Shit doesn't hurt as much, and if you keep doing it, it hurts way less,

and sometimes it stops hurting completely. If you're in things that require you to be mobile like a weightlifter, powerlifters, we don't have to be that mobile. Strongmen need to be mobile. Weightlifters need to to be mobile, like a weightlifter. You know, powerlifters, we don't have to be that mobile. Strongmen need to be mobile. Weightlifters need to be really mobile. But you also need to be stable in those mobile places. It's going to make you fucking better at that. I can't believe you guys haven't heard of this yet.

This is my first time. This is the shit, guy. You've got to get on board with it. I'm telling you right now, you've got to get on board with this. We hear about all the weird stuff, too, in San Diego. All the crazy hippies out there, we hear about it all. JL won't care. I'll email you the about all the weird stuff too in san diego yeah all the crazy hippies out there we hear about it all jl won't care i'll email you the wake up drills video that we shot so you can try and how to do them on your own killer yeah and uh it you'd be you a good podcast would

be to get either jeff or jl on the podcast oh yeah okay yeah are we getting kicked out of your own office get out oh yeah Out, out, out. Well, yeah, that sounds cool. You connect us and we'll make it happen. Yeah. Yeah, you'll see something. That's my boy. He's bringing me down some smoked turkey. That's your son?

No, no, it's my friend Mark. I was going to say, I'm looking at like a baby picture behind you. No, my son's almost as tall as him. The 6'4'' monster just walked in. I was like, oh, there he is. He's a former pro basketball player. He's a good dude. He's going to be pissed if I kick him out of the office.

But, yeah, so can I give a plug to the website real quick? Oh, we're about to wrap. We're about to wrap, right? Well, I actually want to hear about your programs and who you're coaching and just what we've gone over. Strongman, we've gone over powerlifting. Where's kind of your focus at as far as your online coaching? Like who are you attracting with your women's program here?

Just kind of what does your actual coaching business look like? The powerlifting program here is anybody that wants powerlifting comes in, we're going to take them. We're going to teach how to be a powerlifter. Cool. Right? And the adult program, Total Performance Method, it's a group program based on seven foundation exercises,

squat, press, deadlift, kettlebell swing, Turkish getup, push-up, plank, foundation, primal movements, right? Cool. And the goal is to get you as fucking obnoxiously strong as humanly possible and be as technically perfect as those seven exercises that you're capable of being, right? And then we put in other components to it, some conditioning, some bodybuilding, all kinds of shit, depending on what the focus of the training block is. Yeah. It's done in eight-week blocks, and it's a really unique system.

It works off a day one, day two, day three system. So day one is Monday or Tuesday. Day two is Wednesday or Thursday. Day three is Friday or Saturday. You come at a day and a time that's convenient for you, day one, day two, day three. Ideally Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. And groups run from 530 in the morning until 7 p.m. at night, so there's no fucking excuse for you not to make it no matter what shift you work.

Everybody goes through an eight-week beginner prep program where we break it down slow and low, and then we eventually get you up to, after week eight, you're joining the main group and you're doing the lifts. And we build as much success into the program as possible. It's based on five to six days of activity, but we don't really give a fuck what you do as long as you do something that meets three stipulations. One, it's a challenge for your current level of fitness.

Two, it addresses an identified weakness and eliminates it. And three, it's something that gets you further towards your goal. So if you say I want to do spotting races and go see my boy Joe DeSana and you're going to do yoga on your off days, well, you ain't going to be any good. Do you hang out with DeSana? No, I've done a seminar with him. No, he's a good friend of a friend of mine. He's a really good dude.

We like Joe. That was one of the reasons that I reached out to you. I saw that you were hanging out with Zach Evanesh and Joe DeSena. Zach's a good friend of mine. And then, yeah, Zach's the one that connected us. And then I saw that Dave Tate recommended or, like, tagged you on the Instagram post. So between the three of them, I was like, we've got to talk to them. Yeah, talk to me.

There's three people. If nothing, I'm funny. This is actually the perfect combination. Whenever we look for a guest, we look for the guy who has a ton of experience and loves to me. There's three people. If nothing, I'm funny. This is actually the perfect combination. Whenever we look for a guest, we look for the guy who has a ton of experience and loves to talk and has a sense of humor. That's the combination. So the website, I'd kind of like to plug it if I can because I would like some money. Absolutely. I love money.

I love money. I don't really care about money. I really don't. I don't give a fuck about money. I just want enough money to be able to not worry about it. That's a different amount for everybody. But I don't care about being rich. I just want to not have to worry about having a single income and keeping a roof over my kid's head.

Yeah, most people just want to be stress-free and have opportunity. Yeah. So I've created a product that I think it's in beta mode right now. So we did a launch, and we launched it to a select number of people on the list. We did a 50% off launch, and we offered it for life. So it's $169 a year for life. And then we're going to launch it to the public at $29 a month for the first level. And then when we get the custom coding done, it's going to be crazy, right?

But what it offers right now is there's about a year of programming up there for TFL or powerlifting. TFL is Training for Life. It's basically the method program that I talked about. So if you look at the online coaching world, right, online coaching and powerlifting is a pretty big business, right? But in the grand total of people on the earth, what is there, 100,000, 200,000 people to powerlift? And there's 8 billion people in the world? How many of those 8 billion lift weights and exercise yeah right so uh the boy my buddy richie that i said he was telling me a story he went to a gym to take some karate from what was from some master guy and he had a sign on the top

of the wall and it said one of a hundred to come in here will be a black belt and he looked at him and he said i want the other 99 yeah so i want to teach karate to anybody that wants to learn, even if they're not going to be the best karate guy in the world. I want the other 8 billion. I want the power lifting people, but I'm really limiting my market, and we have a really fucking first-rate, outstanding adult strength program here that addresses all aspects of fitness. So why not take it and create a market online for that?

So we have about a year of TFL programming loaded up now, and there'll be much more. We have about a year of powerlifting that is either loaded up now or will be loaded up by week's end, starting from beginning, going up to intermediate. There'll be programming for raw and equipped powerlifting. And then as the site develops and we get more of the beta stuff done, there'll be a whole separate section on just conditioning workouts. There'll be a, you know, a TPS method home section where if you don't have a gym, you can do this stuff in a home gym with just dumbbells and they're all different facets to it. But right now it's the two programs that we run that we know are fucking locked in and

rock solid. It has online courses. So right now there's a squat bench and a deadlift course. They're a little over an hour each and they take you in like nice 10 minute chunks and they break you down from every little detail and nuance that you could possibly think about. The squat or the bench or the deadlift from rooting to proper bracing to little tricks, things to do with your pinkies, all kinds of shit. Stuff that you're not

going to learn by trying to find it all yourself. And it's from what I would call a reputable source because I didn't make any of this shit up. I learned this shit from people that were way smarter than me and way better at it than me. So I'm just parroting stuff that I've learned from smarter people, you know.

So there's courses on that, and there's more courses coming. We just shot a course on the overhead press today. You know, there'll be one for pretty much every major lift, and there'll be a lot of shorter ones for um accessory lifts right yeah there's about 450 videos on the website now all professionally produced um the majority of those are about 10 to 20 second chunks so when you go through when you get your program it'll say you know for example trx pistol squad is one of the accessory exercises you don't know how to fucking do a pistol squad if you're Mr. and Mrs. Jones in the Midwest, right? So you click the video, boom, somebody's doing a TRX Pistol Squad.

Yeah. There's seminars that we've done and filmed that will be on there. We had about seven or eight seminars that we filmed, and the audio ended up being really bad, and we couldn't use it. So, like, we had a Milano Chef seminar, and we filmed it, and it didn't come out right. We can't use it. So next time Andre comes back, we'll mic him up, and we'll put the lights up, and we'll film it. But if you're thinking about a seminar, it costs you $100, $200 to go to a seminar, right?

Plus you've got to buy whiskey. You've got to fucking get food. You've got to pay for a hotel room. Necessity. God, dude. Look at it. There's only a little left. It might cost you $500, $600 to go to a seminar.

For $29, you've got a seminar here online. So there's two on there now, and we'll have much more up there as the site develops. And the member forums is a huge thing. I think it's the best feature, right? So remember the forums back when the Internet started? Oh, yeah. This is the same but different. It's troll-free.

It's heavily moderated. You can just copy and paste an Instagram link or a YouTube link, and you put your video up there, and one of my coaches that's been vetted and interned and certified by me will watch a video, analyze your squat, your bench, your deadlift, or whatever lift it is, and give you accurate feedback on how to correct that lift. To me, for $29 a month, you're getting a program that was written by an actual strength coach. You're getting professionally produced videos on how to do the exercises.

You're getting seminars, courses, and a coach is going to watch you lift and tell you, hey, you lost a root on your pinky. Yeah. You know what I mean? What does that mean? Watch the root video. We should have talked about that because that's fucking great. Fucking specialty exercises to fix technique and fucking assholes.

Jesus Christ, why didn't we talk about it? You guys got to come back out. I got another six hours. We easily could do another show. So that's TPSMethod.com. Membership is shut down today. What's today's date? I don't know. Membership will be back up. We'll be accepting members at the founding level

member again by December 1st. We had to upgrade our server because fucking GoDaddy sold me hosting. And even though I said, I don't know if this is right, they said, no, it's absolutely right. And then when we launched the live site, it didn't work. It didn't work. Internet. So we had to pull the site down, and the site's undergoing a server upgrade right now. So we shut membership down.

But by December 1st, decided to be back up if you guys want to join. We're not offering any free trials right now because it's in beta but if you want to join at 50 off a life you can go to tpsmethod.com and run the risk um but i wouldn't sell you a product that's not going to be great but you got to realize that it is in beta so in exchange for that 50 discount you're accepting the fact that there might be some bugs might might be some issues with the site, and 100% of the content's not up there, and we want the user feedback from these beta members to help us develop the site fully for the level 2 launch that's going to be coming within hopefully 90 days or so.

And then we get out of beta, and then the price goes to full price. And if you guys want to check it out, let me know. Send me an email. We'll give you a password and a login. You can check it out. That would be awesome. Yeah, I'd love to see it. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

What's the website again? TPSmethod.com. Right on. Easy enough. Any socials you want to get people to follow you on? Instagram, at TPSMalden. T as in Thomas. M-A-L-D-E-N for all you non-Boston people that didn't understand that word he just said.

TPSMalden. Malden. T as in Tango. P as in Peter. S as in Steven. M as in Mary. A as in Alpha. LPS Malden. Malden. T as in Tango, P as in Peter, S as in Steven, M as in Mary, A as in Alpha, L as in Lima, D as in Dick, E as in Echo,

N as in Nitwit. TPS Malden. And then at TPS Method on Instagram too. Doug Larson. Yeah, you can follow me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson and and of course, everything's Drug Collective. I've got Barbell Strug every Wednesday and most Saturdays these days, and I do Technic Quad on Sundays.

Yeah. You have a fucking great voice for radio, bro. Thank you. That's a good voice. Yours is good, too, but he sounds like the TV cost salesman. That was awesome. That's right. Thanks for having us out. This was awesome. I love sitting around talking about lifting weights with people that love lifting weights. That's pretty much why we do this.

You have an awesome gym. Super cool little culture out there. Cool. Guy in the bathroom Dude, this is fucking great. Talking about lifting weights with people that love lifting weights is pretty much why we do this. Yeah, I had a great time. Awesome gym. Super cool little culture out there. Cool. Guy in the bathroom talking about squatting 600 pounds. He's probably out there doing it now. I actually went in the other room, and he was somewhere not on the big squat rack. Was he wearing tights?

What's your opinion of men on tights, by the way? Yeah, why not? I feel like Klokoff does it, so. I'm not Klokoff. Yeah. He's a's a super cool dude too he's been to the gym he's been here a few times yeah super cool dude yeah he's uh he's a monster and he doesn't all all the real athletes do it yeah it's the athletes that aren't yeah look at you truth i wish if you're walking into the grocery store with your junk out. And a pair of weightlifting shoes on. And a pair of weightlifting shoes.

You know, everyone. People need to know that you lift. Yeah. And before we break, real quick, you'll love this. There was a guy that owned a karate school in Everett Square, right next to where our old place was. And you would go to stop and shop at 7 o'clock on a Sunday, and he was wearing his gi.

And you would go to the bank at 2 o'clock on a Tuesday, and he was wearing his gi. And you'd go to the bank at 2 o'clock on a Tuesday, and he was wearing his gi. The guy wore his gi every week. You had to know that he taught karate. It's fucking great. It's fantastic. Find me at Shrug Collective. Shrug Collective for all the things.

At Anders Varner for all the things Anders Varner. And, yeah, six shows a week. Four YouTube shows going out a week. Life is good. Yep. A million- going out a week. Life is good. Yep. A million plus downloads a month. Crushing it. Are you shitting me?

A million downloads a month? Yeah, it's been fun. I was going to say, why just email me some shit and I'll put your links out there, but you don't need my fucking help. Oh, we always need help. We appreciate help. Yeah, we'll get you all the stuff. Yeah, it's been fun. We just expanded into, I say just, it's been about eight months now seven months

into a network brought on a couple new shows bringing on new talent in the new year we've got a seasonal show so if you ever I'm always available

for talent if you are ever I'm like pitching a new show right now but if you're ever interested in getting very very deep into specific things

talk to us whatever you want dude I'm available 24-7 I'm always available for I love this shit yeah right on and a shout out to zach evanesh for connecting us yes we love him i love it yeah cool guys see you next week thanks guys shrug family cj murphy what a guy seriously i was sitting in a freaking barber chair for two hours talking to a human being that knows everything

there is to know about powerlifting it It's an unbelievable life. I want to thank everybody for all the support over the past year. 2019 is off to a bang. I feel like we just finished eight of the best episodes that I've ever come across shrugged. We really worked hard in Guadalupe Luzo. We cranked out a ton of two-hour long shows with some really high performing people. Matt Frazier is coming to shrug. Gabby Reese, Under Armour is unleashing their brand new shoes at the CrossFit market. We were able to get an exclusive interview with them. All kinds of stuff coming your way. Chris Henshaw, man, Logan Gelbrich, and Guido Trinidad telling the story about Guadalupalooza. So tons of good things coming up. I appreciate everybody tuning in. Make sure you get over to Instagram,

follow me at Anders Varner, hit me with the hashtag, go long, take a screenshot of the show when you're listening to it and, uh, see you guys next time.