Cameron Hanes - Keep Hammering Collective - KHC 029 - Tristan Hamm and Stefi Cohen

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

  Dynamic duo of a 25x World Record holding powerlifter and adventure connoisseur; Stefi Cohen and Tristan Hamm bring different perspectives of resilience through struggle and extreme goal-chasing mindsets.  Follow along: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cameronrhanes Twitter: https://twitter.com/cameronhanes Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/camhanes/ Website: https://www.cameronhanes.com   Connect with Tristan Hamm and Stefi Cohen:  https://www.instagram.com/tristanhamm/  https://www.instagram.com/steficohen/   Thank you to our sponsors: Santa Cruz Medicinals: scmedicinals.com use code KeepHammering for 15% off Ketone IQ: https://hvmn.com/CAM use code CAM for 20% Black Buffalo: https://blackbuffalo.com/discount/CAM use code CAM for 15% off MTN OPS Supplements: https://mtnops.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% off and Free Shipping First Light: https://www.firstlight.farm/ Use Code Cam15 for 15% off your first order Leupold: https://www.leupold.com/ Black Rifle: https://www.blackriflecoffee.com/ Use code KEEPHAMMERING for 20% your first order Hoyt: http://bit.ly/3Zdamyv Bass Pro/Cabelas: https://www.basspro.com   Timestamps: 0:00:00 Introduction 0:03:30 “Influencer” world 0:06:30 Making a business 0:14:20 The Animal Cage 0:22:00 Environment shapes your belief 0:34:50 Perceiving pain  0:35:22 Groove Life 0:35:50 Ketone IQ 0:54:30 Tricking your brain 1:07:00 Why injuries happen 1:09:00 Growing up in a 3rd world country 1:13:09 Resilience through upbringing 1:18:50 Master of the mundane 1:27:00 No cares about your struggle 1:37:08 Vegan for 4 years 1:49:50 Oil industry with an open mind 2:05:00 High bar set 2:09:00 Women’s boxing 2:14:00 Do what you're good at  2:30:00 Win the day 2:32:00 Stefi 2.0

I'm always putting constant stress on my body, which is why I decided to try mud water, and it has been a game changer in regard to mental focus. The blend of adaptogenic mushrooms, cortisps, and lions mane all support focus, physical performance, and are great for the immune system. Now, these aren't the hallucinogenic type of mushrooms, but I do like that mud water gives back to the Berkeley Center for the science of using psychedelics to help treat individuals, with mental health disorders. Go to mudwater.com, this M-U-D-W-T-R.

Use code CAM for 15% off your first order. Hoyt Archery has been my bow hunting sponsor since 2005. And personally, I really don't care what bow you shoot, what brand it is. I just hope that you have the same level of confidence in your equipment as I have in mine. Because I know if I get one opportunity with my Hoyt, it's gonna pay off.

All right, here, we're the key panel. Cameron Collective with Tristan Ham and Steffie Cohen. How are you guys? Feeling it. Yeah? We had a great lift run shoot day yesterday. Yeah. And you've been to Oregon.

Have you been to Oregon before? No, first time. I've actually always wanted to come here. Yeah. Yeah. I've always heard great things about here, just how beautiful it is and how much there is to do in nature. And so far, exceeded my expectations. We're going to rip up to Ben today.

Yeah. So it'll be beautiful up there. What's the plans there? Probably do some mountain biking. We were trying to do some mountain biking Whistler, but we just ran out of time because we had to get down here to you. Well, I had to fly back to Whistler, but.

Yeah. I heard Whistler's beautiful also. Oh, Wistler's a vibe. Yeah, I haven't been there. You haven't been to Whistler? I don't know. I, you know, I flew up there one time. It's in B.C., right?

Yeah. Just outside of Vancouver, about an hour and a half. Yeah, I went up there because they were doing a reality show, and I was on the pilot for the reality show and mountain bike, there's a, what is the guy? They call him the bear. He's a mountain biker from up there. Darren, Baron, somebody.

Okay, okay. Yeah, anyway. I don't know what I do. These guys were just freaking studs and there's so many good trails around Vancouver. And we were, to them, it was no big deal. But I'm just like pretty steep, pretty ruddy. It was fun though.

You know, like you were just bear hunting in the area. in Alberta. You know, like the vibe of Canada generally, if you're not in Toronto or Vancouver, these hot spots, it's like, it's clearly that you're in Canada, right? Like, everyone's got that real good accent there, but they're gonna go smoke a dart in the bush.

Yeah. But then you go to Vancouver and more specifically Whistler, and you feel like you're in the US. Really? It does not feel like you're in Canada. Yeah, it's very much Americanized. And you were right, you hit it right in the head when he said that it seems like Park City.

It feels like Park City. Totally feels like Park City. You spent time in Park City, right? Yeah, yeah. It's like a resort town kind of. Yeah. It's bougie, you know. Boogie.

Cool stores, good restaurants. Everything's stupid expensive. Park City's ridiculously expensive, dude. Everybody's just like in shape and like nice clothes and walking around. There's nothing but Cam Haynes walking around everywhere in Park City. It's a bunch of retired guys that had a bunch of solar companies and they all sold them about $350 million. and they're just running and they're biking and they're jacked.

It's so true. It's so true. Me, I'm just like an old small town bow hunter. Yeah, you're also very humble about that because you're a little bit more in that. We all can attest. Well, it's great having you guys here. I mean, it was, I don't know, I don't really know how it came to be, but other than social media, I mean, we got to think social. We can test social media for a lot of times.

things, but also it brings a lot of people together. It really does. It brought us together. Yeah. You know, so it's, uh, social media is a huge thing. It got a long, a bad rap for a long time, especially the influence of world. Like, but it's cool to see it all coming full circle and everybody kind of getting on board. And, um, yeah, it definitely brings people together.

It's a, it's a way for people to connect on a way it never was able to before. And I think that if you're able to use it, like I'd like to use social media to like connect with my followers, like literally meet them in person. So that's, that's really cool. You get to see who you inspire. And you're able to inspire people that also become influencers or that already have influence of some sort. The word influencers, I think, abused a lot. But at the end of the day, we're all influencers of one level to our kids or to our parents even.

And you were a huge influence to me. And I mean, I've been able to tap into a whole side of my life that I didn't know existed without your influence. Oh, that doesn't tell you something. Yeah. And now I'm going to run with that. You know, I'm going to help millions more. Yeah. I've seen, I mean, I saw the videos you had the campaign's boots on.

Yeah. You ran in the shoes yesterday. Yeah. And then I was like shooting a bow. And you definitely have cool content. I didn't really know. It's weird because it's like most of, most of time, people like find their way to influence, if you want to use that word, through something out.

You know what it means? Because I knew Steffi from lifting. Yeah. And then I was just like, I guess how did you find your way to influence? Yeah, my way was found through. I wanted to wake up doing what I loved every single day. And I didn't know how to do that. So, you know, but I started in a small town and lived out in Manitoba, Canada.

And then I joined the pipelines and started working my ass off there. And in the oil fields. How long did you work and do that? About eight years. Yeah. And worked my way up. became a foreman, you know, really paid my dues, but got ahead of the game a lot faster than most. I mean, every other foreman ever there was their 50s, 60s, you know, here I am at 18, 19 year old,

you know, telling guys that are six times my age what to do. Yeah. So, you know, that was, that was huge because it taught me grit and taught me resilience and how to endure. And, but, you know, I learned to fall in love with that because the money was bombed. But I knew, that's not what I want to do for forever. And I knew it was a matter of time before I had to get out and had to get out sooner rather than later. So started using some of that money to like spend on just travel for myself. And I'm like, well, imagine if I could do this for a living.

And that's right around the time the social media started to take some momentum. And like to, but it was right out of the gate too. Right. Like so right, right as I started making money on the pipeline, I was like, I was like, let's like put this money to work and start traveling and in between my job. So I worked like two months on, three months on. and take two, three weeks off. Started traveling in Hawaii, fell in love with Hawaii,

got welcomed in by the locals. They taught me like a whole side of like culture that I didn't even know existed before. They showed me both the good and the bad side. And just fell in love with that process, started inviting my friends down to come with me. I loved like including them in it, taking them on these adventures and shit.

And then one day a friend has tapped me on the shoulder and he's like, hey, I want to start like this club. where we take people on adventures like we've been doing. Do you want to get involved? And I'm like, that'd be sick. Let's do something like that. And then we tried to make it into a business a few times, didn't really work together too well because we kept bringing in the wrong partners.

Finally, I'm just going to try to do this little thing on my own, you know? So I started making this business where we were taking people on adventures and trips. And it's just a little side hustle, you know, just kind of like. What was the hiccups? Like, why wasn't work? It's because it takes money to get started. It takes money to get started.

And I was putting a lot of money in. And it was more like a charity than a business. It took me a long time before. realized that but I knew that if I kept investing it would it just felt right I really believe in like following your heart and believing in in that thing that drives you and like following it there's a reason you have that little ticker inside and keeps you going and um I just I knew that even though I was spending literally all my money on funding other people's experiences and trips on these adventures that had taken people on in Hawaii in California at the time that um you know they eventually would

pay off and it would lead me to somewhere and through posting those trips, my Instagram started to grow, right? And I never ever thought I'd hit a million or anything like that. I thought like it was a cool tool to stay connected in a different type of marketing tool, like Facebook ads, YouTube ads, that type of thing. I didn't really see it as building a community until I started experiencing some negativity in the community.

You know, once you start making an impact, there's a counter to that too. You get a little pushback. And then I was like, well, there's clearly a dark side in the adventure space. There's people that don't want new people in it. There's my wall. I don't want to share it. And I'm like, well, why don't I make my own community? And when I locked in that mentality to make my own community,

that's where it just started to make sense. Everything started to pile together. And that built momentum, that company started to grow. The community started to grow. My social media started to grow. You just started to have influence in my own community. And then that just expanded. And with the different tools and stuff like that and collaborations and stuff,

I was able to build every ounce of momentum that I could find And eventually we got here to having millions of people online. So we're just getting warmed up. It's, it's weird too how you don't want to like tie measurables to people. But I think we do in life because it's like if somebody sends you a message and says, hey, I have this great idea or do you want to get together and you want to do this thing? It's weird because what you do is you like look at so who is this person? Because you don't know.

So you're like looking. It's like, oh, well, they got a lot of followers. maybe, you know, maybe they're on to something. You caught my eye. If they have 50 followers, then you're like, this is just some fucking crazy person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's like,

if they have less than 300, you're like, there's some wrong with you. Yeah, wants to meet up with me, you know? But if that same person has three million, then you're like, oh, they're doing something right. Maybe this is real or legit. Or maybe, yeah, they're on to something. But it's just like, you don't want to,

you don't want to tie it. social credit score type thing to if somebody is legit or not, but it's like, it's already happening. It's, yeah. You can't stop it. You can't stop it. And so it's just part of us, you know. And then I was thinking too, it's like, well, that's a weird measure because we said our measurables are followers.

But that's how life works because you're measurable like for you and lifting weights. That's like if you say, well, I'm, I'm a weightlifter. I'm a power lifter. Okay. what what do you mean show show me and then you have well i can deadlift this much that's a measurable yeah that's fucking measurable you're just like how much is it by the way yeah how much can you 50 550 pounds 550 so it's just like yeah it's not followers because of every pound is hard earned but it's still a score yeah so you're just like oh well if this powerlifter who she looks like this and she lifts this

that must mean something but then if that's that's same power lifter doesn't have that million you know it's like okay well then why aren't you why don't people know you why don't anybody know you is those fake weights yeah yeah yeah what's going on here yeah yeah the fake weights are crazy these days too i know but i had a i had a time period of my power lifting where i swear i was lifting like the thing was lift for the gram like gram like grammar it didn't happen oh yeah you know and it's true it's like yeah if you're not documenting and making it public for the world to see, then it didn't actually happen.

Yeah, it's so true. But back to what you were saying, I think like naturally everybody has this, even when you're mating people, and I think it's getting worse, honestly, because of social media. But we have like, we're human lie detectors. Like we right away want to figure out

if someone's full of shit or not. And if they seem like they're not full of shit, it seems like society wants to figure out how they're not full of shit. Yeah. So it's like we have this big like this or this. Like, so you go on there, Instagram account, you see 50 followers, it's this. You know, you see a million. It's like, put my arms up,

what we got? And they're engagement. They got a million followers, but 35 likes this. They buy their followers. You know what I mean? Yeah, but why is that? It's because there's a level of competition right now, social competition and, and financial competition as well to create and sell and push things down people's throats that now people are just skeptical of who they're listening to. Rightfully so. Yeah. And it's true. It's because, you know, in the culture of like Los Angeles, for example, But anyone can be, it's like the culture in general in the United States, like you can become anything you want. But you go to hotspots like L.A.

And they got a bad rap. And you got a bunch of people that, you know, are from Arkansas or something like that. And they just weren't really liked in their towns or they didn't really get anything, any momentum. And they moved somewhere like L.A. And I've experienced a lot of people like this there. And it's like, they roll up and they just like, well, I guess I could be whatever I want. I could just say whatever I want.

Yeah. You can pretend I'm something that I'm not. Yeah. You're creating a virtual avatar of yourself of what you want people to see you us. You want to be perceived as, which is crazy. That starts to come out in people. It starts to rot out in people. So I don't think we have to be such crazy lie detectors.

I think what we should do is just allow people to show us a little bit more, you know, and just let's let's talk a little less. Yeah, yeah. Like, shut up and carry this rock to the top of the mountain. Let's see if you're full shit or not. Yeah. I was starting to really believe that I was one of those L.A. boys there for a minute. I was really starting to question my career path.

I think. I think we both were. But I think that's good, isn't it, that we're questioning ourselves sometimes. Yep. Because if you're never, if you're never out of your comfort zone, never push, never like questioning, like what, what am I about? Then we're not really, we're not testing ourselves. Yeah.

Right. I mean, I think that's good. I like to, you know, and you talk about social media, there was a time back in the day where people would say, you don't really do what you say. Because there wasn't, I couldn't record it and post it. So people would say, you say you're doing this, you're not doing this. Nobody does all this. And so now it's so easy to say, oh, here's what I'm doing.

And then still, but still, people can still fake it. Yeah. You can still, I mean, you could carry that sandbag for 50 yards. That it can hand it to your camera guy. Say you carried it all the way up. Yeah. Act like you're sweating and tired. Yeah.

You don't know what's around that corner. That's what's hard because people fake a lot of shit these days. But that's why I love, I mean, and I'll just, I'll refer back to the first video I saw of you, Steffie's like in that cage. I guess it's at, where's that? Arnold. Yeah, the animal carriage. Yeah, the animal cage.

I mean. She's not safe. There's no faking that shit. Talk about savage. Because those guys would never let anybody fake anything. Because to be in that case. So how do you get in the cage? So animals.

which was a supplement company, still is, owned by Universal Nutrition. They're pretty kind of hardcore in the lifting space. And I was the first woman that they brought in as a sponsored athlete, which was cool. And it was kind of a historical moment, if you may. And then they put this event up at the Arnold, which is a cage, a literal cage, where it has a schedule and lifters that are going to do a particular feed of strength. And for many, many years, I don't know, the last. 10 years, it was always guys. And when I joined them as a sponsored athlete, they invited me over to

the cage. And the first time that I was in, I was planning on hitting a pretty big debt lift. So they plan it, they schedule it in. And then people just kind of like start gathering to watch people lift. And I've honestly never experienced the energy like that. It was kind of at the beginning stages of my lifting career. So I didn't even expect so many people to show up. What year was this? This was 2017. 17 or 2018. Yeah, 2017 was a deadlift. Okay.

And there were just like lines and lines and lines of people gathering around the cage and just like getting on the cage and like screaming at you and rattling the cage. That's awesome. At that point it's like do or die, right? Like all of these people are gathering here. And also like you're also trying to prove something, right? I'm trying to prove that I'm the strongest woman in the world. I'm posting all these all these videos of, oh, look, I can do.

Are you real or not? Exactly. Yeah. Can you do it or not? And can you perform under pressure? That's the other thing, right? That is hard. It is.

But I'm fueled by that. Like, I've always been a performer. If you put me in front of people in front of a camera, I'm making shit happen, you know? Like, I'm pulling it out of my ass somehow, literally. Nice. And so, yeah, man. It was a pretty cool experience just to be able to showcase what I'm really, what I really am about. And especially at that moment, I was coming out of a pretty gnarly back injury.

I was in physical therapy school at the time. So just spending a lot of time sitting down and stressed out. What was the back? What happened with the back? Nothing. It was just, like low back? Look, listen, I was determined. I was a physical therapist and I became obsessed with the topic of low back pain so much so

that I wrote a book about it. Oh, okay. Telling you about how I just like get locked into a topic and then like there's no stopping me. Yeah, I. Literally. Yeah. It was, there was not a kind of a, an instance or a moment that led me to develop this back injury,

it was just kind of over time. They got progressively, progressively worse. I was taking like a gram of Advil a day just to be able to function, not even to be able to go lift. And was so stubborn about not missing training, about keep progressing and keep getting stronger because I don't know. That's what I was focused on on that time. And yeah, just an injury that got worse over time.

And then what's interesting about this particular back injury is that there was, you asked me like what was wrong with it. Nothing was really wrong with it. We can talk about back pain and the misconceptions about back pain if you want. But, but. But your back pain today. Huh? Yeah.

I got a gnarly back pump today. I think we got another back injury. Yeah. No, but in most cases that you develop chronic pain, it's not usually one, an instance that, that did it or like damage a particular body part or tissue, it's more so related to your sensitivity to pain that is perpetuated by your environment, your beliefs, and the things that you do on a day-to-day basis.

So I pretty much gave myself that injury just because of how much I was putting on my plate. And leading into the cage, obviously that was a whole new set of expectations, working with a company that for the first time is sponsoring a female athlete, that is opening the doors to a massive event in the fitness community,

to the first female athlete. So I was training for this for a whole year. And I had my back was all messed up and I didn't know how I was going to be able to perform. So I'm bringing this up because that's what made it so much more special that I was able to hit a personal best by like 35 pounds at the cage just because I'm in front of people and I was so determined to like prove it, right?

That I belong there as a woman and just in that industry. What was that first lift? So I think at that time, my best lift was 515. And so I hit 520 for a 5-pound PR, and it felt so good. And I went up to 535 and hit it. And then I went up to 550. Everybody going crazy. Yeah, everybody was going wild.

Yeah. So it was technically three PRs. It was 120 at that time. 120 pounds. Wow. She's lifting more than most men, like real men. Oh, yeah. Like, well, that was kind of funny, your story that you said,

what average, about the average guy should be able to deadlift 600. This girl, just so everyone else is watching this, I ask her, because I'm trying to, you know, you're a man, you're a dating woman, and you're like, how much of a man am I to her? You know what I mean? Right. I'm like, Steffy, for man's getting deadlift, average man in your eyes, how much can he deadlift? She's like, mm, receive beetle juice. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, 600 pounds.

Like 600, she's like, she's like, yeah, 600. pounds like average guy that's barely more than her when she lifts straight out that would make sense like it's got to just do a little bit more than me i'm like i'm like let's have some context here so like please let me understand this average man to you so what does this average man do oh you know like serious with his diet you know like goes to the gym regularly i'm like what's regular like four or five times a day or a week or what's here she's like four or five times a week i'm like Right? So like I showed her some pictures. She's like like like these guys, she's like, yeah, 600.

I'm like, all right. Well, I guess that's the fucking new goal. Yeah. So how many days do I got to get there? Because so I said, okay, so I'll give me 30 days and I'll get to 600 pounds. Because I got to try to do this shit. Is that time started right now? It started like five days ago or six days ago.

Yeah. Oh. I think yesterday is going to set you back a few days. I don't know. I think I feel strong today. I'm ready to pull some weight. No, listen. I think am I like 220 right now?

This is what back injury she's talking about? This is how it's developed. Yeah. This is where it starts. I did an Instagram post I said to everybody. I said, okay, I got 30 days. Can I do it? And like 90% of the comments were, yes, we believe you can do it, but you're definitely

going to be hurt. Like, you're going to get hurt. Well, you know the people saying yes, I have never deadlifted. Exactly. Anywhere close to that. Yeah. So they're just like, oh, sounds good. Yeah.

But to the people who actually have pulled that weight, Yeah. They know how real that is. It's so true. And there's like a science behind building that type of weight. Like you can't just be a farmer like a friggin pipeline or like me. Just go and just like throw the plates on. You're just snap.

Listen, like the important point to note here is it's crazy how your environment shapes your beliefs, right? My environment is based like the last 10 years, I've been surrounded by massive girls and guys who can lift insane amounts of weight. So that became my reality. Yeah. So like to the men that are listening to this, don't be discouraged because she's in this topic she says no bullshit

fitness content but that's a little bit of bullshit average man does not just out of my research I took it back from my research the average man is 405 a jacked dude can pull 405 jacked man but more average is like 315 and then that's what I that's based on my and then a girl I think I think it was like 225 was average 25 yeah that I think I think that's what you think that's more accurate I don't hardly any women who can do 225 yeah I mean she oh by the way according to her average woman can pull 315 to 405 yeah like what it is different it's like you do you know where whoever you hang around whatever you're doing it does shape everything

yeah and that's good because I don't want to I always just to say I'd take my kids we go to the movies and I'd be like you know whether this was good or bad but I'd we'd be staying in line In the movies, I say, look around guys, and then look around, I said, this is average. We don't want to be fucking average. Because if you look at average average, I'm not talking average to weightlifters or to guys who train. But the average in the United States, not much. You don't want to be anywhere close to that. It's not much.

It's barely fucking moving. Yeah. So, yeah, it's like we want to, that's why we hang around outliers or winners or elites in our field because it's going to help us raise the bar. Exactly. Right. Like shooting. You know, like shooting yesterday.

You know, I was never trained formally how to shoot other than my redneck buddies giving me a couple tips once in a while. Yeah. Yeah, most people, though. So to be there at the shop and the bow rack. The bow rack. Yeah. It's a six-five.

I've heard it's pretty nostalgic. Learning from the herd. Wayne's the herd bull. Yeah. No shit. Do you know what herd bull is? No. So hurt.

So these, the goal is to kill the, herd bull that's the bull that runs the cows the calves it's like he owns the mountains so i'd always say wayne is the herd bull because he's like the o g been around forever done it all set up thousands and thousands of archers so i always say this is the herd bull and he hates it he hates it it's legit though and he's a he's such a good dude yeah but that was uh you put me on that ventum 34 right mhm yeah the vtm 34 vtm yeah last year was a ventum Oh, wait, so they, they change the name. They short, the difference is they shorten the word.

So is the reference. But is it still a ventum in their eyes? No, they tweaked it a little bit. What I always say is like, are these bows any better? And like, if it's 1% better, it's better. Yeah. Because that 1% could be the difference between success and failure. Yeah.

You know how it is. It's like when you're trying to achieve new of whatever, like small incremental advantages make a difference. And so to me, the best. bow is a little bit better than the ventum how much is it if you had an old bow and you had to spend 2000 for an is it is it that much better yeah it's up to you yeah it's how much do you care yeah I care I care about every person yeah I get in your head then yeah and once it gets in your head you know a lot of guys some guys get every new piece of gear that exists and that makes them better than sure

yeah and that's I mean so it's like I think I think it's key this discussion is good because it's key's like you got to look who are you hanging around You know, what's the expectations of these people that you hang around? Are the expectations to be your best? Well, then that's, and that's, when you go to the bow rack, you hang around Wayne, he has a certain standard. It might be different than the guys in your backyard of whoever's teaching. Or if you go lift, it's like, what's the goal?

It's the goal. Most people, most guys go to the gym, they just want to kind of have big arms, right? That's fine. Girls like big arms. It's all good. Yeah. But if your goal, your goal is different, you know, when you're like wanting to set a world record or to be like the strongest power lifting woman of all time, it's going to be a different

set of goals and expectations. And it's going to take something different to get there. And that's what's, that's life. So who are you hanging around? And yeah. And not only that, but what the point that I was trying to make as well about who you're surround yourself with and how that shapes your beliefs is like well the concept of confirmation bias and eco chambers right who you are around and what they're saying is going to shape what you

think of the world and of particular industries we got briefly we so agree with what you're saying we briefly got into it yesterday with hunting right like i've been in an eco chamber with people who have confirmed my bias that hunting is evil right and it was trophy hunting specifically well but that's all i know I didn't know that there was anything more to it, right? Until I started doing my research and what did you even think about like the sort of cut you off but like trophy hunting did you even think that about like meat eaters like like Well, hold on I didn't even know what the concept of trophy hunting was so it's just hunting in general right?

Just hunting like the average person like this is fresh to you too yeah so like just a few months ago like hunting was bad in your eyes so I met Tristan on Instagram and I asked him to go visit him and you talk because I thought he was a cool guy and he had a gym and he had boxing bags for all I know he could be a serial killer anyway so I went to still might be yeah we don't know for sure I am so people trust me with their children can you believe that yeah oh that's hard to believe I know they barely take care of yourself they become savages they would kill them off and then they come back savages and they go home and piss the parents off I believe that so I went to his house and he has a bunch of these guys hanging and I've

never seen that before right this is not my world like it's like imagine you walking to well you came to the ranch so that wasn't my house but that was that was that was that way you do your outdoor activities yeah the retreat center so that one's built out specifically for like yeah so there's like the adventures but there's heads from hunts yeah x dermied heads yeah which have never seen so imagine you walk into my gym and you see the average girl yeah dead lifting four or five like it's nothing and that happens at my gym all the time girl all the girls are lifting above 400 yeah all the guys are lifting above 600 and that's the norm in my world right that this is the norm in yours but it isn't in mine i've never been exposed to this stuff yeah so i walk into the retreat center

or the ranch and i'm like what the actual fuck like this guy is insane by the way i've never heard this before i didn't get this perspective yeah your your original thoughts were like wow this guy's what am i no i thought this guy's insane i'm like he has like a fetish for killing things yeah and we're in the middle of nowhere it's like my head gonna go next on that wall that's what you know there's even just Recently, media has put out that, like, hunters are more inclined to maybe be, like, like, these, what is, like, I don't know, these terrible crimes. And they would say they're more inclined to, to be this type of, fit this profile of this murder or this child abusers.

Like, what? Of course. What the fuck are you talking about? Because you see movies like Jeffrey Dahmer. What was that movie? Yeah. Was it Jeffrey. The Jeffrey Dahmer.

Right. Where the guy, the first kill is animals when he's a baby or when he's a young kid and then he goes on to develop a full blown mental disorder. But that's not the norm. You said yesterday when we were in the truck. He's like that's the narrative they put out to make us look bad. That's right. Let's be all be real. You can find facts facts to spit any angle you want in the world.

There's enough on the internet that you can bullshit your way. But like Hollywood puts when they show a hunter, it's never some bad. badass hunter. It's some freaking redneck who's drunk who's doing stupid shit who's abusing women. And it's like so people who don't know they associate oh that's a hunter

that's a behavior of hunter. That's a poorly behaved human. That's what that is. Exactly. Yeah. That's not a hunter. But it just fits it like oh we need this character in this movie to be the bad guy. Yeah. It's making a hunter too. Yep. Exactly. So you're like okay you can find for any one

fact you can find a counterfact essentially. right? But that's what an eco-chamber is. So if you're trying to find a fact, you're going to try to find a fact that validates your thoughts. And that's, but this is why it's important for people to understand eco-chambers and confirmation bias and unbiased research of their own because it's like if you're trying to, if you're trying to not even change your mind, but if you're trying to develop a deeper understanding about anything, you have to look at both sides. You can't just keep looking at in the same direction and like continue confirming what you already know to feel better about your beliefs.

Yeah. You have to constantly be challenging your beliefs and trying to see the other side. There's a YouTube series called Jubilee. Have you ever seen it? Mm-mm. So they just discuss. There's a bug. I think those are stinkers.

Yeah, that beetle was up in this light a little while ago. Yeah. I watched him go into your coffee cup and out the coffee cup. Oh, did it? I was going to mention it, but if you look at the video, I'm like this all the time. Yeah. I don't care. I'll never taste it.

What was it saying? You're like echo chambers and confirmation bias and to develop. Yeah. Oh, Jubilee. Yeah, yeah. So what they do, that's all good. So Jubilee, what they do is they present highly controversial topics. And they bring in people that are hardcore one side or the other.

And then they ask them questions and then they have to express their views and debate them amongst each other. Yeah. And it's good exercise. It is. I watch a lot of those, a lot of those videos because it reminds me that there's always another side because immediately when I click a video that I'm interested in, I'm like, I side with one group and I check myself. I'm like, all right, like, I'm not going to side my, I'm not going to side my, I'm not

going to side with any group. I want to listen to both of them with the same openness. Yeah. And that's important. More people could learn from that. There's too many people that get so damn heated on their way and they're not even willing, especially, you know, politically. Yeah.

Just nobody opens their. damn minds anymore. And it's hard because it's like there is that there is that subconscious that where you grow up what you've heard your whole life it is really hard to just like okay I need to be unbiased on this. It's so hard because you've been for for me 50 years heard this one kind of narrative or this one slant or this one it's skewed a little bit even if I'm saying no I'm being objective everything you hear your thoughts are skewed you know I mean we're humans we're not machines yep so we are gonna yet I know AI is coming but we are skewed a little so it's very difficult to to be a fully objective but it's it's a great exercise

I haven't heard a Jubilee but I think that's just a you know because if you just say somebody who doesn't know weightlifting they'd be like oh everybody's like if you're big if you're strong it's definitely steroids yeah facts i mean oh if you can look all the b ball you're taking i know yeah i know that you're on b ball because it's d ball is a d ball yeah no d ball yeah d ball d ball d ball d ball d ball b ball b ball yeah so that would that would tell me you haven't been around the world in the fitness world as much as other people. But yeah, I mean, people can write off whatever. Yeah, write off my fitness knowledge with my beatball comments. If they just don't want to deal with that even entertain that thought,

they can just like, oh, I'm just going to write this guy off or this girl off. And I don't have to even think about it. But yeah, I mean, it's not a way to grow. Yeah. It's definitely not a way to grow. So you were talking about your your back injury. And it was kind of interesting. You're talking about your, I think, pain and how it's perceived. Because I know, like, when I get up, somebody asked me, how you feeling? You don't know how I'm feeling. I'm never 100%. That's not the point.

I'm still going to do the same shit I do every day. How were you feeling yesterday? Yeah. So it's like, but if somebody, if their environment is any little hint of pain, you're done, you shut it down because that's where they've been. they've been pacified or they've been nurtured. Like if you hurt at all, stop. Yeah, we've been,

we've been totally conditioned to believe that pain is something negative. And that's just because people have a very limited understanding of what pain actually is. And over the last few years, there's been so much conversation around pain science and, especially in the physical therapy world and the neuroscience world as well. In helping people understand what pain actually means and what it doesn't, because the goal is never to be 100% pain free. I think we all can agree.

No one likes a plumber's crack. My suggestion, Groove Life belts and longer shirts. But not only does Groove Life have belts, they have silicone rings, watch bands, and wallets for everyday use. I've been using their belts for over a year now, and I can tell you they're easy to adjust and my crack is covered.

Go to groovelife.com backslash cam and use code cam for 20% off your order. Hey guys, you want to be as smart as famed neuroscientist, Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. at Stanford? Well, sadly, that's probably not going to happen. But I did find something that can help, and that's HVMN, Ketone IQ. I actually down one right before reading this. So if I sound decent, it's probably why. Because I'm not sure if you guys realize how much brain power podcasting takes.

But whatever I can take, that will at least make me sound smarter, I'm in. ketone IQ is a clean energy boost without sugar or caffeine. Ketone IQ increases your blood ketones. I'm not on a keto diet, but by taking ketone IQ, I can achieve the desired focus and energy for explosive workouts that ketones typically provide to those in ketosis. You can find ketone IQ at your local sprouts or online at HVMN.com. Use code cam CAM for 20% off your first order. You know, pain is is a tool for your body to just give you a little nudge. Hey, you know, we have these things here.

Just be aware of them. Do you, to me, I like when I hurt. I don't know why. I feel like if I had a hard day of training and the next day I'm hurt, I'm like, fucking did something. Yeah. I like it. Is that, I mean, so it can be like a negative.

to some people or some people can go to it. Of course, it's a matter of perception, right? It's all a matter of how you look at things. You can perceive pain as something positive and literally not be affected by it. Or you can have the smallest nag and because of the way you were brought up because of all of this kind of fear mongering and avoidance of pain that the medical community and maybe even our parents, some parents, right, that they are so overly cautious with their kids. then you start developing this mindset of like I'm in a crystal ball and every single little bit of pain that I perceive is a sign that there's something wrong with me. And I do blame the medical community in large for that because we're constantly playing kind of Sherlock Holmes of injuries where at the very slight hint of pain we're trying to put people under MRIs under x-rays to try to figure out exactly where the pain is coming from when that is completely irrelevant. Like your comment about your perception of,

of pain is a testament to that. It's all about your perception of it. And it doesn't necessarily, we've proven via comparing manual tests with diagnostic tests that pain is simply a perception and does not correlate, does not directly correlate with the degree of structural damage that you might have under your skin. It just simply does not. And back injuries, this is kind of my area of expertise just because of how obsessed I became with the topic, but we've proven it via looking at hundreds of thousands of MRIs from both

healthy, healthy and unhealthy people in terms of their pain, and been able to prove that even that a super high percentage, like over 90% of people that have MRIs that are, that have some sort of finding in them, they're not experiencing any sort of pain. So there's all these people that have disc bulge, disc herniations, degenerative disc disease, all. all of these kind of negative words that are thrown at us consistently by our healthcare practitioners, that these people are not experiencing pain. So it's about time that we change that narrative about pain and that we start developing a deeper understanding about it. Like the best way that I can think about explaining pain is pain as a smoke alarm.

I don't know if you've heard that analogy before. But basically say that you're in your kitchen, you're cooking some bacon, right? And your bacon starts smoking and your smoke alarm goes off. Does that actually mean that there? there's a fire and that you have to evacuate. Like I've never seen anybody be cooking bacon and the alarm goes off. And then they tell their entire house that there's danger, right? Like you're like, oh, shit.

You know, you see that there's bake. You can see that there's smoke coming out of the bacon. You see that it's going to the smoke alarm and you rationalize what's happening. And you just air the thing out, turn the fire down and it's gone. Right. Your brain does a similar thing. Sometimes our brain is highly sensitive to the input that it's receiving from the environment or the input that it's receiving from internally, from our organs or from our different structures.

And it doesn't necessarily mean that there is an imminent danger outside or inside of your body. It's just your brain for some reason is uncalibrated to those signals. And that usually happens because the way that we experience pain is a combination of our environment and our beliefs and then the state of our nervous system, which is highly, dependent on how much stress we're experiencing. And so when it comes to the smoke alarm, yeah, it's not the smoke alarm, the smoke detector turns on the smoke alarm, but it's not telling you how much danger you're in or if you're actually in danger or what you have to do about it.

It's just giving you kind of a signal. And if your smoke alarm is consistently going off, like what are you going to do? You're either going to shut it down or you're going to adjust it so that the sensitivity of the alarm isn't that much. When it comes to our bodies, obviously, we don't have a control, I wish we did have a control switch of, a control switch of bringing up and down that sensitivity easily. But we do that through exercise and graded exposure and progressive overload. That's how we dampen and control and regulate our pain signals and pain sensitivities.

So this is a process called habituation. So by progressively exposing ourselves to the initial, painful stimulus over time and in a graded manner, we can essentially teach our brains to be less sensitive to these signals. Right. So when it came to my back pain, I was so against getting an MRI and seeing what's under, mainly because I didn't want to confront the reality of what I had going on because I was so locked into my goal of lifting a certain amount of weight. I didn't want anybody stopping me. I didn't want any sort of like negativity in my head that is telling me that I can't do something.

Yeah. Because listen, at that time, I was doing things, I was doing shit that was impossible, right? Like, there was no girl that had lifting over.

Science would say, you can't do that. You can't do that. Your structure can't hold up. Your bones, your muscles, your tendons, it won't hold up.

Exactly. Mm-hmm. And I continuously prove them wrong. And so, yeah, I had a point of proven. I was already getting enough negativity

from the world about the things that I could do and couldn't as a woman in, in lifting sports. And so I didn't want to look underneath my skin and see that there's another kind of barrier there that I'm not going to have.

That negative energy. I don't need it. And it's like no matter if you want to ignore it or not, that negative energy can build. Oh my God. 100%. 100%. And it's even words, even the words that certain people use. I remember I went into a doctor's office once there was a spine specialist.

And on his table, he had a model of a spine that had that if you squish it, like the whole disc fell on the back. And I saw that. I'm like, oh my God, is that what's happening to my back when I'm lifting? And I swear to God, and it immediately intensified my pain. Like when I went into that lift that day, I was almost like crippled because all I could envision was my disc bulging out of that spine the way that model was doing it. Right. Can I add to that?

So when we were training obviously for this deadlift, so she's training me, she's going to try to get me as close as possible. But we were doing like just, what was it, hamstring curls? Yeah. And like I've had so many knee issues, which is why I'm like, I love listening to her talk about this type of stuff because a lot of, I have a lot of chronic pain from my MCL tears and MPFL ligament tears and all sorts of dislocations and crazy shit. But, you know, I'm just doing some simple curls with lightweight and just an immense amount of pains coming to my left knee. And I'm like, fuck, like can I do this? Am I going to be able to do this? You know, like, I can't even train this exercise. And I tell her, I'm like, I'm like, babe, like my knee hurts like a lot. And I'm like, and. And as that pain is coming in, I'm visualizing, like, what could possibly be happening in there? Is that this tendon? Is that one separating?

Is that kneecap chipped? Is there a piece of cartilage wiggled in there? Totally overthinking everything. Yeah. And I start looping, right? And I think all of us loop a little bit in different scenarios in our lives. Like, there's different levels of pain. It's not always just physical.

There's mental pain. There's all sorts of shit, emotional pain. But yeah, I'm visualizing, and that's getting in my head. And when you have someone come by that's like, if you can put your trust in someone like, physical therapist that actually knows what the hell they're doing. Yeah. It's the first thing. They've got to know what they're doing.

So there's a lot of that ones out there. But Stephier honestly really knows what she's doing. And so you created all these worst case scenarios in your head about your body failing. Exactly. What did she tell you? Well, she comes in. She's like, nah, it's just pain. You just got to look through it, blah, blah, blah.

Let's like adjust. So, you know, we just adjusted to a really light weight and she just helped me through that exercise until the pain just disappeared. All of a sudden I'm doing triple the weight and the pain's not there anymore. Yeah. And almost the exact same situation happened to me. When I was after a year of recovery on my left MCL tear, I fell off a cliff snowboarding and blew my knee out really, really bad.

And took a whole year off of adventure shit, crazy shit. It was still doing a little bit. The crazy shit was limited. But when I got back the next year, the following year, which was last year to snowboard, I strapped into my bindings and I go down that first run. And it was excruciating the amount of pain. And all I'm thinking is looping in my head, well, what if I hit this bump? my knee goes to this or this, but, but, blah, blah, and I get down to the bottom of the mountain

after I was, like, just holding my knees. And I was, like, angry, man. Like, I was like, like, fuck. Like, like, I took a full year, like, dedicating to physical therapy and dedicating to everything. And I put it all in. And it's still painful. So I was pissed. And I was like, ah, I'm going to do it again, though.

I've got to try again and see if I can get a little better. Maybe I'll adjust my feet. But I was, like, stress. I'm like, I'm going to have a shot of whiskey, though, because I got to enjoy this. Is it a shot of whiskey? took a shot of whiskey, get to the top, and it was like 10% better. Went back down to the bottom to,

only only had one more shot. I had one more shot of whiskey. Went to the top, halfway down the run, 50% better. Three quarters away run, 100% better. Get to the bottom of the run, hit this jump, 360, stick it, 100% better.

No more pain in my knees. It was all, nothing changed from the beginning of that day where I could barely freaking, strap into my bindings. Yeah. To three runs later. Your brain changed as all.

I was jumping in 360 and spinning on my knee. It was mental. Yeah. And so that again highlights what the actual focus and goal of physical therapy should be. It's not corrective exercises. It's not a specific exercise in a specific rep scheme. It's how can I improve my patients or my clients or my friends pain tolerance? What can I do to improve his or hers relationship?

with pain and his or her's understanding of pain and what is actually happening in their body. And how do you do that? Through a lot of conversations, you know, eliminating the, eliminating the talk of fear mongering about pain. Yeah. Stop to trying to find for a specific, a specific diagnosis because it doesn't matter. Like what's going on doesn't matter. It's not going to change the plan of care.

Like my approach to you and to you is going to be the same. What's bugging you? Okay. How can I, how can I, how can we work around it? How can I highlight all the things that you can do? How can I empower you to continue doing the things that bring meaning to your life? That's the main goal. That's my goal.

When I have someone in front of me, what do you love doing? What are you limited in doing? And how can I help you work around the things? That's the beetle. Yeah. How can I help you work around your current limitations and how can I help you focus on the things that you can do? So you completely forget about, you know, get out of the loop, the negative loop that you're in, the catastrophizing loop that you're in of,

I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this, to, hey, these are all the things that I can do. Yeah. And I'm improving your, I'm improving your relationship with movement, and I'm improving your relationship with pain. So when it came to me, and just circling back and let me finish the back pain story,

I eventually caved after three years of dealing with this awful back injury. I'm like, you know what? Fuck it. I'm going to go get an MRI and I'm going to see, I'm going to face a reality. That's what I said. I'm going to face a reality. of what's happening. And if it is the case that I have some sort of like career ending injury

and the five people that I trust with my with my physical care tell me that it's time to hang it up. And that's what I'm going to do. You know, I mean, I want to have kids and I want to be able to pick up my kids. I don't want to be crippled, right? So fuck it. Like I'll do whatever they say. So I went in and I got an MRI and I was so disappointed. There was nothing there. Nothing. There's nothing there. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like I'm in so much pain. My back, My entire back has to be broken. I want it to be broken because I want an explanation. To validate why you feel the way you feel.

Exactly. I need an explanation for why I'm in so much pain. Like I can't tie my shoes. I can't bend my back at all. Once you found out that there was nothing, did the pain go away? No, it made it worse. Really? Oh, shit.

Yeah. I don't know. I was just at that point, I was starting to lose hope. I was hopeless. Like I've been in pain for three years. I've seen at least. 20 specialists. I've gone all sorts of, of different types of like regenerative medicine, PRP, stem cells, prolotherapy, seeing acupuncturists, seeing then dry needleing, chiropractor,

all sorts of physical therapy. He did it all. Pain, science, everything. And like, nothing was nothing was working. What started working was there's this guy, his name's Greg Lehman. He's incredibly smart. He went to physical therapy school, chiropractic school, and PhD in biomechanics. Like this guy is just like so committed to a lifelong of learning and really grasping things on just on a whole other level. Like PT school is tough enough.

I can't believe that he did PT school, chiropractic school and got a PhD in biomechanics, like this guy's next level. So he kind of acts as a, well, I don't even know what he accessed, but he does these virtual sessions. He doesn't even feel the need to put his hands on his clients because he so much believes on pain education and pain science.

You can just with words. With words. So it's kind of like a therapy. And he helps you, he helped me. Is that a spiritual thing? No, not at all. He just kind of helps you game plan for how, what kind of steps do you need to be taking every week, like with your training. And so for me, I told him, look, I went from, so my background is an Olympic weightlifting.

So I trained the Bulgarian system. And this system, mind you, have you ever read the sports team? So in the sports gene, it's basically they're talking about natural selection of athletes and how the countries that have the best athletes, it's not necessarily because of their genetics, but it's because they go through this rigorous process of selection where they start with, say, like they start with a million people, and then they put them through like the most arduous training that you could possibly believe. And then they're left with like the three people that could withstand it, right?

The Bulgarian system is just like that. And my coach was a believer that if I can't endure that, then I'm going to be one of the best in the world. And so I started training with that system. And it was we would lift between two and three times a day. I was front squatting and back squatting on the same day every single day at percentages of above 85%, 90% of your max. So it's like you're flying close to the sun. When you're flying close to the sun, you're going to burn some feathers. And wait, what was it telling you the story?

You're talking with the pain. and like the way actually helped you overcome the pain like what was it that helped you overcome the pain did you drink some mushroom juice no no I'm just trying to understand I'm just trying to get back to why it was talking about the Bulgarian system so you you you tried everything and you tried yeah yeah Greg Lehman yeah I'm back I'm back I'm back I'm back yeah the natural selection here guys this is like me explaining something to yeah yeah um Before we lose it, go, go, go. Yeah, yeah.

Okay. And so I used to, the point I'm trying to make is that I used to train at such a high volume and such a high frequency of the main lifts. Like my body was so well conditioned to be able to front squad, back swats, snatch clean and jerk and deadlift in the same day at insane percentages. I was in incredible shape, right? So for me to go from that to barely being able to do one deadlift session a week and one squat session a week was it was crippling and it it was awful right because like when you watch

your body deteriorate and when you start losing your your capacity to to do the things you once were able to in such a rapid period of time like this wasn't like oh I aged 25 years and I can't do what I used to do yeah this is like from in a three year span period right that I lost my ability to perform at an incredible incredibly high level yeah you know at a level that most people aren't able to. And so my appointment with Greg Lehman, I was explaining that to him and how many sessions I've had to remove out of my program. And his approach was the opposite. He's like, all right, I want you squatting and deadlifting every single day at 30 percent, at 20 percent, at 30 percent, at 40 percent. You have to rebuild your belief system and your ability that these movements aren't bad

for you. Literally exactly what you did to me with the hamstring. She took the weight down and she brought it from what we were doing 40, like 40 pounds on hamstring girls. There's nothing. She brought it to 10 pounds and her arm was there the whole time helping me through it. And she knew where to give me a little bit of like little support and where the pain was and we'd stop where the pain was. And every time we'd get to the pain point, we'd just stop right before and then go a little bit past, a little bit past until it was gone. Because look, the thing with chronic pain is that our brains are, are, sticky. Like there's this thing called neuroplasticity. And it's very sticky. You know, once we've,

imagine like a flow of water going through a mountain, right? It starts carving like a crack, right? And then the crack becomes wetter. And then that's how you form rivers, right? Our brain is no different. Once it starts defaulting to a particular pattern, then that crack starts getting thicker and bigger and bigger and bigger. And then all of a sudden, next thing you know is it becomes our natural, our norm and our default, right? So how can I trick my brain? brain to get out of that. And we, we associate a movement with pain. You're associating knee flexion with pain. I'm associating spine flexion and a barbell with pain. So how can I improve my relationship with this movement over time to trick my body to get outside of that neuroplastic area of, hey,

when you, when your spine bends X amount of degrees, that means that something bad's going to happen. Like, how can I teach my body that that's not the way it is? And there's, you can start at the very bottom with like laying down on the floor and bringing your knees to your chest, that's spine flexion. But it's in a completely different context. So was he, did he ask you what caused pain? And you said, well, these movements. And he said, okay, do those movements. Yeah. He said, we are going to start doing those exact movements in an environment that is safe. So for me, first was laying down, bringing my knees to my chest. That's spine flexion in a different context and in a different environment that my brain doesn't register as as dangerous.

causing pain, yeah. So that's how we started. And then we got on my feet. And then it was like touch your knees a hundred times. And then it was touch your ankles. So what had changed? Had anything changed? I mean, was your nothing healed?

There was nothing wrong that needed to be fixed. It was just your brain. Yeah. Just your brain. So it's the same thing that that was with me, right? With my niece. Yeah. Would you say?

Yeah. Yeah, it's the same thing. So it's pretty crazy. So would you categorize your thing as chronic pain? Was that way? So what do you think if you go back to the beginning, what do you think it was? It's just a small tweak and then it's just you just weren't able to go overcome it. Because chronic pain, like I've done a lot of research on physical therapy over the years

because of my knee issues and different issues that I've had doing the crazy stupid shit I do. And so I have a huge passion of physical therapy. When we first met, like I actually didn't even know she was power lifter. I thought she was just a physical therapist. That's what turned me on her. You didn't see the 25-time world record. I didn't find that out to like literally a week after she was at the ranch. Oh.

And like a week later. You need to do better research. Yeah. She already caught my attention. I didn't need more. Yeah. I'm not in it for that. You know what I mean?

I'm in it for somebody that like literally says, can I come hang out with you? And the next response from her is an itinerary. Got a plane flight. Yeah. She got a freaking flight. You know what I mean? Like I was like, all right, bet.

Yeah. So that's what I was into. But anyway. So, so like, the chronic pain side of things, like, where do you think, what do you think triggered chronic pain in you? Like, because chronic pain usually in my research has been it's pain that's developed over time and compounded over time. So multiple injuries, not just one, but like one injury you overcome it. And then next time you do that same injury, that pain, it's not the threshold is the other way. Like it becomes more painful each time.

And so for example with my knee, every time I dislocated my knee, I've dislocated both my knees probably 25 times each. Why? Are they loose or? They were fucking loose, man. They never got better because every single time I dislocate something, I didn't give enough recovery time in between to be able to strengthen it because I didn't understand that yet before I got into the physical therapy.

I had the mindset of a pipeliner, which is like just suck it up, bite down, push through, push through. and and nah, I don't need that. Like, I'm my grandpa. You know what I mean? Like my grandpa ham. He's like, I don't go to the doctor.

I don't need that shit. And so that was in my head. You know what I mean? Like, I don't need that shit. I don't need no physical therapist. Give me a friggin' rubber band. That's going to, what is the rubber band going to stop me?

I got a pipeline at weld. You know what I mean? So that was my mentality. So I just avoided physical therapy and that kind of shit for a very long time. It just dealt with the consequences. And so over time, different things are developing.

I'm sure there was some scar tissue, some shit. like it's messing with my head. I can't do this movement. I can't do that movement. And I started changing my world around my knees so that I could do what I do, but in an area where it limited the risk of my knees,

but every single time I'd blow a knee out or every single time I'd have a knee tweak or something, it was like it became harder and harder and it became more and more limited and the pain got worse and worse over time. So my understanding of chronic pain is that is that every time you injure it, it gets worse and worse.

and then that pain gets just more intense. More intense. Would you say it's similar? But that's neuroplasticity. That's neuroplasticity. Like the first. That's your brain creating that. Yeah.

It's your brain creating that default. So for you, this is why I asked, it gave that backstory. It's like for you, was there multiple injuries or did you just do one tweak or did you do multiple tweaks or do multiple tweaks or you don't know? Like what was that? First of all, was that chronic pain and the second of all, how do you think you got there? No, it was not necessarily a tweak. Like the way I like to think about it is like, think that about this coffee cup right you put a certain amount of water in it if you wanted or coffee

if you wanted to put more coffee in it you need to either pour coffee out or you need a bigger coffee cup right so so pain is the same thing like the things that that amplify your perception of pain are things like your beliefs your past experiences your current stress in your life and it's not only like the stress of i'm stressed out because i have to pay my taxes the stress that you put in your body like in terms of your training so So all of those things add to the coffee that you're pouring to your cup. So in your, how does that work with your situation? I was in physical therapy school.

I was sleeping three hours a night. I was abusing Adderall and caffeine, like on a level. You know, I was also trying to be the best acting in the world. I was also trying to be the best daughter in the world, the best girlfriend and the best friend. And so it was a lot of stress and a lot of, a lot of pressure. Something has to give. Something had to give. You know, there's, yeah, there's always going to be kind of,

a path of least resistance and then a weakening of something. So is you just built on that momentum? Like, sorry, cut you off. Is it that you built on that momentum over time? Like, you had this. I'm trying to, the way my brain works is like, okay, she had this injury. You had this big injury. And I'm trying to, like, relate to other people too.

Like, you have this big injury. And then you have this crazy life. Did that crazy life just not allow that injury to recover? And then that just got into your head. And then the nearest plus is, It gets to your head. It's just like your brain just kind of like turns up this pain signal. Your sensitivity to pain is like the amount of.

And it just never went away. How long was that? Three years. So for three years that switch turned on and just didn't turn off. Pretty much. Do you think what how long do you think before that tweak or whatever you think maybe happened? The actual physical.

Six weeks? Less. Less. Yeah. Like physically because that's the part that we forget. That's not. Because we're looking, we're looking at research the wrong way. Again, like where does our belief about about spines being fragile?

Where does it come from? It literally comes from this one, these two studies, this first one where they look at pig spines, cadaveric catavoric pig spine, so dead pigs. And they grab a spine and they take it to 10,000 cycles of flexion and extension. And then they're like, see, spines aren't, shouldn't be bending and flexing and extending. Look how bad they are. Now all the disks are generated. Now they have all these disc bulges.

Well, first of all, that's a dead pig spine doesn't have all the enzymes and all the ability to heal tissues, right? Like, that's the most important thing. And the second one is that the insult to the tissues, right? Like, 10,000 flexion and extension. Like, we're not doing that without recovering. Yeah. We're doing maybe 25 dead lifts and then we're not doing dead lifts for five days. We're allowing our body to heal.

Yeah, unless you're with Cam. Unless you're with Cam and then you're, you know, pretty bucked. Yeah. So I wonder if you said all that that you're going through. I wonder if creating an injury solved some of that problem. Like subconsciously you created a back thing so you couldn't, you didn't have to train like that because you couldn't keep all these things up and keep juggling all these balls because you're trying to do all this other stuff.

So like an easy out would be like, oh, I'm hurt. I can't. I mean, I don't know. Do you think that it could be like a mentally you create something to give you, give you just a that excuse you needed maybe yeah i mean because because you said there was no injury really yeah because they did the MRI and you were it's healthy yeah squeaky clean MRI did you did you have excuses or did you just push through no i just pushed through like i was i was i was thinking a gram of adville a day just to function two grams to be able to train who waits out there freaking adville

you know i mean i know how many bills do you do your advo no but i i've been in a couple pills right The extra strong ones are 500 million grams, so it's half a gram. So I know I was taking like two or four. You're so analytical. I know. I've been where like I was hurting, but I needed to run. I need to get my miles in. So I'd take four Advil before every run.

Yeah. And you do that three times a day because I was running in the morning before work, at lunch and at night. Yeah. So I'd take 12 a day. Yeah. And it's like, I don't know. And then Dr. Rhonda Patrick, she was on Joe, on Rogan's show.

on Rogan show and she said that Advil can be making it worse. You can be it can make your pain worse it's not helping. So I was like, well, I'll try Kratem. You know, so I started doing Kratom. I've heard nothing but good things about Kratom.

Yeah, so I did Kratom and it's like, I didn't know it seemed like, well, maybe, but it was just hearing her say that mentally I'm like, I thought it was helping me and it's actually hurting me. So I just quit Advil. And nothing to change. my pain never changed.

It was those words. Yeah. Interesting. And so like when we were lifting last night and I've I've had to like go through this in life where because we've been so trained to anything starts to hurt you stop. That's that's what people do. And so like I said last night we did try to do 100 reps on the bench and it's like instead of looking like those last 10 like oh fuck these are the last 10. It's going to be tough. I was like, I was like, like we're finally to the last 10. We had to earn, we had to do 90 to get here. And this is what I've been looking forward to.

Yeah, I love that mindset. These last 10. Yeah, it's not something to shy away from. It's like, fucking finally, here we are. We got it. All these are going to be, this is going to, I'm fatigued, just going to hurt, but this is what I've been waiting for. Yeah.

So we're trying to get to. And so it's something, it's instead of shine away from it's like embracing it. Yeah, but that's the whole mindset of doing sauna daily. and putting yourself in the cold plunge, right? It's exposure to discomfort because as a society, we've become incredibly discomfort averse, right? Like in our comfortable, like perfectly temperature regulated homes and vehicles, and we're never exposed to anything that's uncomfortable. We're actually very adverse to that.

And also this whole mindset of like avoid stress, right? Like, oh, you have to meditate and do yoga and avoid stress because stress is bad and stress is a silent killer. Fuck no. like stress you have to you have to have some level of it and then you have to level up to the next level and consistently do that over time so you can develop into a more resilient human being yeah could you hear people say well i'm stressed out and then you say what's what's a problem they say what's stressing them out some people hear that and be like it's fucking nothing are you

kidding me what we're out of milk and you're stressed out so you got to go to the store and then there's people you know so it is it's your perception of stress or the pain or your environment but yeah when you are when you've changed that and you look you can tweak it but i i get i like your analogy about the river because once you have this pathway of thinking it's really hard to create a new channel through rock because that's essentially what you said so to create a new channel through rock it's going to be like the low weight or the just going through the the movement to build that confidence in your brain to like, okay, we're starting a new channel through here. And then, then it seems like, you know, it's, you kind of forget where you were because you'd

been stuck in this, this canal for so long. Now you're over here and you're like, fuck, I don't even remember what that was like. This is my new reality. And you have to build it up as well. Like a really great way to think about injuries and just simplify them because this. is the bread and butter of why injuries happen. Like, people love to overcomplicate it, but the reason why an injury happens is when the load,

when the load that you're applying could be in the form of, like, stress, or it could be in the form of a weight or it can be a form of a run. When the load exceeds the current capacity or current tolerance for a tissue, an injury happens. Right. And so how can we prevent injuries, or how can we mitigate the amount of injuries that we sustain, is to constantly be elevating that bar,

constantly be adding more load so that we constantly can increase the capacity of our tissues. And that's how we become stronger, more resilient and less prone to essentially like disturbances from the environment, both mentally and physically. How did, I mean, where you grew up, you said Venezuela, right? How did that, do you think that environment made you mentally tough just what you had to overcome? Because, I mean, you're a doc, I mean, you've got a PhD. Yeah, a doctorate degree. Doctorate?

But you said you came here, you couldn't speak English or anything. Yeah. So how do you do, how does that happen? Yeah, I mean, definitely like growing up in a third world country and being exposed and seeing the things that I've seen growing up there gives you a completely different perspective of the world. And it does make you much more resilient and much. more able to to just be okay with shit going wrong around you and and also much more appreciative

of of all the things that you then do have so for me like growing up in a country that was with a government that was so highly oppressive um living under circumstances that were so unnatural like being 10 years old and not being able to like i don't know like walk a block to go play with your neighbor like those are things that were taken from me like i didn't experience that i lived in a world of perpetual fear. What would happen if you, like, how come you didn't go walk to play with their friend? You can get kidnapped. You can get killed. You can get arm robbed. You can get just abducted. You can get taken a Columbia and just putting these like camps. It's actually insane. Look, when I was growing up, and I told you a story, I lived in a building. I moved to a building

when I was six years old that was beautiful, had this like beautiful park and just like a little fence that separated the building from the street. Two years later, that little fence grew into a 10-foot wall. A few years later, that 10-foot wall, they put electric fence on it. Then they put barbed wire above the electric fence. Then they put like military grade, like not even military grade,

like Israeli systems, because Israelis are the Mossad is like one of the best special forces in the world. There were legitimate companies from Israel that were flying to Venezuela or like protect citizens. That's how bad it was. So it's like Israeli military,

grade security systems on top of the electric fence and the barbed wire with security guards patrolling the perimeter and a security guard inside of a of like an office that was bulletproof. And I watched all of that happen. They did all that because Steffie Cohen was inside there. No, no, no, no. So that she wouldn't fuck with the people outside of skating. Was that, were they stealing kids or were they robbing people or what was the? Everything.

Kidnaping, kidnapping, killings for no reason, abductions, taking people's cars, going to people's houses and like taking their jewelry, anything could happen. And I watched all of that happen. I essentially like watch my already limited freedom get or get less and less and less and less. And from a stress tolerance standpoint, which is why I'm bringing it up, right? Like I grew up in a highly stressful environment that over time became my norm. I remember the first year I moved to the States. Like I still had a lot of friends that I kept in touch with that were living in Venezuela. And on a weekly basis, they would get kidnapped or like somebody would get killed or something would happen.

And I was in college right night. Now I'm making all these new friends that are American that are not exposed to that. And I'd be like, you know, look at my phone. I'm like, oh, fuck, like such and such just got kidnapped. And they're like, what? And I'm like, yeah, it's just like got kidnapped, but they're fine. It only took $300,000. It's all good, actually.

it's a pretty good deal. 300 grand? Like it's not bad. Like last week there was someone that got kidnapped and they were asked a million. You know? And it was a problem. It took him a month and a half to get it.

This time it only took, they were only kidnapped for two weeks. It's not even that bad. So. Yeah. That's a whole different reality. It's a different reality and it's also a different,

a different perception of stress, right? Like, what do you have to worry about when you walk around in Park City? Do you look over your shoulder to see if someone's going to kidnap you or like shoot you in the head? like at all times like I used to I mean I'm always thinking that but but but you're not but you're not in imminent danger like realistically speaking like the chances of you getting kidnapped in park city

Utah are a little more normalized it's about zero so so my ability to to tolerate stress is is much higher than most people I would say you know do you think that it's since you've been out of that environment do you think it's changed I I mean, do you think that you've softened from, how long have you lived here? 12 years. 12 years. Yeah, I mean, because we talk about our environment, what we used to, do you think is it different for you now? Yes, and which is why I make a conscious effort to put myself create stress and create challenges.

It's the main reason why I'm boxing right now. Yeah. Obviously, yeah, I like it, but it's mainly because of the challenge. and because of the person that I'm going to become on the other end. And I know the value of that because I've lived that. And I don't want to be too comfortable. Yeah, I understand. I understand. I mean, it's like you see a lot of fighters.

You mentioned fighting and I'm just thinking just, and I don't know shit about anything. But you see a lot of fighters come up where they have no other options. You know, like they might come from a third world country or from even a shitty neighborhood or tough situations here in the United States. they had to earn everything and they got that edge. And then you see like maybe somebody from an affluent neighborhood who's had never had struggle. It's really hard to match that dog.

You know what I mean? You can't simulate what you grew up with and that mentality that you created. But that's what made you the strongest woman in the world and this savage boxer. And it's just like so in one hand, people would say, oh, that's, terrible you had to come up like that but on the other hand just like god has made you fucking unstoppable dude i always like whenever i hate when i'm telling a story about how i was brought up or like maybe like relationship with my dad or things like that that weren't like necessarily positive and then people say i'm so sorry to hear that i'm like dude no like first of all i'm not it's a blessing

i'm not telling you that to like victimize myself it's literally what made me me it's the fact that i went through all of that shit and that life was so hard for me it's the reason why i am the way i'm the way i wouldn't take it any other way like i've been around people who have not experienced any sort of hardship or the most hardship that they've experienced is that their 90 year old grandpa died when they were 10 like that's literally the most hardship and those people struggle like there will be a time where life is going to test you and you're going to be fucked if you've never endured anything and if you've if you've never been able to overcome anything so the more the more the more challenges I come across and the more challenges I'm able to overcome, the more my confidence

grows that as I get older and life becomes more challenging and more convoluted, the more confidence grows that I'm going to be able to overcome that. So I'm grateful for all those moments. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because you survived. I mean, there's something to be a survivor. Yeah. Because a lot of people didn't survive that situation that you came up in. Or there's still stuck in it. But for whatever reason, fate, your hard work, your determination, you're out. But you still are holding on to that. It's why you're great at what you do. Yeah. Yeah. I was just, I love that the video from the cage, was that that was the deadlift you said. Did you, was there any other times you were in the cage at that? Yeah, the following year was a

squat. I was, I was supposed to deadlift again, but my back was still fucked. Mm. It wasn't fucked. It wasn't. It wasn't. Actually, I was imagining that it was fogged, but in reality, nothing happening with it. No, I was supposed to deadlift, but I couldn't, I couldn't even train the deadlift. So I was going to go in and squat. And the same thing happened. Like my best squad at that time with sleeves, which is what I was going to, or with wraps, which is what I was going to use was, I think 430 or something like that.

And then all of a sudden in training, I start repping 405. Just because of a sense of urgency, I'm like, dude, like, fuck everything like I just need to make this happen yeah all of a sudden I'm reping 405 for like 10 next thing you know I'm like just easily squatting 465 and then at the cage I squat it 500 jeez for a massive like 40 pound PR again wow so it just goes to show you know how much how much stronger you actually are than you think and how much and how much we get held back by other people's limitations and other people's beliefs of what you can do Yeah. There's these brothers here in town. And they used, I just remember them telling, they used to do Olympic lifts also, but they squatted. I think one of them squatted every day heavy, something like for seven years. And just fucking beast. I mean, still the guy, we go to the normal gym here. And like if you do the lap pole machine, every exercise, we've lifted together, every exercise pinned at the bottom. He maxes out. Just reps. And it's just like. Every town has their free.

Yeah. Total freak. And I mean, total freak. But the difference is it's like most people they say, oh, I'm going to train legs, you know, one time a week or nobody likes to do legs. Fucking awful, right? It's just awful. And but to have that mentality because you said you were doing those heavy, hard compound

lifts every day, is that, yeah, your body, I don't know, it's weird because to do that, first you have to be mentally. strong and then your body follows or does your body is your body strong and then mentally you get there. Oh, dude. I mean, I don't know. Both things have to go grow in parallel. But I pride myself for being a master of the mundane.

There's and anybody who's done Olympic weightlifting at that level. I mean, it's a, it's a boring sport. And it's all for very marginal gains. Like you're essentially trying to add maybe a, I've gone for 0.1 kilogram PRs. That's how desperate I've been at times. I'm like, fuck. Am I getting better? Like, I've been doing this for the past year and a half.

What do you put on for 0.1 milligram? There's chips. They're called chips. Oh, really? Yeah, they're like legit. It's like a... Shit. Yeah, no, I've just...

Sometimes I've put just the, like, maybe an extra clip. And I know the extra clip is maybe like a half of a fucking gram. Talk about mental gain. But it gave you that confidence that, okay, I'm... It's moving forward. This work is paying off. I never have that like, so for me, like when I hit my 225 bench the first time, I mean, I was more redneck about it.

I didn't have a whole like science and system broken down on how to increase the weight. Most people don't. But I went from like, I don't know, 165 straight to 225. You know what I mean? But there's just like mental hurdle. But there was, I had the strength to do the 225. It's just the mental block. So I feel like that's kind of the same thing.

Yeah, but you have to, you have to every time when I was, when I was training, I literally told myself, like, I'm making a conscious effort to want to get stronger because that is the goal. I'm like, I used to ask myself, I'm like, how bad do you actually want it? Like, how bad do you actually want to get stronger? Because adding more weight to the bar than the previous week or the previous month is nerve-wracking. Like, there's, you're, you can be crushed by that way. I've seen many horror stories of like people getting crushed by weight. I'm like, how bad do I actually want? And I have to make the conscious choice of like going for the next challenging thing. And I'm, I'm sure it's the same thing with hunting. Right. Like, there's pretty.

that are less challenging than others and then there's a mental block that are your are your skill well maybe I'm talking out of my ass but are your skills are your skills where they need to be for you to go to the next animal or the next challenge or the next um like tough environment to hunt in yeah I mean like I would say you could probably agree with this and the Arizona guys like coo steer you mean you got to be able to have a pretty accurate shot to be able to kill a coo steer at shooting 70 yards in a tiny little plate, you know. Yeah.

Definitely. The difference. Refine your tools for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's the difference, or I don't know if it's a difference, but in hunting, most people fail. So it's like nobody knows, as a hunter, nobody knows how hard you're trying. Only you know.

So if you see an animal, say on the far ridge and it's miles to get there, you can easily convince yourself, I could never get there before dark. and you let yourself off the hook. And then it's like, well, only one in ten people kill a deer every year. It's 10% success, 90% fail every year. And that's just the way, that's just accepted. So nobody really knows. And if you fail, it's like, well, everybody failed.

90% of the guys fail. And you can say, I couldn't have got there before dark or I'll get it in the morning. So you can create these situations that let you off the hook. I totally agree And nobody knows Only you know It's so true Out there in the bush

Especially if you're alone You're alone with your buddies Like what happens And the bush kind of stays in the bush You know what I mean You can say whatever the hell you want Yeah you can make up whatever And people do all the time

To justify why they didn't do this But I mean even lifting Nobody knows if you gave all you got You know Because when you're fighting for that To get up You can go back down and have your spot or help.

And they could say, oh, you know, it's just so close. But if you gave up, they don't know that. You know that. And that's the thing about individual pursuits, individual sports or individual pursuits like hunting as well, right? Like who's going to care if you didn't kill the animal that you were after? If I didn't hit the weight that I had program for that day? No one's going to care.

it's not going to have a consequence on anybody or anything just on you and in your mindset, essentially. Right? So it's... Depending on how much weight you give that. I mean, like... Well, for me, it was incredibly important. Like, I was doing it.

For me, I created a purpose that was bigger than me. Like, I was trying to prove something to society as a whole about what women were able to do. And I manufactured that. I manufactured that so that, so that the, the goal became more salient to me. Yeah. You know, and that's, that's what determines how driven you are is how much importance you give to something.

And you can trick yourself. Isn't it interesting, like how you can convince yourself, like a level of importance behind something? Yeah. Like a hunt, like, like, for example, you were telling us about your hunt in Africa. And, like, there's a certain level of importance you put on behind every animal you stalked there.

You know what I mean? So it's like you can really convince yourself. some shit you know yeah yeah it's yeah I don't know it's uh our minds are I don't know it's uh our minds are I don't know it's just weird because I even think of that hunt like normally I'll go on any hunt and there would be nothing that I could tell myself that'd be okay for me to not not bring an animal home I mean nothing but on that one it's weird because I was going after African lion and I think so like subconsciously I'm thinking thinking if I would have killed a lion, you know, we talked about Cecil the lion. We talked about

all the negative connotations with trophy hunting. I think that if I would have killed that lion, I would have had to deal with that for years, forever. Yeah. And that picture. So it was like normally on any hunt, I don't, I don't care about anything other than success. That's so there's one measure of success. Did I kill or not? But on that one, for some reason, you asked if I was okay with, and I don't even know how I feel. It's not taking out a line. Yeah, because it's like, no other hunt would I be okay with it. But on that one, I don't know if, like, my brain is telling me, maybe it was for the best.

Maybe it was for the best. You've got to lean on that. I don't know. I mean, on my Ibex hunt, you know, like I had that same thing, you know, it was really disappointed that I didn't tag out. It's like, you're going through all these mental calculations as a hunter. like I think what are the percentage of how many people have killed an ibex with a bow you know how many people have gone here to new mexico and climbed these fucking mountains and got spotted by these things and were able to sneak up on them you know and tag one out not very many was there like success

rate of archery and ibex in new mexico's very very very low i've been there like just last year i was on a hunt in colorado and i kill a bull on every hunt every hunt for years i've got a bull killed. And so on this one, it was the full moon. It was hot. There's all these reasons why I wasn't, I couldn't get it done. And so I had created in my story, I'm like, okay, what am I going to tell people? I'm going to tell people, yeah, it's just, you know, that's the way it goes. It's, it's bow hunting. There's, it's low, you know, I've overcome all these odds for all these years. And I had this, I already had this story manufactured on why it would have been okay. And And nobody could question it because of all this.

How can you question me? Look at, I've proven myself over and over and over. But in my own head, I'm like, what am I doing? Facts. Am I convincing myself that success isn't the number one thing? So I think you are, you know. And I was just like, but I'd already, I'm like, well, I have another hunt I got to go to. I got to do this.

actually on this one joe's joe was like hey there's a big ufc fight on saturday night and he's like can you get to Vegas and i'm like yeah if i if i get my bull killed i could come and that'd be fun fights are so fun and uh on that one and i was just like what is important to me fucking Vegas in a fight or this is what i do this is who i am and i stayed and on saturday night of that fight I killed a bull. I'm trying to think where that bull is right now. It might be, but I killed a bull right at last light.

The hunt was supposed to be five days. This was day seven. I saved two extra days. And I killed a bull right at dark. And I remember I texted Joe of pictures, it raining in Colorado, and he was out the fights, and I'm like, got it done.

And it was just like, it was so, nobody cares. Nobody gave a fuck. Yeah. I killed another bull. It's not the story of my life. Whatever. And it's like, but to me, that was huge.

And I've been doing this my whole life. But it was that one little thing. It's like, I'm okay with failure or am I not okay with failure? Am I given all I got or am I not? Am I creating this story so other people accept me and be like, oh, that's okay. But it's like, you know in your heart, I mean, I think we trick ourselves a lot. But at the end of the day, I knew. It's so true.

It's all about, for me, like, overcoming these challenges. It's all about what, like I said, the kind of person that you're becoming in that process and the kind of person that you're telling yourself that you actually are, right? Like, I was having a conversation with another fighter who's a world champion boxer. And he was telling me the story about the first time that he ever got knocked down in a fight. So it was the ninth round of a, out of a 12 round fight against an animal. Like this guy is Connor Bend, who was added speak, still has added speak, an incredible boxer. And he's going against him and on the ninth round, he gets knocked down.

And he tells me, Steph, like, it was like time stopped and those, that eight second count, all of a sudden became five minutes. I was having a full-blown conversation about myself, about who I am. He's like, all right, Chris, his name's Chris. I can either stay down. You can stay down. and this can all be over. Like he was getting his ass beat.

He was having a bad time. It was in the like deep waters with this guy. He's like, I can either stay down here and it's all over in a matter of seven, six, or I can get up because I know I still have more fight in me. I know that this knockdown wasn't that bad. I know that I still have some fuel in me. I can still throw punches. So who am I?

And he says, that was the moment that I realized who I actually was. You know, I'm the type of person. that in a situation like that where all odds are against me, I still get up and I keep fighting because I could never live with myself knowing that I had more in the tank and I for some reason convinced myself that I couldn't do it because it was uncomfortable. And that's the same thing with the hunt. Like you knew that if you just stayed a little bit longer, you knew that you could get the job done, right? And that's who you are. That's the type of person that you are becoming through consistently making those decisions. I want to add to that. That's why it's so important.

I want to add something to that. So this is why we came here. That's something that runs in my fucking head and on repeat. Every single time I hit rock bottom. When I'm ice climbing and I'm on top of a peak and I'm fucking frozen and I have the barfies.

I'm throwing up on the side of the wall. My hands are frozen. I can't feel my feet. And I'm up there alone. It's like, this is why I came here for this moment. I think a lot of you guys will be interested in this next sponsor.

First Light Farm. is a New Zealand-based farm that ships elk meat straight to your door. The reality is not everyone's going to fill their tag every year, so First Light Farms is ready to fill your freezer with lean protein that is high in iron, zinc, and B vitamins. To tell you the truth, I've been pretty surprised at how tender the meat is from First Light Farms. And I guess it's because they have no natural predators in New Zealand, so the elk will have a pretty low-stressed life, and you can taste that in the meat.

They're offering listeners of the podcast a 15% discount using code cam 15 at stateclub. combe.combe. The link will be in the show notes of the podcast for those interested. Cabellas and Bass Pro Shops is a sponsor of the podcast. And that's especially powerful for me because I remember when Cabellas came to town, came to Springfield, Oregon. And I actually played a role in the opening of that store instead of cutting the grand opening ribbon with scissors. I shot it with an arrow. And it was just a monumental thing. I mean,

everybody here in town was talking about, hey, are you going to go to Cabellas? Can you believe Cabellas is coming here to Springfield, Oregon? So I know what a staple, those giants in the industry are. And it's actually, it's one of the first places people go when they're looking to get geared up to be, to become a hunter as they go to Cabellas and buy everything they need. So I'm very excited that we've partnered together. And we can help open up those outdoor and hunting opportunities to listeners of this podcast. Loophold optics has been providing my binoculars and eyewear for the last few years. I like that it's an Oregon company and they make such high quality glass.

It's all I've really used. And if you can't find what you're hunting, it's going to be tough to kill. So loophole optics has really played an integral part in my success these last few years. Thank you, Lou Pold, for supporting the podcast. 90 reps yesterday with you, that last 10. This is why we're here. You got 10 because we got here. We got 10 more reps to go.

This is where it counts. Same thing with your buddy when he hit the deck. You know, like this is why I'm here. Yeah. It's like think of how strong America came because of Rocky, you know? And it's like, you know, when he's on the ground and he gets up. Yeah. But that was the moment that he was there.

And that is what Rocky is. That's how he became Rocky. That's how he became Rocky. Yeah. And like yesterday on the mountain. Like, I can't tell you how many times I've repeated. This is why I'm here. This is why I came here.

Right. Yeah. Because, you know, halfway up that mountain hearing you guys say, well, you know, no one, like there's three guys that have actually been able to make it to the top of this. Yeah. With the rock. The rock. With the rock. This rock.

Mm-hmm. So it's not, you could put the rock down. And it's fine. Like, you're chilling. If it's too hard or something, it's like, no, this is why I fucking came here. Yeah. You think I can live with myself knowing that I gave up on that shit? Like, I want to.

People do all the time. Yeah. I don't know how. And they, and you know, no judgment on them because this is hard as hell. Like, it's not a question of like, can you endure through it? Like, that is one of the most physically demanding challenges I've ever done. And I don't train that way. So my body isn't trained to do that.

So it's such a curveball. So you had to dig fucking deep and like shit gets black down there. Yeah. And there's not much down there. When you're dug so deep and you're so far in the dark in this spot where you just want to give up because there's nothing down there for you. You have to rely on those things that you hold on to. For me, this is why I came here.

Another big quote that runs in my head is Mike Tyson, do what you hate to do, but do it like you love it. That sticks in my head. That was repeating yesterday. That repeats when I'm on the wall. That repeats when I have to do a branded post on Instagram. I'm not too happy about this fucking company that's been harassing me and knowing the hell out of me the last few weeks on email.

You know, it's like, do what you hate to do, but do it like you love it. You know what I mean? I understand that. Sometimes I get to that level. It's like I don't, you know, your eagle gets in the way and you don't want to deal with it. But I can't tell you how many times I've been in that dark place. You have to, you have to grab onto something and you can't let go of it.

It's easy to let go of it. It's easy to just throw those things away and just those quotes away and just be like, ah, it's just a quote. You know, I can give up. No one's going to judge me. No, you have to judge yourself. But I have to convince myself to, I genuinely. have to convince myself that lie you know of i can do this and it will happen and i can get through what you have written on that rock you know i read that a thousand times on that fucking

client you know what i mean no weapon sworn against me shall prosper right that's what you got written on there yeah no weapon used against me against me yeah used against me yeah used against me yeah and that's that's a bible verse said yeah it's legit i didn't know that uh that's cool But yeah, it's so true. It's like, you know, this we all have obstacles in our lives, people that doubt us, challenges that come in front of us and try to stop us. And they're all weapons to me. Yeah.

When I get in that hole, I see that darkness is a weapon used against me to try to stop me. And I know that if I overcome that, though it's absolute hell all the way through. When I get on the other end, it's it's the most rewarding thing in the world. And like, so, you know, this last hunt that I was on up north. And, you know, it's out there for 30 days, you know what I mean? And in fucking cold. It's springtime thinking it's going to be warm. It's not warm.

It's cold as shit. It's raining. It's snowing. It's like every single element against you is stopping you. And, you know, you put, I put all this. It's so easy to give up up there. It's like, I got here. I don't, I can live with myself if I, I think I can convince myself a lie that I can live

with myself. I can paint this story of, hey, I was out there. I was at the farthest north, you can go. And I did it all. And I posted about it. And everybody knows about it. And I talked it up. And everyone knows how challenging it is. And everybody will understand that I did this every year. But that every year, you know, I can tell people whatever I want to tell them. I can tell them like, yeah, yeah, I tagged out. I just don't want to tell you. I just don't want to show you because I don't want to scare you because it's bloody. Like, you know what I mean? Like I can come up with some bullshit but I can't live with myself. I can't sleep with myself at night if I do that because I've convinced myself that I can't

sleep at night and that got in my head deep. And so like when you're out there and you actually endure through that shit and you go all the way to the end through all those lies, all that convincing you do yourself, all the pain, all the struggles, everything and you're able to tag out. Holy shit is that the most rewarding thing in the world. man holy shit is it the most rewarding thing in the world to actually summit that mount to take out that animal to get it home and the beautiful thing about hunting and everybody will relate that's a hunter is like to be able to pass off that pack of meat to that buddy yeah and for them to be able to channel

that energy you know what I mean like her channeling that grisly before her last fight you know yeah I know I know I love that necklace yeah all I ate was grizzly leading into that fight that's awesome that shit that's awesome I felt the energy of that bear I bet And like I said, look, I'm a scientist. So I'm very, you'll tell you, I'm very analytical and very square with my thinking. And it's hard for me to like believe things that are not proven, essentially, right? And I can tell you I felt it and I feel it in this necklace and I feel it when I hold on to it.

And it brings me like a sense of power and a sense of peace that I've never felt. And it's, and I know I'm not imagining it because I was so against wanting to believe any of this shit. Yeah. But you feel it. Yeah. It's amazing. And I channel that shit in my fight.

And you can't get that in a stake. No. No. You can't channel the energy of some factory of how an animal got slaughtered. Yeah. You know, I was vegan for four years. Did you know that? No.

And part of it was... How do you go from Canada to vegan in the bush of Canada? Well, so my adventure experiences company, we got all sorts of different characters. And very often we were starting to get a lot of vegans as that was starting to start to become a fad, right? And it definitely was a fad. There's no question about that. There was a proportion of veganism that was a fad. Yeah, there's a documentary. Yeah. And, and game changer. Yeah, fuck that. But how was, you know, when I was first getting into running retreats and this is my business, and we were like calculating the cost and rationing food for these trips and shit, we're putting

all these budgets together and how are we going to feed everybody on these trips? And we always, I always wanted to make it extravagant. It's like one day, my, my, one of the guys, my team, He taps me on the shoulder. So like what are our vegan options on this trip? When we were really starting to get some momentum, we were building these trips out to be more inclusive for people. I'm like, vegan option. What are you talking about?

Like what? I have a pipeline or like, it's not an option on the menu when you're up north. They don't have vegan options. And it's just, I was like, I just was so in denial. I used to be like as a kid. It's so in denial of that shit. And so I was like, nah, it's bullshit. They can eat meat.

and they don't get that luxury. That's the mentality I used to have. But, you know, I allowed through meeting those people and learning their ways and understanding them and having an open mind, like I wanted to experience it. I started to hear and actually open my mind to like the meat industry and in the dairy industry and understand the reasons behind why some of these people on these, some of these people I was meeting on these retreats were vegan and a lot of people in the rock climbing space are vegan. And I wanted to understand it.

more, then there's no better way to understand it than to throw yourself in with the wolves. You know, to be in and feel for yourself like what it's like. So I gave myself a 30 day challenge. I'm going to try it and see what it's like. And that way I can understand it a little bit more. 30 days turned into 60 days, 90 days a year, two years, three years, four years. It became a mental challenge for me. It went from just, you know, trying something new, understanding the reasonings to somebody

had showed me some crazy videos of, I think, Fair Oaks Farm. Have you heard of that? No. Oh, my God. But another, there's some atrocities in these farms, yeah. I'll show you that shit. Fair Oaks farms, man. There's some good ranchers too that, where it's like ethical.

Yeah, I don't want to dig on the bat. There's also, I don't want to dig on farming at all. Hey, anytime money's involved, it's going to be fucking ugly. Yeah. So I'm sure it is ugly. Yeah, and I make myself really, really clear. Like, I've a lot of family that are farmers.

I grew up custom harvesting, like as a super young kid. And so like mad respect for farmers, mad respect for that industry, 100%. But this opened my mind to their world of the vegan's mind for that reason, you know, that people that are anti, right? So I wanted to experience it a little bit. And I saw some shit, the shit I did not like. And I still try to limit dairy because of some of those reasons. Some of the shit I saw was just so traumatizing that I can't drink milk anymore.

Yeah. Like you can add this is some stuff and I'll drink it. but, but I just, it's just not a conscious choice after seeing some of stuff. But anyway, fast forward, you know, it became, it became, I think for me of respecting life. And I want to tap into this a little bit and talk about it a little bit because of, it's really a big reason why I'm a hunter. And so, you know, I started respecting life a lot more. And I, I was pretty rough. I was a pipeliner.

Like I grew up with guys that were convicts and like, you know, I was raised, I was 16 years old working on the pipeline. You know what I mean? I was out of school early and I'm working on the summers. Like, and so these guys raised me, you know, and they raised me tough and they raised me with very few, very few, like very limited vocabulary. You know, it's fucking shit. Yeah. You know what I mean? And it's very close minds and this is the way the world is.

And that's how I grew up. And so tapping into the vegan side of me, like, you know, like. it made me respect life a lot more. So I used it as a challenge for myself to become a better person and use that as a way to evolve personally. So anytime I saw meat, you know, I was getting into bodybuilding at the time too.

So like meat, I was eating six, seven times a day, right? And I'm eating meat every single meal. And so to cut that out with every two hours, every hour, I'm consciously reminding myself I'm not eating meat because I want to respect life more, a better person. You know, that was my mentality. Yeah.

And the growth I had through that was so amazing. Just by having that constant reminder of being a better person, opening my mind, you know, blah, blah, blah, really helped me. And so that's why I stick with it for four years. But there just became a point where my body just started to take a toll from it. And it's like, no, like how can I now respect meat in the animal in a whole other light? Yeah. And there's, you know, through that whole process, by the way, that I was vegan every year,

I'm with my family harvesting meat, helping my brother get his meat, fill the free freezers with the family. I'm not eating it. I call myself the vegan hunter to my buddies that knew that was going on. Yeah. Because I was still down to like pack meat out and help with that process because there was nothing better than that process. To harvest your own animal and to share with your family and to nose to tail using every ounce of that animal. Like that's how I believe in. That's my ethics behind hunting.

but you know coming out of veganism was like okay now coming out of it my first animal that I'm going to eat is going to be something that we hunted you know hunted my first that that that animal was hunted and ate that shit and felt that shit and felt good you know it's a total different process to harvest your own animal and everybody will relate it's a bow hunting podcast So that's my ethics behind hunting and vegan. I did it, been there done that. It's cool. But yeah.

And this is the part of hunting that is so important to get out to the world. And it's hard. It's hard being an outlier. You know that. And you know how much you're met with resistance from the world, right? Because of their preconceived notions and beliefs about a subject, in this case, hunting and the light in which hunters have been painted in mainstream media, right? So you guys are at the front line now to change that narrative.

You have the power to change that narrative. But it is challenging because now you guys are going to be essentially like taking all that heat from people and all that hate just because of a poor, a mismanagement on different media companies on the way that they portray certain people in this case hunters. Yeah. Right? But I was talking to you guys about it yesterday, just how much my perspective on hunting has changed just. by being exposed to this world a little bit more, which is why it's so important that you guys continue being positive advocates for it and continue sharing your love

and passion for hunting in such a positive light, which is genuine and authentic to what you guys believe. Like, I can attest 100% to that, you know, that how much honor and respect you guys have for these animals and how much of it you're doing because of how it makes you feel and how right it seems. in this new light that I'm being presented by.

You know, like I, when I first met Tristan and he had some animal meat that he had harvested, and he cooked it for me, I was so averse to eating it. I was having a hard time. And I'm like, all right, like, I'm pretty rational and objective. I'm like, what am I uncomfortable about? Because I'm still eating a cow or a chicken or a fish. That is to hire somebody else to kill your meat for you. Right.

That got killed. But for some weird reason, like, I find it gross to eat the meat from this animal just because Tristan killed it? Like, what's the logic there? There is none, right? There is none. And objectively, this meat tastes amazing. But I'm having a hard time even like allowing myself to enjoy it.

Yeah. Why is that? It's a common thing. You know, I've actually, other than vegans, I've, when I've brought up that I'm a bow hunter or that I harvest my own meat, I'd never actually, I'm sure this is just me, lack of amount of people, but never had anybody upset about it. they've been adverse to trying it but they'd never been upset at it they were never like oh my god you're a hunter like that's all online type shit you know what i mean that's the people online

talking shit but like actually face to face and people find out i'm a hunter they're like they look up to that they're like wow what's it like what's the experience like well it's it's also you know they're looking at a person yeah and it's not just like this arbitrary thing online or this bad whatever they're looking at you as a human. And they're like, Scott looks pretty normal. Seems pretty nice. Yeah.

And he hunts. So it's all gauged on that or judged on that instead of this persona. Yeah. You know what I mean? It's not so much the case with politics, though. You say who you're supporting. Yeah. Now I'll send your entire perspective changes of you, which is kind of bullshit.

Well, yeah. Even, I mean, even so normally if I say, if I'm talking to say an ultra-runner, which is it's pretty liberal crowd very and i say yeah i'm conservative and i bow hunt but we've been getting in miles together and they see me out there in the mountains and there it's like you get a pass you know you're like um this guy seems all right yeah you know so it's um normally you judge people on your interactions with them that's how it's supposed to work yeah online that gets muddled you know and people like to to group people say a Republican or you voted for Trump or you've, you know, whoever.

Yeah. You know, you're here and there's nothing you can do to get out of that category because that's where you're, I'm putting you. But when it's face to face, it's way different. Yeah. It'd be nice to be able to help people open their minds a little bit more. You know what I mean? Like, I'm open.

You know what I mean? Like, I'm open to trying shit. Like I can say the shit I can say about hunting because I've been vegan. I can say the shit that that I, I don't have a PhD. I got some pro science behind me. Yeah. I got some experience behind me. Now all of it.

Yeah. I got a lot to learn. Well, you're more open. I mean, there's no way I would ever try it to be a vegan. Really? You're more open-minded than me. Instead, I'll be like, you know, if I'm spending time with somebody or going, I'm just going to talk about what I do.

Yeah. And if they want to come do what I do, perfect. Yeah. But, yeah, after 55 years, I'm definitely not changing much. You got a bit of stuck in your ways there, my friend. Exactly. But you're open-minded enough and self-aware enough to understand your bias and respect and accept that they have a different opinion. Yeah, definitely.

You don't have to share it, but you just have to be self-aware enough to be like, all right, like, I see your point. I understand why you might want to be a vegan. I just don't share the same opinion. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm a lot younger. So, you know, for me, it's like I'm still in my infancy of trying new things. You know what I mean? Like, I'm like, let me try everything.

And then that's starting to develop my character much more. Definitely. So, I mean, you know, I got a lot of experience. experiencing my momentum. Well, Canada. You guys are nicer. You guys are nice. That's bullshit, man.

That is bullshit. You know what's funny. You're always like, sorry. Sorry. Yeah, we have great manners until you piss us off. And it's like people pulling over with the hockey stick. Okay. Like, you're not allowed of fistfight and football.

You know what I mean? But that's allowed. And that's actually hooked up to in hockey. Oh, I know. We've seen some great fights. Yeah. It's so funny when people say that Canadians are nice. It is true.

Like, Canadians are nice. Like, we have manners. Very polite. Yeah. Very polite. Very polite. But also there's the side of Canadians that are like the real Canadians. I mean, the real Canadians, in my opinion, are the oil workers. You know what I mean?

Yeah. Those are the people that run that damn country. Oh, definitely. You know, like. Well, I think the United States gets most its oil from Canada. Yeah. I mean, people think it's Middle East, but it's Canada. It's interesting because I'm in a space that's very liberal, right?

Yeah. With the adventure community, rock climbing. Ice climbing all that shit. Well, ice climbing is a little bit more conservative, but rock climbing, especially hiking, you know, nature lovers, tree huggers, yogis, which I'm all of the above. Yeah. But I bring a different perspective because I come from the oil industry. I come from the roughnecks, you know, the guys that don't agree with these new agendas, right?

Yeah. But I have an open mind to it, you know, like, you know, back in the oil industry, you know, when I found out that Caitlin Jenner was transitioning or Bruce Jenner was transitioning. and he became woman of the year. I was like, I mean, all the guys, you're like,

what the fuck? I'm those guys. Yeah, I know you are. And it's like, well, men are so good that even one woman of the year.

You know what I mean? That's how good we are. Exactly. And fast forward to today and Caitlin's a great friend of mine and we were flying a plane the other day. Really? Yeah.

No way. Yeah. And it's like to see how much I evolved just by like opening my mind is really cool for myself. Yeah. But it's like, it's like that it's a different culture up there. You know what I mean?

We're just surrounded by like these narratives that we create ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. And then you open your mind to things like you start to realize there's some pretty good people out there. You know, no, I have some strong and heavy opinions on a lot of that shit. I'm not going to open it up too much. But, but yeah, Canada in general, like. A lot of what shit?

Oh, here we go. No, I mean, you said, I don't know what you're talking about. Well, well, like, it's true. you know the trans agenda and like um you know i think i think they're letting it out like as an adult you can do it or the hell you want to do but like let people mature past 25 before you start indoctrinating them into stuff yeah that's what i know i can can't get on bored with the kids stuff do you all the above right like like should be a full on adult before you're pushing agendas on people you know i know a lot of people that are in the 30s

that haven't matured yet so yeah so who why are people pushing a 17 year olds to yeah to Or younger. Or young. It makes me safe to think about that. Yeah. But yes, that's what I mean by having some heavy opinions. I think we're on the same page there. Yeah.

But yeah. So in Canada, like the oil workers, like they run that place, right? Like, you know, it's the boots on the ground guys. It's total different culture in northern B.C., Saskatchewan, Alberta, Ontario. Like those guys work in the oil fields, working the oil sands, they're, they care about the environment. They genuinely do. Like these guys, the oil workers in the pipeline industry is looked at as guys that don't give a shit. They're spilling oil everywhere.

They're ruining our planet. But those same people that are making those statements, we all know, we've all heard it on a million podcasts. They're the same guys flying the private jets. Yeah, yeah. Right. So we've heard all that shit before. But I feel like me coming from that space is pretty cool because I'm able to educate these people that are in the tree hugging community. It's a good perspective to have.

It's different. It's different. Because it's the same thing. Like when you're sitting in front of somebody and you find out that they're a good person, but then you also find out they're a bow hunter. Now your perspective is changing on bow hunting. The same thing. Like most people, they know that I'm the hiker adventure guy. And then they find out where my background is.

And I came from the oil industry. Yeah. It's like, oh, shit. Like I thought oil workers were bad. I thought that was like a part that nobody really talked about with Canada. When you think Canada, you think beautiful, vibrant British Columbia, Whistler, skiing, nature, like the best place in the world for beauty. But you don't realize the oil sands. They don't think of the oil rigs.

They don't think Texas, that's for sure. Yeah. That's very much what it's like. So, yeah, I'm able to bring some perspectives to those people. Really cool thing. Like in the oil industry, the men that are running that damn. country they care so much about the environment it is our every safety meeting i would doubt it every morning we have environment and safety meetings at three in the morning four in the morning five in the morning

depending on what kind of crew you're running um and we have processes and systems behind everything i am talking the average person going to the store spills more damn oil yeah than the men out there right but you hear of these big things that are like you know you hear of a big oil spill that happens in in the Gulf of Mexico. Well, why did that happen? That happened because that line was supposed to be replaced five years ago. But because of the political agenda that's going on, it's not being replaced because pipelines are bad.

So we're going to stick to the traditional tanker method and the train method, which we have spilling shitloads more oil. Yeah. When that line could have just been replaced by a simple pipeline project. You know what I mean? Yeah, it's education for sure. I worked on a project in Canada called the Line 3 Replacement Project. And we'd had a big, like, over 300 mile section of that is pretty big.

a 36 inch line and then a 48 inch line. Is it above ground? No, August parade. Okay. 20 feet deep. Okay. You know,

depending on where it's at. What kind of materials down there, like if it's rock or something like that. If it's crossing a river, sometimes go under the river, over the river. But yeah, like when that line three was getting,

you know, put together, like, I mean, we waited years to make, to let that line go through. Like, I mean,

from when I heard of it to, to when we started, working on it was a poly pipe or what kind of pipe is that steel steel okay and so they auger the directional drill steel and pull it or how do they is that how do they pull it under the river is what you're asking so um yeah there's a drill crew that it'll basically drill on completely under the river it's all engineered how they do it where they go through what type of rock and everything and then and then it's very engineered on computers and they come in with just some old ass machines and just drill, basically drill a hole all the way under the river and then out the other end.

And then you have at the ends are called tie-ins. So basically you'll drill in and then the lines already built above ground. So the sections of pipe are brought in. They're welded together and you have these sections. And then it's, you've got these caps on both ends with like a giant like thick like. So you drill the casing in and pull the pipe back through the casing. So then that drill comes through and then it pulls it back underneath. Gotcha.

Just like a piece of spaghetti. Yeah. You know, we're like, yeah, exactly. You're like a threading the needle kind of thing. Yeah. So it gets pulled completely under the river and then, and then the other 100 kilometer sections are lowered into the ground and then you'll have a connection point of two, three joints,

which we call them joints. They're green pieces of pipe. Yeah. And then the connections were welded or? Yeah, so everything's welded. Yeah. And so there's two different welding processes. there's either automatics or stick welding and I've worked on both.

CRC is the company I work behind with the automatic side of thing. So I was a tech for a little bit. Rebuilding these robots, which is a good time. But basically, if you're on an automatic crew, the automatics will weld the, we have an internal welder, which is called the pig or sorry, the goose. The goose lays the golden egg. That's the thing. So the goose is this internal welder that drives through the pipe and wells the inside of the pipe.

And then you'll have a number of passes, fill passes in a cap for the outside of the pipe, of course. So, you know, 100, 100, 200, 300, 400 joint sections that could be upwards of 100 kilometers long of pipeline that's built and then gets lowered into the trench that's built and then gets tied in over by the river. Is it under pressure? Yeah, they pressurize it. So after it's been welded and all tied together, you'll put what's called a pig in. It's the cap both ends. You'll pressurize it. So you'll run a pig first.

So then the pig will run through to make sure that if the pig gets stopped, it's basically a big rubber cylinder that gets blasted with the air all the way through the line. Yeah. It gets stopped. There's a little radar inside or a little GPS inside. And you can track it, figure out where it stopped. Why it stopped, maybe when they backfilled the kink to pipe or something happened, you know. And they can go in and cut it out. It's a big process.

Yeah. got to go in, dig up the pipe, cut it out, fix that. And once it's pigged and everything's running smooth, then they'll cap off the ends and they'll do what's called the hydro test. So basically what you do is you fill the line with a mix of water and methanol so that the line doesn't freeze. And then they pressurize it up to a certain pressure depending on the code. This is all engineered. So this is again, goes back to vetoing the people that say that pipelines are bad. the level of testing that these pipelines go through is unreal.

And then the other side of it is people talk bad about a pipeline saying that they're bad because we're coming through and creating it right away through the forest. But the amount of process we have in place to make sure that we prepare the places that we go through, we leave them better than we found. Protect the environment. Yeah. It's engraved in us. Yeah.

There's only a few things that are engraved in us out there. And that is the main one because we want to keep our jobs, you know? There's high standards. If you're doing work out there for sure. So it's pressurized. And then if there's, if basically we wait until, it takes about 24 to 48 hours, depending on the line, there's different processes for every. So, and once the line is stabilized on pressure, we know that it hasn't lost any pressure in that time.

Yeah. There's many different methods to do it with different types of machines, but you pass as a pressure test. It passes a pressure test. And you're good to go. And if there's any line, if there's a leak, then it's a son of a bitch to figure that one out. But prior to that, before you put all this frigging water in. the pipe and you start pressurizing all this stuff every single weld this x-rayed you know you have an x-ray that runs on every beat and if there is a tiniest imperfection it's cut out and it's welded and it's

tested again and it'll keep going until they until it's done and if and if you're welder you get one strike you screw up once you're out you better be you better hope that that weld like there's there's a reason behind that well because there's documentation behind it why why was there an imperfection It costs a lot of money to go back there. A shitload of money. One tiny little imperfection. And they got to go back, bring a crew, a welder, his helper. They got to bring a whole team of operators to lift that pipe back up.

A whole team of labors to help cut it out. If there's a full cutout, sometimes just like little micro repairs so they can just grind it out. You guys are earning their money for sure. But yeah, so there's so much that goes into that. And those guys definitely need a lot more respect and their gift. And support. Yeah, I agree.

Yeah, I'm on board with that. And that's the thing with like those older lines, right? Those old lines didn't have like from 30 years ago. Well, they did. But like those lines that are 100 years old, some of them are still running. Yeah. They didn't have those types of requirements. Right.

They have the technologies we have today. We need to replace those. You know, we're not sucking all the oil out of the ground. Yeah. You know, we're trying to get, we're trying to, we're trying to evolve. We're trying to get to a world where we can rely on renewable energy. Yeah. But we got to pay our dues, bro.

We got to pay our dues to get there. Yeah, I understand. And people forget that. Yeah, I understand. Not just magically going to create AI. We're not magically going to become, you know, non-dependent on oil and gas. Like, we got to innovate the process, but we need to get there first. It's not just a money grab, you know.

I understand. And people were indoctrinating people with this whole, it's like, stock Canadian-American pipelines and drilling because bad for the environment. But as we get, we go over to the Middle East to go and buy all that. Yeah. Like if we're trying to make a global effort here, then maybe we should focus on. If we would want to, I would think there's no regulations out there. No, and we don't want to be relying on a regime like that.

I mean, it'd be better to work in partnership with Canada. you know, our neighboring community or country. We got like, so I mentioned CRC. CRC Evans is, it's an automatic welding company, right? So they're all over the world. It's a great company. And they operate all over the world. And, you know, growing up, my stepdad, he, he did a lot of time in Russia and in the

golf and my uncles. Like I'm like a third generation pipelineer. So, you know, the regulations and the shit that you hear that goes down there is brutal. Yeah. Like the shit that would never pass in Canada, the United States would never pass. I bet. But I mean, the CRC guys, I mean, they got to just, you know, their job is to come there

and make sure the things welled. They're not allowed to touch that shit. They got to just make sure it's, it's being well done. And thankfully, there are places that they're trying to save money. These companies out in these other countries, they're trying to save money. So they're going with the automatic route because it's faster. It doesn't take as long. They get the job done and start making money faster.

Yeah. But thankfully, these machines are so advanced that they're making, like perfect wells. I'm talking perfect welds. That's awesome. So it's, it's good. There's, there's companies like that that are out there that are like kind of having

a little bit of footprint, a little bit of a lot of that. Oh yeah. You know, it'd be better to bring the oil here. It'd be better to be subscribed in the oil here. Yeah, well here running pipelines, replacing these trains, replacing these ship, yeah, these tankers and shipers.

Oh yeah. Just eliminating risk. Exactly. Yeah. Um, is, so is all your family out of Venezuela? Like, Originally. Yeah. I mean like your mom is here, right? Yeah, my mom. Well, yeah, my mom's in the States and all my siblings. My dad's the only one that's still in Venezuela, but he's originally from Morocco.

Okay. And then my family from my mom's side is Eastern European. Oh, I gotcha. Okay. Yeah, like World War II immigrants kind of thing. Oh, I see. Yeah. So where do they live, your family? We're spread everywhere because it's been really hard as a Venezuelan immigrant to get active. to freedom to the states. And so we've all kind of been forced on a, on a different path, which is really sad because a big part of growing up in Venezuela is it's how tight families are. Yeah. It's a big part of our culture.

And so I was used to just living within like a legit, like a five to 10 mile radius from every single member of my family. You know, siblings, grandparents, cousins, nieces and nephews to now we're spread out around the globe, like not even just around the states. I have family in Europe and Spain. I have family in Canada. I have family in Switzerland. I have family in Israel. I have family and, you know, in South America. And we're all just kind of like spread out. Which is really sad. And we're all just kind of chasing opportunity, which is a, it's a much more kind of American way of living, you know, that is not necessarily centered around family. People are just chasing money, chasing careers and chasing opportunities.

and that's just kind of what we've been forced to have to conform to, which is sad. So I have two of my brothers are in Miami, I have a sister in Chicago, and then everybody else is just spread out kind of thing. Are they all freaks too? No. No? You're the only freak? They're freaks in their industry.

Like my entire family is very kind of career and goal oriented. So they're all outliers in their field. But nobody's an athlete. My dad was an ex-professional soccer player. but that's kind of as much as much as my family or i guess like heritage and athletics come from she was a professional soccer player too yeah yeah you know that yeah yeah i was just curious about your brothers and sisters too if they you know but i mean being an outlier it's there's different categories you can be physical or i mean you got both because you're also a doctor so i mean just that i

But it's because of the bar, like the bar was set so high in my household household. I told you I'm the youngest of three siblings. My oldest brother is 51. So they set the bar pretty high. Like by the time that I gained consciousness and awareness of life, they were all doing big things. I think your mom set the bar a little high too with your whole career with the physical therapy side of things. She likes to take some credit for that, isn't she? And she did.

But my mom also, like my mom has two master's degrees. You know, my mom went to NYU on a full scholarship. going from Venezuela as well, has two master's degrees, has like an incredible career as well. So I just come from a family where the bar was raised incredibly high. Yeah. And so I had to prove myself to them. Yeah. And then prove myself to me that I was actually who I said I was.

Right. You know? And so now you just has to walk to walk. Yeah. Walk to talk. Yeah. You know? So are you, you're fully invested in fighting now?

I mean, you still lift, obviously. But not in a powerlifting sense. Like I lift for fun and just because I genuinely enjoy doing it. But in terms of like my athletic goals right now, I'm 100, 1,000% into boxing. I have been for the past couple of years. Yeah, it's been such a cool experience. So the goal is world championship. Yeah, a world title.

World title. But more than the world title is like I want to hone in my skills as a boxer to a level that I become really entertaining. to watch and inspiring for other women to try to accomplish the same things, right? Like I, I started boxing when I was 29. That's really old, especially for somebody who doesn't have any sort of martial arts experience to just like randomly get thrown in there and just start training for a fight in Dubai with eight months of anticipation. You know, it's, again, things that I was consistently told that it were impossible that I could never do, right? I'm too big. I'm too muscular. I'm too stiff. I'm not, I don't have experience. I'm, I will never be skilled enough. Like, all of that is

kind of fuel for my fire that is inspiring me and motivating me to, to prove a point and to subsequently inspire other girls to try to do the same thing. You've come an incredible way, though, like her, from where she started boxing to now the last couple years, unreal. She has it. Like a lot of people, they, they, they just, they can train their entire lives. And they just, They just don't have the it factor. You can see it in Steffi that she has the it factor. When her coach, Pedro and M.A, tells her something, it's executed. You see it come through.

And she can execute. And I think that's going to go a long ways. Everybody in her space in the woman's boxing, a lot of these women have been boxing for a long time. And they have the experience. She's just getting into it. She's got the strength that they don't have. So she's bringing something. She's coming in and she's ready to pay her dues and she pays her due.

I've never seen somebody train so hard in my life. I've been surrounded with pros my entire life. It's incredible what you're doing and you're very underestimated right now in the boxing space. And that's fine. Yeah, that's fine. But people should watch out because she's taking this more seriously than she's taking anything. And I can attest for that. I see it every fucking day.

My whole mindset is. You're humble about it. My whole mindset is being. possible to ignore. And that only happens through, through actions, right? Like showing. So I'm okay with like people telling me I can't do something, people doubting, people, people, I don't know, looking down on me for whatever reason, totally cool with it. I know it's just, it's just a matter of time until I have that second to actually prove what I've been working on. And I'm so patient. Again, I'm a master of the mundane. Yeah. You know, weightlifting is the most boring sport in

the world and I'm mastered that. And so I'm taking all of those skills. I'm taking the skills. I'm taking the skills and everything that I've learned from doing three different sports at the highest level. And I'm essentially just plug and play to boxing now. You made, you made weightlifting sexy. You know what I mean? Like you brought weightlifting to a whole other level for women. And I think you're going to take, I think you're going to do the same thing with boxing. I think you're going to take boxing to the next level for women. I mean, I've been working with your management and trying to help manage you for the last few months here. And it's funny. Like the amount of people that underestimate women's boxing and put it down like, oh, there's no money in

women's boxing, this, that. They've heard every excuse in the game. And it's like, we talked about it. It's like, this is going to change. Steffi Cohen is going to change. Who's the biggest star in women's boxing? I would say right now in women's boxing, Alicia Baumgartner, she's just a stud. I mean, she has this skill. She's incredibly athletic. She's absolutely breathed. taking like beautiful. She, she, and she just has this, like,

charisma about her and the way that she carries herself with, like, so much confidence and so much power and strength. I haven't met her in person. I talk to her on Instagram and I follow her fights really closely.

Where she's from? I'm not sure where she's from Detroit, maybe. Oh, but U.S. Yeah, the U.S. Because I know there's, there's a Katie somebody that. Katie Taylor from Ireland. Connor was,

isn't Connor like a big fan of hers? I would say skill-wise, she probably is the best female boxer in the world between her and Clarissa Shields. Like, objectively speaking, they are the best boxer in the world. But I'm talking more about influence. Yeah, star power. Yeah, star power. And Alicia definitely has it all.

She definitely does. But yeah, like when it comes to actually excelling at something, and again, it goes part of, like, the message that I'm trying to drive home for not only younger women, but just people in general in terms of like, finding their true calling, finding their passion, their purpose and their passion. That's when those two things aligned, then you have a goal that's actually strong enough. But how do you actually get there? You have to go through massive, what I call discovery periods where you're, it starts with inquisition, inquisitive mind, curiosity of like what's actually out there. Yeah.

And then being willing and able to put yourself out there to try to discover, you know, what your options are and what you're able to do. And then at that point, I always. always thought of it like kind of like a chart system again me being analytical and incredibly squared in some ways um i have this like imaginary like x and y axis where there's three bars there's your skills your passions and your talent you're like trying to balance them out and one doesn't necessarily weigh more than the other it's a matter of like finding one that brings the most the most balance that's where you're truly going to excel at so your talent is your god-given

natural abilities for something. Like there's people who are more naturally, both physiologically and psychologically, are better at endurance sports or are better at strength sports, you know, muscle fiber type composition, body proportions, like all of those things play a role in what kind of talents you're going to be able to be good at. Like someone who's six foot three might be really good at basketball,

for example, right? That's an innate ability that they have. then you have your skills which are things that through hard work and putting in hours you'll be able to develop over time and the main factor there is the speed at which you acquire that skill that's what's going to determine if you actually have the ability to get to a competitive level is your rate of progress the rate of development in that sport or in that endeavor skills talent and then passion is your natural, your inclination to enjoy something. And the thing about passion is that is so often glorified at the expense of other things.

Like this whole mentality of, of chase your passions, do what you love. Fuck that. Yeah. Do what you love? No, do what you're good. I don't learn to love it. Yeah. You know, I've also proven that.

I've done shit that I love hamburgers. So should I just eat hamburgers all day? He should just become a hamburger. Yeah. No, but, yeah, it's, it's incredible what happens. When it happens when your skills and your talents, your passion and your purpose all align, then all of a sudden you start, would you start enjoying it? Happened to me with power lifting.

Happened to me with physical therapy. Happened to me with being a social media, quote unquote, influencer, right? Like when you're weird creatures. But you love that part of it. What part? Like you love finding your passion within it. Yeah. Like what you just said directly contradicts my philosophy in life.

Because you're saying like you're just a fight. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, we're going to scrap now. Bring the gloves. Let's go. Well, because what you're saying, if I'm hearing you correctly, it's like, for me, I found what I love to do, and then I made a career around that. I may not be the most talented in it, but I fucking love it.

And my philosophy was I want to wake up every single day doing what I love. Your philosophy of, like, find what you're good at and fall in love with it, is the original philosophy that gave me the opportunity to be able to find what I love and then stick with that one. but I had to learn to fall in love with the pipeline. You know what I mean? That shit sucked. Fucking waste deep mud. It's quicksand.

You asked if ever got caught in quicksand silt in the pipeline by those tie-ins by the river. Natural Springs pile up. You're sucked in. There's nothing fun about that. But I woke up every single day, convincing myself that I was until I started to love that shit. I love the money. But eventually that gave me the wherewithal to get out of that and then find what I love and then fell in love with it.

So it's a little different than what you're saying, right? I think it's different too when it's and you're talking competition against another person. Totally. I think that's, I mean, yeah, because you can convince yourself. You have passion. You love this, whatever. But when you're competing against another person or lifting more than another human ever has, that's going to be different, different approach.

Yep. You're going to have to have that just in love with the mundane. The skill and ability and passion is probably, I mean, that might push you a little bit, but it's, I think it's different. That's what I love about this table. You know, because of this table, there's three total different types of worlds, right? Like you're a professional athlete, top in your class, best, most strongest woman in the world. Okay.

You're a bow hunter, superintendent. I'm just a fucking adventure guy. Figure it out how to fucking make some money doing it out. Yeah. Well, all I'm saying, all I'm saying through, all I'm saying through that is that pursuing what you love and your passion is a dangerous way to get into things because sometimes you can't monetize it. Sometimes it's really difficult.

Sometimes you don't even have the skills to be able to know how to monetize that. So have you ever heard of the Japanese mentality Ikigai? No. So, and I love this because it's another version of my version of skill, talent, passion that I came up with. But Ikai is basically find what you love, what you're good at, what people, need and what you can get paid for. And the intersection of those four things is your vocation.

So it's important to just, what I'm saying is it's important to consider. Yeah, that's a really good formula to find out like how to be able to get to the end. It's, it's important to consider all the other aspects that make up for somebody finding their, a calling in life that allows them to live the lifestyle that they're after, you know, whether it's like financial freedom or freedom of time and place or or whatever that might be. there's different ways of getting there and simply like overly focusing on I just want to do what I love

that might not be the way There's different ways to skin a buck at the end of the day, right? We all do it a little differently. But my way's the best way. Yeah, clearly. What's the 25 world records? It's got to be.

I know. I don't got any of them. What do you have to overcome most to get where you want in boxing? I mean, what's your, you know, you're focused, you're physically gifted, did what, where are you weakest in that? What do you have to shore up?

I mean, right now is building up my confidence. Like coming from the top of a sport to the bottom of another has been mentally challenging. You know, I'm used to like people constantly praising me while you're so amazing. You're so strong. Yeah. And that to going into a gym where nobody knows who I am. And I'm totally cool with that. I'm, I'm a lifelong student of everything.

And I really, really enjoy the process of being an absolute beginner at something. It's really is a blessing, you know, that I have the opportunity to once again do something that's so physically and mentally demanding. So I'm not complaining about it, but it is part of the challenge just like proving to myself that I belong there, you know, and believing it, not even proving it, but believing that I belong there. Like I have a set of flashcards and one of the, one of the flashcards that I have some like affirmations. And one of the ones that I have is I belong in here. I've earned the right to be here. You know, and I really have to work hard on on, on, on, believing that because I do belong here. I have earned my stripes, you know. I am one of the highest level competitors that I know. Like, it's not tooting my own horn, but, you know, I've stuck through things that most people would never, you know, that it's just boring, it's painful. There seems like there's no light at the end of the tunnel and I'm going to do it again. You know, I have full faith in that ability. But sometimes, you know, it's natural that we're overcome by doubts and insecurities. It's just part of natural human tendencies. And so that's one of

thing that I have to constantly overcome. And then then there's a fear of failure. So there's the there's such a high amount of uncertainty of like whether or not things are going to work out in my favor. And then the fear that comes with realizing or thinking that, doubting if I'm actually investing my precious time, which is my most valuable resource into the thing that's going to take me to where I want to go. I don't know that. Right. Like I don't, might be having a completely different conversation to you. years from now and I might not have gotten a belt. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And so how am I going to feel about that? And that part of it, of that uncertainty of not knowing if I'm investing my time and energy into the right thing is a challenge that I have to consistently overcome. And it's through having people like Tristan in my corner that are that are reassuring me and that are encouraging me and believing in my abilities more than in my coach, more than I believe in them myself right now that keeps me going. That's another one.

and then um facing fear like i i i have my struggles with like anxiety and panic attacks and so man like being in super high stressful situations and high pressure situations can become challenging which i love yeah but it's just part of a a daily battle that i have with myself um that i've successfully been able to not only manage but like overcome and have under control and and and i'm prideful of that, but still, like, it's that fear factor again. It's like fear and security and doubt. And I think that those main three things is what plagues a lot of us and what prevents a lot of us from chasing the things that we want to do. And so there's, on a daily basis, there's so many strings that are pulling me in the opposite direction of like, you don't need to do

this, right? Like, you don't have to put yourself in these uncomfortable situations. You don't, you can choose a much safer career path. Like, why don't I just go be a PT, open up a bunch of PT clinics? You know, and like change, which will, it will. But, you know, I'm distracted on a daily basis by this goal that seems so impossible and far-fetched, which I'm constantly told that it is, right? I spend at least six to eight hours between training and recovering and going to and from training. And then I'm mentally exhausted the rest of the day. So it's like, am I, you know, is this going to pay off at the end? And I believe it will.

And because of the mentality that I've had so far of, this is the type of person I am. I'm the type of person that starts something and fucking finishes it, no matter what, yesterday on the hike up, right? You came down and you asked me if you wanted me to carry the rock. I'm like, no fucking way. Like, I'll be on this hill until midnight if I have to, but I'm going to finish what I started because that's the type of person I am.

Well, and I think a lot of people, they tell themselves that. And for most of the time, they're good with that. But when they get exhausted, you know, as they say, fatigue makes cowards of us all. So it's like, no, nobody's taking this thing. But eventually you get beat down and you get tired. Somebody comes back, you're like, okay, maybe just for, you can take it for a hundred yards and I'll take it. So you can, like, I think a lot of people have the standard, but they don't stick to it like, well, both you did yesterday, you know, because I would have taken the rock too. but it's like really easy to say no nobody's taking this but when the going gets tough

people get tested and when they get tested then they sometimes they fold even though it goes against what they've been telling them this narrative they've been telling themselves when it when shit really hits a fan people waver but it doesn't sound like you do there's a lack of honesty in that in that decision because in a lack of self-awareness like you need to be self-aware enough to understand that your actions determine the type of person that you are. And once you are honest with yourself about that, then you're going to start making very different decisions, you know,

knowing that every action that you take, every decision you make shapes you in one way or another. And maybe people don't think this introspectively about it. I know I do. You know, I know I've spent a lot of time being introspective and thinking about how my actions impact the type of person I am, you know, and that's just,

I think that's if people started thinking about their actions in that way, they would act very differently. Yeah. They can start with doing little things, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like a lot, we can talk up how resilient all of us are, you know what I mean?

And how we can, but we all got here somehow, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like my whole message and what I try to push to people is like, like we've got to start with some baby steps for people because a lot of people like they're just so married into this mentality of us allowing up at the rock down.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Like I can't, you know? And the fear, the pain, like all the shit. They got to start somewhere.

And, you know, it's like we all talk at a high level at this table because all of us are high level performers and in our own unique ways. But I think a lot of people that are probably listening to this, like we probably struggle just to get through to the end of the day at work or whatever. And they got to endure through that, you know, or whatever it is. Like maybe it's a hard day at work and they're a pipeliner again. You know what I mean? A construction worker and it's like they're stuck in the mud or something. It'd be unlike to say that we haven't been there though. Yeah, but we all, yeah, like me and her talk about this a lot.

Like, we get deep into it at night. It was like the amount of fucking pain that got us to where we're at today. If I was talking to myself 10 years ago, there's a different man there. Yeah. He's a boy. You know what I mean? And, you know, we can all talk so tough. But at the end of the day, we all kind of got to start somewhere.

And it's like just training, retraining and reprogramming your mind on those little things like that you know you actually can do, like making your bed. it you know what I mean like I don't want to wake my bed like make no make your fucking bed you know or like do the dishes do the laundry fold the laundry put the laundry nicely organized in my in my drawer like these are the little things that start to compound and build interest into your life and over time that in a scale you're looking at an old scale that starts to weigh outweigh those excuses and outweigh those problems in our life that help to just like when you're really fucking in the dirt in a situation or climbing a mountain or whatever it is

like you can lean back to like you can tap into that and tap into that side of scale like okay I made my bed I did I put the groceries away properly this time in the fucking fridge I cleaned all the dishes these little things that I've been training my brain to do I can tap into that and apply it into this mountain today

and that's that first step that lets you get just three quarters way up the mountain with that rock every time just a little bit a little bit and eventually over time like it starts to become who you are and you become that. So we can all, my argument always is like,

everybody likes to talk so strong. And it's, and talk about how strong we've become. How, I like to like get into like, how did we get there, you know? Habits become personalities. Yeah,

but what was it, what was it that got you to that? Like, what do you think for you? Like, for me, it was just making my fucking bed. Like, getting my five things a day done. I got me into my mind's dead. You know what I mean?

Take your bed. Try it. It was just a tool that I used to help. Try it for three days. Tell me how you feel. Or put away my clothes. I'm doing something. It feels really nice.

I'm doing something right now called One Adventure a Day. So it's like every single day I have to get on and do something. And like some days I just don't want to do it, but I do it. You know? And I think we're all like every single day going through things in our lives like depression, anxiety problems, people's problems, our friends problems. The ones we love are stressed out, arguments with their spouse, whatever it may be. Okay, I have an answer for you.

Like what it was it that led me to like start being this way. Yeah. It was a fear of mediocrity. Legit. Like I was, look, I moved to San Diego to play Division I soccer and failed at it. Like, I quit because it was too hard. And I didn't have my coach, like, boosting my ego about how good of a soccer player I am, right? And so I quit.

I moved to Miami. I felt really bad about myself. And to this day, like, that's the only regret I have in life, like when I get asked that question is I quit prematurely. And that became, I was a quitter. Like, that haunted me. It became part of my identity. Right.

I knew that I could have kept going. You know, deep inside, I made all the excuses and I told my mom and my friends and family all the reasons why I couldn't make it happen, why I couldn't become a professional soccer player. It probably sounded good. It did, right? But I knew deep inside that I quit. Yeah.

And then I moved to Miami and I became this like party animal. I lost the biggest part of my identity, which was being an athlete, which I was for since I was eight years old, you know. So I became a party animal. And my grades dropped and I was this close of being kicked out of school. And I was slowly becoming a failure. That's when I was young. I was 19 or 20.

And that's when I realized I'm like, damn, like all those like the people that I considered failures that are 30, 40, 50 years old, this is where it starts. Yeah. Holy shit. Like either I strain up right now or I'm going to end up being just one more mediocre person that has no value or contribution to the world. So who do I want to be? Right.

Right. And that was the moment. Like, and it was through, I had a 1.6 GPA. Like, I was getting kicked out of school. The fact that I was able to turn from a 1.6 to a 4.0, which got my average to 3. Right. But that's an interesting story. And it was just little steps like that in the fear of being mediocre and the awareness of

knowing that every single thing that I'm doing, every single habit that I have is developing a personality over time. And it's essentially like, I'm starting to be. to carve the story of who I am. And so I became aware of that. And I think that awareness is what's been driving me to just be better every single day. And it's like you said, it's one percent better every day. One percent.

It's marginal gains and compounding interest of all these little habits and all these little things that you do on a daily basis. So at least from at the beginning for me, it was learning how to learn in a different language. Like it was that basic. Yeah. You know, how can I learning about the culture and. societal norms so I can be a more integrated member of this new group society that I'm in, this American culture, right? Step by step.

It was becoming more organized and more clean and cleaner and more hygienic and take better care of my of my mental and physical health. But it was just kind of one step after the other and all came from the self-actualization. What do I have? Oh, there's just, I don't know what it was. Got it. Beetle. Yeah.

crawling on it yeah it was the self-realization self-actualization of of just what kind of story do I want to be able to tell to myself and to people when I'm six years old or when I'm 80 90 years old in my deathbed like what story do I want to tell what kind of impact do I want to have and and the awareness of that every single fucking day counts yeah I think people some people have the attitude is like I just didn't get through today what a shitty day and some people have the attitude is like, I'm going to win the day. Yeah. And there's such a, and then, as you said, it compounds.

But it's like, it's still just a day. What are you doing with this day? Is it going to be just getting through it and you're miserable? Or is it, I'm going to win this fucker. And then tomorrow, I'm going to win tomorrow too. And you know what? You can even break the day into four micridaes. Yeah.

From 6 to 10 in the morning, from 11 to 2, from, and then have even just, and that's the power of micro goals. Yeah. You know, don't allow you to get down yourself because you didn't make your bed and now your day's ruined. Yeah.

Ed Milet's a big supporter of that. Breaking your day down into, you know, Ed Milet. Yeah, yeah. Fucking amazing guy. And yeah, you have four days. Everyone else's day is one day,

he's got four days. Yeah, that was huge for me. Because I always felt that way too. Yeah, naturally, always felt that a good approach. Yeah. It's nice to have like these little frameworks that you can apply

to the way that you think. It starts to make life, it starts to make a little bit more sense, you know? because like well why do I think this way or why do I do this or how can I do this like these little systems can apply to people's lives so easily and take them to a whole another level be a better partner be a better parent yeah a better a better worker or achieve something that you you want to achieve so badly but you don't know how what um before we get out

of here what's the tattoos on your what's that what's the pressure what's the pressure mean so I had no tattoos like a year and a half ago. Really? Yeah. I got all new. I got all of this. Yeah. Freshly fresh.

And honestly, it does represent kind of a version 2.0 of Stephanie Cohen. Yeah. I've, I just went through so much this last couple of years just in my personal life with my interpersonal relationships, both romantically and friendship-wise. Like I grew a ton and I, I, reality, the reality of the world. me of like how people actually are and and and I used to have this mentality of like starting everybody at 100 points yeah so 100% and then I deduct right you know based on what I hear from them on their

actions on how they treat other people little things like that yeah and then once they get past a certain point then they're out of my life kind of right and I had to change that to starting everybody at zero you know and they earn that and they have to be your friend and they have to earn that And so this version 2.0 of Steffi Cohen is just kind of a version of myself that I've had to build back up because of how hard I was hit by reality and just how much shit I went through over the last three years. And so my left arm is all kind of a bunch of like positive things, right? Like this is Nike. The goddess, the goddess of virtue of winning. Flowers, clock, Marcus Aurelias, olive branches.

a badass super strong horse, my birth year, Memento Mori, you know, a bunch of like really beautiful and positive things. And then, but this was like, the dark side. This is really unconscious, though. Like, I didn't like plan this at all. It just kind of like. Is it weird to like the dark side better than the light side? No.

I do. Yeah. I love this face. Yeah, look at this. Like a demonic, a demonic woman with like a really nurturing and like kind side, but then like we all have like that evil in us. Yeah. You know, what's that quote?

I think it's from Tim Grover, born bad but learned to be good. Yeah. Yeah, that's what inspired this one. Okay. Right? And so, yeah, Icar is falling from the sky. Yeah. Too close to the sun.

Too close from the sun. A badass dog. How amazing pressure is and how much it helps carve you into who you're supposed to become. You know, and I honor pressure. Yeah, it's a privilege. You got to earn it. It's a privilege, you know? Like every day, for me, it's like,

my biggest passion in life is to be a professional athlete. Like I don't remember a single time of my life. Like from the time I was four, three years old and gained some level of consciousness. I wanted to be a professional athlete. Like it just brought so much meaning to my life. And I know it has an expiration date. You know,

at the highest level, at least I can be a professional athlete at any age. But in terms of my capability to perform, it has an expiration date. And so every day that I'm out there and able to push myself to my absolute limit and experience, pressure, you know, it's, it's just really special to me.

So yeah, that's where all of this comes from. I like it. I like it. Well, I also have a tattoo I got with Tristan. Yeah. What is it? I'm game. It's one of my most special ones. What does it mean? You're just you're in, you're down for whatever. Yeah. Right. But in, in our case. What do you got? Oh, nice. Yeah. And in this case, it has to do more with like, uh, being spontaneous. Yeah. And being down for anything, any adventure and not missing out on opportunities that might. That's how you guys met, it sounds like. Totally. Totally.

And not missing out on opportunities that might present themselves only once. And I do believe that all opportunities present themselves only once, like in that very context. So I don't want to be missing out. I don't want to be 20 years from now being like, oh, what if, like I wish could have, would have, should have kind of thing. So that's where the Amgame comes from. I like it. I like it. Well, I was in the podcast with giving the guests a brand new bow.

Here's yours. Oh, yeah, brother. I like that color too. Yeah, I know. I love this color. Yeah, it's sick. Where's your bow at? And Stephanie, you like, man, yesterday's shooting, you're so disciplined.

I know it's like a new process, but it's, you're so disciplined. Even out at Wayne's last night hitting that balloon, you were just, I mean, so focused and you looked confident you know i mean it's just like your dedication to in this case is the bow hunting craft is evident but your dedication to everything is special and it's it's uh i've had a great time training with you guys sharing the lift run shoot my experience with you guys and uh it's been a lot of fun and then this podcast has been great so thank you thank you man for having us seriously thank you for the bows thank you so much and appreciate it it's cool to get one from you especially the guy that inspired it all on me so yeah dude cam it's so nice when you meet someone who is

exactly who you expect them to be you know exactly who they portray to be online very rare yeah and it's just so refreshing so um just thank you so much for having us and for the opportunity to getting to know you i got i got to add to that like like people don't understand your mentality man 55 years old yeah 55 years old running up that mountain your youtube and instagram does not show the level of difficulty of that first of all it is a real man what did you say yesterday yeah top three work as she's ever done from a 25 time world record power lifter of a woman only person in the world to deadlift four times her body weight that's amazing you got that fact right four point eight almost five almost five and she carried an 80 pound pack to the top like oh i know but the fact that

you did that though like honestly like like i'm strong of shit and i'm young you know what I mean and like even our reps yesterday you know like 100 reps it was fun 155 years old to be able to do that man is unreal like it is it is an inspiration any age really any age period but but yeah for anyone else that has to carry that fucking rock up the mountain good luck you guys did you guys do great thank you it's been it's been so much fun hanging out and i love sharing this with people and especially people who embrace it and you guys have thank you very much it's uh this This has just been a great time. I appreciate you.

Thank you. All right. Keep hammering. Cheers. Keep hammering. Black Rifle Coffee Company is a company that's very easy for me to promote because I drink coffee all day, every day. But more importantly, they are a huge supporter of the veteran community and are a veteran-known

business, so they have my full support. Use code keep hammering for 20% off your first order and 20% off subscription to the coffee club, where you get exclusive coffee. blends and merchandise. Mountain Ops offers the best supplements on the market and functional gear for athletes and hunters. Their battleground marino garments are some of the best I have found. I've chosen to support a company that supports the community. A portion of every sale on Mountain Ops website, www.W Mountain Ops.com,

goes to help feed a family in need. Use my code keep hammering for 20% off your first purchase and also receive free shipping. Thank you.