Mark Bell's Power Project - 2,700+ Total, 12 Days No Sleep | Legendary Powerlifter Chad Aichs

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Chad Aichs is one of the strongest powerlifters to ever do it — squatting over 1,200 lbs, totaling 2,700+… all while battling extreme sleep deprivation, narcolepsy, and mental warfare most people couldn’t survive.Follow Chad here:https://www.instagram.com/chadaichs/Get Chad's book here:https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GK5XNWMC?ref=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cso_sms_apin_dp_029RYZB666BX5XPCEJE4&ref_=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cso_sms_apin_dp_029RYZB666BX5XPCEJE4&social_share=cm_sw_r_ffobk_cso_sms_apin_dp_029RYZB666BX5XPCEJE4&bestFormat=trueSpecial perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject

That meat, I was awake for 12 days before that competition. It was literally normal for me to be awake for two or three days. Completely and utterly exhausted. And I would lay down and I'd be like, nothing would be on my mind. Totally calm, totally relaxed, feel great. You won't sleep. You don't get strong in the gym.

You stimulate growth in the gym. You get strong when you recover and you recover outside the gym. I'm sitting in a chair with a loaded gun to my head, trying to think of a reason why I shouldn't do it. And there's at least a little part of my brain that said, Chad, this is not real. For certain people and for aggressive people, the stimulation of growth is easy. We're trying to figure out the origin of, like, when we met, we have Chad Ikes on the podcast here today. And Chad has squatted over 1,200 pounds in competition, benched over 8, and probably pulled around 800 pounds.

Yeah, I never officially pulled 8 in a competition. Your training partner did, though, and he rubbed it in, let you know about it a lot, right? Yeah, Scott pulled 8 and could. have pulled more yeah he was I remember he was a freak he was truly freak we were talking about um had Dave Tate come out for a seminar and that was actually when I was working at pioneer high school I was a strength coach for pioneer high school and uh had Dave come out and um I was working at a gym and I had I had the beginnings of super training gym in the back of another gym called body construction zone um and then it was a few earlier few years later where I had uh louis Simmons come out

and do a seminar. And we were talking about how rare it was for Louis to travel. Louis didn't even travel to Joe Rogan's show. Joe Rogan went. It's like one of a few of Joe Rogan shows where Joe Rogan's at a different location. It might be the only one. Yeah, which is pretty crazy. I mean, if Joe Rogan wants me, I will fly the.

Yeah, I would go wherever. Joe Rogan can, like, change your whole everything. Louis was different, though. Like when I went to pick up Louis Simmons from the airport, he's, like, waiting by baggage and he's like, with his back to the door. He's facing, like, towards the baggage. like I don't think he under like I don't think he understands like the airport like I'm like if I if I if you said hey can you pick me up at the airport yeah I would be assuming like oh

and Seema's coming in from Florida or something like that and he's landing in Sacramento he'll probably be out front yeah I'll drive you know so I drove by a couple times and I didn't see him I'm like I'm like I better go in there maybe he's waiting for his luggage or something and I go in and he's just sitting there and he didn't even have any luggage I was like he waiting on some luggage and I was like he waiting on some luggage or something. He's like, no, I'm ready to go. And I'm like, if I didn't just walk in here, I would never found him. Yeah, that's pretty funny, actually. But I can see that. Louis, that's one of the things I liked about Louis. Louis was Louis. I don't think Louis ever changed for anybody. What do you think some of the biggest things that you took from Louis?

First of all, I never trained at West Side. Oh, yeah? Like, everybody thinks I trained at West Side, and I don't know where that came from. I would go visit West Side. Okay. And like usually when I was there, I was for a competition or like, I'm one of those guys were like, these are my training days. People like, well, you're going to be a West Side. I go, it's not my training day. Yeah, but you're a West Side.

And I go, it's not my training day, man. Most people would not. Like, they'd just train anyway. Going there to hang out and help the guys. And like, I don't, yeah, I don't care. Plus, it's a little bit like, it would be a little similar to if all the Jitsu guys who are awesome are all meeting up at one side. spot. The like intensity level might be a little like where someone like yourself might be smart

enough to be like, I would love to train on this day. But yeah, you know what I mean? Like it's a you have a tendency to want to go way heavier, way harder than than maybe, you know, what you want for a particular day. Right. But to me it didn't. I mean, I was there to learn. What am I going to learn by training when I'm not supposed to be training? So I would just go, I would go hang out and talk to Louie and go to Bob Evans you know we went to Bob Evans and like because I think was it Tony Ramos my friend would would pick he picked us up a couple times and would take us there and stuff and you know I just wanted to hang out watch what they were doing learn talk to Louie and like man the biggest things that I learned from Louie I would probably say to follow your own path

and keep keep researching and looking don't ever think that this is enough like his willingness to And even like, I mean, you know, the story of when him and Dave started with bands. I mean, okay, you took, Louis, who's this crazy strong dude, was open-minded enough to go, wait a minute, maybe there's something to this. Let's go to this seminar. Like, and do something that's completely out of underground strength training. He went to a- bands?

Like any, bands? That's like for Jane Fonda. You know, but he embraced it and said, hey, maybe there's something to this. He went to a basketball seminar. Yeah. With Dick Hartzell. Dick Hartzell is the rubber band man and Dick Hartzell. Dick Hartzell responsible for anything that you've seen pretty much anyone do with a band.

Dick Hartzell is responsible for it, including traction and some of the things you maybe later saw Kelly Sturrette and some other people incorporate. Those all descended downward from Dick Hartzell. And Dick Hartzell may have gotten him from somewhere else, but I don't believe so. I think he created a lot of these different movements. And Louis was smart enough to realize, hey, these heads. heavy bands, if I attach it to a bar, it could be helpful for strength. What do you think it was doing? What it did? The bands, I mean, because I have a little bit of a physical therapy background, not as a therapist working in the field and went to school but didn't finish it. You know,

we always had like Thera band and we did band stuff and we did like leg extensions with the band and it's tighter at the end. So I mean, it was again, like is there any real original ideas? So they all come from somewhere. And so then it came in. And so then it came in. And so then it came And like I'm still not a huge fan of all the bands with max effort stuff. I think, well, why not just shorten the movement and do like the top end of the movement and go heavier? But I love bands for dynamic training. And I'm huge in a velocity based. If people, because I see all the time, I'm doing dynamic training, it's like, dude, that's not dynamic training.

What is it? What is dynamic training? What does that mean to you? Speed, you're, it's more important the speed you're going than the weight that's on the bar. So that kind of goes back to my throwing background where we trained explosive all the time. And so you got guys going, oh, I'm doing dynamic training. It's like, no, dynamic training is supposed to be explosive in this fast. And they had Detendo units at West Side.

So I don't think they used them all the time, but at least Louie had looked into it and he goes, I know it's supposed to be about this fast. You know, so guys are doing, I'm doing dynamic force training. It's like, no, you're not. It's slow as shit, dude. Like you're doing 0.3 millimeters per second. if you're lucky, you're supposed to be at seven. Louis talked that way all the time.

He was talking those numbers and you're like, I've got to look this shit up. Yeah, but he was kind of, to me, he was a mix of like intelligence and common sense, kind of like a mix between the scientist and blue collar. Because he kind of, he knew all this shit. I mean, you read Super Training, right? Gee, what a, holy crap. That book is horrible to get through. Absolutely horrible.

And that's, and like Louis read that and then, but he can also make it a little more simple. Just a little bit on what to. That's where I look. Just to give people some insight on what the bands do. The bands do something that Louis said. It accommodates resistance. The resistance is heavier at the top, lighter at the bottom. And just a really quick example for everyone to understand is if you were to try to bench press a barbell as fast and as rapidly as possible,

your body is smart enough to slow down at some point to have like deceleration. so you don't hurt yourself as you're pressing that weight up. If you took the same 45-pound bar and just attached band to it, you can now push, maybe force isn't the right word, but you can make it look like a faster movement because there's going to be less deceleration because you have a resistance band that is accommodating the resistance as your body gets in a more favorable position.

And you can also do that with chains. So when I started, and I started learning West Side and doing West Side, I wanted to do dynamic work, but I couldn't afford chains or bands. So I would squat with between 4 and 500 pounds. And I thought it was cool because I would launch it off my back. So I would come up and go, boom, catch it, do another set. Boom.

And it was really cool to my back so hurt. You're back in your back. But that was because I'm like, okay, it's accommodating resistance. I can't decelerate. I have to go all the way to the top. So if you go all the way to the top and you don't decelerate, especially at the top where you get stronger, sure, the weight that you can do off the bottom quickly, you're going to be able to throw off the top.

You actually have a really good point. So you put bands and chains on so that you can go as fast as you can, but there's going to be so much tension you're not launching it off your back. These training methods have been around for a while. You see like Jay Schroeder and some of those other people bench pressing weight where they actually, the Morenovic is throwing the weight off their body and then catching it and things like that and doing the same with squats. Yeah, and the throwers were doing that way, way back in the day.

Right. and guys were doing box jumps with bars holding bars and stuff like that. I think a big part of your story, I think the thing that we should tackle first is sleep. And we're going to talk about your book and all that kind of stuff too. But I think let's just tackle and give people some insight onto what sleep deprivation does to somebody and kind of, yeah, where it took you. I mean, you were still able to have these enormous totals, I believe you totaled over 2,600 pounds. Yeah, 2733.

something like that. Over 2,700 pounds. Unbelievable. And you do that with virtually no sleep for probably over a decade. Yeah. There were at my worst. It was normal to be up for two or three days. So this is funny because you invited me down for the premiere, bigger, faster, stronger. And you're like, he can bring a guest. I was single at the time. So my buddy likes to make movies. And he's also a lifter and he played American football in Australia. So I call, I called my buddy Lloyd up and I'm like, hey, Mark just invited us down to the bigger, faster, stronger. And he's like, oh, shit, dude, I'm kind of broke right now.

And I go, dude, all we got to do is get airfare in a car. He's like, what about the hotel? I go, dude, we're only going to be down there for a few days. We just, dude, just don't sleep. And he's like, what? I go, yeah, no big deal. We're not spending money in hotel. So we come down.

And I'm like, it was literally normal for me to be awake for two or three days. Wow. We kind of stuff. We talked about photography earlier. That's like disturbing to me right now. Because it's because like that's, I can't imagine. I would, I would, there's a lot of times as I was getting into photography and getting deep into this.

So I'm like, okay, I like, I like shooting at night, man. So I would do my training, go home, try to sleep, not going to sleep. Okay, I'd get up, I'd pack up my camera bag and I would go downtown. Or I'd like to go to cemeteries and do photos at night and stuff like that. I'd go wander around all night doing photography, come home, jump in a shower, go to work. And I would do that for two or three days. And then eventually I would sleep for a little bit and then just just keep going. It's just the way it was. I'm curious, man. How were you like, how was your personality? How were you? Because I just imagined I'd just be mad. Like,

and how were you not feeling tired? Because I know you said you couldn't sleep, but is it you couldn't sleep and you didn't feel tired or you tried to sleep. You felt tired, but you couldn't sleep. Oh, no. I was exalted. Yeah, I was exalted. You were exhausted. Yes. Completely and utterly exhausted. Yeah. And I would lay down and I'd be like,

ah, it's so good. Nothing would be on my mind. Totally calm, totally relaxed, feel great, just won't sleep. And so,

you know, after a while, yeah, you can be calm, but after a while, just laying there, your brain starts going. Yeah.

And then now your brain's going, now how the hell I'm going to fall asleep. So that's when I would be like, all right, well, I'm just going to get up and go do something. And photography was one of the things I would do. Sometimes I'd just go walk,

downtown. Speaking of the angry thing, I was kind of like hoping somebody would fuck with me. Because you're like, I want to get some aggression out. Yeah, yeah. You know, luckily nobody ever did. But I mean, it's, it was, it was bad. Like the longest, you know, the clip in Bigger, Fast, or Stronger, that meet, I was awake for 12 days before that competition. And then I was awake for two or three more days afterwards. Things were getting really weird, so I can't say for sure. I think 12 days is like a world record, honestly. Well, they say, yeah, they say you can't.

I think what I did. Someone did like 20 days or something like that. Yeah, you get weird. Like at work, at the time I was, I worked for a liquor company and I was in charge of beer and rotation and stuff like that. And I knew my mind was not good. So I took really, really heavy notes. And all the inventory guys are like, dude, you're the best, man.

Like your shit is always right. And I'm like, yeah, it's because I know I'm screwed up, so I take notes. What's the record? And everything. World record is 11 days, 25 minutes. Yeah, I, it's, you can go longer. The shocking thing is that, like, you also had like a meat. So you had this thing that you had to have your body put forward high amounts of force.

You had to organize yourself underneath heavy load. And you still manage that. And this is the thing is, it doesn't sound like any of us are talking about this in a positive context. You want it to sleep. But you just had to do all of this without. So, I mean, I know we're probably going to get to it. But like, I mean, how the hell were you managing to train? You know?

And also, actually, before I even asked that, was this normal for you to get way less sleep before competition? Because of was competition getting in your head and making it works? No, normally my best night of sleep is the night of competition. Oh, okay. And I don't know why. Like the night after the competition is done or the night before the competition? Okay. Because to me, that's a cool thing.

Like, all the work's done. Yeah. There's nothing to change. I can't fix anything. I get to show what I did tomorrow. Cool. So, like, I never, people who get nervous right the night before a meet never made sense to me. I'm like, dude, you should be happy.

You should be like ecstatic. Yeah, you're almost at the finish line here. Yeah, yeah. You get to show off everything you did. But, like, so, so I didn't know that my sleep problems started around fifth grade. I, most of my, I didn't know I had sleep problems until, probably my mid-30s. Wow.

I just thought everyone was up all night. I thought people, this is what they had to do. And I learned over time that if I didn't take every other weekend and take one day to sleep in, things would go really wrong. I would start getting massive migraine headaches. I would start getting really moody. My anger issues would go over the top. And I just thought that was, I thought everyone dealt with that.

I did not know. Then as I started getting bigger, for powerlifting, I developed sleep apnea. So at one time I fell asleep at a stop sign. Like just dozed off and woke up and I went, oh, I'm going to hurt somebody. Like, this is dangerous. So I immediately went to the doctor. We scheduled my sleep studies and everything.

And they're like, yeah, you have apnea. I put me on a CPAP. Well, my sleep's still horrible. Like the text would wake up and I'm like, so, how was it? And they're like, you had a bad night, huh? I go, what? No, no, that was a decent night. Like for me, that was okay.

And they're like, you're kidding me. And I'm like, no, yeah, I was. And they're like, because it didn't look good at all. And that's when we found out, I don't get deep sleep. And we finally discovered I had narcolepsy through the MSLT test. Exactly what is narcolepsy? And the blood test. Narcolepsy, there's kind of different phases of narcolepsy,

but basically narcolepsy, they don't even fully understand yet. A lot of people think narcolepsy is when you just doze off. and that is one form of it. But what it does is it messes up your sleep wake cycles. So your body doesn't know when it's supposed to sleep and when it's not. Like even during the day, there's times where I'll be doing something or I'll be at work or I'm working on my barn to me. I'm like, I just want to crawl on the floor and lay down.

And I don't know if it's because I'm tired or because my body's going, yeah, you need to sleep. And then I'm supposed to go to bed at night and my body's like, no, no, we're supposed to go do something. Let's go. Get up. And so they think it has to do with, um, these hormones that you release called what's the denisine

no it's like hippocrit hippocampus no that's the part of your brain or oxy oxy something not oxytocin it's another one but anyway that gets released in your brain

into your spinal column and that's kind of what signals sleep time well they think that because during the N1H1 virus they found people were developing narcolepsy. What was happening is they were developing an autoimmune disorder that attacked those hormones. So they weren't getting released like they should be. So all these people

were coming up with narcolepsy and they're like, whoa, what? So that's how they kind of think they had the idea of what narcolepsy is. But there's no cure, nothing they can do. How have you managed your sleep? Because I think you sleep a little bit better. No, I sleep. I sleep a ton better. So I have not had a full night of insomnia in shit maybe 10 years. I've not had bad depression in maybe that same amount of time. Never had any no suicidal stuff like I've been through. So yeah, I've regulated my sleep way better. The best thing I did is I started started multiple businesses for myself. And the last one, I just started training people doing a little bit of online, which I need to get more online clients. And before I moved to Perump, I had trained people out of my gym. And I just said,

listen, I'm not trained in anybody before 10 o'clock. And I'll work until 8. I don't care. Like, because that schedule seems to be a little better with my sleep, or even if it takes me a long time to sleep, at least early in the morning, I will get some sleep. And that changed it a lot. And then like a lot of the stuff with the book, just going, wait a minute, what's wrong with this? Why is this happening? And just working on my mental. mentality, you know, breathing, relaxing, meditation, all that stuff helps me to control it. I mean, it's, it's there. I have it.

It is what it is. I'm not going to not do the stuff that I want to do. I just got to find a way around it. Question. Either of your parents, like, did, I don't know if you had siblings, did anybody in your family have, like, this type of sleep issue? Because, like, when you mentioned that you didn't know until later that it was abnormal, I'm like, well, didn't anybody in your life see that?

This was abnormal or was, would they like that? I think it was my mom's uncle. They said had narcolepsy. He had like to just, you'd be talking to him and he zonk out narcolepsy. No, my mom, my mom, once we started discovering, my mom's like, man, when you were little, I kept taking you to the doctor because you were tired all the time. And they just kept telling me you were a growing boy. And they ignored it.

And I'm like, well, apparently it wasn't. Okay. And I know that because, and I kind of talk about this in the book, from about fifth grade on, I was never awake in a class. From fifth grade through college, I physically could not stay awake. And I remember my one teacher, Miss Hembro, came up one time

because I would go into school, or I taught myself basically, because I slept all day. So I went in, I used to go into school early and do my homework. And my teacher came in and sat down with me, and she's like, Chad, can I ask you something? I'm like, yeah, whatever.

Like, what do you want to know? And she's like, do you hate my class? And I go, what? No. Like, you're just my favorite class. Like, you take. us to go do cadaver work. Like we do all this cool stuff in your class.

Like I love your class. And she's like, but you sleep every day. And I go, I can't help it. It's not you. Like I sleep in every class. I cannot stay awake. It's just the way it is. And I talk about in my geometry class, Mr. Duncan,

he used to give us these free days. And first of all, my brother's about a year and a half older. And my brothers, he's a test. He's a alien. So he, Mr. Duncan knew my brother. brother. So he calls me up one day on one of our free days just to catch up on all our work. And he's like, so, Chad, you get that I know you sleep every day, right? Because I mean, I would walk in, open my book and I'm out. And I go, yeah, I go, I just try to not be a bother to

anyone else. And he's like, but you have an A in geometry. I go, yeah. He's like, do you mind if I ask how you do that? And I go, yeah, I go home. And I go, yeah, I go home. And I, you know, I, do the answers that the questions that have the answers in the back the test questions I look at the answers then I read the question then I figure out how they came up with that answer and he's like can you show me I go yeah sure give me a question give me a question and give me an answer and I'll do it and then he gave me some other questions and he's like well it's not the way I teach it but he's like you obviously understand it and you have an A and you're not bothering anybody and I'm sure there was something like and you're not your brother so so okay you know we're good

last I know I've been spamming questions but my last question about this is like what I mean it's still narcolepsy but since you were you couldn't sleep at night you were managing to get some semblance of level of sleep during the day yeah was it just that your body didn't want to sleep at night is I mean I know I don't know I don't know if you've gotten these questions like this before you probably have but yeah no no they're they're good questions because it is It's crazy. Like when you, even when I stop and think about it, I'm like, this is nuts. Yeah.

How was I awake that long? Uh-huh. Like, it's crazy. And after that competition, I get, I'm like, and you can ask Ethan. Like, Ethan, no, I don't know how Ethan knows me the way he does, but he knows me. Like, there was a point when I would walk into gym and Ethan would be like, nope, uh-uh, you're not fucking lifting today, man. Not happening.

And at first, I had fight, I fought it big time. Like, no, I'm okay. And eventually I was like, all right, son of a bitch, this sucks. Okay, I'm not training today. Like, he could just, he got to where he could just see it in me. And so, so he knows and like that, the long stint that I did that meet. So the next day I get up and I have to go do a photo shoot. So I'm not good.

I mean, I'm not good. I know I'm not good. I go do, I suck it up. I go do my photo shoot. I come back. Ethan's like, all right, we got to get on a plane, man. We got to go to the airport. Let's go.

I go, no. You've got to give me 10 minutes, man. like I got to lay down dude I won't make it so he goes all right lay down for 10 minutes and like we're walking through the airport and all of a sudden I just go

I'm just sweating and I'm like Ethan we got to stop dude I will literally pass out on the floor right and I got to stop man and like him and Carla Carlos freaking out because she wants to make the plane and so we stop and I get on the plane and I'm just sitting there like this

and like the stewardess has come by and I hear Ethan go just leave him alone just leave him be and so I'm freaking out and this this is part of why I wrote the book because this is all about mentality so I get home and I open a door

and my little niece comes home hauling ass across the room jumps in my arms she wants to play all I want to do is like now and I'm like she doesn't she doesn't get what I'm going through like I got to

I'm not a disappointment her so you just do what you got to do. I mean, there is, to me, like maybe people think it's impressive. I'm not saying it's impressive that I live with this. I'm just saying I do what I got to do. I don't go to work.

I don't pay my bills. It doesn't matter if I'm tired. It doesn't matter if I'm insane. It doesn't matter if my vision is blurry because my eyes are too tired to actually focus. It doesn't matter if I can't do simple multiplication and I have to use my phone. Like, it doesn't matter that the numbers above,

the beer that I unload, I can't see it. Like my vision is so bad, I can't, I can't read it. Well, I just got to know. Like, I gotta, I gotta do what I gotta do. Like there isn't any, oh, poor me, there isn't, it's just like, this is what I gotta do. Yeah. You don't get to walk around with like a card

and then everyone just excuses you unless you just get through life without having to pay your bills and so on. And then luckily at work, they kind of, people kind of learned that. So I would come in and I wouldn't talk to anybody. And people learned it like just, dude, if Chad says hello, do you say something back?

If he doesn't, don't just leave him be. And to the point, okay, so I've had, somebody asked me this the other day. I've had three normal nights of sleep my adult life. I remember all three of them. One of them, there was this supplement that worked twice. And I took like 40 containers. And for some reason, it worked twice.

I slept through my alarm. And I woke up like an hour late and called me. And I'm like, shit, I'm late. Like, this can't be. I can't be late, man. So I hurried up and called my boss. And I'm like, dude, I don't know what happened. Somehow I slept.

I slept through my alarm. I'll be right. He's like, whoa, wait a minute. Did you say you slept? I go, yeah, yeah. He's like, go back to bed. We'll deal with it. Like, if you slept, go back to bed, man.

I mean, that's how bad it was that even to people I work for know how screwed up it is. Yeah. Yeah, I know like years ago there was a couple supplements that they got rid of because they let them out for a little while and then they were, shit, it was a date rape drug. I think. Yes, yes. Right?

That's what it was. Well, that one, that was actually somatomax by high tech pharmaceuticals. Okay. But they got busted for having labs and like Brazil and stuff and having real stuff in there, which is, which I found out about and saw. I'm like, okay, I'm going to go to my doctor and I'm going to get some somos and I'm going to try to mix this stuff up. And so like we're trying to, I mean, I've taken every drug possible. And the only thing that really worked was super high levels of syracool.

I mean like like schizophrenic type doses of syracoyle. But it didn't really make me sleep. It just kind of knocked me out. I wonder like a, but honestly at the time, that's what I took a lot when I was lifting because at least I'm in bed and I'm not. awake, you know, but like people told me I woke up different in the morning and I would wake up groggy and miserable and GHB. Did you ever get your hands? Okay, so here's another one and you can look this. You can look this up too and they will say I'm wrong. I got some GHB. Now there is a there is a there is a serum which is basically GHB and it costs like $40,000 a year, but it's basically

it's GHB. And they found out that it does help with some sleep issues. So, I got my hands some illegally because I couldn't afford it medically. And afterwards, I had to give it to my friend afterwards because it didn't work. And he's like, dude, that shit messed me up, man. I just was sitting in a chair drooling for like eight hours after that. But so I took it and I'm always trying to be somewhat smart with it somewhat. And so I started low and titrated myself up. The last night I took 14 grams of GHB and watched TV all night.

That sounds like it's a lot of them. It's, I think seven will kill you or can kill you. But I have, I have a crazy tolerance. Even when they try to knock me out for surgeries, they have a hard time. What do you find it over there, Ryan? I just put in how much GHB can kill you. It says these numbers are not precise thresholds

and people have died at lower amounts. One to two grams is noticeable sedation in most people. Four to six grams is high risk of unconsciousness and slowed breeding. Yeah. Your physiology is something else. It's some weird shit going on there. Yeah.

I mean, okay, so think about this, though. Maybe my physiology isn't that weird. Maybe it's because I'm not sleeping. Right. And so it finds some other weird-ass way to adapt. Mm-hmm. There we go, though. Like, you have some adaptations that the rest of us don't have because if four to six

grams of GHB kills somebody and you took double and you were just channel watching TV. And then to make sure it was good, I gave it to some of my friends that like to experiment with stuff. And they're like, holy shit. this shit's crazy. Do you think you think it was like a multitude of things that helped you with your sleep helping you to have better sleep now.

Like it had to like find like an inner piece maybe like letting go a power thing maybe dropping weight like different health practices. No, the weight never affected it. I mean it did help like I got off my seat path. It helped with the apnea. I mean I think it's a combination of things what, like I tried to explain earlier with my training partners.

I think what happened is the sleep that I dealt with most of my life, but I never really knew I had a sleep problem. I just, I just, honestly, I didn't know people went to bed and woke up in the morning. That still to me is, other than my three nights, that seems crazy to me. How do you, how do you lay down and wake up in the morning? That's insane. It is a weird, I mean, sleep is a weird thing.

I mean, like, I'm up hundreds of times a night. Like, hundreds. I mean, if we put this into context, like you've lived longer than your age. I say that all the time. I say it all the time. I go, I'm twice as old as you think I am. Most of those are asleep. Dogs are waking the sun and I'm up and after a while I'm starting to think.

Yeah. But I think, I think powerlifting and I hate saying this because it wasn't powerlifting to mess me up. It was that I didn't know. I think I overtrained and then I kept overtraining and that made it worse. And so I needed to kind of back off, get my mental health better, let my body heal up to at least kind of get back to where I was. This is making a lot of sense now because, yeah, you're... And that's where when I... The input of the central nervous system, you're just smashing your central nervous system every time you train really heavy.

Yeah, and I'm making it worse, and I'm making it worse, and I'm making it worse. And that's why I've always, like there was always... I guess I've always had kind of a fascination of suicide. Not that I ever wanted to kill myself, but I was kind of like, well, why? Why do we live? Why don't we live? What happens when we die?

Like that kind of a like, well, if you kill yourself, then, like, so I always had that kind of fascination. Never wanted to kill myself till my sleep got bad. My sleep got worse. Insane depression took over. Then the suicidal stuff took over. But all of a sudden now that I get my sleep better,

none of that happens. And like I said, I got diagnosed. I watched this, I was thinking about this the other day. Somehow I was listening to Adamant. You guys know Adamant? I don't.

You don't know Adamant? Oh, man. You don't know the singer, English singer? No, I don't know. Maybe if I heard a song. He's super popular. Well, anyway, they did this documentary about him called, I think it was the fall of Prince Charming or something like that.

And it's all about he was bipolar and went like kind of loopy. and I'm watching this documentary and I'm going like Goody Too She was one of his big songs I'm watching this documentary and I'm like, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, I'm freaking out watching this documentary

because the things he's talking about I'm like, yes, yes. And then they're talking to his friends and his friends are saying stuff about him that my friends say about me. And I'm like, whoa, what the hell? What's going on? And I wonder if I'm bipolar

because I honestly I didn't care tell me whatever it is give me an idea how to fix this because even during my my my suicidal episodes I describe it as sitting I'm sitting in a chair with a loaded gun to my head trying to think of a reason why I shouldn't do it because I just want to get rid of the pain I just want it to stop man and like it's bad like it's bad and and but I'm also floating above myself, screaming at myself, going, this isn't you, man, like this is not you. Whatever your brain is telling you is not the truth.

And so I'm having this inner conflict. And it's like, but I want, but I just want the pain to stop, man. I just, I just want this darkness and this, just want it over, man. Like, I can't keep going like this. And I'm screaming at myself. And luckily, and this is,

I thought about this the other day when one of my friends did a post. One of the reasons I was able to not do that is because I have been training my brain for my whole life. And there's at least a little part of my brain that said, Chad, this is not real. You know who you are and you know this is not you. Do not follow through with this. And somehow I got myself to not do it. And eventually there was an episode where I went, shit or get off the pot. I'm done.

Pull the fucking trigger. or don't do this ever again. And that was when I sat down and wrote that long letter on my training log on Elite. And everybody thought I was nuts. So anyway, I did that. And then it was like, but as soon as my sleep gets better, I'm not having these episodes with this shit anymore.

And that's where you go down in the whole rabbit hole. I honestly think one of these medical communities that actually really want to help people need to get in contact with people like me and go, hey, you went through this. What do you think? because I'm like, dude, you have anybody with bad depression? Go do sleep studies.

And I actually, I found a study one time and I regret not saving it because I've never been able to find it since. And they did a study on people with fibromyalgia, which you know is like that phantom pain and a lot of doctors say it's not real. Well, I found a study where they did sleep studies on these people. Turns out they don't get deep sleep like me. So are they really having pain? Is this a problem of them having neurological pain or are their central nervous? being a system being screwed up because they don't get deep sleep and it doesn't heal. I know for me if I don't sleep, I'm in a lot.

I'm in a lot of pain. Yeah. Like if I have a night or two or I don't sleep, but my body is sore. I'm stiff. I'm like, what did I do training wise? And I don't even remember. You're not recovering. That's why.

Right. Exactly. And it just, it throws everything off. And then it throwing off your, your mental side. We know about your decision making skills, just going all the hell. Yeah. So the types of food that you eat, all your, other inputs are going to be a disaster. Your ability to like get outside and go on a walk

and be cheerful and be like, yeah, I got to go on a run today or I got to go, you know, do this thing that's healthy for me today. You're not going to be so chipper about it because you haven't slept. Yeah. And that's the point where like the video that Merrick Health posted about you guys the other day where it's the point, there's this like, you shouldn't have to truly force yourself to do this stuff. Like you should enjoy it. Because. if you don't enjoy it, you're just not going to do it your whole life. Like it needs to be a way of life and you need to find a way to enjoy it. But there's also some cases where you need to just be mentally tough and go, hey, listen,

I need to do this? And to me, that was one of the hardest things about training is going, do I need to do this? Should I not do this? Do I want to do this? Because there's times where you, like you might go, man, you know, today's max effort day, but man, I just don't feel right. Something doesn't feel right, but you still need to go train.

And that's like the auto regulation is really tough because you're trying to decide. And if you're somebody like me, like I know that my brain's going to play tricks on me. I know that when I'm not sleeping and when my mind is messed up. Okay, so writing this book, for example, I was dealing with some sleep issues

during writing this book because of the whole barn dominium in the build and I got just a lot of things going on. There's times where I'm, writing that book and I'm like this sucks, Chad, you're stupid. What makes you think you can write a book? You're an idiot. Like nothing you say makes sense. And then I got to go, no, Chad, hold on, wait a minute. You know you're tired. You know you like think about how you feel and think about what's going on. This is your brain messing with you. And, you know, and then I get a couple nights of decent sleep and I'm

like, oh, man, that chapter is pretty good. Yeah. You know, and I can kind of see like I'm not, I don't think I'm a genius and I, wrote like the the book of the century or anything but you know I can at least see the positivity in it and the same thing with my barn dominion there's if I feel good and I get sleep I'm like I can figure this out man I can do this I can do this and when my sleep's horrible and I'm struggling with depression I'm like who do you think you are what makes you think you can do this you've never built a house before and that's when I got to go find my logic and go yeah but other people do it they're no better than you you're all the same you can do this

this, you know. And so it's, it's a, it's a fight. And I think everybody goes through that. It's not just me. It's not just people with narcolepsy. I mean, I've heard the other day, you posted the video that kind of started this whole meat coming out here thing where you talked about, talked about, it was a funny video with me sniffing ammonia. And you actually said there was a point where you're like, I just have two ammonia caps in his nose, ampules, two ammonia caps in his nose. Ampials, two ammonia caps in his nose like this and then he would like when he was getting ready he would like break both of them open just and just snored him and I never seen anybody you know how hard it is to be like you know you kind of like you barely open the thing and you and you like almost die and you go back for a little

bit more he would shove these things like right in his nostrils I never seen anything like it did you ever see Gary did you ever see Gary Frank I have but I don't remember him using no Gary Frank would buy a bottle of ammonia and he would he would sit on his chair and he'd and like there would be the motion would be bubbling up and I'm like even me I go okay that can't be good for your brain like yeah I'll shove them on my nose

but that cannot be good Gary Frank was in another another realm with his his strength first guy to do 26 27 27800 pounds but I mean even you admit there was a point at 700 pounds you're like holy shit I can't do this

right you know I mean you I think you squatted over a thousand didn't you yeah thousand 80 yeah yeah so you went on to do another 300 pounds and then you did these crazy bench presses. Like so you had to fight through that and go, wait a minute. Yeah, my brain's saying this, but it's not true. Like there's another way around this. So it's not like it's not me. Everybody does it. I think every best, I think, I think, I think that's a misconception a lot of people make about high level athletes. Oh, well, it was easy for them. They never struggled. They never did this. And I went, you know, I don't think so. And just real

briefly I talked recently on a video about how I did a 705 squat and I thought that was I was like that's probably it like that's about as much as I'll probably ever do because it was it just felt so hard I felt like my head was going to explode and I think he was you were competing at the same meat or maybe you competed at another meet soon thereafter and I saw you you know handling a thousand plus pounds and stuff and I was like oh wait a second like maybe if I just give myself time maybe I'll be able to handle weights the way that he's handling weights yeah yeah and that's that's that logic comes in. I mean, we all fight that stuff. But the, the gentleman that just climbed that tower in Dubai. Yeah, Alexander. Yeah, that guy's absolutely amazing. So I watched an interview with him

because my brother was always an extreme athlete. And I think I write about this in the book. And that's where again, like at some point you got to sign it because you know what? You're, you're going to change. Like, everything changes. You're going to keep growing and expanding. But I wrote in this book about my brother who, and I'm like, I truly think he doesn't feel fear like other people. Because my brother's crazy. Like he'll do anything, man. And like if he's not on the edge, he's not happy. So like, if I'm repelling down a cliff and I'm like freaking out and I go, Lance, if I fall, I'm going to live just long enough to kick your ass for having me do this. You know, and my brother gets happier the crazier and more extreme it is. So I always had this idea that he just doesn't feel fear the

same way. And the whole principle of that was like, what's true courage? Is true courage not feeling fear or feeling fear and overcoming it? but Alex, I was watching an interview with him and he goes, you know, everybody talks about the fear, but what they don't realize is that I have a lifetime of pushing past fear. So at some point, he's used to it. So it doesn't seem hard to him. He's still pushing past it, but he's used to it.

He's done it so many times. And that actually made me rethink my brother in a situation. My brother's still crazy, but. Well, even with thinking of like Alex Hahn, like if you just to think about it like maybe just in more logical terms is there really that much of a difference although it looks quite different of being i don't know 30 feet 40 feet off the ground versus being like 100 like either way you fall you're gonna be in like a lot of trouble right so even once you even once you get up maybe 12 feet or so it's like man if you fall from that you have a misstep at 12 feet yeah okay your chances of survival are a lot higher than if you're at 100 feet But that's probably how over time you do get used to it. And then also him getting himself out of these like precarious situations over and over and over again. You build confidence.

He's teaching himself like I'm going to be okay. I just have to be able to. What I kind of marvel at is like I just think about like what about a leg cramp or like what if he has like a little bit of like a blood sugar issue or you know like somebody. Have a snack with him or he's got like no water. He's got, you know. I think somebody asked, what do you do if you got a poop? Like, man, maybe just takes care of it like some of the runners do. So that actually reminds me of a story when I think it was Chester from Lincoln Park when he committed suicide.

One of my friends at work came up and he's like, did you hear about Chester, that son of a bitch, he's got kids, blah, blah, blah. And I go, oh, wait a minute, man. You don't know what he was going through. And so it's always, I was always open about my depression and my depression and my suicide because if I can help people, I think it kind of makes it worthwhile. It means it was a gift for me because now I can help people. And especially, I feel so bad for people that survive someone that commit suicide. Because that guilt has just got to be overwhelming and they really don't need to feel that. They don't, they shouldn't feel that. I'm not saying it's bad. You shouldn't feel it. I'm

saying you don't have to. So anyway, I told my buddy, I go, all right, listen, go back to work, meet me back here in 30 minutes. I go, I got to get this in my mind to explain this to you. And he came back and we have these yellow lines on the floor and I go, do you see that yellow line on the floor? He's like, yes. Do you think you could walk that line without falling off of it?

He's like, yeah, no problem. It's like eight inches thick. Yeah, easy. Okay, what if it was 20 feet near? Oh, yeah, I could do that. I go, what if it was four stories in the air? He's like, ah, probably not. And I go, why?

And he's like, because my mind would be telling me like, don't do this. This is dangerous. Don't do it. And I go, now you think about somebody else who their body is telling them to commit suicide in the same aggressive way that your body is telling you not to do that. I'm not saying it's right. Not saying it's logical. I'm just saying this is what the people that I've talked to and me coming out about it,

been able to talk to a lot of people about it. This is what they're, it's all the same for a lot of us. That's how strong that feeling is. Yeah, it's this feeling telling you this is the only way it's going to stop. Stuff like that really fascinates me a lot too because if you're thinking about like, if you go like as wide as this table, right? Yeah. And you put this table up 50 feet and you walk across it. You're like, well, it's pretty wide. It's like, you know, multiple feet wide. And if it was long, you know, long enough to reach the other side, shouldn't be a problem. But you keep up in the ante and keep putting it up higher. It's like, no, I'd rather not. Because I think with no sides on it, I'm going to kind of like, you know, for whatever reason, I'm going to be panicking. I'm

going to be like down lower. Maybe I would crawl across it. So I have more like contact with the rest of my body. I was laughing at myself, building my born dominion because it's only one level. But I mean, there's times where I'm up in the trusses and stuff. And I'm like, why am I shaking? Like if I was on a ground, I wouldn't be shaking. Why am I shaking right now? And like, because you just get it in your head. Usually you're so focused on the possibilities of bad things happening. Yeah. And that's why for me, climbing up a rock and a cliff, I can climb up at easy. Coming back down sucks. I guess I'm looking at what, I'm looking at what could happen. When I'm going up, I'm just like, what's next, what's next? I cut you off a little earlier. You were mentioning like kind of what sparked our conversation on the

phone and what sparked you to come out here. I made a post and I was talking about like how long, you know, should you be mad at a particular situation. That, see, that was fascinating to. You me because that's like that's the information I want to get out there to people and and I think that in in all realms of life if you're just trying to commit if you're just trying to make a harmonious life or you're trying to reach a goal whether that be a relationship a business like controlling your emotions is going to be a huge thing and people it seems like in today's society we're more relying on the external world and we got to stop man it all comes from inside If you're relying in the external world to make you happy or you're blaming it for making you sad, your whole future is up to the external world.

You're not in control of it. And you did that, you did two videos. You did that video, which was like, I think you were talking about traffic or something. You're like, well, how long should I be mad? And it was, it's the same thing. Like when I talk about it in the book where when I first learned about that, it's easy to go, well, that person did this. All they did is they did a thing. If somebody punches me in the face, they just punched me in the face.

My emotions are my responsibility. And if I don't want to be mad, why am I letting myself be mad? Yeah. You know, and I think it really is as simple as that or going, hey, that person is taking my control. If I'm letting them change my mood, they're taking my control. And even, especially in a relationship. Now, if you want to bring this down to strength athletes, which I love to do, I love to take everything back to lifting. because I've learned so much through lifting.

You don't get strong in the gym. You stimulate growth in the gym. You get strong when you recover and you recover outside the gym. If you are in a stressful situation, if you're letting the world control your emotions all day long, that means you're in fight or flight all day long. And the problem is,

is that we were developed with fight or flight to save us from a dinosaur or a lot, or something like that. So we're like, oh shit, there's a lion. Bam, go run. You get away from him and you're like, oh, ooh, cool, we're good. I'm back. He's got to figure out how to get some food, man.

You know, but nowadays we have that same system, but it's in this weird life. So your boss is the lion, and he's on you eight hours a day. Like, so you have eight hours in high stress because you're worried about the external world. How are you supposed to recover? from your training sessions if you're in fight or flight all day long, if you're in a sympathetic state compared to a parasympathetic state.

And now the funny part is if you go back to pumping iron, Arnold talks about that, not in those terms, but talks about it can't let things bother me, the reason he needed to recover. For me, and this was something I learned after lifting, I did that based on what I learned watching pumping iron. But I didn't, I never thought about it. after I kind of wasn't competing,

somebody says, do, isn't life so much better now that you're not competing? I go, no. I go, I'm stressed about bills now. I'm trying to make money and all this other stuff. And I went,

well, wait a minute. My outside's life, the same as it was when I competed. Like, wait a minute, what's going on? And that's when I went, oh, I didn't let it bother me before because I had a reason to not, I need to recover.

And then when I didn't have an event, I started letting all the world, in the external world, start controlling me. In terms of your training partners, you know, we were talking in the gym on how, like, you won't let certain people train when you see if they look a certain way or they come to the gym

and they're complaining about something when it comes to like hunger, appetite, etc. I find it interesting that you, again, through your whole competition career, you never really had great sleep. but it's still you're you you didn't let that affect how you went about working with other people and understanding its importance and it's just the interesting thing is like I feel like you've never been able to really feel what amazing sleep feels like it's always been subpar for you so

when you get something okay three nights all right three nights right but it's it's you know you didn't you didn't let your experience muddle the importance of it for your athletes and the people you work with. Yes. I mean, actually, it's funny because you'll have the haters that say you're complaining. I'm not complaining about the stuff I have. I'm just informing people. And I'm trying to get them to understand it.

Like, listen, it's just more extreme for me. It doesn't mean it's not for you. Like we said earlier, we think when little kids are crabby and bitchy, we go, oh, they just need a nap. And then for some reason, an adult doesn't go through that same thing. like they do we've all seen it we'll take your nap

yeah like take a nap dude I guarantee when you wake up and I've seen it I've seen people take a nap and you're like okay it's like that

hangary hungry what do they call it hangary yeah it's the same thing so like somehow we completely missed that that's a possibility and so for me

it was like hey listen I can I don't want my worst enemy to go through the things I went through it would be more kind to put a bullet

in somebody's head than to put up what I went through. So I'm going to do everything I can to make this experience a positive. And I can do that by helping other people. The problem is it's hard to get people to listen because they don't want, they want to hear work harder, work harder, do more, do more, do more. Yeah.

And they're not listed. And I did the same thing. I did the same thing. I loved Mike Menser growing up. it was funny to come back and start reading like Mentsor again after power lifting because I was like wow I jacked that I jack that up

all I heard was train more and train harder like I heard train to you can't like move and then I thought well about I do it again tomorrow and he was talking about 40 minutes a whole time of the week yeah yeah I'm doing it for three hours every single day and I'm like wow I missed like man like my brain was like I'm taking what I want from

this. Yeah. And I go, no wonder I didn't, wasn't stronger when I was a kid. Like, I probably would have been so much stronger if I would have just, like, understood the recovery portion of it. So I get it. And I love beating myself up. Like, I love going into the gym and that euphoric feeling after a training session where

you're so exhausted, you just lay on the floor, but you feel amazing. And you're like, dude, I didn't want to train, but I just did this killer session. Like, it's such a great feeling. Like, I love that. feeling. But if you really want to get better, you've got to learn to control that. Like there is a point just because you can doesn't mean you should. Like if you can't recover from it, don't do it. When you say recover, actually, that's an interesting thing because like people, you know, everybody has their different rates of recovery or what they look like or what they

think for themselves is recovery. So when you say recovery, what does that mean? It means Well, there's there's there's there's the recovery of say the the, the, um, was it the axiom and the dendrite of the nerve and the ATP? There's the recovery of all those hormones and chemicals that need to be replaced. There's the recovery of the, the fluids and everything in your muscle. And then there's the growth. Did I actually grow? Like, so if you recover, if your muscles,

recover and your central nervous system recovers and you go train again, you're interrupting the growth phase. Like so you, so to me recovery is like when you're ready to train again. Yeah. And again, that's going to be different for everybody. And I love the example of, I know you worked with Stan Efforting a lot. I went to one of Stan's seminars and he's like, yeah, you know, I love to train every day. So I make sure I'm in bed by like, I don't know, it was 8 o'clock or something like that. And I'm like, man, that's awesome. Like he earns his right to train. train. Yeah. Like I'd never thought of it in that way. Like you want to train tomorrow? Don't get to bed. You don't get trained. Six meals a day. Making sure you got all the right nutrients. Making sure you're

getting tons of meals. And a lot of people. And I did this too, especially when I was younger. Like, what's just about training? I just, I got to tear the muscle and it'll grow. I wasn't thinking about food. I wasn't thinking about sleep. Like that was my hardheaded blue collar thinking of like the harder the job is, the more proud I am. Well, and you're only doing. what's like fun to you right maybe the maybe for one person the food's not as fun or the dedication to sleep they'd rather watch movies or whatever and i'm at yeah i'm actually doing the easy part i tell people to this day and i get shit for this too i love all this shit i get shit for um the hardest part about becoming a top level power lifter was not training as much that was fucking

hard for me and that was why another another thing here's another thing i learned from louis um when it came Dave Tate called me out on it. Like you can train hard every day and do that, and that's fine. Or you can be one of the best in the world. What do you want to do? And sometimes I need very blunt, hit me on the head type statements. And that was the one where I went, oh, shit. All right, okay, all right, all right, shit.

Let me think about that. Yeah, okay, yeah. All right. And then I'm like, what am I going to do? How am I going to convince myself? That's a little bit hard for you to follow, especially because your issues with your sleep and then you're only training sometimes

only like twice a week, right? That's deceptive to you. For a long time, I thought of training in terms of like the real sessions. So like I'm training twice a week. So I would tell people I train twice a week. Actually, I was training every day. But there was only two that I considered like real sessions.

So what I learned is when I came to this, I go, okay, I got to play some games with my, brain here. Like I can't, I can't only be in the gym two days a week. Like I go nuts. Like, because for a long time I used the gym to control my anger issues. So that's, I, I ended up talking to Louie and reading some of Louie's stuff. And he was doing time to work at the time. And so I'm like, oh, okay, that's kind of interesting. Like maybe I'm, I need to start doing these recovery sessions and adding in more GPP sessions. So that way, and I honestly, I didn't do it because I thought it would work.

I did it because, okay, I'm in the gym. It's not killing my central nervous system. And maybe I can like, Chad, you're in the gym today. It's all okay. The world's fine. You at least went to the gym today. You got something done. And then I found out that, holy shit, this actually helps my recovery a lot.

What's the time stuff? Basically, you go in there, this is pretty funny. Louis was starting with three and four minutes. So you would go in there and go, okay, I bench pressed yesterday. I'm going to start with dumbbells. and I'm going to do reps for four minutes. I'm going to set an alarm for four minutes. We're going to do a rep every seven to ten seconds.

Never going to completely lock out. And so I'm like, hundreds, 120s? It's four minutes. Whatever. Yeah, it did not work out at all. So the idea is for four minutes,

you can't do a lot of weight. 80, like 40 pounds, maybe. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you're dying at the end of that. And so you're basically, you're going to go here. I'm never going to fully lock it. I'm going to hold it here. I'm going to come down. I'm going to try to do a rep every seven to ten seconds. Go up. And I'm pausing at the top and the bottom, but not completely locking them out. And I'm not resting it on my chest.

And so you just get this huge blood flow pump. But it's not killing your central nervous system. And it's not stressing your muscles. It's basically just huge flush of nutrients throughout your muscles. And Louie got some of that too. As Louis started training and working with more people, he worked with people like Laura Phelps. Laura felt, you know, broke many world, all-time world records. And Laura had a gymnastics background. Like, I think she was like a pretty high-level gymnast. Yes. And Louis was like, you know, okay, well, what's this about?

Okay, well, she was doing a lot of, a lot of handstands, a lot of push-ups, a lot of calisthenics, a lot of body weight exercises. And, you know, the West Side guys probably aren't going to do as much calisthenics. And so he just tried to figure out a way. And Dave had those push-up things from like a million years ago that were kind of like the TRX. stuff that came out later on. What's that? Is the perfect pushup?

No, not the perfect pushup, but like TRX straps. It's like a suspended pushup. Dave Tate had something similar, probably 10 years. You know, funny enough, I developed recovery sessions

with just rings or just the TRX and it's actually, it's goofy shit, but it works. Yeah, it really helps, you know. And so anyway,

he would just, he just observed that these people have really high levels of GPP. They just were really prepared for what it was they were doing. And then so he just tried to, all right, you know, hey, you know, Chad, why don't you go drag the sled for five minutes straight? Yeah. You know, walk forward with it, walk backwards with it, and then come in and do the dumbbell presses for four minutes, stuff like that. And you work your ass off. Yeah. It feels great. Yeah. I've seen people like

who have trouble getting through a full power lifting meet. You add that stuff in in their next meet. They're like, hey, that wasn't bad, man. I'm like, I'm not completely exhausted after this meet. Yeah. It's like, it does help it. And this is, this is, it, talking, training so interesting to me because there are the people that just simply are not stimulating growth hard enough. They just don't go hard enough. So when I say these things, I'm like, too, some idiot's going to be out there going, Chet's a do less. No, not for you. For you, no, you need to do more. And when you're young, you can do more. When you're new, you can do more. Like the more advanced you get, the better technique you get. So the more you can get out of your

body, you have better recruitment through your muscles and through your central nervous system so you can push your body further. Like in reality, and I always talk about, I struggle with a lot of stuff in life because you know people that are dirt bags that make millions of dollars. You know people that work really hard. They're really good people that just struggle all the time. Like what fairness is there in life? The gym has always seemed fair to me. If you're smart and you work hard, you will get better. No, you might not have the genetics to be the best in a world. like I wanted to put up the all-time total. I didn't.

I got really damn close. So I'm not disappointed in myself at all. But there can only be one top guy. You know, so I mean, okay, maybe that's not fair, but this part of life. Lifting is fair, though. If you do the work, you do the time, you do it right. And even I can go back and go the times where I didn't make the gains that I thought it would make, just because I wasn't doing it right.

I hadn't learned enough. Now, if you look at the journey, of an athlete from beginning to a high level, you actually end up training less. And so at your highest, you train less but still get strong. Does that not seem right? Does that not make sense? Listen, you worked your ass off. You trained all this time.

Your reward is you can do less and keep that. Does that not seem fair? That seems totally fair to me. That seems awesome to me. Yeah. But we have trouble embracing that and we want to do more. well I did more to get here okay well you don't need more now you need less I mean I even heard Dorian Yates said during Yates one of the things he said I love Dorian Yates I've never got to meet him yet but I

want to um he was like one of the first things I do with people that are in a plateau take two weeks off yep and I've done now guys are like I'm benching five days a week now because I can't get stronger and I'm like dude two days wasn't making you stronger so you thought three would and that didn't work so you thought four would and now you think five will I'm like, take a month off. What do they do? They hit a PR their first day back. Like, dude, you're not, for certain people and for aggressive people,

the stimulation of growth is easy. The recovery is the hard part. For lazy people, the recovery is easy. They can't push themselves. I had a guy, I was helping a guy one time. Like, he was pretty weak, so I'm like, I can't let you train with the team. It might.

It's not. you're not enough yeah i go but we'll help you and so i had him do good mornings and we moved on to our other stuff in the other side of the gym and i keep peeking over and you know and finally he's at like 225 or something and i'm like dude he's got more to go before he even need to spot him and the next thing i know i peek over and he's done and i'm like uh what are you doing dude why is the bar unloaded oh i'm done i go it's max effort day oh yeah my technique fell apart so i just quit Like, yeah, no, that's not going to work, dude. Like, you have to literally push yourself.

And did your technique fall apart because you can't handle the weight or just because you're not focused and how your head in it? I will never go to a doctor ever again about my general health. All they want to do is put you on pills. Really well said there by Dana White. Couldn't agree with them more. A lot of us are trying to get jacked and tan. A lot of us just want to look good, feel good.

And a lot of the symptoms that we might acquire as we get older, some of the things that we might have high cholesterol. or these various things, it's amazing to have somebody looking at your blood work as you're going through the process, as you're trying to become a better athlete, somebody that knows what they're doing, they can look at your cholesterol,

they can look at the various markers that you have, and they can kind of see where you're at, and they can help guide you through that. And there's a few aspects, too, where it's like, yes, I mean, no, no shades of doctors, but a lot of times they do want to just stick you on medication. A lot of times there is supplementation that can help with this.

Merrick Health, these patient care coronators are going to also look at the way you're living your lifestyle because there's a lot of things you might be doing that if you just adjust that, boom, you could be at the right levels, including working with your testosterone. And there's so many people that I know that are looking for, they're like, hey, should I do that? They're very curious. And they think that testosterone is going to all of a sudden kind of turn them into the Hulk. But that's not really what happens. It can be something that can be really great for your health because you can just basically live your life,

little stronger, just like you were maybe in your 20s and 30s. And this is the last thing to keep in mind, guys, when you get your blood work done at a hospital, they're just looking at like these minimum levels. At Merrick Health, they try to bring you up to ideal levels for everything you're working with. Whereas if you go into a hospital and you have 300 nanograms per deciliter of test, you're good, bro, even though you're probably feeling like shit. At Merrick Health, they're going to try to figure out what things you can do in terms of your lifestyle. And if you're a candidate, potentially TRT. So these are things to pay attention to to get you to your best self. And what I love about it is a little bit of the back and forth that you

get with the patient care coordinator. They're dissecting your blood work. It's not like if you just get this email back and it's just like, hey, try these five things. Somebody's actually on the phone with you going over every step and what you should do. Sometimes it's supplementation. Sometimes it's TRT, and sometimes it's simply just some lifestyle habit changes. All right, guys, if you want to get your blood work checked and also get professional help from people who are going to be able to get you towards your best levels, heads to Merrickhealth.com and use code Power Project for 10% off any panel of your choice. And there's a lot of people, there's a lot of people like that.

And those people, you know, a person like that's going to go, oh, that's a do less. It takes a long time. No, not for you. Yeah, it takes a long time to get good at power lifting. And it takes a long time to refine your technology. unique and all that. And so it's going to take people a while. But back to your point about the recovery and all the different things you're talking about, it still ends up going back to sometimes you train so hard. And I think people don't realize this part of it. Sometimes you

train so hard that it messes up your sleep. Yes. It can complete and I've seen it over over over. Your food can mess up your sleep. Your watching of TV can mess like all your inputs from the day. You know, we got to stop thinking about circadian rhythm. as like when you wake up and when you go to sleep. Your circadian rhythm has to do all the inputs that you have for a day and all the different things that you're doing within a given day. And so when you start to think about it that way, you could be by you going to the gym today, this extra day that you wanted to do, you wanted to start going six days a week or whatever,

it could have a negative impact on your sleep. And just knowing that is just, it's nice to know that so you can say, I'm going to go to the gym six days a week and put in a little bit more effort. but I'm just going to do it for this period of time. And then when that period of time's over, then maybe you move back into doing something more logical. Well, it's interesting what you said too about food. And if you don't eat enough,

if you're training hard and you're not eating enough, I don't know if there's ever been a study on this or not, but I've seen that that affects people's sleep as well. And I know it affects mine. I mean, you're going to be wanting to search for food. So why would you want to go to sleep? Yeah. Well, I mean, if your body's not recovering,

and it can't do what it needs to do, you know, our sleep is all based off of, again, hormones and all that stuff. So if you're not getting enough vitamin D, if your hormones are out of whack from overtraining, yeah, of course it's going to affect your sleep. I mean, it makes complete sense. But all that's a factor in.

And I see a lot of people kind of doing what I did when I first started lifting and just focusing on the lifting. And they want to know, I actually used, I use you for an example of this. I would see you try a new lift or something in the gym. You know, I'd see a video of it.

And I'd go into the gym and I'd see somebody trying it. And I'm like, oh, I got to start some shit. I got to see. And I would go up and be like, hey, what's that movement you're doing? I've never seen that before. Like, oh, yeah, I just saw this. Like, Mark Bell did this. I'm like, cool.

Like, what's it working? They're like, I don't know. It looked fun. Mark Bell was doing it. Like, well, how are you fitting it into your program? I'm just doing it today. And what's it working? I don't know.

It's cool, though. And I'm like, so I just walk away shaking my head. Like, so you have no idea. Like you just, you don't know what it works. You don't know how to fit it into your program. You don't know what sets and reps. You don't know if it's a max effort. You don't.

What the hell's going on, man? Like, you know that person is probably not doing anything with their nutrition, sleep or anything else as well. And that just, it just baffles my brain. Like, even when I was wrong, I was, I was trying. You know, I learned I learned reading bodybuilding books back in a day because we didn't have the internet or not this. So I would read, here's the exercise, here's what it works,

here's a description of it, here's a picture before, if I'm lucky, a picture in the middle and a picture after. And I got to figure it out. But I knew, I at least knew what it was working. And if I did it and I didn't feel it in my lats and it said I should feel it in my lats, okay, I'm not doing it right. I got to fix something. we're now in the modern day,

it seems like people just repeat what they see and they have no idea what it's doing why they're doing it. And that, it just blows my mind. For you, do you think you needed some time away from lifting to sort of repair your mindset

and to repair your sleep? Did you need to attack sleep the way that you attacked lifting in some way? Like almost make it make sleep your job? Or were you healing your... So here's what happened. the last meat I did was at Diablo. It wasn't the last meet I did.

I think I did another bench meeting at your thing. After I did the 2733 and then I did that 12-21 squat that got turned down. That was the meat. I was going to break the all-time record because my bench was, my bench training was so outstanding going into that meat. I made the mistake of going, okay, you just got to go harder. You just got to go a little bit harder and you got it. So I did that.

And that was the worst thing I could have done. Worst decision I ever made in powerlifting. I should have went, hey, Chad, you're there. Back off, bro. Yeah. So we went to that meet, and I was going to open with $12.50. And I got pictures. You can, I look horrible.

I mean, I look bad. And so I go out and I stand up and I unrack it. And I get settled. And I go rack it. Had him rack it, went in the back. And Ethan, Ethan and Scott are like, what? What the hell was that? And I go, I didn't feel like squatting.

I go for the first time in my life, I didn't feel like lifting. And I go, I'm not going to try 1221 and put anybody at risk if I don't feel like doing it. And that's when my family and every one of my training partners had like an intervention. And they're like, dude, you're going to kill yourself if you don't stop. And they're like, you got nothing to prove to nobody.

Like, just stop. and so we came up with a plan that I would focus on Highland Games. So like, okay, I'm only going to train so much and I'm going to start doing more Highland Game stuff, which I again still overdid. But I did okay in Highland Games for a little bit. And eventually I just kind of went, all right, Chad, you're being a, you're being a retard, dude. Like, you need to stop. And that was kind of when it's like, all right, I need to back way off, like way off.

Like limit how much I can lift in the gym. And if I want to do more reps, I'll do more reps, but like just seriously limit it. And that's when I kind of started to heal. And that's when I kind of like went, we had my, my granite business at the time. It's really important for people to hear, though. You did have to back off. Yeah. You needed like space from the thing that you were, you're just really into it.

I needed to stop. Yeah, I needed to stop training as hard and as long as I was. and now come, come way forward. This is interesting too. When I moved down to Perrump, there's one gym, and I trained at it one day, and I went, I can't know. I love lifting too much, and this gym is too horrible. Yeah.

Like, I'm not doing it. So I started, I moved my big tire, my big, I had huge chunks of metal, like two and three hundred pounds. I moved those out to my land. So I start beating on the tire, flipping the tire, carrying the metal plates. And I literally have not. trained in a gym for almost a year. Nice. And that's the longest I've ever went in my entire life.

Never went anywhere near that long. But I was riding my BMX bikes a lot. I was hiking a lot. I mean, I was moving, but no weights. And I did start back for like two weeks going light. And then like I had all these things I had to get done for these inspections. So I was just working on the building. And I'm hoping I'll probably start back this next week. And I'm super excited. I'm super excited to start regular consistent training again and to just like I mean I feel good my my sleep's not at its best right now but I feel good like I mean I don't have joint like you lost any muscle mass or anything you look huge still you know I definitely lost some muscle but probably put that back on pretty quick yeah I mean I think six months for now I'll be I might be stronger than than I was

when I started this house chat I'm curious about this because like course everybody has different sports right what would be like an athlete's assessment of themselves to understand whether today is a smart day that I should push whatever the intensity it might be that I'm thinking of pushing, whether it's going out to sprint, going out to do some hard roles of jiu-jitsu. There's still similar things that people can ask themselves to understand that. So what would you have an athlete do? First of all, I've done, I've tried a bunch of different stuff. Your grip is a huge thing of how your sense of nervous system is. So you're, You can get a grip, squeezy thing.

Yeah. It kind of works. You can go by your HRV. For me, it's not really, it's not consistent enough for me to be able to look at that. Yeah. Velocity-based training is the one I'm going to get to playing with when I get back to training because you can use a velocity meter with your warm-ups. And if you're going as hard as you can, it will kind of set and tell you, hey, dude, you're

slow today. So your central nervous system's off. something that you attach to a barbell or something like that. Yes, yes. And they've gotten like a couple hundred bucks. And there's actually one that you buy and they send you a magnet in it and your phone reads it. So it's like 14 bucks a month or 15 bucks a month. Yeah.

And you can also do this just by throwing med balls, throwing punches at a heavy bag. Yeah. So you could check. You could check your speed. How quick are you? But back like in my, in when I was training with my team, I mean, how is your appetite? Yeah. If you're not wanting to eat, something's going on.

How is your sleep? Is your sleep consistent? Is there anything that has affected it? I found a lot of people what happens is it initially starts with you waking up a lot during the night. We're like if you're a person who only wakes up one or two times or no times and all of a sudden you're waking up every 20 or 30 minutes, your central nervous system is not happy and you need to give it a break.

If you're uncomfortable going to bed, like if you're trying to go to bed and not that your mind is racing but you're uncomfortable like, your hips or shoulders or that's actually like yeah some of that stuff's not normal that's not yeah it's not yeah it's not normal like I think we just think it's normal you know like oh I'm supposed to be kind of sore and beat up but it's like no you beat yourself up too much your sense of well-being is kind of a hard one to track but like literally your sense of well-being do you notice you're getting pissed off at your spouse getting pissed off in traffic more often yeah like we forget that our mind talks to our heart and our heart talks to our body and like all of this stuff is

communicating. So if you're not if you're not feeling right and you're having anger issues and you're spouting out and it means something's not something's not healing and recovering the way it's you know okay something that I think is funny because it's like it's it screams okay yeah this is powerlifting is the appetite portion of it because for me right when my appetite's going crazy I know I haven't slept enough like it's one yeah for me like because I generally I do some fasting, you know, just so I can, I don't feel controlled by my appetite. I can eat a lot. Don't get that twisted, right? But when I wake up and I'm like, oh, fuck, I got to eat. And I'm like, all I can think about is eating. And it's frustrating. I know that I actually

probably need more sleep. So when I'm thinking about, but the power lifters always eat, that's the thing. You know what I mean? So if a power lifter doesn't want to eat, there's a problem. Chad, if we would. No, even that. Like I, because I, I, I, it was funny. After me, after me, I would drop 30 or 40 pounds. Yo. I hated eating. Really? Hated it.

Because I had to eat so much. That's true. Actually. The things that I enjoyed were miserable. Yeah. I mean, you were probably close to 400 pounds, right? Yeah,

I weighed in the, I still kicked myself. I should have, I should have went and bought a gallon of milk. Because I weighed in at $3.98 at the APF seniors in Detroit. You're a real quitter. I'm a total quitter. I should have,

like, dude, I should have said, hold on, dude. I'll be back. A lightweight. We've been talking. into the whole time. Yeah.

What do you weigh now? Like you look like you're in like the 250s, you're in the 20s? That's 300. You, dude, wow. You old 300. Wow. Yeah.

You hold 300 really well. You could be a plus size model over there, bro. Seriously. Wow. Okay. Hey, Chad, I think if we would have got a hold of in Seema at a younger age, we could have turned them into a 300-pound power lifting.

Oh, he could handle 300 pounds. Yeah, right? That's what I'm saying. Okay, so remember Scott? feed him real well. When did you meet? How big was Scott when you first met him? Oh, yeah, he put on a ton of weight.

Yeah. Oh, he was, I think he was at, no, he might have been 240? He was at the seminar with, that Dave did in Reno. This guy's like 6-3, maybe? Yeah, he's like 6-3. And he was, when he started with me, he was like 189. Oh, my God. He was skinny as shit.

Oh, I didn't realize that. And so I took him to one of Dave's seminars when Dave did one in Reno. And it's, I love this story. I go, hey, Dave, man, here's my buddy Scott. And he goes, you need to be 330. And just walk. And Scott's like, dude, I'm like 200 pounds. What?

I can't be 3.30. He did. He got it to 3.30. Wow. Yeah, he also got really strong. Yeah. And we also ate lunch with Dave that day. Oh.

I love Dave stories. First of all, we go to this like local deli. And so Dave goes up to the counter and it's this young kid and he's like, what do you got? Like the menu is like on the wall. The kid's like, we got like deli sandwiches and stuff. What do you like? Kids like, I don't know.

Yeah, what do you like? Tell me what you like. Kids like, uh, finally he throws out a sandwich and Dave's like, yeah, I'll take two of those.

And then he goes and grabs like two bag of chips. And we're sitting at the table and Scott's just like, oh my, like Jesus. Like he's just pounding this food. Then he goes and buys like, I think he bought four

of the king size of his peanut bar cups. Oh my God. And just do, and I'm like, that's like you get 3.30. That's how you, That you pack all that weight on. Yeah.

That's so funny. He was freaking out. Scott was freaking out. He's like, no way, no way. I heard something recently, you know, people, people I have identified that IQ is like not the greatest marker of intelligence. It can be a marker of intelligence. They have other tests that they say are superior. But I saw where somebody was saying that thinking, the thinking of your own thoughts,

is where intelligence really lies, like how you think about your own thoughts. And I think that has a lot to do with what you're talking about here today. Like thinking about your feelings. It might have been with who's the guy you worked with really recently quick? Jim quick. Jim quick. It may have been somebody like that that was mentioning it. But it is fascinating thing because it's something that you probably don't think about it a lot until you're a little bit older.

It's not really something that happens when you're when you're younger. as you mature, you start to think a lot more about your thoughts and you start to think about how you're kind of getting moved around and pushed around by emotions a lot of times. It did happen for me when I was a kid. That's when you started kind of thinking about your, you've always been a thinker. Yeah, I have, I can take you to the school when I was in first grade where I would sit at recess and I would watch kids and I would watch kids go pick on another kid. and I would go, why did he do that?

Like that kid had nothing. Why did he go pick on that kid? And then I would think, that's not right. And I would go pummel that kid. Like in my house, if you're defending somebody, fighting's okay. Okay. So I'm like, I pummel the shit out of this kid.

You're the United States. We get it. Yeah, yeah. But I really distinctively remembering why people treat other people. Like, he wasn't bothering you. like, why did you just leave him alone? Like, you actually instigated the whole thing. You went out of your way to bully that kid.

And I kind of went through my whole life doing that. And even when I said, I would have like this obsession with like suicide. Not that I wanted to commit it, but I was curious what happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, I've had that my whole life. I loved to back when you could go to an airport and watch people, me and my best friend would go to the St. St. Louis Airport and just watch people.

And it's just fascinating to just watch what people do. Now you can air drop them. figure out what they're thinking. My kids do that. And then people like look up. They air drop like people that walk. I'm like, don't mess that. Really?

My kids will just. So you can like take a picture of somebody and then air drop that picture too? Yeah. I'd freak me the hell out if I got that. I mean they don't they don't take a picture of the person but they'll just take a picture like kind of nearby. I would be walking behind him going. Yeah. Kind of start looking all around.

You're like, who the hell to take that picture of me? But yeah, I always I always thought about that kind of stuff. And then just as I got, and I don't know if it was, I don't know why. I wonder why. And then with the sleep problems and then kind of having to, because I basically, I was pretty much grounded from like sixth grade to eighth grade. Because every report card I had was horrible because I just, I was tired. I didn't care. I didn't.

I had no reason to get good grades in my mind. and I knew that like dude my parents are eventually going to let me out like it's not forever and I could sneak into my gym so what did I care um and then in high school it's like okay I want to throw the shot boat and want to play football well my dad's not going to let me do anything with anything less than a C so all of a sudden I was on the honor roll and that was like my thing was like okay a C is borderline so if I get Bs everybody leaves me alone like make the out of roll. Nobody says anything. So that's when I kind of started teaching myself, because I knew I couldn't stay awake. And I got an in-school suspension once for fighting. So they gave me all my

homework for the week. And I got to go into one of my football teacher's classes. I had all my work done like two days. And I just slept for the next three. It was awesome. I'm like, dude, can I get all my homework for the next four years? Just let me play football. Yeah. And So I think that's where like the thoughts of the suicide and what happens afterwards. And I had one friend in high school commit suicide. And I refused to go to his funeral because I thought it was chicken shit. I thought it was a chicken shit way out. Did life put one upside my head, man?

And showed me the error of my ways for sure on that one. But then I've just always thought. and even when even coming into, I remember, I tell the story about the first time I was on the job site. I mean, I was on a job site, a kid all the time. The first time I actually started working, framing. And I'm like, do, these old dudes ain't beating me, man.

I'm doing more work than anybody. And like, how many boards can I carry it once? How much can I do? And I was working with my brother. And so I'm just running like a madman. And all the old guys are just like, stupid kids. Stupid kids. You know, and then at the end of the,

day I'm like how did they frame more than me like I worked my ass off this is fucked up but they were efficient I was inefficient I didn't know what I was doing so I just wasted all this energy that was stewed and like I've always seen things that way and looked at things that way and throwing was a ton of technique getting into PT you know I would question my PT's oh they hated me because I would question them all the time they didn't hate me they actually loved me but They would get frustrated. And I made a lot of extra money betting them. And I would be right.

And I'm like, just because you went to school, they'll make it right, man. Like, I don't give a shit. And I just kept thinking. And then when I got to powerlifting, it was the same thing. The problem, the problem I had with power lifting was you, you get so saturated into the people that are around you. And you start questioning yourself. Because you're like, how, now, come on.

No, like everybody's doing this. Yeah. My thinking must be wrong. Like, I can't, I can't, this is not right. And like, with accommodating resistance, I was, I knew from throwing, I'm like, wait a minute, dude, I'm training this linear periodization. I'm getting slower. Like, slower's not good. Even though it's heavy weight, it's not good.

I still need to be explosive. And so I'm thinking of going back to how I train throwing and I'm thinking of, I used bands and stuff with PT. I didn't know how to put anything together. And then I went to my first seminar with Dave and I'm like, oh, no, this is what I've been thinking. Like not, they had put it together. But I'm like, these are my rough ideas. And that was when I kind of learned

and I went back to the gym and I looked around and I go, I'm following all these people. Not one of these people are where I want to go. Why am I following them? Why am I listening to what they're doing? Yeah. And then you get better and better and then you start meeting better and better athletes.

And I'm completely, If I get a chance to sit down with Ed Cohn, I'm, dude, my mind is open. Not to say I won't argue with him because I will, but it's because I want to understand. You know, and then you start learning what these guys are doing, and you're like, wait a minute, I doubted myself. When my thinking was kind of at least on a similar path. And then you start building trust in yourself. And then you start going, well, wait a minute. Then if I know Louis Simmons is Louis Simmons and I know he's super smart, but I go, if I go to West Side, George

Halbert isn't really doing what Louis said. Chuck Vogelpull is not really doing what Louis said. Like, they're all taking what Louis said and moving into their own things. So I'm like, why am I trying to do exactly what Louis says? You know, I need to find what works for me. And even to the point that maybe it comes down to, they all work, but the one you feel comfortable with is the one that helps you mentally. Because if I give you, I could give you the best program in the world.

And if you don't believe in it, you're probably not going to, see great results. Yeah. I can give you a completely crap program. But if you believe in it and you're bought in, I'll bet you still do good. So we forget about that too. And so that's where like part of the reason I wrote the book is I'm like, wait a minute, work.

Everybody wants to learn training. Everybody wants to learn a program. Once they learn exercises. What's the new exercises? I need different exercises. And I'm like, do you know how many exercises I did my whole power lifting career? I don't because I've never figured it out, but I'll bet you money it's not more than 40.

I mean for my whole body, my whole career, I did good mornings almost all the time. Like, why do you need 800 different exercises? You just need the ones to fix your weight points. And so it's like, so I don't have a problem like re, about thinking about stuff deeper and going, I don't care what other people thought. Like when I think about sleep problems

and I think about mental health issues. Just because all these people in college and all these professors said this, I'm not buying it. Like, give me some logic and give me studies that are legit. Yeah, you've got to be constantly kind of questioning the knowledge and then also, you know,

putting some of the things into practice, like trying things. You try new things. That's what I love to do. I love to have different people on the show that have different points of view and they come from different backgrounds and they say all kinds. People say all kinds of stuff.

We've had people talk about urine therapy on the show, drinking their own piss and stuff like that. We had people talking about all kinds of stuff. I'm not going down that road. Right. I know. But then like eventually what happens is like we'll have someone else on the show and somebody else will mention something similar

and then somebody else will mention. And you're like, hmm, maybe there is some truth to, you know, getting more sunlight or whatever the thing might be. But you do have to be, you have to kind of constantly be in search of it.

Yes. And the journey of being in search of it, I think, it will eventually lead you to the things that are going to make you feel good and the things that are going to kind of lock into your personality. Because that is an interesting thing. What you're doing has to sort of fit with your personality a little bit. Now, some people, there's some people that just love flat out to be told what to do. And they can follow like an app.

And there could be like an instructor or trainer on there. They put the phone or the iPad or whatever in the, corner of the room and they just follow along with like dumbbells. I've never been that way. And I don't like, I don't like that. Um, I barely even like being told what to do. I, I, I don't know why. It's like, it's not a great trait to have because I do it with everything. I don't like, I shun like being told what to do always and forever. And I, that is something I need to like actually work on a little bit. Uh, but it is important that you're training. I don't know that you need to work. Well, I just think, I just think it's good to be as open as possible. Yeah.

So when someone does tell me something, depending on who it is, I should probably say I should give that a shot. Before I'm a dick about it, before I shut down the idea. I didn't even try the idea yet. So sometimes I can be close-minded to certain things. And maybe people don't know that. But I try to be open-minded, but there are still things. When someone tells me what to do, I sometimes turned off. I would say you are open-minded.

Yep. Because you try, it seems to me you're willing to try it just about anything because you have tried all these different things. and that's and that's kind of one of the things I respect about you is like and and I think it's interesting especially with like the nutrition aspect is like dude you stayed lean doing I don't even know how many programs and to me that kind of says which one do you like which is the one and maybe Stan said something about this too that it's the one the nutrition the best nutrition program for you is the one you will stick to us with so find one it kind of fits something you can deal with for long term what's a barn.

Dominium. I can't believe you guys. We got to bring up some pictures or something. What the hell is a barn to minium? It's basically, it's either a pole barn or a metal building. And so you build the building and then you build your living quarters inside of it. Now some people will build the whole building will be a house. And then other people like me will build like this metal building and then there's a living quarters inside.

Then there's a huge gym, shop area and garage. But it's all in one enclosed building. kind of cool looking yeah it's like it's just like and you're building all this you're doing all this yourself um I I contracted out

like I had them do the slab and put up the metal building because I just figured by the time I rent the equipment I could pay them to do it um I did all the plumbing I did all the electrical me and my dad did the framing

um I did contract out the guys are finishing up the drywall right now actually how does that how does that make you feel because I hate drywall how does it make you feel building your own? building. Oh, there's, there's,

there's, it's kind of feel great. No, yeah, there's, there's no feeling in the world like that. I actually, at my last house,

the wind blew my fence down. So I'm like, screw that bullshit. My friend calls it, he calls it, he calls it Ike's proof. Like anything me and my dad build,

he's like, yep, that's like proof because we overbuild everything. Nice. So I built this fence and dude, I used metal posts

and that sunk 36's inches in the shit tons of concrete. And I actually took a picture of it running a string down and I sent it to my dad. And I go, I just want to thank you

because you taught me to do my own shit. Yeah. And I go, it may only be a fence, but I feel pretty goddamn good. So like with this house, I've done a lot of different stuff and I had my own, I learned how to do granite. And I started a granite company with my friend. You know, granite sinks, countertops. And I mean, we're fabricating all of it.

So, I mean, yeah, dude, I never wired a full house before. And I'm out there. I did my breaker box. I ran 220 power. Yeah. Now if something sucks about it, it's your fault. You can't be like, who built this? Who built a sink this way?

But if anything ever happens, I know how to fix it. That's right. Question for you. You have a chapter in your book, and this is the first time I saw it. So I glanced through in the chapter that interested me the most was the never limit yourself chapter.

And as you're talking about this and you know, you're talking about things that you've never done in aspects of this building. and boom, you figure out a way how to do it. And also, obviously, you have these crazy powerlifting numbers that at the time probably no one was able to achieve, right? The mentality of not limiting yourself, where did you grip onto that, when and why?

So for starters, when I got into powerlifting, and me and one of the guys in the gym had a bet to reach 700. He went to the meet and we did our openers, we did our second list and he picked $6.99. And I'm like, you, I don't know if I can cuss on here or not, but I'm like, you pussy. Like you are such a pussy. And I did 705.

And from then on, I'm like, dude, pay up. You didn't do seven. And I'd hear him across the gym talking, oh, I'm a 700. No, you're not, dude. You're a $6.99. Like, you did not hit seven. But shortly after that, I told my partners, I go, I'm going to do a thousand pounds drug free. Not one person, not one person in my life believed me.

Like even my training partners at the time were like, dude, nobody's done that. Like, no one's done it. What the hell makes you think you, you of all people, what makes you think you can do it? I go, I don't know. They go, how are you going to do it? I go, I don't know. They go, when are you going to do it? I go, I don't know.

I know I'm going to do it. that's what I know. I just believed I could. I mean, I just thought I could. And I remember my dad, my dad made me read, what was it, the power of,

the power of positive mental attitude by Norman Anthony Peel when I was a kid. I hated it. I hate reading. Can't believe I wrote a book. I wrote a book. I'm as proud of writing that book as I, as any of my lifting numbers.

So I think somehow, somehow that stuck in my head. whether I wanted to read it or not, like something stuck in there. And then my dad taught me about visualization when I was a kid. Nice. And, you know, I remember I had an old videotape of Alf Urbach where he sang shot put blues. And, you know, they talked about, like, you got to see it in your mind's eye. Like, if you can't, if you can't see it in your mind's eye, if you can't believe that you can do it, how are you ever going to do it?

Like, you got to start with belief. Yeah. And so I think things just trickled. down in my head and it's it's not like I've ever been naturally good at anything because I haven't I mean I when I my my freshman year of shot put I was horrible my freshman year of football that's why I started lifting I couldn't make first string my freshman year football and I was pissed and the only thing I could think to do was get bigger and stronger so I started lifting my my senior year I got most improved for track I won my district my comp my comfort my

My district conference totally screwed up. It was bad. So I didn't go to state. But I mean, I went from horrible to okay. And I don't know. I've just had so many things in my life that I've tried that it's like, okay, I'm going to fuck up. I'm going to mess things up. But you know what?

That's just learning. Yeah. And I truly believe that happiness is. So I take everything back to lifting. In life, when we're in a little happy phase in our life, that's a recovery phase. That's time for you to go, cool, man. Things are going smooth.

It's relaxing. It's nice. This is time for me to recover. This is time for me to rejuvenate my body. Yeah. When things are hard, when we struggle, that's when we learn. And it's kind of like Joseph Campbell, who thought a lot about the,

the fairy tales and all the myths and stuff and a hero's journey. We're on continuous heroes journeys. When one hero's journey ends, that's a little lull. That's a time for us to recover. It's a mellow time. Then we need to go on another journey. And I mean, honestly, another part of the book, the Barn Dominium, I had a really chill life up in Reno.

I had my small house. I had my garage. I had clients that I enjoyed. I had online clients that I enjoyed. I was living well under my means. I got to ride my BMX bikes a lot. I was building custom BMX bikes for people. Like, it was pretty good.

I'm saving a little money every month. Like, I got no complaints, man. My sleep was good. I made my own schedule. It was good. But it had been good long enough that something told me I need to challenge myself. Yeah. Like I need to put my cards on the table and see what happens again.

Were you natty for your whole power thing career? Hell no. But you did squat a thousand. Yeah, no, I totaled a thousand naturally. I totaled 2473 clean. And that's what I went on. And I went on because, and this is insane too, I went on because I kept getting sick.

Like every few months I would get sick and I would get these rashes on my legs. And eventually I'm at work on my forklift and I went and bought ice packs because my legs are on fire, and I have this blisters up to here. And I lost 12 pounds in that day. You know how hard it is to eat and gain 12 pounds?

I'm like, shit, I got to go see a doctor. I lost 12 pounds. Like the blisters, who cares? But I lost 12 pounds. Now I need to see a doctor. And so they run cultures. And he's like, can I pop the blisters? And can we test it?

So they test everything is fine. My doctor's like, can I test you for HIV? I'm like, just figure out what it is, man. I don't care. Like, I don't have HIV. but go for it, whatever. The only thing I had was low testosterone. And it was like,

how old are you at the time? In my 30s. Okay. 115, down. Yes. And now my doctor at the time was a master's highling game thrower. So he knew who I was.

And I'm like, Doc, dude, how is this possible? And he goes, I told him to check it twice. Well, you also barely slept.

He goes, I don't know. That's, yeah, that was one of my thoughts has always been. If I slept, what would my test level be? Oh.

So yeah, we tested it and then he put me on the gel, which was horrible. And so like I came back in and I'm like, Doc, something's wrong, man. I'm crying at commercials. And I always get my blood work because I've never trusted. I don't just trust people. So I always get my blood work and do my own research. I mean, I've had doctors where I go in, like after the first couple visits, they stop asking me questions.

they go, why are you here? And I go, I want this med. I want it for this many days. And I tell them why. And they're like, okay, I'll write it. There you go. Because they're like, dude, you've already done the research. I, like, just tell me what you want.

And so after that, I saw that my estrogen was spiked and he didn't even notice it. So I went and found it. I went and found an HRT doctor, a really good doctor that kind of got things straightened out. And I talked with him. And I go, hey, like, since I'm doing this. Let's, I mean, I'm not drug-free. If I stick a needle in my butt, I stick a needle in my butt. I'm not clean.

Can we take a little extra stuff? Yeah, let's see what happens. And that's when I was talking to everybody. Anybody I could get to talk to me about it, which everybody was so cool, man. Like, I'm talking to, I don't want to name names, but I'm talking to a lot of big people. And everybody's help. And everybody's like, no way. There's no way.

And I go, yes, dude. I'm clean, man. And so then we went on. And it was funny because within like two weeks, I go into the gym and my partners are all looking at me. And I'm like, what? The hell are you? Why are you guys looking at me?

And they're like, what's wrong with you? And I go, what? Man, I feel great, dude. They're like, yeah, where the hell's crabby chat at? Are you so happy? And I go, I guess it's a test. Like, I felt so much better. I mean, way better.

Yeah. And then I experimented with it, but it never really made a huge big deal. So, like, I mean, the most I ever took was like, I think going into the 07 or 08 Arnold, whatever it was, like my last two weeks I had ramped up to a thousand tests

and like 75 trend every other day. And that's my biggest ever. Because I had tried more and I had tried orals and the orals didn't do anything. It's like meds don't do anything to me. Like I can tell, most of my surgeries, I don't take pain pills because I'm like,

it's not going to work, Doc. and when they drill my teeth, a lot of times... Do they put you under? Are you like, you still feel in that shit? Like you feel that pain? They can put me under for surgery.

But like when I had my compartment center surgery done, what's compartment syndrome? I remember your calves were gigantic. Yeah, I have like two huge scars down my leg. Compartment syndrome is when you have, you have four compartments in your forearms and your lower legs. The compartment is surrounded by fascia. Why fascia didn't grow?

So then when my muscles would get pumped up, it would cut off the blood and the nerves. Is that where the blisters came from and the red? No, no, no, that's the compartment system is totally different. That was why I stopped playing football because it kept irritating it. And then in college, in his chavs and his shin was like just in college, I finally found a doctor. I was working in physical therapy. So I found one of the doctors I dealt with.

I'm like, hey, man, I got this issue with my legs, man. And it hurts. And he's like, all right, come visit me. So I went visit him. And he's so cool. Such a good dude. Still a friend to this day. He came in and he looks at it.

He's like, man, I don't know, Chad, but I'll tell you what, I'll do some research. And he starts doing this research. And so he calls me up one day and he's like, hey, can you meet me at the arena athletic club? I'm like, yeah, sure, cool. What are we going to do? He goes, you'll see it. Come on. And so I go over and I meet him and he's got this gauge, this pressure gauge.

It's got a sort of got this needles like this. And I'm like, the hell is that for, man? And he's like, we're going to stick this in your deep posterior compartment and tape this gauge to your leg and you're going to go run. I'm like, oh, I am. All right, let's do it. So he tapes it and I go run. And I get, I would get what I call slap foot. Like I couldn't, I couldn't move my foot.

Like it would just no control. So I would have to kick up and like flip my foot out and he would slap down. Yeah. And so I'm on the treadmill for like five minutes and slapping all over. And I come back and I think the number, it's a long time ago. I think the numbers were not supposed to exceed 15 millimeters or mercury. When he stuck it in, I was at 17. I was at like 120 after just a few minutes of running.

My gosh. And then so we went in to have surgery. So funny. I mean, I was like 270 when I was throwing. And he's like, yeah, I'm not knocking your ass out till we're in the surgery room because I ain't lifting you on that fucking table. You're going to get yourself up on there. So I had never done any drugs in my life.

I didn't smoke pot until like just a few years ago, which doesn't work either, by the way, which is really weird. such a disappointment to my brother because he's waited his whole life to smoke pot with me. So it doesn't hit, you don't feel it. You're just like, and nothing. Yeah. Wow.

I smoke like four joints with my brother and he's like, you feel it yet? And I'm like, I mean, I feel good. Like, is there something I'm supposed to feel? Because I feel normal. And he's like, you're shitting me. And I go, wow. Yeah, no.

He's like, well, you're going to stop smoking my pot then. And so I'm in a, I'm in a recover room. Now, the one drug that gave me did work. Uh-huh. The nurses come up and they're like, we're going to give you this drug. It's just going to make you feel good. And I'm the only one in there.

And I'm just sitting there. And they're all their, and they keep looking at me. And I'm like, what? What are you looking at? And all of a sudden I go, I feel pretty good. I'm like, I feel really good.

It reminds me of the bigger, big trouble, little China when they do the drink right before they go down. Before San Francisco. Oh, that's a great movie. Chat, real quick question. What's your ancestry? Do you know?

Do you know? Mostly German. Mostly German? Because, like, as you talk about all this, like, I imagine, like, I don't know if, like, in video games, they're these berserker class type things, and they, they don't feel much pain. They can just run into war. It's like, you just seem like that to, like, if you were, that would be you. You'd be the guy with an axe and just. I had, I had, I loved, I loved telling stories.

It would not look weird if he was holding a giant axe. It would. Lord of the Rings right here. I love telling stories, especially when it makes me people laugh. So in my gym, we had a light by the stairs, and then there was a light on the other end. And I would go out the basement door to go to my best friend's house. So I shut the light off, and I'm like, I'll hit the door, whatever.

So I'm running through the gym, and I go to cut and just, boom, big smash. And I'm like, oh, shit. And my mom's like, what the hell? What was that? And I go, I just hit the wall, no big deal. I'm going to Chris. And I come home the next day, and I'm in the gym. And I'm like, what the fuck?

Hey, mom, what the hell happened to the wall, man? And then I walk up to it and I'm like my fist and my knee and everything. And I'm like, oh, man. I did that cartoonish for us. I did that. And now here, because it's still the same thing. I have so many BMX bikes that I would take my clients and I would be like, all, all, today we're BMX bike riding.

That's our GPP. And I would give them all a bike. Well, a couple of them had bought custom bikes from me. But they would all get a bike and we would go ride BMX. And I'm always, I can kick everybody's ass. Doesn't matter. Like no. Jamie probably could have beat me, but I don't know.

All right, Mark, you're getting leaner and leaner, but you always enjoy the food you're eating. So how are you doing it? I got a secret, man. It's called Good Life Protein. Okay, tell me about that. I've been doing some Good Life Protein. You know, we've been talking on this show for a really long time

of certified Piedmontese beef. And you can get that under the umbrella of Good Life Proteins, which also has chicken breast, chicken thighs. sausage, shrimp, scallops, all kinds of different fish, salmon, tilapia. The website has nearly any kind of meat that you can think of lamb. There's another one that comes in mind. And so I've been utilizing and kind of using some different strategy, kind of depending on the way that I'm eating. So if I'm doing a keto diet, I'll eat more fat and that's where I might get the sausage and I might get their 80-20 grass-fed, grass-finish, ground beef.

I might get bacon. And there's other days where I kind of do a little bit more body. builder style where the fat is, you know, might be like 40 grams or something like that. And then I'll have some of the leaner cuts of the certified Piedmontese beef. This is one of the reasons why like neither of us find it hard to stay in shape because we're always enjoying the food we're eating. And protein, you talk about protein leverage at all the time. It's satiating and helps you feel full. I look forward to every meal. And I can surf and turf, you know.

I could cook up some, you know, chicken thighs or something like that and have some shrimp with it. or I could have some steak. I would say, you know, the steak, it keeps going back and forth for me on my favorites. So it's hard for me to lock one down, but I really love the bovette steaks. Yeah. And then I also love the ribbyes as well.

You can't go wrong with the ribbyes. So, guys, if you guys want to get your hands on some really good meat, you can have to Good Life Proteins.com and use code power for 20% off any purchases made on the website. Or you can use code Power Project to get an extra 5% off. if you subscribe and save to any meats that are a recurring purchase.

This is the best meat in the world. So we're coming on. You're racing? No, we're just riding, but I mean, I'm keeping them. I'm making them work. Yeah, yeah. And we're coming up on this area where there's a couple, where the sidewalk bent up.

So there's a couple good jumps. And I'm like, all right, blah, blah, blah. And I start pumping. And I snap my chain again. Like I snap chains a lot. Well, when you're, you're like, pushing as hard as you can and that chain let guts go there's no you just go so I'm going oh shoot like I go over the handlebars and my my hands caught in a handlebar so I can't like put my hands up

bam right here screw up my shoulder my elbow I'm bleeding all over the place and I get up like Jamie and Paul are like you okay man and I'm like yeah I got to fix my chain and they're like What? Like, are you, like, you're bleeding and like, I'm like, yeah, whatever. If you ever did MMA. And then like, like, I get my chain fix. And they're like, so we're going back home. I go, why we go back home?

Like, finishing this ride, man. Like, we got another seven miles to go. Like, we're not go home. What are you talking about? Having too much fun out here. Yeah, it was awesome. I just, I don't know. I just, no part of you when you were a younger one, it's a like fight.

I feel like you. Oh, no, I fought a lot. Okay. okay, you just like cat, like, okay. I fought, there's one time I tried to take on a whole other track team. I would literally, like, it was more fun to try to fight multiple people.

Yeah. So like there's multiple times I was with, my best friend didn't like fighting at all. There was one time kids were teasing him and away home and I'm like, dude, I can take care of that. He's like, no, no, no, no, just don't stop,

they'll stop. I go, no, no, I don't mind. Like, I want to. Like, just tell me, I'll take care of it. And he's like, no, it's fine, it's fine. And I'm like, no, seriously. Dude, right now, they'll shut up. Trust me.

Like, I'll end this right now. No, no, that's okay. It's okay. And I'm like, fuck. But we were at the movies one time and I had to wear, and this is in the book too. I was born really severely pigeon-toed. So I had to wear these funny shoes.

And at night my dad had to put this bar on my feet to try and keep them straight. And so I'd get up in the morning and I'd have to crawl around the house. I was like, my dad's big, man. I couldn't get that thing off. And so I had to wear these funny shoes. So we're at the movies and I still have to wear these funny.

I had to wear them. That's why I wear vans all the time now. Because when vans were popular, I couldn't wear vans because I had to wear these stupid orthopedic shoes and then these dorky tennis shoes. And so this car pulls up all these high school kids and we're in middle school. And they start making fun of my shoes.

And I'm immediately at the door of that car reaching in their grabbing kids. And I'm like, I'll beat all five of you right now. I don't give two shits, man. And then there's a cop like two cars behind him. And I'm like, I don't fucking care. you are at least three of you are going down before you get me i don't give a shit okay in uh in bigger stronger faster there's the clip of you uh falling and uh dumping the weight i

guess i kind of off your back i forget exactly what happened oh it's i tried to stay with it as long maybe ryan can uh it shot me try to find the yeah you do you remember the premiere when that club came up i don't i don't i don't remember exactly what happened that that audience went dead silent except for me laughing. Like people like, oh, yeah, I'm like, ha ha ha ha. It's super abrupt. It's awesome. Super abrupt.

I've done it twice. Oh, here we go. So wait, okay. Keep it, this is, I was awake for. This is like an 1100 pound squat probably. 1173. This is a million years ago before people really lifted weights. Set up didn't look bad.

No, I got, I got kind of like, I got kind of, I got kind of, I got kind of loose at the bottom. Yeah. I got loose at the bottom and I let the suit shift my hips forward. So it's done. Injuries from that?

Medial collateral strain. What's medial collateral decision to knee? It's just a tendon that goes on the inside of your knee. Ligament, sorry, not tendon. And were you messed up from that for like a long time or?

No, no. No, it's training. Because I remember like, you know, when that happened, I, you know, try to find a thousand, So I was competing. Same thing happened with a thousand fifty two?

That one thousand years probably worse. So I was competing in this meet and I was like, oh man, you know, and I heard what happened. And I think actually somebody, unfortunately, they hurt their hand pretty bad, right? Yes, I felt so bad. Someone's hand got squished, which is horrible. But yeah, seeing Chad, like in the warm up room, he's still back there and he's like totally fine.

And the reason why I'm bringing this up, though, this has a lot to do with your mobility. And I'd like you to share with us about your mobility because you have, I don't from what I remember you're like uh, I want the 150s on there. Kung Fu Panda. Um, yeah. Well,

it's that was, um, mobility. Let me go, let me go back to the compartment center. Oh yeah, yeah. So when we're in there,

um, I get in there and I'm joking with the doctor and he had a seizure. This is pretty funny to you. So I'm joking with him. And he's like, all right. You know, we're going to shoot you up and you're going to go night and night.

We're going to do our surgery. I'm like, all. I'm like, okay, did you do it yet? He's like, yeah,

you don't feel anything? No, good. Okay, let me do it again. You start to feel it? I go, no, fine. Like, dude, are we going to do this or what? And so, like, finally he gets to, like, number six. This is a six shot he's giving me, and he's like,

I've never had anyone take this much. Is you sure you don't feel it? I go, no, man, I feel great. I'm nothing fine. And he's like, okay, I got one more shot. And if you're not out, we got to reschedule this because I got to go get more. I've never had to have any more. This is always, I always return stuff.

Yeah. I've never had to have this. And I'm like, I don't know what to tell you, man. Like, the shit's not working. And so he shoots me up the seventh time. And I go, oh, hold on. Hold on. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, hold on.

Just give me a couple minutes. I go, hold on. And I'm like, all right, Doc, get ready. and I like him to out but I mean I knew I knew it was coming I could feel it I could control it and it was and then so we had surgery and stuff but surgery didn't work my my um my pressure was still too high and it was basically like oh yeah this is it this is the thousand fifty two I think whoa yeah so I had at that at that meet I broke the I broke my drug-free squat record and then I was going for a thousand fifty two.

And it's kind of hard to see, but I was wearing old checkered vans, high tops. And don't do what I do. Nobody should ever do what I do. So my foot rolls over on the way down. I'm pushing out so hard. You remember when we didn't root, but we just pushed out.

I pushed out so hard I rolled over the soul of it on the way down. Well, in Chad's brain, that's cool. Just go ahead and get to the bottom, then pull your foot back flat and then stand up with it. Oh. No big deal. So I get to the bottom and I'm like, okay, pull the foot flat. And just my whole knee, my whole knee comes in.

Did you get injured there? Nah, I felt like I had a ball in. I felt like there was a baseball in my knee. I finished the meat, broke all the world records into total. And then funny enough, my friend from the Philippines was, you can kind of see him off on the shot. He calls my house the next day and I was staying with my parents. He calls my house and my mom answers.

And he's like, hey, I was just calling the check on Chad. See, I was doing. She's like, yeah, he's not here. She goes, I think he's at the gym. I think he said he was going to go squat some. And he's like, you're kidding me. He's like, no, no, I'm pretty sure that's what he said. And I didn't go heavy.

I'm like, yeah, I need to go in and just work it out. Move around. Yeah. Yeah, crazy stuff. So mobility is something that, is that something that you worked on? Well, when I was a kid, we didn't have a lot of money growing up. We had some really rough years. And there was a point when we lived in, we were back in Reno, I think,

that they could kind of afford my brother to take martial arts, but not me. So I would go. I wanted to go every day. And I would sit and watch. And then I would go home and I would practice. And so I see them doing all this stretching. And I'm like, okay, stretching's important. Like, I've got to start stretching.

So as a kid, I start stretching. and I don't remember how long I did that. It seems like I was doing it for a while. And, you know, then everything's kind of stopped because I was just being a kid. And then when I went to track, I knew, you know, stretching is important. I have to have this rotation and I need to have this to move. And I ended up getting so good at it that like, I mean, by my junior year, I was running all the stretching. Like my coach wouldn't even bother with it.

He's just like, Chad, your captain, go. warm everybody up, stretch everybody out. And so I was running all the stretching and stuff. And so just throughout my life, I knew that flexibility was important. And then when I got into PT, it was such a huge thing in PT too, because you see, well, this man, this person's back screwed up just because hamstrings and glutes are tight as shit, man. You know, and I learned that it was, if people have hypertonicity, you know, there's a lot of different things you can do.

I'm really big on the magnesium gels and stuff. But stretching is one of the best things to release hypertensive muscles. And like even Frank Zane back in the day, because I followed Frank Zane too. He was never, I always wanted to be way bigger. But the dude had a great physique, you know. So I can learn something from him.

He always stretched before and after training. You know, so even when I was like just, I didn't know what I was doing and bodybuilding stuff. I'm like, oh, they're stretching before and after. So I still need to keep stretching. And then, you know,

as I started learning technique and really getting syncing in the technique. I learned that like these people came at their technique because they're too damn tight. So like if you don't want to, if you want to squat wide, either start stretching out or stop squatting wide because you look like shit.

You know, and in the shoulders and the joints and I knew like, listen, I don't, I knew when I started power lifting, I only had so much time. Like there's a point where you're done. You're never going to get stronger than you were.

A lot of people can't squat too because of their upper body. No, that's what I'm talking about. Like a power thing squat where their weights. Why do you think Brent Mikesl had a hard time benching? And why do you think his bench went up when he laid off his squats? Yeah. Because he was fucking his shoulders up squatting.

Right. Because he was too tight. So I knew I had a certain amount of time and my goal is like, I want to do this be as good as I can possibly be pushed myself, as hard as I can push myself. And then I still want to be able to do all the other stuff I'm not doing now. So maintaining, I mean, I was willing to risk a lot. But maintaining, I wanted to do.

do everything I could do to stay healthy. And so you see these guys nowadays like Dave Tate and there's all these guys that can't move their shoulders. They never ever did flexibility. They never paid any attention to it. They never opened their chest up. And at the same time, it's like one of the beautiful things about power lifting and strength sports is a lot of people that have a genetic advantage, whether that be just knowing how

to do stuff or whether that be like an actual physiological advantage. they tend to miss the low-hanging fruit because it was always easy for them. And even if you have genetics, there's going to be a point where your genetics isn't going to help anymore. You're a mid-level lift or your genetics are great, but if you want to go up,

you've got to use your brain. I kind of went, okay, I don't have that, but I can use my brain. So, like, you people that don't want to stretch your upper body out, I'm going to stretch my upper body out and watch, my stroke's going to be two inches shorter in yours. So my flexibility is going to allow me to lift more weight.

And my shoulders are going to be healthy. So if I do... So if I do a big squat, I can still bench afterwards. My shoulders aren't so screwed up that it affects my bench. Yeah, you had enough mobility. I think you could also you could do splits and stuff, right? Not a full, not a full split, but pretty close. Yeah, that's pretty wild. Especially at that sorry.

I mean, I can spread, I can spread my legs out, grab a towel, go behind my back and touch my forehead on the floor. Even now? Yeah, if you gave me like 50 or 20 minutes, I could do it. Yeah, yeah, a little bit of warm up. Yeah, and here's some video of Chad benching. You can see it gets like really wide. His legs are out really wide.

And then you're driving your stomach up. And obviously you're big. So that helps. But the range of motion on the bench is. Oh, thanks, show one I miss. Yeah, do the guy like that. find it successful. Yeah, well, we all missed a lot of benches back then.

We did, we did. Sometimes somebody would credit me and they'd say, oh, man, you were a great bencher. And I said, no, I wasn't a great bencher. I was a strong bencher. You were a strong bench. That was a good. I was strong with it. I was thinking about this the other day.

I was like, man, you know, it's like, when you were benching, I would be like, hey, guys, I'm going to go have a smoke. I'll be in before he finishes this one. Like, because you could never figure out. Like, you could. grind like oh nobody's business and that's so much pressure i'm like how does he handle the pressure that long you did some of the longest benches i've ever seen and you just don't quit you just keep pushing and you keep pushing and i'm like dude my head would have exploded i would have had an

eye pop out already or something yeah i had a bench that lasted like 20 seconds at one point yes it was crazy uh it was in Cincinnati or um like those four spotters are like no it was in maybe like Iowa or something like that. Yeah, but all the benches, they always sit, all the, all the, you were a grinder for sure. You could find any of them. They all take a long time. And I always missed my first attempt. First attempt is always like, I think this one might have been this, the one where I did the 1250 and I said how wide you look at your feet. That's amazing. I felt so bad because people came to see me lift that I'm like, well, I'll still bench like, I'll just go bench at 800 or something because that's easy and at least people can see something.

Right. It's amazing to be able to have the, you know, it's not just like mobility. It's like static. You got to hold a static position, you know, for a long time. And you're holding those weights. And that's the same thing with a squat. And I don't think people understand that either. And like people will go like, oh, well, the shirt helps you.

Yeah, but you can't just rely on the shirt. You have to stay tight. You have to keep your own tension. Otherwise, that gear will throw you all over the place. Yeah, lifting and powerlifting gear caused a whole different list of problems. Yes, it was a whole different list. Where can people find you and where can they find your book? The book is on Amazon.

It's called Fight for Your Greatness. So you can punch that in or punch Chad Ikes in. I have my Instagram and I have a Facebook that's tied to my Instagram, but I honestly don't go on my Facebook. So you can go on the Instagram and I put the links in the bio. I started a Fight for Your Greatness Instagram too. but I don't have a whole lot of post yet just because I don't know I'm still kind of trying to decide

what direction to go. To me it all ties in so it makes sense. But some people are like, well, I just want to watch lifting videos. I don't give a shit about mental stuff. You know, and I'm like, well, they tie together, but should I separate it? Should I keep them all together? Like, I mean, that book isn't necessarily about lifting, but I tell

a lot of stories about my life. I tell a lot of lifting stories because it pertains to where I came up with those principles and I mean it's just to me it's all it's like a fabric I think it's amazing man you're a survivor you're somebody that not everyone is still standing that has had suffered the mental health issues that you've had and the sleep issues that you've had so you you figured out a recipe that worked for you and now you know you can share that you know that was that was

when I watched the movie about anaman that documentary like if you have bipolar it It's really, really, really important that you control it. Because the more manic episodes you have, you're eventually going to break. Like one of them is going to be so bad that you never come back the same. And that's scared to shit out of me because I'm kind of a control. Like I like to know I'm in control. Well, what if someone's kind of told? So that scared me and I'm like, dude, I got to figure this out.

I got to figure out what's going on and why I'm having these manic episodes. And I got to control this. And that was one of the first things is I had manic episodes, but I'm not bipolar. It was still all caused by sleep. And the funny thing about sleep is people go, oh,

you get so tired, you're going to sleep. And it's like, no, you get so tired, you can't sleep. And then as you go down, it's like a graph.

So you're like, oh, my sleep sucks. I feel horrible. I feel horrible. And it's like, dude, I kind of like,

don't feel too bad. Like, I can deal with this. And then you get worse and you're like, oh, I feel horrible. I feel horrible. And so when you're getting better, you've got to go through these same. There's no way to just jump back up to here. And like seriously, like when we went down for the premiere, we ended up,

my buddy's like, dude, I got to sleep. I got to sleep. So we went to Denny's and he slept in the car and I went to eight. It's seriously, it was not a big deal to be awake for two or three days. Like this is normal. My question is, how can I get as much recovery as possible? So there was a lot of time where it's like, okay, lay in bed and basically try to meditate. And the longer I can go without moving and keep myself calm, that's the best recovery I can get.

At least it's rest, right? Yes, yes. Maybe it's not sleep, but it's rest. So there was a lot of that. And but I mean, it's all, if I can, in the book, I truly, truly with all of my heart, feel that everybody has something special about him. And I truly, truly feel that everybody has greatness inside of them. For some people, it shows up easy. For some people, it's really deep.

It's always there. And the choices, do you want to fight for it? Do you want to dig down and find it and pull it out and show the world the energy? Because we all have it. We're all special in our own way. I mean, I guess you could say if we're all special, then none of us are special. But I would rather say, we all have something different about us. If nothing else, the odds, if you go into quantum physics and try to figure out the odds of you being here compared to the gazillions of people that could have been here, just the fact that you're here is unbelievable.

Just the fact that we're here living right now is unbelievable. That tells me we're all special. Like we all came here and we're all different. We all have something inside of us. So I truly be everybody does have greatness. The question is, are you willing to look for it and find it? And you're not going to find it in the extra world. It's just not going to be there.

Strength is never a week. This week, this is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye. Thank you.