Mark Bell's Power Project - Bill Maeda - His Philosophies On Exercise, Habits, And Diet To Stay Healthy FOREVER || MBPP Ep. 835

Episode Date: November 10, 2022

In this Podcast episode, Bill Maeda, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about Bill's habits and exercise philosophies that have kept him in tremendous shape into his 50's. Follow Bill on IG: https://www.instagram.com/billmaeda/ New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://www.naboso.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 15% off! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code: POWERVIVO20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject  ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en  Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz Stamps: 00:00 - Marek health 01:49 - Love for unconventional training 07:28 - Learning Jiu-jitsu from Relson Gracie 12:51 - Learning gymnastic techniques 17:22 - Slowing down movements 19:09 - Learning from Charles Poliquin 21:52 - Intuitive to improve Training 25:22 - Benefits of Squat Wedges 26:29 - Crossropes 31:34 - Breathing techniques 37:35 - Learn to hold fascial structure during gym movements 47:50 - Jobs in movie industry 56:51 - How having daughters changed me 1:00:06 - Doing meditation 1:00:59 - Importance of fast feet exercises 1:06:47 - Aware of walking barefoot 1:13:16 - Jumping & Core Stability exercise 1:17:19 - Piedmontese beef 1:19:43 - How did you find out about cancer 1:33:34 - Your diet plan 1:40:28 - Develop habit of movement 1:44:33 - How much do genes determine your body type 1:46:45 - Meal frequency 1:51:59 - Stay active & eat whatever you want 1:57:57 - GORUCK challenges 2:04:27 - Training philosophy & Program 2:10:32 - Reason for using social media platforms 2:23:53 - What led you to depression 2:29:33 - Reframe gym workout in daily practice 2:35:25 - Importance of rotational movements 2:39:25 - Isolation movements are essential to maximize your workout gains 2:46:03 - Learning Entrepreneur course 2:49:02 - Making mini kettlebells 2:54:20 - Fixing lower back pain 2:55:36 - VIVO barefoot shoes 3:09:51 - About MMA: 6'3", 225 lbs with a record of 200-0 3:19:43 - Like, share, subscribe, comment follow the podcast 3:30:43 - Way to connect with Bill 3:31:00 - Smelly's tip 3:31:17 - Outro #BillMaeda  #PowerProject #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

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All right, Mark, whenever you're ready. I'm ready. Are you? Mm-hmm. All you all right let's go what do you think of the gym you like uh pushing around that tank and stuff like that out there mark that was that was um that was so much fun i was like i'll just show them a little bit of stuff and then next in the full workout yeah no i've i've seen that that on videos and on YouTube. And my buddy, Andrew, he owns a store called Total Fitness USA. He has those in there, but I've never actually taken them out of the shop. So I was really happy to try. And you got the big one there.

That's the big one, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, that was insane. I love that thing. You got to mess around with that continuous rope and all kinds of different stuff. You like a lot of unconventional training and that's kind of the reason why you're here is we've seen some of the unconventional stuff that you've been messing with, but I, I kind of thought that maybe you were doing unconventional

training for like really, really long period of time, but it seems like you were mentioning to me that it kind of happened through the pandemic a little bit more, right? Well, yeah. You know, a lot of the movements that you might see on my social media, I was practicing those for decades. And I'll give you a little background. I've been a personal trainer since I graduated from high school. I haven't had really other jobs. After high school, I just moved to Los Angeles. I haven't had really other jobs. After high school, I just moved to Los Angeles. I lived in Venice and Santa Monica area. I worked at Powerhouse and Gold's Gym a little bit as a trainer. I also worked in a little supplement store there.

But I mostly fit, you know, fitness. I wasn't a bodybuilder necessarily. Back then, we didn't have internet. I wasn't a bodybuilder necessarily. I want, I, back then we didn't have internet. So it seemed like the hub or what they call the Mecca of bodybuilding and strength training knowledge seemed to be all concentrated in. Yeah, Gold's Gym and that whole area. So that's why I moved there.

And I just wanted to get out of Hawaii for a little while. So yeah, training is all I've ever done. And I built, you know, I moved there in my early 20s. And I just did what everyone else, you know, muscle and fitness and Muscle Media 2000, all those magazines. So I was just doing the basics for probably the first 20 years of my career. I was just doing deadlifting, squatting, cleans, bench, everything. Then when I moved back to Hawaii in 2000, I got my own place close to Waikiki. I have a small 600-square-foot what I call a studio. And I just work with private clients there.

And I would teach them everything, the basic movements. But I, you know, a lot of people think that I'd be a bodybuilder or something. And I've never really looked at, I'm not, I've never even aspired to be a powerlifter. I think I mentioned to you on a, before we started, I had joint issues that would not support power lifting that well. But martial arts, ever since I was a kid, I saw my first Bruce Lee movie when I was about nine or 10. And literally after that, my parents turned off the television. I think I was like nine. I just started doing push-ups and sit-ups. And I grabbed a length of chain that we had in the garage,

and I started whipping that around like nunchaku. And, yeah, I learned how to use a chain as nunchaku pretty well at a young age. Yeah, I can't do it now, though. So martial arts have always been kind of the inspiration for how I lift. That's why I was always more between not having necessarily the strongest tendon structure and maybe a smaller waist. I learned that I would never be the strongest guy in the gym. But I always wanted to be the most agile in terms of range of motion. agile, in terms of range of motion.

Like if other guys could squat or bench more than me, I wanted to be able to take whatever weight I could handle and move it through a longer range of motion and very slowly control it. You know, I've got to stop you right there for a second because this is stuff that we've been talking about quite a bit more recently. You know, the strongest got to stop you right there for a second because this is stuff that we've been talking about quite a bit more recently. You know, the strongest guy in the gym. You know, that's a really interesting thing, right? So you could maybe say you might not be the strongest guy in the gym in comparison to what the general public would see as being the strongest guy in the gym due to the fact that we put, like people put a lot of high value assignment on the bench squat deadlift,

some of the traditional lifts. But if some of these guys were trying to work out with you, they'd probably be dragged into some deep water and find out that they would, I would imagine would really probably struggle with some of the stuff that you're doing because I have messed around with those just uneven deadlifts a little bit. And I was like, oh, I, okay, I would have to progress into this. This is not something I can just, I can't just use the weight that Bill was using in the video that I was watching. Yeah. And, um, uh, um, in, in all fairness, uh,

you know, I, I heard, gosh, I forget who said this, but he said there is strength and then there's exhibitions of strength. And, you know, like being able to just take a lot of, like six plates on the bar and kind of bounce in and bounce out of that. And he referred to that as, I wonder if that was Charles Poliquin. So much of, I know tons of guys like Ben Patrick and a lot of other guys.

Poliquin was, and Charles Poliquin for me revolutionized the way I looked at training. He's the first guy that I can say got, excuse me, got me out of the conventional bilateral, evenly symmetrically loaded lifts. You can maybe equate some of this to like somebody punching one of those bags that tells you how much force you produce. And you're like, wow, that's really cool. Like this guy did, you know, 2,500 pounds of pressure or whatever. But then the guy couldn't really throw a real punch in a real fight or, you know, couldn't

handle himself. Like that's not very, it's impressive that he can have that force output. That's unimpressive that he gets his ass kicked. Right, right. And, oh, and I think we were talking just before we started. Before I moved to L.A., I was fortunate enough that I believe the UFC started in 93, and I moved to L.A. in late 94. So for a short period of time, right after the UFC started, Halston and Homolo Gracie moved to Honolulu.

And that to me was like having two gods move to my island. I was like, holy crap. So I was able to train a very short time with them. And wow, I learned quickly like within my first class Wow what jiu-jitsu was about and I was always able to up until I had met Halston and those his students usually even if a guy was a black belt in karate or whatever or accomplished a higher level wrestler than i was

i was always using i was used to being able to muscle through whatever the difference was and you're like 215 220 right currently i'm 195 at that point in time oh at that point i was about 210 215 yeah so i was you know i was young and really just quite a bit heavier and what I lacked in technique and I lacked a lot but I would um I must have been eye-opening because probably previously you could muscle through most things and then now you can't I could yeah um and these guys and not only were they able to handle me and cancel almost everything I was trying to do. The lack of effort it took and the positions they would put me in that I was so weak in, that's what kind of got me into this asymmetrical rotational stuff. It was from my experience losing in martial arts and that also went for when i after i moved

to los angeles i um i there's a place called the inosanto academy it was off of lincoln at the time and i i went to that academy and same deal i you know i came from a kyokushin karate background, and I was usually able to do pretty well in that class, but I was taught my hands down a lot of that karate style. And these guys were Muay Thai and Wing Chun and just starting to get the MMA thing going. I remember Eric Paulson was at that place and he was teaching guys MMA and I got beat up by every

single guy there. Didn't matter. That was really eye-opening because guys, if you saw them on the street, you wouldn't guess that they could beat your ass that hard. Every single one of them. And their movement and their agility. So I learned just being big and

strong. And I just had to learn kind of the hard way that there's a lot more to the game than that. So that's when I started building more higher rep, high endurance. Before I was introduced to the kettlebell, after moving back to Honolulu And when I was working out at Gold's and, and powerhouse in Venice, I was much bigger guys would sometimes watch what I was doing. I was wondering, why are these guys watch? You know,

I was, I was kind of intimidated because he's like pro. I remember Lee priest used to be in there. I mean, you know, Michael Hearn, some big guys, Chris Cormier, all those 90s guys.

Not like they're watching me. I don't think I was worth anything to them. But other guys would watch. And then they'd ask me, like, oh, about my training because I was doing higher reps. I was combining dumbbell thrusters with pull-ups, which later on I heard CrossFit called that fron. Yeah.

And I was combining maybe two exercises into a little circuit. Most of them push-pull or they were antagonistic. What I felt were opposite movements. I didn't even know that word back then. But it was always so that when I would go into the kickboxing or the few times I'd roll that I'd have the endurance. And I also found that sometimes there's other guys who like me would just try to muscle through and it ended up being like a full body arm wrestle. Like that. And I learned that if I'm just punching through my weights, there was a big hole in the strength curve that I was missing.

So I could go from here, bang, up to here. But if somebody started pushing me here, my arms would just collapse against my chest and next thing I'm dead. Is that why you slowed things down too when you did some of those movements? Yeah, because all these slow movements, I look for things that force me to slow down. Yeah. You know, like the rings. You know, I was finding, oh, okay, I'm getting pretty good at this,

you know, this pronated grip on the rings. And then I'm watching the guys who are really good. We've all looked at those guys that are doing those, the gymnasts, right? You know, I was wondering, there's always videos on gymnasts' biceps and the way they're built. I'm thinking, what? What's the difference? And I realized, oh, there's this Andrew, I think his name is Andrew Vadnall, Fitness FAQs.

Oh, yeah. I love his channel. I've got to give that guy a shout out, man. Because I think he's very underappreciated on YouTube and on social media. on YouTube and on social media, that guy has taught me more about proper gymnastic technique than, um, and also was it coach Chris summer of Chris? Yeah.

Okay. Those two guys, gymnastic bodies, those two guys really, um, if anybody wants to know how I know what I know about what little ring and pull up stuff I do and body weight stuff. A big shout out to those two. I just discovered fitness FAQs like four or five weeks

ago. And he has like a few, he has like a 1.5 or something million on YouTube, but his instructionals and even his transformation in terms of like what he was doing a few years ago to what he's progressed to now, it's extremely motivating to see. What the fuck is that? Yeah. That looks so fake. That's unbelievable. What really attracted me to him is that he is a tall guy. And tall guys doing advanced movements like this,

and he doesn't look like he's a lightweight either i mean you know there's tall guys that are thin this guy's got you know he's got wheels on him and he's he's a looks like a big boy um and um yeah so if people want to know like and he gives away more useful free information than a lot of people sell. So, yeah, that guy changed things. And I've always wondered what it would be like, like those guys that can hit an iron cross. I've never wrestled a gymnast,

but I couldn't imagine what that would be like, even if they don't have technique, because to me it would be like, you know like in Hawaii, there's certain crabs that we have that if you catch them, their defensive mechanism is just a, just kind of suck everything in and trying to pull their claws or anything open is just impossible. And I'd imagine like that's what it'd be like to wrestle someone like him.

Or if they don't know what to do and they just want to climb up, you can't get under their neck, nothing. They're just going to – yeah. But their ability to just give pressure, that's what I'm thinking when I'm doing these push-ups or any of these slow movements is not, oh, I want to look slow and graceful. I'm thinking this is somebody pressing on me and i need to be able to absorb that pressure and handle it and um so that's why and i'll and if i can't like in this right here if i can't i can't go higher than that that's okay i'm not going to try to blast through that part i only want to squeeze into the area where i'm strong because i found

if i just well i'll use the word if I honor whatever my range of motion is and it varies from day to day. Yeah. If I just honor that and don't trip out and try to exhibit a movement, it eventually will graduate up on its own. I have this kind of thing with – at my age age I used to blast my nervous system with I used to do some drugs and stuff when I was younger and we can talk about that later but I was very heavy metal

rich food and just you know a lot of stimulants and just everything but now I've learned to be a little nicer to my nervous system I've learned if I just let it do what it wants to do like my nine-year-old daughter. Someday she wants to play harder than

others. And on the days where I want to play hard and she doesn't, I've learned we're going to play at her level. So if I do that with like this also, there are many days I can't do that for shit. Like I'm full locked out. I might have to, yeah, that was a good day.

And I was also using these grip devices to help me stick myself to the bar. But yeah, but if I just honor whatever my nervous system wants to do on a given day, then it allows me to go back the next day for one thing and do something else. And eventually whatever I'm trying to do, that used to be impossible for me. And if I tried to just kick through the part that wasn't happening, that never seemed to make it better. Yeah. So eventually, yeah. The main thing is just don't be in a rush. You know, I want to kind of just like, sure. Um, what, from what you just said there, a powerlifter can take that and slow down their bench press and figure out what portion of my bench press is there a bit of weakness. Because most people, when they're benching, they come down and they come up. But if they slow down, they probably notice, oh, this portion, there's kind of a little bit of a skip here.

And I can work on that portion. With any single movement that you do, and I find this especially effective with jiu-jitsu, just slowing down like you said and find out where in this movement is there a lack of strength. Like if I'm doing a fly, why is it that right here I can't produce force? Can I work on that segment of this movement with some lighter load and see what happens? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly, yeah. I've heard an analogy that I really liked is basically of having a smooth paved road. If there are potholes in that road and you race over it, you're never going to know that you've got potholes in your road. But if you drive nice and slow, boom, boom, oh, and then you know where to patch yeah to smooth out and that um that's been my kind of my thing i need to have every move i do i want a smooth road i want it to be verified

every inch and degree of what i do i want it to be smooth and because at just whether you're my age or not um when you're younger, hey, do your thing. Have fun. And yeah, I used to do the same thing. But every now and then, you're going to get sore. And on those days, you might want to just back the weight down a lot and just try to do a little road assessment, looking for where in the road you've got those little where you need to patch things up a little bit.

What did you learn from Charles Poliquin? You said that changed a lot for you. What did it change for you specifically? You know, he talked a lot about working in the, I guess, working in the, I guess, you know, a lot of these movements that we, that are conventional and that everybody practices, a common denominator to them seems to be that they occur in the sagittal plane.

So if you'd imagine like a, a glass pane that goes right through your midline, anything that slides along that plane for those who might not know. And he started bringing awareness into getting strong in the transverse plane, like a hula hoop, the plane in which a hula hoop would – and also the frontal plane. Like if you're on a pane of glass, you're sliding like this. And so strengthening all those aspects of those different movement planes. And one guy asked me recently, like, how do you come up with these exercises, which a lot of them you know humans have been alive so long I am pretty sure I am not the first guy to come up with any of these things

you know you look around hard enough you'll probably see people doing some iteration of what I'm doing possibly better but or how do you decide what to do? And the analogy I've learned to give both my clients and to the people that ask that question is if you imagine like a square box that represents your total physical capacity, your full ability to move and just perform work. And you put a ball into that box. It fits perfectly. And that ball is conventional lifts, which you need. Most of that box should be that ball, the squat, the deadlift, power cleans. The space around the ball in the corners, that's what I try to fill in. So that's why these movements, asymmetrically loaded,

there's also what I refer to as the blade of the body. So anything that's, like if you look at your body like the blade of a sword, everything here, everything here, and inner thighs, and also under the arms. Anything there, that's what I'm interested in strengthening. Or testing and then strengthening. You know, as you were talking in there and you mentioned like nowadays, and I'm curious like how long your training was and what it kind of looked like before. But nowadays, some of your training sessions are 20, 30 minutes.

And it's a different thing each day. But have you noticed that on a certain day, even if you, let's say you have the intention of doing like a lunge movement, can you feel what you need to work? Like, can you intuitively be like, oh, okay, there's something in my obliques or there's something in my lower back. I need to concentrate on that today. Are you intuitively feeling that?

Absolutely. You know, at my age, and I'm sure a lot... 54 coming up? Yeah, yeah, next week. Yeah, so... By the way, you use lotion? No, I don't. Damn it. There you go. Not doing it. I'm just trying to convince these

men to start using some face lotion. He's had a bunch of facelifts he told me about earlier. Yeah. If you guys knew how little i maintain everything it's i'm uh yeah my wife will tell you i'm the laziest person i really it's it's terrible okay yeah i think that's why people are so motivated by you because you're so lazy that's what people say you know i heard one of the things the things that people are looking for on social media is being relatable. And if people really knew the long – I mean, I'm a mess.

My wife still yells at me about throwing my underwear on the floor or leaving my doors right in – my shoes right in the doorway, that kind of stuff. Yeah. That's relatable to me. Yeah. Getting up from dinner and your dishes are still on the table. Yeah. But going back to your question about, you know, like if I go out and my intention is to do one thing and then like if I step back and there's a lot of days I want to do some

of my little lunge, orbit lunge things or whatever. I want to do some of my little lunge, orbit lunge things or whatever. If I step back with my left leg and I start descending, there's a little catch in my knee somewhere. I think I've got some slight damage to the cartilage or something. And I've learned that – you know those Tibb trainers? Yeah. Yeah. OK. A company called Squat Wedgies sent me their version of the Tib trainer.

And I also want to give a big shout out to a guest that you've had on several times, the great Ben Patrick, knees over toes guy. Because between – he had been talking – I'd known about his work with Tibb trainings and just strengthening the Tibb Alley's interior for years. But I was just, once again, too lazy and too cheap to go and buy one. So Eric from Squat Wedgie sent me one. And so on the couple times I've been, my intention was to do a lunge type of workout. Knee was catchy. And I've learned that for at least me, if I stretch, I just kind of pump up the calves and at the same time stretch them. And then I warm up with that tibia trainer. And I also do what's called a reverse Nordic.

That seems to clear the knee for me to then lunge. But there's some times where I'll get so into doing that, that that's the content that I'll post for that evening. I'll do the lunge stuff, but a lot of people have seen me do that before. And I'm trying to, as I go forward, I try to select things that I feel will benefit the most people. I try to select things that I feel will benefit the most people. And just for full disclosure, I do have just an affiliate partnership with Squat Wedgies. And so I do thank people in advance.

If they buy that thing, I do get a modest commission from them. So I want everyone to know that as I talk about it. But it is truly a helpful device. And Ben Patrick, to be fair, he also has similar items as do other companies. So the main thing I'm trying to get people to understand is that training that tibia as interior, it's money. It seems to, and it doesn't take long. I'll just do a few sets of that, and I'm usually pretty, and it feels nice. It's really good. It just, it feels good to do that.

I've been training calves for a long time. I do a lot of jumping rope. I consider heavy jump ropes my, kind of my primary calf building exercise. Yeah, so. Specific jump rope you personally like? I know there's yeah you know i've i've many years ago um i i found out about cross rope yeah i have one of those and you know i just fell in love with that and um you know i i have the five pound the four pound the three pound

i love those ropes i just like the way they you know when i was talking about nunchaku yeah well when i'm doing this you're taking a risk with those it's like you know how to jump because you hit your feet with that oh yeah you know well here's the thing um there's other videos um andrew if you can find a video where the rope looks like a hose it's blue around like a vampire, it's blue. Around like a vampire. That's a fun. I know. I've got to speed that up a little so people don't have to.

Because that's probably, I think, when I'm spinning around, when I'm kind of doing the circles, that's about a 12-minute rope session of just, yeah. And I try to compress it down to 14 so nobody falls asleep. But I'll do, you know, like crossovers with a five-pound rope. And people say and my thing is barefoot you know you guys I've seen your your

affiliation with Vivo barefoot by the way those shoes truly rock you got your trail ones yeah man I mean I just

I love they are very and they look they look they look cool I know yeah but yeah

so people are like oh man you know, that is, to me, that rope moves rather slowly. And it sounds strange, but if I'm going to hit my toe, I kind of know when that's going to occur. It's not a surprise. It's actually the lighter ropes that have really stung me way harder. Like the nine-ounce ropes, the half-pounders that go fast. And then they just whack me and they jam my big toe right into the bed and then it'll flip my – but the five-pounder moves slow

and it's kind of like if it catches on my foot, it's not a big deal. It's those lighter ropes that, oh oh they're the ones that really yeah yeah so but um one thing if since we're on this is actually not only a really good obliques exercise but when you're in midair like that that rope to spin it fast enough to cross it over and to clear it with the feet when you're in midair it is actually trying to push you out of your, I wouldn't call it an orbit. But in order to come back down to where you left the ground, that's more of the challenge to being able to do this. Because if it wants to push you forward, and if that happens, then it's going to catch your toe. forward and if that happens then it's going to catch your toe so as i'm in midair on that i'm actually trying to adjust my trajectory so that i am landing i'm not letting it displace me midair

i like that there's reaction time involved in this there's a plyometric there's like so many different things going on at once obviously the muscles are getting activated uh there's a finesse to it you have to kind of like relax like you can't just be all stiff on this movement you have to relax and do it and then you find a flow and then you probably are able to find yourself doing it for minutes at a time yeah so even though i have that face on i usually do these on days where i'm feeling kind of calm and chill. If I'm actually angry and that face is just like anticipation of hitting my toe. But yeah, I'm just trying to focus. But I reserve this for days where I'm not like I didn't get yelled at by my wife. A really interesting aspect of gymnastics that people forget about is that it's a performance.

So when those guys and girls go out there and perform in front of people, they're not supposed to make faces. They're supposed to have this discipline. Do you practice that at all? Not making, relaxing the facial muscles. Yeah, do you kind of practice calming yourself down a bit on most exercises? I do. Yeah, yeah. A lot of my movements, I consider them, I think I discussed with you guys earlier, I don't call them what I do a workout.

I call it a practice. And the nose breathing, how I breathe, is more important than how many reps I get. As soon as my breathing starts to fall apart in anything, that's pretty much the end of. Yes, I could go more if I open my mouth and just start sucking air that way. But I found that no matter what I'm doing, whether I'm running or lifting or burpees or whatever, if I confine or limit the activity or my expenditure in the activity to um how i how well i breathe i feel like we're interviewing in sema like like several years you know 20 30 years now you're speaking my language right now man oh no well it's more relevant to to my age as well you know like like i'm saying younger guys go for it man all. Go for it. But it's just a good way.

It's a nice fallback for younger guys or whatever. Or just, yeah, guys that want to try something different. So if I limit my activity to my breathing thresholds, I'm able to maintain a disciplined either a breathing cadence or nose breathing. Because there's certain things that are so intense that breathing through the nose might actually not be appropriate nor even safe. So there are times where I will express loudly through the mouth, but it still has to be a controlled cadence.

And I found if I do that, then I guess my lactic acid, I don't know if this is just experiential for, I don't know if there's science, but I found that my recovery the next day is a lot better. Yeah. And your output is lower. It is lower. Yes, indeed. And, um, cause that's one of the things that I, it might be a little disappointing to some, but I don't ever take, people say like, wow, you're a beast. And I'm like, number one, you guys, you got to look at other Instagram and TikTok pages, man. If you want to see beasts, I am really not one of them. But thank you.

You are, Bill. Well, I think what puts you in that category, though, is your consistency and is the way that you've handled yourself modestly in the gym. Like at some certain point, you decided I'm going to go a little bit more reserved, but I'm just going to do this forever. I'm going to do this for a really long time. You mentioned looking at the exercise as like an opponent. And I think that's really interesting. And I think maybe the young Bill would look at that opponent and say, I'm going to fuck you up. And now you're probably like, I'm going to use my skillset and I'm going to conquer this exercise. I'm going to try to skill set and I'm going to conquer this exercise.

I'm going to try to master this exercise. Probably that's probably more the framing nowadays for you, right? Yeah. When I see an opponent – when I was a kid, there was in Hawaii a very popular – before they had anime, there was a Japanese show called Kikaida. And it was on every Saturday. Every kid in Hawaii. Just this was the show. It was this guy, this Japanese, kind of like a Japanese Superman,

this meek guitar-playing guy. But there would always be some monster created by the evil professor. And every week there was a different monster that would attack. I'm so into this story way that would attack tokyo and then kikaido would show up and he'd go and he would play his guitar before he turned into this robot looking thing and then he'd kick that monster's ass and every monster was different like one monster this big sponge head he would roll it at kikaido and try and crush him with it some had these two hands that they would shoot out with chains attached to him and he could like throw his punches but at the end kikai always won and he used karate of course um so that's kind of like that's why all of my

workouts because my social media is literally a log or a journal of my daily whatever i do on that day i'll either post the best or the worst of it or both. And so that's why it looks very different from day to day. Like I'll do that jump rope one day, then I'll do super slow leg raises or pull-ups the next day, and then I'm throwing a sandbag over my head the next day. Each one is a different monster. But my thing is not, my conquering of that thing is no longer to do as

many reps as i can or to do the heaviest version of that is to move to find the weight that i or the load that i can move the with the best control yeah and i know and i just like people know that what i do i never take it to um usually i don't max on anything well look at what we're doing in the gym earlier i had you with uh 30 pounds or so and we just had you on one foot and i was like you know clamp down on it and i saw you like kind of going inside your body and kind of and we could literally see all the muscles all your uh muscles in your back and the obliques and stuff. I could see you bearing down and all the shreddiness came through the shoulder and a lot of shit was going on. And that's another reason why I like –

Is this the show? There you go. That's it. Oh, look at that. That is – Sick. Yeah. In fact, I think that's his – okay, that might be his big brother.

Because the first Kikaida, Kikaida was kind of like... Still reminiscing Power Rangers. And then, yeah, this is kind of... And then that might have been his big brother who was kind of gnarlier. Like when it was too much for Kikaida to handle, then they created his big brother. So now we have... Was that a close-up of the brain? Yeah.

So now we have – Was that a close-up of the brain? Yeah. But back in 1973 or whatever, 75, this was – This is so sick. This was – and there was another guy. Yeah, this was huge back then. Oh, man. And in the playground, literally I was in kindergarten.

We would – we called those the get them guys because they have to go get them get them it was so ridiculous you know how japanese they can take like english words and do the funniest things with them even back then yeah so all you can't hear it but these guys are all saying get them get them get them and he's just beating their asses left and right. And yeah. So some of us. Yeah. Dude, this is great. And the action music in the background. And the sound effects.

This is so reminiscent of the OG Power Rangers. They stole it from this. They stole it for sure. Yeah. Absolutely. It's exploding. Yeah stole it from us. They stole it for sure. It's exploding. Decapitation. That was before.

It was just a dynamic show. Can you see why we look forward to this? Yeah, man. Saturday was just agonizing. You just wait until Kikaida came on. If you got home late from dinner and you missed, oh, there's no, you know. No DVR.

No DVR, any of that. You were just, you got to call your buddy. You know. What happened? What'd I miss, man? I'm curious about like, because there's so many things we have to come back to about never maxing and stuff. But back to the face thing. I'm curious about that for you.

How long you've been doing that? Because one thing I've noticed is like when you make an expression, and by the way, I got the not making expressions during workouts. I learned that from Kelly Sturette's supple leopard when I read that in 2013. Because he was like, when you do these movements, you don't need to. Brilliant. Kelly, he came to Hawaii. I took his supple leopard. Yeah. Sorry to interrupt. I took his supple leopard. Yeah.

Sorry to interrupt. No, it's fine. But that guy, shout out to Kelly Starrett. And that's where I learned about just not making expression when you're doing these mobilizations or when you're doing movements in the gym. But what I noticed over time is initially I was purposefully trying to make no expression. initially I was purposefully trying to make no expression. But then over time I found that like when I, you know,

when you're stressed or when something pisses you off and you're like, that informs the mind of how stressful the situation is, which then informs the body in terms of feedback loop. Yeah. You restrict a movement. Like when you get pissed, like you fucking, you know, you bear down.

But when you're relaxed, you're able to everything. It informs the mind that this is chill. My body can handle this. I'm not stressed. And I found that that was like super beneficial when doing a bunch of things later on. So I'm wondering, how long have you been doing it? And is that something that you found for yourself?

Yeah, you know, it was. When I was younger and back in, when I was in Los Angeleseles and years before i was actually growing up a very troubled kid from a very young age i was the first kindergartner in my private school that did apparently something that was so bad they had to walk me down to the uh was it the principal and for the lower school principal because yeah that's like being tried as an adult back then. I was the first. I remember my teacher told me, never in all the years I've been a teacher have we ever had to have a kindergartner

go see the lower school principal. Yeah, because apparently I broke a kid's arm. We were just plain messing around. We piled up on this one kid. And apparently I jumped on the top of the plane. And when I landed, coincidentally, somebody on the bottom went, ah! And it turns out he kind of broke his arm. Shout out to Mike Blake.

Sorry, man. You're like principal. I swear, Mike is just being a bitch. Yeah, yeah. No, but it was – but, you know, that principal, she was really a like principal. I swear, Mike is just being a bitch. Yeah, yeah. No, but it was – but that principal, she was really a good principal. She actually determined that. She asked – I remember she said, hey, wait, so how many kids were there involved? And the teacher, she's asking, she said, oh, there were about eight or ten boys.

And then Billy came and added himself to the pile. She said, yeah, she said's all well that's more like the straw that broke the camel's back rather i can't so she actually i think the teacher got in more trouble than i did because so she said but that kind of was a little bit you know and then so i was known as bad billy in school all the way up through high school and you know yeah so i was a i i was always getting in trouble terrible grades all the way through, smoking weed, all this stuff. A hard time with maybe you just wanted to move a lot. I was, you know.

Packed up and like had energy or. I think even now I have possibly a little bit of ADD or something like that. In fact, so I'm surprised that up until this point, I haven't blanked on you guys. Where like, I'll be talking and be like, what are we talking about? And you know, and I don't smoke weed. It's a long show, man.

But no, usually when I've done other podcasts and I'll be answering something, I'll just be like, sorry, can you, what were we just? And I might still do that, you know, I'm a day still young, but yeah. But anyway, I was kind of sorry, can you – and I might still do that. Day's still young. But anyway, I was kind of a rough kid and then I had this – and I was getting bad grades and I had real low self-esteem, super low self-esteem. And yet I never hurt a soul. I never was physically violent with anybody, strangers, class – well, my classmates might tell you I was a little rough.

But I was never – my thing was never to hurt other people, but I was angry all the time. And I always had this scowl on my face. And then even when I moved to Los Angeles, I had this thing that I was a badass. You know, like when I went into the great, the jujitsu classes, I would do things you're not supposed to do. And luckily, those guys are super tolerant and understanding. I realize now that some of the things I do, you don't do. Like what? I'm just kind of curious.

Can openers and – or one time a guy had a mount on me and I somehow pushed him away. I pushed him away and I somehow got my my legs to go to wrap around his neck. And I just extended my legs because I was super flexible. And I remember this. Someone says, OK, OK, stop. And they said, that we don't. Let's reset. They didn't tell me.

You asshole. Do that again. I'm going to break your. No, but they were real cool. But I didn't know you're not's what I can't open people's heads. Or I remember one time – it was so bad. And I know that it might be in some competitions legal. You oil checked?

No. Didn't know that technique yet. But I actually took a guy's pinky and I bent it backwards. Yeah, grabbing fingers. Come on, right? Yeah. So anyway, that was kind of, yeah, I was kind of an asshole when I was younger. And then I went to LA.

Any idea where that came from? Low self-esteem. Just having, you know, I was afraid. Trying to find yourself, trying to figure shit out. If I break it down a little bit more, I started a lot of my weightlifting and muscling up. I went to this private school called Punahou. Barack Obama went there. Oh.

Yeah. Did you beat him up? No, he was a little before me. No, he was a little before me. But eventually, my grades and my attitude, it seemed more appropriate that I left that school. I wasn't kicked out. And I went to another school called AOP. It was called Academy of the Pacific, but the nickname for it was Assholes on Pot.

And that was actually probably the more appropriate name because everyone, we had back in 1986, this things, this is how things were. You, this school was for kids like me, um, who private school kids that got kicked out of whatever school they went to. And,

and this school actually had two designated smoking breaks, teacher proctored smoking breaks. And what you smoked was just kind of like, as long as you placed yourself downwind, it was debatable on what you actually, you could have cigars. There's always a cover guy that would smoke the cheap White House. Is this a little byproduct of the island maybe? Maybe. I don't know because I haven't heard of any other school that was like – but their whole thing was we want to create an environment that allows these more free-spirited kids to expand into – and honestly, it worked for me. I learned more at that school than my – in the two years I was there, it was very helpful to me.

Is there more troubled youth, do you think, on the island back then when you were a kid than normal than in other places or not really? I don't think so. Okay. Yeah. You know, I think maybe the, like maybe if you compare it to now, maybe the types of problems that people have are different. But I'd venture to guess that maybe it's about the same.

But anyway, so that was kind of how things were back then. We could smoke. But I got a little bullied at that school because I came from Punahou. And by the way, Punahou gave me a fantastic foundation. My daughter recently graduated from just last year, this year from Punahou. And by the way, Punahou gave me a fantastic foundation. My daughter recently graduated from just last year. This year from Punahou. And we sent her off to

Wharton. So they do right by the right students. They really prepare them. But for me, I needed a different environment. But I knew I got a little bullied there because I kind of dressed all prep school the way because it is a prep school. And when I went

to this AOP, these were some rougher kids and they gave me shit. And so I learned how to kind of dress like they did. And then during lunch, they had their groups, you know, the surfers and the stoners and everything. And I just went down this little tool shed that they called the gym

and these rusty weights and literally dirt on the floors. And it wasn't, it was just a gate that was built on the ground. And rusty weights and I'd start, that's when I started lifting kind of serious. And these guys started noticing I'd come up from that thing and I'm sweating and I'm pumped. And that's what first got me respect it was sort

of like the prison thing you know like and um and that's when oh that's kind of where it first took hold but my I felt very vulnerable scared I felt like anyone could kick my ass so I was always trying to project this thing of strength but hoping that no one actually called my bluff and were you pretty small no for my age like back in high school i was probably 180 so you didn't have good reason to think this way this is i was just yeah um you know even now at my current age you know when when people now you think someone's gonna come up and kick your ass yeah yeah because of what i learned in you know what i've learned in jujitsu and those other when people... Now you think someone's going to come up and kick your ass? Yeah. To be honest, there's always someone. Because of what I've learned in jujitsu and those other things I took,

the most unlikely people can kick your ass. That is very true. That's a lesson for everyone to carry. The most you would never imagine. Don't put your hands on people. And we're talking, yeah, goes without saying, male or female. Yeah. Yeah, so that's without saying male or female. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's just something everyone should carry with them. But back then, my solution to that was to try to project this badass cursing and swearing and don't fuck with me thing. And then I took that to LA. And it actually got me jobs in the movie industry. I kind of, I was never a good actor. I was not trained in that, but I was constantly getting casted for either criminal, military, or cop.

And to this day, I've done a few jobs for like Hawaii Five-0. I actually got better and more work when I moved out of Hollywood and came back and quit that industry than when I was there for five years. Yeah. Because then I got kind of co-starring Billings on Hawaii Five-0 and another show, I forgot the name of it. It flopped, but I got shot and killed on that one. You have a SAG card? I do. I've had a SAG card for 20-something years now.

My first job was with Kelsey Grammer. Oh, wow. Yeah. When we moved to L.A., my uh, she always wanted to be an actor, an actor, and, uh, her dream was to get a SAG card. And I was just there for Venice and, you know, Gold's Gym. And I didn't care about the, but, um, when we went to Central Casting to get her registered, because the way to get your SAG card, if're you know you haven't done any work is to

hopefully do some extra jobs and maybe if you get enough of these vouchers or whatever then you'll get you'll get a card and I drove her there to Burbank and I'm waiting there's hundreds of people there's a big cattle call and she's registering and I'm just waiting for her and I had to go use the bathroom so I went to this building and this guy's coming down the hallway and he's eyeballing me and he's looking at me and I'm like, what's up, man? And he's like, what are you doing here? I said, Oh shoot. I just need to use the bathroom. He goes, no, no. What are you doing here? I said, dude, I need to use the bathroom. He's like, why are you here though? I'm like, you want to hold my dick? I use the bathroom. He's like, why are you here though? I'm like, what the fuck, man?

You want to hold my dick? I need to use the bathroom. He's like, no, are you here to register? I said, register for what? Because apparently when you're in LA, everyone knows what central casting. I had no idea what that was. It could have been a bank.

And I was like, so long story short, he says, do you have a minute? I'm like, yeah yeah sure i do can i use the bathroom first he said yeah and i came back and then he opened this room and there was a this room filled with people and all of them on this kind of stuff and and he says what's your name i said bill maeda he said hey can anyone use bill maeda it's like all of a sudden i'm on an auction block. I'm like, what is this? And all of these,

some hands came up. And it turns out. It sounds like a skit. Yeah. I'm like, what is going on? I didn't know what central casting was. And so he says,

go see Ajay over there. And so I went in and the guy's like, hey, what's up, man? I'm like, yeah. He's like,

do you, are you here to register? I'm like, fuck, I guess so. I don't, he says, you know, they've got a movie called Eraser coming up. That was on Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I'm like, oh, okay. He's like, do you want to be in that movie? I'm like, yeah, okay. I didn't get that. But I got called a few days later to be on Frasier, and I got this little featured scene with just me and Kelsey. I'm a construction guy, and he's saying goodbye to some girlfriend, on, on Frazier. And I got this little featured scene with just me and Kelsey. He, I'm a construction guy and,

you know, he's saying goodbye to some girlfriend. She leaves and I go in and I go, what's up, man. And I pressed the button. And anyway, that got me my SAG card.

So, um, that's amazing. Yeah. And then, yeah, I pissed my sister off because, you know,

I'm just stoner, meathead, bodybuilder, just, you know, I'm just stoner, meathead bodybuilder. Just, you know, all I do is smoke weed and then go down and lift weights in Venice and then come home and eat my chicken and whatever. And I got – within weeks of being there, I got a SAG card. But the happy ending was when we went to actually get my SAG card on Wilshire, my sister came with me. She wanted to see SAG headquarters. And the lady, the nice lady, she says, I paid her the dues. She says, is there anything else I can do for you? And I said, yeah,

can you get her a card too? She's like, I'm sorry, dear. It doesn't work that way. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm just kidding. But then the lady said, sweetie, what's your name? She's like, Tammy. She's like, Tammy what? Tammy Maeda. She's like, have you ever done anything? She says, well, I did a commercial when I was nine. What kind of commercial?

She says, McDonald's. She says, and then she goes, well, I'll be. That was a national commercial and it was eligible for SAG.

So my sister on the same day, my sister was just, her knees were buckled. She went out and bought us a big dinner that night. She was so happy. So she got her SAG card too. And I felt super happy because I was like, cool, see, look at you.

Yeah, when you get that card, you're like in a union. And then any other work that you pick up, you make like double and triple the amount of money. And they treat you a lot better. You get better food and like. Everything. I mean. And if you do like overtime, you get better food. Everything. I mean, you know, we live in, you know, a society that's, you know,

when you are on a movie set, it is a, there's a definite hierarchy. I'm sure most people know this, but yeah, just being union. And there's, well, back when I was doing it, there's open discrimination. I mean, yeah. Maybe things have have changed i'm sure they have but back in the 90s when i was doing all that stuff um there's a just whatever your union status people with a sag car like in an area and they're like eating and like having fun like doing whatever drinking coffee and stuff and there's like everybody else yeah everybody else is just like sitting there grumpy like the dmv or something yeah if it's cold they'll put heat lamps on you

and then the non-unions are like, it's shivering. They'll move you. They're huddling behind the production trucks to get out of the wind and we have these heated tents and blankets. Yeah, it's terrible. But I think it's probably, i'd like to think it's

changed probably yeah yeah so anyway um i don't know how i got off on that's the face thing but going back to the face um so i always had this this face on and i actually got paid for looking like that yeah but then i started kind of hearing um studies studies about how your facial countenance kind of affects this constant feedback loop. And I realized, you know, a lot of people in L.A. and I've heard this my entire life is, man, I didn't realize that you're actually kind of a nice guy. Because when I first saw you, you scared the shit out of me. And I just thought really, cause I'd just be walking around or in a lot of my neighbors used to tell me that like it took them a long time. I thought they were dicks because they would

kind of look at me and then kind of look away. I'm like, Oh, excuse me. I didn't realize that I was freaking them out. Yeah. So, um, it's taken me a while, but I've learned that, yeah, how I hold my facial structure. And I didn't learn to really, you can't just, you know, if you have what I had going on, you're super insecure because you're afraid of everything. You can't just watch a video or read a book and just change your facial structure. video or read a book and just change your facial structure. You actually have to kind of downgrade that nervous system that is feeding that in spite of what you know. I believe there's a separation between that kind of that more limbic primitive part of your brain that's responsible for your defense and the higher centers of your brain that kind of know better. So I actually had to kind of learn how to let go of, and a lot of it had to do with not taking

myself and life so seriously. You know, I was taking everything. I mean, I used to walk my dog with an ASP baton and the neighborhood, you know, those collapsible police batons. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. And if you saw the neighborhood. Like break the table with it. Yeah.

And if you're watching, if you saw the neighborhood I was walking my dog in, it's called Kahala. And Kahala is probably the most wealthy and safe part of Oahu. you're like walking dog yeah and i didn't have it on this swiveling you know holster thing so i can have optimal angle to deploy it really fast he's got it like cocked back and he's wondering why everyone's giving you know and kind of conceal it you know under but i mean i would walk around armed and yeah it was just i just had this distorted view of myself in the world and and a lot of people say you know the big change for me was having kids and god was wise enough to bless me with daughters girls um because if girls can't change a guy like me, then nothing can. And I had my daughter, Barry, she's 18 now. She's the one we just sent off to college. And then recently, or more recently

that I have a nine-year-old named Teddy. And you quickly learned that number one, there's a lot more important things than me being a badass. My thing is I'm going to protect them now. And one of the things I need to protect them from is this scary face and this constantly charged up vibe that I had. That's what I think about. Because children can feel their energy, the energy of their parents. What they lack in their ability to communicate verbally, they more than make up for in their intuition and their ability to feel.

Yeah, I need to protect my daughter from dirt bags like me. I know all the disgusting thoughts I've had over the years and all the bullshit tricks I tried to pull. My older one has heard the most filthy things. But now that she's in college and she's starting to hear the way the guys in school and even in high school bounces right off of her. She's heard them. Everyone thinks, oh, Bill, you're a nice guy. You're a Hallmark guy.

You're so wholesome, though. You're so wholesome. No, if you ask my wife, she's heard this just vileness but um yeah but a lot of that had to do with not just me being so self-aware that i just kind of you know um having children and um yeah just i i i because i learned that my vibe was heavy and that my daughters, both of them, were initially kind of a little bit freaked by me. So especially my first one because I tried to raise her like a boy. I tried to raise her the way I wished I had been raised because I kind of think I needed a stronger type of structure. Basically, I always used to tell people I wish I had someone to kick my ass.

Because a lot of the guys that I looked up to in high school, or you hear about these Navy SEAL guys, their fathers really laid it down on them. They was a really, you know, so I was thinking, okay, the formula for being a confident dude is having a dad or somebody who kind of kicks your ass and makes your life a little bit hellish. And I love my dad till the end of time, but my dad was always just the nicest man. He's an ophthalmologist. He's an eye surgeon.

And he's just got this super chill. Even now at 87, he can still do surgery. Wow. He's just the calmest. He's maybe 5'6". His friends would see him walking with me at the mall, and then later on they'd come back at him at the hospital, and they'd say, his name is Tom.

They'd say, hey, Tom, so why do you need a bodyguard when you go out? Because we look so different. I just tower over him and our bone structure. It came from my mom's side of the family. But yeah, anyway, going back to the facial thing, I also started to meditate some years ago, and I still do to this day. And a lot of that is you can feel the tension in your face.

And that's one of the things, at least the guys that I would kind of follow, you listen to some tapes or get some guided thing and they're always saying you know like relax right here relax here relax here and yeah so just the combined you know of all that and then at my age at 53 you just

realize it doesn't matter a lot of people are going to kick my ass so I better start being nicer instead of trying to have this, putting all my guns out in front of me. I'm just going to say, put them away. I say, please don't. And yeah, it's just kind of,

I had to age into it a little bit. What you got over there, Andrew? Yeah, something I was thinking about the other day and I'm going to try to find the post here, but I was playing basketball with my nephew, and I was just wearing our power sandal. So I'm 37 years old, but my nephew's 14, and I didn't even lace him up all the way. I'm just kind of out there, and I kind of tripped, but I was quick enough to pick my feet up and then keep going and keep playing basketball and stuff. pick my feet up and then keep going and keep playing basketball and stuff.

But I was just thinking, I'm like, man, if my feet weren't quick enough to do that, I would have, I probably would have fell on my face and had like a stupid, you know, horror story where I walk in here with my face all like full of like road rash and shit. Like, oh dude, what happened? You know, did you get in a car accident? Like, no, I just tripped because my feet weren't fast enough. But I'm going to try to find a post, but you were on a trampoline talking about Oh, fast feet. The importance of fast feet. So I wanted to dive into to find a post, but you were on a trampoline talking about the importance of fast feet. So I wanted to dive into that because I think, you know, when it comes to like people, especially like elderly, like one of the things that like this kind of looks like me running absolutely destroys them is just like literally falling and not being strong enough to stand up.

The amount of run forest run comments on that video, you know, why not? Right. Yeah. But you know, Andrew, that's kind of why I'm that trampoline is actually in my little studio. And I work with like younger clients. My younger clients are like in their forties. So most people are my age, a little older, and I don't having them exhibit like fan feats of athleticism is not that important to me. But the reason why I'm a big fan of jumping rope and this kind of a thing for those who don't want to

or can't necessarily jump is just having that exact reflex you had. Like when you either trip or slip, how quickly you can stack your hip or get that hip back under yourself has a lot to do with the outcome thereafter. So

yeah, it's not even about cardio because I only will do that it's on a loop so it just looks like I have eternal. It's only like about maybe eight or ten seconds. Four days straight? loop so it just looks like i have eternal that's only like about it's only like about maybe that was about maybe eight or ten seconds like four days straight do you do you uh do a lot of stuff

like kind of timed rather than reps or i never count you don't care you're just going and then you're waiting for your uh breathing to be maybe getting close to broken or something exactly so the the kind of the the limiting parameters i'll use are my breathing um or like if on the rings if i'm just really just shaking and one arm is collapsing under me that's it or oftentimes i just to keep it simple i will just decide i'm going to do one rep one rep as best as i can how long it takes for me to do that rep i don't care like you know you're mentioning how we were doing that cable thing. And I really did. After you disappeared, because I was trying so hard to,

and that's another reason why I like to go slow is because as I'm getting this input from that cable, it's entering me and then the angles are changing. I have to now kind of, okay. Angles are changing. I have to now kind of, okay. So it gives me the time to actually recruit or spread my neural input into these. Okay, what do I need to do now? Okay, this just changed. So I got to do something. That's why, yeah, staying connected.

It's an interesting thing because if you were were just take something like throwing a baseball, you just throw a baseball, you throw it at 70% or something. There's really not much there's, I mean, unless someone's like kind of teach you or you're trying to follow some guide of some sort on like, you know how to throw it,

you don't really think much at all. You just kind of, you just kind of throw it and you're, you're kind of going to what you said. I'm just going to throw this and see if I could throw it to the guy across the room and see if I can be accurate with it. It's like the concentration is only like kind of on one thing. And you're not even really thinking necessarily about like flexing a particular muscle or anything like that. And what I found, when you slow the exercises down and when you do like an isometric,

yes, there are times where you can be like, yeah, bear down on the stomach. Yeah. Bear down on the glute. But if you keep holding the weight and holding the weight and holding the weight and the, the duration of the exercise starts to become longer, you just get forced into thoughtless activity of your muscles and of your fascia, just like if you were to throw a baseball. So that's the kind of stuff that I've been kind of obsessing over more recently because of the feel of it. And what you're doing on the trampoline right there,

that is so brilliant. It's like when you start to think about who can do a movement like that. You know, trampoline is very inexpensive. And then the ability of somebody to be able to do that, I mean, you might have a client that's a little afraid to balance on there at first, but you could even hold on to something

when you're doing that. Oftentimes, when I'm working with clients, I might be holding their hands in front of them as they're trying to just move their feet. And that's not as dynamic as what you were doing with the rope, but that's a great place to start for a lot of people. Yeah, and I know for a lot of people,

for the people that like to see me whoop of people. Yeah. And, um, yeah, I know for a lot of people that might, you know, for the people that like to see me whoop the barbell over my head, that might not get a lot of necessarily views, but, um, I don't post for views. If I happen to get views or follows that cool, I'm happy. But, um, if that just reaches a smaller audience, but they really like, Oh, the concept that I was trying to present is something they start implementing, then I win. Because that's what I'm trying to really do is present concepts that I hope are accessible and helpful to as many people that would embrace them as possible. So, yeah. Falling in line with what you were kind of doing there, you mentioned, uh, vivos, how long have you been aware of your feet?

Cause I've seen you in videos with vibrams on, um, I see you doing a lot of barefoot stuff. Right. How long has that been a part of what you do in your training? And how did you, cause we started getting into this a lot this past year and a half and we've all noticed a distinct change, not just in the way our foot functions, but even in terms of like the thickness of our tendons, all these different things have changed. Yeah, I'm so happy you asked that question. In Hawaii, we have an advantage in that barefoot in Hawaii is just a thing. You can go to the big malls in Hawaii. Yeah.

And you'll see certain guys, clearly they just came off, I mean, they still have sand stuck to them. And it's not a big deal. So the culture there, I've been barefoot my entire life. Yeah. And I always,

even when I was young, when I was a kid, and in martial arts, I don't know very many martial arts where they allow shoes except maybe kung fu slippers in certain styles. But even then, everybody's barefoot. And since martial arts was my thing, I never liked wearing shoes. Also, in Hawaii, the culture, a lot of my weightlifting when I was a young child and a teenager was in my room and you do not wear shoes in the house in Hawaii. It is considered rude to enter a house or any building that's not yours with your shoes on. So between that and just, um, so I've always been barefoot and, but

going a little deeper at my age, cause a lot of people say, well, you're kind of, as you get older, maybe your feet, things start getting a little more fragile. My, my whole thing is, um, after the chemotherapy, I had peripheral nerve damage to my fingers and my toes. I think that's common to a lot of chemotherapy. It's a side effect where you have numbness and dysfunction for years. And to this day, I still have to massage my feet and I'm always squeezing them in the fists and things. And you've been like 11 years cancer-free. You had colon cancer, is that right? It was colon cancer. It was diagnosed at 42.

And yeah, I went through a year of treatment. I had a foot of my colon removed. People ask me, what are those, you know, I sometimes get accused of having steroid injections or whatever on my midsection. And that's fine. That's fair, whatever. But I just recently said, so what's up with the steroid scars on your lower belly or whatever? It's from cancer.

And I said, well, thanks for asking. But that's actually where a foot of my colon was removed through that hole. And then this is where the laparoscopic whatever entered. And yeah. So yeah. But, yeah. So that therapy, the chemotherapy did kind of a lot of – it was toxic, man. I just felt – it took years.

Like the skin on my feet used to get so thick it would crack like plastic. That's why in some of the videos people would see my big toes are taped, especially on the lunge movements. Yeah. And they'd say, well, how come you taped your toes? Does that help you with whatever you're doing? And my answer was, no, you probably don't need this. But when I step back into a lunge, my toes go into a hard extension rather quickly. And literally where my toe attaches to my foot this

might be a little cringe but it would just like imagine like like stepping back here and then somebody getting the edge of an envelope and going all right yeah a little uh jackass for you there but um that is what would happen and then i'd step back and it happened on because the skin was so brittle so um but still if i if i keep my feet constantly just either barefoot or those vibrums or these vivos and i can constantly move them and flex them and um i would imagine people that don't do what I do because it's obsessive. My foot, I'm always squeezing my head. You know, oftentimes if you try to squeeze your foot into a fist, you end up getting a cramp somewhere in your foot and or your calf,

especially if you're sitting in a chair. You point your foot and you start trying to squeeze your foot hard into a fist. Sometimes the toes keep going. You're like, yeah. Yeah. So, but I've learned that by constantly keeping that sending neural output to those dead nerves, I brought them back a lot. Like my fingers used to be so numb.

I couldn't do intricate tasks. And I would imagine that people that maybe haven't practiced or know what I know about this, who also went through the same, they suffer for the rest of their life with this. So it's not just the feet. It's, I tell people, there you go. That's the tape.

Because when I was jumping back into that, but, and that's another thing is explosive training is something, especially as you get older, because that, what Andrew was referring to, like saying tripping, recovering from a trip or a slip is extremely, people don't think of it as explosive we think of explosive as your body going up rather than preventing your body from hit going down but trying to recover that that little thing that trip or slip there's tons of people that really injure their lower backs from a slip or a trip they don't actually hit the ground yeah but that you know having your core be able to lock your ribcage to your hip so that – because if this hip starts going and this core is all like, what's going on? That's when you see those people do that full-on horizontal body boom down. That's a core that didn't even know what was going on.

And it just allowed everything to just do what it should. But as soon as it senses a jerk in the hip, your core locks, keeps your ribcage connected to the hip, that makes a huge difference. So that's why I like to exhibit. And I also like to show the jump for people that think, man, I'm 40, I'm 50, my jumping days are over. And I don't recommend maybe they do that. Like for a lot of my clients, just a jump rope or just starting on the trampoline, that's a jump.

Yeah. And that's a big, a quick loading of the body. Another thing is the stability. You know, oftentimes stability exercises are, you know, usually regarded as, you know, on a BOSU ball, being able to perform some single leg exercise. And those are great. Those are – but they tend to be either static loading or very slow demonstration of stability. But if someone takes – I was just listening to somebody on your podcast who can – he drops from a 50-foot down to Rivera right that's a guy 50 inch I'm sorry 50 that's a suicide another generation will be 50 feet sorry 50 inch thank you and just

landing yeah and how he said some days he has to change the way he lands based on how his knees and everything. I thought that was because that is the kind of stability that matters to me. It's cool. Like, yes, we can show stability by having this luxury of time to, okay, all right, here I'm stable, but oftentimes when you're slipping, tripping, falling, jumping, the surface you land on is most likely not going to be perfect or symmetrical. This might be elevated and hard. This might be soft and slippery. And you have to be able to stabilize a lot more things at a very – sort of like um you know what reactive armor is on an army tank no okay uh the israeli army i think first developed this they didn't have the budget

you know like our m1 abrams has these laminated ceramic billion dollar armor on it well a lot of other armies they can't afford that they have conventional armor so they've put these brick looking things on the outside of their tanks and then there's, it's a brilliant thing. And then there's a wire mesh that extends outside of those. And when a shape-charged round comes at the tank, it hits the mesh and completes a circuit that then is connected to whatever is the most proximal charge and that charge will explode outwards and actually blow the rocket away so the rocket never actually makes

contact with the tank or if it does explode, the explosion occurs, it's not able to deliver that shape charge right up against the metal and that's the kind of armor I want from jumping. I want as soon as my feet hit the floor for those initial impulses to be so familiar to what's above that as soon as it says, okay,

this is a landing, then the nervous system above that is already ready to absorb and recruit the muscles upstream of that initial contact with the floor. So that's kind of why I like these jump things. It's not so I can say, hey, look at me jump because I don't participate really in any sport or thing that requires a jump. But I need to verify that not only are my joints stable under like slow heavy asymmetrical deadlifts which people seem well you're really stable but if i can't handle a jump or if i can't jump from here to there without my knee just blowing out i am not stable um so stability to me it has to be verified at a high velocity before it actually matters. What's your diet like?

I know there's been a lot of questions and you've talked about it before and swirled up kind of a lot of controversy. So you sort of eat whatever you'd like. Let me switch hard drives really quick. I'm sorry. It'll take me like 10 seconds. Pat Brodsky family, I hope you guys are doing well. Now, we love meat.

We love to eat meat on this podcast. We've talked about it. Yeah, we've talked about yeah we talked about a lot that's why i partnered with pete montes because they have amazing cuts of steak some that have a lot of fat some that are a bit lower fat but no matter what diet you're on you can fit pete montes steak into your diet it's fucking good andrew how can they get it yes you guys got to head over to pete montes.com if you guys know how to spell it say it with me that's p-i-e-d-m-o-n-t-e-s-e dot com and at checkout enter promo code power for 25

off your entire order and if your order is 150 or more you get free two-day shipping links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes let's get back to the podcast uh ball i got right here you want to mash your feet a little bit while we're talking what's the hey let's do it that's actually why we have this underneath our feet i'm rolling now so whenever you guys are ready oh okay yeah but yeah that pad oh fun that pad has that texture on it and what it's doing passively socks off too yeah yeah what just the socks i'm surprised you didn't request more yeah that is quite surprising yeah that's a different show. All right. Hold on. Let's go. There you go.

With the stuff or the tactile input from the mats, what ends up happening with us is our feet, especially with the balls, too, is we're constantly smashing our feet on the balls. And because the feet feel that stuff on the mat, our feet are constantly moving without us thinking about them moving. So it brings neurological awareness to the bottoms of the feet without us really trying to bring awareness to the bottoms of the feet right right by the way are you the only podcast that it's done standing yeah it's probably i think so right we say long we say longest standing we say that yeah no it's this is because um you know i'll sometimes do voiceovers for my videos and they're only like 18 seconds or maybe 30 seconds. But I used to do them seated, and I would screw it up so many times.

And then I learned to stand because then I'd pretend like I'm giving a seminar. I could use hand gestures, and then I could get it done in minutes. It took me a while to figure that out. But I was like, I've been watching you guys stand all this time. I'm like, yeah, it's really. I think I'd be in bad shape if we were sitting. Same. I think it would hurt.

Yeah, it would. I mean, unless I could figure out a way to sit more unconventionally. Right. But you've got to be kind of mobile to even figure that out. Yeah. No, it's really nice to be standing. And it's really cool. How did you find out about your cancer? Because I felt that that story was really interesting. Yeah, no, it's really nice to be standing and it's really cool. How did you

find out about your cancer? Because I felt that that story was really interesting. Oh, okay. And then we'll go back to the diet because that probably they're interrelated. You know, when I was a kid, I think I mentioned earlier, I was kind of a stress case and I was always, mentioned earlier, I was kind of a stress case and I was always, did you guys see The Exorcist? Yes. I saw The Exorcist when I think when I was eight. Oh, God. And it was, you know, this was the 70s.

And so I guess censorship and things, they showed the, I mean, I know there's some scene where she's doing something with a cross. They didn't show that, but they showed enough for a seven-year-old. And even to this day, those effects, you would swear it's real, even if it's 1970s. Yeah. Anyway, that movie screwed me up. I was sleeping on the floor of my parents' room for almost a year after I watched that movie. And right after I'm recovering from that, I'm just getting over it. I'm like a big kid now.

I'm eight. My brother, it wasn't his fault, but he decided for his birthday party to take everybody to go see Amityville Horror. And now I'm like screwed up from that. Every time I saw flies in the house, I was like freaking out.

So anyway, I'm telling you this because literally the kind of kid I was, I was really over reactive to stimulus like that. Yeah. The same with a scene from Alien where the thing came out of the guy's chest. That twisted me. And so I needed to take prescription antacids, like prescriptions. And then so I've kind of had stomach issues my whole life and they would come

and go and just, I was used to it. So by the time I was in my forties and I'm starting to have this dull ache here, I'm just like, ah, just being a emotional, sorry. I used to refer to myself, just being an emotional pussy again. And so my thing was just to suck it up. To say, come on, you're in your 40s, man. Grow up. Stop being such a... Anyway, I ignored that. And so if anybody else has a similar thing, please don't do what I did.

But I ignored that for a good long time. Well, probably a year and a half, maybe two years. And, you know, it's weird. I didn't really feel like my bowels were different or anything. It just seemed like it was weird. I started wanting more and more sugar. Yeah, it's weird. As time progressed, my thing for sugar,

like that Trader Joe's candy ginger, for some reason, I just got addicted to that. It was. And now when I realized how much sugar is in that, Oh, but I used to eat bags of that. And I realized now in hindsight, I was feeding the cancer. Cancer is like this evil demon and it wants glucose. Right. Apparently. Cancer is like this evil demon and it wants glucose, right, apparently. So anyway, I was training with a client one night and strong guy, but he wasn't a martial artist. And part of what I do with people is, you know, I like same thing for jumping. I like people to be able to kick, to express energy forward to the side, not so they can be martial artists, but just so they're getting those muscles to move quickly and explosively in other directions. Yeah, there's a lot going on.

And you're on one foot for a moment when you're doing that. And being able to not just express that leg out, but when it hits the target, you don't go back. They have to lock down enough so that I go backwards or whatever the target they're kicking or hitting. Striking is extremely, it goes without saying, for stability. It's just extremely valuable and it has a real life application, obviously. But anyway, this guy, every time I stood in front of him many times and he absorbed, I'm holding this air shield, which is very effective at absorbing good kicks. But that night, and I'd been feeling kind of real tired in the weeks up to then. But anyway, he was kicking, and every time he was kicking that night,

it kind of felt like, I'd feel this sharp, ow, God, you know, kind of like. I was thinking, ah, you just need to sleep or something or getting old or whatever. And went home, felt fine, had dinner, woke up next morning, and I felt like I got enough sleep, but I was just tired. I was like, I'm driving to work, and I'm like, I can't wait until I'm done. I want to just go home and take a nap. And when I showed up at work, the client I had, he took one look at me, and I've been working with this guy for years,

and he said, are you okay? I said, yeah, I'm fine. Why? You know, as a trainer, you're always trying to put on this strong, you know, you never want to show any weakness, right? Yeah, man, I'm fine. What's up? He's like, you look pale, man.

And I'm like, no, I'm solid, bro. Let's go. We went inside, and we just started chatting a little bit. And he says, you know what, man? I don't want to freak you out, man, but you're slurring. I'm not slurring. You know, I guess when you're slurring, you don't think you're slurring. But I guess I go, oh, fine.

So he's, and you know, he'd known me long enough where he felt, I'm going to call your wife. And he told her what's going on. She came and got me, took me to the ER. And they took a look at me. They're like, ooh, all right, we better get you an x-ray or something. You said you have a, oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, so she takes me to the ER. And they're just questioning me.

They look at me. They're like, yeah, let's give you an x-ray. Well, it shows up on the x-ray that I've got. Like if you can see, you know, x-ray is mostly effective for bones apparently as far as I know. So soft tissue like intestines and tendons and ligaments, not really supposed to show up that well. The ER doctor, he came out and said, what's up, doc? The ER doctor, he came out and said, what's up, doc? He says, it's just like in the movies. If they ever tell you to sit down, oh, shit, right?

So he said, ma'am, you might want to have a seat. And he put the x-ray up and he pointed to my x-ray. And you could see just this weird black, it looked like an hourglass. And he says, that's your intestine. That hourglass looking thing is what we call an apple core lesion. And that's consistent with advanced colon cancer. So what, if I can see this on this image that clearly, we're going to get you into, we're going to start doing things stat. We're going to get, so they put me at the front of the line. Big shout out to Straub Hospital in Honolulu. They took super good care of me. They, um, they had me in surgery within days

and, um, they removed that because they said after the gastroenterologist went and scoped it, he said it was necrotic. He said he had to be very careful going up to that and inspecting that, that cancerous lesion because he said parts of my intestine were black. And then if he went – that he could have perforated and then you have a peritonitis or a peritoneal infection that would spread like wildfire. So he said not only do you have this risk of having peritonitis if you just cough too hard? Yeah, it's advanced. And it also turns out after they did a resection of my colon, they removed it, the lab showed that it had entered my lymph system,

but just the very proximal grape clusters around my that the area they said it had just entered so basically if that guy if we hadn't been doing that kicking they said a day or two later it would have because once it goes into the main lymphatic system that's metastasized you're yeah and so i was like oh so but kind of a little side story on that. After the surgery, when I came, when I was coming to, and this is where being fit really helps. Being fit before shit happens. Being, it's like the best insurance policy you can have aside from having a lot of money is,

I remember coming to and my wife is there and the nurses are, they're all saying, Hi, Mr. Mario, Camelot. Just like something was wrong. I was like, fuck. Okay, but like, do you have any pain? And I did and I couldn't figure out what this pain was. And then after a few more minutes, I realized my dick hurts, man.

My dick is burning like fire. And they're like, oh, you have a catheter in you. And I started getting like almost claustrophobic. Like, fuck. She's all, just calm down. I started freaking. And I'm like, why do I need that? She's all, just calm down. I started freaking. And I'm like, why do I need that? She's all, so you can pee.

I said, well, basically my wife said, what do we have to do to get that out of him? Because she's not used to me being that physically disturbed. And then she says, well, he has to be able to walk to the bathroom. She said, that's it? And she said, yeah. She said, okay. I said, okay, so if I can walk, you'll take this out? They're like, yeah.

I'm like, okay. And I'm still kind of groggy from the drugs and everything. I said, oh, can I just, do you want to see me? Can I, well, we really shouldn't. It's way too soon. I said, please let me try. If I can, so they have to move all the tubes and move that thing with all the fluids and everything to the side of the bed. And I got out of bed and I took some steps from the bed.

Actually, I felt my legs felt just fine. And then I said, now I'm going to do something. I'm telling you right now I'm okay. What I'm going to do, and I went, and I just, I squatted my ass all the way to the ground, and I stood, and they all jumped because they were ready to catch me. And I said, I'm going to do that again. And I deep squatted

and they took that thing right out of me. Yeah, so yeah, I mean it, yeah. Strength is never a weakness. No, it isn't. Especially when you have something like that in your dick. yeah, just a little side story for that.

But anyway, the follow-up chemotherapy was I had to carry – I would go on Mondays. I'd get four hours of stuff just pumped in my veins. I was live with my first daughter, Barry, and we'd watch a television that was on the ceiling while they put all this, it felt like battery acid. It literally gives you this taste in your mouth. By the time you're leaving, it's like if, I don't know if you've ever put like tinfoil or batteries in your, like I was a kid. Yeah. Who didn't, right? And, um, and that's what it feels like. And then I'd

leave with a pump that was attached to a catheter that was surgically implanted in my shoulder to drop right into my heart so that it could distribute chemo for until Wednesday. So I would leave the hospital with this pump in a belly pack. And every few minutes it goes zook, zook, zook, zook, zook. And you could just feel this battery. You want to puke and just yeah so i got pickled in that stuff it was i think six months of that so but yeah that was uh but but if it hadn't been for uh that guy kicking me that night and because we don't always kick it was rare that you know i don't do that with all my clients.

But I think Hugh had a bad day, and I could tell he had a bad day, and part of my thing with my clients is if they feel a little bit edgy and a little aggression therapy would be helpful, then I'm willing to either put them on the heavy bag or better yet, just let them kick me. And it was a good thing we did because if I hadn't, I probably wouldn't have um had that symptom and uh so the doctor was saying that if you coughed it could have been really bad and you're taking kicks yeah that's another thing is like right maybe in one extra kick who knows i was

and when when he asked me how did you what what were you doing prior? And I told him that a guy was kicking me over and over in the midsection. He said, fuck. He's like, oh, Jesus Christ. But I'm here. It sounds like being in shape with all that because you're able to take the impact of those kicks. Your fitness kind of saved you. You know, I'd have to say. And he said that the fact that this cancer was able to get this far and you didn't seem to have, you weren't weak.

I was still working out. I was wondering how come I'm so winded. I would be winded. I remember I was working with a kettlebell guy. He was a super, really accomplished kettlebell sport guy. And I normally used 53-pound or pound or 24 kilo kettlebells for these clean and jerks and it was i i didn't notice that i was having to drop back to the 20 kilo the 44 pound kettlebells for that but i just thought man you just maybe need to cycle things and

i didn't realize that it was oh i also lost he said they said i was many – very low blood volume and, yeah, very low hematocrit. So – but they – because they also said I had – my blood volume was low enough that I potentially could have had heart failure just doing these things. Because I was wondering why am I so tired? It would just take so long to recover from things. But I just thought, man, you're eating all this candied ginger like an idiot, and your diet is just shit. So if you want to go back to the diet thing, yeah. Absolutely, yeah.

Tell us why you're so shredded. Is it the croissants they ate this morning? Yeah, I know. Right before I came here, you know, where I'm staying, it's funny. There's a little crescent shaped strip mall that has a taco place, a Thai place, a Starbucks and a Jack in the box. And, um, most of those places weren't open except Jack in the box. And so I just went and got two of those breakfast croissants and a cup of coffee from Starbucks and I posted a story and sometimes people understandably and I fully understand what they say hey man you know you're not setting a real good example for people and and I said yeah

well it I understand that's that point of view and I appreciate that a lot but it's not my intention to I'm not trying to mock you guys I'm truly the message I'm trying to say is um as it pertains to me um a lot of most of what you see in on my social media has to do with my genetics um and diet has a lot to do with how healthy you are. And I could still drop dead tomorrow. I mean, just being ripped, we all know ripped guys, their arteries could be clogged all to hell. But I do try to check that.

And so far, I'm pretty good. And my grandpa was the same way. He lived to 101. Real quick story about my grandpa, I'll come back to this. When I was on the operating table for my cancer, I know my grandpa's come back to this. When I was on the operating table for my cancer, I know my grandpa's health at 101 was starting to, he lived fine. And then all of a sudden things started to

go south for him rather quickly. Well, he actually passed away while I was on the operating table. I'm thinking that is so weird. It's like, what are the odds of that? In 101 years, I'm thinking that is so weird. It's like, what are the odds of that in 101 years, the moment he left this planet as a physical entity, he, I was also kind of trying to get, save my own life.

And I'm, you know, I was just thinking that is so strange, but he ate whatever the hell he wanted. Doctors would always try to get him to eat that, you know, the, whatever they serve in these care homes.

And he was always like that. Man, I want my, what we call a musubi. It's like a rice ball, right? I know. Spam musubis. So good. Yeah. And he ate whatever the hell he wanted.

Meat, bacon, spam, Portuguese sausage, just to the day he left this earth. And he lived to 101. I probably won't live that long. But did he stay moving? Like, I wonder about that. No, he stayed mobile. He never really needed a wheelchair. He would get up and use the bathroom and stuff by himself.

And he was a big man. For his generation, was five almost 511 wow for that generation that says that's like me being my height but his build was heavier like he wasn't ripped it's weird i'm kind of a strange mix between his side of the family which was taller and bigger boned and my dad i think i described him earlier but everyone in his family they're small boned like but they're ripped i mean they have veins like my dad has these big veins all over his forearms and his hands yeah which my grandpa's uh my mom's side doesn't so i got kind of like because you know i'm i guess people think i'm a little veiny. I got the size of my mom's side of the family and the muscles and the bone density.

But the muscle definition and the metabolism comes from my dad's side because everybody, my dad, my auntie, they're all in their 80s now. And all of his siblings are alive and they're all well into their 80s and they're all ripped. I mean they're all well into their 80s and they're all ripped. I mean, they're all very lean. Yeah. So, but going back to the diet, I am much more aware of eating well. I just don't seem to happen to post when I'm eating fruit. For one thing, I eat a lot of my fruit at home and my house is a freaking mess. Mostly because of me but you know

i have kids and dogs and toys and everything and because you know we live in a townhouse a lot of we have instead of walls we have shelves that span the room and those shelves are just covered with stuff with toys with, with snacks, with bags, just everything. So I don't like to really post from there because everyone starts kind of looking at all my shit and like, oh, are those Doritos and just all this stuff. Why don't you clean your house? Yeah. And you know, that's where I'm headed. Can you pick up some of those towels in the background?

Exactly. And then there's like all my weights and barbells are piled by the door. It's just a mess. But I do eat. My main thing is, going back to being a little lazy, I have a sense of how much to eat. And I think that's kind of what really for me, I know it's not a system that I can sell to somebody else. Well, you just kind of feel what's, you know, how do you do that? But I think what, what really helped besides my genetics, um, was starting this. And I don't

want to discourage anybody that's didn't start as early as I did, but I did notice that a lot of the guys like me who've seen there's other guys that, that eat as much or more crap than I do. And they, they're bigger and more shredded than I might be then or, or than I am. And, um, I think the common link would be that they started at a young age. So the body just learned, I've always, always used to say well before I knew anything that to me, food felt like fuel. I would watch people eat and then they'd lie down and sleep. I could literally, especially when I hit my teenage years, I would get up from a, there was a pasta restaurant that we'd go to, this Italian restaurant, and I would eat plates. They had to make a custom platter.

They called it a platter for me and a giant salad. And literally when I was in my teenage years, I would stand up from the table visibly pumped. You've heard people describe that, right? And literally I would swell into whatever shirt I was wearing. And I just thought that was cool. But I didn't realize that my body had learned or was learning how to take food and quickly either load it into the muscles as glycogen. And then I'd go home and I'd lift like a demon.

I would just use that. I was not tired after I'd eat dinner. Dinner after dinner were some of my best workouts. You know, Bill, I got to fight back against that genetic thing because people will hear that. And most people will be like, okay, yeah, Bill's genetics allow me to eat like that. But I think the bigger part of that is your lifestyle up until this point. The reason why your body knew how to do that since you were a kid is because you literally would do something like it wasn't that you would eat and then you'd sit down and watch tv and sleep and gain fat you would eat and you would move you you always move you're

doing something so your body and all of us here too because we're moving so much we can eat certain things but our body we we keep moving you have habits that allow you to do this and if certain people even if they didn't start from such a young age but they can they started building a lot of the habits that you've set that you've set they'd probably be able to eat that eat that way you know and that's so when i when i and i fully 100 agree with that and what i'm saying um it's kind of a general answer when I say it's genetics, but a lot of the genetics that I would refer to, and maybe I should qualify it better on, on future posts is the shape that I, you know, like the insertions of my muscles.

And because, you know, a lot of times I tell people, hey, number one, please don't think that by, when you read my Instagram description that, oh, all I have to do is weird looking exercises for 20 minutes a day and eat whatever I want. And I can look like Bill or somebody else. No, I built, I was talking with you guys earlier that in my earlier years up

until the time i got my cancer um i was always practicing the foundational lifts and deadlifting as heavy as i could manage with good form and squatting and cleans and pull-ups and didn't do a lot of bench press um just because i my structure wasn't that optimal and i was always feeling that push-ups for me and jujitsu occurred more so i don't know mark sorry mark um but but yeah the foundational lifts were um the and even now i've recent i just posted a deadlift video where i'm actually in my little studio and I'm, I'm, I'm deadlifting again. I'm going to start barbell squatting. Cause like I said, whether you're doing what I'm doing or not, those are not replaceable. Um, but at the same time,

over the years I was constantly, yeah, I think that's the one. Damnrew is just on it um yeah but because uh and i hadn't deadlifted in a good long time oh i i i tried to put 405 on i think the heaviest i went that day was 385 and i couldn't quite lock that out but you're doing it from deficits um not the 385 i i tried to go up to 405 which i haven't done in probably 15 years. I've never really been that strong. But I like to – it's weird. If I deficit, people think, wow, that's harder because you're pulling the bar from lower. I feel like – you know like if you have to just broad jump across into a sandpit versus you get a running start.

That gives me a running start. Yeah, it loads your body up a little bit more. It gives me a lot more time to get a lot more muscle behind the lift. Pulling from a higher, just a standard height deadlift, I don't have all that runway in my muscles. It requires a different type of strength and stability that I still got to work on. So it might look like, wow, look at this guy.

He can pull a lot farther. But I look at that as it gives me more of a running start. So whatever weight I can lift that way, it also feels safer for me because the weight of that bar is entering me slowly and I'm able to spread it more evenly through more of my system. So it doesn't stack into my lower back or whatever areas might not be ready for that. I think even having the mindset of that you can eat whatever you want and that there's genetics behind it. I think even that in and of itself probably helps keep you leaner.

You also are like protein minded. You mentioned earlier that you leaner. You also are like protein minded. You mentioned earlier like that you, you know, you have like lifestyle things and habits and things that aren't, aren't allowing you to gain more body fat. And then just back to the genetic thing real quick. I do think that there's different body types and there was somebody like in the forties or fifties that kind of alluded to an ectomorph mesomorph.

And I think that, I think there's some truth to that. I think that people do have kind of a different body type, whether you're born that way 100% or it's something that forms through your younger years, kind of hard to say. But a lot of people that are thin from the time they're young and they build some muscle, those are usually the people that kind of look the best from an aesthetic standpoint.

It's usually not someone that is on the heavier side that does it, but it does happen. And there's no reason to have limiting beliefs around it, but there's some people that are maybe set up to be a little bit leaner. I think that's fair, right? You know, I have a, yeah, I completely, I have a lot of guys that come to me rather thin and they say, man, I have a lot of guys that come to me rather thin and they say, man, look how skinny I am. I tell them, hey, man, you've got the best body for looking good when you muscle up because it might take you a little more work, a little longer to maybe gain a pound. Let's just go with one pound of muscle on a – I guess an ectomorphic body type. But those guys, because they tend to have smaller joints and their waist size or the ratio of their weight to their shoulders is more exaggerated, a pound of muscle on that kind of body

looks like three pounds on a more traditional body. And it tends to be really well-defined muscle. So you have guys who consider themselves skinny or thin or whatever, feel like they're at a disadvantage, I would argue. Otherwise, that's a very much more – if you're looking at aesthetics, and it's just when you gain that weight, you look – it looks like so much more than on a different body type. So yeah.

How often do you eat? Do you eat multiple times a day or do you do intermittent fasting or something like that or i've done a little of everything um i'm not low carb you know as you saw i actually you and those two breakfast croissants that i had i i do eat the croissant part. I usually will eat here's and this is just my the way I look at food.

My dream growing up as part of my teenage angst and just being my heroes were like Rambo and Schwarzenegger and Von Dahm, you know, all the eighties guys. Yeah.

And so I wanted to be a special forces soldier. And I started my, a lot of my training also, when I say it was martial arts, it was also being able to, being able to be a soldier, being able to take a lot of shit on minimal sleep with suboptimal food. Because I noticed that seemed to be the common thread to being able to get through those buds and special forces selection was, and I figured if I ever go to war, I'm not going to be eating, at the best I'll be getting MREs if I'm allowed to eat. So my thing was all these guys that were, and this was just my attitude back then,

that all these guys that are running around with their six pre-measured chicken and broccoli, brown rice, whatever, were just a bunch of pussies. And that, I'm sorry. Yeah. And my thing was like, I had this, what I call the AK, or now I'd use, we didn't have Glocks back then, so I called my diet philosophy the AK-47 mentality. wore too or rusty or shitty or wet or muddy,

AK could eat all of that ammunition and function and kill. And so my thing was no matter what I had on a given day, it could be sweet tarts or it could be a steak, I had to be able to convert that into usable energy and function and go. And as part of that was being hungry was kind of and i had blood sugar issues growing up due to i guess my diet but being able to function hungry was kind of a thing as well so and i and you hear a lot of that now right that um like a lot i know i think joe rogan and a lot of guys like to work out in a fasted state. Now I'll be honest, I don't always work out hungry. If I'm in a state where

I'm actually a little bit kind of like, I'm not sharp, then I'll have something just to, you know, especially if I'm going to do something that might be a little risky. You know, I do want to have optimal balance between that. But that was kind of my philosophy was that I am a machine. No matter what you put in me, I'm going to turn it into, because that's why I don't really measure sugar, carbs, fat, protein. Yesterday on the plane, some of the things I was eating, I ate a full bag of Trader Joe's Mayan

corn. You know those like corn nuts? I haven't had those in forever, but yeah, corn nuts are good. I didn't realize it's an eight ounce bag. I ate that over the course of a movie. Then it followed up. I just fly coach.

Does that have a massive pump too? Yeah. Well, you know, it just burned right up. And then they gave me some kind of a Hot Pocket thing that when I bit into it, there was this white cream in it. And I was like, wow, what is that? Did you finish it though? I did. white cream in it and i was like wow what is that did you finish it though i did um and i actually had to look at the read the package to figure usually you can figure out like oh this is tuna fish this is what what the fuck so i'm looking it turned out to be chicken

parmesan with artichoke and i was like bro that looks like toothpaste. But I ate that and it came with this bag of Maui potato chips, which I also ate. Because I was hungry by the time that showed up. And then I went to my room that night and I had this, there's a place called Zippy's in Hawaii that's famous for making these little plate lunch things. And they have what's called a surf pack. is for making these little plate lunch things. And they have what's called a surf pack. And it's just fried chicken, a piece of spam, some beef teriyaki, a lot of sugar in there,

and a bunch of rice. And I just pounded that. And then I called my wife and took a shower, brushed my teeth, and went to sleep and felt fine on that. But yeah, my main thing is I just try not to eat till I'm full. I eat till I'm not hungry. And then I'll try to go as long as I can without anything. I'm also big on drinking lots of water.

You know, Bill, a really cool thing about this is you hear a lot when people are talking about health. That's good. You hear people say, oh, you know, is you hear a lot when people are talking about health. You hear people say, oh, you know. There you go. Sorry, you look so good. You're so on it, man. Like in your 20s, people say you can get rid of stuff in 30s or whatever,

but people start to mention, oh, yeah, in my 40s I wasn't able to do this. In my 50s I had to stop eating this way. And it's cool seeing somebody like you because the overarching theme of everything that you're continuing to talk about and do though, is you're still moving. You're still moving weight. You're still doing variable type things. You haven't stopped that. And your body, you can eat pretty much whatever you want. You don't eat till you're gorged.

You know, you don't eat disgusting amounts of food, but you can still eat a sizable amount, whatever you want and perform well because you haven't stopped. So it kind of spits in the face of a lot of the things that you'll see people in like health professionals talk about when they're like, oh, you can't eat this. This is going to be bad for you. if you're sedentary and you don't do much physical activity and you're not active. But when you're an active person, you can have these things, and obviously you're doing it within reason. I try to, yeah. Because I also think, especially as I get older, I'm a really big fan of living life. And some people, and good for them,

if their definition of living and enjoying their life is knowing that they're eating well-prepared, thoughtful meals and really well-balanced, got their macros all figured out and they know exactly what their ratios are. And great, more power to them. But for me, that's never, you know, like I said, I'm a Hawaii boy. I kind of grew up with these foods and I like French fries. I like pizza and I like all these local things that are not of, you know,

they're not considered optimal for diet. But like you said, I think another thing that I should also say that my job is, I've only been a personal trainer since I got out of high school. And every job I've had, even if I was on a movie set, it wasn't as an office guy or a guy at a board meeting. I'm always like I'm soldiering. There's a movie called Starship Troopers. You remember that one? Yeah, I was part of a bunch of cadre that was tasked with training the extras. That was just when they started doing CGI, but they still needed lots of extras.

So they flew us out to Casper, Wyoming. And they had Special Forces guys train me and about 20 other guys to then when you receive the hundreds of extras that came into the movie set then you train those guys how to do it and they those special those sf guys beat our asses and yeah but i've always been um involved some i've never ever had a desk job or a job standing in one place yeah i'm not knock on, those are, the world needs those, but I've always had the benefit of like, you know, just when I'm with clients, I'm standing constantly. I consider each of my sessions,

not only am I changing weights for them and maybe demonstrating, which is not that physically taxing for me, but the amount of energy, like doing what we're doing here, communicating on a rather deep, meaningful level, that is energy expensive as well. And when I'm with my clients, most of my clients have been with me for years. I don't have a revolving door of people.

When people say, how many clients do you have? The number I tell them, it's not very impressive. But that's because these people have been with me for a long time and I'm hoping that one of the reasons why that's the case is because I go very deep with them you know I I'll tell my wife I'll come home and see if I work six or seven eight people I might say I just feel like I did six or seven one-hour seminars because whether even if it's one person i i try to educate them and and also you know find out okay what is going on with your life oh i have to digress for a moment that you had probably one of the most compelling guests that i've ever seen on your show

she's also pretty hot. Gabrielle Lyons. She's very pretty. She's awesome. It's okay to say it. Smoking. But not only was she nice to look at, the way she communicates what she knows is so on the ground.

You can barely understand metabolism or muscle, her ability to communicate what she communicates, which is, I, I've, I've watched some of that twice. And that one concept that I think should actually could probably be the title of a book. I know she's coming out with a book,

but that concept of you're only as fit as your self-worth allows you to be or something like that, that was so powerful. That concept was because I was like, wow. I think you guys were also like, damn, say that again. Yeah. Because I was like that encapsulates so much of why things don't happen for people. Like you all know you've written programs. You put your things don't happen for people. Like you all know, you've written programs, you put your heart and soul into guiding people,

and you'll see the same thing she saw. As soon as something happens, bam, they're right back to where they were. It's a brutal thing to say, but most of us want our problem. Yeah, yeah. Because we're letting it sit there. Like what are you doing about it? Right, yeah. Because we're letting it sit there. Like, what are you doing about it? Right, right. And, you know, I've had that experience where I've – there's one guy when I was into rucking.

You know what the go-ruck challenge is? I don't know what it's required. It's a special forces group. They are actually a bunch of SF guys that they have this – it's almost like – Were you in the military? No. Oh, going back to that, I wasn't allowed. I tried.

Remember I told you I wanted to be SF, right? Too dangerous. No, no. I actually applied right after high school. And I went through all of that maps. I got the ASVAB, that military SAT. They said my score was good enough that I qualified for OCS, officer training school. And I went through the maps.

They said everything was great until the last thing where the doctor actually comes and looks at you. Because the nurses, all these nurses and assistants are kind of putting hundreds of us through this thing they found that i had two stainless steel pins in my shoulders from when i was in high school this is just a high school football injury and you know the shoulder is fine to this day you know it functions same left and right but back then in the early mid 80s sorry late 80s i remember they found that out and they said, hey, man, sorry, that's a no-go. And I said, well, can you make it? I mean, it works fine, you guys. They said, no, that's considered a prosthetic.

And back then, literally, the guy said, this is a, they said, we're a peacetime army. What a nice thing to be able to say, yeah? Because a few things, just a few years later, starting with the Gulf War, and then they literally said, basically said,

things are so cool now. We don't need to take guys like you. And you'll never be, and they said, and here's how not qualified you are. We could have a draft. We could go to World War III and there could be a draft.

We're still not going to take you. We'll take your father before. That's he said i'm like and it happens to be the same surgical procedure that chris kyle you know the american sniper oh yeah great chris kyle yeah he uh he had the same thing but he was a slightly a few years later than me and he was also a little bit more motivated maybe a little more resourceful because he just went to a different recruiting office and lied about it. But they got my medical record, so I couldn't. They actually saw my medical record

because I didn't really mention that I had it. So you were training military people or something like that you were saying? Or I don't know where we left off. The self-worth. Yeah, no. The self-worth. Oh, yeah. Or military people were training you.

Oh, thank you. There we go. Okay. So thanks. This Go Rock thing is kind of like where these special forces guys will come to your town, your city or whatever, and you will meet them. And most of us are civilians or ex-military. And you can choose either 12 hours, 24 hours, or what was the other one? The heavy?

It's like 48 hours. Yeah. I was just looking at it. And. You have three different levels. How much weight you got? 40, a minimum of 40 pounds in the pack damn so it looks like five plus hours 10 to 12 and then 24 i've never done i've never

done one i've never just gone like i've gone on i guess like a mile walk with a 20 pound vest okay and i haven't done like well that's significant yeah i haven't done anything like brutal like that it seemed like it would be kind of great to, it seemed like great cardio training. It was, it was some, it was something that I was doing as a kind of fuck you to my cancer. It was a few years out and that was 2016. So it was about three years after I had a cancer.

And yeah, so I did that. But in training for that, I was also training with another guy, a client who thought, Hey man, cause I was walking this mountain that was near, I would go to his house and he lived at the base of this pretty good sized mountain that, and we'd walk up the road and his thing was just

to get up to the three miles up the mountain. And the top of the mountain was, it took about five miles to get to the top. And so over a course of a few months, excuse me, we, um, to get to the top. And so over a course of a few months, excuse me, we worked him from one mile, two miles. And we got up to the day we made that, what we call the summit parking lot.

There's a parking lot at the top. It was a big day. And I was happy. He was happy. We were just sort of hugging and kissing each other. And then all of a sudden, that literally after that day, he stopped. Like a few days later, he said, man, you know, I'm sorry. I got a meeting I got to go to and I can't see you.

And literally, basically, he stopped. And I could not understand that. And quickly thereafter, he kind of went right back to where he was after months and months of this. And back then, I was much younger. I didn't understand. Why, man? But I just had to move on. But I've seen now with many, many clients. I was much younger back then.

Well, not that much younger, but even before that, you've all seen these guys that do so well. And they're obsessed. They're into it. They're happy. They look great. We've had people on the show lose like 100, 150 pounds and then gain it all back and then lose it again and then gain it all back again. Right, right. And I think what Dr. Lyons was referring to in that, I think what really has to change is that the psychology behind their foundation. Because if that doesn't change,

I think, yeah, if people think, oh, I just need a different diet, I need a different program, I need a different gym or new clothes or something but i think the software has to be overwritten somehow it's rare that you get like a david goggins you know who just goes a complete other direction and like he just smashed the shit out of himself because he knows if he doesn't do that that he's gonna maybe well he's i think he's fearful they might revert back to bad habits so he just wants to lean into it, lean into it, lean into it. And that's why I have to do what I do every day. Because like I said, even though I'm a trainer and that's all I've ever been,

I am very, I'm in a way lazy and I'm susceptible to myself. You don't want to leave that door just cracked open just a bit and miss a day of training. Maybe it will lead to two days of mistraining. Exactly. As soon as I gave myself that one day off, I mean, yeah, that's why it has to be every single day for me. And, you know, for a lot of other people, especially that use fitness as a means to an end, that's why these clients that I start, especially the newer clients that are having trouble, they said, man, or I'll get a lot of in the comments for some of my videos, hey, man, how do I start?

And then, or sometimes I'll, in a DM, you know, you can leave a voice response. So I'll ask, well, is this your first time starting? And they'll say, no, I'm 43, man. I've tried over and over. I said, so the question is, how do I stay? You don't have a problem with starting. It's how do you stay? How do you hang out?

And usually what it comes down to is they'll go to a boot camp with a friend or a group, a bunch of guys from the office. They all collectively get their asses beat. And then that's kind of fun. It's visceral and it's just a group party. But is that a sustainable model, and it's just a group party for, but is that a sustainable model? Both psychologically, endocrinologically, as well as just physically, can you sustain? Because to me, the only thing that's worked for me is being able to do this from the time I was a kid until now is the consistency of it. And that's why I said, hey man, you know, instead of this huge start, this sprint out of the gate, why don't you start the race by walking and then by jogging and also the mentality of every workout has to in some way exceed the previous one. I said, Yert, is that how you are? Every day you wake up, are you better at your job?

Even though you know exactly what you're doing, are you better at your job? Even though you know exactly what you're doing, are you better at your job every day you go to it? You know, some days you're tired. Some days you might didn't eat enough for breakfast or, you know, you got a bad email or, you know, your house, your car got stolen, whatever. You have to go with what you, you know, I try to build my clients program for the weakest day that they're going to have where, you know, that where they're most likely to say,

fuck, this day just sucks. You're not going to work out. Fuck that. I didn't go home and drink or smoke a joint. And, um, that's,

that's what I want. I want to build a system for them or at least present a concept for them where even on their worst day, they know they can still get after it. And it usually just starts with an accessible period of a piece of time that to a strong person might seem almost like why even bother with 10 minutes? I think fitness is a lot of times it's like not tangible. So you can't like see it sometimes.

Like if someone's told they're going to get paid $20 an hour, that kind of registers in their head and they're like, I'm going to work this many hours. You don't literally like, as far as I can think, there's not anyone who's literally getting paid like $20 per hour. They get paid later on, right? But fitness, especially fitness that's not effective or that is self-sabotaged a little bit is like having a job that's twenty dollars an hour but

you don't get the paycheck every two weeks like you would at work right and i think it gets to be frustrating for people so like i don't understand what's going on or they do put effort in and it doesn't have a result that they're expecting. Like it doesn't work as fast. It doesn't pay as much as they thought it was going to pay. It costs them more than they thought because it hurts. You know, they're kind of like, damn, I got pretty fucking sore from doing that jujitsu class. You know, it costs them a little bit more than they're kind of thinking. And I think that people are, they're pretty smart.

And they're like, I don't think any of this is for me. And so they just collapse and they just, they back pretty smart. And they're like, I need to, I don't, I don't think any of this is for me. And so they just collapse and they just, well, they back away from it. But if you can just stay in it for a little while, you stay connected to it for a little while, eventually you'll want to do it so much that there'll be a habit connected in there where it becomes something that you don't need to always rely on motivation and discipline to do it. You're going to find yourself just gravitating towards it because it makes you feel so good. Yeah, it should be self-sustaining in the sense that, you know, a lot of times the goal when people start training is, number one, is always seems to be to lose fat or to get in shape, whatever that is. It's a very vague, you know.

These goals always have to do with something that has to do with some kind of appearance or a performance. How about we're going to exercise today just to set your mind in the right spot? Well, that's where I'm going. To make you feel really good. Because my thing is before we get after those, and they seem basic, but I consider those rather lofty goals, losing weight, gaining muscle, or just getting in some kind of shape. The thing that I feel that first has to be in place

and that has been stopping them in the past is most people, like the 40-something-year-old guy who's started many times, there's always that thing in the back of their mind that, here goes another, I want to work with Bill. There's always that thing in the back of my mind that this is not going to really stick. Because the other 58 times I've tried it, it didn't. So there's always that thing. So the first thing that has to occur is their confidence

and their ability to show up every day. And that's why I tell them that's the goal, not the degree of how hard your workout is or even how fun it was. You just show up for yourself every day. What you do and how you do it and how well you do it, that'll depend on your day, the day that you've had and the day before. But you first need to know, like a lot of guys, they said, I never thought I could train or take care of myself for 30 consecutive days. And they might still have the same amount of body fat or whatever, but they've established

the trust in themselves. I sometimes like to use trust more than confidence because a lot of these guys don't trust that they can actually stick with anything for any period of time. When I started this thing, my whole thing in 2020, this whole, I had no intention of being on social media or having a following of people that I'm very grateful and, you know, I'm honored by. But I don't know if I told you guys, in 2020, after the GORUCK and all that, that's the years following, so probably 2016 and on, up until we locked down in March of 2020, that four-year period, things really went downhill for me a lot. My joints started getting – it almost felt like I was bone on bone in all of my joints.

And I was still trying to train like one hour, which I could kind of gut through, but I couldn't recover. It would take me four days to recover from what used to take me a day, a day and a half. And yet I kept trying to just push and push. I'd try to run hard. And, and I, so I was just stacking up one activity that I'm not recovering. And I was just, just beating myself into the ground. I became very kind of discouraged and I actually stopped training. And I was, by the time 2020 arrived, my clients, I'd tell my wife, my clients are training more than I am. Literally,

they're putting in more time and effort than I am. And I was feeling like kind of a farce, you know, I was giving them the best guidance and information that I had, but I wasn't, they say, walking my walk. I wasn't, you know, congruent with what I'm telling them they should be and what they should be doing. So when I started this whole thing, I started on YouTube. I don't even think they had TikTok or maybe, oh, I think they did. It was there. They did. But I had, to me, I thought that was like the dancing app. Yeah. The dancing app. And when my daughter suggested I start posting on TikTok, I think I'm not a pedophile, man. What are you telling me?

She's all, Daddy, he's not a pedophile. What are these girls younger than you shaking and twerking and all that shit? I'm not. I'm 50. What was I? 51 at the time? No, no, no. She's like, Dad, you know, no, it's not like that.

There's like Coca-Cola's on TikTok. And I'm like, anyway, so yeah, when I first started this thing for the first year, from April of 2020, well into 2021, all I was doing is literally my 10 minute workouts on an iPad mini. And I'm so not technical and I'm so not a social media guy, I was using an outdated iPad mini and I didn't even know that, what do you call the selfie camera? It's a much lower quality camera. So I was just facing, I would go out in my little strip on my yard and I'd face it out so I could see if I was actually in frame. And most of all my YouTube videos were filmed with that camera. That's why if you look at them, it looks like they were filmed in the 90s. I mean, it's just such a bad definition.

Whatever light happened to be available, that's where – and I used – Costco almond milk comes in these square box. That was my tripod. I'd put two here, one one here and then i'd prop my on a chair that's how kind of that's how much production value those videos had at the time but the third day i was doing that um literally i think the third day i started getting all my wife was like what is wrong with youtube and i I said, what do you mean? She says, all these things keep popping up. Wow.

And somehow that one of those videos got out like 30,000 views in an hour. I was like, well, I don't know. And then people started kind of leaving me comments. And I was at a very low point. Just so you guys know, I couldn't do a proper pull-up back in 2020. I like, you know, what you see me doing now i had to use you know the same handles you saw snap off well those are what i was using i could only go with a neutral grip and i just had to kind of nurse my way up to a pull-up yeah and my push-ups

both hurt everything was just bad but i started so honestly ask me, how do I motivate myself? And I'm not necessarily trying to push that you be a social media guy. But for me, one of the most motivating things for me was those comments that I got from people. Yeah, stuff like that, I think. And maybe that was as high as I could go on that day. I don't know. Is that the speed? Like,

like that's, that's, that's cause I, if I slow the speed down, I will in big capital letters, I'll put slow motion or, or fast, whatever,

you know, time lapse. So I was just, and the reason why I was going at that speed is if I went any faster, it hurt. So that's another reason why I was going slow in the beginning to accommodate whatever limitations I had in my joints. But my intention was just, and I started poaching those for my clients who are also at home, they're drinking and eating and not doing much. And one guy said, well, are you doing this?

And I said, kind of. He said, okay, why don't you post what you do on YouTube, send me the link, and then I won't do what you're doing, but I'll do my workout. He didn't, but it got me going. And the comments I got from just people from not only just around the world, that was very inspiring for me. They said, hey, thanks. That was kind of cool.

Are you going to keep doing this? And so I started doing 10 minutes every day because I was in a very bad space as well. I didn't have a lot of exercise tolerance. See, this is how I didn't even edit this part out. I was just. Just went for it. You hit record and then go. Yeah.

I would just, and just walk away. And then when I'm done with whatever the hell I was doing, I would, I'll just walk, come back in and, and, and just turn my camera off. What matters is can someone learn something from it? Can they see it enough to learn something from it? That's really, can they hear it clearly enough to learn something from it? That's all you really need on any of these forms of social media. Yeah.

So I was, um, so that's how, and then like I said, my daughter, then it was weird. I didn't know, like I said,

I didn't know what Tik TOK or Instagram was. I only had Facebook at the time. And, um, I just started noticing that after literally after a year and I didn't talk, I didn't start talking on social media for a year and a half because I was so staged. Your voice is super pleasing, by the way. I heard people talk about yours. Yeah.

Like, yeah. Strange things happen after women listen to someone's voice for sure, yeah. Just got to stay quiet. So coming from you, that means a lot. But yeah. I noticed that there's like for people that are a little gun shy that are listening, I've noticed the same thing with other people that have developed huge followings on social media. Like Adriel.

Yeah, right. I love that guy. He doesn't talk in front of the camera, and he did a great job on our podcast. Nick Bear, he now talks more in videos, and you see him on YouTube and stuff, but most of what Nick posts, if you look on Instagram, he doesn't really, it's rare that he talks,

and if he does talk, it's usually like a voiceover, and he's more comfortable with some of that. But he's, I mean, I think people are so scared to start, and they have these reasons on why they're not starting. But just get started. It doesn't matter if your camera's crappy. It doesn't matter if you don't know what you're doing and you've got a subpar almond milk setup or whatever the hell it was.

I even took a picture of my setup. As things started kind of taking off, I thought, one day people might want to see how this all started. That's great. Yeah, but going back to that motivation thing and using social media as your motivator, like having the people say, hey, man, and like just the guys, you know, they said that I inspire them.

Casey and was it Kenny? Yeah, Kenny. Jack Kenny. Who's the young lady who's getting ready for her show? Sam. Yeah. You know, they say those nice things like how my videos inspire them. And well, those comments and those people, they inspire me more than they can possibly imagine

and not collectively yeah when i hit you up you were all fired up you're like what you responded back with a voice thing and you were like really like you're contacting me i don't understand why so i was because i see the caliber of people you bring on your show and i'm like oh my god how but anyway yeah but for people that want i've had some of my clients that have these social media channels and that started doing this and they post every day and they might not be getting tons of followers but they they throw down every day and i can see they're putting this heart and soul into what they're doing. And that, I got my brother. My brother's a long-haul trucker.

And I got him posting on interesting things he sees when he's driving. Because it's kind of a lonely life that, you know, he'll go weeks without seeing his wife. And yet. And now there's interaction. There's people comment he's got followers and you know uh yeah so um shout out to at john maeda but um yeah he uh it's it's just to me i know there's a lot of criticism of social media both the amount of time that people spend or say waste on it and the way they spend time and the content they consume. And it's just like anything else,

you know, like I was in a dark place in 2020 before the lockdown. And it's, I almost feel bad saying this, but the, as I started doing this and started getting the engagement from this community on all the platforms that I got, it elevated me. And in a way, it saved me. I don't think people talk about this side of it enough.

There's a lot of positive things. Oh, the comments that people leave and the DMs I get. And there's the good, the bad and the ugly in there. But I appreciate – even if you leave me, you want to give me some shit. There's a lot of TRT and steroid. Not as much anymore but in the beginning, it was like every third comment was steroids, growth hormones, PEDs. And that's – to me, that's fair. If you're going to do what I'm doing, you know, some old guy running around in his underwear, flexing

and social media, if you can't take that, then maybe I don't belong on it. And I, and I answer them. I try to give them, you know, a nice, an honest answer. I, my big thing is, you know, I'm not going to lie on, on any of the questions they ask me, what's your diet? My diet is this loco moco thing that you just saw. Loco mocos are good. Right, yeah. Or breakfast croissant today because I didn't plan my shit properly. You couldn't find any spam.

I couldn't find any spam, yeah. I'm in Sacramento. Shit's good. Yeah. But yeah, it just kind of developed a little organically. But the point I'm trying to make is if people, another avenue for motivation, if you can't find it for some reason inside, because like I said, I was not, I was literally prior to the pandemic, I was in a way grateful it occurred. a pandemic, I was in a way grateful it occurred because I told my wife at the time, like I was wanting to just shut my business down. I was feeling, I was depressed. I didn't feel, I felt like kind of a sham or a farce to my clients. Sorry, clients, if you're watching this, but anyway, um, and it elevated me. It really did. And it wasn't just, you know, people complimenting me. It was,

um, you know, you realize how many other people are out there in a similar space, if not worse. And, and they're telling me, Hey man, I'm, uh, this is helping me out a lot. And what better way to help yourself? I think that I know that you're helping others. I think that's, What better way to help yourself, I think, than to know that you're helping others. I think that's the way I'm trying to use the social media is to engage with people and provide for them. Before, my content was kind of selfish. It was just like, okay, this is my workout. Check it out and whatever. Now I'm realizing that there's a certain responsibility that I have to these people that are kind enough to give any seconds of their life to engage with my content that, you know, I would like them to leave after watching a few of my videos with some kind of a takeaway, a value that I hope will transcend or multiply itself outside of that time that they invested or wasted, whatever, on my social media content.

What do you think was leading to you not feeling so good and being depressed? You know, I felt like, okay. You did mention not working out, but what led you to not want to work out? You did mention not working out, but what led you to not want to work out? Constantly feeling tired, constantly everything hurting because I was spoiled. My body has always done exactly what I've told it to do. And then honestly getting diagnosed, I told you guys I was a little over myself with my ego, but I had a lot of, when I was diagnosed at 42, I still had a lot of work to do. I've had people say, hey, man, I looked at your initial, your old kettlebell videos that you were posting in 2007

when I was certifying for the RKC. 2007 and 2000 when I was uh certifying for the RKC and those videos the way I walk up to the camera and the way you can see the asshole in me I mean you just can the way my body language and everything else there's a guy that thinks a little bit too much of himself at the same time if you knew really how I actually felt in but I'm thinking man I got a project I'm an RKC or I'm going for either I'm going for the RKC or I've got a I've got the RKC now and back then that was kind of like a pretty elite kind of spooky certification again and I was kind of fooling myself on that. But as I started to – after the cancer, number one, I was thinking, I got cancer. I got clients that are obese.

They eat cake and ice cream. They smoke and they drink. They live – some of them do kind of harder stuff. How come I got cancer? And it wasn't like, why me? Because I never think that it should happen to somebody else. But I was just surprised because if you saw the amount of money I've spent on my food, on my supplements, because I might eat a lot of junk, but I try to eat good junk, high-quality junk.

So I was just a little disillusioned by that. And then when I got through it, I'm like, okay, cool. I'm through this. Let's just carry on. That didn't happen. My body, there was like, I thought like everything else that I've done and screwed up on in the past, I could screw up with this, that, or whatever,

and somehow get away with it. And it didn't seem like that was. So now I'm realizing, oh, wait a minute. Oh, I felt like I had been living a charmed life, like some god had touched me and said, okay, everything's cool. No matter what you do, you can't fail. And then all of a sudden I lost favor with that god or whatever it was. And like all my power was taken away from me. And being a kind of having a lot of this stuff come relative,

because I enjoyed it, it seemed to have come easily to me. And now everything that I enjoyed was like it was for everyone else. It was hard and it sucked. And it wasn't paying me back. All I had was pain and dysfunction. And I didn't seem to be feeling or looking any better. And it seemed the harder I pushed myself, the worse things got. And because I didn't have the character at the time

to understand what was going on and how to deal with it, you know, my ego just kept saying, well, you got to push harder than you got to go more. And in the past that would work. And now that was actually working against me. It was pretty i'm a little hard-headed that's why it took me almost two years to go in for a stomach thing um that's when i and then finally when the pandemic came i think i digressed from when i was when the pandemic came and i was already think with lockdown i should say uh on hawaii it was actually I told my wife, in a way, this is kind of good because a lot of businesses are going to fail across the board. So I can now close my place without the shame and the stigma.

You know, I can kind of, it's like a big smoke screen now. And I was actually relieved because I had an out, you know, for my business without looking like a failure to my clients at least and um yeah so mostly it was I had I still had a lot of work to do with reality and my ego and that's where I finally had to say okay that was i'd never had to go so basic as 10 minutes but literally the 10 minutes that i posted every single day for over 365 days that was that became kind of like my thing because then as i progressed into the months i'm compressing a good amount of work like kettlebell cleaning cleaning jerks with heavy jump rope like one

minute of cleaning jerks one minute of jump rope and i was really getting good workouts in that 10 minutes i was thinking damn you can get a lot of work done in 10 minutes too it's not just but before it started it was very baby steps and i had to check my ego and just say and not take anything to failure because that clearly wasn't working for me. So I had to stop everything early and the goal was don't be sore the next day. It's kind of the very opposite of everything I was taught and what seems to be out there always was, no, if you're too sore to do 10 minutes tomorrow,

then you've kind of fucked up today. And so that was kind of a, what do they call that, a paradigm shift for me. You know, the really cool thing is that for most people, I mean, as they age, you become more in tune with your body and you naturally maybe slow things down a bit to figure out what you can do. And it kind of will turn into a practice. And I was thinking about this when you were mentioning that you don't call it a workout, you call it practice. Because when I was a kid and we played soccer, it wasn't our soccer workout. It was our soccer practice, just what we did.

And we didn't practice so hard that we couldn't go to practice the next day because we were practicing five or six days a week. Basketball players go to basketball practice. Athletes go to practice. But for some reason, when we look at the gym, we look at it as a workout. You know what I mean? But if you reframe this whole workout thing into just your daily practice, it's now a habit and you now got to figure out what can you do. So it's your habitual practice that you can do every single day. And that's what you morphed it into. Yeah. And I like to call it a practice just so that if somebody else might want to emulate

or try a similar application into their workouts, because to me when you're practicing something, you're focusing more on the nuances of how to do it well, do it properly, rather than making the weight or the reps. Because a very common question every day, I'll post an exercise, and without fail there will always be a comment, how many sets and how many reps? And it's understandable.

But I try to get people to understand, hey, it's not about that. It varies. I'm not you or you're not me, and we're going to have how much weight, how much background you have, basic and otherwise. There's countless variables that would not make any answer I give that relevant. So that's why I just like people to focus more on the practice of how they apply their breathing to what they're doing and another thing that i really really try to push is more important to me than being strong is being bilaterally balanced ambidextrous yeah like yeah i you know um that is, I would rather be 50%, 60% strong,

but equally on both sides of my body and also front to back. And then, you know, really strong on one side and kind of not that strong on the other. People say, hey, how do you prevent injuries at years? Why aren't you sore? When I was very young, I think I got my first heavy bag when I was 14. And I started, and I'd never had a heavy bag before. And I always thought I had a pretty good punch. And I could not believe how inept my left, because I'd never really be able to hit something hard with either hand.

So when I actually punched that heavy bag on the left, I couldn't believe how the difference. And then I started working with some guys that were saying, hey, man, what are you going to do if you punch someone? And it's very likely you're going to break your hand in a street fight if you hit someone really hard and it just doesn't, you just land it. What do you got after that? And I was thinking, oh, not much.

So that's where I first became aware of the value of being ambidextrous was just for survival in a fight. But then it became more of like if you look at your arms, your legs, and your neck, these are like the avenues or the roads by which the gravitational force of this planet enters your body before you lift something unless you're, you know, you usually have to grab it. And I like to have, I use the analogy of if you had a brand new car, everything is perfect on it. Yeah. But you sat on the, you drive on the driver's side and

you only allow people to sit behind you and you can only load the left side of the trunk and then you drive that brand new car around for a year how what do you think the wear and tear it's a brand new car yeah and you didn't overload it you know it's not like you're putting people but all the gravity entering that car is only entering on one side. How is that car going to wear over a year? So with my clients, them being ambidextrous, not just in terms of strength but in ability, you might have seen recently in a pumpkin video I had a knife. recently in a pumpkin video I had a knife that um it's a butterfly knife that um I flicked out as kind of uh yeah that thing um when I was at there's a lot of comments on that video regarding that knife and it was just a little you know a little showmanship just to make the video a little bit more fun. But, you know, I used to have a pair of those as a teenager.

And, you know, they have fidget spinners now. Well, that was my fidget spinner as a teenager. My mom, you know, the things that she had to, I guess, get used to as normal, I was always walking around with butterfly knives and just constantly. Now that I'm a parent, I'm realizing how aberrant a child. My mom just had to go through

some really weird shit with me. But people say, that was just an add device that was you know it was a very satisfying piece of you know sort of like racking a shotgun just that knife just it's a heavy stainless steel yeah yeah so that's all it was i'm not a knife fighter some deadly guy it was just an add toyD toy for me. And yeah. You know, also another cool thing that was kind of glazed over, you mentioned it, but you were talking about the movement that

Mark was showing in the gym where like you were using the cable and pushing over, but then you talked about how you slowed it down and you thought about the muscles that were operating as you were doing the movement. And one thing that you see a lot, you see this, especially with guys who were talking about bodybuilding training or loading a muscle group. And they say, Oh, you know, it doesn't, it's all that matters is the mechanical tension that that load puts on the muscle. And you just got to move that. You just got to move the load. It doesn't matter what you do, that mind muscle connection or thinking about what's moving. It's not a big deal. But I think, you know, you see all the wild stuff that you're able to do on your page. And an aspect of that is you're really thinking of what is doing, what is moving.

You're not just like moving things. You're not just doing things. There's actual thought behind the muscles that are activating and working towards what you're doing. Yeah, you know, and that's why I like rotational movements because that was a very rotational arcing movement. And I like those because those reveal quickly where and, you know, people, they have stuff like that because people ask, well, what muscles are you using? Or I could not tell you which ones or what order I'm going to recruit them on. I'm only responding to where I feel I'm losing my balance. Right?

It's an interesting question what muscle are you using because you wouldn't really ask it in sport. It would be really rare. Yeah. Like if you threw a kick at a bag, it wouldn't be like, hey, what muscle is it? Oh, I'm supposed to squeeze my glute when I throw this kick? You'd be like, no, dude, what are you talking about?

It's a kind of, yeah, so sometimes I don't mean to be a smartass with the answer, but sometimes I might say, well, what muscles aren't I using? Because it seems to me a little, yeah, you know, I'm like, I don't know. And like, you know, what Mark was showing me on that cable machine, all I could respond to was, once again, where I feel my base starting to slip or be compromised.

Like as I'm trying to pull this thing, I'm literally feeling my foot externally rotate into the outer edge of my shoe. So first I'm like, okay, I got to use – wait until that stops. And now I got that bracing against the outer aspect of my shoe to anchor upstream. But until that stops, I can't pull faster because I don't know where I'm going to – I don't have anything to brace against. So from there now, I'm like, okay, now as I started bringing it out here, and I was also trying to lengthen the lever of my arm, I'm noticing, oh,

I'm now starting to, so I had to lower myself into my legs. So it's responsive. I can't plan that. It's just, and until I have, and I can, and there were several stops, and until I can hold that, and then, okay, am I really holding this or am I leaning against this? And I think I'm good because if I'm leaning, then I can't move out of there because once I move more, I'm going to fall. So I have to actually be in control of that. And then I can actually move as far as I could into that. But it's reactionary and it's just based on sensing where I am,

I guess, stable and loss of balance might be interchangeable in this sense. But yeah, if I'm not feeling stable, if I'm not feeling I am properly stacked over myself, then I'm not going to proceed. And if I couldn't with that load, then at whatever range of motion i was at that was

the rep you know if i can get out to here where mark was getting then cool but if maybe here's where i can and i'm not going to try well mark did this so you know and then just jump into that just to be you know yeah yeah i'm not i'm not interested it's just the best of what i can do and that's a that's what a lot of what we're doing in terms of training. And that's something that I noticed from you and your page is like, yeah, there are times I'm trying to remember. I haven't seen a lot of isolation stuff. But a lot of the stuff you're doing is incorporating whole body movement into one thing like that, that ring thing you were just doing. There is a lot going on there. And many of the movements you were just doing there is a lot going on there and many of

the movements you're doing there is stability and maybe there's a concentration on doing a push-up on a kettlebell with the handle on the ground but there's so much stabilization going on everywhere else that it's not just a chest movement there's also probably not i'm imagining probably not isolation just because again of the time domain in which you work, right? Yeah. And, you know, the reason why you won't see a lot of isolation on my thing is because rarely, especially, and I'll always go back to, especially my somewhat recent re-entry into jiu-jitsu, very little of what is required there is an isolated application jiu-jitsu is always like you say you're trying to get a like well the way i might try to get a guy off of me is to try and

bridge on one leg and roll them off yeah which is a system you know there's a there's a lot of things going on with that so um to me for the applications of and just movement in general i like you said for time constraints and things like that i don't um i don't really do a lot of isolated move i think the most isolated movement i might have done in the past where is taking a kettlebell and doing an extension but I'll do it when I'm on my knees. So like the quads, there's like what you'll see an isolated movement here, but the,

what I'm really focusing on is the position of my rib cage and keeping the platform below my elbows, keeping all that together because the potential for me to go backwards, if that falls apart is, you know, is there. I think the biggest thing with weight training is just to make sure it's not a hindrance of the main thing that you want to do or the thing that you want to perform well in. So if it's jujitsu or you want to be a great football player or whatever it is, it's great

to lift weights. It has great application. and even if you isolate stuff that's not a bad idea but sometimes if you do a lot of isolation exercises you're probably going to make yourself pretty sore which is probably going to negatively impact your running for football the next day for you to work on being faster or for you to work on specific drills that can also make you better and you're probably better off incorporating stuff that kind of works the full body a little bit more, but it's still not to say that like a leg press or, or a machine shoulder press, we're not trying to say that these things have no utility and that

you should never do them. Um, what I've been proposing just for a while now is like, I don't know, 10, 20%. You mentioned the ball in the box. I thought that was a really wonderful explanation. And maybe for someone that wants to dive more into these refining movements rather than just like particular lifts, I guess you'd say, maybe they can switch the percentage around whatever way they want. But that ball in the box I thought was a really good introduction because you're trying to fill in those kind of triangles with a lot of the movement you're doing. Right, those little corners.

Now, going back to the isolated movements, something that I heard on one of your podcasts was that same guy who did the 50-inch drop off the box, was that the guy that also likes to warm up before that with isometric lockout on the leg extension machine? Yeah. I thought that was brilliant. I love stuff like that. I could totally see, you know, because yeah, people shit talk the leg extension machine

a ton and it's real popular to do. But, you know, I do kind of something similar. It's more a little homegrown where i'll put a rebox step on an i posted that recently where i'm using that tibia trainer as a leg extension device and more and i tend to hold and i'll lock out that that position in the quad activation yeah it is yeah and i'm also getting this so So I'm getting a nice isometric stretch of the or engagement of my tibialis muscle in the lengthened position.

Andrew, I think it's maybe one that's a little later, more recent than that, where the Reebok step is there's a sandbag underneath it. Oh, yeah, yeah. I had that one pulled up earlier. I'll find it. Yeah, I think so. That's right.

And I kind of get us, and I was like, oh, I don't have access to a leg extension machine, but I was kind of happy that a guy that was as high level as he was, that he actually uses that, you know, as a, yeah, because I thought that's, yeah. I just love how smart and intuitive people are like that kid you know jumping like a maniac we could all just say oh it's just genetics or he likes basketball so he's able to do that or whatever and i'll never be able to do that but he is intuitive and he's smart and he's very thoughtful and when i asked him why he does it he's like it warms up my knees i I was like, that is just so simple.

Right. But it makes a ton of sense. There you go. There's the exercise. That's it. That's it. So can I step away for just a second? I'll be right back.

I want to grab something that, before I forget. Yeah, go for it. I'll be right back. Look at the tibs on that guy. Wow. You know what they say about big tibs. You just hear the laugh in the background. Oh, man.

It does seem like we're speaking to Encima of the future, though. Dog, that's why I told y'all. Bill is the fucking man. It's super encouraging because it's like a lot of the stuff that he's talking about we've been doing you know and then what do you got here to keep doing it penis pump it's actually right behind him you know i'm i know i'm gonna forget link in description best time to to do this but if i don't do this i'm sorry if I don't do this, I'm sorry. If I don't do this now, I'm going to forget to.

Hold on. What's happening? I don't know. I hope he came with some food or something. Yo, you got to try spam with sous vide. You know, I, let's see, 2000 and maybe 2010? Yeah, about 12 years ago, maybe more. I took an entrepreneur course.

And this lady, her name is, a shout out to Daneen Dashefsky. She's in Hawaii. She had this entrepreneur course that she held, and she actually brought in people from China that were, like, actually, you know, connected to factories and, you know, maybe a lot of the people that, you know, from manufacturing. And part of the course was she said, you know, this is not your normal entrepreneur course where we're just going to talk about, you know, how to solve people's problems for profit and then I'm going to let you go. She says, you actually have to make something in this course. That's why I brought these designers and these factory people here. And, you know, the parameters are it should be kind of something that doesn't have a lot of parts. It's kind of – it's not expensive to ship, not too bulky, and kind of a simple thing. But I want you to at least get something started by the end of this.

It was just a weekend course. And I had always wanted – I'd searched on the internet. I even paid on eBay $143 for a mini kettlebell from Estonia. And I went to a bidding war with this person at three in the morning. I woke up and I got in some bidding war with some other psycho over this little thing. It was probably a sewing weight, but it looked, it was a mini kettlebell. Even had that kind of cone shaped divot underneath that the old school kettlebells used to have, like the real Russian ones.

And so I won that thing and I was like, yeah, I paid $100 for this. My wife was like, you're so stupid. But anyway, after that course, I talked with some of the designers and I went back and forth with a factory in China for, oh gosh, several months. And because I had always wanted a kettlebell,

a more conventional looking kettlebell paperweight. And I wanted a one pound mini kettlebell. And the first design, I described to them what I wanted. And they sent me a, I wish I had a picture of it. This thing with a huge looping handle. Imagine a diamond ring. Okay. So – and I should have been a little bit more specific.

But what they did is they made me a one-pound mini kettlebell, but that was actually supposed to be – so they basically made a handle with a little like a pimple on it yeah a little bit like it probably would have been better as like a little nubby brass knuckles yeah because they literally were making it so i'm not okay no no no i'm sorry so i literally had to outline like draw them a scale so anyway this the product. This was the result of that. Wow. You can train with these. This literally is one pound and it's made

to what I thought was proper scale. Andrew, I got one for you as well, brother. Yeah, yeah. But anyway... This is so sick. Isn't that funny? So this is the... There you as well brother yeah yeah so um but anyway um this is so sick isn't that funny so this is the there you go brother thank you right on and um this finger blast and that's it

and you know i was afraid because i um i only came here with a backpack with my clothes in it i didn't do any check-in and you know I had four of these in my bag. And, you know, when I went to TSA, they, I was thinking, fuck, I hope they don't think this. Sure enough, I see my bag stop and think. They're looking at it. They're looking at it. And then they pull it. And this, and, you know, it's all local guys working there.

And the guy's all, whose backpack is this? I said, me. He's all, can you open that up? And then he looks at me and goes, bro, you on Instagram? Yes. Let's go. I'm like, yeah. He's like, bro, hey, you're the guy that does all the, I'm like.

And then he starts calling over like all these stern-faced TSA, right? He calls, hey, bro, this is the guy. And he's like, hey, that's the guy. Instantly, whatever issue they had, because they were looking at those. They kind of look like grenades or at least something you could swing. And you could tie something to that. You could do some damage. But that, I had four TSA guys fist bumping.

They're just like, bro, I follow you on TikTok, bro. So anyway. Dude, thank you. This is so cool. Isn't that kind of funny? Yes. Little kettlebell swings back here. Yeah.

And I recently received from my buddy, Andrew Lewis, shout out to Total Fitness usa and honolulu but he gave me i think the biggest kettlebell that you can conventionally get i think rogue makes a 203 pound kettlebell i've seen i saw one in yeah we have one here yeah i don't know and i know it's over two't know exactly. Yeah. It's looking as a 203 pound kettlebell. So I think I've got the biggest and the smallest kettlebell now. And so do you guys now. Yeah. No one else has it.

This is for you. Yeah. Now it's funny. I, when we were working with a factory, you know, they had us, they sent us all this stuff.

Like I had to pay for the mold. Uh huh. And then we sign all these documents saying okay this is exclusive to your account only the factory well you go look on amazon or whatever ebay um uh alibaba you will see this exact same product that got pirated up there you can get pink yeah so if anybody sees this and they want one, don't come. These are the originals though.

This is the first. We had to order 4,000 in order to get the, so I split the order with another guy. So he bought 2,000 and I bought 2,000. So this was the original first pouring of that mold back in about 12 years ago now so every time you tune into the podcast you're gonna see it right there in front of jesus yeah so um jesus is getting ready to do a kettlebell swing that's what's happening you can do your uh finger swings i i've shown those on on

i sometimes just to kind of mess with people i would have them in the background of some of my videos. And people would ask about them. There's always got to be some guy that has to make a comment. Can I do swings? Would that help with my... Yeah.

And you guys are, real quick, you guys are a carnivore, right? For the most part. I got some meat for you. are, real quick, you guys are a carnivore, right? Well, for the most part. Yeah, we eat a lot of meat. Okay, well, I got some meat for you. Oh, wow. Yeah, this place is called Snack Addicted. They're in Hawaii.

This is beef chips. Yeah, this is all stuff you guys can just pass that around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, and see, you want to save some for me. Don't worry, Andrew. I'll save some for you. You know, my daughter. Green dragon.

Yeah. Apparently, that's a green dragon. Trader Joe's apparently has a green dragon sauce. It's supposed to be in Hawaii. Certain things catch on. Maybe the mainland might not. Oh, yeah. Hawaiian beef jerky is like crispy, right?

It is crispy. Yeah. And even my nine-year-old daughter who doesn't really eat this stuff, she maxed this. She loves this stuff. Oxtail soup beef chips. That's it. That's the one. That's the one.

That's the one. My older daughter, that's her. This one's like a brisket, right? Yep. Oxtail soup. I lost it in the light. I was like, ah! Wow.

What did you give me? What did I get? Spicy something. Why'd you give me the spicy one? You don't like, I mean, I would have assumed you like spicy. Yeah, so they're all good. Crunchy. Bill, we got to ask you this, right?

Yes, sir. That's really good. Well, before I take a bite, your lower back, you mentioned that while we were in there, and I think this would help a lot of people because you mentioned that you used to have some lower back pain, and there are aspects of your training that fix that over time. Yes. Okay. Number, when I was much younger, like 40s, I think I got RKC certified at about age 40.

So even in my late 30s, I was kind of training for that. And there were some days I would just throw my back out. You like that? I love oxtail in general. Right on. So this really tastes like oxtail. It's fucking amazing. Okay, well, hey,

I just wanted to just bring a few samples. We'll send you more. This bison was actually fucking incredible. Oxtail in a crock pot works really well. It's real easy.

Yeah, we instant pot that thing. It's real easy. Yeah, we instant pot that thing. It's just easy. Yeah, I love that instant pot, by the way. But yeah, you know, my back in my late 30s into my early 40s, and then, you know, I also found out that having intestinal or gut cancers in your, one of the symptoms can be lower back issues.

But, um. Oh, you just killed the camera. Imagine when a camera died. Yeah, I'll fix it. Power Project family, how's it going? Now, we know that strength starts from the floor, which is why we want you guys to build strong feet. That's why we partnered with Vivo Barefoot Shoes,

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So if you're interested in checking them out, head to vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject. And at checkout, use the code POWERVIVO20 to save yourself 20% off your entire purchase. Enjoy the episode. No worries. Guys, yeah, eat. A lot of times. I'm saying one of the symptoms

of having your stomach worked on or surgery. Yeah, well, after the cancer and I got through all the chemotherapy, I was as weak and as, sorry, but fucked up as I could ever be. But I didn't, a lot of people didn't realize that. Like, gee, Billy, I can't believe you had cancer and chemotherapy. You look just the same. And, you know, the whole time I was, even when I was in chemo and the thick of it,

I was holding 210 pounds. I was wondering about that. You held the weight. I held the weight the whole time, and they couldn't believe it because usually, you know, normally that just eats you up. But I was doing kettlebell snatches. For some reason, kettlebell snatches was about the only thing I wanted to do and felt right. And I didn't want to train so hard because I felt like they were saying, yeah, you can train while you're on this stuff. But I felt like I'd just be pushing that stuff deeper into my physiology. So I wasn't really

interested in doing that much. But anyway, coming out of the chemo, I actually kind of felt worse. And I, cause I used to wonder like when I was on chemo, there were some days I felt really good, especially when they'd take that pump off of me. I later learned that there were steroids, but certain anti- or steroidal components in the chemo are added to it to just prevent muscle wasting. I thought I'm like, look at me, I'm Mr. Anabolic. But no, they actually were putting steroids in there. So I guess technically, if you ask me, I'd have to say, yes, I have taken steroids, but not of my own accord.

And but it did really make me feel quite relatively strong despite what was going on. feel quite relatively strong despite what was going on. But once that stopped and all of that kind of worked its way out, then I really felt, and my back was, I couldn't do, I remember trying to lie on the floor and do a leg raise, and I couldn't. It was the hardest thing. My legs felt like just tree trunks. I just was amazed.

My legs felt like just tree trunks. I just was amazed. And so fast-forwarding to your question and how this asymmetrical stuff, I've always liked the way the obliques looked, even when I was back in the early 90s. And, you know, I say I wasn't a bodybuilder, but that doesn't mean I wasn't into bodybuilding. Remember, like, Gary Stratum, Flex Wheeler, all of those guys, Lee Haney. To me, the only thing that made a guy look ripped,

I didn't really care what the – if they had really shredded, defined obliques, everything else on them could suck. To me, they still look great. And I didn't really understand the function of them at the time, but there was something about that. And then, you remember Rocky IV?

How can I forget? Right, okay. Dolph Lundgren. There were certain, during those fight scenes where you would see him throwing that punch in slow motion and all I remember was looking at this thing. It was clear that whatever heat he was bringing to Stallone, that was coming through his obliques. Yeah, they both had like shredded serratus muscles. Between the two of them and even when Stallone put his arm up at the end order,

that's all I could look at. And I was just like, damn, I want those. So it was more for aesthetics at first. And there's just something that looked powerful about that. I never, ever cared about the six pack musculature.

And if, yeah. and just when, um and then i kind of started doing yeah you see those obliques on these guys man that to me i think if you have obliques you don't even even have a six-pack if you have obliques your abs look shredded, and you look strong. I just felt it look strong. And I never cared about that blocky look that everybody's afraid of. I remember there's a guy named Rich Gaspari. Remember him?

Yeah. Oh, shit. And I remember he was a shorter guy, and he had maybe a blockier waist, or Franco Colombo. But I didn't care about that necessarily, that wasp-waisted, pretty. I mean, I like that thick, strong-looking, oblique look. You look protected. You do. It looks like armor.

And literally some people on the comments would say, what is that armor on the side? And I love that comment. I'm like, oh, thank you. on the side and i love that comment oh thank you um but when i would grapple or when i and i'm always on the bottom getting my ass kicked i would always find that there was some kind of a twisting thing that i had to do in order to somehow at least survive a little longer and um so when we went to lockdown and i think I was also telling you guys, a lot of this, the evolution of these single arm and asymmetrical things, I was doing variations

of them in my office in between clients for years before, because I'm not so smart, creative that I can just come up with this during a pandemic. The basis for that training was like all of these, what I would call a fulcrum lift. I was doing that a long, long time before just no one ever knew it. Cause you know, I told you I was pretty shy about just talking and I was just putting those videos up was scary for me, but I did probably 15 or more, almost 20 years of just anonymous training in my office that no one ever knew about. I'd come home and tell my wife,

I had a good workout, but who gives a fuck because no one ever will see it. No one will ever know what I did. And that's another thing that was kind of bummed me out is like, I didn't have, I wanted to share stuff, but I wasn't sure if it was worth sharing. And then I didn't know.

Yeah. If anyone would be interested, but I'm anyway, going back to the oblique thing during the lockdown, I live in a small townhouse and there's not a lot of space for me to put weight plates and just stuff everywhere. So I was limited to how much weight I had. And I'm not a strong deadlifter,

but I didn't even have enough weight to deadlift. Yeah, there you go, some of those things. So I had to start getting creative with what I had. And I'm really, I've stated in some of my videos that if weight is the currency you pay for strength, I like to be a cheapskate. And I want to see what's the least amount I need to pay for the most amount of strength and ability. So basically, that's just my way of saying I like to see if I can take a light lightweight and somehow change the leverage or the mechanics or both so that it kicks my ass.

That's why I love those handles that you had that actually stretch before the weight even moves. So you're overcoming two levels of resistance at least. Yeah. So the suitcase thing and even the deadlift, single arm deadlift, I mean, people have been doing that. But a lot of that came from just not really having enough weight. Plus, I was a little bit bored. I also felt this is weird, but I get a lot of questions are, oh, either that's dangerous or have you ever hurt yourself doing that?

To me, if my back is sore, one of the last things I want to do is get trapped between an evenly loaded bar, either here or here, and then subject my back to that. I can have a not great back and put something on the side and it's okay. And I have kind of an escape hatch out the side here if i really am not going it's either i'm not going to be able to move it or i can bail but if i'm trapped here and there's something that's a little wants to twist out to turn or whatever i'm stuck same with here i'm i've got an evenly weighted weighted compressive load on me whereas if something's a little very offset like on this thing if it's too heavy i simply like i cannot do it like if i go put a 25 pound plate on the end of the bar and that goes up with a struggle

and it felt good put literally putting a five pound plate on that, it won't budge. So those things have built into them, at least for me, safety valves that it's either you can or you can't. That's why I put my hand on my head when people say, well, okay, I've seen people do side bends and this and that. Why do you always put your hand on your head? And I said, well, because it's sexy. No, I'm not kidding.

But I tell them the reason why I put that there is I found that if I just kind of go down and get that bar and my hand is just here and I'm having a little trouble, I can start leaning. But if I'm here, it opens. Number one, it exposes more of the oblique wall. And also, I can't really lean because the lever or the length of this opposite side is so long. It doesn't feel good to do that. It just keeps it more honest. And it just exposes you to much more of the muscle so you don't have to use as heavy as a weight on this side. So, yeah, it just, that hand on the head thing, it's not, if people don't want to do it, that's fine.

But I like to oftentimes whenever I'm loading on other exercise, I'll put that hand on the head just so I'm being as honest as I can with what I can do. When your hand's down by your side, you could actually kind of continuously like reach towards the floor and kind of bend a bunch that way. And it's almost natural to do that. Yeah. Whereas here, try do that. It just feels, you don't have any leverage to do it well. And once again, it allows me to get more out of a lighter weight.

Like if I just want to exhibit the most, being able to pick up the heaviest barbell off the side as I can, I'm not going to put my hand on my head. But I'm not at this point, I'm not really interested in that. And the lower back over, like, did you notice a change immediately after you started strengthening this area? Rather quickly. And, you know, one of my favorite comments,

the one that really makes me happy is how many people say, I've been doing traditional core workouts that were prescribed or shown to me for my low back pain or even certain injuries that I had. And it never really changed. And I've been kind of doing your stuff.

Well, not my stuff, but what because but what they see me doing and um it's made a difference or better yet it's made a difference for my dad or you know and um because a lot of times if you have some kind of an issue because there's not an actual articulation of the spine to the side, which I'm not a really big fan of doing. I like to do more anti-lateral flexion than lateral flexion stuff. That's just for me.

And here's what I tell them. Or one guy said, why does that, why does this stuff work? I mean, he said, it worked for me, but what happened? I said, well, everybody knows how to do crunches and leg raises and everything, you know, sit-ups for the anterior. We all do hyperextensions, reverse hypers, deadlifts, Romanians, whatever for the back. So if you imagine your midsection as, once again, a box, we have a box with here and here we have cardboard. Here and here we have wet cardboard. So if you put something in that box, it doesn't matter how dry and strong this cardboard and this cardboard is,

if it goes spilling out the sides of that box when you want to lift it up. So what this does is it, this is basically going after the sides of that box. It strengthens the capacity of the sides, the lateral. Sometimes I'll loosely refer to it as lateral core because it's more than just obliques. It's QL and a bunch of other things, right? But I don't like to use a lot of terminology. Number one, I'm not a real physio guy. I just know what I know from – I have a, I have a license.

I'm licensed massage therapy and I've got some certifications, but I'm not real heavy duty science guy. And I found that most people that watch my videos don't care about those words. And as soon as I start using too much of that, it alienates them and turns them off. And I know it's popular to try to show that you're educated with stuff, but I try to just make things as digestible as possible. So I'll just call it your lateral core because most people can figure out what that is.

Even obliques sometimes is a little bit of an oblique definition for them. So, yeah, I try to use terminology that I would like to receive. You got something brewing over there, Andrew? Yeah, I was hoping for, let me find it, a little bit of story time because I wanted to ask Bill what it's like to be 225 pounds,

I think, at 6'3". Yeah, so, yeah, I really shrank. I mean, obviously I lost weight weight but that was um oh gosh that was 1997 um and that was that was an event mma was still relatively new was it 96 or 97? I forget. Anyway, this was the World Fighting Federation. Yeah. So I guess several, you know, it was clear that the UFC is, yeah, but you can remember I said I don't like to do a lot of bench press. You can see in here.

That's pretty apparent. I had no packs at all. But anyway, all I had on me was a little kickboxing. My opponent was the great Gokor Tchavichian. He has a gi on. Oh, yeah. And yeah. Now, here I go trying to do rudimentary high school wrestling.

Don't even know how to go for a single leg. And eventually, and for go core um i was just a very entertaining spar and uh but anyway going after it and you're going for it well that's all i could do at this point i was just freaking out i'm like and then of course that arm bar and you know despite what this looks like, I'm trying hard. And I'm, you know, probably being a little dramatic about it. But because when you're getting your ass tooled as badly as I was, all you can do is make funny faces. But, you know, he is so skilled at what he does. He got that.

It actually sounds weird, but I'm sure maybe other people that roll with really good people will tell you when you roll with someone who's really good, even when they beat you, I shouldn't say it feels good, but it's just so competent that there's no extra. Like he didn't really hurt me. I mean, yeah, he put a good stretch in my arm and i guess i'm kind of like well i just got my ass beat i'm gonna maybe cry a little bit but um yeah he he is a he's a real deal fighter i just want people to also know that i talk a lot about uh martial arts i am not a high level martial arts practitioner at all i'm as as you know as many years as I've been alive, I've just dabbled in this and that and this and that. Um, but you know, jujitsu, I'm, I still consider myself white belt level and, um, I'm always a student, but, um, I'm not, I am not in a comp. I never try to sell myself as a badass or some kind of a, like an instructor in martial arts or anything. You know, I'm very interested in it.

And the reason why my training revolves around martial arts as much as it does is I haven't, I think I was telling you guys prior to us recording that I haven't really practiced anything with anybody else for over three years easily. My thing with my clients is if they don't have a specific sport or just people in general that are interested, if they don't have a sport that they are interested in, it's good to always have some kind of a sport that you can focus your training on. There's tons of people that have said that rather than just, okay, I'm going to go to the gym to get in shape. But if there's actually a sport

that are a very, something that has a systematized, you know, movements and things, it could be soccer, whatever. If you have that, it gives so much more meaning to your training, right? You have something, okay, I need to, well, just the amount of experience I've had getting my ass kicked in various martial arts, to me, it's been extremely motivating in showing me and revealing to me where all the holes and the gaps in my system and my fitness are. and the gaps in my system and my fitness are. And I tell people, you don't ever have to go to a gym or a dojo or an academy.

You don't ever have to even practice a martial art. But if you practice to fight, if your training is geared around developing the attributes to fight, what sport can't you participate in after that? Because to me, martial arts, and I'll also include maybe gymnastics, floor gymnastics. But I like martial arts because if you're going to practice one or the other, the one thing that all people have in common, every person on this planet, other people have said this before, there's one thing, the one sport you will never be immune from is being attacked by somebody or something.

It could be a dog. It could be another person. And that goes for every human on this planet. If there's one thing that could happen to you, yes, most people, all you have to do is say, I'm never going to play soccer. And you're almost certain to never have to play soccer. Yeah. But you hear of women, men in their 80s, like Nancy Pelosi's husband. Was he 80-something years old and recently just got attacked by some psycho with a hammer?

Jesus. Right? Oh, yeah. And dude looked pretty fit, though. I mean, I don't know anything about him, but still, you know, he looked pretty like a fit 80-year-old guy. I don't know what he's doing. And he's okay.

Apparently, he's going to be okay. Because apparently, he was able to at least hold that guy off enough so he couldn't get a really good hit with that hammer. Yeah. And the guy is tall and he looks pretty fit for an 80-year-old. But it can happen to anybody. And that's another reason why I'm a big fan of people, whether they think so or want to or not, of having, at least developing the attributes for combat when they train. And one of the, and Mark, I notice you're doing a lot of this,

is one of the most, one of the best martial arts to practice is running. Because that's basically the first thing you should do, whether you can kick ass or not. I mean, okay, so if you want to fight, great. Now you got to go to court. And most likely, whoever you got the best of or better of is going to most likely win there. So, you know, number one is running.

That's always something that we haven't really talked much about. But that is one of the best martial arts practices, your ability to get away from a conflict. And also built into it is if you can't, it's one of the most appropriate activities to give you the cardio and the capacity to throw down or at least defend. and the capacity to throw down or at least defend. My thing when I go to jujitsu, if I can just, the longer I can survive, that's the win for me. And if I happen to maybe get something and I luck out and I get the other guy, then cool. But oftentimes I'm more interested in just seeing,

because I know there's so many guys out there that will always be better. I could be a black belt. There's still going to be plenty of guys better than me. Yeah. And if I ever end up on the street or should I have to defend myself or somebody else from someone like that, my thing is I just want to know what they're trying to do. Trying to get side control, trying to get mount, trying to get my back, and just not let that happen or make it really difficult because that's about as good as, that's about the best I can. And then once I'm able to do that, I run away.

So that's my martial art. It's not really getting good at arm bars, triangles, any of that, rear nakeds. It's good to know that that's what's trying to be done to you. But for me at my age, if I can just get away or at least prevent that. And, and that's why I, I'm, that's why I talk so much about martial arts, not because I'm some badass at martial arts. I'm really not. Anybody that would roll with me would be both amused and surprised at how bad I am. And yeah, and I have no problem because I really want people to, I don't want to be

like, I know it's real popular for fitness influencers to kind of represent themselves as, you know, I'm a badass, you know, I'm just, I'm really not. I'm just a guy. I'm a father. And I also tell, I want other people to know that you don't have to be necessarily good. Because I know a lot of guys with all this jujitsu out there, there's a lot of guys that are feeling even more insecure. Not only am I not in shape, everybody knows jujitsu now. And shit, so my adrenaline kicking in, that's not going to work anymore.

Remember that thing? You always have that guy that said, no, I don't have to practice fighting, man, because once my adrenaline kicks in, man, I fucking Hulk on these guys, and that's it, man. They're done. Next thing I know, everything's a blur, and then there's blood and guts around me. No, that doesn't work anymore. But my thing is just take enough jiu-jitsu to understand what the steps are,

because the progression seems to be about the same. Assuming they're not trying to pound you at the same time, which adds. But, yeah, and just know how to try to not let that happen. And you can be wily enough to do that, and it won't take forever. Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Yeah, yeah. All right. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode.

Had a little bit of technical difficulty. Sorry about all that. Sorry. That was my fault. Yeah, yeah. All right. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Had a little bit of technical difficulty. Sorry about all that. Sorry. That was my fault. Yeah, you broke the camera. That's so weird. But let us know what you guys think about today's conversation. Yeah.

And, dude, thanks for this jerky. This Hawaiian jerky is freaking incredible. In the kettlebells. Hawaiian style. Kettlebells everything. Thank you so much. This conversation was great because it's so cool. I get to see, hopefully, where my trajectory is going because a lot of the stuff that you're

preaching is stuff that we've all been like implementing recently and so i'm like i'm super inspired and encouraged so thank you so much for that thank you if you guys feel the same way please let us know down in the comments uh make sure you guys are subscribed if you're down to listen to more conversations like this uh follow the podcast at mb power project on instagram tiktok and twitter my instagram tiktok and twitter's at i am andrew z and seema where you at this brand or whatever snack addicted it's really fucking good i don't know if we're able to get in the u.s but this is too good my daughter loves that and she's picky about stuff like that yeah i gotta i'm gonna go on amazon and search. Um, I don't know if, cause we're about to end the podcast, but why'd you stop smoking weed?

Cause you mentioned that multiple times. I'm just real curious. Cause like, um, you know, okay. I honestly, I haven't,

I just used to smoke a lot. Oh, the time I was 15 until, Oh gosh. Through my cancer. Um, yeah, I was a pretty heavy stoner.

And I used to be like, should I have to be telling people that? But my thing is I want to tell, yeah, at this point I want people to know. I hear Joe Rogan talking about it too. But yeah, because I can't drink alcohol. I'm one of those Asian guys that you give me like that much beer yeah and i go all red my head swells and then i want to go to sleep in the restaurant ah right okay so that's me and i was was kind of but i remember the first time i smoked the weed um i was easily 20 miles we i was of all things i told you i was a teenager i I was a little troubled. So my parents sent me on one of those outward bound things.

And we had it. So you go to the Big Island and they put me with about a dozen other delinquents. And then we go out with these two counselors and they hike. They make us go up into the wilderness. And you hike for miles and miles. You go to these super remote. These places are so remote that I don't think you could do this now due to liability.

And so I'm on one of these things that are supposed to kind of make you better. And I remember we were 20 miles, some valley. It was Waimanu Valley on the Big Island. And, you know, it's kind of Lord of the Flies. Once you're out that far with these kind of guys, there's two groups.

There's the cool guys and then the not cool guys, and I had never smoked weed before. I smoked a few cigarettes, but one of the guys busted out a joint, and I'd been taught, you know, I grew up in a Japanese family, so, ooh, that's bad. That's super, super bad, and if you have that, you're done.

But it was a little peer pressure out there. And so they handed it to me and I was just like, all right. And I had that weird flavor and smell at first. But as soon as that thing hit me, But as soon as that thing hit me, wow, that literally was probably one of the most life-changing. Like the way I responded to weed, if other people could feel the way, like if there's young people out there that when they respond to weed the way I did, they're going to be a stoner. Yeah. Okay? I mean, I don't know how else to say it. It was more than, you know, some people say like,

bro, I didn't even feel it the first time. Yeah. I had to smoke a few times and then, yeah, it was all right. It's sort of like a beer and then, mm, that was. Good shit. It was good shit. And it was just the smallest amount.

And then we went, we all were, and it became like this magic thing. Like it was late at night. The counselors were sleeping and we actually went to this stream and we caught prawns out of this stream. And it was one of those weird things where everything was just kind of going, like we're so far from civilization, but there were some hippie people that were living out there, like people that totally dropped out of society, like wild people. Yeah. And we happened to find this metal grate, and we put the prawns in the grate, and we threw them on the fire, and they were the sweetest, yummiest prawns. And it was really heavy bonding. You know, you're stoned with each other.

And we'd only been with each other for about two days. And now you're eating wild prawns and cooking them in something that shouldn't even be out there. And yeah, so my response to weed was just soup. And honestly, when I started training, you hear people say that, like, here's a, and I don't know if this should go on because I don't really want to encourage kids that are getting into fitness necessarily to necessarily do this. But my connection to weightlifting and to martial arts was strongly influenced by doing that stuff high. I don't know. I've heard other people say that.

I've heard people talk about rolling jiu-jitsu on mushrooms. I've rolled that quite a bit. Yeah, I've done that too. Right. But, yeah, when I started lifting, that's where I could feel things because people would wonder like at a young age i was also kind of showing people things people are always watching what i was doing at the gym i wasn't lifting heavy but the way i was lifting it was to them different and they'd

always come and say what's your secret man i don't want to say well got to smoke a little weed. But, you know, I was like – and now I heard that's kind of not so far out. I heard a lot of people firing up, right? Now it's legal especially. You know, apparently a lot of people doing that. But it gave me a kind of a connection to what I was doing. That if I'm being honest, you know, when I'm, when I wasn't like that, you know, it, it wasn't. And, um, even fast forwarding, you know, during the pandemic and being a little depressed, I was also hitting some weed back then. And that's what gave me

the courage initially to just put that camera out there and you know start that whole thing up but then as it started to take off and i'm now realizing like oh i might have to do this like on for a long time then i was starting to feel like the weed i was becoming a slate like if right like you know how you hear guys talk about steroids weed was kind of becoming that for me i was like oh shit i now i'm feeling like okay gotta post something today and i don't want to freaking smoke today but i you know that's the way that's the content that people seem to want so then at one point i told my wife you know what i don't care if people if i if all my social media goes to shit i'm not i'm fuck it i'm just gonna admit those first few videos, they were weak and I felt so lost and everything. But now there's times just in the past few months or whatever, I might, you know, hit something with a neighbor or something just for fun.

Cause, and my videos are shit. They're just terrible. And, and, and I'm happy. I'm glad now because now I feel like the stuff I'm doing is a little more authentic because it's not assisted by – because it became a crutch. Gotcha. It became a crutch for me. At the same time, there's still times like if I were to smoke some weed, I experiment and I learn some pretty cool shit. It's never – It's creative thought.

It does. It does. pretty cool shit it's never as creative it does it does and but i just didn't want that like to feel like i needed to smoke in order to make my my to post something or you know because during the pandemic everybody was smoking i think the dispensaries in hawaii they had those were just banner years for them they did so well – because people were buying weed left and right. And so was I. But then as my thing started getting popular, I got sucked into the social media thing where, oh, I got to bring new content. And if I don't have my weed, then I don't have my creativity and this all.

And then I started realizing like, wow, literally my views started going down. And I think also maybe the – I think people can sense. You know how when you get an email, and it seems like a friendly email, but you can sense that the person that sent it to you was actually annoyed as fuck. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. I know what you're talking about. Well, videos like that as well.

Yeah. And what I thought was the same presentation, there's something about that i think people sensed yeah and i don't know it's just um so i'm not against it at all you know and um but i just am reluctant to kind of say that you know just on my social media say hey kids if you really want to hook into your body smoke smoke some weed. Because it does work. I mean, I like to be honest, but at the same time, I don't want my honesty to kind of lead people. Especially when you're too young.

Joe Rogan, I think, put it the best. People ask him, well, Joe, how come you're able to handle smoking weed? And other people just go off the rails like I did. Like a lot of my problems in school had to do with me being stoned all the time. Yeah. You know, but he said something interesting that I, and then later I looked into it and I think it's true.

He started at 30. So he had already established the habits of being an adult and fulfilling his adult responsibilities, like paying rent and you know doing his laundry and just picking up after you know and i started at 15 while i was probably at the peak of my just and and you'll see other videos that say whatever age you start at that's where it arrests you at you know and i believe there's a component of that because I still, um, I started that young and there's still, if you ask my wife, um, my wife is a combination of my wife and my

mom. She has to sometimes, you know, talk me through some stuff that you think got my age. You're like, man, you're 54. And, you know, but yeah, there are certain things that it arrests you at. Yeah. So, you know, it gives and it takes. But, yeah, no weed. You know, if you, I don't know how much, you guys okay on time?

Nope. Okay, sorry. Are you finishing up? I'm done. Where can people find you? What's that? Where can people find you? Where can people find you? Oh, okay. Sorry.

We're still at Bill Maeda on both TikTok and Instagram. And FitProHawaii, at FitProHawaii on YouTube. There you go. I'm at Mark Smiley Bell. My tip for the day is to get a heart rate monitor because when you're doing some activities, you don't really have any idea where your heart rate is. And I threw one on today for my run and it was like a lot different than I thought. So get an actual heart rate monitor, not just using your watch. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weak. This week is never

strength. Catch you guys later. Bye. Yes. Cool.