Mark Bell's Power Project - Build These Habits And Make Faster Progress in the Gym

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Is the gym boring? Mark Bell thinks so. In this episode of Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast, hosts Mark Bell and Nsima Inyang reveal why your boring workouts might be stalling your progress. Discover how to build habits you enjoy and why finding fun in your training is the true secret to getting stronger.Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!Best 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ https://www.PowerProject.live➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerprojectFOLLOW Mark Bell➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybellFollow Nsima Inyang➢ Ropes and equipment : https://thestrongerhuman.store➢ Community & Courses: https://www.skool.com/thestrongerhuman➢ YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=enFollow Andrew Zaragoza➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewzChapters:0:00 - The Real Secret to Staying Disciplined 0:30 - How Mark Bell Would Change The Modern Gym 1:00 - Why A Fitness Legend Finds The Gym BORING 2:02 - The Harsh Truth About Building Strength 3:18 - Is It Possible To Be "Jaded" By The Gym? 4:30 - The Sales Trick Gyms Use To Keep You Paying 5:58 - The #1 Motivator To Never Miss a Workout 8:16 - Why "Perfect" Training Protocols Lead to Burnout 9:44 - How To Stay Consistent When You Train Alone 11:56 - The Problem with Traditional Strength Training 13:02 - A Natural Bodybuilder's 39-Year Transformation 15:04 - How Mark Bell Would Make Fitness Fun For Everyone 17:06 - Why "Specificity" Can Be Bad For Long-Term Progress 18:04 - The Key to Making Workouts Feel Effortless 19:08 - What Percentage of People ACTUALLY Go To The Gym? 20:27 - Exploring New Implements for Building Strength 22:24 - Are Machines a Waste of Time for Building Muscle? 23:14 - How to Make Boring Exercises Fun Again 24:40 - How Often Should You ACTUALLY Deadlift Heavy? 26:20 - The "First Rep" Secret to a Bigger Deadlift 27:11 - The Best Accessory Lifts For a Massive Deadlift 29:19 - What Are The Real World Strength Standards? 30:25 - Can a 700lb Deadlift Make You WEAK? 32:09 - How To Build a Fun & Effective Home Gym 32:54 - How Mark Bell Stays Lean While Eating Delicious Food 50:17 - Why Dana White Was Right About Modern Doctors 51:38 - What "Ideal" Testosterone Levels REALLY Are 1:06:19 - The Truth About Methylene Blue Supplements

Someone might think, how do you maintain those habits? How are you so disciplined with this? There isn't discipline because there's a high level of enjoyment. I would like people to be fired up and excited about the gym the same way that I am. And the only way that's going to happen is for them to find that they like. Find the things interesting to you, and it's going to be easier to repeat them. Sometimes you might take a challenge whether it's lifting something or a type of cardiovascular session. You might go into it thinking, I don't know how this is going to go.

It makes you a little bit nervous. If you end up achieving, boom, you know, like, wow, okay. I'm making some progress here. How would Mark and Bell change the gym? Yeah, if I had it my way to expose people to as much of the cool stuff that I've been exposed to over the years, yeah, I would have to build the gym out a little differently than what you see at some of the 24-hour fitness, planet fitness, some of those places, although some of those places have changed quite a bit. Yeah.

Some 24-hour fitness gyms nowadays look a little bit like a collegiate-style gym, where they have more options and stuff. But I just think the gym is boring. I think, unfortunately, the gym isn't always boring, and it's not boring for everybody. I personally think that the gym can be boring. And some of the things associated with the gym can be boring. Yeah. And I want to mention that, like, we were talking about this earlier, and I just find it so interesting because, like, the first time you started lifting weights, how old were you, man? I was 12.

Yeah. And I was 13. And for someone like you to say the gym was boring, having had a gym that was free for people to come train at for so. many years. Ten years, right? Your life has been the gym. To say it's boring, it's like, wild. Yeah, I mean, I think, I guess something can be kind of boring, but you can still love it, you know? I do love aspects of the gym, of course. But I also can understand and I can, I can see and I can relate to a lot of people that feel like bodybuilding style stuff might be kind of boring or bland, just like a bodybuilding diet might be bland or boring to somebody.

Yeah. And the same thing with strength training. Like strength training takes a really long time. It takes a long time to acquire strength. When you're first starting out, it's actually really nice because you can acquire and gain strength quite a bit. But over time, if you're trying to do Olympic lifting, power lifting, crossfit, some of these different things that someone might be doing. It just, it takes longer and longer and longer because of how strong, how good your skill set is. Now you need more and more weight and you need more warm up and more time to do your five by five. But yeah, when I think of strength and I think of hypertrophy, a lot of gyms are set up for you to train that way because those are like big reasons why you're in the gym. You're either in there to like gain a skill acquisition, gain strength, or build muscle mass. There's really not much else you can do in the gym kind of despite what people think, but you can burn some calories, I guess. Some treadmills, elliptical. Yeah, you got some cardio stuff, right? And you can do a lot of that outside. You can run and so forth.

So there's like maybe three things that you can kind of do in the gym. But the big ones, I think the ones, the reason when people think of a gym, I don't think they necessarily think of just cardio equipment. I think they think of the weights. But I think strength training and some of the aspects of it can be boring. And I also think the same of bodybuilding. Okay. So, I mean, I think one of the one thing to remember. And I, you know, I was talking to you guys earlier and I was asking Ryan and Ryan's over here on the other side.

And I was like, dude, are we jaded? You know, like, you know, are we not thinking about this the right way? Because to say the gym is boring, it's like, you know, when I was a kid and I was going to the gym, I remember a high level of excitement going in and just lifting weights. But maybe after you do it for a while, it just kind of, even though it's effective, let's not take away from how effective strength training is and training with dumbbells, barbells, and machines. It can be pretty damn bland and repetitive.

You know what I mean? I think that's, you always find a way to bring Jiu-Jitsu into the conversation. But that's one of the reasons why Jiu-Jitsu is kind of fun, because it's fairly novel. You roll with different people, you get different looks. It's like there's always something new you're doing. And when it comes to the gym, it can sometimes be, yeah. But Ryan mentioned something interesting. And it's actually even the case with the gym membership that I've had for quite a long time because I haven't canceled it. But I don't really use my gym membership often.

And I train and I do something every single day. But the thing is, is I got equipment at home. Most people get a gym membership and they don't go. They're looking at your gym membership. They're like, this guy hasn't been here in two and a half years. It's probably fat as shit. Come in one day. Who's just saying my guy?

Right? So, like, I think that that speaks volumes because like a majority of the population will get a membership and they won't go. And then at some point they'll cancel it. And when I used to work in a gym, I started in the gym in sales. And one of our goals was we knew they probably weren't going to come, right? So we get them that membership and then we do our best to when they come in to try and cancel a few months later. Just remember, remind them of their goals to keep them coming back and get them not to cancel. I have this document here that you signed and you said you wanted to lose 10 pounds of body fat.

Listen, I'm going to give you the next 30 days free. The next 30 days free. Come in once or twice. Just don't cancel, right? That's how you keep this thing going. And then boom, you're right, I probably shouldn't stop. I probably should. You think I should still go?

Still come. I'm kind of confused, though, a little about, like, what to do sometimes. That's why we have this sector of machines. Just go one machine, one machine, one machine, and just do that back and forth. Maybe go hit up some dumbbells. Walk on the treadmill, go right home. We also have those Zumba classes. I know you said you liked.

Do you think I should take creatine? Creatine always works its way into the conversation every time. You're like, you're not even consistent with your workouts. What are you talking about over here? Yo. Oh, man. But it's kind of boring. That's why a lot of people don't go. When I think about the gym, the reasons why I have loved the gym over the years going the opposite direction has been the people. Yeah. The people and the community. You know, I was fortunate. I trained at Westside Barbell.

And then I built my own gym, which was great. And then you look forward to the people. And even when I was younger and I would just go to like kind of a commercial. gym when I was a kid it was the people because like I was in I was into powerlifting and then you get kind of into a powerlifting like community and so I would have never power lifted because of how severely boring power lifting can be I wouldn't do it without having people and and literally the people are they're not always like yelling for you but a lot of times they are a lot of times they're literally standing next to you yelling not at you but yelling for you like come on you can do this because the weights get to be challenging and maybe there's a coach shouting some

instruction and stuff like that. But it does end up being a communal thing. And what happens when you get into stuff like that, much like probably what happened with jujitsu, you're like, I'm in too deep to ever turn back. Yes. And with fitness and stuff like that, I think that's how we feel. I don't always necessarily feel that I'm like super disciplined with strength training or bodybuilding training or any of the training. I don't necessarily feel like I'm super disciplined when it comes to nutrition. It feels like this is just like part of what I do. I always enjoy everything that I do. So sometimes people are like, man, you ever get those times where you don't really feel like going to the gym? And I would say, yeah, to some degree, there's times

where I'm like, eh, I don't really. But if I also just think about it for 10 seconds in a more logical fashion. Look, man, you know, if you were really sick for three weeks and you couldn't even get to the gym because you had some sort of, you know, I don't know, if you had something happened where you couldn't get to the gym for a couple weeks or something, or a handful of days even, I'd be so grateful to get back to the gym. Yeah. So even though I'm saying the gym is boring, there's a lot of exciting things that kind of go on in the gym. There's a lot of fun things that you can do in the gym, but the tetheredness that you may have to these protocols that you might hear on the internet about hypertrophy or about strength, that might pull you in a direction where

you feel sort of bored with it. However, if you embrace a community and find other people to train with, then you're going to look forward to training with other people. If you ever talk to people in the military, we were just talking to a guy who used to jump out of airplanes and shit you ever talk to people in the military they're like i only did it because the guy next to me was doing it like i did it for him you know like and you and even and even their PT even their physical training and stuff that they do like i would never been able to run that fast or never been able to get through that day if it wasn't for this guy you know he was right next to me the whole time and when you start to train with people you're you know maybe maybe it's not always like competition all the time

but you're excited to see that other person make progress they're excited to see you you make progress. And then the only reason why you're showing up every day at 6 a.m. is because you know that they're going to be there. You don't want to let that person down. My wife does that with swimming. And she has a group of people that she swims with. She's actually in Croatia right now with a whole group of people swimming because they have this

community. And she doesn't, you know, she'll, she might go a handful of days and miss and stuff. But she's like, I really got to get back there. I got to see so and so. I got to talk to so and so. And so when you start to build a. community, that's what I would advise people to try to do or to get involved with is a training partner, a community thing, a CrossFit style environment, a powerlifting, whatever these things

might be, again, because they're sort of boring to do on your own. Yeah, no. The interesting about bodybuilding, I think, I mean, you can always find somebody to bodybuild with, right? Especially like when I was younger, I would have friends sometimes that we'd live together. even though a majority of my lifting sessions were on my own. But it ends up being kind of like a sole endeavor for most people, which is fine. You know, like if you choose for that to be a you versus you type deal, that's okay. And many people do it for decades in that fashion. But if you can find a way to whatever activity you like to do,

figuring out a way that you can be involved with other people, I think it'll make it something that you really, it doesn't take you as much effort to do on that day because like, for example, sometimes the jiu-jitsu, like I know I'm going to be seeing certain people there. It's easy to go, right? And that's, it is in and of itself an activity that you need a partner for.

Like Graham, for example. You'd be like, I'm just going to completely destroy and humiliate Graham again today. I never like, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're nice to Graham? Of course. We wrote yesterday. I was very nice.

I don't know. He usually says something different. Yeah, yeah. But when it comes to the lifting thing, I think even one thing that can be pretty strong because sometimes you're in a place or an area where you're like, you could find somebody, but it's maybe kind of hard. So finding people, you know, a lot of people get into Discord groups, a lot of people find online communities. If you could find something like that where people are doing the things you enjoy doing, that can even in and of itself bring a level of encouragement to you for what you're doing because you can share it with that specific community. even though it's virtual. That's something that I would have never thought would actually be remotely effective. But seeing it these days, I'm like, wow, actually, people are keeping each other going.

And it's fun seeing how somebody else is progressing. That'll make you want to try something out. It's pretty cool. I think, you know, some of what I'm referring to as well as like just things are time intensive, you know, strength training, you know, trying to power lift or something like that can be time intensive. You could say that if you want to be,

like a pretty good power lifter. Yeah. We got a minimum of like three or four days a week of working out. I'm sure you could figure it out to where you only worked out twice a week, but it'd probably be kind of hard. So three to four, almost like 90-minute sessions, if you want to get pretty serious about power lifting, it's probably about what's going to take you. Bodybuilding, you know, to acquire the muscle mass that you need for bodybuilding, like if

you're not just recreational bodybuilding, you're wanting to push it a little bit further. That's going to require probably something similar, probably, you know, 60 to 90 minutes, a couple times a week. There's people that kind of sell you on like shorter workouts and stuff. And again, I'm sure that you can do that. I'm sure there's many people that have accomplished, you know, hey, 45 minutes, a couple days a week. I know efforting and some other people talk about those short workouts.

So you're not like just destroying yourself every single day. There's Mark, don't lose your train of thought. I want to send this to Ryan. You remember 3DMJ Godfather? Yeah. Okay. So you put up this post. And again, not everyone who's listening to this is like, I want a bodybuild.

But I think it puts into perspective somebody who has been so dedicated to the craft and he's a natural bodybuilder. But I appreciate this post because it's 1986 to 2025. And if you kind of go through the post, like, yeah, you'll see from his first shows. Oh, how cool. Right? Wow. 24 years old there. 22,000, 29 years old.

And if you're listening, we're kind of going through Jeff Albert's progression and bodybuilding. These guys are great. This whole crew is awesome. It's a 3D MJ, right? He got his pro card in 2009, 16 years after he started competing. You're right.

Right. And this is like, you know, and in Sima, you mentioned this, some people kind of like boring. or they embrace it. And I think that... Not boring to him. Right, right. It's not even boring to us necessarily,

but I guess my point is I can understand how it can be like a turnoff, like training. It takes a lot of time. And maybe when you were a kid, you didn't really realize the time that it took you to get good at baseball. Maybe you didn't realize

how long it took you to get good at volleyball. Or the different sports or activities that you were involved in, You didn't even realize, you know, you almost didn't even realize what was going on in the gym when you were training for football or wrestling or something like that. And you might think now, like, oh, yeah, I remember, like, I remember deadlifted 275 for some reps and stuff like that. I remember, you know, mentioned 225 for reps or whatever, whatever it was you did. And you have this like warped image in your brain that that's like where you started. But it's not where you started, you know, it takes, there's a, there's a time.

commitment to it. And if I was to set up a gym and be able to expose the world to it, I would want to give everyone an equal shot of doing something that they felt was cool. The only way that people are going to do stuff that they feel is cool is to be good at it or to at least be in line with somebody else. Yeah. You know, so like, let's say that, let's say for the last several years, I'd never stopped deadlifting, let's just say, I'm still deadlifting, 700 pounds or something, right?

So if I invite people in, I'm like, all right, we're going to get everybody at deadlift. It's going to be great. And I'm pulling six plates, you know, in between showing people like, this is fun, you know? And they're trying to pull, they're trying to pull like three plates or two plates and they're struggling. Or they're like, oh, my God, I think I twisted something. Like, I don't know what I did. Yeah. There's some people that might enjoy some of that, right?

But the majority of people are going to be like, this sucks, you know? I don't, you know, this isn't fun for you just like beat up on. me right uh-huh um however take a bunch of people into the gym and even when i was at the height of my powerlifting when i was my strongest i could say hey let's let's uh all line up and line up on an appropriate stone and each each person you pick up a stone and if the stone feels super light you know bring it all bring it all the way up and get it to your shoulder the stone feels super light see if you can press it over your head um if the stone's kind of heavy just you know see me just get it off the ground right yeah and we line everybody up and i'm you know 300 pounds or

whatever there could be somebody could the likelihood that there'll be someone that's 180 pounds that can pick up a stone heavier than me it's really high because now we even the playing field by changing what it is that we're doing yes and if we start to implement uh let's say a metcon if say all right we're going to get a couple people together we're going to do a metcon well now if I'm 300 pounds. The other guy's 185 is going to kick my ass in the Metcon, most likely, right? And so you just expose people to so many different modalities that it's almost impossible for people to be completely shut off to the exercises that you're showing them.

But specificity. You're not going to get strong doing that. How are you going to go lift a barbell or a stone and gain muscle? What are you going to do? Do a sled between? Like, what is that? There are some good points there. You know, there are, there's some decent points there.

Like, I don't know if we have, you know, my beginnings or my beginnings, your beginnings, or your beginning. So we don't really have anything to say that you got strong and got in great shape traditionally. And so did I. Like, we did, right? So now we're kind of preaching against some of that. But I'm not preaching against it because it doesn't work. And you're not even preaching against. No, I'm not against it.

I'm still 100% for it. Yes. Still 100% for it. But I would like people to be fired up and excited about the gym the same way that I am. And the only way that's going to happen is for them to find shit that they like. So if I'm to think about my family members, like a couple of my uncles or something like that, if I was to show a couple of my uncles, some of the stuff that we did today with the Maces, they would love it. They'd be like, oh my God, and they would be like, man, I suck at this. but they would like it

and they would be able to immediately see like, oh my God, I think this could help with some shoulder mobility. Oh, and this is kind of like a fitness routine. The thing that you're not going to understand when you start to do some of those movements, you do rope flow, you do maces, you do kettlebells, and you start to, not so much even those particular movements,

but when you can figure out a way to play in a gym or play outside of the gym with gym type stuff is when you lose track. of time and where an hour goes by super quick and when that starts to happen that's so much easier to be consistent as i've talked about many times on the show i'm a huge believer in like finding stuff that interests you find the things that are interesting to you and it's going to be easier to repeat them i was looking up like the percentage of the u.s population that like trains in the gym and i came across the number that said 15 percent i feel like that's really high i i don't know

that's being generous yeah does that sound right well i've heard five before yeah i've heard four percent before i feel like the the percentage but the thing is but even 15 yeah 15's pretty high like oddly enough but that even if it's let's say it's 15 and i think that's being generous um it leaves you know 85 percent of people who aren't physically active in that way who aren't strain training and that's why i just think what is the way i mean obviously showing and telling people how beneficial building muscle is and strengthening the body, but giving people more modalities of being able to build strength, being able to be strong. Because like, yes, we can say we've built our bodies with traditional lifting, and I have no problem with somebody saying that to me.

But at the same time, there are so many ways you can pick an object off of the ground, a heavy object relative to you. There are a lot of implements for that. There's a lot of ways you can squat something. It doesn't have to be a barbell, but there are a lot of ways you can squat. of implements for that that certain people might enjoy more. And there are a lot of ways for you to like work with weight. And I think one of the, a cool thing, and I'm not necessarily meaning this, but this is a mace or like a mid-sized mace that we got from Sam White's here. He's the owner of Berserker Bar. So he made me some custom maces. I think it's insane. I love it. Dude, these things look like freaking lightsabers. This is the super long one. I don't know if this is

visible. This is a mid-sized one. And then, I'm going to show you guys this one. This is a short one. And what you guys just heard is like steel shot. But the thing is, is like, these implements are super fun. You know what I mean? And it's weight. So it's like somebody, I imagine a gym where there's a rack. There's a barbell. Like I have a barbell in my gym at home. But you have maybe some machines that people can work with easily because some people, like let's say that they're really, it's hard for them to go and get a dumbbell and move around. So machines are great for people to have because you can literally sit in the machine, load it up and get a pump on specific tissues. So some machines are great. But then some implements like some stones, some sandbags are going to be really fun for certain people to work with because I took some training sandbags to my mom and I just got a smaller one for her too. And then we started doing some like squats onto a chair. She naturally just like put the training sandbag right here. She, we put this on the ground.

She grabbed the handles right here and she just started lifting it up. But it was a very natural thing for her to easily understand to figure out what she could do with it. And it's like she's 67, right? It was way less, it was way easy for her to figure that out than a barbell. Getting right getting set up for a barbell. So it's one of those things where it's still picking up something from the ground. It's still getting something and squatting. It's still pressing something over the head.

But it's an implement that some people can get the hang of. And some people might enjoy more than having to go pick up this metal barbell. Right. And machines save time. You know, machines can be great. Hypergrapy training does not have to necessarily be boring. You know, you don't have to necessarily, you know, rest two minutes or a minute between each set and whatever. Even if you're resting a minute in between each set, it's not boring because you're just trying to hang in there because it starts to get.

really challenging if you're if you're training properly i think it gets to be really uh difficult but it is kind of nice to go from one machine to another especially on days that you're feeling kind of wrecked and you're just like man like man i i did a lot of sandbags i did a lot of this a lot of that what you'll usually find is that you might do a machine or two and then once you do that then you're warmed up and then you're like you're able to do a lot of other stuff so even though you know i was saying earlier that some of the stuff can be boring it also can be made to be fun. You can change a little bit of your mindset on it. And I think if you do it less frequently, you might not find it as boring. So for example, if once a week or once every other

week, you worked on your deadlift and you did, you know, standard five by five or lower repetitions and higher sets with longer rest periods and stuff, you might find that to be fun. And maybe on the other days and a lot of the other training that you're doing, you're doing, you know, 45 degree back raises, you're doing some sandbags, you're doing some stones, you're doing a lot of other things that will allow that lift to increase because sometimes people find motivation in having that lift itself increase. Yeah. And so that's where you can get into having some really cool goals, but it can be frustrating and it can be a long road if you're just always trying to deadlift that 405 and you're only just honed in on that. I kind of personally like having, even when I was

power lifting, I utilize the conjugate system where you would have a lot of variable, a lot of variations of your training to bring that deadlift up. So for example, I might not deadlift for, I might have to do a regular deadlift for like three or four weeks. I might do good mornings. I might do particular squats, do things back and forth a little bit. And then deadlift. And then you'd go, oh, shit, I feel like my deadlift's getting stronger by doing some of those other movements. Every once in a while, it wouldn't work that way. And you're like, oh, I think I'm I might need a deadlift more often. Then you start to find kind of the sweet spot.

Gosh, let me ask you this. Like, when it comes to something like deadlifts and barbell deadlifts, if you were to, I guess, advise somebody on picking something off the ground, how would you have them maybe conjugate style it potentially? Or how would you have them organizing, not on a weekly basis, but just thinking about how often they should tell them. touch a typical deadlift versus something like a sandbag deadlift or any other type of deadlift. Because I think some people, when it comes to deadlifting, they feel that I have to barbell deadlift.

You know what I mean? But how do you look at that? Man, there's a lot of different ways you can go. If you look at, you know, the success that some of the people have that are super strong, that are online, they're deadlifting with pretty good frequency. Most people, though, can't handle deadlifting that often. It usually breaks you down too much. What I found to work best for most people was to, like, deadlift heavy, like once or twice a month, which sounds like a lot. That sounds crazy. It doesn't sound like a lot. But I didn't say that you can't deadlift at all.

So you can still deadlift for practice purposes, and you can do that every single week. And in fact, you could probably do it even two or three times a week if you really, you know, if you wanted to be. a really great deadlifter, I would say deadlift often, you know, deadlift two, three times a week, but maybe one time a week is literally with a plate and you're like a 500 pound deadlifter or 400 pound deadlifter. Just again for that technical side of things. With what I did at West Side barbell is you would do like eight sets of one or eight sets of two reps. And what that did is it assured you that you got a lot of first reps because that first rep and that that main rep when you're talking about maximal lifts lifting the most amount of weight

as possible that first lift is the most important one so when you do eight or ten sets of singles or even eight or eight or ten sets of doubles what i would do in between the in between every if i was to do two reps i would stop stand up restart pull again so that it was like a first rep again. But anyway, what you get out of that is you get many practices at that first repetition, just like you would in a competition. So I would have someone probably deadlift fairly often, but only deadlift heavy, maybe like once a month. And in the interim, I would have someone utilize exercises that are going to bring up that capacity for deadlifting, which would be anything with your lats, anything with your grip, anything with your core. Anything posterior

chain you know anything posterior chain you're building up that ass all that stuff all that stuff will uh it will help a lot more than what people may even think or even know i do know that like when i started to my deadlift i always struggled with my deadlift i was what's weird is that when i was natural and when i didn't so when i didn't use any gear and when i didn't use any gear powerlifting gear and injecting stuff in my body my deadlift was my best I was like I think I think around 200 pounds

I pulled like 630 or something yeah which is which is great for that body weight right yeah but then but then as I got you know as big as I possibly could and all that kind of stuff I did deadlift 766 but it was like you know I'm in like a squat

suit and I weigh like 300 pounds and all that stuff too so um it's just, you know, for me, the deadlift was always like a struggle, but what really helped it towards the end to help me go from, you know, kind of high sixes and, and push into the sevens and I was, you know, hoping to kind of get into the eights, but it was just training my stomach, just doing like doing sit-ups and static sit-ups and more focus on, I did a little bit more focus on glute ham raises. And it wasn't even, um, the glute ham raises that I was doing, I would, do them static and I would and I would hold them like isometric yeah like isometric and I would um try to push myself away from the machine a lot and like push myself out like push my because my upper body's pretty heavy I try to almost push myself out and then hold and I would usually hold some weight and stuff too so a lot of that stuff you know help me to build up a decent

deadlift yeah you know I think an interesting video for for people to watch watch is Mitchell Hooper's video where he talks about strength standards. He recently posted it, I think maybe yesterday or two days ago where he's, well, at the point where this podcast is out it's a while ago. But he was talking about like strength numbers and what's strong for like a certain body weight when it comes to squatting, when it comes to deadlifting, pressing, push pressing. And when he was talking about that, you know, I found it really interesting because I just look at strength so differently nowadays. Like, I don't really even think about strength

in relation to the barbell. Just because there are so many things that you can use and you can get stronger with that, you know, I've grappled with people who can deadlift 700 to 800 pounds and they didn't necessarily feel strong because that didn't transfer into the way they moved And actually, they were, they're much stiffer because they were so physically strong with the barbells.

So that's why, like. Because there was such a focus on mainly just that for many years. Yeah, right. And it can, I look at it within a grappling context, for someone who is so deep down that rabbit hole, within grappling, you need to be able to disassociate in terms of different parts of your body. There needs to be able to be a rotation here and a lack of rotation here or an opposite on certain sides of the body. And when you build so much, when you build the ability to be so stiff to move a barbell, it can actually hamper your ability to disassociate certain parts of your body. So even though that person is strong, they're not when they're fighting, right? So when I see a lot of these things, I guess I'm happy that I grapple because it makes me really.

realize, like, you know, if that person were able to lift a heavy sandbag in that way and were pretty easy, like, that's, that is different than lifting a heavy barbow, right? And it brings me a level of, like, confidence with, I guess, help, like, encouraging other people to go towards the strength of things that they're interested in, because it doesn't have to be a barbell for you to be strong. Because again, like, we've lifted sandbags. And you know that a 100 or 150 pound sandbag or 150 pound sandbag even when to become experienced still feels kind of heavy it's heavy whereas a 150 pound barbell bro you can pick that up with one hand like a 150 pound barbell for someone who's even just kind of experienced doesn't feel that heavy can do almost anything you

want with them you really really a lot of different size yeah but 150 pound sandbag it's like you know it's different so it's one of those things where like when you're making if you're a home gym setting for yourself, or you're wanting to set things up with a few other people, I think, like, you can have different stations. Like, you can have a strength station that has a barbell or a sandbag or a few sandbags, training sandbags, et cetera. You could have a station that's, like, more movement stuff where you have like a sled or rope where something you're moving through space. You could have some fucking rucksacks if you guys want to go take a walk or something and move through space and with weight or whatever it's like there are so many things

you can do to to gain strength that it's like i don't know it can that's why it can be so fun i agree 100 percent and what you're alluding to is like well maybe the focus shouldn't even really be just to like deadlift deadlift are great they are cool it's nice to have the goal and if you have the goal then it causes a cascade of disciplines underneath it for you to like kind of check these boxes and maybe we can say hey you know what most guys should probably do that until they get to a certain strength level whatever that strength level is for a particular size person but three or four plates if you start to pull that you start to squat that you're solid you checked off some pretty good boxes and you because you know someone could

be tremendously strong and they they could maybe deadlift 275 like they could feel strong right they could feel really strong you're just talking about this with and we could try to joke about that person in here, you know, deadlifting. And we can be like, oh, it's funny. And then they can just destroy you the fuck out. Yeah, destroy you. They have like tremendous amount of power just, you know, being able to generate power in a completely different way.

I think this should be exciting to people that, like, the revolution of fitness is like here, like the movement of fitness is here. It's that we're in a different spot. The guys that are big, jacked and strong can't bully the other guys around as much anymore because we can see what some people can do with a sandbag and what some people can do with some of these other styles of lifting. And it's not just necessarily strong. Man, I know we mentioned sandbags a lot, but they're just simple to train with. And they allow for a lot of simplicity within your training. But there's a lot of different types of sandbags. There's a standard

sandbag that you just grab from what freedom strength, right? That's one of the ones that we use. That you just grab and you, you know, you pick up and you toss or do all these different things with it. Then there's a training bag. And then some companies, yeah, it has straps and stuff like that. Some companies make like a Hussafelt stone type of thing. Yeah, that's like this kind of V-Taper thing and you kind of carry it like a zircher squat. So I think what I would love to see people do, I would love to see people do two things. one is to take initiative and to buy some of your own stuff and maybe you go in with a friend maybe

you don't have a lot of room in your home maybe your friend's got more space in their garage or whatever it is or you have to get a storage unit or something like that and load some crap in there but buy some stuff you know try some stuff at some gym somewhere to make sure you like it if you like it enough then buy it whether it be a kettlebell or a jump rope or a or sandbag or even you know a dumbbell barbell whatever it might be buy some shit the second thing i want to see people do is demand more from your gym gyms suck you know and if you have so like if you have a regular commercial gym they're not this is only so much they're going to be able to do that some of these places but i would imagine you know me being a uh business owner myself if someone

money came up to me and you know didn't say hey your gym sucks bro they came up and said hey you know what i really love coming here but i loved it have you ever heard of these like sandbags and some these other things um maybe you bring one in you show you show them say i bought one um but i think a lot of other people and you could maybe say i got two or three other friends that i usually do it without my house but it would be cool if we could do them in here you know maybe you know and you'd be surprised you're sometimes going to get someone be open minded and other times you You know, maybe it's a planet fitness. And I'm like, get out of here.

We don't, we don't want to do that. Can't grunt, breathe while you train. But demand more from your gym and see if they can, they're not going to maybe want to buy, you know, a mace or something because they're going to think, you know, something's going to go flying off the handle and somebody's going to get hit in the head and all these different things. But I think that people just casually, like, have this gym that they have a membership at that they don't even, they don't even like know anything about. They just, it's like, hey, man, what do you think of your gym? They're like, what? Do you like it? And they're like, oh, man.

I mean, yeah, it's a gym. And you're like, does it have sleds? Does it have sandbags? Does it have kettlebells? Does it have variation of barbells? Does it have a Smith machine? Does it have a leg press? Does it have a hack squat?

Yeah. If it doesn't have some of the stuff that I'm rattling off right here, then you need to either find a different gym, make some suggestions to the manager or owner, or you might have to have multiple gym memberships. But the other side of that is just doing shit for yourself and committing to purchasing some of this stuff because I think if you have it sitting there at your house, you're going to be more likely to use it.

100%. And that's, I think that, again, that's one of the reasons why we've talked about this in a prior episode, but fitness is so easy for us, right? Because someone might think like, oh, how do you even mentioning this in the gym, how do you maintain those habits? Like, you know, how are you so disciplined with this? And it's like, there isn't discipline because there's a high level of enjoyment in terms of the things that we're doing every single day. You know, I don't have to rev myself up to go into my garage or go into my living room and do these things. Let's talk about that a little bit more.

I think some of that has to do with the way that you train. And you get, you get like intense with your training. Like you train hard. Yeah. And you'll lift heavy stuff. but your training usually starts kind of casual and your music is like represents that right your music is like your music's chill i've heard you listen to all kinds of different stuff depending on like what you're doing right but i think that that's interesting because what you're asking your body to do maybe if maybe if you started with something like real intense right off the bat maybe you would maybe you would feel like you needed a an energy drink or something like that but you don't work out that way. No, no. I always start off with some type of movement to get things lubricated. So

Kelly Strette will tell people to use it. Loved up. Right? You know, like use some ropeful for movement. But it'll start with something there. And then I'll move into starting working with lighter weights, load things up, start working with heavier stuff. And I like, I really like being able to transition between like lifting and moving with the heavy sandbag, whether it's taking the heavy sandbag going down my driveway across across the street. Wow, foster street. Coming back up. Then grabbing a rope, doing some of that stuff.

Then going to the cable machine, going back to that, doing some of that stuff, then going back to the sandbag. I like being able to transition between these implements rather than just sitting there with what used to training would be like is just sitting there on the deadlift or sitting there on the squat and then waiting for your next set to go do another hard set of squats. But being able to transition between this stuff, for me personally, makes the training feel better. but also just it's I don't know it just works better for me and it's very enjoyable to do that because if I just want to

if I do that last set of something hard and I want to call on that I can go into some lighter swinging in terms of kettlebell work or doing some club work and it's weight but it's not something that it's not stressing me out that much

it's not like you know I remember sessions in the past when I was just lifting but like fuck I have to do this again Or I know there's a type of session I have on that day and it's like, oh, God. It's like, I know it's about to be a really, really grueling session and I'm not going to feel great after it. But with the way strength training feels now, I always feel good after training strength because there are different modalities inside of it, you know? I love that perspective.

So if people heard that, if you could have your training sessions, your training sessions don't always have to equal that you feel great. You don't have to, like, walk out of there, be like, hey, you know, but you should walk out of there feeling pretty good. Maybe you're taxed, you know, maybe you're like, oh, like, I pushed it pretty good. That was awesome. But you're not like, man, I don't know, I don't know what I did to myself type thing. That changes everything that you need. That changes everything that you do leading up to your workout. I think for some people, their workout or their idea of training,

is like this intense thing that needs to be a white knuckled. Getting ready for war. Yeah, they're getting ready. And I understand and I get it. And I like all that stuff. I did it for many years. I think you've done at least some of it when you were young, when you were bodybuilding, right? You probably had your pre-workouts and all that stuff.

And you probably, you know, we're going to go work out with maybe a couple other people when you're doing your drop sets and you're a professional bodybuilder. which I think sometimes people forget, but that's amazing. And you became a professional bodybuilder to such a young age. Yeah. That's pretty awesome.

And so you know about like, you know, it's not like you don't have intense workouts. You have intense workouts. You know what that's about. But every day that you're training, you're not redlining. You know, like I kind of just look at it like this for myself.

I'm like, every day that I train, the effort's going to be there. I'm going to put, didn't work. But it doesn't have to be a nine or a ten. If it's just like a seven and it's a seven every day, I like to roll the sevens all the time because I know I can do it every day. Yes. I can do it every day forever, like literally every day. I don't even need a day off or whatever. I can do that every day. And what's the difference between like a seven or a ten? Well, you know, a seven is like yesterday I was doing some floor presses and I was super setting,

doing some squats with the sandbag and you know as I'm doing the sets with the sandbag it started to like accumulate I started to go a little heavier

a little heavier a little heavier and the last set I did a set of 30 and I'm like that's it you know maybe the old me

would have done maybe another set or two but I'm like I'm thinking about tomorrow I'm thinking about like that was good because the other sets burned and that one burned

even worse I could barely stand up straight after I did that last set and it felt like I was like Yeah, that was enough. And then same thing with the bench press. I was doing set to eight, just kept working up and up and up and up.

In the last set, I hit like a weird set of five, and then I racked it because it just was like wasn't going great. I rest a little bit, just like waited like 30 seconds and finished out the other three reps. And that's like just after training, like that was what I could do. So someone could say, okay, well, that was like a nine or a 10. But overall, the workout is like a seven. I try to keep them there every day. because the other reason why I do it is I think it will knock down your motivation.

If you put in a 10 or you go way over, you hit an 11 with your training, you know, you're like, oh, man, that was sick. We did leg press and we did hack squat and then we did lunges. And then we finished off with like a hundred step-ups or something. You're like, oh, that's, holy crap, that sounds like an amazing leg day. But then tomorrow you're like, I don't feel like training a day. Right? And you're like, well, of course you don't. You just, you blew your wad.

Exactly, exactly. All over the place. All right. So now I want to ask you this. And I think actually, you know, if you guys don't know who Gunner Peterson is, just go to his profile. That dude has all the toys. He's always having fun. He's always having fun.

He's a celebrity trainer. I think he has a podcast now with, what's her name? Jen Wiederstrom. Yeah. Jen, Gunner, and another guy. have a podcast together, which is just quite interesting. But don't even, don't even do it, Mark. Don't do it, Mark.

I won't. Okay. You have 16 more years in the gym than me. And I want to know what would you wish every gym has? I know we talked about a lot of stuff on this show now. But when you think of a gym or you think it of what somebody at on their own has, what are some things you're just like, have this. Just try to see if you can have this.

Oh, just like equipment. equipment wise things that you just think would be great to have i think i think you can get along pretty well with uh a couple med balls and the medicine balls i think i think it it's good to have them be a little lighter than maybe you think okay um like the head like i i would i would get a six and like a ten and that would be pretty damn good way you'd be surprised at all the different stuff you can do you can eat the hell out of those two right And they're, the amount of different things you can do with medicine balls is just like unlimited. I mean, you could even take one ball and go on a walk with it and then just toss it periodically here and there.

Yeah. You know, there's just a lot of stuff. Obviously, you're not going to do that like in a downtown area, right? But you get to do it like in a field or park or something like that. So med ball would be one of the first places I would start. I think that. They also double as a soft tissue tool. There you go.

There you go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think a kettlebell is just, there's just so much utility in a kettlebell. Dumbbells, you know, some people say that, like, you can do anything, you know, that you can do with a kettlebell. You can almost do with a dumbbell bell, and that's fine. I would just say pick your preference, you know, whatever one you'd like. And I'd even just say, like, as far as, like, weight goes, you know, I would say, you know, if you're more beginner, maybe you get something that's 15, if you're a little strong, longer, get something that's more like 25, 30.

But I don't think you need, like, a lot of variety. I don't think you need, you know, gyms have set after set after set of dumbbells. You don't need all that stuff. Yeah. Just one that's like 15 and one that's like 25. And if you really did want dumbbells, you can always get yourself like some of those adjustable ones. Right. They have adjustable dumbbells that go up to like 80 pounds these days.

There's a lot of different things you can get. You can get ones that you can change the weights on the side and like there's all kinds of stuff. I do think that a machine I think sometimes can be encouraging like a cardio piece or something like that. So like an echo bike or a, you know, one of those rogue fitness, whatever, Airdine type things. I think stuff like that can be pretty useful. But that starts to be a little hefty in price. I think you're looking at, you know, anywhere from 500, like 700 bucks kind of as a starting range. You could Facebook marketplace something decent for maybe 300.

under 350 right for one of those bikes but it's going to be a Facebook marketplace one you know so and then you got like I don't know you have all these like ancillary things that are like barely equipment but like um jump rope um a heavy bag is incredible something that you can punch oh yeah I think I'm really happy you mention I mean I have one too you have one but the ability to just go in and if you learn some preliminary striking then you're just you can go whack the fuck out of that thing you know what i mean it's it's so fun to punch and kick something i worked out with ron penna recently uh okay and just the just this this guy he's the king of talking shit because he just doesn't he didn't care you know can you tell people who ron pina is yeah ron pina

he sold uh quest nutrition years ago for a billion dollars and he owns legendary foods now and just a remarkable guy he's just one of the more fascinating people I've ever met in my life. Everybody will know who he is probably in about a year because he's writing a book and when that book drops, I think it's going to be game over. I'm excited to read it. Yeah. It's like a million dollar side hustle.

I think it's the name of the book. Ron, get us an advanced copy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody wants to know how to get that side hustle going. But anyway, he's got a great gym, beautiful home and everything like that too. And I'm in his gym. and I start hitting this like punching bag thing that he has

he's got like one of those face things you know you can punch Bob I think it's called and so I'm like punching it and messing around with it and he just goes interesting you chose to punch it and I was like all right

well just you know show me some kicks or whatever you know because I know I knew he wanted to like he's been doing martial arts forever yeah and so then he just like he goes goes into full Ron mode and just beats the shit of this thing with these like awesome kicks and stuff and he moves the way that you would think he'd move he's like moving like

john claude van dem and so you can just hop into the splits too yeah i was like that kind of guy yeah just out of nowhere he's like 54 or something looks like he's 34 he's just an incredible guy but yeah he says and i was like you know what that actually just i'll say this if you if you uh work on punching and kicking you covered a lot of ground you have covered you know we're talk about all this stuff on the show about trying to walk with your feet straight and We're talking about rope flow, and we're talking about if you punch and kick, if you punch and kick a bag or maybe kick a soccer ball here and there. Kicking is the throwing of the lower body. Oh, it's incredible.

Yeah. And then realizing that, like, I've never really thrown much of any kicks in my entire life. So it's like, where do I start? You know, I was doing a couple like just, you know, kind of like front kicks. But a side kick for me to kind of loop that thing around, it's like, holy, you know, we did with a lot. Lull? Is that how you say? I'll let you handle his name. But yeah, when we had him here, you know, he was showing you like he gets his leg way up and then he pauses and then he holds and he just flicks the foot out. It's like, holy shit. We're talking about Alongolani, guys,

the martial artist. Yeah. But when you get your body in that position, you don't even realize, okay, it's easy to focus on the foot and the leg. But it's like, look with the rest of the other bodies. The way that he's bending to the side. And we're talking about like, like different levels of strength. And we're talking about being able to side bend and being able to move, you know, laterally and just be able to move in all these different positions. It's, it's an incredible thing to be able to, yeah, see, there again, like, if you watch his head in this movement, see where his head has to go, like, you know what I mean?

His head has to go like almost like perpendicular to the ground. Yeah. On some of the movements that he's doing. And it's just stuff that you don't even really ever realize. But you were saying with Jiu-Jitsu, the articulation, the way that your, you know, your hips, you know, go like this when you walk, basically, right? They go forward and backwards, right? But your hips also have the ability to go like this and to, like, elongate your leg, which is, or just kind of shorten your leg without bending your knee. And you just don't even realize you have the ability to do that.

Yeah. It's like not even in your head. It's something you don't even really think about. I was thinking about this the other day. When you go to throw a punch, people are like, oh, it's a way. all on the hips. And I'm like, that's not even really your hips necessarily. I'm sure your hips are involved. There's some like, you know, whipping of the hips a little bit, but it's like your torso. Rotation. Yeah, it's rotation, right? So you kind of, it's, if you, if you do some

striking, you are covering a lot of ground. And I wouldn't say that you don't have to do anything else, but grappling and striking is going to, you're going to gain a lot of awesome ability to move your body through just doing that. Yeah. We're going to go back to what Mark Bell would suggest people have in a gym because the last thing you mentioned was a heavy bag. But, you know, if you, I think starting Jiu-Jitsu when I did 10 years ago was one of the best things I ever did for my health and longevity.

And it's funny because some people would be like, fighting isn't good for longevity, but it's because of what a martial art will force you to try to learn how to do. do with your body, right? And striking will do the same thing. It's like you have to learn how to turn your body into a whip if you want to become someone who's proficient with striking. And I don't think people need to go in and start boxing and start sparring or any of those types of things. But if you can just go somewhere where you can just learn, like, it might even sound weird, but go to a taekwondo school. Go to what? And people, especially people who are into MMA will be like karate, taekwondo. That's not.

No, it's more so, though, like, you can learn how to kick, but it will teach you, you'll learn how to move your body in these ways, right? It doesn't mean you have to go out on the street and start being a karate guy or a taekwondo guy or girl. It might be intimidating to do some of that, yeah. Yeah, but, like, just to learn how to, because, like, when they spar, too, they're not sparring at 100% or doing any of that type of stuff. You have kids that are going to those classes. But what you learn with your body is something that you won't learn if you're just continuously doing CrossFit or these types. types of activities, right? And it's something like,

Allah's been doing this forever, but it's a skill that you can maintain for the rest of your life. There is a level of community there. It's not something I think you have to do multiple times a week. It could just be like this side hobby that you're building over time or a side skill, but it can go a very long way for the way your body moves. I love that.

And if you think about, you know, for some maybe lifters out there or people that are like, you know, maybe just look and make a change, right? Right. Yeah. Those kinds of things will cause the biggest change because now what you're getting praised for is so different than what you were getting praised for before. And so as I talk about the cascade of disciplines, it's now completely different. If you're praising me because of the way I kicked the bag because I kicked it high or just through a good solid kick, the things that I need to do in order to keep that kick in that same place and keep that kick high, don't have anything to do with me doing a max rep deadlift or very, very little to do with a max rep deadlift. So then the other things that I'm going to do to line me up so I can kick better and get better at that skill of striking is going to look a lot different than me, like just powerlifting

and doing all the things I've been doing for many years. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, a couple more things, I guess I would say, to kind of round out, you know, having a gym, various things to pick up, I think, I would say, get some rocks. You know, if you start to do a little bit of stone lifting of any kind, you start to recognize that the world, the world is your gym, you know, there's stones everywhere. You know, don't go to someone's front lawn and, like, steal a stone. They had to, like, pay for that thing, but you can literally see, like, pretty good sized stones

occasionally, like, on the side of the road, or sometimes there's, like, rock quarries. Sometimes there's riverbeds, you know, and you see a good size one to pick that thing up, chuck it in your car. There's just, there's, again, you can find, like, I have these, I think these were just left by some construction people at my house. They're just like these little, like, blocks, these little, like, bricks, and they're probably about 20 pounds each. They're perfect for me to walk. I walk with them for grip stuff. Yeah. Sometimes I'll walk with two of them, or if I go on a longer walk, I'll just walk with one of them.

So, yeah, some rocks and some stones and some shit like that and throw them, you know, like shot put them. Do some, you know, again, you can utilize it a little bit like you would utilize the med balls. But you can also, you know, get, if you have a good stone, just, you know, always make sure you're secure if you're going to go overhead. So you don't bonk yourself on the head with that. But, yeah, yeah, there's just so much movement you can do with it. And then from there, I would say, I don't, I don't think you need much more. You got, you got. So you said med balls, kettlebell, a dumbbell, echo bike, heavy bag, stones.

You haven't mentioned a barbell yet. Yeah, and this is just for, like, you just to have some, like, stuff, you know? Okay. A barbell of some kind, some sort of thing that you could probably maybe potentially add some more weight to. Yeah. But when I think of a barbell that I just think of all the other shit that comes with it, and I'm like, I don't even think you need that because then you're going to need plates and everything else and again if you if if you have you know if you have means to have

everything then we're just talking about like something totally different and I would say you know your setup should look like like say in strength which is in uh sebastopol California which is like just or Santa Rosa California one of the most amazing gyms I've ever been to it's like 10,000 square feet of every amazing machine that you can think of and every single single different type of barbell that you can think of. Wow. They have everything you can think of for grip. They have everything you can think of for Strongman.

I mean, they literally have outside of the gym. They have the thing that you throw the... The Strongman thing over. The Strongman bags over. Yeah. Those bags are awesome, too. I forgot to mention some of those. So, yeah, various...

If you're going to have sandbags, I'd have various sandbags. But this gym also has, like, the, has the stairs, like the power stairs. Do you ever see those? No. Where you pick up, maybe you can bring it up, Brian is the power stairs. There's a strong man movement. And you just have this, like, 200 or 250 pound, like, thing. Oh, cool.

And you put it on a step. And then you go to the next one. I know. They have all that shit. It's insane. They got prowlers. They got tanks. They have Watson equipment.

But that's why I mean by demanding more of your gym. gym and if your area doesn't have it then build it yourself you know to work on making it yourself it's like for me it was a dream to have a gym i never thought i'd be able to afford i never thought i'd be able to afford anything that i have but uh never nevertheless you know i was able to have a gym and the way that was able to start super training gym was just by getting a couple people together and saying hey you know we all got to pay like a hundred or 125 bucks for this to like work but i'll take the brunt of it and if no one's paying then i'll figure out a way to still the rent and we started with like 11 people and the rent was 900 bucks a month so i made like

you know a couple hundred bucks uh off of that but i think it's that big of a deal for you to you know start to accumulate stuff and the amount of equipment that i've accumulated over time is probably you know a million something dollars worth of stuff um but it was over a long period of time yeah you know and so if you start acquiring stuff now it's kind of like your skill set with jutsu or some of my skill set with strength it takes a long time to build it up but if you start buying a little bit of stuff here and there you have a sandbag i'm sure everybody listening has something they probably already have 10 12 items that they're you know just try to organize those items so that they're like in a spot where you can get to them they're in a spot where you can um

utilize them you mentioned something in the gym which i think is awesome and ryan mentions something slightly different, I asked you like what you need to work out. And you're like, yeah, just probably some music. I was like, do you drink a bunch of water or you drink something special or you do something, you know, and you're like, no, not really. Just good music and just start moving. And then Ryan mentioned something slightly different. Ryan just said that his workouts are a little bit, they're scheduled out, you know, and so he might have a workout with his wife or he might have a workout with his friend. And obviously you're working out, you know, with your buddy, with weights is different than, you know, I think he usually goes on a run with his wife.

Those are different things. And they cause, they need different preparation. And so you can think to yourself, okay, I'm going to go do that run with my wife and I'm going to do it after work. And I'm just going straight to where we're going to run at. So I need to bring my shoes with me. So there's like a little bit of like preparation. But I think that people, that people are missing some of that stuff in their day-to-day, they're missing that organization because I think that, again, sometimes when they go to train, they train so hard, they like redline. And then the next day, they're not as motivated to do some of these things. And like, oh, I forgot my shoes to run. You know, and they're not as maybe organized as they could be. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, yeah, man,

I think, you know, the reason is, and I'm happy you actually brought that up, but the reason why I don't need anything to add myself up is because I know I'm about to enjoy. what I'm about to do all the time. I know I'm about to enjoy it. And I do think back to why do or why what I have needed to the pre-workout or the caffeine or just these things because I need something artificial to bring me a level of motivation to do what I'm about to do. And nowadays, I don't feel I need anything to do that other than like just give me some, give me something good to listen to. Take it as a challenge. You know, take it as a challenge. Go ahead and do the workout, you know, naked. Do the workout cold without any, without any, you know, without any caffeine or cratum or whatever it is that you think you need.

Shit, you know, like sometimes I come in here and I'll start working out and I'm like, man, I need to put on some music. But like sometimes I just get lost in like the movement. You know, I'm just thinking about like, oh, I want to try this exercise today. And I start trying it. And because I like to do so many different things, I think I get pumped and excited about it. but it's it's not easy to you know get yourself fired up every single day for your workouts but i guess what we're saying here is like we don't think you even really need to be that fired up it's you maybe when you get going maybe you yeah you need to be a little bit more excited because

you're going to do a circuit that's like it's going to demand a lot of you yeah but to me that's like i really find it exciting you know recently there was a video put out with um uh uh I was with Rich Froning. He was having me do some stuff. And that guy was like, it's kind of crazy because it's like he'll mention something. I'm like, I've never done it before. I don't know what, I don't know what, you know, toes the bar, never even tried it. The like push up, handstand push up thing against the wall, never tried it.

And so it was really, really demanding just to even do partial of the movement. but again to me it's like it didn't really require like me getting like fired up or anything it just requires that I'm about to work hard yeah and I normally like the hard work I guess I can think back like when I was doing like pro wrestling and stuff some of those practices and stuff that we did those were like those were hard in a way where I'd be pretty nervous maybe similar to jiu jitsu when you start yeah you start getting into like it's one thing to be like new and everyone's like okay you're new so you're treated a certain way right but then you've been there for like six eight months and you're trying to like advance and it gets to be kind of

nerve-wracking like i kind of hope we don't do this thing i kind of hope that this guy's not here like you're kind of half nervous and half kind of scared about it but i think that you're training though it should make you a little bit nervous like that sometimes i think that when you go to do something not that you're going to get hurt i think i think it should bring you to a to where you're like, I'm not so sure if I'm going to be able to do this the way that I'm thinking in my head, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to be able to do it. And that's the thing. You need days like that, but not every day needs to be that.

No, not every day. Not every day needs to be that. But you need days like that to help you understand that you are moving forward because sometimes you might take a challenge whether it's lifting something or a type of cardiovascular session that you're planning on doing. And you might go into it thinking, okay, you know what? I don't know how this is going to go. It makes you a little bit nervous.

But if you end up achieving, boom, you know, like, wow, okay, I'm making some progress here. And if you don't and you just, you're almost there, you understand where you are. But just understand that not every single day needs to be that. Some days can be an underhand pitch and some days can be harder. I did really enjoy working out with Rich Froning. It was like, I don't know if I mentioned it on this show before. But he was like, he's like, all right, well, he's like, we're going to work out. And then after that, I'll take you to the podcast studio.

And he's going to go to the podcast studio. He's like, it's basically at my house and there's a gym there. He's like, and then we'll work out. And then we'll podcast. And I was like, cool. So you're going to work out, then go to the podcast studio, do another workout on the podcast studio, then do a podcast. Yep. Wow.

Okay. but so then like we we worked out and we got done with the workout and he's like oh he's like you want to do this so you know so then we basically did two workouts at first and then we did another workout when we went to the podcast studio then we got done with this podcast after doing you know two and a half workouts i was like oh he goes i have like 15 minutes and i got to go pick up my kids i go that's perfect i was like we got 10 minutes to get another workout and he did no we didn't but he was like he actually was thinking about it he's like he's like you're right we could easily get something in and then we just didn't end up doing it but but you know it's funny because

i was talking to ben alderman yesterday and ben was like because when ben does like red liney workouts for a couple times is amazing with those kind of workouts it's eight to 12 minutes yeah eight's 12 minutes is all you need to eat porch right yeah so it's one of those things where it's like yeah rich is probably like huh in 10 minutes we can do some mean shit You know what I mean? And if you look at the, you know, variation of stuff that we did, and I forgot to add a sled to that mix. I'm a huge fan of sled, so, you know, add a sled onto that. But we did, in this video, we're actually pushing a sled, we're doing a farmer's carry, and then we're doing a bench press.

It's like, that's so much fun. Like, that's great. And you think about it, like, you're just getting in a lot of walking, you know, because we're carrying some weight. I think each one of those is 100 pounds. Rich has a lot of nice, he's got a lot of nice things set up. Things are just sort of set up, which is beautiful. So like if you have, you know, access to some stuff, you have like a rower and some of these other things, it's kind of cool because you can just be like, I'm going to go on the rower and do 15 calories and I'm going to push a sled and then I'm going to do a farmer's carry. And you kind of, it just makes it easy when you have it set up like this.

And as we talk about, if you have some of these things at your home, we understand you're not rich frowning and you didn't win the crossfit games four times and acquire all the things that he's acquired yeah but you could have some of these things and i think you mentioned this on a previous show like you're an athlete not not you but like everybody we're all if you're if you're participating in some of these things that we're talking about you're an athlete and then you should start to treat yourself like one you know athlete is going to have, again, obviously they have a lot of money, but they're going to have stuff that they can have easy access to so that they can get to these things almost on a daily

basis. And, you know, I totally understand that certain people, they'll make a home gym, and then that home gym will collect all the dust, right? But I think that's why having different options for the things that you can do, because sometimes certain people have things in their home gym that all of them. of this stuff takes level of deep preparation. If you have a barbell and a rack and dumbbells, you know that it's like, it's weight on, wait on weight. For the barbell, if you're going to be getting ready for some deadless, you got to warm up. You got to like, there's all these things you

prep yourself for. But having certain things that you can just go in, start moving around and touch. Like obviously a rope is an easy thing. A kettlebell is an easy thing. A med ball's an easy thing where you can just like start throwing this thing, just things that can just encourage more and more and more because that's kind of what my workouts are. It starts easy and then as the body's feeling better, it just stacks and stacks and it becomes harder. I don't just, some days I can just go in and lift the heavy thing,

but some days I need to get my body ready for it. You know what I mean? I love what we're talking about because if I'm to think about somebody that has 800 square feet, 600 square feet, You know, you just, it's got some weights in their garage type thing. They have another car parked in there. They might only have, them only have a couple hundred square feet. Having a rack and having a barbell, while that does pose some cool conveniences,

it also is a major inconvenience in a sense that, like, you can't start doing anything. Like, you go into the cold-ass gym in the morning or hot-ass gym in the afternoon or whatever. depending on, like, where you live or whatever, and now you've got to, like, you know, pull the barbell out and you've got to, you know, situate it and hopefully it doesn't hit the car and you've got to, you know, slide a bunch of plates on there and stuff. And I'm not even saying any of that's hard, but it takes extra. It takes a little extra. Then you got to put the pins in the, you know, in the rack to set it at whatever height. And then you go to test it and it's like not the right height and you got to readjust, you've got to take the 45s back off and readj and you're like, son of a bitch, like by the time I get even just warmed up. look at the time I already have to head my ass out to work and you just, you know,

didn't plan well. But if you had a different setup, you don't have to have any of that hassle. You have a couple stones, maybe have a sled that you can drag outside. I think if you have different options, it just poses you with the ability to just like get right into it. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why it's easy. That's why I just hope everybody figures out a way to set up something for their own

specific practice because that's that's the coolest thing about this it doesn't just have to be some barbells some dumbbells some machines like there are so many things that you can have that you're interested in that you enjoy that will make you stronger i like what you mentioned earlier about being part of a community like i think we should talk about that a little bit more we did talk about you know there's some maybe bodybuilding friends that you have or fitness friends that you have a ben alderman you got a ben alderman in your back pocket or charlie's a more you're a more you you can call these people up and you know that they work or Jason Kalipa. Yeah.

You know what these people work out like crazy person so you can have those kind of redlining workouts. But, you know, not everything, not everyone has to be someone that you always see in person. You know, there's a lot of options online. There's a lot of community stuff. And I know for myself, when I worked for elitefts.com years ago under the name Jackass, it was exciting not just for me to like post. my workouts and stuff like that.

It was more exciting for me to read and see what some of the other guys were doing. And I got so into a lot of that stuff, I would check out what they're doing. And then I would like copy and paste something and I might write it down or something like that. And I would be like, oh, I'm going to try. You know, this guy did reverse hyperglute ham raises and some neck work. And he supersetted it. I need more of that. So I'm going to superset that at the beginning of my workouts.

Just stuff like that. And when you're part of these communities, some of the friends that I made, you know, this is like 20-something years ago, some of the friends I made from the back side of that website were like James Smith, the thinker, along with a bunch of other people. And even like Jesse Burdick is somebody that I ended up, you know, he's my best friend. I ended up spending a lot of time with him in person as well. but it was like through the internet you know Diablo Barbell in the gym that he was at I didn't know that they posted a lot of stuff and

I was like oh I should go up there and train this is before I had super training before I had a gym and I'd go up there and I would lift with them and then it became like very competitive I was like well shit I'm kind of like I'm kind of right there with a lot of these guys Jesse was a little stronger than me on the squat

at the time and so I'd go up there maybe maybe like twice a month It was like an hour and a half drive or something like that. And I get my ass kicked by Jesse. And I was like, you know, I can figure out a way to beat this guy. Yeah. And it was it was something that was really, really motivating to me. That's a trek to go get your ass beat.

Yeah, right? I'm going to go get my ass kicked. This is going to be great. But yeah, having that community, it's exciting. It can be a big deal. And you can, there's so much you can learn. Yeah. You know, the learning side of it,

I think was probably the most fun for me. I would learn a lot by reading the different workouts that people were doing, some of the different commentary. Obviously, there's always like trash talking and stuff like that, too. But, yeah, some of the comments and stuff, you would learn a lot from that. And then you would go the next week and you would try to apply it. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, what I, you know, I started the stronger human community. That's community. I started late last year. And we do challenges every single two months. And it's been really cool seeing, like, literally. hundreds of people share, thousands of people, share what they're doing on any specific day and other people will see somebody doing some sandbag box squats. And the next day you're going to see that person say, I saw Angela do this. So I chose to do these sandbag box squats or I saw

double R do this. And I chose to take my sled out because he, this guy, double R, he has the stealth sled. So he goes out to a field and he has his maces and stuff. And then he'll take the sled around, do some kettlebell, do some. And everyone is building their own personal physical practice and it's encouraging other people to have the confidence to build their own practice because I think one of the things and it's not something I thought about until I saw a lot of people doing this is that training and in physical training a lot of people think that they're not smart enough to set up their own training but no it's actually not that difficult you just need some things that you have and then you need to go move them yeah should I do the mace first or the kettlebell

And you're like, well, why don't you just try and then see what feels better? And they're like, oh, I thought there had to be like a program. And there can be. We have no problems with programs, right? But the thing is, it really is as simple as having some things, doing some movement, taking some breaks in between when you feel you need it and doing more movement. And seeing so many people do that is like it brings confidence to other people to do the same thing. there's so many times where a lot of these programs that have been around for a long time where somebody does something slightly different and they either make it better or find out for themselves that it works better.

The great Charlie Francis used to have his sprinters, he'd have them do their heavy training and their explosive stuff on the same day. He was adamant about it. But, you know, there's different things, you know, like Charlie Francis is somebody that would mainly coach people in person. Yeah. And when you have the coach actually. there, and you're actually running through these squats and running through these jumps and so forth, it's probably a little bit different than if you're just trying to follow something

online, you're trying to motivate yourself to do some of these things. There's so many variables, right? And then, you know, he worked with basically professional sprinters. These other people that are just following some of these programs sometimes, they're not professional sprinters. They're just people that just want to be fast. Yeah. And so this guy, I saw this post the other day, and people were trying to rip this guy apart. This guy was like, I do my heavy lifting, you know, on Monday, and then I do my sprint work on Tuesday, you know, and everyone's like, whoa, they have a problem with. They're just like, oh, Charlie Francis said you had to do them on the same day.

And he's like, well, you know, this is, and he explained, like, this is, I found this, this way. This, this feels like it works better for me and so forth. And he was just sharing like, but anyway, the point being is like, it doesn't matter who's program it is. It doesn't matter if I wrote it up and Seema wrote it up. Louis Simmons or whoever, you know, take those programs and tweak them to whatever,

like make it more convenient for yourself. In truth, I think, again, like the backlash that that guy got from mentioning what he does with sprints, it's one of those things where it's like, guys, sprinting is just moving fast for your body through space. That is, like, let's stop trying to, like,

like, yes, there are ways that you can more efficiently get faster. Your nervous systems, getting taxed. Okay, we get it. Yeah, but at the end of the day, going to die. It doesn't take rocket science to be able to learn how to spread and get a little faster if you give yourself the time to learn it. It's just like jiu-jitsu. Yes, there's an instructor, but you do it for long enough, you're going to get the hang of it. Any type of martial art,

you do it for long enough, you're going to get the hang of it. So these things, you know, people getting mad at that guy, it's just setting up this artificial barrier to not do something because it's not set up in this special way. It's like, no, you just go do it. Is there anything in particular that you do if you don't want to work out? Or do you even have days where you're just like, I don't feel like working out at all? There are days where I don't have the energy to like do something super heavy. But on those days, I'll just be able to work with lighter stuff. And usually all I need is like to warm the body up and then I can work with something

relatively heavy for what I have on that day. And is that, are you able to do that easier because you don't really have anything like written out? No, I don't think that's the case. The thing is, is with the way I have to train, there's a lot of auto regulation because of the stresses from the martial art. If I didn't have jujitsu, like, every day would be able to be a standard, like, understood progression. But because jiu jih Tzu's in the mix, there's some days where like, I'll go roll, I'll come back, okay, I'll do something light, but the next day I'll

still be feeling the remnants of the day before. So I'll have to adjust the types of loads I work with because my body's just like not fully ready to really push something heavier on a specific day, right? So that's why like I can manage to do something every day, but I just have to listen to my body because jiu-jitsu is a different type of stress. And it's not motivating if you don't feel great. Like if you feel stiff and you feel all this. That's why I said in the beginning, those sevens are important, like a seven out of ten rather than trying to do a ten out because you're going to feel kind of worn out. You're going to feel kind of tired and beat up. But I think another motivating thing is having the ability to call that audible because you know that if you

don't feel good, you can just do something slightly different. You're not copping out. You're not being a big pussy or anything like that. It's nothing to really be overly concerned with. But look, if you go to pick up, you know, 100 or 150 pounds sandbag and it feels like your head's going to blow off your shoulders and you're like, man, I don't know what's wrong, but like that feels 10 times harder than normal. Yeah. That's okay to listen to that, you know, listen to your body. in that particular instance and say I either need to like warm up and try that again

or I need to just do something completely different and for me the completely different thing that I would do in that situation is just go pull the sled. You could be half dead and pull the sled. Easy. That's kind of great. Yeah.

Thank you guys so much for listening in. Strength is never a week. This week this is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.