Mark Bell's Power Project - Combining Bodybuilding AND CrossFit = CrossLift - Obi Vincent || MBPP Ep. 866

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

In this Podcast Episode, Obi Vincent, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about Obi starting in Bodybuilding, transitioning into Crossfit and Road Cycling to become what he calls a "CrossLifter". Follow Obi on IG: https://www.instagram.com/obi_vincent/ Subscribe to Obi on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ObiVincent  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://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin! ➢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 to save 15% 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://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://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject 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 #ObiVincent #PowerProject #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

all right i'm ready hey i got a question for you this is going to be the most important question of the day tea or coffee oh tea damn oh seriously of course wait okay what kind of tea chamomile chamomile is good to help you sleep actually chamomile and lavender i'm a i drink a lot of tea i drink different type of tea as well yeah jasmine and lemon ginger of course peppermint it's good for digestion um yeah chamomile lavender uh oolong tea i've had oolong yeah i have a teapot so i drink um i don't usually don't have much caffeine right i actually i do because i take pre-workout oh but in the in the tea itself it's like kind of mild yeah so green tea which i drink so you can get some caffeine in green tea but it's i mean it's not enough if you wanted it as a pre-workout

so i do drink coffee but i because i drink pre-workouts, I try not to have too much coffee. It's too much caffeine. So, yeah, I think Americans, you love, love coffee. There's coffee everywhere. Yeah. And yeah, for me, tea, I only started drinking coffee a year ago. Tea with a biscuit? How does it work?

Fill me in here. I'm not going to do it work i need to be more cultural i'm not that british yeah so it's a rich tea or digestives with yeah with with tea but that i don't that's not my type of what are digestives ah digestives is biscuit you do you guys have that here i think you might oh yeah yeah i've heard of that before yeah um it's i don't know how to describe it yeah what is it supposed to be something you're supposed to be able to digest like but it's like uh it's just fake food like it's just like a cookie a digestive biscuit yeah you call it cookies yeah we call that yeah yeah so there's rich tea yeah there you go what a great spin and great way to word it for processed food yeah yeah so it's uh the brits is it's either yeah a rich a rich and there's the pinky up no you don't have pinky up that's like a weird thing. But you said you actually use a teapot.

Like you have a whole teapot. Yeah. So I have a teapot because I do loose leaf tea. So you're fancy with it. You don't use those tea bags like we do. I mean, the Brits use tea bags. So there's a way you make tea as well. The British people are very, very passionate about this

because Americans put yours in the microwave. Yeah. What's wrong with that? Abomination. That's not the same thing. Why? Oh, my God. There's so many things wrong with that.

You have to boil the water. It has to be boiled water. You got to steep the tea, right? So, yeah. Boil the water, put the tea. Because I don't drink a lot of Earl's Grey tea. So, like... That tea sucks. I've had Earl's Grey. That's weird. Weird flavor. Yeah. I don't drink a lot of uh earl's gray tea so like that tea sucks i've had earl's gray

that's weird weird flavor yeah i don't drink a lot of that tea so you know with the milk so again americans put the milk before you don't do that so you put the tea bags yeah yeah so yeah the milk goes i'll probably get in trouble for this because it's probably wrong but the milk they put the tea for maybe two minutes or something and you put the milk. I don't drink that type of tea, so I never use milk in my tea. But yeah, I'm not, it's not fancy. Like a lot of Asian cultures drink tea

and it's usually loose leaf tea, which is how I traditionally drink mine. And yeah, so I don't know. It's, yeah, people do call me bougie for that. This is a whole separate video, I think. I know, I think it does. Gotta teach us. But I don't know. It's yeah. People do call me bougie for that. This is a whole separate video. I think it does. Gotta teach us. But I have a question.

Why do you have to boil it? Why can't you just microwave the water? It's not the same. How is it not the same? It gets hot. This is, trust me, you would have such a big debate about this because you don't microwave the water.

It has to be boiled. Has to be. Imagine if you went to like a storefront in London and they take your cup and they just put it in the microwave. You'd probably walk way back out, right? That's six bucks. You'd be like, what the fuck? Like you're getting mistreated, right?

Yeah. No, you don't. That and putting the milk first before the teabag, no, you don't ever do that. Okay. Well, you can do it, but it's just not the right way. So some of what I saw with your training online was some massive transformation over the years. And one of the things that stuck out that you said, and I've heard this from some other folks too,

was that you made the transition from, I guess, like maybe being consumed by worrying about your body and how you look to other people and you have got more concerned about your performance i'll talk us through some of that what was that like and how has that helped transform you i think for me it was um i think it was about maybe three and a half years ago when i got to the point with bodybuilding where i was big i was shredded but i was like what else am i doing because i don't want to do shows i did i did a not a bodybuilding i did a show called called wbff yeah it's in between and the stage thing was not for me because i realized i was more of an introvert then. So imagine me on a stage in Speedos trying to do poses. And I'm just thinking,

I remember thinking. Speedos. I think I saw a picture of you in Speedos on your Instagram. That's your most liked photo. Okay. So the difference is that's on a beach. Oh, I see. That's on a beach. And you're not standing in front of thousands of hundreds of thousands of people.

That's not fair. That's a great picture. Yeah. Okay. What were you nervous about exactly? If you notice how there's no one around by vicinity see that so i still made sure that you know it was a little bit of a privacy no but on stage it's different right people screaming shouting and you're supposed to

there i'm standing still on stage you're supposed to show off you know all your hard work and i failed at that because as soon as i stepped on that stage i did it twice and the second time i thought i'll be more confident and it was just as bad so it was like you know i remember getting the notes after the judges said you look great you just couldn't show off your physique properly and i was just like because i just crumbled with all the people they're watching and and then i realized i didn't enjoy it and also i didn't enjoy the dieting like i couldn't be with hang out with my friends because i had to have food in a tupperware couldn't go out to restaurants because i had to restrict how i ate yeah so i you know actually i probably lost a lot of friends because of uh trying to diet down for shows um because i just

became antisocial like we can't hang with him anymore yeah he won't eat carbs he won't eat fat exactly he won't drink a beer yeah i i and to make it worse i don't drink anyway so it was like you don't drink and now you can't even eat with us because i would go to a restaurant and take tupperware with me you know quick question about the not drinking thing because you're 35 yeah right has this not drinking always been a thing for you or was there like a point where you look like i don't drink anymore it's it's a i always say this to people it's maybe a good thing that i don't like alcohol it's not because i don't have anything against alcohol okay i just never liked it and i've never

been drunk and people are like whoa you've never been drunk i think because i'm too much well that sounds great yeah you know because i don't like the taste of alcohol and people have said well you're not supposed to enjoy it you're supposed to just drink it to get to the stage of being drunk i'm like well why would i do that like i love food i want to enjoy eating food and i enjoy eating food so if i don't enjoy something why would i do it uh-huh um and people go well i was you know when you're drunk uh you forget all your troubles and you're happy but then sometimes i talk to my friends and they're like i can't remember what i did last night well how do you remember if if you were drunk you don't't remember what you did. How do you know you had fun?

Like they've made no sense to me. So, and I'm too much of a control freak. And I think that's what it is. Um, I am too much of someone that likes to be in control and I'm scared of what I would do if I was drunk. So I'm like,

okay, maybe I shouldn't, I should avoid that stage. So I can have a glass. I've, I've kind of my later years relaxed a bit where i can have a glass of champagne but i'm one of those people that would hug that glass of champagne by to the duration of the event yeah so i would just have one and i still have that control

and um i think it also comes with food and my issues with food. I had a big, you know, what's funny with bodybuilding shows and dieting down. And a lot of us don't realize we have an eating disorder when it comes to shredding and prepping for shows. Because of the way we see food becomes unhealthy. Because we have set calories. If you go 10, 20 calories over that, we'll be in the gym to do cardio because we need to try and lose that weight. Did you get on that kind of like treadmill of doing that?

Yes, really badly. And I did that for years. I didn't realize it was bad. Yeah, even after a show, we will binge after a show. It's such a weird habit. I know that it's better now, but after shows, you will see a lot of us just chucking down food like it was running out.

And a lot of us did that. A lot of us would just eat. I remember the last time I did a show, it was still old school way of dieting no carbs and you carb up like 24 hours before and I remember the day

after my show just eating so much food I had heartburn for the whole day like it was so bad

and I was bloated really badly from it and I remember that my relationship with food was really bad when i wouldn't even after i did a show i was still uncomfortable with eating anything quote unquote

unhealthy and when i did i would go and do like an hour's cardio this was before i started doing like crossfit and conditioning yeah i'll just go on the stairmaster for an hour it's like no i had pizza yesterday i need to burn off those calories did it mess with your mindset a lot absolutely yeah so feel fat think you're fat yeah all that stuff right yeah you know i remember trying to be when you're bodybuilding trying to have this aesthetic look a you don't want to be fat quote unquote fat but also i remember looking in the mirror and never seeing all the things everybody said was positive i would just go oh my shoulders are too small that while my shoulders not wider my legs are not as shredded as they could be man if this guy isn't seeing good stuff in the mirror this is how bad it was i i say this there's one picture where i

remember it got reposted everywhere simply shredded used it everyone was like my god you looked amazing then you look incredible and i remembered that picture when i took it just going i wish i was i had a more of a v taper i wish my abs were a little bit more tighter and i wish i had my legs were slightly bigger and my hamstrings aren't as shredded as i want them to be i have a question for you real quick obi um what year do you think that was posted that picture was posted on sippy shredded how long ago how old do you think you were if you remember i was i was definitely my early 20s god that was a long time ago probably about six seven years ago six or seven years ago

yeah because i remember when i was in my early 20s and i was starting to like focus on like fitness stuff yeah like i remember see i think i remember seeing that back photo yeah yeah i was like 21 or something at the time i was like i want to i want to get it back like that yeah you know what i mean so it's just so it's pretty cool like this is funny yeah but this picture i didn't realize how lean i was and then but when i looked at it i was like oh my lower back could be a lot leaner i wish my lats were slightly bigger you know rather than seeing all the everything people were saying yeah and i kind of was yeah sometimes i would still i mean now i look at it I'm like, oh God, I wish I could get to this stage now. But it's, when people were seeing a lot of the positives, I was focusing too much on what I could do to look better.

much on what I could do to look better and then looking at other people on Instagram and going oh I wish I had that guy's physique that guy looks a lot more impressive and you know I in a weird way because you want to be better you would never settle and I think we were told that that's a good thing yeah when you when you go oh i'm happy with how i look that means you are not progressing it you're not trying anymore so in my mindset it was i need to look better i saw a guy today at the coffee shop order a muffin and i was just like that guy does not give a fuck yeah right and i was like i would like to trade places with that guy yeah yeah that's kind of nice so you just like fuck it man i'm getting a muffin yeah yeah you know it's it's funny you say that because i had a muffin for breakfast today are we surprised though a muffin like of course no but i the way the more i think of it the old me would not have a muffin because it's not cheat day right i used to have cheat days so i would never touch

a muffin unless it was a cheat day cheat day it's legal yeah yeah you know i would never have i wouldn't go to restaurants where i wouldn't care what's on the menu because i want to go to a restaurant i wouldn't go oh what's the less damaging food on this menu um i can have a burger whenever i want to now i couldn't back then but you exactly the same thought process you have is the same i have now when i see people just yeah i'll have a burger today i'll have a milkshake and i'm like even some part of me i like to pretend i don't care and i would eat whatever i want that's a lie i still i'm i restrict certain foods you know there's an aspect that's good to that yeah absolutely yeah yeah absolutely so but it's still

i still allow myself to enjoy the simple things like have a muffin now and then that's fine and you do see people who aren't in the best of shape and they don't care. And before I used to almost feel bad for them or sorry for them. And now I'm like, I wish I had that mindset. They have a great mindset because they don't care what other people think. We like to think that we don't sometimes. But in the back of our heads, we do. We're placing too much of our own judgment and our own rules on somebody else that doesn't even know us. Yeah.

And they don't even know us. Yeah, exactly. So I look at them and think, if they don't care, who am I to judge them for not caring? Like, why are we so angry sometimes at people's choices? You know, and I find that weird. I think maybe I'm probably, but back in the day, I would care a lot. I'd be like, why don't you care about how you look? And why don't you care about what you eat?

And unless they asked you for help, or unless they asked for your opinion, why are you giving it to them? You start giving them a seminar and calories in, calories out. This is the way that muffin's going to work in your body. Yeah. People get very angry, very passionate. And and i used to be i used to be the

same when it came to people who didn't do anything that wasn't bodybuilding you know i used to think bodybuilding that's the only way to train you know and running running same here yeah i used to laugh people who went who did running what are you doing running around in circles go to the gym lift some weights i never understood people who didn't want to have muscles no seriously like how do you not want to be muscly my son came home from the gym one day and he's like what do people that don't work out do yeah i was like you made it son i just gave him a big hug. Just be coming to me and let's go. But Obi, question about, because like, was with bodybuilding, I assume being the way that you started getting into lifting and then you started focusing on the way you look.

I can understand the same thing you're saying. Because when I did shows, I did a bunch of shows and I stopped because I found jujitsu, which allowed me to focus on performance. But one thing that I found when I started focusing on performance was I also wasn't focused purely on the way I looked. Like with shows, judges say your triceps aren't big enough. You need a better, you need more lines in your glutes. You need a deeper lower back. There's, even though you probably look great with the sport of bodybuilding, it does come down to the way you look. And with that,

every single day you're going to be focusing on are my triceps bigger yet are they improving are they improving every fucking day yeah and that i mean there are some people who've been bodybuilding for decades who i guess can manage that well but for most people that doesn't seem to be a good place for your mind yeah you know yeah i agree it's like you said you probably looked incredible to most of us but the judges will say to you yeah your triceps could be bigger you know your quads could be more shredded and that in a way plays in your mind and it can keep it becomes more of a negative fact of how you see yourself you know that's why i said

when i looked in the mirror i no longer saw oh i'm i'm shredded i'm aesthetic i saw oh he needs bigger shoulders his legs need to be bigger his hamstrings need to be a lot more shredded yeah so you start to see the negatives in the way you look. And a lot of us don't think about how that impacts us in daily, in our daily lives. You know? So when I did start doing some CrossFit, it was all by accident actually, because I was a CrossFit hater.

I thought CrossFit was a joke. And then. Do you remember infinite Elgin intensity? No. Have you ever seen that Asian guy who would always, do you remember? He would like bash CrossFit form and like they're kipping pull-ups and the way they did lifts in competitions. People still do that today.

I know. But he was like, he really popularized it back in the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, hating CrossFit was very popular on YouTube. Yeah. You get views for just showing the fails. CrossFit fails is like a big thing. So I remember someone who followed is like a big thing. So, um, I remember,

well, someone who followed me was a videographer said, would you like to do a bodybuilder versus Crossfitter? And I was bulking, quote unquote bulking. So I was heavy. I was, I was about 115 when I was 115 kilos,

about two, two 50. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I was not very, I mean mean i didn't have any fitness level whatsoever so when he said would you like to try it and i just thought well crossfit it's just you know can't be that hard yeah i went to do it and uh it's actually his uh craig richie's quite popular

uh team richie in the CrossFit industry now is huge. And we got to the workout. It was 21, 15, 9 pull-ups, deadlift and assault bike. I've never used an assault bike before. And obviously 21, 15, 9 means 21 reps on all three movements. 15, 9, as quick as you can. The pull-up section was interesting because obviously you know crossfit pull-ups yes we we everybody takes the piss out of crossfit pull-ups butterfly pull-ups and i was doing normal pull-up quote unquote normal pull-ups and i was like how has he gotten to the deadlift

portion in the space of 10 seconds i was doing 21 pull-ups yeah but i remember i think i'll never forget when we did um the assault bike version is this the video no this is when matt does fitness this is later um that will be on it would it be on my channel or craig richie's channel uh bodybuilder versus crossfit i'm there was quite a a lot of it just to clear some stuff up for just a second a lot of what is done in CrossFit is done because they're in competition against each other. And a lot of times they're doing movements in a very specific way so they can get judged and critiqued on good reps. And a good rep in CrossFit in terms of a pull-up

means that you have to pull your chest to the bar. So good luck trying to pull your chest to the bar with straight form. Exactly. It's really rare for anyone, even if they are super super fit to be able to do that yeah exactly they kip so they kip it's i always say it's efficiency you're trying to be more efficient yeah so yeah that was uh that's the first time i did crossfit did you know that he was bringing you out because he knew that you were gonna to, like you were going to struggle. I didn't know.

Cause Craig used to be a bodybuilder too, but he was really well into CrossFit. So I didn't know he was really good in CrossFit. And, um, as you can see, he's really strong. This was the deadlift portion of the workout.

So people go to CrossFit as a week. This was him doing deadlifts. Uh, so I kind of thought you know what yeah is that the i don't remember them putting there yeah so this was the ah yeah yeah so can you see that and i was i was struggling yeah yeah yeah end up with some rhabdo after that work oh i was in pain so as you can see that was my first time on an assault i call it the devil bike first time on this bike and this was my first time actually seeing the butterfly pull-ups in real time because normally you see it in videos and

after this workout i decided that you know what i want to try more of this it looks really interesting it looks really cool i actually tried to learn to do a butterfly pull-ups and i couldn't do it i think that says a lot about your mindset right there because some people are stubborn like this is fucking stupid yeah leave but no i wanted to learn more yeah i was really inspired i also seen how strong he was and how quick he moved and i was like hold on a minute i'm supposed to be fit but this dude right here is fit but he also has conditioning. Why don't I have that? And I think that was a question I asked myself after this. And then I remember literally the two days after I was in pain, going back to try and learn the workout.

These guys love it. They're filming everything. Yeah. Get his reaction. Got him. Yeah. Sweat angel. Yeah.

So after, I think I remember, I've done that workout again, actually. Yeah. And I've done it in six minutes. Damn. So that time was nine minutes. Yeah.

Because I learned how to kip now. Yeah. So now I have to do kipping pull-ups, but also I'm more efficient on the bike, on the devil bike, as I call it. Obviously the older I get, ironically, when I did lose some weight, you know doing more crossfit i

did lose some size of course that happens um some people did question oh you know are you happy with losing all that size and i was okay with it i was fine with it. But the thing for me was, I want to be able to show people that you can be a heavier guy who looks like myself and also have some conditioning. And also people always say, well, you have to choose one or the other. And I'm like, well, no, why can't you do both?

And that's my thing. And that's why I call myself a cross lifter. I don't say, you know, you know, there's the hybrid athlete. I don't call myself a hybrid athlete because i always feel like you need the running element which i don't so i don't i i don't yes it does mean you i am technically a hybrid but i call myself a cross lifter which means i do a cross section of fitness so i do bodybuilding i do cross i do the functional training i love kettlebell stuff you know and i do i do road cycling that's one thing a lot of some people will know some people

don't so a lot of cyclists recently or is that something no i've been doing road cycling uh 20 i mean what would you say recently it's 20 20 20 maybe yeah yeah for a little bit yeah yeah so i'm one of those people that you see with the jersey with the bib with the whole there the whole shorts and everything yeah special shorts and i'm on the i'm on the track oh that's when i did track cycling that was a lot of fun that's probably really hard oh it's really hard for my size yeah so so when i do cycle when i go on the road when i go on the road uh you can imagine cyclists are half my size and they see me and they're like dude like yeah why not i'm having fun with it uh track cycling is a different ball game have you gotten on one of those tracks that's like on the so this is outdoor track cycling is slightly has ballgame. Have you gotten on one of those tracks that's like on the – So this is – outdoor track cycling is slightly – has a slightly elevation. That's indoor.

That's really slanted, right? That's really slanted, yeah. So Francis Cade is – I was on his channel. So – You just go like hell on that? You just go as fast as you can? So with track cycling or with – Track cycling, yeah.

Track cycling is – there's different types so the one outside which we did stuff is slightly a little bit slanted so you know um when you watch the olympic ones but it's half the half the height if that makes sense yeah so you are almost on an edge but we learned on that day because obviously my size would do better with sprint cycling so sprint sprint cycling is literally just as quick as you can one round. If you watch the Olympics, you've probably seen some of that in law. But what we did- These guys have huge legs. Yes.

Massive. Yeah. But I don't do that. I do road cycling, which is not- Road cycling is harder because you're just going 40, 50K. Some of these guys, I mean, they're half my size, so they're really quick and that's what i do but the reason why i do that is because i enjoyed it i did i tried it once

um with this guy called francis k he's a youtube cyclist he does cycling on youtube and i was like oh this is really interesting um i never thought going around on a bike rounding circles would be fun but i enjoyed it why not so i started to get into that and it's quite funny with my channel and my social media i do have some people who are cyclists that follow me and they have they don't care about the bodybuilding at all so i i didn't i i thought that was quite interesting and it was quite cool to have that so sometimes i'll be on the bike in london they're like oh ob how's it going you know going it's so it's it's it's so cool to have an audience that don't care about the fitness stuff but because of i have that hobby um and also because i also do bouldering again which is someone my size

is not has no business doing yeah but again it's for me it's you know break the mold is something that a lot of people see me wear all the time it's always on me it's you know break the mold is something that a lot of people see me wear all the time it's always on me it's always on my head i have a headband i have it on on my clothing yeah it's because break the mold is for me is i remember when i said to craig after doing a crossfit workout i want to break the mold of being the big dude that can't do anything yes you know yeah i want to i want you to if there were five of us here and everyone had different disciplines you would be like you you could be a runner and be like let's go out for a run a light 5k run i can't run very fast but i'm like yeah let's do it i can do that if you said

let's go bouldering i can do it if you said let's go on the bike i can do it if you said let's do some conditioning workout i can do it yeah i said let's do some good old bodybuilding i can do that too so for me training has become something that i want to be able to do for the rest of my life but also i want to be able to have different disciplines that when i as i get older i'll be fine with just running if someone said to me you can't train for a week but i'll be like well that's fine i've got a skipping rope and there's a, there's road anywhere you can travel to, you know, I've gone on holiday where I've not went to touch the gym. I remember South Africa.

I only trained once and the rest, I did body weight stuff. The old me would have struggled with that. I'll be like, no, I need to find a gym anywhere. I can lose your gains. Yeah.

Yeah. But, but ever since I started the, the, the whole Crossfit scene and then going more into conditioning and you know becoming more of a cross lifter it just meant that i'm not scared if there isn't or i'm not like panicking there's no gym around me when i travel yeah you know because i can train without having a gym now i can enjoy fitness without it needing to be in a confined space with equipment.

And it's, it's actually fun. So, you know, for me, the biggest thing is now I go, you know, what's your advice for people training?

And I always put fun in my top five tips. If you're not enjoying something, you will, that's why a lot of people give up when it comes to fitness and challenges and all these um especially when you're new to the gym what about with food can you do that with food too i think there's some aspects with with your with food and diet and when you are trying to diet down with food there is some sacrifices you will have to make absolutely because we can lie and go oh you can eat whatever you want as long as within the your macros technically you can but if you already have issues with

self-control when it comes to food you do need to set that discipline that's why a lot of people see me and i eat the way i want i go to restaurants all the time and how do you eat like this i'm like well i don't do this all the time. I already have that discipline. And I had to have that discipline when I started to diet down and make sure that I had the basics and learned the basics of food and how macros and calories worked. And also just learning to that self-control, because if you don't have that self-control to start with, then saying to someone, oh, as long as it fits your

macros you can do whatever you want that's hard for them to then learn how to control you know that impulse of oh no then that means i can have an oreo cookie for the whole day because technically it fits my macros well where's the nutritional value in that food so i always tell people to learn you know especially how you can make good healthy nutritional choices or you know before then after a while you can then go into whatever fits your macros power project family your normal shoes are making you weak this is why i partner with vivo barefoot shoes because they have a wide toe box, they're flat, and they're flexible. So with every single step you're taking, if you're taking a 10-minute walk outside or when you're working out in the gym, your feet are able to do what they're supposed to do in this shoe. They have tons of options for

hiking, running, training in the gym, chilling and relaxing, casual shoes. if you're out on a date you need to check them out and andrew how can they get it yes that's over at vivo barefoot.com slash power project and you guys will receive 15 off your order automatically again vivo barefoot.com slash power project links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes question when you were younger right um we're because i'm one of those people who like i ended up picking up the habit of fasting we all did we don't do it every day right but it's something that is in our toolbox because now we're not like we have to eat all the time right when we're feeling a little hungry it's not we're not angry about it right but when it comes to eating we here

can all eat a lot of food right like if you're like if you say hey you're having oreo but you have the whole thing in front of me i'm the type of person who before i just eat all three sleeves because i can do that and then i can eat more after that i'm a person who can eat a lot so were you someone who can put down a lot of food or did you have a struggle putting out a lot of food no i was i was you know i loved food i still do yeah but i didn't have self control so I watched a lot of TV I was more of an introvert so I didn't have

a lot of friends growing up and TV was my friend WWE was like hey I wanted to look like one of my favourites was The Undertaker

and Kane because they were weird all their brothers yeah I liked the weird people who were hench. So I wanted to look hench, but also I liked the fact that they were a bit weird. And I always,

that's why I actually started bodybuilding because I was like, I want to look like a wrestler. I thought that it was unachievable until I saw someone. This time I lost a lot of weight. I used to do a lot of running and then I went to, you know, I was feeling more confident.

So I was going out after working in, I used to work in Selfridges or in a shop. And after working there, me and my friends would go out and then we'd go to the bar. And, you know, that was when I was a lot, I was a lot more confident. And there was this dude just standing there like, I don't dance. I'm too muscly and I'm too swole. You know what I'm saying? I got this stick up my ass. I can't move.

Exactly. And I remember going up to him and I was like, how the hell do you look like that? That's impressive. I've never seen anyone outside of WWE with so much muscle. Yeah. And then he just said, do you go to the gym i said oh no you know i just do some running you know don't eat much it's like well you need to go to the gym lift some weights then you look like how i do and i swear to you the day after i signed up for a gym yeah and

i had no idea what i was doing i like the gym yeah yeah yeah i walked in looked at all the equipment and i i remember i never used to have men's like fitness magazines i never bought any of that i didn't want to waste my money on that you know and then we didn't have youtube i always say to people now you're lucky yeah we did not have youtube we had no one to tell us it was just like the bodybuilders the arnie's and and i didn't know about arnold then because i'm not interested in bodybuilding i'm interested in wwe i want to be a wrestler yeah so i i remember the first few months in the gym just watching people they probably thought i was the weirdest person i did the same shit there was this really jacked black guy when i was 13 years old at my gym yeah so i'd like i knew he

went to the gym at like 6 p.m every day so i'd run and i'd watch him lift i'd be like yeah that's exactly what i did i literally copied people i would see them i'll be like i don't know what this machine does i'll stand in the corner let just wait for someone to use it. I'll be like, ah, that's what you do. And then I'll go and use the machine. I did that for a long time. And it started to work because then I remember my family, being Nigerian, being heavyset is seen as healthy, right? So when I was heavier-

In SEMA, he's always got to eat like a cheeseburger and some French fries, right? My grandma used to say, why are you, why are you, where's the fat? You're wasting away. You're wasting away. Grandma, I'm 250 pounds. 250. 250.

It's funny because when I was slightly heavier, I was chunky. So that was fine. that's normal for us yeah and when i lost a lot of weight it was a year of just i did a lot of running i my food my choices was terrible i restricted my diet a lot and then yeah so that wasn't even as bad it was worse than that but the funny thing is i never used to take pictures of myself so people go oh do you have pictures back then i was like i didn't want anyone taking pictures of me because i hated the way i looked why would you want to have pictures of yourself and it took me a

while to actually like taking pictures of myself and the only reason i started taking pictures of myself because i started to look better yeah that's why i have the timing difference that's a long that's a long time and this is what's how long did it take you like oh i don't know get in pretty good shape uh i would say i was 21 probably about five years so you're 21 on the left there so yeah about 21 there and then they're not a bad physique by the way like you know it's it's not a bodybuilding yeah so that was also don't lift at all there yeah yeah so that was kind of already i've already started training though there that's

why i was doing like the pictures because i you know everybody was doing and i hated i hated it took me a while to actually even share this picture uh the before one and i hate this after one because when you're 21 when you're 21 uh yeah yeah did you at when at 21 there did you have any lifting under your belt or is that with so no i yeah i did so i started losing i started to change the way i looked when i was about 18 okay yeah i was gonna say you look a little bit you look a little bit trained on the left yeah yeah like the arms and chest and i would not allow anyone to take a picture. I would not take a picture when I looked my worst

because I didn't want people to see that. Especially with your shirt off. Yeah, I didn't like the way I looked. So why would I want anyone else to see it? That's why it took me a while to actually post the transformation picture. But I remember, it was quite a long time ago, I just feeling a lot more confident in how i looked to be like you know what i'm i'm fine now i'm sharing you know what i look like and what my work from when i started

well not really when i started because i already started um to how i look now and i just remember i will never forget after years of lifting then by accident we um i don't know where we were but we were out it was with my friends and i was already like quite big and i saw that same guy and i was bigging in him oh yeah and then he was like what the hell happened i was like yeah i took your advice thank you i'll never forget it i still remember um his name francis i remember his name yeah that's like he was a big black dude francis he was nigerian too and um and that's why i'll never forget his name because he's because of him um i started to lift and um you know there's always something that happens that will make you change or you know something

that happens that forces you to or make you remember why you did certain things that makes big impact on your life so for me the the only reason i got shredded and did stage shows was because i worked in a gym and one of the pts tristan he was the one that said to me you're wasting your potential you need to shred down and do a show and thankfully i said yes because i didn't really think i could ever be shredded because being shredded was again a different level to being muscly yeah because you can be muscly but not shredded and if i hadn't said yes to him and gone through the whole chicken rice and broccoli just six times a day jeez i can't touch i can't eat broccoli now i can't eat tuna ever tinned tuna i can't do anymore and broccoli

sometimes makes me sick but do you think you could have died like with all you know now right as far as calories and stuff and you do don't you think you could have dieted in a different way to get that lean oh we've all i know now absolutely we made so many mistakes yeah so many mistakes and so many silly things i mean but at the same time one of my friends actually said well maybe you had to make that mistake to know that you should never ever ever do that again so in a way although yes it wasn't optimal but it was what worked for then and because of i did that that was how the whole social media career started for me if i hadn't done all of that and listened to him i would never have gotten leaner because i you know when you're shredded i don't know if you i mean most of most of us did. We took loads of pictures. And then you start drip feeding the pictures every week.

You're like shredded TBT. I remember that. Throwback Thursday. Throwback Thursday when I was shredded. Yeah. So that was the main thing that got me to, well, people to start to recognize what i do and recognize my physique i got a question here how did you get big because it's one thing to be lean right but you're big how'd you get like what was there a particular style of training or do you think you just

responded well to training was there something specific that you did honestly it was old school way of getting it was just bulking and then training i bought that you know the arnold m encyclopedia of bodybuilding yeah i bought that and i was just like and then uh reading all of that and then with dieting i started to learn what bulking was and how heavy did you let yourself get like what was your heaviest on like a bulk 115 116 was around my heaviest wait how much do you weigh now because you still look dense i'm about 113 well 114 after christmas but 130 112 is what i try and stay well 110 is what ideally i want to be at because that is not too heavy that i can because now around 112 yeah we're the same weight we're what's the actual pounds 246 240 yeah yeah so the thing is what i've realized

is the heavier i start to get when i do conditioning workouts it's just a struggle you know the aerobic stuff is just a killer so So I try not to get too heavy. But with bulking, like old school bulking, you know, when I started to add size was just eating a lot. And I started to learn more macros

and calories and I was just loads of food. And yeah, bodybuilding I used to do because when you're younger, you have time. So I was at uni, at college at uni and I would train twice a day. I used to do because when you're younger you have time so i was at uni uh college at uni and i will train twice a day i used to do the twice a day training and then i used to

do the old school shoulders so one single body parts you know now everybody's like no you don't need to do that anymore you can do full full body you can do push pull i didn't know i found that to be really motivating just to pick one yeah body part because it's like really simple i'm just going to do shoulders today i found it's easy to be consistent with that yeah so i i mean now there's so many scientific uh uh research that says you can now just do push pull for body and that's optimal too but i did the old school way you know how bodybuilders would do shoulders in the morning maybe like back in the evening, you know, biceps in the morning and, you know, something else in the evening.

I did that. I had the time. And when I worked in retail, I would go to the gym early in the morning and do my cardio work and then go back and do some bodybuilding. So I did. Don't tell us that you worked at Abercrombie.

No, no, no. Okay. I did, sadly. go back and do some bodybuilding so i did don't tell us that you worked at abercrombie no no okay i did sadly no i didn't work i didn't work at abercrombie okay i worked in selfridges and i worked for reese and that's slightly more cooler than what selfridges selfridges is like a really uh if you go to london if you go to england if you go to central london west end yeah selfridges are this big do you know Harrods? You've heard of Harrods, surely. No. What's Harrods?

Harrods is... Yeah, it's one of those... What would I equivalent... You know, like Macy's in New York. Yeah. So Selfridges is similar to that. Okay. So really expensive, cool,

but Selfridges had a mix of super expensive and cool brands. And when you were young, you wanted to work either for Selfridges or Harrods. Harrods was more luxury. So that's in Knightsbridge. So I worked in Selfridges in West End and everyone's cool and trendy. So that was when I lost a lot of weight and I was feeling myself. And that's kind of why I worked in Selfridges.

Just Selfridges, the website, that's all. Oh, you can find pictures of what it looks like it's a big department store but it's bougie as anything so that was um kind of for me working there made me also it's like you're trying to impress people right so that's why i started to go to the gym more just so that i can impress people and actually i quit that job because i became a personal i didn't know you could be a personal trainer you know that was a job so and my parents well my mom was like well personal trainer because i went to uni and studied marketing and finance uh-huh how'd they feel about that they were like what does that mean that doesn't sound like a job you teach people how to exercise and i was yeah i didn't i was like yeah that's a that's a job. You teach people how to exercise. And I was, yeah, I didn't,

I was like, yeah, that's a job. You can do that. And I mean, it's taken a while. I mean, even still, when I started doing this whole social media thing, they were like, okay, what do you do? What exactly is your job title? And I'm like, yeah, I teach people how to lift weights and nigerians

don't under i mean now they're getting better at understanding what that means but when i was a personal trainer um it took a while for for for my mom especially to like realize that this is actually an option as a job and that was when i went full into fitness that was when I went full into fitness. That was when I was full into the whole bodybuilding. I had those, you know, the bags with your meals that you can put. I can't remember the name of it. Six-pack bags. Yeah, the Tupperware full of your meals, walking around with that. And then just having that.

Gallon of water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. I got to know that. How do you handle? Because one of my aunts, as I started getting bigger, my aunts, one of my aunts is a nurse and she pulled me aside one Thanksgiving and she's like,

and Seema, are you taking drugs? Yeah. So, cause like you got big. How, like, first off,

cause people probably ask you that all the time. But how was that for you? How do you deal with that? Cause P you probably get that all the time i get it all the time um i remember being trolled really badly for it um there was a guy who does a youtube and he like trolled me for it and actually it was so bad i remember looking at um companies that test and one of them was like we only test olympic athletes and i it was so funny because she was

like well you need to be a team and it's quite you know we don't just test individuals yeah because i was so determined to try and find a way to prove to people and now i kind of just let people think what they want yeah I you know you would never be able to unless you um find someone who can officially test you properly I'm not scared of that I think a lot of people um feel like oh if you're not if you're not um on any form of steroids you wouldn't be you would be happy to get tested yeah but unfortunately if you do the test yourself your your doesn't it doesn't work you can you're you're choosing that you know it has to be uh what what do you call you know like the third party tested yeah yeah and you can't

know about it and they have to surprise you so i know people that have tested themselves and they've been trolled for it was like well you're off cycle dude yeah you're gonna go when you're not taking anything so um now i i kind of just let people think what they want um did it used to bother you though it did in the beginning yeah that's why i went to research into how to to get tested and because when you know that you you are not doing something people telling you and people telling you emph know that you are not doing something, people telling you and people telling you emphatically that you are, and I'm just like, you can't disprove it unless, again, unless you go for the route of getting tested.

But then if you test yourself, it doesn't work because you're controlling it. So, yeah, my family never never asked actually funny enough but you know you will get people that still say it and then sometimes you get people that will try and pretend that they're just joking yeah where can i buy it from i know you're not taking it, but you know, where can I get some? I'm like, okay. I mean, yeah, it,

it, it, the young, when I was younger, it, it, it bothered me a lot. Now I'm just like,

you know, and make up your own decision, whatever, you know, whatever you want to. With lifting, were you lifting heavy in the beginning to get big? Or,

or was it still more straight bodybuilding? Yeah, it was a lot more bodybuilding, like high volume, super high volume. I mean, I think it was even too much volume. Even when I've toned it down, I still find that I do a lot of volume. And even people on YouTube are like, my God, that's a lot of volume. And I'm just like, because I'm so used to training this way.

I even think sometimes I do a video, workout video a bodybuilding workout video and i think i've toned it down and then people go this is not this is too much this isn't and i'm just like this is this is what i'm so used to yeah um and i did used to do heavy lifting too but not to the extent of trying to you know do 280 kilo deadlift and things like that i was always good quality repetition yeah and good set after set exactly i think that's also kind of what a lot of people always say to you if they've watched my training video oh he's that guy that's always like form form like i would use um i remember was it ben pokulski he was he said i can make a five kilo dumbbell i don't know if you're doing pounds equivalent look and feel heavy and that always

stuck with me and kaya green also is known for just using lightweight and making it work and making and and it's all about form and i took a lot of that information to you know away and for me form over everything so every time you watch my bodybuilding videos it's not glamorous i don't shout like i'm a you know crazy i'm not like i'm so calm and people like how how is this workout effective i'm gonna show you how to run yeah while you're here yeah i mean because you can run the same way you don't have to work nearly as hard as you might think i'll get get you through it, big guy. Do you know what?

I think it's just my body, when I start running, just going, what is he doing? What's happening? This is not, this is, what are you doing? So running is one that's, I used to just see running and, oh, you just put in your shoes and go. Yeah. But then when I learned that there's so many technicalities to it, now I've realized there's more to running than just putting your shoes and go how did you get into the barefoot stuff because i can see you're kicking it with those vivos over there yeah so barefoot was an interesting one i wore vivos for a year um they

how did i get into i i think there was one time i saw the shoes and thought they were really interesting because i have flat feet and um i was like oh I really like to try these shoes so they sent sent me the shoes and I was like this is interesting I mean the first two weeks you had to get used to it yeah how was it for you like what what do you remember the first few days like my feet were in pain they were not used to touching solid ground and just walking around so not like uh i can't describe what the the sensation feels like it's just uncomfortable that's what it is and i remember trying to do some crossfit stuff like jumping skipping like jump rope skipping box jumps my feet were just they were on fire yeah and i was like oh i don't think i could i don't think i can do this this is this

doesn't feel right so i rather than stop i said okay i'm going to just go between both of them and then i started to realize that it was actually it was funny after a few months i then I started to realize that it was actually, it was funny. After a few months, I, then I said to myself, hold on, you actually, you don't even notice most of these things anymore. And I stopped wearing my other gym shoes. I started wearing the Vivos more. I didn't realize that I was doing that consciously. I just was every time going to pick my training shoes, which I had loads of, I would just take the Vivos. And that was it and then i just remembered thinking wow this made such a huge difference because when i put on my other shoes on

i just felt unsteady unstable and i would always just go back to wearing the vivos so when i did the i we vivo had this thing it's called vivo health and you do they analyze your feet and how you walk and how you run yeah and he said bring your running shoes and then i put my my normal running shoes and i was running and he could see that i wasn't having in contact with the floor when i was running right here yeah so that was like a 3d print of my feet as you can see i'm extremely flat-footed like like yeah and you mentioned one of your feet is bigger than the other yeah so uh i think is it the left one or the right the left one is extremely flat and slightly bigger than the right one so this was also an eye-opener because i always felt that my left whenever i had shoes on the left one felt tight and when we did that now it made sense yeah and he almost said it's a shame that shoes

don't come in optional sizes like that or half sizes um and it was after that we did because i started running then and then you, we did all the analysis and I learned about foot health and how to, you can actually train your feet. Didn't know that. Yeah. You do exercise for your feet. Again, didn't know that. And, um, yeah, we've, I've gone back since and it's made a big improvement.

And do you have to order two pairs of shoes so you can get like a 12 and a half on one shoe? See, unfortunately 13 on the other yeah well no so 13 is too big so you need like a half but oh i see yeah once you get to a 12 most people don't the half sizes stop it's so weird right like you get eight not eight and a half nine and a half ten and a half eleven and a half but once you get 12 they just like us you can get 12 and a half like do they not do that in the uk in the us no in the uk it's very hard it's even already hard to find 12s anyway so most sizes stop at 11 especially european sizes they stop at 11 pause but like

there are so many like you're a 12 yeah you're like 12 to 13 i'm a 13 12 and a half to 13 our feet size aren't in common no that but then also it's different sizes right it's like a 48 or something right like it's not like 12 i think maybe like 47 in the in yeah in new york 47 i wear 46 in vivos so that's a 12 and a half like yeah that would be about a 12 and a half in the vivos yeah i wear a 12 so 46 yeah yeah but you ever tried a vibram shoe the five finger one i used to wear vibrams before but that was years ago and people used to take the piss out of me oh yeah all the time they used to take the piss what's he showing right here is that like where you pressure pressure plate so you can see that obviously

the green and that shows how much pressure i have with contact with the floor when you're just standing just standing yeah so much on that left side huh yeah and then you can so the main thing he said he said because because we're so used to having shoes that the toes go up you notice you can't see my toes oh yeah yeah i'm so i stand with toes up because all the shoes we have toes up, which we then get used to standing back rather than also, you technically should be able to see all your toes on that pressure plate. And he said, I'm so used to doing that. And also the pressure point is it should be almost centered,

but I am, you can see where the pressure is on either side. And yes, the left is the right one. just looks like I'm not even. Maybe like you made your left foot bigger, put more pressure on all the time. Yeah. So that's also, and actually I find myself correcting myself. It's the subtle thing.

So he said a lot of us stand where we are comfortable. So a lot of us do this. Yeah. We stand like this. And he says that's why there's more pressure on one side. So he says if you, there's more pressure on one side so he says if you uh just small things it's changing that so i always find myself sometimes if i'm cooking i'm like change your style just standing like that you know so it's just those small changes i didn't

even think about until kind of we went through all of this and then when we did the second time round almost a year after like you you could see there was a difference, especially the way I run and especially with the pressure on the, on the pressure plate and how I stand. But it's just learning all that was so alien to me because I didn't think there was a lot of, especially there's a lot of science and information you can learn about your feet and just the simple things as the way you stand yeah can affect the way you walk can affect

everything else you know so um i had to change a lot of ways so now i 90 of the time i train in barefoot shoes and when i go for walks you know like i said to you i walk a lot now i walk in barefoot shoes um i didn't used to like going for walks back in the day so really yeah was that like uh was that a change in habits or yeah it was it was i think you know ever since i changed the way i train but i also think that I always say to people, I'm the laziest fit person you would ever meet. Like I am super lazy. So I had to force myself to be more active when I'm not just in the gym. Yeah.

If that made sense. I know what you mean. So I'm, I have, uh, as you can see, yeah, those are the,

the, the, the leg exercises. So it's controlling your toes, which i didn't think that you you could do but i mean this is it's a little bit interesting when you watch him do and he does it really well and and then it's like yeah you should be able to like individually move them and stuff like that so yeah i learned a lot for that from that day what did you have oh good no i was just asked like it's like performance wise though or maybe not even

performance wise but what was something that you noticed like after wearing the viva shoes for a while that you noticed like oh shit i didn't even know this could come from having stronger feet it's more to especially when it came to um the explosive so i used to do i was learning some snc training with one of my rugby coach so we were doing it for fun yeah and then beforehand i was doing it in cushioned shoes and yeah yeah and i struggled with a lot of the movements because i'm not used to being explosive and once i started vivo so i actually started doing them in vivo shoes as well a lot of the snc stuff and after a while i noticed i was moving better i was just

you know in terms of speed reaction and also when it came to um squats and kettlebell training i found that once i stopped using those uh the cushioned shoes i was moving better and then the main thing for me was i used to have a lot of back pain and i used to butt wink a lot when i used to squat yeah and i found that my my mobility now is so much better so it got to the point where i would say to people okay right we're gonna we're going to do a kang squat or cossack squats with barbell or you know kettlebell let's go for me it's standard it's easy and then i get someone to do it they're like i can't do that like how can you not do a cossack me it's standard it's easy and then i get someone to do it they're like i can't do that like how can you not do a cossack squat it's really easy but because i'm so my mobility has improved so much for me a basic movement like a cossack squat some people still

struggle because they don't have that um mobility and ankle mobility because my ankle mobility was shocking when i started and now you know when it comes to things like overhead squats and having some barbell cycling in the workouts and doing some snatches in the workouts i can do that now where i couldn't do that before yeah but for me certain things i used to think things like pistol squats so you know i thought you know i learned to do it but even just doing pistol squat to a box, I thought, you know, pretty standard. Some people can't do that. And that's when I realized how much improvements I have made since I changed, you know, especially my footwear. Whereby now that movements that seem basic to me is very hard for individuals to actually execute.

And people in great shape to struggle with them no it's it's it's making it it's made a big difference in terms of like not just balance during things while i'm doing jujitsu but like things like walking when you're talking about kind of changing the way you stand we've done a podcast in the past when we were talking about like how we walk differently in terms of the way we place our feet yeah and the amount of weight we put on different parts on our foot when we walk we run differently a lot of things have changed after we started not just like obviously you know like right now we're smashing our feet with these things but like as we've been able to increase the fitness and dexterity of our feet it's seeped

its way into other things that we do as far as like lifting, running, jujitsu, all of that type of stuff. Yeah. It's pretty wild. You mentioned your back bothering you. Did you run into other injuries or have you been like cautious enough with your training to where you haven't really run into a lot of injuries? I think when I started,

when I did bodybuilding, I was just careful that I didn't want to be injured. So I was, I mean, you know, you have like infamy infirmary tendonitis and you know the usual but it wasn't anything scary um but now that i do my training is more diverse um yeah there's a few things here that will probably hurt more you know that wouldn't if i just stuck with bodybuilding, but it's not, you know, they'll probably hear that. Anything that's really affected me, um,

that I couldn't train. So I am quite careful, but you can't be when you do certain type of conditioning workouts, you just have to do them. Um, I have, ironically, I've,

um, uh, sprained my ankle, but I was walking. I just wasn't watching where I was going. So a lot of injuries I've had, had nothing to do with the time. Were you on your phone or something? Yes. Oh, man.

You were just walking? Yeah. And it was like a little pothole and I didn't see it. And luckily it wasn't too bad. So it was a week of just limping and i recovered i've torn my bicep and uh i was ironically i was doing a 40 kilo kettlebell work yeah and i was fine you know and i just obviously you're tired and i just didn't put down the kettlebell it was the end of the session

i was just filming it actually for social media and i just didn't put it down carefully because what like did it just go like i i kind of from the snatch position and no control yeah and that yeah that extension that always hurts my back if i do that and i kind of get disconnected and i'm like let down or let go a bit i get hurt because you've obviously the same way you you lift that weight up you perform the exercise you should still have that same way you put it down but because i wasn't thinking and i was like oh i'm done and it like, and then my biceps, luckily it was just a small tear. It wasn't like full on tendon pop. Yeah. So that was, again,

had nothing to do with the workout. It was just me not paying attention. Yeah. So those are the two major injuries that I've had. Luckily that, you know, the bicep was slightly more serious because I, even though it was a small tear,

you can't, you forget that, you know, just bending your arms, your biceps, you know, the bicep warm-up was slightly more serious because I, even though it was a small tear, you can't, you forget that, you know, just bending your arms, your biceps, you know, lifting your arms overhead. So that was the first time I've had to actually not, I've actually, yeah, take a step back, but then I could train around it. But I think it was also a nice way to learn because I've had clients before,

when I said PT have injuries and not know how, um, they felt not being able to do certain things, but having that, I had to start training in a different way and learning how to move in different ways. And, you know, especially also when I did the ankle. So that actually, even though it was a week, it was about three, four weeks till it was fine that I could start doing some snatches and stuff like that. So, um,

learning to train around that was a big lesson as well. Yeah. That's also good. I mean, that's also makes sense. Like at that time you probably had a lot more tools than just bodybuilding. Yes. Right.

So you've already started CrossFit. Yeah. Um, and I, I'm curious, man, because going from bodybuilding to CrossFit, it's a very different type of domain to be fit in, right? So how long did it kind of take you to become proficient? And for you, because I think you mentioned in the gym, there are certain parts of your physique that actually improved by doing CrossFit.

Yeah. So how long did it take you to get pretty decent coming from a bodybuilding background and then as far as your body's concerned because you do care about the way you look like you're not gonna let yourself get out of shape yeah but how has that changed like how much weight did you lose or maybe gain or has it been easier now because you're better at crossfit to maintain more muscle than it was in the beginning yeah uh i think okay first with in terms of getting good yeah i i mean being good can be a lot of ways right yeah efficient um would be it took me a year and that was at a lot of the other things that olympic lifting took longer because

olympic lifting is very technical and i had to get someone to actually show me how to especially snatches you don't want to mess around in a snatch and that barbell drop in and i made the mistake of trying to learn olympic lifting with a mirror so which you don't do in a crossfit box because there's no mirrors yeah so what happened was when i went to crossfit boxes to start training there was no mirror so i had to relearn how to do um olympic lifting yeah you know so it was i would say a good two years it took me a year to understand the basics a good two years to be like okay you know what i'm getting better at this and i'm moving well my body is starting to feel less stiff yeah during a workout because i always know how much my body's changed when i train with other bodybuilders in a crossfit workout i have videos where i've done

bodybuilder does crossfit so i've done with like matt does fitness steve cook and when i'm like okay right we're going to do a dumbbell snatch or shoulders to overhead and i demo it and then they come to do the movement and i'm like what are you doing this is just this easy move why are you complicating this why yeah you know i put them on the ski and then i'm there you know it's all arms this is it's this is surely quite basic but i forget that i'm so used to training like that yeah there's so many people that struggle with shoulder to overhead you know like push pressing in you know with reps because bodybuilding we're so used to one two so they always control the weight and and i forget that i was there at where they are and sometimes for me what i think

is quite basic movement and and should be understandable yeah i forget that they don't do this type of movement so i think for me that's kind of when i realized that okay i'm a little bit better than i thought i was and especially when i do a workout with someone who does bodybuilding but they're half my size and waiting to work out and they're struggling and i'm like okay this is so easy for a lot of crossfitters and i'm not even pushing you as hard as i could i think that's when because sometimes i i do sometimes feel like i'm not as good as i should be yeah and then until i train with people who don't train like that and i'm i'm like as i should be yeah and then until i train with people who don't train like that and i'm i'm like you shouldn't be struggling this is not that hard yeah and

but it is hard it's just that i'm used to training that way and i think that was that's when i realized that i was getting a lot better and when i started to be able to do you know olympic lifting movements in a, you know, barbell complex in the wad. So you're, you're tired. So under fatigue to be like, okay,

20 cow bike. And then 10, you know, shoulders to have a ground to overhead or some snatches. Yeah. No, you can imagine a workout where they, you know, there was one we did,

which was so silly. Now think about it. It's 20 cow ski and then 300 kilos snatches. Whoa, whoa, whoa. 300 kilos. So a hundred kilos snatch, whoa, whoa. 300 kilos? So 100-kilo snatch times three, not 300.

But like times three, not 300 kilos. Okay. No. But this is like conditioning. So it's under fatigue, which you see some CrossFitters, a lot of the times Olympic lifting movements, I know sometimes weightlifters see that as a really bad thing. Yeah.

But, you know, this is what they do in CrossFit. So for me, when I realized that, okay, I am getting better, see see that as a really bad thing yeah but you know this is what they do in crossfit so for me when i realized that okay i am getting better was when we did this workout and first i was a bit scared i was like 100 kilos snatch when you're tired is not fun it's harder on its own yeah and it's from the ground it's from the ground yeah so my friend is so good at crossfit so yeah for him this is like standard so i was like right okay i'm gonna i'm gonna have to try it and i remember i did the workout and and i was and i did it and i was fine and i was like okay so i am actually much better than i thought i i was yeah

and sometimes it still surprises me but then when it comes to the aesthetic side it's the beauty sometimes with crossfit training is you stop caring because it's not part of what you're doing yeah um there's no emphasis on um your physique even though yes they train topless all the time there's a running joke with CrossFitters is like, they walk in and just doing a warmup and the top comes off. Yeah. You know? So it's,

um, it, it teaches you to learn how to move and not care too much about the aesthetics. I mean, the aesthetics will still be there because of the way you're moving. But yeah, that's the, this was the second one we did.

The first one he did, um, was even um i was a little bit more mean the first yeah like the workouts we did matt does fitness i think i did i did torture him more than anyone else i'm gonna fuck you up a little bit so matt does fitness um i i gave him a bit too much to do it It's, it's, it's always a partner workout, but I even, I remember even with Steve, you know, he started to do more CrossFit style workouts.

He does now anyway. Um, because one of the guy, uh, the guy who works with, uh, Jacob, he used to be a CrossFitter,

really good CrossFitter. So Steve actually, and he used to play American football as well. So, you know, for him, he was like, I just started to add some of these into my training. It just made sense.

Yeah, the workouts are quick. They're pretty efficient. Yeah. So for me, I don't do all the CrossFit style workouts. Of course, yes, I still think some workouts, not the best. And I just don't do them. You know, I pick and choose which ones i like to do i program

stuff for myself stuff things that i know for my size makes sense you know so i it is all in the programming especially if like myself you're a big guy yeah put in a load of gymnastics in your workout some of my size makes no sense you know so be kind to yourself yeah you know exactly yeah but it is videos like this i enjoy doing because then i get to torture people of course which is fun yeah but it goes to show people you know how hard the workouts are because when you watch me do it you're just like okay yeah he's just doing adult pe i think there's a part of you that's also like remembers the first video you did with that one guy was what's his name craig craig yeah like fuck this this is never gonna be me again yeah absolutely absolutely you know so it's like i enjoy it now i i say to people i love

like it it's some of the workouts are horrible some of them you absolutely hate at the end of it yeah but i still enjoy doing it and that for me is the fun aspect of fitness so you know the bodybuilding is still there like i still enjoy doing that you know it's not some people go oh you don't do bodybuilding anymore you only do crossfit i'm like no i still do i wouldn't look like this if i didn't do bodybuilding yeah yeah i would have lost some size i still love doing this makes me love bodybuilding more because i look forward to just be just doing the bicep curls and shoulder presses and not you know battering myself you know in a in a workout yeah it's just like now I have diversity in my training routine.

It's not just one way of training. You think you'll compete in bodybuilding ever again? The only way I'll do that is if it's for like a challenge or something. You know, like you do a series. A specific goal, maybe when you're 40 or something. Yeah, I don't know. It's just that dieting aspect. It's just like restricting your calories because you have

to no matter no matter how much we want to say that there's flexible eating in how you diet down you will still have to be in a deficit and that would affect my crossfit style workouts you can't be doing conditioning when you're like you know know, zero minus 10% body fat because you injure yourself. Yeah. Yeah. So. Plus minimal calories too. Yeah.

You can't, you don't, you can't afford that. So I would have to make a lot of sacrifices. And I think because I've enjoyed the way I've been training for the past two, three years and not restricting anything. I'm not sure how i would do with restricting my calories now yeah you end up in a situation where you end up with what i call and then what so cool did a bodybuilding show maybe you got the five percent body fat maybe you won and all that stuff but then what do you do from there you know um and can you like

you know maintain a way better physique than you already have. Maybe, but maybe that's also not where your interest is right at the moment. Yeah. I mean, I would, when I learned to swim, I would love to. Wait, Doug, you got to go. I've got to rewind. No, that's the one thing. Wait, like you can't float.

All right, wait, pause. But could you like, can you freestyle maybe? Just like, aside from the other, just like freestyle? Or do you go in and if it's six foot five, you're going to sink? I'm scared of drowning. So I don't know. I can't float. I've had like a lot of swimming lessons, like teachers.

And we struggle to help. I've struggled to float. Have you ever done a DEX scan no no no i wanted i wanted to do that a long time ago when i was um doing purely bodybuilding just to see uh-huh but um i want to learn to swim because i would i would love to do a triathlon i would love to try it just to see what that feels like yeah um but the swimming aspect is still happening i mean hey no that's a fair fear if especially if it's an open water yeah like why just why but it's it's invigorating though like i see people do it i'm so jealous

especially because you're already on the bike yeah yeah why can't i why can't i do it i just i'm useless useless in the water my wife and her friends they were like helping me float they're like all holding me and they're like okay like three two one we're gonna let go of you okay and i'm like yep and they're like yeah and they're like all right you know see if you can float and they let every time they let me go my legs just went down yeah they're like an anchor yeah yeah and my ass i'm like my ass is like a big anchor i don't know i mean i don't know what's going on here it's crazy it's the same for me like this is a true story we could i couldn't film it i wish i filmed it so the swim teacher put like floaters on my arms and he put all the floaters he had right and he was like right you

should be able to float now and then he left and then got in the water laid back and then my legs were just like and then my arms started to go he was like i don't have any more floats there's literally he couldn't put any more on and he was just looking at i was like dude i know i told you i'm not exaggerating i'm struggling i struggle god was like let's make obi make him jacked yeah you can do cardio swimming let's take that yeah i was in the water with my kids one time uh in lake tahoe and we're out there for a little bit i can swim a little bit but not very well and for not very long i started getting tired yeah and my son gives me like you know one of those like water weenie things yeah i put that like between my legs yeah and then my daughter gives me one and then somebody throws me a couple more i'm still

sinking yeah you know i'm swimming back but like my ass and my legs are going like this and he's like kick your legs and i'm like yeah i'm like nothing's working really yeah it's like quick sand for you yeah yeah it's like like the more you kick the more you sink well i was laughing too which made it like worse and then i started like like laughing more you kick the more you sink well i was laughing too which made it like worse and i started like like laughing and choking at the same time so like choking on water yeah like this is actually might turn serious even though i'm laughing yeah that's the one thing i wish i i this year i want to try and i need to i need to learn this way it's ridiculous i have to how many lessons have you gone to

i've had about five you had five yeah and has it improved do those no no no it's all the same it's always the same just they can't get me to float my legs just don't want to stay up here and then even if i'm kicking yeah my legs are so heavy i wonder how much floating you need to do to actually swim though especially maybe just like i guess you're gonna do an open water swim now which is different you don't get to like kick off the wall you know at least in a pool you can kick off the wall and like get momentum yeah and then you know maybe just fake it until you make it to the other side you know all right so question when you go under the water like when you go in can can you like swim in the water or like – you know what I mean? Like doggy paddle?

Like not even being above water because you know when you go in water, you can then just swim in the water? Or do you just go straight to the bottom of the pool? Yeah, basically. Holy shit. It's like a submarine. Just get really good at holding your breath and just go underwater the whole time well you know what maybe that's what i have to do like i will probably film this next time i try and learn i think i need to film it for people to see how bad it is my guys you

ever watch one piece yeah of course yeah you're like one of those you're one of those devil fruit users you just can't swim you have all this power and you can't swim you just yeah yeah yeah how long are you here for oh only two days yeah you want andy to teach him to swim yeah his wife is an amazing swimmer but the thing is like ross edgy's offered to help to teach me as well so yeah i definitely will um take him out he was like we'll get your wetsuit you know like the wetsuit help you float it's so funny that doesn't work i think that would be hilarious if it's like this is supposed to help you float and that still doesn't work but that's one thing we want to try maybe if you do a triathlon you can use a jet ski i mean if they allow it but you know maybe they're like hey you know we'll make an exception

yeah no i i definitely i want to film the next time i learn so and i'm i'm gonna hit up ross and just be like right let's do this yeah and the wetsuit as well be quite cool right you know the whole look like black look like black panther as well yeah like that's gonna look so sick i mean hopefully i learned to swim from it not just because i want to look cool but yeah but hopefully the next time i come back yeah you'll you'll learn to swim man there's there's hope yeah have you had to change some of your interpretations of uh being so worried about the way that you look do you worry about it less uh is it still something that floats around the back of your head or um are you more positive about your body because of the cool shit that you can do with it

uh i'm more positive for sure like a lot more i i don't analyze the way i look as much anymore it doesn't my physique um i think again because we don't have mirrors in crossfit boxes it doesn't um i don't have to constantly look at how i look and go oh you know this because it's just conditioning workouts i still do of course i still do it's just natural there's no way it's not that's not going to go away um when i do bodybuilding videos for example i I'm smaller. Yeah. I had surgery on my eyes. I couldn't train for about six weeks. I definitely got smaller. What happened to your eyes?

So my eyes is, it's a weird, it's genetic. So I had to have surgery. And I had six weeks of recovery where it was, it wasn't like I couldn't train. I just, because it would like the lens it would detach so i couldn't so it's not lasik it's completely different yeah yeah yeah and so that was tough that was really tough that's why i said i'm lucky i started walking because i walked a lot like i for me it was like 15 000 steps a day minimum nice so i was just walking every i saw parts of my area i've never seen before so so i um that affected me for sure that was the one time it's not that whole oh you're smaller now you know you're not looking as lean anymore so that started to creep back in

and i remember as soon as he was like you it's safe for you to go back to train. And I was like, it was more bodybuilding. I was like, okay, I need to go back to, you know, because I'm losing my gains. And I think now I am not so hard on myself. I think that's the difference. And yeah, the only time I think now that i kind of would sometimes go oh that's you look a bit small and stuff like that when i do like the bodybuilding videos because i do the

instructional videos and then i i can i can go back to the 2016-17 videos and i'm like oh my arms are definitely a lot smaller for sure and then my friend who's bigger than me now I used to be bigger than him and you know I mean he's joking but I'm like

because he's like my arms are bigger than yours and I'm like oh because I'm the friend who's like you know when you're like the friend who's the hench one

yeah now I'm losing the hench status you know so I mean yeah it still affects me but not as much anymore i'm even saying that like you versus like 99 of the population like i mean i think it's so ridiculous like we're us being in this this fitness industry right like even though that friend of yours is bigger than you like you're still bigger than a

vast majority you know i know it's wild you don't see it that way do you know you i don't we never do you know so it's not you know sometimes people go oh my gosh you're huge and i'm like oh no i'm not that big anymore i say this all the time now and sometimes i have to stop myself saying it because i keep saying that's gotta say thank you yes i know right thank you i appreciate it yeah i think i don't know if the brits we have a hard time sometimes taking compliments so you know someone say oh you look good i think me i think everyone does this and then you're like oh no no i look like i look terrible today i look like crap you know and then i remember someone on twitter when they were like when someone says you look good i'm like oh yeah thank you and i was like yeah why don't why why do we do that why do we always try and deflect yeah

you know take a compliment you know and plus if it's about your physique we spend so much time on it yeah this is true right you figure you'd be like fuck yeah thank you that made me feel great yeah no you're absolutely right but yeah if it makes you feel weird for some reason and then you want to like try to deflect or just throw out the i'm trying to get like you bro yeah because you know you used that one before i mean yeah you i mean you do it you also say that to be nice right it's just it's it's a nice i mean yeah so it's i think i'm learning to just be like, thank you.

I appreciate it. But even once in a while, I'm like, I could be bigger. I used to be bigger. Yeah. What do you think about like people being shamed to be in better shape? Like think that's healthy? Like what do you think of kind of like fat acceptance, fat shamingaming because like in some countries um it's unacceptable to be fat and the parents will say hey you're getting fat and it's not a thing like it is here in the united states if a parent was to tell their kid that they were

getting fat i think everyone would uh think that that's yeah like there's a reason to like freak out and man maybe it is i don't know but what are some of your thoughts on i think it depends right on your culture as well right because i'm nigerian and that's why i said being nigerian like we see being you know heavy and chunky has helped it like we're eating good you're you know you're not wasting away you know i can be this size and like my grandma would be like you're wasting away the way, you know? So, um, yeah, I used to be one of those people that used to preach to everyone that didn't ask me about my opinions on how you should look. And I used to believe that everyone, like I said,

everyone should be muscly or the guy should be muscly and all the girls should be like toned and, you know, being good shape. And the older I got, the more I realized that life is different. Reality is different for everybody, you know? being good shape. And the older I got, the more I realized that life is different. Reality is different for everybody, you know?

So, um, we can go to extreme where we start to tell everyone being, you know, extremely, um, on the other side of, um,

being fat is good. You know, like they go, Oh, it's fine. You know, we, we have to, it's fine. You know, we have to draw the line at some point. Too much of an extreme is a bad thing.

Yes. Right? Too much of a good thing, it doesn't matter what it is. Same with food. You can have too much of good food and, you know, just because you're eating well,

you can still, you know, like certain countries have certain type of foods that they make and we think, oh, it's fresh and, you know, it's organic and whatever um but you can't eat too much of a good thing so you can i think that we can we've gone to extremes have you ever had a conversation with

like a family member or someone close to you where you kind of had to almost give them like little intervention or or they came to you and you you know like uh i don't know how does the topic come up if you ever had to do anything no i've never had with my family because my family um no we've never had this conversation my you know i'm really into fitness my brother is really into fitness my other brother's really into fitness um so they all understand how you know the whole fitness. So we've never had this conversation. For me, I believe in also managing your business sometimes. Don't give advice until people have asked you.

I also believe that people should be able to enjoy their life how they want. I know it's nice that we can give advice so okay it's good for you it's you know you know this being this big is not healthy or being this skinny is not healthy too because sometimes we forget that side of things we always attack the bigger um side and we forget that you can be too slim you can be um underweight and so i think unless people ask sometimes that's fine give them advice um but i think people one thing i've noticed especially online is people are so angry and i think because of where my my life and you know a lot of things that i've had to work for and and been through i don't want to spend my time being angry about things um

that some of it is none of my business it doesn't affect you yeah it doesn't affect you you know and unless it affects you i understand why you're passionate about something but people tend to just want to impose their opinions on other people and if you don't live the way that they want you to they are offended by it and you're just like why sometimes i say to people who have strong opinions well how does this affect you how does this change your life if this person listens to you or not you know why do you i understand you care but if the if the people who are enjoying their lives don't care maybe you should exert your energy somewhere else you know so um i am now a firm believer in just letting people live their lives however they want enjoy your life however

you want and if you're happy the way you are good for you you know i don't i don't have a strong strong opinion about how other people should live their lives and how they should look because i even sometimes get opinions on how i should be living my life and i'm like okay well how does this concern you what if it does affect you or what if you think it affects you like what if it uh you know in the case of covid right you know and it puts a lot of people in the hospital the people that were more unhealthy were more susceptible and what if you feel that it is kind of infringing like you have thoughts kind of along those lines so yeah because you know the hot covid and you know people they saw the majority of people who were affected by it.

And again, we can give advice, general advice, of course. But I think there's a different type of way of approaching how you advise people as well. Because some people attack, right? And they're so harsh with their words. It's like, if you weren't so fat, you wouldn't die because of it. And it's just, who's going to listen to you when you speak to them like that? It's not helpful at all. I get that.

And it also doesn't come across as you want to help them. It's almost like you're blaming them. You're attacking them. You're attacking them. Yeah. So if you were coming from a place of concern and of passion and you're like, I genuinely want you not to be affected by it and not to be killed because of this you know these are ways that you can try and maybe improve on your lifestyle

that would help you fine but i also find that people who already are people are stubborn if they've already made up their minds it's going to be very hard for you to change it you know even even with all those statistics coming out some people still didn't change their lifestyle it's like smoking right i always use smoking as a perfect example you see the cigarette package you see the pictures they put on the on the on the packets now in the uk oh they do that in the us they don't do that they don't do that yeah in the uk we have pictures of lung disease and lung cancer and people still pick up that packet and smoke it right so they know it's not good for them you know sometimes they even say oh i know this isn't good for me while smoking yeah and those type of people unfortunately you know what will happen the only

thing that will change their mind is when it affects them personally. People don't feel like anything will affect them until it happens to them. In the UK, isn't it affecting everybody because aren't there taxes on sugary products? Yes. Yeah. Like they cost more, right? Yeah. But I mean, cigarettes, the taxes on cigarettes is a lot.

Wow. They pay a lot and they that doesn't stop them you know so what let me ask you this a pack of cigarettes in the uk if you compare that to something else that's sold in the uk what is the comparison because i i know we can't do that the their dollars to this but like what's the comparison to another product of the same price just so we can understand like how they charge people because here cigarettes aren't that expensive right like how much is i think they're like nine bucks a pack now nine bucks yeah which from what i understand is pretty high yeah really yeah that's quite high yeah like 20 of them in a pack or something like that i think right i don't actually

even know yeah the price i don't smoke so i wouldn't i just know that they that they that's one thing that they can and they will increase taxes on and they know that it's likely to still continue to be uh about 15 dollars yeah yeah i believe they put a tax on uh some of the food as well some of the processed food which is interesting and that just gets into like a really interesting category the sugar tax right yeah hard to tell like what the hell is healthy and what's not because uh just because something has sugar and it doesn't necessarily mean it's unhealthy but it could be yes i think it's it's um a lot of us don't have very good food knowledge you know we're not taught it that much i'm i'm lucky i did we had design and technology we call it dt in school but they don't do that anymore

and i had food we did food tech so i learned some basics of cooking but schools don't have that anymore in in the uk so a lot of kids i i learned how to sew to like stitch up like if you rip your trousers i can stitch that up. It's like home economics. Home economics. Yes. That's what it's called. Yeah. We learned that,

you know, and that doesn't get taught anymore. So a lot of people can't cook. I used to have friends that couldn't cook. One of my friends couldn't make eggs. And I was shocked. I was like, you know,

in my household, African household, you're made to cook. Like you had to learn to cook. So a lot of the generations, the younger ones now, I say that like I'm old and ancient, but, you know, Five years away from 40. Yeah.

They don't know how to cook. And nutrition is an interesting one because now foods are so easily accessible and the unhealthier foods are not as expensive anymore. So I remember talking to my friends and saying how I buy organic now. I had to wait till I was earning decent money to be able to buy free range organic beef.

Everyone goes, oh, you have to eat organic, but we forget how expensive it is. It's a privilege to say to someone, oh, you only eat organic free-range eggs, organic free-range steak, grass-fed, lived in the Himalayas, you know, things like that. It's not that affordable to a lot of families that will walk into a supermarket and see four, you know, burger patties for a dollar. supermarket and see four, you know, burger patties for a dollar. And they're saving money by buying six of those and feeding the family for, you know, almost a week. Things like that is, I used to preach the whole, everyone has to eat this way. Everyone is organic. But then I realized

it's not that simple. So yes, you can eat healthy. Yes, you can eat healthy on a budget but it's all about education and showing people how they can do that and unfortunately it's very easy to eat unhealthy i've i've seen it you go into the supermarket now you're bombarded with the bad choices um compared to you know healthy nutritional meals and again cooking i feel like if everyone learned to cook properly and learn how to um make a meal you know how i always use my household because being nigerian we always big pots and then we'll have big meal like there's a party that's about to happen but isn't it's just for like three people but we have leftovers you know so i'm making a meal stretch and buying the whole chicken cut chopping it up and you know cooking that and making it last and that's kind of how i learned the fundamentals to cook i was lucky you know that my aunt forced me to make food and make food for my brothers my

cousins so i already had the cooking skills so i never never had to learn how to cook as I got older. It's not that complicated, though, cooking. It doesn't have to be that hard. It can be complicated. Yeah. It doesn't have to be a French cuisine. No. But I think it scares people sometimes when they think,

oh, I have to put this ingredient in this ingredient. That's why now I love seeing like youtube channels where they simplify cooking some tiktok videos as well are quite great to show you how to simplify cooking and not scare people i know there's uh i can't remember the chef's name he's like he does like five ingredient cooking in 20 minutes and then it's like it's just really useful because um people i think it's jamie oliver and people he makes cooking very simple and families can be like oh i can make this and it's quick and you know i don't have a lot of time but this can be done and it's quicker yeah and it's healthy and it's nutritious you sound like you're very uh self-aware of these things

that you used to say these things you used to preach um how did you come to're very self-aware of these things that you used to say, these things you used to preach. How did you come to be like self-aware? Like what, I don't know, did you stop one day and say like, man, I need to stop kind of yelling at people or I need to stop telling people what to do? Yeah, I think when I turned 30, kind of going through life, I think I remember just, I think I had to ask myself why do I care so much what other people are doing that doesn't affect me and why was I so harsh on people

you know like I said when people are unhealthy I wasn't understanding I just felt oh they're lazy you know and it's not that simple and I think I started to be more sympathetic when, um, also when I started to get busy with work and there are some time periods where I had to skip training and I never thought I'd be that person that would say, I was so busy. I didn't have time to train because I thought that was like, nah, you'd always find time. I'm in a business meeting.

Yeah. I always used to think, oh no, I'll find time. No way. I'll find time. But then there was a few times it happened. I was like, ah, no I'll find time no way I'll find time but then there was a few times it happened

I was like oh so I get it now and one of my friends had a baby and his training and they just bought a house and his training is

not even secondary now he said he said to me I remember because we were the same he was so into training in the gym and he was like

that's the the least on my list of concerns I want to work I want to work go home to my family i want to see my baby be around my baby and we're doing the house they're doing up the house and he was like i just i don't have time to train anymore and we were having this conversation because he was surprised that he would ever say something like that yeah and again that's changed my i know it sounds awful because then it feels like something personal had to happen to me for me to even understand more what what having a

family can sometimes affect your training but in a way i've learned because it was a learning experience so now i know i understand i remember when i was a pt and people come in and go i'm too busy working my kids to train and i'm like, you make time for the things you care about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now I realized that, you know, there are other things that also just as important in life than just training.

I think sometimes people like myself in the industry, we sometimes think that training is the most important thing in life. And it's not, unfortunately, this is going to sound weird as someone come from someone like me who is training and my social media is training training training yeah i've realized that it's it's not the most important things in life there's more important things in life and if it means you get to spend more time with your baby and you have to skip that session i understand yeah you know there are more ways to take care

of your health like you don't have to go to the gym and train for an hour to continue to be healthy like there are so many things you could do at home to maintain not even just the muscle or whatever but just to be healthy it doesn't require you to do so many other things that we might be doing there's easier habits making sure you walk a little bit exactly you know move around at home like there's a lot of things yeah going for a walk that's one thing like just walk you know put the baby in the pram take the baby out for a walk pram is that what you call pram here so cradle cradle is that what you call it yeah what's the thing there stroller stroller yeah so you call it a pram pram stroller strobe, wow. Or buggy. Or buggy.

Yeah, I've heard buggy a lot. I know there's a lot of American listeners who are like, God, what does this mean? What does this mean? They'll probably have to get the Urban Dictionary out on Google. Keepy Uppy was the best one I've heard so far. Yeah, Keepy Uppy versus juggling. We didn't pull up that Gatoradeade commercial but we were talking about that earlier i think you want to play it right now sure yeah let's let's play this real quick

now by the way you know steven crowder ladder yeah yeah did you see what he mentioned about this he he said uh to to gatorade or whatever no gatorade this is not healthy that was his commentary and then it went viral but i haven't even seen the commercial so it's interested introducing gatorade fit fitness starts from the inside out get healthy real hydration and no added sugar artificial sweeteners or added colors gatorade fit healthy real hydration all g people got pissed after that but you know what what i don't understand is this was the same with the the nike mannequin you know they had a mannequin a big mannequin yes okay and there was big outrage about that and then i thought you do realize that if you want people to change their lifestyle that you know they're going to

need gym clothes too you do realize that if this is she's doing yoga right this is she's doing yoga, right? This is, she's exercising. You know, fat people exercise too. And they are in the gym. How do you want to not see them until they're in shape? I don't understand. Like, on one hand, you say to, you know, people, go and exercise, go and train. You're not in great shape. And then they show black people

training and then you say oh no that's this is unacceptable this is not healthy well how do you think they get to become healthy by magic you know do you want them to be in a locked room no lights no one should see them until they come out you know with six-pack abs how does that work you know i i think that's why the outrage was weird for me because she's like yoga is a form of exercise i know i know some people some guys especially they see it as you know you know fraffing around yeah do you know what fraffing around is messing around i like it fraffing around i like it around yoga is hard i've done yoga yoga is hard yeah i've done pilates too i used to laugh at pilates. I like it. Yoga is hard. I've done yoga. Yoga is hard. Yeah.

I've done Pilates too. I used to laugh at Pilates. Pilates is hard. Reformer is hard work. It's not easy. And that's, they've showed different type of bodies in that video. And they're outraged because one doesn't fit the standard that they want. Which is quite interesting because now imagine they have family members who are

the same size as her and they have parents or it does. They don't, sometimes it's annoying because then you have to personalize something for people to feel an emotion, but you shouldn't have to, you know, but imagine someone who looks like a now seen everyone that tweet and feeling that they shouldn't be seen yeah there should be something that should be hidden away that mannequin the nike mannequin one was outrageous for me it's like

of course they need to see what the gym outfit would look like on them it's that simple yeah but people were outraged about it and i again i think the younger me would have been the same actually i would have reacted like oh my gosh how can they show a you know someone this size on tv shouldn't be allowed because i was so into everyone should be fit and look great um uh i wouldn't have been like that outraged to tweet anything i would have just thought that yeah so that was that yeah tweet anything i would have just thought that yeah so that was that yeah then this i remember there was a huge uproar of that too and now for me it's like yeah great they get to see what that's going to look like on them the

outfit you know they they are in the gyms they go into the gym this is a sportswear brand one thing you hear from some people and this is not my belief but the thing that you hear from some people is like yeah but kids are gonna see that and they'll they'll think it's okay to be that big it's it's affecting the children that's what you hear people that like that's what that's what some people say but it's like again they say that about steroids too though yeah there are kids who are overweight and guess what it's good to be able to see someone who looks like you doing a positive activity because then you can also see hey this exercise thing can be for me too despite me being overweight or obese right yeah it's it's just it's the weirdest thing to get mad about well in that video i mean she's working on it right exactly she's in there working on it yeah the other thing i think that's. Well, in that video, I mean, she's working on it, right? Exactly. She's

in there working on it. Yeah. The other thing I think that's probably not really all that realized or all that talked about all that often is that, you know, if you were to poll everybody in the gym and you asked everybody, you know, what's your level of happiness with your physique? You're going to walk away with like probably not a whole lot of people that are that pumped about their physique, regardless of the shape that they're in. They could be in incredible shape as we're talking here today. I think everyone has felt that before where you get in good shape or you get in what you feel is really good shape. And then maybe six weeks later, you feel fat. And you're not fat, but you feel fat because maybe your body fat percentage is higher than it was previously.

Right, right. And so I think what we're trying to do with fitness and what we're trying to do with our health and nutrition and this kind of like hobby of ours is we're trying to figure out a way to induce some stress in each and every day so that the stresses of life when they come at us, we're able to mitigate them a little bit easier because we just feel a little bit better about ourselves. We have a little bit better confidence. That's really all you're trying to do. It's just a form of self-improvement. And so I think it's great for people to know that this is for everybody. Like, please, everybody get involved in this. I think on the fitness side where we get screwed up or messed up is we might feel so good from doing a certain thing, a particular diet, a particular exercise, particular style of workout. And then we feel we got to like shout it out and you have to do it and you have to do it and you have to do it.

If you guys don't do it, you're not part of my thing. Yes. And if you're not part of my thing, then if you're not part of my thing then you're fucking against me and i'm gonna go out i got this message and i'm gonna push this out to everybody and anyone else that doesn't do it they're they're not with me then they're against me and i need to like yell at them and talk about how dumb their methods are yeah it's like that's the wrong way, man. I think that's not a good idea. It is. It's, I just don't understand why people, I think, especially they get so passionately and angry about it. And there's so much more you can be passionate and angry about and this shouldn't be one of them

you know and it's just the the angus that some people have especially when i that gateway because there were some people that agreed with that tweet let's be honest many no many people yeah yeah and it's like oh you're normalizing it i hope so hopefully normalize exercise for everybody yeah i mean if that they're working out in this video i think it's just the whole especially guys just seeing especially yoga like i said has not been a form of exercise um and they were saying it's they're promoting um unhealthy habits and i yeah i i don't understand why you're wasting your energy on something like that you know and yeah it is it can be it can be a bit toxic i think now that i look at it from the outside looking in um some people in the fitness industry have a toxic trait

and people in general have this toxic trait of having to tell you how to live your life and you should be living your life how they think you should be living your life you know and any other way you choose to live your life is unacceptable you know so uh i've learned that hey we're only well if you believe in reincarnation maybe you don't think so but i think we're only here once and for me once i got to those i was like i am not wasting my time on things that on unnecessary things that just brings negative energy into my life i have other things going on yeah for me to worry about than how other people choose to live their life unless they ask me unless they say to me specifically i need your guidance on this

i would i you know i would then help i do my youtube video where i do like the workouts i touch on nutritional aspects but i would never say the what the way i do things is right i would always say this is how i like to you know and exactly on that point though is because like you look the way you do you have the performance that you have there are many people who are like i want to know what he does so i can add aspects of that to my life those people want to know but you're also not coming at it like this is the only way to do things exactly this is the way i do it and this is how i enjoy to do it and these are the reasons why yeah and if you choose that fine but if you're doing something else okay that's fine do your thing yeah you know yeah i mean now i would sometimes some people say to me oh i'm trying to lose weight um but i don't have time to train

what do i do um but i do really want to go to the gym i was like go for a walk what like yeah just go just go for a walk every day do it just don't don't even go into the gym sometimes people say to me i'm so bored of the gym i'm tired of working out like you know what take two weeks off and don't go anywhere near the gym go for a walk do something go on the bike go on your bike if you have a bike go on a bike ride all the time go for a walk don't enter the gym i guarantee you when you come back you enjoy it more because people forget that you can do stuff outside of the gym space and before i would say oh maybe change your training plan to do this and now i'm like you know what take a week off don't

don't even touch the gym you know you can find an activity to do that's fun go trampolining i don't care what it is do something you know just take that mindset off because then you start associate negativity with the gym you know how some people you they will say to you oh i've been going to the gym for years nothing's worked oh you know and it shouldn't be they should be excited you should be excited to want to train you should be like oh i can't wait to train i can't wait to hit the gym if every day you're going and you're not enjoying it and okay if you haven't tried to change your routine okay maybe try that but if you've tried to change your routine you're still not enjoying it when was the last time you had i always ask when the last time you had a week just not training oh you know

they can't remember because they forget that there's other things outside of the gym space yeah to you know and i've said to guys before do some yoga do some pilates they look at me like i'm crazy i'm being serious do some do some pilates go and try plus sides to go into your classes yeah yeah go and try it you know try it let me know how you find it just take just completely something different that would a challenge you but also your body would never be used to something like that and and then it would probably encourage you to maybe even try other avenues of fitness yeah and maybe you see fitness in a different light unless in my opinion you're trying to do bodybuilding shows or like a do crossfit competitions there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to try different aspects

of training like running is a perfect example where i used to just see running as oh no it's not something i can do i'm just you know running makes no sense yeah and then when i started to try it and you don't have to be mo farah you don't have to be the quickest you don't have to be Usain Bolt you don't have to be you know you just get out there and do it just take part in it and I started to enjoy it when I started to see it less as oh I need to my 5k needs to be really quick my 5k so slow yeah no I'm just like right I want to just go and do a 5k run just a nice chilled run that's it you know and the more I started to see it that way as a different type of training, rather than something I have to be like really good at,

because that's when you're good at something, it's hard not being good at other things. You know, when I started CrossFit, I was struggling. I was like, Oh, maybe I should just stick to bodybuilding.

I'm good at that. You know, and I'm still average in a lot of my CrossFit boxes. You know, it's so weird for me being in a bodybuilding gym and I'm like, yeah, you know, I know and i'm still average in a lot of my crossfit boxes you know it's so weird for me being in a bodybuilding gym and i'm like yeah you know i know what i'm doing and then i go into a crossfit box even now and then guys half my size are like absolutely destroying me in workouts yeah you know it took me a while to be comfortable with that you know because i was so used to being

good and then now you see other people being better your ego could either go two ways you'd be like now i'm gonna go back and stick to what i'm good at or you can be like you know what that's cool i'm gonna learn i'm going to keep up i'm gonna enjoy the experience so that's kind of now how i see fitness in general take sometimes it's okay to be like you know what i'm gonna take take a different take a different avenue for a bit and then go back to the bodybuilding side if you wanted to. And then usually a lot of people are like, oh, now I'm enjoying it again.

Yeah. Yeah. What if you took two weeks off and you fell in love with something different? Yeah. You know what I mean? Like you don't know what that time off will do. And again, back to what you said in the beginning was maybe taking that time off will

make you better than you ever were before. Cause maybe you'll be so excited when you come back. Absolutely. You know, I think it's funny, even though I can't swim, there's been so many times where people was like, Oh,

I don't enjoy doing cardio. And I'm like, well, have you, have you gone swimming? Why don't you go swimming? This gym has a swimming pool. And they look at me like I'm weird

because everyone sees swimming as a leisurely activity. I'm like, have you ever thought of, see this pool, right? This, time yourself how many laps you can do in a certain time. And they're like, oh yeah. And they try it and they're like, wow, that was hard.

I'm just like, but yeah, this is an activity. This is training. There's actual Olympic swimmers. They don't just do it for kicks. This is, you know, this is training. This is training. There's actual Olympic swimmers. They don't just do it for kicks. This is training. This is conditioning. Swimming is part of exercise. But most people just see it as a leisurely thing.

And every time I tell people that, and I always say to people, I say, can you swim? They're like, yes. I'm like, you're so lucky. If I could swim, I'll be doing it all the time. What are you doing? Why are you not swimming?

It's an exercise. I would say most people can't swim well enough to get good workouts with it. Right. Because you would swim a little bit and you'd go down and back maybe once or twice and you'd be half dead. You have to get used to it. Yeah, because they see it as, again, like anything else, you have to get better at something. Yeah. So then now if they see it as

something that they can get better and as fitness too, then it will be a case of now they'll be going back to improve. So you know how that one lap took you, let's say three minutes. I know it's probably shorter than that, but you can tell I can't swim.

So hopefully the next time they go, it will take them, you know, one and a half minute to do that lap yeah things and then they start to see that as an activity rather than just oh something i do on holiday because a lot of us see swimming especially in england because we don't have you know in countries like the us you have the beaches everywhere australia they have that in england we don't have that so for us swimming is kind of either we see as a chilled luxury or most gyms don't have swimming pools either so i always encourage people to you know if you can't go on the bike if you can't run if you have a swimming pool somewhere go and use that yeah just like take your mindset out of that i have to be in the gym space power

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the amount of times it takes you to fall asleep, your tosses and turns, your heart rate variability. It changes its temperature through the night based off how you sleep, but not only yourself, but maybe your partner on the other side of the bed. It is an amazing mattress. Andrew, how can they learn more? Yes. Head over to 8sleep.com slash power project. That's 8 spelled

out E-I-G-H-T sleep.com slash power project. Along with more information, you guys will actually save $150 off of your entire order automatically. Links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. What you got going on over there, Andrew? Yeah, I wanted to ask, what do you like? What's one of your favorite things about traveling? Because we were talking a little bit about that in the gym, and you were talking about some of the places you've been,

and it just seems super interesting. He didn't grab your butt. But yeah, you were talking about the the importance of like travel and that sort of thing because like me and sima we were just kind of like yeah we haven't really gone anywhere yeah i was i've been to nigeria well there's a few other places i've been to mexico but like oh yeah not recently that's like i was going to spain right um in england so mexico is really near yeah oh yeah a lot of brits go to spain okay yeah um i never traveled that much i didn't have the privilege actually also because i was still nigerian for for years with

my passport yeah yeah so when people when i say that people are like what do you mean you were still nigerian i was like my passport was nigerian i always do that because people look at me like what do you mean are Are you not Nigerian anymore? No, I had a Nigerian passport because I had issues with immigration for a long time. Yeah. And then. And wait, so just for context. Right.

You were born in Nigeria and then you moved to the UK when you were 10. Yes. Okay. When I was 10. So I, for a long time, I had a Nigerian passport with a UK visa. So traveling, you had to apply for a visa

for everywhere. Damn. And with a Nigerian passport was tough. Why? Is it because? Reputation. Because, yeah,

unfortunately, we don't have a great reputation. So there's certain countries, this is a running joke. You look at a list of countries you can travel with your passport. Like I found my British friends, even Americans, you have such a luxury of not even have to double check it. Most countries allow you in, right?

So there's a list of countries that your passport, you don't need a visa to go into. And Nigeria needs a visa to every single country, except for maybe even North Korea. But I think you probably still need one. Like we don't have any, we need a visa for every. Our reputation is that bad.

It's that bad. Like, yeah, I was looking at the, yeah. So, um, even certain countries, I remember wanted to go to bali at some point and you can't even go until you could unless someone can reference you in it was yeah so i didn't travel for a lot and also i was working i was like i want to work i want to save up enough to be able to travel so unlike my friends who had been everywhere i i didn't i i stayed in london london was everything for me so when i could

travel it opened my eyes to different cultures and it opened my eyes to understanding different ways of life and it also makes you appreciate where you live in terms of where you're from and where you're in terms of the country you live at because we can you know i'm sure you do that too as americans you complain this doesn't work this my internet's not quick enough you go to certain countries and you know they don't they struggle to have internet you know when i was in cape town they have load shedding and they don't have electricity sometimes it gets cut off being nigerian happens more often yeah you need a generator everywhere you will exactly so in bali having a car is more

of a luxury everyone use mopeds the roads are not you know that great there's some places no traffic lights so when i go back to london it makes me realize that all the things that i complain about is such a luxury so minuscule we have the nhs in in the uk where everyone gets treatments yes we're all paying taxes for it everyone puts money into the tax to pay for the nhs yeah but if i had a problem i call the gp i get an appointment if you're lucky depends on the area this is a big sore top subject for brits but i've heard like don't you guys like wake up in the morning like everyone wakes up at the same time to try to call get an appointment yeah between 8 a.m to 10 p.m now to 10 a.m but most people call at 8 a.m so that because

otherwise you you miss an appointment for the next day but it depends on the area you live i'm lucky because i moved and now you all do it on the app and you get you get seen on the same way yeah so it depends on the area which doesn't help but it's better than nothing and you know if you have an injury you can go to a and e right you can get seen to so when you go to other certain countries where they don't have that luxury, then you realize, okay, wow, it's not so bad.

You know, it's, it's a lot of things I complain about. Isn't so bad. Yes. Of course there's faults in every country. Of course there is. But I feel like traveling broadens your mind.

It makes you experience different cultures and yeah, it's something that I found that I want to do more of i never thought i would i thought i was like fine just going to the gym training seeing my friends go home um i'm happy and now and i'm like i want to travel life's too short as well i was just like yeah the older i get the more i'm like yeah we only get one chance like even if we come back reincarnated, we don't even know if we'll remember ourselves. You might come back as a bird. You don't know what you come back as. Well, that'd be convenient because you can travel all over the place.

Yeah, that's true. You guys want to travel, Andrew and Seema? You guys want to travel a bit? Yeah, I definitely do. After hearing your experiences with your family in London and these other countries other countries, like growing up, I mean, we didn't even go on like vacations. Like we went camping, you know, like we did very like close knit stuff, but like, which we loved. But I mean, we went to Mexico for a family reunion once and it was like deep in Mexico. Like I met a bunch of people that I'd never even like ever knew existed, but they were

my family. And one thing I got back from that was like the sense of community. Like one of the neighbors like awning just for whatever reason collapsed and like the whole neighborhood got together and put it back up. I was like, we don't do that. I don't even know my neighbors names, you know, and these people all just like stopped, dropped everything that they were doing to do that. And these people all just like stopped, dropped everything that they were doing to do that. And so like, I mean, obviously that's like a really like hyper-focused situation. But like I want my kids to see stuff like that too. And then of course for my, you know, selfishly I want to see some cool stuff too. And so like growing up, didn't travel at all. I'm 37, going to be 38 and still haven't traveled. So I want to definitely get some trips under my belt.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, I, I didn't travel for a long time too, but it's also like, you have to be lucky enough to be able to have the luxury of traveling. You know,

um, I think for you guys, there is, we're closer to Europe. I mean, London is literally, we have so much of Europe europe so it's not that expensive for us but for you it's more it's a big deal yeah yes exactly but then we're envious

because you have hawaii you know you have a lot of south america close by yeah that we love you have the caribbean and for us that's a big journey so So there is pros and cons in the way, in terms of how much you can afford to travel and to wear. You know, so I know like Americans, some of my American friends would love to come to Europe, but for them, it's an expensive adventure. For me, going to Paris is a two-hour train journey. It's like a hundred pounds.

And I'm in Paris. That's awesome. Same day. Yeah. And I'm in Paris. That's awesome. Same day. Yeah. You know, so Italy is the same. Portugal, we went to Portugal.

It was like an hour and a half on the, on the easy jet. And it costs us like 80 pounds each. Yeah. And that's the, that's the other thing. I have no idea that these were all so close to each other. Like when you said that you were close to Spain,

I was like, Oh, like I want to go there. I thought Spain was totally like a totally different part of the world. I'm in the same boat as you. I'm bad at that too, and I've been to some of these spots. Americans are probably worse with geography than people from Europe. Oh, yeah, we're terrible.

I mean, my friends are very bad, so I can imagine. They don't. Well, it's not our fault. It's because the globe is 90% USA, then the 10% is the rest of the world. Yeah. Okay. Got it. Maybe here.

Definitely here. Maybe like you just see America. It's always funny because some of my American friends love, like British people, we don't go, oh yeah, London. No, but Americans are like usa like best country in the world and like british people like we just complain we even complain about london we come back uk england in general and sometimes I think the closest to it is people Londoners we get told off because we only see London we don't see everywhere else in the UK yeah everything is just London London London London London even myself but I can only talk

from experience I haven't lived anywhere outside of London yeah um in the UK but yeah we we don't even like flying the flag sometimes in in England some people see us cringe because we don't even like flying the flag sometimes in in england some people see us cringe because we don't do that unless when there's like a world cup or there's football yeah but america's every like when i come here when i come to america we come to the us there's flags everywhere you know everyone wearing the flag and waving it and smiling it's so american yeah yeah and you you mention it every chance you get america i love that you're passionate about your country i love it that's why it was like 90 percent of the global map is the u.s what map do you mean world history? It's American history. That's the history I'm at.

It's funny you see it on Twitter too. Sometimes someone goes, oh, I've just spent, you know, a hundred on something. And then they go, well, that's not right. Because in, you know, Florida, it costs da-da-da. And people have to go, you do realize that there's other countries outside of USA. There's different currencies? There's different things. There's different things.

There's different currencies. You know, there's, you know, it's funny, especially when it comes to health care, because someone goes, oh, it was so, it was so crazy. I had an accident and went in, they looked after me in two hours and I didn't pay anything. And some people are like, what state was that? And then, you know, they start having this argument

and then the person's like, well, this was not in the US. This was in the UK. And we didn't pay, you know, and it's just funny because some Americans, yeah, forget that other countries exist. yes yes exist but you know i i don't if you don't travel much because you don't need to let's be honest in the u.s you have such a diverse um uh in terms of i mean we're in um california for example but then you've you've traveled how long does it take to get to new york for example it's like six hours yeah it's this is for us that's going to i think it's getting to um new york is almost seven hours for us from from london okay yeah yeah yeah so that's a journey so it's crazy that you do that in your in one country whereby in london for us you know going to a lot of european countries yeah they're close by yeah three four hours we're there so you can go to different states in the us

and feel like you're in some way new and different i think that's why a lot of um i find americans don't you don't feel like you you need to like adventure out of it um but then do you even adventure in the u.s much somewhat there's there is a lot of while he's you know i can actually only speak about this area sacramento and this area of the united states is super culturally diverse like you will run into so many different types of people here whereas you go go to other places, maybe certain places in Texas or certain places in the South, like Mississippi, et cetera, you're going to notice that there is a – you won't see as much of a mix of certain people in certain areas. So it is interesting because there's a lot of different places to see in the United States.

Yeah. Diversity of weather here too. Exactly. In Northern California, there's like – I, you can go to Tahoe and it's snowing. We have, it's some of the hottest temperatures. I think maybe only a couple of states or areas are hotter. The temperature change is crazy. Like I think it could get down to maybe as low as like 30, 25, something like that. Yeah. On the coldest day. But then it can also get as high as like 115.

Right. You know, so you've got these crazy swings and you could drive two hours and be on a beach or you can drive two hours and be in the snow. Yeah. You can go skiing easily in the States, whereby for us, we, a lot of people, you know, go to South France, go Verbier.

This is like where posh people go skiing. Verbier. If someone says, okay, Verbier, you know go to south france go verbiage this is like where posh people go yeah verbiage someone can say okay verbiage you know they're posh so that's what i i mean no surprise i can't ski but you know it will be fun to experience skiing yeah um i just haven't done it because it is you have to go it's a holiday you know but for you here you can just pack your stuff get in the car drive um certain places and go skiing most most part you know one thing that's interesting is i think like you're from poughkeepsie right mark all right state new york yeah the thing is here in california we are extremely spoiled when it comes to the weather here in this area i know you came here from the uk and it's raining right now that you're here this is how it usually is but like my girl she's also from like the midwest and when

she talks about the weather and when you've talked about the weather i'm just like wow we're really soft motherfuckers in california because we have good weather almost all the time yeah like you guys have snow and you're fucking having to shovel driveways and she's never shoved a driveway i don't know what that's like right right? I mean, you go out and you're, like, if you don't have your car in the garage, I mean, it's like, might take you 20 minutes to try to figure out how to scrape all the ice off it and everything.

I mean, it just creates more hurdles, you know? It makes each day a little different, and I think it changes the attitude a bit, and as people that we've had on the podcast before have mentioned that are from the UK and from London, they'reon yeah like yeah the weather is always kind of gloomy and so we have a sarcastic uh mindset and that's kind of our humor yeah so people smile often there on the street or do people look happy and joyful that's an interesting question um

commuting though because i mean that's kind of normal right if you're commuting in the morning don't really london's quite chill it depends on the area okay okay depends on the area so if you're i think i find like shoreditch brick lane it's more hipster so everyone's more creative everyone will call and um i find that people there a little bit more friendly i lived i used to live in Clapham and Clapham is kind of there's a lot of South Africans in Clapham yeah

okay um it's very young if you just finish like a lot of everyone who's just finished uni yeah and work in the banking sector

all move to Clapham yeah so Clapham can be in between Bougie and a lot of South Africans and some Aussies um and

it's not too bad. It's quite cool. But some parts are quite, you know, very, very, so places like Notting Hill or the more expensive areas are not as,

they just feel a little bit soulless because everyone gets in the cars and drives off you don't really see people on the street walking around and um i don't know it depends it's it's an interesting question but because i remember i find when i was in new york everybody like people just start talking to you and i'm not used to that like we don't kind of do that as much in london or everyone's saying hi randomly or saying bye to everyone as they leave the, like, when I went to the deli store or go to buy some bagels.

And the person probably goes there all the time and says bye and says bye to everyone. They don't do that over there. We don't really get that that much, no. So I wouldn't say, I mean, some people you speak to will say, yeah, everyone's miserable in London. They would. We had somebody on the podcast who mentioned that.

That's why I asked you about the smile thing. My experience is different. But I think that's like life, right? Everyone's experience is different. The old introvert side of me, like when I used to go to gyms, I never spoke to anyone. Didn't speak to anyone. side of me like when i used to go to gyms i never spoke to anyone didn't speak to anyone um and now i find that certain places i go to everyone's friendly you know when i go to the gym

um i talk to everyone in the gym everyone you know we we have conversations yeah uh everyone's friendly everyone's nice um i don't commute that much I think when I used to commute yeah everyone was miserable but everyone's on the tube nobody who's going to be smiling no one wants to go to work and you only find the ones smiling

are the ones that enjoy their jobs and that's you know one out of ten you know so and so it's a

it's a weird one to ask this question to someone like myself because I probably experience it a little bit different. I feel like people sometimes say that London is a miserable. I don't think it is. We just don't, we're just not very expressive. That's the word.

We just, we're very polite. We feel like if you shout, that's inconvenience to people. We don't want to inconvenience people. So that's why we say sorry a lot. Like I will bump into you and I'll be like, oh, sorry, but you will say sorry back. I'm the one that bumped into you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, so we say sorry literally a lot. And for no, it's just a weird habit that British people have. I always put myself in that category so i've lived there for so long and i still do it and if you were standing right here and i wanted to go past you or something i'll say sorry it's like well why are you saying sorry like excuse me but we would say sorry for absolutely everything if you borrowed my pen i wanted to get it but i'll say sorry can i have my pen back please we will say that but it's it's it is um it's i don't know probably people say it's more a london thing but if you go more northern to the midlands the northern side they are a lot more friendly that's a fact they're

friendlier people it's interesting when you travel there are some people that don't say they're sorry yeah that will bump right into you and it's like it's not common their culture to say it so you're like oh that was weird yeah that person kind of like lowered their shoulder right into me like am i and then it happens again you're like like are they trying to fight me like what's going on here is this ireland uh no this was uh this was in copenhagen and then also I think in France. Oh, okay. French people are very direct. Like my friends are French.

No one means anything by it. It's just like there's just a lot of people moving around. People are used to banging into each other. They're not like trying to elbow you and shit. Yeah. I mean, Copenhagen, interesting. I thought that there would be – but I know – It's not that they're – again, it's not that they're rude.

Yeah, it's just not in their mannerisms. They don't really just, yeah. I mean, and again, they're not like taking you out. Right, right. They bump into you. Yeah. The streets are crowded though. So I don't, I'm just seeing people just kind of going along their way.

Yeah, because I went to Paris. I love Paris. But yeah, French people are very direct. They don't, they don't, don't you know British people I always say it's funny a lot of Brits would have a longer route

to say something or give you an opinion because they don't want to they almost sugarcoat they don't want to offend you yeah my friends who are French would just say it directly and then

Africans are the same way yeah cut you okay so I have a question about this Africans in the UK do they they do i know it's probably different based off of where they are in the uk but does that culture still seep through in terms of like the directness in which they'll communicate yeah i mean it's also because

speaking from experience being nigerian when i was a lot i was around more a lot of nigerians the thing is the great thing about london is it's a melting pot yeah so many cultures and in a way they haven't needed to change or like dim down kind of not dim down but sugarcoat how they interact unless it's at work so you still get the nigerian directness even like i remember in school yeah when i got in trouble my uncle i remember he was sitting in front of the teacher and i got in trouble and then my uncle was like what did you hit him when he did when he was naughty the teacher was like what she was like yeah did you hit him when he does something bad to hit him because it's so it's so part and the teacher was like, what? I couldn't do that.

You know, and I remember, I will never forget this. We were walking along the hallway and one of this kid was running. Yeah. And he almost bumped into him and he grabbed him.

Your uncle? Yeah. He was like, what are you doing? Why are you running? Why are you running? Why are you running? I don't know the rules rules but you're breaking something right

now i was so embarrassed i was like behave yourself stop running and the kid the kid was just shocked so that aspect still stays trust me it doesn't and i think because there's a nigerian community where yeah in london there's loads of places you can go there's um nigerians um hang out and stuff and they don't feel that they've had to change their mannerisms or anything it's only in the work space that yes of course you, you can't be like that. But yeah, no, my family were the same. Like, it doesn't matter. Nigeria were here.

And, you know, it's so funny when it comes to like, oh, you know, any spanking, you need to tap the hands here. Go and tell that to a Nigerian parent. Get the belt. Yeah, you know, so I think the difference is in Nigeria from what I remember you know it was you know

like he was saying how everyone came around to help out when something happened in Nigeria it was the same and they discipline your kid doesn't matter they're your parents

doesn't matter if your kid does something wrong and it was the neighbour that saw it they would discipline that child and then they would go and tell your parents and the parents would be like

oh thank you and then you still go and tell your parents and the parents would be like, oh, thank you. And then you still get another whirlwind. Yep. You know, but here in London, sorry, you can't, it's not the same anymore. You cannot do that. You mean like an African disciplining a white child?

Because like I still got beat by aunties that weren't my aunties. Exactly. So they've had to kind of not shout at you know our neighbor's kids too much because obviously it's not but they still did shout i remember my aunt was like when they're making noise she will go outside and tell them off and but their parents were like there's nothing wrong with that that's fine so my aunt had to learn to like learn that it's not the culture is not the same the kids can talk back to them kids can talk back to their parents you could not do that

you know you could call your parent by their first name you know i don't want to eat this sally exactly so yeah that that part of my experience was still there because i was raised by my aunt in london yeah so it was only when i moved out that i moved out when i was 18 that then i started to experience um life differently and i didn't need permission to do certain things because it doesn't matter how old you are in nigerian household you could be 30 and your parents would still treat you like you're 12 yeah so um yeah it was interesting for me to be i could do what i want and for the first time i was like oh wow i could do what i want i don't get shouted at anymore and it's not in a bad way people i think in a bad way but it's just how we've you know been raised so um yeah it's definitely

the same nigerians are the same i don't think they've changed they're the same everywhere yeah in the best way possible i love them yeah yeah yeah i i i need to uh i need to go back though i haven't been back in a while yeah that's that's tough i don't know what i'm gonna go back i don't yeah that's a that's a tough one i'm curious about this because we haven't really talked about this much though uh you're big on mobility and you you show a lot of that stuff you've made mobility videos on your page and it's not often that you do see athletes that are as big as you are actually move well not be stiff and they're mobile so what what was it that got you uh trying to actually work on your mobility and put time into it i think the first one was olympic lifting right okay most olympic lifters are mobile

as anything because you have to be um especially when you're doing things like snatches overhead squats you need mobility you have you need flexibility so I realized that I couldn't get my shoulders far back enough of a barbell and overhead squat I mean now that I can overhead squat I see people who can't and i'm just like wow i i didn't realize that's what i looked like yeah because you know when you go down with the barbell and then it just starts to okay you start to come forward and it made me realize my that mobility was a big thing i never thought about it doing bodybuilding at all you never needed to so when i had to do cleans you know squat cleans when you catch it in in the

front right position i had no front rack i still kind of don't because i mean this is a good excuse but when you my biceps too big so you have to learn to like kind of catch the bar in a different way but even still externally rotate a lot yeah otherwise the biceps in the way yeah but even still you need mobility to catch a heavy barbell yeah in this position and i didn't have that and because my lats were too tight so that forced me to have to work on mobility and then i started to do kettlebell training and i used to say kettlebell was the biggest waste of equipment in the gym. I call it a doorstop. You know when you leave the door open, you put it by the door. You're like, oh, great.

And I never got kettlebells. I was like, what is this nonsense? Just use a dumbbell. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so when I started to look into kettlebell training, and I was like, whoa, this is some serious training right now. And I still didn't have the mobility obviously we all know the kettlebell swing that's what everybody knows but then i started to see

that there is you know you can do clusters you can do thrusters you can do kettlebell squat cleans you can do loads of things with it and i didn't have the mobility for that. So it made me have to work on that. So I, yeah, Jefferson curls. So I had to force myself to really work on mobility to get better, especially with CrossFit conditioning workouts where there's thrusters, then there's pull-ups, then there's pistol squats. And it doesn't matter how strong you are if you don't have the mobility to do any of that you're wasting your time no man i like the i think it's interesting

knowing what it feels like moving well and being mobile versus what you used to feel like because i remember what it used to feel like with my lower back tight yeah and when you work on things you're able to move more yeah it's almost like going back to that way of feeling tight it's just you don't i don't want to live that way exactly i mean yeah but it's just also you know you find that you wake up oh my lower back it's really tight and stuff like that then you realize this you know if you start to do a lot of the mobility you probably wouldn't have that anymore you know sometimes we have stiff shoulders and then i've learned that you know how we're bodybuilding we all like this and we thought this is normal that's not normal your shoulders should be able to go back and down you should be able to relax it your arms should not have to be like that your arms should be out straight like

that you know and i didn't realize that it wasn't normal to be like this you're supposed to be like that your arms should be out straight like that you know and i didn't realize that it wasn't normal to be like this you're supposed to be able to move yeah so i had to i learned that you know it was because i didn't have any mobility whatsoever yeah so now i've had to relearn a lot of sorry to unlearn a lot of bad habits and really learn to become more mobile so that I can be better in my workouts. And then I just enjoy doing mobility exercises. A lot of people find them boring.

I actually find them quite, in a weird way, I use a lot of mobility, like sometimes I'll do an hour on my recovery days because I, yoga is a struggle for me. And so I found a way that I can incorporate like some form of yoga training into my routine. And,

but it's not a hundred percent yoga. And that's what just gets me mobile throughout. And I enjoy doing them. I think people find them boring. Yeah, that's the problem. That's a good challenge, doing like a pistol squat and doing some of the exercises you were doing. And most of what we just saw, I'm sure you do other stuff too,

but most of what we just saw is like loaded. You know, it's with weight. So you can do a lot of stuff with weight. It doesn't have to be just that you're bending down, stretching towards your toes. I mean, you can make up all kinds of different ways to work on your mobility. Yeah, I mean, it is. I think that's the challenge is getting people to not see it as boring.

So sometimes I do programming because obviously I've stopped personal training. So, you know, I do have like a fitness app. And what I tend to do is put slightly put in as a warm-up and then they don't see it as a they're doing some mobility but like right so some warm-ups will have thread the needle so they don't realize they're doing some mobility yeah you know um but it's it's a mobility mobility exercise they just say oh i'm just doing a warm-up you know so when you put it in that way a lot of people do it because then it's not uh they don't see it as oh this is boring it's a waste of time and always i find that if you put it at the end of the session most people won't do it either

you can change your mindset about stuff too even just in your warm-ups you know if you're um supposed to squat for the day like rather than just squatting with the bar on your back you can think about trying to pull yourself down towards the ground so maybe you can get a little bit more depth or maybe the goal for the day is range of motion rather than weight right and you can just you know just doesn't you don't always have to have the same goals and i think that's a lot of shifts that you've made over the years that is probably keeping you interested and excited about what you're doing yeah no you're absolutely right. Like you said, with squats, sometimes I do something called a Kang squat because, again, it's a great, it's like a good morning into a squat.

It's like a weird move. What is the Kang squat? Kang, it's like one of those weird things. It's like you do a good morning and then you squat down and then you do the reverse. Yeah, squat, good morning combo. Yeah, weightlifters do a lot of that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So that is a fun one to do. it also it's a fun way to test your mobility especially um with that combination and so it's you can do it with a barbell you can just do it with uh a resistant not resistant but uh you could do um another smaller little weights you can use rather than a big barbell so Is that like the cambered bar thing? I don't know. It's the small looking bar. Yeah, the small little ones that it's not as intimidating. Oh, like a fixed, yeah, just a fixed bar, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And then this is almost something you can give people as a task to, when you get comfortable doing this, not a heavy weight, then you can see that your mobility is improving um and even things like the cossack squat is something that i find a lot of people struggle with it's something that's so basic for a lot of us who have the mobility you'd be surprised how many people can't do it but because it's a dynamic movement i find that a lot of guys especially are more comfortable when you give them dynamic movements in form of mobility.

They find that more interesting than the hold for five minutes kind of stretches. So I always find putting things like that in workouts, assisted Cossack squats, and then they go on to weights and stuff, makes it more enjoyable. So I always try, my mission is to try and find ways that makes especially the boring training more interesting and then also to make people who do bodybuilding that's why i have you know i do the cross lifted thing what i do is even with youtube i'll do a bodybuilding workout and then i'm like right i'll put 10 minutes of conditioning just try that 10 minutes of conditioning yeah and it's funny because i found that when i've just done a fully bodybuilding session and i don't add any of that some people were like oh but where's the

condition i was waiting for the conditioning at the end i was like that's good because now i'm getting people to open up to the more concept of being fit in terms of looking fit but actually being fit you know having some form of um cardiovascular um you know fitness and not just being oh i'm only here for aesthetics yeah because you know that can only take you so far for so long you know and then you get to that age where you know what else is there to do when you aren't really interested in aesthetics anymore but you still love training but now if you do the conditioning that pro that prepares you for as you get older you're not too worried about oh i won't be able to do the bicep curls anymore which you still can but you know how we all see it as we get older we're supposed to slow down and some

people don't i mean some people don't look at it that way but a lot of us do yeah oh i don't want to do as much anymore i want to slow down when i get older for me it's not i don't want to slow down i just want to adapt you know i might not be doing bodybuilding every day but i might be oh i'll go for a run i'll go for a hike you know i went hiking in cape town gosh it was hard i don't know how people do that all the time you know people are going hiking it It's so much fun. And we did two and I was exhausted. I was just like, this is really tough. Yeah.

And it's actually quite scary because we did the mountain hike. Uh-huh. And that was terrifying. And, you know, there was these older ladies. And they were like, da, da, da, da, da. Yeah, I've gone on a few hikes where I see some old ladies and they just have their walking sticks just trekking right up yeah and i'm struggling and they're like hi i'm like you look great yeah and they just pass you up they just pass me and you know it was it was an eye-opener so i loved it so cape town there's there's loads of mountains over there and i was like you know i'm gonna do

more of this i never ever ever thought i would ever go hiking because i was just like you know you would think that because i was more like into different types of training that I would see that as something else to do that's enjoyable. Yeah. But I've always been like, nah, hiking. Wait, why no to hiking though? I don't know because it's just, it looks like too much effort. Okay.

I just know so many people who are like, ah, that's a white people thing. I've heard people say that here like but i love hiking it's so fun when you go out and do it but uh i i was just wondering if no i mean you i can't say that i i go i do road cycling yeah the whitest sport you can think of i think i think it's too late but i actually it's so it's so rare to see other black cyclists that when we do yeah yeah we literally and it's and we actually now know each other because i because i did the youtube video so they there's when i'm cycling obi like yeah cycling because we don't we don't see a lot of black cyclists you know road cyclists

because they think it's so lame yeah the full kit so it's too late for the whole oh that's we don't do you know same with bouldering uh bouldering is the same yeah no people like what you just go inside and you climb colorful things it's hard right it's hard though it's hard right it's tough though it's tough yeah but again people see it as lame you know so yeah i'm too i'm way past that it wasn't it's not because of that yeah it was just because i just saw it as too much effort and then when we did the first first one um i was exhausted i was like i don't think i could do this again and then the second one was even higher yeah and because i'm one of those people that's always like, okay,

I have to, I have to try it. You know, that's for me. That's why I say to people, break the mold a lot. I say that to people and I have to apply that to myself. I'm like,

right. My friend was like, we're doing it. We're doing it. We're going to, and, and I did it, but I have to be honest,

like, Oh, some of it, I did not enjoy it at all. But when we got to the top and then I looked out onto the view and what we have climbed, I was like, wow, this is awesome. And the irony is now I will probably do it more because of I, if I was so close to say, no, I don't want to, I don't want to do it another one.

So now I am like, that's why I said, I've got my Vivo trail shoes now. Yeah. I've got them ready. So like when I go to another holiday, I know that if there's going to be some hiking, I am, like, that's why I said I've got my Vivo trail shoes now. Yeah. I've got them ready. So, like, when I go to another holiday, I know that if there's going to be some hiking, I'm ready. That's another one that's off ticked. It's just the swimming. We just need to sort that out.

And then I'm good. I'm covering every aspect. Yeah. Okay. I have one last question. Is the stereotype also in the UK about swimming? Do they have that there too? I thought it was.

I thought it was a stereotype of black people can't swim, right? In the US, it's a stereotype. Do they have that stereotype in the UK? It's weird. I don't think they do because when I say it, people don't get it. They think I'm like, you know what? That's a good thing. You know what?

I'm happy to hear that. Because over here, whatever I say, it's like, of course, yeah. You expect people to go, yeah course makes sense yeah but no every time i've said i've used that joke and they kind of look at me like i don't know i don't get it this is like this is a common it is apparently it's not commonly known in the uk i appreciate that i'm actually very happy to hear that yeah yeah so So no, it's, I, I, I thought it was, yeah, I mean,

no, there's a lot of, even some of my friends, um, who are African and Jamaican, they can swim. Yeah. So I'm like,

I'm the, I'm alone in this island right now. I'm like, it'd be nice to find one person who can relate to my struggle. Nobody can. I, I can't even relate to that. Cause I can swim yeah and everyone

was like this is a very important life skill hockey you don't know how to swim i'm like just don't go in water it's like what if you're on a boat well i just wouldn't go on a boat i don't intend to go in on a boat so it's yeah okay yes if there's a big flood or whatever, you know, we don't have that in London. We just have rain, maybe some snow might happen to here. Wow. It's not going to happen here. Don't worry.

You're going to be out of here before. I said, I said to the guy at the recession, it was like, I live on the top. Would I be fine? Because obviously I was joking with him, but I don't think he got it.

He was quite concerned for me because I was like, the storm is going to affect the airport because I have to leave but I don't think he got it. He was quite concerned for me because I was like, the storm, is it going to affect the airport? Because I have to leave. I don't want to be here. And he was like, oh no, don't worry. It's going to be fine. I was like, no, okay.

This is another British thing because I was being sarcastic. He thought I was being serious. So I actually even did a video talking about sarcasm. I did a video called Why CrossFit Sucks. And I was being a hundred percent sarcastic but i had a straight face i didn't smile once yeah and a lot of people

didn't get it and a lot of americans didn't get it the brits got it straight away yeah the americans were like i got so many comments until they had to read the comments underneath going oh he's joking and i always put the thing is i put little bits a little gem that you would know i was trolling uh-huh but because i was so straight faced they didn't get it and i was like this could go two ways i'll get in trouble or people will get it and unfortunately some people didn't get it yeah and some people still didn't get it because sometimes i get random hate comments on the video even with the comments that are saying that it's a troll. Yeah.

Like I'm just being sarcastic. Yeah. So that's why sometimes when I come to America, I have to go, Oh, I'm only joking. Yeah. Yeah.

Because I'm so used to doing it in the, in the British sense. And I do it a lot with my friends and, but that's what your friends are for. Like you, you troll each other. That's what you guys call it here. Shade each other. Uh huh. Whereby we use sarcasm yeah that sometimes it with americans

you have to go oh i'm joking you do yeah because otherwise yeah they they would just think you're you're rude but yeah but i love america though like i love coming here yeah like it's every time i've been here a few times now yeah so i'm not just actually it's my first time in california yeah wow yeah you're going to texas as well are you going anywhere else after that no that's it so i'm going back and then i wanted to go to new york again but i'm i haven't experienced new york in before it gets too hot so that's what i want to do i'm i always avoid it when it's cold yeah Yeah. I just don't, I don't want to leave a cold country to go to another cold country.

That's probably why I haven't gone skiing. Because I don't, I like sun. Yeah. So I want, I want to experience, I want to experience LA at some point because I haven't, I don't have the time this,

yeah. Let me experience it for myself do your thing dog I'm sorry LA is great you're going to love your time there yeah so hopefully

and more of Europe so like Europe is next door and it's a shame that you know a lot of us don't take that to our advantage

really and yeah so that's that's the goal this year travel more yeah Andrew take us on out of here buddy sure thing uh make sure you guys stick around for smelly's tip before we get out of here uh and drop those comments down below let us know what you guys think about the uh

today's conversation and uh for everything podcast related head over to powerproject.live 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 make sure you guys hit that like button on the way out. And Seema, where are you at? At Seema Enni on Instagram and YouTube. And Seema Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter. Obi, where can people find you? Instagram at Obi underscore Vincent.

And YouTube, Obi Vincent. TikTok, it's Obi Vincent. Let's go. Yeah. All right. So Melly's tip for the day is to train the beast rather than try to tame the beast. Help a lot of people out with their diet and help a lot of people out that are very, very heavy. And it's not an easy thing to try to teach them to restrict or get away from certain foods.

And so in doing that, I have kind of learned let's give them small influences of some of these foods on occasion so that they can train themselves to learn to have a better relationship with those foods. to adhere and stick to a diet too strongly, too harshly, for too long. These kind of people, they end up binging and they end up setting themselves back even further than they did before. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.