Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 313 - UNC Tar Heels Strength Coach Jon Heck

Episode Date: January 17, 2020

Jon Heck is the University of North Carolina Tar Heels Football assistant strength and conditioning coach. He also spent time coaching under Coach House, Joe Kenn, as an assistant strength coach in the NFL for the Carolina Panthers. Jon is a competitive powerlifter and strongman from Raleigh, NC. and was heavily influenced by Mark Bell. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors:                                                                      ➢New Perfect Keto Birthday Cake Bars! 10% of 1 box, 20% off 2 boxes, 30% off 3 or more! http://bit.ly/pkppbday                               ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT10” at checkout for $10 off $40 or more! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject  ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject   ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok                                                ➢Power Project Alexa Skill: http://bit.ly/ppalexa FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Oh, we ready. This episode is brought to you by Perfect Keto and our peeps over at Piedmontese. I'm actually really excited about this birthday cake bar that they got coming out. I haven't tried it yet. No. But I did get a box sent to the house.

Oh. Because I'm on the carnivore diet, you know, I'm screwed. I just have to look at it and imagine. And I'm thinking about the birthday cake remix from cold stone so it's like sending all kinds of triggers through the body and i'm uh i'm not dealing with it that good to be honest with you guys okay you can bring it here for us we can help you out with that i will i will bring it it's like the the ultimate punishment right like you took everything and guess what you can't even touch it i know yeah you guys can touch

it though or wait i'm talking about perfect keto don't get weird yeah head over to perfect keto.com slash power project uh at checkout enter promo code power project 10 for 10 off of 40 or power project bundle for 25 off of 100 and right now at the time of this recording they just released their birthday cake bar where you can buy one box for 10% off, two boxes for 20% off, or three boxes for 30% off. I can't wait to try it. Hopefully they send us some. Hopefully at least it makes it into the studio. Your way?

Yeah. Also keep in mind Perfect Keto, everything they have on the website is keto approved. Everything they have on the website, I don't think they, or in fact, I know they don't use any artificial sweeteners in any of their products. Things are sweetened with monk fruit, sometimes monk fruit stevia. So all the products are kind of a safe bet when it comes to that. They also have like an instant coffee that has MCT oil powder in it. In addition to that, you've heard us talk about, you know, putting the MCT oil powder in our coffee. You know, for me, for this particular month, I have taken off of all that kind of stuff.

But it is something that has helped me out tremendously in the past. And when I was coming down from being 330 pounds, I didn't know about Perfect Keto, but I would utilize some keto-like stuff to help me to stay on my plan, help me stay on my diet. Just enough, you know, you're getting, with something like Perfect Keto, you're getting just enough kind of mouth pleasure, as we talk about on this podcast,

and you're getting enough of that sweetness that can help kill off that sweet tooth and so having a bar at the end of the day is a great way to end your day uh if you're someone like me that can't kill the uh inner fat kid yeah but during world carnivore month you have been pounding a lot of meat so oh i've been pounding me pounding it but it is no fap january as well so really haven't been pounding it like the way you're thinking. You've been on a roll. I'm happy for you.

Yeah, I haven't been shaving. I haven't been fapping. There's a lot of things going on. Do less be more? Something like that. What has been your favorite cut this month, though? Man, you know, I keep going back and forth a lot of times on a lot of the, uh, Piedmontese steaks, but what I've recognized from them is that their leaner cuts are really,

really good too. So like, I don't really particularly normally like a New York strip, but for some reason they nailed it with the New York strip. Their meat is still tender, even though it's lean. And, uh, so I've been, uh, I've been sweating the New York Strip. Their meat is still tender even though it's lean. And so I've been sweating the New York Strip this month. And then also for tonight, I already have laid out at the house, I have a couple fillets along with that tomahawk ribeye, that dynasty thing. It's like grass fed, grass finished. They got grass fed, grass finished beef for people that are into that, for people that really care about that part of it. They have a lot of great options over at Piedmontese.com, I believe it is.

Yeah, and did you guys see that they're giving away literally 100 pounds of meat? I did not see that. Yeah, dude, you got to check them out. We've promoted it on our Instagram account, but make sure you head over to, it's at Certified Piedmontese. It's, it's like over a thousand dollars of beef that they're going to give away. Yeah. Hopefully by the time you guys hear this episode.

That's insane. Yeah. You'll have a chance to enter. If not, you can head over to piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code power project for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping. You guys know I love the flat iron steaks.

Ever since I started tracking, I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is the best thing that's ever been made. Like, it's incredible. But, yeah, head over there, check it out. Promo code POWERPROJECT, 25% off. Who do we got on today, Mark? We got John Heck on the podcast today, a strength coach, another disciple, another person that has been affected by Mr. Coach House, Joe Ken. And it's going to be great to have him on the show today, talk to him about strength training.

You know, we don't always get the opportunity to flat out talk about, you know, strength and flat out talk about performance. And this is going to be cool because, uh, this is like some real world stuff, you know, and it doesn't really, it doesn't always matter how good your strength coach is. In this case, the recruiting is a big part of it. So he's a, uh, a strength coach at North Carolina and he's with the football team. North Carolina is not known for their football. And so, you know, that,

that would be kind of an interesting thing for him to talk about because I think that a lot of times the trends that we see, they're like, Oh, like who won a national championship last year? And that's, that's the way of everyone kinds of kind of leans towards that. But a lot of times it has to do with, Hey, they're just recruiting more mutants than you got.

And so it puts you in a tough position. But being a strength coach is a really tough job. And I really admire anyone that takes that on because it's a lot of hours. It's pretty insane. It's a lot of hours and it's a lot of athletes that have to juggle around and deal with. They all have their specific issues, potentially injuries, and you got to keep a note of it. I mean, obviously you have an assistant, but it's just when I think about like basketball strength coaches or football strength coaches, there are so many athletes that you have to keep track of at once every single day. And then they're college students too.

So they're not always doing the best things to take care of themselves yeah and then i can't imagine the pressure of like if somebody goes down in a game it's like hey what's going on here like i don't know if that goes directly on them but you know that's what i'm thinking now like oh my gosh like someone's responsible for something and it's like you know as they say like you pass the buck or whatever it's like fuck does it end with the strength coach because it's like hey dude they're not strong enough why are they getting hurt yeah why the guy pull his hamstring all right yeah i told you the deadlifts were a bad idea yep there we go what's going on john how you doing today all right hold on i can hear you guys now can you hear me

we can hear you for sure all right sorry hear me? We can hear you for sure. All right. Sorry about that. Not a problem. How are you doing today? Doing awesome. Happy to be on here. What's the schedule like here in the offseason? You're the strength coach for the football team, correct? Yes, sir. So we've had lift groups all morning. We played our bowl game in D.C. a few weeks ago. Last week was our first week back in the office. We've got the groups all morning. We played our bowl game in D.C. a few weeks ago. Last week was our first week back in the office.

We've got the whole team back. So the offseason is the strength to ask time to shine. So in-season, we're working seven days a week, long hours, but it's the football offseason where the bulk of our workload comes in. So we had two lift groups early this morning. Guys went out. We did some sprint work, came in the weight room, got a big squat day in. What's kind of the hardest part of managing so many athletes? So we've got, I mean, we have 110 players right now.

Oh, my gosh. I mean, just a myriad of different builds, different ages. So, I mean, when you're dealing with lifters, you've got a lot of guys who are built very similar personalities. On a football team, I mean, you've got a million different builds. You've got guys that are 6'6", skinny. You've got short, stumpy guys. You've got guys from all kinds of different family backgrounds

all types of different personalities so creating a program that you know accommodates every type of athlete that we have in our weight room that's the biggest challenge also uh how do you keep these guys uh concentrating and maybe the staff for that matter sometimes uh because you know they might see something that like lSU is doing in their weight room. They might be like, Coach, like we got to, you know, everyone always thinks they got to try this new thing or they think that that's 100% related to like LSU's success. So how do you keep these guys focused on the prize here?

Yeah, that's a big part of it because, I mean, you know, we're strength athletes come from powerlifting backgrounds where the people we're used to being around are the people who love lifting who want to lift. Our athletes, they're football players, first and foremost. So, you know, they're not necessarily lifting with us because they want to as much as because they have to. So being able to create buy-in among the whole team, get the guys on the same page as us, get it to where they get excited about training and they trust the process. That's absolutely huge. So our, our staff, we take a lot of pride in creating a good team culture in that weight room and creating a lot of buy-in. We bring a lot of energy. good team culture in that weight room and creating a lot of buy-in we bring a lot of energy we explain to the players in simple terms how each and every movement that we incorporate in

the program how that's going to make them a better football player so anytime we introduce a new movement or whatever we always preface it with hey here's why we're doing this here's how it's going to help you on the field and uh and then we just attack it with a lot of energy. We have fun with it. We coach hard and we find different ways to, we find the right cues that work for different guys. So, uh, you know, just creating that buy-in, getting these guys excited to lift, even though lifting is not their sport, that's huge. You know, I was wondering also, like you said, you have different lift groups. Um, as far as their lifting is concerned,

do you, I mean, I know you, everyone's not doing all of the same things, but is there anything that you've taken from powerlifting that's working really well with the football players? Yeah. So,

I mean, the squat back squat, that's the big, that's the foundation of our program. Um, squat and bench press. Those that's the foundation of our program. Squat and bench press, those are two of our huge staples. So just coaching a lot of – just using a lot of the techniques I've learned through powerlifting on how to properly coach a squat, how to have a good eye for technique.

And like I mentioned earlier, we've got all these guys who've got all these different builds and being able to just have a good knowledge of that lift. So you can look at a guy who's 6'6", long legs, skinny, and another guy who's short, stumpy, and figure out, okay, how can I cue this guy to squat properly? So just being intimately familiar with the squat and the bench press from powerlifting, being as those are two staples of our program, that's been a big advantage. Do you kind of like avoid the deadlift or maybe do like, or do you do just hip hinge type movements instead? Yeah, so we'll do variations of the deadlift.

Like today, we are doing snatch grip RDLs. We do not do a whole lot of pulling from the floor, at least the straight bar. We'll do trap bar. We'll do RDLs. And then, you know, in the, in the hinge family, we'll, we'll do our cleans and a lot of plyometric work, but generally speaking in most football weight rooms, you're not going to see a whole lot of straight bar deadlifts from the floor just because it's, it's a high risk movement obviously and um you know we feel like we can we can get the benefits of a hinge uh with safer movements

it's also very interesting right like uh you have a guy that might not be able to deadlift 315 but then he can smash the hell out of somebody on the football field. Could be like a safety or a corner or something like that. And it's, it's I guess, you know, from being around it for a long period of time and helping people myself, what I've learned is that if you just take that person from wherever they're currently at,

maybe they deadlift to 25. If they start to deadlift like two 45 or two 65, things like that, that can, you that, that can improve some of the way they play on the field. But as you're pointing out, a deadlift is a high risk move and athletes can't afford to be walking around for three, four, five days licking their wounds from a really tough workout because they have so many other things to be concerned about yeah exactly and like you were saying there i mean people assume that football players across the board are just monsters in the weight room i mean a lot of these guys even at the nfl level um you see some of these guys lift and you'd be surprised they uh

they're not all necessarily that weight room strong but when they're on the field they just know how to play with leverage play with violence and uh you know a lot of that's just a mindset being able to just sprint in there fearlessly stick your nose in there hit someone and know how to do it with good leverage i mean you don't have you don't have to have a big bench press or a big deadlift to hit someone low with good leverage and knock them on their ass. But yeah, so like you said, if we can take a guy, even if he's not the strongest in the weight room or on a particular movement, if we can just increase that number, we can get them a little bit stronger in that movement, it's going to carry over to the field. And we really want these guys to have a strong

hinge, be able to load their spine, have them brace their core properly, load that posterior chain. That's important for us. But like you said, if we get a guy injured in the weight room, that's on us. That is a very bad reflection on the strength staff. The football coaches aren't going to be happy about it because, I mean, the lifting with us, that's only one thing they do. They've got a million other things to do during the week. They've got to see the athletic trainers do their prehab, mobility, physical therapy, things like that.

They've got to go out in the field and do position drills. And, you know, the quarterbacks will go out with receivers, do throw and catch. The linemen will, you know, the O-line will go out, bring out some bags, do some blocking. So, you know, they've got to be healthy, ready to go during the week because we throw a lot at them. You were mentioning having these groups. Do you ever mix the groups up a little bit? Like maybe you have a group of running backs that are consistently working out together. Like maybe you have a group of running backs that are consistently working out together.

Do you ever like kind of throw in a couple O-linemen and stuff to maybe push them to lift heavier or for the linemen to keep up perhaps in the conditioning or something like that? Yeah, absolutely. So one thing, at least during this time of the year where school is in session, one thing that we've got to work around are the players' class schedules. At the college level, that's one of the big roadblocks we face. So our lift groups, that's largely working around the player class schedule. But then within those groups, we try to – we'll have rack assignments. So we've got 23 racks in our weight room,

and we've got an assignment of exactly which players go to which racks. We'll have a full strength staff meeting determining who's going to what rack. And just like you said, we'll purposely, if we notice there's a guy who maybe he needs someone to pick him up, he doesn't necessarily have the high energy, the motivation. He's a guy we see a lot of potential for, but maybe he's been lagging behind a little bit psychologically. We'll put an older

guy or a stronger guy at that rack with him to push him so yeah a big part of it is making sure every rack has a guy who's going to push the others around him he's going to carry them with them he's going to you know set the tone with the energy and that's a huge part of it because in our weight room we want high energy energy. We want guys training hard, supporting each other because we're building a team culture in here. We're not just trying to get the guys stronger, faster, and keep them healthy. We're trying to establish a team culture. So it all starts in our weight room. And then by the time training camp rolls around, they're carrying that over to the field,

carrying over that energy, that brotherhood. And that's been a big part of our success. Do you guys end up sometimes, just because you're so excited, do you end up lifting with them a little bit? I know you need to do your job and you need to pay attention to what everyone's doing, but do you just sometimes get hyped up in the moment and start lifting with them a little bit? Yeah, so we, every now and then just yes literally that will happen we

just get so hyped up someone just says fuck it let me grab that bar or uh you know on uh on saturdays we'll have we'll have uh open hours we'll open up the weight room for a few hours and generally the strength staff will will lift too we'll lift with the guys you know show them that hey we do everything we ask you to do we're doing it too the you know, show them that, Hey, we do everything we ask you to do. We're doing it too. The, you know, that thorough movement prep warmup that we put you through that may seem boring to you guys at the time. We're doing the exact same thing. You know, I compete in powerlifting. I compete in strongman. I'm doing, I'm doing those exact same things. I'm, you know, I'm taking care of my body. I'm doing my mobility work. I'm doing my core activation and all that good stuff. So, uh, yeah, we so uh yeah we uh

we love getting in there mixing it up with you guys it's got to be pretty uh motivating at least for a player because i used to play soccer um to actually have a strength conditioning coach that's also big and jacked it makes you want to listen to them more because like being real the coach that we had he wasn't so like i think a lot of the players kind of like walked over what he was telling them to do even though they shouldn't have but like if you see a guy like yourself who's like what six four six five two something it's i'm six seven jesus christ yeah i'm six seven three ten right now yeah oh god come on i'm on the lighter end of what i normally weigh uh but yeah

having a strength coach that looks the part that's that's big because you know like i said earlier these guys they come in here they don't necessarily want to be in there they don't necessarily initially trust the process but you you look the part as the strength coach all right now you you you're commanding their attention and their respect from the get-go. You've got to back it up. You've got to be able to back it up if you're going to look the part. But, yeah, as a strength coach, you want to come in here looking soft-bodied because you'll lose these players right off the bat.

A lot of times you probably get confused as a player, right? People probably think you're a player most of the time. Oh, yeah, of the time oh yeah all the time i don't think i've gone i don't think i've gone one day in the past 10 years without being asked by someone on the street if i play football or what do i do all right just just tell them your number 55 and to look for you on saturday just just give into it they'll be like i don't see a 55 out there this is so weird what's the biggest sometimes they'll just i'll have people come up to me they'll ask how tall are you but sometimes people

just come up to me and look up and say wow you're tall i don't know how to respond to that you used to say wow you're not what's the biggest difference uh because you had some experience in the NFL as well. What's the biggest difference between NFL and college from a strength, strength coaching perspective. Yeah. From just a, yeah,

just a general coaching perspective, period, like the mindset of the athlete, maybe. Right. So in the NFL or in the college level, the strength coach is generally, you're an authority figure. You're typically in a disciplinary role. You know, we've got these guys come in.

They're 18 years old and we play a large part in, you know, any type of players missing class. Players are getting in trouble. The strength staff handles the discipline. You know, a lot of time we're establishing that team culture and sometimes we have to yell, sometimes we'll have to be hard on these guys. In the NFL level, you are not an authority figure as a strength coach. You're dealing with grown men. You're dealing with men who are being paid a lot of money. So in the NFL level, you're more in service to the athlete. You're almost more of a colleague. You're providing a service to them. How can we help you're more in service to the athlete. You're almost more of a colleague. You're providing a service to them.

How can we help you make more money? How can we help you just be a better professional? In the college level, we're an authority figure. And then just the athletes are a little bit different. In the NFL, like I said, you're dealing with grown men. They're very mature. The athletes who have made it to that level they're generally intelligent so you know they're smart they're older you're and you're dealing with you'll have some guys that are 22 you'll have some guys in their 40s so you're dealing with a big spectrum of ages experience level guys have

kids they have families they've you know a you know, a lot of the players, most of the players that I was coaching was with the Panthers were older than me, making a hell of a lot more money than me. So learning how to reach those guys who, you know, hold a much higher status than I do in my life, you know, it's a much different dynamic than dealing with an 18-year-old kid fresh out of high school who, you know, we're kind of whipping him into shape a little bit.

You know, I'm curious about this, if it's at least if the wave has gotten over there, you know how like the NCAA, they're thinking about or there's something going around about how they might end up paying athletes. about or there's something going around about how they might end up paying athletes. Has that rippled over yet in terms of like, have you thought of that, how that might change the dynamic if it does? Yeah. So we, I mean, that's been in talks for a while now. That's a, that whole situation, it's a much more complex issue than, than people are aware

of. Cause I mean mean from the outside it just seems simple uh the team generates tons and tons of money the athletes are obviously essential to that so why not give them a cut of it well the issue is we've got all this title you know title nine for example which is a rule that if we're going to pay our male football players x amount of money well we've got to be paying essentially an equal amount of money to the women's sports. There's a whole lot of rules in place you'd have to navigate in order to be paying players. And then there comes the question, you know, do you pay all the players equally?

Do they have, you know, are you paying your starters more than your backups are you you know what jersey sales yeah or video game appearances there's so there's so many components to this whole thing um there i don't foresee a simple solution to this um and i'm honestly i'm not qualified to to speak on it because there's there's so much more going on behind the scenes with that than I could even fathom. I don't see anything substantial happening anytime soon with that, though. I'd be a little bit nervous about it because the NFL players, they're making a lot of money, and they're older. They're a little more mature. and they're older, they're a little more mature,

I'd be a little bit nervous about what might happen if you start paying 18, 19-year-old kids a lot of money. A lot of those guys, they're coming from nothing. They don't know the first thing about handling money, let alone handling their own life, living on their own for the first time. So I'd be nervous if players started getting paid at this level but i think we're ways away from that how'd you get started in all this because there's probably some people listening that would love to be a strength coach you just have to lift a lot of

weight what's how do you what's the qualification i mean i'll tell you right now being on this podcast is surreal to me because you guys played a huge role into getting me where I am today. I was always interested in the weight room. I was always kind of drawn to the weight room. My dad played in the NFL for 12 years. He's a current NFL coach. So, you know, I'd go into the stadium with him as a kid. I'd always kind of gravitate towards the weight room.

But when I was in high school, I started watching your YouTube channel. I'd stumbled upon some Westside Barbell stuff online. That was kind of my first exposure to powerlifting. And then I found your YouTube channel. I got hooked. I mean, I'm watching the Backyard Meat of the Century. I'm watching your super training, training videos. And then I'm listening to the original podcast, having all the, you know, Eric Spoto, Pete Rubish

and those guys on. And I mean, I was absolutely hooked. You're the one who put low carb dieting on my radar. As soon as I got done with football, I went on a keto diet because of you. So, I mean, you kind of channeled my interest into strength sports, which then fostered my desire to be a strength and conditioning coach. So I played football here at UNC. I was a four-year starter, two-time All-ACC selection, and I had an opportunity to go to the NFL. Were you a placeholder? Yeah, I played right tackle.

But my senior year, I just decided when I was done with that season, I was done with football. My love was not, my passion was not in football anymore. It was in lifting. So I wanted, beginning of my senior year, I just decided at the end of this season, I'm retiring from football. I'm going into strength conditioning. I'm going to be a power lifter.

And sacrificed a lot of money by doing that but i'm doing what i love now i want to ask real quick how did you how did you uh deal with that sacrifice of that amount of money you know because a guy like you who could play in the nfl and make that type of money you know how like how did you rationalize that instantly instantly yeah it was i mean that was that was the hardest decision of my life because I grew up in a football family. My dad, like I said, he played in the NFL for 12 years. He's the offensive line coach for the Kansas City Chiefs. My brother, he's currently preparing for the NFL draft.

Every one of my friends was a football player, a teammate. And then it becomes your whole life. And then it's just becomes assumed that you're just going to go. You're going to pursue the NFL. If you're a college football player, it's just assumed that we're all pursuing the NFL. That's kind of what we're all. We just go through life with that mindset. And then I just got to the point where I was like I don't love

doing this like I'm so burnt out on playing and my passion is in other things and I mean yeah I'll make more money in the NFL but I'm not going to be happy doing it I'm going to be wishing I was somewhere else wishing I was doing something else so I don't, rather than spend these next few years doing something that I start to hate, rather than, you know, foster resentment towards the sport that's given me everything, I wanted to just kind of take a different role. I wanted to be a coach. And also, I wanted to continue as an athlete just as a lifter. So, I mean, there's times I'll check my bank account right now and i'm like damn if only i just played one or two years um but i mean ultimately i haven't looked back i haven't regretted a thing about it because i mean i've been loving what i'm doing these past few years

but a lot of the people in my life didn't understand it initially uh i remember the phone call with my dad where I broke the news to him. I mean, I sat in the car for like an hour just working up the courage to dial his number and tell him that I was going to be done. But I mean, he could not have been more supportive. He was amazing with it. And that was a huge load off my shoulders. But a lot of my teammates, you know, coaches, they didn't understand. And I knew that'd be the case. A lot of my teammates, you know, coaches, they didn't understand.

And I knew that would be the case because, I mean, it was a very unorthodox decision on my end, but it was the right decision for me. Did it surprise your dad? And, yeah, was he kind of taken back by that? Yeah, he was. He was. Because, I mean, he had been a mentor to me in the sport my whole life. And I hadn't alluded to him or given him any hint that I was considering not playing

because in my mind, I didn't even consider it a possibility. I just was like, well, I'm a college football player. This is the path that I'm on. There's no other path. It wasn't until my senior year that I just kind of started thinking, I don't have to do this. I mean, I'd spent my whole life kind of living in my dad's shadow. He was a very good player. He was a captain of the national championship team at Notre Dame, a first-round draft pick, 12-year starter in the NFL. And I was a good player. I mean, I had scholarship offers coming out of high school as a starter in the college level. But I was never quite as good as him.

And I was always kind of living in his shadow. And I just decided one day, hey, I can live my own life. I'm my own man. I'm going to carve my own path and follow my interests. I'm not just going to do what my family lineage dictates. I'm going to set out my own path. That's super cool. And then from there, was your dad, like, was he,

it sounded like you said he was understanding. Was he supportive? Or was he like, hey, dude, like, you need to think about this a lot more. He was very supportive. I mean, he wanted to make sure that I knew what I was doing because, I mean, once you tell the scouts that you're not doing the combine, you're not going to do pro day, you're not doing the senior bowl, there's no going back.

So we talked it over. But, I mean, he supported me from the get-go he i was lucky to have a dad who you know you see a lot of these a lot of these football dads or there's the hard-o coach on their son making them hit the blocking dummy late at night or ripping them if they don't play have a good game in high school he was never that he was always a supportive mentor um he was always a dad first and foremost and a coach second so he he was surprised i'm sure in his heart he was a little disappointed um but ultimately he he wants me to do what i love and to be happy and i'm still in the sport just as a coach so i'm still tied into that world i'm still in his world and my brother my not so little brother uh he's going to be a good nfl player so my dad's got

one of his boys he's still playing what do you think the the deal is with like this kind of like family stock of amazing athletes? You know, we see it often where, you know, one kid is able to break through in the NFL and then there's like a couple siblings, you know,

like the Mannings, JJ Watt and his brother, his, his brother's now a pro bowler. And then you have like bones Jones, you know, UFC champion. And then I think he has two brothers in the NFL.

Is that just a kind of a genetic thing, or what do you think about that? I think a big part of it's genetics. I mean, I'm only getting my opportunity to play football at a high level if I'm my size. You know, you can't teach 6'7", but I think another big part of it is just when you grow up in a family of athletes, your expectations and your standards are higher in the realm of athletics. A lot of kids who grow up in a, you know, quote unquote, normal family, I think they view college athletics, professional athletics as kind of just a dream you know

something they're probably not going to reach you know just just something they dream about whereas I grew up that was that was my normal like being around NFL players being the son of a guy who played in the NFL for 12 years that was just normal to me so I I, I think when you're the son of an athlete or growing up in a household of athletes, you grow up just believing that that is attainable. The thought that you could also do that yourself. That's just a normal thought. I never questioned myself. I assumed I was going to be a college football player. And I think I lived like that when I, in high school, I was just had the mindset. Yeah, I'm going to be a college football player. There's think I lived like that. When I, in high school, I was just had the mindset, yeah, I'm going to be a college football player. There's no, there's, it's not a dream to me. It's,

that's going to be my reality. And I think when you, I think in anything you do athletically, whether, I mean, even in lifting, if you believe something is attainable and you actually operate that way and live as if that is something that is attainable and you're realistically working towards that, you'll have a better chance of making that happen than if you just view it as a, just a dream that you'll probably never really reach. In terms of like your coaching pathway, because there are a lot of coaches that listen to this, I get, well, obviously want to do what you do right um how did you navigate like how did you figure out a way to get there were you like i need to work under these individuals to get this experience or i need to

get these certs because i know like everyone can get certifications but obviously you gotta you gotta somehow get away from the pack and show that you're better than everybody else. Right. Yeah. I mean, honestly, a big part of that for me was luck. I happen to have a mutual connection with Joe Ken with the Carolina Panthers. Dirk Cutter, a coach he had previously worked for, was someone who I knew personally. He was a family friend of ours and

he put me in touch with House and that's how I got that interview. So I mean, I can't really call that anything but luck. And then once I got that interview, I just went in and made the most of it and started off working as an intern and had had to work hard stand out separate myself so that from there you know i could get a recommendation for a job um a lot of it is going to come down to connections and in order to build those connections in the first place you know as an up-and-coming strength coach, you're probably going to have to spend your first few years of work working for free or at least working for dirt cheap. My first job out of college, I interned at a private sector training facility where I trained a lot of guys training for the combine. I worked for free initially.

I got hired by the Panthers, starting out making minimum wage, long hours, not a lot of money, but that's kind of the normal path when you're starting out in this field. And I think it's the guys who make the most of those opportunities, who even if you're not being paid a lot of money, if you work your ass off and you do the best that you can do in that job while you have it, you're going to stand out. And you may not even be aware of it, but people are going to start making phone calls on your behalf.

You know, you're going to start standing out in the back of people's minds. Whereas if you go into this profession just thinking, oh, you know, I've just got to get through these first few years of internships, not making much money so I can get to, you know, get to the point where I'm making a lot of money. If you approach it that way, you're, you know, you're never going to make it because, you know, as, as an intern, as you're, as a first year strength coach, you're going to make a name for yourself by just hustling and working hard.

You know, your first year, you're not going to make a name for yourself proving how much, you know, You know, your first year, you're not going to make a name for yourself, proving how much, you know, you know, you're not going to make a name for yourself, proving how much exercise physiology and, and technique, you know, it's going to be about, can I work hard? You know, can I go above and beyond and make myself a valuable asset for the coach that I'm working for? Um, you know, prove that, Hey, I can provide something for you. I'm going to work my ass off. And then, you know, he's going to make a recommendation for you. And that's, that's what ended up happening with me. And, uh, in working your ass off, I'm sure that that kind of entails

everything, right? Like, uh, being a strength coach, especially, uh, being like an in starting out as like an intern, it's not really very pretty, right? Like you're probably picking up towels that the guys left behind, you're throwing away cups and you're, or you're bringing them water. Like you're just doing like whatever you can to be supportive because you're now part of the staff, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, my first few months working for house, I mean, I'm just cleaning up the weight room i'm setting up the weight room i'm cleaning out shaker bottles i'm doing a lot of the grunt work and you know like i said you've got to approach that work seriously and work hard at it if you just view it as i just got to get through this you know you're not going to stand out but if you if you attack those things that's

how you stand out and that was something that I had to learn early on in my career was, you know, because you go, I go from being an athlete to all of a sudden now I'm scrubbing racks and you're a servant in a weight room. Yeah, you're kind of in a servant role. And, you know, it took a little while for me to realize, hey, this is more important than I realized, okay, because I'm being watched right now, and that quickly became apparent, so, you know, I had to quickly grow up and realize that if I'm given a task, even if it seems completely trivial, I'm being watched, and it matters. House, I mean, he'll, he says this all the time. He'll often ask interns to clean out his shaker bottle

or pick up a lunch order or something. He'll say, if I can't trust the guy to properly clean a shaker bottle or get a lunch order right, how can I trust him to write a program? And I agree with that. So you've got to prove early on that you can do these trivial

little grunt work tasks and do them do them well and follow instructions and um that was a big part of of you know growing up for me as a coach you can be honest with us has coach house ever made you cry only when i went home yes my first my first few weeks there were some sleepless nights just like replaying in my mind oh geez what did i mess up yeah we've had so many different people on this podcast that have been positively impacted by joe ken uh all the way from brian shaw to kyle kingsbury to yourself and a few other strength coaches. What are some other valuable things that you picked up from Coach House? So he was the one who shifted me over from the athlete mindset into a coach mindset. My very first week of working for House all the team was walking out to the practice

fields we're going to go out and do some speed and agility work we're all walking out there and one of the athletic i was walking with a group of three or four players one of the athletic trainers pulls up on a golf cart next to us says hey you guys want to hop in catch a ride to the field said yeah sure we all pile in unbest to me, there's a team photographer taking photos of all the players, catches a photo of me accepting that ride. And that photo gets put up on the Panthers website. Howe sees it. And then my picture got put up on his wall of shame. He's got a wall of shame in his office. And, uh, I learned very quickly, coaches do not accept rides coaches walk. Um, you know, you're not, that was, uh, it was a lesson taught to me, Hey, you're not the athlete anymore. You've got to start being viewed as a coach. So, you know, you know, you're not, you're not a player anymore. You're not, you're not taking golf cart rides to the field.

You're walking around in the field. You're going to start being viewed as a coach. And that was, I mean, it seems like a silly little story, but that was a little tidbit that kind of woke me up. Like, wow, I've got to change my approach to all this. And from there, he just, he held me to a very, very high standard. Like with a lot of those little grunt work things, he held me to a very high standard of perfecting those things

and learning to handle problems before I was asked. And I think we were like three weeks in. He had been leading all the warm-ups, leading the movement prep, a pretty thorough and complex series of movements and then all of a sudden one day without warning me to john lead him you got him and i mean i was scared shitless because i'm just first year strength intern i'm standing in front of 50 you know multi-millionaire nfl players all of them way older than me and they're all staring me in the face.

So I start leading it. And then our, uh, Pro Bowl center, Ryan Khalil, he goes, Hey John, your strength coach voice sucks. And, uh, I quickly learned right that, you know, it was kind of baptism by fire. I learned how to be confident in front of a group and, and command a group. And also just it was a valuable lesson. You got to be prepared.

You got to be on your toes. You got to be ready for anything. I was not prepared and ready to all of a sudden be leading that group. I thought I'm just the intern. I'm just here ready to clean up or grab some bands or chains if needed. But no, he taught me I've got, I've got to be on my toes and ready and know the program inside and out. Cause at any moment, I may be asked to lead a group. Was there a lot of other things that just ended up happening that

way where you just like pushed in? Yeah. Oh yeah. So with the Panthers, I was on a, it was a staff of four people, including myself. And, you know, we're working with a full team and a lot of where a lot of curveballs get thrown when you're when you're working with a team of 100 athletes. So guys schedules change or a guy has to come in later or, you know, guy gets injured and we've got to modify the lift for him on the fly, especially in season when those guys are getting banged up for their games and we have to modify the program so much as we go. I was on my toes my entire tenure with them. He's like the Mr. Miyagi of coaches.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, he is. He's the true OG in this field. I mean, I couldn't have been more lucky to have him as my first real boss and mentor. I'd imagine even just watching him was probably super beneficial because he, like you said about the coaching voice, you know, Joe, he's going to take command of the room. He's got a ton of energy, and he's able to kind of project his voice. There's so much that goes into being a strength coach. I think people kind of miss out on how much of it is a leadership factor. The team is looking to you to lead them and to lead them to getting stronger,

and in this case getting stronger healthier uh being in better condition what are some things that you work on you know in the off season i know it's a it's a long way a long way a ways is is the beginning of the season um but conditioning is something that i don't feel like people don't even talk enough about and um you know there's multiple reasons for it but you know when we saw the playoffoff game, the playoff games that have been going on, you saw J.J. Watt really just, he was really gassed on the field. And, of course, the camera's centered on him and everybody else is gassed too, but J.J. Watt, phenomenal athlete, future Hall of Famer, unbelievable talent, but he tore his pec earlier in the year, and then this is his second game back. How do you keep people from getting winded like that on the field? What are some things you guys work on?

Yeah, so, I mean, the conditioning part of all this is huge, and having our guys strong and powerful in the fourth quarter, that's something very important and something we took a lot of pride in this year. We were a very good fourth quarter team here at UNC. I mean, it all starts in the offseason. We're already getting our conditioning underway. We have these guys in shape pretty much year-round. A big part of the conditioning is tailoring the conditioning

to the position that the player is in. We're not going to condition an offensive lineman the same way that we're going to condition a wide receiver. I think a lot of programs are still kind of in the dark ages, so to speak, where the whole team's doing the same thing, and they just kind of take the approach of we're just going to run these guys until they puke, run them into the ground, tough uh and you need you need an element of that you need an element of developing toughness and discipline among the group and putting them in difficult

situations where they have to lead each other uh but also you got you want to you want to tailor a program to them that's physiologically optimal. And there's so many positions on the field, and the energy demands of those positions are so different from one another. You know, a wide receiver will have guys sprinting downfield every play, and then on the offensive line, you're operating in a – you might be operating in a small three-yard window every play. And so when we do our conditioning, we'll break up the team.

We'll have the big men go with one coach. They're going to do an entirely separate form of conditioning than the receivers are going to do. Our skill guys, they're going to do a much higher volume of running. They'll be running longer distances. Their conditioning will be much longer distances. Um, their, their conditioning will be much more sprint oriented, a lot of work on sprint mechanics, uh, plyometrics. Um, you know, there'll be running, there'll be sprinting distances that we're not going to

have our big men sprint with the big men. It's much more short burst, rapid fire work, uh, things of that nature. We'll do a lot of strongman type conditioning with our big men. You know, farmer carry, sled drag, heavy med ball work, things of that nature. Because that's going to be a lot more conducive to what they'll be seeing on the field, at least from an energy demand perspective. So finally, fire conditioning that is tailored to the position that player plays, that's the biggest thing.

You know, there are a lot of high school guys that actually listen to this podcast that play high school football and want to make it, I guess, to the college level. Now from a, I guess, a conditioning side of things, because, you know, high school coaches obviously don't go into the depth that college coaches go into. What should a lot of these guys be trying to do in the gym to be able to get strong for college? So when it comes to the high school guys, I'd say if there's one approach that you can master as a high schooler that will pay dividends for you is just master body control. I don't care if a high schooler can bench 405 or squat 500. The guys I want to see are the guys who move well, who have good mobility, who have good body control, good kinesthetic awareness,

who have proper mechanics in all their lifts, who have good balance. They've mastered relative strength. They can do pull-ups. They can do push-ups. They can do a glute ham raise. Most of the guys we get from the high school level, a lot of our big men, they can't do a glute ham raise.

They can't do a pull-up because they haven't. With House, Coach Ken, he's got his block zero program where he doesn't he doesn't have kids you know under a bar or or loaded with heavy weight until they've mastered body weight movement and i i think that's a big thing for these high schoolers is learn how to control your body learn how to learn how to brace your core, learn the proper mechanics of the squat, learn the mechanics of a hinge, uh, be,

you know, get yourself where you can do dips, pull ups, glute ham raises, where you can hold a plank, things like that. You know, and those are very controllable.

Anyone can achieve those things. You know, not everyone, not everyone can squat 600 pounds or bench 500 pounds no matter what you do, but anyone can get to the point where they can do pull-ups, push-ups, glute-ham raises, and have good body control. trying to use more weight and then the more weight that they add, the more it turns into like a half squat and then a quarter squat. And then they're really just, you know, barely kind of bending their knees. And then if they're dead lifting, they're really rounding their back severely.

So having that control and be able to do the movements properly. And then also, you know, if you're doing too many things in the gym that are, you know, going to injure you, hurt you, slow you down in any way, then that's not productive for athletics at all. Yeah, I mean, a lot of what we have, these freshmen that just came in, a lot of the times when we get new freshmen, we spend the first few weeks undoing bad habits

that they've developed in high school. I mean, we had a D lineman come in this past year who his whole life, growing up, lifting very heavy, lifting very heavy, squatting very high. And sure enough, he came in very poor mobility. He's extremely tight. And, I mean, the first few weeks having him here, we were just, geez, we got to teach this guy how to actually squat to depth. We got to loosen this guy up, get him moving properly just so he doesn't get injured on

day one. A lot of these high school kids, especially the ones with kind of the tough dads or the very old school coaches, they go through high school just loading the bar, loading the bar, but they don't move properly. And then they get to college and we're just trying to do damage control, trying to undo all that damage. I mean, same with the NFL. We, uh, we'll get players from all over the country and we'll see them lift. And, you know, right off the bat, you can tell, all right, that guy came from a good, good college lifting program. That guy didn't just

seeing them seeing their squat mechanics on day one. Gotcha. Right now with like, I guess the amount of athletes that you coach, um, are you, do you have goals to coach professionally for professional teams or right now do you want to, are you just focusing on college level like athletes? Yeah. So within strength and conditioning at NFL versus college, NFL is not necessarily a step up. You know, a lot of the top college strength coaches are paid more than anyone in the NFL. And a large part of that's just very recruiting oriented at the college level. The strength coach is very involved in the recruiting and putting out a lot of the team

propaganda you know we have recruits and we're giving them weight room tours where strength staff's playing a role in in the recruiting uh nfl level there's no recruiting you don't necessarily have the big fancy facilities um well you don't have big fancy facilities in the nfl in the nfl because you know in in college you'll see a lot of these awesome facilities, and that's primarily put in place for recruiting purposes, trying to woo all the high school kids. And in the NFL, like I said, there's no recruiting. It just needs to be functional.

So the NFL weight rooms are very good in terms of function they've got everything you need but they're not necessarily big and flashy like like where you might see at an SEC school but there's pros and cons to both the college and the NFL level you know NFL you're working with the cream of the crop the best of the best you're playing for Super NFL, you're working with the cream of the crop, the best of the best. You're playing for Super Bowls. You're dealing with grown men. In the college level, you know, you may not be dealing with the same level of athlete as you in the NFL, but you're getting to spend a lot more time with those players. You're getting to develop them for four years, and you get a lot more time with them in the year at the college level nfl you got them for about six weeks in the off season then they go off to the you know their own

guy to their own trainers back home and uh and then we're in training camp so you don't get as much time with them in the nfl and a guy might be there for a year he might be there for a few months before he's gone. At least in college, you know, when we get the kid in, we've got him. We've got him three, four or five years and we can get him into our program. We can slow cook him and develop them over the course of years. So pros and cons to it. Something that people probably also don't realize about a strength coach is you're kind of the – almost like the messenger or the person in between the player a lot of times, in between the player and the head coach and offensive or maybe their position coach as well.

And so I imagine that a lot of the guys come and just dump their problems on you because they're with you so much. You might be assisting them with stretching, or you might be just with them warming them up for the weight room, or you're in there encouraging them to lift. So I'd imagine that that's a big part of it too. How do you guys cope with the mindset of a student athlete? Yeah, so like you said, unlike the position coaches who they only coach the players within their position, we see everyone. We're coaching everyone. We're with them year round.

We're with them in the off season. And we're the only coaches on staff who don't have the power to determine whether they play or not. and whether they play or not. So we are often in a position where the players can kind of confide in us and talk with us and establish a relationship with us. And that's an important role for us, kind of being a mentor to some of these kids. Because a lot of these kids, like I said, they come from all sorts of different backgrounds. A lot of them don't have a father in their life didn't have you know they didn't have an important male figure

in their life necessarily so uh we get them in and we uh you know we're not we're not just buddy buddy with them but we build a relationship with them and and if we see a guy who's got something going on or or we can tell something's wrong or he's mentally in a bad spot, we'll pull him aside. We'll talk to him. We'll build him back up. Sometimes the strength coach gets seen as the guy, oh, we're just going to run him into the ground. We're going to crush him, be hard on him. But we're trying to build these kids up, too.

We're trying to build confidence in these kids and trying to build trust with these kids so they trust our program so you know they go to war for us and they they love coming they love coming into work so uh yeah that's a big part of it and um dealing with all these players different personalities we see a lot of different situations a lot of different situations with these kids. So, you know, and we've got, we've got five coaches on our strength staff and we each bring different things to the table. We all have different personalities. We all, we come from different backgrounds. And so certain players might gravitate towards certain coaches on our staff might go to kind of, they might have kind of their guy per se on our staff staff that they know they can trust, they can talk to,

they have a good rapport with. So, you know, I've got my guys who, if they need to talk, if they need some extra help, they'll come to me. And other players might go to some of our other coaches. When you were a kid, who were're the most uh obsessed with or amazed by you know when you had your dad as an as a uh you know nfl player but i would imagine like there's probably a lot of situations where you get around the other players and it might even be a player from another team like who uh who was someone that you kind of idolized i mean i know

you know you probably did look up to your dad a lot uh but your dad can't be your idol you need to have like somebody else like that you see the kids at the end of games a lot of times getting autographs from lebron james when they're you know when when their dad plays for the other team and stuff like that yeah so you know my dad really was my idol because growing up around in an nfl locker room my dad was a player, a coach my whole life. I wasn't as starry-eyed around the NFL players. It was normal for me to be around a lot of those superstars. So I certainly looked up to them.

I wanted to be in their shoes, but I didn't necessarily see them in that same celebrity status as I think most people would. So for me, growing up, it was my dad. I just wanted to impress my dad. I wanted to follow in his footsteps and make him proud. And I learned just about everything I knew from him. But then once my interests kind of started shifting away from football and more to the strength sport world, then I started where most kids grow up, their heroes are the football players. For me, the football player was just normal. I see them every day.

I started kind of my heroes became the lifters, the top strong man, Mariusz Pudzianowski and Brian Shaw and Big Z and them. Then seeing some of the top powerlifters. And I mean, even you, like watching your, literally, it's been a dream to be on the power cast. So, I mean, my idols, my athlete idols became lifters later in my life. Well, when we get off this this podcast you can apologize to your dad

from me saying you know saying that i'm sorry that i derailed your nfl career and made you into a lifter and strength coach i fucked everything up you played a big part in that yeah like as a coach now do you have any strong because like you compete in strongman and powerlifting so like you're a big guy and big guys do really well in strongman, do you have any strong, cause like you compete in strong man and powerlifting. So like you're a big guy and big guys do really well in strong man. So do you have any, I guess, big strong man goals athletically? Uh,

longterm, I'd like to deadlift 900. Um, that's kind of, I'd like to do, uh, have a, you know,

400 plus pound log clean and press. Um, but in strong man, who have a 400-plus pound log clean and press. But in strongman, it's less about the individual lift numbers. It's more about the contest wins. Powerlifting, it's all about the numbers, the records, what's your squat, bench, deadlift, your total. In strongman, it's less about the individual events, more about how many Arnolds have you won, how many World's Strongest Mans have you won, how many giant lives have you gotten on the podium for. So, you know, I'd like to, before it's all said and done, I want to get on the podium at some important competitions.

If I could, you know, I'm realistic with everything. If I could, you know, I'm realistic with everything. I know there's only a handful of guys who can make it to World's Strongest Man, and you've got to push the envelope of what the human body is capable of. You know, I'd probably have to be pushing the 400-pound mark in order to get to World's Strongest Man and compete with those guys, especially at my height. strongest man compete with those guys especially at my height um but you know i don't necessarily have any goals other than to just become the strongest human that i can become and get as good as i can possibly get and just build myself into the biggest freak that i can possibly get to and what you know however high that ceiling ends up being, you know,

as long as, as long as I just maximize my potential, I'll be happy. Cause you know, I don't want to set expectations that exceed what I could ever be capable of. And I don't want to set expectations that are lower than what I could be capable of. So right now I'm just pursuing progress, but I'm going to keep doing that till the day I die. Yeah. 900 pound deadlift. Damn. What are you deadlifting now? Uh, eight low eight hundreds. So I've been, uh,

I've been doing strong man now is my second year of strong man. Um, you know, once I got done playing football is when I started really training, you know, as a lifter. Um, I didn't really, I didn't train, I haven't trained the deadlift all that long in my life. Um, so I, I think I've got, my training age is still relatively young, uh, at least in terms of, of strongman events and, you know, the power lifts. So we'll see what I can end up doing. That's kind of crazy progress though, to be deadlifting low eight hundreds and you haven't been deadlifting for that long.

Like, that progression's kind of insane. Yeah, I'm built for it. My long arms are very good for me. My squat is nowhere near my deadlift. These long legs weren't built for squatting, but that's kind of why I transitioned from powerlifting over to strongman. Until I found a strongman gym, I didn't know how to get into strongman because they've got so many specialty events, specialty equipment. I didn't know any of the technique for it.

So I started out in powerlifting. I knew I was built more for strongman um it wasn't until i stumbled upon a strongman gym that i train at now and uh it built a relationship with with strongman competitors over there that that i really even got into it you know real quick i want to get back to the strongman, but again, for coaches that are listening to you, um, you mentioned how like you had to deal or you deal with all of these different types of players. And obviously you had the, like you were able to have experiences with working with coach house and working around other great coaches, but are there any like books or resources

that you read that helped you learn how to deal better with athletes? Not like the, you know, the strength and conditioning side of things and programming, but like being able to deal with the human side of athletes. Is there anything that helped you with that? As far as, as far as, you know, literature of it, not, not a whole lot. I, uh, I'm a firm believer that when it comes to coaching, you're going to experience is going to trump everything. Just having experience coaching on the floor, being around athletes, building that confidence about speaking in front of a group and commanding a room.

I think that's going to develop you as a strength coach more, more than anything in the academic realm ever will. Not to say that, not to say that you shouldn't learn the ins and outs of that, you know, the physiology and the psychology of all this. But I really think just being on the floor, coaching and just teaching someone how to lift, even whether it's an NFL player, a college player, or a middle schooler. You know, when I worked in the private sector, I was working with primarily high school kids, middle school kids.

And that was extremely valuable experience to me because I learned how to coach a younger kid who's, they're not as mature. They're not necessarily as locked in. They're certainly not as athletic or they don't have the same kind of body control or attention span as you know a full-grown man does who and whose job it is to be in their training you know learning gaining experience just coaching kids from a young age up to the professional level that gave me a ton of experience just in working with different personalities, people coming from different backgrounds, just kind of learning how to talk to anyone, how to how to connect with anyone. That's been the biggest thing for me as far as developing as a coach on the floor, more than more than any book possibly could, in my opinion.

possibly could, in my opinion. How do you deal with taller athletes, you know, when it comes to like a squat? And then how did you, you know, build up some of your own strength being a taller athlete? Because it is, it is kind of difficult, and it can be kind of confusing to organize a six foot seven body when it comes to something like a squat. So do you have them squat onto maybe like a box at first and keep them up high? Or what are some things that you try with them? be like a box at first and keep them up high or what are some things that you try with them yeah so when we when a freshman comes into this program we start them on a very very basic teaching program they're not they're not even squatting with a barbell for the first month like our group of freshmen that just came in right now they're doing kettlebell goblet squats um so we're just teaching them the basic mechanics of that. And when, you know, they kind

of graduate from the kettlebells to a barbell front squat. And then once they've mastered the front squat, then we'll start looking at putting the bar on their back. But a lot of these taller guys, especially our tall, very skinny, lanky receivers who have very long legs, sometimes the answer is just, we can't force him into a back squat because that's just not a good movement for him it's not a movement that is going to work well with that guy so just we've got several alternative forms of squatting we might have a guy be a safety bar squatter we might you know getting that more of that high bar position, just some of those taller guys, the safety squat bar tends to allow them to squat with a more upright torso.

And that movement is a lot better for them. Other guys, they might be a front squatter their whole career. Some guys, you know, the worst, if a guy is just a terrible squatter, we can, you know, cannot make it work. We might even have them on a belt squat, especially if they're a guy who deals with a lot of low back issues. But a squat movement is the foundation of our program, but we're not going to force a kid to do a barbell back squat if that's just not a good movement for how he's built. So just evaluating a kid from the day he gets in, starting with the kettlebell

goblet squat, just getting a sense of, okay, how does this kid move? How is he built? And then just finding a movement that clicks with them, finding just a squat variation that they can do safely, that they can get a lot out of that puts them in a good position, a good posture. And then once we find that movement that kind of clicks perfectly for them, then we build off of that. But we're not going to try to force them just to contort themselves into a bad position with a barbell back squat if they're not built for it. Me personally, I was able to make a back squat work,

Me personally, I was able to make a back squat work, getting a more narrow stance and just hammering, just proper knee tracking and really learning how to properly brace my core. I was able to become a, you know, I'm not necessarily the strongest squatter, but I'm a pretty good squatter in terms of positioning and technique and control and all that. But some of these guys, you know, they're just not going to be a barbell back squatter. How do you help beef some of these guys up? How do you help, you know, these guys gain some weight? Because you mentioned a couple, you know, some of the players being thin.

Yeah, so we've got nutritionists here on the team. We serve meals all day at the team. And we're the strength staff. This season, we are hammering the nutrition. So we're, I mean, this morning, myself and two of our interns, we made 120 pre-workout shakes for the guys. Just a shake with some carbs, some quick-digesting protein to get pre-lift. And then we're making shakes for them to have post-lift.

And any of the weight gain guys, the guys that we've identified as needing to gain weight, we make them a special weight gain shake. And then the nutritionists are up in the cafeteria. The strength staff will go up there. And we're just echoing, hey, guys, fill your plate, fill your plate. Lean protein source, complex carb,ing hey guys fill your plate fill your plate lean protein source complex carb healthy fat you know fill that plate trying to get a whole food meal every three to four hours so you know when the players are in the building we're echoing just in their ear whole food meals

whole food meals all right we're pushing our shakes around our training we've we've got a million different snack stations set up around the stadium the the lunch and dinner, it is a full-fledged buffet line. For breakfast, they've got a menu. They text in their order, and the cooks will have it bagged and prepared for them, ready just to pick up, take to class. So we're able to provide a ton of resources with our nutrition, with our food. The issue is we, we're not with the kids all day. We're not with them when they go home on the weekend in the off season. And a lot of these kids, they're young, a lot of bad habits growing up. They don't, they don't, they're not used to having to eat a meal every three, four hours. Um,

so just teaching them, explaining to to them making them learn why it's important for them and then just i mean just hammering echoing over and over in their ear just making it a habit for them to eat whole food meals every few hours not just not just gas station snacks you know not just ordering a pizza on the weekend, but having four whole food meals daily. So we're working on it. What about when you have some fatties on the team? Oh, yeah. You get the fat kid table and you only get served a certain amount of food type thing.

Right. So the, well, with the guys who we want to lose weight, you know, we, we can't force a kid to eat anything. We can't force a kid not to eat anything, but we take a very positive, encouraging approach with that. cafeteria. I'm walking around. I'm eyeing plates. You know, Hey, let's, uh, maybe, maybe we don't need the, uh, the fried Twinkies today. Maybe we will, maybe we don't need the fettuccine Alfredo that they're serving. Uh, and then, uh, we, we weigh the guys in, uh, every week in season, we'll weigh them in twice a week. We're keeping an eye on that weight. We're sending their position coach report on their body weight. The position coach is going to have a big say in kind of setting a goal weight for every player. And then, you know, if need be, if a player is just really falling behind on a weight goal, whether that's losing or gaining weight, you know, we're going to be in their ear.

We're going to be in their ear. And if it becomes a persistent issue, there might be some extra motivation physically. Damn. Okay. Have you guys ever had to deal with athletes that come in and they, I guess, let's say they just choose they don't want to eat meat or meat isn't part of their diet or anything like that, special considerations, is that common or no so and with the majority of the players no but we do have we do have um players who've got specialty diets we've got you know some of the muslin

players don't eat pork yeah um we've got uh we've got a kid on the team who's a vegan. So if there's someone on the team who's, for whatever reason, they have a specialty needs diet, we're going to accommodate that. If a player's a vegan, we're not going to force them to eat meat. If a player's eating a diet for religious purposes, we're certainly not going to, you know, try to force them out of that. So if a player has something like that going on, we're going to do our best to work with them and just optimize their situation. But you know, if we have a player who just comes up, Hey, I read about the diet online. I want to try it. Okay. We're going to

sit down and talk to them and determine if that's really optimal for them. But with some of those specialty needs diets, we just, we work around it. We accommodate them. Yeah. No, I remember when I was playing soccer, like I never really thought of the coach's perspective because being an athlete on campus, you can get yourself into a lot of stuff on weekends. Like a lot of, there's a lot on weekends. There's a lot of drinking. There's a lot of that that just happens. Now, when that happens with players often, how do you guys reprimand that issue or deal with that? Or is that even something that you guys have to deal with a lot of?

Or have you just set up a culture that's so great that it's not, I mean, it's uncommon? Or have you just set up a culture that's so great that it's not, I mean, it's uncommon? Well, if any strength staff can establish a culture to where the college kids aren't drinking and partying on the weekends at all, give them a Nobel Prize. It's something we deal with. I mean, these kids are in college. We don't want to deny them a college experience. We're not we're not gonna tell the kids hey you can't go out on the weekends hey you can't drink a beer or something like that you know assuming they're of age um but you know every friday in the off season friday the last training day of the week

before they go off on the weekend where we bring them in and we give them a talk hey when you when you go home this weekend you got to be smart with, you got to be smart with women. You got to be smart with alcohol. You got to make the right decisions. When you come back on Monday, we're getting right back into it. We'll be right back out there, conditioning, lifting hard. You know, you want to make it to the NFL. You got to start treating yourself like a professional. You got to start taking a professional approach to this. You know, we know these kids, they're, they're on their own for the first time. They're in college. They're going to have some fun. We want them to enjoy their life.

But we're just explaining to them the importance of, hey, you've got to start being professional. You want to win games. You want to go to the NFL. You've got to start treating your body right, especially in this day and age. I mean, you've got to be careful with how you treat women. You've got to be – you're always on camera, anything you do out at the bar, rest assured, someone will catch it on video with a cell phone and it'll be on Twitter, you know, within an hour. So just echoing these guys,

just you're always being watched. All eyes are constantly on you. You know, you've got to be a good representative of this university and representative this program and of your family. Yeah. you know, you've got to be a good representative of this university and representative of this program and of your family. Yeah. You know, in our team meetings, our head football coach, Mack Brown, you know, he'll often pull up a news clip, throw it up on the projector screen of, you know, player at another college getting arrested or, you know, NC State player getting a DUI or whatever.

He'll put that up on the screen and say, hey, this is what happens when you do this. You're going to get caught and there's going to be teams around the country are going to be throwing this up on a projector screen, warning their players not to make the same mistake. So, you know, we do the best we can just to try to explain to these guys that all their actions have consequences and can affect the rest of their life. So luckily for us, we've got a great group of guys and we haven't had any major issues with that lately. Knock on wood.

What's your diet like? You mentioned you're much heavier when you were playing. How'd you knock off the weight and what do you eat currently? So I'm actually not heavier than when i was a when i was a player i'm just a heavier or lighter than i normally am going into a strongman season i played i played around 315 my last strongman competition i weighed around 350 355 um i started working with uh with a diet coach his name's justin harris with uh proponent nutrition. I'm familiar with him. A bodybuilder,

professional bodybuilder. He's the, yep. He's the guy that got Dave Tate shredded several years back. So anyway, I got hooked up with him. I've been working with him now and I've got, he's got me very lean.

This is the first time I've weighed over 300 pounds and had abs. Oh my God. Yep. You're coming back in. Yep. There we go. We lost you for a little bit. We lost you when you started talking about the meaning of life. Um, yeah, but I, I've always just dirty bulked up for strongman thinking I got to keep up with the 400 pounders. And I've always just eaten everything in sight, ballooned up. I'll get stronger initially, but then I start feeling like crap. Performance declines and it ends up being a bad decision that I'm just trying to undo the damage for the next few months.

So this year, I've really, into this year with the mindset I'm going to nutrition is going to be a top priority year round. I'm going to, I'm going to compete lean and I'm going to be in shape and so far it's really paying off. Justin Harris. I mean, he's, he's done an amazing job with me. Yeah. The recovery from those workouts is really tough. And if your nutrition is off, I can really, I mean, same thing with powerlifting. I think a lot of lifters, they want to kind of just, you know, eat donuts and stuff. And I do think there's some room for a little bit of that stuff, especially when you're trying to gain weight. But you don't want to do so much of

it that it negatively impacts your energy levels throughout the day or even worse negatively impacts your sleep. Yeah, absolutely. He absolutely he uh when i got heavy i mean i started developing sleep apnea i mean just ever get so big up top and my sleep quality declined uh my training declined i was out of shape i wasn't recovering very well it felt awful um but i mean now that i'm a little bit lighter, leaner, I had to deal with the first few months losing a good bit of strength, had to be patient with that. But now I'm as strong as I was when I was 350, but I'm in shape. I'm lean. My energy is great. My sleep is great. He's Justin. He does a carb cycling approach. So we've got low carb days, medium carb days, high carb days.

And that's been a really effective way to kind of keep my appetite in check and keep my insulin sensitivity high and keep me lean while being able to build strength. So you mentioned like the goal is to get heavier, right? So how are you guys going to do that with without getting too fat in the process yeah so i'm 25 years old right now um we're taking a long term slow approach to it we figure you know if i can put on 50 pounds of good weight over the course of the next few years that i'm going to be in a good spot. You know, I, I'm trying to be just the most muscular, you know, three 50, three 70 down the road that I can be, uh, just with my frame, I can carry a lot of mass. I can carry a lot of muscle. And, uh, you know, I want to get

into those upper three hundreds being relatively lean. You know know i'm not gonna be sub 10 body fat competing at world strongest man i'm gonna have to put on a little bit of padding a little bit of fluff but just over the long term just taking a slow process playing the long game building as much muscle as possible over the course of the next, next several years while I'm still young. You know, if I want to compete with the half doors and the Brian Shaw's, I can't be a soft bodied 400. I've got to be a rocked up 400.

Yeah. So playing the long game. What do you think of the current state of like power lifting and strong man? People have just gotten so strong. It's really been, it's just been absolutely insane you go to the arnold classic and you see it's very common for people to do thousand pound deadlifts nowadays yeah it's exciting it's an exciting time to be you know an up-and-comer in

the in the world of strength sports because you've got records falling left and right you've got freaks coming out of the woodwork i mean you look at the usa pl you i mean some of these young 20 something year old kids are coming out of nowhere and just putting up these crazy totals you've got in the strongman world these dudes are monsters so it's uh you know it's exciting for me it's just exciting to feel like i to feel like I'm in the mix of all this, and I can be the next guy that bursts onto the scene. Are you a professional strongman right now, or you haven't gotten your pro card yet, or what's the deal with that?

No, I've got to earn my pro card this year. I'm doing my next competition April 25th. As long as I win that, that's an Arnold qualifier. And then from there, just got to get on the podium at the Arnold Amateur. And that wins me, gives me a pro card and a Giant Live invite. Oh, that's awesome. Do you handle your own programming for your strongman? Or do you have like another person that does that for you? So I do my own strength programming like i said work with uh coach on my diet and then the owner of our of the strongman gym that i train at his

name's james deffenbaugh he's uh he himself he's a pro strongman competes primarily in the middle weight class he won america's strongest man in the middle weights two years ago. He is, he has been a big mentor to me within Strongman. All the, as far as learning all the technique and just learning how to approach training for the event. He played a big role, a big part of, of kind of teaching me that. And then whenever I, whenever I write a program going into a competition, I'll always, I'll run it by him to say, hey, what do you think of this? Are there any changes you'd make? And a lot of times he's got some good input. We'll kind of work together on setting up the training split.

And, I mean, he's awesome. Whenever one of the members of his gym is training for a big competition, a strongman competition, he'll set up his own schedule to where he can train with us um line up his schedule and just hop in and train with us push us because i mean he's strong as an ox and i've learned about everything i know in strongman from him um and then you know if there's ever a specialty piece of equipment that we've got gotten an upcoming contest he'll go out and order it for us um we've got a lot of a lot of strong dudes at the gym that i train at that's awesome um how the uh how the kansas city chiefs gonna slow down the uh that monster running back from the titans derrick henry i know derrick he uh that's a big boy right there. He played at a rival high school to me. I'm from Florida, and we played his school every year,

and he was just a one-man team. He'd literally line up in Wildcat. He had a group of tiny offensive linemen. He'd just take a direct snap and run it every single play. Absolute monster. I mean, the Chiefs will have their work cut out stopping him, especially seeing what he did to the Patriots. Yeah, it should be a good game.

What teams did your dad play for? He was drafted in the first round by the Seahawks. He played there for five years before going to the Chicago Bears. Played there for five years and then finished with the Washington Redskins the last two seasons. Oh, cool. Who's the biggest mutant you've ever worked with, pro or college? Because you probably have been around some real genetic freaks,

the guys that barely even train, they just do the bare minimum every day and they're jacked and strong and fast and everything. I'd have to go with Julius Peppers when I was with the Panthers. I mean, you talk about a guy who's in, he was in his 16th season in the NFL. I mean, as a defensive lineman. It's not like he's a quarterback where he's only taking a couple hits a game. He's on the line of scrimmage.

His body's taking a beating. He's about my height. Maybe 290. Jacked. Fast. Strong. I mean, he was in his late 30s. Just the things that he could do athletically, just, I've never seen before. And when it, when it came to his training in the

weight room, just how it's called it small doses of excellence. I mean, he would do, you do very little at his age. He, he didn't practice a whole lot anymore. Not very minimal volume in the weight room. But, I mean, he could take that little bit of stimulus and, I mean, do what no one else can do with that. And just being able to maintain that body and that athleticism and his speed and strength at his age after 16 years of NFL plus four years of college before that uh it was amazing does that ever make you wonder I mean I guess you don't have you if you don't have to have that much volume that's awesome but what if he did do a little bit more does it make you wonder or just like you think it's not it's not necessary well i mean for a guy like that i mean he who's at the pinnacle of you know the very tippy top of of the world of athletics i mean you can't really go much higher

from there he's a pro bowler every year he played as long as you could ever hope a defensive lineman could play he'll be the hall of famer um so you know, I don't think he could get much higher in his career. I don't know if he could have played 20 years, but I mean, that's an interesting question with, with some of the other guys, with some of these players who, who get by with kind of the bare minimum with their training, with practice. Yeah. It does beg the question, could they be at an even higher level if if they're pushing

themselves harder in the weight room i don't know with with some of those guys who you know they're they're so fast they're so fast twitch they're kind of like a race car where if you push them too hard too fast they burn out um so i with some of those very tip-top athletes they respond better to you know a little goes a long way with some of those guys whereas if you try to push them with too much they kind of burn themselves out yeah and you might be kind of overstressing them a little bit just because they don't even they just they're not interested they don't really want to do it and so you know continually like being forceful with that is like a stressor, right? Yeah.

I mean, Julius Pepper, at that point in his career, I'm sure he's had a dozen different strength coaches, played for a million different programs. I'm sure getting a little monotonous to him at that point, but just having that level of professionalism to do what needs to be done every single year for that long and keep plugging, I mean, all the respect in the world to him. Did you coach Steve Smith?

No, he left shortly before I got there. I wish I did. I mean, he was a Panthers legend, and House would talk about him all the time. I wish I'd gotten the chance to coach him. Yeah, I played with him at Santa Monica City College, and that's the hardest I've ever been hit, whether it was pro wrestling or otherwise. I mean, he was just so damn fast. This guy's like, I don't know, what is he, 180 pounds or something like that, right?

Yeah, he was small. He was not heavy. But he hit me with that four three speed and i i knew what was going on or didn't know what's going on when you've got someone who's fast and has just a kill mindset yeah and just can cut loose and just deliver a shot i mean you'll you can take a big hit from a small body yeah Yeah, he was just hyper-aggressive, you know, and I think that that's something that plays out in the football field. Like you're talking about, these guys that are aggressive tend to be more explosive.

The guys that aren't scared to kind of stick their nose in there, and they somehow don't get hurt, too. Maybe they have a little bit better coordination or technique, or maybe they have a little better flexibility than the next person or just a, a little higher up athleticism. And then even with someone like a Julius Peppers, maybe somebody like him, maybe he's just in better tune with his body.

So he's like, coach, I don't really, I don't really think I need that. And he, who knows, maybe he's, maybe he's somewhat right.

Maybe he doesn't need it. You know, that's, I mean, it's very true. A lot of those guys, when they're late in their career, we, you know, we're not telling them what to do. We're kind of asking them, Hey, what do you feel like you need? Or how does this movement feel for you? Do you, do we need to modify this? So with those older guys at the NFL level, the strength coach, you got to work with them a lot, figure out what works best for them. Cause like you said, at that point in their career, oftentimes they know what works for them. They know what they need. They know what clicks well for them. And so we,

you got to listen to that and and you know, accommodate them in that realm. Like Julius Peppers, he was on a completely different program than most of the other players in that weight room were, but in the 16th season, he knows which movements feel good in his body, which movements prepare him well for the upcoming game. So we, uh, we use a lot of his input to tailor his program to him. Interesting that you guys use a bench press. A lot of strength coaches shy away from it because it tends to stress the shoulders of some athletes. So how'd you guys land on utilizing the bench press to help strengthen up the athletes as well? dangerous movement. It can be a movement that causes shoulder issues. And if we ever have a

guy who's got issues like that, we'll use a bench block with them. We'll shorten the range of motion. We might put them on a neutral grip bench or just do like a dumbbell movement with them. But for most of our guys, we place a big emphasis on training, teaching the bench press properly, teaching the setup of the bench press properly, teaching the setup of the bench press properly, how to tuck your shoulders, bench with a tight, you know, with a tight upper back. And we'll do a lot of posterior shoulder work, a lot of rear delt work in our movement prep. We're doing, we're getting that shoulder very well prepared. We're getting that rotator cuff prepared. So I think if you take a conscientious approach to

your movement prep before bench press, if you take the time to teach the athletes how to properly set up for a bench press, how to control the bar, you know, how to keep your feet planted, keep your whole body tight, you know, tuck your elbows, that eliminates a lot of the issues that a lot of people run into with the bench. And then a lot of times in a lot of programs, you'll see a program that it's all push-oriented, not enough pulling. So we place a big emphasis on we're going to do the same amount, if not more volume on our pulling movements than we are on our pushing movements.

And that's going to play a huge role, uh, in keeping those guys, the, that shoulder healthy and keeping guys from getting, you know, getting rounded forward, getting tight packs and things of that nature. So, uh, luckily we, we've been able to train the bench press all year. Guys have gotten stronger from it. We've kept it and they stayed healthy. You know, we just had Chris Duff in here. And when you were talking about that,

it had us thinking because a lot of his equipment, apparently a lot of pro teams use his stuff. Do you guys use any of his equipment like the Cadillac bar or the cool trap bar that he has now? So we actually have not yet, but we are looking at the Transformer bar. I've used the Transformer bar and some of the Kabuki strength equipment, and I love that thing.

We may be getting some of those transformer bars. Right now, we don't have any of that. We got a whole brand-new weight room this year, spent a lot of money on it. Our budget has been somewhat limited on the amount of extra equipment we can buy um but moving but we're always looking at new equipment looking at the innovation in the world of strength training and and looking at new things that we can incorporate uh i don't know if you guys are familiar with the exergenie, um, it's a, uh, a lot of the strong men use it to simulate a truck pole called, uh,

an Exergenie. It's basically, uh, a long tether cable that feeds through, uh, feeds through a coil and you can adjust the resistance on it. So you can do resisted sprints or you can set the resistance so high that it's a truck pole level resistance.

That's a new piece of equipment that we just incorporated within the team. That's something that we found in the world of Strongman. You guys got any slingshots or hip circles laying around over there? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We're big fans of the hip circle. We don't do any slingshot work right now but uh big on the hip circle coach ken with the panthers big on the hip circle big on the slingshot um a lot of a lot of the

veteran players with the panthers uh some of those older guys who were really trying to keep their shoulders healthy or maybe they've had some history of injuries. A lot of those guys were benching on the swing shot. Awesome. Andrew, you got anything over there? Actually, yeah, I do. Sorry, I have to try to clear my throat. I honestly didn't watch it, but I want to get your take on last night's NCAA championship. Yeah, so I'm not even going to lie.

I didn't even watch the entire game there's just just part of me just watching other college football teams play just it's hard for me not to watch it and kind of resent it resent the fact that it's not us and resent the fact that we didn't beat clemson because we played them this year and it came down to the wire came down to a two-point conversion for us and we ended up losing that game. So, you know, I was cheering for Clemson. I was cheering for the ACC. But, you know, I've seen LSU play this whole year.

I've been watching Joe Burrow. I had a feeling that they were going to be unstoppable, and sure enough, they were. But I had no dog in that fight other than pulling for the ACC. Mack Brown is a legendary coach. You must be learning a lot of great things by some of his example. What are maybe a couple things that you're learning from Coach Brown? He is the best football coach that I've ever been around in my entire life.

When our previous staff got let go and we heard they're bringing in Coach Brown, I didn't know what to think. He had been out of coaching for a few years. He had been on the television side of things. But I mean, he came in and he has played such a big role in turning this program around. He's such a good mentor. He talks about when you come to Carolina, it's not just a four-year decision. It's a 40-year decision because he's trying to develop young men, trying to develop good people. And it's not just all about football here. We're trying to develop good men, good fathers, sons and you know good students and i think a lot of these guys

they've you know coach what what mac brown has done he he's setting them up for life and uh you know he speaks to the team in all of our team meetings every day and there often be a life lesson and you know i've grown as a man just from being around him uh but underneath all that he will always echo none of this works if we're not winning games we've got to win games and you know he he's created a family environment in the stadium he's created a brotherhood where people come in love to work but it's also understood if you're someone who's getting in the way of this team success you're you're going to be gone. Everything we do, we want a family in here that's all working towards the same goal. We're all working towards winning. We're all on the same page. If you're someone who's not on that page, who's not buying in in he's going to help you help you leave um so just the the environment

around here it's been a complete 180 from what it was ever since you got hired here and and i think every player on this team and even the coaches we're all grown we're all growing as men uh as you know both as a coach and just a person you're one of the younger people on the staff because you mentioned you're 25 are one of the younger people on the staff. Cause you mentioned you're 25. Are there other like younger coaches on the staff? So I'm the youngest one on the strength staff. We've got, there's some other coaches on the football side who are, who are,

you know, in their, in their first year, few years of coaching, working their way up as far as the, you know, full-time position coaches. They're all,

they're all significantly older. In the coaching world, especially on the actual position coaching side of things, there's a long ladder to climb. You're spending years working for free, potentially, just building up your connections. Because so many people want to be coaches now, and there's only so many positions available out there. It's a tough road to become a coach on the football side of things. We have a mutual big fat friend in JP Price. How did you run into JP Price? I found out about JP through the power cast.

I heard it. I heard him on your podcast and my family lives in Kansas city. My dad's coaching over there. And I, when I listened to his appearance on the podcast and heard he was in Kansas city and he sounded like an awesome dude. So I just hit him up on Instagram. I said,

Hey, I heard you on the power cast. My family lives in Kansas city. I'm a lifter myself. You know, an awesome dude so i just hit him up on instagram i said hey i uh heard you on the power cast my family lives in kansas city i'm a lifter myself um you know i'd love to come by and check out your gym pick your brain and uh he got right back to me so uh i've built a relationship with him and ryan silva and and all those guys over over at uh at his gym. He's got an awesome gym out there. He's a great dude. Anytime I'm in Kansas City, I'll go over to his gym, hang out with those guys,

get a lift in, try to pick his brain a little bit. He's a hell of a squatter. He came here and squatted 700 pounds with a safety squat bar for a triple with chains on the bar. It was just like he did it so effortless, too. It was wild. I know. He's incredible, and he's hilarious, too.

I'm super proud of him, too. He's lost a lot of weight. He had some pretty bad injuries, and then he's done a good job of kind of rehabbing that. How do you guys deal with injuries over there? Because that's got to be a big thing. We were just talking about, you know, when somebody goes down on the field, it's like that maybe somebody's kind of maybe held responsible.

You guys feel responsible when someone tweaks a hammy or something like that on the field? Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of pressure on the strength staff when it comes to the injury side of things. I mean, there's a lot of pressure on the strength staff when it comes to the injury side of things. Because, I mean, a big part of our job, you know, at least the way the football coaches see it, is we've got to keep the guys healthy. So we do a lot of work really trying to reinforce guys' hamstrings, really strengthen their posterior chain. You know, hamstring issues, that's a very common one. know hamstring issues that's a very

common one lower back issues that's a very common one and they're you know there's certain football there's certain injuries that you just can't prevent you know the strength staff we can't prevent a concussion or you know if you get rolled up on awkwardly blow your knee out well it's not really something we could prepare them for but we can certainly play a big role in getting it back. So when a player gets hurt, it's very important for the strength staff to have a very good relationship with our athletic training staff, with the sports medicine guys. We've got a very good rapport with them.

We're in constant communication with them, just setting up just a return-to-play program for the players. And then on our strength staff, we've got a guy who kind of his designated role is he works with all those return-to-play guys. So he's working very closely with the athletic trainers. And then as the injured players start to be able to do more and more, he's working with them. As soon as they can touch a weight they're sending uh

they're being sent to coach blue to start putting through our return to play program and every depending on the injury it's that program will look very different you know if you're if you're a shoulder guy a knee guy or you know sports hernia we've we've got different protocols in place for uh for those types of injuries you know i mean this is gonna suck these two know me for like not watching much football and not knowing much about the sport which is sad but uh i've what i've noticed or i think i've noticed is that the sport has evolved to kind of help the players be safer now is there anything is there anything that's continuing to change in terms of, I don't know, apparel that they wear on the field or rules that causes the players to be safer?

And is that making the game itself worse or better? Because I've heard from big football fans that they think it's a little bit softer now than it used to be. They think it's a little bit softer now than it used to be. Yeah, so a lot of the rules that are in place as far as player health involve head-to-head contact, trying to eliminate some of the concussion issues. Because as information about CTE, the long-term effects of head collisions and the long-term effects of concussions,

a lot of that information has kind of been surfacing here in these past few years there's been a little bit hysteria might be the right word surrounding it and um there have been some rule changes some very strict rules put in place regarding the legality of certain hits you know know, now if you, if you lead with the crown of your helmet to deliver a head to head blow, not only is that going to be a penalty, but you're going to be ejected. And, and the refs will be able to go back and actually, that's a reviewable penalty now. You know, if there, if there's a really violent blow that looks like it was potentially head to

head, the ref is going to usually default to throwing the flag and they're going to review the play and they're going to review whether or not it was indeed head-to-head and if it was that player's ejected that player's gone so that i mean that that's a that's a big deal and in college if you get ejected in the second half of a game well you're actually you'll actually lose eligibility for the first half of the next game. So on the one hand, we definitely want to eliminate concussions. We want to eliminate some of these egregious head-to-head blows on defenseless receivers and things like that. And that's definitely a positive. But on the other hand,

football is a violent game. Football is a game of collision. That's why it's popular. That's why people love it. And I think when you're making players think twice a little bit about delivering that blow when a receiver is coming across the middle and players, I think, are a little bit unclear of what constitutes a legal hit and what constitutes a hit that could get them ejected from the game so you know I think it may have been a little bit of an overcorrection at times I think sometimes

there have been some ejections some flags uh and then the NFL level, some fines given to players for hits that, you know, in my opinion, I thought looked clean, looked legal. And I think that's gotten the fans upset at times as well. So, you know, it's a tight rope to walk. On the one hand, you want to keep players safe. You don't want to see guys getting CTE later in their life. But on the other hand, the fans are paying to see a violent game. They're paying to see grown men hit each other at high speed.

And if you take away from that too much, you're going to kind of take away from the integrity of the sport. So, you know, it's a tight rope. We'll see how it continues to unfold over the sport. So, you know, it's a tight rope. We'll see how it continues to unfold over the years. With your job, I think it's so important, you know, that you're, you know, teaching the athletes about their nutrition, their hydration. Your hydration can play big into concussions and then also fatigue. You know, you said that earlier that you can't really control a concussion, but I actually think that you probably't really control a concussion but I actually

think that you probably are preventing many concussions and maybe just not even recognizing it because when your guys are in better shape for the fourth quarter they're in a better position to make that tackle or to catch the ball and then maybe elude the tackler then maybe they're a step faster maybe their ankles are just a little bit more powerful so they can make that cut at the right time I know you know just playing any sport that I've ever done, you know, anytime I've been tired or anytime my mind drifted somewhere else because I wasn't sure about something, then it did lead to me getting jacked up in a pretty bad way. Yeah, and that's a very good point. You know, when you're fatigued and you're, and you're slowing down a little bit, or you're hesitant on the field, that's oftentimes where, where you'll run into trouble with some of those injuries. Whereas if you're flying around,

you're engaged, you're, you know, in good shape where you can make the proper cut, you can control your body better. You can, can like you said elude some of those hits and then you also touch on the hydration that's a huge part of what we do here i mean we literally have a an objective hydration test in place that the players take daily they uh we have a urine test that the players will do and now we've moved over to a saliva test that actually gives us a a monitor, reads their hydration levels and gives us some objective feedback on that. And that's a report that we'll give to the coaches that the strength staff and the athletic trainers will have eyes on. So we're getting a number on players' hydration levels going into practice or going into a lift. So if we've got a guy who we see is dehydrated, we can jump on him quick before it becomes

an issue. Do you have these guys supplement any sort of electrolytes, add salt to anything, or are they just kind of drinking more water? Oh, yeah. We're pushing the electrolytes big time at every single table up in the cafeteria. We've got a big shaker of Himalayan pink salt. We're pushing the salt hard. We've got,

we've got electrolyte supplements all over the stadium in our weight room. We've got, we've got a supplement called the right stuff. I mean, it's like a gram and a half of sodium and potassium and just like a little gel packet. It tastes terrible. It tastes terrible. Take it like, take it like a little gel packet it tastes terrible it tastes terrible take it like

take it like a shot and uh i mean you're loaded up with electrolytes and we i mean we've got refrigerators all around the stadium with with gatorades and we've got uh gatorade endurances which are higher you know more sodium more potassium in. So we're pushing the electrolytes hard. The right stuff. Never heard of that one. The right stuff. Yeah, look into it. That stuff's awesome.

Like I said, it tastes terrible, but I take it pre-training. It makes a big difference. Cool. Well, you know what? We're going to be out at the Arnold Classic, and we'll be out at that Arnold Sports Festival this year, and hopefully we run into you. Hopefully you're up on that stage competing.

Yeah, that's the plan. It's going to be hard. I'll be looking for you guys. Yeah. Great talking to you today. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you for having me on. Like I said, this has been a dream of mine for years. Awesome, man. Have a good day. You too. Take care. Damn, that's a big boy. said this has been a dream of mine for years awesome man have a good day all right you too take care damn that's a big boy six seven three ten my god i was like six four six five uh no six seven yeah that's a big guy i hope he never comes here yeah oh god he'll make us look like shit yo i really feel like okay he's 25 he still said that

he's 25 he still said that he's new in his lifting career right and he used to be 350 deadlifts 800 i really honestly think that if he you know like he's going to train hard he's going to get stronger he really could be on that big stage oh yeah because he's just genetically made for that shit seem like scratching his face and his giant like it's like a goddamn goddamn baseball glove oh my god yeah that's crazy he's i wonder what his brother's like then too he's probably a big old mutant too yeah shoot that was awesome though it was cool like i mean we've heard this from other strength coaches but it's cool that they're not like forcing people that just don't squat well to squat i remember when i was in college like they they would make you squat they would make guys squat that you're just

like that doesn't look right oh god yeah and then for some reason they never take the weight off either you're like can we just can we take a plate off so the guy can move the right way yeah yeah yeah i thought uh he had a lot of great uh insight and it's it's just you know i think it's just so highly relatable to any other career that you're going to do too it it takes takes time to get there it takes a lot of work and uh you know fortunately for him his dad was uh you know football player. And so that helped open up some doors for him. But then also him putting in the work and him putting in the time in himself where he's not 6'7 and some big sloppy guy, you know, coming in trying to be a strength coach. He's in great shape and he's, you know, deadlifting over 800 pounds. Yeah.

And I love what he was talking about when he started working under Coach House. He was washing shaker cups, but he knew, like, I need to be the best guy at washing shaker cups. He just knew that's just step one. It's not like I didn't, you know, because you hear people, like, they get all these certifications. They get all this experience or lack of experience, I should say, but they put in a lot of time. Like, I didn't work all this hard to come, you know, make shakes. Like, no, that's not what I'm here for. But he was like, no, I knew that I was just going to have to step, step up and stand out, you know, above everyone else. And I thought that was fantastic. Cause you could, that's something

anybody can apply anywhere right now. Yeah. A lot of jobs, that's going to be the case. You're going to be working for free for a while before you start making a dime so and it's like you know he like his dad his dad's a great coach too but it's not like he i don't know he used that to to do like he still started from the bottom in terms of what he was doing which is pretty damn awesome yeah yeah he said he was lucky but he still put himself in a situation to, like, do something with it. Yeah. So, yeah. That's weird. That, like, that's, you know, weird stuff when someone tells me they've been listening to me and then, you know, somehow, like, you know, influenced his career path, which I'm sure a lot of that was in his subconscious anyway.

And who knows, he might have gotten stimulated by somebody else watching somebody else's video, too. But that's pretty just weird. Just cool but weird. You know, I could picture him like his – I could picture his dad being pretty pissed. Mark Bell, you're the one. Yeah, I'd be like, what are you talking about? Well, dad, it's this guy on YouTube, you know. Been watching all these powerlifting videos.

He told me to go fuck my elbow and that's who I want want to, you know, that's who's inspiring me to quit. Oh, man. Yeah, just so confused. 20 years down the drain. Training you, timing you, making you lift in the basement, you know, all that stuff. Oh, that good stuff. Anyway, today is day number 14 of World Carnivore Month, so those of you that have been doing it with me, congratulations because we made it through two weeks. I just finished a week.

Well, today is finishing a week of one meal a day. Feeling really good. But tomorrow I'm going to wake up and probably eat some breakfast or at least get two meals in for tomorrow. Kind of see how that feels and see how that plays out. But everything's feeling good. I've been running. I've been doing yoga. I've been lifting.

I've been something I wanted to share before we hop off here for today is, you know, just, and this is stuff we've talked about here on this podcast before, but make your workouts really simple. Pick a body part and just go train the body part or pick a movement and just go train the movement like i am going to go deadlift today i am going to go squat today i am going just kind of make it like like a like a thing it's just one thing um i'm going to train shoulders today well then just if you're going to train shoulders just pick two exercises and do four sets of both of them that's eight sets that's enough work you can get the hell out of there um just like our 10 minute

walks why not 10 minute lifts or 20 minute lifts send a set o'clock maybe super set something back and forth maybe do a little bicep tricep thing um and uh just get figure out a way to get that working yeah it does need to be difficult like the other day, I just did like a squat workout, some tens. So I did multiple sets of 10 with like 295. And then I did some like Bulgarian split squats. That was my workout for the day because I was feeling kind of beat up. But it was a great workout. It took a while.

It just doesn't need to be hard. Yeah, it feels awesome to get a workout in like that. And then the cool thing is you actually you feel better when you're done. And normally, unless you did a lot of work, normally you'll feel a lot better the next day. Like you'll feel really good. Your legs won't be super sore. Your back won't be tight, you know? So just keep that in mind, you know, with your efforts to get in better shape and be less fatterist. Andrew, where can people find you? Hit me up on Instagram. I am Andrew Z. Make sure you are following the podcast

At Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram At MB Power Project on Twitter YouTube.com slash Mark Bell's Power Project I believe that's what it is There's a lot of people that are watching these videos And you're not subscribing Make sure you subscribe and turn on that post notifications Because we go live all the damn time

We're on LinkedIn We're on TikTok. We're all over the place. But if you guys are catching any value from this podcast, make sure you subscribe on iTunes and leave a review. Rate it. All that good stuff because it really does help the show. Nsema, where are you at? At NsemaYinYang on Instagram and YouTube.

At NsemaYinYang on TikTok and Twitter. You, Mark? Mr. Joe Ken. on Instagram and YouTube and Sima Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter. You, Mark? Mr. Joe Ken, sorry that I didn't make it to the 49ers-Panthers game a while back. He's been giving me so much shit because he got me field passes and stuff and I was super pumped to see him that day, but then just

9,000 things happened that day that prevented me from getting there on time to see him. I know that he'll probably listen to this episode. And I think he's probably just fucking with me, but I think I might've ended up on his shit list. He's, he's one of those guys,

you know, he's very black and white. Like if you didn't do something that you said you were going to do, then you're in a lot of trouble with coach house, coach house. I love you, buddy. And that's all the time we got for today.

Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. You can find me at Mark Smelly Bell on Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok. Later.