Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 349 - Dave Tate

Episode Date: March 19, 2020

This conversation happened during our visit with Dave Tate at Elite FTS. We decided to host a multi-cast and share this podcast on our feed as well. Please find the link below to watch the interview on Dave Tate's Table Talk podcast! Dave Tate is a former Westside Barbell elite powerlifter, owner and founder of EliteFTS, mastermind entrepreneur, and powerlifting coach with over 35 years of powerlifting and strength training experience. Watch the original Table Talk Live Stream here: https://youtu.be/eLRcCjOii7E Follow Dave Tate on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/underthebar/ Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢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 ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

Power Project crew, what up? Today we have a really cool episode for you that I'm ecstatic to share with you. We linked up with Dave Tate at Elite FTS for an episode of Table Talk, and it was really, really quite an amazing experience. It was definitely one of those what the heck is my life moments because Mark had me and then Seema on with him. So it was really, really cool to be able to ask, you know, an OG like Dave Tate, Hey, what was Mark Bell like the first time you seen him? Like, what was it about him that you guys were like, okay, something's up with this dude. He's a little bit different. And, uh, it, it was just really great being able to ask both of them, you know,

questions about Louie Simmons and kind of like what they learned from him that they implement today. And what you guys will see if you are, you know, fans of both persons, or maybe you're just a fan of Mark and you don't really know much about Dave Tate or vice versa. What you'll learn is a lot of their training principles, a lot of the way they carry themselves as far as like in life and in business are very, very similar. And it's just really cool to know that like, okay, they both came from Westside and a lot of the stuff they learned from Louie, they still implement today. All in all, an absolute blast, just a fun experience being able to be on a table talk with Dave Tate and Mark Bell at the same time, you know, again, kind of pick their brains and ask them questions about the old school days when we weren't around.

So thank you, Dave Tate. Thank you to the team for the hospitality and this really just amazing opportunity. Real quick, I'll get out of your guys' way. This episode was brought to you by Certified Piedmontese, the absolute best beef in the universe. It's second to none. Like I keep saying, we had some really, really expensive steaks at some high-level steak houses when we were down in Columbus, and they cannot compete with what Piedmontese has going on. You guys seriously need to try it.

I highly recommend the flat iron steaks, 90 grams of protein and like eight grams of fat. I don't know. I don't know. It doesn't make any sense, but dude, it's delicious. Head over to piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout.

Enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Thank you again, Dave Tate. If you guys can, please find the original Table Talk video link in the YouTube description or the iTunes show notes or wherever you're listening to this.

Hit up Dave Tate. Tell him thanks for having us on. Let him know what you guys think of this episode. And as always, please, please, please enjoy the show. This is Dave Tate with another edition of Table Talk. As you all know by now, I don't have an introduction. So today I got Mark Bell and introduce yourselves. And Seema Iyeng. Andrew Zaragoza. Okay. And that's what we have. Some of my podcast hosts here. Yeah. And we're just talking some shop and we're talking about

Scott Mendelsohn. We're just saying how he's one of our favorites because he's just over the top himself. And then some maybe even, and he might be a little too much for most people to handle, but I kind of like it. And you were just telling a story about how he's teaching people to pull the weight down towards their chest. The bar stops for him, like it did for myself many years. You get so bound up. You get so tight.

It comes down, and you can't touch 135. You're like, fuck, yeah, this is good stuff, man. This is great. I'm going to be super strong. And it was funny when I was listening to him teaching this, because while I kind of agree with what he's saying, it's like, he just assumed everybody this that way. And that at a certain point, everybody's just going to have to pull the bar down. And I'm watching this and I'm thinking, you do realize that from normal people that bench press, so forget about power lifters, so 99.99999% of all people are never going to pull the bar down.

It's just going to come down, and it's going to touch, and they're going to be like, what the fuck? Especially if it has 200 pounds on there. It's going to come crashing down. How do you pull a pressing movement? You know what I'm saying? That's like if you're going to do rows,

you should push it. To me, it was just funnier than fuck because I've been doing this for a long time. So you realize if you're talking with other people that have been lifting for a long time and doing it, there's a certain narrative you can have. But the regular people, you got to like back it down and say, well, you know what? This just bring the bar down with control. Right. And make sure you hit the same spot every time. just bring the bar down with control right and make sure you hit the same spot every time and yeah he had 225 just hovering because he's so thick and so jacked that he needed that weight

just to kind of squish him down into position i think halbert at one point needed like 315 holy shit it was crazy it's like what the hell and he wasn't i mean he was muscular but it wasn't big yeah just so bound up from that and i don't know how much that's really going to help raw i can't really say one way or another but for sure to definitely help because you've learned how to control the weight but that's a different it just struck me as funnier in hell because you're watching him and i think he was filming his training at the time like he was going to try to bench a grand this not too long ago yeah and i'm like oh this is something i can kind of get behind and watch and see if he can pull this off because it'd be kind of cool because he's tried a lot of times yeah he won't

get he won't stop like 135 i can't get that fucker lower than a quarter i'm like oh shit this dude's ready he's primed you know 405 is almost touching i'm like this this is this is he's looking like a primed athlete yeah then i got just right I don't know what happened because I got distracted and quit following it. What do you think about someone like Mendy? When we had him on, he was like, I eat, sleep, live, do everything for powerlifting. And even to this day, he's still putting everything all in. Do you think maybe he was too hyper-focused on just that one thing, that one goal of looking at, uh, of looking at the next

lift instead of maybe, I mean, shit, look around where we're at right now. Like what, look what you were able to turn everything into. I have two ways to answer that. Right. So I have, I have the one way that I was that for probably, well, I was that probably from 80 85 to 2005 so i know that i lived that probably longer than 2005 it was a very hard thing to transfer out of yeah but you yeah you pivoted jim pivoted like some people were able to pivot before they were too stuck and the important thing so i understand that and i don't think it's a bad thing, but I think where a lot of people are missing that message, if I say that, is they need to understand that Scott still has several businesses. He still has been doing things in the background to be able to support his powerlifting. Now, maybe the only intent for him for a long period of time was only for it to support his

powerlifting. Same way for myself you know going to school getting a degree personal training building you know my resume underneath the cloud of power lifting but by no means was i going to do anything that was going to fuck up the power lifting but i was still doing i wasn't laying on a couch playing video games not building that base because you still got to be able to pay for shit, you know, to be able to power lift where a lot of people, if we're have that conversation are going to say,

fuck it, that's all I'm doing. And then just start looking towards companies to pay them to support everything. And then they're 100% dependent on sponsorships and companies to be a barely, if they can get to that point, barely cover their needs, which they're not even going can get to that point, barely cover their needs,

which they're not even going to get to that point. When you were at Westside, what were you doing to build towards what you have now? When I was there, I'd already had my degree. So I was working as a personal trainer in the corporate fitness center. I did that for 10 years. So that was not really so much building this. This kind of was accidentally. I still think I would have been in business for myself because my grandfather was. My father just spent my family for it. Not that it's genetic or anything, but it's what you see. It's your dinner conversations and everything else. But I got to a point training people that you have clients from 4, 30, 5 o'clock in the morning, then leave at 8, 8.30, go to Westside, come back at 10, 30, 11, and then train people till 10 at night, six days a week for years on end.

And then you have a kid and you start asking yourself, well, what kind of father do I want to be? Not saying I would have been a bad father if I still did that, but is that the kind of father I wanted to be? My dad was kind of like that. I did not want to be like that. That's where you start looking for what else can I do? My clients started throwing ideas out. What can you do?

At the time, I was helping Louie do consultation. I can't say it. consulting yeah and so there was that i was at that point louis got sick of the seminars i was helping him with the seminar so he said dave do the seminar so i was doing the seminars doing the consulting had the personal training and just didn't know where else anything was going to fit and so my wife was the bulk well now not that time because i'm still training so i made more money training than i still make now so 22 years later it's still fuck and yeah that's the joke of the whole thing but i would never have had the time yeah you know with my kids they're 17 16 17 now and i didn't miss anything so that that's worth more than what money is long and short of it my wife was training at west side at the time she was in the night crew

so morning crew night crew two different fucking things never see each other exactly and she was bitching because she hated her job and then louie said well why don't you just sell this shit that he had because we already had these other things that we were doing and he didn't it's shit like the manta ray safety squat bars weight releasers just incidentals little things books he just wanted to sell the reverse hyper and not deal with any of the mail order shit. And we're like, fuck it, we'll do that. So he gave us maybe $3,000 of product on consignment. We paid him when we sold it.

And that was kind of the start of that. I think the first ads we put in Powerlifting USA were Westside Warehouse by Elite Fitness Systems because that was the company that i was doing business as for personal training and then over a period of time more focus went on that less on the training and that became the way to have the free time that i didn't have before i think that's important that people understand that that you were you were still working while building towards your future while building towards your dream or looking at your dream.

You were still working. You know, I think some people are, you know, now they're thinking I'm going to be an entrepreneur and all those things are, that's great. And maybe you have a good blueprint for it, but you need to get some sort of job. You know, I just always did whatever I could. I would be a bouncer or whatever,

just making some money to be able to pay the bills so I can one day, you know, get myself in position to where I to pay the bills so I can one day, you know, get myself in position to where I could make the kind of money that I want. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's two different ways to go about business. There's using other people's money and I don't know how to do that because I never did that. I don't think you know how to do that either. Not how to raise money.

Yeah. Yeah. We're going to be more biased towards, you know, bootstrapping nickel and diming. And because I have a bias on that, people should understand there's the bias there. But I think when you do that and you have to be hungry, you know, and you have to, you learn, you have to work all the time. Sometimes you can't get paid for your staff to be paid. You know, there's those, all those things that you're not going to learn if you got somebody else's dime that's going through that i don't know if it's good or bad i think it's good because then you understand what it's like to you know be the staff

person and if be the staff person if it doesn't fit a certain culture a certain way and understand i think your vision becomes a little stronger because of that and you're you're less you have staff here so i'm saying this you're less patient with things that don't really fit the the direction that you want to go and it's kind of been chiseled away and earned because of all the early sacrifices that sometimes you guys won't see he may tell you stories you may not you don't know but those they'll shape a lot you But those shape a lot. You know, those shape a lot in two ways. It shapes a lot in where the direction that he's going to want to go is.

But it also shapes a lot in being able to listen to other people's ideas and then disseminate those in a way that still fits that vision without being so stubborn. Do you feel like in today's world, like things can just end up being a lot less painful or do you think that people still have to have like painful experiences in order to grow? I'm the wrong person to ask because adversity has been my second name. So I, I, I feel that I feel the same way, but there's so much like kind of self-help and there's

so much information out there. There's so many spots to go to. There's so much like kind of self-help and there's so much information out there there's so many spots to go to there's so many different people that if you it kind of seems like if you were to piece it together that you could have things be fairly easy but i'm sure you would still run into something that's gonna i think it's gonna be a bigger punch in the face when it comes where if you get a lot of taps in the face when you're younger and even if you get blasted in the face when you're younger you get blasted in the face later it's not it doesn't hurt as bad because you're used to it now after a certain period of time you be you can become calloused and that's not good either but it's with prosperity comes adversity and adversity comes process it's just kind of that's been your experience yeah yeah without without a doubt you know other people it may it may be a different

story maybe it's a self-fulfilling other people, it may be a different story. Maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I've asked myself that a lot of fucking times. You know, if things are going really good, then all of a sudden the shit hits the fan. Why did that happen? Is it just because it normally happens or did I kind of will this on myself? I don't know. I do better when my back's against the wall.

But sometimes you don't want to do that. What's hurt more, the numbers or personal stuff? Both. I mean, I'm thinking of situations with both. I mean, the personal stuff's always the worst. And I've never had that issue with business. I had that issue with not being able to accept the fact that I was not powerlifting anymore or maybe I was holding on to it longer than what I really should have.

And that created some personal issues that I'll never they'll be with me for the rest of my life because of that. And but financially, anything business wise, while it sucks and it can be stressful it's just it's just normal i've never it is it is what it is it's it's if you how can i explain this if you were to tell me that my squat's high fine my squat's high i'm cool with that you're not saying nobody would ever say that to you i know that but see the thing the thing is you're not telling me that you that you don't like me right you're telling me some attribute of something that I did you don't agree with. That's not me. That's that.

Those are entirely different things. It's not a personal thing whatsoever. If the business is having issues, that's how I see that. That's something completely different than anything that's really associated with me personally. different than anything that's really associated with me personally so if that was to fuck up and go south or whatever it is i'm not a failure because of that the business was not me it's different my family in my personal relationships now that is me that's you see the difference that that's where this must have taken a long time for you to grow into this though right or do you feel like you knew this early at first i mean you get hit enough times you kind of start

to figure out this hurts sounds really mature yeah this hurts way more than this does you know this i can probably live without this i don't want to live without you know could i live without yeah but i choose i don't want to I don't want to live without either. You know what I'm saying? But if there had to be a choice, it's kind of an easy choice to make. And I think everybody knows what that choice is, but they don't know how to prioritize it all the time and they forget about it. The other thing with adversity is, you know, take the word for what it is. Faith, you know, self-belief, whatever. You go through enough shit, you start to realize,

you know what, a year from now, two years, this isn't going to mean a goddamn thing. It's nothing. It's going to be okay. Everything's going to be fine. So when the stuff starts, shit starts hitting the fan, it's not as stressful because it's going to be all right. It's going to be good.

Just when I was powerlifting, probably when you were powerlifting as well, you can be training for a meet your gear don't fit nothing's fucking going right and just like man this meat's gonna suck but you know it's gonna be all right everything works out the bench shirts for instance you can't touch can't touch can't you know what it touches at the meet i don't know why but it'll be all right you know so you have the worst training cycle ever and you go to a meet and you crush the worst training cycle ever, and you go to a meet, and you crush your PR. Best training cycle ever, you go to a meet, and you suck ass. But it's all right.

So I think I kind of learned that one through powerlifting, that no matter what's going on, at some point in time, it's still going to be okay. And that faith and belief is where I think a lot of people miss it. And they don't see that. You still have to deal with the situation but it's going to be okay you know down the line it's going to be okay you feel like you're the kind of grumpier older power lifter talking about you know the way things used to be or you want to kind of see things being done the same way they used to be like do you miss some of that I don't think it should go back to being the way it used to be. That's never possible.

You know, if you don't have control over something, why are you going to stress about it? It's not going to happen. Where the grumpiness and the rants come from is more like I was going to say earlier. You have a lot of them. I have a lot of them. It's more industry oriented because this is a, I've said this a bunch of times. It's a really fucked up industry, you know, in, in wall street, you know, you're going to get fucked in porn.

You see people getting fucked in the fitness industry. You know, you're not, you know, you don't know you're getting fucked till you're fucked. All right. That's 100%. There's the easiest way to explain it. And it's, it's frustrating to me because this weight training thing power lifting thing it changed my life you know it's i would either be dead and everybody says this but this is i'd either be dead or in a juvenile or i'm older in jail you know but i mean those

were the paths you know juvenile detention center or, dead. And I can go through and list 20 people that I knew between the ages of that. And that lifting thing, people taking me in, well, my dad throwing me in a gym, a power lifting gym, because he got sick of taking me to court, but puts me in there and there. It's run by a bunch of cops. So my dad didn't think, it wasn't a power lifting thing. It was like, there's a bunch of cops in here. This is where my kids go.

How old were you? 13. So actually 12. So I did my, I started training for my first meet thing it was like there's a bunch of cops in here yeah this is where my kids how old were you 13 so actually 12 so i did my i started training for my first meet when i was 12 because when i got in there immediately it was you were training for a meet i didn't know did you like lifting at all your dad just kind of said hey you're doing this yeah i was fucking around a little bit in a garage you know with cement weight set that didn't last long as soon as he saw there was an interest boom put me in there and then within that with two maybe three weeks i'm training for a meet so my real beginner weight training experience was training for a meet and that changed everything because when i started getting

stronger i wasn't the kid getting his ass kicked anymore. You know, I kind of overcorrected from that standpoint, needed to come back the other way. And I guess you seek vengeance on those. But that's another- You're like, I got power. Yeah, that's another story. And, but those guys didn't have to help me. You know, I'm just not in those 12 year old kid

in trouble. They didn't have to help me. Certainly didn't have to help me get ready for a meet or take me to the meet and then throughout that it wasn't more than a couple years later i met louis at a meet who was helping me in a warm up room ed cone helping me in a warm up room before i was out of high school um all these people just like coming john florio people from cleveland all these people helping they don't have to do any of that, you know. So because of all of them combined, you know, I'm who I am. You know, I could have been something,

who knows? Maybe I would have been bad. Maybe, I don't know. I don't know. But I am because of that. I didn't have to pay any of them, anything, you know. So a lot of this live, learn, pass on, it all stems from that. I owe them. And the only way I know how to pay them back is to help other people in the same situation. And what's frustrating to me, more so in powerlifting than anything else, because that's where I came up, is it was different back then. I don't know if it was right in many regards, because you had to kind of earn your way into it. You weren't just walking in a gym and training with mark's crew you had to figure out where he was training go to the gym train off in the corner i know you had to do this at some point go off in the corner

and make small talk but not impose and get to a point where you can give a lift off or a spot then like man come on up so you earn your way into that crew and then once you got in it's like fuck yeah but then it was for me it was like fuck yeah i'm gonna beat everybody here then when i'm better i'm gonna find another crew and just keep and that's how i ended up at west side was from that standpoint but because of that all those people you know shaped that that person's way to go on now you won't find that nobody's gonna help you unless you pay them that's where my problem comes i'm fine with people making money per i did it i personally trained people for 10 years but you know remember there's a lot of people that can't afford that and those people that can't afford, those are the lives you're going to impact.

You know, the people that could have special needs, the people that, you know, don't have anything going on, you know, and maybe maybe there's going to be 15 kids that you're going to help that they're still going to be fuck it. And fuck offs. One's not, you know, and if one's not, what can they do? not you know and if one's not what can they do you know what can what they you know myself as an example but you think those guys that ever helped me thought i would be doing what i'm doing now hell no that's not why they did it they did it because they love the sport and they wanted to help these other people help the sport that's where my grumpy old man comes from because when i see this stuff i don't see people making money on a sport that i wasn't able to monop or monetize at the time i see those people being left out that normally wouldn't be left out because those people were the ones during the time when the sport didn't have genetic freaks there were some you know but not like now those are the ones that were placing second third

fourth you know they got there just by grit hard work determination and faith you know that's how they got there and they're not going to be there now that's my they are right i'm not going to say they're not but the shit keeps going the way it's going they're not going to be there now for those people that you see are making money off the sport selling programming i i work with people online what way do you think they can rectify the situation because i've toyed with that in my head too i know individuals that charge insane amounts of money and i've been like oh wow you're making a lot but i can't i can't't justify that. That's fucked up. There's so many people like college kids and shit that I can't work with because that is so much money.

So what way would you looking at the situation from your point of view can, should these people try and help more people? Well, there's, I mean, through social media and I'll just say social media because that's YouTube, that's everything, right? There's always ways to help people. There's always a way. So you can still provide content and still have a service. And that's easy. The content doesn't have to be a freaking ad, you know, every single time because then the content becomes diluted and nobody's going to want to watch it anymore because shut the fuck up. I don't care that you're selling a manual book training.

What? Tell them what to do. And it's actually piss poor marketing, too. So they're not going to last very long anyhow. But there's so many of them that it just keeps coming and going that I don't even bother looking at any of this shit anymore because why get frustrated over something I have no control over. So to answer your question, what can the person do i think the answer is still to be determined but if we look at other professions uh the legal system um doctors and stuff like that they're still doing professional services but they're doing with per day where they they help people for bono yeah all right so i think the answer kind of lies in that model where x percentage of the hours per somebody's week

when they get to a certain point is going to be pro bono and then determine how to do that yeah i think it's just as simple as uh putting stuff out there with having zero expectation coming back yes i think that's why a lot of people stuff out there with having zero expectation coming back. Yes. I think that's why a lot of people, they spend so much time on Instagram because they're like, oh, this is going to get me X amount of followers or this is going to do this and that. But I think like in SEMA, he does put out a ton of content, especially with us now. Like they're following Mark. But I think, yeah, just expecting nothing in return.

I think sometimes the people that rant, bitch, complain, myself included. I'm not going to exclude myself from things that are true. Because I did. I forget sometimes that the customer's smarter. The people who are reading things are smarter than everybody's giving them credit for. So when people bitch about all the frauds in the industry you seriously think that these guys are actually making money they're not they're they're lying about it because people are not that dumb you know that you can fool somebody once or twice but then after that you're not going to fool them

anymore so the best trainers online trainers or whatnot they're going to rise to the top and they're going to get the clients that are going to be better lifetime value clients instead of the short term 10 week, eight week deal. And that's how a lot of those people are making their money are the eight week programs. But the real money is in the two year program, the three year program. Not saying you're going to sell it for three years, but a lot of people in – it's a new business. It's a new industry. This has only really been going on since maybe 2012, 2014. Bodybuilding beforehand, but strength training right around that. So it's a new profession.

People are kind of still figuring out what to do with it. But I kind of lost my train of thought with that but they um i did what about what about helping people out like in a commercial gym you know like do you think it might be a disservice to like it like if someone helped me and i'm in a commercial gym and i see somebody doing something the wrong way do you think it's a disservice to the people that taught me to not go over to that person that might be doing something wrong you know because it's kind of a weird thing to like go over to somebody say hey man you're doing this wrong you know um how would

you approach a situation like that or do you think that's even positive anymore i won't i won't if they ask i'll help so immensely handle it that way i'm not gonna i not going to give anybody unsolicited advice, even if it's in here. You know, if it's somebody in here visiting and they're training, if they're doing something that's really bad, I just can't keep my mouth shut. You know, that I'll say something with. They don't want to get hurt. Yeah, I'm not going to give any unsolicited advice because to sound as bad as it is, is a waste of my time.

You know, there's a lot of other people that want the advice that I can give the advice to that it's actually a disservice to those people. If I'm wasting all my time telling somebody, you know, stuff that they're really not even going to implement or that implements wrong where they're not going to listen to. So I don't expect anybody to do anything I ever say, but at least consider it, think about it and go from there. Cause there's, there's a, there's a million ways to, to go about doing something and to not think that somebody that's been doing this for 10 years has a little bit of a clue what they're doing. That's, that's a mistake. You know, most of the, in your position, if you're training people and you have somebody

that's been training 10 years, seriously, all you have to do is get them to tell you all the answers. It's, it's really it. You just have to pull it out them to tell you all the answers it's it's really it you just have to pull it out they already know you know and they usually want to share it yes they do when people are really knowledgeable about something they usually feel good about sharing yeah that's the other thing that i learned too is when because i was arrogant and a lot bigger mouth than i am now when i was 20 to 25 years old you you know, 20 to 30 years. I thought I fucking knew everything, everything. So a lot of my narrative, a lot of what I was speaking about seminars, a lot of what I was presenting in conferences, I really wasn't talking to the

people in the crowd. I was talking to all the other presenters in the back of the room, you know, so for their respect, and I didn't know it as much as i know it now because you're trying to earn your you know stripes and all the other stuff but it's you find out later the longer you're around they don't give a fuck those people in the back of the room they really don't care they're only standing there to give you respect or for other people to think they're actually listening when they're really not they don't care the people that care are the ones that you're you're speaking to that are that paid to come and then you're speaking over their head so they can't understand a word that you're saying but you sound super smart so that's a

so anybody that's say 20 to 30 that's in this profession i cut a lot of slack to anymore and because i know what it's like to be there i've been there now if they're 30 and 30 and they're still doing that shit then i know they're not training anybody they're not been around it's just it's a lie because they would have already learned that you can't teach people with this way because they're not gonna understand what you're saying and the interesting thing with that is the when people are learning and i think you learn more of the educational side in your 20s because you're just sucking things up man you're reading everything you're just all over all that and i think you should always do that if you're in the profession but you're not going to

have that same thirst when you're when you were 20 to 30 and if they're not teaching and they're not trying to help other people and to teach other people what they're absorbing they're doing themselves a disservice because they're not learning because you learn by teaching you learn by absorbing but you also learn by teaching so if you're not teaching you're not learning because you learn by teaching you learn by absorbing but you also learn by teaching so if you're not teaching you're not going to learn it as well so that's why i can't complain because they're they're doing that step and without that step they're not going to know how to really be good when they're older you just with that comes the passive aggressive crap that comes out where you think that they're, you know, making digs on people that are older and so forth. And maybe they are, maybe they're not.

It doesn't really make any difference because it shouldn't matter. But the people that are older should kind of stop and pause and realize, you know what, dude, if I can admit that I was that way, then so can they, because we all were, I don't know anybody that wasn't, I know a lot that haven't accepted that fact, but you can't do that. And then judge other people for doing the same shit you used to do. You mentioned that powerlifting, uh, it's safe, you know, saved your life and it kind of made or shaped your life. Uh, how did it do it like how so i think just the i think i was born a meathead because it still hasn't gone away so i think that's kind of a part i can't explain so that i can't explain you can't stop it right no no i've

tried i can divert it you know and just find different ways to do stupid my name is dave and i'm here today to let i'm admitting i have a problem and i'm turning it over to the group i'm a fucking meathead and true true meatheads are really hard to find really so when i find myself yeah yeah it's like bro love man they're really hard to find and um i think the discipline was part of it i think that i i understood really fast that, and I was never drugs and alcohol. I wasn't ever into any of that because alcohol tastes like shit.

And the other stuff, I just never had any interest. Alcohol does taste like shit. It just tastes like shit. I never acquired a taste, you know, and I get, you got to acquire a say,

well, sorry, I never acquired, but no, I taste like shit. It's a fact. I know. It doesn't taste.

Yeah. Like Coke, Pepsi, shit like that i shouldn't have i'm all about that people drinking for the effect right exactly so i think the discipline from that the and i just love getting maybe i love getting stronger because i got the shit kicked out of me all the time when i was younger so i was like and now i get stronger then people stop and they did and so there that, but then that kind of kept growing

like, okay, I'm stronger now compete. When I competed, I wanted to place as high as I could, but I didn't really care that much about winning. To me, it was a PR thing. And there was a guy I used to lift with named Rob Fusner, who was in my class is super, super strong. And him and I were sharing a hotel room in one of the nationals one year. And we had this conversation about which would you rather do, have PRs or win? He's like, win. I mean, it fucked me all up. Now, wait a minute.

So if you got a 900 squat and you only squat 800, but you win, you're cool with that. It's like, fuck yeah. If I only have to squat 800, then I only have to squat 800. That's easier. I'm so baffled by this i just can't figure it out i'm like man i'd either i'd rather be dead last to hit all prs and there's two different mindsets you know then you have chuck who had the mindset he just didn't want to lose so it wasn't about winning he could he could not fathom the idea of losing i couldn't figure figure that one out either. And I guess that's where

the adversity thing comes in. I taught if you've had adversity your whole life, you're kind of used to being a loser and it's not a big deal. You don't like it, but fuck it. I'm okay with it. That's the way it's got to be. But that was, that was different because there's different mindsets in the sport where I think the, the power lifting gave me that mindset to know that I could work for something and then achieve it. And that was not something that I had a lot of success. I don't know if I had any experience with doing anything like that. Certainly not school, you know, with that. And then parlay that.

And then you learn from that, that you can work for something, go to the meet and not achieve what you wanted. And that's all right, because you still kind of did through the training and go through there. Can you explain what that first gym was like that you trained at? Can you kind of describe it to us a little bit? I remember, well, yeah, I remember some of the gyms I trained at when I was young and it just always smelled like, smelled like sweat. Yeah. It smelled like ass.

It smelled like baby powder and it smelled like Bengay. Like it was a kind of combination and chalk yeah they are the one thing i do know is they all kind of they all smelled even when i say like rotten wood like rotten wood was like a normal smell people train in here yeah like just gross wood like your jujitsu place you go to i'm sure you walk in there smells like ass it smells absolutely horrible but it had a power rack i mean it was small maybe 400 square a little bit like west side but people won't know what that means so 400 square foot power rack chest supported row pull down machine deadlift platform a bench incline bench that was about it you know so just and i didn't know any different so it's i remember when i went to college it's like oh my god i went to the gym they were a fucking machine like man i that's why i body built for three years it's like i gotta use

these machines because all i saw muscle and fitness and shit i'm like i do this shit make me big right and so i'm doing i never had access to it yeah we had to do pull downs where people held your shoulders down because there was nowhere to hook your legs up underneath that and crazy shit like that it was just a high it was a pulley that was just attached to the wall with it dropped how many of those would you sell yeah zero the plywood's coming out of the wall um and just big weights and people lifting bigger weights so that that was a a benefit i didn't realize until i got older is you're going to gym and everybody's squatting five six seven hundred pounds is to you it's like shit i suck i'm using a plate and this is terrible so immediately you know and the bench you know everybody's benching 400 so i'm like well shit you know they're old yeah i should be able to do

this if i'm 16 i should be i'm fucking young they're old these old fucks shouldn't be able to outlift me and so my perception of strength was really up but it helped intimidating this was place intimidating no no not to me they were they were um what i want to say embracing they they never made me feel that way you know it's only a few of them only after i started outlifting them then i i didn't now i know why because it's just how things work but man when i started i thought they would be happy and when i started to get stronger but no that was that's the rumors and you know all that bullshit that comes with that but that's when the the odd thing that happens with that is that's when the better lifters start saying, look, man, come over here.

And then you start to see the C's part, and there's this group and this group. When you first get in there, it's just one group. Then you see, okay, there's these little subgroups, and this is where I want to be. And these guys, fuck them. If they can't deal with it, too bad. They are who they are. I just wanted to beat them worst at that point. And, yeah, so that that i didn't never have had a west side barbell you know like let's say the entrance is like you know over here and let's say this the monolift is is on the other side of the

room at west side you know you would when someone was new someone was coming in they were visiting you'd always see them kind of they creep in they come to the front door and there's like kind of that area in the front where there's like a little bit of grip stuff and there was a couple there's like a reverse hyper row there was like a row of reverse hypers and there was a couple there was well a million dumbbells on the ground it's kind of scattered all over the place for some reason they didn't have a dumb i don't know why i didn't have a dumbbell rack but he didn't have a dumbbell rack and that's where all the new people would kind of hang out and they would kind of peer in there and they'd kind, and they'd watch some people squat and stuff.

But when people were squatting in there on a Friday morning or something, people would even be further back. They'd be almost all the way out the door. They'd only put their toe in, basically, just to kind of get in there. Westside Barbell, I think, had a very kind of intimidating feel to it. The lifters in there were huge. It was kind of odd to see a group of lifters in there were huge it was it was kind of odd to see a group of lifters in there that were under 300 pounds i mean there was this big when i

got there they're all big yeah everyone's everyone's huge and that uh that atmosphere was was crazy the music blaring people bleeding all over the place and it was kind of just it was kind of just the way the way that it was, but you'd see somebody, they might come in there for, you know, a couple of days in a row. And as they came in, you know, they would, might, they might trickle down towards the model lift a little bit more. And maybe that one point they get brave enough to squat when nobody's looking, when everyone's doing their assistance work or something like that.

So Mark, I don't think you've ever said it on the podcast, but were you part of the morning or the night crew? I'd get in there and the, well, I would actually think you've ever said it on the podcast, but were you part of the morning or the night crew? I'd get in there in the – well, I would actually kind of do both. I would come in there in the morning a lot, but I just hung out with Louie like all day. That was bench days. I remember him being in there in the morning. Squad day, I don't remember too much, but you were traveling,

so he was wrestling a lot. So I don't think I remember you being there much on Fridays, but I don't think you were either in town on Fridays. And there was a long time that he was commuting from somewhere in Kentucky, right? Yeah, I would commute from Columbus to – I was going to Cincinnati for a while. They had a wrestling school there. And that wasn't that bad. Cincinnati's not that far away.

That place shut down and then so the next closest place was louisville this is like what three hours yeah yeah it was maybe a little more than that but it was a trip so there was a commute that he had with that as well west side when that was normal for me you know for a lot of other people to get in there that was different like a cultural shock that's my first gym was kind of like that so there's a lot of shit talking and stuff like that so that was that well for some reason that never bothered me so it was fine you know i remember my the first place i was at i remember i i missed a 500 pound deadlift and i don't know how old i was it's irrelevant and um the fucking guy got so mad i mean one of

the his name was pat he was a police officer he got so mad at me the one of the his name was pat he was a police officer he got so mad he threw my cowboy boots in the middle of the street and it was on a busy street i'm like how the fuck am i gonna get my boots out it's like fucking frogger trying to get your my boots back but at that point i'm like i can never fucking miss another weight in here i'm gonna lose my shoes you missed a lift and he threw your shoes my shoes in the middle should have called the cops yeah yeah yeah it was fucked up and um but i'm like it's kind of funny you know i was mad as fuck at the time because i didn't know if i was ever going to get them back because it was a busy street yeah i'm like god damn these

are the only shoes i have because my whole i the only time i ever wore tennis shoes all the way through high school was in if i was playing sports or lifting i fucking boots is what I wore all the time. So there's pictures of you in cowboy boots? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's all I wore. Is that God talking? Oh, yeah.

Yeah. I thought I'd have a different voice. No, that's it. So from there, then I went to Toledo, and I found other gyms that are just like that because that's kind of where all the stronger lifters, because they couldn't lift in commercial gyms. They get kicked out.

Unlike today, it's accepted everywhere. That's why i said i can't bitch about the old days because people forget you had to lift in basements and people's garages because nobody would let you in a gym and if they did it was you didn't have what you needed the plates sucked the racks sucked it wasn't even worth going and um so when i got to westside, it was like, this is perfect. You know, I was trying to decide at the time, was it going to be Black's Health World or Westside? And I just graduated. So I'm trying to figure out which direction to go. And I knew Matt and Demo very well. So that was really the main reason that I came. Yeah. And how long were you at Westside before Marky showed up? I probably got there in 90.

I don't know what he got there. I was commuting for a year, maybe just coming up the bench, maybe squat bench. And so I don't know when Mark got there. 99 or something like that. I was there for a while. I was there for a while. So I was there before with the famed Demers location, which is that, that was probably to me, it was West side and other people.

It's not going to be West side, but that was West side before that he had a commercial gym. So when I was first going up, it was a back area of his commercial gym. And then he sold that half the shit went to Matt demo, We're going to a gym called M and M gym, which was all the machines. And that was really it. And then Louie took the squat racks and shit like that and put that in this God awful,

terrible fucking. It was terrible. I call it the boxer in the basement gym because there was a boxer that actually lived in the basement and I didn't know it. I didn't know this for like six months and I'm training there all the time. I get there to open it one day and the fucker come out of the basement and i didn't know it i didn't know this for like six months and i'm training there all the time i get there to open it one day and the fucker come out of the basement scared the shit out of me and but there's a hole this is where mike francis trained with us was in this boxer and it was on sullivan and the the gym had a hole in the floor so you could see down into the basement i could never see the boxer down there but it sounds terrible yeah this this

place was terrible it was terrible and there was i think it was a clay shop that was shared the storefront so if we deadlifted did you hear the shit rumbling the other side of the wall then he finally left there and went to demers so we had to move everything over there so going into demers i think it was me, Chuck. I'm trying to think of all the people that were there after we left, to go from there to where he is now. And I think it was only me, Amy, Louie, and maybe Chuck. That was it.

Everybody else had already come and gone through there. So I was there the whole time through Demers. And then two years after he moved, I was done I was done, but I can never, I never found any mojo in the new place either. It just wasn't the same for me. Why do you think a lot of those lifters were, um, like in trouble all the time? It seemed like there, it seemed like at West side, there was a lot of like, uh, jailbirds, you know, there's a lot of guys like that were pretty, that were pretty well known by

the local police i think i don't think there were as many as the movie dictates it makes you think or even if you were there that you think and the reason why i say that is because you didn't know what anybody did right i didn't even know some of the guy's names for five years like gritter was gritter i didn't know who the fuck gritter was until i needed i knew he did hvac and i needed a fucking air conditioner i'm like well who the who's gritter i mean i wanted to do i want yeah how do we find his name yeah his number yeah his name was jeff adams i fucking didn't know this for like three years and then chicken hawk it took me forever and it's a fucking chicken hawk i don't even know if i can tell you mark mark burrows i think yeah yeah i didn't know you know we just knew people by their fucking names.

Who was naming these people? And when you came in, yeah, well, Chuck. Chuck was a good one. So Chuck would come up with most of them. So it's like John. Which is great, because Chuck, he didn't even talk that much. Yeah, I know. Chester, John Stafford.

I guess John Stafford. Yeah. And so you didn't know. And when we got there, Louis was rigorous on, you train at 830. You get in, you train. This is what you do. You I'm not saying we didn't fuck around, have a good time and talk, but we weren't there very long. So if I'm getting there at 830 and I'm back training clients at 1030, you're in there, you're training and you're out. So there's not a lot of small talk. And I wasn't hanging out with a lot of the guys. Nobody hung out with anybody that much you came in you did your shit and you left so you really didn't know what anybody did and you didn't care so in that environment where everybody's you know pissing fire and aggressive and everything else you just assume everybody's a convict because you know a couple are all right so a couple are then you don't realize that you know doc dave is a fucking brain surgeon and you have all these other people in there with phds and master's degrees then you

find out you're like no that ain't right you know you're bullshit me no really no and yeah yeah fucking guy is a you know accountant like no no fuck no there's no way i thought he killed people for a living like that and um but the mentality i guess what you could say was kind of like a convict mentality yeah that standpoint right but and we didn't we weren't prejudiced against people that were out of prison we're gonna go back to prison it's just they didn't make very good training partners because they didn't stay very long so they would come there they were good to train with but then they just disappeared you know like okay where's so-and-so at but then they were teaching people in prison so it was passing on yeah until they took the weights out of the prisons so that kind of happened while we

were through there who do you think uh the strongest guy was that ever trained or that you ever saw there chuck there's no doubt i mean matt was super super strong but for some reason the only thing i can really remember of him is his demise i can't remember so much when he was really strong because that was only maybe a couple years while i was there and then it just yeah it just it faded fast but i think other people had they stayed longer i think joe mccoy was super super strong and not taking anything away from him any any way because he went on to be a police officer and he's one of the highest ranking officers in columbus now but he he still had a lot of untapped potential rob fuzzer had a lot of untapped potential so there were other ones but chuck lasted you know a long time people don't realize how long that dude lasted i mean he was

winning the y nationals which was a huge huge meet before i even got there so this is shit before 90 he had several ups and downs he's part of those old old videos back in the day walking the weights out and everything no monolith yep and when i got there there was no monolith you know i remember louie got the monolith maybe one or two years into dimmers and squatting on the fucking jacks sucked because i squatted with we squatted in little groups you know so they might have two people and you go back to back so three at the most it depends on what phase of training you're in but usually it's two people back to back and you push each other that's how long rest we had so somebody went you sometimes you'd be pushing the fucker out

of the way to get there to try to tire them out so it's kind of like a tag team thing louie and i squatted back to back for most of my time there. So eight years. That fucker, when we had the jacks, would not fucking increase. I had to take it out on his shit. So I'm doing a good morning to get every fucking thing out. My back is hosed and I'm bitching and complaining. He just says I'm weak and it shouldn't be a problem because I'm fat and I weigh 300 pounds. Meanwhile, this is bullshit, you know, and I get mad as fuck about this because it's not right.

He's like five, five. And he pulled this shit with the bands to where, you know, extra band tension. Oh, yeah. I'm standing up. He's taking it. I remember one time the monolith was like, and I'm bitching about this because it's bullshit. He took it like on the first hole. So it's all the way down. It can't get any fucking lower.

And then you got to crank it like 85 times for me and it was like nine inch difference he's like are the bands are the same like you're out of your fucking mind they're the same this isn't even close they're like flapping at the bottom of his and they're like taunt at mine like my bottom's his top it's almost like that so i take these um pulling blocks they're like this tall remember those white things you stand on for deficit deadlifts i throw them in the monolith stand on them motherfucker he threw him out started telling me i was fat and out of shape and all this other kind of crap but that that was louis that's how we got on each other's nerves i don't know if you guys know this but dave like totally killed me he was like he wanted me to write on this site because

he knew i was a wise ass and he knew i can talk he totally fucked me he was like he wanted me to write on this site because he knew i was a wise ass and he knew i can talk and he goes he totally fucked me like he completely screwed me he's like dude it's gonna be intentional he's like it's gonna be great he's like he's like fuck with people and i was like all right i'll fuck so i start messing with like people that are writing in and asking questions and i would say stupid stuff and it would be wouldn't be too bad it would be it was fine yeah it would be okay it'd be okay like you know somebody would say hey you know what do you do for your bench or something i would say uh hey burpees are the best you know it helps with your lockout and you know like burpees were always at the end of my workout i always wrote them in there

because i was just under this anonymous name jackass and he's like it's gonna be great he's like you can fuck with anybody you want and then he then he pushed me to fuck with people in the gym but i'm training in the gym and he's like nah you know no one will know who it is he's like he's like i think a lot of the guys still they still think that it's me and i've had other people do it here and there he's like so just let her rip and i'm like let her rip i was like just i'm like really just like go for it like i can kind of dig on people he goes yeah go for it so i start digging on people people start getting really fucking pissed and they're like dave who the they're going they keep going to him he's not spilling the beans for a little while but this goes on for maybe just a couple of months or so and then finally he just can't take the harassment anymore and he's fucking

spilling stuff though because this this is i to, because he was helping with the seminars. You guys don't know this. It was different training thereafter. I was like, oh shit. He knows way more about training than what you guys think. He doesn't, you're too modest about what you know about your training. And way more than what I see you talking about from a strength perspective. And so I wanted him on there for the q a's but he didn't have his elite yet so that was kind of a thing you can't answer questions on the site so you have your

elite but we can put you on because he could talk shit better than anybody i've ever seen it was great i mean in the gym you you didn't it was fun to talk shit with him but you were going to lose by the way when you say you're elite do you mean it's like a certain total yeah total elite tall yeah so with that you know and that was awesome you know i loved it because if you couldn't win in person you were gonna get drilled online for sure there's no chance of the hell so i tell all these guys that are on the q a and on the site look mark's gonna come on there he is going to fuck with you that's why i'm putting him there oh fine no big deal it's we know what's going on it's cool bob young's was the worst i can say this now because he's passed on so all right yeah so there we go and so mark starts and it's funny man i'm like reading this shit it's cracking me up and a month goes by and i'm starting to get emails

and calls like man who is this fucking guy you know you know who he is like are you kidding me we had this conversation well this is going too far and i'm reading i'm like no it's not he's just saying your shit yeah they're like we don't really know him you know yeah like your squats are high it's just stupid shit you know and then bob just loses he loses bullshit and bob's at west side at the time he's all fucking mad but heard about it and then i had to tell marks we gotta dial it back but you still have to stay jackass until you get your elite total and if you look and go through the archives you can see still on the train all the training that he did from just being really a 405 venture to shit you know pro totals and stuff so

it's there i mean there's the whole path and nothing's changed he's only gotten better at the shit talking the second that's good the second you let your guard down like uh the other day we had an awesome podcast and you know where we met up afterwards i'm like mark dude we crushed you that was so much fun he's like yeah i think so too if you could just uh anytime you speak edit that part out like just totally crushed right like no recovering from that but what was it uh that mark was doing that like caught your attention where you're like dude you need to be writing on elite right now he was helping with the seminars and you know that was that was the first thing and people help with the seminars i wanted people that was to help with the seminar

so if worst case scenario i gotta go take a piss and they're still teaching people what to do i'm comfortable with whatever they're teaching what to do and there was never a problem ever a problem with that no matter what the lift was he was able to teach it what however it needed to be taught and that's that that's different than what you think because every ricky crane once said a long time ago there's technique form and style so there's a certain technique that's associated with every lift say textbook technique but due to people's leverages biomechanics bone structure that form is going to change a little bit you know so let's say the technique says medium wide stand squat well now it's going to go closer because of that then everybody's got their style that's going to fall in there a lot of people when they go to teach these lifts just find their technique and stay right there you can't do that you got to understand what that is and then kind of disseminate

that on who you're working with and what level they're at you can't take somebody that it's just a complete disaster that is awesome i've never heard that before you take somebody that's yeah style i like that that's really good for jujitsu too yes i think it probably goes through every sport yeah absolutely you know and you can't fuck with somebody's style if it's working. And at the same time, you can't teach people beyond what they're capable of doing, you know, and that's where he was able to do that, where some other people I was having help before that could not do that. do that where some other people I was having help before that could not do that. And it becomes a problem when you're trying to teach somebody and you only have one day because you want them to have a takeaway when they leave that day and not think, shit, I don't, I'll never squat. I don't know how to squat. You got to get them to squat the best they can and tell them, look, there's still a lot of distance for you to go, but here's just stay here, you know, kind of meet them where they're at type of thing.

And that's a little different skillset that is required that I think you can really only get if you've been through several different disciplines or different gyms to be able to see that because you can get handcuffed and to one technique or one style based upon only being in one place your whole life. So it's like, okay, this is the place where, this isn't a dig on Westside, but this is a place where you got to squat wide, sit back, make sure your knee is over the heel at all times,

and that's the gospel. Maybe for everybody, or maybe not for everybody. On that note, I for everybody or maybe, maybe, maybe not for everybody, you know, on that note, I'm, I'm curious about this because you mentioned that you have a degree and you, I'm guessing you also have maybe have some certifications or something, but, um, nowadays you'll see a lot of people getting online, they'll start sharing content, they'll start working with people. Um, and, and a lot of people don't bother getting degrees. They, they, they self-educate. So what is your feelings on that? Because from what you said, you know, get yourself in, get yourself having different experiences with different coaches, learn from people. How should people go about that? And do you have a bias towards getting a degree or anything like that? because now the question is going to become, is the degree worth the investment? Especially when you're talking an exercise science program or something of that nature. Because if somebody

is going to come out of college, a hundred thousand dollars in debt for a profession that they might only make 20 or 30,000 at, that's a different conversation. So if we remove that, because I can say that a hundred thousand dollars in debt isn't worth the education you're going to get now, you can self-educate, go to seminars and find mentors that are going to make you way better than that and not be strapped in debt for the next 30 years of your life and maybe ever to be able to pay it back when i went when it was affordable and you could go and work and pay your way through college 100 a degree is necessary because not so much the education from the exercise science degree but learning how to learn is the biggest thing that I took from college is just the word

research. Okay. People use that now and they think that's a Google search and I tell them, well, Google search the word research because that's not a Google search. So the the biggest thing that I don't like about the education system all the way down into junior high is nobody's teaching these kids how to actually use Google and to search and vet content. So there's an oversaturation of content. Everybody agrees to that. I don't think it's that hard if you're somewhat educated to be able to vet through the content you're looking at. But who's teaching these kids how to do that? They're not. Is it happening in college? No. So there's that. So remove that. Yes, I think that it's important for somebody to learn basic biomechanics, to learn nutritional biochemistry, to learn anatomy, physiology. To at least have the surface of all those things, because it will create a bullshit detector because there is a lot of bullshit. There's a lot of stuff that's unique and in trend and has some validity, but there's a lot that doesn't.

And if you just have a basic understanding of how nutrients process and digest throughout the system, that's going to eliminate 70% of the bullshit immediately. Or biomechanics, if you have a basic understanding of that, then you start looking at how some people are teaching form technique and all the other stuff. And you start to see, oh, wait, wait, something's not right. You may not know what's not right, but you have that gut feeling this isn't right. And you know where to go.

Look, that's the value of that. This isn't right. And you know where to go. Look, that's the value of that. The but I think that now can probably be taught online. The experience part that's still necessary if it's a degree or non degree. You still have to. I think you still have to train people face to face in person before you can ever think about training them online. in person before you could ever think about training them online. Because when you train somebody in person, you have nonverbal communication, you have, you know, gut feelings, you have all this other and verbal communication, you have all this stuff that you can drive off of and see and regulate their program. When you train somebody online, every nonverbal aspect is completely removed. Every verbal aspect is completely removed and you're left with the

worst form of communication known to man, email or text, which is even worse. And you're going to use that to regulate somebody's training. The only way I see that working is if you have thousands of hours of training people in person and you find the trends like this follows, this follows, this follows this. And then it's like, okay, I got that. Then you kind of go from there. You don't need a degree for that. That's just finding people to work under, intern under and experience. I mean, ultimately you just need a product to sell in some way, right? So we were talking earlier about, you know, margins and stuff like that. And it's only, it's only going to be worth what the market will pay for it. Well, yourself is the same,

you know, if you're selling programming you may not need to go to college, but if you're further educated or you figured out a way to educate yourself by either, you know, throwing yourself into the gauntlet of like trying to be a pro bodybuilder or, you know, trying to kill yourself doing powerlifting or just going to school or whatever way you did it, it really doesn't matter if you have a good product to sell and a very clear message, then that will probably have a pretty good market value. So as long as you're not full of shit and you're able to have some great information,

then you should be on your way, really. Yeah, I agree. I agree that you have to have that. And it has to be a realistic market. Your key word there is market value, not what somebody thinks their personal value. They should have a high personal value, but they have to understand that's not the market value they're completely different things

and then just to even simplify it mark and i were actually talking about this the other day um you know as a photographer i don't have a degree whereas the next kid might be busting his ass to get that degree but if we both take a photo we'll just say the same thing and mine just looks better people are not going to give a shit about a degree. I'm still going to get the job. So within Seema's training, he can show that he knows what he's talking about, and he's going to show results. And so nobody's going to care about a degree at that point. I don't think – well, I'm an employer, but I can only speak as one employer.

It depends upon what the position is. The last thing I look at on any resume is going to be the degree i'm looking at the experience or usually it's who they know or what's coming through in the interview because regard they still have to learn what we do you know and then bring something to the table that we don't have to be able to help with that and the the degree is really in my mind now it's it's irrelevant but it depends upon what the skill is some skills it guarantees they're going to have the minimum skill set where sometimes you don't know that you know they can say they have it then they get here they don't have it how do you end up with a

team and a culture that that you want you know because you've been doing this for a long time so you must have learned you know a lot of lessons over the years of you know hiring friends or a buddy's buddy or those kinds of things how do you end up with a good strong team um i don't have that figured out you know i have a really weird leadership ability it's like non-leadership but i think that what here's what i know let's put it that way i know what the vision of the company is i know what that is and i know what that path is and it's unfortunately it's a non-profitable pass yeah it it's it's passing it's everything that we've talked about. You know, that's what it is. So it's not a value opportunity proposition, but that's okay.

It's what it is. So I know what that is. So it's a matter of how does everybody kind of fit into that? And if they fit into that, good. And it's exactly what we want. If they don't fit into that then they won't stay and the the culture is it's not a culture that we really foster it's it's not like here's what our culture is here's a b c d whatever it is we have people that have been here for 10 years and other ones that haven't and if they're in a certain position they're given a lot

there's some things that tracy runs the the office so there's some things that she's really strict on that i don't know if she should really be strict on but i'm not crossing that we have separate that's her thing yeah we have separate things but that's helped develop the culture. But the one thing that we're very, very flexible on is the ability. I want the creativity of the job that they're doing to be maximized with what their skill set is. but I don't want his creativity to be stifled. I want to see what that is and him to push that in ways that he can push it that still kind of has to do with the company. He'll do projects that are contract projects on the side, but he can do whatever he wants from that standpoint. So if it's a podcast, you want to do a podcast, fine.

If I have an idea of a different podcast, I'll run it through him. We'll discuss it. And ultimately he's going to be the one that's going to just say yes or no, because he's going to be the one doing the majority of the work for that. Um, if it's the editorial, you know, article standpoint, you know, do however they got to do. I just watched the main indicators. You know, I look at the big, the big rocks, traffic, stuff like that, and make sure that's going where it needs to go. You know, to me, site traffic's the most important thing, not social media, nothing. It's the site traffic. That's everything's a click away from the store. I mean, ultimately it's still a business. We can't give anything away. We can't give any content away. We can't put any articles out.

We can't do any podcasts. We can't do any of this unless we have customers. So the customers provide all the content, not us. Without them, there's nothing. So how many clicks away are they from the store? You know, an article is a one click away. It's right there. Instagram is a swipe.

So it depends. It's right there. Instagram is a swipe. So it depends. It's faster because it's a swipe, but they have to get to that story. So it's really a little bit further away. Facebook's a little bit closer than Instagram because it's a click away. It's an article. It's a click away. YouTube's tricky because it's really hard to get from YouTube to a site.

So that's tricky. So it's what can you put on YouTube to a site. So that's tricky. So it's what can you put on YouTube that can come back to the site as a blog or an article or go to these other, like a podcast goes everywhere, right? 10, 15 places. People need to be really careful with this kind of stuff. I think people spend a lot of time on Instagram and I think that they maybe are not realizing that they're actually working for Instagram. Yes. You know, they say that they're a content creator.

And I look at that and I'm like, man, people have a kind of a misunderstanding of the fact that they're creating content for Instagram. Yes. And it can be a trap in some ways. Not that you have to monetize everything either. I'm not saying that. No, no, no. But you do need to figure out a way to monetize a good amount of your time.

You got to watch your time too, because the average person spends an hour a day on Instagram. That's the average person. So the people that you see posting a lot, you know that's over there. Look at your own screen time on your phone. And last year I was pushing hard on Instagram. I wanted to answer every DM. There's a lot of DMs. I was three hours a day on that thing.

So 27, 30 hours a week. And most of that time is of DMs. I was three hours a day on that thing. So 27, 30 hours a week. And most of that time is answering DMs. And it makes, you're close. It's a personal contact. It's a really good thing. But 30 hours, that's a full-time job. That's a lot. And it wasn't, monetizing is a full-time job.

And at that point, you got to start asking yourself if you are a content creator, if you're trying to help the maximum number of people, you're helping that one person with that one DM, but who else is seeing that? Originally, that's why I had a Q&A is because I was answering so many emails and this one person gets an answer. It's personal. It's great. But there's a hundred other people that want to know when that answer is too so actually the questions the questions came from you didn't

they really well no actually no it was jason burnell because it was on deep squad yeah deep squad yeah so he had all these west side type questions i'd answer and he'd have to html which is code to put it on the site it took forever to be able to do that shit and i couldn't spell for shit either so he had to try to fix as much as yeah that's where i started reading about all this stuff in the beginning is a website called deep squatter.com and then i would see that he would write something and it would say something about like blue bands like what does that mean yeah what does it mean like what is the squat with blue i couldn't picture it i was like i don't understand what the blue bands are then i saw more articles from you obviously and started figuring out yeah speaking of stuff that like it's hard to understand

from what i understand louis simmons almost speaks his own language but you were one of the few that could like decode what he was saying yeah yeah yeah so what what did you learn from the way he taught you that you like have implemented everything yeah everything i mean, I knew a lot about powerlifting before, Louis, but I didn't know what I thought I did. Not even close. So the things that I'm starting to see that I do now with these little groups like I had earlier today is because they're filming this stuff. So there's a lot of stuff that you kind of do automatically that you don't know that you're doing that is valuable to other people. And now I'm seeing what a lot of that is and I'm trying to figure out how to teach that to other people. And that's reading nonverbal. It's how you auto-regulate if you're squatting with somebody

and you know it just doesn't look right. So you're saying, look, man, you're telling them to do this, do this, back down. Or maybe they need a kick in the ass. You've got to kind of know, how do you know it just doesn't look right so you're saying look man you're you're telling them do this do this back down or maybe they need a kick in the ass you know you got to kind of know how do you know that you know you just know it because you've been doing it for 40 years or 30 or whatever it is and how do you tell somebody else to see what you see and that's a lot of what i got from louis because when you're in there he's telling you look at this look at chuck see what he's doing see why why is he doing that you know why he's doing that and he's telling you look at this look at chuck see what he's doing see why why is he doing that you

know why he's doing that and he's just pounding and pounding and pounding it was everybody that was in there we were taught to coach not taught to lift that way when somebody was squatting it wasn't just louis helping them it was the seven other people that are also watching so every lifter had everybody else as a coach. So what you end up with is some of them are going to, are going to embrace that. You know, I was one, AJ was one, you know, winning was kind of one. There's people that are going to embrace that type of thing to learn because what we love to do, other ones are just doing it because it's part of the culture, the atmosphere, what it is, and it's how how you become better and so some of us were able to disseminate decode yeah better because we were teaching people

that were outside of the gym we're in the in the gym it's just like hey you know stop doing that shit and you know what they're doing the connection is right there like quit that shit and they know exactly what they're doing you know now in real life it's like you know look the way you're holding your chin you need to talk or whatever it's going to be to do that so he was a master at that you know he was a master manipulator too which pissed me off but he was a master at that you know teaching you how to coach that that was the biggest thing is learning those the program stuff is kind of easy for me it's kind of easy to figure that out you know and to break it down it was kind of rare from what i remember for him to actually coach you like he would like you said he would point to someone else as they were

going and he he would point out things yes and he did that often i always i always really liked that and when i opened up my own gym and was working with people and having groups come in, people would just keep looking at me when they were doing their lift. And they're kind of looking to me to explain stuff to them. And I'm like, that's not, I don't really coach that way. I need to see you lift a couple times. And we're going to use an example of the people that are doing shit right. And I'm going to point to those people and point them out very similar to what yeah you know louis had us do and there were people that went and

listened to him so those would be the people that would hey dave go tell chuck this you know and then there would always be somebody that somebody else would listen to or maybe it was me you know you know chop go fucking tell dave to do this the communication in there would get quite complicated yeah yeah i mean there's a lot of times where you just it's it's like a family you know a fucking very dysfunctional fucked up family but it's like a family to where you might not you don't have to like people you train with and this is different today because there's a lot more places to train so if you wanted to power lift in columbus today there's probably 50 places to go where back then there was maybe three, maybe. All right. So, yes, you had to train with people you didn't like.

That was just part of I grew up with that. Do I miss that a little bit? Because I think that teaches people how to get along with people that are not like themselves. And now when you can just leave and go train with a bunch of people that you like all the time i don't know how that really goes on to impact how you are as you know father family business and so forth because you have to deal with people you don't like it's just life you know that's how it is yeah who had to uh to who was the messenger for mark like who did who did you have to tell like dude some to tell

smelly he needs to quit there wasn't a lot because it was like i said i don't really only remember the bench you know and his fucking bench was strong i mean it was one of those things like this little fucker's strong man look at his bench is fucking his floor press was fucking strong you know the little fucker come in he's not that big you know at the time he's not that big the little fucker's floor pressing like four you can't say shit because it's almost it's like what you're doing or more than what you're doing so you can't say shit about it the fucker weighs 50 pounds less and he's doing more and he could fucker could bench you know later you discover you can fucking squat and deadlift too but the the bench was so there wasn't a lot with because the bench is a

little easier it's just kenny and george you know just kind of took over that whole thing and what was how was louis a master manipulator like what were some things he saw i don't even know if it was necessary um i think some of it was i i can't really answer because he'd have to answer that because I don't know what the, I don't know what his intent was. I just know that, you know, like when I came into the gym, it was, I guess you could say I was the first one to be recruited into Westside. And when I came in, Waddle was told, you know, Dave's coming in to beat you. You know, and he was a 308 and i was 275 as soon as i got there i'd gain weight and so tom fucking hates me you know because and i'm like what the fun i have to train with this dude in the afternoon when i got there so this he'd make

shit up yeah yeah and he all the time you know and come in i would come in and say you know what rob was saying about you like oh my god what and it is mark does that yeah yes yeah so he'd make that shit up and then rob comes in you're like you want to fucking punch him in the face and then you know after training you're like dude why in the fuck did you say that it's like what are you talking about and then it's like i didn't ever say that i'm like what the fuck you know i thought yeah stupid shit like that all the time and so i don't know what the point of that was except just to maybe make louis laugh when he went home by himself i i don't know but other times it was more along the lines of um threatening to throw people out so it's like tell so and so that they don't get their shit together they're fucking out and why don't i have to tell them why don't you

tell them why don't i have to do this you know because he's your fucking training partner and you know at the time it took me a few years before i said what you're just too coward to do it yourself i don't want to do that to be i don't want to get my ass thrown out and so that that was where things got fucked up because you didn't know if it was for real or if it was just to fuck with the person because if i'm going to be the bearer of bad news and it's not for real i don't want to do this because i got trained with the asshole for another three years and i already don't like him in the first place so if this is for real like he needs to get the shit together and not bomb out of the next meter he's gone then stand by that decision or i'm not gonna say it but shit like that was a lot too where where it was, those were the more unpleasant things.

Do you think the actual method mattered or could we have been doing anything in there because of the environment and the culture? Yeah. Yeah. Um, I paused and had to think about it cause it really doesn't matter how much, like how much. I paused and had to think about it because it really doesn't matter how much, like how much, I still, because gear,

gear is a weird thing. And when we were in there during a real weird time with gear and you went back to California before things started to kind of settle out a little bit because we just put the shit on when we went to a meet so if you had a bench shirt you kind of have to learn how to use the bench shirt we didn't do that we just trained raw this is a big giant misconception with west side by the way we trained raw all the fucking time the only time we put the bench shirt on was a meet i didn't even know if the fucking thing fit i would try it on the wednesday before the meet okay this is good and then go

squat suit the same way the we never used wraps we still didn't use wraps in a meet or in the gym ever no baby powder no wraps none of that shit the only thing we would use is briefs and for dynamic day max effort day you didn't wear shit most of the time you didn't wear a belt and if you did people are going to bust your balls for wearing a belt so it was just it's straight up raw i guess you could call it till the meet yeah good mornings with the safety squat bar feel amazing with no belt so the my pause is how much better would i have been had i known how to use my shirt and suit because if i'm just putting this canvas diaper thing on, and the only time I ever put it on was at a meet

and squatted 940. And now people, four years later, were squatting 1100, 1050 and so forth. And I know I was stronger training with them in the gym. I'm not saying I could have squatted the 1050 or 1100. I'm not saying that. Maybe I could have. I don't fucking know because we never trained in the gym i'm not saying i could have swatted the 10 50 or 11 i'm not saying that maybe i could have i don't fucking know because we never trained in the shit so that's where i don't know because people like yourself leave and other people will leave people in other gyms big iron and stuff like that they're all moving monster and some numbers and they're using

their shit and we're all kind of looking around like what the fuck you know how are they getting 350 pounds of a bench shirt and i'm getting 40 this is stupid as fuck you know what are we not doing right and that changed after i left so i can't i don't know how they're really implementing that into the training but based upon hoff it's implemented correctly because the dude's a freaking beast so that i think could have been better when i was there i think chuck could have been way stronger because he we're all the same so he was going to me throwing the shit on too and he would probably tell you the same is what i am that maybe his upper body would have stayed healthier and stuff like that too so I'm not going to be the person to say that Louie held us back because of that I'm not going to say that but that is something I ask you know is could I have been better with more experience in the gear if the training was designed this is listen to what I'm

going to say here could I have been better in the gear if the training was designed for gear? Now, isn't that contradicting everything people say about WESA? Right. Yeah. Okay. This is from somebody that was fucking there for 14 years. That's the biggest, biggest question I have about the WESA method. Well, I told Louie one time, I said, hey, I went, just so you know,

I went from 903 to 1,080 squat. And you said you're full shit. And yeah, well, so what he said was, and I told him kind of how I did it. I said, here's how I did it. I did box squats. I kind of used a version of your Circa Max stuff that you laid out in the past.

And I kind of created my own version of it, but I did it with my straps. I did it with briefs on and my suit and the straps up and he was always against like the straps up and you certainly would never wear a squat suit and squat to a box was that on a box with the straps up yeah i would squat onto a box and he was like well he's like that's the wrong way to do it and i said louis i'm gonna tell you again i went from a 903 pound squat to 1080 squat you know and i was doing similar stuff in the bench shirt and stuff too i would you know i wear the bench shirt and have bands on there and chains on there and stuff

but i think that you know somewhere along the lines he he he knew what he knew right and then sometimes you maybe start to get kind of closed off to like new ideas or concepts. And so maybe he just didn't want to, he didn't want to hear it. He wanted to kind of try his, his own stuff out. Yeah, it could be.

And how come we don't hear more about that? Is it because it's West side and people don't want to, you know, bad mouth it or whatever you want. I think there's a couple of reasons is Louie. Louie knows his shit. I've spoken to maybe a thousand strength coaches you know and a lot of really reputable ones there's there's very few that i would put in the same i would say louis

a fucking genius when it comes to this stuff he figures shit out that people just don't think about and i think with that comes a level of arrogance is a bad it's what i want to say but it's not the word i want to say where i would not expect him to to be anything different to where if you're a master of a certain Kung Fu discipline, okay, then you're the master of that discipline. You're going to think all other disciplines suck and that this is the only discipline that's really the best. You should think that if you're the master of that discipline, where if you're Ken Leisner with HIIT training, there's nothing better than HIIT training. And if you're learning from these people, you should understand the bias is strong. It's really strong. So just know it for what it is and don't fault the person for that because it's taken 50, 60 years for that to be developed.

60 years for that to be developed. If you're looking at that as an outsider looking in, you can see faults in that because you see that there's more than one way. You know, if you talk to Louie, there's one way that's it. There's one way and everything else is wrong and his way is the right way. There's other people that say that too. You know,

Ken Leisner would have been one and others. And they should. They should believe in that heart. So if you're going to be the master of your own discipline, then be the master of that discipline. But my view on it is understand those disciplines and cherry pick from everything and be the master of none except the person that you're trying to help in front of you. Okay.

And you won't be known for a specific methodology. You see what I'm saying? So I can't fault him for that because that would be the same as faulting the master of any discipline. And with genius comes arrogance and should, I'm not a genius. So I have to work with what I have, you know, and the only concern, the only thing that I want is the best for the person that I'm working with. Now the genius is going to think,

give me that person and I'll make them better. And could they, maybe probably, you know, that, And I'll make them better. And could they? Maybe. Probably. That's the argument of anybody that wants to criticize what Louie does. And they're a trainer as well. Here's the deal. Trade athletes. So you take one of his multi-ply guys into your gym and get them ready for a meet better than he can. And he'll take one of your sprinters or whoever it is. Give it to him. Let him get them ready for a meet better than he can. And he'll take one of your sprinters or whoever it is, give it to him,

let him get them ready for the next meet. And let's see who comes out on top. You know, what's that multi-ply going to do with six months training with this guy and vice versa? Who's going to have the greater results? I know the answer, right? So that has to be understood.

So it's a complicated answer that I'm providing, but it's the only way I know how to provide it. Being more open-minded nowadays to the fact that there's, even though you have a bias towards the conjugate system, when you look back at old articles from yourself, do you kind of think like, eh, I don't even know if that's right anymore? Or you still feel strong and powerful about it? yourself do you kind of think like ah like i don't even know if that's right anymore um or you

still feel strong and powerful about it no i'm still very biased with very very biased with kanji and i was always careful from the very beginning to never write in absolutes because i always knew there's more than one way so i can't look back on anything that i wrote and say that it's not right because i never wrote it in a tone that was absolute. It made it right. Even though places I was writing for was telling me to do that. What about something like the periodization Bible where you had examples of periodization? I think people followed that and they messed up, but you were trying to show it's an example of what not to do. Oh, the linear. Yeah. With that, I could go back and write a second part to tell you how to overcome each one of the objections I have with it.

So that article was penned and written in a way to show all the shortcomings of that with the answer being conjugate. what I didn't show was a nonlinear model, an undulating model or a model or a block type of model, which is still kind of linear the way that it's structured and set up. So I didn't show those where I could have to where if, you know, I have Masons and intern now that I have, that's just strength and conditioning. When I go through with them, I teach them linear. Then I teach them block. Then I teach them conjugate. Then I will teach them, you i teach them block then i teach them conjugate then i will teach them you know how to break down the training days and all the other stuff and then we'll start looking at different programs like here's five three one what is that is it block is it linear is it conjugate you know here's um the cube method what is that you know here's this what is that

here's charlie francis and stuff what is that because i think any strength coach should be able to to disseminate because there's really only so many models right there's block conjugate linear and bodybuilding hit you know that's really about it and look at a program and see it laid out over a period of six months and say that's this that's this and every periodized model has shortcomings. So, conjugate has shortcomings. They all do. So, you have to know the shortcomings and know how to overcome those. Bodybuilding is a little bit different because the room for error in the weight room is giant.

So, you can screw up a lot. The room for error in the diet is not. That's very, very thin. When our strength training, the room for error and training is very thin the room for diets huge You eat pretty much whatever the fuck you want get strong The only factor that limits that you start to get older it starts to become a little more important You know what you're doing with that or if weight classes you have to be more conscious of the nutritional density of the food that you're putting in

so the nutritional density of the food that you're putting in so did that answer the question it did what's something that you learned uh like not to do by kind of seeing louis over the years i i want to say overreaching and because we did a lot of dumb shit, you know, that he would tell us not to do, but he still was an enabler. So a lot of times I think he was telling you not to do it. So you would do it. But just the dumb shit like you miss a weight, you get pissed, you know, and it comes a little bit with the mindset, though, too, where if you had a bad training session, you're pissed pissed about that for a week you can't get it the fuck out of your head so you never wanted to i never wanted to leave with that because i didn't want to spend the next week with myself it's i fuck that it's terrible and so that that's where shit ended, where people would find your buttons.

And it's like, oh man, Dave gets pissed when this kind of shit happens. So it just has a fucking- Zippy. Yeah, get on his ass. You know, and that's where I started to learn. Yeah, that's where I started to learn that I have three zippy cards I can play in a day

and that's it. After that, I'm shot. I'm dead. And in a meet, you're fucked. Because I only got three zippy cards to play. And so I got a what attempt is this going to happen on? Because if it's going to happen on an opener, I'm fucked. I'll get three squats and the rest of the meet's going to suck.

And but they would find that, you know, they they found that in the gym pretty fast. And it's like, oh, fuck, a zippy's funny as fuck. Let's get him. You bash your head bleeding all over the place. But after that, you're not really worth a fuck. So the squats went well, but your supplementals, you're laying on the floor still trying to catch your breath and puking for the next 35 minutes and do some reverse hypers and lead. That I think was that learning the ability to pull back. to pull back.

But I had to learn the ability with the people that I'm helping on how to actually get them to pull back where I think Louie just, eh, don't do that shit. And then you went and did it, you know, now he bitches and complains. Cause he's got a bunch of people that won't do that shit. I'm like,

but they're way stronger. So, you know, what's, what's the thing there. So it is hard. It's, it's,

this is one of those back then thing back then it seemed like you had to find a way to pull everybody back where now it's like you have to find a way to kick everybody in the ass to be and that's just i know what i'm doing when i say that i know i'm being that fucking old guy that's just the same way probably pacifico as with us you know it's just it's the same thing and just how can you bitch when they're stronger? You can't, you know, you can't say they're stronger because they didn't work as hard. It can't be true, right? It can't be, but maybe it is.

I don't know. One thing I'm curious about is, um, one thing I noticed with like yourself and Mark is you guys both have a massive air of curiosity. And when I say that, it's like Mark used to ask me shit a few years ago and I was like, Oh shit, Mark Bell's asked me questions. But I look back at that nowadays. I'm like, Mark probably already knew what the fuck he want, like what his thoughts were on that. And he was asking me a young guy who was just getting into this stuff, some questions. And I like now I don't like, I get that he's curious, but it seems like when you guys were

working louie louie had a way he did things and it seems that you both have a massive ability to pivot and just do new stuff just like you know you're you're doing podcasting all this different social media stuff a lot of guys aren't able to pivot in that sense they're not able to learn all of those new things where does that come from for you guys well if you're those new things. What does that come from for you guys? Well, if you're, I'm going to speak a little bit for him, but when you grow up, the person that is stifled in the opinion, and then you're around people that are making all the opinions for you, and you get to a point where you're like, you know what? Fuck that shit. You know, you cross that barrier, whatever created that cross. Then when you're like you know what fuck that shit you know you cross that barrier whatever created that

cross then when you're working or training under somebody that doesn't pivot you you're not going to do the same you know because all you saw that whole time was all the pivots you wanted to make but you couldn't make so then when you kind of get out from that then you want to know what those are, like what were those things. So if I'm speaking to a lifter that's coming up, I want to know what they're doing because it's obvious if it's working or not. You can see by looking at them or what their numbers are. So you can't say that's not working. There's there's yes, there are genetic freaks, but they still have to train. I know nobody that gets strong as fuck just eating protein bars and drinking shakes and even taking drugs.

If they don't train, they're not going to lift shit. They're not going to do anything. So there's still even with the outliers, they still have to do something. I want to know what the hell it is, because if it's different, then you can share it to somebody else. So he may be asking you things that he knows the answer to, and you may actually give him the answer that he knows you're going to give, but maybe you give it in a different way because he's going to be asked like myself, thousands of times, the same question. And there's a lot of times you give the answer and you can tell from the person you're giving the answer to it didn't click so you need to know how can you say the same

thing in a different way and you just told him a different way so he's sucking you dry of all your information because it does happen there's a lot of times where you're trying to explain things and you go one two three four times it still isn't clicking and you need you need more ammo like what the hell i need something else because this shit ain't working anymore and especially been doing this for a long time because what you were telling people 15 years ago isn't going to work today it's it's the same thing it's the same answer but it has to be given a little differently or the messenger has to change louis did this right he had other people say you know tell chuck this tell dave this but it has to be given a little differently or the messenger has to change. Louie did this, right? He had other people say, you know, tell Chuck this,

tell Dave this, the wrong messenger, right message. So it's, and he'll tell you straight up that with, he needed AJ for that reason because that, that gap became too big between Louie and the age of the lifters he was working with. He wasn't able to communicate that message. And AJ was able to step in and be able to decipher that message to the people there. And it's kind of a version that's the same thing in a microcosm way. I like to ask a lot of people questions for a lot of reasons. Number one is what you pointed out right there

it's just selfish reasons you know it's like curiosity and then i'm able to maybe articulate something uh to someone in a different way um i always like to learn you know i was kind of uh at a young age i guess you you use you use the word stifled i was kind of stifled into thinking that i couldn't learn stuff and as i got, once I recognized that that really wasn't true, I was like, wow, this is actually great. Like this makes me feel really good to be able to learn. I didn't even know I had this capability. So to have that ability and to know that we all possess it, everyone possesses it. It's something that you could just, you could work on, you could build up some people, or maybe, maybe they can retain more information than someone else but another reason why i do it

is i like to i like to show people that they know a lot more than they think because i think that everyone knows what to do i really do i really do i think that people know what to do i think even before we had communication i think that people even I think people knew what to do and what not to do to each other. I really think they do. I think, you know, they didn't have maybe, they maybe didn't have a Bible to read. Right. I mean, think way back, you know, they didn't have a Bible to read. Maybe, maybe before we even knew how to like talk, you know, or maybe there's some other communication.

But I, I think that people know like it's not right to like just pick up a rock randomly and throw it at someone's head you know i think people know they have a lot of answers and i think that human beings who think about from a survival standpoint i mean we knew that we needed to procreate uh we knew that we needed to eat and you just come up with solutions for that like oh i need to eat so i'm gonna figure out how to catch a fish or i'm gonna figure out how to kill something and trying to kill something your bare hands doesn't work great so you're like i'm gonna figure out i'm gonna try to have a better solution to that so i'm gonna make something sharp and i'm gonna go fucking stab something with it you know but i think that i think it's it's it's in you

already the answers are they're there and i think anybody that's listening to this and they want to know how to squat or bench or deadlift i mean the answers they're they're in you more so than they're in us you're asking the wrong person you should be interviewing yourself you should be asking yourself a lot of these questions how do i how do i fix my lockout on my bench you there's no way that you don't know 10 ways to do that already like it's it's almost impossible especially if you're asking if you're asking something that specific well that means that you know uh the general basis of of everything else that goes into like a bench press or at least some of it and so you should have an idea of like oh yeah i wonder if i just worked that range of

like who's the first person to like do a shortened range of motion bench press. Somebody was like, I get stuck right here. So I'm going to try to like push through right there. Or somebody who figured out like a massage therapy or something like, Oh, my forearm hurts right here. So I'm going to, that spot fucking hurts. I'm going to rub it on a tree or something or rub it with a goddamn rock or something. Right. Yeah. My hard yeah i'm gonna put it into something what was the catalyst because you said that you know like myself for a long time you didn't think that you could learn there was something that was a catalyst to where you realized you could what was that it was you it was me it was you was that me? A lot of it has to do with you. Going to your seminars. You know, my wife got in communication with you somehow.

I forget how. But I think, so I forget how this all worked out. But anyway, we ended up with some tapes, some of your old tapes. I think they're cassette tapes or VHS tapes rather. And I watched a lot of those videos and I started to learn and absorb some of that. But then like for my birthday or something, she got me a seminar to go to Westside Barbell. I went to Westside Barbell, the old place where Louis tried to paint the front window black, but it turned purple because the sunlight would come through.

So you're like, why does this badass place have a purple window in it? And one day was in a classroom, and another day was at Westside Barbell, where he taught us how to squat. He taught us a lot of the methods. And I was confused by even a lot of the Westside stuff, because Louis, his message is great. He has a lot of amazing information, and i don't really think he's that confusing but he says different stuff all the time

but it's because he's getting asked different questions and he probably has different beliefs at different times depending on what year you ask him right yes he might say 35 percent in one article and you know what hour 50 percent and i mean i don't know how many times he said different percentages and stuff so i was like man i can't make any sense of any of this but when you started writing and when i read the periodization bible part one and part two and when i i mean these are like i haven't read a lot of stuff so you got to think periodization bible part one and part two is a lot of reading for me because i i have out of all the pages of stuff i've ever read that probably represents like 80 of anything i've ever read because i have not read a lot of reading for me because I have out of all the pages of stuff I've ever read, that probably represents like 80 percent of anything I've ever read because I have not read a lot of stuff in my life.

So a lot of it has to do with you and a lot of it has to do with going to that seminar where I started like piecing stuff together. And when you started explaining the conjugate system, it was maybe like the matrix, you know, where the guy's like, ah, oh, I get it. And then he wanted to learn jujitsu and he wanted to learn all these other things. And it was like implanted into his brain. Everything made sense to me. Bodybuilding made sense to me. Strong man made sense to me. All the power lifters I've seen in the past, all that stuff made sense to me. It was like it really opened up my eyes i was like holy shit and then from there i became completely obsessed with it probably like yourself like it didn't matter if i was taking a shit or watching tv it didn't matter where i was or what i was doing i was

thinking about a squat or thinking about how to get better on the bench or thinking about how to get better on a deadlift and even just like something is like as funny as getting up off the toilet i didn't do that slowly either. You know, boom. Yeah. You can fucking sit back. Yeah.

Back, back, back, back. Yeah. You sit back. Yeah. You go,

you rehearse it all because you're want to practice it all the time. And so I just can play. It became, you know, Louie Simmons, like obviously he was a huge, like idol of mine, a role model to me, a mentor to me in a lot of ways.

But seeing your stuff made me have a much better idol of mine a role model to me a mentor to me in a lot of ways but seeing your stuff made me have a much better understanding of it all and it made me completely obsessed with it all people wonder why i do this so it's your fucking fault it's not a good thing it's not a bad thing no it's bad no it's not a bad i can't stop thinking about it help thousands of people no no going back to what we talked about amazing you know if you can help somebody else and they go on to help thousands of people does it really matter you know if you how much money you make because there's thousands of other people that are helped because you help one person you don't i didn't i don't fucking know this i didn't know this you know so fuck it don't do this to me. But that's why I do what I do.

That's why I've always done what I do, because it's not what I can do. It's what the people that you help can do. And then there's people that you've helped that are going to go on to do bigger things than you do. And then and on and on and on and on. So that's where my grumpy old man, as we talked about, that's where it comes from, because what the fuck happens to us all if that stops? You know, that's where my grumpy old man as we talked about that's where it comes from because what the fuck happens to us all if that stops you know that's fucked up you know it can't so i i'll keep being grumpy i'll keep pitching i'll keep you know because i don't ever want that to stop because this shit that we do you know that's so stupid this weightlifting stuff that our parents told us what the fuck you doing this for? This stuff, man, it changes people.

It changes their lives. It changes other people's lives. It does crazy things that otherwise wouldn't have happened for people. Maybe you find something else, maybe not. But it isn't. And this is what I know. You know what I'm saying? When it's all you know, you fucking roll with it.

And you figure out how you can roll with it the best way you can. Well, it makes you feel good. And it's really empowering to know that you know what i'm saying when it's all you know you fucking roll with it and you figure out how you can roll with it the best way you can well it makes you feel good and it's really empowering to know that you know something you know somebody asked that's what built up a lot of confidence in me obviously my own lifting and a lot of stuff was huge too um but when somebody would ask me something and i would say something i would like hear myself and i'm like that was actually i think that was actually a pretty good answer i think think I'm actually like picking up some of that. It makes you feel amazing. And then you actually see it work. That blows your mind. Or you say something to somebody and then, you know, four weeks later they come back to you and like, Hey dude, uh, remember I asked you a deadlift question in the gym and you're like, yeah,

like my back doesn't hurt at all anymore. And I'm like, I don't even, remember even what you remind me of what i said yeah you know what the hell did i say you know and that that becomes really empowering then other people ask you stuff and then now you think you're like now you think that you know something which is which can be healthy it can also be it can also be dangerous because you have a lot more to learn you know i that's where you know i think louis was on to something when he's teaching us, you know, not to lift, but to coach. Because then you coach, then you can help other people coach. And then, you know, just it's like a snowball, you know, just keeps building and building and building from there. Do you think people will get it?

Meaning, I've heard Mark say this before. He's like, people aren't going to understand what I've been talking about probably till it's too late. Probably when I'm dead, that's when people are going to understand what I'm saying. So when you're saying, you know, Louie told you to pay it forward. He taught you how to pay it forward by helping, or sorry, the policemen that were helping you out. That's kind of where it started. They helped you, so now you help more people. Do you think what you two are doing, do you think you've done enough to where like the next generation of lifters are going to be able to pay it forward to the following future lifters?

I think if it's a passion of yours, and for me it is, you never do enough. You know, it's never done. You know, it's always going to happen. So even if I went completely out of business, I'm still going to be helping people train. Because there's, like I said, there's so much to this that it's not just about what you do in the gym. You know, all that stuff, most of it, not all of it, but a very large percent of it carries over into relationships, business and everything else. The only part that doesn't carry over is the ego. You need a giant ego if you're going to lift big weights. If you're going to be on the top of the heap of any sport, bodybuilding, whatever it is, you need a super ego.

Everybody, you need to be selfish as fuck and you need a super ego. So that kind of comes with the terror i'm not giving people permission to do that i'm just stating a fact that i know from that that does not jive well in business and relationships and other shit and that's where i've all i've been very vocal about my biggest regret through all this is how i treated my wife while i was still competing without a doubt. 100%. The only regret I have, that's it. No other regrets. That's it. And it was fucked up and it was wrong. I can't change it. I'll spend the rest of my life trying to make that back and make that better. Um, that aspect is never going to carry over well to it's just not it's not.

And if those people can't. There are a lot of people that were great, great athletes in different disciplines, and they still have the giant ego, but they're not the ones that are holding the meetings of their companies and they're not the CEOs. They're more figurehead that people know this is an arrogant fuck. This is the way it is. And it's OK. your head that people know this is an arrogant fuck this is the way it is and it's it's okay but all those other attributes that you learn in the gym they carry over to everything so even if they're not a great lifter there's still the discipline there's the consistency there's you know kind of you know behind all the extremeness there is a healthy lifestyle you know under that like down here at this layer where all this layer is really unhealthy but down here there's a foundation

for that gpp conditioning looking at what you're eating all that stuff it's all there it's just you know pointed out later is a little hard. You know what? I have a question about that. The ego thing that you just mentioned. And obviously you have decades of seeing these top level athletes kill these massive weights and you've noticed a trend of them having a big ego. But do you think of these individuals are aware of that danger? You know, if they're aware of, you don't think it's possible to not have a big ego and still be able to attack those things i think if it's a big enough ego they're not going to be aware because the self-awareness is not going to

come with a big ego it's just the way it is and if they are aware that they don't have the ego it's not it's not there you know because trust me the people that i'm talking about they they don't know they might but they don't give a fuck about it they'll deal with the consequences later right now there's a fucking meeting six months you know or you know it's what it is you you can get stuck in it you know if there's a problem with it i don't think the problem is it i think the problem is you get stuck in it so then when you really are it's like the stages of denial or stages of death you know you have there's there's this whole fucked up phase where you're really done but you don't know you're done but you still think you're

going to keep going but with that you know aside from the you know the competitive and all that stuff your mind is still the person that started doing that so to all those people around you you're still the same fuck that they've been dealing with for five or six years and they're like when's this going to be over like this is what jl described to us today jl holdsworth was describing this today he he he had an ego and he didn't know any other way to to deal with stuff other than like punch people in the face yeah his was huge huge and you you if you're training with it and you're working with it you have you embrace it yeah it's like an innocence that you don't want to see somebody fuck up because you that's required now you don't want to see him do shit like punch people in the face and only because you if they break their hand they can't bench you know you you gotta this is how you got to

explain it to these people you know if if you go out and get you know in a fight and you get in jail and squat on friday and you miss the squat work then the fuck i ain't going out if i'm gonna miss the squat work i'll go out on friday night after i squat. So it's those, those are the consequences. The real consequences aren't what a normal person is going to see. The real consequences are you're going to fuck up your squat workout. You only got eight of them left before the meet. It's like, Oh shit, I can't do that. So yeah, but he is, he was one that, and I've known Jay, he's been a really good friend of mine for a long time. He's one that it took a long time for him to shed that. And it had to happen in layers over a period of time.

And there had to be a little self-awareness and then acceptance of it. That's a big part, too. Because with that, there's a lot of things that you're going to regret. I have one giant one. The other ones I've just come to terms with. Fuck it. I'm fine with it. But you've got to deal with those.

You've got to accept them. If you can't accept them, you're going to fight them you know and it's he's come a long way jail's come a really long way you know it's impressive yeah he's come a long way from when he was crazy fuck man he was crazy crazy fuck is it harder to help other people or is it harder to help your own family my own family because you're you're too connected i think that's important for people to understand like you know you kind of hear all the heroes you know are the people that are like you know in their community or the people that are like with their family and it's but it's true because it's fucking hard you know what the other thing is you can bullshit other people to be able to get the end result you want yeah you can't bullshit your family they you can't hide they know you too well you can't outsource your relationship with your kids

and stuff like that i mean you have to be there you gotta there's a lot of time investment there's a lot of stuff right yeah none of your tricks work you know and it is it's it's a big event the way that i've dealt with to me it's i've never been a person that is I don't believe and this is just me I don't believe in quality time at all it's it's quantity I don't I personally I can't live with that personally I just can't that to me that would be something that I would be using as an excuse to to not be there. So I would rather just, I want to be there.

So if it's, if the kids are on the computer or whatever it is, and I'm there for five hours and we're in the same room, but we don't talk, I'm there. And my oldest is autistic. So he's not going to talk all the time, but when he does,

you know, he'll sit down and talk for 45 minutes. Now, if I'm not, it may take 20 hours to get that 45 minutes. I don't get that 45 minutes if I don't invest those 20 hours. So that's validation alone for me on that. You know, I have to be there for that.

And if not, shit, that 45 minutes, if it was all quantity time, I may never see it in a year and so forth and i know where other people are coming from because they don't have a choice you know i have a choice i made that choice when i founded the company to be when i'm kids get off the bus i'm there you know i can work from wherever i want and it's created a situation where the company's grown way slower than it probably could otherwise. But that's not why I did this. I did this so I could have time with my if we go back to what I said, I was a personal trainer and didn't know how I was going to see my kids.

So everything in line with success and how I'm going to define it, I've achieved it because they're almost 18 where I'm going to kick them out of the house because they're driving me fucking nuts. But I was there all the time so they can never say I was never there I can never regret that I was never there and that to me that was important enough to change my entire life to be able to do what has the gym taught both of you about being a parent man uh i would have to say the key for me is is patience you know because it just takes it takes a really it takes a really really long time i mean if you want to be good at anything it takes a long time um but weights are something that really can't be rushed you know

you might have a certain talent you know to be able to pick up a certain weight when you start out, but still the progress and the progression is still going to take time. And if you want to be good at it, it might take a little bit of time before it'd be great at it. It's going to take a very long time. And I think the same is true with parenting. You just, you need a lot of reps. You need a lot of sets. You need to, you need, you know, I remember thinking that, uh uh don't cry over spilled milk is the dumbest fucking saying i've ever heard in my life because whoever said that that asshole that said that never had any kids because spilled milk is fucking disgusting if they spill milk in the back of your car it smells like fucking you smell like death right it's way worse than

the smell of a shaker cup like it is so disgusting and it like curdles and it gets stuck in like the carpet and stuff it is just the most disgusting thing so trying to have patience with these little things that it might not seem like that oh big deal your car stinks a little bit or something but your car like it smells forever you can't get rid of the smell um and it's just like these little things, they add up, right? The kids, they constantly need attention or something's constantly happening. Or if you had both kids, if you ever had both kids sick at the same time or something like that, it takes a tremendous amount of patience.

You're not sleeping for a few days. Both of them are coughing or both of them are puking or maybe they're puking and they have diarrhea and so do you and so does your wife like it's just a disaster like there's this crazy shit going on but you can learn to deal with it i think through lifting through trying to do everything the right way trying to do everything as uh to the best of your knowledge you're trying to put everything together in your training and it's still going to shit. It's still, you're,

you still hurt your back. You know, you got to the gym, you warmed up, you did all these things and you did your first set with two 25. And for some reason your back went out some weird way and now you don't know what the hell to do. So I think patience is the biggest thing for me.

I was going to say patience as well because the, your, your kids are almost there a couple more years they're gonna start testing you and teenagers are this whole parent yeah i got a 12 and 16 yeah yeah this parenting thing is a raw deal right because everybody's yeah you gotta have a fucking hey somebody should have told me it's forever yeah it's yeah it's a it's a it's actually kind of a crock of shit because you have it you have one you're like what the fuck did i do you can't sleep it's whining and crying all the time you gotta feed

the little fucker it can't do anything on its own and then it gets older and it's worse then you get a little reprieve like seven eight like oh cute little kids they do this do that then they start fucking talking more and talking back saying no and then they become a teenager and it's way fucking worse because now they don't listen. They lie. They steal. They do all kinds of shit that you did. It's going to be worse. So when's this good? You know what I'm saying? The little fucker doesn't shovel the driveway or mow the lawn. Like, when do I get my money back? It's like fucked up. But anyhow, jokes aside, the patience is fucking huge because you end up in some really weird situations that I don't hear a lot of parents talking about. But, you know, your kids start showing disrespect and you got to. How do you teach respect?

You know, you got to throw them against the wall, punch them in the face. You know what? You can't do that. So what are you going to do? So where's that line? Where's that line going to be for you? And when you've had to cross that line in different ways, you can't get strong. You throw your back out with 225.

You're pissed off because you didn't make a max effort lift or you missed it and you're mad for a fucking week and all this stuff. you missed it and you're mad for a fucking week and all this stuff, you're able to kind of step back and reassess the same way you would with lack of progress in the gym, where even if you're dieting and you're trying to get leaner and all of a sudden, boom, what the fuck happened? You put on three pounds of water out of nowhere and you're,

you're what the fuck? You're mad. In those situations, you learn to step back, reassess what's going on. What's what, what, what is really happening

like did i did you with the two pounds of water retention did you really gain three pounds no and you in the moment though yeah it's like fucked up you want to take a diuretic you want to do all this crazy shit go do nine hours of cardio you're figuring the calories up like fuck three pounds how many calories is it gonna take to burn that off like 9 000 calories how many minutes on this bike is that two days fuck it i'm doing it you know but you step back like what is this why this happened is it cortisol am i stressed and then you're like oh it's that and then you can fix it you see what i'm saying where because of that experience of stepping back assessing and then kind of finding the solution in multiple solutions the same thing kids pissing

you off it's like man i want to slap this whole fuck across the step back what what's really happening here like why why is this situation why did it happen this is the outcome what was the cause and then look same thing right with the training what is the actual cause and not the outcome you can address the outcome with a band-aid with a diuretic slapping a kid in the face you know whatever you can address but you're still not going to fix the cause and that you learn through training i think uh you know everybody always needs time you know like think about when you're mad or upset i think everybody always needs time i don't think kids are any different so like what we've done in my house is we we try to we're like hey let's just let's just

talk about it later you know what i mean like yeah kid storms off and he says f you or something like i haven't really had anything that crazy but i've had them you know talk back and say no and be completely disrespectful of course everyone every parent i think has dealt with that uh to some extent but i think you actually want that. Like, I want my kids to be heard. I want them to be able to think they can voice their opinion. What I don't want them to do is to try to, like, take, like, a cheap shot. I don't want them to say anything too derogatory. I don't want them to say something under their breath.

Like, no, no, what did you say? Like, let's have a conversation. I want to know, like, let's sit down and let's communicate about this. Like, don't go turn the other way mumbling about something, you know, about taking out the garbage or whatever it might be. So we've always tried to say, Hey, look, let's, because if you can talk about it later, you can probably have, you can probably be more level headed. So you can say, all right, you know, and then I can go to my son and I can say, Jake, you

know, have, have have i have you seen me treat you this way before like have i if i have then that's not a great way to handle things like you know you just kind of yelled at me and you were very disrespectful do are you learning that from me like are you seeing me doing like am i having that communication with anybody else do i treat my friends friends, my employees, my, my family, you know, our family members, you see me, you know, because I don't believe that that's a good way to live. I don't believe that's a good way to do things. And he wouldn't be able to, I mean, he could maybe reference the time I threw something or something like that and was pissed

at something, but I mean, it's really extremely rare for me. So, you know, trying to lead by example and trying to say, Hey, like, where's this coming from? How can I help? Uh, the other thing that I've done at, which I think helps a lot and no one knows how to fucking parent by the way. Now I'm not saying I do. These are things that have helped me. Um, the other one is to, you know, just go to them and say, Hey, uh, you got my attention. You know, what, what do you need? How, how, how do I, how do I help you? Cause a lot of times that's all they're looking for. Something's fucking bugging them.

Could be something at school. It could be something that you're doing. You could not be around enough. You could, they don't like that you don't knock on their door. It could be, look, it could be a million things. Kids have a lot of shit to think about. Obviously, you don't know. You know, if you don't know, you got to find out.

So if you don't know, they got to so if you don't know you they gotta tell you somehow how do you uh oh good well i was actually wondering about this because um we've talked a lot about this in the past before uh i've gotten messages from the guys like 18 19 20 or whatever right and they just started training and i feel like i'm lucky that i was able to start training at 12 or 13 because when I got into powerlifting at a base and when I was young, I was naive. So I would just train and I would get stronger over time. I didn't think about the time it was taking me. I didn't realize, oh, I've already been doing this for a while. You start at 12, you start at 13. And I feel like we're lucky in that sense

because when I talk to a lot of people in their twenties and their thirties that are starting this training thing, they, they find that having that patience is difficult. They're not okay with making those small gains over time. They, they're, they're getting, I mean, I understand it's normal to get frustrated with training, totally normal, but it's like, they're not willing to just continue to put in that time and let the progress happen. So what would your advice be to those people who are aware of their lack of, of progress or they're aware that like there's a guy that's 22 and I'm 32, but he's so much farther than me. How do you, what, what, what advice do you have for them?

Um, a couple, there's a couple of things. I think that everybody should kind of screw around for a while. They should experiment and figure out what's going to work for them, what's not. I think there's not enough of that anymore. I think there's too many answers that people need to go in and kind of fuck around and figure out what works, what doesn't work. With training, though, there's beginner gains. It messes with a lot of people because they start doing things they're making really fast progress for four or six months and they don't understand why

it doesn't keep happening you know and that's where the frustration comes because after six months they're like you know what i should be mentioned 2 000 pounds in five years because if you look at the rate that they were gaining why would they not you know hell if they just put on 20 a year for you know 50 a year for 10 years think about that it's huge and so with with that aside what what i will ask the the younger kids like you're talking about is if i will ask them if they have a ged or a high school degree. And almost every, in all cases almost, they're going to say, yeah, how long did that take you? Did you think about that when you were in third grade?

Or did you just kind of always know that you were going to finish high school? How much, they don't put a lot of thought into it. And now that they're through it, think back, was that really that long? And like, man, that was, and if they're like, well, back was that really that long and like man that was a well and if they like well yeah i was a long time what about high school when you went into high school did those years go fast like yeah it flew by like or you could ask them depending upon the time of the year you know do you remember what do you remember last christmas say it's 11 months ago. Yeah, like yesterday. That was 11 months ago. There's always something that you can reference 11 months or two years ago that's going to be fresh in somebody's mind like it was yesterday.

It's not that long ago. Really, it's a blink in time if you think about it. The longer you're alive, you start the, how small a year really is. It's not that long. Two years, three years is not that long. If somebody starts training and they can in four years, if they have any kind of genetic substance for this in four years, they can be fucking jacked. You know, if they're consistent, you know, eat well, you know, do the right things most of the time. Four years is forever.

Look at some of the people that you've known. Now, other people in four years, it's hard. You know, it's just bad luck of the draw. But it's still four years is a long time. You know, invest that time. Because that's the key i think is you got to find something to reference them back and they're like oh okay that's not that long they're still gonna be frustrated i mean we i still get frustrated i'm losing shit every year

it's like fuck how do i get back but everybody nobody's gonna progress have you ever heard somebody say i gain too fast you know it's the only time i've ever heard somebody say, I gain too fast? The only time I've ever heard a statement like that is a top lifter getting ready for a meet saying, look, I'm a little ahead of schedule. I need to back off. Because they can see it's unrealistic that they're going to hit 125-pound PR. They might peak early. They don't want to peak.

They don't want to get hurt. So they're going to back off. That's the only time I've ever heard. Nobody's ever told me my arms were getting too big. It just doesn't happen. You mentioned earlier having an autistic child. I don't really know what that means. I, you know, we have a kid in our gym that, that comes in from time to time. I, I've heard the term obviously a lot, but I, I also recognize that there's a wide variety

of people that are autistic. What does your son have and how do you guys deal with it? His diagnosis would be Asperger's. So autism is a huge spectrum. The spectrum is actually not even a really good term to kind of define it anymore. But people can fall all over the place on there. So it could be high functioning and high functioning and low behavior. So the intelligence can be higher than social behaviors.

Some could be not audible. You know, they won't speak, but they can still process it. The statement is once you've met one autistic child, you met one autistic child. They're all kind of different. So Blaine is Asperger. So behavioral wise, he's probably if I was to define it as simply as I could. Behavior wise, he's probably if he's 17, he's probably like a 12 year old behavior wise. And maybe it depends on the circumstance but that's easy and intelligence or book smart wise he could probably graduate high school now so he

has no issues with school but he can't go to the public school because the triggers pencils in a classroom, people talking stuff is too much. So he's at a school that's for autism and the teachers are great and they still learn all the material actually at a higher level because he's higher functioning than what he would learn in the public system and at his pace. So if he was in the public system where I'm from here, he would be putting a special ed class and be learning at the slowest person in the class's pace where now he's learning at the pace of what he can do. So as he's gotten older, what are some of the things he, I don't know if he will or will not be able to drive.

So that's a bridge that we're kind of crossing now with simulators and stuff like that you have a temper coordination no that's that's fine it's we address that really soon on with training and stuff like that so it's still not he's not a pro athlete coordination but he's big you know that my fear is for him it's, it's anger management. And he's 5'11", 240 right now. And he's probably carrying 20 more than what he should. But if that's not bringed under control, he can be 270 before he finishes high school. And he's strong like a bull. So he gets pissed and hauls off and punches a teacher

it's doing damage now where before it wasn't that big you know it's still a big deal but it was it's now he graduates and does that the police are coming so this this is where the issues start coming in as they get older and so the every year is a little different to be able to figure it out so what the profession will be what he'll do i don't know he's smart enough he can do whatever he wants to do but all he wants to do now is play video games and watch youtube so you know that's like every other kid exactly yeah it's not it's not that abnormal and he'll find he'll find. And he'll find, he'll find his way. He'll find his path. And, but he gets frustrated with, um, with other people, social situations, stuff like that. So it's working on that in school helps with that.

He can, he can cook for himself. It's, he should not have any problem being independent. Now our, our, our, our willingness to let him be independent. It's another conversation, which that, you know, my wife and I will have to figure out. Why does he get mad? He can't like interpret it the right way or he gets frustrated, can't communicate properly.

I think what happens is he gets mad the same way any of us would get mad where a lot of times you'll get mad many times throughout the day. You just, whatever, you know, you get mad, let's fucking catch yourself and you just kind of come. Yeah. He'll get mad. you'll get mad many times throughout the day you just whatever you know you get mad let's fucking you know just catch yourself and you just kind of come yeah he'll get mad he'll get pissed and then he can't let it go all right and then a little longer will go by and he gets even more mad now he's mad because he can't let it go i get mad yeah i get mad because i get mad i'm like fuck why am i mad i shouldn't be mad that starts this this whirlwind where now he's mad like you said he's mad because he's mad but he doesn't even remember why he's mad so now he's

mad about that and now he's mad because why why do i get mad about why do i now it's less why do i have this happen why is this why and he's now he's mad because of that. Then he's mad because he can't control it. And it's just this spiral that you got to find a way to stop, you know, and when he was younger, it could be compressions or there were things that we could do sensory things that we could do and they don't work like they used to, but it's so much more rare where before it was like multiple times a day, dozens of times a day. Now it's once every six months. But that he graduates, he gets in a workforce that once every two years is somebody calling, you know, security or police because the kid just threw a desk through the office. So it's that's that's where it is with that.

So he's he's come a long way how do you get enough attention to your other child does it uh sometimes divert your attention because i'd imagine you know with him being autistic it must be when they were younger i think it did yeah i think it did now it's not because you know it's they they hate each other well no my my my autism my blaine does not like his brother at all and it's not a brother thing he just does not i don't know if that will ever happen he just can't i i and i can't tell because i i do think with him there is a little there's either um what's the word i'm looking for um like animosity or something no when when you empathy where i don't know if he doesn't have empathy for him or if it's so much he doesn't know how to

display it so with that's one of the things with a lot of kids on the spectrum is you know a lot of people pigeon toe and handcuff and say they don't have any empathy and other ones will say to that too it's kind of hard to figure out and it's my own kid i still can't really figure out with that but that now it's not bad because they just kind of leave each other alone but my my youngest only year younger will still do shit just to piss his brother off. Is it hard to figure out whether your son is acting a certain way because he's autistic or whether he's acting a certain way because he's just being an asshole kid?

It is now. Now it is because he's older. Yeah. So now it is. So it's like, oops. Every once in a while, your kid's an asshole. Yes. Like everyone's kid's an asshole.

Yeah, my younger one, I know. I mean, the younger one, I know. It's like, dude, you're not on this bed. This don't you ain't got an excuse yeah there's no fucking excuse with this right um so yeah that is that is a concern that's it's what is going on and but it's kids are different you know they're they're completely different and so what i may see is disrespect from one and when i say disrespect i'm speaking more about how they will speak to my wife and how they talk to their mom. You know, that that's where my threshold, I don't do well with that. You know, that that doesn't fly.

So what may be seen as disrespect to one isn't to the other. And that's where, you know, it's kind of filtering it out to because they're not the same to kind of go from that but in a social setting and when he comes in the gym with the people that are here he's known some of these people his whole life because he's coming in the gym when he was in a little you know carry-on stroller whatever they call those things so he's cool with everybody here he likes everybody here he'll joke around with them. Sheena's been training him for God knows how long, eight years or whatever it is. He's fine with all that.

So he'll like doing that, but he still would rather just stay home. Even though he likes the people, he still just rather stay home. I think he gets some of that from me. But where my other one is like my wife, he wants to go do shit all the time, go everywhere. Like, fine, take Tracy and go do shit all the time, go everywhere. Like, fun, take your,

take tracing though. I just stay here with Blaine. He'll play his video games and I'll fucking work, read or whatever I'm going to do. I know with a bodybuilding, you got some consulting, you know, with your diet,

you got consulting with how you train. And I would imagine with your business, you must've had a lot of consulting over the years. Did you have someone consult your, you and have had a lot of consulting over the years. Did you have someone consult you and your wife about how to deal with autism? Yeah. The first years were really, really hard because when he was a baby, there were problems.

Every baby cries and has a fit. Not everyone does it for eight hours a day or for an hour and a half at a stretch so you go let's say you take the kid to dinner something like that starts crying and it doesn't stop and you realize shit i'm that person you know that you use now i have no problem when kids are crying and uh it's like it's white noise to you i feel sorry for you i get it man and um that getting the diagnosis was really hard. It was, it was way hard for me, way harder for me than for my wife, because I did not, I was labeled,

you know, dyslexic learning to say I was in special ed classes. I, oh my God, I fought that shit so fucking hard because I know what i know that road i know real well and i didn't like it i didn't like it at all and this was like death to me like you're gonna send my kid down this fucking road i know i still i can't vocalize you know how fucked up that was and at the same time i'm thinking to myself that because he is he's adopted but aside from that i'm thinking to myself that you know god brought this kid to me because i navigated that road i know that road i can help him with this and but things changed a lot this and but things changed a lot since i was a kid so i mean back when i was a kid it was learning disabled that was ld that was it now there's like a billion different diagnoses that was it

and then dyslexia came it's like every every new one that came out i got like you know you're add and like it fucking didn't exist before now i'm something that didn't exist you know so by the time i finished high school i was like 12 fucking things i started out with one and so i i fought that because i i knew the classes i knew all and it was hard and what it took was other parents that had kids on the spectrum explaining to me that there's all these services that are available you know ieps individual education programs through schools and everything else that you get you don't get at all unless you have a diagnosis i'm like fuck i can't i there's no way he's going to be able to sit in the classroom, but I can't put him in a different classroom unless he has an IEP.

I can't get him all these services that can help him unless I have this IEP, but I need a diagnosis for this IEP. And this is, I had to let go of the past. You know what? My, my experience, my experience is not my kid's experience.

And that was a hard, hard, hard thing to accept. And I can tell you stories about meetings with teachers and schools. And I'm sitting there and so-and-so's not here. Well, what fucking classroom are they in? 113, sit here. I'll be back.

And going and getting the teacher and bringing them down. Tell me your story. And just crazy shit that's when when we got him where he is now then there's their services and there's other parents to speak to and then some consulting in a way but just i think it's more of speaking to people that are dealing with the same things because you start to pick up that this is going to sound bad but you start to pick up these parents don't fucking care they're just they're they're delegating you know their kid just getting rid of them you know to somebody else like here's take care of my problem that does sound bad but it's also very understandable like i i don't understand because I was never in that situation,

but I could imagine just being at the end of your rope, like not knowing how to help your child would be, I mean, all you're trying to do as a dad is to protect your child. And if they were to cry all the time, or if it was something you had to deal with all the time, it'd be understandable. We, we met with, we had somebody on our podcast that actually trained people that had down syndrome and autism and that was really really cool to see how he took them through like physical training step ups and box jumps and all different kinds of movements and squats and deadlifts and it was it was uh absolutely amazing to see he was the way he was able to interact with those kids, but those kids were being dropped off, you know,

for a reason. Like it wasn't that the parent, you know, research that lifting weights could help with coordination, help with a lot of things. They were just break. Yeah. It's their hour and a half or hour break.

Yeah. So it's, so those, I was just kind of like, you know, it's nice to meet you. Yeah. And then you find the ones that really,

I don't want to say give a shit because i'm sure the other ones do they're just carrying in a different way where you talk to the other ones like wait what do you do what you do and the the biggest thing for me was and i don't know if it's just location demographics and so forth is i would go to these things when he was younger that were group activities pumpkin patch shit like that where all the dads it's me and like all the moms yeah i always saw that too yeah like this dad left this dad they're divorced divorced divorced divorce like what the fuck you know these kids what the fuck this how's this as a single mom dealing with this this is a big chunk it's easier

now that he's older because he's more independent but when they're younger it's like man what the it's crazy and the training thing to fall back on that is when my sheena who's our uh editor managing editor here she's been with us for eight years or whatever it was her background was in training kids with autism. So I used to bring Blaine to the gym and just, I tried, you know, to work just basic stuff and it just wasn't working. And she wrote a little note one day, cause she was out there training and say, hi, my name is Sheena. And they were passing this note back and they built this little relationship and he started working with her and she documented all this stuff on our site. And what I started to realize is everything that we know about training we start at a basic level say a box jump or whatever it is

in a push-up and we have progressions well there's regressions i'm like what the fuck what is a re it's like under what you're able to do like he can't he can't do a box jump or he can't even squat so we're just going to start with jumping over a line and jumping over the lines dropping the hips you know a little bit and then you know shit i never would have thought of that like what the hell you know it's getting them ready for something that's going to happen two years away which i know that you know i get this two-year program i get that but it was so weird and um the the interesting thing was i love this i love to squat and it's like my shit you know it's like i will do that until the day i lie even i'll be the old fucking guy that can't move and put a safety squat

bar with a dime on each side i'm gonna i'm gonna die trying to with a dime on each side. I'm going to die trying to squat a dime on each side. But anyhow, I fucking love, there's just something about standing up with shit you can't, that's on your, it's a different feeling. There's nothing compared to that. Blaine wouldn't squat.

Anytime I'd have him squat, he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't even do a free squat. I'm like, what the fuck? You can't have a kid that's not squatting yeah he was just driving not in this family this is the greatest thing in the world like how in the hell is this not possible and it took like five years to realize that he associated that with pain and straining because he grew up in a gym with bloody noses and purple faces and giant heads and shit popping all over the place you know pimples popping and people coming up and you know the strain of the face with the shit that we're like yeah look at that you know he's

like oh shit no i don't want to do that that's dangerous shit and so it was figuring that and i'm like oh fuck i see that now or maybe it's not cool somebody doesn't know what's going on and um so he's fine he's fine with he still doesn't like squat but he's fine with you know doing the stuff that he does now and it's a crazy bridge because you have a kid you're a parent as well and you want them to train you know what this can do for the rest of their life and you don't you can fuck up everything else but you don't want to fuck that one up like i don't it's like i don't want to fuck that one up because it's so important in my head and so i can't force it because i'll break it yeah you're trying to naturally let it happen but at the same time

you're like come on let's go exactly and so with him it's like this once a week thing it's been a once a week thing for a long time i'm like let's get more in my in my youngest you know just started training i don't know if it's gonna last i'm not pushing it because i don't want to fuck it up you know i'm really good at fucking things up so i don't want to fuck this up because of that but at the same time i want them to i don't have to compete i don't have to do that but i want them to to embrace it and see it for what it really is but the hardest person you asked before about you know other people in your family the hardest people for me to train in my own fucking family and it's what the hell what kind of coach am i if i can't you know what i'm saying it makes you doubt everything you know and you think you know a lot like god yeah people come

up to you and like you changed my life and you're like you're like i'm trying to impact the people at home but i know it's like i can't even get my own kid to show up to train like what the fuck am i doing wrong so it's it's crazy it's crazy thank you so much for sharing all that uh no it's probably not it's probably not easy but i think it's important to talk about you know i i freely talk about the autism and and blaine and it probably more than i should you know the tons of we did a little documentary type thing you know the tons we did a little documentary type thing you know with him and i think that people need to see it they they need to be aware you know i it's kind of a i get autism aware and i get the awareness thing but to me it's just kind of a dumb word yeah i think other people need to to understand and even people that have kids on the spectrum,

again, this is going to sound a little rough, they need to quit using that as an excuse. You know, and people get pissed when I say this, but if I have Blaine, and an example I have is a few years ago, we were at a pool on our vacation, he was making a lot of noise, and somebody told me, you can't get your kid to shut up. And I said, no. You know, he got pissed and he left. I'm like, I'm not going to tell my kid, tell that person in front of my kid, I'm sorry he's autistic.

I'm not going to allow my kid to use that as an excuse or be an acceptable excuse. I'm not. And if that means somebody is going to get pissed because he was too loud in the pool, which he was. And I did tell him after the dude left, look, calm it down a little bit. I'm not going to give some fucking guy I don't know. We'll never see again the rest of my life. Any validation or power over anything that my son's going to be imprinted in his head or in an elevator. If the kid presses all the buttons you know i'll say i

apologize i'm not going to say i'm sorry he's autistic i'm not going to do that you know he can do that if he chooses when he's older but i'm not so i think other parents need to kind of think about the message that they're sending to their to their kids in that situation well and then even further on that same thing, be really careful about what you think they can and can't do. Yes. And don't share your cards on that one because they might, if they have some disabilities,

they might have even more or they might not be able to overcome them. If you're kind of shoving that on, then, oh, I'm sorry, you know, he can't do that. He can't, he keeps hearing that, right on then oh i'm sorry you know he can't do that he can't he keeps hearing that right that's the thing you know and that's where when i said i i walk this path i know this path i know how to navigate this path i know the negativity of this path you know i know what it feels like to be told you're stupid you can't do this you can't do that i'm not gonna let that happen i'm not

gonna let that no way no way at all there is a way you know there's always a way maybe for yourself maybe you can't read well you can listen you can listen to audiobooks you can watch videos there's there's so many ways now that weren't there 20 years ago. They're there. So what? You don't like to read. Big fucking deal. Listen. Find other ways to learn.

That's no excuse to not learn. Everybody can learn. So that's, no, I'm not going to let that shit fly. Awesome, man. Thanks again. Andrew, where can people find you uh well first off thank you for allowing us to you know use your guys's equipment and all this good stuff and have us like a like a multi-cast right so thank you so much really appreciate that um if anybody wants to get in

touch with me it's at i am andrew z and actually i think zach right that the name yeah he reached out like maybe about a year ago or so. He had been following the podcast and he was just like, hey, I got an internship over there. I had Elite FTS. And like, you know, he wanted some advice. And so when we were talking about paying it forward, I got lucky because, you know, Mark gave it. He gave me a chance to help out with the podcast. And so he's like, you know, yeah, I got this internship.

And I'm like, well, Dave Tate's kind of a hard ass. So just don't make any excuses. Like the second you make an excuse for something, it's over. Like, so, you know, just stick with it. Yeah. It was pretty good. Yeah. So, um, but so again, thank you. But yeah, my Instagram is at I'm Andrew Z, but please make sure you guys are following the podcast at Mark Bell's power project podcast, um, at MB power project on Tik TO TikTok and Twitter. We're all over the damn place. And Seema Iyeng, where are you at? I'm at Seema Iyeng on Instagram and YouTube.

I'm at Seema Yin Yang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark? I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Thanks again. Really appreciate it. Thank you guys for coming out. Poopcast, what up? There's nothing like the good old days, huh?

Thank you again, Dave Tate and the crew for allowing us to be on Table Talk and for letting us use it on our feed really quick thank you again everybody that's been rating and reviewing the podcast it does a ton for us we want to give a shout out to Ryan1406 underscore MT Ryan says gateway drug quote Mark Bell and his crew have been the, quote, gateway drug for me to approach fitness and life in a new way. I have always lifted and have been a gym rat, but since following alongside the Power Project, I have found a level of focus I've never had while in

the gym, at work, in the mountains, you name it. Bonus plug, the carnivore diet has almost eliminated my chronic gas and constipation i actually feel closer to normal now keep doing what you're doing mark and crew and coach the people thanks again ryan uh well first off i'm glad the uh the gas and the constipation is a lot better now uh but second thank you so much for leaving that rating and review and being so open uh sharing that with us uh it's really cool to hear that word of the quote gateway drug for you to kind of look at life a little bit different. Sincerely appreciate the time that you took to write that review.

If you listening right now, if you would like to hear your name read on air, please head over to iTunes right now, drop us rating and a review, and you could hear your name on air just like our boy Ryan1406 underscore MT. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace.