Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 351 - Stan Efferding

Episode Date: March 24, 2020

Stan "The Rhino" Efferding, the world's strongest bodybuilder in the world, inventor of The Kooler and founder of The "Vertical Diet". He earned his IFBB Pro card and is one of the only people in the world to skwaat 800, pull 800 and bench over 600 lbs in one meet. From bodybuilding and powerlifting, he’s done all kinds of diets, and has found that eating Vertical is the way to go. He now helps athletes of all backgrounds perform better in their sport through the Vertical Diet. Hit up Stan on IG: https://www.instagram.com/stanefferding/?hl=en 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's going down? Today we have an awesome episode for you from the one and only Stan the Rhino Efforting, Mr. Vertical Diet himself. Stan was hanging out at the Arnold supporting some of his athletes, such as Larry Wheels, who claimed another world record, and Hafthor Bjornsson,

who claimed another Arnold Strongman title. So when Stan speaks, we listen because he has the track record to prove that he knows what the heck he's talking about when it comes to diet and nutrition. We, of course, got into the vertical diet and some of the new things that he's focusing on, such as libido and fertility for men, which is pretty cool to hear him speaking about that. We also got into his new revamped app that's going to help a lot of athletes stay on track, help them improve. And I selfishly asked him what the heck I can do with my diet. This episode is brought to you by Piedmontese Beef,

the absolute best beef on the planet. And every time we listen to Stan, you just instantly want to start eating more steak. The absolute best way to do that is with certified Piedmontese Beef. 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. Check out the show notes and the YouTube description for links to Stan Efforting's social media. Hit them up. Maybe if you have some more questions that we didn't get to, or if you want to just give them a shout out and thank you for being on the show, please do so. And for now, please enjoy this conversation with the one and only Stan,

the Rhino efforting Rhino. Are you slowing down at all? You know, you don't think so. It doesn't feel like it. Well, you keep getting older, right?

I know. It's reflected in my squat. When you're squatting. So I measure my age. I think I saw you squatting. What? Six, 600 or something close to that. Yeah. It still feels good. And you moved it around for a few reps the other day. Yeah. I measure my age. I think I saw you squat in, what, 600 or 600 plates? Something close to that.

Yeah, it still feels good. And you moved it around for a few reps the other day? Yeah. I don't have a goal in mind. I'm just trying to do what I enjoy, and I enjoy doing it, and it doesn't hurt. Ever since I started using Mark Ripito's form, I can't squat as much as I used to using my... What's the difference in form from what he has going on? Well, when you and I got together...

Starting strength. You kind of noticed that we played around with a bunch of different foot stances. And then obviously that wider foot stance worked for me because I had more glutes and stronger in the hips. Ripitose, you know, even though it incorporates a lot of glutes, it's still a lot of quad in that movement. But it just allows me to go pain-free. I think that in powerlifting, you're working with leverages. And you're just trying to figure out how to move the weight. And I ended up kind of acquiring over time some aches and pains in my hips and knees.

Yeah, your hip was pretty bad for a little while. It was pretty bad. You thought you were done, actually. Yeah. And you could tell from the form that I use that I'm putting a lot of load on those hips. hips and knees. Yeah, your hip was pretty bad for a little while. It was pretty bad. You thought you were done, actually. Yeah. You could tell from the form that I used that I'm putting a lot of load on those hips. And it served its purpose, but long-term, it wasn't going to do me well for longevity. So I'm fortunate that I just was patient. I kind of, with the hip injury and the knees, I kind of started getting frustrated.

I didn't want to go in and squat at all. And it's something that I've enjoyed doing for over 30 years. I've got a torn rotator cuff, so I can't bench very heavy anymore without, you know, paying the price. And, you know, that was always one of the things I really enjoyed too. So, you know, last year I went to a rip-a a ripito seminar after watching a bunch of his videos and playing around with it and uh ever since then i've been doing that technique and i have no pain which is fantastic mark ripito has a genius way of teaching squat and i think that it's misunderstood i think a lot of people think um i think a lot of people think that he's he's he only knows one way to squat but like what i got out of it because i've never been to a seminar of his but what i got from some videos of his is that he's teaching you like

the easiest way to squat and it's a way that anyone can learn how to squat because i think ideally you might want to be more upright in a squat you know you might want to have the bar a little higher you might want to be able but most people you know as you know you go around and try to help people it's very difficult for people to be able to break parallel with like this picture perfect form and being very upright. And so I thought, I think his way of teaching the squat where you're kind of using your back and you're using your hips and you're kind of using a combination of things, I think is smart.

Yeah. Well, and you and I played around with my squat stance based primarily on strength and we went with the wider stance. And you notice I had my toes turned really far out. And I think that has more to do with people's, you know, their way of structure. Their own structure, the way that their hip socket is in their hips. And everybody's different that way. So what Mark's doing is just trying to mechanically set that up

so that you're staying over your center of gravity, you're incorporating more muscle into the movement, you know just had less pain so that's why i did it when i teach it i i always you know i think the squat's the best exercise by far and although i've said what's the best exercise the one you'll do i'd like to get encourage them to to enjoy the squat so they'll do it because i want people to do that. It's like the metabolic rate of it, like the metabolic cost of it and everything, right? Everything. Yeah. The return on investment is great because you're incorporating so much muscle.

Plus, it's a loading exercise, axial loading. So now, especially for women, you get that bone mineral density. Just eating calcium doesn't solve that problem for you. And so my goal is, particularly because I see a lot of people, like when I did that video with Jujie Mufu on his squat, I was just watching when he squatted and he was breaking at the knees and he was having a lot of instability between the knees and the bar. Almost immediately you could see the wave of the body. And we know that as the weight gets heavier,

one of the hardest things is controlling the core. And it's because he was loading primarily the quads the lower quads by breaking at the knees first he wasn't involving enough glutes and being stable enough in the hips and the core and so i i suggested he he adjust his form primarily you know because he was looking for a big total a big high squat and he was using knee wraps already. And kind of the limiting factor was his knees, which ultimately was a problem for me with my knee tendonitis. So they asked me, is this the best way to squat?

And I said, no, squatting is the best exercise is what I feel. And so finding a form that works for you, even i work with you know average folks or um you know dad bods and soccer moms who aren't ever intending to to perform a max squat i just try and find something that's comfortable for them that's the first thing i'll do you sit down in a chair stand up how's that feel and then uh you know ultimately try and make it easy and enjoyable so that they'll come back to the gym and try it again and just by matter of doing it consistently obviously you get that neural adaptation initially and you see a significant increase in in performance over the first 30 days then you're hooked once once you start seeing that

you go from you know a 25 pound plate to a 35 pound plate to a 45 pound plate just within the first 30 days and you go from you know three or four reps to being able to bang out six pretty easily that that gets you hooked and we know the long-term adaptations take much longer to get the strength and hypertrophy but at least it's comfortable it's not painful anybody who's ever been asked to you know get into a squat the way that your high school pe teacher taught you you know look, look up, keep a vertical torso, you know, bend the knees and then trying to find depth. And when your hips are tucking underneath, it doesn't feel good. It's awkward, especially when you're down in the bottom of the

movement and that's your weakest position because your knees are so far out over your toes and you hardly have any glutes activated into the movement. And that's a really weak position to be in. So people start, I don't want to load this anymore, if that's what's ultimately going to be the case. But when you switch the form up and you get a little low bar and you shorten that moment arm and you load the glutes a little more, all of a sudden the bottom of the movement becomes the most powerful position. Absolutely.

Almost like with somebody, if you're a kid. Yeah, you feel really good in that spot yeah that's exactly it if somebody were going to jump on your back to do a piggyback ride you wouldn't have a vertical torso you know it was interesting recently i was working with a football player eddie lacy he was uh he was a i think he had 1200 yard season a rookie for green Bay Packers. And I went down there and he was doing the high school PE teacher squat and he didn't like squatting. And so I walked him through that technique. And within just a matter of three weeks, he was knocking out 400 pounds for reps, uh, loading it, uh, in, in more of a kind of a ribs down, contracting his abs.

And one of the ways that I related that to him is i said when you've got the ball and you're running up the middle and you see somebody on the other side of the line coming at you with her hat down do you chest up look at the ceiling you know is that what you do now you crunch yourself down you completely contract your abs and get that rib cage down and try and get your shoulders about as close to your hips as you can coils up yeah so he understood that immediately when i told him what do you do you know something so for most people you say if i'm going to punch you in the stomach what do you do how do you react and immediately you crunch down and that's you know stabilizing the core it's just another

method i think a cueing mechanism uh chris duffins talked about this for years about bracing, and we have talked about the circumferential breathing. And there's a whole host of different techniques you can perform in order to get people to get that mind-muscle connection. What should you be feeling when you do the movement? Mark talks a lot about the kinesiology of the movement. I do things based on feel. What muscles should be contracting and how do I get them to contract that muscle? So I go through a host of little learning cues. I have them sit down in a chair and then pick both their knees up and your lower abs will contract. You can imagine, you can do it right here while we're sitting here and you start to pull your knees up. And what happens

right down here in your lower abdominals, that's what you should be feeling when you go down to squat not your quads necessarily my connection with my mind isn't with my quads my connections with my lower abs with my core so anyhow i mean to belabor the point but i just love squatting so much that i was you know happy to to to learn it and happy to teach it now to other people and i use whatever methods necessary i've gotten you know juji's video went had like a million views yeah thousands of comments super popular and i got hundreds of dms from people um most of them dick pics but the rest of them were were uh uh you know just comments about how their their form improved and how much more they like squatting and how their PRs went up.

And they were sending videos asking me if they were doing it right. But they just enjoyed squatting. They felt more powerful, more confident. And that, to me, is pretty important. So I don't really talk about what's best overall. I don't make that comparison. But I'm trying to find out what works best for you the same way you did for me when I came to you from training with Flex. I was kind of struggling with 405 at the time.

Obviously, I'd just come off a bodybuilding show, but the weight just didn't feel strong. And we started playing around with the boxes and the bands and trying to get me to positions so that I could figure out where was I most stable and what muscles could I activate that would give me the best strength. And that's how we ended up with that form. Yeah. Pain is a huge limiting factor for a lot of people. And it's a barrier of entry that ends up, a lot of people's fitness falls off and stuff like that because of it.

Are you in pain now? After you do 600 pounds for three reps or something, do have any like the next day or two days do you have any like pain soreness stiffness no that's the beautiful thing about it i don't it's it's the good hurt it's just the muscles yeah you know you bend your leg and you feel the muscle legs are a little tight you're right but not the joints and part of that is you know i've got a really really consistent discipline about my nutrition my sleep my 10 minute walks and all that stuff so i promise you i won't bore anybody today with 10 minute walks steak cpaps or salt i don't need to repeat what you've already heard but

i'm extremely disciplined about that so that's the best thing about it is i can't wait for 72 hours to expire so i can go squat again i I hate even training upper body. It's just so boring to me, and it's unrewarding. I'll do some dip chin-up supersets, and I just can't wait for the next squat day. So I don't have any pain that you would consider to be debilitating or degenerative. I just have muscle soreness, which is great. We just went down memory lane, you know, getting Mark's story about how he came to Westside and all that good stuff. What was it about him that made you seek his coaching? He just reached out to me. I had never had a powerlifting coach. I was a bodybuilder that lifted heavy weights. I thought it would

make me big. And I learned that wasn't the case when training with Flex Wheeler, that there was a different way. It was probably the first time i ever really learned about hypertrophy apart from just loading um and mark had emailed me because i did a powerlifting meet in in sacramento uh probably about a year prior or a little less and uh and so i figured i'd just give him a shot i was already in san jose and so i just i'd packed my bags and lived in san jose for three months in a hotel training with flex so i just drove over and trained with mark and i told mark i said i want you to do every set and rep with me and coach me and i didn't want to just come train at his gym uh and that was the first time i had any exposure to a coach and uh it's valuable i think everybody should have a coach i talk about that a lot even if think everybody should have a coach. I talk about that a lot, even if your coach should have a coach. And, you know, nowadays we've, we've got so much great information out

there that it's, I think it's worthwhile to, to reach out to someone because, you know, from the very first set that I did, he had a video camera going. It's the first time anybody ever videotaped me lifting in such a manner that it was intended to improve my lifting other than just to show off or to watch myself later. And we started critiquing the technique and the form and all that stuff. And I'd never been affiliated with a lifting gym like a Westside like you had, and so I never really analyzed the lifts. I just lifted the heaviest shit I possibly could in whatever ugly form that I needed to.

And we filmed every workout. Yeah. Yeah. And I can remember even after my first meet, uh, the comments were, uh, about my form.

And, uh, even all those years later when I met Mikhail Koklyev and he's, he told me he's the Stan. He said, uh, I watch your lifts many times and every time I watch them, I want to fix your fucking form.

You know, I know people really criticize you a lot about your form, but I think you had great form. I mean, in the squat, you had an unconventional style of lifting. You don't have really big, thick legs, but you were taking advantage of a really strong, thick upper body and strong torso. You stayed very upright. You were super controlled like you would go down it would take like five six seconds sometimes but you'd come back up it'd be like you know a second or less that you'd come back up your bench form was good and your i think your deadlifts were they worked for you you had to get a little bit wider stance but now

look you know look at eddie hall and brian shaw a lot of these guys are pulling over a thousand pounds with this wider stance i think they probably stole it from you. I think that's actually a big thing. Dave Tate's function form style. Like a lot of lifters think that there's one way for them to squat deadlift or bench or sumo deadlift or whatever. But you're someone who like even now where you're picking up a rip-a-toes form, you're continuing to change up. And it's a different form than what you used to squat. What was your PR squat?

Yeah, 854 with no knee wraps. It's a different. You're squatting right now with a different form again, right? Yeah again What feels right? It's like you gotta remember like it's just to understand that there's a constant evolution So a way you can lift even after you become elite of elite. That's a wild thing Yeah, just the willingness. I think I've always thought there was something to be learned I've worked with a lot of different people over the years. I've learned a lot from each of them. It doesn't mean that I agree with everything that they say. Some people, they get afraid to ask questions or they feel like they know it all or just to affiliate themselves with someone that might take credit for their work or something. That seems to be what everybody's concerned about now. I like the people who ask a lot of questions.

I've always asked a lot of questions. Mark's been that way as well. He knows an extraordinary amount, but he never stops seeking more information. Last year I attended, we talked about it before, but I attended Barbell Medicine Seminar as well as Mark Repitose Seminar. And you're in school right now, aren't you? Yeah, I'm taking classes. I read the NSCA's textbook last year and took my CSCS and passed that.

And, you know, I studied exercise science in college. I have a science degree. But there's still stuff to learn, and it's changed over the decades as well. And then even things that I've thought I believed or knew just a few years ago, certainly a decade ago, I've since made some adjustments to those, you know, if not completely entirely as to the belief, but certainly to the weight of how important it is. Because I try and prioritize things in terms of what works and what's really important, what moves the needle and what is probably not as crucial.

How do you manage somebody that's so big? You're working with Hap Thorpe-Harnson. I think this is what, his third Arnold in a row that he's won? Yeah, 18, 19, and 20. We started together in late 2017. He's starting to really dominate. But how do you help manage his health? Because I know with the vertical diet and your 10-minute walks and you guys read his blood work and you guys go over stuff very thoroughly.

How are you able to manage all that? It seems like it would be unhealthy to be that big. Yeah, you know, I have that rhinosos rant i did because you want to be healthy don't compete and so i understand that there's some sacrifices that you make and i mentioned you know we probably heard before that if you ask an olympic athlete uh you know if there was a drug they could take to to win a gold medal but they'd die five years later would they still take it and most of them probably would so we understand there's sacrifices we make but what i found is is that that even though they're two different things fitness and health and they don't always complement each other i just found that that when i got an athlete healthier that they

performed better and that doesn't mean that what they're doing is healthy being 450 pounds isn't healthy by any stretch of the imagination nor is being an mma fighter or even an offensive lineman in football or a 12 year old gymnold gymnast, for that matter, with all the surgeries on their ankles and tendons and wrists. Maybe even just being 6'9 is not that healthy. No, and we know that. We know that taller, heavier people have a shorter lifespan. Not much you can do about his height, right?

Not much you can do about that. Obviously, weight is of concern. his height right not much you could do about that obviously weight is a concern so with these you know and younger people tend to be able to uh be more resilient as you age it's you certainly don't want to carry that weight too far into into the later years that's one of my biggest concerns with power lifters who aren't willing to kind of let that go and uh and carry just too much body too much mass and body fat in particular into their 40s and certainly their 50s. That's when I start to get concerned for people with heart disease and the like. But the younger athletes who are trying to push it, what I try and do first and foremost is I get blood tests, obviously,

and I try and make sure that their blood sugars and blood pressure and the huge things are under control. The blood thickness of the blood, we look at the hemoglobin and hematocrit. Interestingly, when you look at a blood test for those people who have had it done, if you get a pretty comprehensive test, things are kind of in order by what's most important to what's least important. And you start with the thickness of your blood, your hemoglobin, hematocrit, and red blood cells. I want to share with people how they should... It seems like it's kind of a pain in the ass to get your blood work done.

Do you have an easy way? You got a shortcut? The private MD labs, you can do it online. I've got a link on my website in my shop that you can go to where you can get a 15% discount. I just contacted the folks that I've been using for 10 years and asked them if somebody – What website is that? StanEfforting.com. And in my shop there there there's a blood

test link but anybody can go online there's a host of other companies but this one's been around a long time really easy to use and pretty reasonably priced it's not free to get a blood test i mean a good comprehensive blood panel is gonna be about 300 350 dollars and it would be the same if you went to a medical doctor these guys allow you to do it online. You just go into privateMDlabs.com and you select a particular test. There's a host of them in there. I get like an athletic, a male athletic profile that kind of gives you a really comprehensive plan. And they email you a requisition form and you print it out and take it down to any lab corp near you.

There's generally one within a couple of miles of everybody. And then you get your blood drawn, and three days later, or so, three or four business days later, they send you the results. Now, interpreting those, they have a list of your results compared to the range and whether or not you're high or low. So you have an immediate indicator as to what might be high or low. Whether or not you understand what that means is a completely different thing. So you might have to seek help for that. Obviously, I help my athletes and clients. You consult a lot of people, right?

Yeah, and I have. I've worked with, you know, I've been at this for over 30 years. I've had blood tests done, you know, probably over 150 blood tests done since as early as 1990 and certainly almost monthly for the last 10 or 12 years throughout the latter part of my competitive career. And so I'm really familiar with what all those mean, and I've studied it very well, and I've worked with a lot of doctors personally, whether it's specialists for particular conditions or it's HRT doctors in general. And that's what I like to start with. I think everybody who's competing and certainly anybody who's using performance nasty drugs

or anybody who gets into their 40s and 50s and starts to have some symptoms, lethargy or body composition change or depression, those kinds of things, it might be indicative of some sort of deficiency. And so I definitely recommend that. it might be indicative of some sort of deficiency. And so I definitely recommend that. And I'm big on starting there because it allows me to, I think it gives the individual some awareness as to what they need to pay attention to.

A lot of us tend to fly blind. We just put our head in the sand and say, I've got this particular goal ahead of me and everything else be damned. But I'm of the mind that I'd like to know because maybe I can help you reach that goal if we address a few things that you're not aware of or that you're just hiding from. And so that's the most important thing for me in terms of health with Hofthor was to start with the blood test. And we did identify some things that needed to be addressed, obviously. Secondly, and I've talked about this more recently i've been more and more adamant about people periodizing their weight and when hawthorne came he was 435 we brought

him down to 395 well i think that's really important just like you do with your strength training you can't lift heavy all year round now i want to make sure that athletes periodize their weight and so that when they're not lifting heavy, they come down. They drop enough body weight to improve all those blood markers. Yeah, look at someone like Cedruna Savickas. He's walking around the show. I'm not aware of his health or whatever, but he looks great. And he's someone that after every competition that you wouldn't recognize him.

He would lose like 50, 60 pounds easily after every show he ever did he's he won the uh arnold classic eight times in a row yeah so i lost 50 pounds this uh yeah over the winter if you saw him he was about down to 380 uh and him and uh kelsey were trying to get pregnant and they are congratulations to them that's great uh but the previous year he did the same thing he dropped down the first year i worked with him that was the first thing I asked him to do. That's a hard sell. You get an athlete that comes to you and they want your help with their health or their nutrition or their performance.

So you've got to do the opposite of what you love doing for a little bit. Yeah, you're going to have to drop 10% of your body weight. And they look at you like you're crazy. And I would have too because I lived it my whole life trying to get it. But fortunately, just by virtue of the fact that I competed in both bodybuilding and powerlifting, I was dieting after every powerlifting meet and not because you know i thought it was ideal you know for performance or for health i just did it because that was my sport of choice and then come to find out all these many years later that that uh you know just just by

chance i was doing something that was very effective for both health and performance long term in powerlifting. So I recommend it for all of them. I just bumped into Julius Maddox yesterday, and I've been talking to him over the last many months. Big boy, 770 bench. 770 bench. That was amazing. But the first conversation we had was, you know, when was your last blood test? Are you wearing a CPAP? Let's get together and talk about, you know, your 800 bench. And so we're going to get together here next week and start trying to work through some of the same things with him. But there's another example of an athlete I don't want to take a lot of weight off of long term. If his goal is to get 800 pounds, if we do come down, we have to go back up. And so I'm really cautious. I think one of the things that's, I don't want to say tragic, but it's just that's gone wrong in the fitness and health.

The fitness and health is two different things. What I've seen is that a lot of the bodybuilder, figure physique, bikini people employ these diets to get stage ready. The egg whites, white fish, you know, tilapia and broccoli diets. And then the general population, the vast majority of people out there think that that is a successful way for them to lose weight. And we've talked before about all the downfalls of that, the anemia and the amenorrhea and all the thyroid slowing down and all the muscle tissue loss and all of that because the general population is not using thyroid medication they're not using um anovar they're not using uh clombuterol and yeah in addition to uh how hard it is maybe on

your body and your hormones it's just difficult to execute period the regimen with the supplements the regimen with the drugs the regimen with the cardio and the lifting and everything else gets to be too much. And then once you discontinue that, if you go back to kind of like regular eating or not counting your calories, you could end up gaining a lot of weight back. Well, it almost always happens because the more muscle tissue you lose, it's been shown that when you gain weight again, the more fat you will gain because you've burned off a lot of the metabolically active tissue in your body, which is the muscle. So it's tragic that these people go through these yo-yo dieting and they see that bikini girl on stage in quote-unquote the best shape of her life and all they see is the outside. They don't see what's going on the inside. They don't see the rebound the week after, the two weeks after,

the month after the show. Fortunately now with the internet, we have a lot of folks coming out and saying that's not the best way, but it's not mainstream. So I mentioned that the health and fitness industry has gotten bad messages from each other. And so mainstream has gotten that bad dieting information. I want to get in the best shape of my life, so I'm going to eat egg whites and whitefish. And then they end up with all of those health problems. Well, athletes, by the same token, have started to take advice from health practitioners and longevity people. And the longevity people are out there talking about fasting, and they're talking about the same kind of thing, getting rid of red meat, getting rid of

dairy, getting rid of salt, and all those things. And now you've got athletes' performance is being impaired as a result of the health industry trying to advise them on performance. It's two different things. When you read through, you know, Jose Antonio's work at the International Society of Sports Nutrition, you see a very different protocol for performance. He was the one that's been driving the higher protein intakes, whereas, you know, protein is something the longevity people try and get you to decrease. They don't want the mTOR pathway to be stimulated, and they think that that's, you know, precipitous to greater cancer rates and everything else with IGF-1.

They talk about those things negatively. I talk about those things positively. Longevity community talks about insulin negatively. I talk about those things in the sporting communities positively because those are the things that cause people to grow and perform and to increase muscle mass and performance. And so I know it's two different groups of people. And somebody asks me a question about carbs or, uh, fasting or, you know, any of those kinds of things. I got

to be really cautious. So who are we talking about? You know, who's the client is, is the client, a dad bought or a soccer mom with, uh, uh, you know, uh, elevated blood sugars, um, or is the client, uh, you know, a top level professional athlete? Because it's two completely different answers. And so that's what concerns me now is that we're, we're, we've blurred the line or we're borrowing from the wrong, you know, pot of information for the different goals. But it's also really cool how like, you're, you're applying these things contextually. So you mentioned with Hapthor, he's not always in the mode of eating excessive amounts of food to gain weight or staying at that weight outside of competition.

You, you like, yeah, you're focused on his performance, but you're utilizing all of these things from the longevity side of things to help them to be able to not just perform well. But I feel like, and I'd assume that you're also helping him think about the future and think

about like, you know, what he wants to do, how he wants to do it, when he wants to get out. Like Mark got out and he's super healthy. You know what I mean? I'm assuming you're helping him think about all those things too. Yeah. Well, I think that controlling blood sugars, blood pressure, blood thickness, as we just talked about, liver and kidney enzymes, all of those things are part of him performing better. I just do it in a little different way than over-restricting or demonizing certain foods that I think are beneficial for performance. And I periodize it,

as mentioned. And so I think that's what we're going to work on with Julius Maddox. I think that we'll intervene here. We'll get a blood test. We'll find out what we can improve in terms of health. And that may take a short period of time at which we'll bring his weight down. And it's not huge. If you're a 300-pound person and you've got insulin resistance problems, you lose about 7% of your body weight, maybe 20 pounds. So you're only going to 280, right? of your body weight, maybe 20 pounds. So you're only going to 280, right? That is going to be enough to give you an improvement in all of your blood markers. Your blood sugar will definitely improve your insulin sensitivity. That could be enough. And that's important because now we've got this, what's the acronym now? Is it healthy at all sizes or whatever it is now that we're

talking about. And everybody's kind of disagreeing on what it means um but what it means is it's not a matter whether you have a six-pack or or somebody perceives you to be you know fit it's whether or not you're healthy and i i look at that in terms of internal health and so fit at every size or whatever the the acronym is i i can't follow all these little yeah pass i'm leaning over here to see if anybody else has heard about this no it's healthy at every side healthy at every side something like that uh people should know that that we're not asking someone to to lose 100 pounds we're not asking them to have a six-pack we're asking that we're recognizing that when they lose seven percent and maybe that most 10%, if a 300-pound person only has to lose 30 pounds to have a significant improvement in blood sugars,

blood pressure, in cholesterol, and that could be, you know, they'll improve fatty liver, some of that visceral fat around the organs, which is the kind of fat that causes the problems. around the organs, which is the kind of fat that causes the problems, that individual at 270 might not look fit to the fitness community, but that can be a very healthy individual. And then the behaviors are more important than just improving their sleep and doing some sort of cardiovascular exercise. Obviously, I'm trying to implement the 10-minute walks. If they would just consistently do a few of those behaviors,

then they don't got to get anywhere near 12% body fat to be healthy. Nowhere close, but they could definitely feel better and probably improve their hormones and their blood sugars at the same time. So don't think that I'm trying to intervene with one of these big, heavy athletes because I don't want to scare them away. And, you know, I want them to, to implement these, these very sensible lifestyle fixes to improve their health so, so they can improve their performance. Cause that's ultimately my, my goal with them. What does the science show in terms of like body fat? Like, is there any science about, you know, people dying earlier because of X body fat percentage?

Is there any information about like people that are 50 pounds overweight? Because it seems like even from what you're saying and just from my own observation that you can be like pretty fat, you can be kind of fat, as long as you're not continuously bombarding your metabolism with too much food yeah day in and day out your entire life it seems like you you know as long as you kind of at some point decide i'm gonna find a path to eat less food and move a little bit that you can still be relatively healthy and live a long life, but maybe kind of have some decent amount of body fat on you.

Probably the quickest way to check is going to be your BMI. If you get your BMI north of 30 and you have greater than a 40-inch waist for a male, 37, I think for 36 for a woman, that's probably indicative of an increased exposure to some sort of all-cause mortality, whether it be cardiovascular disease or the like or diabetes. So that would be kind of where I would start. Once that waist measurement, and the reason I'm specific about waist measurement is not only because the research suggests it and it's easy for you to measure, but because that's the fat, that's the visceral fat I was talking about.

That's the liver fat that can cause the insulin resistance. fat I was talking about. That's the liver fat that can cause the insulin resistance. And that's kind of the canary in the coal mine. Well, that's actually the term that's used for erectile dysfunction. The canary in the coal mine is what they constantly talk about. If you have ED, then it's telling you you probably have high insulin levels, high triglycerides, high blood sugar. Your overall health might not be great. That raises blood pressure. That causes endothelial lining damage.

And now you're exposed to your increased triglycerides and cholesterol will then start accumulating in your blood vessels. And so all of that kind of starts from that fatty liver, starts from high insulin. All of that kind of starts from that fatty liver, starts from high insulin. If you want to focus on the root of the problem, Dr. Ben McMinn talks a lot about this as being, if you want to, as does Ivor Cummins and the folks that are doing a lot of the cholesterol research, Dave Feldman. They're doing a lot of good stuff and then on the other side in the medical community as well you look at dr nadalsky with rp strength uh you know they're they're definitely focused on um on just reducing that that visceral fat the waste now women tend to carry their fat in the hips and the butt which is not a bad place can Can I get a hell yeah? Hell yeah. Not a bad place. But one of the problems is I just had a woman in my last seminar who had gone through menopause.

And she says, my waist is getting bigger. Well, when you go through menopause and you have low estrogen, all of a sudden you start storing fat differently. And that's not a healthy fat. Once you start storing it around your organs and your waist, that's not a healthy fat once you start storing it in your around your organs in your waist that's a problem and so that would be a good time maybe to intervene get some estrogen therapy and to pay more careful attention to um you know to your body fat at that time because it is an unsafe place do athletes need to be careful of carbohydrate consumption obviously like hapthor has a tremendous amount of muscle mass, some of these athletes that you're helping, and they're tremendously active.

But there is a lot of research, a lot of information that's showing that, like, you know, people are ending up with, like, diabetes and people are ending up with insulin resistance and people are ending up with dementia. And even, like, now they're kind of linking some metabolic diseases to cancer or metabolic dysfunction rather to cancer. Do you think that it's carbohydrates or is it just like the overconsumption of food, period, that's more leading to that? Overconsumption. And some folks are even pointing to fat because once the insulin seems to increase because the carbohydrates can't be stored as fat because they're over fat. Their fat cells have been filled to the point that they're not storing it well,

so the blood sugars stay elevated for a longer period of time because they don't have any place to put it. So I think it's a combination of the both. I know there's a lot of disagreement going on as to, you know, it's the chicken or the egg, disagreement going on as to, you know, it's the chicken or the egg. Um, but it seems that the calories are and do continue to be the most important thing. Uh, just being too heavy. I think what happens with a lot of strength athletes in particular is they just eat too many calories, assuming that, that that's how they're going to grow muscle. You don't need to be at, you know, acalorie surplus to gain muscle. 500 is fine.

400 is fine. 300 might be fine. And that's only for a period of time as well. I think they get over fat, and that's kind of why I like to periodize. I do like to throw a lot of carbs at a big athlete for training and to minimize delayed onset muscle soreness and to muscle tissue breakdown. But those are football you know, those are football players like linemen, people with high workloads like CrossFitters. We have had some leaner

athletes end up with some insulin resistance. But I think there's kind of a perfect storm going on there that most of those leaner athletes that ended up with insulin resistance are usually ultra endurance type of athletes who have muscle wasting. And I've seen that in addition to sucking down a ton of carbohydrates, like a gallon or two of Kool-Aid a day and a loaf of white bread, which was commonplace amongst these guys, they were also pouring tons and tons and tons of vegetable or seed oils onto their salads to, to get extra calories from fats. And I think that's a terrible combination. I think more so we see it in the studies in India with the Northern Indians, uh, uh, in India eat more

saturated fat and the Southern Indians eat more seed oil and they have seven times the rate of heart disease. So, uh, you've heard me often say that I think seed oils are bad, but partly for that reason, I think the saturated fats are more protective. I think the combination of the two, I don't think it's ever a good idea to push fats and carbohydrates together. When I throw carbs at an athlete, I'm bringing their fats down to about 0.3 grams per pound. And then if I bring their carbs down, I can bring their fats back up. But almost everyone has a much higher protein intake. I think the Atkins keto is very different than today's keto. Today's keto is much higher in protein. And we know that

protein has a lot more benefits to it than say north of 70% fat. And I'm not too concerned about ketones per se. You can be low carb and not necessarily be in ketosis because your proteins are elevated. But the blood sugar, the gluconeogenesis that occurs from protein breakdown has a lower spike and a lower duration. So I think it's a better way to go. Either way, I think that people should be focusing on a significant amount of protein

and then be cautious if they're loading too much fat and carbs together. It's got to be one or the other. In that information that you had about India, are you aware that people that are eating the seed oil, is it probably from processed foods? I think they're adding it. I think think it's just straight up seed oil and we see that you know it's been going on you know for 100 years now and we were cutting lard with cotton seed oil back when we were feeding the indians after like in the late 1800s so we we were, um, sending it to Canada and they finally rejected it. We were sending it to Okinawa after Pearl Harbor. Um, you know, we've been outsourcing

this stuff. And even now I've, I've mentioned, you know, I own a meal prep company. And when we went to, uh, to get eggs for our meal prep company, they send them to you in five gallon buckets, which is what most restaurants use and just ladle them up. Well, the eggs are adulterated. They're with 20% canola oil or some sort of oil. So it's like the food is all being cut with it because it's so cheap. And that's a problem. I think it's a problem. I think, and I'm cautious to talk about inflammation because some of the more recent research shows

that omega-3s are more likely to cause inflammation and to oxidize than omega-6s. I'm just concerned about the dose with the carbohydrates. And I think that there is some evidence from the research that I suggested that the saturated fats can be protective. But I'm also not inclined to just think that you should be sucking down sticks of butter either. We went through that period. And I think that some of the research that Dr. Youssef put forth from the peer study, he's a cardiologist from the World Health Federation, and it was one of the leads in the peer study. They didn't like saturated fats north of, you know, total fats north of 70%.

They didn't see very positive outcomes. But when people got adequate protein or when some of those saturated fats were from foods like cheese or milk, dairy, that decreased exposure to heart disease and improved body composition overall. We see that in France and we see that in Switzerland and we see the people, the Dutch and the Netherlands are the tallest people in the world as a population. And they didn't used to be that way before they started raising cattle and consuming so much cheese and milk. They actually had a pretty significant increase in their height overall. So I think it's really healthy.

That's why I like to throw these whole foods in as we discuss. I think too many people uh they get arguing over like processed foods well in what amount and for what individual is is what you start to ask yourself if you've got a an individual that's dieting i know we talked a lot about if it fits your macros over the last many years if you've got an individual that's on 1500 calories a day it's not a lot of room in there for them to do if it fits your macros and not be focused on micronutrients because they're not eating too many calories so those calories have to be really nutrient dense every single

thing they put in their mouth on a 1500 calorie diet needs to have a lot of vitamins and minerals in it and if it doesn't you can end up being just being really hungry and you can end up kind of binging off the diet things like that could happen that's the big thing is appetite control and that's where um you know low carb sometimes helps intermittent fasting helps when you look at ad libitum uh when they study to see what how much people eat just ad libitum just based just leave them alone rather than giving them exactly what to eat or fixing their calories they tend to eat less with intermittent fasting tend to eat less when they sleep more too which is huge do you utilize any intermittent fasting yourself i do sometimes when i'm traveling a lot i'll do two things i'll that's way different for you right

i mean i'll just skip breakfast yeah really is what that is but that's because then i'm less years ago you're eating like eight meals a day right yeah to fuel workload and that was mainly just because i was training more so now on days that I'm not training, I just don't see the sense in sucking down on weight. And you don't eat as much carbs nowadays either, right? And I'll time them around workouts. And, you know, most of pre and post workout. And I'll throw in some simple carbs. Like I eat dextrose on my rice before and after training on a big leg day.

It helps me recover. It gives me a little more energy and endurance for my workout. And I get less delayed onset muscle soreness that and salt in there too but on a day i'm off there's really no sense what do you what do you need them for and if you do eat them you're hungrier and so that what is what i'll do for for folks that have blood sugar problems or appetite problems. I'm working with a lady now who's morbidly obese and has struggled with her weight for many, many, many years on and off diets. And I noticed, and again, another reason why I like blood tests,

we got her blood tests back and her insulin was high. Her fasted glucose was normal. Her HA1C was normal. A lot of doctors don't run an insulin test. So now they're like, no, your blood sugars was normal. Her HA1C was normal. A lot of doctors don't run an insulin test. So now they're like, no, your blood sugars are normal. Well, insulin, for those of us who have played around with it in the bodybuilding and powerlifting world, makes you hungry as hell. You will be voraciously hungry. You could knock down a dozen donuts and your stomach can be in pain from how full you are and you're still hungry

you're still stuffing food in your face because your insulin's high you're hypoglycemic your blood sugars are low and so as soon as i saw that i realized what her problem was this is a person whose appetite was uncontrollable you know and you know people want to get all you know squirrely about whether or not people that are overweight should be blamed. Their condition is different than your condition. Their hunger can, in many cases, in this case in particular, can be so severe that it's uncontrollable. And I've been there.

I've experienced it, so I'm sympathetic to it. So we did a couple of things. One, we went strictly carnivore right out of the gate. You do steak and eggs. You can eat almost as much steak as you want every day. An individual like that, you want them to eat to satiation. You can eat as much steak and eggs as you want in that circumstance because you cannot, not that you can't do it,

but it's very difficult to overeat in that circumstance. Very hard to overeat protein. We saw that in Jose Antonio's protein overfeeding studies that those guys who tried to eat two grams of protein per pound of body weight had a very hard time consuming that much protein and couldn't gain weight even when they ate 800 calories in excess of what they were previously eating but if the other two groups that were being tested who had 800 extra calories and fats or carbs they would gain weight so protein's very helpful that way what were they eating any idea in that study What were they eating? Any idea in that study? Because were they eating just straight protein

or was it like just lean meat or something you think? You know, I don't know exactly. I think he did have some protein shakes in there just to get their protein up that high. But he was talking about it at the NSCA conference last year about the protein overfeeding studies and how hard it was. A couple of people dropped out. They just couldn't consume the two grams per pound.

It was all they did all day was consume protein. So back to this young lady. So not only did I start with that, I wanted her to eat to satiation. I think we saw that if you start putting people at calorie deficits, that they start to get hungry and next thing you know, they're cheating on their diet. And I had to control that insulin problem and so the way i did that is if you have a diabetic who has high blood sugar and then they have uh you know their insulin and they end up hypoglycemic right hyperinsulinemia hypoglycemic they get low blood sugar then they take a dextrose tablet to prevent from having a, you know, what do we call that? Yeah, their blood sugar gets too low and they get dizzy and shit like that.

Okay, there we go. So in order to prevent that, they carry around dextrose tablets on their cells. Well, that's not 1,000 calories of lemonade, you know, which is what I used to go race for whenever I tried insulin when I was powerlifting. And it's not a dozen donuts. It's a couple of dextrose tablets. So I armed her with Jolly Ranchers. And she had a pocket of Jolly Ranchers or some in her purse.

And every time that she started to get hungry, because there's a huge difference between you're going to be a little hungry and a calorie deficit, but how hungry you are can be hugely impacted, obviously, by your hormones and the type of diet that you're on. So she would just pop a Jolly Rancher whenever she got a little bit hungry. And in between meals, I had her taking in some Nunn tablets just because they're sodium bicarbonate, which is baking soda, and it tends to suppress the acid in your stomach,

which can be another driver of hunger. When you start to get hungry in between meals and your acid in your stomach starts to release, you get that whole train of desire for food. And it worked incredibly well. Within 10 days, she'd lost like 14 pounds. But more importantly to me is that she she said that her cravings had had gone down and she wasn't hungry all the time i think that's huge with diet when someone starts

to lose weight and the diet doesn't seem that hard to them you know you ask them hey on a scale of one to ten how's it feeling and they're like well it's like a five or six you know you're on the right track you know and it will only get easier for them from there one thing i like about your diet is that there's a wide variety of food on there and in my opinion it's a any diet's easy to cheat on because you could always just flat out overeat which is kind of a form of cheating that people don't ever really talk about right it's like kind of a way of cheating on your plan or whatever but with your plan there's so many so much variety of food there's really not a reason to you know want to get some of these different flavors because you have oranges in the in the um as part of the plan you have rice you have potatoes

you got red meat you have fish you. You have eggs. You have dairy. I mean, you end up with a lot of great options. So when I was doing your plan, I never really, I wasn't like, oh, I'm going to have a cheat meal or a cheat day. I know people ask me that all the time. What do you have for a cheat meal? I eat steak and eggs and yogurt every day. What do I need to cheat on? And then when I was doing some of your stuff, occasionally I'd have fruit at the end of the day, which would be after a training session.

And I'd throw some heavy whipping cream on there. You know, it was freaking like that. Felt like I was just eating a big old dessert, you know. I was still working. I was still losing weight. There's something I wanted to hit on here before we get, you know, me. I tend to be long-winded. But there was a couple notes I made here, and I wanted to touch on some things.

I had a podcast a couple weeks ago with Greg Knuckles, who we all know from Mass Research Review. He's just been an extraordinary asset. He's amazing, yeah. Yeah, yeah. All the information he's provided. Super smart guy and also a very accomplished former world record holder natural power lifter.

And he has that Mass Research Review, and I've uh you know been subscribed to that for what seems like damn near two years now and i and i i just read it religiously he puts out a lot of great information but he said something that was really awesome in the interview he said that he's concerned about the fact that the front lines the personal trainers about the fact that it's hard for them to make a career out of that business. They're in and out, which doesn't give them an opportunity to learn very much. And the clients we know from research shows that personal trainers are much more effective at getting results from clients

than medical practitioners and registered dietitians. It's been studied extensively. And those people on the front lines, I think, are the ones that are most important. And the fact that they're only in and out of the business in such a short period of time, and they look at it as a temporary position, you know, just to make a little money on the side while they're, you know, pursuing some other career is, I think, a shortcoming of the industry. And, you know, Greg touched on that, and he wanted to, I think, a shortcoming of the industry. And, you know, Greg touched on that, and he wanted to, I think both in terms of the length of time it takes to learn enough information to where you can, you know, train people professionally and effectively.

But then can you make a living at it? Can you buy a home someday? Can you raise a family? Can you put your kids through college as a personal trainer? And so I've been thinking a lot about that. It's something I've been working on for a long time. I told you that the research suggests that the number one way to comply with a diet is meal prep. And so I started a meal prep company.

I thought that's going to be something that I think is important. People have asked me many times, you know, I want to start a supplement company. I'm like, well, I don't prioritize that. To me, that's way down the list of priorities. But whether you prep or we prep, you prep, I've said that the bodybuilding, figure physique, bikini industry has done very, very well with meal prep. And it's the single most important thing

that people can do to comply with a diet. And so I started a meal prep company and I think that's very effective. Secondly, tracking. Whether it's daily weighing or things like that. Me, I've always had that piece of paper that's got all of my list of how much sleep, what I weigh, how many meals, my to-do list. And so I, you know, I went about, damn, it's been a year and a half ago. I talked to you about the app and we finally released

the app and then it had a million bugs and it took us three more months now to where we finally fixed the bugs. But, and it cost me three times as much as I thought it would and took twice as long. But that having been said, water under the bridge, we finally have a very effective tracking app. That's great. Has been shown to be effective for people. And then third, the personal trainer. And so, you know, I've been doing the vertical vert certs, trying to train coaches so they can use our diet plan with their clients. So they have kind of a – and then we've brought in Damon McKeown, a registered dietitian who was head of the dietetic department at UNLV.

And so now in some states you can't give nutrition advice unless you're a registered dietitian, unless you're working for a registered dietitian and implementing their diet plan. So more recently what we did is we partnered with the folks from FitOps, and they're a military organization that works with war veterans. A lot of these guys are suffering from PTSD. The VA is kind of most of this group is probably on the high-risk scale for suicidal. A lot of these guys have been injured um you know blown up brain damage a whole host of of other things and and they they come back and they're having a hard

time transitioning into society so what fit ops has done is they've put together a organization that brings them uh in and trains them to become personal trainers. And so we partnered with those guys and we've got now 300 trainers nationwide that are certified fit ops trainers that we're implementing, uh, that we're providing the vertical diet program to under our registered dietitian guidance so that they can now give nutrition advice. And they partnered with Walmart. So there'll be taking people through and showing them how to grocery shop and that kind of thing. Uh, and the last piece of that is how do they make money? Yeah, they've got a personal training certificate. They've got a diet that they can

give their client. But how do they make money? Over the course of the last few years that I've been traveling, and you and I both know, we meet a lot of gym owners. And I've been in 10 countries and 40 states. And I'm on a plane every weekend. And I've been to, it seems like, hundreds of gyms. And I'm always looking at the business model. know yours sucks you're giving away free membership so i can't use you as an example but you need to work on that yeah yeah you're gonna have to start charging people if you want to make money uh but i've i've seen which gym owners are successful which ones are struggling and more importantly the trainers because gym owners is a small portion of the you know the population out there is something like six or seven hundred thousand trainers

nationwide that uh by by some estimates and how do they make money how is it not a temporary job how is it not a low-paying job and there's uh i ran across a trainer a few years ago a gym owner a few years ago that has an excellent program. It's Matt Whitmer in Cincinnati from Beats Personal Training Gym. And he was a former Westside guy. He used to drive up and train with Louie all the time for years and years. But he's also very successful. He was an NFL speed coach, exercise science. He started teaching his trainers how to market themselves effectively and make money in personal training and he's got three guys that were former d1 coaches

that were had got their exercise science degree and and worked for d1 colleges uh and i mean the pay scale there's what 24 to 42 a year or something minuscule if you're not volunteering. You know, maybe the head coach is making money, but everybody else is probably not doing too well. And they went to work for him and they're all making over six figures. It's within a short period of time. And he probably runs over 100 sessions before 10 a.m. in the morning, every morning through his gym with his trainers. over 100 sessions before 10 a.m. in the morning, every morning through his gym with his trainers.

I was just talking to one of his new trainers, Scotty, is a young lady who was working for like $10 an hour at a box gym. And she's been with him, I think she's on her fourth month. She did $7,500 last month in personal training. Damn, wow. And another guy that's been there for two months did $6,000 in personal training. And this isn't one of those, hey, sit on your boat. Yeah, make $5,000 a month.

Make a dream circle. What kind of house and car do you want? These are guys who come to work every day. They have a great marketing program. They have a great relationship with their clients. Matt, the owner of the gym, has some clients still that he had from almost 20 years ago. A lot of his clients are long-term people. I find the online business is very fleeting. You get a customer for 30 to 90 days max. And what you find is in the personal training business, even back in, I noticed this back home, there's a training place that my wife has been going to for some time now. And a lot of his clients he's

had for five, six, seven plus years. So business is a career and he's a homeowner, married, got kids. It's a career for him, but he looks at it as such, not just as a money-making opportunity. And I see all these advertisements now. You can't go on Instagram without seeing an advertisement for, you know, somebody trying to sell a training program and tell you that you can, you know, make a hundred thousand dollars a year and sit on a boat and take vacations. And, um, that's not the way it works. These guys go to work every day. You know, they've got clients at five 30 in the morning, but they're also making a very good living at it. And they've got a very successful business in a very short period of time. They're left their D1 college position that people in

exercise science school dream about. I want to work for a big college. And then you find out, well, they don't pay shit. I can't make a living at this. But then he has some other people that just have a certification. They're not college grads. And they're doing just as well because of the marketing, et cetera. So anyhow, the point is, is that we're putting together, he's been working with me for some months now to put together a program to show people how to do what he does, how to get the business that he gets, how to train people, how to set it up so that you can make more money longer term so the clients can pay less. Just to throw it out there,

a few of the key components to it is that he does some very aggressive marketing. He'll, like almost every business within two miles of his gym, he's visited and shook the hands of the owner and put up lead cards and stuff. It's just simple guerrilla marketing, knock on door kind of stuff. Attended the Better Business Bureau and he goes to, provides free seminars here and there at businesses, real estate gatherings

and what have you. So it's really fundamental stuff. This isn't rocket science. But the big thing he does is he teaches these trainers how to train more than one person at a time. Almost all of them train at least three people at a time. But they got to be good at it.

Because if somebody's sitting around waiting on you, that's the death nail. You're going to lose that client. So he's designed programs that keeps everybody busy and gets them progress. And he interacts with them. They're always communicating with them, checking on them, texting them, how'd you do, how do you feel. So that's a skill that some of his coaches, when they first came, they didn't know they'd be able to do that.

They certainly historically hadn't ever done that. Good CrossFit box. They can train multiple people, and they have to in order to make a living at that. You have 20 people in your class. But this is more personal training. So he trains, he happens to definitely train, you know, multiple people at once. And then another thing is, is they'll charge, say, $300 a month for unlimited or for 12 sessions or something. So the user's only paying, the client's only paying $30 a session.

The likelihood you're going to get a $70 session from a client for any long period of time, you know, that's your box gym. They're going to charge you 70 bucks for 10 sessions or whatever, you know, $700 and then give the trainer $12 and the gym keeps the rest. You're not going to keep them long-term. The less you can charge them within reason, the longer they're going to stay with you. And then you train three at a time. So now you're still getting your 75 to $90 an hour, which is what you need to make a career out of the business. And so that's kind of just a few tips that we'll be, and we're going to be training our fit ops coaches on how to implement those kinds of things, how to find business, how to get new clients, you know, how to create all the

things that they need to do to run a business, a website, obviously, a way they can, a merchant services set up so they can charge clients on a recurring basis and set them up on these monthly programs. And you can buy in for two sessions a week or three sessions a week or whatever at a different rate. But that way, there's some consistency to it. I haven't really heard anybody talk about the personal trainer side of things and I think that's awesome

and it goes back to kind of my kind of something that I've been made aware of more recently is the fact that knowledge can come from anywhere and in the case of personal trainers the reason why they're effective is because they get to be with that person communicate with that person, even online coaching.

As long as there's good communication, as long as there's a lot of communication, then you're going to be way more effective than a doctor. And it's not because a doctor doesn't know what they're talking about, doesn't know what they're doing. It's because a doctor doesn't have that same amount of time, that same amount of interaction. So a personal trainer could be complete amateur. They could really not know

a ton they could just know what they know they could know some general bodybuilding or some power lifting and know how to execute the lift know a couple things about nutrition about how to stay in shape but that interaction you know and knowledge can come it's just people need to not make the mistake of missing this is that knowledge can come from anywhere it can come from anyone and the more interaction that you have with somebody the more you learn about what's going to help them and that's all you're trying to do trying to help them with their health there's a couple keys here he hires people that have good personalities that are positive and they interact well with other people that's a big thing if you're in the

personal training business as i see most of these ads come through Instagram and your goal is to make a whole bunch of money without ever touching a client, that's a bad place to be. It's not the most effective method, as we just discussed with doctors and clinicians. When are they texting you saying, how are you doing? That's not their model. It's not their model. But also you mentioned that they're good at something. And again, It's not their model. It's not their model. But also you mentioned that they're good at something.

And again, you don't need a degree. I would hope that trainers would pursue education, ongoing education and information, so they can provide better information for their client. But at the same time, they have to build a relationship. He does ask all of his coaches to compete in something. So they understand and they kind of stay on their game, whether it's bodybuilding or powerlifting or CrossFit. It doesn't matter. He has them all compete in something. Yeah. So they understand, you know, and they kind of stay on their game, whether it's bodybuilding or powerlifting or CrossFit or it doesn't matter. He has them all compete in something. It's valuable for them to, to, to stay on their game and to help their clients. But you know, the big thing is, as you mentioned, it's just, it's personality.

It's interacting with those clients every single day and they become like, he's been to weddings and graduations from his clients. That becomes, you know, they're his family, and they look at him that way. And we made a lot of phone calls. We made phone calls to his coaches. We made phone calls to some of his clients just for testimonials to hear what's going on, and it's all so positive about the environment that he created, and that's a pretty big thing there is that he looks at building and environments.

And it's a wide variety of people that come in. You get younger and older and competitive and non-competitive people all in there together, working together, and the environment's important. So it's just something you see with CrossFit boxes too. I was talking about the family and the environment. And that's something you have to create as a trainer if you want long-term in that business did you did you communicate with uh it's the name john martin is that the guy uh through uh the um fit ups do you know if that's a guy no i don't recall or was his name biggs yeah his name was big yeah one of my friends john martin he uh helps

organize a lot of the fit up stuff so i that might have been who you've talked to. But you may have talked to the actual owner. I'm not really sure. But anyway, are you going out to Alabama to do a seminar? Arkansas, yeah. We already did one out there. We've got five more this year. Yeah, that's the same group.

It's an extraordinary opportunity because these guys are, boy, I tell you, they've given so much for our country. You hear the stories of what they've been through and what their lives are like now. It's unreal. And, boy, it'll just floor you. And then part of what FitOps is is a community for them as well. And then they can kind of share their stories and build relationships with their clients. And so I think it's the perfect kind of environment that trains them and gives them the support that they need. And it does exactly what Greg's talking about.

It provides people a career opportunity to help other people long term. Because my friend who owns the gym and his friends or his employees that he's hired over the years, which he considers his friends. They're all successful people now. They've been doing this for years. They all own homes. They, many of them have kids that are going to school. And I would like to see that because when I came out of college and I was a personal trainer and I owned a gym, you know, and I could hardly make a living at it. And I see most gym owners are struggling. I remember 10 years ago, I've told this story before a little more, when you were renting that little 800-square-foot space off the side of a CrossFit box,

and you said they were going to raise your rent $400 a month, and you were going to have to shut down. And I just think that's tragic, because you have so many people that are passionate about this industry that can't make a living at it. And with a few key marketing skills, because I don't think gym owners and personal trainers are necessarily very experienced in business and uh i have a you know a great background in business

i'm trying to get together with other business owners who have who have helped uh you know gyms and trainers be successful and see if we can that'd be the next piece of what we're trying to provide out there for our coaches i also oh go Oh, go ahead. No, go ahead. You go ahead. Um, I really do like what you said in terms of like, or I've never heard of a gym owner or something, making sure that his, his trainers compete in something or do something because, um, like when, like when I was working with a coach, when I'm working with someone, I like, I like seeing that they're doing it. I like seeing that they're doing something along with everything that they have going on. Um, and it's, it's, on. And it's a big deal.

Clients sometimes do look up to the coaches that they're working with or the people that they're working with and seeing whatever they're doing, even if it's not in their sport, is a super motivational thing to continue to keep them going. And they don't even have to be good at it.

They don't even have to be better than you. They're there to help. What we found is sometimes the great athletes aren't necessarily the best coaches. And so that's not his goal. It's just to kind of keep them, you know, keep them motivated so that they can then motivate their clients. At least they can understand them. And most of their clients aren't even competitors.

So it doesn't really matter. I know that clients like to brag about their coach's credentials. But trust me, from as many years as I've been around this, when a client signs up with a coach, they generally don't care if you're an IFBB pro or if you've got a PhD in exercise fits. They're generally picking the gym that's the closest and most convenient to their home and that they've got a nice person that cares that's you know trying to help them and that's kind of what gets them started because we know that you know compliance is the science and as long as you can make it easy and consistent and comfortable for that individual that's what they're looking for and then affordable long term and that's why you got to train more than one

person and i'm not saying these three people train together it's not like you got you know middle-aged mom soccer mom and some 18 year old kid benching together but the the trainer is has all three of them in the gym at one time they might have three completely different workout plans or if two of them pair up because they're of like mind and it you know it, that's great too. That's a bonus. But some of these trainers will run five or more people through a session and they're good at it. You watch them and there's never any downtime. The client's not waiting around. I've stood in his gym when he's had 50 people in there running about eight coaches and they're all busy all the time. And he keeps them moving and they might be on multiple different programs.

That's a skill you accumulate. You start with one person, then you build to two, and then you go to three. By the time you get to three, you can build a career out of it. Now you're making $70 an hour five days a week. That's a good living. What can you tell us about the app? The app, the vertical tracker, I'm big on track and stuff i just want to make it it provides people the opportunity that which gets measured gets improved to weigh in

every day and track it to put their meals in every day their macros how many hours of sleep photos of their meals so their coach can see it the biggest thing about the app is it's set up so that a coach can download the app and set themselves up as a coach. And then their clients can download the app and set themselves up as clients and select that coach as their coach. So now that coach can see all of their clients' daily pictures of their meals, their calories, their weigh-ins, their 10-minute walks,

and take a quick glance and see if they're in compliance and if they need a little you know a little primer a little poke uh and then if if somebody's having a problem with their diet you can quickly look and see what they ate yesterday if somebody's doing really good you guys send them out like a balloon or something yeah that's another thing it'll afford us the opportunity to run queries just like you say we can see who you know if you set yourself up as your current weight and then your goal weight whether it's gain or, and then a week goes by and you gained a pound when you're meant to lose a pound, then we can, we can put together a query and we can reach out to those people with a personal video and talk to more than one at a time and say, Hey guys, we see that this week

didn't go as expected. Here's some tips and we can send them some information that just gives you an opportunity to work with a larger number of clients, but still give them all personal attention based on their goals. Yeah. And are the goals just based on weight or can I get, you know, get on there and be like, I just want to get jacked. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. If you want to increase strength or, um, mass or, uh, even just health, I did a recently did a vertical challenge, 30 day vertical challenge. We had over a hundred people enter and we were flying three people, three of the winners out to Las Vegas, all expense paid trip to attend the next vert cert coaches seminar and do some podcasting with them. And, uh, you know, one of the things

that we asked them for was a testimonial. I don't care necessarily if, if weight loss is your goal, maybe you've got high blood pressure, maybe you've gotten horrible sleep. Maybe you've, you know, got some other issues, uh, that with this intervention, if you realized an improvement in your, in your, uh, you realized an improvement in your in your uh you know your energy levels or your life or your health that's important to me as well if they had digestive issues you know and they were able to remedy those with a you know part of the fodmap or elimination style diet and and uh those things are just as important to me as as weight or body composition what do you think of the carnivore diet? It's building up a lot of popular popularity

right now. Sean Baker's done an extraordinary job with that. He's just putting out so much great information. He started that community. I think it's excellent. I did a video, I think, what, three years ago now at Hofthor's gym up in Iceland. It's got like 4 million views now. Everybody's like, stay on them on your diet. And then I'd say, I saw your video. And because I go through the whole diet in the video, it's too, we put out a lot of free information. People sometimes think we're over here trying to peddle stuff to them. And we do have an ebook available if you need it. And it's, you know, it's very detailed, but all that information's out there in the ether. If you have the patience to watch a two hour video, I walk through the entire thing. But what I said

at the very beginning of that video was that if there is a superfood, red meat is it. It's not kale. It's not acai berry. It's not, you know, celery shakes. Something that you can not only survive on but thrive on is red meat. I also refer to it as the ultimate elimination diet. Somebody comes to me with some sort of, you know, digestion problem. I'm starting them on ribeyes.

And then I might add egg yolks. And then, like any good elimination diet would do, you eliminate and then you reintroduce. And that's kind of why I lead right out of the gate with the FODMAP diet because that's essentially an elimination diet. Obviously, it's got a lot more foods available. But I've just found that a lot of people have digestion problems. They have gas and bloating. They have irregular stool. They have energy-level fluctuations.

And so I love it for that reason. I think I'd love to see more research come out. I know that heads are bumping between gut biome people. And I'm not saying that to be mean. biome people and and i'm not saying that to be to be mean there's good research to suggest that that you know a diverse diet can improve gut biome diversity but what does that mean we don't know yet and and how long do you have somebody on the uh like as far as the elimination uh part of the diet because like if you have me on carnivore diet to figure out what's wrong with my stomach by the end of day two i have

terrible diarrhea so well it might take 30 days i think most it's like mark last year had people do keto for 30 days carnivore for 30 days vertical for 30 days see how you feel i think you need 30 days we saw with joe rogan it took him two weeks to get past the diarrhea but then by week four he felt amazing yeah see the decrease in the size of his his stomach he was getting picked on on the internet for having some distension in his belly and some loading and lost 12 pounds you know so i think you got to give things you know 30 days i would say the same thing about any weight training program too you got to try and give it at least one cycle and then if there's not a relief of symptoms we might have to make but generally i don't reintroduce until i see some sort of improvement in symptoms, whatever it may be, if it's autoimmune or something like

that, skin conditions, it doesn't always have to be digestion, even, you know, less, say, asthma symptoms and stuff like that. All of those things can be improved with some sort of elimination diet. I hate to say carnivore out of the gate, because then people get all squirrely, with some sort of elimination diet. I hate to say carnivore out of the gate because then people get all squirrely. You know, he's a carnivore zealot. And I'm just saying an elimination diet. And if you're going to do an elimination diet,

there's no better food to start with as a singular food than red meat. You don't by any chance go the opposite way ever? Which? There's a certain guy named Vegan Gains that thinks that maybe you should. Oh, yeah. No, it wouldn't be for me. I'm too concerned about making sure that the the fundamentals are covered first the micronutrients i don't want to be a supplementarian i i want to eat my food first there's very few things i think that uh that need to be supplemented you know and it's not to mean that they can't it can't be as

i have often said to people who get all upset because they sell supplements but uh you know they're convenient and they taste good, but it's not whole food and it's not what you lead with, you know, what's new. I know you always are finding new things and I know that you're always updating the vertical diet and like, uh,

even with the vertical diet that people have purchased a while back, my understanding is that you, uh, renew that and there's new information being added to it all the time. So like, you know, what's, uh, what's some new stuff you can hit us with? Cause I know you got something up your sleeve. You know, a lot of the questions I'm getting lately, the vertical diet has been

updated three times. We put just about every question anybody's asked me. And I've mentioned before that over the last two years, I probably get 50, 75 DMS emails and texts in a day. So it's like 50,000 people I've responded responded to and i try and get back to all of them and uh or at least give them a you know copy and paste an article or some information because people tend to ask some of the same questions and so i've got them kind of handy there um uh one of the things that a lot of people have been asking about lately is two things uh libido and fertility uh i get a lot of folks that probably either ran themselves into the ground, maybe they took too much testosterone or anti-estrogens and

ended up getting ED, or as they age, they get into their 50s and they're like, and they've never historically ever tried performance enhancing drugs or testosterone therapy. And they're like, hey, I got this fatigue and i've got ed and i've uh my concern with that is as we mentioned earlier when i talk about the canary in the coal mine which is a common term used in that industry with ed is that that these people are talking about a bigger problem and it's not just sexual dysfunction it's it's uh probably insulin resistance high insulin which can be a kind of a precursor to cardiovascular disease when we talk about endothelial damage and all the things we just mentioned. And even Alzheimer's long-term is associated with hyperinsulinemia.

So to me, I think it's important. And then blood pressure problems also impact that. And if you've got high blood pressure, now you're looking at kidney issues. So I get a lot of questions about that. And I think that, uh, that it's comprehensive. A lot of people will go to an HRT doctor, even friends of mine. I won't mention anybody, my name, it's a sensitive topic, but, uh, friends of mine will come to me and ask me about it. And their first thought is, is to go down and get some shot of testosterone. I'm like, well, that doesn't address the source of the problem. Uh, and the testosterone might work for a month or two or

three, maybe five if you're lucky, and then stop working. Because the hyperinsulinemia or the insulin resistance has just advanced to the stage where that doesn't compensate for it anymore. And that includes things like Viagra and Cialis that might work initially for a short period of time and then stop working and because your disease has progressed to the point where now you can't overcome it without those medications so i try and intervene on the on the source of the problem now we're talking about you know back to 10 minute walks twice as effective as metformin just improve your cardiovascular fitness you'd be amazed what that does to your cholesterol and your blood sugars. And we're talking about reducing carbohydrates or at least losing some weight.

We talked about losing 7% of your body weight. So those are the kind of interventions that I try and get across to people with simple lifestyle changes that don't require them to starve themselves or go to the gym and do 40 minutes on a treadmill, trying to find the kinds of things that they can easily incorporate into their life. Something like a CPAP, drop 20 points off your blood pressure with just a CPAP. I was shocked yesterday when I was at the powerlifting meet, all the big heavy guys there. And you know me, I'm always like, you got a CPAP? Oh no, no, no, man. I'm thinking about it. And I'm like, yeah, well, stop thinking about it and start

doing it. You see a guy with, you know,, and some of those guys are 400-plus pounds with no CPAP. And so it's not new. I've talked about it before, but it's coming at me from a different angle now. Guys are starting to talk about ED. They're starting to talk about fertility. And we've had some good luck at Hofthor, as I mentioned. They're pregnant now.

That's something a lot of people are starting to think about as they get older. They competed a lot in their 20s, and they start to get into their upper 30s or maybe 40s, or like me who has 45, finally started having a family. And, you know, the ability to do that gets more and more difficult, especially for guys who are using performance-sensing drugs or even testosterone therapy. So we intervene with, when I say we, I work with a hormone replacement therapy doctor at Health for Life, Dr. Alfreda, who I've been working with for a number of years now, and he's helped some of my friends as well.

And we've collaborated on a protocol that helps people with those kinds of problems. So I can't say it's new, but more people are talking about it. I'm seeing it more and more, and we're addressing that in greater numbers. Are the things that are having the biggest effects, the lifestyle changes as far as fertility is concerned? I mean, I know there's probably a lot of HRT stuff that's involved, but is it like primarily those simple lifestyle changes that can really help these people out? Yep. A hundred percent. And 100%. And there are different protocols. Like you say, a lot of HRT doctors lead right out of the gate with anti-estrogens.

You crash somebody's estrogen, they're going to get ED. And so we just try and intervene and get some blood tests and address those things in a positive fashion. You need some estrogen. I talked about this years ago in terms of drugs that make you weak. I talked about metformin, I talked about statins, and I talked about anti-estrogens. All those things can compromise strength. And I think that that's a good indicator of

bigger problems too. If you're not getting stronger and you're just getting fatter, to me that's a problem. I look at strength primarily even when I'm dieting women for physique and figure shows if they start losing enormous amount of strength i think i've got a problem there's something wrong with this this diet so i want to hold on to that as long as possible um what about just like you know generally being jacked you know we talked a lot about the diet and uh you've given us a lot of information on that over the years but when it it comes to lifting, you're doing a great job of staying in great shape. You mentioned kind of the heavy squats.

Years ago, you were doing kind of the higher rep squats. What do you recommend to people for training when they're just trying to be jacked? I know we've got a guy in the room here who's doing a bodybuilding show coming up, our boy Matt over there. What are you suggesting to some of these people? What do the exercises look like? guy in the room here who's doing a bodybuilding show coming up our boy matt over there what are you suggesting to some of these people like uh you know what what do the exercises look like what is is there a lot of cardio training you know how do you how do you get uh just in really good shape through lifting and not necessarily just the diet you know it's more bodybuilding stuff i i'm

cautious with how much heavy stuff i throw at people who just want to get jacked because I want to be cautious with the joints and make sure that they can do this consistently. And I think you need a little more volume, a little more frequency. You know, obviously, there's the frequency, volume, and load all kind of go together, and none is probably, you know, hugely superior over the other. But I don't think you need to be in the gym terribly long. And a lot of the folks I deal with now, they're pretty busy folks, know, hugely superior over the other. Um, but I don't think you need to be in the gym terribly long. And a lot of the folks I deal with now, they're pretty busy folks and they need a bigger return. And so I might only have them in there for 30 minutes and I can get a decent amount of volume out of them and just hit every body part twice a week, get within a rep or two, a failure

work in the eight to 12 rep range. Um, you know, the load will take care of itself. If you're within, you know, the eight to 12 rep range. Within a rep or two of failure, that's whatever load you can handle for that. And then some sort of progression over time. We've said that if you never take your body somewhere it hasn't been before, there has to be some sort of mechanical loading that you increase over time or you're just going to stop responding. And I don't care how much volume or what your split is. There's no magic to that.

I don't care how much volume or what your split is. There's no magic to that. There's a good range of volume between 5 to 10 sets per body part per week. The science seems to suggest 10 to 20 sets, 5 to 10 per workout, 10 to 20 sets per body part per week. Most of the research seems to fall in there. There's some stuff that suggests your minimum volume might be 5 reps and that some people are doing, or five sets and some people are doing 30. There's some argument now as to whether or not it's a dose response to volume.

And some people disagree on that. Some studies show one, some studies show the other. But nonetheless, most of us can't do, you know, 60 sets per week. It's just not going to happen. We don't have the time. You know, I'm talking to a large audience here and not just a bodybuilding competitor 60 sets per week. It's just not going to happen. We don't have the time. I'm talking to a large audience here and not just a bodybuilding competitor that trains three hours a day, eats eight meals and sleeps 10 hours a day. It's a different individual.

But for the most part, I want people to find the kind of exercises they enjoy because otherwise they're not going to go to the gym. They're going to start skipping workouts and stuff. Consistency is so, so huge and important. You start missing workouts, then you're just going to regress. You're going to build a little bit and lose a little bit, and you'll just never get any better if that's your goal. Have you found that the people that you help end up getting a lot more motivated?

Maybe in the beginning they may may ask questions about like, how do I get motivated? How do I get started? But then because of the lifestyle changes, because of the diet, because of the sleep, because of the attention to detail and fixing the blood work and those kinds of things, they don't really need to ask that question anymore. I just find it becomes easier for them. When you start to, if you're not eating Ed White's and chicken, all of a sudden you have, you know, energy to train. When you're not overtraining, all of a sudden you're recovering better. You know, when you sleep a little more, your body composition improves.

They just, they start to lose body fat and increase strength. I mean, look at, it was a big boy from strength cartel. He went from 360 pounds to 310 pounds in just a few months since we started working with him a few months ago. We shot some video of him up there and we put him on the same thing. He leads with red meat every day. He's salting all of his meals. He's got a diverse, you know, he eats fruit every day. He's taking in yogurt and, you know, the kinds of things that most people would eliminate

and immediately lose a ton of strength, he's able to hold on to an enormous amount of strength. And he's been showing videos recently. He's shocked. He's all the way down to 310 pounds. And he's benching 500 for reps. And he's still doing a lot of great stuff down there. He's got a lot more energy. He's active and agile too. So

he's really quite an athlete. You know, on that note, Stan, I want to ask, because there's a lot of listeners. You know, we're talking about getting jacked here. Big SC boy, he's getting more jacked, but he's also maintaining a lot of strength while keeping, he's maintaining strength while getting more jacked. So what are some concepts that, uh, athletes, whether it be a power lifter or a bodybuilder can take to know when they're potentially going too far as far as the body composition is concerned, meaning getting too

fat, putting on too much body fat and their their attempt is to gain. What can they be thinking about? I know you mentioned BMI. Yeah. I mean, as soon as they stop gaining strength, but they're still gaining weight on the scale, we know that there's a problem. And that's when blood tests really help me identify blood sugar problems. And if that's the case, then it's going to be really hard for them to partition nutrients towards muscle.

Little things that we do along the way help prevent that, just like the 10-minute walks after meals really helps with insulin sensitivity, and those individuals tend to perform a lot better in sleep and the CPAP for healthy athletes. I know it sounds repetitive, but those things are extraordinarily effective for performance. Just those two in and of themselves, along with the types of foods that we like to eat.

Whole eggs are great, the choline in them for fatty liver disease and for performance. We've seen studies now equating egg white protein to whole egg protein when they equate for the total protein intake. The individuals that are in the separate groups, the whole egg group performs better. They have a huge improvement in strength gains and a measurable improvement in hypertrophy gains. So it's not just the protein that matters in that instance. It's the fact that there's so many other important micronutrients in there, which is why I don't lead with protein shakes.

Because how many micronutrients in a protein shake? You know, I don't start there. And again, not to dog supplements, but it's a supplement. It's not what you lead with. And Brian, how much is it going to really fill you up in comparison to eating some steak and eggs right yeah and look i took every supplement you can imagine over the years the the hot stuff and the cybergenics and the gainers fuel 2500 and i mean everyone you can possibly imagine and that stuff makes you super gassy that champion nutrition back in the day the 2500 i distributed beverly international supplements for years and i have I have high regard for Jim Heflin who started that company back in the 60s

and the folks that currently own it. It's a really high-quality product, but it's a supplement. I've said if you're taking creatine and only sleeping five hours a night, you're a fucking idiot. Well, I feel the same way about supplements. If you're taking supplements and not getting the fundamentals and the basics, then I don't think it's going to do you much good. I was never able to gain or maintain a significant amount of weight or strength on powders.

And I tried. I took lots and lots and lots of them. It wasn't effective. They didn't stick to me. They were in and out. It was a good way to augment an inferior meal or have in the absence of a meal to have something handy. You know,

if you're traveling or working out of your gym bag, that's fine. But my, my rule is always never do two in a row. If you're doing a supplement and then three hours later, do another supplement. I think you missed an opportunity, you know,

maybe use it around a workout or something specifically, but it's not dinner. It's not breakfast. And you'd never have two in a row it's kind of where i feel and there are some stuff that work creatine you know for most people i eat over two pounds of steak a day so i don't i don't get much response from creatine because steak's loaded with creatine but it's worth trying it it's you know very well studied and effective but beyond that you drop off pretty quick there's not a lot of there's a little research on you know betaalanine or citrulline malate, but I don't think it moves the needle very far.

Caffeine probably for performance. Not consistently, but at one shot. That's about it. I'm not seeing a lot beyond that. How would you take somebody that's... I'm just being very, very selfish with this one. So my diet is currently just a lot of chicken and rice. I feel better on rice.

But I do feel the performance in the gym has gone down because I shredded down as much as I could. And then now I just want to feel healthy. I want to be healthy. I want to look better. But right now my staple in my diet is just chicken and rice, except for when I'm out here on the expo and I have amazing steak available to me. What should my protocol be for converting from that to – because, like, I mean, I'm hearing you, and all I want to do now is eat. Eat steak.

Just nonstop, yeah. You know, it's got three times as much iron, six times as much zinc, nine times as much B12. It's just a lot more nutrient dense food than than chicken is so yeah i would definitely try and transition to at least that doesn't mean every meal i'm just saying you got to transition to that i know you've had digestion problems uh you know if i've got an individual that comes and you just say if you've got a client that comes to you and they've got a bad knee, do you take them over to the squat rack and start pounding away heavy squats?

If he wants to get better? His knee won't heal is the point. I'm kind of making an analogy here. Dr. Stuart McGill calls it picking the scab. If you've got a back injury, you don't want to be out there stretching and bending and twisting the spine and continuing to prevent it from healing. Same thing about the gut. I don't care what diet you're on and how good it is. If you're introducing foods that are triggers for your digestion problems, you're not going to be able to fix the problem. So your, your biggest hurdle now, like you said, when you're traveling and

you got to go grab a sandwich at subway, that's going to wreck you. You know, people talk about, uh, you know, 80, 20 rule in terms of food. Well, if I've got an individual with IBS or IBD or Crohn's or any of those things, uh, 80, 20 rule doesn't work, you know, apply the 80, 20 rule to sleep one night a week. Just take a bender, just stay out all night night see how you feel for the next three years you know do that every week so that's my point in terms of of to really solve digestion problems you're going to be really consistent with not introducing the triggers that that keep damaging the gut as you know a particular exercise might damage a torn muscle or something. Let it recover and then introduce consistently more nutrient-dense foods. Some people can't tolerate egg whites.

The abadon in the egg white, they don't digest them well, so you might have to do just yolk. Meat is generally well-tolerated by most people, so we call it a low-residue food. If you're going to get a colonoscopy, your doctor wants you to eat low-residue foods. It's digested almost completely in the small intestine. residue food. If you're going to get a colonoscopy, your doctor wants you to eat low residue foods. It's digested almost completely in the small intestine. So that's the one I would introduce first and foremost, and then try and slowly add food. The white rice is great, you know, for,

if that's what you need to fuel workload, it's easy to digest, but I don't think that's going to give you, I know that's not going to give you the kind of micronutrients that you need. And part of, of healing your gut is going gut is making sure you get your magnesium absorbed, your calcium absorbed, your iron absorbed. And I don't know, your B12, all of those things are going to make for a healthy digestive environment. My concern is having that much fat from steak in conjunction with the carbs, though? Yeah. You just go with leaner meats. You know, when I worked with Nadi White, she took third in the Miss Olympia.

We started her at New York Steak, and then four weeks later, we transitioned her to a top sirloin. Four weeks later, we transitioned her to a sirloin tip or a top round. Each step of the way, we were just eliminating fat, but we were keeping all the micronutrients in, all the iron, the B12, the zinc, selenium. All those things were still in there. She ate fewer whole eggs as we progressed, but we didn't just switch to egg whites. And we went from a whole fat dairy yogurt to a nonfat. So the progression was to minimize calories, but we pulled them out of the fats. And I'm not opposed to fats, I'm saying, but if your goal, of the fats and i'm not opposed to fats i'm saying but if you're

if your goal i think fats are important i never go below 0.3 grams per pound and and for for fats but if your goal is to take in some carbs because your goal is to gain muscle and i think that they that carbs is in that specific goal for strength and for muscle if you're going to be doing more hypertrophy training i think you're going to want to fuel that uh some people who can't even handle rice will do a carnivore with dextrose around the training and and i think maybe even mike mutzel from high intensity health just recently talked about how he's been doing that and i've i've talked about dextrose for a number of years and in terms of how it's not just amylase from the from the mouth it increases amylase production from the pancreas too,

so you digest it a little better. Some people can't handle the starches. They just don't digest them as well, even if it's white rice for some folks. And again, dose-dependent. So that's one way to manage. I'm a big fan of making sure the workouts are great. That's why I like sodium. That's why I like a little bit of carbohydrates, even it's timed and if it's dextrose um i'll mix dextrose and fructose because there's some

research to suggest obviously that you get twice the absorption rate and it minimizes digestive distress to put them together and just a little bit i'm not talking about a ton you know and power lifters less than bodybuilders you know it kind of depends on your how much you're burning during your training so you know ruminant animal animals are uh special you know like cows are special the uh chickens aren't and pigs aren't but cows are because they have the multiple chambers the multiple chambers help provide us with more vitamins because they're able to take that grass and i mean it's they're designed perfectly you know for us so chicken's not going to replace that pork's not going to really there's not really anything you can do to replace it other than eat a ruminant animal lamb bison beef deer

there's a whole list you can just google ruminant and figure out you know in iceland they eat lamb because they can't get bison and beef up there affordably. So it just kind of depends on what country and where you're at. You can find mince is common in Europe. That's the term they use. But that's probably the best way to go. I found when I use, sometimes when I use too much fat, like with bacon or too much butter or even like an 80-20 chub, the meats that you get it you know those big the big

tubes tubes uh that i don't i'm not i don't digest it as well and that can just be you know the amount of bile that i i produce um and that might be able to be you might be able to remedy that over time by you know graduating kind of the same way somebody with lactose intolerance could could take in two ounces of milk for a few days and then go to four ounces for a few days and get their enzyme to increase. Maybe I could get my bile to improve to the point. But I look at fatty content in an individual meal, and I can almost determine if it's a really high-fat meal, like bacon in particular, or too much butter, then I'm going to have difficulty, as Joe did with digestion and stool quality. What's coming up next for you? All of this stuff is still on the horizon.

All the stuff we're working on, these seminars with FitOps and getting this training manual out and trying to get coaches on board and get the app promoted better. Obviously, building the meal prep company is huge for us. So we're, you know, it's a lot. Yeah, we're probably working on a program with, I definitely met with him last week, Dr. Alfredo from Health for Life,

and the program for all these people that are coming to us with fertility. Something that can maybe help read your blood work or something like that? Yeah, that's what he does, yeah. And we're trying to get a program to implement for folks with fertility problems and erectile dysfunction and stuff. So he and I were just meeting on that last week and see if we can come out with something that's really comprehensive

and addresses psychological, physiological together and see if we can make interventions with lifestyle changes as opposed to just all medications. A book with a flaccid penis on the front, I'm sure, would be perfect. You know, I could picture going into the bookstore and buying that one and not being ashamed to, like, you know, put it up on the counter.

Right, right. Be like, I'll need a couple of these. I got some buddies that are like this, too. Yeah. Look who's in the house here. We got all kinds of people over there. I don't know what's going on. Rob, Rob Kearney, world's strongest case here.

Good to see you, my man. Great performance this weekend, brother. Look at that mohawk. You got me with the flaccid penis. Oh, you're in. Yeah. I got to say, it was hilarious. I saw Rob perform.

I think it was the world's strongest man, and maybe even prior to that in Australia, watching him. I was like, how is this dude so strong? All these other guys are like 6'9", 6'5", 400 pounds. And then I see him at the world's strongest man with Derek Poundstone. I'm like, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. It's just one of the most savage strongmen. 800-pound deadlift for nine reps.

I don't think I've ever seen anybody else do that yeah yeah and hit that nine something what he hit 900 and then freaking animal yesterday that was savage it's fun to watch man there's just so many freaks out there i'm glad i'm retired to be honest with you i just think i'm like oh i'm retired i'm retired these guys are amazing who was you got to pull up an old video yeah right i know and then yesterday's powerlifting meet was i mean uh larry wheels just beat Eric Lillibridge's record with an 870 squat, a 645 bench, and something like an 850 deadlift. Does he even care? I don't know. He just showed up.

He was in town. Yeah, he's like riding a camel one week. He fucking tears his bicep the next. And then the week after that, he's like breaking all-time world records. Yeah, he's like riding a camel one week. He fucking tears his bicep the next. And then the week after that, he's like breaking all time world records. Yeah. It's just amazing. Stan still sends me videos of himself, you know, like periodically. And he's like, hey, you know, like, let's talk more about this.

Or I'll ask him a question and he'll be like, how does that help me? Like, this is about me. You know, he wants to try to bring it back to that. Or, hey, remember this 905 squat? Yeah, he was bragging yesterday about how he didn't really watch any of your lifts. No. I don't know that I was bragging. I was actually...

Just telling the truth. Yeah, I was telling the truth. Remember that Creed and I would come in and we'd squat together and we'd have a big day and then you'd come over with your triple ply open back whatever thing you were wearing and be like, hey, did you guys see that 800-pound bench? And we were like, no, can you do it again? We missed it. We didn't even have any mirrors in that gym, but Stan brought in his own.

He's flexing in them. No, there was one in the bathroom. In between sets, I would go into the bathroom and flex and come back and do the next set. Dude, there's two Mark Bells on the microphone right now. That was crazy. It was crazy good time we've got some great folks in here you guys you really didn't see any of the lifts huh i didn't i didn't if it hadn't been for the ones you guys put in the bigger stronger faster i still wouldn't see it you were trying your best to avoid it yeah i don't watch any of those videos.

Who's that fat guy? It was great because you couldn't even get mad at him. Because in between exercises, it wasn't that he wasn't paying attention. He was just paying attention to himself. So you were like, okay, the guy's not going to add a plate or take a weight off. We're like, all right, we'll just keep working around him. All right, Stan, it's your turn. That's what everybody else was for.

Like, oh, okay, it's my turn. It's my time. All right, cool. This will be fun. Make sure we record it. If somebody was out squatting me, I'd have helped them with their plates. Isn't that the way it works? Yeah, yeah.

Strongest guy needs to get the help, right? Right. Anyway, nothing's changed. He's still a prima donna. My favorite thing was when you set them up with, you're like, hey, guys, I made these peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for you. Fed them everything, and then you turn around and eat steak. Yeah.

Just setting everybody up. That was nice of me. Yeah. Sabotage. That is sabotage. I bring those to keep people away from me. Yeah, we're like, oh, my God. We were starving.

We're sitting there eating, and we're like, you know my God, we were starving. We're sitting there eating. We're like, you gave us the cheap stuff. Stan's eating steak and eggs. Yeah. At least they made us sandwiches, right? Anyway, it actually has been really cool to see your progression in so many different ways and seeing how many people that you're impacting and helping. You know, all jokes aside, I, I, I have seen a,

a huge, uh, change in you. I've seen a lot of maturing, you know, you having children and you taking care of the responsibilities there. It seemed like, it seems to me that it has driven you further and made you stronger and made you, uh, perform better in business and perform better with all aspects of, of everything that you're doing. And, uh, I just think it's great. The amount of people that you're impacting and helping because, you know, knowing you beforehand, even though we would kid about it, I know that you do, you have always cared about people, but I've never seen you like this. And I think the having children part of it, I think is a massive, a massive change, a massive part of it, but also just you gaining the knowledge and then saying, you know what?

I really have a job to do here. I have to make sure that I share this out. And I can't tell you how many. I mean, we see it at Powerlifting Meats. I mean, you can't go to a Powerlifting Meet without seeing somebody with some sort of representation of the vertical diet. Like, everyone has been impacted by it. So, really appreciate really appreciate salt shakers and monster mash all the way yeah you always see the meat and rice and they got their chicken stock and everything and you just see everywhere you impacted everybody and it's not just in power lifting we're seeing it in strongman seeing it

crossfit we're seeing it everywhere so thank you for that yeah yeah i'll tell you since having kids i realized i'm not the most important person in the world anymore. And they could give a shit of what I lived in. My own son, my wife says, you know, your dad's the strongest guy in the world. And she says, no, Thor is. Go to your room. Forever. So it's probably, I think paying it forward is really enjoyable for me now. I love to see people. The problem is, as you know, when you work with clients, is really enjoyable for me now. I love to see people.

The problem is, as you know, when you work with clients, is that you get emotionally involved. You want them to succeed almost as bad or more than they do. And when I work with multiple clients that are competing against each other, then it's kind of bittersweet. So you get the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat all at the same time. You're getting excited and depressed all in the same day. So it was like yesterday when Offler was competing,

my stomach was in knots, and Mateus kept pushing him, and we kept coming leading and then going back and forth throughout the whole thing, and he just hoped that they stay healthy. And as was all the guys that came up from Iceland. I mean, I was checking blood pressures left and right. Some of those guys were turning purple in between sets and timing every single other competitor and just hyperventilating.

They get so into it, and they're such a great support. Yeah, Hapthor had none of that. He was breezing through a lot of stuff fairly easy, I noticed. Yeah, I mean, he performed really well, but he had some great competition. A lot of the guys were beat up, though, but Mateus did really, really well, obviously, and Rob had some

huge performances yesterday that just that was ridiculous and his performance on the stones was epic you know just falling on the stone throwing his life if the stone hit his body and his body hit the red mat then that counted he didn't care so it's just the effort that goes into that it's extraordinary uh i just can't imagine i mean imagine the next week trying to recover from that yeah stuff so where can people find you stan efforting stan efforting.com everything's there meal company's there my uh ebooks there my uh i've got a lot of great information on the rants, obviously, on YouTube at Stan Efferding. That seminar I did in Iceland is not at Stan Efferding. It's somebody else shot that.

But if you just Google Iceland and Stan Efferding or Hofthor and Stan Efferding, you'll see that. That's a two-hour seminar that's free. I have a ton of free content out there. Do you want to give people some sort of discount code on this vertical diet? No. No? Not a chance. What, people have to get a job? You're rich. You can handle code on this vertical diet? No. Or something? No. Not a chance. What?

People have to get a job? You're rich. You can handle it. People have to get a job or something? You can pay the rest. Yes. Want me to buy some for some people? Yes. Send some random out?

Mark's going to do a giveaway. He'll pay me full price and he'll do a giveaway for you guys. Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Thank you, Stan. That was freaking amazing. If you guys want to hit me up on Instagram at I am Andrew Z please make sure you're following the podcast at Mark Wells Power Project at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter

we're on YouTube Instagram of course iTunes thank you everybody that's been rating and reviewing the podcast we sincerely appreciate that it's a huge help and Seema if people want to get in touch with you where you at on Instagram and YouTube on TikTok and Twitter at Mark Smelly Bell strength is never a weakness.

Weakness is never a strength. Catch y'all later. Bye. Poopcast. What up? Thank you to everybody that's been rating and reviewing the podcast. We sincerely appreciate it right now. We wanted to give a huge shout out to trans and Trav.

I'm just going to call him Trav for right now. Trav says life changing quote. This podcast is by far my favorite. After really digging into the information Mark and the crew were giving out, I decided to try the carnivore diet to see if it would help my rheumatoid arthritis. In three months time, I went from having flare ups that would keep me out of work and in bed for three to five days to being off my rheumatoid arthritis medications and blood pressure medicine and lost 30 pounds in the process. This was life-changing for me and something I did not think was possible.

Keep giving out great information and entertainment. Poop stories are always a highlight. Awesome job, guys. Keep it up. Trav, thank you so much for sharing that information with us. Man, I mean, seriously, good job on sticking with the diet. I know it's probably not the easiest thing to do for some people, but you kick your rheumatoid arthritis in the ass.

Seriously, dude, thank you so much for that. Thank you for spending the time to post that on iTunes. That helps us out a ton. If you're listening right now, if you would like to hear your name and your review read on air, please head over to iTunes right now, drop us a rating and a review, and you could hear your name on air just like Trans Am Trav. We'll catch you guys on the next one. Peace.