Mark Bell's Power Project - Ep. 405 Live - Andrew Herbert

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

Andrew Herbert is a former 3x all-time world record holding powerlifter and Animal Cage veteran. He currently has the 2nd best skwaat in the world in the 242lb weight class. He is also a Bay Area, CA police officer, EMT, and firefighter. He serves in one of the last cities to have a conjoined first responder department. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Support the show by visiting our sponsors! ➢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 ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Sling Shot: 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 #PowerProject #PowerLifting #MarkBell

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project podcast hosted by Mark Bell, co-hosted by Nseema Iyeng and myself, Andrew Zaragoza. And today we have an incredible episode with our boy, Herbie the Love Bug, aka Andrew Herbert. Andrew Herbert is a three-time world record holding powerlifter. He currently has the second best squat in the entire world at the 242 weight class. He is a police officer, a firefighter, and an EMT. I'm going to repeat that one more time. So he's an elite power lifter, a police officer, a firefighter, and an EMT. So in this episode, we talked a ton about power lifting and a bunch about his role as a police

officer. And because the episode went fairly long, I'm going to try to get out of your guys' way as quick as possible. But upon release date of this episode right now, so today should be, if you downloaded this on day one, should be June 30th. Therefore, it is the absolute last day for you guys to take advantage of markbell.com's free 30-day trial. Again, you can gain access to the entire website for absolutely nothing. All you have to do is go to markball.com register and you'll gain access for absolutely free. But that offer ends today because tomorrow it is completely gone. So, um, yeah, like I said, I want to get out of the way quick because this is another powerful episode, just like the Ryan Tillman one, because we get a perspective from a, an active police officer. But I definitely wanted to remind you guys that please right now,

if you guys have been putting it off, don't put it off anymore because you will not have any more time after today. Markwell.com, register and gain access for 30 days for absolutely free. That's it for me. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy this episode with our boy, Herbie the Lovebug, aka Andrew Herbert. Are you Officer Lovebug? I've been called Officer Friendly, but never Officer Lovebug. Officer Herbie. Yeah, that works. I like that.

Yeah. Believe it or not, I've also been called some more negative things, too. What? Shocking. It's a little sad. Yeah. Don't know if I want to go there. Yeah.

We're in a sensitive era. Yeah. No kidding, right? Hey, great to have you on the show here today. I think we can kind of, you know, break this up into maybe two parts and we can talk police stuff and we can talk about all the stuff that, that, uh, your department does in particular. Cause I think that's really cool that you're, uh, more than just a police officer. You're also a firefighter and also, uh, uh, EMT. Is that correct? Yes, sir. I have my facts right over here. Yes, sir. Um, and then in addition to that, we just talk straight up, uh, training straight up lifting.

Let's kind of start out with some lifting, start off with some more lighthearted stuff, start off with some more fun stuff. And let's, I guess, bring people up to speed on like where you're at now. So we're here today with Andrew Herbert, who has done a 942 pound squat in knee wraps. I think you think you've pulled around 800 pounds before, right? Yeah, 860. So yeah, right uh yeah 860 so yeah my best 860 yeah my best was at um and actually you made a great joke when i did it it was at uh slingshot record breakers the year before this last one and um i was uh similarly jacked 60 by the way yeah or 859 point blah blah blah right like. Right, right. Because of the kilo conversions. But no, you said, because I had baby powder all over my thighs. And I get up to the bar, and it's on YouTube.

You're like, you can't even tell he has baby powder on because he's so pale. And so, yeah. I took that to heart, and I started tanning. You got some tanning bulbs at your house? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Damn. but uh no you got some uh tanning bulbs at your house oh yeah oh yeah damn so how how i guess uh kind of walk us through how did you build up to such a big squad i know that you train uh with dan green and you have a great mentor and stuff um but uh where where did you start

in powerlifting what did you in your first contest approximately how much did you squat so yeah my first meet it was um i squat i think it was 535 or 540 somewhere around that uh as far as the pounds and then bench was i only made my opener i made roughly 365 um i failed i tried 385 and i failed on those in my second and third and then deadlift i went three for three and it was like 635 or 640 pretty much lighter a fair amount yeah yeah so my first meet i i competed at 220 my first three meets actually were at 220 but the very first one i barely even cut weight i um you know i i think i i didn't even really i don't know if i knew about the potential to weigh in 24 hours ahead of time

because like i i mean i came up wrestling, and so we always weighed in just right before we competed, or an hour before. Also, it was in Vacaville, and it's like an hour and a half drive, and I just didn't really feel like doing it. I skipped breakfast, I drove up, I made 220, and competed. Deadlift, interestingly, had been my best lift beforehand. A lot of wrestlers come up with a really strong back, good grip, good back. And so that was my best. Squat was comparatively my worst.

But then, especially under Dan Green's guidance, the technique for the squat came along as well as working on my weaknesses, and it ended up surpassing everything else. What's something that gave you confidence to lift those kind of weights? Was it seeing someone like Dan Green up close and seeing him, that work ethic maybe every day? Yes.

Giving you some confidence? Because you already have a good work ethic because of your wrestling background and sports background. Yeah. I think a lot of it's sort of channeling the that work ethic in the right directions and um you know dan they also you know did other sports before he got into lifting and so i think he channeled that cheerleading he did yeah you hear that boys and girls you want to be jacked start out as a cheerleader or a soccer player. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of good things to do.

And, you know, yeah, so watching him, especially, you know, watching anything in person is different than, because I had watched plenty of big lifts on YouTube or videos and stuff like that, but in person is just different. And that, I think that definitely set a good impression for me. You know, at all the meets I went to, I would watch big lifts, and that, I think that, that definitely set, set a good impression for me. You know, all the meets I went to, I would watch big lifts, you know, like one that I always remembered was, uh, David Douglas, you know, David, the beast Douglas. And I love that guy.

And he's the first person I ever saw squat, uh, nine Oh three. So over 900 huge venture too. Oh, that's insane. Yeah. Absolute animal. Oh dude. Yeah. He's, he's phenomenal.

Um, yeah. So I still remember watching him. He was the first guy who I saw squat over 900 in wraps. He's also the first person I saw tear his bicep deadlifting. It might have been the same. Yeah. That's not good. Seeing people tear stuff up close and you see it roll up or hear it sometimes, you're just like, why'd I have to be there for that?

It leaves a scar on your brain forever. Oh, totally, yeah. But it helped me learn what happens in the sport. And then Derek Kendall, he was the first person I saw squat over 900, I think it was 909, in sleeves. And I was like, what in the world is this? So just seeing other people do it, it know, it's like the four minute mile. You know what I mean?

People before it happened, people thought no one can do that. But then they saw someone do it and all of a sudden more people did it. So that's part of it. And also just the way I kind of live my life is like, if I want to do something, maybe it's impossible. Maybe it's dangerous, but you don't know until you try it. Derek Kendall, by the way, did an 881-pound front squat. Oh, yeah.

Oh, his front squat is gnarly. I've never – I think that's got to be the heaviest front squat. I know Jezza does some crazy front squats too, but Derek Kendall. I mean, he – if you look at – It's just no disrespect to anybody that currently has the all-time world record, but, I mean, like this guy. I mean, his – he got hurt you know and and he got banged up a little bit so he didn't end up actually doing it but i i just have never

seen anybody with that kind of squatting power before oh not raw you know this is crazy derrick was on another level and then you throw in the other thing his shoulder press his bench press i've watched him bench press i think i think he got dinged for it on maybe downward movement, but 628. It was just ridiculous. And he does bodybuilding now. Oh, it's crazy. His guy's massive. He doesn't have body fat on him to begin with.

Right, yeah, he got shredded. But it's funny, he stays off social media. He's a monster like if he was on he i'm sure he'd have a crazy following but i think he's more of like a quiet guy he was a school teacher i remember him and eric spoto having like conversation about like negative comments on on social media i was like this is so funny these guys are both so huge and they're both so sensitive they were so sad eric's like people keep calling me fat i get the same thing too man he's like i've been eating pretty good too i don't know what the problem is i was like oh my god

20 these guys have got like 23 inch arms 24 inch arms yeah so you're like i can't believe and that's got to be maybe five years ago imagine if they were on today oh yeah i mean the trolling has like exponentially increased. Jedi trolling. So you started out playing sports. Were you a smaller guy? Were you skinny and you had to work on getting bigger? Or you always been kind of thick? I've always been kind of thick, you know, especially with two C's.

I mean, I think like looking at my dad, it's funny. Like just a lot of people, I've had people know me for a long time like, looking at my dad, it's funny. Like, there's a lot of people. I've had people know me for a long time, and then they meet my dad, and then they say, oh, that explains it. You know, so he has a big frame. He was never into lifting. That's the thing is, like, I think if he had lifted, he would be bigger and more muscular. He always liked to. You feel like Ram Man from He-Man.

If you can pull up Ram Man from He-Man. You basically just, you know, don't take any offense to this, but you look like a trash can. There we go, yeah. SpongeBob SquarePants. That's, yeah, it's not the first time I've been called trashy. It's good.

But no, I mean, I think my genetics were good for it. I'd always been one of the stronger kids in my class growing up and so um it you know i think it just kind of honed that and channeled it into uh training and i've always loved it too so you never know it's like a chicken and egg thing like is it the fact that i love to lift from an early age that helped me get stronger was the fact that i was stronger that made me love that's ram man i'm getting nostalgic all you have to do is put that shit on that he looks kind of like the juggernaut too yeah right just

a different color uh armor yeah you gotta do that for halloween that's your halloween costume yeah i've done bane i've done the incredible Hulk. I think that would protect you from COVID as well. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. All that armor. No doubt. Yeah. Look up Ram Man if you're just only listening to the audio. Oh, look at that.

There's that grappler. Let's chat a little bit about your wrestling background because I find that to be super fascinating. So give us some background story on kind of where that started, how it started, and kind of what it evolved into. So I think I, from a pretty young age, been very interested. And I talked about this earlier thing about, you know, every kid gets into like fights on the schoolyard or things like that, and you get picked on. And I can't say I was bullied more than most of you. I think I was bullied less probably than most people. And part of that was probably because I was stronger than most people.

But there's always that kid who's two or three years older. And so it's like at that age, they're going to be bigger and stronger and tougher and all that. And so I always just hated the feeling of someone being able to physically control me. Like it's just – that just eats away at my soul. And so I kind of vowed from a young age to like minimize the possibility of that ever happening. And so that motivated me to lift. That also motivated me to get into wrestling.

I got into wrestling a little bit later because just the area I'm from, it's not a big sport at all. Now my dad, he's from North Carolina. He wrestled in high school. And so even from the age, I love just wrestling with him on like the floor, you know, and he'd teach me some base jobs, taught me a cradle and like a half Nelson and stuff like that. And but it wasn't until high school that I started actually competitively wrestling. And I remember a big,

big kind of epiphany was I'd always been one of the, if not the strongest kid in my class. But I remember wrestling with a couple of folks who both on appearance and, you know, strength wise, pure like weight strength wise, I was stronger than. But they crushed me on a wrestling mat. And so it taught me the importance of, you know, technique and, you know, wrestling specific strength, which is different than weight room strength. And so but again, that was that feeling of getting physically controlled, physically dominated by another person, which I did not like. And so that was very motivating. And so I knew then that I wanted to keep wrestling. I didn't want to just make it a high school thing. And so I kind of went all in when I spent all summers at wrestling camps, training, off-season stuff.

I kind of dropped all the other sports. I used to play soccer, basketball, lacrosse. I dropped all that. And then I went to a college that I was able to wrestle at. It was a Division I college. It wasn't like the University of Iowa or Oklahoma State or anything. did you get recruited um yeah so i had i knew i wanted to wrestle in college so i when i was visiting colleges i specifically you know i met with the coach talked to the coach some of them would fly me out and visit and i wanted to i didn't want

to chance it i wanted to know okay i'm going to be able to be on the team and so the school first school i went to which is is Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, the coach there said, yeah, I've got a place on the team for you. You'll be able to be in. And, you know, that first year, the freshman year, I mean, even I was, you know, medium tier coming out of high school, and even like the best guys, multiple-time state champs, you get your ass kicked freshman year. It's a meat grinder.

Is Bucknell, is that an Ivy League school? No, it's close, though. It's in the Patriot League. It's out there. It's with Colgate. You've got to be pretty smart to go there, was my point. From what I recall. Maybe in some areas.

It was a good school and um i enjoyed it uh i wrestled there for two years uh they cut the wrestling program though that was a the problem which has affected a lot of college programs over the years so that's what led me to transfer and led me into going to duke from there so oh snap uh yeah so i went to duke i did three redshirted and did two more years at duke and ended up graduating from there well what happens after that with wrestling because i feel like with college like if you wrestle in college and you finish up like there's not really much other than trying to maybe go real big olympics or coaching yeah no so it's in the one of my favorite sayings lately is quote unquote, unquote, there's levels to this shit. And wrestling, just like any sport, is so exemplary of that where you take high school and there's the guys who are on the team but never really start.

And they're getting their butt kicked by the guys who are starting. But those guys aren't even really getting winning records. And they're getting their butt kicked by the guys who are winning records. And those guys are getting their butt kicked by the guys who are going to the state tournament. And they're getting their butt kicked by the guys that are winning records. And those guys are getting their butt kicked by the guys who are going to the state tournament. And they're getting their butt kicked by the guys who are placing or winning the state tournament. And it keeps going.

And then those guys go to college and they all get their butt kicked. And then, you know, and then the good, the college, in college the levels continue where it's like most guys never start, never really get much mat time. And they're getting their ass kicked by the starters and whatnot. and then the starters are getting their ass kicked by the national qualifiers who are getting their ass kicked by the all americans and so it's just all these different levels that the general public has no conception for you know what i mean they just think like oh you know it's the same thing as when if you're watching like the super bowl with with your your buddies

and maybe they played jb high school football, and they're yelling at the screen at the best football players on the planet who would absolutely annihilate them. That guy's not even that big. Yeah. You don't realize he's 6'5". Yeah, oh, he's slow. The quarterback's got to get out of the pocket.

You know what I mean? Why didn't they pass? It's like, dude, come on. Like, if you were there for five seconds, you'd be hauled out on a stretcher. Yeah. And that goes for any sport. I mean, MMA, same thing. You seconds, you'd be hauled out on a stretcher. Like, yeah. So, and that goes for any sport.

I mean, MMA, same thing. You know, guys who've never even been in a fight, they're trying to say, like, oh, why didn't you do that? I would have done this. No, you wouldn't have. You'd have dodged that much. Right, yeah. Exactly. You would have got beat a lot earlier is probably what would have happened.

Yeah. You wouldn't have been made into the cage. And so, yeah, to answer your question, there's those levels. And so then, like, the Olympic level is the ultimate level. And those guys are – I mean, there's multiple-time national champs who barely get even on the Olympic ladder, which is the top ten. So I wasn't on that level. I knew I wasn't going to make the Olympics or anything.

And so coaching can be an option, but it's not exactly like a lucrative option. There's not like a lot of room past that. You know, thankfully nowadays, you know, MMA has come along and that can be a channel for wrestlers to get into. But so as far as for me, you know, I wasn't good enough to initially compete on the world level or the Olympic level. And I wasn't really interested in coaching. You know, part of me thought, you know, I got this degree from these good schools. And, you know, my parents also wanted me, you know, I don't think they would have been very happy if I had just, you know, not done something beyond athletics, I guess.

And so I'm just trying to think. So, yeah, and I had gotten interested in like mixed martial arts and Brazilian jiu jitsu actually early on. And so I transitioned into more of that stuff, which I know I know you're you're big into now. And I just went with that. But at the same time, it was like I want to also work and kind of do the normal real world stuff. What's your degree in two, by the normal real world stuff. What was your degree in two, by the way? A great question.

So I, uh, it was a long journey. Bucknell had a great engineering program. So originally I was actually an engineering major, but, uh, you know, I learned that I wasn't all that cut out for it. You know, high school, I was, I was good at the math and science stuff. So I thought I'd give it a try. And back then that's all the hot jobs were in engineering, especially in the Bay Area. But I ended up getting my degree in public policy with a poly-sci minor. I just found I was mostly interested in econ, political science, policy-related classes, philosophy.

That's what I really enjoyed learning about. what I really enjoyed learning about. So, um, you mentioned, uh, it doesn't seem like any of this is from lack of like wanting to do it. Like it seemed like you loved wrestling, correct? Yes. And then like, I think that this is a healthy realization and I've noticed this characteristic in many people that are successful. Um, but it's not really talked about much. I think it's a healthy realization to say, I don't know what it is, but I'm just not quite like those other guys. And there's really – I can work out all day. I can lose – I can get rid of all these other aspects of my life, and I can really hone in on it. But from a realistic standpoint, it's just not in the cards.

You hear mom and You know, you hear mom and dad say you can be anything you want to be, but it's like, well, what kind of, you know, within reason, I mean, even if you're born female, you can't play in the NFL at the moment, you know what I mean? So like there's limitations to certain things, right? So what kind of made you realize and how did that feel? I'm sure it didn't feel good, but it probably led you to think of, I have some other attributes that I can work on and I can hone in on. Yeah, and I think that's a great point. And I've talked about it on some posts before. The world of athletics is full of kind of these cliches that are essentially bullshit.

You know, and the problem is a lot of people look to athletes for philosophy or for psychology when they're just good athletes. They're terrible philosophers and terrible psychologists, but they're trying to talk about, yeah, you can do anything for your mind to it, or, you know, you got to give it 110% and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. 120, I heard. That, you know, yeah, and if you're really good, 121. That's Josh, 120%.

Yeah, and of course, they'll say, oh, there's no such thing as genetics. It's only hard work and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think that can be kind of a willful ignorance that can be selectively helpful if you kind of convince yourself of that in a brief time to motivate yourself. But if you, if we're being real and just trying to be semi-intelligent, like you realize that stuff's all not true. You know what I mean? Like, like Gary Coleman's not going to be a all-star NBA center, you know,

like, you know, I mean, like, sorry, you know what I mean? Like, I mean, I, I loved bass. I was obsessed with Michael Jordan when I was younger, but I learned, actually, my buddies who I played ball with. Gary Coleman got thrown right under the bus. Sorry. Well, I mean, Vern, I'll throw, Vern Troyer, we'll throw Vern Troyer in there, too. You know, I mean, there's.

Hey, there is a little person, police officer in Davis. I don't know if he's still around. Oh, wow. Yeah. Seeing him patrolling the streets is a little different. Man, on the flip side, I was in the police academy with the guy who was seven feet tall. Holy crap. Yeah, he was a college basketball player.

He was seven feet tall and he was thick, too. He was low 300s. That's intimidating as hell. Yeah, and he was strong. Probably taking him an hour to get out of his car, though. Well, they had to get a different car for him. Oh, shit. Yeah, he had to get outfitted for a different car because he wouldn't fit in a patrol car. Yeah, he's a monster.

Yeah. He's driving a big rig down the street. Yeah, pretty much. Pretty much, yeah. There's some freaks out there. So you kind of realize that these other people are just a little different than you, and then kind of what was the dialogue or what was the, what'd you kind of switch to? kind of what was the dialogue or what was the, would you, would you kind of switch to?

So, yeah, so I, I'm big on being realistic, like, like pushing hard, but still keeping a rational mindset, you know? And, um, and so, you know, if I realized, okay, I'm not going to be the best in the world at wrestling or anything like that. Um, you know, I would always think, well, what do I, you know, what do I enjoy? There's kind of three things. And whenever you think about any endeavor, there's three things you kind of look for. Like one is what am I passionate about? Two, what am I talented or gifted at? And three, what generates income? You know what I mean?

So now if you're independently wealthy, then, you know, think about that. But 99.9%. Yeah, I was talked about this recently. And it's, you know, these three rings. You can look at it like Olympic rings and then find the intersection, find your sweet spot. Right. You can even call it a Venn diagram. There you go.

This guy went to college. Josh, can you get me a book or something? I need something to keep up over here. Our uneducatedness is really going to show on this episode. Polly Psy, no idea what that is. I don't know if he, like, it sounds like origami or something to me. Or it's like you need a protract going to show on this episode. Polly Polly side. No idea what that is. I don't know if he like, it sounds like origami or something to me. It's like you need a protractor to create one of those.

Yeah. It's actually like, it's like, it's poly polyamory, poly side, polyamory, same thing. Just kidding.

That's an open relationship though, right? That is a version of the open relationship. Yes. We know things. Yeah. Not a lot. Um, some stuff, some stuff some stuff but but yeah yeah

those are the three things i constantly think about and i think about you know the very the luckiest people are ones who find things that cover all three of those you know and a lot of people don't i think that's one thing that gets lost on the current generation is i think a lot of the you know the millennials and gen z or whatever it is are brought up kind of thinking with a sense of entitlement that they can do no matter what, something that fits all three of those when the reality is it's not the case. And if we look over human history, I mean, I don't think a lot of the sheet metal workers who are vital to this country exactly thought, oh, I'm so passionate about doing sheet metal work. You know what I mean? Like there's you think of all kinds of vocations where it was more, OK, I got to put food on the table for my family. This is going to be hard. This is going to be painful. It's gonna be uncomfortable, but I've got to do it. And I'm

good enough that I can do it. You know what I mean? I think people need to realize that like, oh, well, I've got a fine arts major and I just want to, you know, make a great living pursuing fine arts because I'm passionate about it. Well, cool. But, you know, that might not be realistic. You bring up a good point because it still fulfills a lot of the things that you need to have fulfilled in order to have a good life. You're still going to have a lot of self-worth. You're still going to have good purpose. You still feel really good about yourself.

The nine to five that you have might not be like the ultimate thing that you truly love, but maybe at some other point, maybe while you're working, maybe while you're making a living, you could be working on, you know, things you're going to do in the future, kind of a side hustle type of thing. But I know a lot of people that they don't really love their job, but they're very happy. And they kind of, and people will criticize and say, oh, you know, some people that only live for the weekend. Well, some of these people, they do live for the weekend because they don't really love their job. Their job pays the bills. The job provides for the family.

They have a nice family. Everybody's pretty happy, relatively speaking. You know, every family has their own set of, like, problems or whatever. But then on the weekend, they get to go fishing or they get to, you know, enjoy themselves when they have a couple days off. Yeah, I mean, one of my favorite sayings, and I think the French philosopher Voltaire said this, uh, it was the perfect is the enemy of the good. You know what I mean? And so I think a lot of us are thinking, what's the perfect job. And then another one of these saying cliches that I can't stand is, you know, find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your

life. Well, the vast majority of us are not going to find a job. We absolutely love, we are going to work many days of our lives. You know what I mean? That's reality. But if we find something that's good, that's feasible. No one's going to find something that's perfect. And like you said, living for the weekend, that may sound bad, but that's two out of seven days a week. I mean, that ain't shabby, right?

And I think we have to set – It might depend on how you're spending that time. Like if you're just drinking and not doing shit productive at all, then maybe that's not great. No, absolutely not. Yeah. I mean, definitely all forms of recreation are not created equal. But, yeah, I think it's good to have goals and be aggressive in those goals and work hard for those goals, but also have some degree of realism within those. Otherwise you're going to be constantly disappointed. You know, have you all, have you always like had that sense of realism? Like, could it, was that something your parents taught you to think about? Cause you also mentioned like, you know, studying

philosophy in college, like, did that have a, an impact on the way you think about these things? Yeah. I mean, I've always kind of considered myself like you could say a hardcore rationalist. I mean, both my parents, so my mom was a clinical psychologist. She had her PhD in psychology. My dad was a, he still practices actually. He's in his late 70s and he still works, but he's a psychiatrist. So he's a medical doctor. There you go.

And so, you know, so my whole childhood, every dinner, I mean, they divorced when I was in high school. So they're separate. But like growing up, they would always talk about, you know, their work and studying the brain and how it works. And this is all very evidence based stuff, all very rational based stuff. You know, what medication does what, what disorder, what type of neurotransmitter imbalance contributes to what disorder and all that kind of stuff. And so I just was kind of wired, uh, to think about those things. Um, I think I was 13. I started reading, they had all these books.

I mean, one of their marriage wedding gifts was the full volume of works by Sigmund Freud. You know what I mean? So like on their bookshelf was this, it must be like 20 books lined up. I remember front and center of all the Sigmund Freud's. Not a bad environment to grow up in. Yeah, no, it was, I mean, very, I mean, they always stressed education, always stressed, you know, critical thinking, analytical thinking, rational thinking. And along with that, I think comes, you know, realism. Do you think emotions and feelings are irrational? I think yes.

Now, I think at the same time, when I say irrational, I mean that as in they are not rational, not as in meaning they're inherently irrational. I understand. I think sometimes when somebody hears irrational, like you're saying, you know, sometimes you might say someone's thought process is irrational. You're not trying to be offensive. Right. You're just saying that you could think about that better and probably have a more optimal

thought process. Yes, exactly. I mean, like this microphone is irrational. I'm not talking down on it. I'm just saying that this microphone does not have any rationality to it. You know, this table is irrational. So there's plenty of things that just simply lack rationality. It's not a slight on them. But I think as sentient beings we always have to kind of think about that and try and why is the microphone irrational right i mean it's it's a fixed it's a fixed inanimate object yeah exactly and so i think yeah people well nowadays everyone gets offended at everything like i may i mispronounce the word the and it's know, it's a microaggression, but, um, you know, I mean, but, um, but yeah, like I think we, rationality needs to be embraced if we're to progress as a

civilization. I mean, that's what, you know, if you look at how we even evolved, it's based on rational principles, you know, it's, if we were defending, you know, if we were defending ourselves from a attack by a pack of lions, you know what I mean? We had to use rational principles and not just emotion to, to deal with that. If we just cried or got mad, get as mad as you want at the lion, it's not going to solve any problems for us probably. Right. Right. Wow. Pretty cool. What does it mean for you to be like like how does it how does it help you in your day-to-day like let's kind of stay on the topic of we'll shift over into your career in a

moment but like let's stay on the topic of like lifting how does this assist you you know you've gotten some pretty severe injuries uh torn uh tricep and uh you had a couple blowouts you recently had carpal tunnel you know tunnel surgery and things like that. How does this assist in your training? Because it's good to have some rational thought towards, you know, I'm not prepared to do that. But then at the same time, we got this other side of us who's like, fuck it, man, go for it.

Like, you need to just go for it. That's what this guy does. And that's what that guy does. If you want to break an all-time world record you better be at least a little bit irrational oh yeah i mean yeah you know they're saying all power actors were a little bit crazy you know i mean i think kurt karwoski says something about that in an interview and one of my favorite symbols is the yin and yang symbol and i think that that kind of uh is a emblem emblem of kind of the way i live my life. And you got both, you got to have the, you know, the dark and the light. And, um, you know, yeah, the rat, you know,

when I'm lifting and training or think about my like aspirations, I do, you can set rationality aside. You know what I mean? You can even call it ignorance, selective ignorance. And I think selective ignorance can be very purposeful. Um, but, uh, yeah, you know, with the injuries and the training, kind of the interplay between rationality and irrationality is very key. Like I, one of the things I love about powerlifting is it's so rational, it's so objective and numbers based. I mean, you either moved 400 something pounds or you did not move for, you know what I mean? It's clear there's, it's not up for interpretation. Oh, what if you got a bad liftoff though well i got a bad liftoff i think it was misloaded uh those 45 yeah those 45s are a little heavy

the judges the judges suck oh man yeah no i mean so they're yeah okay i'm just saying excuses i'm just messing around no no yeah i got you yeah i mean it's it's as far on the spectrum of objectivity as it gets pretty much right and so i love that i love it is hyper rational um and the training makes sense it's like okay if i want to improve my squat i will stimulate my i will train the squat to stimulate my nervous system to be more efficient and i will train my quadriceps and my hamstrings and my glutes to more efficiently move and to grow, to engage in hypertrophy so that I can be stronger. Like it all just makes sense. But then, you know, and with the injuries, you know, what I think about though is like, and I don't even know if this is necessarily rational or irrational, but I never want to live in the world of what if, you know what I mean? Like, and we all will have some, what ifs, you know, I always think, well,

what if I had changed my major to this? What if I had moved to this city? I mean, that's, that's inevitable, but especially when it comes to things that we are definitely passionate about that we're intrinsically motivated towards, I think we want to like, my thought is, yeah, I've had major injuries. I may get more major injuries, but if I'm not going to pursue what I'm passionate about, what am I even doing? You know what I mean? Like it's, you know, it's kind of almost, you call it a kamikaze mindset. You know what I mean?

Like I may just go down in flames, but you know, that's, that's living. You know what I mean? I, you know, if I'm not, if I'm just going through the day to day and not pursuing what I love and what I'm passionate about, you know, with, with reckless abandon, so to speak, am I really alive? You know, I don't know. It seems so that's, and that's kind of, you can say it's irrational and that's where like it's purposeful irrationality. You know what I mean? Cause you know, like kamikazes, I mean, you're flying a plane into, into your own death. That can't be rational, but I don't know. I mean, sometimes you gotta just go for it for you personally, when you like got into powerlifting, um, a lot of lifters, like you

mentioned wrestling, you just loved it. Yeah. Even though you knew at a certain point, you're not going to be the best that you, you just love not like you, you want to not be able to be controlled by somebody else with powerlifting. obviously you're one of the best. Was that your intention getting into it? Did you kind of see I have these advantages? I can move here. Or did you just love the sport? Definitely the latter.

It was the love. I mean, same with the wrestling. I got into it. It was very individual and it was very personal in the sense of, yeah, I want to I want to be able to not be controlled. And I want to be able to do the controlling if I have to. Same with lifting. It's like I want to be able to not be controlled and I want to be able to do the controlling if I have to. Um, same with lifting. It's like, I want to be as strong as I can. And that, you know, I remember going to my first meeting thinking, you know, I might come in last place, but if I perform to my best, then I win, you know? And so that's the way it's always been. Uh, it wasn't until a couple of years in that even like records like was a concept for me, a possibility.

And I think that's important. It's always we got to stay intrinsically motivated. You know what I mean? Because, you know, psychology 101 will say, you know, worry about what you can't control, not what you can't. And so I can't control what Larry Williams is going to do, what Kevin Oak's going to do. And those guys are my friends. I mean, I love those guys and they motivate me, but I can control what Andrew Herbert does. And so I'm going to worry about that.

It's improving myself. That's one other thing I love about powerlifting as opposed to a lot of other sports is it is yourself. Your opponent is yourself. When I was wrestling, I still loved the accountability aspect. It's just you on the mat. You can't blame the team. You can't blame the coach. You can't blame anything like that, but still it's dependent that. But still, it's dependent on the other person.

It's dependent on your opponent, which is beyond your control. So, you know, yeah, I always just thought about it's how it made me feel, you know, what I wanted to do with myself. And, yeah. Yeah. You seem kind of like outwardly, you know, seeing you compete several times now, you seem like kind of an aw shucks kind of guy on the outside. Yeah. What's going on on the inside? Like when you miss a weight, are'll be frank here and it may not be the most like cheerful thing. But, you know, I do I've over most of my life been become good at putting on a facade, you know, and I think I might be a decent actor because, you know, I from a very young age, I definitely was, you'd say, endowed with more anger than I think most people have. And you could ask my dad and my parents about that. I mean, I was, you know, a wilder kid. I, I've always had a lot of anger and stuff like that, but it's,

I've channeled it, you know, and that's where I think wrestling lifting has been great for me, but you know, those things are still inside and I still, I'm part of myself. I know that, um, which is both a good and a bad thing. Um, but I'm big on, I'm big on turning things inward. You know what I mean? Like, like I don't discourage people from expressing their feelings. I think that's very important. I encourage people to do that.

I think it's healthy, but I don't know. I've always hated the thought of being a complainer or being a burden to other people or sport. Like you, you kick something cause you missed a squat or something. No. Yeah. Just outwardly looks, it looks completely ridiculous, right? Yeah. You might think that in your head, like I feel like kicking something. Exactly. And I may, once I'm by myself,

you know, lose it a little bit. Um, but in the presence of other people, I, I like to, you know, keep that composure for sure. Um, you know, I mean, another thing for me is I, in some ways, I consider myself a very kind of primal person. And it ties in with both the wrestling and the lifting is, you know, and Joe Rogan even will talk about this sometimes where it's like there could be a basketball game going on here, a soccer game going on here. But a fight breaks out over here. Everybody's going to want to watch that fight. And it's the same thing for me so i never i played all the different sports but like when i think about baseball like what what even is that like we're gonna put like three pillows spaced out and we're gonna put like a mound in between them and we're gonna swing a piece of wood against an arbitrary like round

object and then we're going to run. What is this? Whereas I'm concerned, who's the strongest? Who's the fastest? Who's the toughest? Completely made-up game. Exactly, yeah. Fighting makes sense because you have conversation with somebody. There's a huge disagreement on whose space is whose,

or there's a huge other disagreement. Right, who's more tan than who? You've got to settle that, right? Who's more jack than who you got you got to settle that right who's more jacked right right yeah so i mean so fighting and any variation they're in whether it's boxing wrestling jiu-jitsu judo uh anything like that and and lifting whether it's strongman olympic lifting power lifting those that's elemental and then i mean i don't i don't run track or anything but still i i get that too like who can run the furthest or who can run the fastest? Those things all make sense to me.

And I think that comes back to the rationality aspect, too. Like, it makes rational sense to want to see what those human capabilities are. Like, I'm not as concerned with what the human capability is for kicking a field goal, you know? Yeah, you know, what you're saying makes a lot of sense. And also, if you think about the Olympics, some of the sports that we really enjoy, like the 100-meter is very popular. People get all excited for that. It's a huge event.

Fastest man in the world. But the shot put isn't as exciting because people are like, I don't really know what it means to throw the thing 70 feet. I'm not sure. I mean, it looked like it was cool, looked good, but it's like you don't see them in direct competition with each other throwing it the furthest. I think that sometimes what ends up being a little bit boring about powerlifting is it's like you're not, you know, if all three of us were trying to lift 500 pounds as fast as we could for as many reps as we could that were clean, I think a lot of people would want to tune in and see, like, who can do the most amount of reps in the shortest period of time or something like that.

It's more it's more exciting. Absolutely. And not to get too meta here, but I think, you know, the communists might say something else. But most people agree that humans are inherently competitive. Competition is actually how we evolved and survived as a species. It is ingrained in our DNA. And so and that gets at what you're saying. ingrained in our DNA. And so,

and that gets at what you're saying. When we see two or more people going head to head at something, essentially a level playing field, whether it's the track or the wrestling mat or who knows what we are drawn to that competition, seeing that, you know, who, who proves their metal more than the other person dance,

a dance off. Right. Yeah. I mean like, yeah, well that's what we're doing after this, right? Oh yeah.

Okay. Break dance. I warmed up a little bit. yeah i still got a stretch i don't want to embarrass you guys can you get closer to the mic and see my sorry yeah i'll get closer to my thank you i'm real curious about this actually um as we're talking about this this competition you had you know multiple i mean i don't know how many injuries you've had, but I know personally that when I've had injuries or surgeries, those are like, when I, when I was processing those times in the moments in the months, those are some like, really, I just hated those times because I didn't have an outlet for myself. Um, and you mentioned that, like, you know, you don't let that show in public, right? You'll do whatever in private. But when that happened to you for whatever periods

of time that you were off, what did you substitute with? How did you deal? Great question. I think that applies to a lot of things. So I still remember- Booze and cocaine, right? I mean, not in that order, obviously. Yeah. What is the right order there? That's a philosophical question. No, my first major injury from sports was my junior year in high school. I was wrestling, and I blew out my left knee, tore the cartilage, messed a few things up, and I had to get surgery for that. And I remember it took a long time for that to sink into me. And I actually, I mean, I didn't even go to the doctor until I couldn't really even walk. I kept trying to wrestle on it.

It got to the point where I couldn't even really get into referee's position. My whole knee was completely swollen up, and I could barely walk downstairs. And I realized, okay. So I had surgery on it. And I remember even the doc saying, oh, you're going to be out at least eight weeks. And looking back, that's nothing.

But at that time, I was furious. I was like, F that. I'm going to be back in eight weeks. And looking back, that's nothing. But at that time I was furious. I was like, F that I'm going to be back in four weeks. You know, I was just like, no, no way. I'm not training for that long. And, um, but it also kind of knocked me down a few notches as far as like, you know, you are, you do bleed, you are mortal, you know? And, and so it taught me a lot of things and, but also put me in a very bad place where I couldn't do any of the things that I loved. And so then, you know, I had a few more injuries and it was, I think in college early on where I had an injury again that injured. Um, cause I needed that for some kind of comfort. And so it's the books I want to read. It's the TV shows or the movies I want to watch the social events. I may want to do the people I want to connect with better. I mean, cause I, I've never been the best, um, social, uh, butterfly, you know? And so like,

and a lot of times I sideline things for training. Like if you ask my mom growing up, like my buddies would always, you know, they'd call, it was back before cell phones, you know? And so you call the landline at home and, you know, Hey, Hey, Mrs. Herbert, is Andrew there? And most of the time she'd be like, no. And they'd be like, he's at the gym. Right. And they're like, your mom was like, yeah. And so that was just kind of known like, okay, you know, Andrew can't hang out. He's at the gym. And so, um, you know, so we sideline a lot of social things, but I think social connectedness is very important. I'm learning that more and more as I get older. And so whether it's with family or with friends.

And so I would make this list of all the things that I could do. And then in addition, the physical things. Like, so going back to my high school injury, when I blew up my left knee, I was still going to the YMCA and training my right leg. And just doing all kinds of leg extensions, leg curls, one leg movements, as well as all my upper body stuff. I think there's some science that shows that you get a training effect on the other leg, even when you're not training. Exactly.

Same thing with the arms. Yeah, exactly. When I blew out my left arm, I was still doing right sided movements. And I would say that I think there probably is a benefit there. But even if there was zero physical benefit, there is monumental psychological benefit to doing something. You know what I mean? I think it's good to be task-oriented. I think back to – it relates to my job somewhat.

When I see there's critical incidents. I mean, you can think of 9-11 as the most critical of incidents and how so many people were freaking out. And as a first responder, a lot of times when there are a lot of people freaking out, you just give a very simple task. Once people have a task or a duty to perform, it really calms them down. They're freaking out, it subsides a lot. And so it's the same thing. I've got an injury, I can't use my arm. I could freak out, or okay, I'm just going to do some machine presses with my right arm.

I have a task and that occupies my mind. It makes me just feel better even if it doesn't accomplish anything. In terms of your power lifting, a lot of power lifters, especially maybe a couple years back, a lot of power lifters would just get big and fat. I think maybe I made that a little bit too famous or something. I'm not sure. No. But I'm definitely guilty of getting up well over 300 pounds.

For yourself, you've always stayed in good shape. You've always stayed lean. I think a lot of the people listening right now would love to know, like, how the hell do you do that? How do you build that kind of size? Because what are you now, like 260? Yeah, yeah, 25 how do you build that kind of size how do you because what are you now like 260 yeah yeah 255 something around that yeah yeah you look great you keep in good shape i've never i've never seen you out of shape you know how like what's the diet like and and is there something specific with the training obviously that a lot of consistency is built in there yeah i think you know it's when you

mentioned like the history of like very overweight power lififters, I think it's so many times when I've talked to people who say, oh, I'm a powerlifter. They're like, well, you're a powerlifter. But I thought those guys are all like really fat, you know, and and, you know, part of me wonders about what to read. That's like selective memory on people's parts. You know what I mean? Because like Ed Cohn was jacked. kurt kowalski was jacked i mean there's you know plenty of examples of jacked weightlifters and powerlifters going back a long ways strongmen i mean casmeyer john paul sigmerson i mean these guys are awesome yeah these are the 80s you know what i mean so but i think

people there can be a lot of resentment and jealousy you know where people are like oh wow that guy's so much stronger than I am. I'm just going to focus on the ones that are really fat and assume that they're all really fat, you know. So I think there can be misperceptions there. But for me, you know, I've always been lean, you know, and I think of genetics in that sense. Like, you know, my mom is thin. My dad is big framed, but on the thinner side. And so I'm lucky in that regards.

I'm grateful for that. As far as my diet, when I first started getting into fitness, I mean, it was like 8, 10, or 11, I started reading nutrition labels. And actually, I remember I started drinking the ultra slim fast shakes. Remember that time? Oh, yeah. And it wasn't because I was trying to get thinner. It's because those drinking the Ultra Slim Fast shakes. Remember that time? Oh, yeah. And it wasn't because I was trying to get thinners because those were the first meal replacement shakes. It had vitamins, minerals, protein, calcium, all that stuff. And so I would drink those.

And from there, it was always like, okay, I'm going to not consume too many sweets, too much junk food. I'm going to try and get protein with every meal. And I'm going to stay physically active protein with every meal. Um, and I'm going to stay physically active and it's kind of, that's where it's at. Like I've never been a calorie counter, a meticulous dieter. It's just kind of like, and I like to follow the 90% rule. You know what I mean? It's like, if it again, that's the perfect is the enemy of the good. I think people who try and have a hundred percent of their meals, perfect. They're always going to fail. But if you look for like, okay, 90%, that's doable.

You know, 21 meals a week, that's like 18. So you got three really nice apple fritter, you know, French toast meals in there. But the rest are pretty good. You're going to do all right. Pretty much just feeding yourself all the time, not allowing yourself to get too hungry and having large amounts of protein. Is that kind of some of the basics for you? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, you know, through wrestling and whatnot, I mean, I've cut weight and weighed in, you know, hundreds of times. And so I'm very, you know, accustomed to, like, how my body reacts to different things. And I know, you know, some tricks to, like, you can eat high-volume, low-calorie foods to feel more full. You know, fibrous vegetable soups, things like that, high-water things. You know, chew gum. Like watermelon or something.

You can get a pretty good amount of watermelon, and it's not that calorically dense. Exactly. Or, as you said, vegetables. Yeah, celery, broccoli, all that stuff. You know, and then, you know, if you're trying to avoid eating, I mean, I'll just chew gum. You know what I mean? Okay, if I'm chewing gum, that means no, no eating. And, uh, you know, it can be hard, but I mean, anything worthwhile doing is probably going to be a little bit hard.

How about the cardio side of things for you? Like even throughout your lifting career, did you, uh, did you do cardio to an extent consistently? I know, I don't know if you grappled at all during that time, but how was that for you? So that, so that actually, that's, that relates kind of on my, my development within the sport. So I, you know, coming up wrestling, I did just tons of cardio. I mean, we were running all the time, not just to lose weight, but for conditioning and it'd be distance runs, interval sprints, buddy carries up and down the stadium steps, like just a ridiculous amount of that and you know uh and then the wrestling itself of course is very you know uh uh anaerobically anaerobically taxing um and then brazilian jiu-jitsu as you know very well is also a part of that so i had a very extensive cardio background before i got into powerlifting i got into powerlifting uh my first competition was actually right after I had finished the fire academy.

And so the fire academy is also very metabolically taxing. You're kind of moving constantly. You're dragging very heavy fire hose. You're moving ladders. You're in turnouts, which are inherently heavy and very hot themselves. So I was doing a lot of cardio there. And so I always felt like I had to do some kind of cardio. I think one thing that helped me make a lot of progress early on was I backed off some of that

cardio, you know what I mean? Like not to nothing, but significantly less. And I even remember in high school, like I had friends like at the gym who just knew me from weightlifting and they're like, dude, think of how strong you get if you just stopped wrestling. You know what I mean? I'd be like, well, I'm not going to stop wrestling. But I'd think about that, you know, because who doesn't want to be stronger? And, you know, also early on in my powerlifting career, I was getting back into wrestling. I had actually just I'd run some guys at the gym.

I learned about some some wrestling clubs in my area. And actually there's a high school that has a very good, uh, head coach. Um, and they had at that time, a very good heavyweight. He placed two times in the California state. He ended up getting a scholarship to wrestling college. But when you're a big guy and this is both in jujitsu and wrestling, it's hard to find training partners, you know? And so like they, they brought me in to train with this, this kid. And so I wrestled with him a lot and I

was like, Oh man, I, I love this. You know, but I was trying to do both. And it's like, I always use the analogy, you chase two birds, you miss both of them, you know, and I'd go wrestle from like three to five because their practice is worth three. And then I'd drive to boss barbell and I'd lift and I'd be like, my lifts are kind of down. And I had that realization. And it comes also to the realism that we were talking about earlier. It was like, I'm a very good wrestler, but I'm an excellent powerlifter. You know what I mean? And so it was kind of triaging.

And I realized, okay, I want to be the best powerlifter I can be. So I stopped wrestling and cut back on a lot of cardio. That being said, I think I maybe went too far in the direction of no cardio for a while. And the more I have always been a student of the game, you know, learning, you know, from you and Stan and folks talking about walks and bodybuilder friends of mine, you know, the concept of meat, low to medium intensity cardio took a long time for me to appreciate that because coming from a wrestling background, it was always just balls to the wall. Like you're running, you're running as hard as you can. So

it was high stress, which is painful. You know what I mean? If you're go run five miles as fast as you can, you know, like that sucks, you know, but like, so it took me a while to actually appreciate, okay, I'm going to get on this uphill treadmill and I'm going to not let my heart rate go too high. I'm not going to go too fast, but it has all kinds of health benefits. So a couple years ago, I started incorporating more of the steady state, low intensity cardio, and it didn't impair recovery much. It felt better. There's just so much research supporting it, both for psychological and physical benefits that I think I'm at a good place now where I balance it. You know, I do that with the lifting and so I've kind of evolved.

Yeah. Even just, uh, training at like 135 beats. I'm sure it varies a little bit for each person, but there's a lot of, uh, research on that, that. Training in that zone for 30 to 60 minutes a day can be really beneficial, and it can open up the left ventricle of your heart. That's where most people get kind of clogged up. So it's wise to try to find some sort of training. And walking is not enough. Walking does not get you there. But walking is a great start. Yes. Walking is an excellent start for anybody that's listening. You could also just when you lift, when you work out, you could maybe wear a heart rate monitor,

maybe, you know, track, track your heart rate in some way and just try not to take a lot of breaks, try to keep moving. Oh, absolutely. Like, you know, earlier I was talking about how I love supersets. And so before I got into powerlifting, when I would go to a commercial gym, a lot of times I would superset. You know, I'd do antagonistic movements. I'd row and I'd bench. I'd press and I'd pull up. I'd do a quad movement and a hamstring movement. And I loved that because, one, it saved a lot of time, but it also created that cardio metabolic effect.

Kept my heart rate up. It doesn't really impede the strength you know because it's the opposite muscle group yeah i mean there's even might pull away from it a tiny bit sometimes right i mean in in some sense it could even potentially help it where like say you're doing curls and tricep extensions like by definition if i'm doing a curl i have to be relaxing my tricep so it's almost forcing you to rest the muscle that you're going to work when you do the tricep extensions and vice versa so i loaded that obviously when i got into powerlifting and focusing on maximal strength it that's where i started taking longer rest periods and doing

less of the super setting i still i'll save the rest the super setting more for like accessory movements do you mess with much isolation stuff not a a lot. You know, I, so with my elbow before it ruptured, I still had a lot of tricep pain. So I slowly, surely kind of cut out all my tricep isolation movements. Um, I never was big on bicep isolation movements and that's just kind of because of training economy. It's like you only have so many hours in the day. I'm going to focus on more bang for my buck movements. Um, look like bench squat, deadlift, bent over row, overhead press. You have, you have that physique, you have that like density to your body. Yeah. And a lot of that came from the habit from wrestling. It was like, well, we're not going to do curls and extension. I mean, we're going to do compound lifts, get in, get out that kind

of thing. And so, um, but there is the evolution with that too, where I, you know, I partially tore my right pack. And from that, I started, one thing I started doing on my bench days is a couple sets of really light dumbbell flies with a good stretch before I hit the bench. And I found that that was somewhat preventative of like straining my packs. It's, it's an evolution. You end up recognizing like, wow, that was actually really foolish of me to not pay any attention to that form and that style of training, bodybuilding or isolation movements. You're like, those things are so dumb. As you get older and you get more mature and you get in the game a little bit more, you're like, ah, that could benefit me because maybe training my bicep will just help the overall structure around my elbow so my elbow doesn't get inflamed and get all junked up.

And same thing with your pec. Maybe, you know, over a long period of time, maybe you were kind of, you know, rotated forward a little bit, put more strain on the pec. And maybe if you did, you know, tons of face pulls or rotator cuff work, you know, maybe you could have avoided some of that, right? A hundred percent. rotator cuff work you know maybe it could have uh avoided some of that right 100 and just to piggyback off that you know um our our dear friend stephy cohen um who uh she's she's great and i pick her brain sometimes and you know go back to when high school when i hurt my knee i remember my first day of physical therapy the guy said never do leg extensions okay and i've had other physical therapists have said that and they talk about the shearing forces and whatnot so then fast day of physical therapy, the guy said, never do leg extensions. Okay. And I've had other physical

therapists have said that, and they talk about the shearing forces and whatnot. So then fast forward to a few years ago, and I started developing, um, like some quadricep tendonitis and also relatively speaking, my quads were a weak point compared to like my, my hams and my glutes, my posterior chain. So I always wanted to bring them up. And, you know, like extensions is kind of one of the only real quadricep isolation movements. And so I remember I contacted Steffi and I was like, Hey, you know, you're brilliant when it comes to all this stuff. Like, what do you think about these leg extensions? Cause I've been told, Oh, never do them. And it's a shearing stress. But at the same time, I want to like get blood flow to the joint, strengthen my quads, things like that.

And what she said is she said the dose makes the poison. You know what I mean? I'll never forget that saying because it makes so much sense. You know what I mean? You can die from drinking too much water. You know what I mean? Like, you know, or you can die from drinking too little water. Like it's anything is harmful with too much and it can be ineffective or harmful with too little. And so, yeah, leg extension is like, yeah, don't go ham.

Don't max out on your leg extension, but, you know, put moderate weight on there and do a number of reps. Like, that's okay. Like, you know, and so even just move your leg on the leg extension machine, but don't put your feet underneath the part that has the resistance on it. Exactly. Or use a band or something. Yeah.

And so I think that's just so important. I think, you know, as humans, we tend to want to see things in absolute terms you know don't do this 100 do this 100 when in reality the vast majority of things are actually shades of gray in between so then doing some of those movements to help like uh you know like you're saying like stretch and open up the pec is that the furthest you've like strayed away from power lifting like since you jumped in because it seems like you haven't deviated from like the ultimate goal of just being a fucking savage power wonder that one set of flies man oh yeah that was it you're a bodybuilder you know so i do i do like bodybuilding and to be fair i actually do want

to get on stage at some point i hell yeah you would do great thank you i mean it's like pretty much every meet i've done you know i've had people be like hey are you a bodybuilder and i'm always like well no and they'll be like you should you should do it you know and so you know you get that encouragement and then you think back to you know arnold you know one of my original motivations and then ronnie coleman's one of my idols he would get insane huh and then Ronnie Coleman's one of my idols. He would get insane, huh? He would be crazy. He would get weird.

So dope. You know, Dorian Yates is another idol of mine. These guys just motivate me, and I want to give it a try. You know what I mean? I've done strongman competitions. Obviously, I've done powerlifting, and I want to do bodybuilding. You know, it's like they all make sense. But for my training-wise in know, seven years or so of strictly

powerlifting, any isolation bodybuilding stuff I've done has been it with the intent of helping the powerlifting. So it makes sense. You know, I'm really curious about this because you kind of mentioned it in the beginning, the squat is like now your best movement and it didn't used to be the deadlift used to be. So you said that Dan Green shared and helped you out with, you know, some technique work and obviously everybody has different limb lengths. So not everything is universal, but what do you think are some of the big concepts of squatting that Dan helped you change that you do think could be universal with lifters that are listening in? Yeah. So, okay. So yeah. And Dan's, you know, my, I've been very fortunate to have a lot of

great mentors over the years. You know, Mark, you're one of my mentors. Stan Efferding has been a mentor. Dan, I'll take that. Thank you. Dan, Dan Green's been my, my biggest mentor. You know, I trained with him at his gym and with the squat, one, one aspect of it is, is targeting your weaknesses. And so, which is going to be different for people. Like you said, one aspect of it is, is targeting your weaknesses. And so, which is going to be different for people, like you said, for me, it was my quads being relatively weaker. And that's usually translates to coming out of the hole. And so, you know, Dan had me doing, you know, high bar squats, in other words, pushing the weight forward and making it more upright posture, quad dominant and pausing in the hole, you know, one two three count and up so you're really

hammering your quads um under greater stress in the hole and and also front squats so that's kind of the even more than a high bar squat the more you shift the weight forward the more it's a um quad movement and with front squats it holds you accountable because you have to stay upright or else you're gonna lose the bar and so like those things were huge um but then also certain kind of mental cues you know like i know one thing he taught me was you know because sometimes when it gets heavy enough it would pitch me forward a little bit i might even still get the lift but you don't want that and so he talked about don't think of it as a bar on your back think of it as like a boulder on your back.

And the reason, and so that comes down to surface area. If you think of a bar, then you've only got, you know, a small amount of your back covered, you know, right around your scapula. But if you think of a boulder, your entire upper back is covered with an object. So you need to tighten up and really fight against this boulder as you hit the hole and start to ascend out of the hole. and really fight against this boulder as you hit the hole and start to ascend out of the hole. It's a mental cue that kind of teaches you to tighten everything maximally. It might be the difference between just having that weight sitting behind you,

which is kind of hard to manage, versus having a weight vest on. It's just overall just tons of pressure on your entire body. That surface area analogy makes a lot of sense. Dan Green, there's no tricks with that guy. There's nothing, like, confusing about his methods, right? I mean, it's just like, hey, I think, you know, if we build up your quads, which is, you know, a big part of a squat, we're just going to annihilate him. So front squats and things like that too, right? Yeah, high bar.

And then the safety bar is great too, you know, because that – it's so nice because it really – it takes the stress off your elbows and your shoulders. You can go hands-free. You can do like a Hatfield version and get an even better range of motion, but still focuses on the quads. And it has the added benefit of, you know, the safety bar tries to pitch you forward. So just along with that boulder analogy, you're really trying to, you know, really strain your thoracic and lumbar spine against it to keep from pitching forward. I think Dan Green and like his evolution was really pivotal to raw training. You know, I think Rhino came through and, uh, when, when Stan came through, it was, it was a huge thing. And people were like, wow, this guy, you know, not only is lifting these world record weights,

but he also looks great. And then Dan kind of looks like a bodybuilder, too. He looks like he's a couple weeks out from a show. He's frigging massive. But I think what was huge, what I remember, was the methodology. When he started to talk about how he trained, I think it opened up a lot of other people's minds or may have closed their minds off to certain other styles of training. Do you remember the article West of West Side?

I was about to say that. His first article. Yeah. It was really, really controversial. And I believe it was on Juggernaut's website. But like West of West Side, I mean, you could have thought like a war was about to pop off back then because people were like, hey, man, you can't like, you can't say bad stuff about Westside Barbell.

And it wasn't really necessarily him saying, you know, bad things about Westside Barbell. It was more about just the way that he trained his style and how, with this new evolution of training and how you're performing on the platform without powerlifting gear, maybe we should be open-minded to the fact that there might be another way to, a different way to train, a more optimal way to train. And now you do see some people implementing Westside methods and there's a lot of amazing things that come from Westside. Louie will kind of always point out that anytime you do anything different, he'll be like, that's Westside. He'll kind of throw that in there. A lot of great methods have come from there, but I think Dan kind of always point out that anytime you do anything different, he'll be like, that's Westside. He'll kind of throw that in there.

A lot of great methods have come from there. But I think Dan kind of just, I guess he really just solved the confusion. People were confused. They're like, I'm going to try Westside for raw lifting. And they just didn't maybe understand that Westside was very specific towards how they trained in that gym. And if you were outside that gym, you might get kind of confused on exactly what they were doing.

Yeah. No, it's funny. You know, I was, like I said, I've been a student of the game for a long time. And so 2013. Wow. And so I started when, you know, I was in high school when the internet started becoming widespread. So, yes, I am old.

And but about 1999, I started reading this website called TMAG, testosterone magazine. And then you were on it, too. I remember you from the forums. And and, you know, I'd be interested about powerlifting and Dave Tate, who wonderful. I can't say enough good things about him, but he would talk about it. And he was a West Side guy. And I remember hearing about that. And so then I then you know, then I went away to college on the East coast, but I'm starting reading about that stuff. And I didn't understand, you know, gear like

squat suit, deadlift suit, bench. I didn't know any of that. I was just like, Oh, okay. True. You dynamic effort, maximal effort. And I even tried to sort of like emulate that in the college gym or whatnot. But a funny thing is i remember i saw the name west side barbell and i thought west side barbell that must be in california like awesome that's the west side like sweet when i graduate i'm gonna go back to california i'm gonna train at west side and i was so bummed when i found out no it's in ohio like oh i can't i can't train there but um but yeah no i think you think to address what you were talking about, Dan and I have had breakfast with Louie. We've hung out at Westside.

There's a ton of respect there, mutual respect. I love Louie, man. And I think that's the thing. Unfortunately, in this day and age, we talked about trolling and stuff like that. People love to see conflict. And it's unfortunate because Dan never meant any slight against Westside. It was just like, like you said, opening your mind, trying different methods, and there may be better ways to do things. And any decent person is going to want to see better.

I guarantee Louie wants to see progressive methods of training. You know what I mean? Even if he's not coming up with it. If you love the sport, you want to see that. Just like, you know, I've had world records, but but i love the sport i want to see any record i have get broken you got to want that and so you know i think it's a shame i mean you know i was thinking about with you like you post a lot of information on like the carnivore diet and stuff like that and it blows my mind i'll read some of the comments you know and people it's like you're

you're insulting their mother or something like you you know what I mean? Like, like, why is this conflict coming up? Like you're literally offering free content saying, Hey, this is a method to try open your mind up to this method. It may help you. It may not nothing like you got to do this. You got to end up people like get all upset about it. You know what I mean? So it's just the same thing with, you know, Dan writing about West side, Like, there's nothing to get upset about here. Like, it's all just trying to help. Yeah, I think it actually has been helpful for me to have that criticism because now I try my best to just say this is my experience. This is what's worked well for me.

I mean, you'll still have people flare up over all kinds of things, but I'll just say this is me. This is what I've done. You might find this useful. Yeah. I'll just say this is this is me this is what i've done this this you might find this useful yeah i'll just try to leave it at that and then it's like if you say anything you can't say that i'm wrong because it was a statement i made about what i've done yeah you know like it and you're not me so you don't know what i've you know what i mean so it leaves it it kind of leaves it uh it leaves it closed off. And then when I read, if I read a comment that's negative, it's easier for me to identify how irrational it is, if that makes sense. So rather than me saying, hey, the carnivore diet works, it works for everybody, which I actually do believe. I believe like if you put America on like chicken breast and steak, they would lose weight.

Oh, yeah. There's evidence to back that up. Right. And if I was just to say like, hey, this has been i did this it helps me control for calories it's it's something that uh i enjoy doing because i i feel that it it's the best way for me to diet in terms of being able to control my myself really that's the battle that i'm facing every day is to uh try to control my urges to want to eat all kinds of different crap basically and it's been for me it's been the most useful diet in

those terms and now it's more just like a meat forward meat minded diet you know protein first type of thing more so than just a carnivore diet one of the coolest things that i've seen in this gym was uh you squatting i think it was like 800 pounds just in strong knee sleeves, beltless. But right afterwards you went right to your notebook. And I mean, this notebook was so beat up. Like I got a picture of it and everything.

I thought it was great for someone like me. Like I can definitely track stuff in my log or whatever, but like, how do you utilize that? Like, how do you reference it and go back and like learn from you know everything that you have written down so that brings back some nostalgia for me because i still remember and i still have my first workout notebook that i started in 2001 and and i still remember what motivated me to do it so that was my

sophomore year it might have been into my freshman year, actually, in college. And so there was one of the captains of the wrestling team. His name is Brian Newman. He's actually a spinal surgeon at Johns Hopkins now. But he was an insane workhorse. He was one of the big influences on me. And he beat the shit out of me daily. He split my eye open. My eyebrows have been glued back together because of him.

Bloody nose, his bloody lips i mean he was he was a maniac but he's very very tough very hard working and i remember you'll be trained together all the time and he'd be like he had a notebook and he's like you know andrew you need to have a notebook and i'm like okay and so and so i get one and you know i start keeping notes in it but it's so great like i for accountability, but as far as memory too, like I don't have the greatest like short-term memory. And so like, it sucks to go to a workout on Monday and you're trying to do what you did last Monday, but you can't remember what you did, you know?

So I just love that. And as you keep doing, I encourage everybody to do it and you kind of develop like your own abbreviations to make it fast. You know what I mean? Like I'll, I'll write a weight and say it's my last set and maybe I almost got it. I'll write like a B, which means I barely got it or I didn't quite get it.

I'll write an a, I almost got it. You know what I mean? And then if it's a PR, I'll put a hyphen, a dash on the margin and I'll put PR next to it. And if it's a, it's a three rep PR,

then I'll put three PR. You know what I mean? So it's this code you develop, but I can flip back through that and see where are the PRs? What did I do on this day? What did I do on this year? And it holds you accountable, but it also just helps you remember everything. You know, it's, um, you know, just part of the, part of the game, part of the ritual. Yeah. I just thought it was great. And then, you know, like I said, I took a picture of it because like how beat up it was. Yeah, yeah. Like it just shows that like, yeah, you're definitely using the hell out of this thing. Oh, yeah.

I sweat all over it. There's a few pages that have blood on them. Like, I mean, it's just, yeah. You know, I mean, a lot of people use their phones. I'm very low tech. You know, I'm a bit of a caveman like that. And so, yeah, I've always just liked to use pen and paper. Probably way better that way.

Yeah, there's something different about writing it down, I think. Yeah. Yeah, especially for goals and stuff. we talk about that a lot on the podcast but also like the distraction too like if you're writing shit on your phone and then all of a sudden text message someone's sliding into your dms that's main yeah and sema sending you pictures again oh you're not gonna say no i told you yeah it's hard to hard to say no to that i'll be honest yeah so yeah let's maybe switch gears a little bit and talk about your profession. And, you know, you did mention earlier about, like, schedule.

And you mentioned about, you know, tasks and how, you know, having tasks and having a schedule can just really make you or help you to feel good because your mind is occupied. You know, we went through a quarantine and now the country's going through a lot of change at the moment. And I think that people are more stressed out than normal. People have more anxiety than normal. People are fearful of the future, maybe more than normal, fearful of the election and so on of what's going to, you know, what's the future of the United States. How have you personally just kind of kept a schedule even during the quarantine? Did it make you busier because you're a police officer, firefighter and paramedic? Well, so there's kind of there's like two parts to time-wise. So I, you know, the shelter in place, all that stuff happened back in March and I was still full duty. And so I watched and every day was different. You know, one of the first COVID deaths in the country was in Santa Clara County, the county I work in. And so I remember when that happened and every day seemed to change like, okay, what kind of PPE, PPE is personal protective equipment. We're going to use, you know, mask, gloves, gowns, goggles, whatnot. And what's the protocol. And it

was, we were just learning as we go, you know, and it's, it's one of those things where, you know, police by and large have kind of seen it all. You know what I mean? Like you see horrific things and you kind of, that's where policies are developed, how to deal with them, whether it's active shooters, suicides, hostage barricades, things like that, kidnappings, vehicle pursuits and all that. But this was unprecedented. It was like we've never seen this before. So we're all learning as we go. And so there was that aspect.

Then early May is when I had my surgery. And so that put me out on medical leave. And so that's the second timeline. me out on medical leave. And so that's the second timeline. And right shortly thereafter is when kind of the second crisis came out. And that's kind of the law enforcement police issues. I don't even know what to call. I'll just call it the crisis. You know, it's a hard way to describe it. But and the unfortunate thing with that and as far as getting to the task aspect is I was I was off, you know what I mean? And and I think it weighed on me almost more because I knew I've got a ton of respect for anyone who puts on the uniform and the badge, you know, any branch, the military, federal, state, county,

city, you know, and, and I know that because I've worked with so many of those folks and I've seen some of the great things that they do. And to be on the sideline, I think anyone who's a halfway decent police officer, firefighter, EMT soldier, anything like that, you don't want to be on the sidelines. You get into that because you want to be a person of action. And so I felt very bad knowing that my brothers and sisters were on the front lines and I was sitting at home on my recliner, you know, with bandages on my hands. And so it weighed on me, you know, and I didn't have a task, you know? And so part of me, so I did kind of like get on social media and try to post a few things just to kind of, cause I saw there was a major gap in the conversation of lack of knowledge, you know what I mean? Which, which happens in any conversation. But you know what I mean?

Like, so I had surgery on my hands. Am I going to expect this surgeon to explain every little aspect of the procedure to me and to every other patient? No, I'm going to defer to the fact that he has lots of training and experience in doing surgeries. You know, I have work done on my car. I don't expect the auto mechanic to tell me everything he does. And I'm sure as shit, not going to go to the auto mechanic and say, Hey, I think you're doing it wrong. You know, I can barely change my oil, but I think, I think you're doing it wrong. I think it's not really safe the way you're doing things. I think you got to change

everything up. No, I'm going to defer to his training and expertise. But for some reason, when it comes to police and also when it comes to politics, people with absolutely no knowledge on either of those things feel completely entitled to run their mouth about it. And I get some of the motivations behind that. I get that. People are just frustrated, too. People are absolutely frustrated and absolutely things occur. Like, for example, the George Floyd incident that, you know, I had friends talk to me because I condemned it. And everyone I know condemned it. And you're like, wow, I've never seen such a like a unanimous vocal condemnation of a police action by police.

And I said, well, that's because we all recognized it was murder. You know what I mean? Like straight up like it's, you know, because we who actually worked on the streets for years and had training in all kinds of defensive tactics and been in those kinds of altercations. No, you don't do that. Like a knee on the neck ever, much less for eight and a half minutes. You don't freaking do that. Whereas other incidents have come out where we also, where we recognize the details, the nuances, as well as the case law and the policies and procedures that apply and realize, okay, it may look bad, but it actually is legal or it actually is justified. Or, you know, if you actually saw the entire footage, as opposed to just the split second smart cam footage at the end, you would realize it is justified. And so, you know, but yeah, so I understand the frustration 100%. I wish people understood the degree to which they're being spoon fed selective

information by the media as opposed to the whole picture. Like when I think about this crisis, I think of four elements to it. I think of the education system. I think of the law enforcement, criminal justice system. I think of the education system. I think of the law enforcement, criminal justice system. I think of the political system. I think of the media. All four have problems. All four have massive room for improvement. Okay. One of the four, I believe is fundamentally broken and that's the media. Okay. Politics. Yeah. There's problems there. Things that could, you know, I think a third-party system or more than two-party system would be very vital to improving our political climate. And other things can be done there. Law enforcement, for sure.

You know, I'm in it. I know there's room for improvement. We all need body cams. You know what I mean? Like, better accountability, better training, for sure. Weeding out, identifying the bad actors, the bad apples, whatnot. Absolutely, 100%. Education. um, weeding out, identifying the bad actors, the bad apples and whatnot. Absolutely. A hundred percent. Um, education, you know, I think, and I've had this discussion with people, I think it's,

it's a shame, the direction our educational system has gone, especially as far as like our middle school and high school kids, you know, because, um, that's when they're old enough to appreciate some degree of nuance and societal application of things, but they're young enough that it's early enough to basically influence them for the better. And so I've always thought that, or not always, but in the last 15 years, thought that every kid before they turn 18,

before they finish high school, should have a semester of civics, which used to be in all the schools. Learn about the structure of the government, learn about how government operates. Part of that class should be on police interactions. And it should teach people about the laws of search and seizure, the laws of detention, laws of arrest, the concept of an all points bulletin, the concepts of a BOL, a be on the

lookout. Why do you believe in that? So I'll tell you why. And I've had this conversation actually with many, many people, including some people that are fairly intelligent. I mean, I think in any topic there's going to be the people that are just out there and either they're crazy or they're just really stupid. And it is what it is. But there are some very intelligent people with all kinds of different stances on this topic. And so one common thing I've heard is people talk about, well, you know, this cop stopped me for no reason.

You know what I mean? And I didn't do anything. And I'll say that's totally possible. What that means is that person doesn't understand the concept of a detention or the concept of, say, a BOL. And what I mean by that is, say, take, you know, my city, any city, you know, a crime occurs or someone calls it. Most of these things are generated by calls from the general public. Okay. So the police are not generating this. Someone calls in and says, Hey, there's a suspicious person looking into cars. And we all know in the Bay area, there's tons of cars get

broken into all the time. Things get stolen. They give a vague description of this person because they only saw them briefly. I last, this person was walking westbound on El Camino Real. Police are going to get that over the radio. That's a be on the lookout. B-O-L for a approximately 5'10", medium build, light male, you know, approximately 30 years old. I mean, that's very, very vague. Wearing blue jeans. You know what I mean? Dispatch is going to try and get as much info as possible, but it's always going to be imperfect.

Give it to the patrol officers. So patrol officers driving around see someone that somewhat matches that description, understanding that callers are going to give imperfect info. He may see someone who's say six foot one. That's close enough, you know, or maybe they're 230. That's close to 200. Or maybe they're wearing, you know, gray pants, but it's, you know, similar enough. And so what that creates is what's called reasonable suspicion.

Reasonable suspicion means that you believe that this person, there's a likelihood this person is maybe associated to the criminal activity. It's a very low burden of proof, so to speak. But it gives the officer the right to stop that person. The person is not under arrest, but they're also not free to leave. Okay? And people need to understand that. And that's part of the investigative process. The cop will seek to identify them. They might find out the person has warrants. The person

might be on parole or probation. They may have a search clause in their probation, which entitles them to be searched. You know, they'll ask questions. Some of those questions may be uncomfortable to the person. And because the line of questioning might seem like it's accusing you of something. Exactly. And people need to keep in mind that police are both trained and experienced in basically being lied to all the time, all the time. OK, and that's never going to change. So they're going to be skeptical about everything they hear. And but they're going to make this stop.

They're going to do the investigative steps. And some of those sometimes those steps take time. And that that's where I get that people can be frustrated because I've been detained before, both as a child and as an adult. I've been stopped on the street. I've been stopped in my car. I get it. It gets back to the earlier thing I talked about where I think a lot of people feel entitled to have a comfortable life. And that's not always the case. I don't know a single person who enjoys being stopped by the cops. I've never enjoyed it. I don't know anybody's ever enjoyed it, but it's part of life. It's part of living in a civilized society that has law enforcement. So, um, yeah. And so they're

part of the investigation and say, they may find run your, your name and date of birth through dispatch. That may take time. Dispatch has to run through various databases and do checks, you know, and they're going to have you put you in what's called a position of disadvantage. They might have you sit on the curb. That may seem demeaning, but the reality is that police are trained and experienced in folks that resist arrest. And they know that that can happen in the blink of an eye. And so if you're sitting on the curb, especially with your feet straight out and ankles crossed,

that creates buffers to resistance. The person that will have to uncross their ankles, bring their feet in, stand up, as opposed to if you're just standing next to them and you could hit me right now. You know what I mean? And it's rare, but it happens. Like a big training point that comes up throughout the academy is we train for what's possible, not what's probable.

Okay? Every time you stop a car, the odds of someone shooting you at you is very low, but it happens. You know, the first department I worked for, the most recent officer that was killed, pulled over a car at night, didn't know who it was, vehicle violation. A guy reaches out of the window, literally does a Hail Mary shot to the rear, hits the officer in the eye, kills him.

You know what I mean? So that's what you, that's what can happen on any car stop, any domestic violence where you knock on that front door, you know, those things can happen. So probably won't, but it's possible. And so we have to train for that because also we're the last line. That's the thing. People don't realize most occupations, there's always, you can kick the can a little bit down the road. You can refer someone to someone else. When the police come in, that can't happen. It has to stop with you. You have to win, essentially. You know what I mean? And that's the mentality. So all the more reason why cautions are taken. And those can seem aggressive or abrasive or or rough that's part of the job and we just we can't

like not pull people over just because it's dark right right i mean just it it's probably not it's probably not logical right and i think a lot of people don't see the big picture like for example i just on amazon prime i finished this uh this thing called falling for a killer and it's about ted bundy you know the serial killer over the 70s. Yeah, great movie. Oh, yeah, it's fantastic. But, you know, people have this weird notion, I think, that when there's a really bad person out there, somehow they have a sign blinking on their car saying, I am a terrible, terrible person, and the police see them and stop. No, a lot of these things start from just a basic detention or basic car stop.

Let's say with Ted Bundy, he was arrested several times because he kept escaping from jail. But one of the first ones, I think the first one he was arrested in, he was just driving around a college campus. It was night, kind of seemed suspicious the way he was moving. No major violations at all. Cop pulls him over, does an investigation. Long story short, ends up finding ski mask, pantyhose with eyes cut out, duct tape, crowbar, things like that. And, you know, the things he was using to kill people, you know, and they end up arresting him. Timothy McVeigh, you know, the Oklahoma City bomber, like a car stop shortly after the bombing where he was even let go, but they identified him, led to his arrest.

So a lot of these very, very benign stops have a purpose as far as compiling information about who's where at what time that can be used in a very vital sense down the road. And I think people don't seem to understand that. I mean, I think people like to attribute bad intentions to the police all the time. And it's, you know, we all have a natural aversion to authority. You know what I mean? Yeah, a natural aversion to authority, but also the police may place judgment on people just the way the police are being judged as well. Is that correct?

That's correct. Yeah. I mean, it would be difficult not to. Absolutely. Yeah. And I think, you know, police have to. I mean, it's part of the job is you have to be able to confront people. And that can be a very uncomfortable thing.

But, you know, people got to realize they're the vast majority of the population are good, decent people, 100 percent, not 100 percent of people, but they are completely good people. There are bad apples out there. There are the Ted Bundy's. I mean, obviously, he's an extreme example, but there are those folks out there. And oftentimes these folks are not just going to be like, Oh, Hey, so, Hey officer, you know, here's my hands handcuff me. And no, I mean, there's, there's, there's pushback, there's tension, whether it's passive, whether it's aggressive, whether it's verbal, whether it's physical, you know, and police are trained and develop the experience on

how to deal with that. And it has to be done or else these people don't get put in check and removed from society like they're supposed to be. So, you know, I think, you know, unfortunately, so I have a good friend and coworker has a saying, he says, you know, that, you know, any profession for, for one thing, there's going to to be there's got to be racists in every profession. If there's enough people, it's simply the law of big numbers. And there's roughly 800000 police in this country. So, I mean, there's going to be racists among that. I mean, I can tell you the backgrounding process is very extensive, like psychological testing, interviews, your personal history.

They talk to every every girl, in my case, girlfriend, every landlord, every roommate, every boss. I mean, they do everything they can to vet out the bad apples, but again, it's an imperfect process. Okay. So, um, so, so those exist, but it's, it is a much smaller minority than when people would like to think. So my, my friend says, okay, look, 1%, I'm just throwing that number out there. If cops are racist, the problem though, is that 50% of cops are assholes. And so, you know, and, and, and that could be, you know, I'm not trying to be like anti law enforcement or whatever, of course not, but there are a lot of, you know, police that maybe the way they communicate with people is a little bit rough. You know, yeah.

You know, and, you know, I like to give the benefit of the doubt, not just to cost of the people in general. I think it's just a better way to live. And you got to realize that that officer may have just come from watching a child die. You know, I've done that. That cop may have just found out that his friend got got hurt in the line of duty and may never come back to work. Or he may have had a bad day off the job. Maybe he's in a rough divorce with his wife and it's just like you're going to lose the house. There's all these things.

And those are not excuses. None of those are excuses for someone to be an asshole. But we're all imperfect beings. You know what I mean? And so we all have our baggage. And so sometimes we may not communicate in the best sense. Unfortunately, that, you know, less than perfect communication can be extrapolated by people to think, oh, this guy is violent and aggressive or might kill me or I could see him killing someone else. I mean, that's a bit of a

leap. You know what I mean? The vast majority of cops never use deadly force. You know, that's where I encourage people to look at the actual, the data, the statistics, which is kept by the FBI, the DOJ, the CDC. I mean, there's plenty of stats readily available for free that show the extremely low likelihood of anyone being killed by the police. Extremely low. It's less than being killed by the police, extremely low, less than being struck by lightning. You know what I mean?

And so, you know, the problem is, and it gets back to what I was talking about, the media, that's the one of the four branches that is broken. That's the one that is selecting the information that people are given. And that is people's only source of information.

You know what I mean? Like I, I personally, I shudder to think about what if I'd never gotten into law enforcement? And it's quite possible. It wasn't in the cards. I wasn't all my life dreaming about being a cop. I didn't have any family members that were cops.

It was like I gave it a shot. And it was decent, you know, and the recession also hit. And so I was like, oh, I have a decent job. I'm going to hold on to this job because all my friends are losing their jobs. But if I hadn't gotten into that, if I had gone down a different path, would I be also one of these people running my mouth about the police? Cause I had no frame of reference for it, you know? Um, and when I was younger, I had a somewhat negative impression of the police, you know, from being stopped and I didn't enjoy it. Duh. Or, you know, at high school, you know, I was, I partied a lot, you know, I go to house parties and yeah, the cops would break up the parties.

I remember I resented that, you know, looking back, thinking about, well, they're the adults who actually own this house. Why don't you stop the real criminals, right? Exactly. People say, people say stuff like that, right? Exactly. Well, you're, what you're doing is illegal. That's why we're here.

Right. And what you're doing guaranteed a non-cop called in. And you can't just say, oh, we're not going to go. Because that's how you get fired. You're not doing your job. It's just a high school party. It's probably not that big of a deal. Exactly.

Exactly. Some underage drinking. Right. Nothing to worry about. Yeah, they're just trashing this house while the parents are out of town. I'm pretty sure the parents probably want the cops to show up and do something, right? And so, you know, it wasn't until I actually graduated from college and through where I was training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at the Half Gracie Academy in San Francisco, but also I was doing some Olympic weightlifting, actually not very good at it. But both places there were cops that I trained with, and they knew I was trying to figure out my life path.

They educated me about it. And it was getting back to the don't you have something better to do? Well, yeah, I learned about some of the legitimately evil people that they confronted and like took off the streets or the investigations that they did that really helped people who were victims. You know, there are there are people that are victimized out there every day. They need help. And a lot of this current backlash, it seems like it is largely focused on the rights of the criminal or the rights of the suspect without taking into account the victim. You know, and there's people that I've seen it time and time again that just, you know, through bad luck or whatever, they get victimized.

And that's that's I mean, that's where I find the most values when you help someone that you're the only person who could have helped them. You know, from what you like, we were talking to Casey Mitchell about this, too. And obviously, the things that are highlighted are going to be the things that are on people's minds. Like Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Richard Brooks, like those are highlighted. Obviously a majority of interactions that police have, like they probably come out positively. They're out there. Most police are helping people, but I'm curious, like you said that the media is spoon feeding people certain pieces of information. I've seen that. I've seen CNN do that countless times. When youinterpreting because we don't have, or we haven't seen all of the information from a different perspective. Like, does anything come to

mind where you're like, God, I see people talking about this all the time, post them out this all the time. If they just knew this, does anything come to your mind there? Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, just to use the most high profile events here and to touch on one thing you talk about, you're seeing CNN do this a lot. I'll say, I've said this before that you know i don't support the writing or the looting the one building that i'm okay with getting burned down was the cnn building you know what i mean because i mean they i've seen them lie and and also to the thing where i talked about i shudder about how ignorant i might have been if i hadn't gotten to law enforcement it wasn't until i got into law enforcement and mind you this is i was 26 so I was well into adulthood that I really started to see, okay, the media is 100% lying about stuff.

I saw them produce stories about cases that I was personally involved in. So I factually knew they are lying and misleading and cherry picking the info they give 100% based on sensationalism, what's going to get a reaction, what's going to get a reaction what's going to get ratings and so that opened my eyes it took off the blinders so to speak and i wish people realized that more so so two things to address that and there's a number of sources on the internet that talk about this but for every single one of the high profile controversial police killings of people and these ones that are always highlighted are white officer, black suspect there for every single one of those. There is an equivalent officer who knows what ethnicity killing a white person in these exact same circumstances.

None of those are in any media forum, aside from very low profile, you know you have to dig to get that information yeah okay and so that that right there clearly shows that the media is cherry picking and selectively giving stories and then a specific example is the rashad brooks uh shooting so you know it came very shortly after george floyd and i remember you know perusing social media or something. I saw a headline article from a major outlet and it said, Atlanta police shoot man passed out in his car. That was the, that was the headline. And I thought, wow. I mean, I, how can that even be? Okay. There's no, you know, there's no way for that to ever be okay. Literally a person who's passed out can't be shot by the police. Well, then I started seeing videos, and that is a lie.

I mean, we can't call it a fib. We can't call it a fabrication. That is a pure lie. He was awake. The police had lawful reason to be there. He's blocking a freaking Wendy's drive-thru passed out in a motor vehicle, i.e. a deadly weapon. And they put him through the typical DUI process. They're about to put cuffs on him because he fails the DUI process.

And what unfolds is what we know. He fights two cops, punches both of them in the face, takes one of their weapons, is unresponsive to a taser, you know, tries to tase another one of them, you know, all that stuff, which the media hardly touched on at all. And I didn't realize that, like, because obviously I'm friends with a lot of folks in law enforcement, so very quickly a lot of times I will get sort of like the inside scoop on a lot of these things. But what made me realize how pervasive the media lies are and how effective they are is I was driving with a friend,

a good friend and a very, very smart, informed friend. And that topic came up. And through discussing it with her, I realized she thought that she saw the headline, didn't read into it and just assumed a lot of people do assume the media is telling you the truth and thought, wow, the police shot a guy who was passed out. And I say, oh, no, no, no, you know, there's more to it. And she's like, really? I'm like, yeah. And she got very frustrated because she's like, well, I was given totally bogus info. And she might have communicated that to five other people already, too. Exactly. Exactly. So and that's the domino effect of social media and how, you know,

Denzel Washington has a great clip where he gets interviewed by the media about something and he kind of puts them in check and he says, if you pay attention, you're misinformed. If you don't pay attention, you're uninformed, which is worse. And he puts it on them. He's like, you guys have a very big responsibility, don't you? To give people true information, to not misinform people. And it's true. I mean, it's like when I vote, for example, I don't fill out every aspect. There's sections that I just don't know. And I think we need to be comfortable with saying we don't know. And so I won't vote on something if I don't know because I'm uninformed. But I'll inform myself about certain things or

I'll already know about certain things and I will vote on those. So I think we need to be, know what we know, but also know what we don't know, you know, and realize that the media is, is spinning everything that they give us. And unfortunately there aren't very many good alternatives to that. Not many people are going to actually dig into FBI statistics, DOJ statistics, CDC statistics. They're not going to, a lot of these things are open source. A lot of court cases are public domain, but that's boring. You know what I mean? And that takes work to find that information. It's so much easier just to click on CNN or MSNBC, get a headline. Oh, wow. That's what happened.

Wow. That's terrible. Next page, you know, or back to Instagram. So, I mean, that's the climate we're in. Um, and that's why I say, I think the media is, is the linchpin in this whole thing, the media. And, and, and unfortunately I, out of those four things I talked about, the media is the thing I'm least knowledgeable about. So I can't offer like a good solution to it. You know, I, I, you know, I, I hope that there's folks that do know the media, how that works and can propose getting it to a much more honest and truthful and journalistic way than it is right now. Where do you like to get your information? I know you mentioned DOJ, et cetera, but like, if you were trying to search something up for some viewer that's listening and they're like,

I want to find truthful information about some of this stuff. What would be your multiple sources of lifting into if you have any? Well, so in multiple is the key word there. So I'll, you know, I'll Google a topic, you know what I mean? And I'll read multiple things and some things will come from quote unquote the right. Some things will come from quote unquote the left. And, you know, it's hard to find what would be considered a really centrist or moderate thing because I mean, that's not going to be popular. People like to swing to the extremes. But if you look at at least both, and then also read it with a scrutinizing eye. And, you know, when I talked about how I think

the education system should be reformed to include like civics, another thing that I think should be included mandatory in all curriculums is a semester of statistics. So with my major, I had to take a semester of statistics in college. And you learn all about bias. You learn all about how studies are conducted. You learn all how to scrutinize those things. And any article in a magazine, a newspaper, on a website that talks about information is going to cite studies and research and things that are done. But a lot of those are very skewed, or a lot of the way they give the results are skewed. And so if you have a basic statistical knowledge, you can, you can be a little more, uh, scrutinizing

and knowledgeable about that and what potential biases are being incorporated to spin the story. So, yeah, so I just go to multiple sources and then, you know, I'll still look social media. I'll look on YouTube, you know, I mean, if there is video of something, I mean, that helps. But I think always have the open mind and always have the it goes back to the when Socrates said the wise man knows one thing is that he knows nothing. Realize that you're coming from knowing nothing and that you're probably never going to know 100 percent. Right.

So you'll see a video and it may just be a split second or it may just be the last 10 seconds of a 10 minute incident just to constantly be aware of your own fallibility and then think of your own life experiences and then think of common sense. You know, like it's not common sense that a cop's going to be like, you know, this person is doing nothing wrong, but I just want to shoot him. You know, like that is not common sense. All the people seem to like to think that that's the way it goes. More than likely, this is a cop who's gone through an extensive background process, an extensive academy, extensive field training, extensive street experience, more experience than most anybody else gets outside the job. They want to probably put food on the table for their family. They probably want to, you know, catch bad guys and help good folks.

And they probably don't want to shoot someone unless they absolutely have to. But those things happen. I mean that. Yeah. I want to, I want to ask you one thing because, um, like growing up,

I've had certain situations with police. And so many other of like my friends that are also black. Right. And those experiences lead us to having an inherent fear. I'm going to be perfectly honest. When I have a cop tailing me or driving behind me, I get very tense. I am fairly scared. But I know statistically, I don't have a reason to be. So what I want to ask you is this, because I know that, you know, the numbers, can you talk to us about some of the actual numbers that are behind like police shooting

white individuals versus police shooting black individuals? Because I mean, the statistics, if I was actually thinking in that way, I wouldn't be scared. Right. You know what I mean? Right. So can you talk to us about some of the, some of that and shed some light on that? Because the reason I'm asking this is because obviously, if you go on Instagram right now, there are multiple pages dedicated to showing police brutality on everybody, not just black people, white people on everybody. And that makes people scared. Yes. But like we said, there are bad apples. We shouldn't be as scared, even though there are problems. There should be some reform in terms of the way they deal with things, I think. But can you talk to us about some of those numbers? Absolutely. Yeah. So I mentioned earlier, there's roughly 800,000 police officers in the country.

And so every year, there's millions upon millions of contacts with the police. Okay. And I don't know the exact number there, but it's on the score of millions. Every year, roughly slightly lower than a thousand people are killed in a police interaction. Okay. So right there, we were already at, you know, well below 1%, way below 1%. The vast majority of those shootings involve a violent felony, involve an armed subject. So, you know, I think about accountability all the time.

I think of ownership, you know, like what Jocko talks about. And it's like, okay, if we own our behaviors and we don't commit a violent felony and we don't have a weapon, when a police contacts us, we're dramatically improving the odds in our favor. Now people do highlight on the unarmed subject that gets killed by the police, which does happen. But unfortunately, some of those statistics don't account for every year a certain number of police are killed with their own weapon so they're killed by an unarmed person who disarms them takes their gun and kills them with it that still goes down as an unarmed person and they that person might end up then getting killed and you know um so that's kind of a

misnomer but at the same time also that's also where common sense needs to come in, where people the inherent implication is that, oh, unarmed means not dangerous. Well, have you ever seen Mike Tyson? You know what I mean? Like, he'll kill you with a punch. He'll be unarmed. He will absolutely kill you. You know what I mean?

Even with the George Floyd thing, Chauvin, when he murdered him, there was no weapons involved. It was a knee to the neck. So essentially, an unarmed man committed murder everybody realizes that but they'll still think that unarmed means not dangerous again just like every year a certain number of cops are killed with their own weapons a certain number of cops are killed with bare hands whether it's strangling beating things like that so unarmed does not mean not dangerous. So it's a complete, just a, a fabrication. People think, Oh, he called the cop, killed an unarmed person.

Now the overwhelming majority of any of those shootings, whether unarmed or not involve resisting arrest involved noncompliance. And so, and this gets back to the accountability, the ownership thing is like most people. And I know people from all walks of life, all races, all genders, all occupations or lack thereof, you know, I mean, I've been on the job for 12 years. I've encountered a lot of people, just about everybody understands don't fight with the police. Don't resist. You know what I mean? Like there is a court of law. there is a process to do that i mean police absolutely do not get carte blanche you know i'll say this till i'm blue in the face nobody hates a bad cop more than a good cop for sure and you know we we loathe those people so like when we saw george floyd we were furious um because it paints us all in a bad light. But a lot of those incidents, even when it's a justified shooting,

what predicates it is noncompliance by the person. And so I'll tell you what. One thing, before I got on the job, I'd always been a very physically inclined person. I'd been in a number of physical altercations, both through training and not. And, you know, I'll be, I'll be honest. You know, I thought, okay, I'm somewhat talented at that stuff. I'm not very talented at a bunch of other things. And knowing that there are some bad people out there, I thought there was going to be more people fighting with the police and stuff. I was shocked, honestly, when I came on the job

and even dealing with, you know, hardcore gang members that with murderers, you know, stuff like that, who they, they comply there. And I was like, I was almost shocked by that, but it showed me how overwhelmingly known it is in every community to just comply. Don't run, don't fight. Um, and that eliminates just a ton of pretty much every every shooting you know getting back to the numbers and we're talking 99 plus so you know and but then do more statistical stuff and this comes back to like knowing how statistics work so people talk about um i think a black person is 2.5 times more likely to be shot than a white person. And so then when you look at percentage, I may be messing that up, but the percentage is skewed in

that direction. However, when you look at shootings per encounter with the police, it changes it dramatically. And it becomes less biased. I mean, numerous studies have shown that there is, as far as police shootings, police use of deadly force, there is not a bias. One study was even done by Professor Roland Fryer at Harvard University. He did it after the Michael Brown shooting. He did it because he firmly believed there would be evidence of a racial bias in police shootings. And he was shocked to find out that there wasn't. And so, you know, and so he published that study. It was in the New York Times. It was in the Washington Post. I mean, it was pretty widespread. So the 2.5 times more likely, I'm curious because that is mentioned a lot.

Yeah. So what's the error in our perception of that statistic? Okay. So, and this ties into a frustration I have too, is I think a lot of these issues that we're talking about, whether it's with arrests, use of force, crime, incarceration is much more of a socioeconomic issue than a race issue. And, and what's frustrating about that is socioeconomics is, you know, that by definition it's, it's, it's a mutable characteristic as opposed to an immutable characteristic. You know, we can enact policies.

We can do things to try and help people socioeconomically. You can't, I mean, with the exception of Michael Jackson, we can't change our race, you know, nor should we, you know what I mean? Like, and no disrespect to the king of pop, but, you know, so, you know, but it's obviously much more inflammatory and sensitive when things are framed in a racial perspective. And that gets back to the media. If the media talks about, oh, we need a war on poverty. Oh, that's boring. You know, but if we talk about, oh, there's, you know, racial racist homicide happening by our police.

Oh, that's going to get a lot of clicks. And so, you know, every statistically show that crime is higher in lower socioeconomic areas. Unfortunately, and largely due to systemic racism, racism in the past, lower socioeconomic areas have a higher percentage of African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, so on and so forth. OK, police are going to focus on areas where there is more crime rather than less. So they're going to be in those areas. So already the probability of having encounters with minorities is higher. And so then if we look at, say, a cop has 100 encounters with minority, with black people and 100 encounters with white people,

when we look at the shootings per encounter, it's even if not, if not more shootings of the white person than the black person. And so that's where I think it's, that doesn't get shown, you know? Um, but it's,

it's useful. I would imagine this is a case everywhere, but I don't know. And maybe, you know, in places where there's just less money, where they're socially, economically just, that's the reality, you know, and I've, you know, I've interacted with a lot of people who have come to this country from other, you know, more third world type countries and they'll remark to me in private, um, about what's going on and they're just blown away.

They're just like, well, these people have no idea. Yeah. I mean, you know, like, like in my country, like they saw a few people like, yeah, they saw some, and this is not just any one particular ethnicity or race this is across the board like i remember i was at the uh uh la fit expo i was recruiting there and a gentleman came out to me kind of strange dude but i'm really talking to you a lot and he he had immigrated here from romania and he came here when i guess there's a dictator there like chauchescu i guess was a dictator they're a horrible guy i mean just genocide all that stuff and this guy you know he's a white guy

he's eastern european but he's telling me about how horrible it was and how like how so it's so much better here in america and it bugged him when people were bad mouthing america now to be fair no country is perfect we are far from perfect we you know like i said there's those four elements to this whole crisis and all need lots of improvement. But we also need to get back to the perfect is the enemy of the good. There is no such thing as a perfect country. There never will be a perfect country. We need to strive for having a good country or a more better country.

You know, and yeah, I mean, I kind of lost my train of thought there a little bit. Yeah, I mean, I kind of lost my train of thought there a little bit. But, you know, when you get on a scene and, you know, somebody is, let's say I'm upset because Andrew punched my puppy in the face. I would never do that. And I'm like, you got to arrest this guy. He was looking at me weird. The first thing you. I might do that. The first thing that I would imagine is you're like, okay, well, what's knowable about the situation?

So you probably start to think, is there other people I can talk to? Because Mark seems to be pretty charged up. Andrew's mad because he doesn't like Mark's dog or whatever. So you probably are kind of investigating a little bit and trying to learn more about the situation. Is that how it works? Yes, absolutely. And that's, that's one thing that I had no idea about until I got into the profession, excuse me. And that I think it can frustrate bystanders or involved parties is that a lot of things they take longer. It can be a bit of a time drain, but part of that is

slowing things down, reducing some of the emotional load, talking to all possible involved people. And that may take time of like knocking on some neighbor neighbor's doors. Oh, did you hear or see anything, you know, finding, oh, there may be a family member in the house that can lend some insight to an incident, but they're not just coming out and talking. You have to go seek that out, asking dispatch to call back the person who called in, you know, which if I may, you know, getting back to the, you know, police encounter thing, a lot of police actions are based on members of the public calling in and people can

call in about anything. And people, crazy people do call in their crazy calls come in. If you talk to any dispatchers worked long enough, she'll talk about any people call about aliens and, you know, Godzilla's on the loose, you just all that stuff but you know and you know to a degree they can filter out what we actually go to but a lot a lot of times we will go to things where and and this gets back also what's what's possible not probable where we're almost oh there's almost certainly nothing but it could be something and, what I've seen a lot of times is say people may have a greater tendency to call in on minorities. You know, certain person is behaving suspiciously on the street or in this car or something

like that. Yeah, that's on the public. You know what I mean? The police are not generating that, but they have to respond to it per their job. And so I think that's what gets lost in the conversation too is that there is racism whether it's individual or systemic in the general public not everybody i mean i i genuinely believe that most people are not racist i mean that's and i and that's just to go on a tangent one thing that bugs me is so growing up i grew up in a very diverse city

i had friends of all colors all religions you know i was taught that racism like that's a bad thing you know i mean if someone's a reality knew about the kkk the skinheads the neo-nazis if someone's a racist that that meant something you know what i mean and i think about today's day and age you think of the story like the boy who cried wolf you know what i mean i feel like that's happening i feel like the term racism is getting watered down when people that i know are good people not racist people getting accused of racism not only does that offend them and insult them but it weakens the word we need to you know i mean if we could come up with another word for it you know that'd be better but like you know what i'm saying like it it bugs me that you know we're

taking something that should i mean we should all be like i don't i don't understand the concept you were talking about this the other day it bugs you as well yeah like it's it's like you said it's being thrown out around for even the smallest of things right if somebody like misspeaks about something or if they they say something and it sounds a little bit off, but their intentions are known, it's racist. A hundred percent. And, you know, and that ties into some things I said here earlier in the conversation I've had before, like, you know, this generation now more than any is so hypersensitive to things and the quote unquote microaggressions and things like that. And so in this conversation, I have used the term, I've referred to black people. I've also referred to

African-Americans. I still don't know. I used to think that the term, I've referred to black people. I've also referred to African-Americans. I still don't know. I used to think that I'm supposed to say African-Americans. Okay. Well, and I had a conversation. I had a conversation with a good friend of mine that we went to college together, and she's black. And she checked me on that, and she said, no, no, no, call us black. We don't want to be called African-American.

But I've heard the opposite, too. And I don't want to be called African-American, but I've heard the opposite too. I don't want to offend anybody. I am not racist, but in different contexts with different people, whichever one I choose, they could be considered a microaggression. And, you know, it's, it gets back to, I think I had a post about this recently. People need to consider the intent and the outcome of an action. So there's a number of people that I go to for all kinds of great information. And one is Jonathan Haidt. He's a social psychologist, written a number of books, brilliant guy. And he's very moderate too. So he's not conservative, not liberal. He's very even keel. And he talks about the new morality that has come up under the current millennial

and generation Z generation that is purely outcome based. So throughout history, any action was assessed, the morality of an action was assessed on its intent and its outcome. So say, Mark, you and I are walking down the street and I accidentally trip, bump into you, you fall and you hit your head. Next scenario, we're walking down the street, I grab you, I throw you to the ground, you hit your head.

Same exact injury, same exact action, completely different intent completely different morality but that the intent so like when i say you know black versus african-american i don't have a negative intent there but if if say i'm using one of those terms offends someone they don't consider the the intent or lack of intent it It's just the outcome. Just the fact that they are offended means that I am bad. And I think that's not fair. Maybe it gets to be a little confusing, too, because

are we supposed to use brown? Are we supposed to use yellow? They sound derogatory. You know what I mean? Because with Asian people, I mean, to me that doesn't sound right. Even when I say black, I feel like not super confident in saying it.

I'm always unsure of myself exactly, but I mean, we are referred to as white. Even if we're jacked in tan. That's right. Regardless of unless you're Jay Cutler tan. That's right. Yeah. Regardless of like. Yeah. Regardless. Yeah. Regardless of, or unless you're Jay Cutler on stage. Hey. He's pretty orange.

Yeah. Well, and that gets to something that bugs me too, is I'll talk to people about, and the media is really honing in on this, what I call the language of divisiveness. Okay. If you divide people and you create more and more of these us and them scenarios, it really gets people fired up. And I think there's something, we're tribalistic beings. Look at how we evolved. We evolved tens of thousands of thousands of years in hunter-gatherer societies of no

more than 150 people. And we're used to that. And we're used to thinking, oh, the other tribe evil, our tribe good. So, and that's where sports comes out. You know what I mean? Oh, I love the Giants, but screw the A's. You know, I love the Niners. Screw the Raiders. Like, what I mean? Oh, I love the giants, but screw the A's, you know, I love the Niners, screw the Raiders.

Like we're, we're very tribalistic. Okay. And so we'll hone in on anything that, that hints at division and competition. Like we talked about earlier. Yeah. Perhaps the reason why we have political parties.

Exactly. Exactly. And so I think there's no way we can completely erase that. You know, just like a good analogy is, you know, people talk about, you know, communism is taking the river of competition in humans and trying to reverse its direction.

You can't do that. Humans will always be competitive. Capitalism, regulated capitalism, though, is setting up dams and streams and channeling that. So knowing that the competition will be there, but directing it in a better way. In the same way, I think we should do our best to eliminate the language of divisiveness. So like I prefer to call myself a human. You know what I mean?

Like that's it. Now on a driver's license or something where I have to give a description, sure, I'll say I'm white and sure, I'll say I'm male. And there's a benefit there. Say if I go missing and they're doing a grid search for me i want them to look for a white male if they're going to find me you know what i mean but beyond that and for competition of course i'm going to enroll in the the male uh powerlifting competition or whatever but beyond that i'm a human why don't we all just stop with the color

stop with the the gender and just say okay i'm a human you know adult versus juvenile that makes sense but like i don't, it seems simple to me. I'm not sure if anybody's seen the clip from Morgan Freeman. That was, I've seen it many times, a couple of years old, I think. And he talks about like the way to stop kind of all the hate is just to stop talking about racism and stop specifically talking about like race. It's really, really interesting. The way that, the way that he, everyone should listen to that.

Maybe we can put a link to it in the show notes or something like that. But I found that to be just useful in hearing that you're like, yeah, let's, let's, let's kill the idea of really worrying about if someone's a different color than me. And it's a, it's a false division too. I mean, because if we look back further enough, I mean, we are all homo sapiens, you know, we all came from Africa, you know, you know, and like you said, there is no truly white people are truly black people. There's all these different shades. And so it seems arbitrary to, you know, say all white, black, brown, and all that stuff. It's just, we're dividing ourselves unnecessarily.

You know, I, I agree with that. I totally agree with that sentiment, but I think the, the tough thing about that is currently everybody has their own experience that is affected by not just their socioeconomic status, but the color of their skin. Yes. A few weeks ago, we had a group meeting with a bunch of white guys and a bunch of black men. We were black professionals. They were white professionals there. And we were all talking about the George Floyd situation that happened, right? When we had one man, we had the white guy describe, tell us what you believe happened. Or yeah, yeah. Tell us. No, it wasn't George Floyd. It was Ahmaud Arbery. We asked him to describe to us the situation.

And he described the situation without it wasn't, you know, it wasn't even, he didn't think about it, but he described it through the lens of the two men that were chasing him. Through being a homeowner in that neighborhood. And then the black guy that described it described it through the lens of Ahmaud

Arbery. So, when we look at a lot of these situations, it would be nice if we would just be a human race. But there are too many things and things that, for example, as a black man that I have experienced, that, for example, when we talked about it in that room, those white men had no idea what it was like. Like when C.T. Fletcher was on, he asked, have you been, uh, how many of you have, uh, been pulled over fit in the description? I have multiple times, every single black man in that room raised their hand, right? Not a single

white man in that room raised their hand. And we know like in certain situations, it's a policeman doing their job. They're just policing. That's like, you fit the description, you fit the description, but that's something that a lot of black men have an experience of yeah because we just we just fit a description for something right so i understand the sentiment and it would be beautiful if we could all just be one loving human race with no division right i see where you're going for sure i do wonder though if you if you didn't interpret it as racism i'm not even saying maybe it didn't maybe it doesn't sit on you the same way yeah like that's the thing though like i don't understand how difficult that would be though even though situations i don't interpret it as racism i'm on

the same page as you are i think racism the term is overused in a lot of situations um i don't interpret it as racism but it's like it's it's just it is a it is a different experience that, for example, we will have with each other that I might not have with you, which will inherently cause a division without me even wanting there to be a division currently. Yeah, I agree with that. Well, I think that touches on how we have to be measured. Right. I agree with that. Well, and I think that touches on how we have to be measured when we think about a personal experience. And I say that because I had a couple of conversations with people where I was trying to talk about the police side of things. And I hate to say sides because it's not like we're against it.

But you know what I'm saying? I don't know if I have a better word for it. And the person was like, well, you have no idea what it's like to be black. And I was like, well, you're no idea what it's like to be black. And I was like, well, you're right. You know, I don't. I mean, but the and that is important for us to take that into consideration. But to a degree, like as if we if we take that down to its logical conclusion, there's 350 million people in this country. There's literally 350 million different lived experiences. Yes.

You know what I mean? So we can't, you know, if we won't get anywhere, if we just say, well, you don't know what it's like to be me, you don't know what it's like to be me. We have to have some commonality as far as looking at, you know, information, data, statistics and stuff like that and having some common sense and having some common humanity and morality and whatnot. So I think it's, you know, it's not one way or the other. We have to be very measured when we do that. And that's the problem. People aren't measured. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think a lot of the goal is to, you know, try to make it as irrelevant as possible. And when I say, you know, don't talk about it, I don't mean like I just mean that it's it's not relevant anymore, that this person is this color, this person's of this persuasion. And that would be a wonderful place to get to. But I think that what happened to George Floyd, I think if you notice the impact that it's having on the country, you're also made to start to notice the impact it's having on the world.

Yes. And I think it can be a positive impact. I'm hopeful for that because it does bring the topic up. Everyone discusses it. People are very emotional about it, but we're talking about it over like a long extended period of time. And so people can try to be more rational about it. People can try to think of what are some ways that we can like just have this be something of the past where it's just not it's just not such a um volatile topic where it's it's open like you know maybe maybe intermingling schools i know they've tried some of these things they do some of these things for from time to time i i don't propose that i have any answers at all yeah i don't know anything about it really but uh i just imagine like my experiences with

other races has always been good. And I've been around other races my whole life, pretty much. There's certain areas that I lived in where there was mixed races and there's certain areas that I that I lived later on where there where there really wasn't. But I had early interaction, even had a one of of my aunts um married a black man so it was like you know that i was like 13 or something like that and i just remember he was his uncle bill and he was like my coolest uncle like he was fucking legit you know so i didn't i wasn't like oh shit he's black you know i didn't even really i didn't really think about it until i heard the other family members chatting about it like oh what oh, what's going to happen if she gets – and I was like, why are they – why is this like a – Why is it even anything to think about?

Yeah, I was like, yeah, I was kind of confused because, like I said, even earlier in my life, I was around some different races and I never – it's not that I don't see color. I clearly – I do. But I was just comfortable with it. Yeah, I mean, mean it's same here like i you know i guess part of my difficulty with some of the stuff is yeah i grew up in a very diverse city with diverse friends and like even if you look at like my romantic relationships like you all know my ex you know i mean she's black um lived together for years i mean i had a ex-girlfriend i was blonde i had ex-girlfriend that was latina ex-girlfriend that was blonde, I had an ex-girlfriend that was Latina, an ex-girlfriend that was Hawaiian. I never cared about race. And that's not, anyway,

some people have preferences when it comes to romantic relationships. I'm not going to disparage that. But the concept of evaluating someone based on those things just never made sense to me. And one thing I wanted to touch on when you were talking about putting things in the past that I think is really relevant today. And you talked about seeing the long run as opposed to the short run. So one of these great sayings that I always use a lot is see it as a marathon, not a sprint. You know what I mean? I think if we look at, you know, human progress can be a slow one, you know what I mean?

And we'll look back to say the fifties and sixties when there actually was like legal segregation is a terrible thing. I'd say anyone would agree. We have come a long way since then. Yeah. Right. We haven't come all the way. We got a lot of work to do, but that's progress. And I think some of these riots and things going on is trying to, it's like, say, Oh, I want to bench press 500 pounds. Right now, I bench press, say, 300 pounds. They're trying to get that 500-pound bench press tomorrow or yesterday. It's going to be hard work, and no matter how many statues you tear down and how many buildings you burn, it won't happen that fast. Like I said, a nation of 350 million people, a world of 7 billion people it's gonna be slow

and i think we need to embrace the long-term mentality and and when we think only in short term we also do drastic brash things which unfortunately have killed a number of people have burned down a number of poor small poor people small businesses and when it comes to and i mean you talk about putting things in the past, it thinks, I think about something where, like, you know, Germany, okay? Obviously they, you know, our country, we have a horrible past with, with racism. They've got a pretty horrible past too. And, but there's a reason why a lot of the concentration camps are still up there.

It's a reminder, okay? It's, if those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. And that's where I have a problem with people just obliterating, you know, statues of, you know, previous slave owners, Robert E. Lee, things like that. We could move it to a museum, but we need to remember our history. How do we know if we're going, if we don't know where we came from? And we need to remember the horrors of that time. If we try and erase history, we're doing our, everyone a disservice. Yeah. Yeah. I want to,

I want to ask you this because you mentioned drastic measures and we've talked about a bit, um, the whole idea of defunding the police, which I don't agree with. Um, but I'm also curious about, because you know, you, you didn't mention, you mentioned all the things that need to happen to improve police. You kind of just like listed all these things off and we never really delved deep into any of them. But when you talked about the stress of the job and Mark has mentioned that he has a any interactions in that way, that they have enough resources in terms of dealing with that makes them potentially some of them overly emotional or just jumpy. You know what I mean? So do you, do you agree with that? And how do you think that needs to be fixed? Because it doesn't seem that taking away money is going

to be the way to fix that situation. 100%. I'm very glad you brought that up because it ties into a lot of things. I do completely agree with you there. And so some people might not know this, but you're right. The job, any job we do will impact our psyche. And when your job is generally dealing with what you say the dregs of society are, but also seeing tragic situations day after day, year after year, it can wear on you. And some people don't know this, but police have an extremely high rate of suicide. It's very high, higher than just about any other profession. Incredibly high divorce rate, too.

Incredibly high alcoholism rate, too. And unfortunately, the suicide statistics, as high as they are, aren't as high as they should be because when cops drink themselves to death, they don't count that as a suicide, but that accounts for a lot of deaths too. So that happens. And, you know, military and law enforcement have always been very closely tied. A lot of people go from military to law enforcement. A lot of folks I work with are former military, all branches, all specialized units, SEALs, Rangers, Berets, everyone, All branches, all specialized units, SEALs, Rangers, Berets, everyone, PJs, Force Recon, all that. And I just want to give love everywhere.

And so, you know, in both those industries, there's that the old school mentality of, OK, you do horrible things, see horrible things and you bottle it up. You drown it. You drink some whiskey. Forget about it. You sure as shit don't talk about it to people. You definitely don't go to a therapist about it. Oh man, that's weak. And then you get the problems that come up. And that we're finally learning. And I think the wars in the Middle East have done that a lot where we've seen the PTSD, the suicides off the charts from that. And we're learning, God, we need to talk. We need to address mental health more aggressively. And so thankfully my department, like many others we have,

and I'm on the team, it's the CISM team, the critical incident stress management team. And so, so I'm also on what's called the crisis intervention team. And so both of them deal with mental health crisis intervention team deals with mental health in the public so like if typically if i'm able to go to a call of someone who's you know suicidal or having some kind of a mental breakdown i will go to that call and get extra training and dealing with that cism is internal it's dealing with officers dispatchers paramedics firefighters and i went to a training a multi-day training on that techniques dealing with that. And it, to tie in with an earlier topic, it actually further encouraged me to do my steady state cardio because they talked about how research has shown that cardio, you know, roughly, you know,

up to, you know, two hours a week or more. So, you know, the, the 10 minute walks add up to that 30 minutes, four times a week adds up to that helps you process the cortisol in your body. Cortisol is the main stress hormone. And studies have shown that police, you know, their cortisol levels are all jacked up because they go all the way high. And then they, you know, and they, a lot of times live in that hypervigilant state because of all the things they've seen. And it's incredibly unhealthy. Cortisol contributes to, uh, adipose tissue in the belly. You know, like it's bad for the heart. It's bad for the mind, a lot of things.

And so cardio is a way to process out that cortisol. So that addresses what you're talking about, how steps are being taken. But like I said before about racial progress, it's a slow thing. You know, there's still people I work with that will shun the idea of going to a therapist or a counselor. It's going to take time to have that set in. You remind me of some of the earlier things you asked about in there?

Oh, defunding. With that, I think the shame there, so one thing I want to talk about is that I've actually experienced the defunding phenomenon. So the first department I worked for was in the city of San Jose. I got hired on in 2008. So that's right when the Great Recession was starting to kick in. And San Jose as a city got hit especially hard by the recession.

And the mayor at the time was also very anti-union, anti-labor organization. And the mayor at the time was also very anti-union, anti-labor organization. So there was a mass layoff, mass budget cuts across the board of all government employees in that city. And I actually got laid off. It was temporary. I got reinstated eight weeks later. But I was the first layoff, me and 65 other officers from San Jose PD in its history. The department was founded in 1850, never laid a single officer off, not through any world war, not through the Great Depression, but this Great Recession, and this has been

2010, I believe it was, they laid 66 of us off, you know, and it was already an understaffed department. Guess what? Crime went up, went up significantly. And now, and a lot of people started leaving. It was called the mass exodus, which eventually I was part of that exodus. And I left to another department too. But, you know, the numbers dwindled, all the violent crimes, property crimes went up. Thankfully, I got reinstated eight weeks later. Within six months,

everyone was offered a spot back. Only about half took it. Some people just left the industry entirely. A lot of people went to other departments. So it got defunded and it got bad. Our training was cut back. You know, you get training comes out of a budget. So everyone talks, everyone talks about more training for officers. Well, guess what? If you defund, you got to think of priorities here too. So I've always thought that I think police or law enforcement should do a better job of educating the public of how they do their jobs. That's why I talk about, I think there should be a civics class in every school that talks about police interactions. The problem is, is that, you know, we rely on tax dollars. If we're going to say, take three people and have them be part

of a special unit of a public education on police. Well, those three people could be on the streets. Those people could be going to robberies, rapes, molestations. You know what I mean? So how are we going to prioritize that over them? You know? And so it's very hard. And training is one of the things that money gets taken away from earlier because it's not the vital service of going to a shooting, going to a stabbing.

Okay? So if anything, it requires more funding. You know, I had a friend post recently where he said, I think all police should the following. And he said, at least be a blue belt in Brazilian jujitsu, at least be highly have some skill in striking Muay Thai boxing, at least have a degree in criminal justice, at least be there. He even said be world level competitive and CrossFit. He said, like be on the level of froning or so, you know what I mean? And there was a number of other things. He said, any, if they ever turn their body cam off, they should be fired on the spot. You know, these things like that and bless his heart, his heart's in the right place,

but he doesn't know at all what he's talking about. And so I looked at this whole list and I said, you're outlining the most difficult job on the planet with those requirements. To literally find someone who is a skilled grappler, skilled striker, fully educated in criminal justice, in phenomenal CrossFit-type shape, and all the other things added up to make it. Basically, no one can meet that qualification. And if there are people that can meet that qualification, do you think they're going to do it at a cop's pay? No. Right. I mean, Rich Froning was making what? $250,000 for a competition. That's not counting sponsors, none of that stuff. There's not a cop job in the world that pays that much. And you're working a bunch more hours and in a bunch more danger than

doing a CrossFit event. So, you know, so that's just unrealistic. And, and there's further complications, you know, like people, everyone knows I have a wrestling background. So I've had friends say, dude, I think, you know, all cops should be trained in wrestling. Just like people say, all cops should be trained in jujitsu. And that's good. And ideally, yes, all cops would be, but the job is not all physical. You know, I've worked with some cops that are not physically imposing in the slightest. But guess what? They are great evidence collectors. They're great at documenting crime scenes.

They're great at interviewing children who have been the victims of crimes. They're great at so many other things that have nothing to do with fighting with people and engaging in violence. And these things are so important to the job, too. fighting with people and engaging in violence. And these things are so important to the job, too. So if we just select for any particular trait, it's going to vastly limit the number of applicants we can get. But at the bottom line, it's at least going to take no less funding,

if not more funding. I mean, you train jujitsu just by itself. That ain't cheap. No. You know what I mean? And so when I got laid off, actually, that's why I used to train at AKA. I stopped because I was like, I got to cut my expenses. And if we're going to get in, as you know, blue belt level, I mean, this ain't McDojo. You know what I mean?

You got to put hours and hours, years in. I mean, blue belt is legit, even if it's the first promotion. And, you know, when we're using tax dollars here, which is a sensitive topic, are we going to funnel that many tax dollars into that much training? Not to mention people getting hurt in the training or people who just don't have a whole lot of physical ability.

So I think people have some unrealistic expectations. And when they talk about defunding, that's beyond unrealistic. You're a smart guy. You're a rational guy. You're very experienced at being a police officer but you still can't talk your way out of every situation right like sometimes just weird shit happens and you you've tried to communicate with uh whoever you're dealing with and sometimes you you would need the wrestling background or need the jiu-jitsu background so the answer So the answer isn't also just only having more education.

You need to kind of be well-rounded, right? Absolutely, yes. There's two components there. So one thing when people talk about whether it's the physical background, the educational background, things like that, basically the on-paper stuff, the resume. One thing that I've absolutely learned in my years on the job is that there is an X factor that you do not see on a resume. And I would say that probably has something to do with every job. I've worked with cops who not very educated, not very athletic. You know, there's nothing on that resume that's going to stand out, but they just have that X

factor. They know how to spot a crook. They know how to deal with the crook. They know how to help a victim. They know how to talk to people. You know, they're just, they have that sixth sense. And, you know, if we're just so concerned about having these people having this great degree in criminal justice and this great training and grappling and this, this, that, and the other, we're going to lose some of those people. I mean, I've, you know, I've worked with cops who have law degrees from Ivy League schools. I've worked with cops who were in the Navy SEALs. I've worked with, you know, I've worked with cops who were in the NFL, cops who were in Major League Baseball. There's a number of black belts in BJJ I trained with, pro fighters who've become cops. I have not necessarily seen a correlation between those folks who were so superlative in certain aspects and the quality of them as an officer.

That's not a distraction either. In my case, I'm super thankful for my background. I'm wrestling and my grappling has saved me in a number of situations. It's been a number of situations where I've been able to not use any of the tools on my belt that can do more damage and just use my hands. And it works out better. But I'm not going to expect everyone to do that. I had a conversation with someone about the Rashad Brooks shooting. And he's a great friend of mine.

Y'all actually know him. But he was like, Andrew, I don't think you would have shot him. He just said that. And I'm like, because I had already been explaining to him the legality of the shoot and the justification for it. And his rationale was like, well, with your background, he wouldn't have been able to get away. You would have won the physical altercation at first and i'm like well i i would bet that i could if i can't say 100 but like are we going to expect every cop to have a division one wrestling background and to be 250 and somewhat strong and like you know have the you know purple

belt level and brazilian jiu-jitsu like like no like and that's not saying i'm anything special you know but like i mean there's a anthony smith you know the light light heavyweight mma fighter he fought john jones to a decision okay so john jones a lot of people would say the toughest dude on the planet i'll i'd say that and there's a lot of them but i mean he is on a completely another planet anthony smith to a decision with them. He goes 25 minutes with the toughest dude on the planet. Anthony Smith had an intruder in his house a few months ago and he talked about it and you can Google it. He confronted this guy and fought with him. And Anthony Smith talks about how difficult that fight was. He was like, I gave this guy every punch, every knee, every elbow. He kept coming.

And people don't realize. So you got one of the best fighters on the planet. This guy will beat any cop's ass. And when you have a motivated enough, crazy enough, or intoxicated enough guy, especially when it comes to the meth or PCP, even for the best fighter in the world, that can be a struggle. And then if you throw a weapon into it, whole nother game. So that's where I think, you know, the training is helpful, but it's not everything. You know what I mean? And, um, yeah, it's like,

you wouldn't be that confident if you're like, oh, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to this call with Mark and Mark, you know, he, he's really great at, at talking his way out of the situation. So I think we're going to, we're going to be able to get out of this one. You would rather that I, I could do both, you know, I could assist you physically if I needed to and assist mentally, or if you can't, or if you went with me and you're like, oh, great, I'm going with Mark. He's always so fricking aggressive. All he ever uses is his boxing background. He's like, come over and deck the guy while i'm trying to have a conversation with somebody yeah i mean ideally every every

officer is a renaissance person you know you're in good physical shape good grappling background good striking background um good at talking good at de-escalation good with the gun good with every force option on their belt good at collecting evidence good at at report writing. I mean, there's the whole spectrum of facets of the, of the thing, but I mean, it's, um, the likelihood of finding someone that meets all those is just so low being humans.

I just wanted to show the clip. Cause when you're saying somebody stepped up to Anthony Smith, you're probably thinking it's probably a monster. And you look at this guy and he, I mean, he looks crazy as shit, but he doesn't look too like, I mean, he looks crazy as shit, but he doesn't look too like, I mean,

he looks like maybe me in a hoodie, you know, like it doesn't look too bad. So for this guy to, to be able to do that to Anthony Smith, you know, it's like, well,

shit, man. Yep. That just, you know, uh, kind of cements your, um,

uh, your opinion. Was that after, after the fight? That was right before so yeah he this guy tried to break into multiple houses i guess before he broke into anthony's anthony left the garage door open by accident so that was what a unfortunate person to intrude yeah intrude upon yeah i think you know just a real quick one thing that people don't understand is how fast some

things occur too is you know a lot of people the word de-escalation gets thrown around a lot. And we get we've been trained in de-escalation for years. It's not a new concept to law enforcement, contrary to what the public would believe. But the problem is, is that a lot of times and like you addressed, it doesn't work or there is simply not the time for it. Like I've literally, you know, I remember a domestic violence call I was on years ago and it sounded like, you know, a woman's getting beat up by, by her, her, her husband or her man. And so I, I show up and I'm by myself. I don't have my, what's called my fill there yet, but I go right up to the door and knock on the door, door swings open, the dude's flying out towards me

from the door. And did I have time to talk him down? No. And thankfully I was, I was able to throw him on the ground and I still remember it, you know, and, and thankfully I have time to talk him down? No, and thankfully, I was able to throw him on the ground, and I still remember it, and thankfully, I speak Spanish, and they were Spanish-speaking, and I was able to tell another person walking by, I said, stay right here, watch me, and watch that I'm not going to hurt this guy, and I was able to take him into custody and deal with it, and the woman's inside all beat up and screaming,

but de-escalation's not going to work in that. There's a lot of cases where that's the way it is. and deal with it and the woman's inside all beat up and screaming and you know but uh yeah de-escalation is not going to work in that there's a lot of cases where that that's the way it is you know i'm i'm curious too about this like when when shootings are shown like i don't even i don't know his name but i saw like an article and people were making art of him there's this young black kid that was shot recently. He seemed like he maybe had some mental issues potentially. Not when it happened, but like he played violin for cats. I don't know if you've heard about it.

But he was also recently shot by police. And as these stories keep coming up, because the fact is these things will happen. We're hoping that ideally, since cops have such a dangerous job, we'd hope that it never happens, but it will happen. How how like do you see how do you see that officers can potentially weed out these types of individuals? Because you also kind of touched on that. There needs to be a better way to do that because I feel like, yeah, there's training, but there's also accountability on that end for officers to be able to see that this person isn't fit to handle this.

I know you can't tell the future. You can't tell what somebody is going to do, but there are probably signs like Chauvin had all those marks like 18 or 19 derogatory marks showing that he's had bad interactions so he shouldn't even have been there potentially right so do you do you think that things can be improved there so that we can get rid of these few people that are causing all of the trouble yeah i so i think one that i talked about earlier i think everyone should have body cams that's across the board and honestly i love having a body cam that's that's the thing is i think a lot of people thought oh when cops are going to hate body cams because it's going to

show how crooked they are no like i i have friends who work in internal affairs who receive all the complaints from the public and they love body cams because it shows unequivocally that most of these complaints are BS. Their lies are defabricated and they don't stand up to scrutiny and with video audio evidence. OK, also, it helps me remember things. I used to always have to have index cards in my pocket and I'd write down all this stuff. Now I can just look at the footage and get the perfect recollection when I'm writing my report. So body cams across the board got to be there.

Now, those are fallible machines. So like getting back to one of my friend, he posted, you know, anytime a cop turns off a body cam, instant firing. Well, here's the problem. I've been in altercations where I've seen body cams get knocked off. They're not totally secured on there. Also, it's a big button. And the reason for that is because under stress, you don't want to find motor skill to turn something on. You want to just be able to turn it on problem is and it can also turn off in a struggle so they're very and even the angle is imperfect they haven't found a perfect angle for it usually it's mounted on the

chest well look if i'm drawing my weapon i'm blocking a lot of the footage of the camera so these are all things that are have nothing to do with the cop having malicious intent. They're just logistical aspects that cover that up. I'm curious, how long do those, can one record for? Oh, hours. Yeah. So, so the way the cameras that I use and that I'm familiar with have, they have what's called a 30 second buffer and that's also really good. So say if I, when I turn it on, it already has captured the previous 30 seconds in video but not audio so that's when you see footage body cam footage of shootings it'll be quiet for the first 30 ish seconds and then you'll start hearing it but once it starts going i mean

it's you know i mean i've got that hours long footage and then do you like you you get back to your department and you just like start uploading it or how does that work yeah so so there's what's called the dock which is you know like and we have lots of those radio batteries radios go in these things and it's all chargers but it's also uploaders and so you just plug it in it charges it while it uploads it to the general system and you can access it on all the computers and how long does footage like stay on the um i don't know the cloud or whatever it may be yeah the database it's at least at least a year i mean and you get notified when things are about to purge you know so you can take measures to preserve it but um because the vast majority

of things get filmed like at this point now we have to turn it on for every contact and so the vast majority of those are completely inconsequential. And so that should get purged and not take up space. I think an interesting thing here is that like, what happened with George Floyd is, is so irrational. And also, I realize it's also not an isolated incident. I realize that these things have happened before. But this one in particular, has really, you know, kicked everything up and made people talk about it, which I, again, I think is a positive thing in the long, in the long run. The interesting thing is that the very thing that kicked up all this kind of auditing of police, police officers, precincts,

of police, police officers, precincts, just how we handle all these situations, is probably a situation that there's not a solution for at all. Like what happened to George Floyd, I think because it doesn't make any sense, it's irrational what one human being did to another human being just because of their power, because of the badge that they have. I can't think of a solution to it. I do understand people say, oh, you got to weed them out better. And but there's there's good processes involved in that. And I'm sure with yourself, I'm sure a lot of times being a police officer is a giant

pain in the ass. Anytime you you make a wrong move, you probably get in trouble, you get penalized and those things. And we could look at it and certainly say, okay, well, he had a lot of strikes against him. Let's pay attention to more of that. So this kind of thing is less frequent. Yeah. But again, I just think it's such a shit situation. I don't know if there's

an actual solution to that problem right itself i'm glad you brought that up because i think it is true you know when there's a saying it's like you know policing is the you know people talk about oh there's bad cashiers and grocery stores there's bad taxi drivers every person has bad people and some people say well policing is the one profession where that can't happen and i get that. But that is overly idealistic by definition. Yeah. You're getting back to the 800,000 ish officers like there is no way, no way to not have a Chauvin in that group. And it's terribly unfortunate.

But I mean, like I think about active shooters, a very hot button topic. You know, we can do everything we can to, you know, regulate firearms, put officers in schools, do that stuff. There will still be active shooters. You know, I mean, that's, that's part of reality is there are bad things will happen. Bad people exist. Ted Bundy, there'll be a serial killer. There'll be exactly. And there's not a, I cannot, I cannot think of a solution to some of those issues, you know? Right. And one thing I do want to touch on is that I hear, see people post and talk about, well, the police never get in trouble.

No, you just don't know about it. I've actually arrested a cop before and I've seen it happen. I've seen guys either get fired or suspended or arrested. I've seen the gamut of those things happen and it just doesn't get publicized. You know what I mean? Right now I can think of several cops that are in prison, you know, from the departments I've been at, like it happens. It's just, they're not just advertising it willy nilly.

Where are the police weak in your opinion, from what you've seen over the years where like you, you talked about, you know, breaking world records and power lifting and how you attacked the weaknesses. What are some of the weaknesses that you think, you know, that could be improved upon? Okay. I think, okay, a lot of this comes down to staffing. And what I mean by that, and that's one of the unfortunate side effects of the current

crisis is that it becomes kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy or even a vicious cycle of self-fulfilling in the worst way. So basically when vilifying police and basically it's making it less and less people want to become police. I mean, even more or less and less good people. Cause a lot of people, even like I said, I came out of college.

I didn't think about being a cop. And if I came out of this day and age, I might be like, Oh heck no, I'm not going to do that. And so you're going to get more and more of the people who do it just because it's the, maybe the only place they can get hired or the only way they can make some money. And you want someone with a little bit more intrinsic motivation or good motivation than just paying the bills. And so, and there was our, those wheels were already in motion, like with the last decade or so of incidents where the police get kind of vilified and painted in a bad light. Plus,

you know, the economy had picked up and typically government jobs in general do better in poor economies because it's seen as a stability issue and you'll know you're never going to get rich off of it. In a good economy, people see, just like I said, the recession happened when I got hired and it forced me, it didn't force me, but encouraged me to stay put as opposed to in a boom, people are thinking about how to be an entrepreneur, how to get into private industry and really make it big. Okay. So we were already having staffing problems on top of that. And this gets to where I think an improvement can be made. Law enforcement in general is a more conservative profession as far as the, I don't mean politically, but I mean mentally resistant to change. And so for example,

when I was at San Jose, we had shotguns in our, in our cars, we were shooting shotguns. And I remember talking talking to old timers and they talked about how you know before that came to be there was a lot of resistance they were like we want to put shotguns in your cars and the guys were like no no no no no well then that evolved to where a number of departments have ar-15s they have carbines in my current department we have that which is a much better weapon what's the shotgun for or what was it for so okay so the shotgun just like the air 15 so it's the long gun it's a rifle and it's sort of extra backup yeah so certain situations like so say if there's a an active shooter for example you're going to

want to have that because that because you know i've seen it i've seen people get shot with with handguns and they keep going if you get hit with the slug gun that's much more likely to put you down um and with the ar-15 especially you have more distance and it's been more likely to pierce body armor uh than a handgun round so so there's those purposes and if someone's barricaded and you want to be able to penetrate more more layers that kind of stuff is where um or a more precise shot any long gun is going to have much greater accuracy than a handgun so those are all reasons there but even so some departments hesitated to get ar-15s and that's because the perception that they were too quote-unquote militaristic looking even though if we're talking about practicality it's a far better weapon but it's the perception thing and

so there's this resistance to change and so what I'm getting at is in the hiring process, I would say it's somewhat antiquated where, so the first thing you do once you apply is you do a PHQ, which is a personal history questionnaire. And it's all about, you know, previous, you've been arrested before you ever done this, ever done that. And a lot of people, and I ever seeing it when I took it, cause I was in a big auditorium get weeded out right then and there. They did this.

They did that. They put it on the PHQ. They look at it. Oh, you're gone. And I think that was overly strict. And I think, especially in this day and age, I think kids these days are doing more, exposed to more, and experiencing more than they were, say, 50 years ago when these PHQs were being written. I mean, case in point, you know, like cannabis is legal now in California. You know what I mean?

I would venture to bet that more people are exposed to it. And cannabis is not like an automatic DQ, but a certain amount of it or a certain degree of it being recent enough is. Like I still remember when. So someone maybe just being honest, it could just work against them. They could say, yeah, I played video games a lot when I was a kid and I smoked a ton of pot and they could be kicked out. Absolutely. I still remember when I was, so I started in July of 2008. And so I was in the application process all for the six months prior to that. And so i remember

new year's of 2007 i was you know hanging out at a friend's place and there was like people a few people all over the side that were smoking weed i didn't think anything really of it but i remembered it and i remember in my background investigation they said you know when was the last time you were in the presence of people smoking weed and i was like oh yeah new year's and they're like really and they're like honed in on that and that's what really opened my eyes like holy crap like they're really strict about this and you know in which in my opinion that's bs you know and i was honest and everything like that but it's like if you're going to scrutinize that you're probably going to eliminate and i've seen decent people get

eliminated from the process for things that i think are BS, just like people make it through the process that shouldn't have made it through. So I think, and the PHQ is just the very beginning. You do like the psychological written test. It's like four hours long. It's hundreds and hundreds of questions that you fill out to evaluate your personality based on the Minnesota Multipnesota multi-phasic personality indicator test or something like that you also get interviewed by a psychologist you um and your whole background i mean they literally look at any websites you've been to obviously any social media they'll talk to you know x all your x's all your family i, they talk to everybody. So it's very extensive.

And then you do a polygraph examination, where they call it a lie detector polygraph examination. They ask you all these questions. And I think people have failed those just because they get nervous or anxious. You know what I mean? I think the polygraph, in my opinion, just my opinion, is it's a racket.

Because a lot of people retire from law enforcement, set up a polygraph business and just get funneled applicants through their previous employer. Wow. There's a reason polygraphs are not admissible in a court of law. They haven't been shown to be reliable. Also, you know who does great on polygraph tests? Sociopaths. You know who you don't want to be cops? Sociopaths you know you don't want to be cops sociopaths so that's where

you know i think that's one example of a terribly antiquated thing that eliminates decent people and even lets pass not so good people so i think if we amend the entire process to open it up to some people but hone in a little bit more on other characteristics, I think that's where there could be a benefit to staffing. Wow. Cool. Yeah. Something I heard you bring up on another podcast. We'll kind of close it out because we've been chatting for a long time.

But something I heard you bring up on another podcast, and I think it might have been related maybe to COVID-19. I can't remember exactly. But you brought up the fact that Abraham Lincoln had a group of people where they would have a lot of conjecture and they would share a lot of different ideas. And then they would figure out a way to proceed forward. You just mentioned it real quickly, and I never heard of it before. But I do find it really interesting. And it's something I mentioned on my social media as like America has some really, really intelligent people. And we think of like, you know, oh, we might have a shortage of masks or it might take a long time to get those resources.

shortage of masks or it might take a long time to get those resources. You know, I just think to myself, well, it doesn't seem like Jeff Bezos has any, you know, any problem getting stuff quickly and getting things out to people fast and things of that nature. And I'm like, Elon Musk seems like he's pretty damn intelligent and he seems like he's forward thinking. You know, why not get a Jeff Bezos, an Elon Musk? Obviously, you would need other people in there as well, like infectious disease people, people that know about coronaviruses and people that have had a history of studying these things. But why not use our resources?

Why not get people together and say, hey, like, let's just really be open. Let's start spitballing some ideas. How do we help? How do we help the damn public? Yeah. And when I when I propose that people are like, you're an idiot, like stick to lifting weights. And I would just I was just thinking, look, I don't think it would hurt. Yeah.

And I think even Joe Rogan has kind of proposed just kind of spitballing some stuff on his own podcast saying, hey, you know, what if we had, you know, rather than just having a single president, maybe there's four or five people that are in charge. You know, something along those lines. When it comes to the COVID-19 situation, you know, it's very confusing because no one was an expert on it. And still, there's still a lot of different information. Right now, we're seeing like a, you know, and still, there's still a lot of different information right now. We're seeing like a, you know, quote unquote spike, but it's always been there. People have it. People have had it already. Millions of people have had it.

Millions of people will get it. Most Americans will probably get it. I mean, I don't know that for sure, but I've just, that's just my own opinion that most people will get it. What do you think are some things that can be done to assist people through this time? It does seem like a very low percentage of people end up getting sick enough to where they die from it. But what are some of your thoughts? So, okay. And if I may use that in a law enforcement, applying it to that. So the

Lincoln part, I'm really glad you brought that up so lincoln abraham lincoln has been a hero of mine from a very young age and a lot of people don't know this he was actually a county wrestling champion when he was younger yeah he was um another very cool i think he's the tallest president ever right yeah six four or five yeah i think he may have had what's called like marfan syndrome which is where he had really big hands and excessively tall it's kind of it's a disorder but um yeah also he had really big hands and excessively tall. It's kind of a disorder. But, yeah, also he had crippling depression. A lot of people don't know that he had a major depression. And actually, like, when I was younger, you know,

in, like, adolescence and going through some hard times, like, actually my dad printed out an article called, you know, I think it was called The Saddest Man in the World Saved a Nation. And it was about Abraham Lincoln where he wrote a letter, I think, to his wife, where he talked about himself as being the saddest man in the world. And he was very depressed, but he, yeah, as we know, he, you know, did some amazing things for the country. And so I've always held him as a hero in those regards. And, um, but yeah, the book is called team of rivals and it's where, you know, he's the yeah, the book is called team of rivals and it's where, you know, he's the president in the middle of civil war where the country's literally falling

apart. People are killing each other and he realizes we need differing opinions. We need a, we need, we don't, we need a group. We don't need an echo chamber. We don't need group think we need, you know, good minds of all varieties to come together. And that's where he shows a cabinet of a lot of different people like that. And so to address that in law enforcement, one thing, so I recently finished a five-year stint working as a detective in my department. And so as a detective, you use a lot more databases, a lot of more technology. And I had known this beforehand too, but it's a running joke. I'm in Silicon Valley. We'll constantly, our printers will jam. Like our printers won't even work.

We'll be like, we're in the capital of Silicon Valley and our technology sucks. And it's depressing. I mean, like one of our main databases for criminal justice information, and it literally looks like you're playing, you know, what was it, Pong? Or, you know what I mean?

It's like SWAT. You remember like the Apple IIe's from decades ago? It's ludicrous. You know, the technology is decades and decades behind. You know, there's this thing called, you know, so fingerprints obviously are a big issue. And a lot of times we rely on that to identify people because sometimes people won't give a name. They'll lie. But their fingerprint may show, oh, they have a warrant or you need's something important about this person you need to know.

And there's been times when some people have what's called a mobile ID unit. It's a unit that can run a fingerprint and be brought out to the scene because you don't want to bring them into the station and run their fingerprints because that's overly invasive. Well, sometimes those don't work. Sometimes they're not available. Meanwhile, if I go to 24-hour fitness, I put my finger on a scanner with thousands of other people, and it scans me in and identifies me. It's just depressing when a commercial gym has better technology widespread than selectively a police department has.

And it's all the databases. A lot of them, they freeze. I mean, there's nothing. I always think about Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. If we just got them and some of these great tech minds to just evaluate the technology that law enforcement has, it would massively make the system more efficient. Yeah. Can't somebody say, hey, we need some help over here? The government, can't they just kind of wave a flag and say, hey, we need some assistance? Yeah. That know, the government, can't they just kind of wave a flag and say, hey, we need some assistance?

Yeah, that'd be nice. That would be nice. Because it seems like those guys have it figured out pretty good. Yeah, yeah. But with the coronavirus thing, I mean, I think it's, we have, you know, as humans, we have a difficulty with uncertainty. You know what I mean? And the coronavirus is a massive uncertainty. And so, and I think a lot of people people a lot of people forget the way science works

you know people you know fauci or whoever says one thing in march and then he says something different in april and people say oh see he was lying in march or blah blah well no it's more research has given more information and hence he has amended his opinion. You know what I mean? Based on the additional information. And that's how science works. Science never ends. Science is constantly trying to disprove its current theory for a better theory. So I think people love to paint things with malicious or negative intent when it's not there.

But it makes a better story. not there but it makes a better story do you think other departments should kind of follow suit with what you guys do since you are multi-faceted rather than just kind of one thing and maybe we could uh have something other than like just police officers maybe maybe it's even given a different title or just looked at in a different way like oh that's that those are the people that help us because they help you in a fire they help you you know you know, if you if you're choking on food or they help you, you know, if you have a complaint about somebody or whatever it might be. So, yeah, first of all, to head off, because there already are some articles in the media about my department. And it talks about how the city I work for doesn't have a police department and never had. And it's a huge misnomer that bugs me and a lot of my coworkers because it absolutely is a police department. Everyone's gone through police academy. We wear

a badge, we have powers of arrest and all that stuff. It's simply a combined police department with a fire department. It's just called something different. Yeah. With EMT, but we even still, like I still have my, when I was in the detective, a vest I would throw on for like search warrants and operations. It says police on the back. And we still identify ourselves as police. So I think there's pros and cons, honestly. Budget-wise, it saves the city a lot of money, basically because our fire side is understaffed compared to a city of the same size. So you still have a fire department.

Exactly, yeah. And I worked in fire. And so it's the same as any other fire department. We're in a station. We drive an engine. We get dispatched to calls within our area. And that's where the rubber really hits the road is on the police side. So on the police side, in addition to all the police gear,

you also have your fire turnouts in the trunk of your car, and you have a medical bag. So you'll get dispatched to certain medical calls. You also get dispatched to fires. And you literally show up, take off all your outfits. So that's where you really hope you're jacked and tanned for that because the public's all coming out and watching. And then you throw on your turnouts.

And then you go. And by that time, the engine has showed up. You meet up with the engine. You got an incident commander comes out and gives you an assignment to deal with the fire. And so it's good. It saves a lot of money. It's also good that it gives people other opportunities. And this gets to a lot of the conversation is that even the most like true blue cops, cops type people, I've seen it time and time again.

They get burnt out on the job. It's just it wears on them. It wears on their mind. It wears on their heart. And so I've seen some of these guys, I mean, these are bad-ass folks go to fire and it kind of rejuvenates them. You know what I mean? They're like, Oh wow. People are being nice to me. And you know, shift gears. I get you. Yeah. I'm sitting in a recliner. I mean, we honestly call it, and this is not disparage firefighters, but it's called, some people call it going on vacation when you work on the fireside. I mean, it's- That sounds derogatory.

It is derogatory, but unambiguously, I mean, very few people actually do both jobs and I and a hundred percent of the people I work with can unambiguously say that the fireside is easier than the police side. I mean, any way you cut it. Well, dealing with fire is different than dealing with human behavior. Right. And in addition to that, fires are more and more in metropolitan areas more rare. You know, we have sprinkler systems, code enforcement, different building materials,

fire extinguishers, all these things. So in the time that I worked in fire, it was very few actual fires I went to. It was mostly medical calls. And again, those are more simple than crime type calls, less moving parts. So it, so it is nice to have that option to do both. Um, the public I'll tell you doesn't largely doesn't realize it, you know, like even in the city I work, a lot of people don't know that it is both. They're surprised to see that. So, you know, whether it could be advertised more, I don't know. But it's hard to get applicants. Any idea how it came to be?

Well, so it's something I actually learned fairly recently is that I guess back in the day, I'm talking like pre 1950, more and more areas did actually have folks that did both police and fire outside of the major cities. And so like where I live in Silicon Valley, you know, back then it was mostly farmlands and orchards. You know, it wasn't until like the 70s when the tech industries came in that it expanded into a metropolitan area. And so I think my city was kind of just the one that decided, hey, we'll just keep it this way. Whereas a lot of other places said, hey, we'll just keep it this way. Whereas a lot of other places said, okay, we need to start specializing.

And it's just been that way ever since. But some of the drawbacks are finding applicants. Because I remember when I left the big city department I worked for in San Jose and came to where I'm at, I talked to some of my buddies there. And I was like, hey, dude, come over. They were still hiring. And they were like, oh, you got to be a firefighter'm at, you know, I talked to some of my buddies there and I was like, Hey dude, come over there. We're still hiring. And they're like, Oh, you gotta be a firefighter though. You know what I mean? And then there's a lot of people who want to be firefighters, but when you tell them, Oh, you also gotta be a cop.

They don't like that. So, so to find people who are one willing and two able to do both things, cause there are definitely differences there as far as personality and as far as abilities, it's harder to get that staffing. But when you do find somebody, they're probably pretty damn good. Yeah. I can say absolutely. A lot of the folks I work with, I'm constantly impressed with their ability to do both.

I mean, there's some great people out there, and we just need more. And everyone retires eventually. So we need to replace them and it's hard. So, and there's also a lot of training too. I mean, and training is expensive. So like I've gone through a full fire Academy and a full police Academy and full EMT certification. And every year I have ongoing training and all three of those that I have to keep up to keep all my certs relevant. So, you know, that's not cheap. That doesn't grow on a tree that has to be paid for. So, you know, that's, um, that's just a, an issue that can get in the way, but I think it has promise, you know what I mean? But I think people got to remember though, that like we talked about

earlier, there, there are those incidents where people, bad people out there, or even good people, but in a bad moment, the rough measures need to be taken to deal with them 100%. And that's when people talk about, oh, defunding the police, we'll use social workers and counselors and stuff like that instead. No disrespect at all towards those folks, but I know because I've been sent on these calls where a social worker is calling for help because the person's out of control. Counselor's calling for help because the person's being violent.

I mean, it's not like those folks don't exist, and we collaborate with them. It's called a joint response. A lot of times we'll incorporate multiple facets to deal with a case, but there's a lot of times when it simply has to be a police officer doing it. You know? Yeah. Anything else? Good to go?

No, man, that? No, man. That was amazing, man. Thank you so much for sharing all that insight. You know, it's just really cool having, you know, this other point of view. Like, I know anyone on the live stream tomorrow's episode is going to be really good from our boy Ryan Tillman. But, you know, like, again, when we're talking about certain things, we're like, well, why can't cops just do this? Or they need, you know, jujitsu. They need need this and you're just like well shit man like even if we did have unlimited time and budget that's still not going to be the answer for every single

situation so the way you laid everything out it's it's just uh extremely helpful when it comes to like why there's or when it when like uh there's so much pushback on either side. Yeah. You know? And that reminds me also of some of the unrealistic expectations people have. I mean, even at the highest level. So Joe Biden, who's running for president, made the statement recently about why couldn't they just shoot him in the leg. And what that shows is that, you know,

he has zero firearms combat experience or training, you know, because no department ever trains that. And there's a reason they always train to shoot center mass. And so when literally the person who might be the next president of the United States, and I'm not trying to get political, but I will say that, I mean, that is a completely uninformed, if not misinformed statement, but I've heard people say that. And I think people need to realize their limitations of what they know. Most people have never trained with a gun, much less a gun shooting a moving target in a combat situation. So, they should

maybe defer to the folks who have done that when it comes to making those decisions. You could shoot somebody in the hamstring if they had well-developed hamstrings. They're big enough. If they had big enough calves, you could probably pop them in the calf. Oh, dang. If they weren't working out, then maybe it would be a lot harder. They didn't have the genetics to have

big calves. Hey, now. Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Sincerely appreciate your time, Herbie. Again, like I said, that was very impactful, so thank you so much. If you guys got some value out of today's episode, please share it with a friend. There's definitely somebody that you know needs to hear everything that was said on today's podcast. Please make sure you're following the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram, at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ.

And Seema, where are you at? I am Seema Yen Yang on Instagram and YouTube. I am Seema Yen Yang on TikTok and Twitter. Sir? Herb? Herbie the Love Bug on Instagram, which is H-E-R-B-I-E-T-H-E-L-U-V-B-U-G. So it's Herbie the Love Bug, but the love is spelled L-U-V. No spaces, nothing else.

Just on finishing up here, tell us about the carpal tunnel thing. What was the deal with that? Because they went through your hands? They did surgery through your hands? Yeah. So, I mean, and this could hopefully be helpful for some people. So starting about two years ago, I started noticing my hands were going numb at various times. And the feeling when your hand goes asleep, like if you sit on it or something.

But it would happen when I was driving. I'd wake up in the middle of the night and couldn't feel my hands. And so, long story short, a neurologist ran tests and diagnosed it as carpal tunnel syndrome. So, which means the nerve that channels to most of the fingers gets blocked somewhat. And so, the treatment for that is, and I had it severe enough that it had to have surgery. They drill into the base of your palm and kind of free up the tissue that is blocking the nerve pathway. So it's pretty invasive. I mean, I still, it's eight weeks later. I still have like pain there, like as far as putting pressure on my palm, but I was only eight weeks ago. Yeah. Feeling pretty good though. Feeling pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and actually

haven't had any numbness in my hands ever since. They are still jacked oh yeah well you know how to do that right still still looking good yeah it might might bring about a whole new possibility right having your uh hands be able to anyway hey man great great to have you on the show and i you know i'm somebody that appreciates your work. I know police officers, unfortunately, are painted in a bad light, but I can't even imagine what that would entail. I can't imagine what that would look like. So at least coming from me, I'll just tell you I appreciate your work. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that.

And I think what I say to people is we're all part of the machine. You know what I mean? Like I'll never say, oh, cops are special this and firefighters are special this. We're all, you know, teachers, nurses, cops, carpenters. And we're all, I say, part of the machine. We're part of what makes America and society great. You know what I mean? So I think we're all worthwhile and valuable people.

I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you all later.