Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 429 - We Messed Up Our Training

Episode Date: September 28, 2020

Today we are following up our previous episode about some of our mistakes, this time the times we messed up our training. 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 #Podcast #MarkBell

you know he's like dancing and just and you're like oh that's pretty cool like he's like getting down he's having fun and then you're like oh like he actually knows how to really dance so you're like holy fuck and he does the splits too like you do all this shit hop to the splits by the way i don't know if we got on before but we're talking about turk from scrubs if you guys used to watch scrubs i used to watch the show as a teenager it was so good uh funny enough that was one of the shows. And then House. I don't know if you watched House. I didn't watch House, no.

Okay, those shows were like, I want to be a doctor. It was one of those things that kind of made me continue wanting to do that. Well, it looked like they were having a lot of fun, especially on Scrubs. It's like all comedy. Until you go into a hospital. Oh, yeah, and you realize everyone there's everyone's going there to die. Oh, man. I don't know.

A word from our sponsors. That's what my grandpa used to say. He's like, hospitals where you go to die. It's like, oh, man, there's actually some truth to that. That's terrible. There is. Truth sometimes just sucks, right? It's hard. Once in a while yeah but yeah shows

do make things seem like kind of cool like i don't know did you guys watch orange is the new black yeah i didn't watch the latest season i think i kind of just i've seen it that makes yeah but like they're just like hey like you know jail might be a cool place to hang out like uh um oh what's uh andy dufresne um oh yeah uh shawshank shawshank redemption also made prison seem like hey there's a lot of cool people hanging out going there and read and learn a lot of stuff yeah is that the one where the morgan freeman it was morgan morgan freeman's in it really yeah yeah you need to watch that's a really good movie it's one of the greatest movies so if you look up greatest movie of all time it's one of the ones that will pop up all

the time. Andy Dufresne. It's really, really, it's a real. Wait, no, I have seen Shawshank Redemption. I have seen it. I just, I saw it when I was really young. I was thinking of, um, I was mixing up Shawshank Redemption with the Green Mile. That's what I was about to say.

Was it the black guy that had magic? John Coffey. Yeah. And he's passed away. Michael Clark Duncan. He was fucking jack say. Was it the black guy that had magic? John Coffey. Yeah. He passed away. Michael Clark Duncan. He was fucking jacked. Damn. Is his name Michael?

Yeah, that was his name. He was so huge. He was huge. And his voice. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He was massive.

To this day, when I make a really big cup of coffee, I say, strong coffee boss. I know he says his name's John Coffee Boss, but I just, yeah, every time, strong coffee boss like i know he says his name is john coffee boss but like i just yeah every time like strong coffee boss yeah i need i need to i need to re-watch both of those movies yeah shawshank both those movies are amazing really good stuff yeah we sound a little raspy do we that that's my morgan freeman you're pretty good with some of these impressions it's not that bad it's the voice of god coffee yeah what you been eating mark what's that what you been eating oh just uh more meat me you know more meat than you can shake a stick at which i don't know what that like why wouldn't you be able to maybe it's like too much exercise. Yeah, there's so many shakes.

I don't know. Maybe because like the diameter of all of the steak, like you can't get all the way. I don't know. Shake a stick at all of them. Your arm gets tired. Yeah. I've been doing some flat irons lately from Piedmontese and my brothers down there at Piedmontese. I think he went to, he flew into like Colorado.

And then he maybe, I think he saw like a ranch. And then I think he drove to like Nebraska. I could have this totally wrong. I don't know if that even makes any sense. And then he got to see their facility, like their packing facility and stuff. And then he said that he had a seven course carnivore dinner there. Oh my God. And they capped it off. They like kept giving him steak and it was steak followed by steak, seven course carnivore dinner there. Oh my God. And he, they,

they capped it off. They like kept giving him steak and it was steak followed by steak followed by more steak. And he just absolutely loved it. And he said, they finished off with a, a bone in a rib, a Tomahawk.

Oh, what are we going to feed him on T's? I know. We'll get that on the calendar for sure. In 2021. I actually just, I wanted to go this round, but I just also wanted to wait until they have everything. Like they just don't have everything all the way together yet.

So what do you mean? Well, they just, they're building a new facility so they can get their, so they can get their packaging the way that they want. I think they're going to have access to do a lot more grass fed beef. I think they're going to be able to do every single thing that they offer. They'll be able to do grass fed as well. Yeah. And I guess Piedmontese is much different than what we thought it was. It's my brother said that it's more it's more like a giant sperm bank than it is anything else because that's really what that's

really what they uh yeah yeah that's that's what my brother's there for my brother's there jerking off bulls basically um he'll be able to explain it uh when he gets on the show but oh my god uh basically has a lot to do with like. And so the Piedmontese, the certified Piedmontese cattle, the cows, are at many different ranches. They're kind of spread out throughout the country, I believe. So, I don't know, pretty cool stuff.

I think it's, you know, he sent me some pictures. The cows are freaking... Yeah, they look amazing. They look unbelievable. It's got to be different, you know, going up close and seeing, uh, the whole, the whole thing,

right. It's gotta be. Yeah. Seeing those majestic creatures. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so with that said,

uh, for more information on Piedmontese, um, it's our absolute favorite beef. It fills us up and it's amazing. It's high in protein, low in fat. Uh,

so please go ahead and check that out at piedmontese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 more, you get free two-day shipping. You guys got to check out all those deluxe packages and all that good stuff, too. It's really the best beef in the world, yo. I'm so happy to eat it every day. Yeah.

So for today's show, we're going to get into talking about some training mistakes that we've made over the years and kind of keep in mind that uh we don't really believe in mistakes around here we believe that it helps you uh kind of make error corrections later on and uh the uh losses are our learning experiences and you kind of learn like hey hey, that wasn't my best idea. That wasn't the smartest way to go about training for that particular day. But, Andrew, you had a problem with your fridge? What happened with your fridge? Oh, my gosh.

Did it blow up? Yeah. I'll try to make as short of a story as possible. Short and fat? So, not last night. The night before, you look down down it's like hey there's a little bit of water on the floor like i mean little like maybe like a couple of ice cubes like uh maybe my lazy ass dropped ice cubes and i pretended like i didn't see like i don't it just

didn't seem like it was a lot the next morning i'm getting my uh my stuff together to come train here. I go grab my lunch and the fridge is like lukewarm, like, ah, shit. So we, we, we have an ice maker. So we, we grab the ice maker, put all the, like the important food, all the people on T's beef, uh, everything we can inside this ice chest, throw the ice in there. Um, so from the whole ordeal, like started around 3 p.m uh as far as like trying to replace the fridge and it didn't end till like close to 11 at night it is such a pain in the ass to try to go out and buy a fridge i had no idea i've never really i mean our fridge all our fridges have been like hand-me-downs like hey we got a new fridge you guys want this one yes we do so i went to home depot

and this is i mean we can start and stop here but this guy it was his absolute like only job in life to not sell me a fridge it was insane um you know i had my tape measure out so because like i don't understand standard sizes and all that good stuff. Uh, so I find one, I'm like, Hey, like this one looks like it's going to fit price ranges. It's fine. Whatever. Um, so I, you know, flag the guy over and I'm just like, Hey, I have a couple of questions about fridges. Like, you know, like first off, do you guys like do deliveries? Cause I have no idea what I've never bought a fridge. And he just looks at me and he's like, well, it just depends which one you want. Like, okay, well, I would, I'm interested in this one.

So like, do you, will you guys do deliveries on this one? Oh yeah, we can do it on that one. But do you want counter depth? And I'm like, uh, I don't know what that means. Like I, you know, now that I hear it, I'm like, okay, that makes sense. Like the depth of your standard counter. I'm like, I don't know what that means, but, like, this is the size and everything I want. This is perfect.

Well, counter depth is, you know, it's the depth of your counter and da-da-da. Like, you need to make sure you have enough space and blah-blah-blah. I'm like, yeah, well, this is the one. Like, this is it right here. You know, do you know if you have this one in stock right now i'd have to check like okay let's uh let's pretend that you guys do um you know like would you be able to do deliveries today and he's like do you have a center island i'm like uh no no i i don't i don't have a center Island, but I, I would, I have

an interest in buying this fridge. He's like, Hmm. Like, so like, do you think I can purchase this today? Oh no, no, God, no, no, you can't. No, no, absolutely not. What? Okay. Like how long would it take to have this fridge right here delivered to my house

he's like oh it's gonna be at least one to two weeks all right dude um thanks for your time i think and then you know of course as i'm like trying to sprint out of there he starts you know oh but we can do this we can like just just go go is he trying to upsell you on a more expensive fridge no god that guy was trying to not sell me on anything maybe he was honestly i think that he may have actually been trying to save you from the depths of home depot because home depot fridges are more like we said more expensive than other fridges for no reason so he's probably like let me just get this guy out of here and save his save his wallet well okay could have been a great salesman maybe great guy maybe he had like a conscience or whatever but so we went with stephanie

with you by the way yes she was he saw the pregnant belly could be could be he knew you're right yep and then we went to across the street to best buy very similar thing like similar price ranges uh seen a fridge like hey like this one looks cool. You don't want that one. Like, no, like this is a cool dimensions and stuff. Just like, no, no, this is the one that you're actually going to want and pulls out a paper. And I'm like, okay, can we take that one home today? No, you know, just no.

That's not how you buy fridges. I'm like, fucking shit. These are really moral salesmen. Trust me. What happened to you? I guess. There's a, and I don't really remember what this is called, but there's some things with the design within a kitchen that things are like in some sort of triangular pattern because of the way you open things up.

Right. And so they, that's might be the reason why they asked you, like, it felt like they asked you 9,000 questions. You're like, why the fuck do you need to know where I'm from? Yeah. Why do you know where I'm born? Like, this is weird, but I think it's because, you know, you don't want to like, you know, open a fridge that hits into your dishwasher or, you know, other cabinets or whatever.

It shouldn't be that complicated. Yeah. It should be pretty straightforward but i mean i was just frustrated because i'm like i have my tape measure in hand i'm like yep this this lines up depth and everything take my money yeah and no so we ended up going to a uh like a sears outlet store where like they only have what like you see and i'm like load that one up and so thank goodness my brother-in-law uh he's got like he's got a pond cleaning service or a pond repair and stuff so he has a work truck so if you're in the sacramento area um hit me up because i have a really good guy that can help you with your ponds but uh it was still a pain in the balls to load and unload that thing because it was just us because if we wanted them to deliver it they said it was going to be in the balls to load and unload that thing. Cause it was just us. Cause if we wanted them to deliver it,

they said it was going to be like Sunday or Monday. And I'm like, ah, man, all my Piedmontese beef, like, like I can't like, so we ended up getting it day of.

And it was, uh, like I said, like seven and a half hours, but we got it done. So that's cool. Tired, but here we are here we are now you got a fridge got a fridge all right let's talk about stupid stuff that we did to mess ourselves

up over the years um yeah i guess i could start with uh and maybe you guys can ask me some questions on this one but um i did uh the inch on the arms in one day it was a program that was going on it was going around for uh a few a few years back or many years back probably i don't know 20 years ago or something like that and uh it was like you just train your arms all day you stay at the gym and you actually like eat and they had suggestions towards like what kind of food you eat and stuff like rice cakes and peanut butter and stuff like that. And I think from what I remember, you work out for like, I want to say maybe like six hours or eight hours. There's like some small breaks in between, but you just keep training.

And, you know, you bring a tape measure with you and everything. They kind of like check the gun size, you know, you bring a tape measure with you and everything. They kind of like check the gun size, you know, afterwards. And, you know, it does pump up your arms a lot, as you can imagine. Yeah, yeah, it does. And I think, if anything, it might cause like rhabdo or something where you're just so swollen. But I just remember that I couldn't straighten my arms for several days. My arms were just like stuck.

And then, of course, it didn't really lead to any permanent gains. That's what happened to me after he trained with chef fresh. I couldn't extend my arms for a few days. Yeah, dude. So wait, I'm guessing they said do this on a weekend or something. Cause it was,

you were only supposed to do it for one day, right? Yeah. I was supposed to go back to the gym and do it on another day. Right? Yeah. You just, you just stay there basically is what you do.

You get like 15, 20 minute break, you know, you like rest for a little bit and eat and then you get back to it. I don't remember that much about it. I just remember it was like torturous. I think you went back and forth between biceps and triceps. Um, I'm sure it's online. I'm sure you can probably like look it up. Yeah.

Find some information about it. What was it called? It was grow an inch on the arms in one day or inch on the arms in one day something like that i wonder how long that inch is supposed to last maybe like three days or something but man that's a that's a lot of training volume for one single day i know and yeah i wouldn't when you said rhabdo i couldn't think of i was like that's, that's going to cause that thing. Yeah. Annalyn Bailey got. Right. Right. Rabdo. God. You know, that, that, um, that kind of like, I think I've made that mistake, but within a bigger periods of time where I was just chasing the pain.

Right. That was the thing for me in my teenage years. Ooh, is this it? Yeah. Eight hour arm workout by Rich. Did he, was it by Rich Piana? Oh, this is really a long time ago that I found it, but maybe he, maybe Rich Piana. All right.

He got it from that workout. I wonder what he had to say about it. It's kind of interesting. I wonder if he like, yeah, I wonder if he felt that it like did anything, but you know, I think the main thing here is to understand that, you know, you can get a pump and you can make your arms a lot larger in a training session. If you're already well trained and you already have like a peak and stuff, I don't know what's possible in terms of making your arm bigger. But I would say that maybe your arm can get about an inch and a half, maybe two inches bigger for some people because they already have a good peak when they flex. And if you get a lot of blood volume in there and you weigh like 280 or some shit like that,

your arm probably goes from being 20, probably to looking like 22. And bodybuilders, they stay on that theme and they, they pump up every workout and they try to like ride out the pump for an entire duration of a workout. But your arms, obviously, they go down again. They like deflate. They go back up. They go down. They go back up.

They go down. And I think for a lot of bodybuilders, they're really just trying to like, I guess, maybe jam a lot of nutrients in there, right? I mean, you're trying to get carbohydrates, sodium, potassium, those kinds of things flowing through whatever muscles that you're working for the day. That's why they use post-workout and some pre-workout carbohydrates. Yeah. A lot of times.

And it's this idea of like, let's just blow this thing up with air every single time that we train. And over a period of time, the muscle will want to grow and repair and lay down some bigger guns. But it's not going to happen in one day. Dude, let's talk about the pump real quick, because a lot of people like to talk crap about chasing the pump, but these bodybuilders or we, there's logic behind chasing the pump, because when you chase the pump, what you're actually doing is if you, if you do too many reps where you fail too often, well, then your workout's going to end early because your muscles are too fatigued and you can no longer chase the pump.

But if you can do just the right amount of reps where you can keep that pump and you're almost getting to that spot, but you're not getting to that place where you're getting way too fatigued, you can continue chasing the pump throughout a long workout and getting a lot of training volume.

Even though we just say chase the pump, there's so much logic behind chasing the pump. There's a lot that goes into it. And it's, um, it's like an art. And, you know, if you remember Arnold, he said for him, like, it's like coming in the gym, you know, because getting that pump, I mean, it really is kind of a magical thing. It's, it's sometimes elusive a little bit. Sometimes some days you're like, you try something that you tried in the past and you're like, it ain't happening today. You're like, what the, why can't I get that same sensation?

And I think for me, what's worked well is to train, you know, kind of a main movement as movement number one and sometimes movement number two and not really worry about the pump and train in a rep range that is anywhere between four reps and maybe up to eight reps or so. Try to train a little heavier on whatever exercise it might be. And then from there, the next exercise, the rep range is going to be bumped up a little higher. So maybe I did, let's just say hypothetically, I did six reps on the first exercise that I did.

to say, hypothetically, I did six reps on the first exercise that I did. The next thing that I do, I might move into sets of 10 to 12. And then after that, I might even start to move into, you know, sets of 15. And to finish the workout, it could be like sets of 20 because my strength is diminishing as the workout goes along. But you still feel like you have enough energy to still get some reps and you are trying to, quote unquote, shape the muscle or superset or whatever it might be. Yeah.

And there's a lot of logic behind that too, because when you're doing higher rep sets, especially when you're using a decent weight for those sets, it is way more tiring than working with a decent weight for six to eight or six to 10 reps. You're going to beat yourself up more because the set just takes longer to do. So that's why it does make more sense for those much higher rep sets to come towards the end of your workout. Even though it may seem super simple, there's a reason why you want to start with that bigger movement to activate as many muscle groups as possible, whether it be a big barbell row or, you know, maybe a box squat

or, or a trapdoor deadlift, they'll activate a lot of different muscle groups and get you warmed up and ready to work your other smaller muscle groups later on in the workout. Makes a lot of sense. But you see, that sounds too smart. You see, we're, we're not trying to get, we're not trying to be smart right now. What is the dumb shit? What is some other dumb shit that you did? Maybe as a teenager, because as a teenager, we do some stupid stuff you know i've done a bunch of different styles of workouts um german volume training which i don't really necessarily think is dumb i just think that it was like too soon yeah it was just too much like 10 sets of 10 you know like like um so this is something everyone should be aware of is that whatever program you're about to do, it should map match up well with what you've done before.

So whatever you're about to go into, I would like for it to not be this massive stretch or this massive jump into something. It's kind of like stretching. Like when you stretch, they'll tell you, you don't, you're not trying to to stretch to the point of like you feel like you're going to throw up because you're in so much you want to be in pain yeah yeah so i think it's really important for people to you are going to need to take risks here and there and you are going to need to like f yourself up a bunch but in general if you've never done five sets of 10 you don't have any business trying 10 sets of 10 and the german volume training stuff that I did was like a 10 sets of 10 squat supersetted with like a hamstring movement in between. I think I was, I was trying to do stiff, like deadlifts and that just didn't work.

My whole core got like numb and I couldn't move. Yeah. I couldn't move any weight, you know, like I, I couldn't, uh, I couldn't no longer feel the exercises. Yeah. Cause like my back got so pumped up and my core got pumped up it was weird i was like i i'm like the exercises are now like worthless and i'm shaking like crazy and i didn't have hardly any weight on the bar uh and so i had to like then the next time i tried i was like okay let me try a squat and like a leg

curl and then maybe the next time i do it i'll do like a leg extension and like a leg curl. And then maybe the next time I do it, I'll do like a leg extension and like a deadlift, you know, that way it was, uh, you know, to have, you know, one main movement or whatever, but it just slaughtered me. And I, I just remember, I just couldn't walk. You know, that's really the results I got. Like, Hey, what'd you get off of that program? It's like, well, I, I walked, like I shit my pants for, you know, seven or eight days, you know? Yeah. You know, it would have made sense. Like, yeah, if you were already doing a lot of volume, GVT would have made some sense.

But if you go from doing like, yeah, five sets of 10 to 10, 10 by 10, that's fucked. It kind of reminds me. It was a few years ago. I think it was, I think it was 2013, 2014, circa Instagram, right? Where everybody in powerlifting started doing shako like everybody was hashtagging this is shako this is like squat every day yeah squat every day and shako type stuff and then like no one knows what the hell shako was because he was still in russian but we were getting like an american version of shako and it was like hashtag shako this program's great

but then a lot of people were like shako gave me got me injured like a few months later after it got big everyone's like i got injured doing shako and it's just like come on now well you went from squatting once a week to all of a sudden having this idea that squatting with a good amount of intensity every day is a good idea and it's like again you know whatever you're about to, it would be great if you were like prepared to work your way into it. Like, like I've done with like running, you know, I feel like now I can run pretty well. But I was never like, hey, I'm going to go run 10 miles, you know, out of nowhere. And that's just from like uh learning on the same topic uh max aida uh his trainer um his coach was really big on squats he was like we're gonna fix everything on everybody

and this is what cal strength does as well we're gonna fix everything on everybody by squatting you know he's olympic lifting coach and max Aida was a pretty damn good Olympic lifter. And so I asked Max when he was here, I said, what do you think of, I was like, this program's flying around everywhere. Squat every day.

I'm like, it kind of seems crazy to me. He goes, I did that for 11 years. I was like, what the fuck? That's why he's such a good squatter. Yeah.

Yeah. He's like, he's like, he's like, it works. Yeah. He's super efficient. 733 squat at 220. Not a squatter. Yeah, he's like, it works. Yeah, he's super efficient. 7.33 squat at 220, not a bad squat.

But yeah, I think that's the thing that everybody can build up to. But again, it's like 3 to 10 to 10 by 10. You got to start with maybe doing just small types of squats every single week. Maybe a normal squat on Monday, and then a uh maybe a what a box squat on tuesday that's light and maybe a light front squat on wednesday and then maybe another normal squat like you you ease yourself into it you know just two sets just yeah like just a couple sets just have one yeah you have one you have one day a week where you do uh maybe a little bit higher volume you got one day a, but maybe you do a little higher intensity, but it's not high intensity,

high volume, high rep. It's not a Branch Warren. Oh God. You know, Branch Warren style where it's like, how do you train? Do you like to do a lot of sets?

Do you like to use heavy weight or do you use high reps? And he's like, yep, do it all. You just, I remember when he, when he came into the gym, like they just got done like interviewing him with something.

And as soon as I walked in, he just looked at me like right, like right dead in the eyes. Like, are you ready? And I was like, yeah. And then I was like, I'm terrified of whatever is about to happen next, but I'm ready. He grabbed like 50 pound dumbbells. He started doing like front raises, you know, like a madman. When I think of Branch Warrenren immediately like the color red comes into my head and screamo music starts playing that's what happens when i think of

branch warren just because he's he's so intense but he's an awesome guy with a great beef jerky that i haven't tried oh yeah that jerky was delicious you had it yeah when he was here he he drops them off and that shit was hell yeah i forgot about that keep in mind who you're dealing with you know like that's a guy that like jumps on forgot about that. Keep in mind who you're dealing with, you know? Like, that's a guy that, like, jumps on the back of, like, a wild boar and kills it with a knife, you know? Really? Yeah. Oh, shit.

He goes, like, on boar hunts. Wow. And he invites everybody, and everyone's like, no, like, I'm not going to do that, dude. Like, fucking crazy bastard. Everyone's out here hunting with bows and killing elk and branch horns, jumping on boars. He's got a little like pocket knife like no this is all you need like but it's not gonna make it hard yeah that's the point oh man yeah that man's so big i would say you know just in general like biggest

training mistakes especially when i was young was just uh just not being patient towards anything you know i mentioned the inch on the arms in one day yeah um i also just used to train too heavy and um i have always been pretty good at bench pressing so like bench pressing it it came to me a little easier uh i got used to it faster i used to love doing push-ups so i just randomly pop push-ups while i was like watching tv and stuff when i was a Um, but my legs weren't very strong. And then every time I'd try to squat, um, first of all, I wasn't as confident in my squat. And then secondly, I would always use probably maybe 10, 15% too much weight every time. So my form was never good. I didn't lock my former technique in and I pretty much hurt myself. Like maybe about every other month, it seemed like I would pull something to my back and I wasn't lifting like a

total maniac. It wasn't like, like if someone saw me lifting, you know, at 18, it wouldn't be like, that guy's got no clue what he's doing. It was just too heavy.

It was just too much. Um, you know, rep number three and rep number four of sets of five would just, you know, I start to round over and it's, you know, wouldn't be very good. And I learned over a long period of time that for me, whenever the form, whenever I kind of scraped up against having a breakdown, that's when I got really strong. So it's almost like right before you have breakdowns, you know, they call it a technical limit, you know,

just kind of scraping up against that technical limit. Like if we were doing five by five, you might say, Hey, the last two sets, the last rep, you know, wasn't, I mean, it wasn't most amazing reps, but I think that's about where you should be. Yeah. You know, there should maybe be some small, because if there's not any flaws, then you don't have anything to really correct. And I don't know if it's enough stimulus for your body to get stronger. But as we know, with things like jujitsu, as we know with things like football, when you're working on a particular skill, if you continually mess up that skill,

if I'm supposed to go out for a pass and every time i go to like cut to the right i you know round off the pattern you know you're not supposed to round off the pattern because the ball's going to end up going the other direction because the defensive back's going to be able to creep up on you you'll be able to ride your hip they'll be able to kind of they'll kind of be able you're telegraphing like where you're running and you're also creating a lot of space for that guy to get in front of you and to get the ball yeah and so you're supposed to make a much sharper cut right but if you do that continuously well what's now ingrained in your body you know and then every time you go to do a squat if you always look like you're throwing up in a toilet

then your body's going to kind of go to that that's going to be default position for your body you know your body's going to say hey let's use our lower back because our legs aren't strong enough or we just didn't have good position to start with and so i i did i just did way too much of that and hurt myself way too many times and i wish i wish that i didn't i ended up with some pretty bad injuries too i had some really bad uh sciatica um for about two years where just the pain would run from my lower back all the way down my leg i was like 20 or 21 shouldn't have that when you're 20 or 21 you should be like limping around and luckily it just uh happened to heal up for me but you know i like herniated a disc just from like not paying attention yeah

you know it's it's really funny you say that when i was 15 i told you guys when i started training when i was 13 and then there's this guy that i would just copy in the gym he's just really just really jacked black dude and i was just like i'd look what he's doing then i go to bodybuilding.com and i'd copy him we never spoke but there was one day we never spoke but there was one day I was 15 and I was doing penalty rows because he did penalty rows too. And then like he, like I, I saw, he saw me, right. And I did, I was doing some really heavy weight, but then I injured myself. Like my injured my back and he walks up, he's like, I looked really good, but you're doing too heavy.

And I hurt myself. Those are the only words I've ever heard from him. And I think I saw him like a few more times and he probably moved because he never came back to that gym. But that was the first time I got injured. And those few words made me be like, I'm lifting like a dumbass. Like I was really lifting like a dumbass. Like I was just doing things to lift heavy. And like you said, I wasn't patient. And that caused me to mess myself up. And from there, that's, that's the point where I was just like, okay, everything needs to look really, really good. The only time it should be bad is like, if I'm trying to go really heavy and like, I know it's going to be a little, but that should be super rare. And that, that, that, that back injury

changed my life. How about overdoing some pre-workout? Have you messed with that one at all? Once it wasn't a good time because i didn't sleep that night i think i had um what was it it's it's the yellow bottle c4 c4 i had three scoops of c4 sick yeah i love those instagram clips where it's like it says like only use one scoop and the guy's always like fuck it and then he like jumps over the bench and like works out like a madman it's because i always saw other people like there's this guy i used to work with and he he could just take two and a half scoops to the dome he's like let's go i was like fuck it i'm kind of tired so let's fucking do this i was like i'm gonna take three and i had like i was like i was super tingly that workout and i went home

and i couldn't close my eyes i was just up to the next day i went to sleep at like two the next day 2 p.m just completely wired and tired and tired well how about you you had some pretty crazy pre-workout both you guys yeah well i was gonna say like that's really like one of like the the first things that my mind went to because you know like my experience i'm still you know trying to play catch up but yeah like like just like all noobs you know like i'm like oh dude i gotta go hit the gym it's like 8 p.m yeah let me take this pre-workout but the one that stands out the most is when i um it's actually when like i met stephanie you know like i'm like hey i like this chick she does crossfit let me go ahead and you know

hey i want to do crossfit now yeah i took a bunch of uh shroom tech sport so that's uh on it's like kind of like it's not even really a pre-workout it's just supposed to help you like prolong your workout i took a whole bunch and we had and that day like the the wad was like it incorporated like a mile run somewhere in the middle of it and i just remember like okay so you just like hold it in like don't be like don't be a bitch like come on i just fight through if i just puked out like all of this like nasty like green shit everywhere that was one of your first days with stephanie it was uh early on yeah she loves you yeah thank goodness but yeah i just remember

like the pre-workouts and really just like for me it's just it's you know to this day is like the supplements you know like overdoing it trying to like get something out the supplements, you know, like overdoing it, trying to like get something out of this one. You know, it's obviously we know it's like more on this side, but, uh, yeah, the pre workouts way too late and trying to figure out why I can't sleep. Like, this was weird. Like I worked out like, oh, it's because I worked out too hard. That's why I can't go to sleep. I always wondered now, why did we never think about that?

Why did we not think pre-workout has caffeine don't take it at night like i feel like it took me too long to realize that it's just like this isn't like coffee no it is it is it's like you're drinking coffee at 8 p.m why didn't because that's just what you do and that's what it was for me you know it was uh you take the pre-workout and you go hit the gym you go you go do curls in the squat rack yep that's just tradition and then after you have muscle milk and can't figure out why your stomach is cramping yeah it's weird you you don't have that association with it you're like yeah i can have this uh speed stack was a big one back in the day it was a drink and uh i mean it was a pre-made you know an rtd basically and and basically. And it had ephedrine in it and had caffeine.

I mean, it was a really strong blend. Was that the one that they would promote on WWF? Probably. It was by ABB, that American bodybuilding company. I just remember some crazy commercials with a ready-to-drink, like, fat burner is what they promoted it as you know what we need we need to like order some of this shit and fucking take a trip back let's go down like the old school because they this company american bodybuilding used to make something called blue thunder i could text john cena right now and text him blue thunder and he'd be so fucking pumped and he'd probably send me like a long text back about it because it's it

was the most disgusting thing ever but it had like 80 grams of protein it's a ready to drink um and it was like blue like they just made up a flavor because they're like we don't even know what this fucking tastes like but it was blue yeah it was blue raspberry i think is what it was called and when you went to drink it because it had so much protein in it it left like a film on your tongue it was like the worst yeah it was like a like a egg white like your tongue would be like white from it and it was just one of those stupid things where you're just like well other people are doing and they're pretty jacked so you know i'm gonna do it too and then all the uh protein bars and stuff back then they all there was a bar called the steel bar back then and it was like remember

this it was like 16 it's like 16 grams of protein or something but it was like 52 grams of sugar you know like it was fucking wild i'm so happy i'm catching some of these old references yeah the math i don't know how i know them, but that's just old school. Like Metrex bars and the original Metrex shakes were so thick that they would like break your blender. Your blender would start smoking. It would like give up on you. It would be like, rah. Because they didn't have the same kind of blenders they have now.

That's why you got to get a Ninja. Yeah, you would need yeah you need something i mean i don't even know they just put like plastic in it or something because it would bulk up so much and you try to drink that before you went to the gym and you were so bloated and you just felt like you're gonna puke everywhere but you're like this is the game you know this is we need this uh we need this uh protein powder or whatever and all's all that xanthan gum. Oh man. Yeah. But I think it was like,

I mean, at least, at least those gums, like, I mean, they've been shown to like, not be dangerous or whatever. I think the things that were in this thing were probably.

Yeah. Not, not so, not so great, but yeah, that blue thunder was fucking disgusting. Dude, supplements had some dark ages.

I think I'm at that cusp where I didn't get to experience because i remember um guys that were like two years older than me were talking about like like oh yeah i had experience jacked like the original i never took the original jack 3d i think we've talked about it on the podcast before but yeah it's like right once i started getting to like using supplements like it was it was a little bit more tame but i feel like the ingredients like ephedrine and stuff started getting banned before i got to them i'm so curious what that's like yeah they were i mean all those different uh supplements were crazy like ephedrine would uh would make you extremely like wired uh you would talk a lot like a little bit a little bit like mind bullet i was thinking um and you'd get like cotton mouth i mean that happens like

that happens with people that like you just have straight drugs in there yeah that happens with amphetamines and cocaine and stuff like that yeah i just have to point this out because it did make me laugh many things that's what they were called many yeah. This just made me laugh into the microphone. So, aesthetics, no genetics, said the original metrics would break your asshole. Oh, God.

Yeah, it sure would. I mean, it was, it was, it was just super. The original power bars were so gross. Oh, yeah. Those were horrible, too.

Those were incredibly terrible. You know, up to a few years ago i never really had a good protein bar true yeah it took a while it took a while for them to start making some uh some some good protein bars but yeah all that stuff you know i again i think it's like you just want to like advance you just want to like so. You just want to like, so you're like, Oh, this is probably the way to do it. And really, so back then, especially, you know, there was people being paid to promote those things and being paid really well. And so that's what you thought was really going on. You know,

you didn't know that guys were on steroids. You didn't know, you didn't know that you didn't know anything about their work ethic. You didn't realize they woke up at 5am and started cooking their meals for the day and stuff, too. You didn't really know that they ate six times a day. Or if you saw any of that, you were like, ah, like, you know, you're not following that. You're only following the fact that they took this thing before their workout that helped them burn fat. You're not following along with the hard stuff. I think that's the funniest.

I don't think people that market supplements do it as blatantly. I do see it every now and then, but like, yeah, back then the, the marketing was the funniest thing. Cause you'd see this Jack bodybuilder and he'd be like, after my workouts,

I drink my protein shake and that's it. Like, like this brand protein is the greatest for building muscle. Like it's just, and you really believed it. Well, and an interesting believed it. Well, and an interesting thing is if you go back even further, this is like kind of before my time, before I got into like lifting or started really reading the magazines and

stuff, um, they used to talk about the other stuff. So they would say like, Oh, this guy, you know, Mike Menser,

he, um, this is the way he trains. He does heavy duty. He does like one set to failure. Um, you know, he drinks milk, he, this is the way he trains. He does heavy duty. He does like one set to failure. You know, he drinks milk. He eats potatoes. He eats steak.

Maybe they talk a little bit about how he, you know, jogs here and there, likes to walk a lot to keep body fat down. And then it would say like that he takes testosterone and does Diana ball. It'd be like in the article you know yeah that makes sense and it's just like wild because like obviously don't it wasn't a scheduled three drug you know for there's a long period of time where um it wasn't yeah yeah right imagine reading that you're like oh what is that like chicken breast and dianabol you're like like huh that's interesting well and they used to talk about it, like, huh? That's interesting.

Well, they used to talk about it pretty like, uh, openly, you know, they would be like, yeah, this is, uh,

I think people were just like, yeah, what the hell? Like shit, it makes you bigger. Like if, you know, if protein powder does something good for you,

I'll take that too. But if this other thing works, why wouldn't I try that? And it just wasn't like, um, it wasn't demonized. And I think powerlifting gear was similar where I heard stories where somebody would walk into like a warm up room at a meet and just pass around some squat suits. People would try them out as they're warming up and they're like, oh, I lift more in these.

And then someone else would be like, what? What's that? Oh, I'll try that on. And it wasn't like, oh, you can't wear that. You're cheating. It be like what what's that all right i'll try that on and it wasn't like oh you can't wear that you're cheating it was like oh that's sick that's like a belt but for your legs and for your hips like it feels more like i guess it kind of hurt to wear it because it's super tight or whatever but yeah interesting right like there weren't like oh wait we need to we need to split everybody up like you guys go over here and you'll be in the cheater category and then we'll have everybody over here that's doing it the right way or whatever they want to call it right yeah it's funny how we got to this topic but yeah i was watching a video uh greg du set and he's talking about this one i don't know the guy's name he's also a pretty

big bodybuilding youtuber but he was talking about like he uses stuff but he doesn't use a crazy amount of stuff and he was talking about his funny experiences getting like gyno and all this stuff. But how like people ask him, he's like, I don't use a lot of stuff, but people are like people start using a crazy amount of drugs and fuck themselves up like he did. So I think it is good how people are being transparent about that now. But I think some people are being transparent and also giving people stupid information about the things that they should take. Like we had John Meadows on and we talked to him about like, how do you feel about like these individuals that are taking all this stuff? He's like, it's all too much. You're doing too much, you know?

So it's good. YouTube is good now with that. But it's still scary seeing some of the things that that that people seem to be just going with from a drug perspective i mean a lot of it can be really just like we're talking about stupid things that you've done or stupid things that you tried i mean you don't really know the reliability of a lot of the stuff that you get you know it'd be nice if if uh everyone can just get stuff from a doctor like Like, that's what I do now. I didn't used to do that.

You know, it used to be like it was actually really weird because steroids, they. It started out at a point where nobody made them like it was really uncommon for anybody like actually make steroids, except for like a pharmaceutical company. So you would get stuff from, you know, people that, you know, were getting stuff from a pharmacy or I don't even know how people were doing that. I don't know what the method was. And I don't even know why they made certain steroids. It really doesn't actually even make any sense because medically you don't need all of them. You just testosterone would be fine.

You don't need a bunch of other weird substances. They clearly made them for sports performance and then pretended like that. It was never going to be like a big deal or pretended that it wouldn't be tough for people to resist it. But then it started to become really common for people to actually make them. And then you, I would, I remember hearing about that. I'm like,

I can't buy it from somebody that makes it themselves. That's weird. Yeah, that is kind of odd. It it's really weird like imagine just buying a supplement and you're like oh yeah my buddy he just like makes this at home and you don't really know anything about it be different if your friend you know invited you over and said hey like i make this stuff and it's um a coffee blend and it's this this and this and he invited you over and showed you how he made it and then you see that it's like pristine and it's really nice and this and he invited you over and showed you how he made it and then you see that it's like pristine and it's really nice and you're like oh shit okay well you're just taking some herbs and mix them together not a big deal but you don't know the conditions under

which these people are making stuff and it's a hail mary you're just like yeah there's definitely some clorox bleach in some of that shit yeah i mean you know you inject something and you get a big like abscess or, you know, Has that ever happened to you? Oh yeah. Really? That's happened to me. That's happened to a lot of lifters.

I had to, they had to back out of competitions. It's happened to a lot of bodybuilders. They've had to back out of competition. I mean, some people have just, you know, taken so much that they're like blood pressure got out of whack and, you know, different things like that. But usually the most harmful thing is like, what's actually in that stuff like what's it actually made out of because well there's a science to it you know it's a it's a chemical right and there's there's alcohol in it there's uh oil in it um some people will try to like make the dosage really higher you know real

high and it's like well there's reasons why people don't do that because you can't really, you know, you can't really effectively do that without having it hurt really bad or without having to bring the alcohol way up. And then you're going to cause infections in people. Wait, the alcohol, what are we talking about right now? Like, like in the, um, in the oil. Oh, okay. Yeah. Like you need, you need a certain amount in there, I guess. I don't really know all the different things that go into actually making it but yeah it's just crazy it's just it's like a roll it's a roll the dice y'all kids y'all see how complex this shit is like there ain't no reason take take advantage of renew games lift for a while and as we've talked on other podcasts later in the future if that interests interests you, go ahead. But no, don't don't need it.

No. And I think that's a good point. I think it is complicated. You know, OK, I'm thinking about getting on stuff. I would really be interested in doing so. And then it's like, OK, well, how long are you going to be on it for? You know, you're going to be on it just for a couple of months. Because if you're on it for if you're on it for three months and you come off of it there's a you know you're going to kind of you're going to trend upward things are going to be

really great especially after you've done them for about six weeks throughout that whole you know cycle everything will be really good and then you got to come off them and you know maybe maybe you can afford to stay on them but do you really want to stay on them, you know, forever? It's like a, it's a big decision. It's a big thing. And that's why, I mean, I talk a lot of people out of it. I'm like, I don't, you know, I don't think you should do it because you're going to be on it probably for the next 20, 30 years. Hey, again, I always bring up this horror story. Sorry, guys.

I'm just going to, a little client of mine. And I messaged him, I think about seven months ago, asked how he's doing. He still can't. He can't have babies anymore, yo. Like, he's 25 now, because he was younger than me when I started training him. And he did something, and he still, like, he still hasn't been able to fix them so he can have kids. And that's a really weird thing, because you don't, you wouldn't really know right you could you could speculate that it was that and that your body never recovered but it could also be some sort of genetic component or it could be that you don't match well with your mate or whatever and i'm not saying that to say like

you do drugs you can't have babies i'm not trying to scare you guys like that but i'm just saying no it is something to consider what if you well i mean it can it can ruin it can ruin a relationship because if you get together with somebody and you guys have this agreement, yeah, we're going to have kids. And then it turns out that you can't, you know, I mean, I've seen, I've seen it happen. Even my, my own family, when people didn't want to have a kid and then they had kids like it, you know, it could split you up. So, I mean, it's, it's, uh, it's all stuff to really just think about.

Yeah. You know, I, you know, I said in bigger, stronger bigger stronger faster i love them and i'll probably always be on them um you know but that's my opinion it took me you know it took me a long time to to even get to that opinion i lifted for probably a good 15 years before i made that decision i probably made the decision too too young i probably made the decision too early um but now i feel like like what would it be like if i got off of them you know like it would be weird so i'm not ready to turn that page and even if i was to come off them it's like well trt is a pretty good you know it's pretty fairly healthy because you don't want necessarily astronomically high testosterone

levels but you also don't want astronomically low testosterone levels. So it's all something to just, it's things to think about, you know, and you got to donate blood and get your blood checked. It's, it's easier to not have to worry about any of those things. It's also easier to not have your,

your body weight can fluctuate a lot. Your mood can fluctuate. I mean, there's a lot of, a lot of things that can go up and down uh with you adding in you know a drug into the mix and so it's just um it's just something that you need to be sure of like you need to be pretty damn sure that that's really what the route that you want to go yeah coming off of sarms and tests that whole experience is why I didn't jump back on, uh, coming off felt like

shit. I didn't like it. Um, and then also, you know, like I did, I did that whole thing with SARM again, but like, I don't know, man, it definitely is like a totally different experience. All of a sudden now having, you know, my wife's pregnant and like the thought did cross my mind, like shit, dude, like what if something weird i took might like you know somehow like alter the baby's growth or something like it just makes you really think but god forbid you have a jacked baby comes out with all baby and jacked his first word is daddy thank you yeah for real all veiny he comes out squatting more than me i'd be sick oh my god lost my train of thought but uh no yeah just uh like in the moment it's

like nah dude like this is gonna be fine it's gonna be fine you don't think you know a cycle ahead you know like it's just it's out of sight out of mind but like it's even worse you're almost in denial you know you're like nah this is what I want to do. Like, this is fine. Trust me. Yeah. But if you can't, like you're the, like the person you were training or still are training, like that's probably everything to him right now.

And, but in that moment, that was everything. Yeah. And then now it's like, well, shit, I can't do anything. Like that sucks. Yeah. No, I just, I hit him up. I texted him and he was like, yeah, I'm still kind of, things haven't gone back to normal yet. Any idea how long he's been off for?

Well, he was off when I was training him, and that was 2013. Oh, he's been off for a while. He's been off for a long time. He's been trying to get things back to normal, but he still hasn't figured it out. That sucks. Yeah. Yeah. So, just people be careful. what about this like in terms of

training you know um in semen what like do you think it's is it good to think about tomorrow is it good to think about the next day or is that being a pussy you know should you lay it all on the line you know she's laid all in line right there like you feel like you got the energy you feel pretty good or should you be trying to stick to a, trying to stick to some, something specific so that you can continue to, uh, maybe if you stick to something more specific, maybe you're giving your body a better opportunity to grow or get bigger or get stronger. Well, we were talking about chasing the pump and I didn't mention, I used to chase the pain and chase the soreness, you know, because when you start working out or you start doing

anything new, you're going to get sore because it's new. Right. But when you start getting better at it, you don't get a sore. So now you're like, what do I need to do to get that feeling again? So you just start kind of doing crazy, dumb stuff. And for me, it was going to failure almost every single training session. And after a while, I was like, I'm not getting that much stronger. I'm still working with the same weights.

Huh. And I'm just feeling really sore, but it doesn't feel. I'm still working with the same weights. Huh? And I'm just feeling really sore, but it doesn't feel like I'm getting better. So to answer your question, yeah, like you need to back off a little bit. Like, like, like you said, in terms of that technical failure, you need to each day get to that. Maybe you don't even need to reach technical failure, but you need to get to that point where you're almost failing or at that edge. Um, and stop there. It takes a lot of self-control because usually you always want to go, go to that rep or go to that rep where you fail. Right. And it feels great in the moment, but then the next day you can't perform in the next day. You're feeling like crap and you,

it, no. So, so to answer your question, yeah, you, you, you need to usually for me, most of my training sessions or most of my reps in a single training session are two reps shy of failure. And then maybe my last few sets, my last few sets of a movement or the last few sets of the workout, I'll go to failure because then I can still go to the gym the next day and get a good workout in and get a progressive workout in. I'm not totally beat up i think a lot of us would love to um you know be you know we would love to have a great

accomplishment uh without crazy consequences right so jay cutler comes to mind um i believe he tore his bicep you know trying to lift up dumbbells for like an overhead press. But other than that, he looks like a million bucks. He looks super healthy. And he's four-time Mr. Olympia. You look at, you know, Dorian Yates is another great example of a guy that really pushed the envelope. And Jay, I would say that Jay trained very smart. You're going to see videos of him and some other guys, you know, pushing the envelope, screaming here and there, you know, but like that wasn't the majority of his training.

You watch most of his training. Face is usually pretty relaxed. He's just like in the moment. He's concentrating on the muscle um yeah when he did heavy squats and he wrapped his knees you're gonna hear some grunts just like when we trained with ohern it's like you just you just can't help it right um so you need you probably need a little uh dosage of that but it's not smart to really annihilate yourself if you're doing five or six exercises for the day there should be some exercises that are just a little easier than others.

And it's OK. Like, it's OK for it to be a little easier than another exercise. Using Jake Cutler as an example, again, I remember him saying that he started out all of his leg workouts with leg extensions. And he would just do like three to five sets of leg extensions. But he was just moving his legs around. He was just getting warmed up. He was trying to get a little bit of a pump so that he actually was forced to use a little bit less weight when he went to do his squats. It was a way for him to get more out of his squats using a little bit less weight.

Yeah. Getting a little bit of a pre-pump. out of his squats using a little bit less weight. Yeah. Getting a little bit of a pre-pump, but it wasn't like, you know, he wasn't doing drop sets and he wasn't over there, you know, screaming on the very first exercise

that he did for the day. So there's all things to, even like a walking lunge, while it can be just like treacherous, right? It can be really, from a mind perspective, it can be really, really tough, but it's also not something you're going to be like really, you know, screaming and going absolutely nuts for. So it's hard to it's really tough to that's a that's a really tough one to to do.

But I'll say this is like tomorrow or tonight. I'm going to Tahoe tomorrow. I'll be hitting up those trails again. And I think I'm going to try to go. I went on a seven mile hike. I'm going to try to tomorrow. I'll be hitting up those trails again. And I think I'm going to try to go. I went on a seven mile hike. I'm gonna try to go on 11 mile hike tomorrow. And so it's, you know,

it's getting to the point of the week where I'm normally would be training my legs. And I'm like, okay, well that trail is going to smash my legs. So today I have a chest workout. I had, I also need to do chest at some point too.

So I was like, you know what? I'm going to do a small amount of chest and a I was like, you know what? I'm going to do a small amount of chest and a small amount of legs. So it always matters. What's next? What do you have coming up? Are you going on a flight? Are you going to be in the car for a long time? It's okay. Just use your head. It's okay if you get there a little slower, your legs didn't grow maybe exponentially as fast as you wanted them to. But it's okay

to just take your time. I'd rather see people take their time than to get hurt or to be super on it. I don't want to be limping around those trails. I want to be able to get up and down those hills with ease. Those sessions, like the session you said you're going to do that today, I kind of call

those tap sessions because I have one of those a week because i tap in that ass the uh program well i mean yeah like i do tap my ass a little bit i'll do some glute work swipe up so technically i do tap that ass a little bit but um but but like what that session is is because i do three full body sessions a week so that tap session is every single mouse group i'll just i'll do really light load that'll get a little bit of a stim like a little bit of pump in it just for two sets two easy sets on every single mouse group i leave the gym feeling good you know um and that's that's one big thing

it's like people you should get a good workout in you You should work, but you shouldn't leave the gym feeling like crap. You shouldn't leave the gym feeling like crap. Again, you can get a great workout in, a great progressive workout in while feeling good. I think that should be possible. I think probably more often than not, when you leave the gym, you should feel better than when you started yep you know every once in a while yeah it's kind of cool to say like yeah i really like got my ass handed to me today uh-huh that's fine and and those are great and those will be stimulating days but if you try to do that every day you're going to be a zombie and you know i think you know for in sema's training and for the way that I train, I think we actually kind of train in a similar way where we're not going in there and we're not like barely doing anything.

I mean, we're working hard. The weights are heavy, but the weights are heavy for that particular day. They're heavy for that particular exercise. They're not always necessarily really, really heavy. It's not always necessarily that you're going in there and doing a 700 pound deadlift. I remember actually one day I was messing with it. You were doing your, you're doing your rows and you had like two 45 on, but to do them strict is really tough. And I kept making fun of you.

And I was like, dude, you need to put more. I was just like trying to, trying to, you know, make you throw more weight on there. And you're like, no, no, no, I'm good. You know, and you, you just stayed with that weight. That's really hard. That's tough to have that, uh, that patience to do that. But if you can get a good sensation out of using less, I think that's kind of what we're looking for. We kind of need, we can, sometimes we need that. I think that what you just said there is super important. Um, early on, I heard about the mind muscle connection from someone on YouTube. I think that what you just said there is super important. Early on, I heard about the mind muscle connection from someone on YouTube. I heard about it and I was like, okay, I'm really

going to try when I do certain movements, I'm really going to try and focus it there. And it's, it's, I think that's something that like lifters should try to focus on as they start lifting and as they progress. Are you feeling that lat pull down in your lats are you feeling a lot of it in your arms and your traps like are you feeling this movement in the muscle group you're supposed to be feeling it if not either lower the weight and slow it down so you could focus it there um or fix something because you know like i i can use really lightweight and get a great stimulus out of it like like i i can get a pump using use really lightweight and get a great stimulus out of it. Like, like I can get a pump using really, really lightweight cause I'm focusing on that muscle group.

And I think that that could be something that's missing, especially if you ego lift too often and you just try to, you just try to go as heavy as possible. And on, on a lot pull down, you use the whole rack. And when you're using the whole rack, you're,

you're moving around a lot and then you get off, you're feeling great, but you weren't really working your lats. You know, that, that's, that's one big thing that I let go of, ego lifting. You can ask yourself, like, do some of the other people that you lift with, do they use the stack? Do they have a good back? Do you feel that your back is pretty big or it's made the progress that you're looking for? And if the answer is kind of no, then you need to just kind of rethink like

how, how am I going to do these exercises? We're all built so differently to, um, a lot pull down has always worked really great for me. I always get a good stretch from it. Um, the range of motion feels good. Uh, there's a lot of various handles that I can use, but some people don't like them. Some people kind of think they're worthless because it's not a row and it's not like a pull-up, but we're, again, we're all built so differently. You have to really find what's going to feel

good for you. And there's just so many different ways of, you know, working out with Mike O'Hearn was amazing. Cause he's like, Oh, you know, we're going to do this. And then he always sits on the machine and like on backwards or sideways or whatever. And you're like, oh, you know, we're going to do this. And then he always sits on the machine and like on backwards or sideways or whatever. And you're like, what the hell are we doing here? You know, but it's always got a small twist with it. So you'll have to kind of mess around with it, manipulate it and make sure you're really feeling it at the same time. That doesn't mean that you do an exercise that's so hard that you can only use like

20 pounds. So that's where it gets to be kind of tough. You know, I was explaining the other day how like I like to do lateral raises where I throw the weight up a little bit. I kind of almost use it like momentum of like a reverse hyper where I'll bring the weight in front of me and then I'll bring the weight out and I kind of I get a little bit of a swing, a little bit of a arm bend, almost a little bit of a curl. And then I swing the weight up.

But I also do them regular style as well, where it's a lot more strict, where I sometimes will even keep them on my side. Or I'll do a cable one where it's kind of behind the back and I'll get a further range of motion to kind of make sure I get both. So that might be something that you want to try to implement into your training so that you can get, you know, let's say you do like a T-bar row. Well, on the T-bar row, maybe you're trying to handle some good weight. And it's okay to go for it a little bit as long as there's no risk of injury or anything and you want to get three or four plates on there and move it around. That's okay to do that. But I would also say, you know, lighten the weight back up and

clean it up and get that range of motion down to where you're really learning it. I think it's really important. And I would say the same thing is true with like a deadlift, you know, you're trying to work on a 405 deadlift, you know, you move around 225 for a few sets and, you know, work on locking your form in, but 225 is not going to get you to 405 so you're going to need to take some risk you need to put a little bit more weight on there and you're going to need to like feel it out but the majority of your volume should be done with lighter weight until you feel like you have it down correctly the swinging for the fences type stuff that has to be really unfortunately it has to be like very rare it has to be like very rare

and and as you get better at training there'll be a lot less of that yeah there'll be way less of that because you just don't need it because you'll kind of be ahead you'll be more jacked you'll be stronger you'll understand how the whole process works better and you won't really need to swing for the fences at all to be able to hit home runs let me ask you this um was there how did you when did you start training each muscle group more than once a week it took me a little bit to realize that i didn't have to do my arms once a week and i could do it twice a week right because i was killing them too much in one session um i think that's one thing that i think like it can doing like arms or whatever

once a week or doing each muscle group once a week in terms of frequency can work really great when you're starting out and when you're a beginner or if you're someone who's super busy and you can only hit the gym twice a week or something. But after a while, the better thing to do rather than stacking all of your arm work into one day of the week is to split that arm work into two days a week. And I used to think blasphemy. But when I started doing that, I started getting bigger because I was able to recover better. I was able to do more, like more overall totals in both sessions and I grew faster. So I think that's one big mistake

that people make is that they stick to that once a week thing for too long. They stall and they don't know why they're stalling. And you can kind of go at it a little harder because you're fresh again. And maybe the one time that you did biceps, maybe you did three exercises. And maybe the next time you do another two or three exercises. But, man, it's a lot easier to be fired up, excited, have energy for the separate workouts that it is to try to get through six exercises. You know, sometimes that's kind of a drag. You start to get into those later exercises.

And even though it's just arms, it can start to be challenging and it starts to be tough. I think something that's important is for people to realize there's time. You know, there's you got time. You have time for everything. You know, there's there's time, you know, there's, you got time, you have time for everything. You know, there's, there's time to, to spread the fatigue out. There's time to, um, you know, say, Hey, I'm going to do, uh, you know, legs two, three times a week. You have time to do it. You have time to mess with it. You have time to see what, you know, what it looks like for you. Um, for me, I started doing body parts like twice a week. Um,

probably like when I started doing West side like twice a week. Probably like when I started doing Westside, probably a pretty long time ago. It was always like, well, they bench twice a week. There's usually some sort of squat slash deadlift twice a week. And so I just always knew it was important to try to do that and to spread the workouts out. I remember Louie was like, look, you know, you're kind of just, if you're doing more than like five or six exercises,

you're probably wasting your time. the exercises probably aren't challenging enough you should like at some point you should want to get the fuck out of the gym because you should be you know you should have worked pretty hard on those movements so there's going to be days where you have a lot of energy and you're like want to do 20 exercises and and that's not necessarily the worst thing but for the most part you just don't need that many spread them out a little bit more. That's interesting. You like, he said,

you just, you don't need to be in the, how long did he have people in the gym is my question actually. Oh, Louie was a big proponent of, so if you were wearing powerlifting gear, that changes everything. The amount of weight that you start to move,

but he was a big proponent of a 45 minutes to an hour workout. I don't think people, uh, I didn't know that, man. I thought that a lot of Westside guys were having super long workouts. I like that, too. I like that idea, getting out 45 to maybe 89 minutes. He even likes

20, 30 minute workouts, but those aren't usually main workouts. Those are usually the extra workouts he talks about, where you might drag the sled a little bit, you might work some rotator cuff, all stuff that maybe you just weren't able to get to. He's yeah he's a huge fan of like you know he'll say work out like eight or nine times a week you're not sitting out you're not like it's to do that though you're not sitting down that crazy

like i mean i know if you're doing heavy squats or something you got to take rest between sets but you're not just like chilling like you see some people doing these days chilling on the bench on the west side workouts are tough and even training at west side was just like it was it was hard um they don't sit around at all like you you would think like they're resting pretty long in between sets but you're like you're not only like kind of start to gasp for air a little bit you're like oh man i i don't even know if i have like the strength on rack that next set because like we just did 10 sets i mean they move pretty i mean those are big big people those are big guys and the people that listen to louis the most lasted the longest and the people that didn't

uh they ran out of luck a lot quicker their blood pressure got high they got unhealthy you know and louis was always like you got to come in a couple times a week and drag the sled and do this and that and i think everyone just always thought it was like a waste of time it's like no this is like you know conditioning stuff but even on max effort day we would go on a rotation of like four or five people and uh there was no break you know there was no time in between it was just like one person after another we weren't like uh in a race and it wasn't like a rush um but rest period on a heavy training day you got three minutes yeah it's not really that long you know when the weight starts to get really heavy you're kind of like looking around you that's where you wrap your wrist a

couple extra times you're like trying to trying to bide your time oh my shoe yeah i got that from mark uh we have a question from our boy matt um basically how can you tell the difference between ego and drive uh okay so in a lift i would say a straightforward thing is does the lift does the lift look ugly does did your form break down early in your lift and you're just trying to push through it and you probably shouldn't uh there's ego drive as if the form like it's tough but you're staying with it you push through and you finish the rep not like you're you're good morning a squat and you're coming up and you yeah no you that's that's that's ego that's ego but i think you probably have a better answer to that than i do no i like that i think i think that's dead on i think um

that than I do. No, I like that. I think, I think that's dead on. I think, um, so this kind of stuff gets to be kind of complicated because, um, you want to try to burn shit into your brain to where you become, you know, quote unquote tougher, where you become, uh, it's a stronger individual. You can handle more of a life's, uh, resistance. You can handle more of life's resistance you can handle more of life's up and downs and i think we get that through you know drop sets and through sets of 20 and just like going beyond what you thought your body could do but there's a time and place to do both you know i think there's a time to like there's something really really powerful and you think about the people that we admire the most i think the people that we admire the most. I think the people that we admire the most, we think they're crazy motherfucking savages all the time.

David. Yeah. And you know what? They're really. They're really not. They're they're they're way different. Like they're what we admire about them is probably we probably have a misinterpretation of what it is that we actually like about them. But it's almost always the same shit.

They have integrity. They have patience. They got patience. They got a crazy amount of patience. Like David Goggins, as tough as he is, you can't just tough like a run. You can't just all of a sudden, out of nowhere, start running as far, you know, he can do it now and it's easy for him and even as crazy as he is i bet you his training is probably

pretty complex it's probably maybe not even complex it's probably very sophisticated he stretches 90 minutes a day right so these are the things we're not. I don't know. We're just we misinterpret Mike Tyson, man. He's such a savage. He's so fucking. Yes. Mike Tyson is very aggressive.

Mike Tyson is really powerful. But Mike Tyson is one of the greatest athletes of our era. I mean, he is unbelievable. The speed, the power, the agility, the amount of time he spent training. I mean, that guy, you know, when he used to wake up at like three in the morning and run and they asked him why. And he was like, because he didn't think anybody else was doing that. So sometimes you need that, that mental edge. And sometimes, you know, kind of feeding the ego is some, is sometimes a good thing. But I think if you're trying to like lift for Instagram or, you know, you got to think to

yourself, am I proud enough of this lift to like send it to my coach or is my coach going to be like, dude, come on. Like, dude, we went, we went over this like a hundred times. Like what was that? You know, why, why are you still lifting this way? You know, you want to make sure that you're, you want to look like a professional. You want your lifts to, you know, for the most part, look really good 95% of the time, maybe even more. I saw at super training over the years that made the least amount of progress, had the least amount of patience and the least amount of least amount of dedication towards restriction and towards holding themselves back. They always went too hard.

They always went too heavy. That's not admirable. That's not what we like about people. We don't. We think we do. We think we like that. We think we like we don't. We don't like that. We like about people. We don't, we think we do. We think we like that. We think we like, we don't, we don't like that. We like the patience. We like to see the guy be patient.

We love to see somebody come back. We love a good comeback story. And why do we like that story? Because we saw the guy get defeated by it. And we're like, he missed a 405 bench. And then three weeks later, he tried it again. He missed it again. But then three weeks after that, he came back and he made it. And there's some sort of persistence there, but there's also a lot of patience that had happened somewhere along the lines where the guy said, Hey, you know what, everybody, I got to admit, I've been doing this wrong. Like I haven't been doing this correctly. He's got at least admit it to himself. And maybe he reaches out to a coach or maybe he, you know, find some answers within himself and comes up with a different idea or try something old that he did in the past that

worked well, whatever it might be. But we love that. We love seeing that from somebody. I mean, there's nothing more admirable in the fight game like MMA or boxing because it's like, man, those guys, there's nobody else in the fight game like MMA or boxing because it's like man those guys they there's nobody else in the ring you know football is different or soccer or any of these other team sports it's like oh that's cool the other team came back and they they whooped their ass that's pretty cool but imagine you get in the ring with another human being and they're really well they're

really skilled in jiu-jitsu anditsu and striking and all these different things. But you're really skilled, too, and you've been doing it for 20 years and you get knocked out. You just get crushed. It's not even like a lucky punch type of thing. Like the guy beat you up and then he just overpowered you and maybe even choked you out or something. Just totally crushed you. Well, we've seen people come back and then they win. And it's like, well, how do they do that?

Well, it's because they go back to the drawing board. Their coach tells them, dude, you know what? And Seema, it's like, we've had the same discussion about this forever. Your striking game fucking sucks. I know you don't like to hear that, but that's what we gotta fix. If you want to be able to beat this guy, this is what we need to do. And we need to practice more on that. You can't just jujitsu this guy. Okay? Here's

our game plan. We're gonna take out his legs first. Make sure he gets tired. Because you're in great shape. And then you can fucking jujitsu the shit out of him later on. You come up with a game plan and you kind of reevaluate, but can't just ego stuff you can't just you can't just be like i'm gonna you know i'm gonna take my strength and i'm gonna just overpower everybody i'm gonna overpower these weights or i'm gonna you know lean into those things it doesn't it just at some point

your luck's gonna work uh run out're going to have to show some patience. You're going to have to have persistence. And over, you'll have incremental progress that's probably really agonizingly slow over a long period of time. And that's how you get better. And then that's when people tell you that you're great. And you didn't even know what you did. Like, dude, wow, that was like I watched in SEMA do jujitsu in a tournament and he was fucking amazing. But I also know that I'm not him.

I didn't go to all those practices. I know how many hours he spent doing that. Like, there's a lot of a lot of hardship, probably a lot of times where you drive home and you're like man i this isn't for me i suck you know really sore cramping up injuries uh why am i doing this like all these things happen but again there's persistence there behind it and so when he gets his brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt and he when he brings the title back home to sacramento and we get him a labradoodle, uh, we'll, we'll know what it was all about.

It's not about the ego. It's about just figuring out a way to continue to get better. Quick question, Mark, how long, how many years did you lift before you, uh, the,

for you hit your like first record, like state record or, or, or whatever record, how long after you started lifting was that how many years um so as a kid you know it happened pretty quickly just because there wasn't anybody else lifting at that age okay yeah and so those i wouldn't even count those because they're actually literally sometimes there wasn't an established record so that's not really breaking a record i

guess it's like just setting a record at some point um but no it took me like 20 years i i don't think i don't think anyone's ever like realized that like because they see the clips when you're super strong but then that's like that was 20 years after yeah yeah like 20 years after it took 20 years and it took like maybe like eight or 10 years of being like really locked in to the point to the point where it was like, it just not even healthy. You know, like you can't even, you can barely function as a human being because you're just, you're so into what you're doing.

Yeah. People are like, that guy's an asshole. That's the thing that that takes a good time. Like you see the end game or you see someone doing something really cool but you don't you don't see the amount of work that went in so it's hard to understand that who knows you might put in the same amount of work you might not get there but if you do put in that type of work for a long enough time you will get to a spot that it's that you never probably thought you could ever reach just because of time, patience and consistency.

It's really that simple and very hard work. Yeah. I would say like, uh, just to kind of maybe wrap some of this up. Other things I've done that are dumb or are just, uh, you know,

watching what other people do and then like immediately going and trying that and abandoning, you know, just like no longer doing what I was doing before when I was making progress. So if you're making progress, that's really valuable. You know, don't don't undersell that. If you're making progress with your diet, you're making progress with your training and you hear something that we say or hear something somebody else says, don't go and abandon what you're making progress with your training and you hear something that we say, or you hear something somebody else says, don't go and abandon what you're doing. It's okay to like try something. What I would suggest is that you see a new exercise from somebody or something like that.

You try it in your warmup or you try it kind of after, after a workout, and then you can decide on whether you want to kind of like implement that. But to jump ship on a program and to, oh, man, keto didn't work for me because I did it for three days and it hurt my stomach, you know, and then you're and now you're doing flexible dieting. And then now you see the thing on carnivore and you just keep hopping around. It's like, just please try to be patient with it and try to just understand like these things, they take time. And you'll also like you'll learn a lot as you're doing it and so you'll continue to get better but i remember for me when i was young that was always the hardest part was to like want to do what everybody else was doing and like just my and i luckily i had a coach you know he pretty much just had me on the same like lifting program forever. And it was annoying because it was, it was just, uh, it was really boring. Like I just hated doing, I, at a

certain point I hated doing, I liked doing in the beginning and then I hated doing it like two years later. Cause I'm like, Oh my God, like this is the same thing. Every time it was basically like a three sets of three program where he would just kind of bring the volume up a little bit. He might add some sets and add some weight to it. It was just super, super simple. But I was like, I don't want to use 225. You know, I don't want to do this. Like, I got to do this again.

And he's like, yeah, well, we're starting over. We got to build back up. And I'm like, three sets of three with 225 is like way too light. Like, what am I doing? And he's like, well, your form's not that good. good he's like improve your form and then we could add weight I'm like but I don't want to do that like I know I can do 275 you know I know I could but he wouldn't let me he would actually come over and take weight off the bar all the time I'm like this fucking sucks yeah no um that's that's kind of the same thing that happened for me when I was like really, really young or not really young. I was a teenager. But my tendency is when I saw a new program online that was like, oh, doing this program, you're going to your squats going to go up or this is going to go. I'd switch immediately. Like I didn't have confidence in what I was doing, even though I was working. So I was like, fuck it. Let me just do that. Let me try that. Let me try that. But after a certain point, I was just like doing too many different things too often doesn't allow me to really progress well at anything.

Like I'm just, I'm switching too much. I need, I need to give myself the time to really push this, really see what I can get out of it, really see how much stronger I can get. And when I did that, that's when things really started being able to get and continue moving in the right direction. I think that's one thing that, um, it's hard not to seek something new because when you do something for a certain amount of time, the natural instincts,

like this is kind of boring. I don't want to do this anymore. Even though it's working, it was like that. It's like a shiny new toy, right? It's like my Toyota sucks. Let me go get that,

that new car. And then you drive it for a while. You're like, well, unless it's like my toyota sucks let me go get that that new car and then you drive it for a while you're like well unless it's a tesla unless it's a tesla but it still drives itself right um but yeah like if something's if you're able to progress well just stick with it um because there's always all these new these videos like do this to add this much weight onto your deadlift or like i remember the kaylor woolen video which was really good it was a great video but i remember he was like doing these rows these cheater rows right i still get messages to this day where people are like so do you do those kaylor rows still i was like no they weren't for me and they weren't for my back my back

can't do that shit i think that was the first video that I put on the super training channel that got over a hundred thousand views. Yeah. I remember that was like a huge thing for me. I did that, that one day with Kayla, I did it the second day and I realized, Nope,

this is not for me. My back can't handle this man. So yeah. Yeah. That was, that was creative titling. It was, I think deadlift 900 pounds easy.

You're part of the problem, Andrew. No, I'm joking. I apologize, and you're welcome. Yeah, Kaler was insane. He is insane. I remember everybody just standing around looking at him laughing. He made no sense. His arms are like this long, and his back is like pumped all the time.

Yeah, he's fucking jacked he's another beast and then jim jimall i mean jeremy of course jeremy's they can't learn jeremy i like the same person they really are they're very similar they're very similar they look like street fighter characters yeah but jimall man that guy's gonna pull 1100 sumo jeremy i didn't see him for like three weeks that guy's gonna pull 1100 sumo jeremy i didn't see him for like three weeks maybe two or three weeks and like so i saw him about two and a half weeks ago uh-huh and he's like i've been a little out of practice with training and stuff and he's like shredded he's like you know there's veins in his toes and shit and like he's like chewing gum and there's like striations in his forehead and uh

he's just telling me he's like i've i've been eating better like you know he has his gas station diet or whatever but he's been he's been eating a little bit better uh more recently and then um i saw him just like two days ago and i was like dude like you transformed you're like huge like not that he wasn't big before he was big anyway he goes oh yeah i started lifting he's like i think i put on like 11 pounds or something yeah he's just like crazy like this is a super responder and i know there could be other things at play but it doesn't really matter what's at play i mean he's just an absolute he's just an absolute machine and he pulled you know seven plates he did a couple reps with it and he was like it's like man it feels

like shit and he's like flying man, it feels like shit. And he's like flying with it. Yeah. He's moving so fast. Do you guys know what his max deadlift is? It's nine something. He did 897 or eight, whatever that number is just before the 900. What do you think?

He'll pull like 920 or something coming up. Yeah, because anytime we do any content with him everyone they can't accept that it's a lot of hard work so if that's literally all it was what do you think he'd still be able to pull well you also have to think so jeremy you know is unique in the sense that he doesn't look like he would be able to do the other lifts that well and he's squatted 800 pounds so i mean like you know like we should actually do it on video. It should measure his waist. You know, I mean, I would guess and say that he's one of the people in the world.

He's somebody in the world that probably has like the smallest, one of the smallest waists to ever fucking squat 800 pounds i would agree with you i would say that you know ronnie coleman you know he's he's done that too and stan and stuff like that but he would be right there with those guys and then you know also consider the body weight his body weight is so different than what those guys have i mean how did that guy how did that guy squat the deadlift we can make sense of it we can say okay well he's got longer arms he practices a lot he trains a lot he's unbelievably strong he's unbelievably powerful and yes it doesn't make sense that he's able to pull nearly 900 pounds but at least i can understand some of it you know

you can especially because you see other guys now pulling seven and eight pretty regularly right but that guy put 800 pounds on his back and he weighs like about 200 that doesn't make any sense his explosiveness though that's one thing that i don't think people realize he has like you can see it in the deadlift but i'm really curious i'm really curious like how high does he jump i've never seen him but i could assume that he could just jump out of the gym his strength to body weight ratio you know we actually have to slow him down all the time you know you have to like because he'll first of all he'll get hurt um you know they talk about like how bo jackson got tackled and end his career how just powerful he was and how he would kind of like was wrenching

that guy down the field and that's how he blew out his hip. And they were just like, that's because Bo Jackson, like he's, he's got like so much power, so much horsepower. Um, but, but Jeremy is like that where he's just has so much horsepower. He's got to be really careful and cautious. And when I was working with him, uh, the other day I was showing him, you know, how to kind of like lock in a deadlift and kind of move it a little slower. And he absolutely loved it. He was like, holy shit. He's like, I felt every muscle in my whole body.

He's like, that felt amazing. And I was like, yeah, I don't think you sometimes even work some of them because you move so fast. There's no time under tension, you know? I want you guys to realize how crazy what what was said was because that that what you said really surprised me because jeremy is a top deadlifter who's been deadlifting for a very long time and you just showed him something to slow down the weight and it's something he hasn't felt before being one of the top deadlifters in the world he hasn't felt it before and he was surprised you know how crazy that is he was like confused that's wild

he's like what did we just do you know and i was like well i just had you stay at the bottom a little bit longer and but yeah he normally just goes like crazy i was really what i was trying to do with him is have him hold his position because what he'll do is he'll because he's strong enough to do it he can get away with certain things and i don't know anything about lifting the weight that he's lifted. So I got to mention that as well. Like I, that was my advice to Eric's photo too. I was like, dude,

I have, here's, here's what I think. And I think this will work, you know, in my head, this is what I think would work. Cause I've coached a lot of people and helped a lot of people,

but only, you know, how to move that way. Cause no one's ever benched it before. Yep. And you have to sometimes realize that with these people that they're, they're, they're brilliant.

You know, they're, it's like a form of genius to be able to like move these to, to express your body in these ways. And you see it all the time in jujitsu where you're like, I don't understand what that guy just did, but he's on a different level and we should all just go home. Yeah.

Yeah. That's how you feel when you're around Jeremy. You're just like, holy shit. But yeah, just slowing him down a little bit and really making sure he maintained position for all three reps that he did because he'll tend to, the hips will shoot up. It's like so minimal.

It's so tiny. But I'm like, you need to stay down in there a little longer and then pull all that slack out of the bar. That's not the way that he's going to deadlift normally, but I think some training like that, like kind of you were doing with some of the um pause deadlifts you know that that's going to make up a decent amount of his training it's going to you know help add some time under tension help add some volume help add some intensity to his workouts and he doesn't have to use 900 pounds there's going to be muscle memory in there when he does get to that that

weight like even though he was in trying so he's still lifting the same way he's still exploding from the bottom his hips are going to stay a little bit better even though he's not doing it with 900 pounds in multiple sessions have you ever torn anything in train in training or even like just pulled or tweaked a hammy a hip oh yeah bicep yeah yeah but those they don't happen often and when they do happen it's it's not too major i've never torn anything that caused me to be out of commission for months other than like my meniscus i had surgery on but like no like usually if something like that ever happens i know why it happened i know why i i'm always like uh yeah that's what i did um and i just work

around it for a few weeks i'm good and then uh what about like getting really sore have you ever done anything to where you're just like that was a huge mistake like you just can't can't get up off the couch or used to happen a lot when i was younger um didn't that hasn't happened much since it happened with real world tactical when it doesn't it doesn't happen yeah that was brutal we'll talk about that in a second it doesn't happen anymore um because you're smarter about it or it doesn't happen anymore because of like your condition or is a combination of the two or okay so i don't want to go on too long of a rant here,

but when I started lifting, I mentioned, you get really sore and you go kind of hard, you get kind of beat up. After a while, you adapt. You don't get as beat up even though you're training really hard and really well, right? Same thing happened to jujitsu. Initially, since my body never moved that way, I was really sore.

I felt really beat up. I couldn't do shit in here. Everything felt like was really sore. I felt really beat up. I couldn't do shit in here. Everything felt like crap in here until I adapted to the movements. And I don't feel sore after jujitsu sessions, even though they're really hard. So I think that number one, I was able to adapt to the training stress. And then the second big thing is I push myself, but I know where my, I know, I know people don't like the word limits, but I know where my limit is for each training session to be able to progress, but not go over that place where I can't progress again the next day. And you probably have a good idea in your head when you're like, you see pull-ups, you know, or you, whatever it is, like if you write your stuff down or if you don't write your stuff down, but like, if you just are thinking like, I'm going to do pull-ups today, I'm going to do some pen lay rows. Like, already in your head, you have an idea of the execution of, like. The loads.

Yeah, you're going to use, like, a weighted thing for the pull-ups, or you're going to do higher reps, right? You probably have a decent idea of that going in. And then, like, so I think that maybe people don't know how much of this we do. So I think that maybe people don't know how much of this we do. We do like a little bit of a pre-projection of like, I know if I'm going to bench, especially on bench, I just have a good sense of it, that I'm going to use a certain weight. And if I was to do a deadlift workout like right now,

I would be like, you know what, I'd be totally fine. I haven't deadlifted that much recently. So I'd be totally good with deadlifting 315 for a few sets of eight, making sure the form is crisp, and if it felt good, I might go a little heavier. And I think that when you're new, man, it's really tough to figure that out. Or if you tried anything, yeah, you write it down. Herbie the Lovebug.

Y'all remember his notebook?rew took a picture of it but like i think that um that's a really especially if you're newer you know you're trying to make progress it's going to be hard for you to remember what you did last week especially if you're just moving around wait and if you don't know what you did last week you might go into the next week thinking you really progressed and you didn't right and you do it again the next week and again the next week. So, yeah, it would be some people, you know, think it's a bit of work, but it takes a bit of work to move in the right direction. Write your shit out. Really write it out or type it out.

Do whatever works best for you. But I think, yeah, no. Whenever I whenever I like go into each lifting session, I know around the weights I'm going to work with for each movement. I'm feeling kind of tired this day. It'll be within 20 pounds of this weight. If I'm feeling good, maybe I'll be able to work with 10 more pounds. This is something I think you should actively practice.

You know, as you're training, once you start doing an exercise, you do say like a seated row. Um, I always like to do what I like. I refer to as a garbage set, which is just a set just to feel the weight out.

Um, I don't know if I really need it necessarily, but I don't really like to do much in terms of warming up. And so I just I usually just go to the exercise that I'm going to do and I usually just start there. And, you know, on something like a seated row, I might move around like 80 pounds, which is very, very light. I might do so kind of slowly. make sure the biceps feel good and make sure there's no weird feedback in the elbows and make sure the lower back feels good and maybe do a set or two like that. And then, uh, kind of, you know, work my way into starting to project what I think I'm going to be able to do for the day. Oh, wow. I feel pretty good. I think maybe I'll do the stack and get some reps in there with that. Um, or, you know, uh, it's not really, I'm not really feeling, I'm going to stick with

a higher rep range for today, but I think these are things that people should work on. You know, once you, once you get under that weight and also, you know, keeping track of, you know, how many sets did you do last time? How did that feel? What did that do to you? How did that feel? What did that do to you? How did you feel several days later? Because if you did eight sets and you were crazy, crazy sore, maybe this time you can say, you know what? I just want to try six sets and see what the difference will be.

You see, I love how you guys understood that, right? Well, we had Mike Isertal on the podcast, too. And you know how Mike loves talking about maximum recoverable volume, which sounds super complex. We're like, maximum recoverable volume? What is that? Well, that's what we just mentioned here. You look at what you did on that day. You look at how you feel two or three days later.

Are you trashed? Okay, do less sets. Do you feel good two or three days later? That's your maximum recoverable volume. It's that simple. It really is. It doesn't have to be. It's not simple. It really is. It doesn't have to be. It's not difficult.

Yeah. I also think you can feel it, too. And that's something that you might need to learn is that when you just don't feel yourself, you don't feel like your normal self, you're a little fumbly. Maybe you spill your coffee and you're just a little off. You might just need a day off. You know, it might be a good that might be a good sign. I mean, we like through doing all these stupid things over the years and through messing ourselves up, you kind of learn like, OK, like maybe for me, I just I try to lift every day and I try to pick a body part every day. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. If you look at, you know, a LeBron James or a, you know, professional basketball player, they got themselves conditioned to the

point where they can play basketball every day and it doesn't bug them. You know, if me and Nsema went and played basketball, we'd be really sore. We would be really, really sore because we're not used to it. We're used to lifting weights. And so it doesn't really make us sore. But you might have to kind of just pay attention here and there to like I end up with days off just because it's like not feasible to end up in the gym every single day. Sometimes I'm traveling somewhere or doing something else and it's just not possible. But I try to work out every day and I would say it probably ends up being, you know, 300 something days out of the year probably. Yeah, no, a workout like we talked about this especially during quarantine it doesn't have to be something in the gym you can get in some push-ups

and squats you know if you can't get into a gym get yourself yourself try maybe do 100 push-ups or 200 push-ups and 200 squats that's a pretty good workout it's not bad you did something just don't don't let a day go by where you do absolutely nothing. Any, um, like drawbacks to, uh, like what I've been doing recently and it's cause Mark had mentioned it about like, you know, saving time and, you know, making sure you get in a workout. Uh, I just been focusing on like one body part or one muscle group at a time. Um, not really stressed about like, you know, being prepared for another photo shoot, not

doing a meter or anything. So other than it may be taking more time, is there any other drawbacks to kind of just doing that? Getting in maybe like a 45 minute workout as opposed to like a two and a half hour workout? Wait, when you say taking more time, what do you mean? As far as like if I want to, let's say I just, you know, I want to look better. Yeah. far as like if i want to let's say i just you know i want to look better yeah so that's gonna possibly take more time if i'm not you know doing more compound movements i'm i'm gonna come in i'm gonna focus on shoulders today and instead of you know maybe doing like a bench press and shoulders

i'm only doing like shoulder pressing and that sort of thing yeah i talked to you i mean i i told you about this um i'm gonna like you told me told you about this. Um, I'm gonna, like you told me what you kind of like to do. I'm going to try to write out something that you can do so that there's structure there. The thing about writing things out is that when you know what you're going to do, you'll be able to do more when you kind of have an idea of what you're going to do in the gym and you lack some experience, then you're going to be thinking in between each set and you're going to waste time thinking about what you're going to be thinking in between each set and you're going to waste time thinking about what you're going to do next which means you'll do less work which means you're a workout that you could have done a great workout in 45 minutes to an hour um but because it wasn't organized you

didn't do nearly as much as you could have done yeah right so um the one body part a week or maybe the one body part or session thing i don't't think it's bad, but I think you're at a stage where you can be doing not, you don't have to do multiple body parts a session, but each week you can hit each muscle group twice. Yeah. You're at a stage where that, that's, that's for you.

I mean, you've been lifting for so long, but I think to just like get in the gym and lift what you're doing right now is still a win because you're still, you're still pushing that. But now we can just push that more. Yeah would you say like um i don't know like maybe like one muscle group every like five days type of thing so that way it's not like oh i gotta hit chest on monday and friday and if you know you miss that one day then it's like well shit now

it's saturday like you know what i mean like would it be better to look at it that way as opposed to like monday's chess day you know national chess day it is like yeah i think um that's not bad i think one thing that we tend to do is we tend to always look at our our uh our structure within a strict seven day period so yeah each program's like it's a three-day-a-week program that you have to do every seven days but some people are super busy so sometimes like i'll make a program that is six days are programmed right and it's it's a different workout with the six days but it's six days done in a nine-day period okay right you guys you guys get what i'm saying it's a six-day program done in a nine-day period so you made your week nine days exactly you've made your training week nine days so you can still hit all of that but it's spread out a little bit more it

makes it easy for you for your schedule right so understand that it doesn't have to be a five day split four day split it can be a four day at a if you're really really busy and you really can't at the gym before at eight you know it's just one way that that i just kind of burn more calories is like i'll do you know i do one body, but it's like kind of impossible to really do one body part. You know, multiple things are going to get worked. And when I think of like arms, I just kind of consider it one body part, even though I'm doing biceps and triceps. And when I do shoulders, I usually try to get like all the shoulder or sometimes I'm like, all right, well, I'm already kind of, you know, working the shoulder. Maybe I'll, you know, finish with some triceps.

And then the same thing happens with back. It's like, OK, well, I'm already kind of working some biceps. So it just it really depends on the day. It depends on like, you know, what I'm doing. But it's it's and then with legs. I mean, I consider legs all one thing, but certainly not all one thing. Right. I mean, there's a lot of different things to work in there. And so, you know, I'll drag the sled, which is kind of a little bit more hamstrings if you're pulling it forward.

Or I'll drag the sled backwards to work in more quads. Maybe the squats, maybe I view those as working your quads more and the belt squat and so on, right? But you really end up kind of, you know, working, uh, a bunch of different muscle groups. And, and actually more recently, um, just cause of like the way things have worked out. Sometimes,

sometimes I'll do like shoulders and I'll do like hamstrings, which doesn't really make any sense, but it's, uh, they don't take away from each other. And that's, that's a really key ingredient, you know?

So whatever stuff that you can find in your workouts, it doesn't, you know, pull away, you can get amazing, amazing workouts. And there's actually some research that even shows that by working the antagonist muscle, you can flex the opposing muscles like a little harder or maybe recruit more motor units slash muscle fibers and things like that. Yeah. That feels so good though. Like you do a set of shoulders and then just go on a leg curl and boom, you kind of get the little bit of the best of both worlds. Like that. That's the thing.

It's like, I think some people, when I do program them, like I've never done legs on the same day that I hit my, my upper bottom. Like, yeah, you're in for a ride. Like you can do that.

It like, and then that actually makes a lot of sense smaller muscle group uh attached to the biggest muscle group that you got like it makes tons of sense and like again you can like you said you can do these things without them taking away from each other you can go from straight from your shoulders straight to legs straight to shoulders without having to rest so much because your legs are resting as you're doing your shoulders and your shoulders are resting as you're doing your legs. You get more in and less time. Yeah. You did that to me and I hated it. I know.

Like you saw me dying when you, you programmed thrusters and you're just, you're laughing just like that. And I'm like, Oh my God, that was terrible. But yeah, I tricked Andrew the other day too. I was like, yeah, we're going to go do shoulders. And then we did like four hamstring exercises first. I'm still sore from those hamstrings. Yeah. Tom hates working legs. So I'm trying to work on those little chicken legs. And that's all he talks about too is like, I got to get my calves up.

I need calves. And he'll look at mine and like, I have nothing down there. Tom like needs a thought bubble around him you know like the thought bubble is like always about his calves yeah it's probably like on one side it's probably saying i need bigger calves the other side saying but my chest is pretty jacked and there's one side saying i need coffee oh yeah he always needs coffee too and then another one that says i don't actually drink that much coffee yes i don't drink much coffee guys six cups Yes. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

I don't drink much coffee, guys. Six cups in. Yeah. Just a little bit of background info. Tom's a savage. He works his ass off. He gets here early. He drinks a whole pot of coffee to himself before anybody else gets here.

Yes. And then we'll say, I don't even drink that much coffee as he's drinking coffee. Pretty awesome. We love Tom. He had a great, he had a massive pretzel Last night A massive sugar pretzel Oh damn Yeah

Mark loves pretzels Talk to your boy He's going a little bit Off the deep end Slow him down a little bit Yeah Gotta slow him down Tom I love you bro

I'm just gonna tell on you Every time you make a mistake Every time We got his back Did you eat a piece of it I had a small piece It was good It was very good

you watched him get fatter before your very eyes though that's always the best it is it is uh but i had some good food too had some tacos some carne asada fries where at uh i think it was called golden road golden road downtown it's pretty decent food take us out of here Andrew Absolutely all right cool everybody on the livestream you guys were awesome today I seen a couple of debates going back and forth about squatting three times a week whether or not that's a good idea whether or not Novices can do it. It can be great Yeah

I think so but like what I just want to say is like thank you guys for all the comments and stuff that does help the channel. It helps this video house. More people see it. So if you're catching this after we went off air, go ahead and just drop us a comment, say whatever the hell you guys want to say that in SEMA is, uh, Jacked and handsome or fake natty or fake.

Now I was going to go there, but I don't want to. It's okay. All right. Yeah. Everyone's calling him a fake natty. Yeah. You natty. I was going to go there, but I don't want to. It's okay. All right. Yeah. Everyone's calling him a fake natty lately. Seems pretty real to me. Yeah.

Yeah. You can reach out and touch him. Yeah. I'm ashy, though, yo. I need a lotion. It's unacceptable. Yeah. Yeah.

But, yeah, anyway, so thank you, everybody that did join the live stream. And, again, if you are catching this after, leave us a comment. Let us know what you guys think about today's conversation. Let us know what you guys messed up on your training sessions. The good, the bad, the ugly. We want to hear everything. Please make sure you hit up Piedmontese, the people that sponsored this episode. Those links will be down in the YouTube and Facebook descriptions as well as the podcast show notes.

Please make sure you follow the podcast at MarkBell'sPowerProject on Instagram, at MBPowerProject on Twitter. I guess we'll be on TikTok until they officially ban it. I kind of started posting stuff again because I remembered the login. Real, real story. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. And then Seema, where can people find you? And then Seema Yen Yang on Instagram and YouTube.

There's a new video today that's out, Five Things You Need to Know Before Starting BJJ. And a new Smooth Panther video is coming on Monday. And then Seema Yen Yang on Twitter. Mark? That's Smooth Panther. Mm need to know before starting BJJ. And a new Smooth Panther video is coming on Monday. And it's Ema Yin Yang on Twitter. That's Smooth Panther. I need me some of that. Wait, what?

We're still on air. It'll get you all flexible and stuff. Whoops. Yeah. Stretch it all out. There's nothing wrong with that. Today's episode was a lot of fun talking about some stuff that has really messed us up. I'll just kind of finish off by saying when I first got into professional wrestling,

the camp that I went through, they just tried to see if you had what it takes kind of thing to make it through a practice. I can't remember everything that I did that day. I know I ran a bunch in between doing step-ups or something like that. But I had to do like 1,000 step-ups per leg. And then I also did like a two- or three-hour wrestling practice. And I never did wrestling before, so I was so sore uh for the next two days uh my bed was upstairs in this apartment that i lived in i had to sleep i just like slept downstairs because i'm like wow there's really no there's not really like i tried to go upstairs yeah i put like one foot up

and my leg started like tremble and like cramp and i'm like there's no way i'm like i was gonna try to sleep on the couch so and then i i've actually when i went to sleep on the couch my stomach started to cramp up so i'm like i think i'm just gonna try to sleep on the floor yeah just so i don't have to like push myself off to the soft cushions or whatever but yeah it was uh it was pretty bad then my legs were sore for a good like eight or days, but that's probably the most sore I ever got was from that brutal workout. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell

on YouTube, on Twitter, on Instagram. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you all later.