Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 432 - Nick Wright

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Nick Wright is a YouTuber, bodybuilder, and powerlifter. He started training as a teen weighing in at 104 lbs with 11.5 inch arms. He competed in his first show at 15 years old, and since then he’s won a ton of shows, became a fitness model, and picked up a couple sponsorships along the way. He’s also a competitive powerlifter competing in the 181 lb weight class. His all time best numbers include: 602 lb squat, 425 lb bench, and a 650 deadlift. Please follow Nick on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/scondore Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Freeze Sleeve: https://freezesleeve.com/ Use Code "POWER25" for 25% off plus FREE Shipping on all domestic orders! ➢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 ➢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

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Mark Biles Power Project podcast. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by FreeSleeve. And Seema, I mean, ice has been around since forever. It's been a known thing in recovery. What makes the FreeSleeve so much better than traditional ice? You know, it's funny. I think back to my college days of playing soccer and even a few years back, whenever I'd have to use ice, I'd get like these like ice pack block things. I'd put it in a paper towel and I'd sit down on my couch and I'd have to ice each individual knee or if my elbow was hurting, I had to sit there and ice my elbow. It would like leak all over the place.

Water would get on the ground. It was the most frustrating experience ever. And then when I finally found out about the damn free sleeve, like I was just able to put it on. I was able to walk around. I was able to do the things I needed to do before bed. And it's just so smart. I don't know why nobody thought about this before, but hey, we got it now.

Yeah. Don't be like college in SEMA. Drop the straps, wraps, and ice packs and upgrade your ice packs today by heading over to freesleeve.com at checkout. Enter promo code power 25 for 25% off your order and free shipping on all domestic orders. Oh, oh, oh, Ashton Rusuka. Ruska. Ruska. And he's, domestic orders. Oh, oh, oh, Ashton Rusuka. Uh-huh. Ruska.

Ruska. And he's so, like, okay, he's thick. Like, his whole body's just thick. Dude, he's jacked. Well, he's the kingpin for the USAPL's 205 class. Oh, good. Which was formerly the 198 class. But yeah, he's like the, he's the Russell of that class, basically.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It's absolutely insane. He's, yeah, he's squatted. that class. Basically. It's absolutely insane. He's yeah. He's squatted. Fuck. How do you squat? It's high. I think mid sevens. Yeah.

In this video, he squatted like seven something and then he deadlifted like eight. Yeah. Yeah. He's deadlifted over 800 and his bench is not bad either. I forget. I benched like 485. Yeah. You know what I mean?

He, but I think he's like 20 years old. Dude. Yeah. Yeah. He's impressive. Is this the guy that's super saiyan bob i think yeah he's 20 no super saiyan bob's a little older oh so this is not the guy sorry no but he's in this video well actions action i think is a far here's kevin oak randomly in the corner doing 335 overhead presses. Freaking mutant. Yeah, he's jacked.

I was with him in New Mexico when he pulled 805 beltless for a double. Yeah, he's benching over five, squatting close to 905. Yeah, there's Ashton. He's a nice kid. I talk to him once in a while. Look at how freaking flawless his squat is. And he's just dumb jacked. What was that about? And how does this guy squat 650?

He's 185 too this guy yeah i think bob is 185 that's really strong yeah he gained strength fast too i watched him did i remember watching not too long ago and it's like his numbers just jumped yeah bob you're a beast and he's entertaining as well he used to do like these weird lifts on his page like uh i don't know it was like a squat starting from the ground or something. It was wild. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. You guys ever see Kevin Oak, uh, take that 500 pounds and like, yeah, flip it upside. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Side. And then put it on his back and then, yeah. Oh, like this thing.

Yeah. That's what that guy, that's what that guy was doing. 500 pounds in the bar. And he literally lifts up one side of it. So the other side is still in the ground and he picks it up. What the hell is the name of that? Over his head.

What is it? You know, like he's trying to like stand it up straight from the ground and then just kind of inserts himself under it and then just kind of lets it go like over him like a squat and then squats with it. But like from the ground. And puts it back down. Yeah. I could do that with 135.

Yeah, me too. Don't they do that in Strongman? They do, yeah. Okay. Yeah, they take some sort of odd object and they but powerlifters are maybe like one dimensional saxon squat or something or that sounds right press or something i don't know sounds good to me but yeah it's crazy i don't know if we're live i believe we are yeah we're live yeah we're live oh hey all the way oh hey what's going on like right

wow i was talking all this shit yeah yeah we didn know. We didn't know we were on the air. Now we're in trouble by everybody. I take it all back. You guys know I'm not going to talk to everyone. But that shows how awesome of people we are. Like, not even realizing we're on air, we're just like, this guy's amazing. This guy's awesome. Yeah, luckily we weren't bad-mouthing.

Band-aiding everyone on YouTube. What have you been up to? Just trying to be a little bit more than an average power lifter these days. Oh, there you go. Getting some strength back up again? Yes, sir. It's been going well. And have you done any bodybuilding or anything like that beforehand?

No, that show that I did right before I came up last time, that was my last one. I'm good with competing now. I like maintaining bodybuilding style training and obviously nutrition, but you have to be in love with it to like do the full contest and i've done it a lot since i was a teen so i'm good now i think that last show is a perfect way to go out can you get in bodybuilding shape without a bodybuilding show you true well so i think you have to be like borderline psychotic to do it. Like you can definitely, but like there's a huge difference between just getting lean or even getting like generally shredded and then getting stage ready.

And to get the stage ready, it's like you're dying. Like you're suffering by the end of that to a point where most people aren't going to stay doing that unless there's like a very specific reason for it. So usually just looking good, like for the beach is not going to be a reason. So, I mean,

in theory you could, but I think you'd have to have like, be really mentally tapped. You most likely wouldn't go too far if, if it, if you weren't getting on stage, if you're getting on stage, maybe you kind of screw up in your preparation and,

and take it too far and maybe get a little too skinny or like lose a little bit. I mean, but you're not going to take it to those extremes or even you just get super dry or cramp up on stage. Yeah, you're right. You're probably not going to do any of those extremes if you're just even just doing a photo shoot.

Yeah, you're right. There'd be no reason to. And you just kind of go by the mirror a little bit more and like just what looks good instead of like the standard, you know, you have to reach for the stage. How do you balance it out, you know, between bodybuilding and powerlifting and, uh, you know, mentioning last time you were here that you had some trouble with like binging and stuff like that. Yeah. So the binging's I'm good with that now. Um, thankfully that was just a matter of getting away from like the mentality of tracking so much, not that tracking is bad

for everybody. It's just different triggers for different people. But after competing and dieting for so long that whenever I track it kind of get me back into that mindset so um we ariana actually helped me out a ton just she would just force me to like get away from like you know labeling certain foods as good or bad or i have to do extra cardio if i eat this thing and she just started like fixing me like lunches and dinners which is with like normal well-rounded foods but then when we just wouldn't eat a ton of it you know we'd have like three. I intermittent fast anyway just because I like that. So we'd have like three large meals in a day at most.

And it'd be good. I wouldn't gain fat that way because I wasn't eating over my calories and I was just kind of getting familiar with regular foods again and I wasn't going crazy with it. Is Ariana a chubby chaser? This is what you're trying to tell us. She likes to fatten you up a little bit. She likes when I get a little fluffy. When you got a little likes to fatten you up a little bit. She likes,

she likes when I get a little fluffy when you got a little cake back there when I got a little, yeah, a little cake. She likes when I prepare the gluten free cake just right. And then I think there's another part to that question, but I forget it. It doesn't matter.

Well, a lot of people are scared of letting go of the scale. I remember when I started like trying to stop doing that. I was, I was, I had a little anxiety. Yeah. So, I so i mean um you said you implemented some fasting what else did you kind of do to get yourself comfortable with not having to track daily to get over my eating disorder i decided not to eat there we go oh man i don't think there was too many tricks

it was more just kind of rewiring patterns in your mind. Because that's what it comes down to. When you binge or even when you just develop unhealthy habits, they're habits. It's just a matter of taking the time to reroute the synapses, reroute those new habits. So it was getting away from track and getting away from obsessing. And then just sticking to that plan of eating kind of balanced. And staying active, of course, in the gym and with cardio or whatnot. And then just trusting that kind of the same way you trust a program or a diet.

And over time, I started seeing I was like, hey, I feel great in the gym. I'm not gaining extra fat. I don't have to. I'm not fluffing up just to lift heavy. This is great. And then you kind of it's a brand new habit. Now you're like, all right, this is the new norm. You eventually kind of get on board with that plus being out of a caloric deficit helps as well

because you don't have like the ghrelin and the leptin fighting you making you starving what have you guys been doing during uh the pandemic what have you guys been doing with yourselves like how is it you're in what rhode island yeah rhode island yep what's it like out there and like what have you guys been up to the last several months i know things that was the restrictions have kind of let up a little bit but yeah i mean for the since like late june i've been it's been back to normal pretty much back to the gym and everything normal and i think there are still restrictions but the gym i go to shout out to ultimate fitness west greenwich rhode island badass gym um they're really small anyway so it's like it's never

crowded so they are it's kind of like you we meet these minimums by default anyway, which is great. Um, but yeah, when we first, when quarantine first happened and shut us all down, I was fine with not going to the gym because training had been kicking my ass like for a little bit anyway. So I just took the, I took the break. I stayed active as far as doing cardio every day, you know, walks, whatever, had some dumbbells. So I'd just do like some shoulder pump type stuff, some pushups just to keep active, of course.

But I decided to take the break and I dedicated my time to just like mass trying to master a new skill, in which case it was trading. So now I trade full time on the stock market options trading specifically. And so just learning that, like spending hours and hours and hours and hours practicing and learning just pattern breakouts and everything you need to know for that. And that was fun. So I didn't miss the gym at all. And I knew like in a few months, like once you've been lifting for a while, you get away from this whole, oh, I can't go to the gym.

I'm freaking out. And you start realizing like I've been through injuries. I've been through setbacks. It's like in three years from now, three months away from the gym will just be forgotten about about like it's a blip. I'll be back in the gym in a few months, muscle memory kick in and we're back to normal. So I wasn't sweating, not going to the gym. And instead I dedicated my time just to learning a whole brand new skill that I now still do full time, even while back in the gym. What about your gains? Yeah, they didn't go anywhere really. I mean, you lost, you go back in the gym, feel weak obviously everyone does you know maybe you lose a little bit of that pop to your physique you're

not as like full and awesome looking but it's like muscle memory is going to get you back so fast like just i just stayed confident i knew it would come back really fast i didn't sweat it i think that's what most people should do there's no point in driving yourself insane about it so you know like i said i stayed active in other ways i think that's important don't become a couch potato but um and that did help like you know kept they kept things from not it stopped me from going back to like a dad bod you know but i wasn't worried like if i couldn't still squat 600 or you know didn't look quite as full or whatever because i just knew you know give me two months back in the gym good programming and stuff it'll all be back to normal and it was in eight weeks as soon me two months back in the gym, good programming and stuff.

It'll all be back to normal. And it was in eight weeks. As soon as we went back in the gym, I jumped on my own lean strength program, which is an eight week program, ran it. And in that program, it's designed perfectly for actually getting you back in the gym, too, because the first two weeks are just big acclimation weeks to get a foundation going for your CNS. So it worked perfect. And then eight weeks later, I hit that 602 pound squat and then a 650 deadlift for an all-time pr so you know just bounce back fast

real quick let's go to that option trading thing because was that just a totally new thing that you started like you just wanted to learn for some reason well i've always been in and out of the stock market forever you know like back in 2016 i think it was i would do a little bit of trading with the penny stocks over the counter. I'd have some great luck with it. And then some horrible luck is penny stocks. There's a whole different breed. The charting is not even quite the same.

It's a lot of like volume and level two reading. Um, and I never dedicated myself to really learning the skill. I don't know what that means for anybody who likes trading. Um, and so I was always on and off, but I never took time to learn the skill. Here's the thing about trading, right? 90%, something like 90% of traders, especially day traders, lose money. And this isn't because trading itself is impossible to do. It's because trading, the thing I've learned, is trading is as intricate of a skill as going to law school or even certain areas of the medical field.

It's very intricate. There's a lot to learn and understand. And even just about your own psychology when you're trading, learning your own psychology and when red flags come up and you need to step away from the computer and stuff like that. It takes a long time and a lot of practice. They have simulation trading platforms now, like paper trading, to where you're trading the real stock market real time, live, but with just simulation money. So you're really trading the real market, so it's very real, and you can pick and choose how big you want your positions to be, but it's just simulated money, so you're not actually risking it.

It's a great way to practice. But what happens is, I've learned this, and I've talked to a lot of great, I have a lot of friends who trade full time. So it is possible. But I've learned this. I've talked to a lot of great. I have a lot of friends who trade full time, so it is possible. But I've learned this for myself, too. It's like you. The reason people lose money is because it's the only skill that requires a lot of time in practice and learning that anyone can just dive into for free. You know, we can't just walk into a courtroom and start being a lawyer. It wouldn't work. Thank God. We can't just walk into a courtroom and start being a lawyer. It wouldn't work. Thank

God. We can't just walk into a hospital and start performing surgery. Thank God. It should be the same training. It's such a skill where you really shouldn't be able to... It'd be better for people if they weren't able to just access it from their phones and computers. You kind of can be a lawyer, though.

And you could be a doctor. Y'all remember that? You could pass a bar. Youall remember that you guys remember that fake uh that black kid he's like a he made his own office he's like oh my teenage doctor and people believed he was a doctor you got to find this andrew his picture is like this and he has like a little mini beard but he had a practice for a good few months before they caught on it's like wait this kid isn't a doctor damn yeah it's scary you can't do it for very long that's for sure yeah yeah yeah well that's same thing with trading i guess you can jump on and be a trader but it's not gonna last very long right so then for for somebody like that is interested should they just like avoid some of those apps like i've seen them where like

you you don't you don't have to invest you know thousands of dollars you can invest you know whatever you got yeah avoid that avoid. There's a couple of like, um, chats. Like there is one chat shout out to, um, penny power trading, not a sponsor plug.

Um, he is the only one. I actually, I do all my own trading technical analysis, but I will go to his page once in a while for a penny stock trades. Cause he does, um, over the counter penny stocks,

the riskier trades, but he is amazing and he's no bs he doesn't have this big gimmick where you sign up for a thousand bucks he's like you just pay like basically like a small gym membership to be on his chat and he gives you live updates of what stocks he's following as he buys them as he sells them all that stuff is that the guy that's the kid it's oh y'all gotta y'all gotta watch that youtube video just search that's a kid wow he looks so young he is bro he's like 16 oh my god

oh god damn but so i like i like his but even with him it's like you want to make sure you take your time and educate yourself it helps to understand what you're looking at why you're looking at it you know but outside of that um not just like a lot of my own, there's another chat, Tactical Traders. I have a bunch of friends on there. They trade. And I like running things by them, too, just comparing notes on a technical analysis level, things like that. But no, on a whole, stay away from the scam stuff. I don't even like following chats for their calls or anything.

I'll hear people be like, oh, follow this guy. He puts out good calls on what stocks to trade. I don't even like that because it's like you don't know what their situation is. You don't know how much money they're investing, how risky it is for them. And sometimes they're wrong. So my biggest advice for anyone trading is just take the time to learn. First simple things I recommend learning if you want to get into trading is learn how to first. You can even just YouTube search it.

Lines of support and resistance. Learn how to chart those. And then pattern breakouts. Stock pattern breakouts. So bull flags, bear flags, wedges. And then from there, learn the details about those without going too intricate. Those are like your great foundations to start with. And once you get those down, then you learn about volume, to read volume when there is a breakout, stop losses, basic stuff like that.

You stick to the basics, then the charts end up telling everything. So now I'm at the point where I don't really like listening to news or anything. You pay attention to news just to know what catalyst could be there, but you don't act on news. You wait until the chart tells you what it's going to do. So you just read the charts. So just educate yourself on chart reading. Well, and it's real easy for people to go with the popular companies. You know, it's really easy for people to go with Tesla and Amazon.

But I think the main thing is like, it's, it's your, you know, it's your money that you're rolling the dice with that you're playing with. And so I think, you know, lean towards the stuff that interests you. Lean towards the stuff that you like, that you enjoy, that you feel is going to be fun for you to do. Because even if you were to lose money, you're like, well, at least it was a company that I believe in. At least it was a company that, you know. Rather than, I think a lot of times people are trying to roll the dice on these. They'll hear something and they'll say, oh, I'm going to put all my money into that.

And they'll lose like a ton. Yeah, that's why I don't like the hearsay. My best motto is the charts tell all. So that's the easiest way to wipe out all the noise. You start listening to, you'll hear one opinion. No, like that's one opinion right there. Trade in what you believe in. But suppose you believe in the idea of a company like a lot of biotech stocks right now.

Sound promising. You might really believe in them. And it might be a horrible idea to invest in them. You know, or you might hear a stock like Tesla, which is definitely overweighted for like what it is. But it's strong. It's got momentum. It's I don't see it going bearish anytime soon on a large scale anyway. You know, but I'm not telling anybody to invest in it.

I'm just I'm talking here, but, but no matter what you hear, you can just, it's beautiful when you learn how to read charts, you can just go pull up the chart. If you want to do a long-term investment, pull up the five-year chart, the 10-year chart. It's not about your feelings or emotions. It's just about what the numbers say. Right. Yeah. It's, and it makes it so much easier now, you know, pull up the five-year chart.

Has it been healthy over the years? If it's been steady downward, then probably not a good investment. What's the safest thing to do, do you think? Well, as far as stocks in general, I mean, long term investments, the safest. That's what I do. Yeah, I just I never sell. Yeah, that's great. I think that's great, man. Like especially like good, healthy again, reading some basics of reading charts, just seeing if there's an upward trend or a downward trend, which is super easy to learn. Looking at that and then mixing it with other things like how's their dividend been? You know, how's their dividend growth been?

Has it been healthy? And then, you know, just invest and then you just let it go. You don't have to worry about if it goes up and down. Just hold it. 10 years from now. Yeah. If you were to gift a baby 12,000 000 bucks they'd be a millionaire by the time they're it's like 65 so it takes a long time but you know like for people that have a little extra

money or extra income to give a child you know a stock of even half or quarter that amount of money absolutely you know it's yeah if you have a cool thing so it's going to build it's going to build its own money on its own without doing anything yeah yeah you've invested a few thousand bucks in at&t way back you'd you know at&t is a very slow grower it's um very sideways but it's kind of safe and the dividends have been consistent too so it's like you'd have a little bit of extra money now and you'd have monthly check or not excuse me quarterly checks coming in you know so it's yeah exactly so then because i don't know anything about stocks so it's like the whole idea is just like you guys said you

just invest and you just leave it there for essentially ever like how does yeah ideally yeah and then you'll have you'll have stocks that you know maybe last five ten years and then kind of go in the decline but yeah especially and then there's etfs as well which is like basically basket like a basket full of stocks you know so you can invest in those etfs like voo v o o um there's a bunch of different versions of that that are very safe because like the stock market in general kind of always has more money exactly and it's kind of diversity within that one stock so it's like diversifying because it's it'll it'll track a bunch of stocks all at once, like SPY tracks the S&P 500. So it's like you're getting the diversity

of the things that make up the S&P 500. And of course, when everything goes down, tides raise and sink all ships. So that happens. But yeah, in general, if you can get some good solid buys in, ones that have been established, ones that have been healthy,

and there's no real reason for them not to be healthy in another 10 years, and the charts have been all healthy consistently, then yeah, ideally you just invest and you just kind of forget about them. So then what's the point if you're not going to see anything out of it, if you're just never going to? Well, because this is just long-term investing. I do that and I do day trading, so I'll get profits like each day. But for the long-term stuff, it's more like retirement and it compounds and grows over time.

So like if you had invested, God, I don't even know what the math would be. But if you would invest at a, you know, $10,000 five years ago, you'd be up a whole lot of money right now. You know, who knows? Depending what you invest in, you can be up 50,000 bucks right now. Imagine if you did that in Tesla. Right? Oh, yeah. Jesus Christ. So like how'd you invest in Tesla you can be up $50,000 right now or more. Imagine if you did that in Tesla. Right? Oh, yeah. Jesus Christ. So how'd you invest in Tesla back just in February? It was

$300 and something bucks. I got some Tesla stock a while back. You're right. Just before the split that happened, it was up to $2,000 plus. Of course, that's what we call a meme stock. It's almost like a meme of itself now. So not every stock's going to be like that. But that's the idea, man. It's like what we call a meme stock because it's almost like a meme of itself now right so not every stock's gonna be like that but but that's the idea man it's like it's like a glorified

savings that grows over time so like in theory if you invest 10 000 bucks when you're 20 in theory depending what you invested in you know it could be six figures by the time you're like ready to retire you know if anyone's looking actually for some pretty i guess uh uh entry level but really basic advice on this stuff there's this guy named graham stefan on youtube i don't know if either of you guys have heard of him i think i remember that name i'm horrible with names i have to see faces man his content is gold for people who can't like who aren't day trading it's like it's just like concepts on investing that you need to understand like 18, 19, 20 and all that type of stuff. I think I know what you're talking about.

I think, cause I've seen tons of videos. I think I have stumbled upon his channel a few times. I'm just horrible with names. Also another great channel guys for anyone who's just getting into trading. Yes. Yep. Yeah.

I thought it was him. He is good. He's really good. And another great channel is a zip trader. If you're brand new to trading, he's great with covering the basics, just learning the indicators, SMA lines. He's great for basics. Let's add another one in there.

Meet Kevin. Meet Kevin. I don't know if I've seen that one. Like M-E-A? M-E-E, I think. Yeah, meet Kevin. I thought it was a carnivore. How do we get to this?

It's funny. Meet Kevin. He's also another really, yeah, that guy. He makes like five videos a day, but like he, he, he goes through like, like he like 28 years old, owns a bunch of properties. But again, a lot of content that can get you understanding the stuff. If you can't do it, it's right. It's interesting. It's, uh, you know, easy.

And these people, you know, these people know this stuff, like the way that we share fitness, you know, they, they've been living it for a long time and they know, they know what works well. Yeah. It's great to learn about it. Yeah. I'm just pulling everything up for like my own research later so I can look back at this episode. Also, uh, Andrew or Nsema, like if either one of you guys are interested in my buddy, Matt, uh, he's, he's awesome with this stuff. He's really like, he's very, he's pretty conservative. with this stuff he's really like he's very he's pretty conservative um but he'll tell you like what works and he'll explain everything like i had him explain a lot of stuff to me because i didn't know yep i'm like dude i don't know anything and he would mention something i'm like i don't know what that is and he would say

something else i'm like i don't know what that is you know and he went through everything but he's the guy who does our 401k yeah yeah 401k. One more channel to check out for charting guys, and this one helped me a lot, is Wise Trade with a Y. It's W-Y-S-E Trade. And it's actually, I believe, off the top of my head, I think it's a lot of actually like Forex content, but the charting's all the same. And they just did videos. It's very simple.

Their videos are very simple. It's not a huge channel. But their videos on just support lines and trading patterns are so well broken down. So I remember back when I was first learning about that, his videos helped it really click a lot. So check that out. And I can't stress it enough, guys. Anyone who's into trading, just learn the charting. Don't listen to people.

You can ask questions and take in bits and pieces, but stick to your own research. Learn the charting. I can't stress it enough. Learn the charting, and then you'll be able to make your own decisions. And then trust your own decisions, too, because I've seen traders that are better than me, who have been doing it longer than me, that I've gotten a lot of advice from over the years. But as I got trading, and they'd make mostly great trades anyway, but I'd see them. We'd be in a chat, and I'd see them jump into this trade or that trade, and I'd be looking at it, and I'm like, I'm not seeing what you're jumping into.

This looks like it's going to go the other way to me. And I wouldn't say anything because they were more advanced than me, but I'd decide not to jump in. And lo and behold, I ended up being right a couple of times. But it's just a matter of learning the charts. Just read the charts, and they tell everything. Cool. It's awesome. What else do the charts. Just read the charts and they tell everything. Cool. It's awesome. What else do you do from a business perspective?

I know you do a lot of programming for people and stuff. And you mentioned your eight-week program that you have. What else do you do kind of in the fitness community that's generating some revenue for you that's working well? Yeah, yeah. So the website's awesome right now. My site, nickwrightbodybuilding.com. That's where I have the programs on. So, yeah, the Lean Strength site, nickwrightbodybuilding.com. That's where I have the programs on.

So, yeah, the Lean Strength Program, which has been amazing. And then I have a deadlift peaking program, a bench press e-book, just cool things like that. And, yeah, that's been on fire. And then throw up some fun clothing. I don't do clothing lines anymore, but just fun things. We had the 400-pound bench club shirt. Nice. I got those just as kind of just something fun and um people ate those up which is cool there's 300 pound club shirts so yeah just fun stuff like that so that does really well and then i've been

trying to dedicate youtube to just really informative stuff nowadays which i love with strength training strength training specifically um you know and so still cruising on that and then um still working with the same sponsors and but outside of that it's been actually trying to dedicate most of my time into the trading and just get that moving as big as i can since you're so knowledgeable and you've been content creating for such a long time do you imagine in a few years that you'll be making content around trading because like you talk about it pretty knowledgeably at this point but do you think you'd do that? Thank you. Yeah, I've thought of that. Not

now. I'd want to do it... I'd want to make sure I was really well advanced in trading. Oh, yeah. You know, like, be able to show a crazy... Did you do that with fitness? I didn't do it with fitness. But I feel like... Because you have videos from a long time ago. I do, yeah. I definitely didn't do it with fitness, but I feel

like money is a little bit more risky there. So, and plus, also the other reason though is I've done everything publicly all my life so much. It's nice to have something that's not public, you know? And it's kind of nice to have something just for yourself for once. And also it's like, I will share stuff on Instagram sometimes just about like, I'll show like pattern breakouts that I traded or I'm about to trade or something like that just for fun. And that's cool. Cause I'll get really cool people who are also

traders, you know, and become friends with them that way. But then it's like, you get bombarded with all of these questions, like just about stocks and trading and stuff, which I understand it's the same thing that happens with fitness. But then it just reminded me, I was like, yeah, I don't know if I want to make this thing a big public thing full-time like I did with fitness. Yeah. So you have a lot of energy full time like I did with fitness. Yeah. You have a lot of energy and we get asked this question all the time. Like, how do you stay motivated? So how does Nick Wright stay motivated?

A lot of methamphetamines. Awesome. Well, share some with the group, please. Man, just like setting goals based around things I love. That's what it is. Like, I've been asked here and there, like why I don't do this or that, like things that are seemingly like would be easy for me to get into from a business standpoint. And whatever ends up, whatever it is, it's usually because I don't want to do it. So for me,

it's like, like, I love strength training. Unfortunately, strength is not the most popular topic on YouTube. It doesn't generate viral views, but I love it. So I've done, I've been able to do pretty well at it. And I've been able to help a lot of people give a lot of free, really good information now, and now a little more specified information, you know, but that that's fulfilling when you can do that. And there's something that you generally love. Like when I get people DM me, like showing me PRs for my program or like asking me questions, like I'm excited. I give them intricate answers and stuff like that. I'm not just like a quick little two sentence back. I got all even voice texts, uh, through DMS. Some people, if they're asking give them intricate answers and stuff like that i'm not just like a quick little two sentence back i'll even voice text uh through dms some people time if they're asking questions about my program and stuff like that um i've given it to some even some bigger

youtubers and i just told them i was like hey you don't don't even mention me like if it works and you want to cool like don't i'm not even i'm giving this to you because you're i see that you keep mentioning you want to get on a better program here, experience the wizardry. And like, but that feels like that's so fun to me to like really get knowledgeable and skillful in something like this and then be able to do it myself, getting stronger and stronger and then like to share it. So like something like that, man,

you can see as I'm talking about it, I'm like going on and on, but something like that, it's like, that's exciting. So when you have things that you're excited about that are a process of progression, I don't know. It's just, it's invigorating yeah for you then because like we just talked about this

with the stocks and stuff but obviously you're someone who's big on just self-educating yourself on things that's what you did yeah that's what you did like your straight training programming and the stock so where did you go for your education on like you know like programming and stuff because a lot of people think you got to get a cert, you got to do this, but you don't have to. No, certifications are usually a waste of time. I remember taking like the ISSA certification way back in 2012, and it was a joke. It's like you get a book and then you just take this test and you're like, answers. Okay.

It was a joke. No, I just, honestly, the internet is amazing. You can learn a lot on the internet. So with programming, I did have an advantage. It was a combination. I've worked with many coaches and many different people who have given me their programs, and I've been able to ask questions from different elite lifters that not everyone would have access to. And then most of all, I was coached for three years by a three-time world champion, Brett Gibbs.

Yeah, and he is an amazing coach his eye for the small technicals i mean he was finally catching things that no other coach had worked with caught small little things in the unracking of a squat things that people overlook and things that i now think i have a good eye for but um so that was an advantage but you don't need to be coached by someone great to that helped me fast track it of course but it's like you could be coached by someone great and just blindly do what they say not question why and it's like you didn't really learn anything you just did it and you got better because they did it but with him i would always try to learn why i'd ask him why get his reasoning behind everything and then on my own time i'd also

study everything just try to study biomechanics try to like just watch video after video on programming the science behind programming understand, and try out different ones. I've tried conjugate, learning linear periodization, nonlinear periodization, just learning all the boring stuff over time and then putting it into practice. I don't know. It's just anyone can do it. You just got to want to learn it, and you got to take the time to learn it. It takes time.

Yeah. One of the cool things about people that obtain something, like they get really fit or they get really strong, or even if they make a lot of money, they're not afraid to talk about it. Like they kind of want to talk about it. So when you ask somebody a question, normally they're kind of pumped. They're kind of excited. Like, okay, yeah, I'd have some of the answers to some of this stuff.

Right. Definitely. I love it, man. Like I've, I've helped out. Like I actually don't take on clients right now. I've thought about doing it, but I recognize that it is a full-time responsibility and I'd never want to leave anyone hanging. So I haven't committed to that yet, but still like I do train people I'm tight with.

And like we got someone I'm training just started training nine weeks ago and he had a 275 max bench. He was a bigger guy. And in nine weeks of programming, I just programmed him. Each week I made a new program for him based on how the last week went. Very customized.

And in nine weeks, we got him up to a 315 bench. And now we're going to scale it back. Really tweak technique. And he wants to, you know, chase that 400 goal. Yeah. So, and then like,

we had another one, shout out to my friend, John Almonte, who ran my lean strength program. And, you know, I'd be there just to give him little tweaks, anything I saw, just like head positioning on a squat, fix that if needed. He's pretty good already.

But he hit a 40-pound PR on squat on week eight of my program. His big goal, he's a lighter guy, he's 170 pounds. His big goal was the big four-plate squat, 405. And his max when we started eight weeks prior was 365. So on week eight, on on test day i knew 385 was definitely there he smoked that like a second attempt so we threw on 405 and he smoked it beautifully so but like that's like the best feeling and then one last story is we had this is where i like i like brett gibbs for this with the technical thing we there's one kid who came

into our gym who I had never trained. He was a younger kid, again, a leaner, lighter weight kid. And he squatted a PR 400 pounds. I wasn't there for it, but I saw the video. Josh Lynch, the owner of Ultimate Fitness, sent me it. And he squatted 400 pounds, and it was an absolute death grinder. RPE 10. I mean, he barely made it by the skin of his teeth.

Yeah, yeah. Right? And I was analyzing it, and everyone was like, man, he barely had that. But I was looking at it. His low bar technique was perfect. His on rack, his walkout was great. And I was like, but I was looking at the small details. And one obvious one was he wasn't bracing optimally.

So that's an obvious one. But another one I noticed that as he would start the rep kind of looking down a little bit, like a neutral neck, and then midway down into the hole, his head would come up and be looking straight across, and then it'd be that way as he came out of the hole, and I noticed that's kind of where his body would suddenly lock into a stronger position. So we just had to make little changes. We worked on his bracing, of course, and then also I had him, when he walked it out, to take a second, and as he inhaled, cock his head back into his neck

and get that head positioning from the very start before he began the rep. And then a week later, just with that tweak, we got him to hit a cleaner 420. So we added 20 pounds to his squat, and he hit it cleaner than 400 just by making two small little technical adjustments. So to what you were saying, Mark, when you're able to share that with people and it's something you love, it's not like a chore. I love strength training for myself. There's no better feeling.

What do you think is the biggest mistake people are making? Since you're able to help these people turn around so quickly, what do you see as being one of the major problems when it comes to strength training? Lack of programming. Definitely lack of programming. Either not following the program at all. If you're walking into the gym and your goal is strength

and you're kind of just like, what do I feel like doing today? Or how much weight do I feel like doing today? Big mistake. You're not going to go anywhere with that. If you benched or squatted, you did some sort of a lift and you hit, you know, pretty good max one week and like the next week you just, it felt like garbage. You couldn't even get like half of it.

That's a great sign that you're not programming, you know, or they're on a program, say, you know, a basic one, like a, when there's five through one or something like that, but they're kind of being loose with the numbers they do. They might go a little bit heavier than what they're supposed to one day. Cause it feels fine that day. Well, that's a problem right there. And then the biggest mistake I see of all the biggest, biggest mistake is going too heavy too soon, trying to max out, grinding reps and even failing reps in the middle of a program

when you shouldn't even be close to a max yet. Those are the biggest, biggest mistakes I make. I see made in people who are programming, and the analogy I say is programming is like a marathon. Strength training is like a marathon. You've got to pace yourself and you've got to build it up slowly.

And the best analogy for this is imagine you're running a 15-mile race, right? And on the final 15th mile, the very last mile, I'm giving the cash prize to whoever can sprint that last mile in the shortest amount of time. Doesn't matter what the other 14 miles were. It doesn't matter what your time was for all 15 miles. Just that last 15th mile, whoever can sprint it the fastest gets the cash prize. What would you do? You'd pace yourself like crazy those first 14 miles. The first few miles, you take it really easy, light, easy jog.

Maybe midway in, you speed it up just a little bit to get the body warmer and ready to sprint, but you definitely would not be sprinting on mile five or mile six. You'd be saving it for that 15th mile. In strength training, whether you're doing a meet or you're just maxing out the gym, that max out day, that's your 15th mile. So if you go and max out or you near max out before that day, that's like sprinting before the 15th mile and then having to sprint again.

That's good. Just shot. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can't, you can't recover. I see it being a huge problem with people.

Yeah. Training too heavy, too heavy, too often. And then I would even say like with bodybuilders, like most people that even just kind of are recreational bodybuilders, just people going in doing five, you know, four or three sets of 10, things like that and doing various exercises and not really, not maybe having such a set schedule. Maybe they have a split. You know, they do chest and back this day and so forth. But I think that those people, they have a better opportunity to get stronger because the weights are usually lighter because they have more repetitions in there. Right. And so I think that when you're trying to strength train, you're like,

I just want to get stronger. And so you're focused so hard in on the strength part of it that you're not really working on. You're just like constantly testing your strength. There's really not a lot of like building of strength. Whereas if you're a bodybuilder and you're like, I'm going to see what I can handle for a set of eight on squats this week. And then maybe next week you push the leg press and maybe next week you push the hack squat. And then maybe you get back to the regular squat and so on. And you're really mixing it up.

You're hitting things from a lot of different angles. But if you look at why they might get stronger and they're not the strongest athletes in the world, but sometimes they can be. Yeah. They switch over to doing some, you know, central nervous system works and power lifting work. They can usually turn it on pretty good. nervous system works and power lifting work, they can usually turn it on pretty good. But I think one of the reasons for that is just that they're working with, uh, weights that are in a range that they can, uh, lift them properly every single day. Right.

Right. Yep. And then to take that even a step further, um, most bodybuilders can probably attest to this as you get closer to a competition and get weaker and weaker, especially in the pressing movements. Let's go the first. And, um, so what you start shaking all over. Yeah.

So what I wanted to do in 2018, I was doing a cut and I just come from competing strictly powerlifting. So I wanted to make a bodybuilding program for myself because it was a bodybuilding related cut, but also keep my strength in there. I was like insistent on not losing strength this time. And I knew how to program now. So I was like, I've never tried this, but let me try programming, even my bodybuilding training. So I did that. And that's actually how I developed the lean strength program that I still use now. That's the same program I used two years later

to hit the 602 pound squat and the 650 deadlift, even when I was in my heavy, like body weight, not 195. So it works in and out of a cut, but the programming, man, it was magic. It was for the first time ever. I was able to hit new pound for pound PRS as you lose body weight. You're obviously just going to be overall weaker. It's physics. You can't really fight it. But like, you know, I went from one night.

I went for, I started the cut like 206, you know, and I hit a 405 bench at like 198 pretty clean. And then I cut down to 180 during this cut. When I hit about 1822 i retook 405 and it was ugly of course but i still got it which would have been impossible that deep into a cut prior and then i deadlifted 600 pounds again in the 170s at the time my deadlift max was only 610 when i was heavy so it was just 10 pounds shy of my max but now 178 pounds so but it was all through programming and then i also programmed like the

the bodybuilding stuff that you don't usually think about with programming like the lateral raises because even that that makes a difference you know if you if you go hard on the lateral raises the curls it feels easy but that can suddenly it's like okay now my squat feels like it's taking a hit because especially when you're in low calories that adds up so yeah um my only point here is to say even bodybuilders could see a huge benefit from just nailing down some actual programming yeah what happens when you're using 20s but you could use 25s right probably just it's probably just not the most optimal that's all right yep what you're saying right now it's just like it it it's one of the biggest things for people even if they don't follow a strict program like we were just talking

about this a few weeks ago on the podcast, just get a notebook and write down what you did this week. Yeah. Okay. Write down the weights you used. And then next week, try to do a little bit more, maybe just a little bit more.

Yeah. I, I heard you. Well, and even, and even, uh, like,

let's say you go to do something like a lap pull down and you do, uh, you know, you did sets of 12 with 120 pounds last week and you go to grab, you know, the same weight and it feels kind of heavy. It's like, well, maybe you can just try to do 15 reps on the last set or try to do 13 reps for all three sets. Yeah. You know, you just try to get a little extra somewhere like because you're not always going to feel like it, not always going to want to do it. And sometimes you're just not going to have the ability to do it. Like we were doing with some back movements yesterday, we did a bunch of them very,

very strict and we did a couple of them that weren't super strict. Yeah. You know, sometimes you got to have a little bit of a body English in there. I think especially when it comes to the back exercises, cause you really are trying to drive the elbow past the midline of the body as much as you can and sometimes just a little extra movement allows you to do that and i think people think that that's cheating and you can't build muscle that way but you can there's so many different ways of building muscle i agree with you completely i think if you can like we said

if you control that quote-unquote cheap rep you know you're not just heaving it up and letting it fall down you're still contracting and you're still resisting on the way back down. Even if it's not like a slow negative, um, then yeah, that's just some overload right there. You're overloading the muscle, which is a beautiful thing. And look at the, um, the movement that we did at the end of the workout with the dumbbells, we were using like 25 pound dumbbells and that was really hard. And that was much, uh, it was like much more strict rather than when we were doing the T-bar row, you get a little, a little movement in there. And I think you did with a big J.

Oh God. He was, you were like, are we doing high reps or doing heavyweight? He's like both. That sounds like big J. Yeah. And I think you did what sets of 20 or something.

Right. And you just kind of had to eventually use, use, throw around your body a little bit. Yeah. And you'd make involuntary noises that you just didn't want. I was doing that. I didn't have a choice. It was like tough. That'sary noises that you just didn't want i was doing that i didn't have a choice that's like j for you yeah i love him i haven't seen him in so long

yeah but i want to mention that's like super key because like especially if you don't if you don't know what you're going to be doing each day in the gym there are going to be days where you feel like crap but if you actually have like a like a template of what you were supposed to do sometimes you could push through even though you don't. Yes. You didn't expect that you could. And those are the sessions that you can make a lot of progress in. Definitely.

Definitely. That's a fantastic point. There's so much psychology behind just having something laid out for you. Like like you said, there's gonna be days where you're just out of it. Feel like garbage. And like if you're just kind of going off the whim, you might decide two sets is enough and then you're done. But if you have something laid out, it's like, well, I have to do this. What am I going to, I'm not a baby.

I just got to get it done. It sucks, but here we go. And then that psychology also plays in big when it comes time to max out because, you know, like I said, John, who hit the 40 pound PR, 40 pounds more than he's ever squatted in his life. That's intimidating. That's, there's a lot of adrenaline and nerves. And you can see he was nervous.

Like we all get for a big PR like that. It's intimidating, but his biggest biggest one of his biggest things i would keep reminding him but he would keep saying it himself is just trust the programming because if you know if you've worked up to this accordingly and you've been hitting heavier and heavier weight leading up to it you know by this point you've hit 90 of your max at least three different sessions 95 the week prior. Um, then you're ready to go. It's like you hit all those and they kept getting easier and easier.

So there's no reason this one shouldn't be easier. So it's like you get to that point and you can just trust the programming. When you start freaking out, just trust the program. If you don't have that structure programming, that's a gamble. You have nothing to trust. Yeah. Yeah. I think, uh, you know know a lot of times we get

we get so caught up in like you know you're you're in the middle of a workout and you just want to like do more weight but if you have a set program or you have something set you can say i could save that for next week or down the road you know and you don't need to just kill yourself but a lot of this just comes down to one simple thing and it's's just getting acclimated to what you're about to do. You know, like I've been spending some time in Tahoe lately, and the air is very thin. We're at like 8,000 feet, and you get acclimated to it. You get used to it. You actually, the human body is so amazing.

It actually adapts while, I'm sure it it would matter like the shape that you're in. But even like the first five minutes of the walk is pretty much straight uphill. And you're like, whoa, like, yeah, I don't know what it's going to look like when we actually start hiking. But once you go over that first hill and then you come down a little bit, you're good to go because your lungs are opened up. You already you kind of acclimated to it just within that one workout, just within that one moment. And so, and then obviously the more time you spend out there, the more the body gets acclimated to it.

But with strength training, there's so many different ways to get acclimated to the weights. You can, you can spread fatigue and you can, I believe Brett Gibbs was a huge fan of this where, you know, you might squat it like, you know,

70% on like Monday. And then on like a Wednesday, you might squat it 80%. And then, you know, might squat it like you know 70 on like monday and then on like a wednesday you might squat it uh 80 and then you know on friday you might squat it like 90 and then it might start back over and you start fresh with like more reps and more sets because the intensity is lower and you spread fatigue and then the next thing you know you do that for six weeks and your legs are twice the size they were when you started the program. Yeah, 100%. And you're just gaining a lot of strength, but maybe you're not even really, maybe the

90% example is a little high, but like- We know what you mean. You're not really touching a lot of real, real heavy weights. Like you could actually run a program where you go 60, 70, 80 probably would be more accurate or something like that. Yeah, 80, 85. Right. And you're not getting into like even 90%.

I think you were mentioning for some of your, for your 650 deadlift, I think you said the most that you deadlifted was like 615 or something like that? Yeah, 95% at the time of my max, which was at the time 640. And it was 95% was the heaviest, but that was only one week. So out of all eight weeks, week seven, we went up to 90. And that was very specific to that program. And I want to throw it there too, because. it also might be specific to the deadlift for you exactly exactly and there may be situations where you don't even want to go that heavy or go that heavy

that soon before you max out depends on the programming um but yeah yeah but still a good example of the heaviest i went before a 650 pound deadlift was 615 which is most people would think well wouldn't you at least want to try like 625, maybe 630, 640 moves easy again, but no, you don't want to go near that weight. So 615, that was just one week. And then before that, the heaviest I went was no more than 585, 595. You know, I don't like, maybe I touched 600 once. Yeah.

Stay conservative. And actually this, I can't stress this enough. The biggest advice I find myself giving to lifters, especially when they run my program, the first two weeks of my program are very light and easy and almost kind of boring just because it's so light. It's designed to be perfect acclimation. It sets the foundation to start priming your central nervous system. You don't want any bad experiences. You don't want them to get hurt.

Yep. And you want to get used to the exercises. Exactly. So I always tell them, I'm like, stay on the program. Leave the gym feeling bored. Leave the gym feeling like you have more in the tank. You should feel like Superman at the end of this workout and not be gassed out. That's what I want.

And it's so counterintuitive. You think you got to feel like you just killed yourself at the end of each workout. I'm like, that'll come when week four comes around. It starts getting really fun. And you're going to wish you followed these first weeks. So, but that's, that's it. Don't push yourself and don't worry about maxing out and grinding, put in the work, leave some in the tank.

That's the best way to go about it. Back when you, what age did you start lifting? Started lifting 14, but started power lifting at like 23 or 24. Okay. Now, how old are you now? 29. Okay. You're 29 now being a lifter now versus lifting

then do you are there any struggles you feel that younger lifters have now that you didn't have when you were lifting struggles no if anything i think younger lifters now have a huge advantage with all the the information that's out on the internet and readily available like i'm not complaining. It all is what it is. But like, I think back now, if I was 14,

but I had a channel like mine to go and watch breaking down how to do the deadlift, like the right way and really covering the small details that no one likes to cover, you know, or like a Johnny Candido's program or like an Alan thrall. Oh yeah. If I had all that stuff,

all this information, Mark Bell's podcast, all the videos, Mark Bell does. If I had all that stuff, all this information, Mark Bell's podcast, all the videos Mark Bell does, if I had had that back at 14, I feel like my numbers would have skyrocketed so much sooner than they did. Instead, you know, I was doing a bro split, no real rhyme or reason, wasting like five years of training like most teens did back then. So I feel like young lifters have a huge advantage now just with how much information. And what's interesting, actually, is my uncle was a bodybuilder,

non-competitive, but he looked amazing. Yeah. And I ran into him just the other week and we're chatting and he's, he told me it's pretty impressive how I've been able to do all this weight wise. I've surpassed him without getting really seriously injured. Like I'm still good to go.

Knock on wood. Um, but I just told him I was like, cause he had had some pretty good injuries in his day. But I just told him, it's like, I had the advantage of being in an era where there's so much information on mobility now. There's videos you've done, Mark, with Kelly Starrett. You know, like, he didn't have that back then.

So now I know, like, if I'm feeling tightness somewhere, I know what it might be. We have that information. And I think that might be why you're seeing so many young powerlifters just come out of the woodworks with phenomenal numbers now more young kids are getting exposed to good information yeah i've been lifting for 31 years you know um and i was lucky to learn from the people i learned learned from you know my first power thing coach was um he was he was pretty smart in terms of like how you programmed, especially for back then. I mean, it was just,

it was very straight up progressive overload, but he always stressed like, hey, look, man, you know, you need to do the assistance work to kind of hold the muscles together and all this kind of stuff. But having Louie Simmons and Dave Tate, seeing both of those guys not really be able to do

a lot of the stuff that they really loved and enjoyed i was always like well what's that about right what is that side of it and louis was like hey you got to drag the sled you got to at his point wasn't that you have to necessarily drag the sled his point was that you have to be in shape like you can't like you can get big and fat you can get his you know you can kind of let things go a little bit because having more size on you can be productive and it can help but he's also like he would warn everybody and you wouldn't think that would happen at west side because there were so many huge guys there lifting such crazy weights but he was the first guy to warn everybody like you you keep doing what you're doing and you're not going to be able to you're

going to work yourself right out of the you know but out of lifting all together and so i was lucky to have kind of seen that firsthand and kind of like wonder, like, why can't Dave do like a shoulder press? Why can't he do this? Why can't he do that? And then he would tell me like, dude, like I, I just, I started, you know, getting rid of some movements when they started to hurt. And the next thing you know, I couldn't do them at all anymore.

Like he, then he would try to come back and do them with lighter weight. Right. And that didn't work. Right. The body's inflamed and they don't take care of themselves from a food perspective. They don't get enough sleep. Just really just,

just obsessed with lifting the weight. Yeah. And that was all, that was all there was to it. And they didn't really have any other precautions, but having them go through that kind of for me, you know, allowed me to still be able to do all the things that I love to do.

How long did you train at Westside? Just about a year. That's so cool. Yeah. Experience. Yeah. Yeah. It was awesome.

And to kind of see like, you know, the, like Louie kind of just, he really, uh, it was just really a hard, a real harsh environment. Right. So it's understandable how those guys got sucked into that because it'd be like, if your jujitsu instructor was like, I don't really care if you guys, you know, go, go out at full speed and I don't really care if you guys,

you know, and I'm sure there's probably schools that are like that. There are, you know, you go after the guy's leg, go after the guy's knee, you know, and,

and you could see how it can create an environment to where maybe perhaps people would be better because they're more vicious or whatever. And in competition, maybe they Cobra Kai it or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But at the same time, it's,

it's not great for longevity and it doesn't make any sense. And what was all that kind of stuff at West side a lot? So, yeah. What was that? What was it like? Like, what was the environment and like the vibe,

like in West side when you walked in, like, was it like, did you walk in looking like everyone was ready to fight you? Like it was that kind of, cause the documentary made it seem like everyone was intense. They get in physical fights during training. It looks that way, but it's not.

You get regular, what's up, man? Squat today? Yeah. I mean, the guys are covered in tattoos. There's some guys with tattoos on their necks and stuff. And so, yeah, you're just like, whoa, I don't know what I'm walking into here. And there's always some crazy music blasting, whether it's like gangster rap yeah yeah some crazy like metal or whatever yeah i like that i keep that going in my gym the thing that was

always hard at west side was to walk to the back of the gym because in the front of the gym there was just like dumbbells and some benches and stuff and like a lat pull down machine and there was some reverse hypers and stuff but as you walked further and further down that's where you got to the serious shit. That's where the racks were, and that's where the monolift was. And a lot of the people that would come in there, you would see people that were really nervous. They wouldn't be inside the building at all. Really?

They would be by the roller door, and they'd just stand there. And Louie was actually really nice. Have you ever had a chance to meet him before? Never. He's super nice. He's very, very kind. But if he saw people, he didn't care where they came from. If he saw people outside, he wouldn't talk to them.

They had to come in. They had to just have enough courage to step in. Are you talking about spectators? Yeah, well, he didn't like for people to watch. He wanted people to participate. So that was the other thing. If you just walked in with your girlfriend, he would make her do a bunch of stuff like he'd make her do a bunch of exercises he would show you stuff and he'd say hey you got to try and she might say all my back hurts and he would say hey try these exercises yeah yeah you know he's gonna like but

he's super nice he's super kind that's cool um another interesting thing was when you asked him about somebody you would say hey, what about this strength coach? I heard this guy is really good. And he'll go, he sat right there. Huh. Wow. I'm like, oh, you know, do you know Charles Poliquin or you know this guy or that guy? He goes, yeah, he sat right there.

That's cool. Meaning he came into this gym and he didn't do fucking shit. Oh, shit. He didn't even lift with anybody because he was too embarrassed that he wasn't strong enough. Wow. That's cool. I thought it was cool. Yeah. He's like, he sat right there, but he didn't say anything bad about the guy. Right, right, right. So you're like, yeah, he wasn't strong enough. Wow. That's cool. I thought it was cool. Yeah.

He's like, he sat right there, but he didn't say anything bad about it. Right. Right. Right. You're like, yeah,

okay. Got it. Yeah. You're like, well, how is he? Or what? He's like,

he sat right there. That's cool. He just stuck, stuck to that. I love, dude, I love that whole West side, everything about it.

I love it. Like I've, I've had this, I've talked about this before. Um, like you'll get a mixed review on Louie Simmons. Obviously you get some people that worship him. Things is the grandmaster of lifting, which he is in many ways.

You get some people nowadays that think that, you know, his, his style is antiquated and it's not really relevant to like modern raw training. You know, you get all these different, you get some people that think that the old insane intensity of everything was the most bad-ass thing. And that part of thing isn't what it used to be. And you'll get some newer guys that'll look at that and be like, that was absolutely retarded. Why?

Hey, like you get a mix, but what is just so cool is regardless of whether you love him and think he's awesome or don't like him and think it's ridiculous, you know, his name. And it's so unique in a world where everyone lives for the weekends and is so bored with their life.

Um, it's so unique to see someone who is just so passionately obsessively driven in a world where everyone lives for the weekends and is so bored with their life. It's so unique to see someone who is just so passionately, obsessively driven towards something like that, to where they created something that is now a household name, whether you hate it or love it. I love that. So when I watched that West Side vs. the World documentary three different times now, I just love it, man. Even though some of those guys seem out there to me, even though some of it doesn't apply to my own life, it's just so cool to see in a world where everyone's bored and lives for the weekends,

someone, especially like Louie, being so blindly passionate about something. They have a reason to wake up every single day. But that's great because I think that's kind of rare these days. Plus, as somebody said, that greatness usually requires an unhealthy, unbalanced... Yeah, it's never going to make any sense. Right. Anything that's great doesn't normally make any sense um you know louis louis was uh like i just need to point out the fact that he's just he's very nice you know i know i said it already but like

people uh people may say different things about him but like if we if we if we were hanging out with him right now he would be like hey let's go to lunch. And he'd buy everybody lunch. And he would sit there and he'd talk to you forever. And he'd say, how did you get your shoulders to be so big? And he'd ask you questions about your deadlift. Like he'd say, why don't you deadlift in more weight? You should be pulling 750. Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.

But then he'll give you like a bunch of advice and stuff. But he did want his gym to be the best. He did want his gym to be the best. And I think that sometimes there was some sacrifice there where he may have said certain things or the guys might have done certain things where it just seemed loony tune. But I remember one one case where Brandon Lilly was complaining about his peck bothering him during a training session. And Louie's like oh it's your turn and they put like 500 pounds on the bar and brandon's like no i think i'm out and uh louie said what's wrong and he said i because i don't know my pec you know my pec feels weird and louie's like well we don't save pecs around here oh yeah i remember hearing that and everybody was like what

does that mean we'll save pecs around here but But Brandon, he did the set and he was fine. Like luckily, luckily he didn't, he didn't get hurt. But I think, I think that people think that he said that so that the guy would get like injured and he would get him out of the gym. That's not really why he said it. He just said it to kind of test his mentality. Right. You know, like how, like how far are you willing to kind of take this?

And he didn't mean that you had to do it. And's just like brandon could have been like all right well i'm out like that's what you should have done right um but he decided to like go you know go through and do the lift anyway so things like that seem crazy and wild but it's probably in louis mind it was the best way i think to create competition yep yeah what you said about louis i've never met him i'd love to but what you said about about him being nice and taking an interest and all that I've noticed that the more and more content you watch of him, at first glance you watch the popular content and you're like, okay, this guy's a savage

which he was, but then you watch more and more, like Steffi Cohen did a video where she went in toward his gym and he was super hands-on helpful and it wasn't even just dismissively helpful, it was like he would ask questions to the different people with her and very interactive and then just other videos where you start seeing more and more of that even just dismissively helpful. It was like he would ask questions to the different people with her and very interactive.

And then just other videos where you start seeing more and more of that. So what you're saying, I've, I've started to notice he does seem like a really cool, genuine guy who's just driven. Yeah. He's a, he's a,

he's definitely one of a kind, you know? Yeah, for sure. For sure. It comes to that. But if you think about all the different things that kind of came out of West side,

you have, you have him and then you had Dave Tate, right? Jim Wendler, like the impact that those guys had. I think, too. Yeah. Yeah. J.M. Blakely. And then there's just a whole list of I mean, there's a whole list of great lifters. Yeah.

But then there's a whole list of strength coaches, Coach House, who we've had on this podcast before. And then Coach House had a lot of understudies under him. Kyle Kingsbury, a former UFC fighter. And like the list just goes on and on of people that have utilized a lot of the West Side stuff. I never really understand why the box squats or the the board presses and some of those. I don't really understand why they get a lot of flack. I think they have a lot of great merit. They're just they're great exercises, you know, and people like I don't transfer over 100 percent or whatever.

But it's like, well, what are we getting out of a leg press or a lunge? Like, I don't know who's to say like I don't have any idea what a Romanian deadlift does for your regular deadlift. I just know that it can sometimes be productive for some people or doing a single leg Bulgarian split squat like it does something right. Yeah. And then a box squat just works your lower body works your legs i wonder if it's more that because i know he did a lot of equipped lifters so i wonder i wonder if it's more that for raw training there's probably just some possibly more optimal choices now right you know doing like a pause squat versus a box

squat for a raw lifter might help you stay tight in the hole better. A hundred percent. But could you utilize a box squat when your knees bug? Oh, absolutely. When your groins, your back hurts. In fact, actually, I, as a raw lifter, love the box walks and I used it to really help me hammer down the neural pathway of a low bar squat. Cause I was always very like quad dominant, really good at front squatting, naturally good forward knee travel.

I had a hard time loading my posterior chain. So box squats is actually one of the things i did to really hammer that home because like you had to aim for the box you had to do it in a controlled motion and um my god it helped me so much just get that movement of loading the posterior chain in a low bar squat down so yeah i agree with you i like it for sure yeah let. Let me ask you this. In terms of, I guess, the box squat was an example of that. But as far as movements are concerned right now for training, are there any recent movements or movements the past few years that you've added in that maybe you thought in the past would have no benefit towards your training? That you're like, that's probably stupid. Then you brought it in and you're like, ooh, actually.

That's a good question. Yeah. that you brought it in and you're like, ooh, actually? That's a good question. Yeah, none of the big exciting stuff, but actually more of the minute overlooked accessory areas, definitely like glute ham raises, for example. It's one movement where it's always been obvious that they're beneficial, but they're boring and they're painful.

So I'd always kind of just skip to something else for hamstrings. But just recently, upon getting my deadlift up, I've really realized, you know, how movements like that are just that are an actual natural. You got to move your whole body weight, how beneficial those are. And like things like the reverse, the hypers, hyperextensions, you know, with a weight in hand really hammers like that lockout, the hip extension and just things like that. Like a lot of kind of like the, the less exciting, less glamorous posterior chain movements like that. The accessories,

those have really begun to take an interest in and appreciate more. And I always train posterior chain and hamstrings, but I think a lot of lifters, especially in their earlier years, do this. You know, your coach will assign you some sort of hamstring thing, but you kind of lean more towards the laying leg curl, the seated leg curl, the stiff leg deadlifts, just because they're a little more exciting. They're a little less painful. But no, nowadays, man, like that'd be a good example.

As far as the main compound lifts, still been kind of consistent with those, but definitely like even after we pulled Mark and I deadlifted yesterday, and I'm not peaked. Unfortunately, it's been a hell of a month, so I really didn't get to get good training in. So I just wasn't peaked for a PR. So we went for, like, a small five-pound PR. Felt great in my hands. I actually popped right off the floor nice and easy, but I just couldn't lock it out.

I got loose, back started rounding a little bit. You know, form just kind of fell on me, and I didn't get the lift. And it happens. You know, bad lifts like that happen from time to time. But now that has me, what's funny is in in my head that has me more excited to go home and program but most of all focus on hammering away on those accessories like my um back in the day I think my first instinct would be to go and hammer away rep after rep on just deadlifts which I'm going to do but really like strengthening up the glutes here if you watch moves nice and easy

right there and then my back kind of started rounding. I lost my hip hinge there. And it was only a five-pound PR, so there's no reason it shouldn't have gone up. That was really good form. Thank you. It was. I mean, you were very – Yeah, that was just a matter of not being peaked.

That's all it was. I just wasn't ready to handle maximal weight. And I think this is where people uh sometimes overanalyze you know we could sit here and you know say oh you need to do this specifically to you know strengthen your lower back but it's really just like hey probably just a little more focus on deadlifts for three four weeks yeah and you'll be able to pull that very easily so like had i been able to peak like i did my last peak you know in august i peaked and i hit that 650 pr 10 pound pr had i been able to peak for this perfectly like that i think that would have moved fine so yeah i'm not overthinking it but like just little details you don't want to overanalyze just continue training to train and train longer and better but little details like so if my back

is rounding there which you can kind of see it's a good sign that glutes could be a little bit stronger there's other things that cause that of course like poor positioning or just not being strong enough but um it doesn't hurt to like work on the glute i know the glutes for be a little bit stronger. There's other things that cause that, of course, like poor positioning or just not being strong enough. But it doesn't hurt to work on the glutes. I know the glutes for me are a weaker point of my deadlift. They're probably like my weak link of my deadlift. So really hammer away a lot of glute work, posterior chain work for accessories. You ever tried cheating?

Cheating? Sumo. Oh, I was like, are we talking about equipment lifting? No. Yeah. So I have played around with sumo and sumo is so technical compared to conventional. So what I do is I'd play with it for a little bit.

It's been like three weeks. I work up to like moderate weight, 600 pounds and pull that or whatever. But as soon as I get past 600, the weight would feel fine and easy, but like something stupid would happen. Like my knees would just start moving forward or, you know, like some positioning shift. So subtle. And it would make you kind of stall out.

Because with sumo, once you lose it, it's lost. You're not grinding it out. And not a big deal. It just became evident. It's like, okay, you're going to actually have to go back to lightweight for a while and really spend a lot of time just practicing this and getting this technique down. And I realized I had no interest in doing that. That's fair.

It's just, i don't know man i like conventional i think it looks cooler for me it feels better yeah so it's the more manly deadlift yes yes so i'd like to what i'd like to do man is go back start real programming if it can go nice and smooth uninterrupted uh knock out that seven plate deadlift before the year ends for sure nice um i'd like to say peaked for 660 would be there. Right now, if I had peaked up for this, because that's 555. I think if I had able to do a nice peak, I think maybe a 660 could have been there. So yeah, I'd like to hit like seven plates before the end of the year.

That'd be cool. 675. You really like the bench squat and deadlift in particular to help increase the bench squat and deadlift. And then you utilize the assistance exercises to maybe help bring up weak points or to help bring up the size of the muscle or, or, you know,

think things of that nature. And I think that that is a really simple approach. But I also know that you sometimes will utilize some other methods. Like you might use like a pause squat, right? You might use, I don't know if you mess around with any pause deadlifts. But what are some other techniques that you might utilize that have that you've noticed that have had a good impact on bench squat and deadlift that maybe is like, you know, equivalent of like a close grip bench or a partial range of motion, something or other?

Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you said that, too, as far as just sticking to mostly the main lifts. Because I have played around different styles of training. I've done different conjugate styles of training before where you do a lot of, like, different movements to help. I like sticking to mostly the basics and then just kind of making a variation of those basics. That's still the same movement. So, like, for deadlifts, actually, one thing that helped me with deadlifts were pause deadlifts are great. But one thing that helped me with deadlifts, positive. Those are great. But one thing that helped me with that,

those actually for a while was doing deficit deadlifts because like my lockout would always be really slow. I'd be fast off the floor to get to the knees lockout would be really slow. And so that can be a number of things that can be poor positioning too close to the bar. But one thing for me was I really wasn't engaging my legs. Like Mark gave me a compliment yesterday, which was cool to hear. He was, he noted how I really get my legs into legs. Mark gave me a compliment yesterday, which was cool to hear.

He noted how I really get my legs into the lift, and I make it all one fluid motion now, the deadlift. It's not a two-part motion. A lot of that came from actually doing deficit deadlifts. If you have a slow lockout, people think block pulls or rack pulls work on the part that's weak, and that can be a thing. That can definitely work depending on what exactly your situation is. But what I found for me and for a lot of people is usually it's the very start of the lift where you're getting kind of weak and that's making you stall out halfway up an analogy would be the bench press

if you touch and go a bench where do you usually fail you get a few inches off your chest you fail about midway up so people would think it's a lockout that's weak they start doing lockout training and it doesn't go anywhere it's because they're weak off their chest. If they don't have that control and explosiveness off the chest to get them through the rep. So if you're failing midway up like that and you've been using touch and go, what I would recommend doing is switching to all pause reps. Soft touch pause reps. Trying to touch just the fabric of your shirt without touching your skin underneath. It's impossible, but it's a good way to make sure you touch the bar nice and soft and let it sink down.

It builds that control at the bottom. Throw in some tempo reps even, three-second negatives, because that'll help. If there's any positioning that is weak or unoptimal, it's going to come right out when you're under three-second negatives. You're going to be like, oh, shoot. So that'll force you to kind of go into a stronger position where you should be and build that new pattern.

So that's what I like doing. I like kind of just maximizing the entire lift like that. So for deadlifts, what I actually did for a while was deficits on like a three inch deficit. Because for me, you know, when you're when the bar is that much lower, your knees can bend that much more and come that much more forward. So it's really easy for your hips to shoot up on a deficit deadlift. So you are forced to really work on engaging those glutes from the very start of the rep and doing that help me just

get my legs more involved, my hips more involved. And it's like, you know, again, people think if you're having a hard time with the lockout, work the lockout. But if you can be strong and clean off the floor, a lot of times you're not going to have issues with your lockout. Even if you're fast off the floor, it's usually because you're using your quads to get it started, but your positioning is weak everywhere else. So yeah, I would do that. I would work the whole lift, the entirety of the lift, add some extra range of motion and do it in a way that forces me to really engage my lower body better. And that helped tremendously.

And then if you get that down and everything's firing clean, your position is great, and then you start having an issue with lockout, then you could probably start adding in some overload to the lockout stuff like block pulls and stuff like that. But so to answer your question, I love tempos. Tempo reps for sure. Like three second negatives on the squat. Love that. I like pause squats.

I think they're great. The bench press, same deal. Long pauses, two Mississippi counts on the bench, and then three-second negatives on the way down. I like very simple variations like that. Can you explain, so like yesterday during the live stream, so people should definitely go back and check that out on the Mark Bell Super Training Gym channel.

You were saying that when you kind of set up for a deadlift, you're almost simulating like jumping forward. Yes. I've never heard anybody say that. Can you explain what you're talking about? Yeah. So a couple of things there. On a very basic level, when you set up for a deadlift, like if you set up to do a vertical

jump, not even necessarily forward, just jumping straight up. Okay. Wherever your feet go, like if you don't even think about it, if I tell you to just jump up as high as you can touch the ceiling, without even thinking about it, your feet go, like if you don't even think about it, if I tell you to just jump up as high as you can touch the ceiling, without even thinking about it, your feet are going to suddenly adjust to their strongest, most powerful position to leap off the ground. So that's about where your feet should be like distance wise,

setting up for a deadlift. Cause that's your powerful position for your feet, for your stance. Also, if you look at the deadlift, the biggest mistake people make is trying to squat into a deadlift too much. Hips should be somewhat high in a deadlift, not too high, but they should be higher than a squat because a deadlift, the biggest mistake people make is trying to squat into a deadlift too much. Hips should be somewhat high in a deadlift, not too high, but they should be higher than a squat because a deadlift actually mimics a vertical leap more so than it does a squat. So if you

look at a vertical leap from the side, if I stood here and just jumped in front, if I jumped forward, or if I jumped high, whatever, if I did a vertical leap of any sort, if you watch my body in slow motion, it would look very similar to a deadlift. You see my hips move backwards. I'd be hinging at the hips. I get a little bit of a bend in my knees, but I wouldn't be like squatting down to the ground. Very similar to a deadlift. So from the jump, no pun intended, verticals like a vertical leap is very similar to a deadlift mechanically speaking.

And then so as far as jumping forward goes with the hips this has been a huge cue that's helped me and it helped a few other lifters i know um what people a big mistake a lot of deadlifters make is they try to sit the weight back on their heels too much and they start pulling and then it usually gets stuck on the knees and then as they make it past their knees they usually if you watch their hips remain back behind them and they struggle to drag it against their thighs. They're kind of bringing the weight back to their hips when it should be the other way around. The hips should be shooting forward to the bar.

Your hips should be trying to hump that bar. So what I tell people is imagine you're standing at a deadlift and you're literally just about to leap forward over the bar. You're going to jump in front of the bar over it, right? And if you just do that motion, you fake like you're about to jump over the bar, watch where your hips go. As soon as you go to leap, your hips are firing over that bar. Hey, now. Yeah, exactly.

Your hips go right over that bar. What's behind that desk? That's the best way. That's the best cue I found to get hip engagement going is focus on that. When you go to deadlift, be on the center of your feet, not the heels, the center of your feet. And as soon as you start pulling, those hips should be coming forward as if you're jumping over the bar. And that fixes so many deadlifts. You'll see it.

The hips start shooting straight forward into that bar and locking out beautifully. Power bite. Yes. And just zoom in on Nick. Just that. Someone make a mini. We're about to have a mini desk we just have to call it nick wright jr impregnated it yeah so how about like head placement not of the uh

making of the new desk but like because mark you you told me like like hey like let's get your head behind the bar because i was going too far forward do you like pay any attention to like uh like where your head like your upper half of your body in relation to where the bar is yeah typically a good rule of thumb is if you look at yourself from the side your rare delts should be over the bar like lined up at the bar the rest of your shoulder should be in front of the bar now for you it can be different for different lifters different lifters need sometimes extreme cues to really get something in their head. So if you were too in front of the bar or you had your head too far down or something like that, and he's telling you to get it behind the bar, you're not going to

literally be able to get your head behind the bar. It's impossible in deadlift, but thinking that way might help you get your head back into just a better position. And I've done that with another lifter who was too heavy on his heels for a while with very lightweight because you wouldn't want to do this with a heavy weight but very lightweight I had him practice dead lifting on the balls of his feet just because it helped him suddenly engage the hips he was no longer sitting back on his heels too much and obviously we'll get it so he's doing it on the center of his feet eventually but it was a an extreme cue that was incorrect technically that helped him get out of a bad habit. So for me, I like for the head position, I mean, a good place to start is keeping your

neck in line with your spine by looking about five feet in front of you, looking the floor about five feet in front of you. So your head's not going to be straight down looking at your feet, but you don't want to jar your head straight up either. And then there's some flexibilities, different builds, different people. So my head goes a little bit higher than that, but I'm not looking straight up towards the ceiling either. Yeah, no, that makes sense because like when you're saying like don't pull the bar into you i swear that that's definitely me it's like are you trying to do

like a standing like row like right now like what's going on so that's when you said that i'm like oh he's like at me next time you know but so that makes a lot of sense yeah i appreciate it if you guys look at my youtube channel my most recent video called a form check, fix your deadlift. And it's long. So you have to pull up now, but anybody who's listening, who's having issues with the deadlift,

go check that out. I actually filmed somebody who I'm training. I filmed their failed attempt. Um, and they had the strength for it all day long. Their positioning was just off. So I go in and actually show where the position is off. then i demonstrate some things and i think it's probably one of the more helpful videos on deadlifting i think what happens a lot of times is people their butt

will shoot up and a lot of their body weight goes in front of the barbell right which looks like to be the problem but it's not necessarily the problem. It's the result of maybe not keeping their lats tight or just simply maybe just also not being strong enough to hold a position. But if you can keep your lats, if you can try to take a regular barbell and turn it into a trap bar, you know, by trying to pretend that you're bending that bar around your body, then you should be able to keep your lats tight enough to where there's not a lot of room between where your elbows are and where your body is. Because once you have a lot of distance between where your body is and where your elbows are, it means the weight's getting out in front of you and you're getting a lot of body weight

over the bar. And then it just makes it very, very difficult, like the position right there. Right. Yep. And he's an example I was talking about. It makes it very difficult to clean that. He had the weight all day. He moved it easy.

He's easy. I see what you mean by heels. He's sitting backwards. See, he's sitting back. He's trying. Makes it very difficult to clean that lift up. He had the weight all day. He moved it easy. I see what you mean by heels. He's sitting backwards. See, he's sitting back. He's trying to pull it back into him. Very common issue. I've had the same issue before. So for him, we're working on he needs to stand further away from the barbell first. And I get into all of it in this video in really good detail.

I think this video will help anyone who watches it. But yeah, we're going to get him further away from the bar. And he's the one who we're going to have work off the balls of his feet with lightweight just to get out of that habit of being on his heels. Starting position is so huge. You know, his back is a little rounded from the start. And then when he goes to pull, he gets rounded a little bit more. And whenever you're rounded, it just gets to be really, really hard to use your butt.

Yes, yes. And it's rounded because... Hard to use your hips. It's rounded because if you look at his shins, they're too close to the bar. Perpendicular. Needs more space. Yeah, there's no room for his knees to bend forward, so his hips are way far behind him now. And you have to round just to get down to the bar in that position.

This guy is just a mess. You were able to help him though? You hear that, John? Yeah, so he was the one who actually hit that 40-pound squat PR. I want to give credit where it's due. Hit a 40-pound squat PR. And as soon as we get this positioning down, the floodgates are going to open so this is 455 he's going to shoot up to a 500 pound deadlift in no time he has a lot of strength built up john

what in the fuck are you doing this boy's got some long arms though yeah so i think he's gonna have a monster deadlift um it's just some positioning things just gotta move some things around and it'll be all good to go he gets that back flap from the beginning he's gonna be crushing it yep and that'll just come from simply just changing the positioning. He starts in with his feet a little further away from the bar. Yeah. And so about that, like, I just remember hearing from like gym bros in the gym, like 24 hour gym back in the day, like, oh, like you, your, your shins need to be like basically touching.

Right. And then, cause it was like, well, every inch or whatever it is away from your body adds X amount of pounds. If you watch this right here, look, he gets past his knees and then watch where the bar goes. It goes in. It goes back to it. Look, his hips stay behind his feet and he brings the bar towards his hips. And that's a very common issue.

So that should be the opposite. We want his hips to go towards the bar. Not like that. But that's because he's too much on his heels and it's because of positioning. And then what you were just saying about getting advice. Yeah, just like how close should we be then? So, yeah, if a good rule of thumb is if you're standing straight up and you're a conventional deadlifter, your shin should never be touching the bar.

Almost never. There are some exceptions, I'm sure. There's always exceptions in life. You got some crazy builds out there. But a good rule of thumb for a majority of people is if your shins are touching the bar and you're doing a conventional deadlift, you're too close to the bar. Typically, a good idea is to cut your feet in half, starting from the front of your ankle to your toes that stretch cut that in half of the bar and um i actually get into some tricks how to find that in my video and actually mark and i's live video we

got into that too yeah the only time your legs should touch the bar at all would be maybe at the initiation depending on how much forward knee travel you're going to need right um and then again each person's a little different with that, depending on their ankle mobility. Like there's some people that get down into almost like a snatch, you know, like that and they can deadlift really well that way. And so for some of those people, they might be really, really straight up and down. But that's from what I've seen in general, it's not a great way to deadlift. No.

Try to really squat them up. I've seen seen a couple guys be able to actually do it um but from a conventional perspective to try to squat it up is usually a mistake it's usually uh you're usually at like a mechanical disadvantage you're you're moving around a little bit excessively and if you raise your hips up just a tiny bit a lot of times you're in somewhat of a little bit stronger position that's yeah that's one of the most important points of deadlifting raising your And if you raise your hips up just a tiny bit, a lot of times you're in somewhat of a little bit stronger position. That's yeah. That's one of the most important points of deadlifting, raising your hips up. So like one of the most common causes of hips shooting up on you in deadlifts is you're starting with hips too low to begin with.

So they have to find their actual proper point of leverage. So they raise up. And then once they find it, then you start lifting. They raise up. And then once they find it, then you start lifting. So actually what you guys can do is if you've ever had your hips shoot up on you, film yourself, replay your deadlift. About where your hips land when the weight finally starts lifting off the ground is roughly about where your hips should actually be starting in that lift.

And it goes back to that jumping analogy I made. If I told you to jump as high or as far as you can, you're not going to squat your butt down to your ankles. Think how hard that would be, squatting all the way down and then just leaping. That'd be horrible. You wouldn't do it. Your butt stays kind of high up. Your hips just kind of move back, slight little knee bend, and then you launch.

So unless you're Nick Rodriguez and you can get super low and do those low shoot-ins, he's just a whole different breed. Oh, Hearn is like that too, right? Yeah, yeah. I swear, he would just get under the barHearn is like that too, right? Yeah, yeah, he can get in. I swear, he would just get like under the bar for a deadlift. Like, whoa, how'd you get down there? Yeah, Mike's a mutant. And some people, it should be noted that some advanced lifters,

it might look like they're starting from a squat, but sometimes they're kind of almost like the way like Brian Shaw kind of rolls and sits the deadlift into them. Sometimes they're kind of squatting into it just to get nice and tight, and they're coming up. And when you see them coming out of that deep squat it's not necessarily them starting the rep yet that might be them just kind of now they're getting back into position building as soon as that hip hits then they start the rep but it looks like all one motion they're built building tension one thing i want to point out is you mentioned

deficit deadlifts and i think um if you use a deadlift bar uh quite a bit in training and you're doing repetitions and you're doing touch and go then i would advise that you always pull from a little bit of a deficit and the reason is is that the bar is bending right quite a bit and you're shortening your range of motion for every single lift that you do after the first rep right so if you're touching and going your your range the motion of your deadlift, you might have cut off two, three inches of that particular lift. So I would advise, as you were saying earlier, with the deficit deadlift, I think it's a great thing to implement.

But also, I see a lot of people using the deadlift bar, and they'll do reps, and they'll do those touch and go reps, which is great. You build up a lot of time under tension, but rep number two, three, four, and five are nothing like rep number one. I agree.

I typically don't like touch and go as a rule of thumb. Anyway, I think it's a little more risky and I'm huge on just getting that big reset. Treat each rep like a single. Some people do touch and go. Some great lifters do it and it works. So again, there's always exceptions.

There's no black and white, right or wrong answer. But in general, I think a lot of people would benefit from resetting each rep. What about going down slower in the deadlift? Do you ever mess with that, or you're not concerned about that? No, I actually, personal opinion, and people can disagree, I feel like the deadlift is the one movement where the negative is kind of useless to try to focus on and actually more dangerous.

Unless your goal is to build big legs for bodybuilding or something like that or a big posterior chain. So maybe as an assistance movement, perhaps, but otherwise, don't worry about it. If you're going to do negatives, maybe light deadlifts or stick to variations like stiff leg deadlifts or RDLs. I think those are good to do negatives with. But regular heavy deadlifts, I don't like doing negatives at all. I think you should just straight down each rep. As someone who had problems with their glutes like you said that you had problems

activating your glutes that also seems like you may have had problems actually using your hips during the direct initially what are some of the things that helped you get some of that because a lot of new lifters don't know how to use their hips yes yeah so um one big thing that can make a huge difference is just simply getting your stance a little bit wider and i go into it in that video i just mentioned my most recent one on my channel um but just getting my stance a little bit wider because everyone wants to start with a really narrow stance because they feel like you know you get more quad drive out of the bottom it feels and you can get your torso a little more upright because you can get your hands in closer but if

you just widen your stance just a little little little bit, it really helps you engage like the glutes, engage the hips a whole lot more. And then outside of that, just using, so another big factor that hurts people is just simply not bracing well enough. If you don't brace well, you're not going to have a hip hinge. You know, your back's going to start rounding. So really learning how to brace and feel that hip hinge, even with no weight. And again, widening your stance, if you even just do it like standing with no weight it's easier to brace and feel a hip hinge with

your feet wider apart than it is closer together you don't be too wide but um you don't be too close either and then outside of that just different movements like uh hip thrusts which i don't even think are necessarily the best movement for building glutes but they're definitely good for working them and for feeling them and for learning how to activate them. And they definitely do. They build some strength. I think the reason why they help so much is that people are really, really short in the hip, in the hip flexor and in the quad. And that helps to kind of open that up. A lot of people just don't move well from there. You mentioned yesterday, uh, having, you know, your hips kind of, uh, rotated towards the ground a little bit. Right, right.

And for a lot of people that are built that way, a lot of athletes are built that way. And a lot of times your butt kind of gets bigger from any of the stuff that you do. You sprint or you play football or you do anything. Your ass just keeps getting bigger and bigger. But what I've seen in powerlifting is actually really interesting is that that big butt, a lot of times you're not able to use it the way you need to because your hips are kind of stuck back just a little bit all the time. And so anything you can do to get your hips to open up, some sort of couch stretch or hip thrust or whatever way you got to figure it out, I think would be really beneficial. And you'll notice a lot of power lifters when they stand, a lot of the really, really strong, bigger guys, their knees are always kind of bent.

Their hips are kind of like, you know, just like stuck. They just look like they're stuck. Like you're like, man, like how, this guy looks like he's going to have a hard time getting up off the couch. But then he goes and deadlifts 800 pounds really easy. Yeah, you nailed it. And then one of the things that Mark told me about like bigger powerlifter guys was they won't stand flat footed. told me about like bigger power lifter guys was they won't stand flat footed and when he pointed it out to me he pointed out to me at in the gym and i was like in tears laughing because the guy that he was pointing at absolutely did it but then now that i'm in the store they won't stand

flat so a lot of times they won't be like on their on their heels um they're just uncomfortable so they're kind of like they're kind of like this all the time and their and their back is like this and i don't think anybody even so now just like when you're in line like this all the time. And their back is like this. And I don't think anybody even... So now just like when you're in line at the grocery store and there's a bigger person in front of you, just look and you'll be like, holy shit, that was right. I do it sometimes because my back will be tight.

And so I'll be a little short with the way I'm standing. But years ago, learning a lot of stuff... I'm just trying to emulate this and see why the fuck are they. They don't do smooth panther, do they? Yeah, they don't do, yeah. They're not smooth panthering it.

But like years ago when I started learning a lot of stuff from Kelly Surrett, it just got to be really weird when he and I got in conversation. He was talking very technical and then I was just saying like, yeah, I like to kind of screw my feet into the floor when I do a squat. Cause then, then it allows me to flex my butt and drive my hips forward and have my knees, uh, you know, pretty locked in for a squat or sometimes for like a sumo deadlift or something like that. And he started adding all these technical terms to it and stuff, but he was talking about how important it was to have a neutral spine. He's like, when your spine is neutral, you're able to demonstrate your strength the most.

And he showed me these slides that he presented in seminars. He's like, here's this guy running a 400 meter. He's like, he's at a disadvantage. He lost the race. He's like, look at the guy who's in first. Wow, that's cool. Because the guy's running, he's got this crazy upright posture. Right, right.

He's overextended. And he's like, look at this other person. They're in flexion and they're rounded over. And he's like, just, you know, it goes next time you go to a coffee shop or something, he's like, or you go to a mall or whatever, a restaurant, he goes, just look around and look at people and just watch the way they stand and watch the way they move. And you'll see, like, there's so many little corners of life where you can optimize everything, even just the way that you stand, the way that you walk, the way that you do anything. And I'm not saying anyone should try to like emulate trying to be perfect or even just try to stand with like this picture perfect posture because you would actually hurt yourself in the long run. But a lot of people, a lot of lifters and a lot of bigger people in general, their elbows are real bent.

The knees are kind of bent. And that's just going to cause a lot of problems for you later on when you're trying to lift big weights. Because, I mean, you see it a lot of times with older lifters. They're like, I can't lock out my benches. My arms only kind of go like this. I'm like, how the hell did that happen to that guy? You might have some guys in jiu-jitsu who are older. Maybe they're not as mobile or flexible or whatever.

Do you see that in jiu-jitsu? Or does jiu-jitsu require are older. Maybe they're not as mobile or flexible or whatever. Do you see that in jiu-jitsu? Or does jiu-jitsu require you to stay loose enough to where that kind of counters it? No, jiu-jitsu and wrestlers, their posture is generally like this. Yeah, I've seen that with wrestlers. Yeah, because they're always pulling and doing that. But also, especially if they don't do a lot of strength training, they're not getting a lot of posterior chain work. Especially if they're rear delts and stuff. So they end up having like, you can tell, even fighters.

That's how you can tell when someone's a fighter, they usually walk through a door like this. Yes, Nate Diaz look, right? Right, right. Always with the shirt, yeah. And actually, it's funny. I was watching Wrestling Drills randomly last night on my phone, but it was funny.

All the coach walking around was in good shape, just like this. Yeah. It was in the bathroom. You have the most beautiful girlfriend sitting right here. That's a beard. And all you do all day is look at men on your phone. Bodybuilders, wrestlers.

She's dead inside over here just waiting. Oh, man. She sticks around for my Dodge Magnum. That poor girl. She's just hoping that stock stuff works out. Yeah. Oh, man. She is pretty, huh?

Yeah. Yeah, not bad. I think you're doing pretty good, buddy. All around you're doing pretty good. Keep her as a beard for a while. She was actually very disappointed yesterday. I don't know if you heard, but that deadlift really kind of hit her

pretty hard. She was like, I don't know. I was like, no, I get it. He missed 655. I don't know. Why do you think I was in the bathroom watching Rustlers? I get it now. I get it now. Now it's all coming together. Making some sense. Now I'm never going gonna be able to stop looking

at power lifters feet sorry go ahead well it's gonna make you laugh because you're like oh my god i see him messaging like eddie hawk can i get pictures of your feet 100 bucks how have you been from a mental standpoint uh dealing with just uh i don't know the different media news and like you did mention like you didn't mind taking off from the gym, but how have things been in general, like, I don't know, with your family and everything else, like you've been able to stay in pretty good spirits and stay pretty pumped up and excited about life?

Yeah, I mean, as far as media goes, I don't focus on any of that stuff. Like, it trips me out how people can get that emotionally attached to just news. It's insane. Even if you have your opinions and stuff, it's like, unless you can actually change it that day, why get upset about it? So yeah, my biggest thing is, man, I just focus on me. You don't see many successful people focusing on news, politics. You just don't see them posting about it.

It's not taking up their life because they're focusing on them and what's in front of them. And it's pretty much just what I try to focusing on them and what's in front of them. And it's pretty much just what I try to do. And just look at the positives of everything. Before coming out here, the last two weeks I had to go. The reason my training got so thrown off is I was driving like a four-hour round trip to New Hampshire to take care of my grandparents. And my grandfather, he's good. He's just going through a surgery soon, so he's on this heavy pain medication.

It was all temporary. He's sharp as as a tack but the pain medication just made him like basically almost like physically numb like he had to help him stand up walk you know the whole nine yards then you have to give him this medication lead up to a surgery you know my grandmother has a different situation going on that out of respect for them i'll keep her situation private but you know she definitely you need to be around the clock for her as well. I go up there with my aunt, Aunt Allison. Shout out to Aunt Allison. She's amazing. Superhero.

We would take care of them, but that was throughout the night and stuff like that. But I didn't look at it as a big thing. The whole time I went up there, I was like, hey, I'm happy to be up in this house again. Who knows how much longer this house will be around. I was just looking at the positives. Hey, I get to spend this time with them. That's awesome.

There's no sleep involved, but it's like, you get to have that time. So, I don't know, I just feel like you can look at, you can choose to look at things really negatively, or you can choose to look at them positively. You can have your moments, obviously. You have moments where the sleep hits you, and you're just like, you have almost like a meltdown. Everything sucks, but it's like, you know, you get some sleep some sleep and you wake up the next day and you're good to go. Did you grow up in a fairly positive household?

Yeah, very blessed. Very blessed there. My father was so supportive. He was a disciplinarian, but he was also a whole lot of fun too. He was awesome. And then my mother's a sweetheart. So I was blessed to definitely have that. And I don't take that that for granted and so that's why i also try to pay that forward whenever i can in life too that uh discipline did that um you know kind of play into like who

you are now you know you're yeah you seem like a self-starter and and then at that time did you hate it or you're like fuck man this is like because i think every kid kind of goes through that oh yeah of course when you're young it's like you don't like the discipline yeah of course but uh no definitely like i got my work ethic from both him and my grandfather my grandfather is a machine of a man it's impressive and um and so like even when you had when i had to help him out you know he physically couldn't do much you had to help him stand up and walk with him and almost carry him basically he's a six foot one man. He's no, no tiny man. But even it's like,

he was like probably the best person you could have hoped to have in that situation. Just cause you know, there was a lot of uncomfortable situations physically for him. Most people probably would have thrown a fit or gotten snappy or just said, I don't want to take the, I don't want to take the medicine. Just leave me alone. Whatever.

He was, he's such a machine as he just, he met you halfway as much as anyone could i mean he just powered through it no complaining militant but i love that i think that and then my father his work ethic kind of drilled that into me so that's why like it's funny because people would i got a couple of compliments the other day people were just saying that like oh you guys had a long day here you know how do you stay upbeat how do you stay upbeat and i just like for me it's like if you're doing something you get it done like a job it's not and honestly i mean working with you guys is

like fun that's like a family like you guys this is a fun time it's like disneyland but but like yeah that's just i don't know i think that's how i was raised which i'm grateful for now you just you have a job to do you do it and there's a lot to be grateful for yes especially right now like i mean people are losing the people don't have jobs they've lost their jobs right if you have somewhere you work even if you don't like it that's something to be grateful for right there so i mean we felt it too yeah that's a new spin on everything right yeah but we felt it too i've lost um people people watch this and probably like oh it's easy to be positive when you a b c and d i'm definitely grateful in respects but man my my income got chopped in half.

Sponsors, whole salaries are gone just because they got hit. So it's like, and then traffic slows down because no one's caring about working out. No one can even go to the gym. So we all got hit. I'm grateful to still be standing and have what I have going on. But yeah,

you just got to keep pushing through. Pity parties don't save anything. The stock market goes on, my friend. That does go on and you can make money when it goes up or down. Yeah. Well, and it never gets that messed up. Like in the course of a 10 year span, it's, it's been pretty much a bull market. It's, it's always, it's always going to go up.

Yeah. Yeah. For real. It's been pretty much a bull market. I think people think it's like gambling. I think they think it's a real roll of the dice, which it could be if you were uninformed. Exactly, if you don't know what you're doing. There's so many parallels I've found to trading, learning trading, to lifting.

It's like it is gambling if you don't know what you're doing. Just like going to the gym and trying to load up a max weight. If you don't even know how to squat, you don't know what technique is, you don't know how to brace, nothing. Stay away from the risky shit until you know what you're doing better. Exactly. Yeah. Practice it. Learn it. Learn it. Patient. Yeah. Like just don't sell when things go down. Maybe don't be so emotional sometimes.

That's the biggest thing. Don't try to time the market. Hold on. Things go down and up. Don't try to time. You won't time it. You're not going to catch the bottom. You're not going to sell at the top. Just hold on. It's kind of funny because my wife likes the stock market and you know when she's going over it with, with one of our friends who, you know, specializes in it, he, you know, he's, he's very kind. So he's like, Hey, you know, look lady, you know, do whatever you'd like. It's your money, you know? Like, cause my wife has

some certain things that she's like more drawn to. And my wife is like, I don't know how she does it. Cause I just wouldn't be able to do half of the stuff she does. Like she's able to have emotion in stuff and have it not negatively impact her. And so for me, I need to be like, kind of just like, just, I don't know. I need to be very even keel. I don't have highs and lows. If I hit a certain lift, I don't really care. If I miss a certain lift that I really don't care.

I, uh, I just try to keep everything more even. But she's able to really go up and down and have it not have a negative impact on her. That's impressive. But it's kind of funny. When we're doing stock stuff, she's like, oh, I really want to do this. And he'll advise, and he's trying to say in a nice way, that's not a great idea. But then he's also seeing how like strong willed she is and he's like

I better just I better just shut the fuck up I'll let her I wouldn't want to try to tell her what to do it doesn't work out

so good unless you have wine unless you have wine yeah you have a bottle of wine and some cheese maybe oh man that sounds fantastic

even in SEMA I was digging on that cheese brie cheese we love the cheese Ariana and I that's our big thing. Wine and cheese boards. Craft cheese, I heard. No, no, no. That's on me time. That's my own time.

Wait, is there a craft cheese inside joke that we're not getting? No, it's just that I have the palate of a dog. So I like... She was ratting him out yesterday. I appreciate nice things in their time. So we do a nice cheese board, but on my own time, left to my own, I use craft cheese on everything. I just melt it in their time. So we do a nice cheese board, but on my own time left to my own,

I'm dude, I use craft cheese on everything. I just melt it over like chicken. I love it, dude. It's great. It's not even real cheese. It tastes so good.

You need to do a meal. You need to do a meal prep with that. I've done it before. Like, like make, like make like a, like the perfect bodybuilding thing. And then just dump a giant thing of craft cheese on top of it. That is basically

what my meals look like. I'll be like, well-made chicken breast, this and that. Cheese, microwave, bam. Slathered. I did that when I was younger. I used to do a lot of that. Just like dump cheese on something, warm it up and eat it. Yeah, I did it when I was younger too. No, that wasn't supposed to be a bit.

I grew out of that one, man. Looking back to last week before I flew out here. That actually sounded so messed up now that I replayed it. Oh my god. When I was a kid, we had these... They're not popular anymore. We had these sandwich maker things.

You press it down and I don't know, just like toast your sandwich or whatever, right? I used to make the weirdest combinations of stuff because my parents had three boys, and so we were just always eating all the food, and there would be nothing left. And so I'm like, what can I make a sandwich with?

And I'd put mustard and turkey and whatever the hell cheese was around, Velveeta cheese or something, something that's indestructible that never goes bad. And so I'd try to... And it never worked. The sandwiches always sucked. I could never get them to... If my mom made it then it was amazing. If I made it, it just

was awful. Had you been high, it would have been fine. I would have been good to go. I used to make omelets out of that same little press thing because you could just throw whatever... same thing. I just bring those things back. And I would put like the already like made bacon bits. Cause I'm like,

I'm going to put bacon in here. And it just like, it's always hurt your teeth. Cause it's just, isn't it funny when you make something for yourself and it like, you know, like you know that it didn't work, but you just keep eating it.

And you're like, this is totally, wow, this just didn't work. And you just keep eating it. It's like this is totally wow this just didn't work and it's rare that i experienced something i feel like didn't work yeah at least it happened to me all the time when i was a kid i'm not so much anymore i'll eat anything it doesn't matter yeah it doesn't matter what about fat-free cheese it doesn't melt it doesn't melt it melts you guys saw me eat it yesterday i don't know man because that's so the fat-free singles is kind of where

i draw the line. It comes out kind of plasticky. Yeah, that's just not classy. I'm not a classy lady. How is fat-free cheese? I'm really curious about the process of fat-free cheese. It's kind of like opposite. I think it's like milk.

I think they take the cream off the top or something. It resembles cheese, and it kind of gives you the effect. If you ain't talking crafts, I don't want to talk. That's all about the Walmart brand. They make really good fat-free cheese. Dude, Walmart's where it's at for crafts. Craft is actually really good. It's delicious. It actually is delicious.

I don't know how you can look me in the eye and tell me you don't enjoy the taste of Kraft Singles. I don't think, yeah. That's right. No one has anything to say. You don't count. You have too many allergies. Yeah, that's right. No one has anything to say. You don't count. You have too many allergies. You can't have it. Yeah, those individual packets of cheap American cheese.

Yeah, that's what we're talking about. Yeah, you know you're down to the bottom of the barrel and you're eating that. Kraft Singles sponsored me. That'd be sick. You know what's amazing that I found recently at the store, and I never knew about it before. I went past it a bunch, and I've seen advertisements for it, is Fairlife. They make a chocolate milk that only has five grams of sugar in it, and it has 26 grams of protein.

I've been buying it for my kids. Wow. It's freaking good. I'm sure it's not just whey protein. It's kind of what it sounds like. It's a protein shake. Yeah, that's cool. And it's lactose free. It's freaking good i mean it's not just whey protein it's kind of what it sounds it's a protein shake yeah that's cool and it's it's lactose free it's freaking it's really really good i was i was surprised i was like wow this is actually because they make a chocolate milk and their chocolate milk has more protein than regular milk but it still had a lot of sugar in

it right right but yeah i saw this more recently and i was like damn that's pretty good sounds pretty good yeah it's legit. That's another phase I had as a teenager. For some reason, I read somewhere and they were like, oh yeah, studies show that drinking chocolate milk after a workout. Oh man, the post-workout gimmicks. Yeah. Did you guys ever do that?

Of course. Yeah. I can't remember if it's chocolate milk. I've never heard of different sugary things. That is really genius. No, it's an actual study that they did with chocolate milk. Yeah. never heard of different sugary things. That is really genius. No, it's an actual study that they did with chocolate milk. But shout out to the dairy farmers, man.

That's a great way to do it. Yeah, but didn't the dairy industry in itself get busted for so many fake bias studies? Yeah. I mean, chocolate makes sense post-workout. It's like glycogen, but I don't see what the need for milk would be.

You're like 30 grams of protein. Dude, and only 150 calories. Yeah, you're going to be fucking jacked out of your mind. That's true. I think it's for Jasmine. How are you eating now, Nick? What's going on with your food nowadays? I intermittent fast.

I just feel better that way. Besides deadlift day, it's the only thing I eat before. Fast, fast, or just like 10 hours, 12 hours, or like you're going're going pretty deep i basically i wake up i don't eat until after the gym and i'll usually do the gym depending on the day because i'll trade throughout the day but if i get trading done nice and early gym might be like around 11 12 get out get home by like 1 1 30 and then i'll eat then if i trade later into the day go to the gym late three four you know if i stay all the way till market close and i go to the gym after four then that'll be the first time I eat all day. So there's no real set window.

It's just after the gym, I train fasted. And this just kind of allows me, A, I feel better training fasted. I hit all my bench and squat PRs fasted. And then B, it just helps me eat big meals without overeating. So that's why I've been able to not get fat, just kind of maintain like this sweet spot of 195 where I'm not shredded, but I'm not chubby either and like i feel good lifting so just eating like it ain't pretty well rounded i don't follow like you know a no carb or anything like that right now it's just it's very well rounded like post-workout meals usually

whey protein the slingshot protein still actually hell yeah and then um and then like uh what i'll do is the ronnie coleman grits which i actually got from him so it's it's butter flavored grits um with one cheese melted on top cook up two eggs scramble them cook them up when the steaming hot grits the melted cheese is done you put the eggs on top put the cheese another piece of cheese on top of that let it melt for a second and then you mix it all around and it sounds like what and it looked kind of crazy when he made it but oh my god it's delicious it sounds amazing yeah did you ever have any doubts real quick before you started working out fasted like did the first few workouts not feel the greatest or was there or did you immediately

go into that no it felt it felt like i don't remember it that clearly but i do vaguely remember it feeling like hell at first yeah you. You're just not used to it. I went from, especially, you know, all my years of powerlifting were always done with big meals before you lift. That's how you did it. And, um, so I remember doing it and I started in 2018 when I was doing my cut for the photo shoot and my calories were just so low. It's like I had to intermittent fast or I'll be starving.

Yeah. You know, it's either that or have just the tiniest meals and be starving. So I started intermittent fasting and I just forced it. Unfortunately, hitting PRs wasn't my big goal. I ended up hitting a bunch, but it wasn't my focus. My focus was getting shredded. So I was able to kind of put the psychology of I need to be strong for this workout

in the backseat. And I just forced myself to push through the workouts. But then like unsurprisingly, after a month or so, it clicked and I started feeling great. And then after doing it for over a year, now it's like there's been times. I tried actually recently. There's been times where I've tried going back to eating a good meal before I lift just to see. It feels horrible.

It feels sluggish. Yeah, so sluggish. So, yeah, I just got used to it. I've never looked back. Now it just feels way better to train fast. And not to mention mentally, like when I do trading all day long, I feel so much sharper with just some caffeine and some water in the morning. And that's it. And then just empty stomach.

My brain feels sharper. Second, I eat. I'm like sluggish. I just want to kind of clear some things up for people because I think people get really confused on this stuff. And we were just talking about post-workout. up for people because I think people get really confused on this stuff. And we were just talking about post-workout. So post-workout and breakfast, you know, are two things that always get kind of mixed up. Your first meal of the day is always breakfast. It's breaking a fast, right? Post-workout, I mean, post-workout could be pre-workout and post-workout. It could be any meal that you had

prior. It doesn't matter how long before it was. And anything you had after your training session, again, doesn't matter how long it was later on. Now, a lot of the information that we see lines up with saying, hey, 30 minutes prior to your workout, you need to have protein. But these are kind of the only studies that they have. They don't have studies to really show what's the impact of eating four hours later. Right. You know, we don't really know. We just think that having a protein shake or something like that or carbs and protein intra workout or post workout is superior.

But why do we know that? Well, we know that because there's supplement companies and we know that because that's where some of the research is. But, you know, people that are worried about not having a good workout because they don't have glycogen, it wouldn't be true. Like if you fasted for 12 hours and worked out, it's not like you don't have any glycogen in your body. Yeah, right. You do. The human body will always have glycogen in it.

Even when you buy meat from the store, sometimes the meat like that we get from like Piedmontese, and this is from any place, so I don't want to throw people off. But when you get meat from anywhere, it might have a little bit of glycogen in it. It might have a little bit of carbohydrate in it. You're always going to have a little bit of carbohydrate in your system, even if you don't eat any carbohydrates. Now, it's possible that you may have a lot less than somebody else, but your blood sugar levels in your body, they only go so low. So I think we tend to make such a big thing about these different things. else, but your blood sugar levels in your body, they only go so low. Right.

So I think we just, we tend to make such a big thing about these different things. And if you're trying to get big, yeah, eat, you know, eat, eat as much as you possibly can within reason. But for the most part, I think that we tend to make such a big deal about what we have pre-workout, what we have post-workout. And I really think it just doesn't matter that much. All that matters is that it just lines't matter that much all all that matters is that it just lines up well with whatever your goals are for that time yeah and and what you said

is especially true when you're in a nice caloric surplus or even just like a solid maintenance it's funny like we don't realize how fat we all are until we do a cut and then once you're deep in that cut and you're you're you know you're hungry you're eating less meals you're losing fat every day and then you look back and you're like wow i can't believe how fat even if you're deep in that cut and you're, you know, you're hungry, you're eating less meals, you're losing fat every day. And then you look back and you're like, wow, I can't believe how fat, even if you're only 12% body fat, you look back and you're like, I can't believe how fat I was. I had all that extra energy on me all the time. I took it for granted. So, and then you go back to it and then you're like, even if you haven't eaten in 15 hours,

you're like, well, look, this is, I got so much energy stored up here. Like I'm good to go. So it's like exactly what you said, man. A lot of it's psychology. People think you need to. And I'll tell lifters this, too, because I'll see lifters like overeat like crazy before a big PR. And I tell them eat well before, especially the day before. I think it's more important to eat well the day before a PR than the actual morning of.

So I always tell them eat well and hydrate well. But don't go crazy. Don't go like nuts or do anything you wouldn't normally do. If anything, maybe your dinner can be a little bit bigger than usual you can go out to eat and get yourself like it's something big and awesome but don't feel the need to like stuff yourself with something you wouldn't normally stuff yourself with by the way uh since you do fast workouts and faster training have you ever tried uh electrolytes like element electrolytes or anything during your fast period um just the basic like either pedialyte or like even just like a Powerade mixed with

like a jug of water. I've done that during the fast period. Bruh. Yeah. But you got to try that. It'll get you on it. Yeah. I'm down. I'm down. It'll make a big difference. Yeah, we've been feeding them some of these element packets, but we took all the good flavored ones and now we just have the unflavored and we have some

spicy ones. Fortunately, I have a Kraft Singles palette, so it's all good to me. Well, I think the Kraft Singles would have sodium in it. And cheese most of the time has calcium in it, but I don't know what that cheese is made out of. It might not have calcium. Just showing the world that we're here still. Oh, hey. We're still here.

Hi, everybody. Hey. Oh, hey. We're recording the podcast and we're recording the podcast. That's great. Oh, hey. We're still here. Hi, everybody. Hey. Oh, hey. We're recording the podcast, and we're recording the podcast. That's great. Just an update. We're still in the podcast. Tune in live.

Look at you. The pies. You know what was really weird was yesterday, Smokey, when he was showing me the questions from the live feed, it was like you and I standing there from like 20 seconds ago. That was fucking bizarre. Oh, wow. That is weird. It was really weird. I like i was like this is the

multiverse this is what everyone's talking about what's what's really tough about like i didn't see that that was that was weird yeah i was like you're like is that me now yeah yeah so so when you're when you're producing that though you not only like you see it live you you watch you know the delay but then you hear the delay while hearing you guys talk. So if there's a mistake that you catch, you know, just with like the whole YouTube setup and stuff, it's like, oh shit, can you guys not do that five seconds ago? Oh shit. How did, uh, how did we go?

What was it? Two and a half minutes without audio? Yeah, that's, so what happened was, no, it was just, just uh we used a different computer so like all the settings had to be reset well i wasn't even giving you a hard time i was literally like how did that yeah you guys not have headphones in for that or no so it's it's just one of those things where like the uh the audio was going oh you heard but it wasn't recording software but the software wasn't sending the right output to youtube i got you that makes sense yeah and then so like once we realized like

ah shit like like no it wasn't that long but like two minutes in the moment yeah was at least i don't know like three years like yeah right forever like why is this not working like what's going on we just did it all did you pin a comment underneath it saying yeah that's that'd be yeah i wasn't even giving you a hard time i was like literally how it works yeah yeah it was a different machine did you see the weird explosion in elk grove oh seriously i heard so okay this this is this is beyond weird uh there's some alien shit yeah i was actually just talking to them about my annoying ass dogs they just wake up in the middle of the night just go to the bathroom some weird shit going on it happens uh i let them out and then i heard the

noise and i was like like in that moment because i'm still like half asleep it sounded like somebody broke down like my fence like it was just like a loud like thump like something fell over but i'm like huh that's weird and then i woke up and uh you know like the like the ring app it has like everybody can like discuss like did you guys hear this in the neighborhood? And I seen that. I'm like, okay, so it wasn't just somebody like trying to break in. What was it? I don't even know.

So on the news. I don't watch the news. Well, on the news this morning, it had just like some random explosion happened at like two in the morning. Yeah. Like in Elk Grove. And there's this big, there's video of it. There's just this big light and nobody video of it there's there's just this big light and nobody knows what it was and they're like a transformer didn't blow up nobody

had a power outage wow but yeah there's been some weird shit going on like during this whole like covid thing and the phone is weird man california is really weird but during this quarantine that they started to like leak information about like alien ships and stuff have you seen anything i have i have seen that, yeah. There's like spacecrafts that have been that they said are not they don't believe they're from this universe. They don't believe they're from this world.

You guys have both been hearing about this? Yeah. I heard shit about this. It's fucking bizarre. I mean, it's like official statements from our government. This is like all over the timeline. Facebook feeds. Yeah. It's weird, though, know the time that they released it they're like hey there's so much chaos going on between covid no one cared everything else is going on no one cared it

wasn't even like viral news or it's like all right and then uh i've heard rogan talking about it quite a bit and he's like i think they're just trying to like trickle this information out because sneak it out and one guy had a really good point. Lex Friedman had a really good point where he said that things that are alien might be so alien that we might not even recognize them. Like you might not even, you might not even notice. Yeah. Right.

Or like if you said something, if you, if you just said something crazy, I just wouldn't fucking believe you. Yeah. And you'd be like, oh, I tried to video it, but it didn't come out on my camera. It's like, you're not, you can't video this species or whatever. We'd be like,

yeah, sure, dude. Like, well, there's no way. It makes sense when you think about just the stuff that we can't even get our heads around of our own earth,

like ions, like we can't see them. It's not the concept of oxygen. We can't see that. It's insane. Like the, uh, micro bacteria that's on us right now that we can't see.

So it's like if there's all that stuff that we can't even see, and that's just within our world, and that's been grown through evolution of being on this rock with its climate and everything. Imagine what would come from somewhere deep in space, that totally different environment. It might be something that we can't even process with our five senses. There's a guy on a radar, and it's been confirmed by other people as well. And I think there may have been video, but like this thing goes from like zero feet to 60,000 feet in like a second.

And there's like, there's, there's not anything that we have that can do anything remotely close to that. Wait, what, what thing? He like, he was an object, an object, an object. And, and and and they were asking like if it's a star and stuff like that and they don't they don't think it was a star but it was like recorded on radar um but there was something else about it too where so what so what they said was there is a possibility that it's like a spy plane or

something that is just throwing the radar off so much that like they can't, they can't track anything that's going on because there is some technology like that. Like it's like a stealth bomber, like can kind of go on detected and things like that. So that was like the one thing where they're like, yeah, maybe somebody has this technology to do this, but they don't even know how that's possible. Yeah. So there's a lot of weird shit going on.

And I can't find anything about that explosion in Elk Grove. You can't find anything. I can't find shit. They must've killed the guy or the alien. But yeah, I remember Rogan talking about like, why do we think that an alien is going to come and just be like a physical form?

Yeah. Right. Right. He could be, or they could be like a gas and we just can't even see it. Something just not. And like our set, we forget that our senses are limited as it is. like there are more colors available to be seen than we can

actually see we just we don't have the ability in our eyes to process them i think like certain flies can actually see like an insane amount of colors like colors that we've never seen that we don't even know are possible so it's like and then you know hearing like we can't hear the same high pitch frequencies that dogs can hear so there's sounds that are actually going on around us that we are totally oblivious to same with smell. Like this whole world's being painted in an animal's nose that we're totally oblivious to. So it's like,

it's very possible that something came from outer space, AKA an environment where it's evolution would yield something totally different than anything that would be evolved here on our planet. It's totally feasible that like, we just wouldn't have a way of even recognizing it not to mention how oblivious we might be to it too because again we were arrogant as humans but like do you think like the mites we look at through a microscope are aware of us watching them we have the technology to do that so if something doesn't technology to come and reach us or the means to it might be in

a way where we're kind of totally oblivious to it. At least they don't want to kill us. It seems hopefully, or maybe they already are. They're harvesting COVID. They're studying the Rona. The Rona. What do you got coming up next? Nick running for president?

No, no, not yet. Not yet. Not throwing your hat in there yet. Honestly, I got nothing, nothing because the years has been so shut down.

So nothing of note to really mention because traveling kind of all got put on hold. This is the first trip we've done in 2020. Wow. So, yeah, I'm just kind of taking it as it comes. Just continuing trading. I'm excited to get back to programming and get stronger. Obviously, continue putting out good content. What did you think of that bicep board?

We haven't used it for biceps even yet, but we did it for lats yesterday. That was cool. that was cool that was cool i was to be very honest i was unsure how it'd be because there's just so many like different like gimmicky equipment out there that's just like even even regular gyms just so many different handle variations and some of it's like i have no use for so i wasn't sure to expect with that i was like okay it might be kind of cool in concept and something i never really use realistically. I was surprised and wrong. That thing's cool. I would use that 100% if I had that at my gym.

Just wait until you use it for biceps. Yeah, it'd be great when you use it for biceps. It'll get a big pump going. Yeah, that was impressive. I want one for my gym. Well, it's always great having you out here. We got a lot of respect for you and your lady and just appreciate you coming out. It's always a lot of fun.

Oh, yeah. Hopefully tonight we can enjoy a lot of fun. Oh, yeah. Hopefully tonight we can enjoy a glass of wine or three. Yes. Craft cheese. Sounds perfect. Yeah, we'll get you set up with some. Do not disrespect my Lord and Savior. Get you some very fancy, fancy, top of the line craft cheese.

Hey, perfect. Sounds good, man. I appreciate you having me. I always love coming out to the Slingshot family. Where can people find you? YouTube.com slash Nick Wright. And then Instagram and Twitter are both at Nick Wright NWB. I'm always responding on Twitter because it's smaller, so it's easier.

And I try to get back to you on Instagram as well. But yeah, definitely stick around. Follow me. Follow me on YouTube, guys, for informative videos. That's my main thing this year um i think you guys will be impressed with the content i'm bringing to the table info wise on strength training hell yeah andrew take us on out of here buddy absolutely thank you everybody for checking out today's live stream it was cool chatting with everybody a huge shout out and thank you uh free sleeve for sponsoring this episode for more information

on them please check the youtube and Facebook description and podcast show notes. Please make sure you find the podcast at Mark Biles Power Project on Instagram. Interact with us. We like to have a lot of fun with everybody and tell jokes, memes, all that good stuff. At MB Power Project on Twitter. Uh-oh. I missed it. I had to change the angle one more time.

One more time. Look at that. Just showing the before the b one more time. One more time for the camera. Look at that. Just showing the before the bicep board and after the bicep board. Wow. Thickness. 24 inches. Looks like Mount Everest over there.

Thank you. Jesus Christ. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? At Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube. At Seema Inyang on Twitter. Mark. That is the most extra name.

How do you say your last name? Yung. But I say In Yang because that's how... You can't say it the right way. I dig it. That's so much cooler than Nick Wright. Nick Wright and Mark Bell. Yeah. Right? It's like Clark Kent. Oh, no. Terrible. Here's a creative. Natty Professor, is there

any way that this guy is natural? Look at the size of these biceps he's got going on. No. It's a synthol. No. I need to make a Natty or Not video on him and just show how unnatural he is. Do it. I can't wait.

Well, that Kraft cheese can't be natural. What's he running, you think? Tren? Yeah. Tren. Tren. Some D-Ball. Maybe some Winstroll.

A little Anovar on Cruz. Anovar, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's probably doing a little bit of test. In SEMA, every once in a while, he'll slip up on the show, and he's like, yeah, I've been using creatine. Like, whoa! Then he mentioned a multivitamin one time. Shouldn't meet your heroes. Right.

Never a good idea. We've still been reeling from that never recovered and then he punched me like a podcast or two ago hey he punched me i was hyped up on eight kratom pills and then something was said i was just like oh that's hilarious and it was like it was like, oh, shit. That's hilarious, arm bar. Still got a bruise there. That tricep will never be the same. Should have choked someone through the table.

I know, right? Made a whole show out of it. I don't think I can, though. That's the thing. I've tried to kick him off. I mean, we've tried a lot of stuff. I've tried to kick him off the team and stuff and just keep showing up. That's because he gave me a key.

I made eight copies. He's never been able to kick me out. One free spill of Kratom. I'm at Mark's Millie Bell. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you all later.