Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 458 Live - Lean Year Round Means Ur Cheating?

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Today we're discussing whether or not if someone is lean year round means they are taking special supplements. What's your take? Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter: https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: https://drinklmnt.com/powerproject Purchase 3 boxes and receive one free, plus free shipping! No code required! ➢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.

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Yes. Yes, I will. Cheers. Can't take half. Oh. Well, I took two or three before jujitsu this morning. Not three potions. Oh, God.

Three of. Yeah, not three potions. Three pills. So I noticed that when I do pills and I take a full potion, it just hits different. Like a popping pill. I feel it for a minute. I feel it for quite some time. So like smoking and then having an edible, it's going to hit different.

I've never done that before. How was your Pop-Tart? Did you eat it? I'm still, I'm savoring it and it's incredible. Oh, you're, you're eating it slowly. Yeah. Well, I got, I got a little sidetracked, but no, this legendary food's blueberry. Yeah.

Shout out to our peeps at Legendary Foods. They also, they up the protein. No way. Oh, really? Yeah, they up the protein on them. I got 15 grams of protein, I think, before it had like five or seven or something. So here's the amazing thing, though. What other type of any kind of food has 15 grams of protein, but only 150 gram or

150 calories. Yeah. Right. It's extremely hard to find that low calories with that. Is that a pop tart or a chicken breast? But I, right. Yeah. Like this is, this is super man.

Yep. This is amazing. And it tastes incredible. Legendary. Yeah. I haven't had the blueberry yet. I had the brown sugar. I think that's what we had.

The brown sugar is amazing. It's my favorite flavor of oatmeal. Yeah. I haven't had the blueberry yet. I had the brown sugar. I think that's what we had. The brown sugar is amazing. It's my favorite flavor of oatmeal. So. Strawberry is good too. I was thinking about the keto bricks today because I got a bunch of them in my pantry. I was like, this keto brick guy is a genius. We got to have him on the show. We really do.

Like, who has the balls to make a thing that's a thousand calories and it's in the shape of a fucking brick. Yeah. I mean, eating a brick of fat pretty much. Yeah. That's what it is. It doesn't have much protein in it. I mean, it has some, but it's, yeah, it's a brick of fat.

It's good though. Like that's the thing. I'm going to sell a brick of fat. Did he ever say, do you know what spurred him to make that? Cause like, where was the need? I think, right. That's what i'm saying yeah people don't need like an edible brick first of all right but i think so good i think it came

from the type of thing that he uses in the product and i think it's just solid like the cacao butter or whatever it is just uh whatever that stuff is it's kind of solid like that like a brick yeah i ain't complaining i love it it tastes amazing so it's kind of solid like that, like a brick. Yeah. I ain't complaining. I love it. It tastes amazing. It's just straight fat. Anything that gets me closer to a peanut butter cup. That's not a peanut butter cup.

I'm all for it. Mm hmm. Is that peanut butter flavor is amazing. Yes, it is. Peanut butter is the best. It is the best. We're talking about being fat, but on the show today, we're going to try to concentrate. I'm talking about lean and we're going to try to get lean for the entire year and stay

there and just be shredded all the time. The rest of your life. That's right. We're talking about getting lean and then staying there and then like what that means and why some people do it and what is speculated on YouTube about people. When we see people that are really lean and they're lean year round, a lot of times people are inferring that they are on steroids. What?

That's a bunch of bullshit. A plethora of them. So I guess let's start there and because there's a lot of things to talk about here, but let's start there. Why? Why do you think the speculation, if someone's like, I don't know, let's just say, let's just define being lean. And we'll just say for a male it's under 10%. So let's say a guy is consistently under 10%. He's consistently single digits. Why do people think that that

person's on steroids? Oh yeah. So, you know, it's not just being lean, it's being lean, but also having some size on you. Um, because that's impressive, right? To people. Uh, and when a guy is like typically lean and he has a good amount of size and his muscle bellies are relatively full, um, that typically doesn't feel good. It, it, it like, you know, especially like, let's come, let's talk about, you know, getting ready for a bodybuilding show. When you're stage lean, you feel like crap. Bodybuilders do not stay that lean year round. They don't, but 10%, um, some people just chill there. And for a lot of people, the, when people make these videos, um, like natty or not type videos, one of the big

things that the reasons that they say, oh, this guy's definitely on drugs is, well, he's always shredded and he's big. You can't be big and shredded all the time. Like you, you just can't do that.

You either bulk or you get lean and it's understandable to be shredded for some pictures and it's understandable to be big a couple months later, but to stay lean like that and kind of big, that's where people are like red flag. Yeah. And also the, the full muscle belly thing along with that is something that a lot of people say because people are like, Oh yeah, you can be lean and kind of stringy, but you can't have full muscle bellies and be lean capped shoulder, the, the, the shoulders, the shoulders are another telltale sign. So, um, yeah, that that's, but that's the thing. Like whenever I would hear that aspect of it, like you can't be

lean and full, um, and natural. I've always been, I've just wondered like, what's why? Like I can, I used to kind of understand it because when I got ready for my first shows back in like 2013 and I was really lean, I felt really crappy. And then, um, even for my first shows back in like 2013 and I was really lean I felt really crappy and then even for my second shows or whatever when I did those second third when I was that lean and I was eating that low amount of food I didn't feel good but after a few years when I gained some weight slowly lost weight with all the activity I do and been able to stay lean i understand how it can be done and now i'm just like yeah it's kind of bullshit right so i yeah i think it depends on like uh for each individual person like what they're kind of living within you know like uh what what uh what body size and what leanness are

you like staying with uh because if somebody was previously consistently over 20%, and now they're consistently 10%, and they're consistently bigger, it's a little easier to start to assume that they may have done something, because that's just really hard to overcome, especially if they did it in a short period of time. But if they did it over a long period of time, that might make some sense. It really is hard to change who you are. If you're always 20% body fat, switching and being 18% body fat and 16% body fat, it's not out of the question.

It's going to take a pretty good amount of work. But for you to get down to 10, your body's going to be... We talked yesterday or the other day about how your body wants to keep pushing back towards that same body weight that you normally are. Yeah. And I think the same thing can happen with your body fat percentages. So it just takes a monumental effort. And I think in the long run, I think that's what we're talking about here with these videos

where people are like outing other people. I have never, I've never once clicked on any of them because i don't care if i don't really care i don't really i don't i definitely don't appreciate somebody lying about their story because there are people that are listening that really truly want to know yeah and i don't really think that's fair to not mention anything i think is fine like to not say one way or the other. I think that's fine. And I don't think you have to. I don't think anyone should feel like they have to say all their business and lay it out there. But I do think that's the best way is to try to be as honest as possible.

When I first started losing weight, I did an article about it. And when I wrote about it, I was like, I used some thyroid medication in the, you know, while I was doing this. And I thought that that was really important to put in there. And people are like, oh, you're suggesting thyroid medication to people. It might mess up their thyroid. I was like, no, I was just saying this is what I did. And I want to make sure that you understood that. So you didn't think I got these results in a different way because I'm trying to tell you how I got these results by the way that I lifted and

by what I ate and also by other, other things I may have taken in or consumed. And I wanted people just to know the story. Unfortunately, maybe not everybody wants to know the story. Maybe they want to conceal it and say, Hey, like I did this on my own. I did it fairly easy. Maybe that's the message that they want to be able to get out there. I don't know. Yeah. You know, that, that, that's the thing though. Like, I feel like if, if you're putting information forward, you should be upfront with what it is that you're doing.

But the thing that kind of is weird when I see people make these videos and it's, it's just, we were talking about it yesterday. You're saying, okay, well, you can't be lean and big year round or whatever. And you have all these, all these reasons why this person is on drugs, right? But you're kind of just feeding in to what a mass audience wants to believe. Because if I was a guy that was starting off and I've just started lifting, I just started getting into all this stuff. I have a goal body that maybe I want to try and achieve. And then I have this really, you know, ripped guy or whatever telling me, well, you know, you can't do this. You can't do this. You can't do this because I'm not even close to

there yet. I am going to want to believe all of that. It's going to feed into my, um, it's going to feed into my first off limiting belief of myself, but then it's also going to put me in a place where I'm just like, well, shit, if I can't look like that. And this guy's saying that if I want to kind of maybe look like this guy, or maybe being big as lean as this guy over some time, I have to take drugs. Shit. Maybe I should, maybe I should just, you know, forego all the time it takes to get bigger and stronger and just start doing something now. You know, I think like if I was a teenager and I like, and I saw that I wouldn't just

put in the time, you know? But getting back to the topic, you know, I think that for an individual to be able to get that lean and stay there for a period of time, there is first off a lot of training that's involved in the beginning to get bigger, to get stronger. But then when you get lean, like I was in the past, I wasn't able to be at nine, 10, 11% without feeling kind of crappy. But it took time staying at that body fat percentage and performing at that body fat percentage. Like I do a lot of jujitsu. I do a lot of lifting. Initially, I felt beat up all the time, but over time I was able to adapt at the way I would be

able to perform in the way I would feel. And now at what, maybe nine to 11% body fat, I can, I don't feel like crap at all. I can eat quite a bit of food. I feel great every single day. Um, but it's very different from the nine to 11% in the past. So it's, it's something that takes time to do, but it doesn't mean that an individual or myself are on PDS. What about your, your output though? Like back when you did, you know, yeah, back when you did you know yeah back when you didn't reach those single digits i mean you weren't doing jujitsu you were mainly just focusing on bodybuilding right i was focusing on bodybuilding and all the cardio that i was doing was like to get on stage um and the only times i was that lean was when i was getting ready to be on stage i

wasn't doing enough like like when i was only lifting i wasn't doing enough. Like, like when I was only lifting, I wasn't doing nearly enough work to stay at that body fat percentage. Right. But it's only when I started doing jujitsu where you burn a lot of calories and you have a lot of output that first off, it doesn't necessarily even feel like a lot of work to me. It doesn't feel like cardio, but it is, but it's just really fun. And I can do that consistently. Um, and that's one of the big reasons why I'm able to stay lean. If I wasn't doing jujitsu, I wouldn't be able to be this. I wouldn't want to be this late. You do about, um, maybe like 10 hours of jujitsu a week, or do you think it's

a little more than that? So usually an hour and a half to two hours a session, um, four to five sessions a week right now used to be five, like five to six, but four to five right now because of COVID. So it's usually around eight to ten hours a week what about like studying it and looking into it more and like watching videos and stuff do that hour or two every week at least oh yeah probably a little bit more probably watch matches and stuff and think about it a lot yeah it's like heavily on your mind my point here is that you know, not everything is like performance enhancing driven. Not everything is always just from taking steroids. Not everything is always from somebody having taken a shortcut.

Like if I think about like Eddie Hall and where he was, they did a documentary on him a while back and they showed that he had kind of a he had kind of a nine to five job. And that job was really like in the way of him. It was literally in the way, you know, we could, we can use these optical obstacles and say, ah, it's kind of in the way of me being a pro,

but for him, it literally wasn't a way because once he got rid of it, he won the world's strongest man title. And he became the first guy to ever deadlift 1100 pounds. And I think some people might look at that like, oh, he just got on tons of shit when he went, he went from this point to this point. And I think some people might look at that like, Oh, he just got on tons of shit when he went, he went from this point to this point and that's how he won.

He must've just got on tons of stuff. Maybe, you know, did a bunch of wild, crazy things before his lift and he was able to get his lift. And they think that it has to do with those things. And it's like, no,

he, he actually just, he took his hobby and he figured out a way to sink every single thing that he had into it. And the PEDs for him, they were always there. For you, the way I look at your situation is you're like a professional jujitsu-er in a way. But you have taken the other measures in your life to provide that for yourself, where you do personal training and you do stuff on, or you do online training and things like that.

So you can afford the time to put into it what you want to get out of it. Yeah. And it's not always, I think people just, they want to think that there's always like, there's always something suspicious going on. Something strange is going on. You got some sort of special advantage that no one else can do.

My point here is that anyone can figure out a way if they really want to, if they're, if the reason why they want to do it is pulling them strongly enough, they will quit their job. CT Fletcher has that great interview that he did in super training where he talks about being an iron addict and what it means. And he talks about a woman being addicted to drugs. He's like,

they'll give up their, their money. They'll give up their body. They give up their own child, you know, for that. And obviously this situation is different. It's not gonna be that hopefully,

you know, not obsessed with, with what you're doing, but sometimes people are, people get really tied into their hobby and it really defines them. But I just, I just think it's, it's kind of bullshit for people to just to think that it's about this, it's about steroids or PEDs. And that's this huge shortcut to transport you into, uh, like being the best, it certainly won't make you the best. It certainly will.

It certainly can make you better. So that's important to note, but there's a lot of other people that already pulled that card too. So now you're just thrown into that competitive field now. Yeah. And there are a lot of people, like I know of a lot of people that take stuff, they don't look good. Like they, they just, they don't look, they don't even look

like they're on drugs. You know what I mean? So it's like, I'm not saying that those things don't make a difference, but it's, it's, it's not something that like you said, is going to transport you there. But you know, people are probably like wondering, okay, so then if it's not impossible to be lean year round or lean and big, then how do you get there? I think like there, there is the amount of time that it takes to train, get bigger, get stronger so that when you actually do cut down, you're able to look good when you're leaner. Like, I think one of the problems is like when you start training, initially you want to look like that person. You, you want it, you want to have that end body, right? Um, whether it's being 12% body fat, having abs and being kind of big, that's what you want.

But it takes a substantial amount of time to get big, maybe cut a little bit here and there. It takes years to be able to get there. So the goal initially, when you start training for the first few years, actually for the first many years, shouldn't be to get lean and be like that all the time because you won't be able to do it you won't be able to handle it but i think it's very possible you don't need to be doing jujitsu you don't need to be training 10 hours of cardio a week i know guys that their their form of fun cardio is cycling i know that's a funny thing to use

right now but literally cycling on it right cycling took me a minute what cycle bro but like cycling on a bike like they find that fun they they're they're they're bodybuilders i think a a guy uh that i know chris elkins uh people also think he's on a lot of drugs but he picked up cycling and he really enjoys it as a form of cardio on the side but my assumption is that he doesn't again look at it work. It's not like you're getting on a stair master every five days a week for like an hour. That isn't that for most people, isn't that sustainable for some it is, but for most it's not enjoyable. But at a certain point when you can add in some cardio to what you do, um, and you're able to adapt to being that lean and performing that lean, then you're good.

Like I have personally, I don't have a desire to, uh, like over time I want to be gaining muscle, but I don't have a desire to bulk. Like I have no problem with my physique whatsoever that I would feel like, okay, let's bulk. I don't feel that yet when I do, I do it. But currently I'm happy with where my physique is. Right. It's hard for people to get to that point. And I think that that's what people are trying to do. And I think to your point, people are trying to have that end build, which is usually a leaner look, and it might be in their best interest to spend the next 10 years.

I know that hurts, but it might be in their best interest. If you're 14 or even you're 20, you know, you might take from 20 to 30 to really work on and not like you would work on it the whole time, but you would work on getting big. You might get big and then go maintenance, get big, go maintenance, you know, and move around a little bit.

So you're not gaining a ton of body fat, but you might have to spend some time there. And I think a lot of people don't, they don't really spend any time there. People rarely mess around with trying to bulk and trying to be big. I think there's like, that's a, that's a big sacrifice for a lot of people. They, they get really excited about, about being lean and the look you have. And when you're lean, you just wear less clothes and you feel great. Everything you put on like looks, looks good to you. You're like, oh, that you're lean, you just wear less clothes and you feel great. Everything you put on, like looks, looks good to you. You're like, Oh, that's cool. Like that fits well.

As soon as you get big and fat, everything you put on kind of looks, you're like, that does not look good. You're like, that does not look good. You just keep changing and changing. And you're like, okay, I'm just going to settle for nothing's going to really matter because I'm built like a fucking refrigerator. But these are some of the, some of the things that you'll have to, you'll have to go through if you're trying to, if you're trying to get a physique that is filled with muscle, that,

that looks, you know, anything like a bodybuilder, that's why they do that. That's why they bulk. That's why they, for yourself, did you have to spend a lot of time

like did you have to bulk for six months or three months at a time or how did you manage it so outside of competition i'd immediately try to put like a bit of body fat body fat back on trying to put on some baddie fat that fat's a bad for the podcast yeah no like when i was focused on bodybuilding and stepping on stage there is no way like that i could build more muscle while staying really lean or build the amount of muscle i was trying to look to to build so i think my first show i i was at like 218 or 219 right when i was even trying to bring up a little bit of pictures or footage or something of uh the natty professor yeah uh there's there's footage on youtube on the old break the bar channel and there's footage from my when i was uh i did my mic when i went top five at wmbf

wmbf worlds that's like one of my first youtube videos on the new channel and then 218 and you were like 19 years old 20 years old yeah yeah when i did my very first show 2014 how old was i 22 this one when when is the first time i was like my when's the first when's the first time what year Okay, yeah. So I did my first show in 2013 then. Damn, you're dark. Yeah, this was in 2015. And right here, I think I was like probably 235 to 237. So this was the year that I was continuing to like, this was a show in the middle of the year. So I got down to 228 in my last show that year, which is WNBF Worlds.

Dude, what's up with your legs, bro? For reals. Yeah yeah my legs are my strong part they're my strong legs are awesome yeah but like those are those aren't legs those are those are like legitimately wheels when you take a step and they like move around like that yeah but no and in the off season especially like natural bodybuilders, you cannot try to stay lean. You have to actually put some body fat on and focus on performance. Like my off season was about a year and a half. And then that's when I started trying to get ready for a show again.

I can't compete or I couldn't compete every single year. So right here, I was like 238, 237. And yeah, that was 2015. It's just, it's just silly, you know, because a lot of times you watch bodybuilders or you see a bodybuilder or someone's talking about,

Oh yeah, here's how I looked on stage. And they're like, Oh yeah, I was like one 70, you know, or I was one and you're just like, Oh,

that's awesome. But then you're thinking, well, the guy just doesn't weigh that much. You're a big, big person. Yeah. Yeah.

Fucking big. There's a lot of weight on me um but yeah if you're i think would you like when when is the first time that you like really remember other than somebody just kind of like messing around when's the first time someone accused you oh when i was 16 and at 16 you were already lifting for how long three years the reason why i started lifting at 13 was because um i played soccer since i was six i told you about this i got something called oscar slaughter oh yeah so oscar slaughter is like this thing that goes on in your tendons when you're growing too quickly so i couldn't that's from all the growth hormone your mom's all the gh my mom was giving me yeah she she pumped me with drugs um like i have two bumps in

my knees so that's when i started lifting because i couldn't do anything else when i got back on the soccer field at 16 i was like 210 it's like 210 to 215 and my teammate that was the first time he's like he got mad because i like i tackled you said i had a big ass on stage i also you know the thing was trailing you like that's that's genetic my my family we all got big butts but um yeah that was like when i slide tackled him and he was like the fucking scene was probably on steroids and the coach was like shut up tyler his name was tyler maltby we have the same birthday so i remember him specifically um but that was the first time i was like, really?

Okay. Yeah. But and then when I started playing soccer again, I dropped some weight, but I was still lifting throughout that whole time. Did you look pretty big on a soccer field? Yes. And people were like, what the fuck's up with this? Yeah, no, no, no. There were there were a lot of tournaments that we went to when parents like legit went to the organization because they wanted to find my they wanted to make sure I was my age.

I was my age. I was going to say they thought you were the coach. They thought I was like, they thought I was much older than I actually was in like you 16, you 17. They thought I was in my twenties or some shit. And I'm serious. Like they were really trying to do that because there are some, there are some people that take their birth certificates and do that stuff

so they can compete in younger. So yeah, parents really tried to do that. But that's the thing it's like i already like i had years of lifting under my belt you know what i mean so that's the only reason at this point that i'm able to just stay here and i think that's what people need to understand that you really do need those years you know i mean you you can't do that off the bat that can't be your goal four years into lifting like yeah you can have a goal of getting a six-pack or getting lean and that's cool but if you're not necessarily the happiest with how you

look you want to get bigger don't expect to try to stay that lean as you're doing it people have a really hard time uh like swallowing the pill of like uh hey man like i'm sorry but people just start out in different places genetically. You know, they do. Yeah. And you don't want to use the genetic thing as an excuse either. And I never want to bury anyone's hard work in, you know, because because they have genetics. But we've talked many times in this podcast about unfortunately in this world, you know, there's some people that start out and they're wealthy and they kind of grow up with a silver spoon in their mouth and they have a great education.

They have parents that are there all the time. They have what looks to be this wonderful life. That's well organized. And there's not a lot of chaos. Then a lot of times you have the exact opposite of that. You got child abuse, sexual abuse on children. You have all kinds of really foul and screwed up

stuff so we can see that really clearly and we could admit we could say okay yeah okay well these guys over here a lot of them really you know were deprived and had it just a shitty upbringing and that's going to really impact them later on they didn't have like they weren't set up good and they were you know if we're starting on a track, unfortunately, maybe they started out, um, you know, the, the other, the other kids were on lap number two and they're, they didn't get started running yet. Right. When it comes to genetics, for some reason, that one is, is, uh, is a tricky one and it's tougher for people to embrace and just say, Hey, you know what? That guy's got a bigger dick than me. Good for him, bro. You know what? That guy's got

bigger arms than me. That guy can bench more than me. As soon as they see that, they are so defensive and so angry, but at the same time, a lot of times it's the stuff that we... A lot of times it's... It's going to take a while for Zima to get over that one.

It's interesting because we also put that stuff up on a pedestal sometimes where you have just the total mutant of mutants like a Shaquille O'Neal who can who can move and was athletic and was fucking gigantic. And he was just able to dunk on every like no one's ever seen anyone that size before. And again, you can't say that it's just genetics because, you know, Shaq obviously had to work for it. And there's a lot of things that went into him being one of the all time greats. But there's a genetic component to this stuff where people just start out further. You know, you're not five, three, you know, and you're also not six, eight. So if you were five, three, things would be way different. If you were six, eight, things would be way like it would just be harder if you were anything other than like what you

currently are. Same thing with me and same thing with anybody else. Yeah. Oh God. Okay. Real quick. Cause I want, I want to talk about that. We, we had this podcast yesterday. Um, but something yesterday was said that was super cool, but I need to go into his hand about the dick thing real quick, because here we go. Once you said that, man, I remembered something from college. Cause I played soccer. Hold on a second. Hold on. I was like, this is going to get really, anyone who's listening, they just adjusted their

earbuds, making sure they're poked in. They're like, wait, what? All right. So yeah, I played soccer um freshman sophomore year of college uh at sac state and we had this teammate i won't name him because he'll know who he is but everyone who was on that team knows who i'm talking about um dude was just unreal in terms of just that like he was ha like it was crazy actually jessica knows what i'm talking about because she went to sac state too um but not not that she did something with him but it's just like that person was known

that's what i always say that person was known someone has like a giant dick everybody knows everybody yeah just didn't do anything with this person she just knew who he was so obviously you know we we take showers like you know that was the first time that that's ever happened i was kind of shocked first but i got used to it on day two i'm like all right penis is everywhere that's okay cool um you were shocked by his oh i was shocked by his most definitely but i wasn't just i wasn't used to showering with a bunch of men stuff like that is really funny and interesting because like people just take their stuff off and they go and they do their thing but once in a while there's somebody somebody that's just got a horse cock.

And somebody like, you can't help it, be like, bro, what's going on? It's not something that's not talked about. Mark. Uh-oh. Placid was probably like this long. Shake your cup. Shake your cup.

Not this would be freaky, but he was like that just like walking around just chilling right so i'm in my locker i went on pants yeah yo i go i sit down in my locker because they had these lockers where you can sit down i was on my phone chilling right and i guess like this was just something he like it was you want to pull a prank on me so i was looking at my phone and i hear some shit but i'm like whatever and then i look up and i see just this big body mid-air hips shifted to the right oh no and he was getting ready to try to swing and dick slapped me oh my god we almost lost you yo and then i was lucky because i saw it i saw it coming I was just like probably heard it

I just heard this go by my face like dude come on why are you gonna do that to me and that was just that was just so funny to me but god dang that guy he probably had just the most confidence like all the time yeah I love the dude he's awesome we're still homies we've known each other for a long time but

didn't always pack him like that it was scary he came in taking off pants. He had no problem with that. Yeah, absolutely not. But to the point about genetics, right? Sometimes it's just like that. Sometimes it just be like that. Yeah, you reminded me about that.

That was great. Yo, remember our podcast yesterday where, what was our guest name? I'm so bad. Oh, Bickman. Bickman. Dr. Bickman. He doesn't like being called Dr. Bickman name i'm so bad oh bickman bickman dr bickman he doesn't like being called dr bickman no benjamin benjamin bickman he was saying that you know not everybody can get to 600 pounds like some people just have like their fat cells just some people like normal maximum fat threshold right they just develop more and more and more fat cells so they can get to 600 700 pounds morbidly obese whereas most people their fat cells just get larger they don't continue to gain more fat cells so in that sense where a person some people have the ability to get over

fat why would we think that some people don't have the ability to get much bigger why some people like like you said basketball players have you seen yeah have you seen people um have you seen people lose their kind of leanness and dryness from going on peds when they went in before if they competed naturally because i i've actually seen that with some amongst some friends they weren't bodybuilders, but pro wrestlers and stuff. And one guy in particular that I'm thinking of, he, he looked, he looked like the chart that they have at the chiropractor,

you know, the, the chart that has all the muscle on it. I mean, he looked just crazy. Like there were striations, there were striations in every muscle group, which usually only see on a professional bodybuilder or,

you know, somebody prepping for a show or something. But you think he was on? No, he wasn't on anything. He wasn't at that at that point. And it was very it was very obvious. There's this kind of change and he got a lot bigger and thicker. But it was it was interesting to me. So I actually think and maybe some listeners might know more about this that that are really into bodybuilding.

But I think. A natural guy can actually look, they're not going to be as big, so they can't get as freaky, I don't believe. Or maybe they can. Maybe that's what we're talking about here today, right? We don't really know what that limit is. Nobody does. Nobody knows that limit. Not a doctor, no scientist, nobody.

But I think that natural people can appear to be leaner. They can get really, really shredded and maybe it has something to do with hormones or something like that. I'm not sure. No, that's something that I've noticed as far as like, when you look at the top level,

natural bodybuilders and how lean they are, um, they, they have to like, they get leaner, they achieve a leaner look. And when you look at, I can't compare them to the top level NPC and pull up like,

uh, Alberto Nunez and some of those guys. Alberto Nunez, like, yeah, pull up any of the 3D Jam guys. Alberto, Jeff Alberts. There's a lot of, like, those, like, look at Jeff Alberts. Because that's a guy that he's lean, but he's also pretty damn big. And he's 40-something years old. Do you know who Jeff is?

Do you know? No, I don't know who he is. Well, yeah, Andrew can pull him up. You should get some of these cats on the show. Yeah, no, Jeff is great. He's super knowledgeable, too. Who's the young black kid that is considered the best natural bodybuilder? The natural bodybuilder at the moment.

He's here in Sac. Ken, no. Oh, does he live here? He lives in Sac. Oh, shit. Yeah, he lives in Sacramento. Ken, no. Oh, does he live here? He lives in Sac. Oh, shit. Yeah, he lives in Sacramento. I know him. He actually won WNBF Worlds the past two years.

Fuck, man. Look at these guys hamstringing. Yeah. But he was actually, people have accused him, or there's a video that was made of him that he's not, but he gets randomly drug tested all the time. What is Alberto Nunez way in this video? Do you think approximately any, any idea?

My guess is one 60. Right. And he looks, but he looks fucking awesome. Like everyone's always so addicted to hearing the weight. Yeah. That body weight. If you got to,

if you got to be one 60 to look like that, I think it's worth it. Hey, Andrew, if you can look on Instagram, look at Sam Okunola. Yeah, that's it. That worth it hey andrew if you can look on instagram look at sam okunola that yeah that's that's it you know you know sam yeah there's sam okunola um and then there's this other guy do you got his handle yeah sam yeah s-a-m-o-k-u-n-o-l-a sam i want to touch

upon something that we were mentioning a little bit earlier about social media. I think social media kind of screws a lot of this up, too, because you want to look lean for social media andbuilder, it's going to be really tough if every day you're taking pictures with your shirt off and showing your abs because you won't have any time to progress and get big. Yeah, there's 2007, there's 2019. He's not on anything. And people will find that really hard to believe. But look at 2007. I know it's not a great picture in 2007.

He looks great. He looks great he looks great man that's the thing like you can tell that he you know i mean he probably played some sports and stuff but he was in it right so i think like like you mentioned though i think social media kind of messes with it for a lot of people because you're not allowed we've talked about this you're not allowed to be ignorant like if you're especially if you're not allowed we've talked about this you're not allowed to be ignorant like if you're especially if you're starting out whether you're starting out when you're 15 or you're starting out when you're 20 something you see all of this and you look at you you live

for a year and you expect to be close though you expect to be even somewhere close to that but you're a long time right it's easy to understand why guys can feed into what some of these individuals making all these natty or not videos are saying like it's very easy to want to believe that because you're like god i want that i've lifted for a year i've lived for two years i don't even look anything close to that okay well he they're on drugs right and that's to me i just think it's it's's I used to have kind of a rule or like a barometer for being able to, like, size somebody up on whether they're on them or not. And again, I want to point out the fact that I don't care if people are on them or not. I just it's the lying, I think, that can be annoying and frustrating.

Yes. And we are all in a business where we're, we're trying to make people feel good. Really? If we break it all down and I don't have any problem. If someone's like, Hey, if I shoot this stuff in my arm, it's going to make me feel good when I work out. Cause I'm going to be a little bit stronger and be a little bit bigger.

I'm kind of all for it actually. Like, like go for it. Sounds great. Yeah. I'd also say learn a lot about it and stuff like that. But I think everyone gets they get so caught up they you know they get so caught up in in you know trying to maintain this

like shredded look all the time andrew go to go to that photo you see the two guys so that's kendall yeah kendall one sack right he's from sack he's currently on the left yeah on the left he won sam got second place these are two of the top natural bodybuilders in the world currently you know what i mean like i don't know it's just i think that the one of the big things is as an individual you need to focus on like your process you need to take in all the information take the information from these individuals um but then just try to apply it to yourself and give yourself the time you need. You can't necessarily compare yourself to them. I can't compare myself to you in terms of what you've been able to do in business. You know,

I can't say it's cause Mark had this, this, this, I can just look at the principles you use in your daily habits, your daily life, how hard you work, the, the type of people you hang around. Right. And I can try to apply that to myself. It's going to take a fucking while. Right. But I have that goal of getting there. Right. Right. I know not everyone's going to be able to get that big, but I guarantee that if you

train for long enough and you take some of their principles. Right. And your principles, you'll attain a body that you're very proud of. Right. I also think a lot of times people are, you know, there's a, there's a whole nother side of this too, right?

Where we haven't even touched upon. People are just really lying to themselves really bad. And they're a lot of times that people on YouTube and stuff and the comments and how fired up and the, even the reason on why these videos exist in the first place is because there's a lot of young people on there that want to see somebody outed. They kind of want to see that, you know, because they're like, I told you, like they were talking to their buddy.

It's I told you so type of thing. They were talking to their buddy and they were like, there's no way that guy's Natty, you know? And then speculation comes up and like, I told you so, like you can't get that big. It's impossible. Yeah. But that same person that's saying that they don't have, they're just, they don't have

their diet organized. They don't have their life organized to, uh, to be able to be tunnel vision, to go towards their goal. Anyone that has their, their mind set up on, uh, being tunnel vision towards their goals. Once they start down that journey, they don't talk that way anymore. No, you don't, you know,

it's, it's kind of like the, the guy who's the Brazilian jujitsu black belt, who's not going to get in a fight in the streets. Cause it's just like, it's completely ridiculous. There's no, what am I going to,

I'm going to go break someone's arm. Like it's just, it doesn't make any sense. Like we're, I'm just not going to, that guy's probably, that guy's probably cool. He's not going to fight. Cause he doesn't feel like he needs to like prove himself. Yeah. You know?, I'm just not going to, that guy's probably, that guy's probably cool. He's not going to fight.

Cause he doesn't feel like he needs to like prove himself. Yeah. You know? So I think, um, I think just people need to just understand, like you said, there's so many principles. Those principles don't disappear because you take steroids. Those principles don't disappear just because you take a diuretic or you take a thyroid medication or you take, it doesn't really matter what it is that you take those principles of showing up and getting that work in every single day i mean i know people on both sides of it and i see hard work um being done by both and

people just make a decision i i lifted a lot you know for my bodybuilding prep shout out to my boy andrew because we lifted together a lot during that time but i also lifted with uh ryan spencer a lot ryan spencer doesn't fucking care ryan spencer is 160 pounds squatting like four he's got like 405 for like four sets of six reps you know and i would it was actually great for me because i'm just trying to keep up with the guy he's tiny compared to me right he's you know as far as i've known i've known him forever he's he's natural and he he he wants to he still wants to beat me he doesn't care about my body weight we're not comparing ages or we're not comparing we're not comparing anything he just all that we're comparing is that weight that's on the bar.

He sees that I might lift more than him. He's pissed. He's like, I want that for me. And what is he going to do? He's not going to be pissed. He's not going to say anything negative, negative to me. He's going to train harder. He's going to figure out a way around it or past it, or he's going to make up for it when

we deadlift because he's a real savage on the deadlift. And so I think it just kind of reminds me of a lot of the people I've lifted with over the years. Whether they were on stuff or not on stuff, they were just like, OK, well, I'm just not quite there yet. Or there's some many have been well beyond anything I've ever even done. Yeah. And when that was the case, I was always like, fuck, yeah, this is great. Probably jujitsu is probably the same. Somebody comes in and they're like super strong and they're really good. You're like, okay, today's going to be, today's going to be tough, but this is going to be

an amazing opportunity to learn. I remember when Eric Spoto came through the doors and he, he, uh, benched 675 for a triple and we were going back and forth on the bench and he did two plates and I did two plates and three plates. As soon as he moved three plates and the weights didn't make any noise or anything, I was just like, oh, okay. The weights didn't make any noise.

Think about that for a second. Yeah, there's no clanking. And these were metal plates. These weren't bumper plates or whatever. It was just so crisp and smooth it looked like a machine was moving the weight and i was like oh my god and i was like i was like what do you i was like all right what's you know what's the deal you know because he came in like with he didn't say anything he just came in and he just he just trained with us and uh i was like what do you bench like 600 he goes oh easy no i was like okay i was like well if he does 600 easy

maybe he's like near like world record strength we go back and forth a little bit more 405 i think i did 500 for a triple and he goes to like five he goes to to like five 85 or whatever. And I'm like, I'm not able to do that, but I continue to work up and wait. And I just use like boards and I was just doing whatever I could to try to, uh, just to still be involved with him, you know? Yeah. We get done and he goes, no, one's ever done that with me before. And I said, what's that? It's like, no one's ever like stayed on the bench with me. He's like, usually I start lifting more and they take off. I'm like, no, man. I'm like, this is like, I'm like, this is one of the greatest days of my life.

Like, I love this. You're just shoveling dirt right on top of my head and I'm enjoying myself. You're, you're a lot better at this than me. I don't know why. You don't know why your arms are so fucking big. I don't know why your, uh, you know, forearms are bigger than my biceps, but that's just what you're blessed with, I guess, you know? And, uh, sometimes that's just the way shit goes.

It's sometimes just that way. I don't have any idea why he was that strong. I mean, he took stuff, but so did I, right? Yeah. It's, it's, it's really crazy. I think, um, one of the things that people that listening to this, the way we should shift our mindset is don't. Those videos are in and of themselves pathetic. And I understand because the videos are quite pathetic.

And let me tell you why. because the netty or not videos they're quite pathetic and let me tell you why um the individuals that do that stuff are saying that their whole message is i'm trying to save you from lies i'm trying to help you be more realistic with yourself um i'm trying to help to show you what's possible and i agree with all those. There's no reason to believe in IFBB, like Kai Greene or, or, or Phil Heath, like don't expect to try and even get close to that with or without drugs because their genetics are just like out of this world. But when you see a lot of these, them making videos of people that are sizable and kind of pretty bigger than average, right? Um, if you feed into that,

you're just honestly feeding into a very type of defeatist ideal. Not to like, like you said, don't try to be honest with yourself. Like if you see somebody that's just crazy massive, right? You can't tell yourself, okay, like I'm going to try to be that big in three years or whatever, or five years. Maybe you won't be that big. But when you start feeding to this idea of, oh yeah, so there's all these reasons why this person's on drugs, even though we don't know, there's all these reasons why this person's on drugs, even though we don't know.

The whole thing that you're going to have in the back of your head when you're training, when you're trying to get bigger, when you're trying to get stronger is shoot. The only reason why I'm not able to do this, I'm not able to bench this much. I'm not able to deadlifter or do this type of stuff in my performance is because I'm not taking drugs. And sooner or later, you're just going to do it. You're never going to give yourself the time you need to put in the work and get bigger. You're feeding into a pathetic mindset. And it's, it's, I'm not calling you pathetic. I'm literally saying, though, if you if you personally feed into that, you're shooting yourself in the foot. You're holding yourself back from the progress that you could make.

Rather than if you just put the blinders on, take good information, change your habits, get your diet in check, work out consistently and be patient with yourself. Because there's so many other things that people are patient with in their lives. But for some reason, when it comes to their body, when it comes to building strength, when it comes to building muscle, they want that shit now. It's pathetic. What about if on those like Natty or not videos, they're they're pointing out somebody that's in their opinion on something. Yeah. But that one person that they called out is like selling a protein and saying like, Oh, this is the reason why. See,

I think that, that, that they're there. Like that's where I can understand this stuff. So that was just playing devil's advocate. No, but that's where I mean, I agree.

I can't pronounce that word right now, but yeah, that's why. Yeah. You see, that's the thing. I guess I wouldn't, I don't focus on other people.

So I wouldn't like, I wouldn't take that approach. I get that. If someone's out here saying this protein is why I got bigger. That's just not true. No supplement is what got you bigger. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So the mindset shift you're talking about with believing or not that they can get that big with or without steroids is the same thing that you want them to approach like this supplement that they're talking about. Yeah. Like we just had this conversation about supplements yesterday on the podcast. Supplements are not going to make or break you in terms of getting bigger or stronger or whatever they're going to add to it but they're not going to allow you to get from 200 to 220 pounds like it's not that's just time and training you can do that without the supplement exactly

so i can understand it but i just think honestly the the the the, the approach I get, it gets clicks, it gets views, it's entertaining, but I just, whenever I look at it, I'm just like, and it's just kind of, again,

it's just kind of pathetic. Like I can't look at any other way. That's why I never even checked any of them out. I'm like, I just don't normally care about, you know, why they think somebody's, you know, on them or not. Something I was going to mention earlier that I just, whatever reason care about, you know, why they think somebody's, you know, on them or not.

Something I was going to mention earlier that I just, for whatever reason, didn't get to was this barometer that I have. If somebody is 220 and they are under 10%, that is very difficult to obtain. It doesn't mean that they're on stuff, though. It just means that that's very difficult to obtain. It doesn't mean that they're on stuff though. It just means that that's very difficult to get to. So I always felt like that's a, that's a, that's a good gauge. Now,

again, you can't apply it to everybody. We've talked earlier a little bit about basketball players. First of all, they're really super tall. So that starts to shoot my, uh, it starts to shoot my theory,

like, you know, right, right in the foot. Right. Yeah. Um, but there's plenty of people that are under 10%, uh, that's hard to shoot my theory, like, you know, right, right in the foot. Right. Yeah. Um, but there's plenty of people that are under 10%,

uh, that are two 20, but it's, you're just going to be few and far between the ones that are going to be natural. I think, yeah, and it's just,

um, there's people that are always going to be kind of on that, uh, that outer edge of what's possible. You know, I think of the movie, uh, like unbreakable or,

or glass or, you know, those, those kinds of movies where it's's possible you know i think of the movie uh like unbreakable or or glass or you know those those kind of movies where it's got you know this one guy is always sick and he's always breaking his bones and everything and you got this other guy who has never been sick in his life right and that i know that that's a like kind of superhero movie but that's the world is like that too people are people are like that. People sometimes, uh, they grow up and they're allergic to milk and they're allergic to gluten and they're allergic to like every single thing except for like rice,

you know? And then you got this other person over here that can eat anything and they're totally fine. Yeah. Or what about people that are like 105 and they're like, yeah, I smoked, you know,

since, since I was 21 or whatever, you're like, how the fuck is that possible? Yeah. It's just, that's just the way, that's just kind of the way it is sometimes. And I think, you know, just, just knowing that no one can tell you how much you can like learn or know or lift or grow.

No one has that ability to, to put a cap on you like that. There's obviously going to be like a limitation. I mentioned the other day, like you can't all of a sudden wish you were 6'4". You know, if you're 5'10", you're just stuck. That's just where you're at. But within reason, you can manipulate and augment just about anything. You can be stronger than you are today. You can be leaner than you are today. You can be bigger than you are today. How much? Nobody knows. I decided at 25 years old to start to use PEDs. But I had, when I was a kid, I had a lot of influence. Both my brothers took them. My uncle took them. Most of the people in the gyms that I was going to I believe they took them I didn't know for sure all the time but it was

it seemed like it was pretty obvious there was no reason to do a natty or not video on those guys environment you know growing up in those gyms and kind of seeing that and even kind of hearing people talk about it here and there like very openly and they're getting ready people talk about it here and there like very openly and uh they're getting ready for a contest or something and someone you know misses a lift or

whatever and somebody else comes over and it's like hey you know uh you want to try this with your training and they'll mention a bunch of training stuff and the other guy will be like hey well you know what about throwing in you know of weeks to the meet? What about throwing in a little Diana ball? Like it was just conversational. It wasn't like, hey, bro, I got this shit. It's illegal. You know, it was nothing like that. It was like, hey, like this is what you love to do.

This is an opportunity for you to come through on what it is that you want to do. This assists you a little further. I don't think there's anything more powerful in the world than your belief in yourself and within again within reason you got to be reasonable within reason i think you should do most of the things that are going to align with that that you can like how if you can if you can take something and it can help you with your belief system a little bit, because it makes you feel better, puts you in a better mood, helps you be a little bit bigger. I decided it at 25 that I wanted to do that. And at 25, I was probably 215, 220.

How long have you been lifting up until that point, too, by the way? Yeah, forever. Yeah, since I was like 12. 13 years. Yeah, since I was 12 years old, I was already lifting. I was already pretty strong. I wasn't like crazy strong, but I was strong. Well, I was actually pretty strong.

I did a 500-pound floor press at Westside Barbell before I ever touched anything. Weighing about, again, weighing about 215, 220, somewhere in that range. My issue for me and one of the deciding factors was, A, I got into pro wrestling and B, I had a hard time because I just didn't, and this is lack of knowledge. I just didn't know. I didn't know how to do it. And so I just kind of was at the end of the line for me because I didn't know what else to do next, because every time I would try to get a little bigger, I would get fatter. And that had to do with me, like just not having good discipline with the food. I didn't really, I, at that time, I just didn't know, I didn't know anything about like the

type of food that I should have ate to be, I didn't understand that the type of food I ate to be lean is the exact same food I should have ate to be, I didn't understand that the type of food I ate to be lean is the exact same food I should have ate to be big. Yeah. I never, I never knew that I didn't, there wasn't like YouTube and as much stuff out there. So I made that decision.

Someone like in SEMA, he kept navigating and kept finding and kept moving and you kept making progress. And you're like, at some point you're like, I don't really care to do it i don't need it and maybe you grew up in an environment that didn't have it around yeah it was it was my mom and like that like in terms of parenting that that's it she would take

me on my soccer games and she was always watching what i was doing and i was just i was too focused on other things in terms of the gym and lifting or the gym and soccer to even think about that type of stuff. Um, so for me, when I started like understanding that at that point, I was already too deep. Like I was already happy with the way I looked, so I didn't find a need. I didn't like, I didn't, but that's, I think that's where I guess my, that's where my issue lies with a lot of this stuff is because I look at the guys, the young guys that are watching these types of videos right now. And I think of my mindset when I was a kid, I was lucky that that type of stuff wasn't there because I think if I was 16 or 17 years old getting into my lifting journey and these guys, like they're saying, I'm doing this so that you know, what's achievable. I'm trying to, you know, save you from the lies. But if I was hearing that stuff, that, that would rush me into that path. And I, and I see, I see a lot of people rushing into that path because of the belief systems that these

individuals are sharing with them. And I think that's like, you say you have good intentions, but at at the end of the day you're the one who's fucking up a lot of people in the long run not the individuals who are sharing information that you think are taking drugs i also think it's important to point out the steroids are they're still illegal unless you're an organ and they can be extremely dangerous and when i say dangerous some people you will be like, well, no one died from them. Well, that, you know, thank God no one dies. No one dies directly from them necessarily. But there are people that have taken lots of them, lots and lots of them for many, many years and have negatively impacted their heart. There's a lot to look at. And that's for maybe a different show or maybe tune into somebody else's channel that talks more about that.

But steroids are they're no joke. They're they're a drug. They're an illegal drug. It's if you are ever considering doing them, you should do so with a ton of caution and you should communicate with multiple people about what that process is going to look like. What's the exit strategy? You're going to get big and strong. And then what are you going to do? Cause I've been on them since I was 25.

So do you want to like, you know, you want to make that commitment. And I was very fortunate that I was able to come off of them and have Quinn. But if I didn't like that would have been, man, that would have been heartbreaking to not be able to have a second child and not be able to,

I can't imagine my life without her. That would suck. And that happens to people. Sometimes, sometimes their fertility is messed up. There's all kinds of this shit that you can get yourself into with steroids, especially the ones that are, you can take some like testosterone and that can have a big impact.

And testosterone is safer than some of the other ones. But that's not usually all that people take. People usually take a bunch of different stuff. They don't really know much about any of them. And they just kind of haphazardly go through it. And they run out, you know, four weeks into it when they're supposed to do it for 12. They don't have the money. It's like it just gets to be a big it's a big mess.

And it's a huge, huge deal. I also see a lot of women getting pushed into doing it. And I think that that is not that women shouldn't take them or I'm against women taking them or anything like that, but it's just, I think they should think about it more because of what it does. I mean, it, there's a lot of male characteristics that kind of come along with it as something that should be just taken very, very seriously. And in your opinion, like just because there are younger guys that are actually listening to this.

And if you are considering that, that's not a problem. But don't isn't there shouldn't an individual wait until I guess their hormones get to a normal level there. They're not still developing. They're not still changing to add in these things. I can't see a reason to take them when you're a teenager or 2021. Like you're still growing at that point. Like you need to give yourself more time, right?

I would say 25 when you started, I would say even try to like wait till like 30, you know, but I was already lifting for a long time. And I just, again, I thought I, I thought I was like kind of at the end of the line in terms of what I was

able to do, but I certainly wasn't, you know, I realized that now, but my mindset is so different now too. I thought I was like kind of at the end of the line in terms of what I was able to do, but I certainly wasn't, you know, I realize that now, but my mindset is so different now too. So yeah, you should definitely just think, just think to yourself if you're listening right now and you're, I don't know, you're, you're 20 years old and you're, you're thinking about it. Can you be bigger and can you be leaner? Like, are you working that hard for it without them?

And you can probably honestly answer the question and say, oh, yeah, yeah, I still got room. You know, I still got room. I just need to figure this out. I need to be diligent with my sleep and with my training. And you might have to go really, really far on everything. You might have to have a training journal. You might have to write down what you eat every single day. I mean, you might have to be crazy meticulous, but can you do it?

The answer is probably yes. Yeah. Let me ask you this. Cause like we were talking about this before the show too, you know, you did your bodybuilding show. You mentioned that you were much, you know, you did your bodybuilding show. You mentioned that you were, um, much, you were, you were, uh, lighter at that time, but you also didn't feel as good when you were lean. I want to get back to the topic of staying lean, right? You didn't feel that good at that point when you were lean, but now look at your

pictures, you're pretty damn lean and you, you feel pretty great. This is something that you could, um, do like, do you feel that the habits that you have right now are consistent and like you could do this consistently without breaking yourself or without andy getting mad at your mood or whatever right on a scale of one to ten like the difficulty level of this um is like bright smack dab in the middle probably it's like five or six not that hard um there's a pretty good amount of walking, which is like this, but I,

I like walking and, uh, I have increased that a little bit over the last, like maybe three months. Um, I've done a handful of cardio sessions, so I can't really give any credit to cardio cause I just didn't do that many, but I did do some,

I did about maybe like 10 sessions in the last month. Um, so there's, there was something there, but, uh, it's some, I did about maybe like 10 sessions in the last month. Um, so there's, there was something there, but, uh, it's just, I, I, I lift every day and I'm pretty rigorous with my nutrition, but I'm not crazy about it. I'm not completely nutty about it. Um, if somebody else tried to do what I was doing, they would say, Hey, you're nuts. Like what you're doing is nuts because they're just not used to it. But I, I utilize, um, like a protein sparing fast every day, which is simply just, I only rely on protein through most of the morning. Um, and sometimes I finished my day the exact same way, but the protein like modified fast is what people will kind of refer to it as. There's really not other nutrients in there.

There's very little fat and very little carbohydrate. And then, you know, midday every day I have like meal number one, which is usually an icon meal. So there's no meal prep involved in that. Meal number two is usually another icon meal. And meal number three is whatever Andy and I have for dinner.

And I just kind of eat it. It almost, there's not really, there's every once in a while, uh, we'll make something that's really not like on my menu, but I'll just cook up like a steak and then still eat whatever else, whatever else we had, you know?

And so this is, yeah, I can, I could do this forever. I feel amazing. I feel great. I, I,

um, I feel pretty strong. You know, you always kind. I, I, um, I feel pretty strong. You know, you always kind of wish you're stronger, but I feel pretty strong. Um, I'm able to deadlift squat and bench and do a lot of the things that I love to do.

Yeah. I have a little bit of pain in, in, uh, both of my elbows, a small amount of pain in my knee, but those come and go always. They're kind of always there.

I had some pain in all those spots when I was doing my bodybuilding show. And this is just way simpler than what I was doing for the bodybuilding show. And it just, it doesn't. And this is all, this is all a big part of this is because of protein leveraging. You're eating a high amount of protein, right? It all started with me. If you guys remember a while back, I was like, I'm going to eat 400 grams of protein for a while, right? And I did that for about a month.

And it had a great impact. It actually helped me pack on some weight. And now I'm probably around 300 or something like that. Because 400 is fucking hard to do every single day. hard to do every single day, but I probably have, you know, a hundred grams of protein every day, or maybe even actually maybe even more like 150 from shakes, protein shakes. And then the other 150 just comes from food, something like that, you know, somewhere in there. But the protein leveraging made a big difference because it just prevents me from eating other

stuff. I still eat carbs. because it just prevents me from eating other stuff. I still eat carbs. I eat potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice. And then every once in a while, like even during this whole, even while I was prepping to do these photos this morning with Andrew. Thank you, Andrew.

Looking crazy in those photos, too. Even when I was prepping for that, I'm still eating some legendary Pop-Tarts here and there. I'm still eating some. I'm not eating a ton of them, but I'm, you know, I'm eating them. And normally if I was like, you know, in bodybuilder mode, I'd be like, I can't have that. I can't have that. I can't have that. And there really hasn't been a lot of that.

What do you think would be the, it sounds like it's all fairly easy if it's at about a five. But out of everything that you are doing, what do you think is the most, like the biggest challenge for you? Um, it just doesn't feel, it doesn't feel like it doesn't feel challenging. Each, each day when I lift,

I try to just do one body part. So to talk myself into lifting isn't hard. Um, I think if I was trying to like train chest and back at the same time and the workout, you know, like my workouts are long because once I get in there, I love it. And that's just the way it goes, but they're not intentionally long. Like I, in my head, I'm like, Hey, 15 minutes would be great. And I did my first 15 minute workout and probably three years yesterday, but normally it doesn't go down that way. Normally I go in there and I'm in there for like two hours. I just, I just have fun with it. I love it.

Um, I'm trying to think if there's been anything that's really been tough. I mean, I guess like getting up in the morning, like I'm early riser anyway, but I'm all snuggled in my bed and Andy, Andy's there. And like, that feels comfortable. And I wake up a little bit before her and I take off and I, and I walk, you know, I walk for like an hour a lot of times. And so that kind of sucks an hour. Yeah. Usually I usually I walk about an hour. And again, that, that doesn't, it's not really an intended intentional hour walk i go and meet my dad and we walk and we probably walk for 15 20 minutes and then he usually goes on his way and i'm like i'm just gonna i'm gonna keep going i probably walk about five miles almost every day damn a little more yeah just because like i was talking to everybody like in comparison from when you did

your show to this morning you know you're not as uh like it's dry yeah there you thank you you're not as dry but when you did like your lat spread and when you just see like your abs and everything like you're so much thicker but not like obviously there's like not a lot of fat there right it looks man i would say like it might even look a little bit better just because you look bigger. Yeah. You know, stage sometimes can look weird. Exactly. That's what I was going to say.

So like stage ready bodybuilding is different than like looking good on the beach, right? Like it's, it's a different look. And right now the look that you have is, it's freaking great. And to hear that it's, you know, like a, like you're doing it, like just cruising almost. It also is cruising. It's also, it's also a blast and cruise. It's also, it's also a five though too, because of the mindset, you know, like it, you know. Totally.

Yeah. I built into it. So again, somebody else tries it to like, I don't know what he's talking about. Yeah. And like, as I ask you, what's the most challenging, I understand that you don't see any of it as being a challenge. I reject this challenge. Balboa is no challenge. That's from Mr. T. Rocky three. I thought that you don't see any of it as being a challenge. I reject this challenge. Balboa is no challenge.

That's for Mr. T. Rocky three. I thought that was CT again. It was so good in that video. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. At Rocky three,

they ask a club or Lang, Mr. T. They ask him, they say, are you prepared for a Rocky Balboa's challenge? And he goes, I reject this challenge. Balboa is no challenge? And he goes, I reject his challenge. Balboa is no challenge.

And he just like takes off. Fucking savage. How's Mr. T doing anyway? I haven't heard much about him. I have no idea. Still alive? I'm on a podcast. I can Google it.

We should get Mr. T. Mr. T. That would be amazing. It would be amazing. Back to this guy. So you were kind of talking about like being careful of like social media and stuff. So let me do this, do this.

So like, if I seen the picture of this, uh, what's his name? Sam. So, so right here, in my opinion,

yeah, he, he looks definitely natty. He's, he looks massive. Okay. That was great. When you say he looks natty,

you see like, why do you think he looks natty? Cause most people would say he doesn't. I i'll show you why because when i see this picture let me find it oh come on find it oh here we go here i'd be like i don't know because all these veins and how straighted everything else is yeah that he didn't have this in the other picture but he's also doing a totally different pose. Right, right. But what I'm saying is be careful of the social media aspect of it all. Okay. You know, like people are going to see this and think it looks like this all the time.

Yeah, it's one picture from one angle. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was just kind of more like adding to what you were saying earlier about like, you know, like don't fall into the social media traps. Yeah, it's, you could do certain poses that just make you look crazy but if i just stand right here in the podcast just put my hand down i look i look pretty natty i don't know vein anyway but no you're totally right and like i mean one thing to mention is that like you know a lot of people just take a lot of pictures and recycle them sometimes some

of those people don't look like that but back to what we were saying about being lean year round, it is possible. Mark's doing it right now. I think one of the big, do you think that one of the big things that's allowing you to also do this is, um, you're not, you're doing a protein sparing fast, but I, I in line with you in the fact that when I started utilizing some fasting, which helped me contain my appetite a little bit better, which helped me not get as hungry as often when I eat. I don't need to eat exorbitant amounts of food. I don't now have the urge or the cravings that I used to have.

Yeah, protein was just the protein stuff was huge because it just pushes down the hunger and the cravings. But fasting does the same thing. Yeah. Which sounds crazy. But if you work on fasting, then it can be a great tool. I urge everyone to try and mess around with some fasting here and there.

And I don't know, just maybe, I don't know, implement it twice a week or something for 12, 14 hours. Just, just give it a shot. Your body should know what it feels like to be hungry.

your body should know what it feels like to be hungry. There's certain decisions that I try to make each day that are different than what I used to do. So a lot of times, and I'll still do this from time to time, but I do a lot less. Sometimes I'm like, ah, like if I eat,

it's going to take me 15, 20 minutes to eat. Then it's going to take me like 10, 15 to even feel like I want to work out. Cause I don't want to really necessarily work out right after I eat. So I used to not eat and I used to just train. Now I'm like, well, you really actually, you really need that food. You kind of need those nutrients and I'm not a pussy about it. I'm not like, I didn't eat any carbs and I'm, I'm not going to like be able to lift.

I don't think that way at all. Um, but I recognize I need those nutrients. So I feel better later on in the day. And so I feel better a day or two later or three days later. I think the human body works a lot differently than what we understand or what you hear preached. I think it,

I think you got like a two or three day, uh, delay on what's going on. Because you think about how long it takes for the food to like actually hit you and to assimilate and for the food to actually become like one with you, for it to become like part of your body, basically. I'm sure it fucking takes a while. And so if it's Monday and you start to, you know, you train like crazy, you do legs, you have a crazy leg day, you have a long day at work.

Shit's going down with like some family shit too, right? You get through Monday and you're like, well, it was a pretty rough day, but it wasn't too bad. And then you do, you get through the Monday, you know and tuesday rolls around and you find yourself making a little bit worse decisions with your food you couldn't sleep that good on monday because everything else was kind of jacked up well now it's wednesday and now you're fucked yeah and now you're probably going to cheat on your diet because it's going to be you're just kind of behind on a bunch of stuff you're you're stressed you just want to just you want something good. So you're like, I'm just going to eat some bullshit food. Yeah.

And that will help. And it does. And when you have it, it feels great. It tastes great. Hits all your receptors, your dopamine receptors. Things are pinging in your head. You're like, that was fucking awesome. Yeah.

And then you're kind of in that vicious cycle now because now you're disappointed in yourself. You're like, I shouldn't have fucking done that. And if you just would have eaten when you were supposed to eat and supply yourself with the nutrients that you should have, you could probably avoid a lot of that because you probably won't be as impacted from whatever stresses are outside. In addition to that, if you work on some fasting, you might find it beneficial in the same way because you're teaching your body to be more comfortable with being hungry so that on Wednesday when those situations come up and you're hangry

and you're kind of, you're like, I'm not really that hungry. She ain't really that bad. I got a fucking refrigerator full of food. I'm, I'm straight. I'm okay. I'm going to make it through it. Yeah. Like a few years ago. Exactly. I wouldn't have felt that I could actually get a good workout without having a meal two hours before, because for 20, what, 24 years before that, it was religious that I would eat two hours before my workout. And if I didn't, I would be a bitch about it. I would get in the gym and I'd just be like, oh, I feel so weak. It's because I didn't have my carbs two hours ago. Like I didn't have my pre-workout, didn't have my pre-workout, didn't have my because i didn't have my carbs two hours ago like i didn't have my pre workout didn't have my pre-workout didn't have my carbs didn't have my meal but like now i'm gonna eat tonight probably gonna have a meal later and then tonight i'm gonna go through i'm gonna do all my workouts tomorrow i'm gonna feel great because i realize that it's not actually i don't feel it's that important you know what i mean there's and if we were to draw some blood, your blood glucose levels wouldn't be. Sounds of Tren.

Tren would go spouting everywhere. Your blood glucose levels wouldn't be zero. You know what I mean? You have carbs in your system literally running through your veins pretty much at all times, regardless of what diet you're on, even people that are on a low carbohydrate diet, their body will eventually start to make more carbohydrates to keep your glucose. Your body will make it for you. They'll start to make glucose and you'll, you'll, uh, you'll always have a steady stream

of glucose running through your body unless you're dead. Yeah. You know? you'll always have a steady stream of glucose running through your body unless you're dead. Yeah. You know, so, you know, I, I, I think that a lot of times that stuff's mental, you know, that having that pre-workout or having that thing, you know, right before your training session, what I have found for me to be true is once I warm up, I kind of even forget like what I did or didn't do before, you know, I've kind of forget about whether I had that meal or not. And there's going to be days too, where you just need to audible with your workout.

Like maybe you didn't eat the way that you should have. Maybe you missed the meal the night before. Maybe you just really fucking hungry. Maybe you're really tired. I don't know, but that's where you have to make a decision. This is why I don't love to always follow like a, I personally don't follow any programming,

but I don't recommend even for people to really i personally don't follow any programming but i don't recommend even for people to really stick to their guns on their programming i think that sometimes you got to say ah and you got to be you know experienced enough to be able to make that call but just do something different yeah just get a stimulus with the weights and have fun yeah and i've heard you in the past i don't even remember if it was a podcast you were on or if it was this one about um like tracking the weights like you're tracking your workout and how people were tracking the wrong thing and it should be more of how you felt that day as opposed to what you lifted can you explain more about that yeah because well so like for example um can you do like a lat pull down and a seated row um and curls and some of these accessory

assistance exercises really any of the exercises um can you use the same weight all the time and still get better i think people would say no but i disagree i think that you can i think the way that you do the exercises matters a lot. I think the rest interval matters a lot. And so I think that, you know, keeping track of the weight, it can be, it can be important. But you're, you're really looking at the overall amount of work that you did and the work and it in, in terms of time as well, the density of the workout, those things are, are important. You don't want to go racing around through your workout, but we see Josh Bryant do this a lot with a lot of the workouts that Sully does,

where he's like got a minute and 15 seconds before his next set, and he's really diligent with it, and it looks like he's doing the most brutal stuff. I mean, if you're going to keep track of stuff, I think you're better off trying to keep track of uh number one some of the things where you're not that you're not good at you're not good at pull-ups and that's a great thing to track and to start to really start to pay attention to um and then number two would be like yeah just paying attention to your conditioning like how's your how's your conditioning how do

you feel you know when you did five sets of 10 of that exercise, were you able to complete all 10 reps? I think those are the areas that I would keep track of. I don't think it's unnecessary maybe to write down everything, but, uh, if you want to, I guess, uh, have at it from, from a strength perspective, it can be even more important to, uh, to be able to have some wiggle room with what you do with your weights and, and how you, uh, to be able to have some wiggle room with what you do with your weights and, and how you, uh, and what you write down and things like that. Cause I, you know, I did a conjugate system style stuff and, and for that, it's like, I didn't really have to write down any of it, but it was weird because I would go and I would, I remember when I did write it down, there was a period of time where I did write

it down where I, I felt like this was necessary for me to get stronger. Or I didn't write it down. Maybe I posted it somewhere. And I remember being like, fuck, yeah, that was a PR. That was sick. I felt amazing. I check on my phone and I look it up and it wasn't 40 pounds shy of like a PR, right? Or whatever it was, you know?

I'm like, God damn. But like it's, it's your, the Russians who had created this conjugate system. Um, they were, they just said, Hey,

it's a daily max. It's whatever you max, whatever you get to on that day, that's important. Forget about what you did two weeks ago or three weeks ago. Cause it's not that time. It's a different time amongst regular people that aren't professional lifters.

It's not your job to lift weights. And so therefore the weight is going to feel way different on certain days for many, many different reasons because you don't have time to just only lift. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's what you mentioned there.

You know, I agree with, okay, this is, this is where I agree. And then this is where I may be, maybe think a little bit differently. I agree with the fact that lifters need to allow themselves some wiggle room,

like especially what, what it's easy. And I, I used to get caught into, if I had this programmed, I have to do everything that's easy. And I, I used to get caught into, if I had this programmed, I have to do everything that's programmed, no matter how I'm feeling, I have to do everything that's programmed on this day. And some days it probably wasn't the best idea because maybe I didn't get enough quality sleep the night before. Maybe I stressed myself out the

whole day with some certain things I was doing. I just wasn't feeling that great that day. And, but because it was on the program, I did it and I felt like shit. Right. Right. Um, so lifters need to allow themselves that wiggle room. But I think that also it takes you, like you said, it takes experience to get there. It takes experience to say, okay, uh, I'm supposed to squat four Oh five, but today my warmup of three 50 felt like four or five. So maybe I shouldn't try to put four or five on that bar that that takes experience. Um, which is why I think that is beneficial to write some of these things down, but have that, have a method of gauging how you're going to feel that day. You do that when you, when you're lifting, like I've seen you do certain sets to feel how you feel. So you could figure out, am I going to bench this much

today? Am I going to squat this much today? You do that because then if you're like, if your warms are feeling great, you know, you can push it. Sometimes I might do two or three sets of the same weight, which I don't usually see that many people do, but like just with a plate or two plates, sometimes it's good to do it for three and be like, wow, okay, that really felt like shit. Let me just double check and make sure it really felt like shit. Okay. It really felt like shit. Okay.

Today is going to be a different kind of day. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, because again, if, if, uh, if a new lifter just goes based off what the program saying and they just try to, you know, push through all the, the, the discomfort and pain they're feeling that day, they're going to hurt themselves. It's tough because these things, they, they do need to be forced in a way, you know, but if you're going for aesthetics and going for kind of just a look, you know, I think you can forever

pull, you know, do a lat pull down with pretty much the same weight. And maybe, I don't know, maybe the switching up that you do maybe is some different handles and some different reps and things like that. But when it comes to, when it comes to the powerlifting side of things, there are things that unfortunately you just, you have, you kind of have to force them.

You have to go to that. You have to go to that, uh, kind of outer edge. But again, if we're, we've talked so many times about strength, the percentage that you actually need to get stronger is lower than 100%.

So that's important to always keep in mind. And what I see, and the reason why sometimes I'm against it, and the reason why maybe the message gets confused is I often see lifters just using too much weight. And I think that whatever the coach had intended for them, they had these well-meaning intentions of, of this athlete using 78% after they did, you know, some of their main sets or whatever.

And it's like, ah, like these just, they don't look that good. They're not controlled. Like you're shaking a lot. It just looks like you're going to get hurt. Yeah.

And I don't think, I don't think your coach, like, I don't think he meant that. And I don't think you're going to get hurt. Yeah. And I don't think, I don't think your coach, like, I don't think he meant that. And I don't think he wants you to get hurt. So just pull off like 5% weight or just 15 pounds or something. Pull, pull some weight off there.

If that feels better and starts to move good again, then you can make a decision on whether you want to go back, go back to it. But I've done stuff like that with a solely and with smoky and with a bunch of guys in the gym where i'm like let's just i'll always encourage everyone to like go up and wait and like see what you can do and all that shit but every once in a while i'm like hey like let's just take some of this weight off and let's see what happens when we do it the right way i remember when i was uh at the old gym when uh i, I was working on my deadlift and you had me change something,

but you're like, Hmm, let's take some 45s off the bar. I was like, yeah, let's take some 45s off the bar. Right. But that's what helped me to build the technique to be able to deadlift a heavier weight later. Like it's what you got to do. And it's no matter if you're getting, um, stronger, but if you're getting bigger too, like if there's a load you're working with on those lap pull downs that everything just looks messy and it's not good and you're not doing it with good form. Take some fucking weight off the stack. So right right now you could weigh you personally could probably weigh 15 or 20 pounds more and be a lot bigger and thicker. Right. more and be a lot bigger and thicker, right?

You potentially could deadlift maybe 50 more pounds than what you can deadlift now, or maybe even more. Yeah. If I was heavier. Yeah. And in just a few months, right? And everyone could always be leaner. So you could certainly be leaner and just look ridiculous. Yeah.

In three months or so. Yeah. Right. My point is, is that you're not all those things right now, even though you appear to be all those things to people, you're not, you're still not at your strongest.

You're still not at your leanest. You're still not at your absolute best, but you're close to all of them. That's the fucking key. And that's a lot of what we're talking about here today is this idea of trying to stay lean year round can be really difficult but if you can find the right groove then you have started sort of found the right path and that's what i felt so good about doing this photo shoot today is i really felt

great about it because it didn't it didn't feel like I had to do anything wild or crazy. Even though it, you know, it does take dedication. It does take time. I'm not going to lie. Like I spent a lot of hours in the gym. Like I spent a lot of time there, you know,

just what I love to do. So I'm not going to be like, Hey, I did in 30 minutes, whatever. But I found my groove and something I was thinking about the other day. And I'll use this shaker cup as an example that you used earlier.

It's not for the same thing. When you try to, when you try to screw something on, you know, a shaker cup lid or whatever, for those who are just listening, how do you like thread it? You know, how do you get a screw or a washer or bolt or whatever it is? How do you, how do you get a screw or a washer a bolt or whatever it is how do you how do you get that thing like threaded usually and a lot of times it starts out by like when it's crooked it's crooked right and and what do you usually do go the opposite you go the opposite way right and why do you go the opposite way it's so you can find your groove like you sometimes need to go away that you wouldn't even think of

in order to like get on track and then we do the same thing with what do the same thing with map quest right you got your you're trying to use the map and you're like i don't know fucking ways telling me to go out of this parking lot yeah i'm gonna go left you're like ah fuck i went wrong way like you learn right away and that, goes back to what we, for a map quest, that goes or ways or whatever it is. That goes back to, uh, you know, that failing fast idea, right? Yeah. You kind of need to fail quickly to, to learn. And there's people that want to be, uh, you know, bigger and more jacked in your training. You're going to have to go the wrong way for a minute with your nutrition.

You'd have to go the wrong way for a minute just to kind of recalibrate yourself so you can head in the right direction. Yeah. I love that analogy, but also every time I will turn the wrong way, like son of a, and then it'll, it'll tell you to go like 18 miles this way because it doesn't want you to

make an illegal U-turn. Right. Right. Yeah. It reroutes you. Just ask me if nobody's looking. Yeah. But no, that's cool.

I should tell you there's no cops around. That's ways. That was a Confucius-level analogy. It was. Like, I... Yoda style. Yeah, that was great. That makes a lot of sense.

I was thinking about it the other day. It was like a mind-bullet moment. I didn't have any mind-bullet, but it was a mind bullet moment where i'm like screwing this lid on and i'm like man this is so stupid i have to go the opposite way just to thread this the right just to get it in the right groove and then yeah i was like ah i was like that's actually great it's actually a good analogy for stuff yeah you know i know how long we have but i want to i want people to kind of really get what you're saying here or um um, kind of understand your, your, your process to getting where you are now, because you used to, you got up to like three something or three 20,

three 30, three 30, right? Let's say like Mark at two 70 Mark at two 80. How would you feel? What would your struggles be in terms of doing what you're doing now? Because you didn't make all those adjustments at once. You were doing certain things slowly failing and recalibrating, but how would you have responded to this protein leveraging to the frequency of your eating to all of this? How would you have been able to handle that? Or would you have been able, would you have been able to at that point?

First of all, I probably wouldn't have believed it. You know, if you were like, Hey, this, this, this is the way it works. if you just stuff yourself with protein you won't be as hungry for other

stuff and you can still have some room to eat some other crap here and there not that i eat crap but like just still have a little freedom with the diet right uh i probably wouldn't have really believed it but um it would have been really difficult because i at that time i'd'd still wake up in the middle of night and want to eat something. And you would eat something. And I would. Yeah. And so I got better at it. And that's how I was able to lose weight. But I still wasn't always able to rein it in.

And then like with just my overall perspective on food and dieting just wasn't great. Like I would be like, oh, oh i'm just gonna have uh you know i was good for four days so i'm gonna have a cheat meal you know and it just was never a cheat meal it's never like it's never responsible you know it's always out of control every single time it's like out of control i'd be like i'd have some pizza and i was like i'll just end with some pizza then on the way home i'd stop at the grocery store and I'd get a bunch of candy and shit. And it was just, I mean, it was like embarrassing to buy that much candy at the grocery store. And they're like, what the fuck's this jacked fat guy doing with all this candy?

So it would have been difficult to implement that. The walking was reasonable because I started walking a pretty long time ago. So that's something that's real easy to recommend to anybody. But again, I think with people that are big and people that are really having a tough time with it and tough go of it because they just diets have never been their friend. Stuff yourself with food and not even necessarily just protein, but stuff yourself with nutritious whole foods. Start there. If you're not making any progress,

see where you can cut back a little bit, try to do your best to stay away from combinations of food that will make it super easy to overeat. I think a lot of people should be able to maintain, uh, a lot of people should be able to maintain a, their weight loss and be a lean body year round. But at the same time,

I would say when we spoke about it off air for a minute is I don't even think it's that smart to try to be like, we mentioned earlier, like you're not at your absolute strongest. Why aren't you at your absolute strongest? Because it's going to pull away from your jiu-jitsu it's going to take too much time in there you could potentially get hurt that's not where your interest is at you're talking where your focus is at why aren't you completely you know shredded and three percent body fat instead of five or whatever the hell you are same thing it's going to pull away from

your jiu-jitsu. It doesn't make sense. So people, when they're, you know, they're trying to stay in good shape year round, it should only represent a certain, for the most part, unless they're getting on stage, it should only represent a certain level of, or a certain percentage of their best. It shouldn't necessarily be that they're at a hundred unless again, they're on stage. What's the, you know, is there a good reason for it? Maybe you do that once or twice a year, but to ask yourself to do that, Ed Cohn, I think competed, uh, like twice a year. And when, when I was coming up through powerlifting, as I got to know him, he's like, man, he's like, a lot of these guys, they compete way too much. It's great that they get their feet wet they get on the platform they get the experience he's like

but they're competing every other month he's like i used to compete twice a year yeah and he was able to his point was he was able to prep and that's what we talked about earlier when we were talking about bulking and cutting and bulking and cutting and going back between those two things and it doesn't even have to be that extreme it It's just like, maybe you have a time where your food is just different for a while so that you can enjoy food, so you can have some drinks, so you can be more social.

I think Christian Guzman does this. He's not really like a bulker. You know what I mean? He just makes sure that he doesn't gain a lot of weight. He'll go off the diet. He'll look a little smoother. He always looks great. He'll look a little smoother. He always looks great. He'll look a little smoother for a while and then he'll get shredded again. And so, you

know, you can make your own decision on how far you want to take that. But if you're trying to be lean for, you know, all the time, it might, might be to your detriment. It might not be the best move because you might be compromising your strength, compromising your muscle, and also compromising kind of down the road, your body working for you rather than you having to put so much work in to get your body to head in the right direction. And that's, you know, one of those big things. It's like it takes you a long time to get to this place where you're at now, to build all the habits that you have now like you mentioned christian there was in the past before he was where he is right now like

when he would try to get bigger he it's not like he was fat but he'd put on more body fat than he would want to put on at this point in time like even the pictures that you've seen where he has like a little he's a little smooth he put on a little bit more fat than that when he was earlier when he didn't lift for as long because he needed to develop now i'm not saying that you need to get to 20 body fat or anything but in your earlier stages of your of your lifting you you might get to maybe your upper level is 17 you know right but when you do that and you are able to put on a good amount of size maybe you don't ever have to get that big again and there's also the things that happened when when you get

lean or when you get pretty damn lean and you gain weight again your body fat um you're the way your body fat distributes around your body changes substantially it becomes more even the next time you get bigger i see that all the time that happened with me um like you'll get bigger but now for some reason you see lines in your legs when you're bigger right that and and for some reason you're oh yeah we've talked about that before just over time yeah you're gonna yeah and over time too you're just gonna get if you keep training and you keep supplying yourself with the nutrients you're just gonna like maybe not necessarily be a lot like lighter or anything or be a ton leaner. You'll look leaner.

Like your triceps will look better. Your legs will look better. Like some things will just, they'll look a little bit better. I just want people to kind of ponder some of this, you know, before we end the show for today. But like,

there's a lot of, there's a lot of really, really talented lifters out there. Power lifters that get tested. You can't forget about the CrossFitters, right? You can't forget about how strong some of these men and women are and how they look, the physiques that they have. Don't sell yourself short and just be like, oh, man, he's on tons of shit.

Look at Ray Williams. I think Ray's best squat so far is 1,080. He squatted the same weight that I squatted, but... Um, look at it. Look at Ray Williams. You know, I think Ray's best squat so far is a thousand 80. He squatted the same weight that I squatted, but he squatted it deeper. He squatted it with no power lifting gear. What I was wearing was a squat suit underneath the squat suit is briefs. I got a belt on and knee wrap. So he wears, he wears a belt and he wears knee sleeve.

How much is our knee sleeves helping? Let's just say knee sleeves help by 30 pounds or whatever, right? They don't really do much. But I had knee wraps on and a suit that probably helped me by like 200 pounds. I don't have any problem being honest with that. Ray Williams is a better lifter than I could ever possibly imagine being. He's one of the all-time greats. One of the strongest power lifters ever walked the face of the earth i love big ray um and he's a guy that gets tested frequently and i know like people like oh well he's probably gonna okay that's fine but what

about the guy behind him and what about you know what what about the guy behind him that squatted eight or whatever what about um you know bryce lewis and what about just there's this bunch of savages out there. And there are Russ Swole we talk a lot about, right? Like what's the deal with these guys? It's just, it's just more proof. And it should be encouraging to everyone that is that everyone that's stuck. And they're like, I need to, I need to get on a bunch of shit because that's the, that's the road to success.

That's the only way I'm going to be able to make it. Mark Bell did it. Arnold did it. I'm going to do it. Or whatever the conversation is that you have with yourself. You don't necessarily have to. There are a lot of people who have achieved some amazing things. How is it that, I know Ray Williams is a lot bigger, but he's a huge individual yeah i know that big ray is is is bigger but how is it that

he's able to make he's able to lift that weight right like he's able to put that much weight on his fucking back and squat it is able to deadlift that much weight at the end it's it's a lot of work that he put in over a long period of time he was patient and he figured out a way to do it michael hearn is somebody that everyone's always got always questioning right like is he natty is he not um again let's look at let's just look at let's say that you wanted to be built like michael hearn and you're like i don't really care anymore about whether he does stuff or not because we don't have any way of knowing unless we were to flat out just ask him or search his house or something.

I don't know. But if you wanted to look like him, all you need to do is to apply a lot of the disciplines that he has every day. And you would be more likely to start looking like him eventually. Are you going to look exactly like him? Well, he's 6'2 or 6'3. He's like 260. He's a big, big person person arms are over 20 inches right oh yeah yeah yeah that makes sense yeah his arms are mad i mean he's a he's a massive massive guy

um but you you want to take those main core principles that people have and that's that's what you want to really look at i think that's where your focus should be and let's say that you do all those things and you're like fuck man i look nothing like him well then maybe that's, that's what you want to really look at. I think that's where your focus should be. And let's say that you do all those things and you're like, fuck man, I look nothing like them. Well, then maybe that's a time when you're an adult and when you can make that decision for yourself, maybe that's the time you start to think about utilizing some other methods. But again, no one can tell you how far you can push all this stuff. And I think that these natty or not videos, they, they,

they kind of put like a limit they put a little bit of a ceiling on a lot of that for a lot of people they absolutely do they absolutely do and notice andrew didn't say shit because he's on so much stuff over there well i'm just laughing at uh this new string of names for in sema which is leaner meaner and seamer leaner meaner and seamer i like it i love it who came up with that i gotta go back up and check because i don't want to mess up oh come on i went too far now but now the uh the live chat today has been on fire so shout out to everybody in the chat room today hello people yeah glad you guys are here i'm not gonna find it yeah oh it might have been our boy matthew balcom i love his name

yeah that's our boy everyone's cracking up at that name that's dope what leaner uh meaner i think we used to call in seamer i'll use the same yeah like alasker and seamer yeah what is that people kind of throw an r at the end actually a lot of times it's british people dangerous territory yeah jasmine will pretend to have an accent oh yeah i was going somewhere else oh oh oh sweet heart r don't give me my name with a hard R. In Seamer. Okay. What was that? Oh, God.

Hey, where can we find this guy that had this going on? Oh, I'm not going to put his name out there. I don't think he wants all his stuff out there like that. Let's just throw his IG handle out there. Is he the one that got compared to a Lysol can, or is that someone else? Lysol can. I'll have to tell you off air, but I think that could have been the same guy. Andrew, you can't stop thinking about it.

Maybe it could have been the same person. Maybe it could have been the same person. Yeah, I haven't stopped looking at that shaker cup this whole fucking episode. I was like, what is that? It's drooling a little bit. That and then just remembering about that guy, Horsecock. Oh, yeah. That would lift off.

Oh, God. Yeah. You could see his shit right through his... Cargo shorts. Cargo shorts. Yeah. That guy was a stud. He probably couldn't wear normal shorts.

No. He had to wear something to try to distract you from that hog. I remember asking Scott Mendelsohn. I was like... Because this guy was just like a big person anyway huge arms and stuff like that and i remember asking mendelsohn i'm like i go um i go that guy's super nice he always helps me and my brother i'm like but what's his deal and he's like his deal i was like well i was like does he have something like there's something wrong with him? He goes, some people might think he's got something wrong with him.

And I was like, yeah, man. I'm like, there's just like, I can't tell what's in his pants. It's like, it looks like a fucking football in there. Oh my God. He's like, Mark. He's like, he just has a huge cock. He's like, you need to get past it. I was like, I can't. I was like, it just, I was like, I didn't know if he had like he just has a huge cock he's like you need to get past it i was like i can't i

was like it just i was like it i didn't know if he had like a blown up ball or something or you know if his nuts were swollen or something i didn't know what was going on oh man god just chose to give some people some different types of gifts and for this guy he just chose to sprinkle a lot of cock yeah He sprinkled it. Took a handful and just dumped it in the bowl. Like when you're trying to pour out something and it's like ah shit it all came out. You just export too much.

That's a show guys. I like it. I think so. You gotta end with horse cock all the time. That's the best way to end these shows. It's embarrassing. this show is pretty embarrassing sometimes like when we have we have certain guests on that are like really

like they got great credentials and we end up starting to talk about assholes or dicks or it's like when they leave at the end of the episode we just well like if we see any relatives over the holidays like what's your podcast about oh dude talk to doctors and talk about people's gigantic penises i remember when i first started the show

my dad was like he's like you really he's like you cuss a lot he's like you cuss a lot and i was like i do i'm like oh i don't know i'll try to cut back and i would listen to it i'm like yeah man i do damn i do curse a lot you know i'm just doing it all the time and he was like you need to just he's like see if you just cut back on it at least you know so i i did try but i don't i don't know if i'm successful or not yeah i've sent my mom certain episodes and then like why are you talking that way she messaged me she's like and see i heard you say something i was like oh no i forgot so now i'm like i know which ones i can send her which one's like i can't it's awesome yeah heck yeah take us out of here andrew all righty thank you everybody for checking out today's episode uh especially everybody in the live chat you guys are freaking

awesome really appreciate you guys if you're not subscribed we're extremely close to 50 000 subscribers so please help us get there hit that subscribe button if you're not already and then while you're at it just hit that bell notification so you got that way you guys don't miss uh one of these live uh streams again please make sure you're following the podcast at mark bells power project on instagram at mb power project on twitter and again if you haven't subscribed already to the newsletter, please do so now. Links will be down in the YouTube and Facebook description as well as the podcast show notes. My Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. If you guys want to hang out on Twitter, it's at IamAndrewZ as well.

And Seema, where are you at? And Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube and Seema Inyang on Twitter. Mark? I'm at Mark Spilliebell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. And big shout out to my boy, Andrew. Thank you so much for the photo shoot today.

That was freaking awesome. I had a blast and sorry I didn't. I got through almost all of them. I wanted to show them on air today, but I just ran out of time. But yeah, they'll be ready by probably tonight. Andrew, he can't handle like not having it perfect. So he's got to keep messing with it. You know, they'll be fine.

We're out of here. Catch you guys later.