Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 480 Live - Love The Process

Episode Date: February 8, 2021

The dreaded "off season". If you stay ready, you don't have to get ready, right? Today we're talking about athletes heading into the off season, or training when not prepping for anything specific. Why do the workouts start getting less intense, why do we lose focus? We believe it's because some are not in love with the process. 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! ➢FREE LMNT Recharge Sample Pack: http://bit.ly/3bxyMND ➢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 Bell's Power Project Podcast. This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Piedmontese Beef. And Seema, you work with a lot of clients, definitely have, some have different goals, some have, they want to gain strength, some want to lean down. But can you tell me why, for most people, getting more protein in is important? So, I mean, something that not only do people struggle with, I struggle with a lot is getting really hungry during a diet. It's the biggest thing. It's like people are dieting and they're like, I want to eat more. I need more food. But, you know, one of the reasons why protein is

so important, and Mark talks about this all the time with his protein leveraging diet, is that when you have more protein, it's satiating. You feel full. You don't feel like eating a crazy amount of food. And the great thing about Piedmontese is that not only does it have a lot of protein per every single serving of meat, but it has minimal amounts of fat that if you're dieting, you can kind of go to town on Piedmontese and you're not getting in that many calories of fat. It's great. It's perfect for if you're cutting.

And if you're bulking, well, you can just have more meat. It's pretty amazing. You guys got to check it out yeah you guys got to get satiated today by heat by eating a higher quality cut of beef and the best way in our opinion to do that is by heading over to piedmontese.com that's p-i-e-d-m-o-n-t-e-s-e.com at checkout enter promo code power project for 25 off your order and if your order is 99 or more you get free two-day shipping. Fanning off his balls. And it's just like some of these babies, sometimes their balls get pretty big in comparison to how big the baby is.

It's pretty funny. And we're like, what are you doing? She's like, I don't know. He looks like he's really hot. It's like a summer day, so she's trying to fan him off she's like i figured this would help she went straight to the source yeah yeah wait where his balls exposed yeah yeah he was naked yeah he's naked she's like fanning off his nuts yeah it is funny like like body proportions i wish i had someone do that for me me too god buckets get amazing a little warm in here but yeah grab that

newspaper i've been waiting for you to say that all day oh yeah but anyway so we're live but oh yes it is funny though like the proportions of sizes right like you got a big old head torso and then it's like, man, you're packing some heat. Does he look like he's wearing like little rubber bands on his wrist? Cause there's like, forearms are all fat. I, you know,

I'll go back and check, but I don't think he's that quite chubby quite yet. It's funny. Cause yeah, the wrist goes in and the forearm goes back with just like a big old thing. A chub. Yeah. Eventually he'll be able to like put his hands in his pockets without clothes

on, you know, cause he's just got creases everywhere, but he is getting the, the, the nice little double chin going now. Nice. So that part's cool.

Yeah. Keeps gaining son. And it was cool that the doctor was like, uh, chubby kneecaps. Yeah. How do you have chubby kneecaps? Amazing.

But it's for when they crawl, like they're all set up. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Oh, wow. Yeah. A for when they crawl. Like, they're all set up. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Oh, wow. Yeah, a little padding. Yeah.

Didn't realize. Built-in protections. Yeah, the doctor was like, so you guys are just exclusively breastfeeding? It's like, yeah. He's like, wow. Okay. Like, that's cool because he's supposed to only gain, like, one ounce per day or whatever, and he's, like, surpassed that.

So I'm like, yeah. Shout out to Element. You know, we had Rob wolf on talking about how that has helped you know shown to uh to help uh the production of breast milk and yeah stephanie's been drinking at least one a day there you go and it's freaking awesome yeah kids getting jacked yeah yeah he's gaining weight so i'm like hell yeah keep eating son all these bodybuilders i love breast milk are now going to be giving their donors. Oh yeah. Their donors. Yeah. That was a thing for a little bit, right?

That's still a thing. Really? Yeah. All they do is got to, you know, get your, get your lady that's getting you that breast milk. You want to increase your production, get some element in her. Yeah. Knock on your neighbor's door.

You see that she's pregnant. Here you go. Hey, can you take this? And then in return, just give me the excess stuff that your baby can't eat because he's not going to be able to eat all of it. Man, no, I got it. How are people getting breast milk online? Is that where we decided?

It's probably online. Yeah. Based on that, like that, that it was like a documentary on Netflix or something like they showed, like they followed somebody who lifts that was trying to buy it or whatever and trying to buy breast milk whatever, trying to buy, buy breast milk. And I think they had like Craigslist ads. You can probably somewhere online,

but then they had experts saying like, Hey, like that's kind of like there's bacteria in that. And you know, it's not really going to do anything for you other than help you just gain like weight, like not like muscle or anything. Like there's no extra like super protein in there.

Right. Times are hard. It's COVID for all my female hustlers out there if you got you know uh speaking of breast milk uh our our good doctor friend dr tony huge wants to come back on the podcast and he said that um he has a few uh like documentaries out he wanted us to check them out but i'm not really sure how to watch them do you know how to it's like enhanced too and enhanced whatever i was like i don't know i believe they're on demand but he did send me a oh they're on like history national geographic so there's the national geographic one is that the one that was mentioned on rogan yes the the dude so so he said they're super popular they They're like downloaded more than anything, any other documentary that they have. Oh, I'm not surprised.

They're really good. And then like Casey came up to me like when it aired and he's just like, hey, I saw your boy on National Geographic. I was like, whoa, like finally it came out. You know, not saying that like this happens all the time to everybody, but like you hear somebody say like, oh, yeah, I'm working on this project with National Geographic or, you know, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, oh, yeah, sure. You are. Yeah, exactly. And then.

Yeah, we know. Like, sure, Tony, like they're going to show steroids on National Geographic. And it's like, oh, and they did. They did. They did. My brother knew a guy at Gold's Gym that like went up to my brother. He's so excited one day. He's like, yo, bro, I got a show.

And my brother's like, what? He's like, you were able. My brother's like, I didn't even know you were an actor. He goes, yeah, man. He goes, I'm on every day. And my brother's like, well, how do I find out more about it? He's like, I'm on YouTube. I was going to say.

My brother was like, cool. My brother didn't know what to say so he's like congratulations my show has a dedicated website and everything go ahead write this one down youtube.com slash yeah uh what was it oh so anyway uh watching the uh the national geographic show on tony huge you you forget things that happened yesterday let alone like a year or two ago watching the show. I'm like, Oh yeah. So the,

the, the lady that conducted the whole like documentary that was also on Joe Rogan was hanging out right here in this podcast room, interviewing me, uh, just to see like as a side project to see if they wanted to film here at the gym. And I'm just like, like all the memories came to see if they wanted to film here at the gym.

And I'm just like, like all the memories came back and like, Oh, that's right. Like I did meet and hang out with them. Yeah. Her and like the producer. That's cool. Yeah. It was wild, but enhanced and then enhanced to the max or whatever. Oh, there's a lot of, there's a lot of us. Sounds like a sequel.

Yeah. There's a lot of us in the second one. Cause I was one like, that was like right in a lot of us in the sequel. Yeah. There's a lot of us in the second one. Cause that was when, like that was like right in the middle of Sarmageddon. Yeah. So they filmed a lot of stuff here and I can get you guys a link to watch all of the above. Yeah.

We got to check it out and then have them on the show. Yeah. Just people like gaining weight like crazy pretty much. Right. Yeah. A lot, lots of, lots of injections.

Um, and it's, it's a lot of it. When we had Tony Huge and Canadian Trevor, Trevor Curitson, sorry, buddy. You know, when he took a bunch of stuff and he was like, yeah, I gained like 15 pounds overnight or whatever. And everyone's like, well, like, that's like a lot of water. Like some of its water like well i mean but how much you know so there's a lot of that where they they do the dexa scans

and stuff and they can show that they gained a bunch of muscle and stuff but you know then like lee priest will come on and be like oh shit i can do that too and you know in two days if i just eat a bunch of shit and gain water so it is interesting there should be like an upper there should be like an upper limit on how much water you can gain you know via like percentage of body weight i'm sure each person's maybe a tiny bit different there but like yeah you could probably only retain so much water i would assume um unless you're doing something for a really long period of time i would say i would i would guess that you could probably retain more and more water over like a longer period of time but if we're talking about like 48 hours or you know a week or two um i could see how you could gain uh probably 20 pounds in

two weeks uh wouldn't i actually i don't think gaining 20 pounds in two weeks would be hard even without steroids. I think if you just ate like a motherfucker and got after it, I think you could gain. And then, but like, I guess what I'm trying to say here is some of it, some of the volume of what you, some of what you weigh would be the actual food and would be the actual

water. You know, that would be part of it, you know, cause you're not going to be emptying that out all the time. So quite a bit of fat, if it was two weeks, boy, I, I, oh yeah, I could gain, I could gain 20 pounds in two weeks.

Yeah. Quite a bit of it would be fat. There'd be quite a bit of water and a little bit of muscle. That's an interesting question. How long does it take to gain some fat? You know, does it like, does that, that happen in days? Probably, you know? Oh yeah.

Probably can happen in two, three days. You can be fatter. You can definitely hold on to water like immediately you can we could do it right now we could eat a bunch of carbs and drink a bunch of water and we can all like retain water but like gaining fat it probably it probably takes a few at least a day or two or three you know yeah interesting that yeah i don't know it's it's tough to say because then you still see younger people fairly big you know like that's like man you haven't been on the planet long enough to really but it's like there they are right that's that's tough yeah wait what do you mean i'm just lost

you know i just kids like obese children you know like fuck like if you're x amount overweight like you've only been around for x amount of years like shit you've been on a tear you know it's like yeah shit so maybe they started out right that's kind of overeating at a really really young age so we're what i'm saying is like we're pretty good at it yeah we're efficient at getting fatter real quality high palatable foods it's like you can get in a lot of calories without trying. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I've been talking a lot about being less fat, you know, trying to give people some motivation from a different side, like rather than even think about like being skinny

or even just trying to think about like losing a bunch of weight, just be less fat. Like just could you eat a little bit less? You know, could could can you cut back a little bit? Can you develop the discipline to put a Ben and Jerry's back in the freezer? You know, could you? There's a lot of times when you're eating and you're like, I don't really need any more food. But then what do we do usually? You know, we usually finish it off.

And if you're already heavy, you can just make the decision to be like, I'll save the rest for tomorrow. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. you can just make the decision to be like i'll save the rest for tomorrow yeah something like that yeah it's uh it takes yeah it takes a lot to be able to do that though it takes years it takes years it takes repetition and i like i'm actually very serious about that especially if you come from a place of like i want to get big i want to get strong and you eat everything on your plate you don't leave anything to To put some food back. Yeah, it's an eco blow

Well, then maybe you just learn to take a little bit less to like, you know I don't you know at my house like my wife will cook up some food And then we have some food either like in the pan or we put it like on a dish And then you gather the food up and then you go sit down, you know We don't we don't always sometimes we'll bring the food to the then you go sit down, you know, we don't, we don't always, sometimes we'll bring the food to the table. It kind of just depends on what meal it is.

Um, but then, you know, from there you can just kind of determine how much food you put on your plate. You know, try to fill up that plate with protein, try to fill up the plate with vegetables.

And if there's something else there, try not to have too much of that. Yeah. I did used to pride myself on how much I could stack my plate though. Oh yeah. Thanksgiving, Christmas, everyone would be taking food and not just be like. Well, then you're kind of known for being that person too. Yep.

Like, oh man, he always eats a lot. Like, I don't know. It's a thing. It becomes a thing. Like you're the, you're the guy that's funny or you're the person that cheers everybody up or whatever. You have like an identity and you, you play into that. Yeah.

Cheers everybody up or whatever you have like an identity. Yeah, you you play into that Yeah, I mean in a Mexican household your it's really rude to not destroy a hell of food on your plate You know like and if you don't then you're you actually like I've been spanked before because I didn't finish my food Oh, yeah, no, actually, you know, I mean like that's happened to me, too I honestly like I wish I can go back and like get spanked for like I don't know not eating the good food You know, I can say of like just like eating whatever yeah because like i mean obviously my views are way different now than when i was a kid like when i was a kid i just you didn't eat nutrient dense enough foods yeah whack how much how many grams of protein today 25 whack there's no vitamin d in that food whack yeah yeah but no but i think i think we're in a really good place now because like,

you mean the three of us? Oh, for sure. The three of us. Okay. Yeah. But not like generationally, because I feel like there's a big,

mine drifted there for a second. It's like the way he said it. I think we're in a really good place now. I was like, I was, I got so excited. I was like, man,

we've been working so hard on our relationship. I'm so happy that we're here now. I thought I was the only one that was feeling that energy. Oh, by the way, where'd you get that hat? Or what is that hat? It's pretty dope. Top secret. It is?

Mm-hmm. No, it's actually just a hat that we can print on. Oh, really? We can print on it, yeah. Dude, yeah. I was like, is that like a Lulu hat or something? It's pretty sick. I think it's just like a flex fit or something.

Let me see. It doesn't just look like a flex fit, though. It's top secret because it's on the top of his head. Oh, it's like a flex fit or something. Let me see. It doesn't just look like a flex fit though. It's top secret because it's on the top of his head. Oh, it is just a flex fit. Sick. Well, don't give out our secrets. Yeah, flex fit. You can bleep it. Okay. Yeah, let's bleep it. It's up. We're live.

Speaking of, real quick, uh, markbileslingshot.com. Today is Free Shirt Friday. Oh, yeah. No way. Yep. Don't go giving him shit. It's not up to me. I'm just the messenger don't kill me yeah but yeah i have no idea what the actual i'll look it up but yeah free shirt friday mark balsam are we actually live are we on african time okay all right he's explaining yeah because mark he's gonna get canceled if i don't explain this

what there's white people in af, too, right? Yes. South Africa. There's a lot of them over there. Yeah, that is true. Yeah. OK. The more you know. So I was I was saying we were in a good place, but now we're not.

That was a close one, guys. African guy, a black guy and a Mexican guy walk into a podcast room. What could go wrong? What could go wrong? All right. So African time is this. And all my all my Africans know about this. But I think also Andrew knows about this, too, because there's apparently Mexican time.

But like Nigerian parties and functions, you know, like straight up. Andrew, pretty good with that one. Straight up. It's true. If a function starts at like five right and the flyer says five everything says be here at five everyone gets there at like seven seven thirty like like clockwork it's it's real it's this isn't a joke it's like everyone will get there at seven the whole thing will actually start at seven

um and people will just arrive then and if you arrive before that like that that just wasn't smart maybe you should have read the flyer maybe you're part of the setup or something helping with the party or something yeah yeah you're usually someone that's just helping there put up chairs put up tables but no one gets there at time this includes weddings and wedding parties so um that's real shit like that that that is real african times i bet you i could google it right now an urban dictionary is gonna give me something yeah yeah but um i think it turns out there are some differences between all of us yeah i think it was let's not point them out george lopez he was just like mexicans just think everything is 15 minutes away

like it doesn't matter what time how far the distance is like Mexicans just think everything is 15 minutes away. Like, it doesn't matter what time, how far the distance is. Like, I'll be there in 15 minutes. Like, that's just what it is. And if I tell you I'm 15 minutes away, that means I just left. There's no way. It should be noted that almost every African on both leaving and receiving end does this. So if one does actually arrive on American time, don't be surprised if a party is still getting set up. A person is still getting ready, et cetera, et cetera.

Guests arrive on African party at 9 p.m. when the invite said 630. You got to remember this for his wedding. Wedding invite says, note, there will be no African time at this ceremony. It will start promptly. Like weddings actually put that on the flyers that there won't be african time that will actually start on time it's real like i'm not joking so um that is african time if it's if it's white like how do you know when to get there you just add 90 minutes or two hours just add about 90 minutes to two hours yeah but if it's widely accepted like well known then that's fine right like yeah it's widely accepted, like well-known, then that's fine, right? Like, it's just.

You're not late. You're not late. You came on time, on African time. It's pretty sick because you could show up an hour late and be early. Yeah. Yeah. So smoky. If I'm ever late, just, I confused it with African time.

Oh, now we get it. Now we see. Oh, man. Anyway, today's topic, we're talking about how competition for a lot of us has set us straight and has set us to have a cascade of disciplines that descends downward from, hey, I'm going to compete, you know, March 24th. And because, you know, you're going to compete March 24th and you lay out how many weeks that is and you start to really prep for it start to prepare for it whether it's powerlifting bodybuilding

jujitsu doesn't matter really what it is you start to prep for it and you're like this is the competition and you know what do we say like you know oh I'm going to take the training like more seriously I'm you guys going to see me around a lot more because I got this competition in March or April or whatever it is. And so that, you know, you really start to kind of.

You really start to up the production of you training, you're really trying to you're working really hard. And we're going to talk a little bit more today about how and why you should just be kind of working hard all the time. Sort of kind of goes along with the saying of, you know, if you stay ready, then you don't have to get ready. But then how do we do different versions of that? Because it's not realistic to be, you know, 5% body fat unless you're gifted with having a, some people have a body that kind of stays in a certain leanness most of the, most of the time. Um, but for the most part, most people will diet down to be 5% body fat.

And, uh, and then what, then what happens? Then they're 10% body fat, you know, then they gain 20 pounds of body fat after the competition or after whatever it is that they were doing. And so it's hard to stay on point when you don't have a really specific goal. The more specific the goal, the easier it is to stay on point with your training because you're like, I need this training. I need this training is the language that we use because I have this competition on this day. I'm going to, you know, I'm trying to squat 800 pounds and I can't, I physically would not be

able to go to this contest and squat 800 pounds without training frequently for it and without being very serious about training. And so when a competition's lined up, we're all fired up, we're all set, we're ready to go. We're, we got everything all dialed in now, you know, in now times we have, uh, the Corona virus is around and a lot of competitions are shut down. And so how do you stay on point? Why do you, why would you stay on point? And, uh, I have a bunch of suggestions. I think it seemed it does too. And we'll review those today. Yeah, no, I'm really, really excited about this topic just because, you know, I saw it a lot when I was doing bodybuilding when, when guys would compete, they're like, okay, cool.

Competition's coming up. They get ready. They compete. But now the off season is potentially going to be a year. And this was obviously before Corona and there are more competitions. And in that year, like some guys would be too scared of gaining body fat so they would like hold on to their leanness until they were getting ready for another competition and then they'd look the same on stage right um and then some guys would just kind of they'd be lackadaisical in

their training for for a while until it came until they were like 20 weeks out from competition okay now i'm gonna bump up and train super hard. And they look the same on stage again. You know, it's like, you're not really doing much in the same with powerlifting, right? Um,

you're training, you're training, you see a competition that's 16 weeks out. Okay, let's bump up the training and let's start training hard. And then you don't really have really great PRS because you weren't the whole time. You weren't putting in the work you needed

to do to really beat those old prs or be competitive and then jiu jitsu it's like the same thing i'm going to train four times a week now because i have a competition scheduled but why weren't you training four times a week before why weren't you doing that like that like or just uh even being consistent with training three times a week like why were you only training once and then once and then four times and once and four times you keep going back and forth Or just even being consistent with training three times a week. Like, why were you only training once? And then once, and then four times, and then once, and four times. You keep going back and forth between that. When you're in competition, the four times happens all the time.

And when you're not in competition, you're only there once a week. And then you're probably running into a lot of injuries. You're probably also really having trouble making just steady progress. And if you could make it there three times a week, that's why a lot of the stuff that we share on, on the power project, a lot of stuff that we share, we try to give you guys stuff.

That's really palatable stuff that you can stuff that you can actually implement into your day. You know, the 10 minute walk is something that we talk about all the time, but you can 10 minute walk anything. You can apply this to stretching. Like I have been at night following the nut natty professors, stretching recommendations, but just by simply stretching for 10 minutes, you know, you could read for 10.

You can do any of this stuff. It doesn't have to necessarily be 10 minutes, but you dedicate a time. The AMRAP mentality kind of via Jason Kalipa, who's talked about that before he you know he would set a watch for these workouts and then he was like i'm gonna set a watch for my life you know i'm gonna set boom 15 i'm gonna do this for 15 minutes grabs his phone he sits and he literally will do that i mean he's a nutcase but but he's holding it down pretty good over there you know he's a very successful person and so we can do this with anything. But if if we're implementing bits of consistency all the time, it's going to be way

easier to be really, really good at something. I think one of the number one places to start when you when we start to think about stuff like this is. You want to have a little bit of a mind shift if you are somebody that currently competes and you're currently the guy that gets really fired up and excited about competition, but when there's not a competition around, you're kind of, you don't have the same motivation, then I think we just need to work on shifting the mind. And an example of this would be, let's say that you're prepping for a meet and you get injured. That's a great example of shifting your mind. One option is to be super sad and super upset about the injury that you have

and how this always happens to you and you can play the victim thing and you could be out of the gym for a few weeks or months and really get really down. People can get really depressed when they get hurt. So it's good to check in with your buddies that get hurt. You should take it a little bit more seriously. I remember when I was wrestling, anytime, anytime somebody got seriously injured, like they had to go to the hospital,

which happened a lot, you would call them up because you're like, it's not so much you just for mental purposes, you want to kind of check in on them and make sure they can recover from it. But it's demoralizing. You get injured. One minute you were moving around 400 pounds, 500 pounds, and you thought you were a stud. You felt invincible. And now you can't even get up and down a flight of stairs without having tons of pain or going down sideways and hold on to the railing. You're, you know, you're just like, fuck, man, I really, I really screwed up.

Shifting your mind to some different things. What can you do? Well, you could probably still bench press, you know, maybe you can work on some bench press, or maybe it's a time period to work on your physique. Like maybe it's a time to work on a transformation, you know, maybe because you're, this is what happened to me when I fell with 1,085. I was like, I don't know what will happen with my power to think career. That's pretty vicious injury. I was messed up for a pretty long time. I was messed up for about three months and I was like, I'm 330 pounds. I could very easily be under 300. So let me work on that. So shifting your mind to something different, something different to be competitive with. But ultimately, I think if

you're in competition with yourself, then you don't have to ever really worry too much about going in once a week versus going in four times a week. I think that you're always going to show up if you're in constant competition with yourself. You're just trying to get a little bit better every day and recognize that if you do that one and four and one and four back and forth, it's just going to take you a lot longer. I'm not saying you can't be successful that way. It's going to take you a lot longer to be successful. So chip away, even if it's twice a week and you do it for a long time and you can make three times a week here and there, I think that'll be way more productive than getting all fired up and going four times a

week for three months in a row. Yeah. You know, I think it's interesting because there was an episode where we talked about like to get the ball rolling. Sometimes it is good to sign up for a powerlifting meeting or sign up for a bodybuilding show so you can get things moving. So if you're in that boat and you want to do that, that's good. You should do that. Maybe it's your first competition or something. But after that, if you get that fire to compete, you have to like like Mark just training, you just kind of kind of learn how to just like the whole thing, like, like training, you know, like going into the gym and working on those movements and enjoy that, that aspect of things. Um, because if you enjoy it, like I enjoy training in jujitsu, I enjoy training in the gym. If you enjoy it, there's always going to be the ease of finding out something to improve on even if it's a minuscule thing like figuring out how to like get better at pull-ups right so like when we were in quarantine some of us only had a pull-up bar

and the ground for some push-ups right so getting fired up to do that because increasing your back strength might actually help you out when you know help you out in terms of getting stronger right yeah i know i'm definitely guilty of um i guess not loving the process because if i don't have a shoot scheduled or anything it's like uh like i i can go kind of hard today like you know it there's just you leave that room for making up the excuse of not giving 100 every day yeah you know and it's weird it weird. I know for myself, it's just falling in love with that process. Oh, I love the end result, of course.

Yeah, that is great. But if you have been there, once that's over, you're kind of like, oh man, it was cool, putting in all that work, 4 a.m. workouts or whatever it may be. And it's just weird,

not that i don't appreciate it but like not appreciating appreciating it in the moment you know i think for like i said for me and for many others that's where some of that like uh you know the off-season woes come in you know it's just like uh well i'm not not training for anything right now so i'm just gonna go work out, right? Like the difference between training and working out. Like I'm just going to go work out. And you kind of scroll on your phone or just like, hey, what's up?

Let's talk and not work out. Like that's tough. That's a tough spot to be in. Maybe treat some of it like you're a little kid. You know, I know you're pretty good at pull-ups, so you can go through some of the exercise. And if you're not feeling it at the moment and you're, you know, I don't know, you did three sets of six of pull-ups, like, what would a little kid do? You know, a little kid would be like, let me see how many I can do, you know? And they just do as many as they can, you know?

So that's going to be hard, like, if you're not really feeling it. It's going to be kind of tough. And you can even drop down right from the pull-ups, right into push-ups, and see how many you can do of those. Once you do even drop down right from the pull-ups, right into push-ups, and see how many you can do of those. Once you do that, once you make the action towards that, you're going to be fucking fired up. Oh, yeah.

Especially once you get to rep number seven. You're like, I think I could do 10. You get to 10. You're like, I think I could do 12. And you surprise yourself, and you get like 13 reps or something. You drop down, bang out some push-ups. Maybe you get a little bit further along on your push-ups. Now you're really euphoric at that point and how long did that take you to get

there maybe 30 seconds maybe 60 at the most like it didn't take you very long you went from zero to 100 real quick right yeah i think uh like a young andrew like the kid in me would definitely like back in the day would have like imagined this whole scenario where I'm at a pull-up competition in front of hell of people and like people screaming. It's like, okay, it's, it's a silly thought,

but yeah, a kid would do that. And that would actually have gotten me to a kid playing with a baseball in the front yard or football bottom of the ninth, you know, and they throw the ball up to themselves and they whack the ball. It's a home run, you know,

like just try to think of like teams down by two points, two seconds left, you know, trying to make the last game teams down by two points two seconds left you know trying to make the last game winning shot three two oh he was fouled when you miss you know make some weird make some weird challenge you know even if you're pushing 80 pound dumbbells for the day on some bench press and just say oh fuck it man i'm gonna roll the dice and see if i can move those hundreds today and maybe you only get like two or three reps, but it's a lot of times you need a challenge to really elicit the response that we're looking for here. And it can help a lot, help shift your mind. Yeah. You know, I was thinking about something and I think it's, again, some, a lot of people

do have access to gyms now, which is great, but some people still don't. And I think it's like we were just saying, it's a good idea to figure out what you can do that might actually give you some progress in terms of like your bigger goal, whether it's powerlifting or bodybuilding. Um, and it's funny because, uh, I told you guys, I started longboarding like again, a long time ago, I used to longboard as a teenager, uh, but I wasn't really that good at it, but I, I bought one last year. Right. And I've been doing it quite a bit and the the funny thing i noticed is that initially i was really crappy and falling off of it all the time but i've gotten pretty decent now and the funny thing is that by getting better at longboarding my jujitsu's

improved because of my my single leg balance like i'm doing a lot of weird shit on the mat now where i'm like standing on one leg and passing somebody's guard and i'm just like oh shit like i'm i'm staying on this leg and i'm not wiggling around because because of it's because of long wax on wax off right and it's gotten me like like the fence exactly and like i think of like okay if a power lifter maybe they don't have gym access but maybe they're like i want to like maybe just increase my endurance a little bit by doing some run walks and then they go back into the gym later on and they're like, I want to like maybe just increase my endurance a little bit by doing some run walks. And then they go back into the gym later on and they're like, whoa, I can do this without gassing out. My workouts feel better. My recovery is better just because you got a little bit better at running.

Right. That's that's a pretty big deal. Something that's totally outside of your sport can drastically improve your performance. You increased your work capacity and now you can do more work in less time and you can be bigger and stronger with that um i was just gonna say that like i've been using some some footage from your youtube channel for jujitsu you're just you kind of wreck people sometimes dude uh there was one i don't know what it's not very nice like you you grab them and then like throw them over and i'm like

no wonder why you can't find anybody to roll with jesus no everybody does roll with me like no one says no i'm joking but you know what i mean like i was like oh poor guy like he's over here just trying to get in a good role and sema just fucking threw him right on his head you probably play nice with most people that are like softer right yeah of course absolutely yeah no i really do yeah like um like depending on the opponent like i'll gauge like how much someone's a motherfucker then you got to do what you got to do right yeah yeah but like you know no one that i train with is like unnecessarily rough or whatever unless

they're a white belt um and white belts they just try to use too much energy and like with those guys you just kind of just just slowly suffocate them yeah it's probably not a good idea to try to wreck them either because you might hurt yourself in the process right like exactly you might be like fuck this guy and then you go to do something and it hurts them and hurts you and sometimes some people are so dumb they're like immune to pain too like you're like i just totally killed that guy i didn't care for some reason yeah but it's not even a white belt's fault because they don't know what to do so they're trying to do everything and i mean i and when i was a white belt i was like i didn't think i was but like there's this guy jackie's like you

had a little bit of white belt rage when you just try things and you don't know when you're using your strength it happens yeah there's no way to uh hide the fact that you're completely amateur and the whole thing you're green like there's just no you know you can't you uh you can't hide it it's like it's very obvious we saw it a lot with pro wrestling too people would just kind of have happy feet and have a lot of uh unnecessary movement you see that a lot with pro wrestling too people would just kind of have happy feet and have a lot of uh unnecessary movement you see that a lot in boxing too like when someone's like trying to box they bounce around a lot and it doesn't look like a boxer you know boxer isn't really like bouncing around for no reason they're they have footwork that is uh that is enhancing their movement enhancing angles and things like that but But as someone who's new,

just looks like they're hopping up and down on both feet and kind of moving around kind of silly. And you're like, what the hell is that? Exactly. But shifting your mind and shifting, you know, your focus into doing some other stuff I think is really valuable. So you don't have competition at the moment. Why not see like what you could do for a set of 10 or a set of 20 or, uh, what you can do with like something crazy,

like German volume training, do like 10 sets of 10 on something. Can you squat to 25 for 10 sets of 10 with 45 seconds rest in between? It's like, that doesn't really sound that hard, but once you get in the middle of it, once you get 50 reps in, now you're second guessing like why you tried that in the first place. But things like that can be, can be not only fun, but as Nsema pointed out, it could be training something different. You could be training your conditioning levels.

And when you go back to doing your heavier stuff, you're going to be able to handle more work and more volume. And that's all that training is. And then that's all that strength training is. It's just building up resilience, building up the ability to accept the input that you put into your body. Otherwise you're doing stuff that you're not quite ready for. And that's how we get hurt. And that's how we have setbacks. And that's how you stay stagnant. Yeah. That's, that's the biggest thing, you know, outside of having that goal of competing, you need to set up, especially like right now, since you, in a majority of these sports, it's hard to find a competition. Like I was just mentioning a client of mine, you know, he had a bodybuilding competition set for like, I think a month and a half or two months from now,

just canceled. Right. So it's necessary to try to set up like these mini training goals that, you know, you'll probably enjoy. Um, so that like, you'll, you'll have something to look forward to when it comes to training. It could be as simple as a bodybuilder as like, okay, well, I think my best on dumbbell bench press was 70 for 10. So in these next four or five months, let me see if i can increase that to you know 80 pounds for 10 reps right or doing more on the dumbbell bicep curl over time doing more volume on that because like you if you're able to do that your biceps probably gonna get bigger and it's probably gonna feel great yeah and i'm guessing that's probably why uh some of the um bodybuilders that we've had on this show have said like they'll switch to like power lifting when in their off season right it's just to kind of go for a different goal and like oh that's what

you guys were doing this whole time yeah i thought you were trying to get strong but no yeah now they have a goal to handle more weight in like a deadlift or something and then by handling more weight in the deadlift you can uh observe that most likely they'll be able to do more weight with a bent over row uh by being able to bench press more maybe they'll be able to do more weight with a bent over row by being on a bench press more. Maybe they'll be able to hit their shoulders a little harder, you know, by doing some of these movements by squatting more weight, maybe the leg press becomes a little easier, or maybe they just conditioned their legs to handle more work in a condensed

time period. You know, I think it was a couple of years back. We had John Cena in the gym and he was working on some deadlifts and he ended up getting a PR, which happens a lot at super training gym. I gave him a little bit of advice on something I was seeing from his deadlift and that helped quite a bit. Obviously he knows how to deadlift, but you know, kind of work in and working together, he ended up hitting a nice PR for the day. I think he deadlifted like six 75 for the day. And he's a beast. And this is a guy that's traveling,

you know, traveling the country, traveling the world really with WWE at the time on the road for 280 or 290 days out of the year or something wild. And he's still able to hit these big weights in the gym. I just remember seeing him do that. And he was like, he was pretty pumped. I mean, he didn't like, you know, run around the gym. I just remember seeing him do that, and he was pretty pumped.

I mean, he didn't run around the gym and go crazy and celebrate, but he was really happy about it. He was really excited about getting that PR, and I was thinking to myself, I was like, why the fuck can't I be happy like that, like with just hitting a PR in the gym? Like I would never be that pumped about a PR in the gym because I was like, it's just a gym PR because at that time I was still competing and I was just

like, not the gym thing. Doesn't, doesn't mean anything. But when I saw that, I was like, no, I should celebrate.

Like, you know, I have to like have it throw a party, but I should celebrate. I should be excited when I have a PR and I should be pumped about it. There doesn't have to be a competition for it. Yeah. Um, we've talked yesterday a lot about like being even keel, you know, what about, when I have a PR and I should be pumped about it. There doesn't have to be a competition for it. Yeah.

We've talked yesterday a lot about like being even keel. You know, what about just having a similar amount of excitement for whether you hit a PR in the gym or whether you didn't competition, let's not make too big of a deal about the competition. I mean, unless you won like a world championship or something that that's pretty cool. But other than that,

you know try to stay as even as you can so that um you don't experience these these crazy highs and lows because after a lot of competitions for power lifters for bodybuilders we have post-competition well for everybody i guess for all competitions kind of have post-competition blues you know you feel like weird you feel funky and then you go back to the gym the next day or day or two later. And people are like, what are you doing next, man? And you're like, I don't know. I'm not really sure.

Are you going to compete again? You're like, I don't know. Cause it was, cause it was treacherous, right? You put yourself through so much. You put so much on that day. You told everybody about that day. Maybe even some people came to support you on that day. It's like a whole, it's a whole thing, right? It's a whole big thing. And we put so much on it. that day. You told everybody about that day. Maybe even some people came to support you on that day.

It's like a whole, it's a whole thing, right? It's a whole big thing. And we put so much on it, but why not take a lot of pride and be excited about some of the PRs you hit in the gym? The other thing that I saw John Cena do, and this probably extends out to some CrossFitters and maybe even some bodybuilders. But it's kind of cool when you have a lot of different things to get PRs on. I guess Westside Barbell Program is that way as well. But John does clean and jerks. He does snatches. He does overhead pressing. He does all kinds of stuff.

So that gives you an opportunity to excel and to kind of compete against yourself often with a lot of different movements and gives you a lot of different options in case you get hurt i remember a while back he he probably two three years ago he tore his pec well the torn pack you're not going to be able to make advancements on your bench press but maybe that's a time where once the pack heals up a little bit maybe that's a time where he can work on his mobility so he can be better at his cleans and his snatches. He loves to do Olympic lifting. Yeah.

The same thing with some CrossFitters. I mean, they have so many options with the different lifts they could do. If something's banged up, something's injured, something's just not feeling right. Something's just not going well. Their deadlifts aren't going well.

And maybe they can practice their overhead squats or rope climb. How different is a rope climb from doing a deadlift? How different is a rope climb from doing a deadlift? How different is a rope climb from doing a bench press? I mean, they're not, they're very, very different. You know, the guy that benches 700 pounds is going to have, you know, the odds of him being able to rope climb at all are probably zero, right? And so when you have a nice wide array of things that you can go and do now you can go and still feel really good about what you do you can we talked a little bit yesterday about being

like proud of yourself you could have this injury that sucks that's really you know pulling at you and making you kind of feel uh sad depressed that you can't do certain things but you can still do a lot of these other things and you can go in there and feel good about it. Well, sorry, we had Chris Duffin on Mark Bell's Super Friends series on markbell.com. If you guys missed out, you missed a really good one. But in the intro, you had said that, you know, he's squatted a thousand pounds for a double in the gym.

And you were like, that's really freaking hard because it's not a competition. It's not anything where, you know, you, like you just said, you have all these people that are there surrounding you. It's just in the gym. And when I, when you said that, I'm like, wait, no, I thought in the gym was supposed to be easier. But what you were saying, it was like, no, it's actually way harder. Right?

Like, can you explain what you meant? Yeah, I think so so just just kind of what we're talking about here today like that alignment to the competition um chris kind of treated it like a competition because he had a film crew there and he had he had some friends there to support him and he would go on podcasts and stuff and talk about this day and so he made it like an event and so it it kind of ended up being, you know, a little bit like a competition, just minus the officials, I guess you'd say. But it's hard to have everything in alignment. It's hard to pretend that anything's a competition unless it's actually a competition.

You know, because I don't know, just it just it's hard. It's hard to like fake. It's hard to mimic. You know, you could say, oh, we're going to set this up this way. And if it's not really an actual competition, then in my opinion, it would be a little harder. There are the nerves of competing, but not when you're Chris Duffin and you've competed as many times as he has. He's over it. Absolutely.

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They're homies now. And just seriously, drinklmnt.com slash powerproject. Again, absolutely free. Just pay for the $5 shipping and it's yours. Go there right now. Now. free just pay for the five dollar shipping and it's yours go there right now now i think uh the big aspect of all this is uh just finding being being okay enough to find a weakness and really work on it because when when we were talking we were mentioning like okay yeah you got to learn

how to enjoy that enjoy your training right most people they really enjoy training when we're doing they're doing something that they're really good at so you know i'm great at deadlifting so i can't wait for deadlift day or like oh you know my arms are pretty nice so i can't wait to train arms on arm day but when it comes to uh you know leg day i hate training my quads right because you have weakness in your quads so you don't really look forward to it that much. But, you know, if you really want to get better, that should be the day you look most forward to. You should look for certain things that you're really weak at. Maybe you suck with lunges. Maybe you're your squats not that great. So maybe you're doing a bunch of stuff for that. And and and having goals for, you know, your, your Bulgarian split squats, goals

for your lunges goals for your, your front squat. Maybe you have those goals so that you can actually improve at that because they're your weaknesses and that that'll allow you. And that'll give you first off, you have a lot of room to grow there because it's a weakness. Um, but it's just like this consistent goal of something that you're continually getting better at. So I think that's a huge aspect of it. Like, um, during quarantine, I found that my shoulders were kind of, you know, with, with like jujitsu, like I had some like shoulder weakness. So I was like, okay, a lot of the kettlebell work I did really helped with my shoulder stability.

And that was one reason why shoulders look really weak, bro. Well, shoulder stability, I'll say shoulder stability. Um, I felt that he looks like he's permanently wearing football pads underneath all his shirts all the time. I needed a lot of work. Cap shoulders. But the kettlebell work helped. Like it helped be the stability in my shoulders, which translated onto the mat. Right.

So doing that and it was outside of powerlifting and bodybuilding. But that kettlebell work helped with my exercise on the mat. And then once you make a little bit of progress, it's encouraging. You're like, Oh, that was, that was a little bit better. You know, and if you get a pat on the back from somebody else who say your shoulders look great, or you, you make progress in those ways too. That helps a lot too, especially with, when it comes to nutrition,

when it comes to diet, you lose 10 pounds. And as soon as somebody recognizes it, that's when it's like, all right, everybody look out because this person is probably going to go on a tear and make some great progress because now they got some momentum and they feel just, they feel amazing about what it is that they're doing. What you just said right there, I think, you know, exposing, you know, where you're weak and then working on the weakness. It's a tough thing because you're not great at that.

So you like don't want to do it. But there's going to be there's going to be times in your in your fitness. There's going to be times in your life where you're going to have a break from the main thing that you're great at or the main thing that you're great at just kind of wears itself out. Or you've reached you reached a point where you're limited at just kind of wears itself out or you've reached, you reached a point where you're limited by your weakness. You know, your weakness is like in the way could be flexibility and you could be trying to be a great bodybuilder. Like it actually takes more flexibility than you might think to do some of those poses

and to do some of the stuff that they do and also to have a good routine and to show off your muscle mass the way that you want to. You could have this glaring weakness. Why not? You know, if you have some sort of setback, you're just not where you want to be, whatever it might be, that could be the opportunity. It can be a great opportunity to look at it a little bit differently and say, you know what, I have so much other stuff to work on.

I know I love training my biceps, but I need to work more on my waistline or whatever it is. And you work on that. You hone in on that. It's a difficult thing to do because you're like, you don't want to do it. It's something that you're not good at. But once you start to do it, once you start to make just a little bit of progress, which might take a couple of weeks, but it'll probably happen pretty quickly. Once you start to make a little bit of progress, you're really kind of on your way from there. Yeah.

You literally took, well, not the exact same words out of my mouth, but that's what I was going to say. You know, like everybody knows I've had these back issues and stuff, but it is a daunting thing to look at and just be like, man, like I have so much to do and who's going to be excited to like stretch or do you know? Stuart McGill's big three every day like it's it's not fun But I'm experiencing a tiny bit less back pain You know also I mean I talked to you guys about like how to sneeze like I was like fired up because I learned how

To sneeze and it's like okay. Tell the people real quick. It's just, yeah, real quick. So just, um, in the book, he explains instead of like sneezing down, especially if you have low back pain, um, you know, you're, you're, you're sneezing down and you're causing more compression down on your, your back. And, um, you're using your body to absorb that. Like some, sometimes I sneeze and I'm like, I think that's the last one. Like, you know, like that's it. Like I'm broken. Right right so some of these sneezes can be very vicious yeah so instead of absorbing all that to sneeze like upwards like you're kind of shooting it out of your body almost now that can be problematic if you have like bad allergies yeah if you have bad allergies and you

know you're you're shooting stuff everywhere yeah but little things like that where I'm like, oh, like, all right, let's let's keep going. You know, but it exactly, Mark, like it's freaking hard to get going, though, like to to be excited about those small little goals. And just real quick, I love that we're preaching to the choir because like everybody in the chat room right now is just like, no. Yeah, like I I stay on my training in the offseason or I do this and that. So like everyone here is like already well on their way. But like, you know, I'm sure some of you know somebody who may or may not be. So maybe that's something you can share. This is a podcast you guys can share with them or just kind of cement your thoughts already.

You know, like I just I'm just pumped because I'm seeing everybody talking about their their offseason strategies. And it's like lining up with everything you guys are talking about. I think it's a good idea to just like I have a lot of people that will ask me questions about, you know, what can I do if I got sick? What can I do if I got hurt? And I always just tell them, focus on I usually say five things, but three things is usually kind of more than enough. You know, five things is kind of a lot of work. But if somebody came to me and said, oh, man, I tweaked my knee. I still want to do this.

I still want to compete or whatever. And they decide they're not going to compete or whatever the situation is, I would say, well, let's just focus on what you can do and what you're not able to do at the moment. Let's just forget about it. Like there's no reason to even talk about it. No reason to even think about it. Let's get you heading in a, in a good direction. Okay. You can't squat because your knee is bothering you.

Can you do a leg press? Can you do a belt squat? Like what, what items do you have in your gym? Um, what are some things that you can do? Like sometimes people can deadlift even when they have a hurt knee so hey let's let's shift you've been working on your squat really hard and that's great well let's maybe work on some deadlifts for a while or maybe you can do stiff leg deadlifts maybe you can focus in on the hamstrings rather than focusing in on the quads

i want people to really work hard on like, you know, trouble troubleshooting, you know, what is. Never mind competition, like you don't really need competition to point out your flaws, you know, to know like where you're weak. You know, if you wanted to just in a really, really simple terms, just take like three things that would work you towards your goal. And it doesn't matter if there's a competition or not. would work you towards your goal. And it doesn't matter if there's a competition or not, but like, even if, even if there's a competition for bodybuilding, let's say, I'm sure you want to be leaner anyway, just in general, you would, you can probably afford to be a little leaner. Almost everybody, there's a few exceptions, right? Um, everybody probably wants to be a little stronger. So let's say that you want to be, let's say you want to be in better shape. Let's say that you're pretty heavy and you don't have any thoughts of even competing in

bodybuilding necessarily, but you just want to be in better shape. What are three things that you can do that are, that are, that are going to be things that you will do, you know, and I just wrote down a couple of really easy things, but there could be, you could expand on this list. You could add some variation to the list and, but usually two or three things is enough. If you wanted to lose weight fast, utilize some intermittent fasting. Doesn't have to be a lot. You can start out with 12 hours a day for a while and see how that works. You can shift into doing 16 hours every other day. That should be sufficient. That should be enough. If you wanted to do more, you could, but I don't think you need any more to

make a lot of progress. Next thing is eat protein. Eat protein that's the size of your hand or at least the size of the size of your hand or the size of your fist in every meal. And if you're still hungry, eat more protein that's the size of your other in every meal. And if you're still hungry, eat more protein. That's the size of your other hand as well. Double up on it if you need to try to have lean sources of protein. And the third thing is have a protein shake every day. And if we want to throw in number four, don't want to walk. Aside from that, you can kind of eat whatever you want, but within reason, you know, you can't eat like an asshole. You can't just eat whatever you can't like, just go and, but you can have a normal diet. You can eat fruit,

you can eat carbs, you can eat rice, you can eat potatoes, you can have a burrito, you can do all those things. If you're able to actually do some of these rules here, you're able to actually eat the protein that you're supposed to eat. If you're able to actually fast, I think a lot of times we have a tendency to focus in on like all the roadblocks and i think the difference is when you have a competition you cut out all the road you cut out a lot of those roadblocks because you're like i don't really care you're like i don't really care what i sacrifice at the moment

because it's only for a moment it's only for a short period of time. I don't mind if my work suffers a little bit. I don't mind if my relationship suffers a little bit. You know, I want to go after this with everything I got. And you just know that it's for a condensed period of time. So you're like, I'm good. And I'll tell other people around me, I'm going to be a dick for a little while. I'm going to be selfish and self-centered,

but I'm going after this goal. Yeah. To kind of add on to that, I'm going to go on one thing that you mentioned to kind of, to kind of add on to that, I'm going to go on one thing that you mentioned, cause you mentioned a lot of people ask you questions. And I think for some people that can be a very strong thing because for example, a bodybuilder or a figure athlete, they might be like, I'm trying to make improvements, but I really don't know where. So maybe, you know, somebody who's a judge and they can say, hey, OK, you need to work on your shoulders this offseason.

You need to work on your butt this offseason. Like those need to be your focuses. Now, you know, the weaknesses that you need to focus on, because as an individual, it might be really hard to see your weaknesses. I know that myself. Like there's this guy I roll with at Jiu Jitsu. He's a black belt. His name is John. We always have great roles.

Right. So the other day, I think it was a few weeks ago. I'm like, dude, OK, I want to know from your perspective, me rolling with you and you seeing me roll, what is a big aspect of my game that you think I should work on that you think I should really try to get better at? You told me pressure passing. So for the past months, I've been watching a bunch of videos on pressure passing and every single role I try to just work on my pressure passing. And it's been, it's literally been the thing that has improved all of my roles my roles these these past few months that's where you basically hurt the fuck out of people with your knees and elbows and stuff and make them squirm so you can get in better position kind of

yeah so when you're right exactly so when you're passing when you're passing somebody's i hated that part i hated that part just because like the guy so i before i ever actually did jujitsu like uh on a um before i was ever taught by like a real instructor i used to just roll with this guy before i had wrestling practice and he would just kill me all the time and he trained with like mark coleman or something the guy looked like mark coleman the guy was jacked as fuck and he would just kill me yeah but he would do shit like that to me where i'm like you know i can't i i just never dealt with anything that got his knee like in my like ribs i'm like whoa you know and then he boom he kept catch me in like whatever he wanted yeah any sort of strength that i had was rendered completely useless cassie was amazing at that he's

like 175 180 pounds but like when he's passing he he does the thing that okay so the thing that i was doing he said he feels really strong. He feels heavy. Yeah. He feels like 200 and something pounds. And it's because like when I was passing people's guards, I'm fast. So I could do things very quickly and get past their guard really quick. But John was like, well, when you're rolling with me, I can slow you down.

And when you pass, you can't use that. So you need to use your weight and just put all your pressure on me and slowly. It could help you conserve energy. It could help me. It'll help me conserve energy energy but it'll also help weigh down my opponent because when cassio's passing he just feels like this slow rock that's slowly coming up your body and you can't do anything about it right so that's helped me massively and i remember also um when i was really trying to improve like on my bench my deadlift here i'd ask you more questions i've had i'd ask marcus questions and like you guys would be like, you should do this.

You should do this. And those that I, I didn't know. Right. But you guys told that to me. I'm like, huh? Okay. I should focus on that. And once I did focus on that, boom, started making progressions.

So if you have people in your life that like, you can ask those questions to on, on the outside, looking in, that can give you some advice. Ask them what you can do. Right that could be the thing they're gonna be able to give you answers and and they might not know the exact answer but you can work on that thing and you can see how it works for yourself you know the guy that we have coming in today is the king of that Kelly's Tourette he says like test retest you know you try a stretch and then do a movement does it feel like anything improved if it doesn't feel like anything improved maybe you have to still work on opening up or releasing that muscle you know you're working on your hip flexor you do a stretch for it for two minutes you do the other side for two minutes then you go to move into a

lunge and you're like ah it's still like something's pulling there. You could have an injury that maybe just won't go away, but he wants you to kind of test and retest. And I think testing your strength and testing where you're at, I think is also good. There's just so many different ways of doing this to get excited about your training that you don't necessarily always have to have a competition there. And one of the reasons why we brought this topic up today is because we see a lot of people compete in figure competitions and bodybuilding competitions and powerlifting and jujitsu, and they reach this heightened state. And you're like, man, that is so cool.

That is awesome. Shit, man, that's crazy. You ran, you know, you ran a marathon. But where are they in two years or three years or four years? That's really the concern. You know, it's immediately afterwards, after bodybuilding show, you're going to gain a bunch of weight. I mean, it's just, it's inevitable, right?

But maybe just instead of like getting fat, maybe that's a purposeful like bulk, you know, maybe it's an intentional thing. And I would say that anyone that's going to compete in bodybuilding or figure or any of that kind of stuff, I would say, come up with a plan because if you just go and eat whatever after the show, you're going to, you're going to really, you're going to really blow up. And just like in SEMA said, talk to someone who's done it before, you know, why not get advice from somebody that's competed before they're going to know they're going to be

able to give you some great advice, but have an intent, have a purpose into whatever it is you're going to do next. And the competition thing, you know, having an actual meet or something like that is great. And I encourage everyone to do it anytime they have a chance to do it. But I'd also say just having an intent to your training. What are you trying to do? Sometimes what you're trying to do doesn't even have much to do with the end result that you're trying to get. Somebody could say, I'm really working on my pull-ups a lot. And you could say, okay, what's the reason you're working on your pull-ups?

You want to be really good at pull-ups or do you want to have a big back? Because not everyone that has a big back can do a lot of pull-ups. So it, you know, the working on pull-ups can definitely help. It can definitely assist. It's a great movement. But if you're thinking that's the only way that you're going to get a big back you might be making a mistake and you could be maybe focusing in on some other movements as well as you work on getting better

at those pull-ups because directly to that statement right there though if you have a big back i could and you can do a lot of pull-ups oh fuck yeah that's a that's a That's a double whammy. Yeah, well, now you can add weight to it. Now you just have more options. You're always better off with more options than you are with less options. Absolutely. You get somebody that can do like four or five exercises, and they start to lose a lot of their movement and stuff like that. You're going to start to see somebody that's probably not conditioned really well, that has a hard time doing a lot of their movement and stuff like that. You're going to start to see somebody that's probably not conditioned really well, that has a hard time doing a lot of other movements.

They might look big, but they're probably not moving well. And they're probably, it's probably not anyone you aspire to really be, you know, like we probably aspire to be somebody that's jacked that could at least move halfway decent. That is still,

you know, capable of tying their own shoes and stuff like that. Yeah. Oh, no, I was just going to say, does this guy look like he has shoulder issues? You took that picture.

That's one of my favorite pictures. It's be dude. Like it's because of the angle. That's pure angle. That's awesome. So it's freaky right there. But what I was going to say was like all the things that we're mentioning right now in terms of like, you you know getting these goals outside of competition um

before the podcast you're mentioning like when you get older and you're not competing some some things have like masters competitions and whatever but like when that's like not the real focus anymore trying to compete at that high level um this is going to prepare you to just be able to enjoy all these different aspects of training. Because the funny thing is like, you'll see like retired basketball players, retired football players, or just retired athletes in general, when they're done with competing and they've done all that in terms of competing, a lot of them just get kind of fat. Like a lot of them get really out of shape and they're, they don't look like they're

doing too well because it's like they, they, maybe they didn't do all of that. Um, when they were training, when they were younger, maybe they didn't have these skills to just, you know, get better at all these little things. And they, they didn't enjoy it that much. I feel like if you're able to do that, um, when you get older, you're still going to be able to be in great shape because now the focus isn't always competition. The focus is just what little thing can I maybe get better now? Like, like the guy you're mentioning that's 50 years old or, or yeah. Like if you want to talk about him, like, yeah, yeah. I just think like, as you get older, you know, start getting into your forties, fifties and even sixties. And, and even later, the main thing is just not to regress, you know, just not to go backwards. And there's, there's, um, a lot of the steps that a lot of people that listen to the show are already taking are all things that are going to really help with that. So even if you are a person that is on the heavier side, if you're starting to take some of these actions and you're starting to lift and you're starting to walk and you're starting to pay more attention to your nutrition, yeah, maybe you're not losing 60 pounds like you wanted to.

But what if you kind of stay about similar? And then over a period of time, you lose a little bit of weight over the course of several years, you're going to look a lot better than a lot of the other 40 and 50 and 60-year-old people that are around because most of those people don't take care of themselves at all. And not only do they not take care of themselves, they do a lot of things that are negative to their body. And they might not have hit them yet because they might be 30, they might be 35. But when they're 55, it's going to show up. You're going to start to really see that.

And you're going to be like, oh, shit. Like, how old is that guy? You're going to start to fall apart. So, you know, uh connected um to your fitness is huge my wife goes swimming every morning and the crew that she goes swimming with i would say probably i guess i'd have to really ask her but at least from what i know i think maybe only like 20 of those people compete they They all swim every morning. You know, they swim at like 6 a.m. Or you jump in the water.

It's fucking freezing outside. Fuck that. It's 36 degrees outside, you know. And they're going outside. But, I mean, they do. The water is not cold, you know. Obviously, the water is heated or whatever. But, anyway, these are people that are getting after it every single day.

And there's people that are 70. There's people that are 80. And there's people that show up even at an earlier time than that. So just a really small percentage of those people compete. But there they are getting in their swimsuit, getting their swim cap on, having the dedication to get wet first thing in the morning. Like fucking go dive in a pool. Like it sounds like insanity, especially like to go drive to it and then to get out of your car and to be in the cold and then get in the water.

It sounds rough. And then walking out of the water afterwards in that cold. That's what I'm thinking. Me too. I'm like, the water's going to splash and the concrete's not heated, right? I mean, I guess some places can be, but... Yeah, you're going to be cold as fuck doing that. Oh, man.

But those people don't have any trouble um you know doing what they love to do every day and it's actually kind of rare for hardly well i guess maybe a small subset yeah only a small subset of those people even like make a lot of progress but they're happy to do what they've been doing for a long time and it sounds it might sound ridiculous to do that but i I would, I would speculate that you can do the same amount of weight on a lap pull down and the same amount of weight on a dumbbell bench press and the same amount of weight and squat and still look better and become stronger by using the same exact weight for like 20 years. I know it sounds, I know it sounds weird,

but you'll get better at moving those weights. You'll get better at controlling those weights. So here we are, like we're in this dog fight every day. Like you got to get better. You know, I need to, I need to handle 150 pound dumbbells. It's like, well, you don't really need to handle 150 pound dumbbells. What if you handled the 80 pound dumbbells the right way? That would be, that might be a good start, you know, um, you know, lower them for four seconds, get a little pause in there. And every time you, you go to press, you actually are contracting your chest. I mean, it just depends on the goals. If the goals are to get stronger, yes, we might need to push the envelope a little bit heavier

weight. If the goal is to look better, we probably don't really need to mess around with that too much. Although it would, uh, it would be wise to do that occasionally because getting stronger can help lead to hypertrophy and can help lead to bigger muscles because you'll be able to handle more weight over a period of time. But on the black pull down that we have out there, I've been just doing 130 or 140 pounds for 10 years probably, you know? And I actually, the other day I reduced it down to like 80 and I just went super slow and it was contracting it. And my lats were fried.

My lats are still sore from the other day. So I just, I think it's deceiving. You think that you always need more and you don't always need more. You just sometimes need to do it better. That's the funny thing. Cause like, yeah, when you pay it, like like when you pay attention a lot of like bodybuilders who've been doing it for a long time like here we go again michael hern we look at some of the loads that he uses on some of these movements when you actually if you train with them or if you see him train you're like oh that's not too heavy but when you

look at the way he's moving it when you look at the the tempo when you look at all these little no facial expression at all facial expression noise all these weird pauses like there are a lot of different ways to improve at these things and to get much better at them without stacking on or adding 40 pounds right and that's a way to get better at it for a long amount of time and to enjoy different levels of difficulty i think out like it's high green train's pretty light i mean relative to how big he is I mean, I know you I know you can handle a ton of weight But he's using like 30 pound dumbbells on curls and stuff like that. You're like, oh shit. Yeah. Yeah, exactly

again, it's like it's great to to be an athlete that that competes and you should like if you're doing that you should have that focus on competition, but When when you get older outside of that you gotta figure out ways to continue to increase your love for the sport or the love for the training because that's the thing that you're gonna have until you're old and there's old old and frizzled exactly when you when you're 70 years old ideally hopefully you're still gonna enjoy going into the gym and hitting up squatting session squatting 225 at 70 is impressive as hell right you want to be that person that's able to do that i know i want to be able to squat like 315 at 70 yeah that'd be awesome that's something i said i think when i was like 18 i was like i want

to still be able to move some of these weights around when i'm like 70 you know and here we are i'm 70 yeah in regards to like what you're saying about michael hearn if we had like gold's gym footage is his last name oh tren or hearn uh oh oh tremble all oh yeah wow speaking of things that you can't pronounce correctly i was like uh but if we went back like 20 30 years ago he was doing that also he's still was still strong. Exactly. Right. So yeah, that consistency and love in the process.

Yeah. Well, he's probably still lifting like similar weights, you know, to my point earlier. And then the different weights that different people are able to do. Um, I don't know how relative they are.

I mean, Mike is big, but again, like looking at some other athletes, like they don't handle the same amount of weight and they can get just as big and sometimes even bigger. So I think a lot of this stuff is, um, it's just stuff that we think, like, even when it comes to protein, I love talking about protein because I do think it can help drive down your hunger. And I say that you need X, but you don't need that amount of protein. You don't really need that amount of protein.

Um, it's just, you have to eat something. And I would guess that you can probably get away with eating half your body weight in grams of protein and be totally supplied with the amino acids that your body needs. When I'm in downtown Davis every morning, I see a lot of homeless people. I actually talk to them quite a bit and buy them cups of coffee and stuff like that here and there. But when I, when I see them, like they're not atrophying, they're not any smaller. And I'm sure that it's hard for them to get their protein requirements. They're not eating like chicken breast a couple of times a day. They don't have whey protein shakes sitting around. So, um, a lot of these things that we think are really true, like we need these massive amounts of weight to be big. It needs massive amounts of protein to uh be able to hold on to any muscle mass we're gonna

we're gonna lose it all like if we fast or if we you know and and you've done like one meal a day type things for a while and i've never saw you come in here looking frail or yeah being like oh shit man you better up your protein bro like i don't think you're getting your requirements again one of the reasons we recommend it is because you have to eat something and it can help manage your hunger. It can also help manage the overall amount of food that you eat in a day. But for the most part, we all just eat way too much. And when I say all, I would include myself in that bunch.

Yes, absolutely. No, it's that's one of the big things. It makes a very, very big difference. If more people could just build the habit of just getting more protein in each day, being fit would be so much easier. It would be so much easier. Yeah. I have to film it. But for the newsletter, the Power Project newsletter, I'm actually going to film just multiple ways that I sneak more protein in my diet every day.

Oh. Just small little things. Nothing crazy. Do the bum hole? No, not like into every day. Oh, just small little things. Nothing crazy. No, not like, not like, like into the body. Oh no.

Like literally like in my foods, like adding more protein to that. I thought you were talking about like a protein enema or something. That's what I was thinking. Cause it works really well. Shooting it right in the ass. Yeah. I used to,

I used to do that. Like, especially when I was trying to get in 400 grams a day. Like I couldn't always eat it all. Sit on it. Yeah. Get it in there. Slide it in.

Maybe that's why BCAAs don't really work very well because we're not putting it in the right side. It's got to get into the bloodstream. How do you think I got so big? Reverse peristalsis. Reverse what? Peristalsis. Peristalsis. Reverse what? Peristalsis. Peristalsis? Peristalsis is the process from, like, I think the time the food hits your, like, mouth to the time that it goes through the whole digestive system.

So this would be, you know, going through the butt. Got it. The reverse. We're going to have it go through the butt and come out the mouth. Knocking on the back door. How do we always get here? I think I did it. Yeah, this was your fault this one was me this one was

my fault next show we'll talk about how you can shave your butt crack safely i've never done that well it seems like it could be dangerous have you done it right not you you have i have oh what process but no not like with uh not like with a razor. Oh, like with a... Just like a little trimmer. Oh. You know, just... Manscaped type thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't been brave enough to get a razor in there.

Uh-uh. Hell no. I don't even really know if I could get a razor in these cheeks either. That's true. You'd have to have like an extended arm to get in there. That's risky. I had a college friend, Chris, who told me how he... Why you gotta use his name? You're running out his name he doesn't no one knows his last name

he shaved his ass with like a the razor and he's telling me just how much it stung he was like bro pooping is the worst right now oh no yeah that was so that was so funny that one story is the one thing that's like maybe we'll have a show on this it sounds like it's a bigger uh issue than we think yeah that's been the thing that stopped me from wanting to ever do that that's why i've never done it before you had a problem shitting i'm not doing that yeah i'm not gonna do maybe that'll be our next poll on the pot on the uh like have you ever shaved your taint yeah that's one that men and women can can chime in on the one we have up today right now i just hopefully you guys find it as comical as i do but uh it just says can we make the results even at 25 each and just one two three four

hmm ah yes so right now one is 21%, 19%, 21%. And then somebody is like, you know, people just want to see the world burn votes. Number four. So four is 38%. God dang it.

Let's even this shit out. Why can't you guys just cooperate? You could do a poll. A one plus one equals two. Yes or no. See what happens. You're going to get a, yeah.

I already know the results of that yeah i've seen uh i think it's like lex feinman or freedman freedman lex freedman has put that up before and it's like i don't know why i don't know i don't know what his thing is i never like looked into like why it's a thing but yeah he just got all these crazy responses yeah it's like one plus one equals two and people are like like losing their minds but you know since silly since alexis podcast is like this math podcast you probably have a lot of like oh yeah theorists who are like it's not two because yeah yeah right right oh fuck that it gets to be crazy i love his podcast by the way yeah anybody that wants to get down and and listen to some intellectual ass shit

needs to go over there and check it out. Yeah. It's all your mind. It's a lot to think about. You're like, you can only listen to a couple minutes of it at a time because it keeps like blowing your head off your shoulders. Yeah. I was going to say,

yeah, maybe you need like someone else, like go from here to like Joe Rogan to maybe that one. Cause if you go straight from here, you might like, this is like watching Spongebob we try to keep it as mindless and proud of it

oh man what was the name of that one guy who he's he's he's got like the he has a mustache he's got like little moles and stuff but he's been on Rogan and Lex's podcast he he's really cool he has a mustache no he's got like little moles and stuff but oh he's been on rogan and lexus podcast he he's really cool he has a lot of cool stuff but um i have no idea his name not even ha damn it we're not i forgot we're not good i'm terrible with names i've said it before on the

podcast like you know people talk about like oh i had like first and last name in this class you know with this teacher you know like this period i'm like i i just know i went to school at one point in my life i can't remember specifics what episode are we on by the way 480 oh yeah 480 why didn't we do something special for 469 because i didn't think of it because he's not for it. We should do something special every 69th episode of every hundred. So like five 69, six 69, seven 69. I forgot Daryl Davis's name yesterday.

I felt so ashamed about that. I love Daryl Davis. He's awesome. He's a good dude to talk to. Awesome. A musician as well. Oh yeah. He's a,

he's a, he's a badass. I was at my sister-in-law's house maybe like a week ago and we're at like the dinner table and my nephew he goes to Jake he goes Jake he's like

what's 69 mean he's like he's like I keep hearing it he's like what does it mean and Jake just kind of like looks at him Jake goes go ask your dad it he's like what does it mean what does it mean and jake just kind of like looks at him jake goes go ask your dad and then uh lachlan it was lachlan that asked the question he just like looked at jake and he's like nope oh my god i thought it was a great response from jake though

i was like that's hilarious you know but obviously he would his dad would be like what what the hell are you talking about someone did that to me in the seventh grade and i feel like i was such a dumb seventh grader because i did go ask the geometry teacher miss mcconagher i think was her name um but i didn't know what a cunt was i was like no you don't know i didn't even know it was a bad word yeah i didn't even know it was a bad word. I didn't even know it was a bad word. Um, and I asked, I asked,

it'd be a good word. I asked his team. Yeah. Yes, exactly. And, um, he was like,

Oh dude, I think, I think Ms. McConaughey knows she was talking about that the other day. I was like, really? I was like, all right,

let me go ask. I was like, Ms. McConaughey, what's a cunt? And she's like, Oh, it's SEMA.

And I got in trouble for that. I was like, what? Like what? And then I found out what it was. I was like, shitcconaughey what's a cunt and she's like oh it's sema and i got in trouble for that i was like what like what and then i found out what it was i was like shit i didn't know i don't think we had like i don't i didn't have like internet access that great at that time so i couldn't just type it into google that's so it was a little tough but yeah brutal that was stupid of me man like that was so dumb i should That's great the way your friend worded it. I would have fell for it. I'd be like, oh, yeah, I'll ask her. She seems really smart.

Oh, man. That was funny. Yep. He could have worded it even worse. He could have been like, oh, yeah, she passed him out the other day. You can get one? Like, Miss McConnell, I miss when you passed out the cunt. Can you get me some of that

yeah oh it was it was such a good set of that so i've never forgotten it because i was like that was that was that was solid man damn i like that guy yeah trevor trevor for i was gonna say his name is little smoky oh yeah oh god yeah damn but see even you remember his name i can't remember people's names some people you just don't forget, man. That's true. Yeah, yeah. Take us out of here, Andrew. I will.

Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Everybody on the live stream, you guys are freaking great. We love you. Thank you so much. Huge shout out and thank you to Piedmontese Beef for sponsoring today's episode. Best beef on the planet, you guys already know. But if you guys haven't tried so, you need to head over to piedmontese.com. You guys already know, but if you guys haven't tried, so you need to head over to Piedmontese.com.

That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout. Enter promo code PowerProject for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two day shipping. Highly recommend that you just get the PowerProject Deluxe Bundle. That way you can try out all of the different cuts that we like the most. Just caveat, the code doesn't work on that because it's already discounted as is. But once you do get that deluxe bundle, then you can go back and get your favorites and use that code that way. Please make sure you're following the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram

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How can people get in touch with you? Thanks for plugging the meat daddy. Uh, at and SEMA ending on Instagram and YouTube at and SEMA. Mark at Mark smelly bell strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later.