Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 505 - Zach Even-Esh

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

Zach Even-Esh is the founder of the Underground Strength Gym, the author of “The Encyclopedia of Underground Strength & Conditioning”, and has been a strength coach for nearly 20 years. His passion and tenacity to learn from the best in the business has led him to becoming one of the top minds in strength and conditioning, as well as a widely respected business coach in the fitness industry. 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: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢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

Hey, everybody. This episode of Mark Biles Power Project podcast is brought to you by Element Electrolytes. What's up, guys? So, you know how here, you know, all of us love using these electrolytes pre-workout, inter-workout, post-workout love? Love? Did I say love or love? Anyway, love. Anyway, you know, L-O-F-E. Love? Love. Love. Okay. Well, I love it. I'm going to start using that word now anyway. But what I was going to say was, as far as performance, I used to think, because I used to do a lot, I used to play soccer, I did a lot of bodybuilding, I used to think that I had to eat a lot of carbohydrates pre-workout to be able to perform, 300, 400. And if I didn't have my carbs, I wouldn't be able to perform. But when I started doing keto, doing carnivore fasting, I noticed that one of the big key

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Or like I said, we like using the value bundle because that's literally the best value. Head there right now. What up power project crew. This is Josh Setledge, AKA Settlegate here to introduce you to our next guest, Zach Evanesh. Zach Evanesh is the founder of the underground strength gym, the author of the encyclopedia of Underground Strength and Conditioning, and has been a strength coach for nearly 20 years. Zach has gone from elementary school teacher to college strength and conditioning coach to private gym owner and business mentor. Zach's love and passion for strength and physical culture began when he was 13 years old,

reading old school bodybuilding magazines with his older brother. He grew up lifting weights and wrestling throughout high school with dreams of becoming a professional fighter, but his fight career trajectory was unfortunately derailed with a tear to his ACL. As he was going under for surgery, he decided he wanted to do everything in his power to make sure this did not happen to any other wrestler or fighter around the world. His passion and tenacity to learn from the best in the business has led him to becoming one of the top minds in strength and conditioning, as well as a widely respected business coach in the fitness industry.

On top of that, Zach was also part of a TV show project with the legendary wrestler, The Ultimate Warrior. But that is a different story. Please enjoy this conversation with Zach Evanesh. Do the people, do they get to see the new Slingshot yet? I mean, I guess by now they've already seen it. Yeah, that thing is, it's crazy. You talking about the crazy mega powerful one that we made?

Yeah. I bet it's like 600 the other day with it. With like four reps. Yeah, we weren't going to release it because we're like, people aren't ready for this. But we just, you know. It's insane. Yeah. Well, I was surprised at like what it's done for your physique.

I mean, you've always been in great shape, but your arms, I mean, the trice. Am I lying, Andrew? Like how long have you been using it for? Like it's been like about six weeks, right? About seven. Seven to eight weeks. Seven weeks. Those came in quick then.

I mean, you've always had big arms, but I mean, what, a half inch? Oh, you're talking about this? Yeah, that right there. Oh, I didn't realize. They look more sculpted. Oh, just rounder? Yeah. This is perfect because I have the-

Sharper? A little bit? They look dangerous. They're thick. They're much thicker now That's what happens When you start benching 600 with a new slingshot For reps though

That's the crazy thing I didn't do four reps You said I did four reps I did three And it didn't bother Your shoulder at all No even my AC joint Everything's good

It's fucking crazy Super deluxe Mad Dog Pro Max Elite Level 10 Is my mic on It's on yes Yeah

I wish I had one Because but i don't have it did you not did you not get to use it even though you freaking had tom make it i've tested it but i i don't have a a current one no they sold out denim and carbon fiber the fact that you guys put carbon fiber in that thing is shocking however however the hell you figure out how to put kevlar in there is we were gonna throw carbs in there too but we didn't want to make it too crazy yeah potato starch it feels great though it feels really awesome doesn't feel like you know any heavier than the other slingshots but with everything else inside of it it's awesome dude good i wouldn't be surprised if it made

your dick bigger i mean not your dick but just... I'm usually about this big, just in general. About the size of this crate. Those are rough days, you know? Yeah, when it gets cold. When it gets warm, I'm still this big. It's kind of nice when you have a bigger day. You're like, I'm not doing so bad. Yeah, you can take a few pictures. Yeah.

Shake it around a little bit. I'm represented a little bit better today. Change with the door open type of thing, one of those days. Summer's here, man. Summer's here. Yeah, yeah yeah big dick energy that was a great explanation of it too we all could use that it was weird when i asked him about he like pretended like he never said it before i just don't think anyone's ever been up front and be like so what's big dick energy yeah all right yeah i think yeah just the way you I was trying to make fun of him too. Like,

I think he just like tried to breeze past sex. I was like, you know, like I'm always thinking of these things, like when I'm watching TV and like some of these people are in like these high places, like I'm always thinking like who beat this kid up, like on the playground or who's, who's wondering like,

uh, you know, how did this guy ever fucking be whatever he is, like a movie star or whatever? And so when he's talking about big dick energy, I'm like, there's probably a lot of girls out there who are like, I don't know if you should be, you know, I don't know if you should be saying that or claiming that, you know? Oh, man. There's probably a few. There's probably a few. Haters.

Haters. We have a comedian on the show today, right? I mean, he's pretty funny. Yeah. How are we going to translate this accent, this New Jersey accent? It's so good. Yeah, it's very East Coast. He's got an accent and a half.

I can't wait to hear this. Yeah, that's what makes everything so much better. He'll say just a normal thing, but he'll say it with an accent. You're just like, nice. He's like, what's wrong? Like nothing, dude, just keep going.

Dude. Have you guys ever seen the videos of my boy, Zach scaring the shit out of his son? No, I haven't. It's amazing. He's been doing it like since his kid was like, you know,

born basically. And he just like pop out from like behind a car or pop out of a closet or fucking scream at him in the kitchen and like more recently he just had a video of like i think he got bored of like scaring him he just throws an egg at him that's right his kids outside like just in like lounging in a chair and he just fucking throws an egg right on him and it just goes all and he's just like dying laughing he always films it why does he terrorize his well that's just fun that's just bonding oh my god now his son's gonna do that to his child and it's just gonna be going down and down i think it's a great way to like uh just maybe just not take life so seriously right oh yeah i wonder what his father did to him yeah

yeah i don't know kids do like that though like jasmine she loves scaring people like that's it's not fun like stop it and then you'll do it to her and you know of course she when she was little she really didn't like it it is it is funny it's fucking funny to scare somebody but to be on the receiving end of it kind of sucks and then you're skittish all the time yes i'm not a fan so my mom never let me let me do Halloween as a child because we're Christian. So instead, what I did is I went to Target and I got this scream mask painted in blue. From the ages of 12 to 15, I would go around bushes in the neighborhood and scare children. And it was the funnest thing ever.

I would like, because I was a pretty big kid. So I'd wait for kids to come by in the dark. And then they'd run. I'd be like. And then they'd run. I'd get chased by parents at times. But like, it was, it was fun, man. It's amazing. It was so fun.

You know who's real jumpy is Smokey. Have you ever scared him, Andrew? All the time. And you don't have to do anything. You just have to like, I don't like. Coming in and out of the bathroom. Yeah, exactly. You just have to walk in his direction.

And I don't know why that scares him. Because like, of course, there's going to be of the bathroom. Yeah, exactly. You just have to walk in. And I don't know what direction, I don't know why that scares them because like, of course there's going to be people walking around. Yeah. You know, it's not, if you're in here at four in the morning and you happen to bang into somebody, you would be, I would fucking freak you out.

But like in here during kind of normal work hours, you just kind of expect that people, people are going to be walking in and out of the bathroom. I still go. Yeah. And then you'll get mad at you like you did it on purpose yeah he'll shake his head I'll be so frustrated like why do you do that to me or like whatever he says you know just like I I can't be like alive right now like I can't be here like period he did probably know he'd probably judo throw you if you're yeah they don't chop anything i think i just realized that yeah they really need to make another austin

powers movie is that guy still alive he's still around yeah you really need to make more recent commercials uh wayne's world yeah wayne's world commercials yeah oh shit yeah michael michael myers mike myers yeah i always scare people in the break room because i'll be sitting in the one of the tables just quiet eating and somebody will just not see me they'll come in and start washing a dish or making their own food they'll be like yo and they'll be like what the fuck like i've literally been here for for the last 15 minutes eating. Not trying to be quiet. Jesus.

Okay. Scared the hell out of me. Yeah. Put the wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable. Remember that? Sounds familiar. It's from a movie Mike Myers was in where he was on a plane. Oh, yeah. With a blonde woman.

I don't remember which movie it was, though. I don't know. God, he's weird. He's hilarious. Austin Powers is amazing. Love those movies. Yeah, I watched him as a kid. That's a problematic movie to watch as a child.

Isn't Beyonce in that? Yeah. Gold member. She's shooting her titties everywhere, right? Pew, pew, pew. That's the fem box. Yeah. That's where i fell in love with beyonce that is where i fell yeah in the first one it has uh what's her name um the main jerked off to austin towers i did not maybe i don't know we don't know who knows jerked off to a lot of things i've jerked off to worse I think As a kid

You see something and you're just like It's like a gun Just about anything Elizabeth Hurley Was in the first one I forgot who she is How come all the great comedies Always have a super hot chick in them

Elizabeth Hurley Good component of it I ought to remember who she is but yeah she didn't she didn't shoot people with her boobs though did she yeah in the on the beginning of the second one part of the fembots yeah uh do you remember uh fukumi and fukuyu fukumi and fukuyu i love those they're so great so great. A lot of vagina. He's like, what did you say your name is?

I don't remember the name, but he's like, is it Spitz or Swallows? Goddamn, that's a good movie. I gotta re-watch it. We need some movies that are mandatory for the employees here to watch. That should definitely be one of them. Just to understand movies that are like mandatory for the employees here to watch. Yeah. Yep. That should definitely be one of them. Just to understand what your work experience is going to be like.

All right. God, that's a great movie. What did you do for training today, Andrew? Shouldies. Oh, my God. Yeah, I did some shoulders and still just pulling sleds or pulling the tank in between each set and then just kind of going back and forth. Why are you working so hard? I'm trying to be better than I was yesterday.

Okay. I don't know that's what we do here, but okay. Yeah, always trying to get better. But yeah, I did what you had recommended, which was like on the third set, like skip the sled work and then just go into like a superset type of thing. Man, yeah, it killed me. Get a little extra pump dude yeah so that's really all i've been doing is just kind of chasing the pump uh staying out of pain

and doing enough to feel great but not to take away from tomorrow how's the back feeling back's feeling better yeah yeah i woke up a little a little bit extra tender today but like i i no longer uh have to prepare to get out of bed like i can put my feet on the ground and you know take off versus before it was like a like i gotta find something stabilize grab myself and you know and then go how do you fit in the big three to your day because i know some people who are like that i've told hey start doing it they're like i can't find time but you're doing the big three every day right yeah no i mean it can take i don't know like 10 to 15 minutes if you're like really focused on it yeah i just do before i work out or before i go on a big walk and so yeah that's just how i do

it on days where i'm not training i have noticed like like, oh, shit, I forgot to do it. And I'll just do it right before bed. And then I feel pretty good when I get in bed. But, no, it's, I mean, do whatever it takes. Like, if you can only do, like, three reps of each movement, then that's 100% better than zero. So, I would say just start there. And then you'll probably realize, like, oh, wait, this actually doesn't take as long as I thought, you know, that sort of thing. There we go. Yeah. So, and there's days where like today, you know, we're starting early.

So I didn't do like the all three sets of each one cause it's it, the way he told me to do it, he was like, do, uh, whatever. I think it's like five, three, one. I didn't even realize that. Um, and then today I just did like the first five and I skipped the other sets and just kept, kept moving. So that way I could start my workout. So that way I got in some,

uh, some volume in. Yeah. And somebody could even think of just an exercise or two that makes them feel good. You know, like I realized that Stuart McGill is really smart and he came up with those for a reason.

But if you find yourself falling out of, you're just, you're not doing something consistently that's supposed to be for your lower back or supposed to be for something specific, just shift gears a little bit and see if there's something else you can do. Cause again, doing something is better than doing nothing. So whether you're just like,

ah, the 45 degree back raise is a lot easier for me to do, or banded good mornings are easy. It's not the same, but shit, it's something that could potentially make you feel better. And if you can stay consistent with it, it should help this all the same. Cool. We got Zach coming in. Coming in hot?

Coming in hot, yeah. Going with that bicep. That's just going to. You just always flexing. That's going to be where I am the whole time. What's up? What's up, dude? Guys, I just had knee surgery a week ago, so I'm, like, confined to the bed.

Oh, my goodness. Oh, my God. Yeah, let's start there. How motivated are you by my 10 minute walk voice it's i laugh but it fires me up though we we have that inside joke what's what disappoints me is jesse burke like he takes forever to text back he's not like impressed with the jokes you know so i think he needs to step it up so for those listening smelly will randomly send um like it'll also not be like video footage will be of his feet walking i'm on my 10-minute walk

guys he starts just talking about something random and then it cuts out and so uh well summer i need that water bottle and um I'm like, these are the best. People should have to pay for them. And then Verdict doesn't text back for like 24 hours. He's a hater. He better respect those text messages if he's out. Those are some high-powered text messages. Hey, what's going on with you scaring the crap out of your son?

I've been doing that since I know you mentioned it on a um podcast i've like that's just fun i've always loved doing that you know and the last one where i egged him i'll give everybody context so you know mark and i have known each other for like almost half our lives, you know, it's pretty crazy. And so, um, when my son was, you know, very young, I remember sending Mark a video. I must've picked him up from school kindergarten or something. And, uh, I held the video back then you couldn't, you know, edit your video to trim it. So I'm like waiting behind the car i think there's like three or four minutes till the kid gets out of the car he gets out i'm like he's like and so it became a thing where i would like always try to scare him and so this summer

i get yeah it was summertime um i'm outside grilling and like an egg comes whizzing by my head. Like I heard it go like, you know, and I was like, what the heck is that? Starts throwing eggs. And so I, I say to myself, man, I grew up in the eighties and this is war. I know how to throw eggs. And so we came back from a baseball tournament. He's outside, you know, he He's laying on the recliner. He's all tired. And I go, hey, buddy, how's it going?

He's like, good. I was like, I love you, dude. He's like, I love you, too. I just threw the egg and nailed him. I didn't have the whole thing, but I asked him, I was like, are you all right if I put that up on Instagram? He's like, yeah. So now I fear there is retaliation. And who knows when, right?

Who knows when? He could be saving it up for a long time. Plus, he's had knee surgery, so he can't move. Yeah, now forget it. But what's the challenge in that? It has to be a challenge. But here's the thing that I'm afraid of is he's a pitcher. So if he winds up the arm and,

and hits me like he can legitimately injure me with an egg. God, you have always been this way since I've known you, you'd love, you love to have fun. Is that like something that's been hard to stay connected to at times? Cause I don't know. Life goes up,

life goes down. Business gets good, business gets rough. How have you been able to laugh your ass off through your life? Yeah, I don't think it's always been easy. I always try to explain and share with people. I say, you might see a video of my gym. There's 20 kids, but there's also times where there's two kids. There's been times where there's one kid in the group. It's never always just like pumping, but you know what helped me the most is, I don't know if you recall, Mark, but I used to teach elementary phys ed. And that was, I taught at the elementary level for 11 years. And that was so much fun because you always got to put on a show. You got to have an act.

And even if you're having a bad day, like those kids, they don't hold on to stuff. So just things, you just, you know, I think that was such a powerful thing for me with learning just how to have fun. And also, of course, organization and things like that when when you have to organize those young crazy kids you know and be really specific with them i would use those things and apply it to when i was coaching at the college level you know so um teaching at the elementary schools, I always think like one of the biggest things for me with regards to, um, helping me as a coach and really helping me in life. I remember in the early, you know, early years teaching, I was like, man, this is crazy. Like I'm getting paid for this. And I loved teaching. I think you get around some teachers. They sometimes,

how do you say, like they punch the clock, they've checked out, right? It's unfortunate. But I was always like pretty, very hyped up to go in and teach the kids and just have fun and joke around with them. And that's the other thing. Young kids have a good sense of humor. Look, as an adult myself, I always say like, man, sometimes I'm taking stuff way too serious, way too seriously, too much work, too much, you know, everything. And then you're, you're like, man, that's not the way it's supposed to be. You know, when you were younger, was there a, anyone who like did that type of stuff to you in terms of all the jokes and shit or not my mom said i always did

that stuff to her oh so you just like this yeah you know if i think it also depends on where you grew up i grew up in we had a legit neighborhood it was like a it was a block and then other friends lived in like this other like dead end street connected to it so we were constantly out there was always something that you were doing to your friend. Um, but I remember, you know, my mom always tell me I'd be like waiting behind the door to scare her. I remember there was a snowstorm, she's driving home from work and I knew what time she's coming and I had

snowballs ready to go. So I just remember just like launching one and like it, it like landed like dead smack on her windshield she's like oh and um i'll tell you some funny stories we're still best friends to this day me me and my buddy we grew up together i must have been four or five years old and um he always had some crappy cars and i remember one day seeing his dad get into his car with a key that was not his son's car key. I took note of that. I was like, damn, the, what do you call it?

The key is the lock can be entered with anybody's key. Aha. My friend, my friend, like I must've taken a nap. I take my key. I open his car door with my key. I put it in neutral and I like push it down the road and I block the entrance to his cul-de-sac. I block the road and then I just jet. I put the hazards on. He told me like later in the afternoon, he's like out cold sleeping. His grandma's flipping out. There's people outside honking the horn, trying to enter the neighborhood, can't exit the neighborhood.

And they're like, what's wrong with you? You parked your car. You blocked the street. And then you took a nap. Who does that? He's like, I never did any of that. And so I had to tell him, I was like, I got to come clean. I did it.

And let me tell you one last funny story for the next question. So, you know, our friend, John, well-born our boy. Yep. So John has his podcast and they have a hotline to call in and ask questions. So I call the hotline one day and I have the Arnold Schwarzenegger soundboard ready. I'm ready. You know, it's like, this is detective john kimball you know ready to go and then one of the guys answers the phone so i'm trying to like do the thing but because i i guess it's a google phone they had my phone they're like zach we know it's you and uh i'm like i'm'm a cop, you idiot. You know, I'm like hitting all the buttons.

So I actually did prank call them. I did it like late at night when nobody would answer. So I'm hoping they played on their podcast. So I was like, I did. I just mimicked Arnold's voice. It's like, this is Detective John Kimball. I want to know what is your favorite old school strength lifter? How would you learn from him? And why would you learn from him?

Tell me now. At the end, I think I said, I'll see you at the party, Richter. From Total Recall when he like rips the guy's arms off. So I hope they haven't said anything to me yet. I'm hoping they don't know it's me. They're going to hear that New Jersey tone in there somewhere. Yes. An Arnold Schwarzenegger, New Jersey accent.

Zach, how'd you go from elementary school teacher into being a strength and conditioning coach? So I was teaching at the elementary level for four years. And on my second or third year, I started coaching middle school wrestling. Once I started coaching middle school wrestling, I would go to the middle school after, you know, the day after a match, and I would do a morning announcement because i had a morning prep so i'd be like good morning tj coach evan s year and uh i can't remember what our mascot was tj i can't remember who we were but i'd be like frank the tank got another pin in the first period

like i would do this whole like stick. And then the principal was like, when you make the move to the middle school, when you come into the middle school, I was like, never, I'm not doing it. And that was my third year.

Then my fourth year, then my fourth, late fourth year. I'm like, you know what? I think I'm going to go to this middle school, change the way they're doing phys ed there. You know,

I really thought I, looking back, I'm like, I think I had like a God complex about how influential I could be as a teacher. My principal says to me, Zach, you're making a, you're making a mistake here. You're making a bad move. He's like, I know you. He's like, you are not going gonna do good there i was like i think i could do this i could do this i'm gonna change you know everything over there i'm a fifth year teacher i'm coaching wrestling of course there um those were the i'm talking like 2002 2003 it's the early years of as you uh and sema how old are you i am 28 28 yes sir um and when i want to say something real quick you may not know the jerky boys but for anybody in their 40s

when uh they call when he does that call he's like how old are you you sound like a young kid yeah the jerky jerky boys were amazing they're just like prank callers basically and they would record it and then uh i don't know kind of like just went viral back before you could go viral people would share cassette tapes with each other yeah because a cassette tape yeah right a cassette tape so um i'm calling about the dresser remember that the guy's like i need i need someone to help me in the morning because I can't put my clothes on so good. And the lady's like, no, it's a piece of furniture. Like, what are you talking about? He's like, yeah, Addressa.

I don't know how they did that. They were fucking awesome. Dying laughing. They made a movie, I think, about those guys. The Jerky Boys. They make a movie, but the movie was too late. So the early 2000s, you know why I was asking and seeing how old he is? Because I know you're in jujitsu.

Well, in the mid 90s, into that 2000 era, you know, MMA was not called MMA. It was called no holds barred fighting, NHB. And so NHB fighting had this eclectic mix of all kinds of combative sports. You know, you had pure wrestling. You had, you know, karate, different styles of martial arts. And I had recalled hearing about something called shoot fighting. I think I saw it on MTV in the 90s when they had something called MTV Sports. And there was like Pancraze and stuff like that.

Pancraze, yeah, which is essentially shoot fighting, open palm strikes, Muay Thai. Boss Rutan. Leg locks. Yeah, Boss Rutan. Savage. And so I started getting into that. There was a place in New Jersey not far from Newark Airport. It was in Newark.

There was a place in New Jersey, not far from Newark airport. It was in Newark. And, um, the guy who owned the, the martial arts facility is big Dan Maragliata, who was the UFC ref for usually the big fights. So big Dan ran that. And I got involved with the no holds barred fighting and grappling. It wasn't even jujitsu. And basically we didn't learn anything. It was like,

you went there and whoever was there, it was like, you fought. Okay. It was just like, who quit? I remember the first time he was trying to teach, he was teaching me a flying arm bar.

That was the first one. And I'm like, what in the hell? And so I would wrestle everybody. And then a jujitsu guy would arm lock me, this, that. Long story short, I get into the competitive grappling, Grappler's Quest Nationals. And I had trained for two weeks out of this place that was called Bama, Bayside Academy Martial Arts. My first match, I kind of panic.

I take the guy down. I panic. He steps over me and ankle locks me. I could have easily slipped out, but I panic and I tap. I'm pissed, really pissed because I had lost a lot in high school wrestling. And I was like, I'm too damn strong. I'm too damn tough. I ain't losing.

So the next guy that I have to compete against is a judo black belt from the Matt Sarah school. And I had spent a lot of time on the mat wrestling. I remember he comes at me, kind of like tries to club me, tries to headlock me. And in wrestling, you step around, you hold, you take his momentum, boom, you throw him. We have a battle of a match and I lose in overtime. And I thought I was so remember, get my hand raised. I'm like, I'm going to get my hand raised. We're in overtime.

I'm taking him down. They raise his hand. Dan and the other coach say to me, Zach, they're like, we thought you were going to win. The ref goes, you had, you know, all the takedowns. Then they go, but he had like 100 near submission attempts on you. He couldn't submit me. And, you know, all I knew was how to do a neck crank. And you know how I knew how to do a neck crank? Because I had watched Mark Kerr's um what's what was that uh documentary again

smashing machine smashing machine yeah one of the greatest documentaries of all time by the way oh and i can't wait for the rock to do that he's doing that as a movie black adam smashing it's the smashing machine yeah everyone needs to see smashing machine it's the fucking greatest document i think it's the greatest documentary ever. Wait, you're powerful. He's doing a movie based off of that documentary, which shows Mark the Hammer Coleman and Mark Kerr. Mark Kerr, yeah. So those guys were wrestlers from when they were college guys when I was high school. Those guys were gassed out of their minds.

Oh, dude. And same with Big Dan, the ref. He was fucking all jacked, too. Yeah, Dan trained at that gym next to the original Underground. Remember when we did the seminar, the best seminar nobody knew about? That's right. And we had some really good pizza.

The best seminar nobody wanted to attend, and we'll get into that later. So here we go. Here's the problem. You ask me a question, it takes me like 20 minutes. There's like a lot of stories behind it so long story short i'm so pissed off that i lost i look up the next competition i see grapplers quest nationals i had just entered the world championships which by the way was like 12 guys in a week so i was like this world championship and i barely lost i'm entering nationals you know there would be like all these different um you know world barely lost what a great quote yeah barely lost i lost in overtime and i was like i'm not i'm not losing

again i'm glad i'm glad you got over it. We got to make him a championship belt that says I barely lost. That's not a real L, you know what I mean? It's just like the beginning straight line of an L. All right. I don't think that shit's funny. I barely lost the Zach Evanesh story. It's like a book. I barely lost the Zach Evanesh story.

It's like a book. I want Andrew to go back and edit. All right. So long story short, I start training crazier. We have no knowledge. You know, there's maybe T Nation was the website at the time. There's no knowledge how to train. I'm training crazy, crazy.

I show up an hour before a Saturday morning training session, and I'm like carrying a heavy bag, squatting it, lunging it, punching the heavy bag. I'm telling another guy to wrestle me. I'm going nuts. Then an hour later, practice starts. We just started doing some light stuff. Guy goes to heel trip me. Boom. Tears my ACL. Yep. Tears my ACL. And it's like, that is what, you know, pushed me into strength and conditioning. Because at the time I think I was like 228. to strength and conditioning because at the time I think I was like 228 you know people thought I you know they thought I was 250 I was 228 you know back then I could consider myself strong

but I think Mark you've said this when the internet came along and you start seeing people do crazy stuff you're like yeah I'm not really that strong you know I might be have been strong in that gym I was at. So when that happened, I started researching how the Russian wrestlers trained. And, of course, I came across Elite FTS and Westside Barbell. And that's actually how I came across Mark. And I printed out every Westside Barbell article. And I went OCD West Side Barbell article, and I went OCD, down the rabbit hole, how did the Russians train? And I started taking that information and saying to myself, as soon as I get this surgery done, it's war. I'm waging war.

I'm going to start training combat athletes. war. I'm going to start training combat athletes. And so the beginning happened when I was living with my parents as a fifth year teacher, which would have been 03. And actually the year before that, I had just started collecting some gym equipment for the house off of newspaper classified ads because there was no Craigslist. i'm not even sure if ebay was out but i had bought equipment from like a gold's gym that moved to another location it was being stored in a guy's barn um i bought stuff out of um newark i still remember like newark is a dangerous area so i always people laugh at the story knowing i was going to newark into a um storage facility you don't know what the heck could be going on in those places so i put like different amount i

put like money in my sock money in my underwear money in my pocket and then some more money in the car so i was like if on the way i get jumped or somebody tries to like destroy me they don't get all my money. They won't get the money in the underwear. They only get like maybe the money out of the pocket. And so I started buying equipment the year before because I hated what was becoming of these normal gyms. And I started training some local kids in my neighborhood, a basketball player, his brother, who was just, you know, out of school flag football., his brother who was just out of school, flag football, then his friend. They just started training out of my garage. So kind of the beginning was 02,

but nothing really happened until I tore my ACL and came across, I really think coming across Dave Tate, Jim Wendler, Louie Simmons, Westside Barbell. Those were the game changers for me. And I began calling Louie every week on the phone. As you know, Mark, when were you there, Mark, by the way? What years were you there? Probably 2005 or 2004, something like that. Okay. So you were able to call him on the phone and he answered or Doris answered.

Westside. And then she'd be like, Lou, I'm back from New Jersey. Yeah. able to call him on the phone and he answered or doris answered west side and would yeah and then she'd be like lou back from new jersey yeah and then lou would get on the phone and you'd ask him a question and then he'd kind of like just like unravel he would always teach through stories you know you'd say hey hey i'm training I'm training, you know, these wrestlers, you know, they're undersized. He's like, I'm training these three wrestlers right now. And then he starts telling you what he's doing with them. And it starts kind of opening up my mind.

And every week, once a week, I would call Louie. I don't know how long it lasted, at least a year. And just hopping on the phone with him. Tommy, my Slinsky, I remember did his graduate thesis on the Russian conjugate sequence system. You know, Milo played in the NFL for, I think, 10 or 11 years for Jacksonville. Then he coached there 10 or 11 years.

So these guys were at the forefront. And of course, you know, you guys yesterday, you had Mark Uyama on, he was talking about James thinker Smith, you know, James thinker Smith was sharing information, but it was too,

it, to me, it didn't have like freedom to it. Yeah. It kind of was like this, you know, the stuff he said seemed like it was like, it was a little bit like super trend.

It was a little bit like the book Super Training. It's hard to take information from Super Training and actually go apply it. You can't rip a page out of it like you would with a magazine where you're like, oh, this guy did four sets of 10 incline bench. Correct. I'm going to try this myself. Super Training, you're like, this is great information, but I don't really know what to do with it. James is a little bit like that. Yeah, until you've been in the weight room and done a lot of training, then it starts making sense.

And so I learned easily from Louie because he shared through stories. He would tell me about training Mark Coleman's old training partner, Kevin Randleman, who passed away. So I don't know how much into, you know, MMA you are and see i know you're you're competing in jujitsu yeah look up kevin randleman of just a fucking beast the monster so kevin

randleman was you know he was a genetic freak of course but he was also just you know ohio was known for their wrestling as was pennsylvania Oh, shit. But Kevin, yeah. Damn. Yeah. You got to get on the history books, my bro. Whoa. Yeah, jacked. Built.

Yep. And so he basically, those guys trained like bodybuilders until Louie started training him. And I think Mark Coleman didn't want to train with Louie. And same thing if you look at Mark Kerr in the Smashing Machine. He's doing leg press, machine squats. That's what we knew unless there was a underground kind of guy. So in the early 2000s, training with kettlebells was underground. Doing Olympic lifting, I don't know where you would find somebody to teach you olympic lifts it was usually a former collegiate thrower who was lifting out of his garage who had bumper plates

from the 70s who might invite you in to teach you how to train i recall so i recall pavel uh was you know talking about kettlebells and stuff and i I think at the time, most people just viewed it as a gimmick. And I remember like seeing stuff like that. I was like, oh, that's just for people that can't lift. Like that's for people that aren't that strong. Like that's kind of what I just, I kind of just missed it. And then Louie started talking about it for getting in shape and general physical preparedness. And he brought a lot of kettlebells in. And once I, once he brought them in and kind of explained like, look, man, if you're just in better shape, you'll be able to A, to do this for longer. B, your recovery will be through the roof. And a lot of guys didn't listen to Louie. And a lot of the guys that didn't listen to him, they crashed and burned, man. They, they, the guys that

didn't drag the sled, the guys that just didn't take that little extra care of themselves because you know, the way that they were powerlifting was pretty dangerous, like gaining all that weight and doing all the things. I did a lot of those things, but I always stayed connected to having some level of preparedness and some level of fitness, tried to keep it in there all the time. I think Pavel visited Westside maybe before you got there, probably because he was doing something at the

arnold sport observe every dude in those early days everything was so like you know i don't know what the word is but you had to have like some sort of angle. And honestly, you know, when I was underground strength, I remember when Ryan Lee asked me to describe it, I simply said, I don't really follow the rules. I don't just do this. I might use some of these old school bodybuilding methods from the sixties and seventies. I'll use kettlebells. Then, you know, years later, you know, grandma is flipping a tire on the biggest loser. And you're like, well, now underground is all mainstream. You know, everybody's doing it. And then, of course, COVID happens.

And now everybody needs a sandbag. And I always said, like, I was using it because it was just getting kids strong and tough, not because I needed some angle. strong and tough, not because I needed some angle. Although those early two thousands, you needed to like have all these, I don't know what the free, like you got to brand yourself. You have to be this guy. You can't be that guy. And I was like, dude, I felt more like I want to be like the hell's angels. Like, I don't really want to follow the rules, but you know, I want to be like the hell's angels. Like, I don't really want to follow the rules. You know, I want to be able to just free with training. And so I think, you know, even a buddy of mine said it recently. He's like, Zach, in your early days, he goes, people got attracted to you because they saw you train with all these odd objects.

So he's like, you were kind of like a polarizing person. You, uh, you were, you like a polarizing person you uh you were you know you attracted people and polarized others and he's like now you know because you you openly say you believe in all these training methods he's like you know that's kind of gray he's like it doesn't like blow people's minds and so like that video that came out with robert oberst he's like don't deadlift now you know that video went like crazy. It went like you. And to me, I'm not into that.

I'm not into having to play some fake-ass game about, you know, I'll get any. I don't care what you have. I'll get kids strong, adults strong, using a stone, using a barbell. And so that was my philosophy. I'm using a stone, using a barbell. And so that was my philosophy. And I also was influenced by like Rocky three, Rocky four, because I believed in it, man. I believed in that stuff. And that's also what I had access to in my backyard, stones, monkey bars. And so we used it. And so being a strength coach, I always tell people was kind of an accident for me. I didn't say, I'm going to, this is my career. Not like the kids of today. You know, I always tell people was kind of an accident for me. I didn't say I'm going

to, this is my career, not like the kids of today. You know, at the time I was going for finishing my graduate degree in health education and I was going to get a PhD and plan to teach at the college level. I never would have thought I'd be doing what I'm doing now. I love the unconventional training for so many different reasons. Like one thing that kind of pops in my head is that oftentimes great athletes aren't necessarily great lifters. And sometimes we see the combination of the two and sometimes it does benefit a great athlete who maybe is not that strong for them to be able to squat more, deadlift more, bench press more. I mean, you can make some arguments and say, yeah, these things are going to be helpful to squat more deadlift more bench press more i mean you can make some arguments and say yeah these things are going to be helpful but it's also not a requirement to squat 405

necessarily 100 but i love what you're saying because it gives everyone a better opportunity to um to feel like they're putting up points on the scoreboard to feel good about what they're doing because you know if we're lifting an 80 pound bag and running and then coming back and doing kettlebell swings, that's different than just testing your absolute strength on a one rep max deadlift. And it's probably something that would apply more to the sport than, you know, I hate the term like sports specific because sometimes, you know, people are thinking, oh, if I got to swing a baseball bat, I'll just, you know, hold a really heavy baseball bat and swing it or I'll do twisting motions that represent that with weights.

And that's not really what we're talking about here. We're just saying that a lot of times when you're in a sport, all the movement patterns, a lot of the things that you're going to do, they're going to be unconventional. You might have your knees over toes like the knees over toes guy. unconventional you might have your knees over toes like the knees over toes guy uh you're going to be gripping and grabbing things in weird ways that you normally like a person doesn't have a handle you know unless you grab their dick i guess a person doesn't doesn't have a handle right so there's there's you know you need to have good grip strength for you know fat bars and different handles that you use and the sandbags and all those things that was so fun you can grab it by the dick right are you the guy from the 49ers got that one time remember that by his dick yeah what's uh excuse me davis uh uh uh oh god not

terrell davis i always want to go to terrell davis but yeah he got tackled by his junk. I'm like, man, I remember him grimacing really bad. I'm not representing well enough to get tackled by my dick. How does one get tackled by their dick? Like, did the like, how did that? I'm just really trying to look it up. We got to get information on this. You could probably Google it. Yeah. You never know what's going to pop up. And Mark, you know know what's going to pop up and mark you know what's um so funny kind of you mentioned in these you know different like the odd stuff i always remember my favorite

training tape from west side was the special strengths and so i don't know where how old your listeners are what their experience is but is it your favorite because i'm in it i just i you know they're gonna mark was in the original one but i remember he was doing zurcher squats he was a kid named zach he's doing zurcher squats using a yoke a strongman yoke um training for time i remember you telling me when you were pro wrestling he had you do 10 exercises one minute of each hardest workout i think i've ever done dude that's actually would be great if you are a i you i remember when you told me about that

i would use it for my wrestlers but i would do six minutes seven minutes if i was at the college setting and a kid maybe was like he wasn't like a big scorer was often in overtime an overtime match could sometimes take 10 minutes so i would do these 10 minute circuits with them and what you were saying is it develops your mind and and look it also takes a lot of guts and mental toughness to do a one rep max there's a different kind of mindset with everything and then what you said that has really hit me through the years. And, you know, Mark will tell you this, our boy house thinker Smith, cause they've been in the NFL. When I was at Lehigh, there was a heavyweight benching four or five in season. He would do one arm rows with one eighties. And he was not our starting heavyweight. He wasn't even the starting

guy. I remember being very nervous with him benching 405 in season. I was like, holy F, please don't tear our pec. Like, I did not like the idea, but he insisted, and he hit three clean reps. I remember being at Rutgers. Some of the guys that were killing the weight room could not flip the switch on the mat. They couldn't take it and apply it. And I think that as a strength coach, and I use that term broadly, I always would call it strength and performance or a sport performance coach.

And you could hear how Mark and the thinker say, you're just a coach, which really is, you know, I had a conversation with thinker and he's like, Zach, if you want to make change, he goes, the best thing you could do is open a wrestling club with strength and conditioning or whatever you want to call it under the same roof. has been bad through the years. Like, I'm not going to do jujitsu or wrestling again. But in the Russians or the Soviet Union, before it was Russia, that's what they did. Their wrestling coach was also the, you know,

they called it physical preparation coach. And I followed this Instagram handle. They're in Georgia, you know in Russia. The guy coaches them in wrestling, and he does their strength training, whatever we want to call it. I don't care what people call it. He's one of the same. You see them doing cleans, snatches, they're benching, they're sprinting hills because they live on a mountain. But I look at what they're doing and it's like, man, this guy is so dialed in and tuned into what they're doing because he sees what they need. You watch a kid wrestle and you could see where he might break physically or mentally. And then you make a mental note. Okay. And SEMA struggles in the third period. Then he starts to question himself. I need to tweak the program a

little bit where I don't destroy him, but I do something that's going to build him physically and mentally for that third period. But the training has to feed the sport. It can't take away. So James posted something on Twitter the other day, like, look, most important thing in sport is the sport. And Mark, I know you're, you know, you're such a big football fan. You,

you like a historian. I don't follow football enough, but I know some of those guys from the eighties and nineties, they may not have lifted. Like some of them would run Hills, but they didn't run five second Hill sprints. Who's the guy that ran the really long hills? Walter Payton.

Payton ran hills, and did Jerry Rice also? Jerry Rice ran a lot of hills, yeah. I think Jerry Rice ran his hill that he ran was like a distance. Right, yeah. And now, what would all the experts today say? It's the wrong energy system. When you say stuff like that, well, what if Jerry Rice believes in it? Now I'm going to take away this because it's the wrong energy system.

Sometimes a training doesn't have to be scientifically appropriate. But if the athlete believes in it, it will have a carryover. There's a wrestler from Oklahoma right now who's a true freshman. He just won the national title last weekend. He was the only true freshman to do it. I don't know how many true freshmen have done it. It's quite rare. He's got like a 655 deadlift. Now, if we watch his deadlift, the technique is dangerous. His lower back is round. Upper back, okay. But when your lower back is round, you know what I say is like,

you only got so many of them before something bad happens. But guess what? He don't care. He don't give a fuck. He believes in it. So when they interview him, he's like, 655 deadlift, baby. Whoa. He shouts it out.

When he benches, he's bridging. He did a squat with like 600 pounds in season. He only squatted like two or three inches onto like a high, high box, but he walked it out. As a strength coach with the number one kid in the country, I'd be like, bro, not on my clock. You ain't walking out 600, three plus times your body weight, three times plus your body weight, but he did it. Some guys are crazy and they need it. And I bet you, you picked up on that in those early West side years.

Like you could say, it doesn't make sense to do that, but he's crazy and he believes in it. And so it makes sense for him. And that's a very interesting area for me in strength and conditioning or whatever the heck. I don't even know what we call it anymore. It's so stupid. But Zach, let me ask this man when you're talking about that guy who's dead lifting 655 and you can see that back i understand like some athletes need that level of crazy right like like before covet happened and the gym that i like to go to the sauna right before that all happened i really liked the sauna and a lot of strength coaches or whatever would be like oh that's not going to be good for you because it'll whatever.

But I like it. I like the way it feels. But that deadlift example, that just makes me nervous. Like, I know he's crazy. I know he feels it's probably helping him. But like that legitimately seems like something that, you know, wouldn't that you should probably, you know, tell him to back off of, or tell them to fix over time because it is a matter of time. I mean, I just fricking pulled a muscle in my lower back with two 65 because I was

warming up the wrong way. You know what I mean? So it's like, listen, you need to warm up when you tackle dicks. I know. I just be going for these. I just be going straight up on these men.

It sucks. I should warm up more. Yeah. I think when you're, when you are a coach at the college level, you have – Louis Simmons always said these great athletes are eccentric. This is why you see on Instagram and Twitter a high-level running back, wide receiver, doing stuff, standing high level, you know, running back wide receiver doing stuff, standing on a physio ball and all that crazy stuff. They believe in it. You know, this kid

deadlifting really heavy. He's just, I mean, now he's got, I feel like you got more pressure. You're a national champ. Now you got to do it three more years. You got three more years. You got to do it. And I know guys who did it two years. Then their third year they lost. You never know who's coming down your back. If he deadlifts more, will he be a better wrestler? I don't know.

But if he starts deadlifting lighter with a flat back at 405, what's that going to do to this? Then where do we go? Then what happens? We don't know, man. There's a lot. And look, I like that kid's attitude, man. He's bringing energy to the sport. He's a little bit of a showboater.

I like it. And we're seeing a lot of that. These younger college kids, they have, you know, they have like several hundred thousand Instagram followers now. What they're doing now is like setting them up for the rest of their life. You know, it's really interesting. But yeah, that's the other thing is like, wow, is this his strength coach? His strength coach been there for 20 plus years.

That guy's seen a lot. So, you know, as a coach, you got to read the kids emotionally. Some of these kids don't believe in heavy lifting. And so then you might have to trick a kid into lifting heavy, you know, or a kid might say, Hey, can we just work fast twitch tomorrow? Okay. Tomorrow when we box squat, you know, or a kid might say, Hey, uh, can we just work fast Twitch tomorrow? Okay. Tomorrow when we box squat, you know, do the warmup set, then add weight once, then stay there. We'll work fast Twitch. You gotta be careful with pulling away the thing that gives somebody confidence. You know, Mark is always saying points on the scoreboard of life. We don't want to take away points on the scoreboard. And yeah,

I don't know, man. Some people could get away with things. They could just do it wrong. But how long can you get away with roundback deadlifts? I don't know, walking out a 600 pound squat. I don't know, man. Well, a lot of times we have to swallow our words, right? Like the things that we thought, you know, when I looked at a kettlebell, right? When I've heard about intermittent fasting, you know, there's been things over the years where I've had to be like, I got to kind of, I got to admit I was wrong. I got to change my mind on that. So even something in the case of like a rounded back, I mean, it does appear that it doesn't look to be great. And we have seen people injure themselves before. We ourselves have been injured before, but I think, you know, there's, you need these unconventional people to push the envelope because then we won't be able

to really get to the root of like how to be great at something. You look at like someone like Michael Phelps, you mentioned Jerry Rice. These are all people that fall in this category of like how to be great at something. You look at like someone like Michael Phelps, you mentioned Jerry Rice. These are all people that fall in this category of like, man, they're really massively overtrained. Michael Phelps to the point that Michael Phelps is jacked and he was jacked throughout his whole career, but he gained like 15 or 20 pounds when he finally had to slow himself down and go to rehab. And his coach was like, dude, like you've been lifting a lot.

He's like, I haven't been doing anything. He's like, have you looked at yourself? You gain, you know, you must've gained a lot of weight, hopped on the scale. And sure enough,

he gained like 15 pounds, but Michael Phelps was a guy that could, he just killed everybody with yardage. You know, obviously he has tons of gifts and he's, you know, got like a size 16 foot or whatever. He's got big old flippers.

So he's, he's a massive dude obviously the genetics were there but uh the motherfucker just spent a lot of time in the pool and he didn't care about no rules about overtraining he's like fuck that i'm gonna so you must have seen that with a lot of the kids you worked with where they can handle crazy amounts of overtraining right our? Or quote unquote overtraining. That's right. You have to be really careful with what you plug into their mind. And you're going to have some athletes that start researching stuff. They start listening to Joe Rogan. Then they think they need to smoke pot all the time or something like that. Or they heard one podcast with Joe Rogan and the guy says deadlifts are bad.

Now that kid tells the whole team, look at this, Joe Rogan, this guy saying we should not deadlift. So you need a kid like AJ Ferrari in the room. You need these extremists who lift up the kids that are at the bottom. Unfortunately, if I'm speaking about Division I wrestling, it's probably the same with Division I football. You have some guys that are never going to start. They're just going to be training partners. And the coaches have told me, we need those guys in the room because they're going to make our starting guy better. We need multiple training partners. And so you need to be careful with what you plug in to somebody's mind. You know, kids will sometimes say stuff like this to me, younger kids or even parents will be like, I don't know if I want to sign up and see him for your gym now because it's lacrosse season. And I'll say, you know, Mrs. So-and-so,

ask your husband what he did when he was 13. He probably left the house in the summertime at 7 or 8 a.m., ran around all day, came home for dinner, then ran around more after dinner. He ran 12 hours in a day and he wasn't worried about his legs or overworking. And then we'd start hearing all this stuff. And then we become very weak minded. I think we set all kinds of limitations and you don't, I don't want to be around those people. And you mentioned a swimmer we're training. Swimmers have been some of the toughest kids I've trained, both male, swimmer. We're training. Swimmers have been some of the toughest kids I've trained, both male, female. Their level of fitness are so high. They get strong so quickly. Even though they're in the pool, they do such high volume of pool work. It's like resistance training. They gain muscle so

fast. A kid that we have right now, he should play football. His school doesn't have football. He's at a small private school. He's a beast. And it's like his attitude has been shaped from swimming, which is often high volume, high frequency training. They're in the pool at 6 a.m. on a Saturday, not just on a weekday. he will lift and then go straight to the pool or he'll do pool work after school, then come straight to the gym. And then you have other kids who are like, I'm, you know, I'm getting tested on my bench this week. I won't come in this week. Fuck is that? You're benching so you can't fucking drag a sled, farmer walk to like, they're afraid. You can't fucking drag a sled, farmer walk.

They're afraid. And then I tell those kids straight up, you need to be a worker. You need to be ready to handle work. Not just now, but what's going to happen when summertime starts and you have football practice? You're practicing six days a week and you have to show up and lift. Or what do you say to the coach on Tuesday when it's practice coach? I can't use my legs today. We used legs yesterday when I was running. Like we run every day in football. It is the way it is. And so for me, the important traits in sports is of course, sports skill, number one. And then you need strength, speed, and toughness.

You have to have grit. If you're not tough, you will crumble when those matches or games are at their toughest, when they count. You know, you don't want to – what did I say? I almost won. You don't want to be the guy that has a bunch of almost wins. And that those lessons have taught me what I don't want other kids to experience. And what's weird is as the years and decades have gone by, coaches, I think, are more conservative. They're afraid to push a kid hard. And so you think back to when you

were playing football in the nineties, Mark, your coach would call you a name or tell you what to do. End of story. They didn't explain it with a story. They didn't take you down a rabbit hole about, you know, how to get tough and what, Hey Mark, make one more play next time. One more point. They didn't do it they just said don't be a little bitch done or they sent you home or they said f you or lee you know what i mean now we're always explaining and we're massaging the whole thing and it takes forever where you need some uh more i think the tough experiences shape you. If you don't have challenging things in sport, you know,

how we're not going to win when it really gets close to the wire. You said you're a big fan of Rocky. Do you remember the scene in Rocky where Rocky and Mickey are talking? Oh, yeah. I know what you're going to say. They're talking over their game plan, and Mickey's like, hey, man, I think your CNS is fried. And Rocky's like, oh, I totally agree, man.

We shouldn't run today, and let's not have any raw eggs, and let's not beat the shit out of Mr. T, and let's not beat up Ivan Drago. Remember that scene? Never said that. What about, remember the scene where he said, it's Rocky III. He's going to fight Clubber Lang.

And Mickey says he's done. And Rocky's like, why are you leaving? Why are you leaving like this? And he's like, you can't win. He's like, this guy will kill you. And he goes, all this stuff you got, this beautiful house, the money. He's like, it's beautiful. He's like, but the thing that happened to you is the worst thing that could happen to any fighter.

He's like, you got civilized. And so I'll be honest with you. When I'm in my gym in the summertime, and I know it's crazy hot up by you too, it's like a hundred degrees in the gym and kids are asking me about air conditioning and this and that. And let me tell you, I'm in there for four hours. I'm exhausted. I'm 45.

I'm not 25 anymore. So it has a different toll on your body. And I'm like, man, comfort is the enemy. We need this. It's, you know,

I get it. It's not comfortable,'s you know i i get it it's not comfortable but you know being comfortable just it doesn't help you in any way whether it's sport related or not you know that's the that's the tough thing about nowadays because there's so much information out there like there's so much really cool information and and evidence and science-based shit but what you were saying it really messes with people's belief in terms of like what they can probably do in the gym or how big they can get or how strong they can get just because you have so many individuals that are saying oh the evidence says you can't do this much volume and the evidence says you shouldn't be training this much and and it makes people scared to just go fucking try shit and see what they can handle

it's so frustrating like i'm frustrated for people that are getting into strength training because i'm just like y'all just fucking scared like everything just scares you yes i always i i openly say man it sucks i've learned so much i've gotten so smart with all this stuff. And I'm like, I think sometimes the training I did out of the garage was better because I didn't overthink. I wasn't overthinking and kids weren't getting stuff implanted. And look, at the college level, at the high school level, kids aren't really doing too much research. But at the college level, you always got like one or two or three guys that have these, you know, they always want to feel just perfect, just right. I heard this. I listened to that podcast and you brought up something real interesting.

When I was 18 in Israel visiting my grandparents, my brother was in the Israeli army and the guy had just opened a gym. I mean, I don't want to call it a gym. It was like a small room. It had a bench that if you wanted to squat on it, you lifted the uprights and turned it around and somebody had to sit on the bench because when the bar would be in the uprights, it would flip. So you'd have to have people sitting on the bench if you were going to rack the weight. So my brother was telling me about this crazy guy named Joe who came to Israel to be a Navy SEAL who was airborne army from Miami. So I get to the gym one day and I see this guy benching 295 and he had the strap, he strapped in, he strapped in, remember, you know, straps. This is 1994. So a guy like, he's strapped in memory no straps this is 1994 so a guy like he's like ah like trying to make 295 it's like looks like he's gonna die somebody runs over and like touches the bar he flips out on the

dude and he's trying to speak in hebrew he can't speak hebrew and he's like trying to say to him like just a little just a little like you shouldn't have touched it like that. And so Joe would do, he'd bench three days a week. He would curl after every workout, five sets of 10 with a 45 on a curl bar. And before every workout, he would do sit-ups. I remember one day we did a very hard leg workout, very hard squats, lunges, RDLs, leg extension, leg curl, just those volume days. We're done. I'm crushed. A hard leg workout, as you know, destroys you. Then Joe puts a 45 on a curl bar and starts curling. He's like, ah, nuts. Joe's nuts. Joe, by the way, became a Navy SEAL. He came to, went, came back to America, became a Navy SEAL.

I go, Joe, can't do that, man. You're going to overtrain. We just did biceps yesterday. Puts it down. He goes, you think the boys in the pen give a fuck about overtraining? He goes, they do their benching and curls and sit-ups every day. And then he goes back and starts curling. I will never forget that. He's like,

that was 19 summer of 1994. He said that to me. And, um, you know, speaking of early days, 2000 strength coach, I don't know if you remember Mark, but I'm, when I was a phys ed teacher, I called out sick and I went to the prison in New jersey it's called east jersey state prison the it used to be called rawway state prison they filmed the movie lock up with sly there did you ever see that movie and see my lock up i did not you better get with it boy if you want to keep this job talking movies so they filmed the movie there i had a friend who had a stepdad or or something who was a lieutenant there who worked with the lifers you ever see scared straight where they scream at the kids yes or like yes that's where scared straight was so this guy ran that program you know he was a lieutenant. He just called him LT.

And I said to my friend, would your dad be able to get me in there if I could talk to some inmates about lifting? So I get into the prison. I use a sick day. And I also say this for the other strength coaches out there. This was the year, if you look it up on T Nation or whatever the website is, I wrote the article maybe in 2006. So I'm like, you know, I tell other coaches you should be creating content and they make it so complicated. I'm like, let me explain to you something. I used a sick day to go to a prison to learn about training and you can't film a video. You know, like I went to prison, you know what I'm saying? Like I went with, with the lifers. And so, um, those guys all trained very unscientifically, you know, the big strong guy that they introduced me to first,

this guy was training one body part a day, but high, high volume. And then Saturday was like 100 reps of every bodyweight exercise. Then the other guys who were part of that Scared Straight program, they were on the former boxing team. The other guy was on the former powerlifting team. They had powerlifting teams in the prisons. They'd go and compete. The boxers did high volume calisthenics. Those guys, so I don't know if I was 30 at the time going there, 2006, so 16 years ago,

something like that. These guys were 45, later 40s. They were doing like five sets of 50 pushups every morning, five sets of 50 before going to get, you know, chow, breakfast, this and that. If I share that with somebody, when's the last time you did five sets of 50 pushups in a month, in a year? You don't, you know, my early mentor in strength and conditioning, Coach Reeve was doing 500 pushups a day. He did 500 push-ups before winning a state title in high school. He weighed in, did his 500 push-ups. He believed in it. The coach told him, do a lot of push-ups. You'll be a great wrestler. How many kids have done 500 push-ups the last month? But you tell me you want to get strong. What do you do on your own? And so I'll tell you, coaching has gotten really tricky and hard through the years because they overthink it when you can't escape hard work

in training or any athletic endeavor. Yeah, there's going to be a outlier who will be a successful athlete, but once they get to the college level, you know, you can't be lazy and successful. It's just not going to happen. It makes me wonder, like, you know, when people are in prison, they get really strong and really big. You ever heard of, like, you know, like when women get together and they start living together and their periods sync up?

You've heard of that phenomenon, right? I feel like it's the same thing in prison. Like you got all these dudes with high levels of testosterone together and they just train and they just get big for no reason. You know why? Why? You know why? There's always a threat around the corner. For example, I was thinking about this.

I think about it a lot. I was thinking about like, I always think of mark when i drive up to lake georgia past pokeepsie i always snap a photo for him of poe town but i think to uh you know to the um first documentary that your brother made bigger bigger faster stronger i was thinking myself man like you started training you guys were doing all this wrestling together your brothers probably would beat you up sometimes. And then if they weren't trying to beat you up, there's usually, remember the kid who took your football?

Yeah. Joe Garland. Like there was always somebody in the neighborhood who was going to kick your ass. And if it wasn't in the neighborhood, then somebody at school was going to kick your ass. And if it wasn't in the neighborhood, then somebody at school was going to kick your ass. Somebody was a bully. Somebody was going to take your lunch. Somebody was like always at, you know, the BMX dirt track you went to

and would take your bike and throw it. And so my early days of doing pushups was not because I was like, I will be a better athlete. I'm like, man, if I continue to be weak, I'll continue to get my ass kicked. And nobody's going to respect me skinny and weak. And then what is the greatest self? What is the greatest respect you can have smelly? Self-respect. And you get it through work. And so I tell these kids, I live in a really nice town.

Has my son ever been into a fist fight? He's 12. No, I was punched in the face, I think by like age seven. Got beat up. And so same thing at the high school. Shit, I'll punch you in the face right now. Take that football. Didn't you punch that kid in the face right now. Take that football. Then you punch that kid in the face when you saw him.

Yep. And I think you're threatened. You're in prison. And if you ain't strong, now you got a bigger target on your back. And I don't think maybe people are like, well, they're doing it because, yeah, it feels good, emotional health, yada, yada. But, man, if I'm in prison, I'm going to be training hard, too, preparing. Because every day is like, you know, every day could be that day. How many different shifts have you had to make with your business?

I know you and I've talked quite a bit over the years. I remember maybe like two, three years ago, you gave me a call and we were talking about you coaching and you were kind of like driving to one spot for like two hours and then you were running your gym. And more recently we had the pandemic. So like, how have you been able to, I mean, it sounds like you've had to do a lot of shifting around to stay alive. This is a good topic because we were just talking about being tough. I think if you want to be successful as a strength coach and or business owner, you better be tough, better be tough. So what happened was I left teaching in 2009. My online business, my certification, my gyms were all making so much money. And there was not really a lot of competition for what I was doing. I was kind of like an earlier guy with Mark making YouTube videos. People weren't doing that. And so it's like you're smooth sailing then got comfortable this town that we live in hurricane sandy hit which i think is like eight years ago so it was like 2012 maybe

2013 it like it made like a recession hit new jersey and so my gym tanked, my online business took a big shift downward because the kind of one man army that I was wasn't really working anymore. People started getting higher end editing with their videos and stuff like that. And so that, you know, the creative took off, which I did not have. And then 2014, I was commuting to Lehigh University, which was just shy of two hours. I'm talking an hour and 45 minutes if I'm flying each way. I would go there twice a week. I would coach there for three. So two hour drive, coach for three hours, drive an hour and 15 minutes to my one location, train myself, an hour and 15 minutes to my one location, train myself, then do five hours of coaching,

then about an hour drive home. It was nuts. I could say, I don't know how I did it. And I always say, the way I did it was, you just got to be tough. You got to be tough when you're doing that. That was what it took to make the money. That's what it took to provide. And that's what I did. And also that was an opportunity I wanted, like going to Lehigh was a very, that was a, it's a historical, I think it's one of the oldest wrestling programs. So I'd walk into this building and you go down this hallway with all Americans and national champs from like, I don't know, the 40s, 50s. I don't know how far back it goes. Black and white photos where you could hear the walls speaking. So I took a lot of pride in going there.

And I remember I called Mark before that. I was like, dude, I want this, but the pay is crap. And Mark was like, dude, he's like, you got to make them film every time you go there and leverage it. And of course, they didn't film every time I went there. And so I had to, I remember taking that into account, saying, all right, they ain't filming. I'll film. And I'd train and pull out videos and I would utilize that because I knew it would build the resume. Then after that, I'd say two years later, I got hired at Rutgers. I started working at Rutgers.

I'm now running, at one point I had four locations. I had kind of three and then like a fourth satellite inside a baseball facility. And I like sharing the story because you have such a big following. People don't always catch the stories I share. So the baseball satellite location I had, I thought it made perfect sense. This guy calls me. He had the weight room set up already. Somebody had been in there before. It didn't work out. It made sense. You got a bunch of athletes walking through the doors all afternoon and evening. It just sounded like, boom, convenience. It's going to happen. I invested a little money, some equipment,

put in our software. We couldn't give it away. This thing that was supposed to be like an easy win became just like a headache. And the partner I had just kind of dragged it on and on and on until I finally was like, peace out, I'm done. And so, you know, you made that video of like the inventions that not every invention from Slingshot made it. You know, you brought the earlier slingshot model to the seminar that we did that we had to give it away. We had one person sign up and

see him. I was telling Smelly, I'm like, dude, let's just cancel this seminar. You're not even going to cover the cost of your flight and hotel plus Jesse's coming. He's not going to make money jesse's brother passed away the weekend before the seminar i i told smelly probably three times

smelly says to me shut the fuck up he goes i'm fucking coming out to new jersey and i'm teaching people how to be strong and if it's one person, I'll fucking teach one person. And my gym was right next to a gym that had a lot of competitive powerlifters. And Mark was a competitive powerlifter at that time. So it's like they knew that. Back then, he was still 300 plus pounds. And I'm like, man, these guys don't want to learn from the guy who's stronger than them, who's trained at Westside, who's got a power. We couldn't give it away, and we had to start inviting people we knew.

Hey, bring a friend. It'll be 50%. We had to finagle all that. We made it happen. I always say we should have recorded it. I don't know why we didn't probably have none of this stuff, but you're constantly pivoting in business. You can't say, I always did it that way. Nobody gives a crap what you always did or how it used to be.

Gary Vaynerchuk always says, the market is the market is the market. Meaning, if people don't like VHS tapes anymore, but you love them, the market doesn't love them. So it doesn't matter what you think is important. And so I pay attention to a lot of these things, even with the words that parents use when they speak to me. So right before the podcast, a dad called me and a son's a soccer player. I know that parents are going to use words that they don't really know what they mean, but they've heard them. They're going to say things like core strength, speed and agility. You know, and so core strength, I don't like that word, but do you think I'm going to tell this guy there's no such thing as core strength? Or listen, your son can't get fast. He has to get strong first. They don't need to hear that.

Everything's what's in it for them. It's about them. And so I've learned in business is that I'm always trying to figure out what is it that the consumer wants and how do they want it delivered and what's the experience that they want to have. And so you have to create those things. that they want to have. And so you have to create those things. So there's been a lot of up, down, all around. And then after I left Rutgers, I left Rutgers because it was a full-time opportunity, but the pay was less than what I was making when I lived at home with my parents, without kids, family, any of that. And I remember saying to myself, if I take this job, I open the floodgates and create another green light for more strength coaches to get paid less than average while working way above average hours. You know, when you have 20 plus years experience with a master's degree in accounting, do they put you at the bottom? No.

But strength and conditioning has too much of that. And so I said no, not just for my own. I don't want to say pride, but for my like I had to stand for something. But I also had to take a stand for the industry I felt. And so I turned it down and I went back to teaching. I went back to teaching and partnered with somebody to open another, you know, a second location. And so is everything smooth sailing? No. And now with COVID, my gym here, we just had our most successful month. So on the first of the month, I get like all the auto renew and stuff. We're doing great.

And why do we do great? Because we do great stuff for the kids, period, end of story. I put the kids first. I don't care about what other people are doing around me. I try not to pay attention to that stuff and that. And then here's something I almost forgot to say, Mark, with this kind of pivoting and business stuff. And that, and then here's something I almost forgot to say, Mark, with this kind of pivoting and business stuff. And yesterday I had a pretty heavy duty business call with some people and they wanted to, you know, talk about bringing me on board as like

a guy who could deliver content. And then the night before I'm saying to myself, content, you know, I've trained, I don't know how many thousands upon thousands of athletes from youth to guys prepping for olympic trials you know to different sports you know from swimming to fencing to football to lacrosse you name it and i'm like i'm not just a content guy anymore i've worked you know with my buddy jo DeSena at Spartan and helped him launch his first book. It had a number two on the New York Times bestseller. Tim Ferriss has reached out to me for exercise stuff. Marty Gallagher invited me with his crew of guys to work with Naval Special warfare. I've built businesses. I've survived recessions, COVID this, that, like you name it. Like I'm like fucking Rambo part one. And, and so I said, um, I go, you know what I'm thinking guys

is I've partnered with people before and it doesn't even make sense for me to partner anymore and just be another guy that here's a platform, here's content, come film, you'll blah, blah, blah. I was like, if I'm going to be part of any company from here on out, then I have a stake in the company. I am part owner because now when I think the smartest people and you and I have had these conversations before, Mark, you've shared them through all your videos as well. The smartest business owners, they also have an exit strategy. The company can be sold. Not like you're like, I'm out of here in 10 years. But underground strength gym can't really be sold for what it's worth. 10 years. But underground strength gym can't really be sold for what it's worth. Years ago,

somebody offered you money for Slingshot and you were like, man, this company is going to be worth 10 times that in only a few years. I'm not selling it. And so at age 45, I look at things differently. I don't need another job. I got 99 problems and a job ain't one. I've been working my ass off for a long time. Like a 12-hour day to me is very normal. And so I tell these young strength coaches like, look, man, I'm twice your age and you're not even outworking me yet. And so I'm starting to look at things differently from financial perspective and the ability to have more freedom in my life. You know, that's the one thing I do miss. So I'm a full time strength coach at a high school. I got my gym in my hometown and we've got my partnership gym up north.

Then we got the online business. And so that's a lot of stuff under one umbrella as a kind of a one man army. And so now I want to, you know, I, I know business, I think deeper than a lot of people think I know business. And I also have done stuff. Like I said, like when my buddy Joe was going to release his first book, I was like, I know how to launch a book, dude, and get this thing to number one on New York Times. And I always said, if your team would have listened to me faster versus being,

who the fuck is this guy telling us what to do? That book could have been number one. And so going through these generations of business, early 2000s, then prior to 2010, then a little after 2010, then 2015, every few years there's another shift that we see. I'm starting to get a good pulse on where people are going. Like you, Mark,'re constantly like creating something new. You know, I pay attention to those things. Um, there's lessons to be learned from all that. And the way, the best way to go out of business is to never evolve. That is the best way to go out of business. I was curious about, um, as far as your knees concerned right now is obviously you mentioned that you had that first ACL thing when you had that, uh, the grappling fight, but now recently also, um, uh, obviously you coach people, but you know, I'd imagine that there are certain things, like you mentioned, you know, you can't grapple because of your knee. How am I going to do that? Yeah.

Yeah. because of your knee. How are you going to do that? Yeah. Yeah. How is it, you know, not being able to, and I guess, how do you mentally handle not being able to do certain things that you'd actually just really want to do because of limitations on your body? And also, I mean, even what happened to your knee recently, do you see anything down like the next few years to be able to potentially rehab and do some of those things that you want to do? Or is it just something that you're going to leave on the table? So every time my knee has been injured has happened through wrestling or grappling or some sort of jujitsu. So this is a full meniscus repair. So I have six weeks on crutches. So the meniscus gets stitched together. So it's not like our boy K star, he had the knee replacement.

They want you walking like that night, you know, same thing with an ACL. You're walking three days. You know, I know you guys had Phil come up. So this is actually like, you're very restricted, but I do a lot of other things that I love, you know, talking grown up as an eighties kid, I was always on my bike. So I have a mountain bike, you know, we live in a beach town. So we ride our bikes to the beach. I want to, last summer I didn't go surfing. Not like I'm some great surfer, but you know, I get a big board, I paddle, I go on my knees and then I stand up like real basic. So I love doing that stuff. I don't care if I don't wrestle anymore.

I also want to say this. There are genetic components, you know, like the coach at Rutgers, Coach Goodale, he's 50 or 51 and he's always wrestling. And some guys genetically are less predisposed to getting hurt. Others have more mileage on the body. I really think that the crazy shit I did in my younger years destroyed my knees or made them more susceptible. And so this wasn't necessarily like an injury. It was like a wear and tear that started pulling me away from my ability to do things like jog. You know, I want to be able to jog. Like Mark, when I saw you jogging with,

you know, Cam Haynes, I'm like, man, I just want to be able to jog. I want to do a normal thing. And so I did PRP and ortho visc. And, um, I spoke to Phil Daru's surgeon and he was like, look, you can inject everything you want into your knee, Zach. He goes, but you have a tear in your knee. You have a fully torn meniscus.

It's like, that thing is not going to heal back. The injections kind of mask pain, maybe a little bit of this, a little bit of that grows back. So I don't know in 10 years from now, will we have better injections that heal stuff up? I doubt it because, um, how will surgeons make money?

Right. So, um, I'm okay with not wrestling again, although I love wrestling, you know, I love the lessons it taught me. And, um, you know, I'm listening now to Dan Gable being interviewed on Joe Rogan, really intense, you know, and Dan Gable's body is beat up. And, you know, what's interesting is when I was in high school, I got his, uh, VHS tape called competitor Supreme, and he was known for the brutal workouts he would take his team through. And the common theme was you have to outwork your competition. And once I saw that tape,

that was kind of embedded in my mind. And so I did that with wrestling. I did it with bodybuilding. I just kind of went nuts. I did it with business, you know, and it's not necessarily the healthiest thing, to be honest with you. You got to, you know, I think's not necessarily the healthiest thing to be honest with you. You got to, you know, I, I think I've been thinking a lot about this kind of overall health thing in business. Mark, maybe two years ago, I remember you sharing a video, you know, you're waking up early and you're like, I, you're like, I kind of like to be done with my work stuff by two to three o'clock, which I think is very healthy. You could go home, you could shut it off. You're with the family. See, I've never done that.

That's not because I don't want to, but because of the way the business is. So, you know, yesterday having an important meeting, I basically said, they're like, they're like, what would it take if we had you all on? I'm like, this is the amount of money I want to make every day. And then this is the percent ownership I want because if the big people at the top sell it when this thing blows up, I don't want to be another employee. I've worked very hard for a lot of people, especially at the university level. especially at the university level. And I'm not a me, me, me guy at all, but I've learned that I've never been a me guy period. And so I think at age 45, I learned finally to say, you know,

you got to do something better for your health. Like I look at these football strength coaches in college, they're always like yelling and screaming and dah, dah, dah. And I'm like, man, doesn't that shit burn you out eventually? It's old. Then you come home, you're exhausted. Now that energy that you gave all those kids, your family has less of it. You know what I mean? And so I'm okay with not wrestling or not doing jujitsu. Who knows? Maybe jujitsu could happen down the road in a very light kind of environment.

Some of the guys I train are black belts that just do stuff on their own in their garage and just more chill, you know, so that could certainly be an option. And why do you also, by the way, because maybe somebody can get something out of this since meniscus surgeries are common.

Why'd you choose to get the repair versus the removal? I ended up getting a removal in my, I forgot which knee, but I ended up getting a removal. So why did you go? I think I remember. Did you get this last year or it was like two and a half years ago. Okay.

I kind of remember this. It was like two and a half years ago. Okay. I kind of remember this. So I've been kind of trying to figure stuff out with this knee for a few years. And, you know, kind of on the theme of me not taking care of myself, I never got an MRI. I would, you know, Mark and I being connected to a lot of smart people. You contact K-Star, of course. Whenever I'm injured, my text goes like this,

K-Star for hire. It's like I text them. He starts saying something. But Kelly's also honest. He goes, look, I don't really know what's going on until I could put my hands on you and see a picture of that knee. Then you go to another friend, and I go to another friend. Then I talk to this person. then you go to another friend, you know, and I go to another friend. Then I talked to this person. You're trying to just avoid all this surgical stuff. And then finally the pain was so bad. I was like, man, I'm just going to get an MRI. You know, I did acupuncture.

We did, like I said, the injections. So we do the MRI with the contrast. They see the tear. And by the way, it's hard to see a tear when guys like us who are like heavily built, they don't, it's like maybe there's other things happening in our knees. So he wasn't sure if he'd be able to repair it, but my doctor is aggressive to repair it because it saves, you know, your meniscus is the cushion between the patella and the tibia. So if they keep shaving it and shaving it, now we're getting more of the bone on bone. So you want to, even this thought of preserving my own body is how I think with athletes now

because of my own injuries is I'll work you, but I will not destroy you or kill you. And I'll do a lot of these, you know, I'll borrow from Matt Wenning's warmups and just things I've learned through the years to preserve the athlete's body, even if they're not going to be a collegiate competitor. And so he said, when I go in is when I could figure out if it's truly repairable. Um, and I was, I knew that this recovery would be hard six weeks on crutches. Yeah. You know, I can't use my hands cause I got to hold the damn crutches.

It's been really, this week has been really hard, but every day has gotten better. It's gotten better. And I was glad he repaired it because maybe if he just scoped it, I'd be body weight squatting right now and walking around and driving my car. I'd be body weight squatting right now and walking around and driving my car. But you know what? In four or five years from now, I'd have another issue. And so now, you know, what is my lower body training going to look like?

I've got the winning belt squat. I do a lot of, you know, for me, it's training. I don't really care if I'm deadlifting, you know, 545 anymore or any of that stuff. It's, you know, I remember Marty Gallagher telling me, Marty Gallagher, you know, he's a strength coach who was kind of like born and bred from this late 60s, 70s, 80s. He always told me that his old training partners, they always got injured because as they got older, entering one decade to the next, they'd say, well, I always used to do it like this, or I don't want to do it because that's what I used to do. And that's what I said. Like, that's how you put yourself out of business. So you, you know, destroy your body. So who cares what I used to squat? Then you'll never be happy if you always look at what you used to do. So now I look at

what do I want to do? I can't wait to ride my bike to the beach. I can ride my bike, but I'll go mountain biking with my son, just play tennis with my daughter. not that I could compete against her, but like I could move around. I want that freedom. And so our bodies build up mileage. That's why sometimes you see guys who are in their forties, fifties who are running or doing all kinds of hard training, but they didn't really start getting into training until they were 35 or 38 or Cam Haynes, he might be just genetically predisposed to being able to withstand a lot of running. You know, of course he works extremely hard. He trains hard. He, you know, eats great, this and that. There's a lot of factors there, but genetically he just might be, you know, built for that stuff. So you got to take that into account.

The gym business is alive, you know, in the morning, you know, when you're a trainer or coach and it's alive later on at night and the middle of the day, you know, it's like, who knows how many people get in there. And so that kind of, uh, you end up in a dilemma of like, yeah, how do I get, you know, at home time with my wife and my kids and things like that? Do you have a hard time delegating? Do you have a hard time letting go? Like if we go back to what you said originally, um, how it's about, it's kind of more about your customers, more about your kids. Um, so what's the difference if, if people still get a good service, why do you feel that you have to be there? Yeah, that's a great question.

So, you know, number one, once COVID happened, my North Jersey gym has a jujitsu, boxing, wrestling. It was on, off, shutting it down. boxing, wrestling. It was on, off, shutting it down. We have a higher payroll up there because we have a coach who's full-time. And then we have a coach Saturday and Sunday, part-time. I pop in there. And so the money I used to make from there, I don't make anymore until we're going to get these adults going. we're going to re you know get these adults going here that made me furlough my employees down here so they're obviously back now helping me because of the knee and stuff like that and also just you know i need a certain amount of money and until i get a certain amount of money then i'm the guy that has to do the job. Before that, each of those guys would usually

work once. Maybe I was probably in there three days a week and then somebody was in twice. The other guy was in once. And to the other question, do I have a hard time letting go? Yes, but getting much better at it. I think also the kids enjoy a break from me because I'm very tough on them. I'm tough on technique, all these things. But also, it's just good to have a different coach, change it up, different warm up, little different coaches. And so that's important. And then here's the next part to that, Mark, something that I think about often. And sometimes I'll do this if I consult with other strength coaches who are in this position, coaching a lot. I do a, it's called

what if, and basically you come up with this, what if, you know, what if slingshot only sold, you know, supplements? What if slingshot only did this? What if slingshot was only open Monday, Wednesday, Friday? Like you just start writing just anything you feel, no actual rules to it. And so let's say I start working with a company or something else comes up where I really got to be full-time with that and I'm making a lot of money. Then I have some what-if options. Maybe I get a coach full time and he gets a percent of that profit, you know, 35% of the profit, something of the gross profit. What if it's just me and I only open the gym, you know, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday at 6pm and you pay me a thousand bucks for three months in advance and then I close it for a month. Like kind of these no rules,

like what if I run my business completely according to my rules, not according to what for three months in advance. And then I close it for a month. Like kind of these no rules. Like what if I run my business completely according to my rules, not according to what the industry thinks we should do or I should do. And so, um, right now is one of those times where I call it, you do what you got to do. You're doing what you have to do, period. And the story, and that goes back to me talking about as a business owner, you need grit and toughness. I've known you for a long time, so I've seen the evolution. I've seen different team members. Do I know everything that's happened? No, of course not. But I know what it feels like when I have somebody who's worked with me or you have your best friend works with you and then they start the same business that you brought them in with. And you're like, man, I never would have done that.

And so as a business owner, you need that grit. You know, you need that grit and you got to you got time to hold on to like, hey, oh, I want to do this. I'd like to do this if you're the owner you don't just get to do what you like and what you want you know maybe mark smelly bell does but i'm not i got to get on that level well i was gonna so just make a suggestion um yeah the conversation that you had with this uh company this call that you had the other day i would just have the same conversation with yourself you know and see like because i think that you're with this company, this call that you had the other day, I would just have the same conversation with yourself, you know, and see like, because I think that you're you're in a position to where I understand COVID like just fucked everything up for everybody.

But I think you're in a position to where you can write your own ticket your own way with your own company. Like you don't necessarily need anyone else to come in. You know, I've known you for a long time. You crush it. You sell books. You have consulting. You do all kinds of different things.

So I think that you could figure it out. I think that the hardest thing sometimes is let go and just try to imagine what the fuck's this place without Zach Evanesh in it. And then I, a realization I came to, this has been really helpful for me is that if I just pass this off to somebody else, they actually might do a better job without me. Yes. And that's a really hard thing to say, but you're like, it might be better. It might be better off without me because a young guy coming in might just have a different perspective or he might be all fired up. I agree. My goal I have, though, with this business is, you know, I've been renting space since 2007. Did you purchase the building, Mark? No, I did not. leave to net you know my buddy joe descent is like i will buy nothing he's like i'll rent this fork he's like i don't want to own anything because then it'll own me um but i i would like to own

uh a building you know a lot of chris cooper has mentioned that and he's mentioned you and his pie i think he's had you on the podcast but chris cooper you know he bought a building and then he used one part of the building and turned it into a coffee shop because he loved having coffee with clients nice for people who might want to become members so kind of like one thing paid for the other yet down the road it's if he's not trading i think the worst thing in business is trading time for dollars it's the worst way. Yeah. And so I want something, um, that would pay me back. So as far as like the next few years, you're concerned because you, you have all these gyms

and stuff going. Um, how do you see things looking in like 10 years? Like ideally, if everything went the way that you wanted it to go, um, how involved would you be in terms of the gyms you're running? Are there new businesses that you've been wanting to start that will be started by that point? Just what does that look like? Since you already do so much as far as business is concerned right now? Right. So I have two locations now, 10 years from now, hard to say, right? Like it's 2021 or 2011. I never would have predicted any of this, not, you know, not talking COVID, but just the way the business world has evolved. I will definitely be less coaching.

Will I want to manage another coach to run the gym? I'm not sure. I don't, we'll definitely not be putting in these kinds of hours 10 years from now, let alone five years from now. Um, I would also say like a mistake I made, which I, you know, I have to figure out how to like, kind of make this work is, you know, Mark, you know, has a media team. Even from the early days, there was somebody recording that could make it look, the creative look good. I've never had that, which I think is a huge difference maker. You know, like Phil Daru shows up to his gym or he rent or he's inside of a baseball facility and he coaches somebody else partnered with him

films and creates and puts it together he focuses on his unique ability which is coaching they focus on their unique ability which is content creation distribution and turning it into you know consumable products whether it's digital, physical stuff. And so that's something that I need to look, find a way to make happen. Yeah, because I remember years ago, Mark was like, hey, I'll do a guest video for you. You could do one for me. He's like, we kind of get the same views. We get like 1 like 1400 views of video

and so uh mark sends me a video on box squats and it was like really blurry and a dude comments he goes what the fuck did you record this on a calculator like i was laughing so hard and so now what's interesting is here we are 10 11 years years later. I don't know how I'm, you know, infinitely smarter than what I was then, but my YouTube views will be like 200 views a video, you know? And I say to myself, like, that's pathetic. And what do you need? You need better creative behind it. You just can't be a one man army anymore. What's your uh i know like uh towards the end of his years you got close to uh the ultimate warrior um oh yeah what attracted you to like i don't know just uh like he did a seminar at your gym or something like that i believe right it's crazy like how did you uh

how did you come in contact with this former pro wrestling icon when um on twitter i think i saw one of his uh injections of inspiration videos you know people had retweeted it you know this is probably 2010 or something and uh it was the my passion is passion. And I remember thinking to myself, that's how I am. I'm just fired up about life and lifting and not necessarily just this or just that. And I went on his website and messaged him saying like, man, this video really hit home for me. I watched it so many times. And he emails me back the next day and he's like, Zach, I know who you are. I've been following you for many years. I love what you do. And that was really like, whoa, like this guy's following me and trying, you know, learning from me.

And so we just like started exchanging some emails. And in the emails, we were just, you know, talk about like training and the old school guys. And then I remember he asked me about like, I think like bicep and shoulder health, you know, like saw me climbing rope and stuff like doing all these pull-ups. And then I just asked him if he wanted to do, um, back then there wasn't podcasts, but I have a membership site. So I asked him if he would do an interview with me. a membership site. So I asked him if he would do an interview with me. And so he agreed to, and we did like a very long interview. I remember I broke it. I chopped it up into like two segments of like an hour and 15. And he goes, Zach, I normally just don't do these interviews

because they always want to ask me about the same stuff. And it's not really an inspiring person they're kind of asking like you know it's all going like i think they wanted you know how did you fall out with vince mcmahon like the same stuff i kind of got into uh him and i when we would chat we would always talk like training and like our kids and like being like walking through the mountains like being in nature like simple man stuff and we that became like a friendship and i think um i think maybe the way he felt was like it was like a kindred spirit that was just younger that he could you know almost confide in so we would like call each other every other day so if if I was driving to my gym up North, we'd hop on the phone. He'd call, leave a voicemail. I still remember the time he called,

how long ago it was, we still use the house line, but he called the house line and my wife's like, Zach, somebody on the phone named Warrior. So she don't't know, like my wife's like, what the hell is going on? Yeah, that's his name. He changed it, his like legal name, right? Oh, really? His legal name. Yeah, he took that stuff quite seriously. And I also think, like I said, he was very frustrated with people.

You know, he had that big falling out with WWF before his WWE. He didn't like lazy people and he didn't like people that couldn't try to figure stuff out on their own. And so he was torn. He wanted to help people without, without actually telling them what to do or how to do it. And so I think he enjoyed how I was passionate and intense and into kind of that way as well. And the way he spoke at my seminar was, it was just by pure luck. He was coming to speak at a

wrestling event in New Jersey, not far from my gym, 25 minutes away from the gym you and Jesse were at. And he saw that I was doing this seminar. We called it the Underground Strength Conference. And he had done a, man, like, I don't know what we call it. It was on YouTube where he's training those rock stars and he's like kicking their asses dave tate always reposted he's like squat low like you're shitting in a hole remember that video and he's like screaming at them he was approached by tv networks to start something like that as a reality series and i guess he just thought, you know, I will, you know, if Zach gets involved, Zach could do the strength training and I'll do the kind of motivational stuff. And so he told me he's coming out to New Jersey.

It was literally speaking like a day or two before my event. He tells me about, you know, the TV networks are contacting him and he goes but i want you to do this with me he goes i've had my time in limelight i don't need more limelight time he's like but i do need he called it less you know a coach and then um he goes if you'll help me do the first one at your gym he goes if you if you will have me, I'll speak at your event. So he asked to speak at the event. And I remember saying to him this. I go, warrior.

I go, I'm your friend. So if you need anything from me, I'll do it. I don't need a favor in return. I'm not going to keep score. And I said to him, that isn't what a friend should do, right? You need me. I'll do it. And I'm not going to come back and say, remember when I did this and you owe me. And so he was like, yeah, motherfucker. He was all hyped up. He's like, you're going to be the warrior beast coach. And so after that, if he would call me or email me, it was always like WBC warrior beast coach. And so after that, if he would call me or email me,

it was always like WBC warrior beast coach. You know, sometimes he'd call me Zach, but he would, that's how he would do it. So he spoke at my event on, I think, I can't remember. I think we did a Friday, Saturday. He spoke Saturday morning. So he says to me, you could now announce I'm going to be the keynote speaker for you. And I'm like, I'm not going to announce it until I sell out, sell it out. And then they'll know what they missed out on. He's like, that's fucking right. He's like, you don't need nobody to fucking help.

You know, he got all like hyped up over that. He speaks the next day, blows the roof off at a place elliot hall spoke that you know later in the afternoons it was like a real wild event like each speaker was very unique um i had my buddy speak quattro deuce um who's the 42nd black active navyAL who's got a very unique story. Him and his wife spoke. Just unique people. And so this next day is Warrior University. This is the beginning. And this is really the beginning of the end where it just implodes.

A camera person doesn't meet him and the people who are going to do the event at the hotel. He flips out on his assistant who's from London. That guy bugs out, gets on an airplane, flies home. They're walking to my gym. It's like a five-mile walk because he wanted them to do a warrior trek. The cameraman collapses, so somebody else has to do that. They show up. It's hours after they're supposed to show up easily three hours later.

The people, you know, one guy was very strong in the group. The others were not, you know, at all. Forget about lifters. They were just never had done pushups.

He was destroying them i thought people were gonna die or blow out a shoulder and just like it just got really bad and what what i what basically happened was like i just felt like he you know it there wasn't a lot of complimentary action going on at that time because i think the people in the event were not the right fit um and remember what I said earlier like I'm like I got too smart I'm like oh my god this guy could have a heart attack this guy's shoulder this guy's back and uh the one thing that's I always I always share with Dave Tate he always laughs I'm showing the guys take these kettlebells outside pick it up with a flat back blah blah blah warrior's, fuck your flat back.

He's like yelling. And it was really a mess. It was a mess. And so after that, it actually finishes on a positive note. They go to the diner. I kind of like have a crash. I do this big event. I do that thing i'm like i'm gonna go home see my wife and kids and pass out um we try to connect with each other a

couple days i call he calls we miss each other blah blah then he just goes off the radar which the beginning of the negotiations with WWF. And, you know, he had that falling out with his assistant. Then they kind of, you know, bring things back together. He gets the partnership with WWF. And then as you guys know, he has that heart attack the night that he's inducted into their Hall of Fame. the night that he's inducted into their hall of fame. And it was like very, the toughest thing for me was like, we never were able to connect after the event.

You know, he called me, left me a voicemail. I called him, we missed each other. And so you have like conversations left unfinished, unsaid. And I,

I typed up a letter and sent it to his house and then his wife texts me back, you know, and she was like, he loved you like his own son. She said like, he always spoke about you in the house. And, um, I sent her, um, you know, the, uh, footage and stuff. And then I never spoke with her again because then she got into the WWF, WWE, whatever it is. And I think legally who knows, you know, what stuff was going on. The good news is, you know, after years of me not speaking with his assistant, you know, we reconnected like in the early part of COVID, which was good, which was like good to just say, man, I'm sorry that I said what I said in the heat of the moment. He's like, I said, you know,

it's like when you're, it's like, I said bad stuff too, man. You know? So it was just good to be able to say, man, I'm sorry. So that was, you know, the toughest thing because I didn't um so that was you know the toughest thing because i didn't do this to become a business partner with him we just became like friends legitimate friends that would just like call each other and shoot the shit because it felt good to like hear from your buddy it was like always so great to talk with him um that was the tough thing. People might not understand like some of the switch that ultimate warrior made, obviously is like a wrestling icon and he would sprint to the ring and he was in amazing shape.

One of the best built professional wrestlers of all time, a pretty awesome bodybuilder, even before he got into any of it. But I kind of viewed him as a philosopher like if you listen to he is he is yelling and screaming in some of those videos but there's also videos where he's just he's just talking and his whole thing about the genius reaper i fucking love that like those videos uh they meant a lot to me they were they were transformative in a lot of ways he talks about you know how people have these hopes and these dreams and these ideas and before they

even have their first cup of coffee or glass of milk in the morning he said the genius reaper has already visited you and you're not going to fulfill your hopes and dreams because you already talked yourself out of it. You had an idea when you went to bed and you didn't fucking hold on to it. You didn't stay connected to it. I've always been like, man, that is like, why why the fuck that happened to us so much but you have this idea and then the next day you're like that's not really that good of an idea you should sleep in or you should do this you find so many other things to do that you're uh like better off with i guess talking you talk yourself out of all these different ideas that you have for yourself. Yeah. And he, you know, Warrior was his true, I don't know, alter ego.

You know how, you know, think about even now, Mark, not just when you compete or in SEMA, when you compete in jujitsu and lift heavy, we all have, and I don't want to say we all, but us lifters, athletes, you learn to flip a switch and your alter ego, you become someone else. When you train, you, you know, it's, you know, you feel like you can run through a brick wall, you know, and SEMA is no longer in SEMA. Now you are, you know, name the character. He was the warrior. And, he did a lot of warrior-esque things. He would take a walk for days through the mountains of New Mexico or when he lived in Arizona. He told me he did not sleep in the house. He would go in the desert and sleep on the floor and on the ground and meditate.

And, you know, his wife said she felt his body couldn't maintain his spirit. Like it was just too powerful. And there is truth to that. And that being said, you know, now I hate saying I'm older, but I'm learning to kind of temper that inner warrior spirit because you're trying to like elongate your health. That's why I mentioned these football strength coaches. They're always going nuts. And I look at it and I'm like, that's not healthy, man. Not healthy.

not healthy. It's also like not healthy for the, for the, for the profession, because now they think that's what you got to do is scream and yell when, you know, then you're, you got too much kind of like hype going, you got to learn to kind of like temper those things. And so interesting how many people still are inspired by, you know, the ultimate warrior. And, uh, my, uh, stepbrother who, uh, would live a little bit North of me, the area was like a pretty popular area for where, um, people would stay if they were like, uh, performing at Madison square garden. And he told me when he was, uh, I guess he was in high school, Ultimate Warrior pulled up to Gold's Gym, Cranford, in a limo and went in and he watched them start curling. And he curled a plate, then 185, 225, then 275. And Ultimate Warrior would do the clean and press

so he could lift the guys. He would clean and press 315. And he's like, I always paid the kid working at the front desk, even though they'd say, you don't have to pay. He's like, no, you take this money. He took a lot of pride in not getting a handout. He didn't want a handout. He wanted to earn everything. And so there's a lot to be learned

from that. I also think he struggled with, you know, he struggled, he wanted to help people, but then he got, I don't know if the right word is angry or disappointed when people were so helpless, constantly asking questions. So, you know, Mark, do you have his, like, he has like a fitness program. Do you have it? Did you ever buy it? No, I never bought it, but I've heard him talk about it for you. Right. So there's no workout in it. It's just him, you know, a self-recorded thing. It goes out on a CD. It might be an hour or 45 minutes, but he just, he tells you stick to the basics, five minutes, but he just, he tells you stick to the basics, you know, wake up early, get rid of junk food. He wanted to help, but he didn't want to give you the answer because then he felt he

didn't help you. He felt he was handing it to you. And, um, yeah, I remember him saying that. I remember him talking about that. He's like, I wrote a whole workout thing. And then he's like, there's actually no workout in it. He's like, cause he's like, you have to decide for yourself what's going to be best for you. But he's like, I give you advice on what to do. I was like, damn, that's actually, it's really interesting because I think that he knows that if you listen to some of that advice, and if you are interested enough and you apply that advice that you're going to find yourself, you know, a knee deep in workouts and you're going to be having a training log and writing down three sets of 15 and probably meticulously diving in because he didn't try to force feed a particular

system down your throat. Yeah. You'll figure it out. There's, I think because he knew there was power and beauty in figuring it out. You know, think about those early workouts you and your brothers did. You were figuring it out. Maybe there were some of the bigger guys in the gym sharing some stuff with you. Then you read a magazine. Maybe you read about those, you know, those wrestlers from the 80s were fucking tanks. I mean, those guys were so damn strong. fucking tanks. I mean, those guys were so damn strong, but don't, you know, now we're in the business. Of course we create content, right? It's always at the palm of your hand, but there

was something special about having to really research and find it because then you cherished, you were like, man, I, I worked, I really researched and dug this up to figure this out and um probably like did you you know looking back for you mark when you went to west side barbell did you own a vhs tape of west side barbell or did you read about them in powerlifting usa before you got there? Yeah, all the above, yeah. And so... I watched Elite FTS Exercise Index video so much that my wife was like, just please stop. She's like, can I get a break on this? She's like, really? She's like, you watch it every day. Like, how many times

have you... I'm like like i don't know i'm just gonna keep watching until i know it you know i used to watch all those lifting videos also in those early 2000s and i remember like my son is like a baby like he'd be downstairs with me and i'm like we're watching west side barbell special strengths ethan this is what you do at 10 months old it's so funny just looking back at, at that. And so, yeah, those were, you know, interesting. Uh, it was an interesting time. It was something that of course, you know, I remember being very open with him saying, you know, Hey, I, I'm not, I did not follow wrestling as a kid, so I don't really know what you did.

And he liked that because he liked that that part was over, and now we were connecting with this philosophy stuff. I remember for a while, while you were speaking, you were really hyped up on inspire, don't instruct. So it was just interesting to see how one video or several videos really inspired you. And it makes you think you're like, man, maybe my one video is, and I'm sure you've gotten many of these messages, how it's saved people and what it's done for them. Right. You got the lift through it. It's just, it's nuts. And when we did the super friends thing, so that's for your membership site.

You know, I like sharing this story. I don't know if Nseema heard this story, but. Oh, this isn't the shared dessert thing, is it? That's embarrassing. No, not the dessert. That one's old. But this is like the earliest. I'm very curious about the shared dessert.

I feel like this was your earliest time of trying to share and help, you know, people, but you were at Westside Barbell. It was the T Nation Forum. The T Nation Forum would have, you know, Joe DeFranco would be on there, Alan Cosgrove, all these guys, big names would really engage with all the readers and mark posted some photos of you know um when he was wrestling what his build was like his transformation i think you were looked like the final photo you were like 220 ripped like really good photo and you're sharing how you eat how you train with hopes that like hey guys if anybody wants to hear what I do when I'm at West side, because people were asking me at West side, here's what I do. And I don't know why or how, but the comments were like,

go fuck yourself. They're like, what the fuck are you trying to show us for? You're on steroids. They're like, Shane saying all this crazy stuff. Mark's like, I'm just trying to help.

They're like, go fuck yourself. I swear to you. All the comments were like, F you. And I'm like, this guy just shared workouts. And I remember you were like benching 315 for double digits. I was like, damn, this dude's strong. And I'm looking at the workouts, trying to see what I could pull from it and use myself and use with athletes. But everybody else is like, go fuck yourself. And Mark, that day you could have been like, you know what? I will never share anything again.

People don't want to hear from me, man. I just tried helping people. They told me to go F myself. I mean, it was like, I don't recall or understand what it was, but that always is like embedded in my memory as this first time because other than that mark was on the elite fts q a as jackass you may have been jackass on um the thread but yeah you said i'm mark bell you you revealed who you were and they just you know blew blew up on you and um it um, it's like, man, you know,

he was trying to help people. And I was, I was inspired by that post, the workouts, your, your transformation photos. I still remember. Yeah. I think, uh, you know, there was like inflammatory stuff. And then I think I played into it, you know, cause you know, being, being a pro wrestler, like, you know, you, you you you're pretty good with like a microphone you know so anytime i anytime somebody said something i would respond to them and just then it became more inflammatory and then people are like oh now you're talking about like how this guy doesn't you know this guy doesn't have you know good enough numbers to like speak about your photos or whatever you

know and then they would people just pile on you know they blew it up man today people don't know how to talk smack like you talk smack i talk smack to kids at the gym they're like staring at me i'm like man dude you gotta get with it bro you're gonna have too many soy protein shakes you know what are you vegan you know we start like saying they don't they don't even know how to like talk smack back sometimes you know they're confused they don't even know you're talking shit to them yeah you can uh like mentally defeat them before it happens what's interesting is some of the college kids now do it through their own instagram you know they're competing against somebody they start saying stuff and uh some of them some of those kids are good at it. But yeah, man, through these about 20 years of business has been a lot of unique experiences and definitely not where I want to be. And I really feel a media person is a must have for me to really get this information out because, man, I feel like the results we're getting with the kids is just so awesome. I just want somebody to come in and be able to do it.

You know, they call that focus on your unique ability, you know, stay in your wheelhouse. And if you start doing things that take away from your unique ability, it's like sucking, you know sucking gas out of your gas tank. You don't want to be there. Ask and you shall receive. I bet you there's someone listening right now who's like, I'm kind of in like New Jersey area. Yeah, bring it. We need a Jersey person.

Jersey Shore. Now, it's curious when you're talking about the alter ego thing. Yeah. You work with a lot of like college athletes,, college athletes, young kids, how do you teach them how to do that? How to like get in the zone? Because I feel like, you know, the, the instinct is to get angry or whatever, but how do you instruct kids to do that individually? Like to, to get in their specific type of zone? I don't really have a specific way. I'll be honest with you. What I've learned is that it takes everybody different time.

I call this turning the corner where I see this change in them, where they start kind of leaning into the tough times versus cowering during the tough workouts and things of that nature. It goes back to like you guys were talking about when we started the podcast, this, the odd objects. And sometimes I'm like, man, I wonder if just those, were those kids tougher because they were tougher or because I wasn't using as much barbell work.

It was like thick bar, sandbags, stone, train outside, cold weather, hot weather. sandbags, stone, train outside, cold weather, hot weather. And so I feel there's a couple factors there. Number one, Marco, I share this all the time, points on the scoreboard. You got to just keep letting them get points on the scoreboard of life. Build the confidence, build the confidence. Number two, talk to them about how it's okay to believe in yourself. You've done the work. You're working hard. You're doing the skill work. And so now you just got to go and perform. Now, those who perform the best often have a lot of experience in competing. The more you compete, the more of a natural thing it becomes.

The more you compete, the more of a natural thing it becomes. The tricky thing is, you know, we have a lot of coaches for everything. I got a mindset coach for you. You know, you were talking yesterday with Mark Uyama. You know, what do you do when a fighter has five different coaches? You know, Muay Thai coach, grappling coach, wrestling coach, nutrition coach, sleep coach. What other coach do we have? Boxing coach.

It's like sometimes it's just like, what do they call it? Too many chefs in the kitchen. Yeah. And then you just dilute it. So sometimes it just takes time. And I explain that to kids. I explain it to my coaches. I go, look, John Smith is not here because he's a beast. A beast wouldn't be here. They're going to think they don't need to come here. And so that being said, I keep trying to get points up on the scoreboard of life. iron sharpens iron. And then a lot of challenges where they experienced success and you announced that success. Make sure that you identify, dude, you don't realize it, but you,

I don't know if you remember, but you couldn't do one good pushup when you're here. You just banged out 20 pushups with 40 pounds of chains. Or, dude, if we look back to when you started training, you weighed like 128. What do you weigh now? I weigh 175. So everything is, you know, I guess as a dad, you've like time has a different kind of, I view time differently. You know, you got to have this patience where things will evolve. And so I sometimes train a kid in eighth grade who weighs 85 pounds.

He stays with me through the end of high school. Now he's 185. He gained 25 pounds a year. That's two pounds a month. Two pounds a month. You're not going to see it in the mirror. You know, that's half a pound a week. It's so little.

And so it's that compounding effect. And so I have to explain to them like, look, this shit takes time, man. You know, it's, it's not going to be easy. And sometimes some of these kids are not willing to put in that time, you know, and then I got to reach out to them. For example, train a real big football player. I love this kid. Great kid. He moves great. He might be like 275, maybe 265. He could front squat like his butt is like down to his ankles, you know, beautiful technique. He's not like overly strong. You know, when he benches, you know, he could probably bench 225 for a triple. He could deadlift 455, maybe close to 495, but he could move, which to me is very important. Like you could maybe deadlift a lot, but if you can't move, forget it.

We encouraged him to join the wrestling team. And I watched him wrestle and he kind of walked out with his shoulders down, checked in, then he walked to the center, shoulders down, and he kind of walked out with his shoulders down, checked in. Then he walked to the center, shoulders down, and he did nothing. He didn't attack. He didn't snap and spin. No front headlock, nothing. And I'm like, man, he gets after it in the gym.

He could move. He could sprint, jump. But then he was outside of his realm. And so now he needs experience on that mat. And so yesterday his mom sent me a video, he's wrestling on bottom, he flips the kid over and pins him. And the day or two before that, I was like, your son has to flip the switch. She's like, what does that mean? I was like, he needs an alter ego. He also needs to believe. And before you go out, you got to like kind of add up all the things you've done. And I've been training at the underground for a year,

killing it three days a week. I've been playing football. I know how to hand fight. I'm faster than this guy. There's no way this heavyweight could squat like I do. You add it up. You got to give yourself permission to believe in yourself. And if you don't give yourself permission, if you don't believe in yourself, I don't care. You could have all the best coaches in the world, but everything is going to stop. You'll have this like roadblock. That was actually my thing was like, I was so hard on myself that if I didn't score a takedown or something didn't go my way, I just downward spiraled. What did coaches say back then? Toughen up.

Now I have to explain to these kids how that works. Talk to them about rebound. Something bad happens, it's over. It's actually over. It doesn't even exist anymore. You have to rebound. Now you got to just get one more point on the board. Get little small inches of success, inch by inch, brick by brick. Coach, you know, like Uyama's saying, and thinker, you're not just a strength coach. You are, like, talking to them about mindset, technique. You're talking to them about so many different factors.

You are, have you guys had, you didn't have Brett Bartholomew on the show, have you? So Brett is, like, big into the psychology of stuff. He talks about, like, as a coach, you have to be a chameleon because even in the same group, you'll have, you know, you might be training the football team, just the big guys are just the skill guys, but each of them has like a different personality trait. And so he might respond to coaching a little differently than this guy and that guy. And, you know, as looking back to my younger years, it was just a blanket. This is how practice is going to be run. This is how everybody does it. Whether you're a big guy, small guy, new experience, bang, that's how we do it. If you're

not winning, you're not tough. Get tough. Done. That's how it was. And so now I have to talk to them about a lot of things. And you know what else I told them about, which I've changed, is having fun. You mentioned that earlier. I'm like, guys, if you lose a wrestling match, we still love you. You got to do your best though. They say that's why John Wooden had the great teams. He didn't yell at them. He taught the kids how to recognize winning and losing as an internal effort kind of thing. I know it sounds corny. You know, the squirrel take care of itself.

Not always. Because some of my hardest working kids, they may not be the most talented. And so sometimes they're losing more than you. Then you're like, man, I can't work so hard, but sometimes it just takes more time. And I'll tell you this. And see me. You mentioned the age groups. You know, think about this.

If you graduate high school at 18, you're still kind of a baby when you're 20 or 22 as a senior in college, that's a whole nother animal. You could be a completely different athlete. And so that's why I always encourage the athletes. Don't stop at the end of high school, you know, and then like, Oh,

well school, this and that. I'm like, listen, when you're an athlete, school is easier. You have, you know, study hall organized, you have tutors, you have an academic advisor, you get to choose your classes first so you could get to practice. It's actually easier, you know, but some guys get tired of the work is, I think that's what happens is they get tired of showing up and putting in that work. And so at the college level,

you'd see that you'd see kids that never didn't care if they were not going to start. And I learned that when I was at Lehigh and I was like, that kid's never going to start coaches like, yeah, and he knows it and he's fine with that. He's happy to be with this team he this is like a brotherhood to him but he doesn't care if he's not the best guy which is weird you know but

if everybody cared about being the best guy right we'd all win you know what i'm saying there would be no second place so we need the in this in the weird way we need those that don't care. We need those who kind of care. We need the few AJ Ferraris who deadlift 665 with a round back and ready to go and kill people. We need all that. And then it's up to you to choose who you want to be. And then sometimes I'm not sure you get to choose that. Sometimes it's your environment, what you are brought up in. And so I always think if, you know, we share the story, so I'm not going to get into it. But the time I cried in Israel with that Andre, the weightlifter, if he would have said, you come back.

If you would have told my grandpa, bring your grandson here twice a day, you know, I'm going to lift with him in the morning and at night, those three weeks could have changed my life completely from athletics that may have changed. You know, think about that. Who's Olympic weightlifting in 1989. If he could have taught me and then the aggression behind all that stuff, that could have completely transformed me. So, you know, we mentioned the stuff with the prison. If you're not threatened, sometimes there's no reason to be tough. But then on the flip side, some of the toughest kids I've worked with have come from families with, you know, more money than God.

It's crazy. with more money than God. It's crazy. And so I can't ever pinpoint who will be tough, who will not be tough, who's going to break senior year and bail out, who you never thought would quit. You never know. It's pretty crazy. How do you build and then keep a young athlete interested in training period. I'm just thinking, thinking ahead. Cause like, you know, I'll try different things with my daughter. Some of them work, some of them don't, but then, you know, my son, I want him to be super interested in, in training and, you know, his,

his health, but I also don't want to be one of those, you know, trophy kid dads, you know, like forcing it on him without him like being interested yeah it's got to be fun and you know to me hard work is fun i love a hard workout but if a kid has never done anything hard and then you put them through something hard then they're gonna be like f this this. This is hell. And so you need freedom. And so my daughter's 14. My son is 12. When they come to the gym, my daughter is now, I coach her. She's 14 and a half. She's mature enough for it, but there's still freedom in that workout to do,

hey, you want to do this? Do that instead. When my son comes, I try not to coach him at all. I tell one of the other kids, Hey, go grab Ethan for this. Do you know, tell Ethan that because as a dad coaching your son, sometimes that's very difficult. And I play the long game. You know, I play the long game, meaning the dad I spoke to today, his son is seventh grade. And so I've had kids leave the gym or their dads pulled them out because we don't squat or deadlift right away. You know, they're going to go somewhere else and do their round back deadlift. And so I'm playing the long game. Why? Because in high school, we are going to be doing all that stuff. And you're going to do it when you

have mandatory high school weight room. So now I got to kind of play around that. And coach Reeve told me, coach Ethan Reeve told me, always let an athlete leave with 10% in the tank. It was that way. They do extra at the end. Maybe they do arms. Maybe they do machines. Maybe they go to a gym on their own. He goes, it doesn't matter. The fact that they're doing extra on their own is like, makes them feel like a champion. He's like, cause if you destroy them, then they don't want to come back. They feel like they're always getting beat up. And so, um, some stuff, you know, and I'm always trying to get better.

So some stuff that I recently did, which has helped me has been, I was like, man, I can't keep telling these kids how to warm up and do this. And it was like September, you know? So we're kind of the beginning of school. COVID is still fresh in everybody's mind. I'm like, guys, it's wacky Wednesday. You create the warmup. You do it. They're like, we do it. I'm like, do whatever you want. Medicine ball, kettlebell. I don't care. Do whatever you want. This one kid goes and grabs a kid and like a fireman's carry and starts running with them. And I'm thinking to myself for six months, we haven't like touched anybody, you know, God from, you know, your, everything's been sprayed down. You, you know, you're acting like your, your, uh, gym is like gonna be like, uh, cleaned like the operating

room, but you know know and i was like thank god that they just did that then they went like hand walk wheelbarrow hand walk then buddy carry they went nuts then they started doing dodgeball with the medicine balls but they're gonna put a hole in the walls like holy hell they went nuts and so sometimes the training needs to have no rules. It just needs to be kind of do whatever and let them do it. And then with coaching, this was interesting. I've seen it with Mark, and I saw Jocko Willink get a question on this in his early years on Twitter. Somebody asked Jocko on Twitter, there was a photo of him, his son surfing. And he's like me and the boy catching some morning waves.

And somebody said, is your son going to be a Navy SEAL like you, Jocko? That my son will be whatever he wants to be. And I think ultimately our kids will become whoever they want to be. We can push. And especially in wrestling, there's plenty of wrestlers who were pushed into it, who hated it and became great. But there's also, you know, infinite more that hated it or, you know, you name any other sport. And so there's many moving parts to that question. I think a fun environment is crucial.

And so what I've learned is I trick these kids. It's like a party when they train. They don't even realize they're working so hard. And then I let the kids take ownership. So I might say they might stay at the end and they create or they do this thing called the conveyor belt. They get like a bunch of plates, you know, two tens, two quarters, two 45s. They line everybody up. You do 10 curls down,

10 triceps back, 10 overhead press down, 10 curls back. They call it the conveyor belt. So you're like just constantly curling and pressing. You got to give them freedom. And even if I was a sport coach, you know, wrestling being my sport, I would probably have those free days on Wednesday. And I have a funny feeling Penn State, which this year they didn't win the national title. I think they took second, but Penn State won multiple titles in a row consecutive. Not all of those guys lift. I think if some of them want to lift, they let them lift. If some of them want to lift a little, they lift a little. If some of them want to not lift at all, because some of their kids look like they don't lift, but they're fucking killing people. And it just goes to show you that the sports skills, number one, the sport coaching has been matched to the mindset to the

psychological uh you know matching of what that athlete wants you um you know and i'm not i never thought i'd get into psychology and all that stuff but it's been a uh something i picked up on through the years of coaching you know i'd say the past 10 years i really picked up on through the years of coaching. I'd say the past 10 years I really picked up on it. And then being in the college sector, Lehigh and Rutgers, very top-tier wrestling programs, I really started seeing how training needed to be matched to these guys individually. It's pretty interesting. So as a dad know andrew what i would do is go hands off get your get your son and daughter to uh somebody else but do some research you know

do those places train kids like kids or do they train kids like miniature adults like when i see a seven-year-old pushing a prowler i'm'm like, dude, you know what I'm thinking for seven? I'm thinking dodgeball. I'm thinking tag. I'm thinking like relay races with like little medicine balls, stuff like that. I'm thinking monkey bars. I'm not thinking of anything organized. Box jumps, sleds. Why am I going to do it at age seven?

You're going to be excited to do that at 17 still? Maybe, but you're, you're trying not to waste those things. Um, I was actually, uh, we were talking earlier and I heard that you, um, you have, you're really big on like strength coaching books, et cetera. So I'm just actually curious on the psychology side of things. Has there anything that you've, you know, that you have that you've read that has helped you out a lot with the psychology side of things. Is there anything that you've, you know, that you have, that you've read that has helped you out a lot with the mindset side of things,

with the psychology side of that? I haven't read any psychology books. I've read the stuff that got me, like, really fired up about mindset was when a lot of those Navy SEAL books started coming out in, like, pre-2010. lot of those Navy SEAL books started coming out in like pre-2010. But the first Navy SEAL book I read was in 1994, was called Rogue Warrior by Dick Marcinko, who was the guy that created SEAL Team 6, which then became development group, dev group.

became development you know development group dev group and so he always uh like he and then he created a business book too and i remember one of the rules was like um you don't have to like it you just have to do it and it just reminded me a lot of wrestling wrestling you know my coaches changed me and not every coach could change somebody you know they some people say the sport changes you a great coach could change you and um look my coaches were minus my head coach they were all college guys our assistant coach was a pan am games champion but they were just tough. And so they, they pushed us like the workouts we did. Like I look back and I'm like, man, uh, that would make like what they did to us would make newspaper headlines around the world.

The things they did, the things they said back then. And so I learned from what was right, what was wrong. The Navy SEAL stuff that intrigued me was so many of the SEALs were quote unquote, physically normal guys. And when I went to work with the SEAL guys, I remember the guy that picked us up. And I remember the guy that picked us up, he was like the lead guy. He was like drinking a Mountain Dew. He was like, had chew in his mouth. I thought he was like the driver. I thought he was just the dude to drive us and pick us up. Then I realized he's like one of the veteran guys for, you know, the most elite special forces team in the world.

And I was like, man, these dudes could throw you for a loop. He had saggy jeans on, a loose-fitting t-shirt. When we started training, he had shorts on and a tighter shirt. I could tell he was ripped up. Did a lot of Muay Thai grappling. But I was like, this dude, man. I thought he was just some guy that drives a van. Yeah, he could kill me in three seconds.

That kind of makes me wonder, because obviously, again, you've worked with a lot of kids at this point. You've worked with a lot of people that do crazy amounts of conditioning. I remember when I was in college, especially when we were doing double days and there was endurance type work. There were a few times where I broke right now. What do you mean? What happened physically? Like, like physically,

like we, we would do this thing. Fuck. It was, it wasn't called the Cooper, but we would, it was this very long endurance type run length of a soccer field. So we would,

I think, run back forth, then sprint half field, sprint back, then run back and forth, then sprint full field, sprint back 21. We do that 21 times.

Um, and the endurance aspect of it fucking broke me, but we would do that on specific double days. Now, how heavy were you? I was two 15. Yeah. Yeah. as a soccer player oh that's right you played soccer so it's interesting is like doing that for a guy who

weighs 135 is tough but when you're 215 it's like now a whole nother world yeah it was it was but that's right i forgot you played soccer yeah but that got me curious because you know you yourself you know so much in terms of the knowledge of strength conditioning but you also have this this you know history of there were times where you just like fucking trained and you trained till you got to this place where you realize okay okay, that's, that's not enough. So you have both sides when you're working with college athletes, kids, et cetera. How do you know when you need to back off or is there ever a time where like you need to kind of really not break them,

but take them there to a very, just like all of it. Yeah. All of the above. So let me to uh see if i could break this down summer when you get a chance can you plug in the charger for me so i'm your story reminds me of um when i was at one of the colleges we would do a pre-season run friday mornings on the football stadium not just a run but it was like you know we mornings on the football stadium, not just a run, but it was like, you know, we jog around the football field. Now in wrestling, you got heavyweights and you got one 25 pounders or one 26 pounders. A heavyweight could be two 70, you know, twice running like that is way different. And I knew that, but there are certain things that the wrestling coaches are going to do that

everybody's going to do. And they don't care if it's in, you know, Zatsy Orski's science and practice of strength training. But in my mind, knowing too much is like, damn, what are we doing to his knees? What is this doing to his knees? Now is he going to suck today at practice? Cause he's getting destroyed doing this so then we're like sprinting you know across the football field halfway down and back all the way down back then you're you know kind of like running these loops then you

come down then you have to hand fight and wrestle on the5, you could do that. When you weigh 195, that gets tough. When you are a heavyweight and you have to finish with a mile run like everybody else, they're not even running hard. They're like barely trudging along. And so it's not even effective anymore. And then the kid is kind of coasting. So what I would have rather have done there is less of the distance stuff. Take them down. Let's get some of the wrestling dummies. Let's do some carries with the dummies, some throws.

Let's do some sprints on the airdyne bike, some battle ropes. Boom. You know, the lighter guys and the middleweights could handle that stuff. Maybe an upper weight, I would do stuff similar with the heavyweight, but maybe get a couple dumbbells out there, throw in some dumbbell complexes. But then is this too perfect, too optimal? You need some of that optimal, and then you need some of that crazy shit. You have to know when to open up the crazy shit and is this crazy shit going to interfere with the competition time? And so sometimes the crazy shit is best done in the deep off season when there's no threat of competition and it's, I'm

going to really put this out there, that it's safe to do with that kid. That kid is prepared. As you guys know, kids have died in college football strength and conditioning with all that kind of sprint work that you're talking about. And usually the kids that die are not the skill guys. Who is it? The bigs. They, it's just, they need something else.

You need safety things on hand. You got a sport coach saying to the strength coach to do something. The strength coach knows that that's probably not the safest or even sport effective, but the strength coach does it to keep his job anyway. Look, that's a big reason why thinker said, peace out. Like you don't even know what you're talking about and you're going to tell me what to do. You know, he had the balls to do it. He had the guts to do it. So the crazy stuff, you have to figure out when is the appropriate timing. Here's when it's not good. When you got kids that haven't trained or you don't know if they've trained. So John Welburn has said, after winter break, you're always coming back to football and getting tested. You know you're getting tested. So if you have a three-week winter break or a four-week winter break and you didn't train and you partied and ate crap, you're going to get killed.

Now, there's two responsibilities there, coach responsibility, kid responsibility. With a good warm-up, you can identify who's going to struggle with what's to come. So if a movement warmup, skipping, jogging, shuffling, you know, world's greatest stretch, you know, the quadruped stuff, getting down on all fours, rotations, some med ball work, you know, some sled drags and one-arm kettlebell carries. If the kid is crushed there, he's not going to handle your prowler suicides or your 10 sets of 10 squats he could die you know and here and there kids who have died had maybe an underlying heart condition that wasn't maybe they didn't know about but um here's the other thing and see me there's so many of these variables the other thing is

if you don't train year round you don't got to go balls to the wall, but if you're not at least in it on the regular and you keep doing this roller coaster, you get better, stronger, more confident, then you stop and you're on and off. You're going to struggle all the time because you're always going to try to get back in shape. And so a great program has everybody regularly in shape. You know, football has minimal downtime, which is actually good. It's safe, because if they have too much downtime, forget it. When can you not crack somebody? When it's in season, because if you kill them, you know, I've said this earlier,

your strength and conditioning must feed the sport. It could never take away from the sport. Here's an example. I know you got next question or whatever we do. When I was at one of the colleges, this was, uh, so they always had Mondays off. Cause in the big 10, you compete on Friday and Sunday. So Monday was off. And then we always lifted Tuesday, Wednesday, which I didn't really like. Thursday, you sports, wrestling, and Friday compete. So I had to really have an interesting day. So Tuesday was like a heavier day.

And then Wednesday was a speed day. And on one of those days, we did sumo deadlifts for five sets of two, 10 total reps, no eccentric, drop the bar. So you started light, then you added weight, medium. So you added weight on the second set, then you added weight on the third set, and then you kept that weight for your fourth and your fifth set. So you did a total of 10 reps. weight for your fourth and your fifth set. So you did a total of 10 reps. You did three sets of two working at about 50 or 60%. So a speed, right? So six reps with no eccentric. What are you thinking

of that? Easy, right? Easy. That later that afternoon, they had a practice and the head associate coach was like, Zach, guys are saying that their backs were killing them. I go, let me tell you what we did. I go, because that's bullshit. I go, here's what we did. And I explained it. So nobody deadlifted more than like, you know, the heavyweights may have pulled 275 for two sets of two. Right.

Meaning they could pull 495 for like a double. So they did speed, speed should feel good. And I was like, man, what's going on there is mentally, they're just in that mode where their body, they're starting to feel a little bit the aches of the season. And here's just kind of like something to attack like we deadlifted today like guys we did 10 reps with no eccentric and we did speed work and sometimes you just gotta and and moments like that you just gotta say guys if you think you're always gonna feel good you are wrong you will never always feel good in this sport you will feel good if you're in the chess club or band, you know, that's it. If you're playing a combative sport, things will hurt. And so

the warmup is that time to assess, okay, we're warming up. And while you're waiting to do something, I see you doing this. Boom, mental note. Now I'm going to come over and just have a little quick chat with you and ask you how you feel. I'm not going to mention anything about your shoulder. It's going to see you say anything to me about it. Then I'll look at how you move during pushups. You know, I see Mark grabbing his knee or doing knee circles while he's waiting. Mental note, like paying attention to that. So during a training session, you know, let's say it's you two guys amongst 15, you know, two guys are getting these adjustments. You know, this other kid who loves to go heavy, I'm letting him go heavy. This other kid who

loves speed work. I make sure we incorporate jumping and throwing med balls when he's there, because I will announce words like explosive and speed and I'm getting into his mind. And I can't learn that stuff from a book. I can't even put that stuff into a video. I learned it by coaching so effing much that was I, was I always this tuned in? No way. Do I make mistakes to this day? 100%. Am I sometimes too hard on a kid? Yes. Am I sometimes too easy?

Yes. It's just like I explain it to people like that movie 50 First Dates with Adam Sandler. That's what this is. It's like 50 First Dates of Strength and Conditioning. It's crazy. Do I miss simpler days and like here's the blanket program? I You know, do I miss simpler days? And like, here's the blanket program. I don't know if I miss it. I love constantly getting better, but I think we got to be careful of thinking we're too special. You know, John Wellborn says you

looking for that secret squirrel program. You're a special snowflake. like deadlifts don't work for you squats are no good now like they don't work for you okay andrew um can you um hit record that was a good pre-show warm-up i like that so whenever you guys are ready i'll put in the sd your uh your son instructed us to do your son instructed us to do that. That was the prank. We're going to have to do this tomorrow if you've got some time. That is funny. Hey, thanks for spending your time with us today. Appreciate it.

Where can people find it and where can people purchase some of your books and courses and whatnot? Yep. Got the Strong Life podcast, so they can find that wherever. And then on social, it's a Z Evan. So it'll be Instagram, YouTube, all that stuff. And then my website, go to Zach strength.com. Awesome. Thanks again. Have a great rest of your day. Yes. Thank you. Bye guys. Later, bud. Damn. I, the part I really, really liked was you need to give yourself permission to believe in yourself. I think that's fucking huge.

Gigantic. I love that. I mean, it's funny because we were talking about the same type of idea with Doug Miller when he was on. A lot of people, because of all of this fucking information, they just don't believe they can do things. And they put these limiters on themselves. It's fucking sad. Mental note, you're doing the shoulder thing. have to right now they're just kind of just kind of won't yeah yeah no uh like mark and i were talking yesterday about my well i mean i guess at the

beginning of this podcast too on my training um you know i'm doing stuff that's not hurting me and you know i'll be doing uh whatever it may, like, working on my chest and, like, doing, like, partial reps, getting that burn, getting it to feeling that. And then I won't stop and I'll keep going. And keep in mind, the weights are super light. And then I'll do the sled drags. And one of the trips down the turf, I'm like, man, like, I know bodybuilders go super light and they, like, they crush it, they kill themselves. But they went heavy, you know, at some point in their career, like they, you have to, right?

Like you're going to have to do something to build that density in that muscle. And I, so I started doubting myself and I started thinking like, ah, no, like, man, I probably need to like, need to do a little bit more. Like, like I should be doing something, but then, you know, it's like, no, but it's kind of, it's working right now. And then what he was saying, he was like, you know, you gotta, but it's kind of it's working right now and then what he was saying he was like you know you gotta you know believe in it right like i shouldn't go googling like when i should when when is the right time to go heavy or like you know what i mean like i shouldn't go find the research that says what i'm doing is wrong i'm just gonna can easily i'm just

gonna say fuck it and keep doing what i'm doing because it feels good and I keep showing up every day. Yeah, when I was hanging out with Dante Trudell more recently, fucking huge bodybuilder. I mean, he's still massive, probably into, I don't know how old he is, but he's older than me, I think. Anyway, asking him about, he's the creator of Dog Crap Training, which is DC training is just basically five sets done in a row with utilizing rest pause method. Rest 10 to 15 seconds in between each set, and you do five sets. And just really try to blow yourself up on something, lat pull down, squats, doesn't matter what exercise it is. You can utilize it for anything but i asked him about it and he gets tons and tons of questions on it and he what he was trying to do is just have a

program that was just really really simple and it was kind of called dog crap just as like a joke because everyone kind of has their own like just training system and so he was like i people asked him how he trained and he's like i train like dog shit you know it's like dog crap like and so kind of here's here's what i do yeah but in explaining all that and listening to him tell me how he does it it was great because he was like oh you know i just i warm up for the exercise like let's say i'm doing incline bench he's like i still take all the normal precautions and all the normal jumps that I would. He's like, and then the dog crap sets start. And I asked him about like form. I was like, well, what about your form and technique? Because as you're doing five

sets in a row, you know, like you're going to put some body English behind it. And he was like, well, yeah, he's like, and sometimes, you know, he's like, but when I first start a new exercise, I don't ever do that. He's like, but a couple of weeks down the road, when I want to use a little bit more weight, he said, I put a little oomph behind it. And I'm like, you can't get that. Like Zach was saying, it's hard to get that kind of stuff from a book. It's hard to like relate. Like if a new person's like, what does that, we all kind of had an aha moment, right? When I said oomph or like, I get it. Like, okay, he's doing a bent over row and that we all kind of had an aha moment right when i said oomph or like i get it like okay he's doing a bent over row and he had to kind of pull himself down to the

bar to meet the bar he had to get a little momentum on it but that's not stuff that you really need to be concerned with on day one week one of starting a new exercise program like just save that for down the road and keep things as simple as you possibly can absolutely yeah yeah our boy zach's great at simplifying stuff and just having people just fucking work hard yeah there's there's an awesome dessert story that is going to be or already is on markbell.com oh i'm so curious about that story bang that story hopefully we'll share it on one of the various platforms but it is great yeah no i i really though do like our discussion on um you know training nowadays in terms of like all the information because it's amazing the amount of information you have

on training the amount of videos the amount of instructionals but um the still with the idea that there there will be times that you will feel a little bit uncomfortable that you may be doing things that people don't think is evidence-based like i i i have a love hate relationship with the whole evidence-based type of idea because i get it but at the same time it's like so many people use that as a crutch, just not to really kind of work hard at something or do something that is a little bit unconventional because it's not evidence-based. and as we talked about that deadlifter, that kid that deadlifts,

you know, over 600 pounds, that doesn't mean that other kids on the team have to try to deadlift 600 pounds. It doesn't even mean that another kid has to try to deadlift three 15. Um, it's just, that's the way that one particular kid did it.

And when he talked about shifting his, uh, psychology towards assisting the kids that he works with into what they're interested in, that's amazing. Yeah. Uh, you know,

you have a group of kids and you're, you're like, all right, we're working on bench. One kid's like, all right, we're working on bench. One kid's like, it hurts my shoulder a lot to bench. A shitty coach is just like, well, I don't care. You know, this is the program. A good coach is going to say, well, okay, I understand bench press hurts, but maybe there's some options.

Maybe we can board press. Maybe we can incline bench. Maybe dumbbells might be more effective. And if all those things don't work, we can figure out other ways to try to get some work for your front delts, your chest, your triceps. I mean, there's always options, right? There's a lot of different ways that you can get a football bar, you know, a bar that has your hands in a different position, partial range of motion. I mean, you should be able to find something that suits the athlete. And I like,

I like that. I like that. You're not just, you know, forcing someone to fit into this. I think where you would have to force them a bit is maybe with the overall method, but not necessarily any one exercise.

So it's like, if we're doing conditioning today, you might be uncomfortable. You know, if we're doing strength today, you might be uncomfortable. You know, if we're doing strength today, you might be more comfortable because maybe that's what you like. If we're working on flexibility and mobility, like, you know, I might have a problem with that, right? Yeah. So think about getting crushed in your workouts. Those conditioning days, those are some dark fucking days, man. Those double days were dark. dark fucking days, man. Those double days were dark.

It's tough, man. It's crazy. I remember all of my really good coaches. They always had a great effect on me. So it's like, you'll always remember those individuals. It's hard to... So one thing that gets to be really difficult about all this is that if you've ever been worked on by somebody, if you ever had like some tissue work done, you ever had any body work done, you could recognize there's a lot of body parts that you can reach just fine on your own. Or you could use tools, right? How much pain are you willing to go through when it's inflicted on yourself? That's really difficult, right?

Think about when you go to somebody and they start digging in on an area that's real sensitive, you start sweating and stuff. Do you have the same capability to do that to yourself? With just a lacrosse ball or something? And I'm not even saying that's the most effective way, but a lot of times that is what happens, right? Is that they dig in so hard that you feel like you're going to black out or cry or you start sweating. You're like, oh my God, what the fuck? The likelihood that you'll do that to yourself is pretty low.

And then so in your own training, how do you kind of monitor that? How do you manipulate that in your favor? Because you know that the method that you utilize doesn't matter, but there has to be some sort of intensity somewhere. It's either intensity or, but there's so many different ways to get to intensity. You can use light weight, but you'd have to do higher reps. You could use light weight, but you would have to use less rest. I mean, there's ways of getting there. There's ways of cheating the system.

And I think one way to get there to cheat the system when it comes to lifting is to utilize a lot of bodybuilding techniques. Because you can peel off a lot of the layers of having to be super aggressive or having to lift really, really heavy weight. You can get a lot more out of lifting less if you can kind of use your brain. So an example of that would be, you know, do four sets of 15 of a cable crossover before you go and do your dumbbell presses. Now you are going to use a hundred pound dumbbells. Now you're probably going to use sixts and get crushed by it pretty good.

Or just be a masochist. Yeah. Because I really like that, the Compex gun. I love digging that deep into muscle tissue. And you start to learn that that's okay for you. That's okay that's okay i think um the one reason why i got it's got to a spot where i don't mind that really uncomfortable feeling is from the supple leopard stuff from kelly where he's like you know don't make a pain face this might feel a little bit uncomfortable get

used to you get used to it and just like digging into your psoas or digging into like those weird muscle groups you're just used to that feeling and it's nice we talked about that a lot with lifting in general i mean just pretend you're have an opponent you know like in lifting you don't really necessarily always have like an opponent but just pretend someone's watching you and someone's like judging you someone's like uh you know i'm gonna kick this guy's ass today and then how do you squat 135 for your warm-ups like it should look different you know if you feel that like if you start making all these faces because you're feeling a little something in your knee i mean these are things i think about when i just even go on a walk sometimes

for my first reaction sometimes i'll walk outside and i'm like oh it's kind of cold and then i'm like then i'm like thinking about it more. And I'm like, okay, hold on a second. What's actually cold? You know, like what's, what's bothering me? Like what's cold? And I'm like, okay, my hands are a little bit cold. Yeah. I can put them in my pocket. You know, I'm like, what's like, it's not that cold.

Like just fucking get over it. Like you might get a little chill at first or whatever. And the wind is blowing or whatever, but you can get over it quickly. Right. Talk yourself out of that shit that's how it is in the mornings training like here at the gym i'm just like this is going to be one of those workouts where i don't get warm the entire workout there are some times where it actually does like stay pretty cold but no it's the same thing you know you get through with the big three and it's like wow i'm actually already starting to sweat like i haven't even started yeah hop on the bike right when you walk in right you know and do two sprints

you'll be drenched in sweat yes you will yes you will as far as like the uh like inflicting pain or whatever in yourself like i remember i can't i think it was like a movie or something like we have something built into our like system that like technically we could bite our fingers off but like our brain and our body is like no like you can inflict pain like don't do that too much yeah and they got you stop yourself without even really stopping yourself yeah so it's probably has something to do with that too it's like wait dude like you're hurting yourself stop it I bit my finger really bad one time eating a bagel that's i was pretty surprised

at how how hard you can bite i don't know i was in a friend don't judge me it must have been fat mark when he's like bench bagel i was like god damn you gotta be eating so fast to bite your finger while eating a bagel like your fingers probably just got in the way well everybody's been there like cheek or tongue before right yeah and you're just like man i could like basically every day that shit just makes you want to cry yeah you almost like bite a hole through your whole face you're like how the fuck is that why am i biting so hard it makes me mad yeah on my left side it's one of those things where like i did it once and then i do it like a little bit every time i go to eat because then then it gets swollen. And then it just, it's kind of been stuck there for, it seems like forever. Five, six years.

Yeah. We ever take, I remember it happened in junior high and it's still there. I think it's, nevermind. Yeah. Take us on out of here, Andrew. DrinkLMNT.com slash power project. Head over there right now. Pick up a value bundle. Watermelon. Yeah. Oh, I know m n t.com slash power project. Head over there right now. Pick up, pick up a value bundle.

I watermelon. Yeah. Oh, I know the new flavor. It's good. I haven't tried it yet, so I'm a little jealous, but yeah, value bundle. I think you get like, what's like four months worth of, uh, element electrolytes if you have one like every single day. Um, so why the hell not?

Uh, link down in the description below as well as the podcast show notes. And the new Slingshot. Right. Yeah. That's it. Well, I guess we'll see how that goes. I forgot the link, but yeah. Yeah.

It's on MarkBellSlingshot.com right now. So we'll see what it's like by the time this episode goes out. Maybe it's already sold out. Might be sold out. Yeah. Gone forever. Please make sure you follow the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram at MB Power Project

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Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.