Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 538 - Stress Is A Choice

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

The crew decided to hit up a podcast while Mark Bell was traveling up and down California. We started today's podcast discussing Nsima Inyang's incredible body fat test results and what he's been doing to maintain single digit body fat year round. We then took a turn to dealing with stress, getting rid of the word completely and letting you know you have the option to choose not to have it. 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! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use ode "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢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 ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Would be the results of a DEXA scan of a Piedmontese cow. Oh, that thing would have so much muscle and so little fat. It'd be insane. It'd be insane. Yeah, it would be just a bigger version of Encema, like if we're being honest. So now all I am is cattle to you? No, no, no. Really?

No, no, no. I would definitely call you a piece of meat, though. That's fair. That's fair. If only it were bigger, though. Pretty big. You wouldn't know. How much did you weigh, bro?

How much did you weigh at the body fat testing thing? At the body fat test, I weighed 247. Oh, nice. 247. But i ate quite a bit that night so yeah i ate quite a bit that night imagine what you would have weighed if you just focused on just eating pete montes the day before yeah you're right that's true but um yeah that's very true yeah we had um spaghetti last night and um yeah yeah i do have some on my sweater already but it was with piedmontese ground beef and yeah it's funny like trying to explain to people like i mean ground beef is ground beef but it's different when it's piedmontese i don't know what they do differently with it because it's still 85-15, but it just tastes better. I don't know if it's just higher quality meat.

Is that what it is? It's just awesome. I get the 85-15. I sometimes get those. The sliders are freaking awesome. The hop-dotty burgers are awesome and oh yeah even the really lean ground beef that they have which is like 96 or 94 or whatever it is amazing unbelievable yeah it's it's fucking dope yeah i know i do like the lean one a little bit

better just because i like i don't know it just, it's better for me. It's better for my diet. Put it that way. Cause it fits the macros. You threw it in with some spaghetti. Yeah. Yeah. And I use pizza sauce. I don't use spaghetti sauce.

I don't use marinara. I just use straight up pizza sauce and throw a little bit of a mozzarella on top. So it was, it was a little bit of a fun meal because I liked the, the DEXA scan results that I got as well, which we'll get into in a second. But yeah, no, I just felt

comfortable. I felt like, cool, let's eat up a little bit because some of the relief from seeing that I am on track. And a lot of that is because I do focus on getting high-quality meat from Piedmontese. And if you guys want to

take advantage of this, please head over to piedmontese. And if you guys want to take advantage of this, please head over to piedmontese.com. It's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com at checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your order. And if your order is $99 or more, you get free two-day shipping. So you can order Sunday night and by Wednesday, you're already grilling. or if you're in Sacramento where it's really, really hot, you can definitely just throw stuff in the oven or the air fryer and it's going to come out

nothing short of amazing. Head over there right now. You will not be disappointed. But yeah, in SEMA's body scan results, it was so funny because the guy was like... Don't tell anybody. Okay, no, I won't. The guy was like,

I've never seen anybody with this much bone density. The funny thing is he put out a scale where you're kind of in the danger zone, anything less than that, and you have a really big issue. And the scale went up to 2.5 he's like over here he's like that's good bone density that's where everybody should strive to be that was at 2.5 and sima what was your bone density i don't remember exactly what

it was it was 7.2 have you ever broke anything um i've never broken a bone no i've never broken a bone that's what he said the guy didn't you know he didn't know and seem i mean he he's met you before but he was just like yeah i'm willing to bet you've never broken a bone before because it's like impossible so why is my bench so trash if i have these strong ass bones why do i still have such a trash bench press tell me that riddle me this you can fix your bench bro now your shoulder's feeling a little bit better yeah my shoulder feels great man my shoulder feels amazing um but yeah the dexa scans were interesting. Like what, what happened with, um, my results where I got a DEXA scan two years ago, uh, back in 2019 and my body fat was at 7.7

at that point. Um, but I w I wasn't feeling amazing. So I decided to put a little bit of body fat back on and train there. Um, and then again, like I got down, I've been talking to you guys about getting leaner. I wasn't trying to get leaner. I haven't been trying to get leaner. I've just been doing more jujitsu. I've still been trying to just scarf down as much food as possible, but my I'm leaner now I have 7.6 body fat. But the interesting thing is that my, my lean tissue went up to 217.2 pounds. Whereas two years ago was apparently at 214.5 and my fat tissue went up to 217.2 pounds. Whereas two years ago it was apparently at 214.5 and my fat tissue went down a little bit. So I have been able to put on a little bit of muscle. Um, and who knows, it could be a little inaccurate, but, uh,

I feel like I've been able to make a good amount of progress. So it's, it's very interesting. If you had to compare jujitsu to like,'s just say sprints because i think everyone knows like everyone's sprinted before how many sprints would it be equivalent to doing like is it equivalent to going out on the track and doing you know 20 sprints at like 70 percent or is it you know because it seems like you're sprinting a lot. Like when you're, you're blocking someone from taking you down and like, and then I know that there's different paces to it at different times,

but if you had any comparison to like running or sprinting or something like that, what would it kind of look like? That's, that's, that's a really interesting thing. Well, if I can think about it within like one hard rule, like let's say I were to roll with Casio and we're going at it, that would be like the equivalent of five to six, maybe five to seven sprints at 70% of like a hundred meters,

like a hundred meters. Yeah. 70%. Yeah. About five. That's what I would have to send. And so, yeah. So, 70%. Yeah, about five. That's what I would have said. And so, yeah. A lot of work.

I think people kind of undersell sometimes when people increase their activity. You're saying you're doing jujitsu more often. To the average person listening, they might not really understand. That's a shitload of work. For you, it's simple because you've been doing it for a while it doesn't feel like much to you but for anybody out there that's never done a jiu-jitsu practice to jump in on that would be very very demanding very difficult absolutely and i think one interesting thing we learned about like you know from from brad i think he

actually went to the bathroom when i asked this question but he he he was or actually might have been there he said how it's surprisingly easy to maintain muscle once you've been able to gain it. Right? So that's why I've been able to make these small positive changes over the years, because with my training volume, I'm able to maintain the muscle that I've built, but by just adding a little bit and going to a little bit of that edge of my fatigue, as far as doing jujitsu and lifting at the same time, if I can just push my lifting just a little bit, I can still make small amounts of progress every single year, as far as my physique is concerned. And then going to your edge of your fatigue with your hunger even, right? Intermittent fasting, eating meat. It's pretty much your diet is you don't eat.

Let's not say that. I know, but you don't eat for several hours a day normally, right? And then when it is time to eat, you make sure that you get your macros and your micros in every day. You're not really – I haven't really seen you – recently I haven't really seen you losing a lot of weight. Your body weight has been similar for a little while. really, I haven't really seen you recently. I haven't really seen you losing a lot of weight. Your body weight has been similar for a little while now. You just kind of continue to get a little leaner. Yeah. My body weight, exactly. My body weight when I got the DEXA scan in 2019 was

245, right? And that, that was at 7.7% body fat. So it's like, um, my body weight is not changing, but it's like, you know, the idea of body recomposition where you are slowly gaining muscle and slowly losing fat over time. This is just this is just a continuous slow recomp. That's why I just think it's so funny. I find it so funny when people online are like, oh, after your first few years of training, you won't make that much progress. I think an interesting thing that you told me the other day is because you saw like old pictures from my 2015 bodybuilding stuff.

And I watched some old videos from like my posing right before I went on stage. I was lean and I looked good. But my like my muscle just looked young. Like I could tell it didn't have that mature look, even though I was lean. Yeah, like really high level bodybuilders are normally in their 30s you know they're not normally in their early in their early 20s so you're i mean you'll still get leaner i mean you're you have like striations here and there and stuff but like you'll be doing jujitsu as a black belt with striations running

through your chest and your stomach you know just you'll just look like a complete mutant unless at some point you decide like well i just need to weigh 260. um you know for the most part you'll probably continue to get leaner and leaner what i what i like about you know what you've landed on with your nutrition what i've landed on with my nutrition is that i don't really see you walking around with Tupperware. I don't really hear about you eating chicken breast and broccoli and rice. You're not eating six times a day. You're not like chained to your refrigerator or chained to your food.

You know, you're not like tethered to it all day long. When it's time for you to eat, you eat. On days where you're like, I'm going to have a little bit more activity, I feel a little worn down from the last couple of days because I've been lifting hard, I've been doing jiu-jitsu hard, then you're just like, I'm going to have breakfast. And then you eat. And then maybe here and there you maybe eat something off plan

a little bit here and there just to get some cows up and just to have some fun with it. And then you kind of get right back to it. Right. Exactly. And it's, I don't get, I don't get what gets people so up in arms when we talk about this. It's like, okay, even let's just like, take it out of the scope of one meal a day. Right. But let's talk about maybe just taking two meals a day and choosing not to eat for a bit of

your day people are are over here thinking like oh my gosh if you don't eat for 16 hours you're going into starvation mode or that's not healthy for you or it's like are you guys like are you serious you really think it's like we just can't go without food for a good part of our day. We're just going to start catabolizing everything. I don't get it. I think it's because of some of what Doug Brignoli was talking about on the lifting side of things. Everything has been, is the word sensationalized, by the magazines and the YouTube videos where we're seeing Jay Cutler eat a thousand grams of carbs a day.

We're seeing the guys that are doing it better than everybody at the very, very top. We all know that if you want to get big, you got to eat big or whatever that... I think it was Rich Piana that said something like that, right? Fridge Piana that said something like that, right? I think we see these high-level bodybuilders getting to that level, eating multiple meals a day. Therefore, we think to obtain a decent-looking body, we have to do that also. Taking out competing and all that, we forget that, oh, if we're not going for Mr. olympia we don't actually need to follow their diet so i think there's some um disconnect when it comes to that side of things like there's no way like you're gonna lose all your muscle if you don't eat

but if you were competing at that high level i think your nutrition would maybe change a little bit right um when you say competing at what high level? If you were literally trying to get on the Olympia stage. Let's not even talk Olympia. Let's talk about like, let's just say I was trying to do another bodybuilding show. To be perfectly honest, at this point, if I was trying to do another bodybuilding show, there are very few things that I would change. I would still fast.

to do another bodybuilding show, there are very few things that I would change. I would still fast. I would still fast because being in a deficit while fasting is easier than eating five meals a day while being in a deficit because the meals aren't substantial. I'd be feeling hungry throughout my whole day. I would still fast for 16 hours a day. Wow. And that would be an easier way for me to get leaner because I wouldn't be food focused while trying to prep. I mean, look at my body. Like if I think about my body fat right now and what it would take me to get down to being even leaner, I'd do the same exact things, but eat a little bit less. And that's the crazy thing about it. And I would suggest this to other people who are trying to do a prep and be in a deficit. I wouldn't say eat one meal a day, but I definitely say use some fasting so that when you do have the chance to eat your

calories, you can now feel full and satiated and you can then move into your next day. I would totally do that. Yeah. I even think there's some merit to it with getting big. I just think that people haven't really utilized it. I also want to say that the old bodybuilding strategy, it does work. The old bodybuilding strategy, it does work. Eating multiple times a day, it has worked for countless people and it will continue to work for countless people. However, intermittent fasting is just a lot simpler, in my opinion, a lot less time consuming. You can just wait until you get home. I mean, most people sleep in their homes every night where they have a stove or an oven to cook their food and they don't have to, you know,

have food prepped for the week, you know, not to cook on Sunday. And I know that some people like that and that that's kind of a hobby for some people and they they would rather be attached to that so that that way they really do stay disciplined and they do stay true to their diet and that's cool like if that works great for you i think all in semen i've ever really wanted to share and the whole reason why we even had this podcast amongst the three of us is to just show people there's a lot of different ways that we can look at things. There's a lot of different ways to do things. And intermittent fasting is extremely beneficial. I don't think I'm far off from when I competed in bodybuilding.

And I felt like I felt like I felt like it was pretty difficult. Like I felt like that was pretty fucking challenging getting through a lot of that. it was pretty difficult. Like I felt like that was pretty fucking challenging getting, getting through a lot of that. Uh, the extra cardio sessions, um, working like I did a lot of, I really, I guess I could probably honestly say, I don't think I've ever worked that hard in my life. Uh, even though it was a real short period of time, um, I don't remember putting that much effort and that much time into anything I've ever done in my life before whether it be business or anything else and looking back at it and and thinking about if I was to ever do it again which I probably will when I'm a little older

I could spend literally I think almost half the amount of time I think almost half the amount of time of kind of quote unquote, sweating it out and and have better results. So, I mean, I, I, and right now I'm 200 and I was two 31 this morning when I competed, I was about the same weight. I mean, from all the pictures and stuff, I don't look that much different. It was just like polished and like prepped, you know, but I think I could do that in two or three weeks very easily. So if I was to do an eight or 12-week prep now,

I would look a million times better than I did the first time around. So it's been massively beneficial for me. And then also like, you know, just the standard, you know, chicken breast and broccoli type stuff. I don't feel like I need to do that. I have more options with my diet. I don't eat, like, crappy foods, but I can eat food that's pretty fatty, which is a little bit unconventional amongst bodybuilders because I choose kind of fat as more my source. I don't eat carbs. I mean, it really, I'll go two, three, four days without carbs. And I'm not saying that to brag or saying that as if everyone should eat that way, but it's just something that has

worked for me. I tend to eat more protein and I don't eat outrageous amounts of fat, but this has worked great for me. Helps keep my hunger down. Helps keep me lean without, I don't really have to think about it as much. You know, man, I would honestly go as far as to say, and then this, I don't know if this has been proven. I don't think so. And then obviously this is from my end of one, your experience and a few other people who've kind of maybe had similar experiences. I think that a lot of people say, oh, you can't get to very lean body fat percentages and feel okay. And yeah, if you're super lean, there's going to be a point where you don't feel great. But I think that if you get lean and you're eating a good amount of fat every single day, because fat plays a much bigger role in terms of your hormonal levels, your testosterone, your libido, all that shit than carbohydrates do. no carbs, I think a majority of those individuals will feel much better and actually be able to perform than the individuals who are going very low fat and moderate to high carbohydrates to

try to do the same thing. Because I was looking back at my macros back in 2015, when I was single digit body fats and when my testosterone tanked, my libido went away, all of that, I was eating 250 grams of carbs, 35 to 40 grams of fat, and 250 grams of protein a day. Oh. A day. And there would be some days where I'd have to cheat a little bit because I was like, fuck, I need fat. But that little bit of extra fat, even if I had 60, didn't help me because I was still eating mostly 35 to 40 grams of fat a day. And I was hormonally messed up for months after that but now i am at

the very close if not better than the same body composition than in 2015 yet i'm doing jujitsu i'm lifting i'm i don't feel like i'm dieting i don't feel tired i think there's something there yeah i mean our boy robert sykes right like he'skes, he's very successful with his body comp and everything, and he does the high fat. for the overall experience, kind of earning your bodybuilding stripes per se and look back and kind of... What was it called? I forgot what Brian Aldrew called it, but like suffering beautifully or something like that. Yeah. Like, can you look back and be like, yeah, it was really hard, but it was worth it. In a way, but also, you know, what just I guess from a philosophical perspective, like I've learned that life doesn't need suffering for you to grow and advance.

Like it doesn't always have to be that way. What can avoid suffering is knowledge. And so when you have more knowledge going into something, you can be more prepared for it and you can do things in a less painful way. I mean, you could just use your head. And so while it was kind of cool to, while it was kind of cool to go through it that way, you know, now I, now I feel that I know a better way, more optimal way. And I also going through it that way was good because of the kind of

experience that it gave me. And it helped me to recognize when people are talking about their metabolism being wrecked and all these different things. I think, first of all, I just think in general, I think that's way overplayed. I think that's way over,

way over exaggerated, way, way over exaggerated. It may take people several weeks and months to recover from some of the shit that they do for bodybuilding shows but in my opinion they shouldn't be doing that anyway because they're shotgunning their approach and they're trying to do something way way too rapidly that they shouldn't they shouldn't be messing with they should take a lot longer um but but anyway uh you having, having gone through that,

it did kind of show me, okay, this is what some folks are talking about. But I also didn't like, because I had honey coaching me and he knew my level, which wasn't very high level. He didn't really put me in a crazy caloric deficit. Like I think I was running on like 3,500 calories a day. It's just his philosophy on bodybuilding is he wants to fuel you really well for your workouts. And he wants you to, you know, go in the gym, get good training sessions in, and then he

kind of burns, I guess, extra calories off of you through some cardio training. And so that was his philosophy. And that's what I followed. And that's what I did. But I also think that, like, I would have just probably fueled myself a little bit less. So I didn't have to spend as much time doing the cardio. But, again, I was under his tutelage. And I was like, he knows what he's doing.

And I only got eight weeks, so I'm following his shit. I guess along the same lines, do you think the cardio was also just like another experience or a stressor that you needed in order to really dive all in into bodybuilding? to like really dive all in into bodybuilding yeah but it's also like um i i've never been a i've never been a huge fan of like doing shit harder you know like i don't when i was power lifting and i would see just video after video of like guys headbutting the bar and just, I don't know. I just, and, and like every single, like every single power lifting video had like flames and like death metal music and shit. And I was always like, I understand what they're doing. I get it. Like I get fired up myself. I get excited

myself, but, um, it doesn't, it doesn't need to be that way because it's not actually that, it's not actually that difficult because your body is trained for it. Your body's prepped for it. Your body's ready for it. And so, um, while doing the cardio and stuff is kind of part of the whole bodybuilder thing, I would probably still utilize cardio to some degree for a bodybuilding show. I do think that for me personally, I felt it was helpful to kind of designate out some of those calories for that. But if there is anything to bodybuilding where there's like a bodybuilding badge of courage, I think it's more so in the actual lifting. I don't think bodybuilders get enough credit for

what Zima said. And he kind of casually put it brushing up against these areas of fatigue and bodybuilders do an amazing job of that. And some guys have different opinions on that and how far they take that. But that was the shit that I really liked. And that was the shit that attracted me to do it in the first place was when you're in the gym and you're, you know, doing your lat pull downs and your bench presses and your dumbbell presses and all these different things. You get to rep number eight and you kind of remember, oh, I'm about to step on stage and you do rep nine and 10 and you're totally fatigued and you're dying and you're like, let's go, dude. Like you're going to do a show. Like your people are going to see your body, you know, coming up and you're going to be judged by, you know, thousands of people and the judges that are

there to place you in the competition and everything. And so it encouraged you to, to hit those extra reps. And so, and I don't think that people really understand the conditioning and the shape that bodybuilders are in. I've had the opportunity to work out with Branch Warren and Dan Efferding and a bunch of high-level bodybuilders before, and they will smoke you. It's amazing the capacity that they have to just pile on set after set. And even the older guys who are way past their prime, they'll fucking crush you. They'll do like three or four sets in a row without breathing hard at all, and they got

a pretty good weight on there, and you're like, holy shit, like, all right, they're going at it. But just they've been doing it for so long. And they're used to brushing up against that fatigue. And they build their mindset over a long period of time. Yeah, I think, let me ask you this, Mark, because I think this is an interesting thing. After you worked out or after you, you know, worked with Hani and changed up your training, even though you haven't been lifting crazy heavyweights or doing powerlifting style type training only, your physique has gotten better in certain areas that you've noticed very well, right? And where are those areas? Yeah, I would say like one of the biggest things my legs like i didn't really have

my legs just didn't have any shape to them at all um it's been it's been uh it's been interesting to kind of get get my body uh leaner in better shape. My chest has gotten better. Through my stomach has gotten better. Pretty much everything has improved quite a bit. The only thing that's different is my arms used to be fucking massive, but they were never really like in great shape. They were just like big old slabs of beef. But I've torn a bunch of shit a bunch of times.

So that has kind of gotten messed up. I think at one point, I think my arms were like 22 inches, like after a training session. I mean, they were just like completely, completely ridiculous. I did weigh 330, you know. I did have a lot of body weight on me now. And so that's the one thing that kind of stinks is this all the different kind of injuries and stuff. But even those are coming back around, like I'm able to get a little bit of a peak on them now. So yeah,

it's just without, yeah, without training heavy. I don't think I really, I personally don't think I need heavy weights hardly at all any longer. I don't think I need heavy weights hardly at all any longer. I don't know. No, I totally agree. Like, you know, Andrew and I were talking about this. It's even when we were talking with Brad Schoenfeld, he was talking about if you're able to better activate specific muscle groups as you're working like load does matter but your ability to feel those muscles like andrew you both of you guys you and mark haven't you guys noticed that you're able to activate certain

muscle groups just better now yeah well 100 yes yeah it's night and day difference before i would do the movements like literally going through the motions I would just try to mimic whatever Mark was doing. But now, actually, we've all heard mind-muscle connection. But even though I could give you the definition, I didn't know what the hell it meant until I started developing muscle. And then I'm like, oh, that's what a lat feels like. That's what the pump is actually like. So, yeah, no, absolutely. I can feel everything so much better now, except for my rear delts.

Something to keep in mind for people is that anyone who's ever been spotted on any exercise, anyone who's ever getting a little push on the elbows from doing incline dumbbell bench, anybody who's done some cable crossovers and had someone kind of push their hands together, anywhere you've gotten assistance on a curl or whatever, you'll notice that when you get assistance, when someone actually helps you on like a lap pull down, they pushed a weight down for you, what happens? You're able to activate the muscle that much more. And so normally, under a lot of circumstances, it's in your best interest a lot of times to lower the weight or even to look into doing some drop sets. Maybe you do four to six or eight reps where you are challenging yourself or maybe there's just a little you got to put a little body English on it.

Maybe you got to move and get a little momentum. momentum, but then maybe you drop the weight a bit and you finish out the rest of the set with a lot better form, a lot better activation and really, really, and really try to squeeze. And you'll be shocked at the reduction in weight. And then also just doing the exercise the right way. I think that that has been something like, you know, when, when you power lift for years, something to keep in mind with power lift things, you're trying to, I always said you're trying to run away from the weight. Like you're trying to get the hell out of there as quickly as you possibly can. This deadlift, I just want to get it over with. Bend down, pick it up, get the hell out of there.

Same thing with a squat. Same thing with the bench press. Let me just get this weight off of me. But when you're, you know, when you're lifting, you know, for bodybuilding or things like that, you want to try to squeeze, you want to try to get the most out of every single repetition. And because of that, you don't really need, I mean, think about if you were to squat, if you were to, if you were to squat, even just one plate, but you can do a lot with one plate. You can fucking kill yourself with one plate. So it's actually kind of a fascinating thing because we always think that we need to put so much weight on the bar. But I think it's important that we get an

overload, that we do give our nervous system and our body something to think about. But there's just so many different ways. And I know, Encima, your foot's banged up at the moment. For me, my left bicep has been weird, and I just had a PRP injection in my right knee. And immediately, my mind goes right to, let me just think about the shit that I can do, and never mind the stuff that I can't do. So what what I can't do isolated bicep work at the moment. Okay. So what I can't squat at the moment. But what can I do? And so the other day when I went to train, I did some weighted carries and it wasn't even heavy, but I'm just like, let me get my body under some weight.

I just grabbed some dumbbells, walked back and forth on the turf with it. That was part of my training. Instead of doing bicep work, I did tricep work. There's still stuff I can do with the sled. I can still walk forward and backward with the sled. So like, just, you know, try to think of what are some just ways that you can get your body underneath some weight and get some resistance. It doesn't always have to be these exact ways that you think that you have to lift all the time from said bodybuilder or from said power lifter. Yeah, I think that like, I totally agree with that. Like the, The weird thing is the stuff that we're doing right now, to be perfectly honest, we did not invent anything that we're currently doing. But I think that I don't see many people approaching maintaining or gaining muscle or dieting while performing at the level that we're performing,

I don't see a lot of people doing that. And I think that that's an interesting thing because most people do what every other professional says this is what you should do. And they don't really venture out into trying those different things to see how they're going to feel or to see how they're going to adapt. There was a period for all of us when we started doing this type of diet, when we started doing some fasting or, or yeah, when one meal a day that it didn't feel great immediately, right? It took some time for you to get used to the way it felt. It took some time for me to get used to the way it felt with the way I'm eating right now with performing in jujitsu and lifting. But after some time I got used to it and then it turns to something that's really, really easy now. And that makes life easier. Like life is easier for me now

athletically than it was five, six years ago when I was eating a lot of carbs and low amounts of fat. five six years ago when i was eating a lot of carbs and low amounts of fat right um so that i think again that's the thing with why we have all these different types of guests on who have different types of views um and why we take a lot of different information in because it leads us to doing different shit yeah and if i'm being totally honest I feel that my physique has looked the, it, you know, I've looked my best when I have incorporated a lot of fasting. And for me personally, I think it comes down to just being able to focus. If I'm, you know, going to be eating five meals a day or whatever, I could easily lose track or I could easily like, oh, wait, no, I'm eating five meals a day. So it's okay. I'm going to have this here. I'm going to have that there. And I could easily lose focus. But with fasting, it's black and white. I'm not eating right now. I'm going

to eat later. It's really, really easy. I know a secret about Andrew. He doesn't like to fast. I know a secret about Andrew. Oh, he doesn't like to fast. Well, I mean, think about it, right? Like what,

what sounds more fun than cracking open some food and, you know, getting that, that, you know, those pleasure senses, but absolutely. Yeah.

But no, I, on the flip side though, I don't really love eating. So fasting makes eating a lot easier. Yeah. That's a great, great combo, though, I don't really love eating. So fasting makes eating a lot easier. Yeah, that's a great, great combo, right? I don't like to fast, but I don't like to eat either. Could you just fucking choose one?

Like, geez. That's what I'm saying. At least when I decide that I'm going to fast, it helps me focus. Like, hey, you're not eating, so don't worry about it. Oh, my God. That's funny. Yeah, it's like the good and evil you know devil's on my shoulder and angel on the other side saying oh you should eat you should not eat

i think another thing that's been kind of interesting with our training like training in general is like ever since we had um you know some different people pop through the gym like phil derue and knees over toes and having these different guys come through the gym and show us just different ways of doing stuff. There's been stuff that I've kept in my training. That's like, not even really lifting, you know, it's like, it's more like just movement. And I think that people like a real bodybuilder, a quote unquote, real bodybuilder, like the fuck are you doing? Or real power to be like, this is so stupid. Yeah. You're doing that for, I mean, there's stuff that I'll do in the gym where I just would never thought that it would really like, I'll just deadlift

kettlebells. Like I'll stand over a kettlebell and I'll do a couple sets of like 10 reps of the heavier kettlebell. It only weighs like, I mean, we have a heavier kettlebell. We have like a 200 pound kettlebell, which isn't very heavy, but for a kettlebell we have like a 200 pound kettlebell which isn't very heavy but for a kettlebell it's kind of heavy and i'll just do a couple sets of 10 of that but like stuff like that has been really helping me maintain size or even um you know uh doing the suitcase carries or uh you know walking with the uh kettlebell the bottoms up kettlebell stuff really hard walking and forth with a sled, you know, just a weighted, weighted walking. I mean, that's really all it is, right? Walking forward, walking backwards. The amount of weight that's on there is nothing. Two plates, three plates.

Sometimes it's not much, but it's all been, it's all been great body weight exercises. I think people sleep on body weight exercises, but I've still been doing quite a bit of push-ups throughout the week. And before my knee got banged up, body weight squats and stuff like that. I mean, there's just – I've heard so many people, you know, get real bummed about, you know, the gyms being closed and things like that that happened over the last year. And that was unfortunate, but man, there's still so much stuff that you can do.

Grab a hold of a, you know, weighted vest or grab weight and go walk around the block with it. and go walk around the block with it. There's a lot of different things you could do to get resistance and to still end up having a really good positive impact on your body without it being some giant hassle, really. Mark, you started running, right? Yep. And Andrew, what did you start doing? Like over the lockdown and stuff?

Yeah. What was your form of, um, exercise that you took up? Um, well, because my, my wife is a beach body coach. I just threw on like one of the, um, it's digital now, but I threw on a beach body DVD and that's what I was doing at home. Yeah. And I mean me, like I wanted to find a way of getting some resistance. So I ordered some kettlebells because up until that that point, I had one kettlebell. But doing things like kettlebell snatches or things like that, I was still a little bit iffy. So I took that time to spend time learning about the kettlebell, increasing my cardio.

I did the five-minute snatch test, which I barely passed, but I still passed it. And that's only with one piece of equipment, but it massively had an impact on my fitness level and my fitness skill. You know, I can't participate cause we're married, so we can't do that test. Yeah. I couldn't last five minutes anyways. I would, I would beg to differ. You can last more than five minutes, brother. What does a snatch test entail? Yes!

Yes! I didn't even realize that. That was good. The snatch test is how many snatches can you do in five minutes? Oh, yeah. See, I'm too faithful.

I think I've seen video like that once. I'm guessing it was from Japan. I'm guessing it was one of the Japanese ones. They do some wild shit down there. Is Japan a country? Oh, no.

Oh, no. Let's call up the guy they can't see to comment. He'll help us. Oh, yeah. Wait, what? Oh, yes. John Cena. Okay. I thought we went somewhere else with that but uh cool okay good john i think you know what i mean let's not even mention it though we ain't trying to get canceled

i don't know what you guys are talking about might help oh but yo that reframing like like i think that um you know if you get an injury immediately try to figure out what's what's what's some what's a like a mountain i can climb right now what's something i can do you know what i mean like this foot injury okay i immediately i was like oh i can get my upper body bigger for a month. I can just, just mess my upper body up with volume and grow. I can do that. Right. So I think that's what people need to do instead of like worrying about what's going on at the moment. Think about something you can do instead that can allow you to progress in some fashion. And even aside from like an injury, think about day to day, what can you do to still salvage the day what can you do to still maybe the day is not a victory overall maybe you like maybe you messed up maybe you drank

alcohol and didn't want to maybe you ate something that you shouldn't have but is it still 7 p.m 8 p.m and you can go out for a walk go go ride your bike, you got no exercising, you kind of ate like crap, you did a bunch of stuff, and you kind of feel guilty about it. Well, you know, don't feel guilty about it. Like, go out and go do something about it. I've been, you guys know, I've been helping my buddy Russell out quite a bit. And he's on the verge of losing 20 pounds. And he was just kind of mentioning how the day went for him the other day. And he was like, it's a little tougher than yesterday and so forth. And it's just starting to wear on him, right? Like that's what happens when you have a nutritional intervention,

it starts to pull you down, especially if you haven't been great at it in the past. And it was later on in the day. And I said, I just gave him like flat out instructions and said, go on a bike ride. Cause I know that he likes riding his bike. And then he texted me back maybe about 20 minutes later and he wrote check, like got it done. That made me feel great. Thank you so much. And I just, I just knew that just by, you know, kind of mentioning that to him that he would probably go and do it. He went and did it and

he didn't regret it. So you're not going to go on a walk that you're going to regret. You're not going to do an, uh, you're not going to lift and really regret it. You're not going to ride your bike and regret it. These are all things that you're going to appreciate that you do. And in the long run, if we can just be consistent and figure out a way to stay connected to our fitness to some degree, it doesn't have to be that you're running a marathon every day, but to stay connected to your fitness in some way, work on kind of

reframing the things that you hear and reframing the things that you once thought, you'll always be able to do a better job than you did in the past. And I think that's a lot of what we're talking about where we feel like we're a little leaner than we have been with less effort. A lot of that is because we keep acquiring new knowledge. We take that knowledge in and then we start to utilize it and put it to practice as consistently as we possibly can. Yeah, absolutely. And I think along the lines of what you're mentioning about just getting out to do a 10-minute walk, like, oh, I had donuts, so, I'm going to throw the rest of the day away. But I believe it was either Lane Norton or one of his business accounts, his coaching app. It was given the scenario of an overweight person ordering a crazy meal and then upwards of 10,000

calories or whatever, just a big meal. Oh, and then I'll add a Diet Coke and everyone's like, you know, 10,000 calories, whatever, like just like a big meal. Oh, and then I'll add a diet Coke. And everyone's like, oh, good job on the diet Coke. Like you're doing a good job. And the post was mainly just saying like, why are we going to take a somebody that's already, you know, making a poor choice and then get mad at them for making one right decision? At least they made the one right decision. So when you look at somebody's day, they might look at it like, well, I had a shitty day.

So what's the point of even having that Diet Coke or going on that 10 minute walk? But like with our buddy Nico, he's been coming in training with me. And some days we have just enough time to do literally one exercise before he has to go to work. And he, you know, is he making a ton of progress like with his body? Like, is he losing weight? Is he, you know, he probably not with the amount of effort that we're putting in. But he's telling me like, dude, I feel better. He's like, when I leave here, he's like, I'm in a much better mood.

I'm smiling more. He's like, it's doing more than what we are. Our mind is focused on like, oh, I just want to get jacked. I want to lose weight, but it's doing so much more. So that last little bit of your day where you can, I don't know, drink an extra couple glasses of water, you can go on that 10 minute walk. It's in the grand scheme of things might not get you really close to where you want to be, but it's going to start momentum in that direction. And then you can use that momentum to really get on it the next day or whatever's coming next. So I think if people, again, reframe their mind and say like, oh, I threw the day away,

so it doesn't matter. I'm going to have this bowl of cereal. It's like, no, maybe you can have a protein shake and go for a walk instead. I think that's kind of like what Mark Schurz says right now as far as think less, right? Because, like, sometimes, you know, this has happened to me before where I'm like, okay, I'm going to go on a walk. But then maybe I'm sitting at my computer. I'm pretty comfortable and I'm just kind of working. I'm like, let me just push that walk back. And then I get a little bit thirsty and maybe I just want to go sit on the couch for a little bit. So I push the walk back a little bit. And then the end of the day comes. I didn't take the fucking walk that I was supposed to take eight hours before. Right. take the fucking walk that I was supposed to take eight hours before. Right. So it's like when you're when you have this urge to go do something that you know is going to be good for you, just don't don't think about it. Like have the urge. Go, go do that thing. Go, go get it done. Because a 10 minute walk is a 10 minute walk. Yet you can spend eight hours of your day thinking about how you need to go do the 10 minute walk and never take the freaking 10 minute walk. Right. We've all

done that before, but in essence, it's like, it's, it's, it's kind of a funny, it's a, it's a funny, I think the word is dichotomy. I could be totally wrong that where you have all these guests on, where we learn so much and we apply this, all this, and we're thinking, because obviously we think to get better, but then to just do other things, we need to not think and we need to just go get it done. You got to do both, but more so you got to think less. Yeah. We tend to overthink and overcomplicate things quite a bit. And something, you know, I hear, I see a lot of people doing is, and we're all guilty of this. Like I'm guilty of this too, but taking on like, trying to take on too much. And this is why the idea of a 10 minute walk is like a metaphor

of life. Like a 10 minute walk is so simple for nearly everybody to do. It's a simple, easy thing to implement. There are some people that aren't healthy enough to do a 10 minute walk, but for most people, they're healthy enough to do a 10 minute walk. And it's not anything hard to implement. There are some people that aren't healthy enough to do a 10-minute walk, but for most people, they're healthy enough to do a 10-minute walk, and it's not anything hard to do. The point of doing a 10-minute walk, the whole reason for a 10-minute walk, is that it doesn't pull against anything else that you could do. It's not sucking out so much energy. It doesn't take so much willpower. It doesn't take so much strength. Whereas, if you go to the gym and you're all fired up and you're going to deadlift 405 and that's kind of towards the, towards the end of

your capacity, well, you'll, you have like a strength meter, you know, every month, like almost like a video game. And that strength meter is going to get knocked down by, you know, getting a call from your mom, who's nagging you about cussing too much on the podcast. You're going to get, you know, a bunch of things are going to happen. It's going to knock down your power meter over a period of time. You have the stress of training, the stress of trying to be on point with your nutrition, the stress of being a dad or a mom. There's many, many different things that we have in

our day to day. On top of that, you know, we're trying to improve our body. And so we're trying to lift a certain way. And all these things, they eat away at you. But when we're training, and throughout the day, and all the stuff that we're trying to handle, you should always have more capacity, you should always have like a extra reserve, extra capacity to handle every single thing that you do. So in your training, it's good to put in a good strong effort, but you don't want to leave so much like on the mat or on the court or on the field or on the, you know, in the weight room that you don't have anything left for anything else, because those stresses are going to really weigh you down and eat you up. And it's gotten to the point for me

where I just have chosen to even think about eliminating the word stress, because usually when I say the word stress, I'm kind of utilizing it in a negative connotation, saying it in a negative way. And so I just eliminated it. Instead, I just say the word challenge, you know, so I'll say, oh, this is, this has been more challenging than something I've dealt with in the past. And I'm up for the challenge. And I'm going to meet the challenge by, you know, preparing for it more by, you know, being just making myself more conditioned towards whatever it is that I'm about to do. So those are things that I found to be, you know, really helpful in trying to manage

the overall amount of stuff that we're trying to always do and implement, because you can get in a category where you just think about it so much. Oh, I should be doing this. I should be doing that. I should be doing this. I heard be doing that. I should be doing this. I heard this guy say this. I heard that guy say that. And then you end up paralyzed and you don't really do anything. You don't move on anything

because you're overthinking it. I like that a lot. I was just thinking about how, like even we talk about stress, it's like we always talk about trying to manage stress, right? Whereas when you get a challenge, you try to just take on that challenge. And if you think about just taking on stress in and of itself, that's not a like take on stress. You know what I mean? Like

it's, it's not a, it's not an abnormal or bad thing to do, but when most people talk about it, it's like, I just got to manage, got to get, I got gotta get by with with it right so i think that's a really great thing that people can can use in terms of just the way that they look at new stresses in life whether it's new opportunities or new challenges um you can you can take it on and you can figure it out yeah and i mean this is a silly analogy where I think that's the right word. But if somebody's playing a difficult video game, do they see it as like, oh, this is a very challenging game? Or do they say, man, I got to manage the stress of this game? No, nobody does that. I know it's different because it's a video game and it's fun, but something like Returnal, very stressful. but something like returnal, very stressful. So yeah, I don't know. I think, you know, if I can look at things that way, cause I am somebody that will like kind of like start thinking that I'm stressing out when really it's just cause like,

there's a lot of stuff that like, Oh, I want to get to X, Y, and Z. And it's like, Oh my God, I haven't done X yet. So I think looking at it as a challenge is definitely the right approach. yet. So I think looking at it as a challenge is definitely the right approach. There's, I think, things that will kind of trigger in your head, you know, in accordance to previous experiences. And then you're kind of like, you'll grab your head and you'll be like, oh no, like this is going to happen again if I choose this route or if I go that route. And so then you are really overly consumed and maybe worried about it. But again, you could just say, oh, okay, that's going to be a challenge. You know, that's going to be something that I'm going to have to put a little bit more thought

into or a little bit more work into. That kind of makes it, it kind of calms you down quite a bit. You can still have your initial feels and stuff are probably most likely they're going to be there. But as our friend, the thinker says, he really encourages people to use something more useful than stress. You know, select something more useful than stress, you know, utilize, you know, select something more useful than stress, you don't have to, your job can be frustrating. But you don't have to choose it as being a negative all the time. There's different ways of looking at it, you can look at it that

you, you know, you like the income that you get, and you like, do you hate everything about your job? If you do, then you should probably re-examine it and move on rather than having it. Nothing in your life should be like pulling at you that hard is the whole point. And so your stress levels, they should be things that are, again, back to the lifting analogy. they should be things that are again back to the lifting analogy if you're going to deadlift 405 we like to see people be able to deadlift you know 455 or 435 so they have extra capacity so that when they do the 405 they don't potentially blow their back out or they could come back the next day and still enjoy a great training session. They're not just getting totally annihilated by that one lift. What I was thinking about was just like the way that most people like when certain

things are posed on social media, like let's do this 12 week challenge or this, this whatever eight week challenge to change my body, whatever, right. It's going to be hard. You already know it's going to be difficult and your body's going to be, there's going to be a lot of what we would call challenges through that eight week challenge. Um, but again, I think that like, we don't call it an eight week stressor, even though eight week challenges for some people, when they look at it and they're in it doing it like, fuck, this is stressful. Right. We, we look at it as a challenge and like, just, just shift that idea. Okay. Shift that idea. And I was, I was just, uh, while we were talking about this, I was thinking about

certain individuals who I'm going to back up. I'm going to say they would be stressors straight up. I have some people that if I interact with them, that would actually just be, that wouldn't be a challenge. No, that, that would, that will legit just be a stressor. I just, I'm not going to take the challenge. You see, like you don't have to take every challenge that comes your way, right? Some of these people, I'm just not going to take the challenge and I'm just going to push that challenge to the side and not even climb that mountain. So remember this. Yeah. And there's, there's things in your day to day. Um, I know it seems guilty of a lot of the same things I'm guilty of, uh, procrastination and, uh, not doing like, I don't know, paperwork and like you've had this jujitsu

thing planned forever and you just like get a flight last minute. I'm the same way. My wife would be like, how do you even know there's flights available? Like, how are you going to get to, I'm like, I don't know. I didn't even think about it. I just, you know, I would like pick stuff like, uh, like the day of, but if that stuff, if, if it doesn't stress you out, it's not a huge problem. But if it does stress you out, then you're better off, you know, taking it on earlier and trying to be prepared and trying to, you know, get things done in advance as much as possible. And for me personally, I still suck at that. But it's something that I work on quite a bit. But I also just don't – there's certain things that I just don't care about

that much, and I'm always like, ah, it'll work out. And I've been that kind of person who's always done that, and it always has worked out. So it's rare that I get, I guess, burned by it, It's rare that I get, I guess, burned by it, but it's probably a larger conversation for another day to kind of dive into all that. But anyway, I think the stresses of life, you don't necessarily have to get rid of the word the way that I have kind of chosen to. You can just reframe the way that you think about it. It doesn't, a stress, a stress is a good thing. Resistance in the gym is a good thing. When we have stresses in life, these are things that our body can, can start to get accustomed to.

It can start to get used to, it can start to adapt to it. The human body is highly, highly adaptive to the point where we've even used some examples. Andrew and I were talking and you taught me some words in Spanish and you can learn a couple of words in a couple seconds, really, in the amount of time it takes you to enunciate the words properly. And so our body is highly, highly adaptive. You can adapt to just about anything. Once you adapt something, then you can adopt it. Once you adopt it, then you can implement it with consistency. Once you're able to implement it with consistency, it can start to become part of your habits. And once it's part of your habits, it can then become part of your character. And so you can just kind of, rather than thinking about stress as being any

sort of negative, you can think about stress in terms of being more positive. But usually when I hear people say stress, they're usually like, oh man, I'm so stressed because of like what happened in the last year. And, you know, things are so hard. And I'm like, things are so hard and i'm like things are so hard compared to what um and so i this is something to really think about i'm not i'm not even that old but like when somebody's in their 20s and they're saying they're stressed out when you think about compared to what compared to what went on during like the civil rights movement compared to what has gone on you know uh with the civil war compared to what's gone what has gone on uh during the time of like uh you know when martin luther king was around or

in in comparison to um uh the great depression in comparison to world war one, world war two, like, like, no, like things, things actually seem really good to me and people, there's still a lot of hate crimes. There's still a lot of hate in the world. There's still a lot of there's still a lot of people committing a lot of harm to each other. Um, but in general, in general, it seems like that has gotten to be at least a little, at least a little bit better to have something, to have a, uh, to have a global virus that wipes some people out, that gets people sick, that causes people

to maybe get an infection and for some people to die from that. To me, that's way better than people inflicting harm on each other. People wanting to shoot each other because of religion. People wanting to kill each other because of political beliefs, or people want to harm each other because they're different colors. So I think that if you can gain perspective on what it is that you're stressed about, you're stressed because you can't get Wi-Fi on the airplane. It's like, give me a fucking break. You just learned, you know, three years ago that that's like a new thing. Now you're all upset about it you know there's there's if you can gain perspective and kind of hone in like we were getting frustrated about our headphones not working right i'm kind of honing like who gives

a fuck the head headphones don't work all right fuck it we're not doing a podcast today or we'll do it we'll do it without the headphones like we're doing it now. You can choose. You can choose to be stressed out about it. You can choose to go and punch a hole in the wall. Now you've got to fix the hole in the wall. Now you've got to explain to people why your hand's all scraped up. It's just maybe we can reframe stuff, and maybe we can think about things a little bit more before we get ourselves overly stressed into these moments where our emotions are really compromised and our emotions are going to – emotions – it's really rare that people make great decisions when their emotions are heightened and going all crazy. And so your decision-making skills, your overall fatigue, all that stuff can be

really, this might explain why I'm able to, like, I don't really sleep well. I've told you guys that forever, but I'm also not a stressed out person. So maybe maybe I get a pass on my on my sleep because I don't because I just I'm pretty calm and pretty casual throughout the day. You know, it's interesting when you were talking about that, when you're talking about kind of maybe taking a look at what you're literally going throughout this moment and then maybe taking a global perspective, potentially like looking at or having some perspective. Okay. I might be going through this. I know some people that have gone through this and they've made it through. I know some people who have gone through this and they've made it through. You can then like, yeah, you, you, you reframe things to understand that, okay, this might be hard, but it's a stressor that I know people have handled before, so I can definitely handle this. Now, I think an interesting aspect of that is I was having a conversation with a woman a few weeks ago, and she was talking about an experience.

And I wasn't trying to take away from her experience, but I told a story about someone that was close to me that, that like in a different country, they went through some like on a very big scale. A lot of them were going through a lot of horrible things, right? That were kind of similar. And then she was like, are you trying to diminish my experience? And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not diminishing your experience. I'm just saying how this isn't just a here problem.

This is a global thing. And in many places, this is actually much, much worse. I'm just saying that in certain ways, we have it good over here. Okay. And an individual, not only do they need to reframe their specific experience, but they need to reframe the way they look at other experiences. You know what? You should diminish your freaking experience. You should diminish it. You should take a look at what you're going through at this moment in time and understand that actually this is not that big of a fucking deal. Diminish your experience. That'll probably make it easier. And that should be okay.

That's huge. Diminishing the response to it is probably the most important thing, you know, because the, what's your in, like, there's there, we can all agree. There's like, really there's, there's levels, right? Like if I, if I never, if I never really knew you guys the way I know you and said, Hey, you know, we've just, each one of us shares the worst thing that happened to us. Right. And we go around the room and I, I say, Hey, you know, we've just, each one of us shares the worst thing that happened to us, right? And we go around the room and I say, hey, you know, my brother died a couple years ago,

impacted me greatly. He, the hero to me, he died of like a drug overdose. And we go around the room, each guy says something. There's levels to it, right? Like people dying of drug overdose, like, I'm sorry, but it happens all the time. Drugs are very addicting. They can be very dangerous. And Mark, you and your family story is no different than millions of other Americans. There are levels to stuff, though, that you cannot, that there are levels of stuff that are very difficult to interpret in any other way than it just being fucking shitty. Yeah. Like if I was like, hey, I got raped as a child.

You know, it's like, holy fuck, man. Like you're just like, you know, I don't even I don't even know what to do with something like, you know, that's a. But there are still people who have been sexually abused as children that have fucking amazing lives they have great lives they have i don't want to speculate on anything like like that necessarily but they have figured it out they've figured out a way to reinterpret life they figured out a way to look at things um we know some amazing people um you know that are that lost the use of their legs or were born that way and they're high level brazilian jiu-jitsu black belts and tyler bray yeah we see yeah and they're competing in bodybuilding and like all kinds of stuff like that and you you look at people like

that and you're like this is amazing and there's a guy who said, this is what I got. And I'm happy with this. I'm going to focus on what I do have. And I'm not going to sit here and hone in. You know, it's an interesting thing, though. I think that when we talk to friends and hopefully listening to this and sometimes, well, I would say just significant others in general or um it's hard to really like flat out just say uh 100 but like i think i think sometimes we just want to be heard you know i was gonna say, but I don't think that that's true. I think it's male and female. I think it's, I don't think it's gender specific.

I think it's both sides. Sometimes you just want to fucking pour your shit out to somebody and you want them to say, you know what, Andrew, that fucking sucks. You've been slighted. You've been handed a bad, you know, bad deck of cards. I don't know why we think, I don't know why, because it would be way more productive if somebody said, hey, you know what, that's unfortunate, but that's what you were dealt with.

We were all dealt with different problems and we've all had to overcome them. So welcome to being an adult, motherfucker. Like you've got to go out and make money, go pay taxes. And you've got to eat shit like everybody else every single day. But for some reason, we really want that compassionate interaction. Oh my God, are you serious? You went to the DMV and they fucking turned you back and now you got to go back. You got to make another appointment. Holy fuck, man.

They really and it cost you 200 bucks or whatever. Like, just people want to, like, really, really kind of sit in that for some particular reason. I want to sit in the suck. Yeah, but it's the most common when, you know, a friend of yours is coming in and just like, dude, I can't believe my ex-boyfriend did this and blah, blah, blah. And if you just throw it back at their face, it's like, well, you kind of were flirting with that dude, so I get it. No, they want to hear, I can't believe he treated you that way. They want you on their side. They want that compassion, like you said.

But what Encima said was freaking amazing. I forgot how you worded it, but your friend didn't want you to diminish her... Experience. Experience. Yeah, dude. I think, as silly as it sounds, but I don't think we know that we have the option to look at it this way, the way you guys are explaining. the option to look at it this way, the way you guys are explaining. I'm thinking of me in junior high being upset that I got to ride my bike in the cold of Northern California, right?

It was barely cold. And then hearing the guy that said, oh, back in my day, I had to walk to school four miles uphill both ways in the snow. And in my head, I'm just like, well, that's your story. That's not mine. People are caught up in their own shit. But if we do realize we have the option to just think, reframe our mind and think like, well, in the grand scheme of things, it isn't that bad. And maybe take on the challenge and don't worry about the stressor. take on the challenge and don't worry about the stressor.

What if you just stopped saying it? What if you just worked on, or maybe not completely stopped saying it, but what if you just worked on saying things a lot less? When somebody's like, oh yeah, I heard so-and-so did a no-carb diet and they lost 50 pounds. Rather than you saying, that's impossible. I would never be able to do that. Why don't you just think, rather than you saying that's impossible. I would never be able to do that. Why don't you just think, oh man, that's really interesting. I bet that would be challenging for me since I actually like carbohydrates a lot, you know, and just kind of walking your way through it and say, I think I could probably figure out something like that. I would have to start out by eating less carbohydrates before I would just jump in, but maybe you can start to kind of rationalize it a little bit more rather than just losing your mind, thinking like it's

impossible for you to even try it or consider it. And along with that guys, like I'm not, okay. So for anyone who just heard this, what I said, as far as diminishing this individual's experience, experience. Um, you know, I, I even, after we, after I said what I said to her, to her, I literally said, cause, cause I could, I could see her gears turning as I was speaking. So she said, are you trying to diminish my experience? Like, I'm absolutely not trying to diminish your experience. I'm just talking about some other experiences that I've personally seen and heard of from people very close to me and just, it's very interesting. But, you know, I know that everybody does go through their individual things. Like Andrew said, we're all kind of,

kind of caught in the scope of our own personal daily lives, but that's why I do think it's going to be, it is super beneficial for number one, not just for us to maybe think about all the things we're grateful for, but then we should be thinking about things potentially on a, on a scope outside of ourselves. You know, I think that can make things much easier for every single one of us individually. And along with that, you know, some people's coming to you with a problem or the boyfriend of said girl or husband to said woman who's talking to you about the problem, you know, sometimes you're not supposed to say shit. Okay. I get it. I totally understand.

But I do think that for everyone listening, it would be a great idea when you do have a problem and you're going to talk to somebody about it, be open to hearing about a potential solution or be open to hearing about some ways that that person may have for you to feel better. It's sometimes that, that, you know, sometimes it's, it's a good, it's a good thing to have. I ask people, I just ask people now they'll, they'll vent to me and I'll say would you like to know what I think and they a lot of times they'll say no yeah no no you know they're like I know I'm gonna get the same fucking medicine that you always try to give me my kids especially my kids will they'll even stop me before I say anything like oh no they're like don't go on a speech I know it's my own

choice I got choice on you know how I want to react to this and uh like we've go on a speech i know it's my own choice i got choice on you know how i want to react to this and uh like we've heard it a million times they just they just stopped me right away that's funny dude so i don't want to know your thoughts i'm out thanks yeah you're listening yeah they're like no how about um i mean if you're cool with Sharon, like, um, Russell was texting you when you didn't have your phone and he kind of like figured things out on his own. That was so cool. Yeah.

Yeah. Um, yeah, my boy Russell, he, um, you know, I've been,

I've been helping him drop some LBs or I went on the OMAD diet with him one meal a day and, uh, he's down nearly 20 pounds. I think it's been about 22 days or so. So he's losing weight pretty quickly. Yeah. And the other day he was he kind of has his ups and downs. And I just told him, like, let me know everything that's going on. Show me pictures of your meal.

You know, tell me what you're craving like just fucking tell me everything tell me if you're tired tell me if something hurts because i was like we can work around and through anything it's it's not hard it's just i just need information you know and so i went to a winery with my wife and my family a couple days ago and i a lot of times i wife and my family a couple of days ago. And I, a lot of times I'll leave my phone at home for situations like that. Cause there's no need the distractions. And if we need to anything for emergency, my wife's got her phone with her. And so anyway, I get back, you know, from this day out without my phone, I see Russell,

he blew me up big time and he's talking about uh you know what he wanted to eat for the day and russell hopefully i'm not outing you too much here big guy but uh he he uh he wanted to have like breakfast burritos and different things so he's writing all this stuff out and he sees like that i get that he gets no response it's like 20 minutes later he's like all right man well uh going to the pool, you know, going to get a workout in. Then he writes back and he's like, I've been thinking about the burritos. He's like, I think I'm just going to order one. And then he gets back to me again. He's like, you know what, man, I think I'll just cook up some stuff here. And maybe I'll just mix a bowl with eggs and some rice and some cheese, which is all part of his diet currently.

And I'll satisfy the need for this burrito. to doing stuff that was a little off the diet, all the way to him exercising, all the way to him getting back on plan and back on point, totally 100% by himself. So it was pretty awesome. And when I got back and I saw all that, I just wrote to him. I said, glad I could help because I didn't have anything to do with any of it. But it goes back to what we're talking about. He's reconditioned and reframed his mind.

He knows that. I think a lot of times people, when they're stressed out, they're like, I want to have a drink. They want to eat poorly. And it's like, you know, having a couple of drinks can kind of relieve you of some of these things. Eating some junk food can kind of relieve you of some of these things. Eating some junk food can kind of relieve you of some of these things. But to try to think about it in the grand scheme of things and overall, maybe with the big picture stuff, how does it

help you to be further away from your goals? Is it, is that, is that going to really help you at this moment? You might have to buy into something at this moment to get the payout that you're looking for later on. And so things might be a little bit tough right now. They might be a little challenging right now. But you could be on the verge. You know, I think a lot of people don't recognize this is like, sometimes you're right there. Like you're on the verge of doing something really great and something really awesome you just need to fucking hang in there you just need to be a little bit braver a little bit more bold than everybody else and just sit in that pocket for just a little bit longer everything in life works that way including like losing body fat you know know, including gaining strength. Like you work on

your strength, work on your strength, and then shit starts to kind of hurt. Your body starts to ache. Stuff starts to feel like it's going to fall apart. And that's where we separate people out. That's where we see a lot of people fall off. And some other people are like, I'm going to keep going. I'm going to keep going. Week five, week six, week seven, week eight, you get to week eight. And now it starts to get a little easier because now your body's starting to really just kind of adopt these new quote unquote stresses that you're giving it. But that's a long time to hang in there. Two months. It's actually a long time when you're in it cool um can we get your guys's final thoughts on today's uh discussion we uh and sema and i have to go take an important

phone call coming up look at us go but yeah um i think today's both topics that we talked about with the um and sema being a freak athlete and his body fat percentage and everything that you guys have been doing everything i've been doing is super beneficial but then this whole reframing you know it's like uh you know people talk about like the guests that we get to speak to and all that stuff rubs off on me and all the information but a lot of the stuff that i carry with me day to day just comes from you guys and so conversations like today where, um, you know, we're, we're trying to talk to, you know, the masses here, but it's just funny to me that like, I still learn shit every day. So I'm like really grateful for these, uh, you know, these conversations without guests,

cause I learned so much from you guys. Speaking of some reframing, we got John Anderson coming up on the podcast pretty soon. And, you know, John Anderson talks about eating 700 grams of protein a day, you know, so I'm sure for some people when they heard, you know, eat a gram of protein per pound of body weight, I'm sure that some people when they've heard that or some people even suggest 1.5. I've heard, you know, I know that for some people when they've heard things like that, it's like blows their mind. They're like, oh my God, I can't believe that much protein, but you get used to it over a certain degree. And next thing you know, you're kind of, you're kind of doing that. We've heard Cam Haynes talk about running a marathon for lunch. Like

that's his, that's what he does at his lunch break. And I'm sure at some point before he got into running, I'm sure when he was five years old, I'm sure when someone said running a mile, he probably thought a mile was really fucking far, you know. And at some point, you start to get more and more accustomed to these things. So it's a choice, you know, how we frame it up and how we want to decide how we react to things and how things affect us emotionally. And then in terms of Encima being a freak, I'm well aware of this. I get to see it every day and I love it. I think that you kind of stumbled upon our episode title because that title will trigger some folks. Stress is a choice.

That title, that, I like, I think that's a good one. I don't know what you guys think, but yeah, I learned a lot from this episode too. Honestly, I came across a lot of thoughts that I wouldn't have gotten to if I wasn't talking to both of you guys right now. So this is always good. Yeah, absolutely.

So thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. For more information on Piedmontese, check the links down in the description below, as well as the podcast show notes. And again, promo code PowerProject for 25% off your order. Please make sure you're following the podcast at MarkBell's PowerProject on Instagram, at MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ and as well as the Andrew Z on TikTok. I promise I'm going to get that bitch off the ground and see how can people get in touch with you. Don't forget, go rate and review with us on iTunes, y'all and all of those podcast platforms.

But I didn't see my in Yang on Instagram and YouTube and see my yin yang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark, I know you were talking about maybe taking John Anderson for getting some body fat tested. I mentioned it to him. So just kind of waiting to hear back from him on, on that, but he's 290 pounds that he would be so interesting on that machine.

Yeah. And thanks to, to Dexa fit Midtown in Sacramento. If you're in the area, J Street, really awesome facility. I think the worst, most difficult part is the fact that it's connected to a really good sandwich shop. Once you get your body fat test, you're like, I'm good. I can go all in now, which was kind of our thought. But no, that place was amazing.

Tim was super nice and super informative. And like I said, there's a video currently exporting right now. That'll be on the super training. Oh, six channel where you guys will see our whole experience. So again, thank you to Dexa fit Midtown sack.

We got to do a before and after of the sandwich shop, right? Oh yeah. I think so. That's a great idea, right? It will throw it for a loop right i think so like if you just forked out because i think liquid and all that like matters right

yeah liquid for sure well no they didn't have they said you want to be hydrated right but why do they want hydrated because it probably gives you a uh what more accurate reading but it's probably a, I would imagine it's a less leaner maybe, maybe, maybe, but I'm not sure. Maybe just tell people to be hydrated just so it's like, I don't know. It's probably hard to tell people to be like dehydrated. I don't know if anybody would know what that means.

And I don't know if anybody would know what that feels like. Yeah. I look forward to that anybody would know what that feels like. Yeah. I look forward to that episode with our buddy, John Anderson. It should be interesting. Thank you guys so much for listening. I'm at Mark Smiley Bell, TikTok, Twitter, Instagram. Check all that stuff out.

Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Hi-yah! Pow!