Mark Bell's Power Project - Functional Patterns: Revolutionary or Overhyped? Our Honest Review || MBPP Ep. 1082

Episode Date: July 8, 2024

In episode 1082, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza give their honest review of Functional Patterns. They reference a conversation they had with two people from FP and review how the conversation went. Watch the full length podcast mentioned: https://youtu.be/Ug8rWsFJOhg?si=i7l6m7kkP-1ApMR3   Official Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw   Special perks for our listeners below!   🍆  Natural Sexual Performance Booster 🍆 ➢https://usejoymode.com/discount/POWERPROJECT Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎 ➢https://emr-tek.com/ Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!   👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶 ➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject   🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save up to 25% off your Build a Box ➢ Piedmontese Beef: https://www.CPBeef.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150   🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!   Sleep Better and TAPE YOUR MOUTH (Comfortable Mouth Tape) 🤐 ➢ https://hostagetape.com/powerproject to receive a year supply of Hostage Tape and Nose Strips for less than $1 a night!   🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained:      ➢ https://withinyoubrand.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off supplements!   ➢ https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save 15% off all gear and apparel!   Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Become a Stronger Human - https://thestrongerhuman.store ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/JoinUNTAPPED ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en   Follow Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/ ➢ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

If you gave me Usain Bolt right now, I think we could make him faster. He himself with his coach became the fastest man on the planet. Try to build one of your own. The people that come to FP are generally not prone to be muscle bound. The people that are prone to be more muscle bound

go to power lifting, weight lifting. Anybody has the ability to build muscle. With Rodney and Mike, if we brought them into here to our studio to train, we could get them bigger and stronger. Personally, I wouldn't grab a sandbag and start walking with it. It doesn't seem like it's gonna help you improve your mechanics.

Walking with it is not gonna lead to downline dysfunction unless that's the only thing you ever do. They don't even want you doing like lateral raises. Some things we agreed with, some things we disagreed with. We're here to talk everybody out of FP. Don't do FP. Don't do it. It's horrible. I'm just kidding. If you do FP. Don't do it. It's horrible.

I'm just kidding. If you guys have been enjoying the content we've been bringing here on The Power Project, consider leaving us a review on Spotify and Apple. We've had podcasts with people from Functional Patterns to Ben Patrick to Jack Cruz, who roasted us on air, but we did that for you, to bring you some of the best information in fitness.

We're learning along with you, and leaving a review with how you dig the podcast is really going to be something that helps the podcast move forward. So if you can leave us a review there and enjoy the rest of the show. So we got some clips we're going to go over, huh? Some FP stuff. Yeah, it's going to be, I think that FP podcast got a lot of people looking into it, thinking about it. And we hit a lot of people looking into it, thinking about it. And we hit a lot of topics, some things we agreed with,

some things we disagreed with. We're here to talk everybody out of FP. Don't do FP. Don't do it. It's horrible. I'm just kidding. Actually, I'm sure there was a lot of negative responses, too. But I heard a lot of positive.

And I was kind of surprised, especially from some long time friends that have been really just into bodybuilding and powerlifting, but they were like, hey man, kind of cool. Like maybe these guys are right about certain things. And I guess we have to have perspective on where other people are coming from. Some people that saw the show,

I saw some comments where people were like, well, those guys are so small. And it's saw the show, I saw some comments where people were like, well, those guys are so small. And it's like, well, yeah. And maybe that's where they're coming from. Maybe genetically they didn't have the size to lean into heavier lifting and maybe they both said it. I mean, in their own words that genetically they don't feel that they had enough resilience to like lift heavy weights. And that's kind of how they found FP. And I'm not saying that all FP practitioners are like that,

but from what I've seen, you know, having gone to a gym that has FP and having watched a lot of their stuff, it seems like a lot of people that are getting into that are people that are banged up and have tried other methods and have not had success. Now we could also say, well, maybe they did some of those things incorrectly. Maybe they tried to go too fast, too heavy. Maybe CrossFit wasn't a great place to start.

Maybe powerlifting wasn't a great place to start. Maybe powerlifting wasn't a great place to start. We could have all these different modes of interpretation of like what they went through or whatever. But I think it's cool if they found something that they feel is working really well for them with what they're doing. And then it's also working for a lot of the people that they're working with.

And I think that if you look at it with an open mind and check out what FP is doing, some of their changes that they make for some people are pretty cool. You're like, oh, that's pretty cool, right? But some of the changes that they make for some people are extraordinary. Or people have maybe like MS or people have-

Scoliosis. Scoliosis, degenerative things going on in their body. People can barely walk. There's people that can barely walk and now they're like jumping and then, jumping over something like you're producing a lot of force. So that's what got me interested in it in the first place. And I was like, hmm,

maybe I should kind of think about this. This is kind of interesting. Maybe some squats, benches, deadlifts, maybe some of these movements that I've grown to love, that I have been doing forever. Maybe they are kind of compressing me a little bit. Maybe I should look for something slightly different for a little while.

Even though we have some disagreements with FP, there's a lot of things I think they're right on, because one of the things that they mentioned was that Rodney and Mike, they got into training, I don't know who was their trainer, but they said that they didn't feel, they felt that lifting weights wasn't good for them, right? It didn't bring for them what it brought for us.

And some people can get better at lifting weights despite lifting with bad form. For example, I've seen like Larry Wheels and some of these guys that lift a lot of weight, they do certain things where I'm like, that would break me. I would pull, I would like literally just pull everything in my back if I lifted in that way, but they're durable enough to withstand that. I think of somebody who doesn't have that type of durability and they get into lifting and that's the type

of thing that pumps them up and they sustain a bunch of injuries. Well, you can see how like there's no system to that. And they've done a really good job of creating a system for what they do. Yeah, I think the thing that I initially was like really put off by everything and why a lot of people will, you know, kind of not bash, but like just disagree with everything is because they will talk about other movements

and say how bad they are. Obviously we know when they talk about other movements and say how bad they are. Obviously we know when they talk about other systems and stuff like that, but a lot of people identify with their bench and this and that. And so I think that's what gets people super fired up. They're just like, no, I can bench more than you and you're smaller than me. I'm not going to listen to you. I was like, come on, dude, like, don't judge a book by its cover. You know what I mean?

And so for me personally, like, yeah, I actually did start with the CrossFit and I didn't have a great time with it. I went into like traditional bodybuilding, got a little hurt, dabbled in powerlifting at ST and got a little hurt. And then, you know, my back's always been pretty bad. So, you know, it's funny because I think I am

like the typical blueprint person that finds FP and is like, shit, this thing's amazing. Everybody needs to do this because it helped me so much. It is helping me a lot. I'm doing it before Jiu Jitsu. You're talking about that 12 week online course, right? The Bioshash release? Yeah, yeah.

And we can get into the fact that it is in this program, but it's not necessarily the first time I've ever heard any of it. But it is a program and I'm following it, having a ton of success. It's really like, I very badly want to reach out to anybody that has back pain and be like, look, this is helping me, it's gonna help you. But the fact is, I don't know

if that's actually gonna happen, right? It's helping me in my situation with my body and everything that I've gone through. Doesn't necessarily mean that this is now the answer and it is the best and the only way to go about fixing some lower back pain. But it is exciting the fact that like I am reaching like these different levels of pain free levels, especially on the mats. You know, like I'm, this is funny. I thought I was going to create a black hole because I did Gota and FP on the same day.

And I felt amazing. And it was just funny. Cause like, like those two camps definitely cannot coexist. But here I was on the mat using stuff that I learned from both camps and feeling really freaking good. They agree on a lot of stuff, you know, and that's what you'll find is there's these through lines with FP and I mean as much as all of them probably want to deny This some of these things but uh, you know They just use different terms, you know from go to you'll kind of hear that

They talk about being in a column, having your head in a column. David Weck talks about head over foot. A lot of these things end up being similar. And then Gota, they want you to kind of spin up energy via like, kind of flicking the heel outward. At least it's been, I just go off my own experiences. It's been my experience when I've done a lot of FP stuff. I say a lot, but I've done, I don't know,

maybe 10 sessions or 15 sessions or something of functional patterns with a functional patterns certified coach. They did have me every single time. Any sort of movement that I did that involved gait, that involved me kind of moving through space and like taking a step, it was always, it wasn't always head over foot

because it had to do with how we were using the cable, but it was almost always flicking that back heel out the way that you kind of see from go to. Interesting. And I do want to mention this, like one, I think a big concept to maybe keep in mind for, for anybody who trains at a gym or whatever you do is, I think one thing that's great that they keep in mind

is keeping sprinting as the North Star. Keeping sprinting as like the thing that they're doing everything towards. And I'm not saying that has to be what you do everything towards, but can you figure out a way to bring back your ability to run, jump, sprint and throw? Like can you do that?

Like when is the last time you ran, jumped, sprint or threw something, right? If you try those things, and sprinting's one of those things that you don't want to try immediately, but if you try those things and you don't feel safe, maybe it's a good idea to be like, well, how can I get these abilities back so that by the time I'm 50, 60, 70,

I can still do these things? Because I mean, I'm not saying you can't get these back when you're older, but it's gonna be a bit harder. So if you're in your 20s and 30s and you've been lifting for a long time and you like really don't feel comfortable even going out or going on a run or going on a run for a little bit hurts,

what can you do to build those capacities back into your life? Because the reason why I say that is because these guys, that's the thing that they focus on. And I don't think that you have to focus everything to that to be able to do that, but this is the thing. We try to take what's valuable. And what's valuable from them is figuring out ways

to get those abilities back, along with also being jacked in tan. I think for anybody that's trying to have a program, or anyone who's trying to just improve period, just trying to be better, and you're utilizing fitness as part of your venture to get better. I think it's in your best interest

to have something that's like a North Star. The reason why Westside Barbell stuff made so much sense to me and it made all of their programming make so much sense. Dave Tate wrote what I consider to be the greatest article of all time. It's a two-part article that's on elitefts.com called the Periodization Bible Part 1 and 2. It's probably about 30 pages worth of reading and it's not a hard read at all. It's very, very simple. But in that article, he talks about how as a power lifter, your main goal is to do a one rep max

with a squat bench and a deadlift. And then everything else is designed on how to bring up those qualities of a squat bench deadlift. Well, that makes it super simple when we start to think about like, what are these exercises for? You know, and Seema, why are you doing glute ham raises? Well, it can help me with my deadlift.

It can help me with my squat. Why are you doing 45 degree back raises? Oh, it's strengthening my lower back. It's strengthening my glutes, strengthening my hamstrings. Those are all muscles that are involved in the deadlift and the squat. Why are you doing good mornings? Why are you doing shoulder presses?

Why are you doing these movements? Oh, well, you know, first of all, I just want my arms to be bigger because that's kind of fun. But secondly, and most important, if you're a powerlifter and you're going after that total, having bigger arms and bigger legs, it should make the whole process

of lifting heavy weights easier because you got more cushion for the pushing. You have more mass, mass can move mass and it is helpful to be bigger. And so again, even thinking of like just gaining body weight, for me, I gained body fat. A lot of it. Maybe a little bit, maybe I went a little too far.

Body fat and muscle, right, over a long period of time and just kept slapping that on until I could, you know. Couldn't breathe. Couldn't breathe, couldn't sleep, couldn't really do anything actually to a certain extent. You could lift. I could lift heavy stuff. I could lift a lot of weight. But that was the North Star.

And I think for anybody that's doing jujitsu or whatever it is, if you're participating in jujitsu and then you're going to the gym and you're making yourself stiff and you're making yourself tight and it's this kind of, you're swimming upstream all the time, you're tired. It's like, well, man, I think that if Jiu-Jitsu

is the main priority, we gotta kinda, you might wanna look into untapped. You might wanna look into a program that's gonna give you more than just you lifting heavy and you're just causing more harm than good really over a long period of time. As we say on this show often, I think that there's a couple of things that are really important

to always to keep in mind, and that is you have to have fun with stuff. So if you see these cable movements that are done by FP or done by any of these other movement practice people, and you don't like that, well, then it's not a good idea. or done by any of these other movement practice people, and you don't like that, well, then if you really hate it that much, then I don't think it's really worth doing. It's worth still thinking about,

hey, maybe I'm over squatting myself. Maybe I don't have to squat 52 weeks out of the year, or maybe I don't have to squat twice a week, every week, forever. Maybe it'd be nice if I could like tie my shoe or play some basketball or do some other things. So I don't think that you have to necessarily have such an intervention that you end up doing a bunch of shit that you hate.

You can still do a lot of the things that you love, but you might wanna try to start to reconsider some of the stuff that you're doing. Cause as I've mentioned before, you can do the thing that you love to your own detriment. And I've had this happen with running, I had to happen with bodybuilding, I had to happen with power lifting,

had to happen with pro wrestling, had to happen with football, where I go to get up from something and I'm just like limping and shuffling across the, you know, my living room and going like, well, it's cause I'm powerlifting. Like it's part of it. It's cause I'm bodybuilding, it's part of it.

But it doesn't really have to be. Like you can actually figure this shit out. I'm not saying that you're not gonna have some days that don't crush your soul. You're gonna have some days that are gonna crush you a little bit. But I think the main goal is to figure out how do we manage all this stuff

and be able to move forward and be awesome and get better at what we're doing on a consistent basis without wrecking our body. You guys ready for the first clip? I just also wanna mention too, Andrew, I think when you were saying how you kind of found these different practices, like we found Gota, we found functional patterns.

It's to no surprise that you landed on doing a lot of activities that involved a cable, right? And so it's like each person is going to have to find movements and things that... So my point in bringing that up is that you switching to cables is not you not going to the gym at all. You know what I mean? It's still doing stuff that you love,

but you're like, hmm, how do I still do stuff that I love and not kill myself? I've tried the stiff leg dead lifts. I've tried the bent over rows. I tried all these movements and they all hurt. And I don't know if people are lying to me or if they just want me to get hurt worse or what's going on,

but I'm fucking sick and tired of being in pain. And then you start to find some of your own things, right? Yeah, no, again, I've said this before where I would think maybe this isn't for me. Oh, getting big and jacked isn't for me. Now, I'm not saying I'm big and jacked now, but when I started doing cable work and just literally just sticking to exclusively working with cable machines, I got into like the biggest best shape of my life. I actually looked at a picture from

couple years back. Pretty jacked. You're like what 10% or 11% body fat? Probably like 13, 14% right now. But then you're also like what 180, 190? 183 trying to get that down a little bit. We got to sort of redefine jackness. Okay, that's fair. I think we do. I think too much judgment is placed on some of these FP guys and some of these movement pattern people, I think sometimes, because sometimes we're comparing them to bodybuilders.

True. Yeah. Bodybuilders. True. Yeah, bodybuilders are fucking awesome at what they do. They are, they're just fucking, you guys are amazing. I'll just put you in the category, even though you're temporarily on a hiatus from actually like being on stage. Bodybuilders are fucking amazing at what they do. And it's a really interesting sport.

And the Michael Hearns and some of these people that are out there, you gotta just, all you can do is just tip your hat to them. The Stan Effortings and stuff. It's like, that is fucking amazing. That is really hard to obtain, you know, a body like that. But there's a lot of people that are well-meaning that just get shit on on the internet.

People are like, well, he's known as Paul Saladino, you know, comes to mind. Like, well, he figured if he does that stuff thatadino, you know, comes to mind like, well, he figured he does that stuff that he would, you know, if he only eats meat, he'd be more shredded or more jacked. You're like, he's got a great physique. He looks awesome. He's out there surfing every day. Like he's super athletic. Fuck it. I'll give it to him. He's jacked and tan.

He got the seal of approval. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, like I was saying, just for, for me and my body, I was able to develop more muscle than I ever have using barbells, using traditional, iron, I'll say, and switching to the cable machine, I got hurt. I didn't get hurt at all. Obviously, I'm not saying you can be forever pain free and lifting that way. Like obviously anything can happen, but it was just so much smoother and easier for me and it made more sense. And having the time under tension,

the way you do with cables, as opposed to when, you know, sometimes you don't with, you know, standard plates and stuff like that. I just, I developed way more muscle than ever before. So yeah. Cool. Let's check out these clips. Yeah, buddy.

The theory is that you have, like like if you gave me LeBron, if you gave me Usain Bolt right now, I think we could make him faster. Like you could give it to me, not even like Naughty or like the best practitioner in the world. You could give him to me right now and he could nix most of that stuff and we could probably make him faster. Because of that genetic potential as well. You know, I think. That was interesting.

Because Usain was the, is, you know, he was the fastest man on the planet. You know, we showed clips of him lifting. You posted something about him, him talking about what he does. David Letterman asked him, he's like, do you train? It's like such a dumb question. It's like all the time.

Yeah. And I think every coach, every sprint coach, every athletic coach would love to, and would will say with confidence, I could make Usain faster. But that statement in and of itself is just, it's just odd to me, you know what I mean? Like he himself with his coach

became the fastest man on the planet. Try to build one of your own if you can, that's the thing, but don't try to say that you'd make the fastest man on the planet faster. Right, he's had a lot of, I mean, Usain Bolt is the byproduct of like some amazing genetics along with some amazing mentors, coaches, and just a long history of training.

He also got his ass kicked for a long time. I don't know if people know, but he like got smoked by people all the time. And, you know, it wasn't until he really figured out the exact way that he needed to train to prep for some of this stuff. So, just so much goes into that. I do think that that is a bold statement,

but I also agree with what you said is like any trainer is gonna say, hey, yeah, I think I could do, I think I could help that person be better. We did bring up during this podcast that we did with FP, we brought up our buddy Ian Danny. And Ian is a pretty big believer in like, hey, look, if we get people stronger, a lot of times they're gonna get faster.

Now, does that mean all the time, Ian is super smart, he's got like ratios for shit all the way to the point where he could tell, how many Nordics you could do, he could probably predict how fast you are. If he watched you do pull-ups, he can tell you about how fast you can, how your 40 would be,

because he knows your strength to weight ratio and all these different things. But we know that you can build your strength to weight ratio through some of the training in a gym. Is it gonna be built doing just regular bodybuilding? Maybe for someone who's untrained, maybe it will do that in the beginning and maybe it will be helpful. But it's just hard to say sometimes because sometimes bodybuilders, sometimes they're really fucking strong and sometimes they're really explosive. But you know, we don't know, is it from bodybuilding? Is it from

the training that they're doing? You know, someone like Kenny comes to mind. Super explosive, super well-built. I know a bunch of people that bodybuild and they can jump like crazy, you know? But does that mean that bodybuilding is gonna help you with your vertical? They're probably jumping before too. They're probably jumping before.

Yeah. Olympic lifting on the other hand, which doesn't really get talked about on this show that much. Shout out to our buddy, Zach Delander. A lot of people that do Olympic lifting on the other hand, which doesn't really get talked about on this show that much, shout out to our buddy, Zach Talander. A lot of people that do Olympic lifting, it seems like a lot of people that employ some Olympic lifting,

it seems like they do get the benefits of being able to have a better vertical. Again, it's just hard to put context to it because were they jumping before? Have they've always been athletic? They probably selected Olympic lifting because they were very athletic. Because to do a snatch, I mean, means that you are,

it's a tough movement to do. So someone that can perform a snatch and someone that can probably move their body around well enough to do high box jumps and all kinds of different things. So it's sometimes hard to tell where shit comes from. Because I don't really know him very well, but does Sam Selec ever show any athleticism type stuff

or is it just lifting? I think it's just lifting. I don't really watch his videos like that, but I think it's just lifting. Yeah, no, I'm just going to super duper nitpick on that just to be like, well, he was a diver before or something, right right yeah, so it's like oh did the bodybuild and make him athletic It's like well. No he kind of already had it and so again nitpicking, but right an example right and then like him just you know Handling 90 pound or 100 pound or 150 pound dumbbells in the gym and stuff like that

Does it help it's it's, it can be difficult to tell because I think that we could find a lot of bodybuilders that blow out their hamstrings sprinting, right? But we could also probably find a lot of bodybuilders that are really fast. But just like they would have to do these things simultaneously, I know that Flex Lewis was really explosive and really fast.

So it's hard to figure out. I think this just comes back down to something. If you want to become athletic, and I know as an adult it's a little bit more difficult, but a lot of people talk about the hybrid athlete thing, and usually it's within the context of like lifting and running. But if you want to build athletic capacities,

get into a sport. I mean, as a kid, it's kind of obvious, play a sport because kids get better as they go to practice and play their sport. You practice. Initially, if you're a soccer player, you can barely dribble the ball around. You're not gonna be able to juggle.

By going to practice and practicing over time, doing little drills, you get better over time. If you wanna become athletic as an adult, try to get into a sport and play a little bit. It doesn't need to be every single day, but can you find an adult league where you can do something once or twice a week, right? Along with keeping your body strong

with resistance training in the gym. It's- You're not going to be that athletic if you just go on some jogs here and there and you just lift. That's fitness. Yeah. That's just fitness. So I agree with it.

It's not a problem either. No, it's not a problem. That's great. Your body's probably gonna be relatively healthy. Your ability to like stop and start, your ability to change direction, some other abilities might not come from you just going on a 12 minute mile pace jog for three miles or something like that.

In addition to some lifting here and there, you're going to gain some muscle mass and yes you'll have some zone two cardio and those are all really amazing things for your health. But if you're trying to become more athletic and you're also looking to potentially be like in less pain and to be able to be more resilient, I think you're going to have to push shit a little bit more than that. I think one of the things that's helped me with some resilience in some of the stuff that I do nowadays is my past, you know, playing football and playing other sports. And then even though I had a long hiatus

from some of that stuff, all those years of powerlifting, when I've talked with Flex Lewis recently on his podcast, he was like, you don't have shin splints? He's like, nothing hurts. Like, how is it possible? And I just said, I don't. So I guess I could blame my genetics on some of it too. Like that could be the case.

Maybe mom and dad made me really resilient somehow. But I think that a lot of the lifting and a lot of the history of the different things that I've done over the years has helped me to where my body's like, yeah, we don't have any problem with you running for an hour. It's not a big deal. And this one last thing I'll say about this,

because I know just mentioning that about sports may seem a little bit like, oh, I can play a sport, well, I have a job and kids. Okay, cool, find a pickleball league. Pickleball league is actually great, or pickleball is amazing, because you're literally, the racket sports are awesome for people. You get lateral movement,

you get swing throwing movements, cool. Jiu-jitsu, also pretty awesome. Jiu-jitsu, I think is one of those adult sports that people like to do as adults. And you can build a skill. You get a lot of movement variability with that. There's probably a ton of others too, and you guys probably have some ideas,

but pickleball and jiu-jitsu, right? Can you find something that'll get you moving in different ways? It's all you need. Yeah, and racket sports, if you play it, you live longer, right? Yeah. Apparently.

Yeah, there was a stat the other day that I think somebody said like 11 years and it was like a thing that was going around, but I'm like, if you play racket sports, you're also probably pretty wealthy. So there's probably a lot of other conveniences. How much do pickleball leagues cost? Do you guys know? I don't know. I don't know. It can't be that expensive. I don't have like inside track on all white people's things. You don't get the newsletter?

Yeah. I've seen it. We need to do a whole show where we just ask each other questions like that back and forth. Why do you drink a full gallon of milk each day? Tell me why you do that. Why don't we like to spice up our food a little? I can't wait to get canceled again.

For years on this podcast, we've been talking about the benefit of barefoot shoes. And these are the shoes I used to use back in like 2017, 2018, my old Metcons. They are flat, but they're not very wide and they're very stiff and they don't move. That's why we've been partnering with and we've been using Vivo Barefoot Shoes.

These are the Modest Strength Shoe, because not only are they wide, I have wide ass feet and so do we here on the podcast, especially as our feet have gotten stronger, but they're flexible. So when you're doing certain movements, like let's say you're doing jumping or you're doing split squats

or you're doing movements where your toes need to flex and move, your feet are able to do that and perform in the shoe, allowing them to get stronger over time. And obviously, they're flexible. So your foot's allowed to be a foot. And when you're doing all types of exercise, your feet will get stronger, improving your ability to move.

Andrew, how can they get the hands on these? Yes, head to vivobarefoot.com slash power project and enter the code that you see on screen to save 20% off your entire order. Again, that's at vivobarefoot.com slash power project and enter the code that you see on screen to save 20% off your entire order. Again, that's at Vivo barefoot.com slash power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Why do your dad's never run? And we're going to go ahead and hit this play button. I actually don't really know how beneficial it is to slap on like a lot of muscle. Sure. I'm definitely not against it.

I love it. I love lifting. I love power lifting. I love bodybuilding. I will be doing and participating in some forms of that the rest of my life. It's ingrained into my system. I enjoy it. How effective is it for other things?

I don't really know. It's an interesting one. We had a guy on our podcast, goes by the name of Muscle Doc, and he was talking about how he knew some scientists that were studying people in the NFL, and they were studying the bone density. And kind of based off the bone density is how much muscle they can hang off of that density and kind of based off the bone density is how much muscle they can hang off of that skeletal frame. It was super interesting and he even went into it further and some guys had too much weight and some guys were too light in accordance to their bone density and in accordance to the position that they were in. So it was super fascinating to kind of hear that an analysis like that. Yeah, so the people that come to FP are generally not prone to be muscle-bound. The people that

are prone to be more muscle-bound go to power lifting, go to weight lifting. So it's a little bit of both. Obviously, some people are able to build the muscle with traditional weight lifting, but it takes a longer time to build the framework. It's like, imagine, yeah, it's like you have to build the foundation from the very like imagine, yeah, it's like you have to build the foundation from the very beginning and it just takes a long time. But the idea is that- I think I know what he's trying to say there is that like a lot of good, a lot of people that are already good athletes are going to gravitate towards certain things when they're

young and therefore like a lot of the people that have been to FP are people that may have tried those things, but they sort of struggled with those things because they were smaller framed or they were like hard gainers and they had some difficulties. That's kind of what it sounds like he's describing to me. And also one of the things is,

I think anybody has the ability to build muscle. What he said there is like, yeah, the people that come to FP don't tend to be the people that are ready, were muscular, already built muscle pretty easily. But the thing is, I think some people don't give themselves a shot because they're the individuals who they step into a gym and they start gaining muscle really quickly. And then there are people that we know in this industry as hard gainers. But if we know people like that, who spend a good amount of time lifting, and over the years, they've actually been able to build a decent amount of muscle.

Look at a lot of people that even do calisthenics, right? Also able to build a good amount of muscle. So one thing is I think some people count themselves out too soon of weight training because they see the progress that certain people make. They compare themselves to that progress. And because they're not making progress anywhere close to how that person is, they automatically think I can't do that or this is not for me. Whereas they probably don't have their nutrition in check. They're probably not eating in a surplus. They probably have been consistent for a long enough period of time. I'm not saying that everyone needs to be big and muscular.

The goal isn't just being big and muscular, but the goal is building some structure so you have physical resilience for anything that you choose to do, right? So that's why I think it's just like, don't count yourself out just because you don't feel that you're some genetic freak. There's a signal, right?

You send your body a signal. And again, we can't be too dismissive of genetics. My brother Mike was around six feet tall. He was like 260, 270 pounds. Chris is like built like a fire hydrant. He's over 200 pounds. With huge, bubbly, beautiful calves. Yeah. The rest of my family isn't necessarily like that.

My aunts and uncles and stuff, not everybody's really like that, but on the Bell side of the family, like everyone pretty much does have, male or female, everyone's got jacked calves, all the way to the females are like, I had to hide my calves forever. Cause you know, it wasn't, people didn't find it to be attractive when they were young,

I guess. But anyway, you know, I do have like a decent amount of genetics, so I'm not afraid to throw that out there. But with Rodney and Mike, like we know and Seema and I know, Andrew knows, like if we brought those guys into super training and brought them into here to our studio to train, we could get them bigger and stronger. Now, would that be functional for them?

Would that be beneficial? Who the hell knows? Like that's kind of harder to say exactly. But I know that, especially with Rodney being a shorter frame guy, it's just, you get a guy like that sending the right signals and hypertrophying the muscles and following some of the laws and rules of hypertrophy.

It usually comes along pretty quick. Now again, I'd imagine that both these guys have messed around with that. I know Mike said that he's done some power lifting. I think he said at one point, he dead lifted around 500 pounds. So I know that both those guys have gone down that path and they obviously are doing something different now

for a reason, but helping those guys to put some muscle mass on would be easy. They both have good frames, they're both in good shape and neither one of them have any pain. Yeah, I'm curious. And this isn't even just like people that have found FP that said that they couldn't develop muscle and that sort of thing.

I just mean generally like everybody and throwing myself in there as well as one of those types. Like how honest are you with yourself in regards to like you not being able to develop muscle? Like, if I'm being honest, I wasn't doing all the right things necessary. I wasn't checking off all the boxes. I wasn't getting in all the right calories the way I'm supposed to. I wasn't training the way I was supposed to. Meaning like I was, yeah,

I was hurting myself a lot because, oh, the online program that I paid a hundred bucks for said I had to do stiff legged RDLs, deadlifts, back raises, and then some other dumb back movements all in the same day. And it's like, dude, I can't even sit up straight. Like I can't even like walk home right now. Like I'm torched. This isn't for me It's like no, I'm not and then I would not get sleep that night You know, there was just so many things that I was not doing the right way But I labeled myself as somebody like oh, this is just I can't develop muscle. I wasn't being honest with myself. So with Again, not just singling out FP

I just mean everybody in general if you've ever said that if you't being honest with myself. So with, again, not just singling out FP, I just mean everybody in general, if you've ever said that, if you're being honest, how many of those boxes are you checking off? And I think if you're honest, you'd be like, you know what, yeah, I did have nachos the other day or whatever, you know? And so it's like, yeah, we have to be real. I think each of us have, we all have blind spots.

Yes, that's a great thing. I could say that about like mobility or something. You know, I just over the last maybe two, three years have finally embraced it. I finally do stuff for it. And so over a period of time, I will become more mobile. Like it's just gonna happen because I'm working on it. So, and even already with my running,

which I haven't really been messing around with the faster runs and sprints and stuff for that long. It's only just honestly been a couple months. My experience with sprints in the last 10 years is I probably have done 20 sprints. So that's gonna continue to improve. But like you said, Andrew, I gotta give myself a chance. I gotta give myself a shot.

And it's just gonna take some time. I was gonna say, yeah, time. And for muscle, muscle takes time. When you see people online that seem to gain muscle really fast, or if you've just started training and you're like, why haven't I gained 10 pounds? It's like, it's one of those things. Muscle takes consistency and time. And you don't have to train seven days a week.

If you can do that three to four days a week fairly consistently, you'll gain muscle over time, but you just gotta be consistent with it. Yeah, and I agree that there are particular ways to move, but some of that even gets to be a little difficult to figure out sometimes. There's a lot of debate when it comes to a bench squat and deadlift on how to do it exactly. You see somebody like Joe Sullivan

and they'll put out a video and he'll say, hey, this is the way you bench, you squeeze the bar, you do ABC, and then you look at the comments. That's not what this guy said. Oh, what about Isra-Tel? He said this. What about this other guy? He said that.

Joe has an all time squat record and he can shoot a video about how to squat and have the same people saying all these different things about the right way to do it. So sometimes it's really difficult to narrow in and figure out how to do something. My interpretation of like fitness and people talking about like what's functional and what's non-functional.

I think if your body can do it, and if your body can move in some of these ways, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's non-functional. It just might be odd particular ways that your body can move and who the hell knows why the body can move in some of these planes. What I would say though is that I am starting to believe at least to some degree that you could have

unfunctional amount of weight on your body. And what I mean by that is what I was pointing out with that study that was done on the NFL athletes with the bone density and stuff. So we know that if you have a protruding stomach, that a lot of times that leads to a lot of back pain. So guys that have kind of the dad bod, they got the belly sticking out

and their back a lot of time is kind of curved from that. So just kind of hang with me for a second here and think about it in terms of muscle mass. You just have like giant jacked arms, right? And maybe you don't have the structure to really handle that. Maybe your legs are really jacked and really big and then it makes it harder for you in certain scenarios or certain situations to get into certain positions. Or maybe it makes jujitsu harder, like a hoist Gracie, who we wouldn't think is jacked necessarily, but extremely fit.

He's gonna be able to bend and move his body around in a different way than a lot of other people are going to be able to move. And then also just the mechanics and just the, somebody actually said this on my, one of the runs I did the other day, they were like, they're like, this guy looks like his legs weigh 50 pounds each.

And I was like, my legs probably do weigh around 50 pounds each, thank you very much. So anyway, it just kind of like, Hussein Bolt's legs aren't going to weigh 50 pounds, even though he's fucking 6'5". It just doesn't make sense. Does it make sense for him to hypertrophy his legs? So if you had someone like Hussein Bolt doing, you know, tons of hack squats and training with Isra-Tel

and eating a lot of protein and building up those legs, you know, it would make running faster harder for him. He'd have to exponentially get X amount of more explosive and stronger in order to have the locomotion necessary to still do the same times that he was doing or to even beat them. So that's something that is kind of a more recent thought. And I also think that,

and this is probably another podcast for another day, but like just honestly, how much muscle mass could you put on? How much muscle can somebody gain? If we're just talking about somebody being natural, I think they're bringing up their baseline of muscle mass, maybe 10 pounds and maybe 20. I start to kind of think like,

if we start going over that 20 pound ratio, then starts to be kind of a lot. I don't know. What do you think? About what? About somebody being able to like, how much muscle could someone slap on naturally if they're doing everything as hard as they can,

everything the best that they can? That's a question that's dependent on the person. I'm 250. You know what I mean? But I know I'm not comparing everybody to myself, right? But the thing is, is I think that depends on your structure. When we talked with Jordan Shallow and we had these conversations,

your structure is important. My bone density is 7.5. That's seven standard deviations above the norm. My structure was meant to carry a good amount of muscle and weight lifting helped me build this bone density which helped me pack on this muscle, right? But a lot of, some people are not gonna be able to put on the amount of muscle I'll put on.

So it really depends on the person and it depends on the time that they've been lifting. How much does your dad weigh? My dad is probably 220 something, 220 or 230 something at six four. So in your case. My dad didn't lift. My dad was a bookworm, 220 or 230 something at six four. So in your case. My dad didn't lift. My dad was a bookworm, you know what I mean?

But he had the structure. Like my dad has a build, but I don't think he's never done a DEXA scan. So I don't think he has that. It's okay, if you go way out of your way, then somebody can gain maybe 30 pounds of muscle. Again, depends on the person, depends on how much they weigh initially, right?

Could be the Ryan Coleman's out there, whoever. If you're like 150 pounds, right, without lifting, maybe you'll get up to like 170, 175 after a few years, maybe, right? But like that stuff takes a long time of training, right? So, but I was actually curious after you mentioned the thing about Usain. Usain was 207, right?

I think maybe it was six four or something or six five But the thing is is like that's a lot of weight to be lugging around it is You imagine how powerful he had to be strong You got to be powerful to make that weight move that fast through space either You're really light with minimal power or you're heavier, but you have the power to move that weight fast So it's one of those strongest. One of the strongest people, one of the most powerful people of all time. Think about like Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay,

I think also, those two, like if you pull up a picture of Tyson Gay, pull up a picture of Justin Gatlin, I think actually Justin Gatlin got popped, but even so, bad example, but he was still big and fast, right? Yeah, a lot of these guys, you know, they can have the muscle mass to a certain extent

because sometimes the muscle mass is a byproduct of strength training. Ben Johnson, obviously being a great example, everybody knows kind of his story, but he was jacked. And also he was lifting heavy. His coach had him squatting heavy. And I think, you know, a lot of that, a lot of what functional patterns was sharing on the show

is that they don't really necessarily believe in a lot of that style of training. They don't believe in some of the, now this gets to be difficult to figure out as well, just because, you know, Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis, and X, Y, and Z athlete, just because they trained, Carl Lewis, and X, Y, and Z athlete, just because they trained this specific way, doesn't necessarily mean that that's the right way.

They could have just gotten away with training that way for a bunch of various reasons. But it seems like it would be odd for everyone to be wrong. It just, it seems like it would be odd for, it seems like it would be odd for everyone to be wrong. However, we've seen this happen before where like a lot of people are wrong. We've seen this happen with diets. We've seen this happen with recommendations

from our government. We've seen this happen. I mean, they used to recommend that people smoke. You know what I mean? There's all kinds of like weird things in history where you go, oh my God, like the earth being flat. We know the earth is flat now. We didn't know. We didn't know for sure until it's a dome five years ago. In regard, like I have no idea how much muscle a person can pack on, but it's just funny

that I actually was having a conversation similar to this this morning. And my answer was, if you're in a phase where you are, you have the ability to develop and grow muscle, grow as much as you can, because you can always dial it back. True, right? You might hit a stage in life where like, damn, I'm not growing as much muscle as I used to whenever it was. Even if you have newbie gains and you're older, I'd say go for it. And if it becomes a detriment, you can pull back. It's hard to go the opposite way. I think it'll be interesting to like,

because with how popular Dexa scans and that type of stuff is getting, I think it'll be interesting for people to learn how, what are all the different ways that one can gain bone density. Because the thing is, is people always refer to lifting as the main way to gain bone density, but probably gain a lot of bone density by sprinting, right?

Because the amount of force that your body and your bones need to be able to handle to move your body through space like that. There's probably a lot of other ways, but I think like if one can actually do that when they're younger and even when they're older They'll probably be able to stack more muscle on their frame because that does seem to be correlative, you know Even just getting sunlight and getting vitamin D. Yeah, especially for your children, especially for people that are growing You know try to get them outside I have a question for you guys.

Cause I mean, I'm curious about this cause like we recently got a bunch of sandbags in the gym. I've been working with sandbags quite a bit. And by doing some of those movements, lifting them, walking with them around the block, squatting with them, doing a bunch of things that are classical movements, I was like, this seems like something that would be

kind of up the alley of being something this seems like something that would be kind of up the alley of being something that I think you guys would be, you guys would assume, you guys would think promotes human movement because putting a sandbag, picking up a sandbag in that position, putting on your shoulder and going for a walk, you have to create just the right amount of tension so that you can walk, but not too much tension

where it's like, you know, you can't move through space, right? But when you're putting 300, 400, 500 pounds on your back, you create so much tension so your spine doesn't move at all. And a lot of times people are creating so much tension, right? Like let's just say this, let's use an example. Let's say like you put 300 pounds on your back, but you create 500 pounds worth of core tension Not but when you're walking with a sandbag or something on your back You're creating just the right amount of tension where you can breathe and walk through space and you're still getting the benefit of slight compression But you're able to walk right? So I'm wondering what are your thoughts on that?

Piece in general because you can do a lot with. And it seems like it's great for Gait. Yeah, it comes down to the specifics. Because you can... I personally wouldn't grab a sandbag and start walking with it. Really? Why not? Even though it sounds like it gives you some feedback, it's like I can probably do either better things with it. Pause it for a second.

I just feel like Rodney's been electrocuted by Nadi Aguilar way too many times. I'm kidding, of course. But he kind of is talking as if like he's waiting for like something bad to happen. I'm fucking around Rodney. I'm just messing with him. Shot caller maybe?

Yeah, yeah. Oh, fuck, I got the answer wrong. Okay, he said, I got a hook to a cable. Okay. And Seema said, sandbag. Okay, yeah. Fuck, I got the answer wrong. Okay, he said, I got a hook to a cable. Okay. And Seema said sandbag. Okay, cable. Can we hook a cable to the sandbag? There's not a D ring.

There's not a D ring. And Seema, is there a D ring on the sandbag? Jokes. You can even do better things with it in terms of relating it back to GATE and things that are going to give you more like a better return. I forgot what the other thing that I was going to say but I wouldn't walk with it. I would just… It's like… It's the same thing.

It's like your rotation might be limited. It's like if you're not trying to improve, it doesn't seem like it's going to help you improve your mechanics. So, but there's ways that you can... I think actually, I don't think I realized when he first said that, he said with a little bit more context, he said, I wouldn't walk with it. He said, there's other things you can do with it. So that's interesting. So he wouldn't necessarily like take it for a stroll.

And maybe he didn't have enough time to really talk about that further. But I think maybe what he's speculating is if you, you know, you walk around with 100, 200, 300 pounds, or 300 pounds, kind of hard to walk around with, but you walk around 100, 200 pounds, that 300 pounds is kind of hard to walk around with, but you walk around 100, 200 pounds, that's a lot and that might be like compressive is maybe some of what he might think rather than just taking like a step or two or three and doing something like explosive. Is there more to this one? Let's play a little bit.

Marinate. Throw it, you can pick it up and rotate with it and throw. You could probably make that work. And it's so the question I, well, I don't want to say too much. And one thing that I brought up there was that like, again, in certain parts of the world, like people are carrying around a heart like heavy objects all the time. There are people who still have to carry water from wells back to where they live, right?

And people that, like in other areas that, let's say they work in agriculture, they have to carry big things from place to place. So one thing that I just, it's unfortunate, I can't wrap my head around this. It's like, why can an individual not build a capacity to do something? Right? It's like, because I think he ended up getting to a point where he, the stopping point for his statement was like, it's just going to lead to

further dysfunction. But that, no, it doesn't just end up leading to dysfunction. If, for example, if you just deadlift and that's the only thing you do in perpetuity, that will lead to issues down the road. If you only squat, if you only do certain things, but the thing is, it's like lifting a sandbag, doing whatever, throwing it, and then maybe walking with it is not going to lead to downline dysfunction unless that's the only thing you ever do. Because he was saying that, oh, well, it limits your rotation.

OK, so we're talking about this specifically. But you can do things that will help you have extra rotation along with doing things that allows you to pick up heavy objects and move them through space so that you learn how to keep your body stable enough with said heavy object so you don't fuck yourself up. Because what if you do have to go lift up something that's 100 pounds or lift up something that's 150 pounds

and put it somewhere? Are you going to rotate with it and fucking walk? No, you're going to stabilize, pick it up, place it comfortably, walk with the right amount of tension, place it down. Wow, you can do that. But if you never do that, you're probably going to be too weak to do that.

It's just one of those things where I find it unfortunate that what they do is really cool, but it's like, it's an isolation of all these other capacities that people have the ability to build. And you can see that. And now, I mean, they're getting into more things, we're moving with more resistance, so more people are probably going to be gaining muscle

on their structure. But the thing is, people that have structure, that have built that structure, most likely are not gonna have a problem doing a lot of this stuff. So how can we marry these two ideas rather than saying this is bad, this is good? Doesn't have to be that way.

What you're doing is great. There are other things that are great too, and that's where my frustration lies. I think that to be like on their side for this for just a moment, I think some of what they're referring to is like having the capacity to do certain things without doing those things.

So sprinting is kind of their North Star, right? They wanna do everything in respect to gait, running, jumping, throwing, and so on, right? But they don't really sprint that often. If you look at some of their content, you'll see a little bit from Rodney, a little bit from Mike, they'll do some sprinting. And obviously you see some of their clients

on a treadmill doing some of that. But at least again, I gotta just speak from my own experience, the place that I went for FP, again, I gotta just speak from my own experience. The place that I went for FP, again, they would measure gait and they would use that as a thing to see like, are you improving? You know, and Seem I've been working with you for six weeks, let's have you get on that treadmill again and let's kind of look at that.

Oh shit, it does look like your hip is opening up. It looks like we're heading in the right direction. Or they say, oh crap, like you're, you know, we're not programming in the right direction. Or they say, oh crap, we're not programming the right stuff. So even though they use these things as a North Star, they don't always have to do them. And so Mike, when he was here,

he picked up I think like a 200 pound sandbag. And he was saying like, in promotion of FP, he was saying like, what's cool is I don't ever really even do that. So I thought that was pretty interesting. So I think some of what they're trying to, again, not- By the way, you saw him pick it up?

I did, yeah. You did? Okay. Yeah. It was one of the bigger sandbags. It was impressive either way. I mean, he's not a heavy guy. Maybe it was 150 or whatever, but he picked it up and he did pretty well with it.

And I think, you know, some of my own experience with FP has been because I'm, when I was doing some of the FP stuff because I'm not as compromised from some of the lifting that I was doing is actually stronger, way stronger in my day to day, if that makes sense. So like wear myself out with like a lift and some of the stuff that I was doing. And then I was a piece of shit, otherwise,

helping the wife move the couch type of thing. And so I think that might be some of what they're referring to. And that's the thing I agree with that because I think that you can build all of these capacities. You can build the ability to do the things that they're doing in FP. Cause you can see some of those concepts

and you can work on them, and you can build tissue, you can build strength, you can do that, and you can marry these two things, right? So you don't have to live in one thing. So it's like the person that they do jiu-jitsu and they think strength is bad for jiu-jitsu, right? They're like, oh, if I lift weights, it's actually going to mess with my jujitsu.

Well, I mean, then go fucking look at Nicholas Margally or Kainan Duarte or any of these savages who are great at jujitsu and they're also very strong. They're going to fuck you up, right? So it's probably a good idea to build a little bit of resilience within your body, right? You don't have to live in one thing. You can build multiple things.

We're humans, we are adaptable. We can do a lot of amazing things. I see what you're saying. So I think it's kind of ridiculous to say, this is bad. Well, do we have the capacity to do it? Why can't we can do both, but they're in the camp that it's gonna lead to dysfunction. Like that was where Rodney actually led his,

he was like, cause I came back with something else. He's like, well, it's gonna lead to dysfunction. Yeah, they don't even want you doing like lateral raises. You know what I mean? And so this, I mean, it starts to get way off track, but like you have to do some stuff that you like, that you enjoy, and things in life that make you feel good or make you feel better about yourself

that are generally recognized as healthy, I think those are things that we need to lean into. So if you're a person and you feel undersized or you feel overlooked and you're like, man, I think if I, you know, by building up my arms and my shoulders, I think like people stop wanting to pick on me or push me around. I think it makes sense to fucking train your arms

and to train your shoulders and to be, you know, just in that mindset of like, this is gonna make me more formidable. I also would say from like an athletic standpoint, from an athletic standpoint, I think there is something to like work and effort that is really important and that you get married to something that you believe

is going to be really helpful for you. So you, let's say in SEMA, you know, for Jiu-Jitsu, which you don't really need it since you've been spending so much time in the gym and you have such a great knowledge, but let's say that you went to John Welborn. Well, it's fucking beautiful to believe in what John Welborn's doing.

And you're like, really? We're gonna do some like Olympic lifts and like box jumps. And like, I haven't really done any of that. But then he's like, and Seema, look at the seven other guys that I'm training. They all won worlds, you know, or whatever it might be. Right? And now you have this thing that you can believe in

and you're on the fucking, you're on the bike doing some of his drills for sprints and you're listening to John, you're all bought in. I think there's something to that. And then what ends up happening a lot of times is that guy creates another champion because he has a bunch of people that believe in this system and what they're doing.

Again, I still understand some of the point of FP of like, hey, this is smart, this is a cool way to go. This is gonna accelerate you here, but what's your life maybe gonna potentially be like five, six years down the road? Maybe you maybe burnt yourself out a little bit you hear, but what's your life maybe gonna potentially be like five, six years down the road. Maybe you maybe you maybe burnt yourself out a little bit or maybe there's some compromises, which is I think good to it's a good thought process to walk yourself through, but it's

a horrible process to even think about or consider or even have it flash into your head while you're an athlete, because you can't afford that shit. Yeah. Yeah, you have to kind of like, unfortunately almost like blindly be going to the beat of this particular drum to get you to where you need to go. I don't remember if he said it for the sandbags,

but I know he said it for sledding or sled work. And it was something along the lines of like, yeah, it'll be novel at first, but then eventually you won't get anything out of it or something like that. Like you won't get more other than what you get initially. And then after that, maybe he said it'll become dysfunction. He said it as about the sandbags too,

that he also said it about the tank. I'm really confused on that part. I don't know if you guys got more out of it than I did, but I don't know. I just, I'm just thinking like, well, no, if I'm, if I'm getting some benefit from the sled, can't, can't I still continue to get more benefits if I just keep going? You know, I'm not saying like all of a sudden now I'm sprinting with the tank and I have it at level three and I'm like, you know, I'm just like, if the North Star is like the gate

and sprinting, like won't sprinting eventually run its course too, if that's the thought process? The minute 47 timestamp, go there. That actually falls in line with this, what you just said. Were you about to say something, Mark? I just think what Andrew said is really well said. And I actually think that it kind of brings us to a little bit of the point of like,

I think that if, I think a lot of people really saw you work out, they saw you like live, like training, not necessarily your jujitsu, but the way that you like lift, I think they would be like really surprised. And if they trained with you for a couple of weeks, I think they'd be really surprised. Not that what you do doesn't have difficulty level and skill to it, but the intensity is usually fairly modest. I know sometimes some of the stuff you do in here is different than some stuff you might do at home. I think what might catch up to people

is maybe the accumulation, like the amount of stuff that you do, especially in accordance to the amount of like jujitsu that you're doing. But I think people would be surprised even by the way I train, or even by the way I used to train. I think that, you know, there's some video,

you know, the fuck your elbow video. And there's like some videos of me doing some intense stuff, getting fired up to like do a lift and stuff. But those were like, those are usually like main lifts. It was like something that I was thinking about for like an entire month. It was like a culmination of like a lot of training and getting fired up and doing some of those theatrics

were things that just made me feel good. They just felt right to me. So I did them. But my training was, I mean, Andrew remembers recording a lot of this stuff. It was like Mark gets fired up. He plays patty cake in the chalk bowl. And then like he does a lift

and lift took like half a second, you know? Like I might lower it a certain speed or whatever and then like he does a lift and lift took like half a second. You know, like I might lower it a certain speed or whatever and then explode into it. And it was very rare. They got hyped up like that and like missed a lift. So they were all, all these, my point in bringing that up is that all these things are in like a reasonable percentage of what I was doing.

And if you saw my training, if I wrote it out to you and said like, I'm gonna do this in the meet, you'd go, that doesn't make any sense. Like it wouldn't make sense to a lot of people because the weights that I utilized in training were a lot lighter. I trained and still train the same way. My intensity is not really crazy,

but back to Andrew's point about the sled, I think you can get a lot out of a sled, a tank, lifting, being in this like 60, 70, and kind of scraping on that 80% range. You can get so much out of that. And if people don't think so, if you do the math on bodybuilding and start to figure it out, I mean, you can look this up online, you can find a chart that shows you a one rep max and you start to figure it out. I mean, you can look this up online. You can find a chart that shows you a one rep max equivalent of like somebody doing, you know, a set of 10.

You know, that's bodybuilding, it's all sets of 10. Bodybuilders can be very strong. I know that sometimes people knock on bodybuilders and say that they're, I think 10 reps, I think equals like 60% or 65 or 68% or something of your one rep max. How amazing is that, that you can train, you can train with so little and get so much out of it.

A lot. And we haven't even talked about all the variables that can be within that weight. The weight and the reps and the sets are not the only, you're talking about the sled. You can do the sled and you can have one minute rest. You can do the sled and have 45 minutes rest or 45 seconds rest. You could, you know what I mean?

Like there's so many ways you can do it. You can add a little weight, you can add a little resistance. You can push and pull in different ways. You can push and pull. Go sideways, yeah. I mean, it just is endless and it would probably make the most sense for jujitsu

or for some of the things that you're doing to do that, to just have fun with it and just go fuck around with the sled. And over time, you'll probably notice a bunch of other things are getting better because you're working all these different muscles in all these different planes. Yeah, torquefitness.com, link in description.

Also, Mark, you would turn purple, you would get off the bench and you'd blow a snot rocket. Oh yeah, that was important. Right in the middle of the gym, yeah. You're probably wondering why am I wearing these glasses? Well, it's because I'm being bathed in blue light. And blue light isn't necessarily bad. There's blue light in the sun.

But if you're in your office, if you're indoors, if you're in front of a screen during the daytime, it's not a great idea to have your eyes being bathed by blue light all day long. That's why EMR Tech, a company that we've partnered with, has blue light daytime glasses and blue light blocking evening glasses. These glasses right here are meant for you to wear

during the daytime when you're in front of screens, et cetera. But if you're outside, take the glasses off and get the natural sunlight. And if you're at home in the evening when sun sets and you need to be in front of screens, et cetera. But if you're outside, take the glasses off and get the natural sunlight. And if you're at home in the evening when sun sets and you need to be in front of the TV or you need to be in front of your computer or on your phone, these glasses are the ones to get. They also have the best red light therapy devices

on the market. If you stand in front of any of EMR Tech's red light therapy devices, you will actually feel how much stronger the output of the red light is on those devices versus any of the competitors. They also have some of their smaller red light devices like their fire wave, fire dragon, and fire storm. And then if you want to get some of their bigger panels, they have their fire hawk,

which is their biggest panel, and the inferno panel. These are literally the best red light therapy devices on the market. And if you want to save on them, Andrew, how can they do that? Yes. You got to head over to EMR tech.com. That's EMR dash tech T E K dot com. And at checkout inter promo code power project to save 20% off your entire order. Again, that's EMR tech.com promo code power project links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Your head looks kind of bigger like in these videos. Yeah. Thank you.

That's all. Yeah. I have it back here a little bit, you know? It doesn't look... It's more alien-wear, you know? It doesn't look disproportionate up close. You know, for some reason, the past few months, I've been more confident on wearing a hat. I don't know what it is, but...

I like it. I like this confidence. Yeah, I've... Go ahead and say something about my head. I'm not going to say something. I ain't going to do shit. Trust me. Say and say something about my head. I'm not going to say something. I ain't going to do shit. Trust me. Say whatever you want about my head. It's like, there's a certain amount of muscle that any individual can have on their frame, but the puzzle is trying to figure out what's the perfect amount of muscle.

So if your goal is to be able to sprint well and to move well, what's the perfect amount of muscle that you can hold on your frame where it doesn't cause you massive levels of dysfunction? And also, yeah, over time, over... Because a lot of the people that do the weightlifting and the... Or like the deadlifting and the heavy lifts, they don't... You don't really see too many people past their 50s or 60s doing a lot of heavy weightlifting.

Right, so what's sustainable? So the idea is, yeah, like be able to sprint, and we're saying sprint well into like 80, 90, 100. The only thing, the only thing I'm gonna fight back on that is, you do see some, but you see some who like, again, are smart about the intensity and the load that they're using. Again, it's a tough thing because it's people... Up until what age?

We know people in their 70s that are still labeled a deadlift. You see it on like people are posting on Instagram. We've pulled those types of stuff up on the show. But the thing is, those individuals... They're the exception. And I will say this. They're the exception because of the way they do these things. Again, if you are constantly pushing yourself in the gym to do more.

How do you know though? Like if you can't know that if deadlifts and powerlifting helps or doesn't help athletes, then how can you know that it's the way that they're doing it that's getting them into old age? Because there's a lot of factors in it. If you're constantly trying to increase the load of a movement you're doing in perpetuity, you will injure yourself and you'll never do it again and you'll think that the movement's the thing that messed you up.

But if you can maintain the capacity of doing the movement without constantly trying to increase the load forever, which is what a lot of people do, which is why they fuck themselves up. But how else can you get better at… But getting better doesn't mean increasing load. And what I'm saying is the problem is for a lot of people that enter the gym, constantly getting better is constantly lifting more weights. And what we're trying to say here,

but what we're saying, the thing that we believe is that to get better, you don't always have to lift more weight. It's not... What you were saying right there beforehand, it's like, how are you going to see progress? And again, the sprinting to 80, 90, 100 thing is interesting because it's like, we've seen people

who are actually doing that. We've pulled up clips of people in their 90s or whatever, but are they doing FP? No, they're doing other things, right? So it's one of those things where you don't necessarily have to always lift heavier weight to progress, right? It's, I think that's where people get themselves in trouble because he tried saying, well, there are exceptions.

Maybe there are exceptions, but the reason why is because like, there are certain people that understand that idea that I don't have to lift more weight to have the benefits of lifting weight, you know? I don't have to bench 600 pounds in 10 years to have the benefits of the bench press, right? You know, it's the stimulus, it's building the tissue, it's keeping the structure strong. And you don't have to always lift more to do that.

I think all this is like so funny because it's like, first of all, I don't, you know, just kind of like for the record, I don't think that humans need to lift weights to be healthy. Maybe here in the United States we do because of like modern technology and modern conveniences, maybe we need to go into a gym and like lift some weights. As people, we need like labor, you know? And so we don't really do that anymore. And so then therefore we now need to go to the gym.

But now what's happening is like, no, no, no, don't lift weights like that. Lift weights like this. Like that sequence that you're doing where you bend down and you brace yourself and you go with the under over grip and then you, you pick the weight up and you bring it up, you know, to your wiener and put the weight back down. That exercise is the wrong exercise. Instead, you're gonna grab this cable with this weight attachment, and then you're gonna twist it, and then you're gonna breathe a very specific way

and contort your body and flex your glute at the same time. That's kind of the right way to do it. And it's just really like, it's all very interesting and all very bizarre, but I've said this many times before. What makes barbell movements amazing, what makes them a beautiful thing is that they're barbell movements and that you can usually utilize kind of a lot of weight

with those movements. But what makes them dangerous is that they're fucking barbell movements and you can use a lot of weight with them. Yes. So trying to find the appropriate amount of weight is really critical. And when someone's trying to sell you on,

hey, if you do this movement this way, this is much healthier because now you're utilizing this cable machine, we have to keep in mind that what they're demonstrating is done with a lot less weight. And they might have a lot of good points. Like they might say, okay, well, that's actually the point of it is that we're gonna use less weight and you're might have a lot of good points. Like they might say, okay, well, that's actually the point of it

is that we're gonna use less weight and you're still gonna get really good exercise in and we're not like loading you this way. We're not a squat or deadlift. You don't have the weight loaded on your spine in the same way as when you're holding a cable and moving in these different directions. So there's a lot of really good points to all of that.

But again, you have to think about the way that they're loading the body and the weight. And that's exactly what you were saying. Like we know people that can lift into their 70s, 80s. We've seen all kinds of different videos. We've seen people sprint as well. But all of those people are all people that are mindful and experienced with the intensity,

the frequency, how often they're doing it. You'll hear people like that. They're always, it always seems like they have so much wisdom, but they really just say things that seem so simple. So how am I like, oh my God, that's amazing that you sprint. Like how often do you do that? And sometimes you're like, well,

I kind of do a sprint every day, but it's not every single day, but I try to get out here as much as I can. And when I, I just go by how I feel, you know, like I warm up and I always warm up and then I go by how I feel. And some days I'm a little faster than others. And today was one of those days where I felt good.

You know, you usually see like they have like really good intuition with these things. And we see the same thing in the weight room. I think the mistake is to think that you are going to, you know, forever hold on to these, you know, strength levels that you had when you were like in your twenties. Levels. But you can hold on to these strength levels that you had when you were in your 20s. Levels. But you can hold on to some of these things

for really long periods of time and you can have a capacity. And as I was also pointing out, in the case of like bodybuilding, bodybuilders just, they get after it in a different way. Bodybuilding workout is just, it never appealed to me. So I'm like, I don't want to sit around for four sets and torture myself and have the back like reps five through 10 suck.

They all hurt. That's where the good is. I know, I know, right? That's what you like. Like you like that burn and I never liked that burn. I always liked the pressure. I liked the pressure of the lift and the burning of the inside. I'm like, I'm burning!

Get me out of this predicament. Anyway, all that to say is like, if you load stuff appropriately and you're mindful, you're going to be able to live and lift a very long life. I want to add this in. It's from my buddy Micah, who again, he was a UC Davis sprinter. He knew a lot of sprinters.

And when we were talking about it, he's like, dude, I don't know how you think you're going to be able to hold on to this, because all the sprinters I know are totally fucked in their 30s. They can't sprint anymore. They injure their hamstrings, their backs, et cetera. And then we had a longer conversation about it.

I was like, well, let's think about this. All the sprinters you know are always trying to get faster. And they always up the ante. They always keep pushing harder and harder and harder, despite what their body might be telling them. They're competitive sprinters. But if you can take the competitive mindset out of all of these things and instead just

be like, I want to be someone who can sprint. I want to be someone who can lift. I want to be someone who can do these things, not competitively. Right? So you don't always have to get stronger. I don't always have to lift more weight. You don't always have to go faster. But if you can just keep inching at it slowly, you'll probably start

getting a little bit faster and a little bit stronger and a little bit bigger, but you're not going to be damaging yourself because it's not like you're trying to do this in a certain amount of time. So you push yourself when you know you should back the fuck off, right? That's how we're going to be able to do this for a long time. And there's going to become the inevitable time when you start slowing down because of age, right? That will catch up to us.

That will catch up to me. And I'm gonna listen to my body and I'm gonna slow down so I can just keep doing the thing. That's the goal. You do it in a different way. Do it in a different way. I hear the same thing about gymnastics. I hear the same thing about Olympic lifting,

especially when it comes to gymnastics. I know a lot of people that did gymnastics when they're young and you hear that from a lot of people like, oh, you should get your kids comes to gymnastics. I know a lot of people that did gymnastics when they're young and you hear that from a lot of people like, oh, you should get your kids to do gymnastics. It's the greatest for like sports and for strength and for all these things. But again, like the level at which people

start to do gymnastics or the level that people even start to play baseball. Like baseball doesn't seem like it would wreck you, but you throw a lot, you swing a lot, and then they don't just play like for three months anymore. They play like year round, there's travel soccer, there's just like so many things. Like, oh yeah, man, all the soccer players I know

are broken. I think that it's like soccer must be the problem. It's like, no, soccer is amazing. Like running around and kicking a ball and like learning how to use your feet that way and the coordination of your eyes and your feet and the stopping and the starting. We can also look at soccer and say,

hey, we've had so many athletes on the show that have been incredible. They've gone on to do other incredible things in powerlifting, bodybuilding. We've seen it time and time again. We're like, oh yeah, my background was in soccer. Steph Cohen, Stan Efferding, people who've had multiple all-time world records had this background.

And Stan was a professional bodybuilder. They had this background in soccer. And so it's easy to say like, oh, well, this sport, I know all my buddies are all banged up. They don't do anything anymore. And I could say the same thing about powerlifting, but it doesn't have to be true. It just generally is true

because people are fucking stupid. Yeah, they are. I mean, it's just like, you gotta let go of some of it and you gotta put your ego to the side at some point. I mean, in jujitsu and whatever else it is you're doing, you're gonna have to, I mean, in jujitsu and whatever else it is you're doing, you're gonna have to, I mean, you know, like you did it to Casio, right?

Someone's gonna do it to you. You know, you're gonna be teaching somebody and you go, fucking A, man. Like I got like six more months with this guy and he's gonna start kicking my ass. It might not be till you're 50, might not be till you're 60. It'll happen. It'll happen.

It'll happen, if you're still enjoying the sport, still doing it. I was cracking up, because when you were talking about, oh, you don't lift the weight off the floor next to your wiener, don't do it that way, do it this way, I'm cracking up because, you're right, fitness, the gym, the weights, the going and getting an outfit at Lululemon, all of it is to help

the practice. Initially, right? That's what it was all for. It was initially to help whatever the practice was. It wasn't the actual practice, but now- Oh yeah, it was like to help whatever game it was you were playing. Yes. And now we just look at like, no, lifting is the thing.

Therefore, now we have to argue about that. And it's like, well, what if I'm in Jiu-Jitsu? Like, fuck it, like, things matter. But it's funny that we have the thing that people get hung up on and they want to argue about the thing that's supposed to help something else. It's supposed to, you know, in this case, it's supposed to like help your life. But, you know, I think if we're if we're to try to like just take a giant step back from everything and get away from fitness

and nutrition like as we know it right now, people that are gonna be the healthiest don't need to hear any information about a diet. People that are gonna be the healthiest don't need to hear a lot of information about. And the reason why I'm saying that is like, it just comes natural to some people. Like you just interview someone on the street and say,

hey, you know, you're, looks like you're in great shape. Like, what do you do? Some people that you interview with that, especially like 60, 70 years old, they're gonna be like, I, I just kind of like always kind of watched what I ate. And, you know, I walk, I garden, you know,

I like to swim here and there. It's gonna be like, just more like, and when you go to other countries and stuff and you communicate with people, it's rare for them to be like, oh yeah, I go to the gym, two hours a day and then when I'm done, I just have a fucking piece of meat. Like that stuff is rare.

That's more unique to the United States and that's like an over correction for all the misses that we've had over the years, all the mess ups we've had over the years. We got this kind of like over correction of fasting and all these other things that we're doing now. Yeah, it is funny though, like my dad, if you guys saw him, you'd be like, oh yeah, he looks like a pretty healthy 60 year old, but then you'd ask him, he'd be like, oh, I'm 71. It's like, oh shit, okay, like that's interesting.

But then he will say, like, what's a carb? And I'm like, like, what do you mean? It's like, well, like, is, like, is there carbs in like a taco? And I'm like, well, yes, there can be. So like, he has no idea about diet, like at all. But you know, he's been able to hold it together because he moves so much.

So that's, yeah, interesting. Moves so much and maybe he's not like, well, maybe he is, I don't know. But he's not like maybe addicted to food. Maybe he doesn't have a crazy appetite. No, yeah, no, not really at all. Definitely love sweets. I know I make it sound like, you know, I don't like FP.

Why don't you like them? I don't like FP. I'm joking, I'm joking. I'm like, you know, I don't like FP. Why don't you like them? I don't like FP. I'm joking, I'm joking. I'm joking. I guess I like a lot of what they do. And you know, just by going through FP's Instagram and Nowdy's Instagram, it's helped me have a light bulb of a lot of things.

Like I think I started looking at it a few years back and I started just trying stuff on cable machines. I was like, oh, this is cool, right? So I think there's a lot of cool stuff there. I just massively disagree with the idea that this is the thing that you must do in a silo. You can't do other things because I've been getting faster. My sprints have been feeling better. I can pretty much put full force through my body

at this point, but I'm still doing other things. And I think a lot of people, I'm human, just like everybody else, so other people can do the same thing. And that's one thing. I think people should definitely check it out. Andrew was talking about Myofas release, and the 12 week online course is good,

but literally all the Myofas releases that are in that 12 week course are in Becoming a Supple Lepid by Kelly Sturrett. At the end of the book, he has routines that you can set up for yourself. The online course, though, does make it simple to go through it all. So I'm not saying that people shouldn't check it out, but I'm saying that the Myofast release isn't necessarily revolutionary. But a lot of things like what's being shown right here, I'm going to fucking buy that

attachment if it comes out to the public. Leverage King? The Leverage, yeah. Now that he just made it. Yeah, that thing looks really cool. That's amazing. Like, you can see how great, like, I can see how great that would actually be for a jujitsu athlete. Because I've done things with your, um, the shake strap, where I've put my foot through the shake strap

and I've navigated my leg in different ways. I'm like, this is good. It could be, but this fills in the holes of that. So they're doing a lot of things that the fitness industry does need. I just don't think that you have to get rid of all these other things because it's chaos. I don't believe that. Interesting that he's doing some ISO work here.

Working the rotator, the hip rotator. I know that he's like, obviously this is like a demo. I'm sure that he's figuring out like other things to do with it. But typically from FP, you don't see them doing like a lot of ISO work. There's a couple things I really appreciate from them. And number one, I would say the emphasis on the Myofascia release, I think is huge. I know other people have done it. I know Kelly Stretz done it and there has been other people, but I think that there should be an emphasis there because I think that a lot of times with the training that you're going to do, you're going to eventually sort of beat yourself up.

And if you're playing like a sport, you're doing basketball or jujitsu, we have to worry about other people flying around and trying to figure out how to land and how to do certain moves. It's gonna be very difficult and you're probably gonna get banged up. And so some mile fashion release stuff is awesome. Encouraging people to start to figure out, I'm not necessarily that FP is encouraging people to sprint

because they would probably say, don't do that. Because some people aren't maybe moving correctly, but I do think that sort of what I'm learning from running in general is that if you go out and jog, your gate is gonna be a certain gate. Like it almost is like irrelevant. It almost doesn't matter that much whether you heel strike or forefoot strike or really how you run.

If you're jogging, it just doesn't matter that much because you're not strike or forefoot strike or really how you run, if you're jogging, it just doesn't matter that much because you're not moving very fast. Now, if you could say like, oh, if you did that for like three hours and you did it like often, then you're gonna start to maybe run into some issues. But the point in bringing some of that up

is that jogging, the intensity is very light. It's very easy. With jogging, like what improvements are you gonna get? I don't know, you'll be able to jog a little bit longer. Maybe you'll be able to have more frequency with jogging. But with running, once you start to run, then you're gonna start to implement and start to get a lot of great benefits from

just your body getting used to the mechanics of running. So you'll hear that from runners, you'll hear that from swimmers, like you wanna get good at swimming, they'll say swim. Jiu-jitsu, it's like a lot of mat time, like just go every day, bro, like go every day. And I realized that that could beat you up, but if you can handle it, like go as frequently as you can

and absorb as much as you can, because that's a way to get better. And so same thing with what I'm doing with running, the faster that I run, the more that my gate is going to open up. So people can give me all this advice. They can say, hey man, you gotta lean forward more. Hey, you gotta pump your arms more.

Hey, you gotta pump your legs more. You gotta drive your knees up higher. They can say all these things, but it's not going to be until I actually run faster that you start to see those things because I will have to do that. And my body will have to get into those ranges of motion. So I like this kind of top-down approach of like,

let's have sprinting be like sort of the main thing. That's not necessarily exactly what I'm doing, but I'm working on sprinting. I'm working on jumping, I'm working on having a better like VO2 max, which I don't really care what the actual number is. I'm just trying to improve. And I think I'm hoping what people get from some of these shows that we've been doing is that there's many different ways to do these things.

So rather than thinking of like, there's just one way, oh, that was a cool podcast. Now I'm going to forget about, you know, the Olympic lifting that I learned for the last 12 years. No, and that's not what we're saying. Like it's great to have a skill set. I always think of our friend, Jason Kliepa, like what an amazing skill set he developed through CrossFit. He can just go in and just annihilate himself with these

kind of quick workouts or these metcons. He knows how to just knows how to like do some of these things very easily and it's a great skill set to have. So the skill set that you have, the thing that you like to do, the thing that you enjoy to do, I would say, you know, keep on doing it, but also have an open mind and think to yourself, you know what? I gotta be honest with myself. My back is like, it's pretty wrecked. I need to be honest with myself. I'm not feeling great.

This is banged up, that's banged up. And maybe when you start to kind of think in that way, you can start to look at some other programs that are available and start to think about, well, maybe some of what they're saying is true. Now, can you marry the two things together? Can you blend it together? Can you mix these things together?

Because I'm not necessarily spending a ton of time stretching to get my gait to be better for running, but what did I say earlier? I'm running faster. So running faster is gonna continually push me into these new ranges. I am doing some stuff for mobility and over time, that will lead to me being in better positions

when I'm running and stuff like that. So I've found searching for all this stuff and just knocking on a lot of doors, trying to figure out what's best and what is this information about? I don't care if it's the guys from Gota, I don't care if it's Gary Scheffler or I don't care if it's David Weck

or if it's Naudi Aguilar or if it's Kelly Sturet. And I don't care if all those people hate each other. I'm gonna bring them together on the Power Project in a way that you can understand the information that's out there so that you can learn and grow from it because I think each individual has some fucking amazing things to say that I think that all of us should consider. Strength is never a weakness, weakness is never strength. Make sure you go check out that episode. It's episode...

Well, it's definitely going to be linked. It's the FP episode. Episode 1059. Catch you guys later. Bye.