Mark Bell's Power Project - How To Fix Low Back Pain And Other Common Gym Injuries || MBPP Ep. 1044

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

In episode 1044, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza go live and answer your questions about back pain, sciatica, shoulder rehab and more. Don't miss out on our Live Q&A Sessions, join the Discord below!   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!   👟 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 ➢ UNTAPPED Program - https://shor.by/untapped ➢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 on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz   #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

disc bulge with level 10 pain. I think it's really easy to get in a habit of saying that like everything hurts. If you want to stay where you are, stay still. If you want to get out of that pain, explore movement. If your knee hurts, it's probably coming from your foot, but it's a mistake still to just isolate it and say, I'm going to do a bunch of stuff for my feet. I would first figure out what hurts, what range of motion hurts, and then what type of movements can I do with no pain? Does it hurt to press right above head? If that hurts, what is the lowest amount that you could do there? But work your way in reverse from that.

How could you get yourself to that point? Use the pull. It is such an underutilized tool for injury. I have sciatic pain that flares up when I run. Does this pain mean my back is a weak area? No, it certainly doesn't mean that your back is weak. If it's pretty bad, then I would go go see somebody try to find a local body worker live and we are live yes oh i need to put that on instagram at least i thought the discord let everybody know

all right well wow look at that we already have a couple of super chats. Oh, my God. A couple of people piling in. Thank you, guys. Elliot and David. Look at all these losers. Oh, my. I mean, look at all these people. This is great.

Supporters, fans, good people. Yeah. Anyway. So you had a jujitsu tournament, huh, Nsema? I had a jujitsu tournament. Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Yeah. And no one was able to get any points on here or anything like that. Nah, man. So yeah, no one got any points. I literally just, you know, I went into the position I wanted to, got close guard on the first guy, swept him, got an arm bar on the second dude. I got a loop choke and that loop choke was the same loop choke that I got over at Masters Worlds.

So that's some, that's like a move that's been working so well. It's like it works well in training and it works well in competition. Yeah. So how is your training leading into, I know you're kind of always training, so you don't like go into camp like you hear some MMA people do, but yeah, the training been going pretty good. Training's been good, but you know, oddly enough, training has been a little bit more inconsistent than it typically was just because, you know, we've been moving in here and there's been a lot of stuff, podcasts. So I think that week I only managed to train once and that was the Friday before comp. Usually I like to train earlier in the week and then not train close to comp. But I was like, I've had no training this week.

I need to at least go get some good rolls in. So I trained Friday. It probably doesn't matter too much when you have all the training behind you already, right? Yeah. Yeah. That's why I wasn't too worried because training's always pretty consistent, but leading up to it, I think the week before I managed to get in four times and the week before three times. Um, but training's pretty consistent. So I'm never, I'm never not training. Yeah. But after the competition, actually in my first match, the guy crunched down and I felt a crunch on my ac joint so um in my second match i had to i i i played purposefully within my close guard so that i didn't have to pull much

with my arm and that's why i was uh i was just happy how that ended up but yeah in the last six matches i haven't had any points scored on me so i'm pretty happy about that noticing anything like your i know you train your neck, you focus in on training, like your groin and you focus on training, like all these different things. Has there been anything that you like noticed, uh, you know, I know train, you train the feet and you've mentioned before that you could like kind of almost grab people with your feet a little bit nowadays. Have you noticed a couple other things like that, that have really been beneficial?

Dude, you know, I think just, I think everything is, I think everything's coming together with my body and training. Like my neck, that's made a big difference in terms of, I feel like I can pull harder for some reason. I feel like just everything is better connected. One of the biggest things I think I notice is my bounciness on my feet because I've been doing a lot of jump roping and that's something that I've kept pretty consistent. But I've really been trying to just push my ability to be more fluid while jumping. And I think that's something that's like it's just I feel springier. I feel much springier and I feel pretty fluid. So I think that's been something that on the back end is reaping a lot of benefits now

when it comes to all of that. But everything works together. My movement's been getting better. My game is improving. So I'm pumped. We're going to get to a lot of your questions here in a moment. And I might need to restart the stream.

Oh, no. If you do, can they not hear anything? So I know what's happening now. They're only hearing stuff out of my laptop. But for some reason, I can't change. I don't know why it's not working. All right. I got to take a picture of these super chats.

Some technical difficulties. We're in our new studio, which we haven't even really announced. It was kind of funny. We did that show with Dominic and Thomas DeLauer. And we didn't even really mention that. were that was the first uh and that was interesting then interesting day to do uh kind of a double podcast with those guys unbelievable information in that podcast you got the super chats no my camera is fucking all the technical shit give me a sec andrew can you just take a picture of the super chats real quick and send it to me?

Cause right now, every time I put my camera up to my screen, it's like going, you see what I'm doing? Yeah, that's weird. You see that? Yeah.

Try video and then take a picture. There we go. Okay. I can do it through. Oh, what the fuck? That's crazy. All right.

That's continuity camera. So anyway. All right. Sorry guys. We're going to end this and we'll be right back. You got all this. Got all the shots. Okay. We'll be back guys. All right. That's continuity camera. So anyway. All right. Sorry, guys. We're going to end this and we'll be right back. You got all the shots. Okay. We'll be back, guys.

All right. Shout out to our boy, Graham Tuttle, the barefoot sprinter. You guys have seen him on the show a couple times. And I want to congratulate him on winning his first jujitsu match and competing for the first time. Pretty awesome. And unfortunately, I think in the second match that he had i think he got hurt and uh he lost that match but pretty cool just to see people that i'm friends with compete you know to go out there and to kind of put yourself on the line and then to do so in like a simulated fight

i think is like it's pretty courageous so i give people a big old pat on the back for that i think it's really remarkable. I, for example, when I compete, I am not putting on submissions to break my opponent, but there are people that go out and compete and they're like, you know what? Like this is competition. You sign up for it. If you get broken, you get broken. So they don't care if they pull an armbar too hard or if they're, they don't care about the amount of resistance they put on you. So like he, he did a really good job in his first match calming down. And his second match, it was a sweep where he like kind of pushed that his AC joint a little bit, but he'll be okay. And then you did really well.

You won both your matches, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll be quick with it because I think I talked about this in the last live, but the audio was gone. But yes, won both matches. No points were scored on me. And first match won by armbar. So swept him, went to armbar. Second match won by armbar so swept them once armbar second match won by loop choke and that loop choke was something i did in masters worlds also uh it's something i learned from i watched a bunch of videos from nicholas marigali doing it in tournament and like

i was like wow that that's fucking sneaky and it clicks so it's been clicking but yeah in the last six matches i've had i haven't had any points scored on me um and just like my game is progressing me and cassio are like working on expanding what i can do and it's just like the years are paying off you know what i mean like i think this is year nine now so i'm just curious how things gonna be on like year 10 year 11 year 12 i think that's when that's when the goals i have are going to come to fruition uh Is it kind of like hard to size up your opponent? You know, like in jujitsu, people could look so different, right? Someone can look like way out of shape.

Someone can be shredded. And does that factor into it a little bit? Like you look at, cause you're in a heavyweight class, like the unlimited heavyweight, right? So the guy could be like some monstrous person. Like that would make me go, Oh, I'm not so sure if I want to do jujitsu today. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, I made the mistake when I was competing years ago of like kind of judging how my opponents would be based on how they look.

But you can't do that in grappling. You can't do that in jujitsu because someone can look very unassuming. grapple. You can't do that in jujitsu because someone can look very unassuming and jujitsu is a martial art that the, the trope of it is always that this martial art was made so that the smaller person will be able to beat the bigger person if they have good technique. And that's very true. Just look at someone like Kyle terror or any of the like fucking Mikey Musumechi who beat, literally he beat a 320, 330 pound grapplerler in a match. And Mikey's like 130. So I've learned to never underestimate somebody based off of how they look when we walk onto the mat

or when I see them across the room, no matter if they look intimidating or if they look unassuming. Because I literally respect all my opponents, but I don't allow myself to be scared of them. But I respect every single one, and I'm going to treat every single opponent the same way. I'm just going to try to beat him. I'm also not going to try to break him, but I'm going to try to beat him. That's such an interesting thing, like sizing people up.

We're going to get to a lot of your questions. Appreciate you guys following in on the live. But it's just an interesting process, like, you know, because there's so many different ways that you could start a match. Like you could just like go and sprint over to the other guy and try to like tackle them, you know, there's like all kinds of stuff you can do. And you know, like if you had a reputation for doing that, starting out explosively and starting out fast, the other guy might be expecting that. And then you start out completely differently, you know? So it's just a lot of head games going on and it's just

um you see it in boxing you see it mma sometimes a guy comes out remember tyson back in the day he'd come out just swinging and you were like man if this guy can make it past like 45 seconds and calm down he'll probably the guy probably actually can do pretty good because he's a professional fighter he'd probably do well but a lot of guys couldn't make it past that, just the initial part where they get super intimidated. Yeah. How did you feel actually, Andrew, when your first competition, when you went on and you saw like

you're competing against somebody, how did you feel mentally? Well, I mean, again, because it was the first time I competed in a sport that I had only had eight months at the time of experience in, and I've never done anything like it. So I was really nervous.

I just kept focusing in on the moment and how cool it was. Like, oh my gosh, like here I am. And when it came to my opponents, I was sizing everyone up. Because like as you are in the, I forgot what it's called. The bullpen. You can see like, okay, everyone's here for a reason. Like if you're going at this time on the mats then you know like okay these are all my opponents and i was looking at them i was like

so i think i look like i'm in better shape than most people here so like i leaned in on that yeah so i went that route but once i got that initial like first like throw down to the floor i was like oh my god this is real and like i started seeing stars everywhere and like it was getting kind of like blurry. Like my vision got blurred a little bit. So it was kind of surreal like honestly. And like again, being my first one, it went so fast and I didn't know what I was supposed to be feeling. So I was like, let me just try to remember what I've been training this whole time. And there was definitely a moment where I could have swept him and I looked at the footage and I'm like, let me just try to remember what I've been training this whole time. And there was definitely a moment where I could have swept him.

And I looked at the footage and I'm like, dude, I had it. But I was moving in the wrong direction. Like I was trying to push him one way and go the same way when I should have been pushing him one way and going the opposite way. But it's just like little things that like, you know, over time, eventually I'll figure things out. But yeah, my boy Chris he he got second at his first black belt competition and the question i wanted to ask you and see him because he was looking at the first guy he was going up against yeah and he was a judo guy and he would do a lot of these like random kicks like he would just like kick you into you know to try to sweep you or whatever

didn't work but at what point do you think it's because i've heard don't look at your opponents don't worry just focus on your game don't try to like because then it's going to throw you off at what point do you think that like at a certain skill level that you can start like getting research and seeing okay this guy tends to do this and he tends to do that yeah i'll answer your question uh and guys i think we have five super chats so thank you we're going to get to your questions and how we're going to do this is we're going to answer the super chats first. Then we're going to answer everybody else's questions. I'm going to write down the names of the winners and whoever we pick at the end is going to get some product from sponsors. But with what you sent, Andrew, I think I took from Alan Belcher. Alan Belcher, he's the bare knuckle, bare knuckle, heavyweightweight champ and also just like a legend in the UFC. He watches all his opponents. Jon Jones watches his opponents and he analyzes them. I don't think that's something that one needs to do in the beginning.

I think maybe it's a better idea if you have your coaches watch your opponents, if there's video of your opponents, so then they can help you have strategy for what you're about to deal with. Because when you're newer to something, you have a limited game in what you're able to do because you've only been doing it for so long. So you have your A game and that is your A game. And even you go to other positions, you're like, oh shit. Right. But if your coaches watch for you, they can see, okay, this guy's really bad here. And actually just don't let this guy get to this position. And if he's a half guard player, boom, drill how to half guard. If that's what you see him doing in all of his matches, right? But for me at this point, I have been watching the last two guys I competed

against. I went to Flow Grappling, I looked up their grappling footage, and I watched what their tendencies were. And that was something that allowed me to understand like, okay, this guy always likes to do this. So that's the only thing I need to worry about with him. I've never seen him open up his game in any other way. And when I see the brackets for Pan Ams

that's coming up, I'm going to watch all the guys that grapple there. And if there's anything that's kind of confusing, I'm going to go into the gym with Julian and Casio and we're going to brainstorm certain things to beat certain games because that's going to allow me not to be surprised by anything my opponent throws for me at the most part, for the most part. Where are Pan Ams this year? Florida.

Kiss me, Florida. I was hoping it was like SoCo or, I don't know, maybe Sacramento. Cool. We have a clip to play from Alan Aragon, but we'll play that in a moment. I think we should get to a couple questions and kind of reserve. We got a couple things maybe to play during the show, but let's get to these questions before we get too far behind. All right.

Let's hit these super chats. The first one's actually just a thank you from Elliot Harris. He said, Nsema, thank you for the 5-4-1 Levi deck recommendation on Discord. Levi 5-4-1s. Oh, thank you, Eric. Levi 5-4-1s are just some genes that are like good for guys with big quads. So if any of you guys are curious. So yeah, thanks for the five bucks, man.

I hope you enjoy the genes. Elliot Harris asks, okay, chance to train at the new power project gym as a giveaway what do you guys think nah next question but as a giveaway that doesn't sound too bad if it's on their dime and they pay us when they get here i'm just kidding we'll think about kidding. We'll think about that one. We'll think about that one. I like that idea though. All right.

So David Greco asks, I have an L4 S1 disc bulge pressing on a nerve with level 10 pain. Had steroid injections, pain gone. Possible to rehab back from this without surgery? Man, sometimes that can be really tough. I would say a couple things to think about are how was the injury acquired? Like a car accident or something like that?

And that's a pretty serious thing. Or is this something that just kind of developed over a long period of time? When you're in that amount of pain, it's kind of hard to – I think it's really easy to get in a habit of saying that like everything hurts. It's really easy to say that like I'm at a level 10 pain. But are you? Are you actually at a level 10 pain? And are there moments where you forget about your back?

Are there some periods of time where it's midday, maybe you're ready for your day, you showered and did all these things and your back actually feels a little bit better? So I think if there has been any improvement in your back or there's improvements throughout the day, it does show you, it does give you like a glimmer of hope that there could be a potential possibility that you could start to get yourself to feel better for longer periods of time. Having not like, you know, seen you move or anything like that, it's kind of hard just to give like flat just advice because sometimes somebody with a really delicate back, I could say, hey, you know, the reverse hyper is great for your back. Well, the reverse hyper is kind of great for your back when your back is healthy. and when your back is able to do all the things it's supposed to do. Same thing with a deadlift. Deadlifts, I think, can be great for your back, but they're great for your back when you're healthy, when you understand how to do the reps and the sets and stuff like that.

So I would just do my best to try to – I would try to invest in looking into two different spots. to try to invest in looking into two different spots. I would find a body worker and I would try to find a movement pattern person that you trust and try to find a trainer or coach, somebody in your area. I think you could look up functional patterns if you want to try to get some movement introduced into your life where you're moving without a lot of pain. Functional patterns has people all over the country and you can probably find someone who's a Functional Patterns trainer, but you can even go on their website and you can even sign up for a course that just basically shows you a lot of ways to assist yourself in getting out of some pain. And I'll also say it might be a good idea because you said

you're in level 10 pain, so pay attention to that. Learn how to breathe fully. So we've done podcasts with, we actually did a recent one, hasn't come out yet, but just learn how to breathe deep into your diaphragm because you want to be able to expand all of those areas around your lower abdomen and your lower back. A lot of people, they have a lot of stiff tissues down here because they don't allow themselves to breathe down there. So start to get the hang of that. You can literally put your back on the ground, put your knees up, try to keep your back flat on the ground, and just try to expand. Try to breathe and expand your lower abdomen, right? Try to have that expand when you're taking inhales and just try to breathe because that's going to help those tissues out.

I think a good place also maybe to look at, and again, you want to do everything you want to do. You want to limit the pain that you're in. You actually want to have no pain if possible. Don't fuck with a lot of flexion patterns right now. So you see a lot of people, I love Jefferson curls. I love all those movements, but I would never suggest them to somebody who's had a herniated disc. It's not a good idea. You're just going to irritate that. But a good place is the McGill Big Three. This is where the curl up, the bird dog, and the side plank, those stabilization movements, they come into play here really, really well. And you can do that. You can, you can regress those. You can look up regressions on YouTube for those movements and do them without pain, right? You can breathe through

those movements. And I think that's something that's a good place to start because those are movements that are going to allow you to work that area and minimize pain and get stabilization back to the spine. Yeah. And I would just like to add that, you know, I had, I mean, almost 18 years of back pain. And the one thing that I did that made it prolonged all the pain was I avoided pain as much as possible because I was just like you. I said everything hurt. I'd wake up, couldn't get out of bed without like really grabbing onto everything, trying to pull myself up. My wife had to help me put on my socks and shoes. It was really, really bad. And so I followed a lot of Stuart McGill stuff where, you know, I'd brush my teeth by putting my elbow on the thing and then I'd brush. And so

stuff like that where I was doing everything in my ability to avoid anything that caused pain. But stuff that Nsema just mentioned, you know, I couldn't do the big three. I had to regress everything a lot. And even then I still couldn't do it, but now I'm doing jujitsu and I'm doing a lot of other stuff because I got that movement back in. So I leaned in a little bit, every single time I leaned in a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more to the point where now I can roll around on the ground and not be in pain, but avoiding all the pain all the time is not the best move, even though it sounds like the most sane and most obvious answer. It's not if you want to get out of the pain. If you want to stay where you are and minimize the pain as much as possible, stay still.

If you want to get out of that pain, you definitely need to explore movement and lean in a tiny bit into that pain. Obviously, don't get too far over to where it like regresses everything just a tiny bit every single time and it also it looks like he said his name was david right david greco yeah years of being obese always hurt it was degenerative and then he he woke up and couldn't walk at all burning fire and constant pain damn i i herniated a disc when i was like 19 went to the doctor and they were like, you need surgery. You need your spine fused. Fucking hell.

And they also told me, they also recommended that I don't move for a while. So I was like, well, I am like hyperactive. I was like running and lifting and getting ready for football. And I was like, I probably could chill for a little while. So I tried to chill and it got to the point where I could barely get out of bed. It hurt when I peed. It hurt when I had poop.

It hurt, everything hurt. I had pain, you know, going down my leg, the whole thing. The whole thing that you get when you have like sciatica and all that stuff. And I basically healed it very similar to what Andrew's describing is I took the little bit of time off for the doctor's recommendation and things got worse. And then I was like, you know what? I'm like, this is like miserable. And I was like, I'm just going to go to the gym and do whatever I can.

And so I did a lot of exercises seated. I found machines and I found things that I could do that didn't place any extra weight on my body. And then I used all kinds of other movements as like a way to like recondition my core and my back and stuff like that. So even something like standing curls or standing overhead press. So I progressed from like a lot of seated stuff, a lot of laying down stuff, bench presses with my feet up because if my feet were down, hurt my back too much. So I had to like really progress super slow. But I found a lot of almost like rejuvenation in doing things like leg extensions and leg curls, getting, you know, just getting a lot of blood flow into those areas. Other things come to mind like pushing or pulling a sled, you know, just getting a lot of blood flow into those areas. Other things come

to mind like pushing or pulling a sled, you know, things that aren't going to really load you. So when it comes to like exercises in the gym, there's still a lot of options, I think. And if you're still getting blood throughout the whole body and you're still teaching your body and sending a signal to your body to get stronger, your body will get stronger. Your body will still respond. And so I was very fortunate that when that happened, I think I was around 19 or 20 years old. So I had youth on my side and recovered from it pretty quickly and never really had that, never had a similar pain to that ever again.

Thank God. Yeah. You should definitely follow Russell Buddy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. That would be good. Russell does a lot of and you know i know you said it hurts to walk but if you can get yourself walking just walk slow breathe walking is is a great rehabilitation tool um i say that because like when i injured my ac joint you know one of the things is like what my, my arm wanted to guard my shoulder. So like, I noticed like, Oh, loosen up and walking, right. Allows that just, you know, movement and swinging to happen, which naturally will help that area improve, which is also the

same for the back. If you can just get yourself walking. So if you want to join our live podcast, you can actually join our discord group, which is linked below. And we typically go lives on Thursdays out of around 11 to noon Pacific. There we'll answer all your training questions and try to do things to help you guys out and help you become better athletes. We're also giving away some cool stuff in every single live. So join up, get involved and enjoy the rest of the show. We have a super chat from Elliot from earlier, right? This is a quick one. How do you manage calluses from lifting any specific recommendations for callus files or lifting tape man i'm i'm the worst person to

ask about that i just like pick at them and i like to chew on it i know i do the same thing i'm always fucking with them they're there's they're permanent they're permanent now yeah like i have do you do you guys have issues with calluses like do you guys not like your calluses i like my i don't have any concern over it. I know when I started jujitsu, that was like, obviously with like, uh, mat burns on my feet. It was freaking awful. But now-

Your mat burn looked like, that shit looked like a disease. I had, I had zombie foot. That was crazy. It looked really bad. I still need to post that. But yeah, it was awful. Yeah. So over time, it just got better.

But yeah, with my hands um i know like um my girl has houses when she puts her hands around like yeah yeah i like that shit rough a little bit you know sandpaper a little bit of ridges bumps but like when i was doing crossfit doing fucking pull-ups all day long my hands would just it was awful yeah so yeah i don't know i don't yeah i don't i don't do shit i do think that do think that chalk can make your hands almost worse. Really? When you're done with your workouts, make sure you wash that shit off because it'll just leave your hands super crusty and dry and stuff like that. The only time I've opened calluses were when I was actually using chalk to do something, which is unfortunate.

Yeah, because it just makes your skin super dry. Yeah. Okay. It's very tacky. Next super chat. We'll be able to go through these ones, I think, fairly quickly. From John Blade Music. $20.

Thank you. Thank you. How would you rebuild your knee from the ground up? My knee swells and pops even after a short walk. MRI and x-ray came back fine. Would love your thoughts. This has been affecting my mental health as well. Would you still lift upper body?

Yeah, no, for sure. I would still try to lift and I would try to do what you can. Not being able to walk is a real huge disadvantage. I would see if there's other things that you can do though. Could you, maybe regular walking is hard but could you walk with a sled sometimes it sounds counterintuitive but sometimes walking with weight

just has you walking slightly differently you might be leaned forward more and you might be able to use like your glute I would suggest walking forward I think walking forward is the best way forward when you have a bad knee the best place to start and then in addition to that I would also try to do just a lot of movement that just makes you feel good.

Because, you know, so pick some stuff that you're already good at that you kind of enjoy that's easy. Like if you like doing upper body, you like bench pressing and bro-ing out and stuff like that, then do some of those exercises because it sounds like you kind of got into a little bit of a slump, which is totally understandable when you have an injury. I'll also mention, and I'm going to gunpowder tea, please. He asked a question too, which I think kind of falls in line with this one. So that's why I'm mentioning it. He mentioned the opinions on the ATG programs effectiveness. So on the ATG app, they have all their programs accessible for anybody who's on their app. And there's the ATG programs effectiveness. So on the ATG app, they have all their programs accessible for anybody who's on their app. And there's the ATG level zero program, the knee zero program that

Ben's made. And there's a bunch of those progressions on there. And I think one of the things that you got to figure out is right now, okay, when you do things, when walking, there's popping, there's pain. I think that app is going to be good for you because it'll allow you to go through on the level zero and you can find what doesn't cause pain. What level of movement can I do that even if it's just us, it's your, your, your leg is up on something and you're just slightly going into your knee and you're coming out of that range of motion. You're stopping before you get to that range of motion that causes any type of discomfort or pain. And you just rep in that shit, just greasing that groove over and over and over and over again. Because as you're just repetitively doing that motion, that pain-free motion, you're going to be driving blood to your knee, your meniscus,

your kneecap, et cetera. And that blood is going to help whatever you have going on in there heal, because you got an x-ray and MRI and you see nothing, but there's something going on. And the only way to deal with that something is getting blood in there to help it heal. And that's why I think the ATG app would be good for you going to knee zero and fucking around with some of the movements there because you could do a tibialis raise on the wall. That's one thing that you're probably not doing. You're probably not working your tibs, although you might be, so I might be totally wrong. But I think that that would be good for you to do start with the regressions milk the fuck out of those regressions don't get overzealous and

try to progress too quickly because that's how you're going to injure yourself but if you can work those regressions over time you're going to soon be able to come to a point where you can walk pain-free and then you can walk backwards pain-free and then you can walk backwards with a sled pain-free and then and then you're the fucking house is yours pain free and then and then you're you're the fucking house is yours but you got to start low you got to start easy yeah should he um start on something so like you said tibs like should he go like above the knee too like maybe work hip flexors or is that is that counterintuitive because then he might be using too much muscles everywhere else instead of like where the knee pulls no that's the thing like the knee level zero thing it has

all those things. It works out. Like it's not just for the knees. A lot of other things are work there. But the thing is, it starts with the regressions. So that's where, this is where people like, they, sometimes people don't make a move on something because the progressed version looks too difficult. But sometimes we don't see that there is a much regressed version that you can definitely do and progress and get hundreds of repetitions in before you move up and do something harder.

And those hundreds of repetitions are going to allow you to heal so that you can then start doing the harder movements that are going to help you build more resiliency. I think one of the coolest things that Ben Patrick ever did was put a slam dunk in reverse motion and show you like the steps that someone takes as they're about to dunk and to show the different progressions of where their feet are and where their knees are and how their hips are oriented. It's really kind of bizarre. I just don't think we think about it that much. We don't think about the landing. We don't think about hardly any of those things. But when you're trying to fix yourself, I think the best thing to do is to work your way in reverse and work your way backwards. So it's like, okay, the front of my knee, I can't extend, I can't sit in a chair and extend my knee.

I can't like just flex my quad. But like, what's the reverse of that? The reverse of that would be a leg curl. So could you do a leg curl? Leg curl is like almost the same exact motion, right? I think we can all agree that you're still bending your knee, right? But you are working the opposite side. So it's like, it's kind of cool because you're doing a very similar motion. It's not loaded onto the quad. It's not loaded onto the knee. And so whatever way you can figure out some ways to do some type of leg curl, I think would be good. I do think there are other things to keep in mind when you're trying to rehab something. It's real easy just to look at the area and say, like, I'm going to work my knee, but you do want to try to work on the whole body. I'm in full

alignment and agreement with a lot of the stuff that Functional Patterns shares in that this is a major, like if your knee hurts, it's probably coming from your foot. It's probably coming from your hip. But it's a mistake still to just isolate it and say, I'm going to do a bunch of stuff for my feet. Or I'm going to do a bunch of stuff for my shin. It's the entire body working together. And however you got hurt, sometimes it's a complicated process sometimes to try to fix some of these injuries. Yeah. Okay, cool.

Next Super Chat, and then we're going to be able to get to the normal questions. And if you guys could hit that Like button too, please. Yes. Hit the Like button because it's going to help this live get to more people. Oh, I forgot one more thing for the knees. And we talk about all these different things every time, and we're just throwing the kitchen sink at you sometimes. But don't forget about the power of a voodoo band.

I've seen that have instant impact on people sometimes. So give that a shot. Check it out. You know, Kelly Sturette has videos on it. I think Ben Patrick's done some videos on it. We've done some videos on it. So search it up and check out some Voodoo Floss stuff. And one of the creators, one of the guys that made it popular in the first place is Donnie Thompson.

So check out Donnie Thompson and some of the stuff he offers as well. All right. Next question is shoulder routine for partially torn rotator cuff from the Banshee. Man, people be injured out there. What are you guys doing, man? It's wintertime. That's what happens. It's cold and everything pops.

And we're like. Yo. Okay. Shouldies. Well, what I'll say is like, I think it's just going to be like a constant theme throughout this. If you can find someone that can work with you, that'd be beneficial. But the way that I would attack that is the way that I would attack, honestly, a lot of injuries

that happen. I would first figure out what hurts, what range of motion hurts, and then what type of movements can I do with no pain? And then what is then the minimum amount that I can load these movements to get a lot of repetitions into the injured area? So for like the partially torn rotator cuff, does it hurt to press right above head? Does it hurt to push? Okay. If that hurts, what is the lowest amount that you could do there? Could you do that with a band? Like, could you do this type of movement with a band? Could you bring a band here with a really light band and do this type of movement with it being pain-free and just get this area moving and drive blood in there? Can you press a really light brand overhead?

Can you go into a push-up position and move your scapula up and down without pain? Can you do these for high repetitions? And when I say high repetitions, I mean 20, 30, 50 type of repetitions to get a pump in the area because that pump is going to help you. It's going to help you heal. And the reason why I'm saying that is because a lot of people, what happens when they get injured, they then avoid the area altogether, which slows down their rate of healing. But when you get any type of injury, you want to figure out how much blood and stimulus can I bring to this area to help it heal with the minimum effective load, right? So that's what you want to think about. That's why I can't

tell you what exactly movements you should do, but there are many types of movements that you can do that get the shoulder involved in terms of rowing, in terms of pressing, in terms of rotation, right? And you can load these very light with a band. And then there's a lot of things you can do to stabilize that area. So you could do carries down. You could do carries above. You could grab a light dumbbell, five pounds, hold, walk to help the stabilization of the shoulder. Again, getting blood into that area.

But if you can do that, figuring out what you can do pain-free, over time, you'll get out of injury. So that would be my suggestion. I pretty much have had a few different things happen with injuries. And the injury, every once in a while, will just go away. Like I'll tweak something. I'll be like, man, that's a little weird. And I know enough to avoid the actual type of movement that I think will hurt the area.

And I might do that for just a week or so. And then maybe the second week I'm able to now move around a little bit better. And like I said, that sometimes the injury just disappears. Um, the other thing that has happened is, uh, sometimes I'll take action and do my own version of some sort of myofascial release. And then the third thing is sometimes I'll get body work done and the practitioner will be able to help me with whatever the injury is. But I'm trying to think if there's any other scenario that I could think of where I can like identify an exercise to something, you know, particularly getting like fixed. But I agree with you a hundred percent that like getting blood flow to the area is really

critical because again, as Andrew pointed out earlier, like if we, if we don't move, then we're screwed. If we're not moving, you're going to be screwed. If you sit around, it's just going to make you worse. You have to figure out ways to continue to move. So whether it's your knee or whether it's your back or whether it's your shoulder, you still have to figure out ways to move. And I think if you can think of the most violent thing you can do, the most explosive thing that you can do, I think it would be in your best interest to start to think in your head, how in the world would I ever be able to do that?

That's what Ben Patrick thought of when his knees were so bad and he had surgery after surgery, he still had a passion to go and dunk a basketball. And now he can dunk like crazy. I mean, it's wild the shit that that guy can do. He's so explosive. So for someone with a hurt shoulder, the thing that I can think of that would hurt my shoulder the most would be to just take a ball and just throw it as hard as you possibly could. But work your way in reverse from that. You know, how could you get yourself to that point? I mean, you know, like I was running this morning and I'm out there doing sprints and I did squat 1,080. I've torn a bunch of muscles. I've torn three pecs. I know you only have two, but I magically torn three. I've torn my hamstring. I've torn a muscle in my hip.

I mean, I've gotten banged up so many different times. And the way that I'm able to keep coming back from it is by taking care of some of these things before they get to be too crazy. And so I don't think there's like necessarily like an exercise that's going to like fix an area, but there's an exercise that can help strengthen an area. So an area is more resilient later on. I, I saw you talking a little bit about, um, I saw Andy Galpin talking a little about like neck bridges and stuff like that. And, uh, those things are interesting because is a neck bridge bad? Yeah. It looks horrible. Like it looks like a horrible exercise. Can it build a lot of resilience on your neck? Is it a good idea?

Are you ever going to get thrown? Like, especially if you're newer, like you might get thrown quite a bit. And what if just that one match, that one guy grabs you this particular way and throws you? Well, now you've built a more resilient neck through this practice that kind of looks like almost like a dangerous exercise. Yeah. The neck, you know, neck bridges specifically, I don't think they're a bad exercise, but the reason why they get such a bad rap, cause I just put out a neck video. It looks crazy. It put out a video on my YouTube channel and I use them as an example. And Mike Tyson even mentioned that neck bridges made his neck worse. But the thing is, is the neck bridge is a great movement, but it's a movement that you don't want to do with a crazy amount of frequency. If we think about how much of a freak

Mike Tyson was, there's chances that he was doing neck bridges four or five, six days a week. And if you're compressing your neck that often with that, probably he was doing a lot of volume because he was a strong dude. That can cause a lot of wear and tear on those small little discs. But the movement itself, if you do it once a week, twice a week, and just, you know, do it slowly and improve at it over time, don't load it with a crazy amount, it's probably a great movement. But most, like a lot of people, when they start something like that, they're going to be like, I'm going to do this every day. There's some things that should be low frequency. And then there are some things that you can do every single day,

but the neck bridge is one of those things that if you do it, you got to be careful and you got to be, you got to do it with a low frequency. It's interesting too, because you can't like judge a book by its cover. A neck bridge looks like a nasty exercise. You know, some exercises look treacherous, but like what way do people hurt themselves the most? People hurt themselves the most probably with their own body weight from running. Runners are all jacked up. And running doesn't look like it hurts. Why are they jacked up though, Mark?

Well, they're not taking care of themselves and they're not like making themselves more resilient. Yeah. And they're running so fucking much. Yeah. The frequency is way too high. And they don't understand the amount of force that's on the body with every single step. Dude. Yeah.

Yeah. It's an enormous amount. 120 miles a week and you don't strength train? Really? Like you asking for trouble. Shit. A constant thing that's been beneficial for all of our health has been intaking enough protein, but also intaking quality protein. And that's why we've been partnering with Good Life Proteins for years now.

Good Life not only sells Piedmontese beef, which is our favorite beef. And the main reason why it's our favorite is because they have cuts of meat that have higher fat content like their ribeyes and their chuck eyes, but they also have cuts of meat like their flat iron. Andrew, what's the macros on the flat iron? Yeah, dude. So the flat iron has 23 grams of protein, only two grams of fat. But check this out. Their grass-fed sirloin essentially has no fat and 27 grams of protein. There we go. So whether you're dieting and you want lower fat cuts or higher fat cuts, that's there. But you can also get yourself chicken. You can get yourself fish.

You can get yourself scallops. You can get yourself all types of different meats. And I really suggest going to Good Life and venturing in and maybe playing around with your proteins. I mean, going back to the red meat, there's picanha. All kinds of stuff. There's chorizo sausage. There's maple bacon. That stuff's incredible.

The maple bacon is so good. The maple bacon is really good. Yo, my girl put those in these bell peppers with steak and chicken. Oh, my God. It was so good. But either way, guys, protein is essential and the Good Life is the place where you can get all of your high quality proteins. So Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, you can head over to goodlifeproteins.com and

enter promo code POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your entire order. Links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. All right. Next question is from James Gallegos. Advice on getting any form of exercise for someone who works construction and travels because of that job. First of all, you are a better man than us. You are more manly than us. 100%. And we do not know what it's like. So all we can do is kind of give you suggestions i would say uh i had the same advice for anybody else who's like maybe short on time or short on energy is to try to find two or three days a week where you can just get after it and get a good 30 40 minute workout in um if

you're not sure what to do you're not sure on like programming you can look up what's jason kalipa's brand what's his name of his company does? Does any of us know that? Is it NC Fit or is it something else? I think it's something like NC Fit for his app that he has. Oh, his app. Yeah, we'll call it that. Let me look for it. Anyway, people, you can search for some of Jason Kalipa's stuff, but there's a lot of apps out there. You could use Peloton app and get some really intense workouts.

I think that sometimes people look at some of those apps and they're like, ah, I don't really want – it's sissy stuff. But you try some of those workouts, they're actually really difficult. She'll kick your ass. It's really hard. And you might find it to be fun. So if you're in a construction job and like you feel like you've got these condensed workouts, you might want to look into some of the work from Dante Trudell. You can find his information if you just kind of Google search him, look him up on YouTube.

But he developed something called dog crap training. It's basically just a high intensity training. I love those. Yeah, and he's asking you to do five sets. Do five sets, maybe only one, maybe two exercises and you can go home. So there's a lot of options out there when it comes to like kind of high intensity,

low duration sets and reps and stuff for workouts. And I also, Andrew has the app on the screen right now. It's called train hard fitness app. But I think a few pieces of equipment that I think would be pretty clutch for you are getting yourself a few resistance bands, some medium weight resistance bands, because what you could do is you can lock them in on your door. So like you can fucking put a resistance band in there, shut the door of your truck. You can do some presses. You can do some rows. People say that you can't do a lot of the resistance bands, man. I've been using resistance bands for a while now and fuck you can, you can do a lot. You can get a lot of stimulus and you can let a lot of progressive load with a resistance band. So get yourself some of those

because those are easy to take around with you. Get yourself a kettlebell, 20, 30 pounds. Have that with you too. Get yourself a slant board, right? Because then you can do a lot of like regressed unilateral work. You can do squats on the slant board. You can do presses.

There's a lot of things you can do with bands, a slant board, and a kettlebell. And then it's not gonna take up a bunch of space in your truck. And you can literally do these at stops if you want to. I'd also say get a jump rope. I'm biased with that, but like just being able to like jump in place and do that a little bit every day, that is going to be so beneficial in your body for the long run. Because one of the things about jump rope that people don't, I think people miss is that to improve at jump roping, you actually

need to get better at relaxing and not holding tension. One of the reasons why people can't jump rope for a long time is because when they're jumping, first off, they're not used to coming off the ground so that their lower body's tight. And when they're holding the rope, their traps are tight and they're here. So then they can only do like three, five jumps at a time. But you get better when you're able to relax and your body's hopping and that helps you have that bounce. Right. And that takes time. But when you get there, jump roping is so fun. It's so good for your body. And I think it's, it's, again, it's a light tool that you can carry around and you can legitimately do anywhere. I would also say we, you know, sometimes forget the fact that machines can save so much time.

Oh yeah. So when you go to, if you are going into a gym setting and you hop on a machine, got some horns going off in the background, you know, utilizing a machine can really help reduce time. You're going to have a lot less warm-up time and shit like that. It's a little distracting, huh? Yeah. Well, we're still live, huh? Yeah huh yeah that's fine it'll shut down it's gonna test my editing skills so hopefully nobody heard that but uh one last thing for um the guy that has less time and

he travels and he already you know kicks ass at work and stuff whether it's a program an app or whatever it's kind of almost always based on like a week program or whatever. Tried to just ignore the fact that it's like a Monday through Friday, because for you, it's not going to be the same thing. Think of it like in a whole month, how many, like how many training sessions can I get in? Look at it that way. Don't look at it at the week because you know, Monday's chest day, right? It's chest day for everybody, but you're traveling that day. It's like, well, shoot. And I got to do two. Well, I can't do Monday's workout on. No, it doesn't matter. day. It's like, well, shoot, now I got to do two. Well, I can't do Monday's workout. No, it doesn't matter.

Just get after it and try to ignore the Monday through Friday or Monday through Sunday programs. Yeah, no workout is too short. I think it's an important thing to keep in mind. And we're big fans of microdosing. So if you can get a little short workout in the morning before you head out to work, then that's cool. If you're able to get some more in later on, that's great. If you can't, then just repeat the next day. Keep that frequency high.

The next super chat we just got, thank you, is from Nebuchadnezzar. Do you guys know the story of Nebuchadnezzar? I do not. Yeah. It's from the Bible. I kind of forgot it. But there was a big old statue that was made of him. I think that's true. So anyway, for weight loss, if I'm at 350, sorry, Andrew, he used like four S's bro.

If I'm at 350 pounds and my goal weight is 260, should I aim at 260 grams of protein? And any other tips I'm struggling. Oh, you got this, dude. Nebuchadnezzar, if you can, because there's probably going to be a lot to this answer, just give us a little bit more context in terms of how long you've been training, how you're struggling. Give us some ideas. But yeah, that's him.

He said he's having 260 grams of protein or something like that. Yes, he's asking if he should eat 260 grams of protein since that's his goal weight. Currently 350, wants to get to 260? Yeah, I would say eat as much protein as you want. If you can get over 250 grams, that's great. I don't think you need to necessarily have 300 grams

or 300-plus grams of protein, but if you wanted to, you could because I think the protein is going to help you with hunger. To do that day in and day out though is it's going to be like it's going to be like work be really tedious however what it could do is it could drive your hunger down quite a bit and it could assist you in like this morning I had I had steak and I had a potato and I threw some salt and I threw some honey on it and it was like a it's like a purple sweet potato. Those are good.

Dude, it was so good. Like when I got done with my run today, I was like, I'm not hungry at all. Because not only did I eat well in the morning, I also was satisfied by the meal as well. Like it's important that your food tastes good. So for this guy who's trying to lose weight and trying to get on track, you can go as much as you want with the protein. I would say throw in some fruits as well. And I wouldn't shy away from carbohydrates. I wouldn't be scared of like potatoes. And a potato is really, really satiating. It has the highest satiation rate out of any food, I think. So that would be my suggestion is get in some really good healthy meals and keep that protein like blasted high.

I'd also say, I want to add in real quick, Mark. Have you ever made sweet potato fries out of the air fryer? Oh, delicious. Fucking hell. And you don't need to add much to it like you don't need to add a bunch of oil or anything uh you could just add some seasoning and cut them into fries the sweet potato fries with the purple sweet potato is it's all it's so good dude i'm hungry yeah you throw some uh like a little bit of olive oil and some salt it's like

freaking amazing on a potato on any potatoes like. Like you, and you throw them in the air fryer. I don't understand what people's problem sometimes is with like convenience of food. Cause it's like the air fryer is amazing. I use it all the time for like potatoes and stuff like that. And it's just magical. Nebuchadnezzar added some context. He said he's struggling with a diet. I trained three to five times a week and I have a trainer once per week. Just started walking. So one thing I'll add is like you just started walking. That's good. Keep that consistent. Be careful with your feet as you've probably already realized our homie Russell buddy. You know, when he increases frequency of walking or not just frequency of steps, you notice, fuck, my feet hurt the next day.

So try to get those in. I know, Mark, you probably have some good ideas for him on light, like in terms of when he should walk. Yeah. Get outside. Yeah. Get out, you know, please, whatever, whatever chance you can get yourself outside and try to get yourself exposed to some sunlight. If you live in an area where it's not super convenient to get outside just yet, the months are going to, or it's going to get a little warmer out as the months go along. In terms of the feet stuff, like you might have to have different forms of exercise. You might – Russell went from weighing over 500 pounds and now he's under 400 pounds. And he utilized a bike, like an actual bicycle,

not just a stationary bike, but he would occasionally do like cardio indoors as well. But he also goes to a pool. I mean, you're going to want to probably think of some different options. A pool is amazing. Like if you're a heavier person now, it just, I mean, Russell's in there doing squats and doing lunges and all kinds of stuff that can be, he can do all those things because Russell's very strong, but those things are really challenging for him under normal circumstances. The pull is something that it's like my first go-to because like when I had something that happened to my AC joint and recently there's something happened to my knee a few weeks back, I go immediately to the pull because I can kind of move these areas a little bit more violently with some force in the pull, which I can feel like a little resistance. But the thing is I can use the pull because there's a little bit of resistance in that pull, but it takes away gravity.

So use the pool because there's a little bit of resistance in that pool, but it takes away gravity. So use the fucking pool. It is such an underutilized tool for injury. But also like you see Russell here on the screen using the pool, you can train with the pool. Alan Belcher, he gets in the pool, bare knuckle world champion, as well as Bones Jones. A lot of athletes know like the pool can be outstanding for workouts. Athletes know like the pool can be outstanding for workouts. It can also just be like if you're not like a swimmer swimmer, just going in a pool is just – you're going to burn a lot of calories. Swam this morning, yeah.

And a lot of times, in a lot of cases, hopefully you're outdoors as well. That would be even more beneficial. But I do want to kind of get back to this topic of he mentioned he works out three to five times a week. I would just be like conscious, very conscious of your energy. Like how do you feel each day? Do you feel like you have the energy to work out or are you like getting off of work and then meeting with your trainer and you feel pretty exhausted and you need like a monster energy and you need all these things? You're going to have to work on trying to reverse your way out of some of this stuff. And it's going to take a long time. You're going to have to work on your sleep.

You're going to have to work on, like, you know, there's a lot of things to work on at one time. It really sucks. And it can be difficult. Try to see the sunrise every morning if possible. Try to get outside as much as you can. Try to limit your blue light. It would be a good idea to go on Amazon,

get some blue light blocking glasses for when you're like watching TV and stuff like that at night. Try to get away from your phone an hour before bed. Try not to eat an hour or two before bed. All these little things, they're all super annoying

and they can be difficult to switch to. But the last thing you need before you're going to bed is to be scrolling on your phone. And the last thing you need is to have this like heightened awareness of being awake. And if you're awake and it's 10.30 at night, 11 at night, and you're still up, what are you going to do?

You're going to make a bad choice most likely, and that's where you're going to struggle. So I'd like you to think about your energy, and I'd like you to think about what time of day it is that you struggle, and most likely it's probably later on in the evening. And if you can start to fill each day with nutritious and delicious meals, your food, there's no reason for your food to ever taste like shit. There's no reason. I think that people have that misconception. I'm going on a diet. Everything I eat has to have like zero fat in it, has to be super lean. That can be a way for some people to lose some weight quickly, but that's not a good long-term strategy. Be a little bit

adventurous with your meats, good life proteins. You can get different cuts of beef, chicken. You could get sausage there. You could get fish, scallops. You can get organs if you want it. There's a lot of meat options there. So sometimes people are like, oh, I'm getting so tired of eating this meat. But you've been eating fucking flat irons over and over. You've been eating a bevette over and over and over and over. And it can get boring, but you know, change up your meats. That'll be, that'll be super beneficial. I'll add this because it's something that I haven't gotten tired of. My girl started making stuffed bell peppers and she stuffs meat in it. She stuffed meat in it. And the thing is, it's super simple to make too. You can make an air fryer. So she's on, she's doing her at the Arnold right now. So I had to make the stuffed bell peppers is, it's super simple to make too. You can make it in an air fryer. So she's doing it at the Arnold right now.

So I had to make the stuffed bell peppers. But it's super simple. I just stuff the bell pepper with meat, stick it in the air fryer, right? It cooks up. It's juicy. It's just so good. But it fills me up, right? And it's good for me.

And I can't get enough of it. So there's a lot of recipes like this. I'm just using the bell pepper thing as an example. I know you're struggling with a diet or your food. But figuring out different ways to make your food fun. Mark, you do a lot of recipes like this. I'm just using the bell pepper thing as an example. I know you're struggling with the diet or your food, but like figuring out different ways to make your food fun. Mark, you do a lot of stuff, man. You do a lot of stuff that you haven't talked about. What are some ways that he can like – and you too, Andrew. What are some ways he can like spice up his food?

Well, my wife was out of town last night, so I took a bunch of 96% lean ground beef and cooked it up for my kids and myself. 6% lean ground beef and cooked it up for my kids and myself through some mozzarella cheese in there, some Italian seasoning and some marinara sauce. And it was just, it was incredible. You know, I think, I think like a little, oh, I used a little bit of panko, pork panko in there too, to kind of make everything kind of, you know, melt together a little bit. I think there's a clip of it on my Instagram if you want to kind of pull that up, but, you know, be creative with it. And, and the cool thing, the fun thing about cooking, and I'll say for this guy that had the question, you're going to want to turn this into like a hobby. Like you've got to turn, like you kind of have to, you kind of have to, I mean, I guess,

you know, if you had the money and the means and stuff, maybe you can door dash a lot of stuff and like you could figure out some of that, but that's not going to be your best route. Um, your best route is for you to turn this into an entire passion. Um, that ends up being something that's the rest of your life. So, and you're going to be able to do it, you know, we've seen a lot of people do it. We've had a lot of friends that do it. Russell's a great example of that. And this is, I mean, this is how I got, you know, fired up and excited about cooking up all this different stuff, all these different ways. Another really simple thing, you mentioned peppers. You can buy some peppers, chop up some peppers, or you can get some that are already chopped up.

That's what I usually get. I usually get like a fajita mix from a nugget and it's got like onions and peppers already chopped up. And I'll just, I'll just cook that up and I'll, I don't know, I might cook it up with chicken thighs or I might cook it up with ground beef or I might cook it up and eat it along with a steak because that flavor and kind of the slipperiness and the wetness of the vegetables sometimes goes really well, especially for somebody that might be eating leaner meats. Talking about sex now. See, you're making food like sex. That's what I was saying. Yeah.

Yeah. So take those bell peppers into the bedroom. Cut it open. Make everything a little spicy. Yeah. Wings and sex don't mix, but that's a different name for that like there's there's i mean there's bestiality is there like vegetable reality do people there's uh there's there there is a a seinfeld episode where he george costanza tries to eat a pastrami sandwich while he's having sex. Because he's like telling his friend about like this sandwich.

He's so obsessed with it. And then he meets this girl and then like he hooks up with this girl and he's like, I, he's like, I got to find out what it's like to blend the two. And so the whole episode is like, he's trying to eat the sandwich. Like it's next to the bed and everything. Do you ever see that? I absolutely remember it. Yeah. No fucking Costanza. Or he would just always mess things up. everything you ever do you ever see i absolutely remember it yeah no fucking costanza yeah or you

would just always mess things up yeah i got nothing on on what mark was cooking there but the one thing that i did do recently and this might you know it's a little give and take so i don't like ground turkey i don't think anybody likes no nobody likes ground turkey i'm trying to lean into the leaner cuts and the leaner meats okay i hate ground turkey. I hate it. I don't like it. I think it's gross.

We had it with spaghetti, but what I do with my spaghetti is I use pizza sauce. So again, little give and take, right? Pizza sauce might end up being a little bit like easier to eat more of because it's just, it's delicious. I throw a turkey pepperoni on top of that and then i throw a little bit of cheese on the top and when i say a little bit i say a little bit because we're live right now but in reality i throw a shit ton of cheese on there but again little give and take so now if you can control yourself and be an adult um you can get in some like just get creative with

like the foods you eat and you know because you can look at everything and be like oh this has a little bit of like palm oil i can't eat it or oh that's that's not fat free or or this has carbs or whatever it may be but like if it's going to help you overall and end up with a net positive or net negative in calories then go for it don't be so meticulous with everything just get a tiny bit better with every single meal and you'll get way more creative and then you'll have a lot more fun and yeah it will become a hobby because I love cooking. It is one of my like favorite things to do because I can make a healthy meal for my family and they enjoy it.

Like that's one of the best feelings that you can kind of ever have. I do stuff with like yogurt and stuff like that. Like I've got vanilla yogurt. I'll take this is the way protein dump some in there. I'll mix that up and I'll throw like a bunch of fruit in there. Sometimes I'll dump some honey on top of that. I agree with Andrew 100%. If something's going to help you stay on your diet for a longer period of time,

because this is a consistency battle. That's what this is. This is like, and I know what it's like. I know I've worked with a lot of people and I've been there myself where it's tough to make it three or four days. It's tough to make it three or four days with a good sound nutritional protocol when you're starting. Now, I think the three of us feel like it's almost harder for us to like go off plan than anything because you feel secure with it. You feel really good with it. You just want to, I think about it like football.

You just want to run the same play, you know, and maybe in jujitsu, it's like, this is working. Like, why don't I just keep beating the shit out of this guy with the same move over and over again and demoralize and make it feel like crap. Right. And I think with your, with your diet, you know, you do get to a point where you're like, this just feels good. This routine feels good. I think, you know, I travel more than you guys, but it's mainly because I have kids or, and it's mainly just because of like the stage of life that I'm in.

Yeah. But I love staying home. I love being a homebody because the routine is all locked in. It's like, everything's like secure. This feels really good. I go outside of this and I travel and do a bunch of other stuff.

Then it feels like all hell's going to break loose. All right. Next question from Jonas Dahl. Do you guys utilize any greasing the groove methodology in your day-to-day to increase your activity level? Simple things like push-ups, pull-ups, et cetera? Greasing the groove, just meaning moving around a bunch

to get yourself ready for like workouts and stuff. Little things to increase activity level. Like even right now, the stoic mat, you're standing on one of those mats too. They're not a sponsor, but like there's this company called Wild Gym and they have this mat that has different surfaces. So you'll see Mark and myself, we're always kind of fidgeting as we're standing around during the podcast because we're kind of smashing our feet in on these things and it makes us need to move around. So passively, our need is increased when we're standing. And if you're someone who is like an office worker and you have a standing desk, a lot of times you're just standing still. But if you have like a rock mat underneath you or a textured mat that'll that shit that'll make you move more yeah that's one thing and uh obviously we have like cold plunge um the things i'm trying to think of like things that activate me or get me to like do other things i mean when i get to

the gym i usually just try to do stuff that will i don't know warm me up make me feel better yeah some of the things I've been doing lately that are maybe unconventional is like, I try to add a lot of movement to other movements. So for example, if I'm doing like a tricep pushdown, I really won't just do a tricep pushdown anymore. I won't just do a standard like tricep pushdown. I try to turn it into like a lunge

or try to turn it into something where, okay, now I'm stretching the hip and now I'm stretching a little bit here. I like to use the cables a lot like what Andrew does. Like Andrew will use the cables and he'll squat with the slant board and do kind of like a hack squat type thing. I don't really do that same movement exactly, but I do something similar where I use that weight as a counterbalance to squat down. And not only will I squat down, I'll get my butt to where it actually touches the floor and I'll actually sit on the floor and I'll kind of pancake out and put my legs out and stretch and move around. So a lot of movements like that.

What's funny is like, if I come here, I could feel like the Tin Man. You know, when I first show up here, I could feel like, man, I need to oil everything up. Everything feels shitty. Everything feels tight, stiff, dry, all these things. Once I do a couple movements like that, it's almost like I never had that stiffness or pain at all. It's like it's completely gone. And then now I'm also excited to work out because my body feels better. Now I'm thinking of like, oh, maybe I'll do some squats there. Maybe I'll do some deadlifts. Now

I'm fired up because the body feels a lot better. So those are, those are just some of the things that we do. Okay. So these come out Friday? Uh, whatever March 1st is. I think that's fine. Oh, are there 30 days in February or there or there's 29 29 there's a song that's going on in my head right now i think it's 29 so oh yeah i never know how to do that stuff i never know how many days are in a month at the end it's uh yeah because february isn't it black history month right and they gave you guys the least amount of we learned that from that one guy so yeah oh shit we're live oh fuck you can't pull that one down god damn oh man yeah black history month's coming to an end oh that's the sickest hoodie on the planet that's beautiful yeah this and this was designed by i am melso who's currently in the chat

melvin melvin is a hell of a fucking designer, man. Hell of a designer. Friday. Look, it says right there. That's what it is. Ourproject.live. Melvin's in bread and syrup. He spelled Friday wrong, though.

I'm just kidding. I was about to say. This hoodie right here. Cold chill down his back. Sorry, I didn't see what. He designed this, right? It has this cool stuff at the back, but the front of it is actually textured. It's super dope.

It's puffy. He's the man. That comes out March 1st, guys. I think you'll dig it. But what I was going to say was, if you go to my story, Andrew, some things that I think, again, allow me to grease the groove of movement. And both these things started off really low. I mentioned it before, but jump roping. And both these things started off really low.

I mentioned it before, but jump roping. And jump roping, I think, is good for everybody because it'll allow you to maintain the habit of jumping. Oh, that's Ryan's little dog. It'll let you maintain the habit of jumping, which most of us stop doing. But again, start low, start slow. It could be a minute a day. As you start to feel more comfortable, you can increase that minute. You also do rope flow on top of jumping rope.

And I was going to mention that. Exactly. With jump rope, if you look like last year, early last year, the year before that, my jump roping didn't look so bouncy and fluid. But now, like it is that way because I've become more efficient with the movement of my body. I've learned how to relax my body when jumping. Look at those titties. And my titties bounce along with the action, man. My titties bounce with the action. But this is now a super fun thing because I built the habit and I built the habit low and slow. I wasn't jump roping multiple minutes a day. Initially I was just doing it a little bit, but it built up. And one thing I'll say is for anyone who does choose to start jump roping, your ankles are going to feel a little bit of, you know, your lower back, you might actually feel some tightness there because you're not able to jump. So like one of those things is give that

time to get better, right? But if you progress it a year from now, jump roping is a really fun activity that allows me to grease the group and I seek jumping every single day. Rope flow is another thing that didn't look so good a year ago, a year and a half ago, two years ago. It didn't look as fluid. I was hitting myself with the rope. It was frustrating. But now it's something that allows me, like with my AC joint and what's been going on, the rope has been something that's been allowing that shoulder to move really fluidly. It has actually been helpful in my recovery. And now because it's been a practice of mine, and I've slowly gotten better at it, I can flow with the rope without thinking. And it allows my spine, shoulders, body to move in this rotational pattern.

And it's another thing that I seek every single day. But it started off clunky, didn't look good, didn't look fluid. But again, with anything we do, as we get better, it becomes a really fun thing. And a rope is something you can have in a truck or your car. A jump rope is something you can have in a truck or a car. I just think these things over time can have such massive dividends for everybody. The rope flow stuff, I think, is just something anyone can do. So simple.

And what came to mind watching you jump rope right there is how difficult it is to not to hop from one foot to the other kind of back and forth, maybe like a boxer. not to hop from one foot to the other kind of back and forth, maybe like a boxer. Like that's not too bad. But to hop consistently on one foot like two or three or four times, just all these things are just interesting to try to do. And whether you're trying to have the coordination to do it with a rope or even just standing still, just try it. Just try to hop up and down on your right foot like four times in a row without transferring your weight to the other side. And it's like, I don't know, these are,

it seems like these are simple requirements. So like if you go to do something like that and you can't do it, you got to ask yourself why? That's a pretty simple thing. I should be able to do that. And if your ankles aren't holding up for jujitsu or some of these other things that you're doing, well, then that would be a great place to start is with some jump rope. Absolutely. And I do want to add in the early last year and the year before that, hopping on one foot was a very difficult thing. It kind of hurts. Yeah, it hurt. I couldn't do it consistently.

I could do maybe three and then I'd hit myself. But again, with the practice, that just became a bouncy, intuitive thing. But now that skill is with me forever. So there was a time where I couldn't do it, but now I can maintain it and I can get better at it. So that's one of those things, again, I think it adds on over time. If you're someone that's taking supplements or vitamins or anything to help move the needle in terms of your health, how do you know you really need them? And the reason why I'm asking you how do you know is because many people don't know their levels of their testosterone, their vitamin D, all these other labs like their thyroid, and they're taking these supplements to help them function at peak performance.

But that's why we've partnered with Merrick Health for such a long time now, because you can get yourself different lab panels like the Power Project panel, which is a comprehensive set of labs to help you figure out what your different levels are. And when you do figure out what your levels are, you'll be able to work with a patient care coordinator that will give you suggestions as far as nutrition optimization, supplementation,

or if you're someone who's a candidate and it's necessary, hormonal optimization to help move you in the right direction so you're not playing guesswork with your body. Also, if you've already gotten your lab work done but you just want to get a checkup, we also have a checkup panel that's made so that you can check up and make sure that everything is moving in the right direction if you've already gotten comprehensive lab work done. This is something super important that I've done for myself. I've had my mom work with Merrick. We've all worked with Merrick just to make sure that we're all moving in the right direction and we're not playing guesswork with our body.

Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, that's over at Merrick health.com slash power project and at checkout, enter promo code power project to save 10% off any one of these panels or any lab on the entire website. Links in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Any other questions?

There's a lot. There's a lot of questions. I want to say a shout out to Alan Belcher who fights this weekend. Oh, shit. We had him on the show. Great episode. Yeah, he's an amazing dude. He fights Junior Dos Santos,

I think on Saturday. So we'll have to keep an eye on that. All right. Dylan Burnett, any tips for plateaus while cutting when you feel like your calories are already low? Okay. And I think you got to kind of start over, right? Yeah. You got to bring those calories up for a little bit. So, you know, sometimes people you got to bring those calories up for a little bit. So, you know, sometimes people, they'll bring the calories down, they'll start getting leaner. But when the calories are so low, it's good to do something people like to call a diet break. So, Dylan, I don't know where your calories are right now, but I'd say bring your calories up by 25 to 30 percent. I just pictured him going like 7-Eleven right away. Diet break!

Loading up on candy. Getting like the weird sausage hot dog things they sell there. Yeah. Yeah. They sell weird shit there. I used to live off of those things. Really? Yeah.

Were they good? Of course. Yeah. They look like they're amazing. Three for three deals back in the day at AM, PM. Like some sort of weird breakfast thing or something. Dylan, don't do this. Okay.

So just don't, don't, don't do that, dude. But what you should do. I thought you were going to be like, no, what you need to do. No, but what you do need to do is like bring your calories up by maybe 30%. You're going to see, you're going to gain a little bit of weight. That's not a big deal. It's not like you're going to balloon back to where you were if your, if your calories are up because it sounds like you're tracking, but you should probably do that

for, you know, let's say that you've been dieting for four months or five months, maybe give yourself two to four weeks where your calories are up 30%. What you'll see is like your weight will come up for a little bit. Your energy expenditure will also come. You're going to start feeling good. You're not going to feel as shitty. Your workouts's going to be great. You're going to have really good workouts. What might happen towards the end of that diet break is your weight might actually start to trend down and then you might not actually have to bring your calories down again. That's what happens with a lot of people because a lot of people will do a break for a little bit and then they'll start digging their calories again. But if you've been doing this for a while,

it's a good idea to bring those calories up and let yourself feel good. Because now if you're starting to drop at higher calories, that's good. Because now when you start to slow down with those higher calories, you can start to dig again a little bit, right? That'll work, but it just takes a little bit of patience. I think that's what makes some of this confusing is like we hear calories in, calories out. Some people are kind of in that camp some people aren't some people are somewhere in between um but ultimately i think most people would agree that it's not a great idea to continuously lower your calories because you you will lose weight like it's a mathematical equation with certain point um if you start having you know uh 1500 calories a day and you're a 220

pound person, you know, you're going to lose weight. And then you start to bring it down to 800 and then to 500. You're going to lose more and more and more weight, but you're going to lose a lot of muscle. You're going to die. You're going to feel like you're going to die. You're going to feel like shit. And just trying

to keep pace with any of that and trying to have any sort of output is going to feel horrible. And so you have to have a different strategy. And I think that's a great recommendation is to bring those calories up for a little while. And I actually have noticed that with myself. Whenever I just start to eat more, I will gain weight.

Like I'll gain weight in a real short period of time, maybe three to five days, just boom, put on like six, eight pounds, you know. Then it levels off and then the weight gradually starts to go back down again. And I think also what happens too is I think you like you sort of recalibrate your hunger. It's like, man, I'm getting real hungry, you know, and then you start hammering some food. And then that like that lust for that amount of food sort of, sort of dies off a little bit. Yeah.

You kind of, you kind of kill it a little bit, you know, you knocked it down a notch. And so now you're like able to like, uh, be more reasonable, I guess, for a little while. That's great. That lust for that food. Cause that shit's real, man. You really start like, it starts to, you want it. You want it. Like, this is great. I'm in great shape. And then you're just like, it starts so you want it. You want it. Like, this is great.

I'm in great shape. And then you're just like, I'm so hungry. But the thing is, anyone who's dealing with that right now, be okay with that little bit of weight gain when you start eating more food. That doesn't mean you've lost all that progress because the weight's not. But you need to let that happen. And again, don't go crazy with the food. Don't go eating 3,000 calories more because it's diet break. Eat a little bit more food. You're going to feel better. Your workout's going to be better. You're

going to have more of a pump. You're going to have more energy. And that's what's going to allow you to start trending down again over time because your energy expenditure is now higher, even though you're eating more food. Right. So just do it. You might be able to change your training up a little bit too, because of that, you might be able to lift a little heavier or something like that. Hell yeah. Yeah. And if anybody out there is like a little bit confused on like the eating more part, you have to just be consistent for quite a while. And I'm saying this because from my experience, like, you know, you guys know, like I crushed a bunch of eggs every single day. So once I swapped that out for, instead of having 10 eggs, I'm doing two eggs with a bunch of egg

whites on days where I'm feeling a little bit tired. I'll just have like five eggs and man, I feel so much better. So like I have to start tinkering with that, but I can't figure that out unless I do it for a good amount of time. And when I was like, still, you know,

kind of get the diet stuff figured out. I was just like, dude, like, like I don't understand like Mark and Encima talk about like when they eat more, like they, you know,

have so much energy. And I'm like, dude, I just, you know, I kind of feel the same no matter what I do. It's because I wasn't doing it long enough. So you just got to be a little bit more patient. That's true. Sometimes when you eat more, you can actually feel more fatigued.

You know, if you just are packing in food all day, you'll kind of be like. And also the quality of food, too. Huge, right? Yeah. Andrew, how's your gut been feeling since the Dolce stuff? Yeah, dude, thanks for asking. So,, we'll get to the, the girl stuff first. So like, you know, when we spoke, especially on air, so I highly recommend that episode, but he was like asking me about like all kinds of stuff. And like, I would say, yeah, in the morning, it's kind of

like an emergency. Like I have to get my, my hydration in and then I got to run to the bathroom because like, it's just going to be a bad blowoutout that's gone away to the point where like i'll get to jujitsu and i'm like dude i didn't poop today like this is weird and i get nervous so then that makes me feel like i have to poop okay but if i don't have time i can hold it and i'm good throughout the whole training session so you're just holding your poop while you're training but i don't know one puts on too much pressure huh well there's definitely that but like it's like i'm gonna remedy that yeah oh yeah if that happens i'm just tapping right away he's like you know for me but um no i mean that's so that's one thing and then again we'll just we'll just stay on

that topic but i used to have like floaters everywhere and like some was low some was high now everything's just sinking like the titanic that's a good sign and less wiping so you got rid of the diet sodas so i have not had any artificial sweeteners of any kind and i have not i have avoided pretty much all uh seed oils not that he has anything against it i'm just trying to go all in and see what i can eliminate that's not natural whatever okay you know whatever we can deem natural. And I've been feeling pretty good. All I eat now is just like eggs, egg whites, and I switched to sprouted bread.

And then for dinner, I will have some vegetables, which I'm still not a fan of, but I'll mix that in with steak, some rice. In the middle of the day, I'll have some fruit. I'm not having any sucralose in my coffee, all I'm doing. So the, the, the extent of my artificial sweeteners is the Stevia inside steak shake. That is absolutely it.

And then I, I put honey in anything that I need to be sweeter. I just throw some honey. So honey and cottage cheese. Oh my God. From good culture. That stuff is so good. I'll do that.

Even if I have like a little bit of peanut butter, I make sure the ingredients are 100% peanut butter. And you'd be surprised that like 99% of them, it's not just peanut butter. Oh, yeah. So I'm just trying to stick to more of a whole food approach and single ingredient things. And I've been feeling great. I feel like I can sustain this for a long time. When I do want to have a little something, something, I'll have that. I don't know what that chocolate's called but it's like hu yeah that's right so that chocolate's

incredible the dark chocolate salty like the brand is literally who hu yeah yeah dude it is so freaking good like it's it's incredible so i'll do stuff like that where it's like in the past i'm like oh i can't have yeah i love those i can't have sugar i can't have this high caloric thing but now it's like it it doesn't matter if it is like actual like cane sugar or something like i just like i just have it and i still feel good here's an interesting thing um carnivore aurelius he was on rick rubin show oh that's sick that's the first time i really heard uh anything from him like publicly like that. You know, he has an Instagram, but he usually lays low. Yeah. And he mentioned how he has kind of more recently been eating carbs and he eats double the amount of carbs that he does protein.

I don't know like what his weight is or whatever, but he probably eats like one gram per pound of body weight in protein and then proceeds to eat like double that amount in carbohydrate. And what he said was – because Rick Rubin asked him about like the types of carbs. He's like, oh, I like fruit. I don't really eat vegetables. He kind of explained the vegetable theory. He's kind of a fan of that. He doesn't really think that we should really be eating too many vegetables. He's like, they kind of hurt my stomach.

They don't really agree with me. And so therefore, I don't really eat them. But he eats like some vegetables. But the next thing he said was really fascinating. He was like, you know, it's interesting. He's like, we demonize sugar so much, but it's so easy to digest. And I was like, that is a great comment.

You don't like, you don't have, there's really nothing that sugar seems to do to like your stomach. You know what I mean? Like maybe it does, I don't know, but it doesn't seem like, it's not like lactose. It's not like stomach you know what i mean like maybe it maybe it does i don't know but it doesn't seem like it's not like lactose it's not like you know these other things that are um in our foods that can really upset your stomach make you bloated make you gassy and all these things sugar seems like you just you know like you drink gatorade gatorade doesn't

like hurt your stomach you just caused within the next two weeks for our podcast audience to gain about a thousand pounds that's what you just did with that and their a1c is gonna be all fucked up mark bell said it's easy to digest yeah yay hey but you got a great point there yeah that's so true i never have any issues digesting sugar no no feels great no like if and no no disrespect to our friends at legendary foods but like if i have one of those tasty pastries, I can have one and I can feel a little something. If I have two, I am done for. I'm in bad shape. I could have whatever, like a king-size Kit Kat or something and be feeling fantastic.

Snickers, same shit. I would have three Snickers if I have. I haven't done that in a very long time. What was that for the Halloween thing, though? What was that? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I had Kit Kats and long time. What was that? For the Halloween thing, though. What was that? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I had Kit Kats and Snickers.

That was a test. It was just to see how I responded to it. When I went to Target, the peanut butter cups are out. Like the Easter Bunny ones. Oh, damn. God. The shape ones are so good. Okay.

But I will say this. I think this is, it's super important to pay attention to how you digest certain things. Yeah, true. Because just because Carnivore Aurelius was like, you know, and I think he made a great point. If that's what he said, that like, I don't eat this because it messes my gut. I can digest vegetables fine. I think that you should be able to. Yeah.

And do you think that it's a thing where your body can adapt and get used to it? The thing about, you know, the fruit, right? Like, fruit, you you know has like a seed in it is my understanding of it and an animal will poop it out and it wants you to do that so it can propagate itself so it can kind of live onward i guess you would say gotcha but a vegetable has um has anti-nutrients in it basically that are saying don't fucking eat me because it has no way to protect itself i mean that's that's what some of the people think, and that's what he thinks. That's what Paul Saladino thinks.

I actually think that that might be true for some people but not for everybody. And the reason why I say it is I think that you need to build a – need is a strong word, but I think it's a good idea to build a tolerance to be able to eat some vegetables because I think they have a lot of value. And I think, you know, I, I probably agree a little bit more with Joel Green. Like Joel Green loves vegetables. And he likes using vegetables as like, he calls them functional foods and he has very particular ways to like eat these particular plants and stuff like that. And I, and I do, I do think that you should work on building like a resistance in your gut, not resistance, a resilience in your gut so that you can eat and enjoy all kinds of things.

I think someone who's like, oh my God, if I eat broccoli, like I totally crap my pants. It's like, well, broccoli is not an appealing vegetable in the first place there's not probably not a lot of reasons to really fuck with broccoli but in general i think you should be able to tolerate vegetables i don't think i don't think a small amount of vegetables should automatically cause you to get like bloated i think you should work your way into it over time yeah that's one thing i will say you know like um because it's not like the for example i've been eating a lot of bell peppers, literally probably every day I've been eating like three or four bell peppers.

Initially I was like, Oh, you know what? But it took two days and my shits weren't perfect. Right. So that like, there is, you can get used to this stuff for everybody.

It's a varying degree and it doesn't mean you have to do it. If something really fucks with your gut and you feel pain, okay. And you like, it's then just either eat a very small amount of it and you can build that up followed some of the FODMAP stuff. He's followed some of Ray Peet's work. Ray Peet was like in his nineties. He was a guy that had a lot of interesting nutritional like kind of discoveries, I guess you'd say. And that's kind of where the carrots came from. You know, if you eat carrots, carrots can potentially help your body to get rid of like estrogens. It could scrape out maybe some – it's almost like a detoxifier I guess in a way.

A lot of these things are just theory. Like people don't – I don't think – people have actually controlled their estrogen in their body from my understanding via using carrots. So I guess there is like a little bit of evidence of that. But I don't know if there's like studies that have been done, you know, randomized controlled trials. So I'm curious what you guys think about this. Like,

so I, I've always kind of, not always, but in recent past, I had a lot of issues with like dairy. So like if I had milk or if I had yogurt, if I had anything like that, my stomach would get a little bubbly and get a little messed up.

This was when I was having a lot of artificial sweeteners. I took those out. And again, following the Dolce diet, I'm having a lot of like Greek yogurt with like chia seeds and like all kinds of like healthy shit. Yeah. My stomach's been fine. Boom. So I'm like, okay, I didn't really, I didn't like, like titrate that in. I just kind of like went for it and I was like, well, we'll see what happens. And I've been fine. It's like artificial sweeteners are just fucking you

up. Me. Yeah. It's fucking me up. Right. I don't want to put that out there. Like, Oh, look, this guy said this and Lane says that or whatever. Like, obviously you're not going to put us two together, but what I'm saying is like what you were talking about. Like if you can adjust, if you can digest it, cool. But I'm wondering if for me, the other stuff was just like confusing my stomach and it was just throwing everything off. And now that that's out, I'm, I'm wondering if for me, the other stuff was just like confusing my stomach and it was just throwing everything off. And now that that's out, I'm literally drinking milk. I haven't done that since I was like a baby. That's freaking wild.

It's cool, dude. I mean, again, this is why I think it's awesome how we have all these people on and we're able to fuck with certain things and see how we respond. Because at the end of the day you your digestion is different from mine and mark's and everybody who's listening right now so you got to take certain things and fuck around with it and see what works some of you in here maybe fucking artificial sweeteners are fucking with your gut and you should try getting rid of it you know i'm careful with the i don't intake a lot of diet sodas and stuff i'm careful with that because i do notice like my shits are gonna be a little bit off right yeah so i'm careful with that because I do notice like my shits are going to be a little bit off. Right. So I'm careful with it, but it's not totally out. So that's one thing. It's like,

even though like the research will show nothing's wrong, my gut tells me otherwise. My brother-in-law, he started kind of getting like his hair got like patchy and he was just having all these like symptoms. Just wasn't feeling good. And it's kind of a longer story, but like he basically needed to clean up his diet. And he cleaned up his diet and he had a lot of improvements. He had great improvements in his physique and his body and everything like that. And so all that was pretty good. And he just looked a lot better.

But then he still had this like, you know, patchiness going on with his hair and some sort of like discoloration and stuff like that. Even like I think on his scalp a little bit. He cut out energy drinks and the shit went away. That's what I said. He was like, well, I just – he's like, I cleaned up this. I cleaned up that. I cleaned up all these things. I had about two or three energy drinks a day. Yo. and i was like i that's probably not a good habit anyway uh-huh

he's like i need to ditch these he's like so then i went to one he's like and i still my hair was still weird and still had this kind of patchiness and he's like and then i got rid of him and he's like he's like look at me now and i'm like you don't, you don't have that at all anymore. Dude. That's amazing. Right. That's amazing. He's crazy. Yeah.

I mean, I think we're all, we have to admit we're all different. You know, I got some friends, like I'm explaining like diet stuff to them and I'm telling them like, you know, Oh, you have this category of food, this category of food. And then, you know, maybe some dairy. And they're like, Mark, I'm Asian. I can't look at dairy. I'm like, is that true? Like all Asian?

Maybe not all, right? But probably a large subset of people. I mean, we're just different. Like we're all very, very different. And this is where, you know, this stuff gets to be confusing too. I don't think just because we're different that our diets have to be so wildly different. I still think you're going to end up with a Dolce diet. You're going to end up with a whole foods diet and you're going to have to figure out a way to manage energy,

regardless of what nationality you are, regardless of your genetics, regardless of your origin, regardless of any of those things, I think you still have to kind of pay attention to those general principles. Last thing, I'll be super quick because I've changed my diet to whole food diet. Guess what happened to the rest of the house? It's all changed over to whole food diet. I have two kids. If you have kids, obviously that's going to be something you want to look into. All right. Two super chats and then we're on to more questions. One is from Hayden Pratt. All right. Two super chats, and then we're on to more questions.

One is from Hayden Pratt. I've lost over 80 pounds thanks to the great info you guys put out. Thanks for all you do. Great job. Hayden, hell yeah. Fucking awesome job. That's dope, Hayden. Proud of you.

That's great. Next one is from Nate Gates. Do you have to sacrifice some strength when moving away from conventional lifts to learn other movements such as ATG movements or other movements in general? Um, I would say that if you're coming from the background of the SBD squat bench deadlift, and that's the main thing that you've been focusing on when you start varying the type of movements that you do in the gym. Um, sometimes, you know, like an ATG split squat might be something that actually helps your squat. But if you're actually focusing less on those movements and not doing them as frequently and not loading them as much, you know, you're going to sacrifice a bit of strength. But honestly, I don't think it really matters if you're not a competing powerlifter.

Like, I'm not connected to my squat bench and deadlift numbers because I'm not competing within the sport of powerlifting. So I really don't care about what I can do on those lifts. I more so care of what my body's able to show when grappling and what I'm able to do on other movements in the gym. So maybe you'll have to sacrifice some, but I don't think it really is a big deal unless you compete. Yeah, I would agree with that. I think having capacity to do some versions of squatting and deadlifting in particular, bench press, it's like, I don't know. There's not a lot of reason to bench press other than just to bench press and it could be fun. Like, honestly, you know what I mean? I think there's a lot of other exercises,

there's dumbbells, there's inclined bench, there's, there's other movements, just a flat, regular bench press just doesn't serve like human movement as well as the basic fundamentals of being able to learn how to do some version of a deadlift and some version of a squat.

So I think we have a tendency to kind of like look through a straw with a lot of this stuff. And when we think of squat, we think the guy's got, you know, a bunch of weight on his back and he's doing a squat and we have a tendency to think of like a deadlift. Okay. The guy's going to bend down and like pick it up and he's either going to be conventional or he's going to be cheating with some sumo deadlifting. Those are the only things that we sort of think of, but you know, you might say like, oh, I haven't really squatted in a long time, but you squat all the time. Yeah. Right. I mean, you've probably almost squat nearly every day. Yeah. Some,

some version. Yeah. Some version of it, like kettlebell swing and a kettlebell swing is weird because kettlebell swing is like a weird version of like a deadlift and a squat simultaneously. Right. And these are all things that we should have capacity for. You should have the capacity to be able to do a good morning. But again, it might not mean that you loaded up a bunch of weight on your back and that you bent forward and did a good morning. So I think, you know, when you're trying out some of these other movements, I think it would be a mistake to leave versions of squatting and deadlifting in the rear view mirror.

Yeah. Is this, I mean, I don't know, like if he does go away from it, is there a potential chance that he might kind of refresh and get some newbie gains when he goes back to it? Actually, like there is something to that. It depends on how far you disconnect yourself from it. There is something to that. It depends on how far you disconnect yourself from it. But like, you know, if you disconnect yourself from those movements for a bit, like you don't keep them involved at all. When you go back, you need to be conservative with how you begin progressing.

But you'd be surprised with how fast you can progress. Oh, yeah. If you do progress in other areas of training. Like let's just use an ATG split squat as an example. The amount of strength that you're going to be gaining in your front knee that's's getting into deep flexion along with your back hip flexor, that's lengthening on both legs along with the mobility that you're going to be gaining across those muscle groups. If you actually progress that movement for a while and you've disconnected yourself from a squat for a few months, then you go back and slowly start progressing squats. You'd be surprised about how good your squat pattern

feels because of the different amount that the different ranges of motion you've built strength. Yeah. You'll be moving better. You'll be moving so much better. So it's like, you know, I think it's worth it to venture into other movements and improve your movement capacities, especially if you want to be good at the big three. I agree. All right. Next question from Primal Mike. How can I change bicep curls so that less of forearm is activated and most focus is on actual biceps? I find my forearms limiting bicep pumps. I've seen some people just talk about like, I got to use a dirty word, cock. I've seen people cock the wrist back a little bit.

And sometimes that takes the forearm out of it. I think you also might need to just find like exercises that maybe allow you to like not use your forearm as much. What comes to mind is like sometimes people just squeezing the dumbbells like super hard. So maybe try to loosen up the grip a little bit. That's huge. That's fucking huge. That's a big deal right there. A lot of times when people are trying to move,

like especially when they're bicep curling heavyweight with dumbbells, they'll squeeze as hard as they can and they'll lift. But you notice once I even squeeze my forearm right now, how the musculature just starts to go, right? When I do bicep movements, I kind of try to use my hands as hooks. So I kind of let the bicep movements, I kind of try to use my hands as hooks. So I kind of let the bicep or the dumbbell kind of sit in my hand and holding my wrist position, not squeezing, I pull up with the bicep. So my bicep's doing the work. Now I have to use lower load, but that load

is being moved by my bicep in a much better fashion. And a movement that I think is going to be really good if you have access to a cable machine is having the cable come from behind you, have your arm outstretched, cables here. I'll try to actually angle myself this way towards the camera. So here, cable, and let your arm kind of hang a bit. Boom. Just have it right there. I feel, I love those cable bicep curls because I feel all of that tension in my bicep and I'm able to get an amazing pump. And your arm is in a position that almost looks like a inclined dumbbell curl, which I've always been a huge fan of. I think it's a great exercise. Yeah. Stretches out the front of the shoulder as well. Yeah. But I think that key you mentioned right there, the squeezing, that's the, that's the thing for like a lot of movements,

not just bicep curls, but even rows like, like, you know, cable rows. Try not to squeeze as hard as possible. Try to have your hands is like hooks or you can even pistol grip it. Right. Pull with your elbows and you're going to feel much more activation of the back versus if you're squeezing and moving as much weight as possible. You can feel your forearms, your biceps, everything activate as you're trying to get a back movement. So that's just bodybuilding. Yeah.

Real quick, shout out to Doug Brignoli for teaching me this. But this is one of those things where he would like go on a tirade and just start yelling at people. Yeah. But so, you know, he showed us to do hammer curls because he wanted to kind of get the bicep and more of the forearm or that like little extra meat that uh phil heath always had he had a huge forearm so to negate that you just turn your pinky up which we all know but it's just something that we just need to get refreshed with but like yeah turning your pinky up is going to focus everything on your bicep now if you want the bigger forearm and you want that extra little extra meat chunk right here then do hammer curls which is what i focus on because yeah i want bigger forearms but if it seems like he's already doing a good job of that so yeah just turning the pinky

up and focusing mainly on that bicep get that ain't nothing ain't nothing wrong with having some jacked forearms real worked out for john cena yeah see i gotta pee you guys keep running okay we'll answer some we'll have fun jujitsu-based questions right now. Let's go. Take a shot. So, Haley, we're going to come back to you, but let's go to some jujitsu shit. All right, from Jonah Taylor, how do you deal with jujitsu deficits? For example, I'll focus for a long time on guard retention. Once I feel pretty good, I start to focus on other things like arm bars or whatever.

feel pretty good, I start to focus on other things like arm bars or whatever. Then after, okay. After a while, my, my guard retention starts to fall off. Okay, cool. So Jonah, this is one of those things where it's like, I'm, I'm assuming you're a little bit newer to jujitsu and when you're newer to jujitsu, what you're going to be focusing on initially is building out your game. You're building out your A game. You're building out the things that are going to become second nature to you. When I started off, I started like, I realized that as a big guy, no big guys like to play guard. So I was like, okay, I want to start with a basic guard game. So I started learning the fundamentals of the collar sleeve. And then I played that so much that I got certain bread and butter movements from the collar sleeve that became things that I don't really need to think about,

which then allowed me to, okay, I have these movements. Let me start focusing on maybe playing a bit of X guard or playing a bit of this other guard because my collar sleeve is always there for me, right? So then when I kind of, I wouldn't say mastered because there's so many things I can get better with there. But when I've built a level of proficiency there where it's like, I've got the 80, 20 out of this, I've got the most out of this. Now I'm going to start to focus on something else

in training, something that's a little bit more foreign to me. Let's say X guard is the example. And I had intentional training sessions where it's okay, today, my goal is to get underneath my opponent's hips and use the X guard to sweep them and then go to submissions. And I'm going to use X guard through training this week. So I set up training weeks in that way, where this week I'm focused on close guard. This week I'm focused on collar sleeve, mastering certain things there.

This week I'm focused on my X guard and doing things there. I personally switch things from week to week. But when you're newer, you need to build the A game first. You need to have that bread and butter guard, the bread and butter pass, the bread and butter submissions. You need to build a cohesive game first. You need to have that bread and butter guard, the bread and butter pass, the bread and butter submissions. You need to build a cohesive game that can work together. And then when you've built that,

and it's like, that's your money, right? That it's causing almost everybody's like, oh shit, watch out for Jonah. His fucking X guard's nasty. Or watch out for Jonah, his half guard's nasty, right? Then you can start toying with other stuff. But the thing you don't want to do is you don't want to do is you

don't want to try to do everything and you have nothing that is remotely good and scares nobody because then you're just you're not even a jack-of-all-trades you're just someone that does a lot of shit that is ineffective so figure out what you want your initial game to be and then you can build off of there yeah the only thing i thing I can add to that, cause I'm, I mean, I'm probably even less experienced than you, but is like, if I have, so like I have my, my go-to headquarters position when I'm in that position, I feel comfortable when I try to explore anything around that, it gets pretty wonky. But what I ended up, what ends up happening is I go back to that position and it now all of a sudden, now I'm at a deficit in that position.

But it's sort of like muscle memory. I get it back way faster than it took me to learn it. So now I'm not really concerned with like moving away from anything that I would consider like my go to moves, I guess I'll say. So, I mean, I still still trying to build out that game anyways. But yeah, if I go away from it, I know it'll be there for me. that game anyways. But yeah, if I go away from it, I know it'll be there for me, I don't know, a week or two later, because it's just going to take me less time to kind of recalibrate and get that back. I want to lastly add this in for all the grapplers in here, because I think it's important. It's something that Andrew has experienced recently. And it's something that I like I experience all the time. When you are drilling and working on something within training

consistently for a long time, there comes a point where you feel, you literally feel like I am not getting better. I'm beating my head against this wall and drilling this shit and nothing's fucking working and it's fucking not working at all. That's the time where you want to take a few days off of jujitsu. Maybe you take a week off of jujitsu. I know, wild, crazy. But the thing that ends up happening and all experienced grapplers know this, what ends up happening is that week you took off, your brain is wrapping things up and making things nice and, and putting the things together that you've been trying to beat your head against the whole

time you've been training consistently. And when you come back to the mats magically, holy shit, you're getting into positions that never worked. You're doing things that you haven't done before. And it's because instead of just trying to grind through everyday bohada, I'm going to keep coming in. You just went off and did something else. Maybe you trained in the gym for a little bit, or you, you, you had a little bit of break and you came back. You got some sleep. You got, you got a little bit extra sleep, but you, you gave your brain and body the time to, to put the things you've been working on together and then you come back better. So I take breaks every now and then, especially if I've been really drilling something hard.

And then I'm like, okay, I've reached a, it's not going to do me any good to keep this up. Instead of just switching to something else, I'll legit just take a few days off the mat. I won't train for four or five days. I'll do something else in the gym or whatever. And I come back and boom, shit clicks. It's like magic. You clear out the cache and then you also just make more hard drive space.

Hell yeah! There's no more room for shit. We had Mark Allen on the podcast and he just would disappear. He would run, run, run, run. He would do all these triathlons, do all this training and he'd be training with a group and all this stuff

and then he would just disappear for a week, sometimes two weeks. And he would show up on game day and kick everyone's ass. People were like, Oh, he would practice on his, uh, alter ego with that voice and that face.

That was scary. That, that shit was Chris Rock. He was channeling Chris Rock. If you think about that Mark Allen podcast, he was like, yeah, he was doing a Chris Rock thing.

A lot of people in the house. Oh, yes. When you do something. He was talking like Chris Rock. He kind of was. Amazing. Yeah, he was great. Check out that podcast.

That was great. Hi, Project Family. It's time to step up your barefoot shoe game. Now, we talk about foot health all the time on the podcast, but the winter months are coming and Vivo's come out with some slick boots. These are their Gobi boots and they have different colors on their website. Now these have a wide toe box. They are flat and they are flexible and they're stylish and sexy as boots. But obviously Vivo is awesome because they not only have boots and casual shoes like their Novus right here, which again, wide, flat, flexible, so that your foot can do what it needs to do within the shoe. And you're getting the benefit of having your feet improve while you're walking around in shoes.

But they also have shoes for the gym, like their Modus. Again, flat, flexible, wide toe box, along with their Primus Lite 3s and all the classics that you know. They also have shoes for running and for running on their website. So again, for all barefoot type shoes, Vivo is your one-stop shop for pretty much all the types of kicks you need. Andrew, how can they get it? Yes, you guys got to head over to vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject. There you guys will see a code at the top. Make sure you enter that code and you'll save 15% off your order. Again, vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject. Links in the description, as well as the podcast show notes.

Next question is from Haley Neal. I have sciatic pain that flares up when I run. I'm a 145 pound person and can deadlift more than my body weight. Does this pain mean my back is a weak area? Damn. Uh, no, it certainly doesn't mean that your back is weak. Sciatic pain is like kind of a nerve impingement. You know what to do about it. Shit, that's a tough one. I would say what I would kind of go to is I would go to I would go to a body worker and or I would do some myofascial release. Sometimes when you have certain things though, I think you're better off having someone look at it that knows what they're doing. If you just start rubbing the cross ball on a certain area, you might do more harm than good.

So if it's pretty bad, then I would go see somebody, try to find a local body worker. Yeah, I fully agree with that. I do think though, Mark has mentioned the FP online course thing. I think that'd be a good thing for a lot of people to check out. Now, this is the thing. So the FP has its online course stuff, but there's also Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Sturett, which has so many different myofascial release maneuvers. Lots of pictures and everything too. Yeah. Right. So it'll have different things that you can deal with your glute, your IT band, your hamstring, your quads, your hip flexors, and you can, you can start building the habit and messing around with that stuff. And that's one book.

So I'd suggest starting to mess around with that, but you need to find somebody that can work with you in person for sure. For sure. All right. We got something fun from Dom Sornberger. All right, we got something fun from Dom Sornberger. I'm starting TRT due to low levels under my doctor's supervision. I've been training naturally for nine years. I've slowly been cutting over the last six months, losing about one pound a week. Still have a few pounds to lose. Should I up my calories while on TRT or should I keep cutting a few more weeks then up my calories? What are your thoughts?

Well, if TRT is new to you, I would just eat normal. Whatever you were doing previously, food-wise, I would just kind of keep that going. I wouldn't really make any changes. I don't think there's any reason to be in like a caloric deficit necessarily. So I would just, if you have been in a caloric deficit for a little while, maybe just bring the calories back to like maintenance. Okay. Yeah, it just sounds like, you know, because like I've read forums and stuff and they're like, oh, like when you start blasting,

that's when you can just eat a bunch because you're going to make all the gains and the progress and it's like newbie gains all over again. So it sounds like maybe there's a little bit of that. But yeah, I don't know. I don't have too much to add to that other than what you said, Mark. Yeah, I mean performance enhancement or TRT is – it's going to allow you to acquire a little bit more muscle mass. But when I say like a little bit, I'm saying like a little bit. You know, like if you are taking dosages that just put you in like high normal ranges,

you might gain three to five pounds over the next couple months or something like that. What about his like workouts? Do you think maybe anything should change there like the intensity, frequency, or just keep doing what he's doing? No, I think if he just continued on with what he's doing, then he could see, you know, what the TRT treatment is doing. Do you believe that there might be like a little period of like newbie gains when you start taking just TRT? Yeah, I think so. But I think it's small small i mean you you have more experience with that uh than i do because i i never you know i was actually talking to my wife the other day i'm

like i never started to take steroids to be on trt you know i that's not what i signed up for like i signed up to like actually take performance enhancing drugs and actually push them to like a blast yeah blast them exactly and so i don't have that experience that my experience was like the first the first time i did steroids i was on a cycle and um it had a profound impact you know gained like 20 pounds nice yeah in like like 12 weeks or something like that the only thing i would say is it just like you just you just feel better so like the workouts feel better you're more accepting of healthier foods that you don't have to like worry about the yumminess of it so much all of a sudden i don't know it just puts you in a better mood so yeah i'd say just keep doing what you're doing you're gonna enjoy it way more and did you gain a lot of weight no no just like not too much different than no not no yeah i'm trying to

remember i always had a hard time gaining weight but no i was still in like the 170s and it didn't really change much right all right all right guys quick question how many more questions do you guys want to take i gotta pee really bad you gotta pee i mean i can make it so that's up to you how How many do you want to do? Four or five more or whatever you guys are up to. Three. How about that? Okay, we'll do three. Give them an answer. Maybe four.

All right. If there's a really good one. And there's a lot of good questions in here, but like, you know, people got to pee, you know, so all right. So this from Rock Humper, our friend Rock Humper. Running slash walking question. I started walking over 10,000 steps a day about a year ago. My health in one foot is burning slash sore every day. How do you manage foot pain from walking and running? Oh, man. Your foot burning? That sucks. I actually had a pretty bad, like, I think it was a callus. I don't know if it was a callus or a callus I don't know if it's callus or corn or I don't know what the hell it was like what do you when you say foot burning like what what is he

like for just foot pain or is burning yeah so I don't know exactly what he's talking about but for myself my foot would burn and but it was like a real particular spot it was like the outside edge of my left foot. And by wearing toe spacers and by getting like barefoot shoes and having more space and all that and rarely putting my foot into a compromised shoe, which I would say that I guess now I don't even put my foot into a compromised shoe ever. So the combination of those things has gotten rid of that for me. I do have like, this is all gross to kind of talk about, but I do have like this scraper kind of thing that I bought off of Amazon. And I actually kind of just will manually like scrape some of this like callus off because sometimes you can have a callus and the callus can actually be like pushing on like a nerve. So for some reason, I got the same exact callus off because sometimes you can have a callus and the callus can actually be like pushing on like a nerve so for some reason i got the same exact callus on the right side causes no pain and i got the callus on the left side and caught it used to cause tremendous amounts of pain

but i no longer have that callus because my foot was being like pinched by most of my shoes for a long time and even when i got out of the shoes, that callus would still like rebuild, but whatever in the hell happened over the last couple of years, that seems to have really subsided where, um, I haven't had to scrape that thing off there in a long time. Yeah. I have the, or had the exact same thing. Like it would be very painful. Like I couldn't fly on a plane and not, I had to take my shoes off every time because that like it's like it was right on the edge of the like pinky bone or whatever that edge is over here and yeah it would just catch fire it would just be so like it would be so painful i just wanted to throw my shoes away but once we started wearing vivos and stuff like it just over time went away

so i don't know maybe checking your shoes shoes and seeing what's going on there. Yeah. I mean, sometimes, you know, doctors get bashed all the time, but sometimes it's a good idea to go to a doctor, you know, might need to go to a podiatrist. Is that what they're called? Podiatrist. Yeah. I will say like, okay, so all this stuff was on the foot burning for anybody who's like dealing with foot pain or ankle pain. There is a movie, not movie. There's a video that we did with Brian McGinty.

I don't think it's on this channel. I think it's on the Super Training 06 channel where Brian took us through a bunch of things with the feet. And I think some things that I have maintained that are really good is he had us do some stuff with a single leg on a slant board where we go kind of go up on your toes on one foot and you do that at different angles. And the thing is, is that what that helps that do is you start to learn how to stabilize your ankles with your calves. And you'll actually, if you do it over time, you'll start to feel your hip flexors start firing all through your hamstrings, et cetera, to kind of keep in that position. I do that almost every day. And that's been super beneficial for the strength and stability of my ankles and the strength of my feet.

And I think that's something that, again, it's going to be very difficult to do without holding onto anything. So literally what you can do is you grab yourself a PVC pipe. Most of you might have a slant board. And you can do those same movements, getting up on your toes on the slant board at different angles while holding onto something to work the balance of that area. But I'm telling you, you do that over time, you will be surprised at how sturdy your ankles and how strong your feet begin to feel. And it's very simple. I think when you're doing stuff like that too, you need to keep in mind that you could probably flex your foot a lot harder than you think. So like you might, you know, push up on your toes.

But if you think about it and concentrate more, you're like, oh, no, I have way further to go. I can really concentrate on like really driving every toe into the ground. And when you're doing it on a single leg, it actually, you'll actually feel kind of heavy. leg, it actually, you, you'll actually feel kind of heavy. It's kind of weird because like most body weight stuff isn't, doesn't feel like it has any, it just doesn't feel that heavy, you know, most body weight stuff that we do. But when you are just on one foot, really trying to push your toes as aggressively as you can into something, it's, it'd be difficult at first. Yeah. Yeah. And it might not help like directly, but that's the whole point is like working around the thing.

So like taking care of the rest of the foot, you know, doing that thing with the eraser in between your toes, maybe even working on the calf a little bit just to kind of loosen things up because it might be kind of forcing you to just tighten everything up because it does hurt so much. All right. Next question from Nate Gates. I'm trying to progress my workload over time. However, especially during the winter, I end up feeling run down and I get sick. I don't feel I'm overtraining as sometimes it could be three to

four moderate workouts per week. I have a physical-ish job on a farm, but still don't feel I'm overtraining. My mental ability seems to be the bottleneck, but rather my physical ability. Advice in scaling workout to workout more. So my mental ability doesn't seem to be. Yeah, so it's the physical ability that's his blocking, not his mental ability. This dude is.

Yeah. I mean, sometimes people have, you know, different versions of like seasonal depression. It's kind of a real thing. The sun's not around as much and you might kind of feel the blues and you might feel like low energy. It's actually very common. It's very – not even common isn't the right word. It's very natural.

Like our energy should be conserved in the summer or in the wintertime. That's kind of how we evolved. You would stay inside a lot more because it would be fucking cold outside. And so I think those are really normal things to do. I think we have a hard time. We have a very hard time like sitting still. You know, you mentioned you have a hard time like if it's quiet. If it's like totally silent, you're like not cool.

You want music on or you want something on. I'm similar. It's not necessarily music, but like, I kind of always, I feel like I always need something going on. So either I need to have coffee or kratom or a protein shake, or like, I kind of always need to have, and it's not like one thing going on for some reason, one thing at a time, isn't enough. It has to be like two or three things going on at one time. For some reason, one thing at a time isn't enough. It has to be like two or three things going on at one time. And so I think it's okay for you to like chill in the wintertime a little bit more. But maybe because of that, maybe you change some things or you try to, you know, go off in a slightly different direction. Like, um, I like when it's colder out,

I like to really try to get outside a lot. I do like going outside in the summer, but man, it just in here in Sacramento, it gets hot. It gets hot. It gets like really, really hot. So actually like what I'm doing right now with my running is I'm actually working on like shorter duration runs. And, uh, I'm working on some like sprints and stuff like that because when the summer hits, I don't want to have to be out there for like an hour or two trying to run when it's like a hundred degrees outside. Like I just, I don't mind doing stuff that's hard. I don't mind doing stuff that's difficult, but it's just like, it just kind of sucks. And so I think, you know, maybe for someone like this, that's in a situation like this, maybe in the wintertime, maybe you try to think of like, what are some tasks that you can do that are maybe they have access to that feel good, that are fun?

Okay. Yes, I fully agree with that. I think what you need to try to do, and this is kind of how I handle progressing everything, is figure out a way to zone to what you're doing. And the reason why I'm using that phrase zone to it is because zone to cardio is typically the cardio amount that people are like, you can go forever. It's just under that threshold where you have to stop. Obviously, there are certain times when it's good to push past that to see what you're able to do. But to make long-term progress with a lot of things, you usually, whether it's lifting, you want to be working within a percentage that you can do smoothly and you can slowly increase over time. You don't want to be working at 90% all the time. So I'm going to use sprinting as an example because sprinting is something that I started adding in. And the first time I sprinted, I was like, fuck, I'm so beat up. But it's because I was literally going way faster than my body was ready for. I wasn't able to be smooth. So I needed to literally slow down my intensity of sprinting so that I could sprint kind of with a relaxed face,

kind of letting my body be loose. And then over time, I was able to sprint faster and with more vigor and more violently without it beating my body up. That's what I'm able to do now. So I'm sprinting three to four times a week, but my body doesn't feel up because the intensity of those sprints is just at the spot where my face is relaxed,

my body's relaxed, and I can just put the power through my body without it feeling horrible. But if I was sprinting at 100%, I'd probably be wrecked for the week, right? So like this goes with anything, whether it's jump rope, whether it's sprinting,

whether it's lifting, whatever you're, what, jujitsu. And jujitsu is different because there's a level of skill you gotta build. But like you wanna figure out how much of this can I do that I'm gaining progress, I'm getting better, my skill is improving.

But it's not wrecking me so much that I can't do it again tomorrow or the next day. Figure that out, work that, and improve that over time. And then you'll notice your workload magically increases because you're more efficient. Aside from like a few super long runs that I've done, Have you guys really seen me do in the last two years? Have you seen me do something where you're like, oh man, your average person could never do that? Like where I'm doing stuff in the gym? No.

Right. And I would say the same is true with you. Like I think people, maybe they think they would come. Now, occasionally I'll go and I'll pick up, like we have a heavier kettlebell. It's 200 pounds. I mean, it's not insanely heavy, but I do some stuff here and there. I bench pressed 315 the other day for some reps, but it was with a slingshot on and stuff. So I do handle like a certain amount of weight here and there, just like you go and do jujitsu and you do it at a level that somebody needs to develop a skill set to be able to do that over

over the course of many many years most likely um but my point here is that we kind of like just like we like brush up against a lot of stuff and i think for you you you brush up against like a like a really wide base of a lot of different things and so like how high is the intensity um i know that occasionally you do intense stuff and I know that sprinting might be done at a certain intensity where someone else would have a difficulty maybe keeping up with you or maybe having the same heart rate, but they would be able to do the exact same workout very easily because you're at 80% or you're sometimes at 70%. The balancing that you were talking about, like you're balancing on one leg and you're on a slant board. It's like we can grab someone's uncle and have them do that, you know, right? But now they might have to do a different version because maybe they don't have the same balance or coordination. And so I think that – I think people – for some reason, people want fitness to be so hard or so difficult. For some reason, people want fitness to be so hard or so difficult. I think maybe because the accomplishment you could feel afterwards.

I would say that like most of my workouts now when I'm done with them, I would agree. It doesn't feel like, you know, like I'm stamping something, you know, like, yeah, motherfucker. You know, like I got that workout in the way I want it. It doesn't necessarily feel the way that it did, you know, eight or 10 years ago. But it's like, just like a, yep, we did it. It's just a little, a little stamp, a little light stamp. Like you did it and I still get the results though. I still get the things that I'm, that I want out of these movements.

And so I think like sometimes a little bit of a, a little bit of a reinterpretation of, you know, what these great workouts are supposed to look like, I think can be really helpful. I want to add in too, because I'll do bodybuilding workouts at a Planet Fitness right by my house. But the thing is, is like these workouts to most people, they look pretty intense. Like they look like pushing. pretty intense. Like they, they, they, they look like pushing. And the thing is, is like, I am, but because I've been lifting for such a long time, my push doesn't fatigue me as much as it would another person. So that's why exactly what you said there is that you need to, you need to work within a good intensity, but not an intensity that's going to wreck you. You need to stop wrecking yourself in the name of having an amazing workout. Because I know how it feels to like fucking push so hard where you're like, oh yeah, that was a good one. But then you feel like shit the next day. Was it a good one sessions that fuck me up the next day. And I don't think that you need to feel fucked up the next day.

At this point, I'm like, that's actually counterintuitive to my long-term progress. Because the way I'm going to be able to progress is by being able to do this consistently at a great level over time. Because over time, that level is slowly going to increase. And my output and efficiency is going to increase to where it looks hard, but it's actually not. And if you do an exercise, if you're, you know, on the hack squat machine here in the gym and you do a couple sets with two plates on it and tomorrow you wake up and you're like, I don't really feel much from that. You could easily add weight the next time you use it. Like at least there's a good opportunity. But instead, you know, sometimes people would say like,

you know, they want to do extra sets or extra reps or extra weight. And then they go and they do their other thing, running or jujitsu, and then they get hurt. And it's very easy to get hurt when you're like stockpiling, you know, all these like intense workouts on top of each other. And I think, you know, when we're talking about like energy and where you can get your energy from, I think you might want to be cautious with the amount of drop sets that you do, the amount of intense. Like, what are they for? You know, like, are you trying to finish the workout and are you trying to like walk out of the gym with a pump?

Well, the pump is a great feeling. I think all three of us would agree. Like if that's what you're going for and you're doing this like drop set as kind of the last thing on your way out the door, then yeah, probably go for it. Probably sounds like a great idea. But should you be doing a drop set on three different exercises, four different times in the course of the workout? It's like that sounds like way too much. You want to just try to back, uh, back off of some of that stuff so you can do this stuff consistently. And I think so many people suffer from this, where they, they're trying to like dig deep for motivation and trying to figure out why they're not motivated. But we know because of all the people that we talk to, and we've been in this space for a long time,

that people are cutting calories. They're not sleeping. They're trying to get leaner and stronger at the same time. Does this sound familiar? Right? And then they're like, man, I just, I'm bummed out. I just, I'm in a slump. It's like, well, we could take the most dedicated person in the world we could say

it's chris bumstead let's just say he's most dedicated lifter in the world at the moment right if we put him in a similar scenario he's going to start to feel like shit too and he's going to be like i don't want to go to the gym i don't like bodybuilding like eventually you know your luck is not functional. Yeah. Eventually, eventually your luck is going to kind of run out with that stuff. And lastly, I'll just kind of turn this over into a little bit of nerdiness, but like some red light therapy can be really beneficial. It can assist with giving you a little bit better energy and a little bit of cold therapy. Now, these are things you got to try for yourself. If they're not in

your budget or you can't figure it out, a lot of times there's places you can go nowadays where you can experience this. I know here in Sacramento, there's a place that has like really high powered lights, red light therapy. So that might be something that people want to try to look into is like in your area, you know, is there a, here in town, there's what Asha, right? Has like some different recovery stuff. Yeah. They have cold plunger sauna, no red light therapy though, but they have a cold plunger sauna. I go to that spot all the time. I love it.

Yeah. So those are, I mean, look in your area and just, I know you see everybody doing it and you see all this stuff and you're like, this is stupid, but like, give it a a shot give it an honest try try it a couple times you know three or four times and you either felt something from it or you didn't yeah it is stupid but what i always like to say is i don't want to sacrifice tomorrow's workout because i want to hit another drop set or whatever right like is it really worth it like no because you want to get you know more bang for your buck tomorrow and this last drop set when you're already exhausted and it just your form

is going to be all screwed up and you could potentially get hurt no it's not worth it yeah and i think probably what's uh fairly normal for the three of us too is like we kind of work out by ourselves too so it's like there's we're not necessarily maybe doing barbell exercises by herself all the time. Although I was in here like two weeks ago and I was bench pressing. I'm like, I'm like, this is kind of weird. Like, so I had to take the collars off kind of old school style. And if I needed to dump it, well, I'm just thinking like, I mean, I've never ever had it happen to me before, but like, what if I got hurt to me before but like what if i got hurt you know like lowering just like you know minor weight and then i can't it's like the one exercise that you

kind of can't do by yourself yeah yeah everything else is kind of fair game because you squat you throw it off your back deadlift obviously you can just drop it but yeah look into all those things and see if you can uh boost that energy up and definitely look at your sleep and look at your diet too. A lot of times people just are not feeding themselves properly. Yep. Yep. Yeah, there's a lot of factors, man. Sunday Rambler, Mark Bell's Power Project.

How do you make friends in the gym? I think there's a lot of social anxiety in the gym. I don't know if you're asking the right people. I'm joking. How do you make friends in the gym? I think there's a lot of social anxiety in the gym. I don't know if you're asking the right people. I'm joking. How do you make friends in the gym? How do you go up to somebody and say, what's up, man? I want you to be my homie.

You want to be homie? Create your own gym? You want to come in here and sweat together? Like maybe tomorrow? Would you like to? Hey, I like lifting. Just phrase it that way. I like lifting.

You like lifting. We look like around the same age. Want to be best friends? Yeah. Yeah. Start there. And then some of them think that's weird enough that it's actually funny. Just be like, hey, hey, bro.

That would be so awkward. Bro, bro, listen, listen, listen, listen. I saw you over there doing those lunges. I got to say you are caked up. Do you want to hit a lift together at some point? Maybe, you know, get some coffee later? I mean, that ass is looking good. Yo, I want to ask like yours, bro. out just this simple simple easy yeah i think uh i

think you can kind of naturally make friends in the gym fairly easy like if you see if you do see somebody that has a physique where you're like shit that guy looks or they're doing something that you feel is kind of impressive they're doing doing a lift, a certain amount of weight. And you're like, man, that's kind of cool. I'd love to learn that. Most of the time, not all the time, but most of the time, if you go up to someone and say, hey, man, could you show me how you're doing that? I mean, you want to be maybe cautious on how you word stuff

so they don't seem so weird. Like, hey, I noticed your hamstrings from across the way and they are unbelievable. That's weird. How'd you get that three-dimensional look and that tie in it? Does it go all the way up? Can I see it? Yeah, show me what it looks like.

But I think in general, I think, you know, it's not hard to kind of make a friend by just, you know, watching what some other people are doing and um you know maybe just asking you can work in on certain things and stuff like that yeah one thing that i did when i was lifting at at crunch down the street from my house um you know i'm on the cable machine headphones on just trying to get in and out for my you know get my workout done and i seen this this dude he was like pulling i think 405 like with four or five, like with ease. And I was just like, dude, that's impressive. And like, after he was done, same thing, headphones on and whatnot, you know, just fist bump, boom, that was it. And then next time he was doing something else. And I'm just like, dude, like what's your body weight? Cause

you're strong as fuck. Like, you know, just being like extra, like, uh, complimentary, complimentary. And every time we saw each other other it was just like a fist bump and then like you know just a little nice little bromance for a little bit yeah you're like 220 that's great i could pick that up want to see never mind you want to see give him a smack on the butt yeah maybe next time huh yeah but then like and then other times you go for like a pr and i try to hype him up too you know like just like I do here in the gym. Like I just walked over and was just like, come on, like, let's go. And then he appreciated it.

And it was just cool. Yeah. And like, again, almost everybody has an Instagram. And this is one of those things where it's like, if you see somebody that you want to get a workout in with at some point, you're like, dude, you're impressive. Just be like, hey, man, dude, you're impressive. I want to learn more or something. Or just literally you could just ask them for their Instagram, ask them a question and then say, Hey, got an Instagram, follow them. Right.

And then people like you can plan a workout later, but Hey, that's how you, that's how you talk to the bros. That's how you kind of, you know, you know, slay some bros. And the better shape that you get in, the more likely people are to come to you. Yeah, that's true. Absolutely. All right. You guys want to take one more likely people are to come to you. Yeah. That's true. Absolutely. All right. You guys want to take one more or you want to give away this stuff?

Sure. We'll take one more. All right. Who's the last contestant? Good one. There's a lot of good ones. Let me find them. All right.

Let's see. I like this purple hue we got going on in there. Yeah. I dig it, man. Or reddish or whatever. It's like pinkish. Andrew's spent a lot of money on this setup. Oh, this is going to be fun.

Chicken in a Sweater asks, I find it really hard to move past 185 pounds and I've hit a body weight plateau. Whenever I get any heavier, it usually negatively impacts me for the last year. Should it just be a time thing? I can't read. Okay, yeah.

So he wants to get past 185, but every time he does, he doesn't really feel good. Yeah. Maybe, yeah. Okay. That's tough to fluff up, right? It's tough to just gain weight and kind of commit to it. I think it's a long-term commitment, probably a lot longer commitment than people want to kind of recognize.

But what I've noticed for myself in losing a lot of weight over the years is that it was always, I'd always lose weight in stages. And that's been the most helpful thing to me. So I think, you know, maybe you can hit the gas pedal and maybe you can gain a little bit of weight. You can say, you know, I want to eat. I want to gain three pounds, you know, and so you work on gaining a couple pounds and it's like legit three pounds. It's not like you just happen to like drink a half gallon of water and you're three pounds heavier.

You actually consistently are weighing three pounds more. Well, then you can kind of just go back to maybe normal eating and things like that. And then you can kind of do it again. You can do it again. But I would imagine that these things, they're probably going to take a while, probably take a long time. And it might take it might take a year or two to really gain the weight that you're looking for in the way that you're looking to do it. Because you don't want to just be adding a bunch of fat. Yeah.

So like we were kind of going back and forth in the chat because what's happening is he'll get up to like around 190. And then just like a lot of us, you know, we kind of get tired of the eating. I'm speaking for him now, but he'll drop back down to like around 175 and then work his way back up. So what I was explaining to him is what like I learned from Stan, which is like, you got to own that weight. So like how long can you maintain 185 pounds? Right.

Can you do it for a whole year? Well, now that becomes your set point. The set point right now is probably somewhere in the one seventies, kind of like where mine is potentially. If I don't eat, if I, if I miss meals,

if I don't like train, if I don't move and if I just basically sit if I don't train, if I don't move, and if I just basically sit still, I'll naturally drop down to 172. It's been a while since I've done that, but that's what will happen. If I maintain everything and I can hang on to it, lately, it's been 182. And I've been weighing that for a little bit over a year now. So that's now the new set point. So if I eat a little bit more i can plump up to 184 and hang out there so yeah the set point in this owning a certain weight plump up yeah plump it does get a little soft everywhere so you know like that word like andrew said take that

shit slow um own that weight and when you feel like you want to eat more try to just eat way more protein. Do that. And I think that'll be beneficial because what's happening, if you're gaining a bunch of weight really fast, that means that you're probably overeating your fats and carbs. And then you gain a lot of body fat and then you don't feel good. So then you cut down, then you feel small. So you gain again, get to that 185 point that you feel pretty good at, and then start eating extra protein, maybe a little bit more carbs, but start eating extra protein and focus on, instead of focusing

on the scale and the way you look, focus on your performance. Make sure that your gym workouts feel great because especially if you're eating more food, those workouts, you should feel like Superman. Like your joints should feel good. Your body should feel good. Focus on performance. If you start to feel performance drop off, pay attention to your food, sleep, et cetera, but make sure that everything you're doing is making your performance feel better. And you're hitting PRS because if you're doing that and you're slowly increasing volume, you're going to be gaining some good quality muscle tissue. Maybe keep up on some walks, really easy way to just kind of burn some calories and stuff like that too while you're trying to gain.

I know Stan has used that with Hapthor Bjornsson and Brian Shaw and a bunch of other people. Yep, yep. Now, guys, anything else you want to add to that or is that good? I think we're good. Okay, so right now in the giveaway, I want to mention if you need to be part of the Discord, the link to join the Discord is in our description. So click the link, join the Discord is in our description. So click the link, join the Discord. Because if you win, right, we're giving away, EMR Tech is giving away a red light therapy device. Yeah, I think they're giving away one of their biggies, one of their Inferno Pros.

What? Not the $25,000 device. Oh my God. No, no, but one of their Inferno Pros. Yeah. That's great. I still don't have mine. But.

I want one. EMR Tech, we're giving away your supply of hostage tape. We're giving away a year's supply of hostage tape. We're giving away some Vivo Barefoot Shoes. Some supplements from within you. And Joy Mode. Doi-oi-oi-oi-oi-oi. You want better boners? Have some citrulline malate.

No, no. And the cool thing is that with everything in Joy Mode, it's literally all natural. There's L-citrulline, vitamin C, arginine, Penex, ginseng root. Like, these things are just going to enhance your ability to produce nitric oxide and have a harder dick and it's not gonna you're not gonna have any side effects because it's natural shit we'll show you next time yeah oh we'll put it on camera we'll all put them on camera so you can see we'll blur it out so youtube won't ban us for that but listen join the discord because last time in our last giveaway i I dropped the ball. I lost the list of people that won. So you're not getting your shit.

But right now you're going to get your shit. It all got sent to your house. Yeah, yeah. Join the Discord. If you win, message me on Discord. Send me your email address, your physical address, and your full name.

That's all we'll need. Okay? Okay. Okay. I won't lose this list, guys. You'll have to give it straight to Eric. Oh, yeah. Don't worry. I'll take a picture of it. I won't lose this list guys so you'll have to give it straight to eric oh yeah don't worry i'll take a picture of it i won't lose it mark here's our first winner what are they winning first what are they winning if it's gunpowder tea i can't yeah just within you brand all right first winner is going to win a gift card to Within You brand. Jonas Dahl.

All right. Let me write this down first. Jonas Dahl. Jiu-Jitsu question. Make sure you join the Discord. Message me. Email address, physical address, and your full name. Within You.

Get that steak shake. James Gallegos. You're going to win a year's supply of hostage tape. Hey, now. James Gallegos. Yeah, tape that mouth shut. One year hostage. Once again, Discord, message me.

I'm Trencima on Discord. You know what I noticed is that the tape from hostage tape, the thing that's for your nose you know strips yeah i actually if i get like a little too furry here i actually use the nose strip on my mouth it works great because it's a lot smaller so do you do you take do you do it this way or do you do it this way this way just gets the lips only yeah it's like right there interesting got to try that out. Yeah, it worked pretty good. Okay. That's a cool hack. All right. This next winner is going to win.

Well, it can't be a female. So joy mode. And if you're a woman, then it'll be chicken in the shower. Maybe it's helpful for women too because it does help blood flow. And when having...

Just send it to your boyfriend or husband. Or boyfriend and husband. Chicken in the shower. We're going to send you some Joy Mode. Nice. Chicken in the shower. Chicken in a shower. Choking the chicken in the shower.

Also, people, please make sure that you message me your username that you have here on YouTube so that we know you won. All right, Joy Mode. This next winner is going to win that panel from EMR Tech. Oh, it's got powder tea. I fucking swear. It's Andrew's. Dom Sornberger. Oh, shit.

Dom Sornberger. That name makes me hungry. Yeah. Now, Dom, you got to be a little bit patient with this device because let's just say it takes a little bit of a while to ship. So Dom Soreberger, you're going to win a red light device from EMR Tech.

Congratulations, dude, because those shits are expensive. And this last winner is going to win a pair of shoes from Vivo Veriput shoes. We're going to have to start

giving out some penis pumps every once in a while. I think people would be really excited. With the joy mode maybe together. Oh my goodness. That's actually a great idea.

A combo. Who is the person you just put back in there? I have no idea. Hayden Pratt. Hayden Pratt. Nice. Congratulations. You're going to win a pair of Vivo Barefoot shoes. Again, everybody, if you won, you got to be part of the Discord. You got to message

me your physical address, your email address, and your full name. Okay? Vivo Hayden Pratt. It's all written down, so you guys are going to get your shit. Again, from the last Q&A, you didn't get your shit. Sorry. That's how it goes sometimes. Shit be like that sometimes.

I'm excited to go see Dune 2. Me too. I'm going to try to go maybe like today or tomorrow or something. I have to wait for my girl to come back, so I'm excited to go see Dune 2 I'm going to try to go maybe like today or tomorrow I had to wait for my girl to come back so I'm excited to see that movie I gotta wait for my son to get older he just can't go to a theater he counted to 10 today

all by himself dude's a savage I think he's the smartest kid in the world dude I remember I remember telling a kid one time he counted like 19 this is like somebody else a friend's kid and i go what about 20 i should have seen his face he was like what's 20 i was like dude there's 21 there's 22 like he just looked at me like what the hell are you talking about evil sorcerer you. You ever heard of a million? I have that in dollars. And then just

walk out of the room. Explode his brain. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.