Mark Bell's Power Project - How To Gain Strength & Endurance: Use These Training Tips!

Episode Date: November 2, 2025

On this episode of Mark Bell’s Power Project Podcast, hosts Mark Bell and Nsima Inyang talk with former NFL coach and nutrition expert John Heck. They share simple but powerful training tips for building grip strength, improving conditioning with loaded carries, and using fat bars for safer pressing. John also details how he programs nutrition and recovery for some of the world's strongest athletes, showing you how to get stronger and last longer.Special perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 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!🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!➢ 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/markbellspowerprojectFOLLOW Mark Bell➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybellFollow Nsima Inyang➢ Ropes and equipment : https://thestrongerhuman.store➢ Community & Courses: https://www.skool.com/thestrongerhuman➢ YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=enFollow Andrew Zaragoza➢ Podcast Courses and Free Guides: https://pursuepodcasting.com/iamandrewz➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz/

What do you think for you are practices that you use for benefiting rotation? I've been doing a lot more heavy loaded rotation work, heavy cable rotation work where I'm using the entire stack. And then I'll do dynamic rotation with the med ball throws. You see a lot of guys, they're hurt or they're just burnt out. I think you can trace a lot of that back to poor fitness and a lack of conditioning. You can really utilize a lot of the strongman specific work in a conditioning format, like the loaded kick. carries. You can do that with a sandbag. Carry for 50 feet, 15 rounds every minute on the minute. Now you're working with some of these high-level strongman athletes. How are you programming their

nutrition with their training? We'll utilize a lot of intra-workout nutrition because of those longer duration sessions, multiple shakes, utilizing coconut water, highly branched cyclic dextrin, aminos, electrolytes, creatine. There is no better performance in the answer, optimizing fluid and electrolyte, especially around training. So what's been going on, dude? Well, I guess a lot. So I was here, what, back in February? So it's been a few months in my first year of business, hammer and chisel performance. So I think we talked about it a little bit when I was on last, you know, made the move away from football. So this is my first football season, not on a strength of conditioning staff. That's got to free up some time. Yeah, a little bit. But you know what? I'm busy. Honestly, I'm busier than ever. The difference is I just set my own schedule. but it's different right you know when you're working in football or really any traditional job you've got a schedule set for you and when the day is done you get to kind of turn off works done for the day whereas now working for myself there's no one setting a schedule for me it's all on me so I've had to figure out how to turn off you know be like at home on the couch and I'm just thinking should I be doing more do I need to be filming another video doing more marketing you know coming up with more ideas so that was something that I, you know, had to work through early on. But, you know, I've figured out some structure, got a good little schedule set and things have been awesome. You know, I got my

podcast going, YouTube channel, working with a lot of clients that I'm loving working with them at a coaching capacity. So it's been a fun year. Yeah, and he had a baby this year, too. Had a baby, yeah. Got a little nine-month-old guy at home. He's a little redhead. He's starting to, he was crawling around like a maniac starting to, like 70 or 80 pounds by now. You know what? He's like, he may have gotten his mom. genetics. He's in the, you know, kind of mid-range percentile for his head diameter is like 88th percentile. That's something you're proud of. So maybe he'll grow into his noggin, but height, height and weight-wise, he's kind of middle of the pack there. How about you when you were a baby,

though? Were you like a big baby or did you? Because you mentioned like, you grew, but you had to fill in. So right. I was a pretty big. I was 10 pounds. Okay. So pretty big. And then I was always a tall, tall pretty lanky kid and then you know i was six six 180 my my freshman year of high school um and then by the end of that by the end of high school i was you know grew an inch gained 90 pounds so and all that yeah and that led to some major issues i had stress fractures in my feet from you know filling out too quick and uh had to have you know major surgery my brother he had a crazy growth spurt too he was um junior year of high school he was six foot one 40 and then blew up to 6-8 out of nowhere and now he's playing offense to tackle for the Tampa

Bay Buccaneers. But he somehow like skipped the the tall awkward growth spurt fate. Like he just maintained his little guy athleticism as he got huge. Whereas me, I was, you know, the tall, gangly, uncoordinated kid. You weren't sure what to do with your giant feet. Yeah, exactly. I was growing half an inch every week. So I couldn't figure out and figure out my own body. damn i remember that shit hurts yeah yeah it was grown pains and then i you know the stress fractures my feet as i started getting heavier and just my i had to get my achilles tendons surgically lengthened because my what yeah my tibias were grown you know so long so fast the the soft tissue just couldn't keep up with it so i had these rigid tight achilles tendons and that's part

of why i got the stress fractures i just had such poor ankle mobility that i just couldn't absorbed force well and it's getting heavier all of a sudden, so. Quick question to interrupt you. Hit me. Was this three grams or three milligrams? Three milligrams. Why, you buzzing? I'm really buzzing.

That's why I took it out for a second. But, yeah, this is okay. Three milligrams. Milligrams. No, I'm on the baby dose. Now I'll. But you're six, six, two. See, see, this is hitting me.

You're six, six, three hundred. Six seven. I'm going to claim that extra inch. Yeah. I'm six two, right? Yeah. I think this is hitting me much more than it hits you, buddy. It probably is.

It really is. If you have a, if you, nicotine, that's great. Nicotine's a powerful drug, man. He's a big boy over here. Nicotine's a powerful drug. It is. Yeah. That was the goal.

You just wanted to come in and get us drugs. You want to fuck me up, man. You guys are the ones trying to put the crate them on me. No, we would never. So you're working with some high level strong man athletes and stuff like that now. And I know that you did a lot of strong man yourself. You were telling me the other day. you did some really impressive farmer carry i think you were telling me you did like 440

440 pounds per hand which that ain't no joke to be walking walking around with uh 800 pounds my hands still hurt from that from that training session years ago it is weird when you you know i'm nowhere near the weights you're at but when you just get near like a PR and you put the weight down your hands are like crinkled you're like what oh yeah like i'm peeling my fingers off of the handle i mean it's almost a pain tolerance exercise more than anything but yeah those super heavy pharma cares your hands are just destroyed that really hits your nervous system like nothing no else i think nothing yeah yeah there's a there's a strong link between grip and kind of neural readiness in fact like you'll see uh grip testing

sometimes being used as a readiness test like you'll you know you'll sometimes see programs have the athletes squeeze a grip dynamometer and then right you know if there there's a drop off in grip strength and maybe an indication of, you know, neural fatigue. Whereas if you pop off a good number, okay, you're primed, you're ready to go. Okay. That makes you want to ask, because I don't believe that your hands are purely genetic. I think that you've also put a lot of work into those things, those fucking paws. So I know, you know, a lot of people, we, I do a lot of stuff for hands and grip because of my martial art, right? Please give him a compliment on his wrists and hands. You could if you don't have. Those are some thick wrists.

Thank you. Oh, there you go. Okay, well, I think we could stop the podcast. Let's just end right there, take that clip and ask the clip from this podcast. But what are things that you think athletes can do to strengthen their hands, strengthen their grip for different types of sport? What would you suggest? For sure.

I think grip is an underrated trait for sure. I mean, you can go to as simple and fundamental as just doing like a pull-up bar hang. I mean, that's a good place to start, especially if you can do it. you know from ropes or towels like if you do a dead hang off the ropes or the towels it's a it's a really good way to build up that grip strength and then it's also if you apply it in a you know an athletic setting can make it competitive and we'd do that you know i was at troy university we'd have guys do a a grip hang off so we'd have them face to face hanging from the the towels or the ropes who's the who's going to give up first and we'd also do it in place holding uh farmer handles you know you're

foot away from your opponent, staring them in the eye, just holding under the grip. But yeah, I'm doing dead hangs. I think doing just loaded carry works, you know, whether it's a dumbbell, kettle bell, you know, trap bar, you know, actual farmer handles incorporating carrying. It's going to be great for grip. And you can apply it for work capacity, conditioning, you know, general strength type stuff. And then also, you know, doing just your rows and your pull downs, you know, doing it without straps, things like that.

But I think if you take a well-rounded, diverse approach, you know, hang, carry, row, pull, all that sort of stuff. Do you mess with a lot of, because I think you mentioned, did you mention any fat grip stuff with any of the stuff you were doing? Yeah, so I, I, what do you think about fat grip stuff? So I really love using an axle bar or a fat bar. And honestly, it's not even necessarily so much for the grip component. Like, I love pressing and having athletes press with a fat bar because it's just a wider

diameter so it distributes the weight across a wider surface area of your palm. You can grip it with a more. It feels different on your elbows. It does. So it just loads the tendons in connective tissue in the wrist, elbow and shoulder kind of more evenly versus if you're, you know, bearing down on a small diameter barbell, everything's kind of clenched up. So, you know, we'd have our linemen pressing on fat bars in season and it alleviates a lot

of those shoulder, elbow, bicept tendon, wear and tear. Donnie Thompson was actually the one who put that on my radar getting into fat bar pressing. So, yeah, overhead, bench. Donnie loves fat everything. He's got the fat pad. He's got it. The fatterpillar. Yeah, he's really coined the fat prefects.

How much is Donnie Thompson way now? Oh, he's in good shape nowadays. I think he's probably like 250, 260. Yeah, he's been on a big weight loss journey. He's a lot healthier. It's not on brand though. Yeah, he's not like 400 at some point. That is a major rebrand.

for him, isn't it? Do you think people need to be careful with, like, kind of the programming of the grip because it does seem to be tied to the nervous system? Yeah, I think you can probably, you can probably overtrain it. I don't know that I've seen it too often where I can say, oh, man, this guy is overtrained due to too much grip work. But, I mean, just like anything, if you, you know, at the end of the day, you're training tissue and you're training muscle, whether you're training your abs, your calves, your grip.

I mean, you certainly can overtrain it. So, you know, it's probably not something I would do daily. I'd program it in the same way. I might program, you know, any other muscle group. Yeah, if you do something really heavy on one day and your grip feels fatigued, maybe wait a couple days and then train it again. But the thing is, like, you know, depending on what type of grip training you're doing, like let's say you're doing heavy, you know, farmer hold type grip work.

Well, maybe it's not just taxing your grip, right? It's just picking up the crazy weight in general. And that's going to be fatiguing in its own way. But, I mean, like in athletic settings, I think grip's probably undertrained. So I can't really say I see much overtraining of the grip there. But in Strongman, stuff like that, yeah, probably. But it's probably coming from the heavy weights in general. So now you're working with some of these high-level strong-man athletes.

Highest level. You're helping them with their nutrition. How did this kind of come to be? Because I know you've been helping a lot of people in nutrition for many years now. Yeah. And I know that you have, you know, specific ways that you're doing all that. But how did it come to be? Yeah.

So I made some just connections in the strongman world here in this past year. Our mutual friend, Joe Ken, of course, he's gotten a lot more. Big house. He's gotten into coaching and strongman. And then a guy named Chad Coy, he's a coach who works with just a ton of strongman competitors very well connected. And I started working with Chad. as a nutrition client. And Chad was a client of houses for training. And then I, you know,

I did good work for Chad. And he's like, hey, would you, you know, work with some of my guys? And he referred a few competitors my way and, you know, did a good job for them. And then they started kind of telling their buddies about me and then started marketing a little bit on Instagram. You know, hey, you know, here's some of my nutrition clients and my strongman guys. And some of them started doing well. And then, you know, next thing I know, had a few top guys reach out to me. And then a few of them did really well at the Strongest Man on Earth competition out in Denver. And then, you know, things kind of took off from there. This guy's pressing 420 pounds over his head for a set of eight.

Yeah, that's, that's Lucas Hatton. He's a new nutrition client in mine. Fake plates. Really fired up to work with him. I mean, he's just an absolute monster. And he's got a shot to be one of the best American strong. man. Is he the guy that you said broke the all-time record for log press? The American record, yeah. Wow.

He just broke that at Strongest Man on Earth, where he took second. He must have hit close to 500 pounds? Yeah, it was over 500. He hit 490 and then came back, and I don't want to butcher the number, but yeah, he's got a 500-plus pounds. Does Sidrunas-Vicciss still have the record? If I'm not, if I'm not mistaken, I believe Big Z still holds it. Like, yeah, the overall record, not just the American record, yeah.

Don't quote me on that, but I believe it's Big Z. Like 512 or something. Yeah. Yeah, he was unbelievable. Yeah, log clean and press, like, it's one of the most just, it taxes you head to toe. I mean, it's essentially like a deadlift, a front squat into an overhead press. And, I mean, you just have that weight bearing down on you. It's just suffocating you.

Like, if there was one lift. You can't breathe. No, especially. especially if it's a max rep log clean and press. You cannot breathe. I've blacked out many times training a max rep log clean and press. And I really sucked at the overhead stuff. What are things that you're working on with,

by the way, Iron Bibby apparently has that record at 509. Oh, that's right. That's right. This isn't my knowledge, guys. This is me looking it up on the internet. Yeah, no, Iron Baby did end up breaking that record. That's why I was tentative about claiming it was Big Z. But yeah, it's, yeah, he's a monster too.

When you're working on nutrition with these guys, what are you working on? Because, I mean, these guys, right, like you kind of think, oh, strong man powerlifting, just eat some Snickers bars. Right. You know, add some Snickers bars to your diet. Yeah, that's the old school approach. Well, I mean, just like with anything, I'm going to look at them on kind of a individual needs basis.

And the first thing we're going to look at is, okay, what phase of the year are you in, right? Are you in a competition prep? If you've got a competition coming up in eight weeks, now. was not the time to try to lose a bunch of body fat, right? Or are we in an offseason mode? And if we are in an off season mode, are you a guy who could probably benefit from losing some body fat? And for most of these super heavyweight strongman competitors, they would benefit from losing some body fat. So a lot of these guys, once we get out of competition season, we're going to try to pull some body fat off of them. And that doesn't mean we're going to diet them down to be

bodybuilders. We're not going to have them lose 100 pounds. But if we can pull off 20 pounds of body fat, that is going to allow them to then gain more muscle. It's going to allow them to improve their insulin sensitivity, their nutrient partitioning, their recovery, a number of health metrics. And, you know, you take the 380 pound strongman competitor, you dyed him down to, you know, 350, suddenly he's moving a lot better. He's got a much higher work capacity in training. And you give them some, you allow them to, you allow them to. to tap into some traits that allow them to get stronger, right? Being big, mass moves, mass, it has its place. Like, it might benefit a heavy log, clean, and press, but you have to be so

well-rounded and strong men. You're an athlete. You have to be able to move. You have to be able to do max reps in 60 seconds. You have to have a very good base of conditioning. A lot of these big events, they're two-day shows, or you'll do four events, go to bed, wake up the next day. You've got four more events and you'll see the guys who are in really good shape and have a really good base of fitness are guys who can make it through all eight events and sustain their ability and strength through the entire show and getting leaner in the offseason can be a big way to help to set the stage for that you know so question for you yeah um the okay so you work with Lucas Hatton you work with a bunch of others too um obviously Mitchie Hooper we've seen

he had an endurance background and he's still doing very well well. But have you noticed that some of these guys, actually my question is, do any of these guys have an endurance background before they came to Strongman, like a sport background? Well, Mitchell Hooper, you know, he is the prime example. I mean, he was literally a distance runner before coming over to Strongman. Now, I can't think of another guy who comes from a true endurance background, but a bunch of them did play football, you know, did play other sports. I mean, they're just huge monster human beings. But, no, Mitch Hooper, he's kind of a, he's a rare creature.

He's a rare specimen. He's got a very diverse range of physical ability. And I think that's what's allowed him to be so successful is he's so well-rounded. And that's kind of the name of the game in Strongman is being a well-rounded athlete. Because then my one, my curiosity is for, like, for you, if you run into a Strongman athlete that seems to have less than par work capacity, because obviously Mitchell has great work capacity, I'm assuming Lucas probably has a great work capacity. too. But there are some guys that I would assume, maybe not at the very top, but they're

very big, very strong, but their work capacity is fairly low. How would you adjust things for that athlete to improve that? Yeah. So, you know, and you look at what Joe Ken, who's, we just talked about him, he's doing a lot of coaching a strongman now. He has taken a lot of his training concepts from NFL football, and he's applying it to strongman. And a huge part of that is conditioning. Yeah. Right. So Joe Ken, by the way, has written books about this.

He has like a tier system. Yep. That's very specific. So anybody wants to look up some of his work. You should check it out. Big House on Instagram. Big House power, I think, on Instagram, right? Yeah.

But, no, you can really utilize a lot of the strongman specific work in a conditioning format, like the loaded carries, you know, and I've taken a lot of this stuff from Joe Ken doing things like, you know, Yoke carry for 50 feet, 15 rounds every minute on the minute. You can do that with a sandbag carry. 15 rounds. That's a lot of work. Yeah. And you don't necessarily start there. You might start in 10 rounds and week two bump to 12 rounds. But doing a lot of short duration interval type training and then also incorporating just some general, you know, good old aerobic work, right? Getting on the bike, walking, things like that. But for a lot of these guys, really hammering conditioning,

I think is going to go a long way for that. I mean, you just need like a tremendous work capacity to get through these workouts and to be able to recover from these workouts. Yeah, just having that work capacity, that base of fitness, it's going to allow you to effectively train and recover from that training and then be ready to train again the next day, right? Because Strongman is so physically taxing, right? And there's just so many different types of events you've got to be good at.

And the guys who are in really good shape and have a good. good base of fitness, you see them having a lot more success. And then like I was saying, on competition weekend itself, you have eight events over two days. The guys who are in shape are going to make it through that, whereas you see a lot of guys, they're hurt or they're just burnt out by the end of day one. I think you can trace a lot of that back to poor fitness and a lack of conditioning. Not always, but I think that's a big culprit sometimes. So a question that aligns of this is I know that there's some, if there's a strong strongmen that are listening, there's some people who are thinking, well, you know what,

I could probably just take, there's certain PEDs that are allowing these guys to do that. That's why they have that work capacity. That's why they can train day after day. And some people don't really pay attention to the training aspect that can, that is a bigger deal more than one would think the drugs are. So for someone who's thinking that, why is that thinking potentially flawed? Yeah, for sure. I mean, I guess with this kind of boom of the mitochondrial peptides and things like that,

you probably do have people thinking, oh, and there's a lot. a shortcut I can take to there's a peptide for that right I mean a big part of it's like the grit and mental toughness side of things I mean if you're doing like a max log clean and press for reps in 60 seconds or you're doing a van where you got to carry a yoke and sprint do a arm over arm truck pull like there is a gritty mental component to that that just training to push through that adversity I mean that's a huge part of it that you'll never be able to replicate with with any sort of drug So, no, I would, I don't see any of these peptides of, you know, maybe they can augment some of this stuff. But no, it's not going to, none of these things are going to drive truly that aerobic capacity and the mental side of things.

And like I said, I think that's a big part of it, just the mental endurance going through the pain of it. I'll interrupt here for just a second. And one thing that I've seen, and it's kind of hard to necessarily judge because a lot of times these athletes are bigger athletes. But when I compare powerlifters that are in non-tested federations versus powerlifters that are in tested federations, what I see sometimes is that the guys that are using, the guys that are on performance enhancing drugs, they seem to sometimes almost have, they seem like they actually need more recovery sometimes. Whereas you look at the IPF in USAPL or if they even call it that anymore. Powerlifting America. There you go.

Powerlifting America. If you look at the Federation that is drug tested, a lot of those athletes tend to train the bench squat and deadlift actually with more frequency. Frequently. Yeah. And sometimes, again, it's the smaller weight classes too. So sometimes hard to judge. And sometimes it's the female athletes.

But in short, the reason why a female athlete will recover faster than a male athlete is because a male athlete oftentimes can just, boom, just put it all on the line and recruit a lot of motor units. And I think the same thing is true when somebody is using PEDs, they can put so much into a training session that they can like blow it all out, basically. And maybe they can only deadlift like every other week. Yeah. So I'm not saying it doesn't aid in recovery. That's not, that's not my message here at all. Obviously, it does aid in recovery. But when you're able to move more weight because you're on more stuff, it's like you're causing more damage and you're having more interior drives well said yeah i mean when you're when you're juiced up i mean

you're a race car and i mean when you're driving a race car fast like you got to be careful like you can easily blow that thing out so it's true when you've gained super physiological levels of strength and neural efficiency and suddenly you're handling loads that you otherwise would not have been able to i mean it is going to take more to recover from that in a lot of ways and yeah you know, the anabolics do help with recovery in a sense, but to your point in a lot of ways, there's components of the system that are probably under recovering, that the antibiotics are not accelerating any sort of recovery there. And the ability that they're giving you is incurring a bigger recovery deficit compared to, you know, the natural guys who they're not handling super

physiological levels of strength. And then also because they're not able to get the same level of just tissue adaptation and neural efficiency from a drug, they've really got to lean more on movement practice and the specificity to help gain some of that strength. Ryan, see if you can find some clips of Eddie Hall where he was like just violently deadlifting and he wasn't even like, he wouldn't even pick the weight up much over his knees from what I can remember. Yeah. But he had that, you know, he had that technique very specifically so he could recover.

cover. So he would just like bend down and just take 700 and just smash the shit out of it. Lifted as fast as he possibly could, but he wouldn't lift it very high. It was just like a partial movement. And he had that practice for a long time kind of before he started getting into the 900,000 and 1100 pound deadlifts. Kind of for the reason we're talking about here, this guy can recruit motor units, muscle fibers in ways that pretty much the world has never seen before when he did that 1100 pound deadlift. Yeah, for sure. And like, the stronger and more advanced you get, just the more taxing these weights are. And it's, you know, people might think, oh, it's relative, you know, 90%, it's 90%.

Well, it's like if you're 90% is 900 pounds, just the way that that is going to tax your skeletal system, the soft tissue tax you nerily is very different than if your 90% is 405. Right. when you're pushing the boundaries of human capabilities to the very edge, yeah, you're going to be taxing the system a whole lot more and need a whole lot more recovery time. And it's not even just, you know, the non-tested guys, like even Ray Williams, you know, one of the greatest squatters of all time, drug-free, you know, he would squat every other week, right, you know, because, you know, he'd be squatting 800, 900,000 pounds.

you need two weeks to recover from that before you could train loads anywhere near that. Yeah, it takes a lot to recover from these big-ass lifts. How are you programming their nutrition with their training? Are you get, because you're not necessarily doing a lot of their training for these high-level guys because they already have a coach or they already have their own ideas on exactly what they're going to be doing training-wise because I know that you like to be cyclical with your carbohydrate intake and stuff like that. So, yeah, like, do you match it up on an event day, or is that, was that where you throw the

thousand grams of carbs at these athletes on those long-ass days? Yeah, so I'll coordinate with their coach. I'll get, you know, get their training schedule. So I'm very aware of what the demands of the week are. And I'll try to get them carved up. Usually they're big event days, which in Strongman, a big event day usually lasts two to three hours. So it's a long duration.

It's a big day. If they're training in the morning, we'll load them up the day before. If they're training in the evening, we'll usually load them up day of. You know, the first three meals going high carb. But yeah, when I know there's that big event day coming, we'll do a carb load. Like I said, either the day before or the day of leading into it, depending on when it is. And then we'll utilize a lot of intra-workout nutrition because of those longer duration sessions. So we'll use a lot of intra-workout carbohydrates.

I'll have them make, you know, multiple shakes, utilizing coconut water, highly branched cyclic dextrin, aminos, electrolytes, creatine. And then a big underrated variable is the hydration part. You know, when you're that big, the electrolyte intake required, the fluid intake required is huge. And most people skimp on that. Like everyone knows, like, oh, yeah, I need to hydrate. I need to get my electrolyte intake.

Very few people actually follow through with that. Well, strongest man, by the way, sometimes is here in Sacramento. know, one of the hottest places in the United States, and it's in the summertime. Yeah, most people in general drastically under-consumed potassium, right? So that's why I really like using coconut water. It's a very rich source of potassium. And when you're, when you've really optimized your sodium, potassium, magnesium, and fluid intake, there is no better of an acute performance enhancer than really optimizing fluid

an intellectual intake, especially around training. Now, now you're also, you know, we were talking with you earlier because you have that long background of being a strength conditioning coach. And, you know, when it comes to athletes and stuff, you know, we're always fascinated to ask you because you've been around so many high-level athletes. And you were a high-level, you are a high-level athlete. Yeah, yourself playing for North Carolina. I mean, just like how much does a weight room, you know, there's always all this controversy

and it's really hard to tell how much the weight room helps and if it does help what do you think are the main contributing factors that could be helping an athlete from stuff that they would traditionally get from the weight room

oh this might be him ripping the weights off the ground right here Eddie Hall deadlift it's impressive to watch him just yeah you just go right shortens the range of motion another cool thing by the way before you mentioned that John about Eddie

is just like Eddie was also somebody who came from a competitive swimming background that's right you did have a swimming background and it's something that like he i mean something he would use as like a recovery thing when it came to his training you know what i mean so it's one of those just another one of those things that you can pull at that won't destroy your body and especially since he has a high skill but can still allow him to work on his cardio the cardiovascular end and the work capacity end of what like his heart yeah and he was in he was in really good shape i mean you look at some of his

training he would do similar to like you know the matt wenning warmups where it's like super high rep dumbbell work. Like Eddie would do, he would pre-fatig with super high rep short rest dumbbell work before he'd even get into his heavy barbell or event training. So I mean, he was in really good shape. I think that's a good point with his swimming background.

So just another example of a guy who's well-rounded as an athlete, a great base of fitness. And of course, he goes on to be one of the strongest men to ever walk the earth. But Mark, getting back to your question, And, you know, when I got into strength and conditioning in football, you know, I was a programming nerd and training was my love. And I wanted so bad for the weight room to be this huge impact on the football team. I wanted the program and the coaching of the movement, the squatting, the cleans.

I wanted that to be like the thing that that really took these guys next level. And I quickly realized in the college setting, it was a lot less that, you know, these, genetically gifted kids. If they sniff a barbell, they're going to get bigger, faster, stronger, you know, just don't break them. But the biggest impact we could have in the college setting were all the intangible factors. The, you know, the guy I worked for most recently, Daryl Bauer, he had this analogy, he would say the strength coach, and really any coach has two swords. And he'd compare it to the samurai. The samurai would have the long sword, which is kind of for defense, and they'd have the kill sword, the shorter.

sharper sword. And the comparison he would make was the coach's two swords. One is the art of coaching and one is the science of coaching. The science, that's the X's and O's. That's the program. That's the movement quality. That's the sport science. But then the art of coaching, that's your ability to communicate, your ability to push guys, your ability to develop buy-in to instill the grit, the culture, the discipline, all those things. So, you know, I walked away from football, realizing that the art of coaching, all those intangible factors, have a way bigger benefit or a way bigger impact on the team, just teaching these guys to push themselves past boundaries that they thought possible, the team building component. Like I said, instilling that

grit, that toughness, that culture, making the guys coachable, bringing the guys together, mentoring them. You know, that's really where it was at. And then, you know, going to the NFL level, you start to realize even how less of an impact, I think the weight room often has in terms of getting guys purely just bigger and stronger. You know, when you get to the really elite level of sports, you know, these are guys who they probably don't need to get bigger. They probably don't need to get stronger. You know, at that point, we're really, oftentimes we're using the weight room to make them more durable, you know, more robust. We're getting their tissue prepared. to change directions and sprint and decelerate and things like that.

Yeah, so the more advanced the athlete, you know, talking field athletes, not strength athletes, of course, I think the weight room becomes a little bit more, a little bit more secondary. And I think earlier on in your development as an athlete, the weight room is probably more important. And then as you get more and more and more advanced, it starts to take a little bit more of a backseat. And in a sport like football, I mean, you kind of just need to weigh a certain amount to play certain positions. And it's just helpful, you know, right? It's just helpful to like way

more. So I don't know if necessarily going into the weight room and, you know, getting a lot more hypertrophy is necessarily the best way to go about doing things. But again, you do have to have a certain amount of weight on you to have the durability. So if you're 185 pound running back and you're trying to be in the NFL and trying to last for a long time, I would imagine that you're going to have to probably lift some weights to at least hold on to some muscle. For sure. And I don't want to say it's unimportant in the sense that,

oh, these guys don't need to lift. What I'm saying is like, you've got an NFL running back. And I'm like, how can the weight room benefit this guy? It's not a, oh, we got to put 50 pounds on his squat, 50 pounds on his bench. He's going to be a better, you know, a better running back. But no, that means you'll have more power. Exactly. But no, to your point, but keeping him training.

That is going to be crucial to his longevity in his career. The guys who, you know, football season ends, then they just go to Cancun and they just, you know, pack it in for the off season, they barely train. Those are guys who get hurt the next season. Those are guys who fizzle out. So I think training and, you know, maintaining it in the off season is huge. I just think it's not so much a matter of just continuing to build, you know, traditional top end weight room strength. It is amazing how many athletes really don't train in terms of the weight room, sometimes until they're sort of forced to, until they get into a specific college program or until they're in the NFL

where you get paid, I guess, a little bit to even just to work out. That's something I also said to come to terms with getting into strength and conditioning was realizing, okay, these guys don't love the weight room the way I do. Like us strength coaches, we got into it because we love lifting, we love training. And then you realize, you know, a lot of the guys you're coaching, they're football players and or, you know, whatever sport you're coaching. And the weight room is secondary, right? It's, it's just something to help augment their sport. So finding ways to get guys bought in to the weight room, you know, goes a long way. And that's especially something we learned or I took away from the NFL is you've got these guys who, you know, maybe they're a 16 year NFL veteran. They're pushing 40. You know, they don't want to put a bar on their back. anymore. And, you know, maybe on paper there's a more optimal way we could train him in the weight room. But a lot of times it comes down to finding like, hey, what's a way we can train this guy where he's going to be invested? He's going to be bought in. He's going to apply a lot

of effort. And maybe on paper, it's not the best way to train per se. But if he's motivated, he's into it, he's training hard, we're going to get a lot more out of that guy compared to if we're, you know, forcing him to squad and clean and do all these, you know, traditional methods. that like I said on paper might look better but then he he's not bought into it he's in pain he's half-assing it and then you get nothing out of it and then maybe uh you give the guy options right you say okay well we're just trying to get after your legs for today what you know what what's one of these five things for sure you feel comfortable if you want to pull the sled you want to do lunges you want to use the belt squat right and you're still targeting the legs right yeah exactly

I mean at the end of the day they're not power lifters we don't need to specifically back squat we just got to find, you know, a way to, like you said, like you just said, train their legs. And, okay, let's give them a few options. And then you mentioned the pushing the sled and you see their eyes light up. You're like, boom, this guy's pushing the sled. And he's going to get a lot out of that session. And it's going to go a long way. And especially with the genetically elite guys, it's incredible what small doses of a stimulus can do, right?

All right, Mark, you're getting leaner and leaner, but you always enjoy the food you're eating. So how are you doing it? got a secret man it's called good life protein okay tell me about that i've been doing some good life protein you know we've been talking on the show for a really long time of certified pied montes beef and you can get that under the umbrella of good life proteins which also has chicken breast chicken thighs sausage shrimp scallops uh all kinds of different fish salmon tilapia uh the website has nearly any kind of meat that you can think of lamb is another one that comes of mind And so I've been utilizing and kind of using some different strategy kind of depending on the way that I'm eating.

So if I'm doing a keto diet, I'll eat more fat and that's where I might get the sausage and I might get their 80-20 grass-fed, grass finish ground beef. I might get bacon. And there's other days where I kind of do a little bit more bodybuilder style where the fat is, you know, might be like 40 grams or something like that. And then I'll have some of the leaner cuts of the certified Piedmontese beef. This is one of the reasons why like neither of us find it hard to stay in shape. because we're always enjoying the food we're eating and protein. You talk about protein leverage it all the time. It's satiating and helps you feel full.

I look forward to every meal and I can surf and turf, you know? I could cook up some, you know, chicken thighs or something like that and have some shrimp with it or I could have some steak. I would say, you know, the steak, it keeps going back and forth for me on my favorite, so it's hard for me to lock one down, but I really love the bovette steaks. Yeah. And then I also love the rib-eyes as well. You can't go wrong with the ribeye.

So, guys, if you guys want to get your hands on some really good meat, you can have to Good Life Proteins.com and use code power for 20% off any purchases made on the website. Or you can use code Power Project to get an extra 5% off if you subscribe and save to any meats that are a recurring purchase. This is the best meat in the world. Well, let me ask you this. Is there anything that you are taking or you, because you've done Strongman before? So is there anything from Strongman that, because you're taking a lot of stuff from NFL to Strongman, but is there anything that you take from Strongman to and you think NFL athletes would benefit

for? For sure, for sure. Not even just NFL athletes, people in general, because I think like Strongman is a unique sport where you see the monsters doing it. But a lot of the things the monsters are doing, you know, someone who's not a monster can also do a benefit from. Yeah, no, when I was in football strength of conditioning, I was trying to bring a lot of strongman stuff into what we were doing, you know, especially for the linemen. But I'll give a few

takeaways here. You know, one thing I really learned was the value of overhead pressing. You know, and you look around most weight rooms, most programs, and the flat bench press is so heavily prioritized. Yeah. And I've kind of been on a, I'm not, you know, an anti-bench press guy. Like, I love bench pressing. But I've sort of been on this crusade of like, why is the bench press, like, programmed, the priority upper body. lift in like every sports program. Be careful what you're saying right now, John. How much you bench?

Be careful, John. Yeah, well, I mean, you're going to hit the button. In my opinion, in my opinion, if you are not a power lifter, unless you just, you know, you love bench pressing. You want to put up a big lift for your own, you know, personal goals or whatever. Of all the pressing options out there, it's pretty low on my list in terms of the transfer.

I wonder why it is such a thing. I mean, I, maybe I helped with some of that, but I, I just like wonder why. You've made millions off of the bench. I know. I don't just leave it there, I guess. It's funny, but, like, I've tried to figure that out myself. Like, why? I guess training the chest is kind of, like, fun, I guess.

But here's my thing. Yeah, Arnold had, yeah. But then I'll, I'll counter people, be like, okay, well, what about incline bench? And then they're like, no, it's not the same. And, like, I think incline pressing is a, is a better hypertrophy option. Inclined bench, by far is better. It's just harder. Yeah, for sure.

So no one wants to, no one wants to mess with it. I think that's part of, it's a few things why everyone loves the bench press. It's just what they've always done. done, you know, everyone's dad and their grandfather was bench pressing. And that's kind of all people know. And it's all they train. And they're really weak on overhead and incline. And they naturally just want to stick with what they know. Usually if someone's good at incline, they're good at flat. But sometimes the reverse doesn't. I've always said that. I always said, that was my big takeaway from Strongman was I spent an entire year. I didn't bench press once.

No flat pressing. I exclusively was doing standing overhead press, push pressing, high incline pressing. built that up and then I did a strongman competition and then I had kind of an offseason a little transition I'm going to play around a flat bench again bench for three weeks smashed crushed my lifetime PR and I quickly realized oh wow building up my overhead press had huge carryover to the bench press but I think there's something to be said for you know learning how to generate force through your upper body while your feet are in the ground right while you're having to engage your core and something like a push press where you're having to derive power through your hips into your upper body.

You know, in my opinion, you know, those, and I never want to get too overly sports specific in the weight room. Like, oh, we're trying to replicate sports specific movement with lifting. But like the general quality of transferring power from your hips into your upper body, I think that is a general, very valuable trait for athletes, which is why I was such a big proponent of push pressing. And then, you know, with overhead press variations, you tend to see less, you know, bicep, tendon tweaks.

You're on bench press, you know, I'd see a million injuries pop up, shoulder impingements, peck tears, whereas overhead pressing tends to be safer and, you know, you don't even need a spotter for it. And it's going to transfer over to all the flatter angles of pressing. So learning the value of overhead pressing and the getting away from the bench press, that was one takeaway I had. But then just, you know, having to push, pull and carry and lift heavy, awkward implements we would apply that in a conditioning setting in football.

So we would have our linemen doing strong man style conditioning where they're pushing and then dragging a sled. They're doing heavy sandbag carry or in place, you know, sandbag over shoulder, incorporating farmer carry work or, you know, zurchers and things like that. You know, that's kind of the name of the game for playing on the line of scrimmage is you're just going against a 300 pound man who's trying to awkwardly push and pull and torque you. And it's just short burst play after play. So we'd kind of replicate that with Strongman implements. So that was a big takeaway. And then even throwing, you know, you'll see the power clean is kind of this just staple of many, many strength of conditioning programs. Whereas in Strongman, I really learned, man, there's a lot of value in just throwing the heavy sandbag.

Like doing max weight over a 15 foot bar. Great way for rate of force development, triple extension. And you can make it fun and competitive. There's a much lower learning curve. It's a lot easier to, you know, implement that for incoming freshmen than it is going through the rigors of teaching a power clean. You guys would throw like a single handle sandbag type thing? So you said over a 15 foot bar. Yeah.

So like in Strongman, you'll have like the rogue or the Cerberus sandbag and you grip the handle with two hands, almost like a kettlebell swing type motion, although you want to coach not coach it like a kettlebell swing. You want to get a little bit more a vertical, like a vertical jump. But, yeah, throwing the sandbag or, you know, they'll do a keg throw in Strongman. But I really love the sandbag throw. And we'd either do that with, we'd do it with a heavy med ball a lot in the football setting. That's just the equipment we had access to. But we'd have them throwing, you know, the heavy 30 pound med balls. We have, do we have quick access to what you throw on the med ball?

I've got a sandbag throw, or a heavy sandbag throw where I threw the 60-pounder over 15 foot on my Instagram. It might take a minute to find it, but yeah, see if you can find it. I just talk, Leo, we've been talking about a lot about sandbags on this channel recently. We had Ben Patrick come in. We did a whole video on that. But one of the cool things is that capacity of being able to throw something. If somebody has a sandbag at home, again, you don't have to be super heavy. You don't have to be super yacked or whatever.

But just that act of creating that force and throwing something hard and far, that's something you can easily maintain. You know what I mean? And the cool thing is that it doesn't stress, you don't feel a crazy amount of stress from that, and you're getting a lot of amazing power out there. Absolutely. And it's fun. And it's fun. Yeah.

Yeah. So I would, you know, for a lot of my strongman sessions, I'd come in, the first thing I'd do would be throwing the sandbag. Because like you said, it doesn't put a lot of wear and tear in you. You don't need to warm up for it. So I'd almost use it as a warm up and a primer. There you go. The video. No, that's the sandbag to shoulder.

I was about to say this man threw this. No. It's a more recent video. What's the best sandbag that you shoulder? What's that one way right there? That's a 275 bag. Nice. You're fucking cartoonishly huge, man.

That's brutal conditioning right there. Dude, honestly, you remember Game of Thrones? Yeah. Thor's the Mountain. Like, you need, you look. Right there with them. You need to get in some fucking movies as like a huge fuck. You know, I've had a few feelers put out as far as, you know,

maybe getting into Hollywood here do it here's my thing though here's my thing in Seema I don't want to be typecasters the dummy oh no you don't have to be typecast as the dummy but that that's all I would be that's all they would I would be the big dumb henchman I'd be the oh you know that guy whereas like if you're getting me into Hollywood I want lines hey look at what the rock did though look at what the rock just did the smash machine right for a while he's the rock but now he just did something dramatic give it time just get your fucking ass in there but if I establish myself in Hollywood as the big dumb henchmen, then I'm forever in that role. Well, the second that you pop up

on screen, everyone's like, he's dead. Right. Look at Tate Fletcher. He was just in the boys. Yeah. And he Tate has a great part in the boys this recent season, and he's doing a bunch of stuff in there. Right? So it's like, that guy's died a lot. He's died a lot, but he's not dying right now. That's right, man. He's staying alive a little longer. I wouldn't mind a good

honorable on screen death. I think it's where all large people have to start. We got to get, we got to be brought down. Hey, maybe you can star in my son's movies. Yeah. Yeah. He's been making some movies. I'm in. I'm in. If he gives me some a sophisticated role to play, I see. I'm in. You want to show everybody your intelligence and your heart. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, what are these skits about? You got some skits on your Instagram stuff. You like to mess around, have some fun. I've always had a little bit of a,

you know, creative flair to me. I've always really enjoyed writing content and, you know, bringing out some of the improv comedy stuff. So, you know, once I got away from football and the shackles were removed and I could start, you know, being me and say whatever I want to say. I started, you know, leaning into some of the more humorous content. And it's certainly, um, when it comes to getting engagement on Instagram, that stuff plays pretty well. Um, but yeah, you know, I've had a lot of fun doing some of the, uh, the skits and stuff on social media. Yeah, it's fun. There we go. That's the, uh, yeah, so this was a, uh, three sandbag run, 145 to 55 to 60 pounds.

I can just picture him throwing a kid that way. That's exactly what I just thought about. One of my skits that I posted was me holding my son and like I'm thinking about throwing him. Then it cuts to a shot and you're like a little handle on them. Your wife's like no. Dude, that is that is fucking ridiculous. How far. Where, like, is this like a place that you go to train or is it like your backyard?

What is this? This is Spider Strength Gym in downtown Raleigh. So that is a Strongman gym. That's sick. It kind of looks like you're throwing the bags over like a billboard. That's what I was, like randomly on the side of the street. Right. No, they, we've got some cool toys over at Spider Strength.

That's where I've done all my strong man training over the last few years. So really, really cool community and a lot of great equipment over there. I've never, I've never tried this in particular. It's fun. But as I'm watching it, I'm like, I would. hit the bottom of I'd hit the bottom rung of that spider maybe if I was lucky just that's just right now give you I know yeah get some work yeah give it some time all right mark mark I'll do you want to hit this strong around stuff more because there's something I want to shift

to yeah I want to know if you want okay so you know we were talking in the gym how back in you know there's been CrossFit right and CrossFit I think shows a really good a really good range of what athletes are trying to be able to do right so these guys can run they're doing a lot endurance stuff. And in the mid-2000s, like 2012, 2015, there was like hybrid athletes. And these would be athletes who do powerlifting and bodybuilding. And that was like, that was the hybrid, right? And now you're seeing a lot more athletes who are doing more athletic things.

So they're lifting, but maybe they're also doing an actual other sport, a field sport, doing some sprinting, right? Building a broad level of athleticism. And we were talking in the gym at like what capacities make, for a complete athleticism. Because a lot of people, and it's good to focus on strength and building that. But there's a lot more capacities

if you want to build a broad level of athleticism. So my question to you is, what do you think that kind of looks like? And of course, this will depend on somebody's specific sport or their specific goals. But what are some things that maybe people aren't thinking about as much when it comes to building that?

And then later on, I want us to talk about trying to maintain that as you continue to get older. Yeah, I think number one, building, and we've touched in this a couple times now, building a really good base of general fitness and aerobic capacity, I think if you have a good base of fitness, you can carry that into any specific endeavor you want, whether that's, you know, powerlifting and strongman, whether that's endurance training and high rock stuff. If you are in really good shape and just a fit human being, it is going to increase your ability to do anything and be really good at anything and it's going to help your recovery. I think another thing is just moving in different planes, and I'm just breaking this down to very basic, you know, general, general things. Moving in different planes, like you'll see like strength athletes, they're all up and down, forward, sagittal plane. Very rarely are they rotating? Are they moving laterally?

things like that so i think having a really good base of fitness conditioning aerobic capacity and getting pretty good at moving in different planes i think that's big um and then i think just an ability to move in space whether that's plyometrics doing a little bit of you know change of direction work doing a little bit of sprinting jumping things like that i think that goes a long way like if you show me a human who can do all those things like you're probably show me a very impressive athlete who could then channel that those abilities into any specific sport and have a much better shot of it compared to the guy who's only specialized in this one thing like a power lifter most power lifters they might be freakishly strong but it's like

have them jog a lap around the track and they're dead like they can't do it have them try to do a very basic change of direction drill they look like a newborn baby giraffe right have them step off of a low box and try to stick the landing it's like it's shattered you know you It looks like it shattered their knees. You know, you'll see these specialized guys who they can't move in different planes. They can't rotate. Their fitness and conditioning is terrible. And you watch them try to move in space and it's laughable.

Whereas now, to your point, you're seeing kind of this popularity of the true hybrid athlete. You know, we were just talking about Alec Blenis and you've got, you know, I don't know if you're familiar with guys like Blaine McConnell. He was a former Team USA Bob Sletter. and he puts out a ton of training content, but super strong guy, but also incredibly fast and explosive. Then you know, we talked about Judd Lionhard.

Oh, there you go. Yeah, Blaine, he's, he's freaky. Some of those bobsledders, it's a sport where you just see

some of the absolute freaks of the freaks coming out. Oh, I saw that clip the other day. I did doing that jump like that. That's crazy looking. Yeah, because those bobsleders, they got to be built like linebackers.

Most of those guys are, you know, 220. 2.30. And then they, you know, run a 4-5, 4-6, 40. But then they also have to be really strong explosive. Ian Danny was like on bobsled team. Oh, he was? Yeah. And he's a damn proficient coach as well. And then I think Herschel Walker was recruited to do it. Herschel Walker, you know, had like Olympic level speed in the 100 meter. So, oh, okay. You know what? Let's not even switch the topic, but there's something I want to, I'm curious about your, you're right, take here, John.

You know, Herschel Walker was somebody who, he wasn't really a weight room guy, but he was a high volume calisthenic guy. Yeah. And I know that, you know, when it comes to being heavier, a lot of times body weight training is harder for guys to do. But I've been doing a lot more high volume calisthenics because that's something that I started doing as a kid when I found the weight room I did some but then I kind of dropped it and as I've brought that back I've been surprised at the trans the how that's been translating into the other things that I do in the weight room along with my martial art and it makes me curious like why do you think that it seems that like high volume type of calisthetic work is not really done that much yeah it's a good

question you're speaking my language i'm a huge fan of of body weight training like i have always made a big effort to maintain my ability to do pull-ups yeah especially especially as i get bigger because when you start getting bigger you start to lose that ability and when you start to lack the ability to handle your own body weight you're opening the door for injury big time and i why why well if my if my shoulder complex and my lats are not strong enough to handle the weight of my own body, right? Now you're asking me to go out in the field and handle the weight of another 300 pound human. That shoulder is susceptible to issues. So in my opinion, like for bigger guys, especially, like maintain or develop an ability to move your own body weight, to handle the forces

of your own body weight. And if you cannot, I think that is a big glaring weakness in the chain. And why does it get neglected? I think it probably just gets looked. It's not a sex. thing to do it's it's not fun it's not it looks from the outside in like this sort of just like low level you know low level overly basic type of training low bang for your buck and i want to also mention keep keep going with that train of thought but like i think something that would have hit me in my early 20s when i look at that as like well you know i can just press heavy fucking dumbbells i may just press the 120s or 130s or let me bench heavier let me overhead press heavy even though my capacity with my own body weight is shit. It's like, there's this equivalency of like, if I can

move this much weight, why would I bother moving my body weight? That's rudimentary. That's basic. Right. And I think, you know, body weight exercises are a little bit more multifactorial. Like, we'll see, like, would you have freshmen come into our football program? And they might be a big venture, but they struggle with pushups. And we realize it's like, oh, wait, it's like a weak core. It's because, you know, you're doing a pushup. You're sort of having to maintain a plank. And we'd realize, like, oh, this guy can't do a pushups. And we'd realize like, oh, oh, this guy can't do a pushup because his core is super weak or you know you're doing a pull-up there's kind of a mobility component there's kind of a you're swinging there's kind of a balance kinesthetic awareness component to

it so I think like when you're just on a bench pressing weight you remove those variables whereas when you're doing a body weight exercise there's a little bit more of that overall body control the incorporation of the core the balance component of things and I think there's a deficit with that a lot. Yeah. So I love doing heavy dips. I love doing weighted pullups, glute ham raises. I think single limb training is is criminally under trained. Like one of the single biggest deficits we would see with football players, especially the young ones, or even older guys who just didn't train this throughout their career would be unilateral strength. You know, they might be the really great squatter, but then you put them on a single leg and it's crazy how weak they are. Yeah. You know, so.

There's some things you can add to your training, I think, that can really just help athleticism right away. And one thing that you mentioned is just like single leg, single arm. It just changes everything. Like, there's a dynamic to it. Like, it's not, it's not like it's hard to do or anything, but it's a different movement pattern than just standing there doing a set of curls, lunges, step ups, and overhead, you know, single arm overhead pressing, especially when you get to a heavy. your weight, somebody might find it easier to use their whole body in a single arm overhead press versus what, you know, when you're doing almost something like a log press, that takes a little bit more coordination, get used to that like push press. But I like the idea that you were

mentioning earlier too about the push press because as you were pointing out in the gym, some things take a little bit of rhythm. And you wouldn't really think like, oh, a push press is like pretty easy. And it can be pretty easy. But as you start to go up and wait, you'll be surprised at how your coordination starts to really get hammered. Yeah, synchronizing the hips into the upper body component of a push press is something that a lot of guys struggle with. It's a timing thing. Like you'll see them, they launch up from the legs, but then it's kind of off sync with

their upper body, whereas you need to figure out the timing of transferring that force from the hips into that upper body component. So, I mean, you're spot on. There's a timing and rhythm component to that. Body weight exercises are amazing. I just recently incorporated pushups, squats, and planks into my workout. So I'm like, you know, just every time I work out, I'm going to do either 10, 15, or 20 of these. I'm just going to do round after round.

So if I'm a little shorter on time, I'll just do 20 reps and I'll do like three or four sets. If I got more time, I'll just do like, you know, five sets, six sets, eight sets of 10. Yeah. And it's like when I do that, you know, it's like, okay, I started my workout with 80 pushups. I started my workout with 80 squats. I started my workout with 80 planks. Yeah, I think, you know, I think COVID lockdown, you know, open the eyes to a bunch of people about, you know, the value of bodyweight training. Because for a lot of people, that's, that's all they had. I remember when we were,

when we were in the lockdown, I was at UNC and we were, we were coaching our guys over Zoom. And we literally had them doing loaded backpack in body weight workouts. But I remember coaching a lift from an airplane. So we, I'd flown to Kansas City to visit my family and then airports shut down. There's no flights, but I've got to get back home. And it was like two weeks before I could get on a flight. And I finally got one, but it was the one flight it could take, but it timed up with when we were running a Zoom session for the team lift. So I remember I was sitting in an airplane chair like, you know, coaching through my phone. And the guys, we'd have, you know, a hundred thumbnails popped up on the Zoom screen. And we'd have, you know,

have we'd alternate we'd have one coach demoing the exercises from home you know loaded backpack overhead press and pushups and then the guys would be following along with it and us coaches would be you know chiming in from our computers or it was such a weird time yeah but you know and aside on like the i think sometimes you know longevity when people talk about that it's it's it's kind of like almost seems like a meme now but a lot of times like you'll see 60 year old 70 year old 70 year and calisthenic parts, still doing pull-ups, still being able to navigate their body weight. And you've got to imagine, like, okay, as an athlete, cool,

but if you're in your 60s and 70s and you can still be freaking doing, like, you know, all those different types of bar movements because you have superior control of your own body. Yeah. That goes a very long way. For sure. I mean, how many strong power lifters do we know

who are, you know, maybe 50 years old, and they can squat the house, but it's like you watch them try to stand up out of a chair. And it's like they can barely get themselves out of a chair. They have to go through a 30 minute warm up and before they can, you know, can do anything. So I think maintaining your ability to body weight strength, like you said, I mean, it's going to have a huge longevity and durability component to it. So this makes me like wonder, in your opinion, because they're, you've programmed so many

different types of athletes and so many different same things. And I think some people wonder, well, you guys are talking about all these things. is like a lot of people are coming from probably lifting programs where they're lifting four, five, six days a week, and they're not working on any of these other capacities. And, you know, I would think that you could probably get away with doing certain aspects of these lifts two to three times a week. And then you can still do lifts on other days,

but you can get on all these other capacities, which will still long-term allow you to gain strain muscle. But you're now building other capacities that will make you more well-rounded. For sure. And I think part of that comes down to identifying what's your goal. I mean, if you're if you're somebody who your goal is primarily strength, then you're probably going to allocate, you know, a higher percentage of your training towards strength work. And, you know, a lower percentage towards the other stuff. But you're still working it in. You know, okay, identify what do I need to get really good at. I'm going to put more of my eggs in that basket. And then you can put the other qualities kind of on minimum effective dose, right? But still keep them in. And then maybe you should, you shift gears in the off season. Okay, I've been focusing the last four months on strength work and, you know, 30% of my efforts on the endurance, you know, conditioning, movement type stuff. All right. Competition's over. Off season. Now it's shifted the other way. Now let's start

focusing, you know, 60% on the other stuff. Jujitsu, you know, more of the running, the plyometric stuff, and then kind of shift the strength stuff to more minimum effective dose maintenance mode. Or maybe your goal, you're not trying to be great at any one particular thing. Maybe you are just the guy who wants to be being well-rounded is your thing. And then it's, you know, you're going to be a little bit more balanced. And like you said, maybe you're only in the wait room two to three times a week. And that's probably perfectly adequate to reach or maintain the level of strength you want to reach. And then your other sessions are going to be running, jumping, sprinting, martial arts, whatever the case may be.

I will never go to a doctor ever again about my general health. All they want to do is put you on pills. Really well said there by Dana White. Couldn't agree with them more. A lot of us are trying to get jacked and tan. A lot of us just want to look good, feel good. And a lot of the symptoms that we might acquire as we get older, some of the things that we might have high cholesterol or these various things. It's amazing to have somebody looking at your blood work as you're going through the process, as you're trying to become a better athlete, somebody that knows what they're doing. They can look at your cholesterol. They can look at the various markers that you have and they can kind of see. see where you're at and they can help guide you through that. And there's a few aspects too where it's like, yes, I mean, no, no shade to doctors, but a lot of times they do want to just stick you on medication. A lot of times there is supplementation that can help with this. Merrick Health, these patient care coordinators are going to also look at the way you're living

your lifestyle because there's a lot of things you might be doing that if you just adjust that, boom, you could be at the right levels, including working with your testosterone. And there's so many people that I know that are looking for, they're like, hey, should I do that? They're very curious. And they think that testosterone is going to all of a sudden kind of turn them into the Hulk. But that's not really what happens. It can be something that can be really great for your health because you can just basically live your life a little stronger, just like you were maybe in your 20s and 30s. And this is the last thing to keep in mind, guys.

When you get your blood work done at a hospital, they're just looking at like these minimum levels. At Merrick Health, they try to bring you up to ideal levels for everything you're working with. if you go into a hospital and you have 300 nanograms per deciliter of test, you're good, bro, even though you're probably feeling like shit. At Merrick Health, they're going to try to figure out what things you can do in terms of your lifestyle, and if you're a candidate, potentially TRT. So these are things to pay attention to to get you to your best self. And what I love about it is a little bit of the back and forth that you get with the patient

care coordinator. They're dissecting your blood work. It's not like if you just get this email back and it's just like, hey, try these five, things. Somebody's actually on the phone with you going over every step and what you should do. Sometimes it's supplementation, sometimes it's TRT, and sometimes it's simply just some lifestyle habit changes. All right, guys, if you want to get your blood work checked and also get professional help from people who are going to be able to get you towards your best levels, that's AmeriHealth.com and use code Power Project for 10% off any panel of your choice.

The thing is, when it comes to the minimum effective dose that you mentioned, I think people sometimes get it twisted at the amount of progress that can be made from that minimum effective dose. It's like if you look at new people who, let's say they train some, there's a lot of people, like most people in the population can gain consistent muscle, can gain consistent strength, training two days a week. For sure. Training three days a week. Like, they can go very far doing that. But when we get into the maxing out as much muscle as you can in the shortest amount of time or maxing out the most amount of strength in the shortest amount of time. Then we get into those five day a week type programs, right? So it's one of those

things where, like you mentioned, it's important to think about your absolute goal. If you're a field athlete and like you need to gain some size fast. You need to get some bar and wait on the bar quickly for whatever you're doing in your sport. You probably have to max that. But even if you are an athlete and you're fairly proficient, you could still probably make progress on a lower dose, albeit that progress is just slightly slower than it would be if it were five days. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, people would be surprised how much progress they can make with, you know, less frequent exposures.

And I think the big part of that is it's quality over quantity a lot. And I think that's something that doesn't get appreciated enough. A lot of people are over-prioritizing the quantity and they're under-prioritizing the quality. Right. And, you know, you'll see some of the new popularity. with like hypertrophy training more of this low volume you know the you guys familiar with paul carter lift run bang i'm not he's lift run bang on instagram you know he's been putting out a lot more of the you know just uh nine working sets per muscle group per week type of stuff in

any one session you know two sets per exercise but pushing these sets to you know near failure you know one rep and reserve and just high intensity work but they're short sessions and it's it's low volume and you know there's a lot of research to support that being really good for hypertrophy but the the point is that's an example of quality over quantity it's not about you know getting into the gym a million times a week or doing a million exercises a million sets and reps it's you've got a shorter amount of exposures a shorter or smaller amount of sets that you're going to do but you're maximizing the quality of those sets we sometimes forget that you know like training you can overdo your training so easy yeah you know it's very easy to do

and if you're only lifting weights or you're only running or you're only picking like one thing it makes it that much easier to overdo it because like most of the time people get addicted to this stuff they really end up enjoying it and they want to do it frequently and i think we're all better off having a couple different options so that way we can still do something nearly every day. And you can still, you know, go on a hike or a ruck. And it's not really costing you because you don't ruck 16 miles every day with a 60 pound pack. You do it maybe once a week. And then you have your opportunities where you're doing some lifting. Maybe you have, you know, once a week where you're doing some agility or some sprinting. But if you think about it, you know, someone like

Chris Bumstead trains like probably four or five days a week. Maybe there's an extra, maybe there's a couple extra days in there for cardio or something like that depending on like where he's at but uh it's one of the best physiques we've ever seen so if he if he can get along building one of the greatest physiques that we've ever seen with four workouts a week then a lot of other people should be able to get along just fine with getting into like a weight room type setting like twice a week yeah for sure 100 percent and i think that it's another you know quality over quantity type thing and i mean at the end of the day, you know, the training is the stimulus. It's the time away from your training where you're actually making the adaptations and recovering. So like for even an advanced guy

trying to optimize hypertrophy, to me, four days in the weight room is ideal. And even a five day split is something I've gotten more away from. You know, with myself, like I'm trying to maximize muscle gain right now. I'm in a big gain phase. And I'm training four days a week. And I see those three days out of the gym is arguably more essential to gaining muscle or as essential as the four workouts that I'm getting per week. And we've had bodybuilder people on here before that were very regimented with their meals and stuff and they would say, hey, a missed meal is the same as a cheat meal. 100%.

Like that's the way they viewed it. And you're like, whoa, okay. And so for you, like, you know, doing excess of training, excessive lifting on a non-lifting day is like a no-no, right? Yeah. I mean, you know, I love training. I wish the answer would be, oh, just train every day. And, you know, a lot of guys, they're kind of, like, addicted to it. And they start making bad decisions because they're going with what they want to do. Like, it truly becomes an addictive thing where it's at a detriment to their own development that they're going in and training more and more than they should. Yeah. So some guys really got to reel them in

and have them train less. I know, like, and Seema and I, you know, we just have this habit of, like, drifting off into the gym, you know, when we have guests here and we just start messing with, like, rope flow. And I think you were doing a couple, like, pull-ups and stuff. But usually it's like, and I know you did grab a pretty heavy sandbag at one point, but usually it's like pretty low-intensity stuff. We're just like, it's like literally just movement.

We'll grab a mace, just move around. I've been really trying to work on some of my mobility of my shoulders. And so anytime I get around in Mace, anytime I see one, I just grab one and start trying to like twirl it around basically. You got to use a different word than twirl. Man, whenever you use twirlman,

it just is twirling around. It doesn't work. Actually, I think there is a feminine pixie dust. I like it. I like it. I'll twirl it around even more. Going through the gumdrop forest. Twirling to and fro.

You know, this is a little bit of a tangent, but you made me think of it. I think there's also something to be said for recovery with training and kind of a low arousal state. Like you said, you come into the gym, you kind of just, you know, what sounds fun today and you do some stuff, you're not getting amped up for it. I really learned to control myself psychologically in training as I started getting

stronger. You know, it used to be every heavy session. I'm amped up. It's the nose torque. I'm cranking the music. And then you hit the big lift and you get this big adrenaline dump and it's like you're just zapped. and then I don't sleep and then I wasn't recovering.

So I started really trying to take a little bit more of a nonchalant psychological approach to training. Just come in. I'm going to train high quality with intent, but just in a more low arousal state, I started listening to calmer music. A little bit of handy. The music makes a big difference. Yeah, it does.

So I think, and like Chris Bumstead, and I think you see this with a lot of elite athletes, it's a lot of these guys, they're not overthinkers. Like Chris Bumstead, he's in. most like even keeled chill can't bother like so are you mark i mean you're a very even keeled guy and you'll see it with great athletes like sometimes sometimes being too you're too smart for your own good like you're you're you're so aware of everything you're overthinking my programming for today yeah you're stressing about everything whereas these guys they just go into this flow state and they just they don't overthink it they just they just go they just do on this topic i

think this is actually a very important topic. It's something that I started doing when I was powerlifting a while back years ago, but it shifted into a lot of my other training. And it actually stemmed from Kelly Sturrette mentioning the pain face and supple leopard when doing soft tissue work. Yeah, it's true. Because then I realized, wow, when I'm doing a lot of my lifts, I'm also like, you know what I mean? Everything is. So I started learning how to try to do high intensity things while maintaining a level of lower arousal. That doesn't mean I'm just fucking, right? But it also means like when I have to do something hard, can I still keep myself fairly calm and have high output? And that, that in and of itself has helped me recover so much better from, because

I still train hard. But it doesn't, I think when some people like see some of the things I put out, they're like, that doesn't look like it's hard. It doesn't look like it's hard because I'm, it doesn't, it doesn't hit me as that, even though physically it feels difficult. Yeah. When you watch great athletes, it always looks effortless. Like it always just looks so smooth and easy and something i've tried to do recently is is train with um focusing on nasal breathing more like can i go through a hard session doing just breathing through my nose even help you with if it has helped you with anything i think it's helped me with just literally with my breathing and just some of my ability to recover between sets because i used to be you know classic

mouth breather whereas developing my ability to just breathe through in and out through my nose between sets, even during the exercise sometimes, I feel like it's improved my, you know, between set recovery. I think it's improved just my kind of my lung capacity a little bit. But then it also helps modulate that arousal state, I think. You know, when you can just be calm between sets, breathe through your nose, I think that goes a long way. I know the Russian lifters, we had Mikhail Kokelev. He went to Jesse Burdick's gym and did a seminar and he was talking about caffeine you know and he was talking about like a pre-workout and stuff and he's like when you when you exercise with these things it's a little artificial boost before you go and do your workout and then

therefore you are like expending a little bit more energy because you got this you got this little extra boost from the pre-workout and he didn't really like that he didn't like the extra stimulation but he said hey you know on game day or day where you're going to you know you're going to hit a PR or something like that, then maybe it's more appropriate for those types of days. But, you know, the central nervous system is, like, more sensitive than we kind of give it credit for. If you're just compounding things on top of that and then cranking the music and getting real intense, I love all that stuff.

It's super fun. I do it weekly. But I also have other days, like yesterday, we did some legs yesterday. And then I went and ran at UC Davis. I ran at their football field and did the stadium stairs. But that was like nasal breathing. That was like easy workout. And then when I was done, I did my body weight push-up, squats, planks, and got out of there.

So, you know, I have, it's nice that I have, you know, some days where I can go in and kind of hit that higher level or that higher intensity. And then days where things are a little calmer where I'm just twirling stuff around. And, you know, like with the, you know, caffeine and our nervous system being, you know, fragile. in some ways. I think something that people don't appreciate enough is that physical stress comes in a lot of different realms outside of just training, right? It's, you know, if you're stressed in your life, like you're going through a hard time in your life or your sleep is poor or you're hammering caffeine, you're getting, you know, adrenal fatigue from that, things like that, you know, stress comes in a lot of different ways

and your body doesn't know the difference between, you know, the stress you're incurring in your nervous system from the barbell. versus the stress you're incurring from just being hyper-focused on your job and the promotion and the breakup and things like that. How loud can that nine-month-old baby be? Yeah, exactly. Right.

Yeah, my wife's neural fatigue is tapped out right now. Those right through your ear. Oh, yeah. You know, on the same topic, when it comes to the nasal breathing thing, some people, when they hear about nasal breathing, they're like, that doesn't make a difference. You know what I mean?

We've had coaches that have come onto the podcast, who is like high-level coaches said makes no difference, not really something important to pay attention to. But when applied, I think that's one of the things we need to start thinking about. Like understanding that there might not be research to back this up, but potentially look at applying it to see what it may bring you as an athlete. Because you pay attention to a lot of research, but then you applied something that might not be extremely research-based

and you saw some benefit from it. one thing that actually a cool thing is on juji mufu's channel he had john brookfield where he did a hardcore home gym and john brookfield my god this guy has so many cool tools that he uses but he has this one thing he was doing in the video and it was a rope it was a rope he set up this like three-pronged rope pull i don't know if you can pull it up ryan because juji mufu's recent video hardcore home gyms you'll see john pulling this rope okay john was pulling it then john at 69 70 years old puts his feet on the wall has one hand on the ground and is pulling the rope. You'll see it here in a second if we can go to the timestamp.

It's a great series by Juji Mufu. Shout out to him. So check out his YouTube channel and check out the videos that he does with the people's homes gyms. Yeah, keep going, Ryan. It's going to be right there. And pass this part a little bit, Ryan.

I want us to see when John gets onto the wall. Such a simple thing he's doing, but so difficult. So John is talking to Jugi as he's doing this. Looks like Spider-Man. I know that I would find so much difficulty he doing this for even 10 seconds. So I didn't want to figure out a way to set this up in my home gym. But John mentioned something key. After he was talking, Juji, he's like, usually I'll

actually do this breathing through my nose. And I'll go from side to side. Now, I want you to watch something here. He does a transition. Staying on the wall while talking to Jugi in a very calm way. Jugee is highly skilled. He attempted this. And I want to say, if I attempted this, I would also not do a great job. But he attempted this. And he wasn't able to do it like John. And John is old. John talks about nasal breathing and one thing that I found from the application of it is I usually have a heart rate monitor on when I do certain things like when I do some of my conditioning

I'm able to actually just keep my heart rate lower but that doesn't mean that I won't have times when I start breathing and ventilating with my mouth if I want to have a higher heart rate and a higher potential output but it's a tool that if you want to maintain if you want an output that you can maintain for a long period of time that's what I'll do in jiu jiu jit-to

like I'll be breathing to my nose for most of a match If I want to turn it up on somebody, they're already breathing through their mouth, and I want to speed things up. I start ventilating differently. So it's like, we got to look at these things as not like absolutes, but levers that we can pull on at different times for what we're trying to do. And people miss that. Yeah, it's always about the big picture. People get overly focused on single individual variables and overanalyze a single individual variable. But, you know, kind of what you're alluding to, it's how do you apply it to the big picture?

These things are tools. They're small pieces of one big puzzle. And I think for a lot of people focusing on nasal breathing can have some real benefits. Yeah. And the other thing is, you know, we've got these hairs in our nostrils to help filter the air that we're breathing in. So I think there's some real merit to some of the, you know, protective immune qualities of nasal breathing. And then also it's like, you know, whether it's your body weight strength ability or your ability to breathe through your nose, if there's just something you realize, I can't do that. It's like, ask why.

I can't go through a tough training session and breathe through my nose. Maybe we're exposing a little bit of a weakness in the armor that we should address. Oh, I can't do a pull-up. We've probably exposed a weakness that maybe should be addressed. I think you do a great job with scaling, and that probably comes from your strength and conditioning background. Even with nutrition, do you kind of scale? Because I'd imagine these athletes that you're working with, even though some of these guys are big, You don't have any room to mess with, like, digestive issues.

And so how do you get some people, like, acclimated to amounts of protein, amounts of carbohydrate, and some of those things? Yeah, well, it's a quality that I think you can train. I think you can train your body to handle and process and utilize more and more food. You know, a lot of the time, people who come to me with a fat loss goal, they'll comment, oh, I feel like I'm eating more food than ever. and they probably are they're eating higher food volumes but they're eating high quality foods highly digestible highly bioavailable foods and they're getting a lot more out of it and then

we're kind of training that metabolism getting their body better at processing and utilizing more and more nutrients and then by week three they're saying oh the food's a lot easier to eat and I'm feeling myself you know getting hungry but like with the strong man guys who've got to eat really high volumes of food it's identifying okay what are the foods that are going to digest really well because at the end of the day, you know, you're, you're only as good as the food that you're actually absorbing and processing and utilizing, right? If I shovel 10,000 calories into my face, but I'm just bloated and I just, I'm not digesting it. Well, I'm not, I'm not doing anything with those 10,000 calories. They're just hindering the absorption of all the other nutrients that

I'm eating. It's slowing down the system. It's either passing through me or being stored as body fat. So, you know, for a lot of the big strongman guys, I might have them start eating less than they normally do, calorically, but they're going to get more out of it. Like, I had a guy who I just started working with a couple months back who, um, he wanted to gain weight. And he had been eating kind of a typical, you know, seafood diet, mass gain diet, a lot of mass gainer shakes and crap food. And I thought you actually meant seafood. No, the, the seafood, seafood, eat food. So I got him on the diet, and on paper, calorically, it was less food than he had been eating. But he started gaining weight. And he's like, what the hell? I'm eating less, but how am I

gaining weight? Well, it's like, you're actually using the food now. I mean, before you're eating 8,000 calories of crap that was just passing right through you, right? Whereas now we're eating food in a way that's actually bioavailable. We're actually giving your body the ability to build muscle. We're developing your insulin sensitivities. Now you're storing some of these carbs as as glyphal. your body's actually getting better at using the stuff, doing a little bit more with less. But then on the flip side, with more gen pop people, a lot of them, they're chronically under-eating. They've got these suppressed metabolism. So the first move is start having them eat more. Right. You know, on what you said there, I think some people may hear that and they

come from the side of the fit your calories, it fits your mess. So I can eat what I want to hit to this caloric goal. Yeah. I think someone would hear what you just said and think, like, oh, that's pseudoscience. If I just get the if I get the right protein, if I get the right carbs and fats, it's all going to do the same thing. So you seeing that in application, how much of a difference do you think the calories were for that guy?

Because that's a big deal right there. Yeah. So I mean, so calories in, calories out, like it's on paper, it's true, but there's this whole thing that happens in between the calories going in your face and the calories coming out of your body. Like there's a number of processes that

have to occur within the system. I mean, a calorie at the end of the day, it's a unit, it's a physics unit. It's a unit of energy. And what your body does with that unit of energy, it's not the same for everyone. Like I said, with the guy who, I think he was eating somewhere in the realm of like 8,000 calories on paper is what was going into his face. And, you know, the diet I got him on was probably more like 6,000 calories. So, I mean, we're talking about a decrease of, you know, 2,000 calories. I'm kind of just spitballing numbers here. But he started gaining weight because those calories in were actually, you know, for lack of a better term, kind of sticking.

Yes. And his body was actually using the calories. So like your metabolic capabilities, what is occurring at the digestive level, all of these things matter and are going to influence the calories out component of things, you know. Yeah, calories definitely aren't equal, especially when we consider protein. You know, if you start to switch your macros around and you have a very low protein amount and you go to a higher protein amount, a lot of times you'll see people gain some muscle Yeah. So like a good way to illustrate this. They ran a study. I can't recall the exact study off the time I had. But basically they had a group of people they were overfeeding, feeding them in a calorie surplus. And they'd feed one group a surplus of just protein. They'd feed one group a surplus of just carbohydrates. And they'd feed one group a surplus of just fats. But calories were equated. But the group that was overfeeding with protein gained far less weight than the group that was overfeeding with

body fat because protein is going to have a higher thermic effect of food, right? Your body has to burn more calories actually processing and utilizing and digesting protein. So your body's burning more calories, utilizing more protein. And then carbohydrates kind of an intermediate, whereas with dietary fat, it's in the name. Dietary fat physiologically has a much easier time being stored as fat in the body. So a calorie is not just a calorie. I mean, what your body does with that calorie it matters yeah it's a huge it's a huge deal we were talking a little bit in the gym about like acceleration and and you've sent me over some programming and um i just think that you do a good job it's really like well thought out and it's like what's the athlete i'm working with and

what's their previous level of capacity for this thing and then you start out at a very like modest level and i think a lot of times i think people aren't willing to Like, I guess for yourself, when you've tried some new things, when you tried strong man and you tried some of these things, are those same, did you apply a lot of those same rules to yourself when you got into these things? Or did you get maybe a little too excited and want to like? I've probably been a good example of do as I say, not as I do at many points in my career. Yeah, no, I've, I've gotten way over zealous with finding a new thing I love and like a kid in a candy store and I want to play with the new shiny toy. and yeah, that's the value of working with a coach, right? Working with someone who's going to steer the ship and kind of not have that emotional attachment to the thing and help kind of put a governor on you.

So, yeah, I've definitely gone too hard, too fast with new endeavors because I was coaching myself. I think it's a good thing for people to think about is like what is your exposure to something? Like if you're going to go out and run or try any of the stuff that we're talking about, I mean, even rope flow can make you pretty sore if you've just never done it before.

Yeah. A lot of these things are, you know, you haven't had exposure to in the past. They can, they can potentially wreak havoc on you if you're not careful. So you got to just, you got to just think about it a little bit. For sure. Like, especially with someone trying to get into running, you know, I had a guy who I'm working with nutrition-wise who, you know, he let me know, oh, I just started getting into running. I ran, you know, five miles last week.

And it's like, oh, well, now I have shin splints and planter fasciitis and all that stuff. So, like, with running, it's a lot of pounding and wear and tear on your feet, on your, on your lower legs and on your knees. So you got to kind of train your tissue to be able to handle that. So there's absolutely a progression. And that was a big weight room application we'd have in the football setting with our guys was preparing their tissue for field work. So, you know, like at Houston, the Texans, we'd utilize a trifasic training approach in the weight room in the off season. So, you know, the first couple weeks, they're doing heavy, overloaded, slow, eccentric work, followed by a few weeks of dynamic eccentrics to a hard pause, isometric hold.

And what that was doing was the eccentric work was preparing the tissue to absorb forces, then the dynamic eccentric to hard, hard stop, pause, teaching their joints and tissue to handle that deceleration at high speed, absorb and stop that force, which would then have carryover to their high speed change of direction work. You know, when we're asking them to make a hard cut, well, they're coming in at high speed. They have to decelerate on a dime, then re-accelerate the other way. That puts a lot of, you know, eccentric force on the tissue that's having to decelerate their body and then re-accelerate them in another direction. So we would prepare that tissue in a controlled setting with weight room work, with plyometric work and things like that to prepare them for the field.

So for you, let me ask you this. So is there anything you have in your training right now that is, because you mentioned, you're training four days of lifting. So what do those other three days look like in terms of some of the stuff that you do? Yeah, so I'm doing a ton of walking right now. So right now, you know, I've got a good little morning routine. I'll wake up. First thing out of bed, I get ice cold, cold shower for, you know, 60 seconds.

It snaps me awake. Then I'll go down. I immediately hydrate 32 ounces of room temperature water. and all of all my morning supplements, and I actually have been experimenting with a few of the mitochondrial peptides. Okay. What are those?

Like, what are those called? Yeah, so I, for the last six weeks, I was utilizing MOTC, SLEU, SLO, S-P-332, and then SS-31, as well as I use some BPC-157, both injectable and oral, the oral, to help address some gastric inflammation I've been dealing with.

you feel that that's helping yeah so you know i and you and i talked about a little bit off air you know i i was not overly impressed with the injectable bpc 157 in terms of a difference i saw with soft tissue joints aches and pains um now some people you know claim to have kind of miracle results from it but i i didn't see a lot from it but with the oral bpc 157 you know i've i had my gallbladder removed a couple years ago and i've dealt with some digestive issues and I got to eat a lot of food. I've suffered from chronic acid reflux for years, which starts to put a bunch of wear and tear on your esophagus. But the oral BPC 157, it has some direct local effects on the gut, on the intestines, and I saw a lot of benefit from the oral

version of BPC. But anyway, back to your question, Seema. On the off days, I'll get up, do my morning routine, and then I'll go for a 30-minute walk. I'm incorporating more zone two cardio. So, you know, I'll get on the bike, the rower, the skier. Do you mess with the rucking at all? I feel like you'd like that. So I haven't, but I'd love to. Okay.

Just with my schedule, you know, the baby and the life and everything, I haven't really been able to get out and do as much hiking and rucking as I'd like to. But, you know, that sort of thing would be great. I'll get a ruck saxon out your way. Because, like, they're really, the way you just put it on, put like a 35 or 45, whatever played in there and with how big you are like it's surprising um it doesn't beat you up yeah but it's it's a nice loan on your walk you know i'll i'll take you up on that you know and so i'm you know i'm going into this big gain phase right now where i'm trying to really you know go all in on hypertrophy and

in years past i would be pretty anti-cardio at this point yeah not necessarily because i truly believed it was an interference effect but i just wasn't bought into it i didn't value it whereas now more than ever, we talked about having that great base of fitness and aerobic capacity. Now I'm putting a premium on keeping up with my cardio work as I get bigger. So, you know, I'm going to have cardio in regimented throughout the entirety of this game phase. So post workout, I'm doing 15 minutes of zone two cardio. And then on some of my non-training days, I'll have just, you know, true cardio day, zone two stuff. I'll incorporate some of the rucking.

But then I'll do one day a week where it's high intensity interval training. So I'll do a bunch of med ball slam, battle rope, tire sledgehammers, prowler pushes, things like that, kind of every minute on the minute type stuff. So, no, I'm much more here recently bought into the value of just being in great shape and that only benefiting, you know, everything I'm doing in terms of getting bigger and stronger and putting on muscle. I think guys, as you get bigger, if your fitness isn't keeping up with the added size, you know, that's an issue, right? If your aerobic capacity, your blood flow, your cardiovascular health is falling behind your size, you're going to start under recovering. Your sleep is going to suffer.

Your ability to push in training is going to suffer. So I'm really putting a premium on staying really, really fit and in good condition as I get bigger. Power Project family, how's it going? Now, over the years, I've learned a lot from guests. that have come on to this podcast. And I've taken the time to learn many different movement practices. So, for example, if you wanted to learn rope flow, which is a practice I think is just beneficial for everyone,

I have a free rope flow foundations course at school.com slash the Stronger Human. Now, the Stronger Human community actually has over 11,000 members, so it's a great community there, but you'll also be able to learn rope flow for free, along with many other things I teach in there, like kettlebell flow, kettlebell juggling, all that good stuff. So head over there.

Along with that, if you're looking for where to get your equipment as far as ropes, maces and clubs, sandbags, all that good stuff, you can head over to the StrongerHuman.S store. And on that site is where I have all of the different functional fitness equipment that I use to become a stronger human. So check those out. Let's get back to the episode. There was a study done recently where they had people walk for three minute intervals. Have you heard about that? I don't think so. So you do like three minutes, you walk not necessarily as fast as you can, but you pick up the pace, you walk a little faster. And for three minutes, you just go back to like a normal pace.

And you go back and forth and do like five sets of it. And I think Dave Asprey posted about it today, but the study came out like a while back, like maybe almost like a year ago. And just saying like it's, I forget what percentage. And I don't know exactly how they tested it. I don't know how well. Sure. I don't know how good of a test this was or whatever.

But it's just interesting. You know, it's like anytime you have an ability to enhance something, it sounds like a great opportunity, you know, like even just with walking, you know, and Seema was telling me like he walks with some weight. And I've been walking with vests and stuff, but I just haven't really thought that much about walking with weight. We've walked around the block here before with like a dumbbell or something like that. But I just been taking to it more, more recently. And I'll grab like I have like a sandbag. You know, I got 20, 30, 40. Like the training sandbag. Yeah. Yeah, I'll just grab whatever's and throw it around. my neck. I have that bag, that 35-pound Bulgarian bag, as I was called. Yeah, so I throw that one around my neck or something and just go on a walk with it. So anytime, you know, you have an ability to enhance a walk a little bit, because I think walking is awesome. Yeah. But I think that like, you don't want to make it annoying to the point where you're not doing it anymore. Right. Like, that definitely is not a good idea because you want to keep walking fairly simple. But

if you can amplify it a little bit and it's not too annoying, I think it's, I think it's It's a good thing to try. Yeah, for sure. If you can, like, little ways like that to just add a little bit of added intensity to it. Or, okay, maybe I'm not walking quite as long or as far, but because of added weight or I've increased the speed at different intervals, I'm getting more out of a little bit less. And you're adding kind of a novelty and fun component when you bring in some of those other modalities.

So I like that. I just walking with sandbells, I think that's a sandbell. I think this is the thing. I think that long term, it'll play a difference. because you're 300. I'm about 300 right now. 300 pounds. If you just had like a 45 pound rucksack on you

or even a 35 pound or whatever, you're technically walking around at 335 or 3.45. And you could still walk the same distance you always walk because it doesn't beat you up that much. But compound that over the weeks and months. Like all those steps you're taking at 345 pounds adds up. You know what I mean? So it's something that I've noticed makes actually a substantial difference for, again,

just a kind of minimal input on top of something I already do. I'm in. I'm in, please. You've got me thinking about it for sure. So, yeah, when I get back, I'm going to start throwing on some weight. I might, you know, carry the baby around on the, you know, the little koala vest deal. What are some of the things that you really want to try to make sure that you maintain and you keep? You know, I did hear you say you think, you know, a lot of your hands.

heaviest lifts are kind of in the rear view mirror these days. But I imagine like you probably still want to keep like guys, you know, you throw in a sandbag over the, over the thing and just probably you want to keep some of those capacities I would imagine. Like what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, for sure. So, you know, yeah, I've come to terms with the fact that I think my prime is behind me in terms of, you know, the heavy lifts. So, you know, as I get further into, you know, this new season of life where it's a lot more coaching and I'm a business owner and a little bit more of a public image. I think getting more into the kind of hybrid, well-rounded space is going to be, is more important to me. So I always want to be strong. I always want to possess

a good physique. And right now, the one area I am kind of trying to push to an extreme still is the physique side of things. It's something I can do, whereas I can't, I'm probably not going to deadlift, you know, 900 pounds. Those days are probably behind me. But I can go all in with the physique. But at the same time, I want to show that, hey, you can have a good physique and still be able to be strong, but also be able to move. And that's, you know, I'm a strength and conditioning coach by trade. And, you know, I work with a very wide variety of clientele. And I want to have some, you know, appeal and in connection to all these different types of people. So I think, and Unite kind of talked about it, maintaining the ability to move, to jump, to change directions,

to rotate, to throw while having a great physique to back it up and while still, you know, being one of the stronger humans in the world, although, you know, not in that 0.001 percentile I was, you know, previously chasing. What about hitting a heavy bag or anything like that? You have any, you mess around with anything like that? You know, I haven't. It would be great to incorporate. I'm just saying it like rotation and all those kinds of things.

You know, I've always thought, I've been intrigued about, hey, maybe I dip my toe into the martial arts world, whether it's boxing or jujitsu or anything like that. I feel like that's sort of this trajectory. So many guys are on. Like once they can't lift heavy anymore, they get into jiu-jitsu and stuff like that. But yeah, I would be intrigued about potentially getting, I think I could. could be a decent boxer. Yeah. I've kind of got the footwork from long-ass reach.

I've got the reach and everything. And I'm always for finding something new to really pour into, you know. And all you need to just install a heavy bag. You know what I mean? You don't have to go as deep as, because you could go as deep into like starting and getting into sparring with people and stuff, which would be fun. But a heavy bag can just allow you to train the movement. Something I just, I know about myself at this point is I'm such an all-or-nothing guy. Like once I go down the rabbit hole of hitting a heavy bag, then it's like I'm joining a boxing club.

And then, you know, I'm sparring with people. Then I'm booking my first fight. You know, it's like, to a fault with me. I've always been like extremely all or nothing. Like if I'm going to focus on nutrition, it's like bodybuilding lifestyle. You know, it's hard for me to find happy mediums. So it's served me well in aspects of life. And it's, you know, probably been a detriment in others.

It's probably not that hard to get clients when you. you're this big and jack i like to walk the walk it's it's always been important to me i love doing it personally but then you know i i always want to show my guys uh my athletes clients potential clients and athletes like hey i live this i do this i and it helps me stay in tune with my own coaching right it stimulates my own creativity exploring new methods of training new methods of dietary approaches, new supplementation, and as long as I have skin in the game, I am going to constantly be curious and exploring and experimenting and learning more. And then I'm able to apply that to my coaching. But then also I think, you know, people that work with me respect it,

you know. Let me ask you this. As far as rotation, because you mentioned moving rotationally, what, because you do med ball stuff. So what do you think for you are, practices that you use for benefiting rotation. So I've been doing a lot more heavy loaded rotation work. And this is also something that I've kind of changed opinions on, at least how I'm implementing it, is I used to be in sort of the camp of squatting and overhead pressing and deadlifting and caring is enough to train your core. And that's all I need.

Whereas now I'm much more in the camp of really specifically training. my core and loading it and you know so i'll do like heavy cable rotation work where i'm using the entire stack and i'm doing you know sets of eight and you know i'm doing this exercise or i'm in kind of a hinge position almost like a golf swing and a heavy loaded rotation big loaded stretch um things like that and then i'll do you know dynamic rotation with uh with the med ball throws you know at higher speed but i really loading the core in different planes of motion especially rotation, has been sort of a new thing I've implemented recently. I got some stuff I want to show you on the cable machine.

It's with Mark's, I don't know if you fucked with it, but it's with the shake strap thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think you'll enjoy it. Absolutely. What are you feeling when you do that? Like you said you like to have it, you know, loaded pretty heavy. Are you, you know, like twisting in that direction? Like, are you having it kind of pull on you a little bit?

Yeah, I use the weight to kind of pull me into a loaded stretch. And I was, I realized, you know, with so much of the, you know, bodybuilding strongman, you're all, like I said, sagittal plane forward, straight up and down with, and, you know, I'm kind of like ungluing my hips and just ungluing my midsection. I like that motion that you're showing. It's kind of like a golf swing. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, I took some of that stuff from.

We were just talking about him, Alec Blennis. He will do crazy heavy, loaded rotational core work. But, yeah, I realized I was so rigid and stiff and my ability just to talk. turn and rotate, but then adding in that loaded component where the weight is helping literally pull me into the stretch eccentrically, and then I'm pulling it back the other way, concentrically. It's really helped loosen me up, open me up. My low back feels better. Ryan, can you play that video of the rotational work that we do here at Super Training, the video that we posted the other day of the guy twerking his hips? You know what I'm talking about.

Is it on your Instagram? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, the golf guy. Yeah, I think, and Seema sent it to me. Yeah, but isn't that like... Dude, that's legit as shit. Yeah, yeah, it looks amazing. But, yeah, it's funny looking. You got to play the sound. Oh, I guess we'll get demonetized, actually,

so we can't play the sound. The music makes it so much better. I'm trying to figure out what I'm looking at here. Oh, wow. Oh, hey. Hey now. It's basically spanking that ball in front of him. Well, no, this is, I mean, it's obviously go.

for you to look at, but there is really something to be said for the quality of being able to move your hips independent of your upper body. That kind of hip torso dissociation is big time. I started working on that like maybe two years ago. And before that, I didn't even know I could do that. Yeah. And I'm like, I didn't know my hips move that way. Yeah. That was something I learned from throwing discus, you know, kind of that you're rotating at the hips and then the upper body is kind behind it, you know, you want to talk about some of the freaks that come out of the throwing world. Oh, right?

Yeah, they're so explosive. Yeah, you can kind of rotate your hips, you know, that way, where you can pull your hip up or down. Something you can kind of almost like shorten your leg and lengthen your leg. You just, I don't know, we just lose track of these things where you get so into the particular things that you're

doing. And it's hard to make time for everything. Yeah, you know, it is. Are you still like, so in your pursuit of bodybuilding, in pursuit of like just just getting big and slapping on some weight you did mention you're doing a little cardio via like some walking and stuff are you still like sled dragging or farmer carrying or any of that stuff or is that stuff pushed aside for a little while yeah so i'll whenever i do my high intensity interval training i'll which i right now i'm doing once a week i'll usually do

some sort of strong man modality with it i really like doing um the yoke or a farmer carry the sandbag front carry and I'll do kind of like I said that Joe Ken was programming you know 10 12 15 rounds 50 foot carry as fast as possible every minute on the minute stuff like that and then on my upper body days sounds fun but brutal it is fun and that's a big part of it for me was you know conditioning and cardio has always been boring whereas finding a way to make it more kind of up my alley with with things I enjoy things I kind of put a little bit more competitive fire into that was a key for me to get more bought into conditioning work. So, you know, if you could find a way to make mundane, you know, less mundane, make it more competitive and mentally stimulating, then it's a good

way to go. Yeah, we did some sprints and some sandbag tosses the other day, and it was pretty brutal. Oh, yeah. Yeah, with Jordan Chavez, and he was totally dead afterwards. Like, it took him like maybe 30 minutes or something for his skin tone and his legs. his legs were just right I never had my my butt pumped up like that before yeah major a major fucking pump on the legs

and quad's pretty crazy but it's one of those it's another good thing you know just understanding that you can sprint on multiple implements because we did some max

I think 15 calories as fast as you can on the air bike then we went to a sandbag to shoulder and then we were rotating and we did that maybe three or four times

yes I mean that's brutal but it's fun yeah right yeah but the thing is again, the capacity of sprinting, right? I think a lot of times we think of just sprinting, which is good. You want to be able to do that. But sprinting on other implements will at least let you have that output, sprinting

with a sled, so pushing a sled as hard as possible. Safe, safer for people too. Yeah, it does, having the weight slow it down is going to make it safer. Where can people find you? Let's see. You can find me on Instagram, what the heck 71. Just search John Heck. You can find me on YouTube.

I've gone a lot harder on growing this. YouTube channel. It's, um, it's a hammer and chisel performance on YouTube. You just search John Heck and then you can go to my website, hammer chisel performance.com, get me up for my coaching services, training programs, ebooks, all that stuff. But, um, then I've got my podcast, the hammer and chisel performance podcast, um, guest episodes every Tuesday. Um, got 50 out right now, um, but it's on YouTube, Spotify, Apple. So yeah, you were, you were a big inspiration for me with, with getting into podcasting, getting into YouTube, man. So it's, it's, you're, you're a big inspiration for me. man so it's uh you've been a probably the biggest inspiration to me and in really diving into

the fitness industry you know yeah thank you so much and and thanks for the content too because i watch a lot of your stuff so appreciate it yes sir strength is never weak this week this never strength catch you guys later bye