Mark Bell's Power Project - I Used to..

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Getting older doesn’t mean I have to stop lifting, running, sprinting, or doing the things I love. But it might mean I need to change the way I approach them.In this episode, we talk about how to stay in the game for decades by balancing intensity with longevity. We get into why constantly redlining your workouts can eventually work against you, why most people may benefit from doing more easy “green zone” work, how injuries turn into bigger problems when you refuse to listen to your body, and why enjoyment might be one of the most overlooked pieces of long-term fitness.We also talk about walking, conditioning, nasal breathing, isometrics, cross-training, David Goggins, Cam Hanes, strength, athleticism, and what it actually means to train for your future self.You might not always be able to lift what you lifted at 25 — but that doesn’t mean you have to become the person saying, “I used to do that.”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/TRT/PEPTIDES! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com and use code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off Self-Service Labs and Guided Optimization®.🧠 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=e

If you're killing yourself in every session, you're not going to last. You need to get better, but you need to get better while having each session make you feel like you want to go do it again. Nobody really likes to hear this advice because it's not challenging enough. But dude, I think you should just walk. You don't have to annihilate yourself to be really, really good. I think if you think about your future self, while you're training right now, you will make different decisions. We're not saying don't work hard, but be smart about the work you're doing. Treat yourself like a professional.

And if you want to be able to do it for a long time, you have to figure out ways of staying ahead. I was on a run today and kind of made me think like, hey, I think this is a cool topic to talk about. As I was running, cruising down the street, a guy said, hey, I used to run like that when I was coming back the other way and doing like my rest interval. First of all, I was thinking, no, you didn't. But I just gave him like a thumbs up. Like, all right, cool. Yeah. But, you know, kind of, it makes me think, you know,

people say that a lot. I hear it a lot. I think that, you know, seeing people around town and seeing people that are like 25 and in good shape, you see, you know, a volleyball team or you see basketball players or you see various people and you're like, okay, those people are fit. But a lot of times when they're younger, you're just like, well, it's just a fit younger person. Like a lot of people are fit when they're young. I think it sticks out a little bit more like a sore thumb, especially when you dye your hair white and black. and you're in shape. Jay Jonah Jason or Omneman?

And you're older. So people ask me a lot of questions. They're like, what do you do? How do you get in shape and all these things? And they're usually like close to my age or they're usually like in their 40s. Yeah. And they'll always tell me, oh, I used to do this. I used to do that.

I'm always like, man, why do they used to do that? Like I understand maybe they used to have like a prime and they used to lift a certain amount of weight or do something really efficient. but now it seems like they're not doing anything. So that's disheartening to me. And it's like, man, maybe we don't have to like say that. Maybe we don't have to say I used to, because I don't have to, I could say like I used to bench more weight, but I wouldn't say I used to bench. I still bench. Yeah.

I still lift. I'm still in the game. I'm still doing some of the stuff. You love the game, bro. That's right. I think that's one thing that that can be kind of difficult, you know, because I played, I played soccer since. So I was six, got cut from college when I was 21. And when I got cut, bro, like, because my foot surgery, first I stopped watching soccer.

I stopped really playing soccer. And it's because, like, knowing what my body was able to do with it and then not being able to do that, it really just kind of pissed me off. And in my mind, I'm like, if I'm not going to be able to be high level at this, if I don't have, the ability to try to take this to another level. Why am I even going to do it anymore? And that was a really, really, really big mistake. And I realize that these days, and I'm playing more soccer, I'm going to touch the ball and building those skills, but I'm doing it from a place of like enjoyment rather than a place of, I got to do this so I can, I can try to reach the highest level. It's, it's, I'm taking the pressure off the practice. And because of that, it's just a

really, really fun thing to do. And it's the same thing because when you see people, because I know people are like, ah, I used to bench that much, or I used to deadlift, or I used to do that. And they don't do any of that stuff anymore. You know, I think sometimes you just put too much pressure on these practices. And if we can remove the pressure and learn to enjoy it and have it be like play, I think it's going to be much easier to maintain this for the rest of your life so that you can keep running at 60, 70, 80, 90, you know? I want to this place called Roostaller on Saturday and they have like pizza and beer and you've been there before.

Really cool atmosphere, cool place. But I went to get in line and this guy was like, yeah, he's like, what do you, you know, what do you do? And I just, I've told him, I run, I lift, you know, I've been doing this for a long time. And he's like, man, he goes, I'm 43 and he's like, I think it's too late. And I was like, but I just told you, I'm older than you, you know. I'm going to be 50. And he goes, yeah, but you're already in good shape.

He's like, I got fat. He's like, I got out of shape. And he was saying that he used to do jujitsu. And then he got into MMA and he got into it. Like he really, really enjoyed it. He loved it. He was sparring. And he goes, yeah, he goes, sometimes the young guys would come in.

He's like, every once in a while I'd tag one of those guys pretty good, you know. He's like, I was just on top of my game. He goes, I'd go home. And my wife would say, how'd it go? I said, I beat some ass today. You know, I was able to hang. He's like, I was real proud of myself. And then he ran injuries.

And kind of like one thing led to another. And then he left for a little while. Then he went to come back. And when he came back, he's just getting killed by everybody. Every new person, every, you know, white belt, blue belt, doesn't matter what belly. He's getting slaughtered, mainly because he just was out of condition. He's out of shape.

So he could kind of do some stuff. But he would get gassed out real easy. Yeah. And, you know, what I was telling him, it was like, you know, nobody really likes to hear this advice because it's not challenging enough. It's not hard enough. But, dude, I think you should just walk. He's like, walking. He's like, really?

I said, dude, if you make a decision to start to walk every day tomorrow, not some crazy amount of mileage or anything, but if you just make a decision to start walking tomorrow and you do so for the next five, ten years, I'm like, you're going to start to. get rid of some of that weight, you're going to be in a better place, and it doesn't hurt at all. And you develop this habit. So it's not like it's going to like strip weight off of you, but over a long period of time, it's going to help you to be healthier. And again, it's something that all it costs you is some time. But I do think that most people can slip in a couple 10 minute walks throughout the day here and there. So, you know, it's funny because I try to give that advice to people because to me,

that's the way you get back into the game. That's the way that you don't have to say, I used to do this or used to do that. Dude, you know, I think one thing that I'm curious to see what you say about this, but when it comes to building your consistency, because there are people who are still doing all these things and then there are people who, they just, they stop at a certain time. I don't want to tell people that you shouldn't compete or you shouldn't go hard at it, But it's one of those things where I feel like you have to find a happy medium from being competitive and trying to be really, really good to having fun. When it comes to your lifting, when it comes to your physical activity, because again, it's like when I think about jujitsu, yes, I want to continue improving because I want to be able to roll with some of the people, some of the best people on the planet.

I want to be able to hold my own. I want to be able to beat them. But I also want to be doing this enjoyably when I'm 60. 70, 80, 90. So there has to be, there has to be like, I need to be able to do this in a way that I still love going to practice every single time I go to practice. And I think that can be, that can be really difficult for people to find the balance. Because people, I think what ends up happening is, whatever it is, whether it's your lifting or whatever, when you, when it becomes too competitive, sometimes it makes people want to just stop doing it all together.

Like that guy you were just talking about. That's the prime example. He started to feel bad about it. He started to feel bad about something he used to feel great about. Exactly. And then also I think that the other thing, though, too, is like the injuries. It's one of the things when you look at lifting, why do people get injured a lot of times when it comes to certain aspects of lifting? You might be pushing too much weight.

You might be doing too much here, right? And every time you go back, you keep tweaking stuff and then you just stop doing it altogether. So how can we do it in a way that we can just not get injured? enjoy it, get what we need to get out of it, and do it for a long time. I think there's so many messages that we've shared on this show. And of course, I'm going to think the stuff we shared in the show is amazing and great. But I really think it would help people if you can follow along with some of what we've been talking about. We've been talking for a while about the importance of nasal breathing.

We've been talking for quite a bit about the importance of sleep and other people to talk about it. There's other influencers and other people and other podcasts that talk about these very same things. It's not like we made them up. But if you like if you were to, and I'm not saying, I'm not proposing that because there was a great clip recently from, what is his name? Milo Serkev. Oh. Milo Serkev had a great clip recently where he talked about how he sees all these people lifting and not making any faces and not grunting at all. It was legendary.

Trying hard enough, man. However, if you do lift in a calm way, okay, maybe you're going to ensure that your results might take longer because maybe your intensity is a little lower or maybe you have developed a pain tolerance or whatever the case may be. If you can lift calmer and you did most of your lifting, just nasal breathing,

I would say, man, that's going to, in my opinion, it's going to lower the risk of injury. You're breathing and you're not holding your breath. You're not bracing because you're not even trying to lift so much weight that you need to brace or grunt or go crazy. Some people might be like, I'm out. I don't want to do that because it's not, again, not challenging enough. But could you still get your muscles to exhaustion through breathing in and out of your nose?

Sure you could. It might take a little practice. It might be a little annoying. It might take, you know, a little bit of time to sort of figure out. But that's one way to just put a governor on something. And maybe you don't lift that way all. the time, right? But maybe you don't crank the music. You know, maybe you don't crank the metallic or maybe don't crank the fast pace, whatever music that you really like. And maybe you

don't take the pre-workout because all these things, they kind of put you into this mode of, I'm going there, I'm going to get after it. And you're kind of kind of almost like red line. And you could be, you know, kind of thrusting your heart rate up in the 170s, up in the 180s without even really recognizing it just from doing like leg extensions really intensely. again, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Like if you're after that hypertrophy and you're after some of those gains, maybe some of that is good. But something to think about is you're putting so much energy out

that that has a biological tax at some point that needs to be paid. And you're either going to pay it within the next couple weeks or you're going to pay it in the next couple of years. And it'd probably be paid like in the next couple years when you're going around the next couple of years. when you're going around slightly injured and maybe not motivated as much as you used to be. It's the, you know, what you're mentioning there,

I think if we even think of a broader context and this can be with all of your physical activities, you know, I've mentioned that when I go into jiu-jitsu, the thing that I keep at the top of my head and the reason why I do this is, I always keep in my mind like, I want to be able to find the best leverage for anything I'm doing.

Right? So the mantra in my mind is find leverage, find leverage, find leverage. And the reason that's my mantra with Jiu-Jitsu is because in Jiu-Jitsu and in all martial arts, if you're able to find leverage with the movement that you're doing, finding the best leverage, inherently the movement, the takedown, the sweep, the submission is easier. Because instead of trying to use as much muscular effort to pull this arm on the arm bar, If you can get your hips in the right position, your elbows in the right position, your body in the right position, and your whole body moves it, it's so much easier. It takes so much less effort. It's so much easier. Finding leverage allows you to find ease. And if we can take that concept into our cardio workouts, our movement, whether you want to go out and play some basketball or whatever, baseball, or go back and do some M.M. May and Jiu-Jitsu. If you can have the idea of like, I want to try to find ease. within this somewhat difficult thing,

you're gonna force yourself to try to do it in a way that doesn't feel like it's destroying your body. Even if we think we think about running. And I know that this can be so opposite to kind of like, you know, I love David Goggins, but I think he's the prime, the opposite of this. That man was so, so, he had so much grit that he was able to run through two busted knees.

He had sores and stuff in his feet that were bleeding, and he kept running. And that's motivating. But that is also just, I get it can be good to have grip, but that is just pushing through difficulty because you want to push through difficulty. And I'm not saying this isn't bad, but I feel like the more, the thing to be able to do these things for a long time efficiently is trying to find, just like you mentioned, nasal breathing, it's going to keep your heart rate lower, it's going to put a governor on your output. It's going to lie to probably do this thing again tomorrow because again,

there's a, doesn't mean you won't make progress, but there is a governor on your intensity. So we can do this thing longer. We can continue to make progress and we can probably stave off potential injuries that would happen because our intensity is so damn high, you know? There's a like a safe feature of bodybuilding, you know, and it's your rest interval. Yeah. You know, if I was training with you and you're like, all, let's, you know, let's both compete or something and let's, you know, do a contest. It's a ranch war in it, huh? Eight months from now, right?

Then we'd probably lift at a different pace than normal. Like the pace would probably be faster. The weights probably wouldn't be all that crazy, especially in the beginning. But you might say, like, let's have, you know, I go, you go type thing. And then when you do stuff like that, I don't know how many of you've done things like that before, but you do maybe about four sets of 10. It's like, well, you know, maybe. Maybe normally you can handle like 120 pound dumbbells on like a dumbbell bench or something.

Well, now maybe you're only able to use the 80s because you're going back and forth so much. So you just kind of created a leverage for yourself. And someone might think that that's that, oh man, that sucks. You can't use the 120s. Yeah, it does suck. For that particular day, you can't use the 120s. But maybe you set it up on some other days where you can kind of have at it and hit those 120s. But then also think about, okay, last time I did this, I did four sets.

I did them this way. I did this with this short rest interval. Today I want to handle the 120, so I'm only going to do one set. You know what I mean? And you try to figure out because every day is a new day. Every day is a new opportunity

to do something different. And when you start to blend disciplines, you start to blend things together. Sometimes things can go crazy. Sometimes things can go haywire. But I've found so far that it's a huge advantage. It's another leverage. to be able to cross train, just to have the ability to cross train, have the ability to,

oh, now I can, if I want, I can go on a stairmaster. If I want, I could, it's not like I couldn't before, but I just didn't have a decent skill set with cardio to really make it all that valuable. It would just be like, maybe like labor intensive or just didn't want to do it because I wasn't good at it, right? Like you start to get decent at stuff and it's a little easier to do it. But I could be beat up from a lift and then I could go and do the bike. I could be beat up from sprints.

And I could say, you know what, I think my feet and ankles and stuff, I think they've taken too much of a beating. And I can figure out a different style of workout for the day. You know, I'm curious about this, man, because you have had a long history of power lifting and lifting and doing things despite what your body is telling you. And, you know, with what we're saying right here, you know, It's not like I don't want people to think that we're saying you should never push yourself. I still have training sessions.

I still have sometimes jiu-jitsu sessions where it's like you get done. You're like, all right, I'm just going to chill tomorrow. You know what I mean? It's like I'm not saying you never do that. But it's about finding the balance between that. And honestly, having most of your sessions be kind of like in the green zone. There's a orange theory

The gym Orange theory They they You wear a heart rate Every heart rate monitor Actually on your arm Yeah And they keep you in the orange

zone They have orange green red They have like different Different zones That's the whole Actually you should do a session You'd actually really like it a lot Okay

Check it out It's kind of cool Because you can like You can go as nuts as you want I think for you You might go kind of like casual Like workout number one Because you don't really

know what's all involved Yeah Is it? I could picture you like getting after it in there though. Dude, they have bikes in there, right? They have some orange theories have bikes probably, but the ones I've been to have a treadmill, has a rower, and it has weights.

And anyway, the whole point of the whole thing, because everybody in there is in the red. That's the funny part. The person on the treadmill next to you, they're in the red, they're going crazy. Okay. And my wife and I've been to some of these classes before. We do them together sometimes.

And we're both, walking on the treadmill and then people always look at us because we're in good shape. So they're always like, yeah, they're always like, what are you doing? But yeah, we're, we, we, uh, we tend to try to listen to what, what they promote. And that's to try to be in this, you know, 70 to maybe 80% heart rate zone rather than redlining the whole workout. There's a TED talk by Stephen Saler. Stephen Saler is a, he's done a bunch of research on this. He's worked with some of the best Olympians in the world when it comes to conditioning. I definitely heard the name before.

Yeah, yeah. He has a, he has a, he, when he looks at breathing, for example, he thinks about it in terms of like your ventilatory zones, rather than zone one, zone two, zone three. It's based off of ventilation, right? And he's been able to show that a majority, vast majority of elite athletes do most of their conditioning work and most of their training is in what he calls the green zone. which by most people's standards would feel easy, right? Lower ventilation, lower heart rate, long period of time.

And that it's the last 15 to maybe 20% of their work that is in that red zone. Minimal amounts of their worker in the middle. Now, we're kind of talking about Joel Jameson type stuff with the Morpheus app and how he has it worked out to where, yeah, you're only doing smaller amounts of those like really hard anaerobic activities, right? depending on the athlete, depending on your goals. Red zone workouts, right? But with those elite athletes,

it's none of the stuff is in between, which Saylor calls the black hole. It's like where you're going kind of hard. Yeah, yeah, you should watch a TED Talk, man. It's 15 minutes, but it's great. So, but it really gets you thinking, like what elite athletes do most of their training in this green zone and this zone that's easy, right?

And we've had multiple athletes that have come onto this show, the top high rocks woman that came and she has a very good aerobic capacity and we talked to her about it and she's like the majority of my sessions are in that lower you know in that aerobic easy zone right um and most people though they don't feel like they're getting a workout if the workout isn't kind of push like if it doesn't feel uncomfortable they don't feel like they got a real workout and they don't want to go into the gym or into jiu jiu jitsu or into any of these things and and leave feeling like they didn't almost kill themselves.

That doesn't feel like a workout. But when you think about building that first, that broad aerobic base, but also being able to build efficiency in what you're doing, you've got to think if you're going to be doing this for a long time, then if you're killing yourself in every session, you're not going to last. You need to get better,

but you need to get better while having each session make you feel like you want to go do it again. You know what I mean? So you guys should check out, that TED Talk. We'll probably link it down here, but it's a really good, it can really help you understand. And I even, I mentioned this to people over the stronger human, try to have a lot of your sessions. You know, have a good session, feel good, but have to be in that green zone. And maybe once a week, maybe twice a week, do something that's going to put you in the red zone.

But that should not be a majority of your work. I like what you said about wanting to do the workout again. The best workouts that I've ever had, I get done and I do not. not want to be done. It's the last thing I want to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And you must have had this happen a million times of jihis or you just sit on the mats and you just like looking at everybody and you're just like, I just want to keep going. Yeah. I want to keep going. But you're like, it's Wednesday. I'm supposed to go home and eat. Get ready to recover on Thursday and be back in here on Friday. And Friday, you know, I know these other guys are coming in that are really good. And that's, I'm going to get more working on Friday. So you can keep telling yourself. But there's

that side of you where like, this feels so good. I want to just like live in this spot right now. This feels awesome. Yeah. And you have to shut it down. And I had to do that yesterday, doing some treadmill work. I was like, this feels great. And then I kind of said to myself, you know what? I'm not going to be the person that's not that good at something that wants it so bad that I just keep hammering myself, making myself worse. That's, I saw a lot of that in powerlifting. It was easier for me to see it in power lifting because I did it for so long and I became proficient at it. And I'd be like, why is this guy doing this? Like I, I just, I just need him to take a day off, you know, but they, they wanted it so bad, which is totally understandable.

When you're talking about this, uh, ventilation in this kind of green zone, um, you're also talking about something above just walking, right? Like, it's, it's definitely a more intense. I don't want to bash walking because I think walking is, is so awesome and I think it's a great base. Oh, and I want to, but we need to do stuff just a little bit beyond walking. If we're, trying to push our cardiovascular system. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the thing is, is like, what you mentioned about walking, I think, is still something that shouldn't be understated. I saw you posted a video about disagreeing with Rhonda Patrick about her 10K steps. And I heard her talk about like the not thinking about 10,000 steps anymore. I don't know the context of what she was mentioning. But like that,

just having a goal for getting a certain amount of walking in each day, I think is extremely important for everybody. Athlete or if you're someone who doesn't play a sport, it's just that is, it's essential. Ronda Patrick did have a good, uh, kind of schick instead of the 10,000 steps. She was like, I'd love to see people work hard for 10 minutes. And I, and I like that, but, but walking is too easy. It's too simple. It's too. I would love people to train 10 minutes a day. I think she's like, she's like just discovering the VO2 max is like, and she's super hard on. so much fun with it that she's got to share it with everybody else, right? Yeah, because I even heard her, I think I heard her on a little bit on another show

talking about how like, you know, she was giving advice on cardiovascular work and then saying, I think it was Chris Williamson saying, yeah, you could do these workouts maybe three times a week. And I'm like, excuse me, German four by four three times. Excuse me? Do you know the amount of fatigue physically that this causes the system? Or no region four by fours. I'm sorry. Yeah. It's like VO2 is really important and really beneficial.

But it's like there is a swing right now to like let's do the most intense cardio and build our VL2 max where people are missing building the base, building a high level of efficiency with your cardiovascular system so that you have more access to your highest VO2 max. It's so hard to share some of this stuff because, you know, someone like Kai Green's like, I don't lift heavy. I'm not, what does he say? I'm not a lifter, right? I'm not a lifter. I think he says I'm not a power lifter. Yeah, I'm not a power lifter. A weightlifter.

Yeah, he says weightlifter. He's got a good, good New York accent. And he says it repeatedly. And then you're like, I think I've seen to do 405 in the incline for like reps, like slow. Like, and he's so strong. And then you're like, well, what is he talking about? That's, but it's relative, though. Yeah.

He's obviously recovering from those workouts. It's obviously not that hard for him. I think Jay Cutler did a great job finding a sweet spot. I think when Jay Cutler was young, I think he got into a mode where he was like, saw what Ronnie was doing. He kind of got caught up in that for a minute. I think he got hurt a couple times and was like,

nope, I need to kind of stay in my own lane. And he kind of found weights that were good for him. But still the intensity that we see from these guys is like through the roof a lot of times. But again, we're seeing their highlights. You're seeing our highlights. you're seeing like what we do and and um we're not going to necessarily show you guys like us on an

hour long walk you know what I mean or or uh or maybe just like a hike or something we might share some of it with you that we do it but it's boring right and it's it's uh it's kind of slow uh but there's so much that you can get out of some of these activities and I think something that I'm picking up more recently is I think that you can do like lower reps and do stuff in succession with other things and get yourself into some really great cardiovascular shape. Something like, and you could pick how challenging you want it to be.

You know, like if somebody wants a hell of a challenge, they could have like a 200 pound sandbag and they can do some sprints in between or something like that on an Airdine bike, which is what we did when we had one of the guests here in the past. We've done stuff like that before. and it just annihilates you. But you can also just get like a 50-pound med ball.

And a 50-pound sounds like a lot for you. Grab a 30-pound med ball or 20-pound med ball. Do three reps on one side. Do three reps on the other side and go back to the bike and then see if you can get 200 watts. Hold 200 watts for 30 seconds. Hop off of it. Maybe do some thrusters or something like that.

Grab the ball again and start over. It's like you'll get such a sick workout from that. It'll be unbelievable. and your recovery from it, again, if it's appropriate for you, if these numbers are hard for you, then it's going to be hard to recover from. But if they feel kind of on the easier side, don't worry about it because you can do round after round after round. And there's another thing that you can do.

If some of the numbers I just said are too light, you can use a little bit more weight. You could have the intensity of the watts on the bike be a little higher. But you can also do like three or four rounds in a row with very little, to no rest and then you could rest three minutes or four minutes and then do three or four more rounds. This stuff is like, you know, I know this is people like, oh, you could discover CrossFit or you discovered some high rocks training. And yeah, those guys did a great job of bringing some of this stuff to the masses, but you'll find some really amazing, you'll find some really amazing gems in there. And I think it's a different way of working out that maybe some of the

normal bodybuilder gym bros haven't really tapped into yet. Yeah. You know, when it comes to that, this is also why it's dope that more and more people are starting to do things within their own living space, like getting an assault bike or getting some med balls, getting a few pieces of equipment so you can do these things at your spot because it allows you, I guess, a bit more freedom in terms of what you do, right? Because going from a bike to a med ball to something else, that might be difficult to do at your gym or your box gym, but you might just be able to do that at your spot, right? But with what you were just talking about right there, something to think about too is going back to the nasal breathing that you were talking about earlier.

Now, when you're doing something like that, some people will have the tendency of like going until they're breathing hard and heavy. but if you keep nasal ventilation, again, it's going to put a governor on the outputs that you have on the bike, the outputs that you have with the sandbag. Because again, if you keep at the top of your mind, I'm going to try to find a level of ease with what I'm doing. I'm not saying that you never should let your mouth open. And if your mouth opens, that's fine. And maybe you need to give the bag a little ha-ya, right? Right, absolutely. But this will allow you what's happened for me and what's happened, what's happened for you, and what happens for a lot of people,

is that your output is going, your output at whatever it is that you're doing is going to be able to increase while your ventilation stays calm and while your heart rate stays lower than it typically would be. And because of this, because of the calmer ventilation, because it doesn't actually, you don't perceive it as being as stressful, and your system, your body doesn't also perceive it as being as stressful. Tomorrow, when you get ready to do something else, again, your body will feel good enough to do it, right? The next day, you'll feel good to do it and you'll continue to increase your efficiency at doing whatever workout it is you're choosing to do. Versus every single workout kind of redlining it or being in this kind of middle zone where you're working kind of hard but not. And then the next day you feel fried.

You know what I mean? A lot of my workouts have continued to like just push the boundary of my green zone. I have like a red zone workout once a week or so. but my efficiency and my heart rate and my power output has continued to increase in all these modalities without me having to redline. So it's one of those things of like, again, finding leverage, finding a level of ease. And this is one of the things that's, I mean, I've been doing jiu-jitsu. It'll be 11 years now. And I'm not feeling my body, my hands, everything feels good. I don't have pain anywhere. This is just a sign to me that I can do this thing where I'm fighting people multiple times a week, training.

and I can do this for a long time because my body doesn't have the wear and tear that most other people's bodies would have doing this type of activity. And how do we get back to doing these things? You know, I think we're mentioning some of it right now. I think, you know, one thing that got maybe swept under the rug with strength and conditioning is actual conditioning.

Yeah. And maybe not for the universities and the football players and soccer players and so on. But like the people that were, the people that were into strength and conditioning workouts, they just kind of, you know, the conditioning side just sort of like fell off. Maybe they'd drag a sled here and there, do something a little bit, but not enough work to really to really make a change.

But if you, it's as simple as this, if you work on getting yourself fit and you may want to have a definition of that, I mean, it's been my experience. I feel amazing. I feel so good. I don't want to necessarily say like I feel better than I ever have or whatever because I don't want to like over-hype it and stuff. But I feel very capable every day. I feel very capable of doing whatever,

whatever's on the schedule for me to do, workout-wise, whatever I need to do, whether it's, you know, single-leg hops or bounding or sprinting. You know, and maybe some people are like, well, you're not that good at it. That's okay, too. I'm working on it. I'm working at it.

The fact that I can do it makes me feel amazing. The fact that I can go out and I can, you know, sprint forward, sprint backwards. I can jump on the boxes. I can jump down off a box. and I'm seeing results. And I feel like I'm progressing. I feel like I'm getting better.

I feel like there's a little bit springier. I am lighter, but I also feel lighter as well. And so how does some of these people that are listening, you know, for people that say they used to do this or they used to do that, you know, how do you get yourself headed back in that direction? And maybe even like, maybe should you get yourself headed back in that direction? direction. You know, sometimes some people might say, oh, well, you don't lift as much as you used to. Well, I would be lying if I said, well, I don't want to. Of course, I would be, that would be

great to hold on to that strength. That would be cool. But it's, it's not really, it's not part of the goals as much anymore. It's not part of the plan. I don't have any input. I have no input to produce that amount of force anymore. And I'm moving on to like other things. So I, I don't have, I don't have over the last six months, you know, lifts in the 500 range on squats over and over and over and over again like I did when I was competing. You know, I had lift after lift of, you know, bands and chains with 500 pounds or good mornings and deadlifts and all these movements and all these exercises going on for, I don't know how long. And those inputs, they're no longer there anymore. I don't train that way anymore. And should I even bother to pursue it? Well, strength is never a weakness, right?

And weakness is never strength. So yeah, I should pursue some of it. Why not bring some of it back a little bit? But also, let's be cautious that we don't, because I like that shit, right? I like that stuff a lot. Let's not get tangled up with it. And let's not wrestle with it. Let's not spend 45 minutes or an hour on the bench because that's like, that's costly in terms of how much time it takes.

And then also we know that I need to be able to move my shoulders better to be able to run better, right? And so then I'll just kind of be addicted and stuck in the same wheel of things that I should be. So for some of you out there listening, you know, can you still do what you used to do, but also should you still do what you used to do or should you be maybe looking in a slightly different direction? Yeah. You know, Mark, it's funny you mentioned strength is never a weakness again because I think I saw, I think I saw a post from Dr. Gabriel Lyon, and she was using your phrase, strength is never a weakness.

And I was walking and I was thinking about it. I was like, what would be a situation where strength would be a weakness? And I thought of like conceptually where strength would be a weakness. And it's to the person that's listening where they're very physically strong, whatever it is they do. But that strength stops them from doing. some type of modality or practice or something that would bring them a level of, you know, competency in another, let's say, movement pattern or another ability. But because they're so

strong, it stops them from even being open to doing X, Y, or Z. And I see that a lot from people. A lot of people are not willing to do certain types of, aren't willing to try rope floor, or aren't willing to do some type of mobility work. You see a lot of people, they look at a guy like Ido Portel and some of the things that they talk about. And because he doesn't deadlift or squat a certain amount, it's like touch butt in the park. Oh, that dude's strong, by the way.

He's very strong. So don't underestimate how strong he is. People don't realize how strong is. But that's the thing. A lot of times your strength can literally get in the way of you making progress because it makes you have so much hubris and pride that you aren't open to trying other things because you're so physically strong or so competent in what you do.

You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean years ago, you know, because I started saying this, you know, I did like a deeper dive into it. Yeah. And I looked into it a lot and I found all kinds of stuff on like monks and all kinds of different things and talking about like weakness and weakness being associated sometimes with openness because sometimes when you're, sometimes when you're weak, we're very weak. Yeah.

We are very weak. Anyway, keep going. Yeah, I'm weak in my, and I'm wide open. No, sometimes weakness, sometimes people don't want help, you know, like I start jujitsu or something and I don't even talk to you about it. Like, for whatever reason I'm trying to keep it like more to myself. I don't have the, I guess you could look at as a strength for me to just go to you and say in Seema, I'd love to get help with this.

I know you've been doing it for years. I might as well just, you know, chat with you about it, right? But in some cases, when I was looking into some of this, it was like weakness was the willingness to get help. It was the willingness to say, I'm not actually that good at this. Could you mind helping me with this? Or, hey, what are your thoughts on this? Asking people for their power, almost.

Asking people for their, oh, I know that you're kind of strong in this area. I'd like to get your perspective, your strength on this because, yeah, I could use the help. So yeah, I did look into it a bunch and it was really interesting. But where I would say strength can be a problem is, yes, like if it's the only thing you're working on. And also if it's not even so much the only thing you're working on. If you're only working on one aspect of strength, that's where we get. killed, right? That's where that's the hard part because I would say that like so many things are strength. Like what, uh, the proficiency of, uh, David Goggins. Like, I would say he's a strong,

like I would use that word. I'd say he's a strong runner. He's a really strong runner or, um, I worked, I worked out with Cam Haynes and I don't know if you have any footage of that, Ryan, but like Cam Haynes like totally killed me on everything, even bench pressing because like, we just did like nine gazillion reps. Oh, and strength is, you know, with this pulling this bow and arrow. Yeah. I had no idea how to pull that damn thing.

And he pulls it all day long. Uh-huh. And at the time, I'm 240. He's probably 170 or something. I don't know, 180. I mean, this guy, there's a lot of, this was a rough. I need to get a, I need to get a redo on this thing. This is a, this was a rough go.

What year was this? Like you're 240 or how long ago is this? That might have been yeah, 240 or 250. Dude, he, he ran up the hill. The way that you would expect someone to run up a hill if you were like filming them run 200 meters up a hill. Yeah. You know, and then the person would stop and they would like, you know, rest and then they'd like run it again for Instagram or something. But he ran up the whole thing that way.

He just like ran. He just floored it. Yeah. A shout out to Casey Short, too, who came with. me on that trip and actually ran up the whole hill too because he's a beast yeah case he is a beast and a fellow a fellow hunter as well and um anyway man there's so many different types of strength and you need to have rotational strength or some stuff that you might do with like a bow yeah um so yeah if you only focus in and hone in on one type of strength i guess that's where it can start to become a weakness

but how do you think like you know i know cam haines is the extreme i know gaga i know some of these people are extreme, but like, how do we get more people to be able to handle some of this stuff into their old age? And maybe they don't train with the same intensity as these guys. We don't train as much as these guys. What are some of your, like, what do you think some key elements are for people just to be able to still train? You know, I think back, there's one big thing. The first big thing is having a level of enjoyment in terms of what you do. So you need to figure out a way to whatever your plan is, like have a way to have things in it where you look forward to doing this. I don't understand why more people don't know about certified Piedmontese beef.

The steak, some of the cuts are just as lean as chicken breast. To me, it's amazing. It's pretty crazy because, like, you know, don't get me wrong. Go to Costco, go wherever get your meat. But there can be a lot of fat in certain cuts of beef, which is why some people don't. They aim towards eating chicken breast and chicken thighs. but they have certain cuts that have like the same amount of fat that you would have in a chicken thigh but it has all of the nutrient content that you get from red meat you freaking iron vitamin B

all these other things that chicken just doesn't have grass fed grass finish regenerative agriculture uh kind of the only way to go and a lot of the meat that we see at the stores and stuff sometimes it says it's grass fed and sometimes it's not grass finished and so on but i've actually been out there and seeing what they have going on at Piedmontese out there in Omaha, Nebraska. And it's a pretty impressive operation they got going on over there. So if you had to Piedmontees.com use code power at checkout, you're going to get four pounds of grass-fed beef with your order at checkout. I look forward after this show to going home and doing some kicks, doing some flow, doing some sandbag work. I'm really looking forward to that because it's really fun for me,

Right? But that's the thing. You have to make it fun. And then the second thing is, is I, you know, I do think that having a mix of modalities within your practice is something that's going to allow you to do it for a long, or make it, first off, make it more enjoyable and allow you to do it for a long time. Because I mean, you see, you see guys for like, you know, upper lower push pull. It's like every day, it's like these lifts, right? Because maybe the prime goal is muscle and strength. And I get that. But I think, a cool concept to think about is Greg Souters came in. We were just talking about Greg. He teaches that standard jujitsu. You know, he brought a lot of the constraint-led approach to jujitsu and I'm not saying

that this is the approach, but there's something that happens when people do games with the constraint-led approach in grappling. When you have those constraints in those games, what ends up happening is people end up doing different types of movement that they wouldn't have come across.

to get to, let's say the arm bar, get to a pass or whatever, because they're not drilling the same type of movement. And the byproduct of this is less overall, like, fatigue on certain areas because they're figuring out different answers to a movement problem. So they do more aspects of movement to get there. So a lot of these athletes don't tend to have the same amount of soreness in their knees and back, et cetera, because they're getting more aspects of movement than they would be if they were just drilling consistent movements. I'm not saying that drilling is bad, but it brings me to this idea of when you have broad movement abilities,

it will allow you to become more physically robust over time, but also each session that you do isn't just going to drill down on one part of your body that might be getting excessive amounts of stress. Because when you think about it, when somebody is doing certain types of training, like we both know what, well, at least I really know what it was like to have,

back pain when I was doing strength training in the past because I was doing a lot of the same movement patterns over time. And there were a lot of movement patterns. I wasn't getting a lot of rotation. I wasn't getting single leg work. I wasn't getting hopping, right? I wasn't getting, wasn't doing anything backwards. There were just a lot of these things that I wasn't doing and I was drilling in this sagittal plane in force production in these same vectors. So I was having consistent pain in the same areas. Now, I'm still strong. I'm still making progress. I have no physical pain. I'm still doing jujitsu, but I have a more movement practice that's allowing me to develop way more capacities. And the fatigue is being spread

throughout more of my structure than going to specific areas, right? So I think figuring out a way to have a broader practice, whether you know you're playing basketball or playing a sport and then you have other things that you do for your fitness, that's going to help you to develop more capacities while not, you know, especially if you don't want to be the type of person who I used to do this, not having specific pain. Like, I haven't think about it with people who run. A lot of runners have chronic pain in certain areas. I think it's like 80%. I think that's like a real stat. It's like 80% of runners are injured. And I want to, what is your theory? Like, let's just even think about the way most people who run like it's the same road it's the same you know the same type of uh

the same way you're doing it man there's a lot there's so much that goes into it yeah because there's such a broad variety of people that run um but the littlest things make i mean shoes like you know right off the bat people you know um there's you got to find appropriate footwear for yourself and for the conditions that you have every day and you don't necessarily just want to put your stuff your foot into some giant cushion all the time sometimes it might be appropriate so there's a lot of stuff with stuff like that there's also just the simple thing of like if you were to test a runner if you're if you're a trainer and you're like all right I don't know a ton about running but I'll give you some evaluations and and I'll think this through a little bit you go

home you think it through you talk with chat cheap ET a little bit and you you come back and you say I'm going to have you do an evaluation because you said you wanted to run 10 miles. And here's a couple things that are needed to be able to run 10 miles. Obviously need to be conditioned running 10 miles, right? But how about something so simple as just jumping up and down on one foot? You ask the person to jump up and down on one foot and they do it for 30 seconds and their legs completely on fire. And then you're like, well, wait a second, you know. And then you test a couple other things.

You just test them doing some lunges. And you're thinking, well, they're going to be on one leg a lot, you know, just for this running stuff and they got to have some strength here take them through a couple other tests and just find out they're just not that proficient they're not doing great right so then you're going to have to set up an entire program that allows them to circumvent the possibility of getting hurt via like bringing up some of these capacities and I don't think people even think of they don't even think about it at all it's just not even it's like it's like I heard about running I got fired up and I just started running which is that's awesome that's really cool

But it would be great if playing in the background was a little bit of you working on some of these other things doing TKEs, you know, for the knee, as my knee just totally popped when I do that. Do a TKE, you know, just whatever exercises, right, these smaller exercises. And look up terminal knee extension if you want to know what he was mentioning right there. I think that the main reason why people are hurt is because they continually do things when they're hurt. Yeah, that too. And so it's the fastest way to end up in this category of I used to. Oh, I used to do that. There's, I could have just completely wrecked myself forever with some of the lifting

I was doing. But I stopped. I mean, again, I think I've told a story before, but I retired from the sport because I was lifting a weight that was like, I don't know, I was getting into like 80% range and I was doing sets of four with it. And I just benching or something else? Yeah, benching. Yeah.

And it just sucked. It was like, these suck, these reps suck. They're not, they're not nothing compared to what I should be able to normally do with this percentage of weight. And it was a pretty good amount of weight. It was like 475 and I was doing a couple sets of four reps. And they were paused and stuff. And they look, if you watch it on camera, you're like, no, it looks great. Yeah.

But my elbow was totally killing me. And I'm like, if my elbow hurts with 475, I want to bend 600. I mean, these are not. they're not even remotely close to each other, you know. So I didn't necessarily have to retire, but I just had enough in general, you know, and I felt like I did enough, had enough. And so it was time for me to move away from it. But I think most people, they, they don't take these signals as like hints.

And the reason I, the reason I actually retired too was also like, I went to the doctor. I had the elbow checked out. Yeah. They wanted to do a surgery and they were like the surgery was iffy. They were like it'd be 50 50. So I'm like, I'm not going to have a surgery. I don't think it's necessary for me to live out an awesome life. And I don't want to be like disabled.

Yeah. So I'm going to just stop. You know, and so I just and I don't know. Some people might think, oh, that's kind of sad or that stinks or it's like, no, it doesn't. Like a power lifting was great. I had so much fun with it. I was lucky and felt great to be able to do it that long. But there are messages that your body has.

I have some friends, you know, they have like an Achilles thing going or a knee thing or a hammie. And they're like, I still got to go out there and I still got to go do my thing. It's like, well, hold on a second. Like, you know, if you have a slight injury and you're swapping exercises and you're lowering the intensity down quite a bit, I can buy some of that.

You know, you have an Achilles thing and you're like, I'm going to swap out with the, with a salt bike or something. I'm like, okay, that makes sense. Doesn't mean you can't train at all, right?

But man, if you're still trying to go out on a run and you got something that's really nagging you that's really telling you over and over again. Yeah. It's like, I don't, you don't want to find out, you know,

you don't want to find out what's on the other end of it. Luckily for me, I never had to have any surgeries and I haven't had anything that, uh, has injured me for like a really, really long period of time. I've had kind of, kind of, uh, some shorter stuff except for that injury that I had to my foot. And that injury that I had in my foot, that thing went on forever. Yeah. And that. Did you ever figure out what that was? Did it just go away?

So what I, my, my theory after a lot of stuff, uh, I still have a tiny bit of it. Um, it's still like in the heel. It's like a planter fasciitis type of thing. And I dig through it on the show all the time. I'm always working on it. Yeah. Um, I think. Um, I think. it has to do with my spine. I think it has to do with like as my spine starts to open up and as my body starts to relax better. I think my whole system will move better. And I think it's like a, it's a weird thing to say, but I've come to the conclusion through like just many different diagnoses of trying to figure out exactly what the hell is going on. And I think that that's, that's one of the leading causes. The other one is sometimes I overreach when I start to sprint.

And sometimes my, it's not like I'm slamming my heel on the ground. Um, But yeah, my foot is in front of my body. Yeah. And then it's repeatedly over, you know, over and over again. And you won't feel it a ton with just running. But as soon as I went to sprint is when it started to kind of act up. Gotcha. Okay.

Yeah, but what you were saying, actually, what you were just saying right there and what you were saying prior, that the awareness piece is another big piece for you to not be that person that says I used to be that guy. because I'm I there are people in my mind right now that I do jiu jitsu with one is actually not doing jiu jitzzi right now because of the thing that he was complaining about I told him just say don't don't come for a bit just do something else boom that injury turned into something bigger but there's so so often someone will get an injury someone will get a tweak and it speaks to them this has happened to me in the past years ago with jiu jihitsu or something happens you're like ah I can train through it it's okay you go, you train, you get through another session, you get through another session, and then there's a session that happens that takes you out for a few weeks or a few months

or that injury becomes something bigger because you just weren't listening to what your body was telling you to do. We get these signals because we're supposed to pay attention to them, not because we're supposed to work through them. And when it comes to training and fitness, there's just so much of the messaging of go through the pain.

If you, you know, work harder. Not saying there's anything that meant to hard, work. But honestly, I think at that point, the work is literally stupid, like you're being stupid because you're not listening to what your body is telling you. There's a signal that your body's segment. For you, it's your heel. For me, it's at times been my groin. The other day after jujitsu, I came back home and the next morning, like my hip was, my hip was speaking to me. I was like, oh, this is weird, right? So I started doing some isometrics, right? And some tissue work. And after that, boom, it went away. But it's because it's because. It's because. It's because. It's,

I listened to what my body was telling me and I like I we have modalities right another way for you to not to be the I used to be that guy person is have strategies right have tools we just talked to the episode that we did with Dr. Keith Barr just came out where you you guys will learn after this episode I think you should go check that out how beneficial isometric can be not just for building tendon resilience and strength but also for recovery after sessions of training or hypertrophy right we've done so many episodes. on soft tissue work, right? Now you have a modality where you can take care of your own soft tissue, right?

And you're not just sitting there and continuing to train when something in your elbow or something in your hip or something somewhere is speaking to, you have something that lets you work on that, right? That awareness is extremely, extremely important. An isometric is almost like a surgery. Explain that. Well, what Dr. Barr was saying, it was unbelievable. He was talking about how it helps synthesize the collagen, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And how it helps with like the connective tissue. I'm not saying it's going to take like tissue that's unconnected and torn and like literally put it back together. But man, it seems to have a crazy impact. You know, we know for years we've talked about and we had Ben Patrick here years ago and we talked about pulling the sled backwards. And Ben had that statement of like, you know, pull the sled backwards so much that if you were to go run and, afterwards that you can't hurt yourself because you can't pick up any sort of speed because you've got so much blood flow in there, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's related to this because that, so that's all concentric activity. A lot of the gym, a lot of stuff in the gym is concentric. There's eccentric portions of stuff too, but the eccentric side gets kind of pushed off to the side. The isometrics aren't always done. There's some people that understand, like to do a little bit of them. They do a little bit of pausing here and there with exercises.

but it's not really that popular. But one of the reasons why the backward sled walk works and one of the reasons why it feels so good is because of the amount of blood that it drives to the area. It drives blood flow all the way around, all the muscles in the knee. But even more direct route than that is an isometric. An isometric like bypasses all the activity

and all the different things that you need to do. And it bypasses like just that wild fatigue that you might have from pulling the sled backwards. there's still going to be fatigue, but the fatigue's going to be like deep. It's like in the joint. It's kind of uncomfortable. Yeah.

You know, when you're done, it's kind of uncomfortable. Whereas the sled pulling backwards, it's just like a, it's more like a quad pump. Then it doesn't necessarily feel it like in the joint quite as, quite as much.

So I think that the isometric stuff is huge. And the isometrics, eccentrics, what you mentioned about, mixing, you know, mixing up your workouts. Yeah. You know, hopefully you enjoy that. Hopefully, hopefully, you know, variety is the spice of life, hopefully for everybody.

And hopefully you enjoy having some different things in there. But I think if you can just view stuff as it's hard to illustrate to people because you and I have been doing this stuff for so long, people are really obsessive about like programming and their sets and their reps and everything. And then we're like, I don't know. you just kind of, you know, there's somebody was telling me recently that there was some study that was done on like all these really high level athletes and they, they found that like none of them could really explain very well what they could do, you know, and how they could do it.

They could just do it. You know, it's hard for them to be descriptive of what it is that they did. And it's because you get like so keyed into something like, like hypothetically speaking, of course, maybe LeBron James isn't the best basketball coach. Although he could be. Oh, that guy. He could, he could, he could be. Yeah. But there could be like other athletes that maybe like, you know, aren't as athletic that had to figure things out a slightly different way that that might know different angles or whatever the hell, right?

Maybe he's a bad example because he's been in the NBA for like 30 years or something like that. It's pretty. When you hear that guy talking about basketball, he's a bad example for that. I know. And Jordan too. And Jordan and Brady, like some of these players. players like they're, they're unbelievable with some of their descriptions of how they, of how they did it. But if you want to kind of, you know, be someone that doesn't say I used to, I think

if you can try to have some, maybe arrange for some unplanned stuff, unplanned training, like, I don't know, I heard a lot about like med ball tosses. I'm just going to like go around and I'm just going to like mess around with it. And be okay with that. Yeah. Because doing, doing that for a minute and then walking away from it is okay. Yeah.

Yeah. What about, I don't know, take a six pound, just like order off Amazon. You get six pound med ball and take it to the local football field. Yeah. And if they have a field goal post,

even chuck it over the field goal post a bunch of times. And then that's like your workout. But you're going to find that as soon as you start to mess around with shit like that, you're going to do way more than that. The odds of you just doing that is probably pretty low. Yeah. And I think it seems like, I mean, I don't know, those workouts that you have in like your driveway and in your garage. It seems like you just like, just have some major workout ADHD and you're just like pulling out all kinds of, you're like, do you stop and then just look at the sandbag?

You're like, I should lift that one. And then you just go and is it just by feel or you have like real specific thing you're thinking about? I have intent for the things that I'm going to do the amount, like if I want to bring tension to a specific area, but the thing is, is I have a lot of different ways to do that. If I want to get rotation of my shoulder and also a bit of load, I could swing a club. I could swing my 25 pound staff. I could swing my heavy rope, right? I could grab my 16 pound shot put and do rotations with that. I have a lot of ways to get the same desired outcome, right?

So that's that's kind of like, you know, that's why I think it's good to build a broad understanding and a broad movement practice because you might tell yourself, okay, you know what, I want to get some squats in. Well, you can use a sandbag. That's not the heavy staff, but that's fine. You can use a sandbag. You can use, I have the belt squats. that I could do that with, right?

I could do some stuff with higher at body weight, right? I have a lot of options, and I know how to reach my goals in a way that, not even in a way that, but like in multiple different ways. Versus if you want to just work your arms, well, you typically, you just go to the gym and you do some bicep curls. Well, I could do some things on my stall bars for my biceps. I could do the cable machine. I could do the mace and I could have it offloaded.

I'm getting a little bit of leverage in there. I have a lot of answers to any type of thing I'm trying to do all the day. Is this your other YouTube channel? Yes, my second YouTube channel. Because you have two, right? What's this called? This is called The Stronger Human. And actually, I'm explaining something in this video.

There's this movement that, remember that Barbell 360 thing that I put that. So people were wanting to know how to do that barbell 360. I was just showing people how to do that with like a broomstick and how to like do that movement. So that's what I'm explaining here. But that's the thing. It's like I think that if you have different, you know, different skills, it makes it easy to reach your goals because you can, you can do multiple things to get to the same outcome. The other thing I did want to mention is when you were mentioning the isometrics from Keith Barr,

it's funny because sometimes when, you know, we were talking to Keith about this, but when a lot of people think about isometrics, they think of five seconds, 100 percent or three seconds with as much force as possible. Well, Keith was talking about those three LD isometrics, long duration, low intensity. So 50% of force output, right, for 30 seconds. Think about that. Think about how not difficult that is,

but it can still bring such a great response from your tendons or your connective tissue that you're trying to work. And you're not even doing it at 100%. And you could do that literally right now you're listening to this episode if you're not driving, right? That has a positive effect. That has a positive effect on blood pressure. That has a positive effect on your tendons and connective tissue. It's huge, but it's not, it's still that green zone that we were talking about earlier in this episode. That's a practice that will allow you to be the person that says, that doesn't say I used to be that guy.

And it's allowing yourself not to have to, like again, the mindset I used to have with soccer. If I'm not trying to be the best, I'm not going to do it. The mindset, I used to have with lifting. If I'm not trying to be one of the strongest, I'm not going to do it. It's like you don't need to have this all or nothing mindset when it comes to your ability to build your movement practice or progress. And that's going to allow you to actually progress. And then maybe at some point you end up being extremely good, but it's not because you

trashed yourself trying to get there. It's because you had fun along the way. I think that's like a key is that you don't have to annihilate yourself to be really, really good. You don't. I guess, you know, maybe, maybe for some people, like, if they want to be great in a particular sport, you know, we see that a lot from champions and gold medal winners. And we see that pretty often, right, from the, sometimes the cream of the crop.

Sometimes they did have to, like, you know, sacrifice a lot. But not that position is not for everybody. And you can still, and I think most people from recreation. standpoint, I don't even know if that's what they even care about. I think it's fun to be able to like, it's, it's, it's fun to continue to improve. And then over time, you recognize or other people recognize like, oh shit, like you're, you're getting quite a bit ahead of most other people that are your age. It's kind of, it's kind of cool. You know, Adam Sandh playing basketball. That just came to mind. Yeah. But Adam's a fucking baller. Oh my God. Yeah. He's awesome at basketball. And he's old. And you

see him crushing it with people, but like he's fucking good. Yeah, he's very good. He just looked like he's killing himself though. He looks like he's just having a fun. Exactly. He's not out there like redlining the fuck out of it. Yeah. I give everybody basketball update for me. I drained another three the other day, but I got stung by a wasp. Oh, yikes. I know. Yikes. But you know, was on the rebound. You know, I do think though that there's a there's a there's a, there's a in finding efficiency because like you know to get good a lot of times again we think that we got to be trying super hard going super hard but I think all of us have ran into people who like whether it's in jiu jitsu whether it's I know so many of these guys who I used to what I used to play soccer

right where like it doesn't really it looks like they're just chilling everything's just like moving they're smooth they're not they're not breathing super heavy they're not doesn't even look like they're stressing they're just having fun though that you don't want to go against in practice that's always going like crazy you're like, dude, what? No one wants to play with him. You suck. Like when we have a game, you don't even barely even play.

Yo. You know, that's true. Practice all American, we used to call him. Because like one of the guys in my high school, he would like, he was a linebacker. Yeah. And he would just, he would sprint to like where he knew the play was. But I'm like, we're on the same team. So of course you know where the play is, you idiot.

You're supposed to give us like a good look from like, a regular defense that might be tricked by like some of this shit that we're doing. Instead, he would like run to the exact hole that we were trying to run through. I'm like, and you make every play. And you're like, dude, just chill out. Yeah. Yeah. I think you've mentioned this before.

Do things with the intent of like being able to do it again tomorrow or maybe the next day. Like think about your future self in your current session. And I think if you think about your future self while you're training right now, you'll make different decisions. My homies that had effed up groin probably wouldn't come to train the next day or the day after that or the day after that because they would have learned to address it and they wouldn't be in the situation there and now, right? Because they were thinking about their future self right now. And if you do that with the way you train, you're not going to be the person who says I used to be that guy. I didn't want to mention something too. I think something that's maybe missed is that Cam Haynes,

and David Goggins and some of these people that we see, you know, going through this really hard thing or hard time. These guys have tremendous skill set. These guys are like, they're some of the best in the world at what they do. Yeah. And then we're watching them, you know,

kind of pour it on after they already became, you know what I mean? Like they're not, they're not some mid-level person who's redlining and then never getting there. They're already there. And they're like, put the pedal to it.

I want to be the goat. Like I want to leave it, like no doubt that I want people to understand that I'm completely out of my mind. And I'm going to show them by, you know, finishing his race with two shitty knees or whatever, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also I think, you know, for David Goggins, he said many times it's like a mental thing for him. He just happens to whether it's good for him or not. I think that he would even agree. It's probably not good for him.

But he likes doing it. Yeah. So he made a conscious decision as like one of the best in the world to like really floor it in this particular. situation. Yeah. You know, that's that's a complicated thing too because it's like, again, we're not saying don't work hard, but like be smart about the work you're doing. So you don't put yourself in a situation where you can't do the thing you love to do because of a dumb decision, right? And if you do that, again, Cam and David have been doing this stuff for decades. You got to be able to do whatever this is for decades if you want to become really good.

30 or 40. Imagine this. If you're 30 or 40, let's say you're 40 right now and you manage to do jiu-jitsu for 20 years, you're going to be pretty damn good at 60. You'll be really fucking good at 60 actually. If you do it in an intelligent way, have an awareness of taking care of your body and actually do things with the intent of staying in the game. I know a lot of people who are like, like again, they're with jiu-titsu. I used to do that when I was in my 20s or whatever. It's like, why aren't you doing it anymore? Decisions, decisions. And I know sometimes, you know, sometimes it could be a stupid sparring partner who did something dumb, right?

But a lot of times it's like if you make better decisions with kind of how you're handling this, you'll do this for a long time. It's interesting because I feel like we know these things. You know, I think we intuitively know that, I mean, even with learning something, anybody who's ever been to a seminar or anybody's, ever been in a class that's difficult and you start learning you learn some stuff and you're like getting these inputs and you're like okay okay oh I caught on to that okay and then they kind of go over the next thing you're like oh that's a little bit oh wait what they do there oh wait a second I think I'm falling behind right and then you get like fatigued and you get like frustration right you get all this stuff going on right and there's only so much you can learn only so much you can

take in in a given day and I mentioned this before you go to trade shows or seminars or something like that, go to seminar, and you see everybody, you know, they pop out of there an hour and a half in, 90 minutes in. Everyone's pumped to be there. Everybody wanted to hear these speakers. And now, you know, on a second speaker and they've really been going for a while. And you see people like duck out and like, who. And everyone's just like, they need to, they need to plug their batteries back in. They need like recharge. So they sit there and they have a coffee. They sit there and they chit chat with everybody. And then maybe they go back in. But there's only so much input. you can handle in a given day.

Yeah. And whether it's learning. I mean, what we're doing is learning. You know, if you teach me a particular movement pattern, it's learning, right? Yes. And it's going to fatigue me. It's going to, right? I can only like learn so much in a given day.

You can only train so much in a given day. I think sprints and explosive activity are probably some of the greatest things that you can explore and do. but how much of it can you do? You can't always just do that. So then we need to like have other stuff in between. And all the other stuff in between is, is fun as well.

But it's just not that same crazy intensity. So you can only do so much in a given day anyway. And I think thinking about that, thinking about what you were mentioning about, think about yourself next week. Think about yourself six months from now. I always think too. It's a good idea to think of,

maybe this is too much but like maybe this is too conservative but think about if you were like training your mom or someone you really care about and apply that to yourself you know oh i wouldn't i wouldn't push mom this hard i wouldn't push uh my uncle this hard well obviously like they're in a different condition or whatever than you but i think have that same kind of care for yourself like don't just i think sometimes i think what our exercise has become has become some sort of therapy and some sort of abuse session for us dealing with our past in some weird way. And, you know, just be careful. You know, if you're diving down those, those kind of dark tunnels, just be careful how often you do it. And if you have injuries and stuff, do your best to pull back, have some

skills and have some things that you can lean on, some mild fascia release, maybe go into a practitioner if you need that. There's, there's so many different things you can do, isometrics, eccentrics, a list goes on and on of different things you can try and do to keep yourself healthy. The last thing I'll say on this is like treat yourself like a professional. Why not? You know, okay, maybe we don't have the money that, you know, somebody making $25 million a year shooting some hoops. But you don't necessarily need that amount of money to be able to to be able to have some tools and be able to have a tennis ball and lacrosse ball to roll around on. like it's not crazy expensive.

To sleep on time. Yeah, just treat yourself a little bit like a pro because the stuff is fun. And if you want to be able to do it for a long time, you have to figure out ways of staying ahead. And I know for myself, one way that I've been able to be someone

that can still do stuff, now I can't still bench 500 pounds. I bench 500 pounds for probably about a decade. And I remember saying like, oh, I'd love to be able to do that for like really long time. But it wasn't something that I could even come close to holding on to. I only did 315 the other day for double.

And that was to take everything I had. It was kind of funny actually. But you know, you're going to probably lose some attributes here and there. But like I can still do the movement. I could still enjoy. I could still enjoy the movement. I could still do it. So maybe the intensity goes down a little bit.

We see that with high level athletes that sprint. and they sprint a little slower when they're older, but they can still sprint. They can still put in 100%. And so there are all things that I think it's worthwhile for us to think about how can we do that and the way that we're going to be able to do that is to treat ourselves like a pro. And the way a pro handles themselves as a pro knows what's coming next. You know, what's you're doing in your next workout?

What are you doing next week? I think about what I'm going to do on Friday or I think about what I'm going to do on Saturday, very, very often and it starts to kick around in my head on like Monday or Tuesday. Maybe not everybody's that much of a meathead or that excited about it, but that's where I'm at.

Strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.