Mark Bell's Power Project - Josh Settlage - Why Waking Up at 4am Will Change Your Life || MBPP Ep. 767

Episode Date: July 13, 2022

Josh “The BJJ Strength Coach” Settlage aka "SettleGate" is a strength & conditioning coach, wrestling coach, competitive jiu jitsu athlete, and podcast host. Josh works with grappling athletes all over the world helping them become stronger, more explosive, and better conditioned so they can win more matches & get injured less. Get coached by Josh here: www.thestrengthmatrix.com Subscribe to Josh's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5LpYPNiaPVEH4VmStGwiGA Follow Josh in IG: https://www.instagram.com/joshuasettlage/ Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really does work): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code POWERPROJECT20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $150 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell #FitnessPodcast

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And you got Goku there too. Cover their ears. Oh, I have a new thing for the table. Yeah, it'll go in and out with Goku because we can't have too many toys on the table. But you guys will like it. Did you say in and out? You just made me hungry. Yeah, that does sound good.

In and out. Josh, in and out versus five guys. Which one wins? In and out, 100%. You fucking traitor. 100%. Traitor? He's always been on that side.

That's true. Andrew and I have already established this bond like four years ago. Right, yeah. Yeah, this has been an ongoing debate for years. It actually hasn't. Fuck you. You're the only one that's debating it. I love In-N-Out, but I just think Five Guys is more expensive, but it is also just better.

I'm so fat. I had a dream about in and out i know i'm sorry wait what was the stream they were serving up piedmontese bonnet steaks oh wow it's like that and it made like national news everyone's freaking out because they've never changed their menu and then people are like i'm confused what's about that like no one knew what it was it was like on list but i like that that's like food news yeah it's so important in your dream world that it made national news let me guess are you the one who told in and out about piedmontese and they're like i don't even know i don't even know it was fucking weird and i've been sleeping better, so I've been having dreams.

It's been wild. Yeah, that happens. It's been wild. I've been knocked out. Dang. It's been pretty crazy. Good to have you back on the show, Settlegate. Thank you.

Yeah, it's awesome to be back. I looked at the date of the last show, and it is 51 weeks almost to the day. We couldn't survive. We couldn't make it. It's only been a year? Yeah. Whoa. Time. It'll be been a year? Yeah. Whoa. It'll be on my last day working here was July 16th, 2021.

We couldn't make it a whole year without you, buddy. I guess not. I guess not. So now we got to have a yearly appearance. Yeah. Andrew, write that down. July 5th. Fuck.

Every year. The day after Independence Day. I'll put it in the calendar right now for next year. Perfect. We'll just do it that calendar right now for next year. Perfect. We'll just do it that way. It's perfect. People are coming off of a high from the 4th of July. They had a good time, and then we got Settlegate on.

What's ironic about that is when I was working as an unpaid intern originally, I started in April. Let's not talk about you being unpaid. I was unpaid and mistreated. Totally abused. Then it was on July 5th that i started as a paid intern so and that was four years ago also in 2018 so it's a shame you didn't fall for the paid internship where you paid us i couldn't quite get you to do that that's what i was trying to get you to sign up for originally but it didn't work almost got me almost got me but not quite but

anyway we were talking about kind of like maximum fat capacity of America, or at least I was talking about that. Josh was kind of asking, like, do we think that we're going to see like old age pushed off further and further? And I certainly do, because the generation at least appears from my small circle of kids that I know through my own children, I see a lot of kids losing weight. And I see a lot of kids being focused towards that. Kids that unfortunately gained a little bit of body fat, got a little heavier than they liked, and they were like, that shit ain't for me.

I don't want to go that route. I want to get in better shape. So there's that side of things. But I still think that America is still heading in a very bad direction because people that are my age and older, when some of us are 50, 60, 70, 80, and so on of people from my generation of like kind of the 80s, there, I don't want to say there wasn't information because that's just so lame. Like there's always been information that if you eat way too much and if you are gluttonous with your, with your food, it's just not a good idea. But we didn't have the kind of information that is out there today where

things are a little bit more accessible. There's a lot more healthy options. There's meal prep companies. Like there's back then it was like you had slim fast and people would drink, uh, I think a slim fast shake. They would have, they tastedast and people would drink, I think, a SlimFast shake. They would have a- They tasted good. They were good. Yeah, they taste pretty good. They'd have a quote unquote reasonable dinner and then they would not be able to make it through a handful of days because that diet was just very difficult and it just left people very hungry.

So that was the kind of information that was swirling around back then. Then you had the whole carb movement, like don't eat any fat. And you got like snack wells and those things tasted good, but they gave us a lot of sugar and also left people, again, just super hungry. I think we're in a time period now where there's a good shift where people are learning like we need nutrient-dense foods. We need to figure out a way to get satiated. If you're on some sort of nutritional plan or you have some sort of nutritional intervention uh it shouldn't be like a death sentence and it shouldn't be so damn so damn difficult but i do think that people that are when i go to like like i went to a couple

barbecues and stuff like that this weekend just people just swirl around me and it's like a seminar they're like what are you doing like how like how does your body not hurt? Like they're confused. It's like, I've been training forever. I would hope that my body doesn't hurt if I could, you know, have once picked up a thousand pounds or deadlifted 700 pounds. I'd hope that my body was, uh, still resilient and still in good shape. But anyway, nowadays my goal is to have the workouts particularly make me feel better. And so therefore it would be really, really rare for there to be something in the workout that is going to kind of bleed into the next day or the next handful of days that's going to really slow me down, make me too sore or just make me beat up. Gotcha. make me beat up. Gotcha. And in your experience over the course of your time being so dedicated to your own health and fitness and performance and things, when did that conversation at those

barbecues change for you going from like, how do I get stronger? How much do you bench again? To being like, my elbow's killing me. What can I do? Or like, how long did you say you fix or how did you say you fix your sleep? When did those conversations transition for you? That definitely was more recently. No one would talk to me at those barbecues before, or I wouldn't go. I was so into what I was doing, I would tell my wife, I would just tell her,

you know I'm not going to that. And she'd be like, yeah, it's fine, whatever. Obviously I always wanted to be around my own children, and I wanted to be around other family members and stuff like that. So you do what you got to do with that kind of stuff. But I would just go to a lot less stuff because I was like, I'm a power lifter. And, uh, I was just all in on that. And I, if I needed to go to bed at certain times, you understand this being somebody that Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you're here at like 4 a.m. I had a dedication to something else where I sometimes had to leave the women and children home while I went out and did my powerlifting thing. Okay.

So, yeah, but the conversations changed more recently. The 4 a.m. shit's still going on. How the fuck do you manage to get here and already start training at 4 a.m. with the whole 4 a.m. crew? And how long have you been doing that? What have you noticed like productivity-wise also like the age age range like you guys are all like what 25 and less uh yes yeah okay yeah all 25 and under there might be one dude that is 26 but you'll kick him out pretty soon that's right 25 it's like a cult that you got going on. Talking with Eric, Eric's like, man. He's like, I missed today, man.

And he just was like, he was so mad at himself. And I was like, Josh got him perfect. You got him right where you want him. Eric's the man. Eric is, he's like, he took everything. So I originally met Eric when I was a wrestling coach at the high school that I used to go to. I wrestled with his older brother and knew him, but I didn't know Eric that well. Then when I came back as his coach, I was able to get to know him a little bit better.

Then he started hanging around a little bit more, and I brought him to the gym a couple times. Then he just absorbed everything. He would just go in on me. He'd go in on some of your other— He's your mirror image right yeah yeah he'd be like what what was that man like you had like six more reps in the tank i was like we keep referencing that story of louis simmons where i think you said it was brandon lily he hit his top set he's like louis i don't know like my pec you know it doesn't feel good and

louis is like max effort and he does another set and he tears his pec. And Louis is like, oh, come on. And so Eric is like that. Yeah, Louis said, we don't save pecs here at Westside. Oh, God. Yeah. You're like, what does that mean? We're going to tear it when we know that we're hurt?

We're going to go harder? If you do it right, yeah, you'll tear it. Yeah. It'll heal back stronger. But Eric is like, he's developing that intensity and that level of focus and discipline too, which has been freaking sick. But yeah, the little group that we have, we all train at 4 in the morning. And it originally started with me coming in when I was still in college because I didn't really have any other time to train except early in the morning.

And I was by myself for a couple weeks and then I was going to the bathroom, some pre-squat dookies, and the door opens and it literally scared the crap out of me. And Mark was like, hello? And I was so relieved. It's just me here at the gym.

I don't know if someone's here trying to swoop some slingshots or something, but thankfully it's just me here at the gym like i don't know if someone's like here trying to swoop some slingshots or something but thankfully it was just mark so once i started training at that time it just stuck and you know it's been the schedule ever since and there's been a rotation of people that have come in during that time it was me and mark for a little bit and then uh mark you had like sean provost and way and Wayne and your brother would come in. And then it was me and Sully for a while. And then after like everything with COVID kind of blew over and was done, Sully had started training in the afternoon. And so it was just me again.

And I needed someone like Sully. I needed other people like Sully who were there to push me and keep the intensity up and put me on game when I didn't feel training at 100% or felt like saving my peck, ironically. So guys like Eric, Zach, Joe Bonabdula, those people started coming into the gym a lot more during that time. So now we have a group of about seven or eight of us that train three days a week and it's been going strong ever since. What time do you go to bed? of us that train three days a week and it's been going strong ever since. What time do you go to bed? Between 7 and 8, depending on kind of what's going on. I'll take my last walk of the day with my wife around 7 and then we'll be in bed by around 8 o'clock.

She goes to bed around the same time? Yep. How do you guys do that with the brightness right now? Because I can understand winter, but right now it's like bright at 7. It is. It's a little tough, but we have eye masks and things and there we go uh she doesn't do the mouth tape but i do the mouth tape and why are they against the mouth tape i've noticed even my girl doesn't like dude even my girl doesn't do mouth tape and i'm

just like what the fuck like why does your wife do it so she says i think for her it's like a like a nervousness thing so she says, even though she doesn't snore, she's the feeling of not being able just to open her mouth to breathe. She said like, she's still taking some time to get used to it. But it's, for me, like I've felt like after a couple of minutes of having the tape on,

you just like control your breathing. You can kind of relax a little bit. But yeah, she doesn't she doesn't do it but maybe eventually she will i think that men you know end up having like a lot more problems with sleep apnea and stuff like that and uh you know i i guess women run into similar issues but i don't i just don't think i don't find that sleep is statistically it's men yeah and i don't find like uh that most of the men i talk to like i'll ask like who falls asleep first or who sleeps better like it always seems like their their

girlfriend or their wife sleeps a lot easier than they do i know that's just the case with my wife she'll just she'll go right to bed and like wake up eight hours nine hours later or whatever for me i might toss and turn and wake up a handful of times. Do you think that's mainly a size thing since men are traditionally larger and have thicker necks than women do? It always comes down to size. I don't want to take it there, but I know. I think there's probably a lot of different reasons for it.

But yeah, size has got to be one of them. We're just kind of dumber you know we throw ourselves into harm's way a little bit more you know and uh not that women don't get after it with their training but there's a lot of guys that are like training or uh this uh kind of um what's the word i'm looking for like this uh self-development type stuff is more in the male space right like i'm not saying it's not in the female space, but guys really seem like they're, at least nowadays, maybe women coming soon will have a similar problem

because maybe they'll be, you know, striving for the same thing. But I just know a lot of guys in particular that are like waking up early, journaling, like doing all this shit. I don't hear of any, I don't hear of any i don't i don't hear of hardly any women that do that could be more common than i think though i don't know yeah uh the nasal breathing stuff that you you do taping your mouth shut all of that um how's that been helping you as far as sleeping if it made any difference for you and sleeping is concerned and then how's it made a difference as far as like jujitsu, fitness, et cetera?

It's made, I'd say over the past five years, that's been probably the, definitely in the top three, but maybe the number one biggest change that I've made in my life that's improved all the other metrics that I would track that to see if something is worth keeping kind of in my daily routine or keeping within my training. Um, from a sleep perspective, I tried it. I tried it at the same time of trying a bunch of other stuff. So tried at the same time, I've taken a contrast shower before bed, getting more sunlight first thing in the morning. And so during that period of time, I definitely slept better, but I didn't, I couldn't quantify whether or not the mouth tape itself was actually making the biggest difference. And coincidentally, I ran out of those Somniflex

mouth tape strips and I immediately noticed a huge difference. And I wouldn't say that my sleep was horrible, but I definitely noticed a difference in that little bit of a difference over the course of two, three months, it definitely adds up. And if you're an athlete and you're trying to get better and, and, you know, make small improvements in any area that you can, those two, three months can definitely add up either for you or against you. And so after recognizing the deficit that I was in for those couple months, I put, brought the mouth tape back in and then sure enough, immediately started sleeping better, was staying asleep longer. Um, I have an app on my phone that it gives you like a quality of sleep reading. I have no idea how accurate those are, but if they are consistent

with like, I slept great and it said I had a good reading, I slept horrible and it said I had a low reading. What does it use to track it? So I put it, it says you're supposed to put it face down under your pillow by your head and it listens to you and it tracks like how many times you're tossing and turning and stuff. I know if you have something that you can wear it's probably a little bit more accurate so looking at that for what it's worth that definitely was uh correlated with improved sleep when i started putting tape over my mouth and then uh performance wise the nasal breathing that that was like an immediate uh there was an immediate increase in conditioning when i started nasal breathing and it was a little tough to get used to at first but everything i do now as much as i

tried or as i try to as much as i can in jujitsu breathing through in and out through my nose all the conditioning we do is nasal breathing specific i don't wear tape when we lift because i do like to get a little fired up and it's just hard to do that if you're like, and then, you know, get under a bar, I try to nasal breathe as much as possible. And it's just had huge gains and boosts in performance for me as far as conditioning is concerned, both in jiu-jitsu and just in everyday life. A good training tool is just to have a bottle of water with you. And if you just gulp some water, don't swallow it, just keep it in your mouth. And so rather than having the mouth tape, so you can still, you know, if you wanted to, you can kind of yell and scream.

But like during your set or whatever, you can try to like – you just hold the water in. That's a military thing. They do it on runs sometimes. Sometimes they'll have people run like a marathon that way, which is pretty wild. I've heard of that, and there's a book. But you can just spit it out like whenever – if you were training, you could just – Yeah. There was a book that I read that talked about Spartan culture and the different things that they would do.

And part of their training was to fill their mouth with water. And they had a – they measured the exact volume of water that they would drink. And then at the end of the run, everybody was responsible for spitting it out and refilling that cup or whatever they drank from. And I think the – in the context of the book, it was to develop mental toughness and all that stuff. But I think there's a lot of other added benefits to it besides mental toughness. And you're doing this when you're actually training sometimes, though, too,

because Eric was telling me some secret settle gate. He's probably not. He's probably supposed to sign an NDA or something. He gets a pass. He can take me down, so I'm not going to hold him to it an NDA or something but he's good he gets a pass he can take me down so he told me I'm not gonna hold him to it he told me some top secret shit but yeah he was telling me that you do it on the assault bike and stuff like that sometimes right yep yeah so we'll do the way we structure it is Monday Wednesday Friday it's always lifting and what we

do during those lifting sessions is going to be a little bit different based on the day but on Mondays and Wednesdays when we're in camp prepping for jujitsu competition or in Eric's case, he's wrestling in college, so it'd be for wrestling competition, we finish with some sort of conditioning intervals. They're usually 15 to 60 seconds depending on where we're at in camp, but those are always done with nasal breathing.

Occasionally we'll mix in breath holds, which make things way significantly harder. And I would not suggest that anybody who's listening to this here, like, oh, I just need to close my mouth. I'm going to do conditioning and hold my breath. Just start with nasal breathing first for like six months and then, you know, progress to holding your breath while doing conditioning. But we'll do some stuff like that, where it will be six rounds, 15 seconds on 45 seconds off nasal breathing the entire time. Those 15 seconds, you know, we're really trying to achieve the highest wattage that we can on that assault bike or on that rower. And then, um, you

know, focused on bringing our heart rate back down as quick as we can during the rest periods and then continuing from there. Have you noticed the breath holds have been helping some of the athletes you work with? We, not everybody does the breath holds. So helping some of the athletes you work with? Not everybody does the breath holds. So in Patrick McKeown's book, The Oxygen Advantage, he mentions that you should have a Bolt score of 20, which a Bolt score is essentially it's a breath hold test that you can do to see how adept and how fit you are to be able to be in a hypoxic environment or without oxygen. And so those, the athletes that have a Bolt score over 20 will occasionally do breath holds with them. And then the ones that don't will just focus on nasal breathing. Yeah. The, um, the Bolt score, if any of you guys want to test it, you should do it once you wake up, but you can just literally when you wake up,

take a short breath in or a normal breath in a normal breath out, hold your nose, and then see how long you can hold your breath after that out breath. When you get the need for breathing, like if your diaphragm starts going or whatever, breathe and see where your Bolt score is. Patrick, his goal is for people to have a Bolt score over 40. So does that represent 40 seconds? 40 seconds.

A Bolt score over 40 seconds. And I remember the first time i did my bold score i was like i'm gonna kill this shit i did like like yeah like four or five years ago my shit was at like 20 i was like bitch so that's pretty damn good for the first time first time i did i got 10 i was like what i couldn't even believe it you got 10 the first time i ever tried it yeah i got 10 seconds was that before you started focusing on nasal breathing stuff too? See, that makes a difference. Well, and what you do beforehand too, right? So if you do a little bit of Wim Hof, then we held our breath the other day for how long?

Around two minutes or something like that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's not hard to hold your breath for even 30 seconds or I don't know. I guess I haven't tried it that much. But once you start breathing a particular way, if you do it beforehand, it kind of preps you. It's almost like a little bit of cheating. But yeah, I think you got to do it like kind of first thing in the morning. And then if you're doing nasal breathing, then it will naturally be a little easier for you, I think. That's something

that's been huge in everyday life is just focusing on nasal breathing. And when people ask me like, hey, like I try to do like hold or not hold my breath, but hold my mouth shut while I was doing that conditioning you talked about. And I couldn't do it. I had to breathe out through my mouth. And so I'll just tell people like when you, if you're taking three, 10 minute walks a day, just start with seeing if you can keep your mouth shut the whole time. And it's surprisingly, it may be a lot more difficult than a lot of people think initially at first, but once you can get those three, 10 minute walks and nasal breathe the whole time, then you can progress that to something a little bit more challenging and maybe, you know, increase your output a little bit more, do something a little bit more intense. And then something that's, uh, with breath holds that

Phil DeRue put me onto was instead of diving right into hard condition with the breath holds. And I think Patrick McKeown talks about this also in his book, but it's doing breath holds and counting your steps. Ooh, yes. That can be really difficult. Yeah. Oh my gosh. And again, like the first time I tried the bolt score, I got 10 seconds. The first time I tried walking, holding my breath, I think I took like 20 steps when most of the time you should be shooting for 50 or 60. So it was a big wake up call for me. Um, the Patrick's new book, it's called the breathing cure came out in 2020. He go, he has like 26 different exercises in there and he has the, the one where you will take an, uh, inhale, exhale, then take all those steps. So all of those,

including cause, uh, Phil also before one of my tournaments, he sent me this sheet of different breathing exercises and like there was a breath of fire and all of that. All of that's in that book too. So like if you guys are curious what we're talking about here, you should definitely check that out. But Josh, I think you're in a very unique situation because you've probably dealt with athletes who have like deviated septums or broken noses, right? Yep. Do you find that there are challenges with those types of athletes in terms of adopting nasal breathing and have you been able to help anybody successfully adopt it? Because that's one thing I always see, like, I have a deviated septum or, you know, I've broke my nose. Yeah. I would say the ones that have, that said they have a deviated septum that didn't come from a straight up smashed nose,

those with those guys, I've seen a lot of progress with. Um, and I think that some, now I'm not saying that if you have a deviated septum that you're lying to yourself, but I do think there are some limiting beliefs about your deviated septum that a lot of people have. Yeah. And I think it just takes time to overcome those things. I do know one dude that he,

his nose is messed up and he's like, dog, I'm trying, like I can't, it ain't working. So for him, it's just, we just do the best we can and,

you know, maximize condition as much as possible. But unless you, you know, take time off of training to get your septum fixed if it's been broken, it is pretty tough to focus on nasal breathing. Oh, imagine just for that person, they just incorporate some nasal breathing into their day-to-day. Like it's not necessarily for training. Exactly. Or to get like a way better training effect. It's just it feels a lot easier to

deal with stress. You know, when negative things come your way, it feels good just to go get a little sigh, you know, and then practice just breathing in and out of the, in and out of the nose when I'm running. I've been doing a lot of nasal breathing when I'm running. Um, but I'm not afraid to breathe in and out of my mouth too. Like if I need it, I go on a hill or something. I think the idea isn't to like kill yourself with it. The idea afraid to breathe it in and out of my mouth too. If I need it, I go on a hill or something. I think the idea isn't to kill yourself with it. The idea is to have it be something that you work on over a period of time that you get better and better at. I got a question for you about the 4 a.m. stuff.

Do you think that you would have been able to start your own business and kind of plunge into some of the stuff that you're doing now if you didn't start that 4 a.m. mentality? Because it seemed like there's been some pretty good influences on you. I know you read a lot, and I think it was what Corey Gregory kind of has that 4 a.m. mentality as well. Do you think that had a massive impact on you being able to kind of branch out, even like you're still young, you know, and a lot of people just, they say, I'm young, I'm young, I'm young, and then they're 35. Yeah. Yeah. And you're not so young anymore. So how were you able to do that? Do you think that 4am thing played into it big? Yeah, absolutely. I think there are

two things that attributed to that. The first one was just seeing all the people that would get up at 4am. Like, if you surround yourself, or whether you're surrounding yourself, literally, like I'm surrounded by you guys, you guys are in the area, or you're surrounding yourself with just the people you look to or read from or study under. If you're surrounding yourself with a bunch of people that get up at 4 a.m., I don't know a whole lot of – there's a lot of successful people that don't get up at 4 a.m., but I don't know a lot of unsuccessful people that also get up at 4 a.m.

So it is like a correlation. Corey Gregory has built multiple successful businesses. Jocko Willink has built multiple successful businesses. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Wes Watson. That guy's pretty incredible. He came out of prison, built a very successful business, and he wakes up super early. Yeah, he's amazing. He's mentioned it too. Yeah. So those people, I mean, not that for them getting up at 4 a.m. is the key to their success, but it is a habit that they've instilled that contribute to the other habits that they have

with being successful. So I think being a young man and being in high school, recognizing that, looking up to guys like Corey Greger, looking up to guys like U3, looking up to guys like Jocko Willink and seeing like, oh, well, if Jocko gets up at 4am, that's good enough for me. If Corey gets up at 4am, that's good enough for me. So I think that was the inspiration. But once I realized that this gives me an edge against my former self, it gives me an edge against anybody I compete with, gives me an edge against any other adversary that I or adversary that I would want to put in front of myself to get me an edge. And for me, I found that if I can have the most amount of uninterrupted time to focus on things like building a business or establishing relationships with other people or training or anything else that I'm passionate about, that uninterrupted time for me happens to be super early in the morning. I don't really do well staying up late at night. It's like,

I mean, yesterday was 4th of July and I didn't even try to stay up to watch fireworks. I just fall asleep right away and I can't focus that much, but I can focus really well in the morning. So if I get up and I'm at the gym at four, and then my workday starts at 6am, most people are still doing their morning routine or getting up at 6am. So if I work from 6am to 12, that's already six hours before quote unquote, a traditional lunch break. And that's six hours of uninterrupted time that I was able to put towards something like building a business or getting better at jujitsu, learning more about strength and conditioning. So I think it's like a two-part answer. You know, the inspiration comes from seeing the example of people getting up that early

and looking at all the stuff they've done. And then the action of getting up early and having that uninterrupted time, I think is the biggest contributor to being able to do those things. You've been doing this for a while now and you're still just 25 years old. I remember me at 25, I would have never been able to do that. But did you ever feel that you've been like you missed out on anything because you're like, you said you're going to bed around seven, eight. Cause I'm just thinking a lot of 20 year olds are going to be like well no because i can't because of x y

and z like whether it's something as simple as like netflix or like i gotta go see my girl like whatever it may be but have you ever felt like ah like man i'm making a sacrifice to get up early uh for some things yes but i'd say like 99 it, no. When I was younger and I was wrestling, I was super competitive and I put all my identity in winning and losing with wrestling. So I didn't put my identity in the quality relationships that I had. So if I had to sacrifice an activity with friends to develop a quality relationship, but it meant that I have an opportunity to get a little stronger, get a little faster I can win more at wrestling that was a really easy trade for me to make and it's like screw you guys you guys can go have pizza like I'm going to bed and I'm getting up early

and doing all that stuff and so and I definitely think that was a mistake early on and my mindset with that has changed but I think just from the time that i was younger i didn't care that much about what a lot of other people my age maybe cared about i never partied in high school it didn't really like seem fun like i don't like being around a ton of people like that and i'd rather just like hang out with three people and i'm i'm i get too nervous around sketchy shit yes you know people getting into fights and people getting hammered and people like being high and shit. I'm like, I don't know. Because at that age, when I was young, I just I didn't know what it was about.

So it kind of like me and my brother did a lot of drugs and shit like that. So I was always like, I don't I don't want any part of this. So I just didn't go to a lot of stuff like that. And that is an amazing way to put it, because it was kind of scary. And like I'd hear stories or I'd see stuff from like other family members that have had issues with the law and just think like, I don't know the connection between, you know, having fun in this manner and then going to prison. But I don't even want to flirt with that connection. I'd rather just stay out of it all the way. Anytime I ever saw a cop, I always thought I was going to get arrested.

Yeah. I'm like, I'm going to get arrested for something. Yeah. I'm like, I'm going to get arrested for something. I'm doing something wrong. I shouldn't be chewing gum. You're not doing nothing to worry about.

My fucking hat's backwards. I think I just cussed or something. The first time I got my license and drove to school, I was wearing my hat the way Andrew was wearing it

and my mom said, you should probably turn that hat around in case there's a cop behind you. And I was like, mom, that's not true. Hey, this is not true.

Hey, this is just a hack for anybody in your 20s and you're driving too fast, you get pulled over by a cop. Just say you're driving to a criminal justice final. It worked for me like five different times in college. Every single time I was pulled over, I was in my beat up fucking Corolla, big ass black dude. Sorry, officer, I'm late for my criminal justice final. I'm pulled over. I was in my beat up fucking Corolla. Big ass black dude. Sorry officer. I'm late for my criminal justice final. I'm so sorry. What if he asked a follow up question? There was no follow

up questions. He was just like oh yeah I'm good. I'm sorry. What school are you at? University of the United States. Hey but criminal justice final will get you. It might but for me it worked every time. I haven't heard that but with people in the jujitsu community, I've heard so many stories of them getting pulled over and be like, what?

You train at Casio's? Man, I keep seeing that place. I'm probably trying to slide through. And then they start, you know, like spitting some game a little bit. Like, man, you should come through. Like, it's tough training. Like, okay, well, just slow down a little bit, man. But I'll catch you on open mat.

Yo, we're going to give you all the tricks to get out of you fucking getting a ticket this is good shit that's funny yeah there was a uh like a block party like fourth of july block party and i'm like i have zero interest in going over there like there's a lot of people over there like and there's some people drinking like that's whatever they're having a good time but like i've never wanted to like be in the middle of all of that and then what you were pointing out like like oh like somebody got arrested for part like i don't know like what if every once a year whenever we work out somebody gets arrested we'd be like fuck i don't know if this is really a good idea yeah and like you're willing to like possibly get into some shit because you want to go party like i don't know man that just i don't think it's worth it have you seen that that movie shot caller that's a perfect example this dude

like total straight edge works in the financial district of la gets one tiny dui and just gets a bad jury and they put him in a general pop in jail and then the ab gets a hold of him and he has to like like shank people and do all this stuff and then anyway the b gets a hold of him and he has to like like shank people into all this stuff and then anyway the movie is him he ends up becoming shot caller gets the keys of the yard and it's a dope movie but it's uh it all started because he like had a little bit too much to drink didn't pass a do i stop so it's like i ain't trying to mess with any of that i just want to give a general like observation of like this kind of 4 a.m. mentality. So people that are listening can, I guess, kind of pick whatever way they want to go about doing things.

I have met a lot of successful people that don't wake up at 4. I've met a lot of successful people that they're not even sometimes up by 7 or 8. the thing about waking up at like four or the thing about being somewhere at four or five a.m. is you normally under normal circumstances people do have a pretty particular purpose for waking up at that hour and so that means that they're pretty driven because they're setting up the rest of their life they have the discipline I call it a cascade of disciplines you have a cascade of disciplines that descends downward into you figuring out how the fuck am I going to be somewhere at four or 5 a.m. tomorrow morning. And so then therefore you have to get to bed earlier. You have to arrange your whole day, every day to coordinate yourself, to be organized enough to make it somewhere that early in the morning. However, you mentioned that you don't really like to work

at night i've been the same way for many years i think that the opportunity to do like more bullshit type stuff at night is usually what happens to a lot of people i'm not saying it happens to everybody there's some people that might just be editing uh a youtube clip you know uh in the middle of the night but a lot of time time that's where the devils kind of roll in, right? That's where pornography, texting chicks, or like whatever the stuff is that you're doing in the middle of the night, that's where a lot of that stuff seems to happen for a lot of people. And even just doing drugs or, you know,

getting high and eating stuff that's not on your diet. Like that's where, so a lot of people and even just doing drugs or getting high and eating stuff that's not on your diet. Like that's where, so a lot of people I communicate with, I'll ask them about their diet, their nutrition. It's almost always past 7 p.m. where they have the mistakes and something like making a switch, obviously waking up at three or four to get somewhere that early might be way too huge of a switch. But what if they just started to organize themselves to where they got to bed at like 8 p.m. every night?

They weren't up watching TV and having all those cravings. Like all those thoughts can be eliminated by simply just making a decision to perhaps get up earlier. Yeah. Yeah. Another thing I, another thing I noticed just with like waking up early is it's almost always beneficial for people just to wake up earlier. So again, I just want to kind of reference that because people are like, man, I'm not fucking waking up at four. I know there's people that are probably like, I'm not getting up that early. What's, what's interesting is that, I mean, I, I hear this so often, like I'll even tell people whether it's at jujitsu or at a coffee shop, or even if I'm not, I don't have a relationship with them built on lifting or jujitsu. And they'll ask like,

you really like trained at four today? And I was like, yep, like we did today. And we're going to be there again on Wednesday. And sometimes like, they'll come back with like, man, I would be there. Like I would totally slide through, but I got shit to do. I got four. Like, what are you doing? And I think when people, they look at their day or they have a reason slash excuses on why they can't focus towards building their own business, why they can't study more for school if they're a college student, why they can't get three, 10 minute walks in like simple, not, I don't want to say simple, but, um, reasonable things to add into their day or their daily habits. And they just look at their whole day as like, Oh, my, my hands are tied now.

All my time is taken up. And if they just woke up 45 minutes earlier, an hour earlier, they could do their personal development. They could at least get one walk done. They could get their training done. They can get all these other things done that they can contribute towards the goals that they have. And like you said, it is a cascade of disciplines. If they continue to do that and they stack that up over the course of a year, there'll be a completely different and transformed person.

Let me ask you this too, because Andrew was mentioning something like, you know, getting in the way of friendships, relationships. And you said earlier on, maybe it did. But one thing is you've kind of built a community around being up at 4. And I'm curious, like, would you say that the guys that you get up and train with at 4am are also some of your close friends? I mean, they're, yeah, clients or people that you train with, but are they also some of your friends? Because you guys now have this, you know, group that does the same shit.

At 100%. Different people have kind of come in and out of the group just based off of work schedules and kids and things like that. But when I got married, one of the guys from the group was in my wedding and several other people in the group were at my wedding. And anytime I hang out with friends, it's always with them. I don't really hang out with anybody else, I mean, outside of family. And I do think that it's the interesting thing that I've seen is, like, one guy that's in the group, Zach, I've known him since middle school, and we wrestled together, and we'd work out together, we'd train together.

And I had other friends in high school, but he's the only one that that i still talk to and he's also the only one that trains at four and it's not that if any of the other people that i used to hang out with didn't train at four then it's like sorry like i'm cutting you out but there's just not a whole lot of extra time to build relationships like that that don't necessarily contribute to what I'm looking to do in the relationship I have with Zach his goals are aligned in intensity he's a real estate agent so his goals are very different than mine as far as what we want to do with our our own lives but the intensity that he has for it is very similar and he trains at 4 a.m so that's something that we can bond on that's something that we can hold each other accountable to that's something that we can bond on. That's something that we can hold each other accountable to. That's something that we can continue to pursue together as opposed to someone that only got up at 630 and, well, like we should work out. And it's like, great, I'll be there at four. Like, well, no, I was thinking in the afternoon. Sorry. It's just not, it's just not going to work. And that's, that's the way it's got to be.

Have you always been a leader? Have you always been drawn to that? Have you always been a leader? Have you always been drawn to that? I haven't always been drawn to it. But since a young age, people have told me that even if I didn't believe it, there would be people at church that say, like, hey, you're a leader. And my parents definitely instilled that into my brother and I saying, like, you guys are leaders. You're not followers. And they would say, well, unless you're a follower of Jesus. They're like, yes, yes, yes.

Just be a leader. Shut up. Shut up. I love it it's uh at jesus underscore christ that's right yeah check them out um but yeah people would say that a lot in through different stages of my life i definitely recognized where i was in leadership positions and recognized where i didn't want to be in a leadership position because the accountability that comes with that and i'd say from middle school to those maybe like first or a couple years of high school, I wanted nothing to do with being a leader because of the accountability

that came with it. And the accountability that came with it often led to like me making wrong decisions or getting in trouble in certain things that if I had thought more about the position I had as a leader, probably could have avoided a lot of those things. But now, I definitely recognize like my interest in leadership and learning more about leadership has, you know, coincidentally developed into being more of a leader and being in more leadership positions or having more opportunities to lead in different areas. So yes, to to your question that's kind of always always been there seems like you can't help yourself like you want to coach people you want to help people when you were wrestling in high school were you like taking other guys aside saying hey let me show you this you know like

here's something you could work on were you drawn to that pretty quickly not in wrestling because i didn't feel like i was a leader in wrestling because i hadn't really wrestled for that long but i wrestled most of my years in in high school and at that point everyone that was in the varsity lineup had already been wrestling since they were in fifth or sixth grade so i didn't feel like a wrestler in that sense but i did feel like a wrestler on the strength and conditioning side anytime we did like team conditioning or a team workout like my goal is to smoke everybody and then circle back around and like cheer everybody on to finish their pushups or shoot through jump overs, whatever we were doing. And, uh, my older wrestling coach recognized that also

and would, you know, in the off season, have me lead certain wrestling based workouts and things. But I would say like the leadership was definitely there just not from a wrestling skills perspective just on other things you know one thing i've been noticing too in terms of and this is kind of off but as far as your size over the years um i've been getting kind of messaging people being like is josh on like it's like i know like you're wearing an oversized black shirt right now but if somebody were to pull up your social media which by the way has been growing really fucking fast if somebody were to pull that shit up um you're jacked like you're especially compared to when you came in initially so i'm first off i'm curious what's the weight difference

and number two you do jujitsu along with doing a lot of conditioning, and you've been gaining size every year. Tell us your cycle. That ST lighting, bro. Right under the mats. It's perfect. But what have been like some key things for you to be able to gain this size over time? Because a lot of guys just don't – they don't first off put in the work you put in, but they also just don't think it's possible. I think the one thing I recognized was I think a lot of people don't think it's possible because they don't think it's possible in a year, which for the most part, it's not. It's possible

in 10 years, but it's not possible in a year. And I started lifting when I was 12 or maybe like 11 going into being 12 years old. And I did my first wrestling competition and I weighed 124 pounds. So I'd already been lifting for a year by that point. So I was 124 freaking pounds, which is pretty freaking small. And so you look, and that was an eighth grade. So you look at over a decade later and now I'm 164. I've been bigger than 164. The biggest I've ever been was 176, but I was a little pudgy. Um, but it just, it just takes time. And over a decade, if anyone put on 40 pounds of muscle and, uh, in any amount of time, people would say like, that's freaking crazy. Like, tell me all your secrets, 40 pounds of muscle. That's like what they would put on the cover of

those magazines, like build blockbuster 40 pounds of muscle in however many days, nine weeks. Yeah. And it's things like that, that I think a lot of people get discouraged by and they say like, how'd you get so jacked? It's like, well, I started when I was, yeah, there we go. I started when I was 12. And I kept doing it for a decade. That's right. Yeah. Those, those cap delts, that's the, the key giveaway. But I think a lot of people just, they under, and I'm sure you guys have heard this quote before, people underestimate or they overestimate, excuse me, what could be done in a year and underestimate what could be done in a decade. along with trying to learn as much as I can from you three and everyone else that's kind of circled around Mark Bell's Power Project, the guests that have been brought in, the other people that the podcast has been connected with, has helped me just continue to develop myself on a

physical level more and more over the years. As far as like the quality of muscularity and conditioning and things, I think that just comes from smart training and smart eating. A lot of times people get really excited, like I'm a bulk up and I'm back on some muscle and they do it for like eight weeks and they're like, man, I'm, I'm full. I can't eat anymore. And then they either just switch gears and move on to something else, which is fine. But if they stuck with it, they'd probably see, you know, some pretty serious results. I think the episode that you guys did with Ben Pollack was really telling and really

eyeopening for a lot of people. I mean, he gained like 90 pounds, 97 pounds, something ridiculous, but he had a singular focus and a singular goal that maybe took different forms over the years. Maybe it'd be more focused towards bodybuilding, more focused towards powerlifting, but the base of that goal was still pushing towards getting freaking huge. And so even though I'm not that big, I'm still pretty small compared to, you know, most people that lift, I have been able to develop myself in a way over the past decade, that is something that I can be proud of, and then continue to build on in the future.

There's something with you where it seems like, and I could be wrong, it seems like you're not, it appears from my observation that you're not really trying anymore in terms of your physique. Do you know what I'm talking about at all by that? Yeah, 100%. And have you like,

because I think you were like really dialed, like you were really focused on like, I'm going to be more jacked or I'm going to have a better build and maybe it got stagnant for a while i'm not sure exactly what the transition was but what do you think like led to that confidence was it you just wanted to see better performance because once that happened then your body like it it was clear there was like some sort of time period where it was like tick tick tick tick tick, tick, tick. You just turn that dial a little bit.

There are a couple of things that I could speak to that contributed to that because I definitely did care a ton about my physique and looking. Yeah, weren't you whipping out Tupperware at weddings and stuff, right? Yes. That is true. That is true. And I did care a lot and I did one bodybuilding show. And so like you do that one time and then you can never not look at yourself in that way ever again. Even if you have a healthier relationship with food and all those things, you're always going to look at yourself as like, I know how lean I can get and I'm not even close to that.

things and was trying to get to a certain point that I could feel confident in that. And when I first started working here, like blew the roof off of my expectations, looking at guys like you, looking at guys like Smokey, like Smokey, we're the same height and you bench more than my best deadlift. That doesn't make any sense. So seeing what was possible was definitely eye opening. And it was, I wouldn't say it was discouraging either. It was, it gave me a lot of hope like, okay, like, how long have you been lifting 20 years? How long have you been

lifting 15 years, over a decade. And so seeing examples of people that just kept sticking with it helped me kind of not I want to say cool off in the sense that I wasn't working as hard or I wasn't as disciplined, or I wasn't pushing towards some of these things, but it did help me not focus so much on that individual thing. And I, this is something that you had mentioned. We were talking about money at one point and you said, and it makes complete sense now, but you said, yeah, you know, like at the end of the day, like money doesn't really matter that much. And at the time that you said that, I hardly had enough money in my bank account to get a tank of gas to get back home. And I was like, Mark, you're freaking crazy. Like, hell yeah, money matters. Like, I like, it just didn't make sense. Like, it doesn't matter. Give me 50 bucks.

Exactly. Yeah. But I get what you're saying now. Because if if someone were to only focus on the money that mattered, they'd probably never level up to a point where money, quote-unquote, doesn't matter and it doesn't run their whole life. They do kind of have like a broke mindset. And I think seeing examples like you guys and other people that came to the gym helped me kind of break free of that broke mindset. And it's like, well, I can focus on learning more, trying out new things. And so even though now I'd say I, from an aesthetics perspective,

look the best I've ever looked, I've focused the least on aesthetics and have focused more on like how can I get the rate of force production and these jumps to get faster? How can I help people get faster when they pass someone's guard? How can their squeezes on their chokes be tighter and more dangerous and as a byproduct those things just you know it's improved did you take more mushrooms no man hardcore laughing because fucking josh said like he was just like yeah i'm not that big dog is wearing an oversized shirt oh yeah and his delts are just like what's up like his delts are popping through a black oversized.

I did listen to that podcast with Eugene, and as soon as he said it, I was like, gosh, dang it, Eugene. His delts aren't calming down. He's like, I'm not big. I did a check to see if he's flexing, but he's not flexing. He's not flexing. Oh, dog. I think maybe it's like when you said that – you said this like an hour ago. You had to have been lifting that heavy. Like, man, I've only lifted three plates three times over the last year.

And there are some people that are like, three plates. That is my dream. And maybe it's just a matter of perspective. Like compared to you guys, I don't feel very big being 5'6", I don't know, 64 pounds, but maybe like some high schoolers or some other college students, I'm pretty jacked. You're a bundle of muscle though over there.

I mean, what's the body fat percentage at? It's single digit. It's definitely like my guess is like 9%, like 9 to 11, but I'm rearing towards like so he's uh he's on here well i mean you know you can't be that lean year-round can't do jujitsu and lift job that's beyond something look at the the chin and the jawline like there's a lot going on with that right that's probably some growth hormone but that's that that brings up to my my only criticism about your social media which i want to get into but i told them seem like a similar thing um you're not giving me much uh material

for the spank bank because you're you're posting up a bunch of real man knows what works i know which is fine which we're gonna get into because this shows like i'm a fucking boomer over here i don't know how social media works sometimes but because like when you talked about that one right there bro look i can but then but then you know when i click on it or whatever like it's just like let me get that one picture uh look at that you just spanked to that bro look at that shot right there you don't spank to that okay you got me your problem this is one thing though too real quick can spank it too but it's not like memorable spank bank yeah so like when you file it away when you asked about like body fat percentage i'm like oh let me pull up a still image.

He doesn't have one. Like, that's what I need. But Josh, come on. In regards to thirst trapping. No, I know.

But the thing is, do your social media has like blown that it's blown up very much. So like fairly recently, what the hell happened? This has been, uh, like a recurring conversation that my wife and I have, cause it has blown up recently.

And thankfully Instagram has analytics so you can check certain things. And I don't know how else to describe it besides it was just like five years of consistently posting every single day. Sometimes I'd go through phases where I'd post three times a day or go back to posting one time a day.

But it was constant posting for the past five years. And then it's not all of a sudden, but it definitely felt like all of a sudden it just skyrocketed and kept climbing up faster and faster. And when I've talked to other people about this, because now people are messaging me like, what can I do for social media? And I was like, I don't know what else to tell you besides like just be consistent for five years straight and then watch what happens. But that's not the sexy answer and it's not the fun answer.

And I can't tell you how many times like I've like thought of like, man, is this social media even working? Or am I like missing something? And asking those questions, I think everybody asks themselves those questions about goals that they have. Like, is this fat loss thing even working? Is this jujitsu thing even working? And people have a choice to make on either continuing to ask, uh, or figuring out how to

ask better questions and seeking out people that can answer those questions, or they just get frustrated and don't change anything. And there's another, like, you know, if you ask better questions, you can, you know, nine times out of 10, get better answers. And then that usually opens up a door to ask an even deeper question and you can start learning a lot more.

And so certain things that I was able to learn when I was working here and being taught things by people like Jess or Josh Kim, there were copywriting things and marketing things that I never learned in school that they were able to teach me, which gave me a little bit

better understanding of what questions to ask. And then I just kept asking those questions and then would apply it and see if it worked. Ask another question, apply it, see if it worked. And I've seen other people that I remember five years ago when I first like shifted in promoting my company and strength and conditioning stuff for jujitsu athletes there were other people around the same time that had started similar social media accounts and I could see the progression of them being really consistent getting frustrated and then not be consistent anymore and then a couple months later like they spark back up again and then it's like dude that's freaking awesome like keep going keep going and they get frustrated and then they fall off again. And it, I mean, again, it's not the sex answer, but it is just at the end of the day, consistency and learning. And yeah, there's maybe like some strategy involved with like looking at guys like Ben Patrick. Ben Patrick blew up. Did he blow up because he's a marketing genius like he definitely knows a lot of stuff but he's

not promoting marketing he's promoting ways to help people and the way he delivers that uh information to help people is a very specific digestible way not necessarily for marketing but to be more effective in helping people and i think when i made that switch that definitely helped things move a little bit faster and kind of contributed to the whole spike that happened. Yeah. Cause I think we all knew it's like, it's just a matter of time because like when we'd have guests on like a, for like a markbell.com interview, like, Oh Josh, like what's up dude? Like that post on like Zach Evanesh was like the first one that I could think of. Like people were commenting and giving you props on your videos and stuff. But I was just like, dude, day now this shit's gonna blow up like in my head i knew you weren't gonna

give up but i'd always be like don't give up don't give up and i never said anything but like i just knew it was just a matter of time because the shit the quality was really good thank you it's just like the traction just wasn't there that's all thank you man yeah yeah it took some time but and it's still you know gonna take some time to continue climbing but it has been nice to see over the last 90 days. I think when I looked at the analytics over the last 90 days, there's been a 24,000 follower increase, which I never heard of before unless someone got Rogan'd.

We're getting there. We'll get Rogan'd someday. Go ahead. No, you're good. Okay, okay. One thing that was like you mentioned, you've been making content for five years and the thing is is like when you start making content it's not going to be great you're not going to have that camera presence or whatever but you get the reps in because if you look at your content now versus the content that you first made you were getting

all those reps in and now like looks like things are just blowing up but you've had a lot of fucking practice because you're great behind the mic you can speak really well you have your own podcast but you're also great behind the camera where you deliver information people watch it because you're also engaging because you've been doing it for five years so it's not something like that magically happened or you did something at like clicked. It's just like you've gotten those reps in and you've developed it and now it's hitting because of all those reps. Thank you. Yeah. It's something that like a lot of people will recognize in other areas of their life.

But for some reason they experience struggles and they assume it's not going to work for this other industry. Like there are some other people at jujitsu that are thinking like, man, I want to teach more privates. Like, what should I do as far as like, um, like getting more privates? It's like, well, you should just post on Instagram that you're doing privates and just share techniques and help people like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, how can I get it to the level you're at? It's like, well, how long have you been doing jujitsu? Like over a decade. So just do what you did to get better at jujitsu over the course of the last decade and do that with social media. And you're right it's like well how long you've been doing jujitsu like over a decade so just do what you did to get better at jujitsu over the course of the last decade and do that with social media and you're probably going to have a similar result and because you've already overcome so many challenges and have gotten used to the process of trying something new failing trying something new

failing then finding something that sticks and going through that process in jujitsu you could probably go through that process a little bit faster in another industry. But sometimes people get stuck in their own head and think like, well, I did it for jiu-jitsu, but this over here is completely different. It's definitely not the same. There's definitely a trick to it that jiu-jitsu doesn't have, that social media has, or there's definitely a trick to it that dieting has that jiu-jitsu doesn't have.

It's specific. We're talking about consistency, and I think what we're maybe failing to mention is it's the consistency of a specific message um i don't see all your posts but like i'm unaware of like if you have a dog i don't see a lot of stuff with your wife i don't see a lot of i've never seen anything political from you. I've never seen anything religious from you. I've never seen you like talking about like your beliefs necessarily. It's strictly within the realm of your business.

That's what you're posting. I don't suggest that people post the way that I post, which is really random. I post all over the place. And there are things that are in my life that I won't post because I'm like, I just don't think – I know that people would think it's cool. But like I'm a dad and that's the coolest thing that I'll ever do. And that's kind of private to me. I'm not going to like – maybe if my kids were younger, I would – it would be irresistible for me to want to – hey, look at how stupid my kid is today or whatever. Look how cute they are today or look what they did. That might be harder to deal with. But again,

back to just the consistency of a very particular message. So going back to that, somebody wants to be able to, let's just say, train people for anything. You want to train people for something, give a very specific message. Say, hey, if you're just starting out and you're looking for some classes and you want to learn how to defend yourself, this is not the place to come to. This is for people that want to be a badass. This is for you have a very particular message that strikes a chord with very particular people. And who cares if you only get two people or three people from that? How many privates do you really need?

But there are going to be people that they identified with you already. You're identifying with them through the message that you have. And now you have not only a client or customer, you have somebody that's really bought in to your methodology. So being like very specific, or you could just do the other way around. You could say, hey, if you're high level, you know, this, that's not what this class is for. I'm actually doing these private lessons. And we're going to work with, I'm going to work with three to five people at a time for an hour. And we're just going to go over some real basic stuff so you can protect yourself out in the street.

That is so, so huge. And I had this conversation this morning. Someone had asked, we met on Zoom, and he was just asking a couple coaching questions and things. And he was in a similar position that I was in five years ago where he's like, I want to work with jujitsu athletes, but I got like six old people. I got two soccer players. I got this football player and I got three people who do jujitsu. And I'd like to reverse those numbers and make 90% of the people do jujitsu. And I asked

him, I said, well, like, what are you doing? Like, what message are you sending? He's like, well, I'm just, you know, I'm just a personal trainer. It's like, well, then people are only going to look at you as just a personal trainer. But if you are the BJJ strength coach, if you are Mark Smelly Bell, Inventor of the Slingshot, if you're Nsema Iyang, if I can freaking say it. I've known him for five years.

He can't say my name. We're even now, though. I don't know. I don't know if it's quite even, though. He's going to treat you like Muhammad Ali. He'll be like, say my name when you guys are rolling next time. Say my name. I don't know if it's quite even though. He's going to treat you like Muhammad Ali. He'll be like, say my name when you guys are rolling next time. Say my name.

But if that's all you're promoting yourself as and that's all people are going to think of you as. And so I definitely noticed a big distinctive shift when I transitioned from like I'm not talking about bodybuilding anymore. I love powerlifting, but I'm not talking about bodybuilding anymore i love power lifting but i'm not talking about it anymore i got crazy i got some pretty strong conspiratorial views on which i love that i'm not talking about oh man i wish we could get into that on social though and that that's the thing like that's not what i'm gonna build my business off of as much as it's something that i would get fired up about and like i'll have spirited conversations about with you guys off air but once i switch to like nope i don't even work with wrestlers anymore i'm just talking about jujitsu i'm not even talking about i don't want to say that i'm not talking to people who are doing jujitsu for the first time but these are mainly dedicated to people who are competing in jujitsu the number one goal is to win more matches and

get injured lessons so everything that comes out of my mouth, that gets posted on social media, that gets released as either a product or service of mine is funneled through the perspective of if you follow these steps, if you adhere to this protocol, you're going to win more matches and get injured less. And people like that consistency.

And there have been other people that have asked like, hey, like I'm not a competitor, but I am thinking about like getting started. It's like, hey, you know, thanks for reaching out. I appreciate it. It means a lot, but there are probably 10 other people who would do a much better job at meeting your needs.

I'm not focused on meeting those particular needs for you at this moment, but if those needs change and are something that's more aligned with what I'm servicing right now, then we could definitely figure something out, but someone else would be better to work with. That's awesome. So how do you filter or I guess select the content that you're going to post on social media because you are essentially trying to gain clients, right?

So obviously there's a lot of stuff and a lot of different modalities and a lot of different protocols and programs and stuff that you need to be talking to somebody. But for like other trainers, other coaches and stuff, they sometimes don't want to put out all the information on social media because they're just like, well, if I give it out, why do they need to hire me? So how do you do that selection process? That I used to have that exact same mentality for a long time. And then I, uh, I forget exactly where I heard it first, but a couple of people like Bedros Koulian and Graham Cochran, they have said that you should put your best material out for free and just bless people with that and help them with that. And the thing is, is that if someone were to take all that information, like I've definitely downloaded a lot of books for free and have like swooped a lot of stuff on the internet, like when I was a broke college student, but I actually used all of it. And in return, I've

paid people for their services to learn more or have a scheduled time to meet with them and like, Hey, like I read your book, but I have some followup questions. And then, you know, I was able to take it a step further and not everyone is going to take your best stuff a step further. And so if they don't, you kind of – like no offense to them, but you don't really want to work with them. They haven the strength matrix as part of the team, someone that I would want to train with at their local. That's something with the AM crew that, uh, everyone is pretty clear about. Like a lot of people at jujitsu will say like, Hey, like, I want to stop by and lift with you guys. And like, okay, you can, you can, but just be aware, like, we're not holding your hand. Like we have a schedule and this is what we're sticking to. Like, I'd be more than happy to send you some free stuff but we this is not this way of doing things is not changing for the one percent if that one percent is not affiliated or aligned with the goals that we have so i think uh to

circle back to your original question andrew i think uh a lot of coaches maybe get nervous that if they give out their best stuff for free that they're just going to be broke and no one's like everyone's going to be thanks for the free plug and then leave. And some people will do that. But I think most coaches would be surprised that most people aren't going to do that. Most people are going to see their best stuff, download it for free and be like, okay, I see that you said this, but what can I do to get more than what you just provided me? And that's where the coaching comes in. That's where, um, you know,

online membership sites come in and all that good stuff. Our project found this episode is brought to you by Vivo barefoot shoes. We've been wearing these shoes for almost a year now. They're flexible. They have a wide toe box. They allow your feet to get connected to the ground and they will make your feet stronger. And they don't look like shit.

Like a lot of these other barefoot shoes. Andrew, how can they get them? You guys got to head over to VivoBarefoot.com and check out enter promo code POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your entire order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Let's get back to this video. You know, I want to quickly go back a little bit to your gain in size. And how do you think jujitsu athletes should look at the gym?

Because there still is, you know, I see so many jujitsu guys should look at the gym? Because there's still is, you know, I see so many jujitsu guys who are like, Oh, I got injured again. I got hurt again. And like, are you training? Are you doing anything in the gym? Like, no, they're not strengthening things. So they keep getting these same injuries, the same shit. Um, but you know, some of them just don't look at the gym as a serious training protocol to help with their jiu-jitsu so how do you think they should change their outlook on lifting and you get this question all the time and there's probably so many ways to answer it but the second part of the question is how do you balance jiu-jitsu training with lifting the i'll answer the second question first that one's pretty quick yeah um you should lift as many as you can, as long as it doesn't negatively

impact your jujitsu performance. And so there's no prescription that someone may lift six days because they only go to jujitsu twice and they only roll hard on one of those days. That's fine. I go to jujitsu or I was going to jujitsu six times a week. And so I'm only lifting three days a week because anything more than that, then my jujitsu starts to suffer. So as like a broad sweeping statement, lift as many days as you you can just as long as it doesn't negatively impact your jiu-jitsu training then as far as the the need for sound strength condition for jiu-jitsu athletes the best way i found to describe this is you guys have seen those change my mind memes with those signs yeah i wish like it'd be a fun, funny bit to do, but just put on there,

no one ever lost a match because they were too strong. And then the next series would be no one ever got injured because they were too strong. The only reason why someone got injured is because some part of their body wasn't strong enough to withstand whatever happened. And there's limits to that. Of course, you know, sometimes like if someone, of course, we've all seen those horrible videos of knee injuries where people jump guard and land on someone's knee. I don't know if anybody is strong enough or could get to a point to be strong enough to protect themselves from that or protect themselves from a huge car crash. But just as a good practice, it's a good idea to get stronger because the stronger you are, the less likely you are to get injured. less likely you are to get injured. And if you're a jujitsu athlete who is constantly training,

constantly competing, and you're constantly pushing yourself to that high, that high intensity of kind of putting your body on the line and letting things bend a little too far and you end up escaping, which is great that you escaped, but you only have so many of those extreme stressors on some joints like your knees and your neck and your elbows and things. And if you're not doing any strength training to help enhance those things, then you're really asking to get injured in the future. So, and you're right, there are so many different ways that someone could go about getting strong. There are definitely some sound principles that every

jujitsu athlete should look at, like principle of overload. If your training doesn't get at least a little bit harder over the course of the long run how are you going to make progress it should be your training should be specific to jiu-jitsu if you're a competitor your training should account for the fact that you have to recover from training so like things that the four of us or just all we don't even think about it because it's just so ingrained but a lot of jiu-jitsu athletes don't have that background information um and so as long as those principles are adhered to you can do any training program you want as long as it's something that you enjoy and something that you can do consistently and it's realistic for your skill level and your physical attributes there are some athletes that just do

power lifting and then mix in like very quick forms of conditioning right at the end that seems to work pretty good there are other jiu-jitsu athletes that are uh that do a ton of the functional pattern stuff or the weck method stuff or even the go to stuff that is kind of all the way on the other end of the spectrum and they're doing just fine because that's what's working for them so i think bruce lee put it best when he said you know take what's useful discard what isn't and i think if a lot of jiu-jitsu athletes take that approach with their strength and conditioning, it'll solve a lot of issues for them and get rid of a lot of that confusion. Um, just as long as they're adhering to some of those base principles. Yeah. And kind of to add on a little bit to that is that, um,

you don't have to, because working with the barbell has a lot of interesting technique involved, right? And especially when you're overloading and working with heavier and heavier loads, there is a higher risk for injury if somebody isn't a true, like isn't a strength athlete and has a lot of those mechanics of bracing and keeping everything aligned and involved. So don't, I mean, understand that you can get very strong and improve strength and conditioning with dumbbells, with kettlebells, with these tools that, I mean, you could get very strong and improve strength and conditioning with dumbbells with kettlebells with these tools that i mean you could get injured with these tools but at the same time it's like there is a lesser risk of injury when doing certain strength movements with dumbbells and

kettlebells and lightly loaded or moderately loaded barbells you don't have to be doing one rep max is three at max is at 90 something percent to get to become more athletic and stronger for the sport so So that, cause I think, you know, when people think of strength conditioning, they think of that. Yeah. There's a lot of modalities. Yep. Absolutely. I think that has been maybe like a turnoff to a lot of jujitsu athletes because they see the extremists, they look up like, man, I need to get stronger. So how to get strong. And then it's probably like a picture of Mark with a thousand 80 on his back. It's like, Whoa, Whoa, that's okay somebody dead lifting or something right yeah or and of course

like you look up um like anyone that gets ringworm they look up like ringworm and it's the worst cases of ringworm of all time and it's not even ringworm anymore at that point it's like the worst staph infection you've ever seen and i think sometimes like the internet just works that way and just immediately throwing the extremes in your face. And so if jujitsu athletes were able to look to things like this podcast or look to things like the content that myself or Jimmy House are putting out, it's not the full extremes right away

that they're immediately jumping to. What? I'm just, were you looking to see if you had the chills when he's talking about staff and ringworm? Yeah, it's disgusting. Yeah, it's not good. Yeah, the internet will show you what you're looking for. You know, you'll find it.

Yeah, fuck that. But, you know, there is an aspect of it, too, where it's like some guys have messed me just like, you know, there's this whole thing of, yeah, I want to get big and strong for jujitsu. But some people just want to get bigger. Like they just want to look more jacked. Right. And that's where the gym can help you out too like you eat more food you lift consistently like you have over a decade because your size didn't come all at once man no i can still remember you five years ago and every year you're just getting better and better and better

because you've just been consistently having this output in the gym and you're a crazy grappler so it's very possible to do both. You just got to be consistent as fuck with it. I think when I met you, I probably weighed like 153 or 154. And that was five years ago. And I weighed 164 this morning. And so it's, I mean, it's a slow grinding process. Not with Trent, it's not.

Well. By the way, guys, we're making jokes, but not with Trent. It's not. Well. By the way, guys, we're making jokes. Our boy Josh is not on any drugs. You have the website for people to get the discount on the Trent? That's right. Yeah. Trashsettlegate.org. Settle Trent.

That should be his new nickname, Settle Trent. Settle Trent. I like it. Back to like this lift and weights thing. I agree 100%. Like, you know, athletes, I don't think really need to have a really strong centralized focus on just lifting. I think there's so many different ways they can go about doing it. All the way to the point if, you know, they told someone, yeah, I lift.

Come check out what I do. They could have a mace, you know, and they can be practicing drills with a, with a mace, or they could be using a sledgehammer. They could be flipping a tire. They could be utilizing a med ball. They could be doing box jumps. But I just think like the setting of the gym is important too. There's something about what it could be your garage. Like it doesn't have to be a place that you have to drive to, but I do think there's something about the setting of the gym where it's like, I'm going to do my foam roller. I'm going to do my myofascial stuff. And then you do some movements that are helping to make you more mobile and things like that. And then next thing you know, you have like a full workout going.

So I think it's massively productive. And I think that what people need when it comes to diet and when it comes to exercise, they just need a lot of options. You know, we're always talking about like, how are we going to kind of solve this problem for people? You know, being overweight, is it going to be the carnivore diet? Is it going to be flexible dieting? It's like, I would really love for people to be taught a lot of it, most of it or all of it and then they can kind of decide on their own is that kind of your approach with some of the people that you're you're working with you're just maybe trying to uh figure out what they kind of like to

do or are you kind of saying like this is how i coach people we got to do these box squats we got to do like particular things or do you give them a little bit more freedom? It's a little bit of both and the freedom is definitely built in there. With the athletes that I work with in person, initially as they got started, it was definitely like this is what I'm doing and we're training together at this time. This is what I'm doing or you can find somewhere else to train or do something else. or you know you can find somewhere else to train or do something else uh you brought up a great story uh one time talking about mark henry like hey it's mark henry i'm gonna go ask him to lift and he's like i'm not lifting i'm shooting hoops and so would you have said like mark like come on man like can we just bench no it's mark freaking henry so you're just gonna shoot hoops yeah um and sometimes i'm still so sad about i I did see him lift a couple of times, but he did like lateral raises and curls and stuff. And I was like, man, but I do think so. Like for those guys first coming in, it very, it was very strict. Like this is what we're doing, you know, learn these things and we're going to move through this training session a lot faster.

a lot faster. But now that a lot of the guys have been training with me for over a year now, there is a lot more flexibility and some free time. So there were a couple of weeks where I was sick and they came and it was just like, Hey, do whatever you want. And everyone for the most part did all sound stuff. There were like a couple of people that probably were like maxing out on things that probably shouldn't have, but it's totally okay. They didn't get injured or anything and they're just having fun growing out. And there's definitely a time and place for that. Um, so I think at the beginning, the variety of options can be overwhelming for some beginners. And as a coach, you have to understand and know, okay, how much, how many options should I give this person who's just starting out? Or are they someone that needs a very direct, like, this is what we're doing. And this is the only thing we're doing. And, you know, people's

personality differences will probably land on one side or the other of that. But for myself, with working with someone in person, there is definitely some room and some flexibility for autonomy and whatever they'd like to do. And then the stuff that i put online is not necessarily constantly changing in the sense that i don't have a set system that i use but there's flexibility within the system for these newer things that i'm learning and testing and then finding valuable so i didn't start things out with like this is the jujitsu conjugate power lifting program he only uses a straight bar and safety squat bars and it it's only squat bench deadlift. And then I find something new, and then I got to completely revamp the whole system. The system has enough flexibility to add in things from like the go-to coaches or

the WEC method or functional patterns and still keep in the stuff that I think is fun. Like yesterday, we did deficit sumo deadlifts. I think that's freaking fun. Not everyone has to do it, but it's what i think is fun and so for some people they might align themselves with that and think that's great other people might think you know actually i'm going to do some go to stuff instead and there's definitely room in the system for that what do you think of the functional pattern stuff we did today i showed you a little bit of stuff that uh i have my work cut out for me because i'm definitely going to be diving into that when i first saw that dude's posts, I didn't understand it at all,

and I immediately thought it was a bunch of crap. I was like, that doesn't make any sense. And I can see, like, I haven't looked at all of his stuff, so take this with a grain of salt, but from the stuff I did see, he was making these sweeping controversial statements that I think like just kind of hit me the wrong way. Like never bench press again. Bench press is the worst exercise ever. And anytime someone says anything on those extremes, I'm instantly just a little bit skeptical.

Yeah, unfortunately it turns us off to maybe something else valuable that they're about to say behind it. Exactly. That's exactly what happened. And so for about a year or two, I really didn't pay much attention to it. And then I had listened to some other podcasts that Nadia Aguilar did with Brett Contreras and hearing a 90 minute conversation, they weren't saying the exact same thing, but they were so much more closely aligned than I would have guessed that they would have been. And so once I experienced that, I started looking at more and more things and thinking like, okay, I don't necessarily understand that. So I'm not going to try to replicate it right away in my own training, but this thing

over here where he's swinging a, um, like, uh, he has a rope and a ball attached to it. I could see how that could be pretty effective for getting fast and powerful. Some of the stuff with the barefoot sprinting he was doing, that makes a lot of sense. And same thing with the WEC method too. Like when he was first talking about the thing with his, his hands, I was like, I'm not grabbing a bar that way, dog. Like, I don't, I don't get what you're talking about. But then hearing a 90 minute conversation about it, it's like, okay, that makes a lot of sense. Some of the other stuff about, um, just positioning your feet in a different way. So, uh, I kind of forgot what the original question was, but I definitely was turned off to a lot of that stuff at the beginning.

But having an opportunity to witness and experience a long format of them explaining what is actually going on turned me on to it a little bit more. Yeah, I had you just doing a little bit of the functional pattern stuff yeah today with the uh uh you're using the uh stretchy strap and you're doing some like spinning twisty stuff yeah and just trying it the first time like it lit me up pretty good and i immediately thought like oh god i come back tomorrow and try this pretty nuts basically the the gist of a lot of these movement things that are going on, these movements that are having a movement and an influence on fitness, to sum it up really easily, it just is

in regards and in respect to the way that the body moves when you're walking, running, jumping, or throwing. That's basically the gist of it. And so a lot of times when we lift, we isolate and people can kind of have their own interpretation on whether they think that's good or whether they think that's bad or where it fits. Me personally, I think there's kind of a time and place for all kinds of different types of training, isometric training, eccentric training, targeting a specific muscle. Like to me, it all makes sense and can be integrated. I think that sometimes what happens is somebody like myself gets stuck on what they're good at, and then you just sit in that, and that's the focus. And so you're like, I'm going to squat,

I'm going to bench, I'm going to deadlift, and you just kind of stay in that forever. And there's not enough outside influence to still keep athleticism. So young people listening to the show, or if you're kind of newer to lifting, uh, you're probably not gonna listen to me anyway, but I would just urge you and encourage you to keep some forms of athleticism in, you know, at the end of a workout or maybe to start a workout for a warmup, uh, maybe look into some functional pattern stuff, maybe do some box jumps, maybe do some med ball stuff. A little bit can go a long way. If you do it weekly, you'll most likely keep a lot of your athleticism from when you were young.

That's a great point because I've seen the athletes that have come in and trained with me in the morning, the ones that did the most that had the most variety in their sports history adapted all this stuff so easily there's one dude josh province who i think like outside of like a um so like a bo jackson he's probably like the freakiest athlete i've ever seen he wrestled and he did water polo and he he played soccer. And he went to the California State Tournament for Wrestling, which is a huge, huge, huge challenge. He kicked ass in water polo, kicked ass in soccer, and this dude, you could give him any exercise,

and he kind of stands it. He's just like, like this, just like that. He's already doing more weight than all of us. He can mimic it right away. Yeah, he can mimic it right away. He can move in a way that I think like I definitely made a mistake of funneling myself into certain positions or certain movement patterns too early. What's his current sport focus, by the way? He's not doing a sport.

He's in college and he's just rock climbing and getting jacked. Okay. Yeah. Oh, rock climbing. Well, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. He's not competing in anything i

should say yeah is he on instagram he is i don't know what his instagram is he doesn't really post anything people that rock people that do things like rock climb or go do trails or uh do jujitsu or swim it's huge advantage it's a huge advantage to have your whole body incorporated. Like if you already lift and you're already doing jujitsu and things of that nature, I think you could worry a little bit less about exactly what we're talking about with like getting on board with the knees over toes stuff and all the various movements because you're probably getting a lot of them in. getting a lot of them in, but you do want to address, you know, certain weaknesses and certain areas where you think that you're not strong and certain positions that you want to get stronger from. It's important that you work on building that up. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Josh, I'm curious because you probably have some young athletes, jujitsu athletes specifically that hit you up. And I was having a conversation with a few guys from Kyle last week, and they were talking about how a lot of young jujitsu athletes are starting to try to get on like TRT and starting to try to take like EPO and shit because apparently, and I didn't even know this, within ADCC, it's almost kind of encouraged. Apparently they were asked or people within the heads of that organization were asked, are you guys going to test? And they're like, no, these are athletes.

We want them doing what they need to do to be the best, freakiest athletes. So within the ADCC, which is like the biggest no-gi type of tournament, athletes are encouraged to, you know, EPL is apparently pretty popular, and athletes are encouraged to hop on shit. IBJJF tests, but they're testing. They don't test everybody. There have been some people that are cut out of been caught like Canaan.

He was caught a few years ago. I don't know what was in his system, but it was arms. Okay, there we go. So on the side of younger athletes thinking that they'll need to do shit. What have you seen? Like,

do you, do you get questions like this from guys trying to get bigger and stronger for jiu-jitsu? Yeah, I do. I mean, this may be a hot take in the jiu-jitsu community, but maybe not around here. If someone, I think ADCC is awesome. You should be able to take whatever you want. If it's the highest pinnacle of the sport,

you should be able to take whatever you want and compete. That's awesome. Everyone understands or should understand the risks of that pinnacle of the sport you should be able to take whatever you want and compete like it'd be that's awesome everyone understands or should understands the risks of that and make that decision for themselves yeah um but it's kind of like pride versus the ufc the ufc was testing in their own way but pride was like we will not pride was so good everyone loved it those guys were so big it was amazing yeah it was dangerous though. And they were on a lot of other drugs as well. Yeah, that's, that's true. Strictly speaking about PEDs, I think most jujitsu athletes, and I've said this a ton and people don't, I think, uh,

I mean, I, I feel pretty strongly on this take when it comes to PEDs. But I think 95% of the jujitsu athletes that are currently on PEDs probably don't need them. And I would also argue that the 95% that are on, it probably doesn't help them that much. And I think that's going to be true probably for the next 10 years until the sport catches up and the athleticism of the sport reaches the pinnacle of something like the UFC or the NFL or the NBA, those athletes taking PEDs, like that changes the playing field big time. In jiu-jitsu, I don't think it changes that much. Like maybe they'll be able to train a little bit more, but you look at guys like John Donahue

within a matter of a couple of years completely revolutionized the technical side of jujitsu. So how can you say that PEDs are going to help that much when there is this big gaping hole in the technical side of jujitsu that got completely exposed by John Donoher's guys that were smoking all the dudes that were clearly on PEDs that were like all 40 pounds bigger than I've had crazy python veins and purple arms like these guys are so crazy jacked arms like you know like they get it just they get like you know they just you know their arms are like kind of they have a tint to them because of uh their blood pressure but so I think like if then there's been several times where athletes have said like hey like I think this

is the year like I'm gonna hop on stuff and I'll ask him like, okay, like thanks for letting me know. What have you, what does your training look like for the last decade? Well, I started lifting and like going to the gym like a year ago. It's like,

Oh, okay. All right. That's, you probably don't need PEDs. But then COVID hit and then I got an injury and I haven't been in for a while, but I'm going to get back to it.

Start next week. It's just a little boost. But I see that from what you just said right there. I hear that from a lot of athletes who like you've barely fucking lifted. Yeah. You've been lifting for eight months and now you think you need to hop on shit. Oh my gosh, bro. There have been several conversations that I've had in person where I'm like,

you're going to make a bro. You're an adult. You're going to make your own decisions. But let me just tell you, like, you're going to make, hey bro, you're an adult, you're going to make your own decisions. But let me just tell you, like, you're probably like nine years too early. You should probably like just lift and keep lifting your face off for a decade. And then when you're 35, hop on some stuff and then you could really wreck everybody. Because if they're not getting tested, you could take whatever you want. But at that point, what's more efficient? Like raising your base level of fitness and strength and athleticism and then adding a little bit on top. Dave Tate did an interview with Dave Hoff. And Dave Hoff said that he was natural up until he squatted 900.

He jumped on gear, squatted 1,000. He stayed on gear and his next squat was 1013, 1050. And he only had that hundred pound jump in a squat once. And I think that's true for jujitsu athletes. They start so young, they have this huge jump in athleticism, but they're not technically caught up to the rest of the game. So maybe they have like a quick flash in the pan of, of, you know, getting really deep in a stacked tournament at such a young age and then they they just can't make up for that in the future yeah i think uh what's going to be pretty interesting because like i when i was having this

conversation i didn't know like that like young brazilian kids because like that's like that shit's you know really easy to get over there but But young Brazilian kids, because they're assuming that everyone is taking shit like 16, 17, 18, 19, like they're already on, they're already on. It's going to be interesting to see, you know, because most people I don't think know how to do that type of stuff safely. So it's going to be interesting to see how it pounds out for the younger people, uh, over a long period of time, because in AD Because in ADCC, if they're not testing for it, if they're encouraging it, okay, whoever wants to do shit, do shit, right? But it's the young ones that I'm like sort of concerned for because we know how that can affect brain chemistry, depending on what you take, how it can affect your hormones, depending on what you do.

And most people don't have somebody who can help them understand or give them the protocols to be able to do this so it doesn't damage them in the long run so um it's just it's it's really interesting because it's a sport where the young guys think everyone's on so the young guys hop on and it's like oh you'd have to really know what you're doing and you would have to have a very particular cocktail in order to have it really transfer into a sport like jujitsu and you would no longer be talking about trt you would be talking about like getting on like cycles of shit uh which has a much uh which carries much more danger to it so if if let's say you at 25 you were to get on some stuff and you were to do TRT through a doctor, through a clinic,

it wouldn't have much benefit to you. I mean, you would get a little stronger. You'd be a little bit bigger. Maybe because you work so hard, maybe you would perform a little bit better in your contests and stuff like that. But you wouldn't see a huge difference because it's testosterone replacement. So there's a difference. People think just because you're utilizing testosterone replacement that you're in the same category as people that are using performance-enhancing drugs to be, like, amazing at a sport. Now, if you were to drill yourself with tons of tests and tons of trend for jiu-jitsu, most likely you would be gassed out pretty bad. You might be able to handle

yourself against some people uh there's you know there's certain match-ups right where it might be a big advantage to be just super strong so it might benefit you but what i'm envisioning is that you're going to blow up quick you're going to be gassed people that look at you when they when someone looks at you across the mat and they see like how big the traps are and shit and they see they probably think they can do that too and see them they're probably like hey man i'm just gonna hang in there for a little bit this guy's gonna be so tired it's gonna be fucking easy right but when you look at somebody and they have that look that they look like they're on steroids if you were a practitioner of jiu-jitsu for any period of time you you'd be like, I've rolled with dudes like this before. This guy is going to gas out pretty easy.

Vitor Belfort's a really good example. When he started out, he was shredded. He looked amazing. He already looked incredible, but clearly there was a stage where he went from like being, I don't know, 205 or something. He went to like 240 and he looked insane and he would knock people out. He would catch people here and there. But if he didn't, he was gassed. He was really, really tired. So there's a lot.

Oh, Jesus. Yeah, and there's stuff even from when he's younger where it's just insane how fucking jacked he got. But you would have to know quite a bit about steroids to have them really truly benefit you in being amazing in like jujitsu in particular. I've had this theory for a while and I'd be interested to hear your guys' perspective on it. I think we'll see an actual, if you want to label it as like the jujitsu PED cocktail until the sport increases in financial value to a much higher degree. Because who's going to be able to pay for all the doctors that are needed to really do their diligence on this stuff? The jujitsu athletes don't have time to research and test all these things in a lab or the resources. these things in a lab or the resources so maybe like the very pinnacle of the sport who have made tons and tons and tons of money even outside of competing through instructionals or coaching or

coming up with affiliate schools and things because the sport of jiu-jitsu unfortunately is still i don't want to call it a broke sport because it's it's not but competing is a broke activity hardly any unless you're winning hardly and even the winners hardly make any money. So until the sport grows to a point where there's enough money in it like baseball or like the NBA or like cycling, until there's enough money in the sport for people to afford to get the research done

for that jujitsu PED cocktail, I think it's still going to be like guys hopping on Tron and then getting gassed out, trying to EPO and then realize then realize like my blood's too thick. I got to get off and, you know, moving on from there. And again, I think that's just like a massive misunderstanding, like for people to think like, especially kids, they're going to think that they're going to think I'm going to take steroids. But in terms of the list of performance enhancing drugs that you could take for that particular endeavor, testosterone and like TRAN and stuff like that would not be that high up on the list. It could be part of the

building block. It could be part of a phase that you go through to build a little bit of hypertrophy. But what's already happening, I think, in the MMA community is that there's a lot of coaches out there that are smart enough to understand that if we do like just little dosages of this little bit, EPO is an excellent example. Um, but what's the negative side effect of EPO? You can fucking die. Like it can, if you are to die from like testosterone, like, uh, it would be over a very, very long period of time taking like very large doses for a very long period of time. It's not like you can inject even like an entire bottle of it

over the course of a handful of days and you wouldn't die from it. It doesn't work that way. EPO, on the other hand, insulin, some of these other things that could have a really positive impact in terms of how you roll and how you do your jiu-jitsu and how you recover from it. I think we're seeing a lot of that happening already. The doctor that we had from Merrick, he was referencing- Oshkosh.

Yeah, he was mentioning a very specific, I cannot remember the name of the drug, but he was mentioning a specific drug that mimics one of the SARMs like carterine that can help. I don't remember. There's a lot of just like there's so much stuff out there to where I think people are already utilizing a little bit of these things. I mean I don't know like if there's a test for Adderall, but there's probably something similar to Adderall. Even if there is a test for Adderall, that can make you a little bit more acute,

make you a little bit more acute, make you a little bit sharper for the match, and maybe increase central nervous system activity during something almost a similar way that, like, caffeine would. So there's probably a lot of that kind of happening already, but you're right. There's not the dollars behind it, so it's not like the Tour de France, where, you know, you have people like, those guys would train at altitude. They would get their blood taken out of their body for those specific hardest training sessions they've ever had. Their coaches would dial it in and they'd be like, this is the best training session that you ever had.

They would put that blood, that particular blood back into their body right before they did the race. And it's your own, but it's also odd because it's your own blood. So it's like, how is me shooting my own blood back into my body how is that illegal blood doping yeah blood doping it's like highly oxygenated blood from you training like a fucking lunatic at altitude do you think uh in your experience watching yeah i mean you've been in the game so long and i've had so much experience with peds do you think as companies like merrick and um people like uh i forget i forget the name of the the guests you guys have had on recently that have been very open and shown a lot more light on ped

usage do you think maybe in like 50 or 60 years the perspective is going to shift and change and maybe those things won't be as banned or the they won't the rules won't be as stringent towards ped use in some bigger sports like nba or the ufc or um mlb things like that do you think that's ever going to change you think people are pretty set in stone like no you got to do baseball clean 50 or 60 years from now we won't have to probably inject stuff i think the injectable side of things is a pretty limiting factor. I also think that just smashing your testosterone levels up, it works a little bit for like – well, it works a lot of it for like strength

and it works for some other things. But I think there's a whole other list of hormones that you have to manage based off of how high up you drove that testosterone. So I think in the future, there'll be things that are, uh, that work a lot better. And if you remember in bigger, stronger, faster, that's what Louie Simmons said. He's like, what's going to happen when they make something that's a lot better than steroids. And we haven't really got there yet. Like SARMs work pretty good. It seems like there's some peptides. They kind of work a little bit. But like we're going to get to a point where it's like biosignature,

like Joss Settlegate, you know, like it's specifically for your body and it might be just a pill or it might be something that you do like once a month. And that will change, I think, sports probably forever, but maybe they'll also be able to do it in a way that's safer. But I don't know about like just opening up the floodgates and just like allowing it. I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't think opening the floodgates would be it.

But like if you remember like in baseball, like kind of what happened was there was a lockout or a strike. I don't remember. Fans were upset so when the when baseball came back people weren't watching anymore so that's when mark mcguire and um sammy sosa started hitting home runs baseball was just like oh they're fucking huge but look at all these ratings we're gonna look this way as they go that way so if there's a lull or if there's like we've run out of LeBron Jameses, I can imagine them just like, oh, there's a new drug. We don't know anything about that.

But as far as opening up the floodgates, I don't think so. That's interesting because maybe that will happen in the IBJJF because the IBJJF is kind of the premier organization for gi competitions, and the way the rules are set up, it makes finals matches so freaking boring because the two guys, the number one seed on one side, the number two seed on the other side, smoke everybody up to the finals, and then they just get stuck in these stalemates. The best matches are the ones in the very beginning of the day.

The finals matches are super boring. In ADCC, the rules are a little bit different, which promote a little bit more action, but maybe that's what's needed. It's like, guys, we don't need any more boring matches, so you just start taking whatever you want, make this exciting again. Take some brass knuckles with you. That's not

a bad idea. I was going to say, it's all really fucked when you think about it, because it's like, we're testing the athletes stringently for these particular drugs, but then let's have a commercial break and let's show all these pharmaceuticals that we want to sell and budweiser and cores and whoever else uh you know all the alcohol that's promoted and you know the ufc all of them they all take a lot of money from these other companies and they don't have a problem promoting those drugs but and it's it's interesting it's like it's just a weird like why why can't the athletes just take

what they want i guess the the thing always goes back to kids but like you don't want your children to like cuss and stuff like that too i mean you know what i mean like yeah and although all those kinds of things they always come back to like parents but then people are like well what about the i don't know if we if they were all legal like is there a problem in mexico with kids running around just you know taking tons of steroids i don't know or in other countries i mean you're mentioning brazil with the jiu-jitsu maybe there's yeah i don't know i brought it up before i mean like i don't know is it worse than your kid right fucking around with other drugs i can't think of any of my cousins that are like super jacked so i don't think there's a problem they're all pretty uh

pretty slender still it just needs to be more education on it you know 100 for the for the young guys that are getting on testosterone thinking that's going to make a big difference like testosterone is the super popular thing right nowosterone is a super popular thing right now. TRT is a super popular thing. But you go on TRT, there's really not going to be – you'll have a boost, but that boost is not going to be the thing that's going to take you to being a world champion or take you to being the opponents that were kicking your ass. And then secondly, it's like we talked about this before,

but guys that go on TRT typically don't go off because like, you know, it's just at that point you, you, you feel normal with that. Right. And when you're not on it, you don't feel as good. So you're going to probably be on that for the rest of your life. And are you ready for that? Which most people aren't. I just don't think there's, there's not education on that shit. And most people aren't thinking about the longterm ramifications. And also most people don't have the simple shit in check. Most people aren't starting training consistently. They're not getting enough sleep.

They're not doing these little things. They're not even taking some of the easiest supplements that could help with their performance over time, like electrolytes or creatine or like— Eating better, sleeping better. They're not doing the things that actually really move the needle. They're hopping to the things that they're like, TRT is going to move the needle for me. And nah, dog.

If someone wrapped up all that simple stuff into a drug, that would fly off the shelves. All the benefits that you get from sleeping an extra hour, even if you're still not getting the perfect eight hours of sleep, you go from sleeping five hours to six hours, you wrap that up in a pill. You wrap all the stuff that is great about having electrolytes in a pill. You put like some Mind Bullet in there.

That thing would fly off the freaking shelves. And it's all like easy, accessible stuff. It's just like it just takes a little extra effort. But because it does take a little extra effort, people are just like disregard and be like, no, no, no, no, bro. I'm gonna hop on some stuff. This is my year to win worlds.

What'd you eat for lunch today? Oh, nothing. But I went to, I trained hard, man. I got like six training rounds. Yeah.

Yeah. Awesome, bro. Ain't nothing. Train hard. What's funny though, is like on that box, it would say,

you know, like, uh, effective, like in the next 10 years. Yeah. Maybe I won't buy that. Yeah. I'll just get the cream.

You know, what feels better, like just having an energy drink or going outside, going on a walk and being in the sun? hippie stuff, right? But to me, the energy drink can do stuff specifically for me in certain instances where, yeah, I just want to go in the gym and be able to have a good workout or something like that. But then what? You always end up in that situation. If I was to simply just go on a walk, if we all went on a walk, then we're like, hey, let's get in a good training session. We would all feel good enough to get in a good workout. And then after the workout, I would be able to go about my day normally. I'd be able to shut down at a normal time, but perhaps with a monster energy drink or something like that in there. Maybe when we get done with the workout, I'm still all hyped.

Maybe that shit's still hitting me. I mean, I think caffeine can last in your system for 10 hours or something like that. I forget what the shelf or the half-life of it is. But it can stay in your system a lot of times. And so just doing things where you get outside or you even just dropping down and you don't feel like doing a workout, drop down and do like 30 push-ups. Turn around and do like 30 sit-ups. Turn around again and do 30 push-ups. You'll feel pretty damn good and you'll probably like,

fuck, man, I should probably do a little bit more. You do bring up an amazing point that reminded me of what Andrew was asking about earlier with the people I hang out with and the guys in the morning. The biggest reason why those are the only guys I hang out with is because every time we hang out, it's the best thing ever. Every single time. Like we're always lifting every time we hang out or we're always doing jiu-jitsu. And it doesn't mean that it's always easy when we hang out or it's always comfortable, but it's always enjoyable and we always feel better afterwards.

feel better afterwards. And so if you're building relationships off of feeling like trash after you just got hammered, how strong could those relationships be? And if you're in an environment that makes you feel anxious because you're not hammered, but everybody else is pretty freaking drunk, those aren't really relationships that can thrive very well. But if like the relationship, relationships that have built with all three of you have all been built in the gym or at jiu-jitsu. And those are pretty strong relationships. Those are pretty fruitful relationships. And other people that don't necessarily get the opportunity to develop relationships like that

are probably missing out on a whole lot of things. You got some Tupac shirts. You got a Metallica shirt. We were talking a little bit about style earlier and your wife is like trying to paint you into this corner, man, right? She's trying to make you pick a particular style. No, no, no, no, no.

I'll see something, and I'll think it looks sick, and then I just say, like, babe, what if I blank? Give us an example. Like A$AP Rocky's dreads. I was like, let me cop some of those. And she's like, you could do that, but you also have to have some other stuff going on for you. Yeah, there's a bunch of other stuff behind it. Yeah, yeah.

Or I'd say, let me get a nose ring like Tupac. Look at that. I would totally get those. Yeah, but then you need certain other kinds of clothes to go with that. You don't have the current wardrobe to go along with that exactly and that's not man you're handsome enough to pull it off see nah she paint nah you initially i was like but you got the face man you got the face yeah handsome guy yeah i think man nose ring bruh that's what i'm saying you could do a nose ring. Look at that.

Look at that, dude. If I didn't have to take it out for jujitsu, I would get one yesterday. But yeah, I'd totally snag one of those. But I have these ideas. And then like six months later, I hop on some other thing that I think would look sick. In high school, I thought it was dope if I shaved my head in the same way that mr t has his hair in rocky three so he has the mohawk that that connects in the back and those super tall sideburns i had that going on for a while you did yeah yeah that's amazing on the last day of school

i that's what i came with my hair like for a while okay um so i'll yeah just like that oh shit i didn't have a beard then because i was 13 but yeah i definitely had like a mohawk and i was like man i want to get some feather earrings because that's the only dude that can rock those dangly earrings and it's still look oh yeah we were talking about dangly earrings too yeah right yeah i don't understand is that like a thing it is now somebody's gonna pull up that has i'll say there's no rappers i listen type in gen z earrings you like you'll see it i know um men gen z earrings i was gonna say that they're gonna be the same though i know that to terrell owens wears like he has like fucking big ass rings.

Yeah. It's like the third one. Yeah. Like this thing? Yeah. That looks like a. That's old school. Is that Michael Bolton?

Oh, yeah. Go down a little bit more. You'll see. Incredible. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. Lil Nas X.

Pull him up. He's the definition of Gen Z. The black guy right there. Lil Nas X. I can't see. You can't see? No't see no because i'll show you my screen different than what you're seeing but yeah man josh she just doesn't want you to turn all these other ladies heads that's why what about a turtle neck uh i do have uh you got a pretty good neck it got uncomfortable i was wearing it for a little bit i even wore it it here in the wintertime in the offices. My sweater's choking me out.

It wasn't stretchy enough. The stitching on the actual neck was too thick. So I'd get like, it was just way too uncomfortable. It wasn't happening. I always look down on a scarf. I was like, but girls are like, this scarf looks good. But I'm like, your neck is that cold? I mean, but it's just an accessory, I guess come on bro like your neck is freezing let's go if your

neck is big enough it probably doesn't get that cold you're right yeah but you can't hide a skinny neck behind a scarf i guess that's true yeah but i have to ask you um the new batman oh man i mean i know that's your boy. Yeah. Batman, the character. I don't know if you like that actor. I tried to watch it. I couldn't get over the sad Batman.

Oh, man. What? Dude. I liked it. Doesn't like Hendrick? Doesn't like the new Batman? Yeah. This guy.

I'm just a hater. I don't like anything. For me, I thought it was freaking sick. And everybody I talk to is like, no, bro, you're freaking crazy. No. But I think that movie is a straight-up masterpiece. It is the best movie that came out this year. It's the best Batman movie that's ever been made.

And I know everyone that loves A Dark Knight is going to say that's sacrilegious. And don't get me wrong. Because it is. I love The Dark – I still do love The Dark Knight. going to say that's sacrilegious, and don't get me wrong. I still do love The Dark Knight. But in 10 years, we'll record this, and then in 10 years we'll rewind it back on the 10-year anniversary of me coming on the podcast on July 5th, and they'll run it back,

and we'll look at what everybody's saying about The Batman. Because that movie was so well done, and there's so many intricacies to it that make it different than anything we've seen before that pull all these different character points and bring them to the big screen that are in the comics and really fleshed out in the comics that no other movie has shown before give us an example so everyone says like he's like oh he's too emo he's like listening to kurt cobain like that's not batman but if if your parents were if they got just capped right in front of your face like that would

be a pretty traumatic thing to experience and if you had all this money to just be a loner and teach yourself how to fight and like you know throw ninja stars and stuff like you'd probably have some pretty deep psychological issues and if you live by yourself with this old british cat like you're definitely gonna have some emotional trauma to sort through. And so the thing is, people think that Bruce Wayne dresses up to be Batman, but that's not true. Batman dresses up to be Bruce Wayne.

And Batman's the character underneath the whole time. And this movie actually showed that. They showed him like, he's not trying to be Bruce Wayne. He could care less about who Bruce Wayne is. But it's like Brian Johnson versus the Liver King. The Liver King has to dress up to be Bruce Wayne. He could care less about who Bruce Wayne is, but it's like Brian Johnson versus the Liver King. The Liver King has to dress up to be Brian Johnson if that was the way

he does things, but he doesn't. He's just Liver King all the time. You guys know what I'm trying to say. Were you cool with him just looking like he never worked out? I would have preferred... Is that in the comic books

where he just chooses not to there are some where he's not as jacked like his first two years I would have preferred that he's that he would have been more jacked but I'm not mad at it like I can overlook that one small thing compared to the rest of the movie

I'll give it another shot then it's long. That's the other thing too. Yeah. If you're not ready to like sit down for three hours and pay, not that you weren't paying attention, but be invested for the first three hours, it's a tough watch.

It's like watching Godfather 2. That movie is so crazy long. It is one of the greatest movies ever, but if you're going to watch it in 45-minute chunks, by the time you're done with it, you're like, eh, it was okay. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday. What does that look like? Because Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you're here super early.

Yep. Yeah. So Tuesday, Thursday are pretty similar. Still get up around the same time. I just don't come to the gym. I'm just at home working on business stuff, working with athletes online, all that stuff. and basically take care of business until it's time to go to jujitsu. So the schedule Monday through Friday is pretty similar as far as when I wake up and what time I go to bed, the activities during that time look different. And then Saturdays and Sundays are either complete rest days, or I'll go to one jujitsu session. And usually like Friday after I come home from the gym until Sunday at like six 30 is just whatever my wife and I want to do. We just relax and spend

time together during that time. So she's kind of, uh, adopted that work week also. So like Monday through Thursday, we both know, like we're focusing on getting these things done. She, uh, owns her own company too and so she takes care of her stuff monday through thursday i take care of my stuff monday through thursday and then friday saturday sunday we have a little bit more time to be flexible during that time i will stay up a little bit later or i will sleep in a little bit later but i i don't like you mentioned you mentioned this like you kind of just don't like sleeping like you just feel like you're missing something if you sleep in, or you feel like you're, you know, like you're not going to

have as much time to do what you want to do if you, if you get enough sleep. And so I definitely struggle with that also. But, uh, over the past couple of months, I've been trying for sure on, uh, Friday or excuse me, Saturday and Sunday, I've been trying to maximize the amount of sleep I get, even if I'd prefer to get up a little bit earlier. Some mindless activity that you engage in because it seems like so many things are so driven towards – I mean we mentioned watching Batman but like so many things are driven towards you being better and you trying to be the best. What's some like just decompression, like just chilling kind of stuff that you do? I'm a huge movie nerd.

Like I watch movies not every day but most days out of the week like the day ends with watching a movie um so i'll do that and uh just read a lot of comic books so movies and comic books it's important to have some of that stuff in there right what uh are you watching any like series or anything or uh not not a whole lot but my wife and i did get hooked on uh this new show with chris pratt uh called the terminal list on amazon it was i mean it was freaking sick it was like i got halfway through the first episode and that shit was pretty intense yeah it's it is pretty intense um yeah we don't have to get into spoilers it just came out i think on friday but we watched that and

that was pretty good thing with series though i don't know if you guys spoilers. It just came out, I think, on Friday. But we watched that, and that was pretty good. The thing with series, though, I don't know if you guys feel this way. I know, Andrew, we've talked about this. Someone will say a certain show is the best show ever, like Soprano is the greatest thing ever, Breaking Bad, greatest thing ever. And then you go, like, okay, I'll try it out, and it's five seasons. You're like, no, I don't got that kind of time. I'm out.

So that's what's – Huge commitment. I'll wait until I'm hospitalized, and I'll get into that. Yeah, exactly. So that's what's nice about movies it's like look 90 minutes 120 minutes at the end of the day the story's going to be over and then i can let me uh make a argument for series okay so like in breaking bad the amount of tension that gets built up as you go through season to season that's true you get to a couple of scenes in the show that are quite arguably the greatest scenes of all time in the history of any sort of motion picture that you'll ever see.

So if you haven't seen it, you owe it to yourself to watch it if you're already into movies. I have seen Breaking Bad, and I've watched it all the way through probably three or four times. But I watched the last season as it came out. So I was able to watch it episode to episode.

Now I feel like with the way streaming services are set up, it's getting kind of tough to just sit down and knock out 27 hours worth of content. Yeah, sometimes they just give them all to you at one time, right? Yeah. Some of them are splitting them up. They did that with Stranger Things. So my wife and I were able to

split those things up. That's one thing with Breaking Bad though because I have to tell people like it starts off slow. Like when it came out when we were watching it on TV like it was week to week.

Now if you try to watch that streaming so many people are like this show is too slow. I can't watch it. You know? Yeah. Yeah.

I had this conversation last week with somebody. They're like, Breaking Bad is the best show, but the first season is the worst because it's so slow. Then how is it the best? It doesn't mean it's a bad season. It has the worst rewatchability factor. Any episode from seasons two through five,

you could put it on and be like, I'm sitting through this one. But anything from season one, it's like, nah, I'll watch something else. Yeah, did you catch up on Ozark? No, I didn't watch the last season of that. Ozark gets wild. Yeah.

That show gets crazy. The last, I remember watching season three, and it gave me, I had a hard time sleeping. Like, it was that stressful. Same thing with that movie Uncut Gems. Oh, shit. Oh, my gosh. Yeah.

I slept horrible. I was like, I can't do this anymore it needs to i need to cool off watch it earlier or something yeah yeah his new one hustle's pretty sick oh yeah i love that one okay yeah i liked it a lot yeah i'll check that one out pretty good sounds really good diet advice too where he you'll see okay anything oh good when he orders hella hella room service oh there's like like six sandwiches all the room, and they all have one bite of each. And he's like, why are you taking one bite of each sandwich? He's like, that's how you don't get fat.

Anything new on the daily disciplines front? Like anything that you added? We talked a little bit about the nasal breathing, but has there been anything that you incorporated in the last year that is maybe different that you haven't shared with us before? Yeah, something this is recently within like the last my wife has been doing it for the past couple months, but I recently just started doing it. But there's this app called the pause app. There's a couple apps that are called pause, but this one in particular is was made by a guy named John Eldridge who's written a bunch of other personal development books on a variety of subjects. But he – on a podcast, he was talking about how there's a lot of trauma from the two-year COVID time that people haven't addressed and that they're still dealing with. time that people haven't addressed and that they're still dealing with. And everyone has gotten so excited on COVID quote unquote being over for most parts of the world that they rushed

into going into the way things were before, which if you remember in 2019, things just kept getting faster and people were more focused on productivity, you know, sleeping less and doing more. And then they had this two year COVID break, which had all these other issues within that timeframe. And then they jump right back into that as soon as COVID is quote unquote over. And so he developed this pause app, which is they have different pause lengths, but basically it's like the shortest one is just a minute. It's just 60 seconds of a guided, whether you want to call it like a meditation or a mindfulness practice, but it's 60 seconds that just forces you to relax for a second, kind of regather your bearings, reassess, not necessarily what you're doing for the day, like mapping out all your goals and things,

but just kind of like, it sounds like pretty hippy dippy to say like you're centering yourself or you're just reconnecting with a calmer mindset. Reconnecting with yourself, sounds like, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of what the app is based around. And so I've been doing that lately. And I'm not going to lie, like when my wife first told me about it, I was like, oh, that's cool that that works for you. I don't think that's going to work for me.

And then I've been trying it and it has been like, it's not a life changing in the sense that I'm a fully transformed man. But it has been beneficial in the sense of like when things do get stressful, when things do get busy, just taking like a minute or three minutes to have a guided meditation or mindfulness practice that like lets me like, okay, all right, we're all good. We can move forward and the way it's set up, it's very easy to use and things. So that's been like, okay, all right, we're all good. We can move forward. And the way it's set up, it's very easy to use and things. So that's been new. I've been way more strict and disciplined over the past couple months with getting my walks in. So I'm getting 10,000 steps a day. And we've all been talking about 10-minute walks for years now.

And I'm sure you guys probably experience it too. Some seasons you're getting 20,000 steps a day. Some seasons you're only getting 5,000 steps a day. But over the summer, I was thinking like, you know what, like, I'm just going to focus on getting 10,000 steps a day. And that's had its benefits that we talk about all the time, more sunlight exposure, better digestion, better recovery, better heart health, all that good stuff. So I'd say those two things in particular have been the big daily discipline focuses, if you will, that are newer over the past couple months. How about, because you read a lot. So in the past two years, what have been some really beneficial books for you in terms of like self-development business, maybe fitness?

There's been quite a few. So on the personal development side, Patrick Bet-David has a book called Your Next Five Moves. That one's really, really good. That book, he talks a lot to an audience of like just really driven individuals. It's not a book about motivating you to get driven. It's not a book about motivating you to pursue goals and things. But kind of the next step, like, okay, you got started. to pursue goals and things, but kind of the next step, like, okay, you got started. So what are the things you should focus on to keep going and to continue to pursue those goals that you have? And so there's a lot of leadership tactics when, um, that he gives when you're leading a team of driven individuals, how to manage different people who are all driven, um, and kind of can

sometimes have competing personalities. Um, if you're an entrepreneur versus an entrepreneur. So while I was working here at Slingshot, I was an entrepreneur working within Slingshot, then I was able to branch off from Slingshot and become an entrepreneur. So that book was really good. Ed Milet recently just dropped a new book called The Power of One More that I'm reading right now. That one's very, it's just reiterating a lot of the stuff that he's talked about before, which I've been a huge fan of. Thanks to you for turning me on to him. As far as training books, Periodization by Tudor Bampa is an old one,

which is always good to. Kind of green book with the red writing on it, right? Yeah, yep. Yeah, exactly. So that one was good. I'm reading Built to the Hilt by Josh Bryant, so I could figure out what he did with Sully, get the secrets. So that one's been good. And then Winning by Tim Grover, which I know you guys had him on the podcast shortly after

that book was released. That was probably the best book I read last year was Winning by Tim Grover. So what about you? I know you read a lot also. I'm just reading a lot of books on breathing right now. So Patrick McKeon's new book, you'll really like Breathing for Warriors by Belisa Vranich. We're going to have her on the podcast soon. Really, it's a really detailed book on breathing for strength training and breathing for a lot of training in general and retraining people's breathing. The Illuminated Breath by another author, I forgot his name, but it's another deep dive book on breathing and the mechanisms of breathing so that's a really good book and these are all just three breathing books which i think are really fucking dope um and then i'm going back

into joe dispensa shit he's that guy that's like yeah helps people out in terms of their belief systems and there's a lot like meditation some people think it's somewhat woo woo but joe isn't you know joe isn't where he is based off of pure woo woo there's a lot like meditation. Some people think it's somewhat woo-woo, but Joe isn't where he is based off of pure woo-woo. There's a lot of really, really wild shit going on behind people's belief systems. So I think all of his books, everyone in our audience, I think you guys should read all of Joe Dispenza's book. And the one I'm going through right now again is I think it's Becoming Supernatural. So, yeah. What about some podcasts?

This one, you guys already know. tuned with mark bell's power project um that's i mean i do want to say like you guys have been freaking killing it lately the guests that you've had on it's like i haven't ever at least i don't think so specifically asked like can you guys get this guy on the podcast because Because I'd love to listen in. But it's just like there's so many good people. The ones you did with Joel Sullivan and his training partner, Jake. The ones you did with Ben Pollock were awesome. The ones you did with the guys from Merrick. The Pitbull Torres was awesome. Andrew Huberman, all that stuff.

So I do listen to this podcast a ton. I listen to John Wellborn's podcast every once in a while. So John Wellborn played in the NFL for a long period of time and now he's developed a really cool company that's focused on strength and conditioning for athletes and military and first responders, which is pretty sick. He's been ahead of the game for a long time talking about breathing and your feet and all this stuff that we're diving into. Yeah. Yeah.

So I love listening to him. There's – lately I've been listening to a ton from Dave Ramsey, just like sound, simple, money advice, which has been awesome. And then there's a couple marketing podcasts that I'm not subscribed to. But you know how like on YouTube if you just watch one episode, you're not subscribed, but it'll just pop up some other popular ones. So I can't remember the names of those, but there've been some, some good marketing ones that I've been listening to, but usually I always have some sort of podcast going. Sick. Take us on out of here, Andrew. That's dope. Yes, sir. Uh, thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. Please drop

us some comments down below and make sure you guys slap the shit out of that like button and subscribe. If you guys are are not subscribed turn on all those bell notifications so you guys don't miss an upload uh please follow the podcast at mb power project on instagram tiktok and twitter my instagram tiktok and twitter is at i am andrew z and simo where you at go to the discord below go there now demanding do it people like that though yeah no but there's there's a lot of cool stuff in the Discord, a lot of cool topics. People are killing it in there. So check it out.

And see me on Instagram and YouTube. And see me on TikTok and Twitter. Josh. You guys can follow me at Joshua Setledge. J-O-S-H-U-A-S-E-T-T-L-A-G-E. If you guys are looking to win more matches and get injured less, you guys can go to thestrengthmatrix.com. Do you run, Josh? I don't.

Not very often. I like to sprint. I don't really like to. You do some sprints here and there? Every once in a while. Yeah. What about going to a track or something like that? You mess with that at all?

If I had like continuous access to one, I'd probably mess around with that a lot more. When I was coaching the high schoolers, I had access to a track, so I'd mess around with that. The track in Davis is open. Oh, yeah? It's open all the time. Yeah. It's just right right next to uc davis okay you ever want to go

over there um but i think like going to a track might be something that might be kind of fun for you bring a couple med balls throw them around yeah get a little running in do a little bit of barefoot running or something like that on the uh grass that stuff is so much fun in high school we do that a lot like uh go in the the fields in the back of In high school, we do that a lot. Go in the fields in the back of the high school and just throw a kettlebell as far as you can or throw a med ball and then chase it. You can get some great training in just throwing something as far as you can

and then running after it. Just be a hoodlum and hop some fences. That's what I do. There you go. That's that hood conditioning right there. You mentioned earlier about being competitive um what part of the like did you drop a little bit of competitiveness so it didn't have as much of a negative because sometimes when someone's competitive and uh they lose or don't do as

well as they wanted to they're really disappointed like were you competitive like that where you would uh you would flounder in the negativity of the law like did you end up that way kind of for a while yeah that was me all throughout wrestling uh in high school and that's why i didn't end up wrestling my senior year because i'd put i was super competitive and there's a lot of other issues going on you just didn't wrestle at all? Not my senior year, no. And the main reason was because I was so competitive and wanted to win so badly because I had only put my identity in winning and losing. And so when you win two matches and lose two matches, you feel like you're average.

When you go to a really tough tournament and you win one match and lose two, you feel like you freaking suck. And I just couldn't see past my identity being anything more than winning and losing and so it took a long time to change my mindset and kind of re discover my identity and who's got who god's created me to be that after wrestling i could go into jujitsu and have a much healthier mindset with competition i still feel like as equally competitive and different things but the outcome it's much like i'm sure maybe you guys can identify with this you're more process driven than outcome driven so you can be extremely competitive and be process driven and the chips are going to land where they land if you win or

lose but at least you were so dedicated to the process that you can be proud of that performance as opposed to just spending a bunch of time being anxious about the outcome the outcome not going the way that you want it to and then you feel like gosh i've like i gotta get better i gotta do this i should probably give up all these things like am i freaking doing the right thing anymore and that you know downward spiral that happens it's a problem solving thing right like there's some like math to it and you can kind of figure out and maybe somebody else did beat that person uh but maybe you're not that somebody else like sometimes it's just whatever reason that guy kicks your ass and you can train for it and you can try to problem solve but maybe there's a slight chance that you might not ever catch that guy it's just that's kind of sport right And that's kind of what it teaches us.

Absolutely. Humbles us. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.