Mark Bell's Power Project - Legal PED’s to DRASTICALLY Improve Performance & Health - Joe Sullivan & Jake Benson || MBPP Ep. 915

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

In this Podcast Episode, Joe Sullivan, Jake Benson, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about LEGAL performance enhancing supplements that are NOT banned that WILL help an athlete gain a huge edge on the competition.  Follow Joe on IG: https://www.instagram.com/joesullivan_aod/ Follow Jake on IG: https://www.instagram.com/jakeyb_43/ Purchase injectable L-Carnitine and more using code sully10: https://www.betterthroughbiology.com/   New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live 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! ➢Better Fed Beef: https://betterfedbeef.com/pages/powerproject   ➢https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin!   ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!   ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM   ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject to save 15% 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://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://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject   FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.com/@marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell   Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ 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 #markbellspowerproject

We took an actual literal injection before we worked out today. Can somebody get really great results performance enhancement wise without getting into the PEDs that are banned? You can burn fat faster. We don't need to do this dumb that everybody thinks we have to do. You don't need to kill yourself. You know a little something about creative. What are some things that people should look out for?

Cool. Sure. Yeah. I'll just get some flannel shirts, have it unbuttoned, get a little something about creative what are some things that people should look out for cool show yeah i'll just get some flannel shirts have it unbuttoned get a little hair out what if you shave your chest you shave your chest too oh yeah dude shave everything that's a go you guys ever the face you know you guys ever shave each other it's the most manly way to go not yet not yet you're getting. You'll have your day. Andrew, the thumbnail you made on the last episode, isn't it perfect in terms of the beards? Power bears we got going here?

I don't know what the reference is there. Oh, actually, confession time. The last time we were on the podcast in SEMA, you brought up soaking. And I just laughed through it because I had no idea what it was. And after that, I had to ask Joe. I was like, dude, what's soaking? And I just laughed.

I'm like, oh, yeah, soaking. Wait, I don't remember. Mormon soaking. Because he was raised Mormon. And we were talking about the Mormon loophole. So when you said soaking, I was like, baptism? Now I feel embarrassed. I don't know what soaking is. Oh, my God.

I'm so lost. Thank you. Thank you for knowing. Urban Dictionary. It might be another word. I'm pretty sure it's soaking, though. Okay, Mark. No, it's soaking.

It's definitely soaking. Vagina? Mm-hmm. Penis sits. Doesn't do anything. It's soaked. There's no movement. Loophole. It doesn't count. sit because there's like as a more you're not allowed to like you know have premarital sex right well you're not you're really not allowed to do like you know anything this is why we've denounced religion on this show if you

think about it it's like the most intimate way, though. You just sit and hang out. No, no, no. Just marinate and hang out right there. This is nice. Right at the doorstep. That's weird. I just got a coughing attack. Don't breathe. That's a great way to start things, Jake.

Oh, gosh. It was all fine until my girlfriend sneezed. It was all fine until my girlfriend sneezed. Speaking of soaking, you have a supplement coming out. You have a bunch of supplements. And one of them addresses the ladies. Normally, the sex pills that you see at the gas station are all for dudes. It's all like boner pills or whatever, right?

But you're making a supplement for the ladies? Yeah, so we have a couple out now and then we're kind of coming out with a few here soon. But, yep, we have two that are going to be for women and two for men. One of the ones for female, we're going to call it Aphrodite, is going to kind of move towards that female sexuality. No one's really tried to attack it. Awesome. Let's get these ladies charged up again, right? Yep.

Mark was already talking about putting his wife's oatmeal. It's kind of messed up, but, you know. Yeah, wow. Sprinkle a little bit of that in there. Yeah. What she doesn't know doesn't hurt her. Yeah, but we actually kind of want to try to turn them into like RTDs or like a little, you know, like five-hour energy too. So it's like you're always packed and loaded, ready to go.

What's in it? Well, there's a couple of things in it, but none of the ingredients will probably super stand out because what you're trying to do is actually get the right metabolism in certain parts of the brain and the right physiology going to put you in the mood, right? So there's not like one single ingredient that's like, bam, this is going to – Fuck, man. Women are complicated. Yeah, exactly. It really is though. But that's kind of the whole idea of all the products is like these things that really haven't been attacked. We're trying to go after them. So like even things like, uh, like kind of mimicking like a, an Adderall or something,

right? It's like, Hey, I have to come in. I have to focus. Like I need to be, like, I may need to speak really well today at like a presentation or something, but I'm like nervous. I'm not in the mood, whatever. It's like, bam, here's your little, you know, supplement you can take, be ready to go. Um, another one for the men we're doing is like, uh, we're calling it Zen and it's like bam here's your little you know supplement you can take be ready to go um another one for the men we're doing is like we're calling it zen and it's going to be like men have a really hard time relaxing we're kind of talking about this like especially with

mindfulness and whatnot and it's like hey you know i'm done with work kind of got to shut down um these are things that you know you'll be able to take like you know every day or just acutely as needed um but yeah kind of just like a new line of supplementation. Yeah, you guys are kind of finding the, I guess you're finding like the optimal way to do all kinds of different things. And the way we started out today's workout was unconventional. What was in that shot that we took? We took an actual literal injection before we worked out today. You guys.

I wasn't part of this workout. But you would still be natty. It's still natural. Is it carnitine? Yeah, carnitine and choline. I still need to do that. Yeah. It's really cool.

A little carnitine, a little choline. And what does that do? Well, it just kind of depends on the situation. And the timing, like everything else. Yeah, absolutely. A little bit of carnitine injection will give you a little bit of a norepi bump. It's going to bias you towards using a little bit more fatty acids during your training too. Kind of what I like to call opening a creatine window,

like becoming a little less glycolic during the training. And then the choline is just going to give you, you know, that acetylcholine, you know, spinal stuff is just going to help you like squeeze harder and be able to kind of give you a little extra like oomph. But we call it nectar. But a little bit of nectar and like a little bit of NuPep really helps you focus. Really cool combination to take. So lots of ways to take it.

Yeah. What's NuPep? It's a nootropic. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know like what an actual compound is, but it's just like essentially pairing it with something like carnitine and choline. It's like we talked about at the beginning of the workout where it's like people get into these habits of like,

oh, I need my caffeine to wake up. Oh, I need my pre-workout to wake up. But it's like if you understand what the carnitine, what the choline is actually doing, and then take something like Nupept, which is going to basically like just increase, like you can explain it better. Yeah. So like Nupept, I think the best way to think of Nupept very succinctly is it's going to lower the cost of LTP. So being able to make long-term potentiation, like make these, like if you're working on a skill, you're working on, maybe it could even be something like homework, writing a bike, like literally anything you're trying to do that's new.

It's going to lower the cost of this long-term potentiation. And that's like the dumbed-down way that I was going to say it. It's like it can increase or theoretically increase like the rate at which you can like learn something or acquire a new skill. That's amazing. So like you guys – like Mark, we were talking about my deadlift during the session, how it was such a new approach for me and like just learning how to sumo correctly and being able to hold on to stuff correctly since I had all those nerve injuries and whatnot, like using the carnitines, the cholines, and the new peps to actually apply it in that context to learn these new techniques and apply them and like cause this change that normally would take years to happen. It basically increases your ability to have that athletic intuition that we were talking

about. You can pick up on something quicker if you focus on it and if you approach it with a great deal of intent like we're all trying to do. Are these like category of supplements? Are they all stimulating the brain, the choline and the new pep? I guess the carnitine choline is a mild stimulant. You wouldn't want to take it right before bed. It's probably going to keep you awake.

But Nupep, no, not really a stimulant at all. It's not going to all of a sudden make you want to go do something or whatever. You'll feel it, but you'll feel it. I guess I used the wrong word. I didn't mean stimulate the brain. I just meant like is that where things are happening is mainly in the brain. Oh, yes, absolutely. Almost mostly in the brain, yeah.

Question two, like you mentioned, you obviously don't want to say before bed. So what if somebody is using this before an evening workout? Is that something that like would keep you revved up post-workout or is there like a time you want to pay attention to? No, that's a good question because if I were going to be training at night, see, I would lean away from any caffeine and I would just do like nectar. And that's probably what I would do. This nectar is what we call the carnitine choline. It's the actual product that you know we buy um but that's that's what i would lean into because if you're taking a caffeine it's like cool it's gonna you know it's gonna alter the adenosine in your

brain it's literally gonna keep you up make your brain think it's earlier than it is so you know get done with training it's like i'm still awake you know but you won't quite get that with the carnitine choline it's not gonna going to alter adenosine or anything. And it's not a dopamine reuptake inhibitor as well. So it's not going to just flood your brain with like catecholamines and just like keep you wired. Does the presence of calories make a difference? Like if you ate right beforehand or was – Yep, absolutely.

So there's actually a pretty cool study. You can probably find it just by looking up. I think it's 80 grams of carbs. It's like 80 grams carbohydrates with carnitine. I'll find it for you guys. But anyway, it's like you actually get this different threshold with carnitine based on what you have eaten. So once you pass this mark of like 80 grams of carbs and take it, you actually start biasing. This drug actually becomes a little bit different.

So 80 grams of carbs plus, you get this pretty cool effect where it's pretty hard to get hypoxic now. So like if you're going to go in and train, you're trying to get a whole bunch of work done, you're going to start paying a lot of this debt, this acute hypoxia debt via fatty acids. And you're not paying know, and you get, you're not paying near as much with glucose, but if it's less, we're just going to start to kind of like bias a little bit more towards fatty acids, but it's not quite the same effect. Interesting. How about, and I don't think L-carnitine or choline injectable is illegal in almost any type of competition. So if somebody were to use this like before a power lift, a meter, a jujitsu competition,

would it be something that could increase performance? Or is this something that if you're doing something cardio-based like jujitsu, would it make you gas out more? Like gas out quicker? No, that's a really good question. In just about every setting you can think of, it's going to help you gas out less. Okay.

It's a really cool thing to take. Absolutely legal on literally every sport. going to help you gas out less okay um it's a really cool thing to take um absolutely legal on literally every sport am i way off by saying maybe it kind of almost puts you fat adapted a little bit a little bit that's kind of what i was going to say it's like because if you think about terms and like think about the energy systems as a whole it's like we going back to like high school biology or chemistry or whatever i don't even know what it would be called. But it's like you think about like the first energy system, like speed power, second energy system, carbohydrate metabolism, like a little bit longer and then fatty acid metabolism where it's like super long endurance, marathon running, whatever. You think about all of the energy systems in like vacuums, but we're not like closed systems, humans that are doing things.

Like they're all working at the same time. So by getting a little bit more like you said, like fat adapted or just biasing towards using like your fatty acid metabolism as your form of energy source, it just lets you deplete that first and then lean into when that is gone. Then it's this energy system, the glycolytic side, and then even like the stored ATP and whatnot. So it just – it doesn't – I wouldn't say that it increases like the capacity of your gas tank. But it like increases the efficiency at which you use the gas that you have. Would this potentially help somebody with like higher triglycerides? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Because it might help you utilize that as energy? triglycerides? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It might help you utilize that as energy? Because what you got to think about is like when you have this lipolytic effect, you get this, when you're releasing fat, right? Fat goes into the bloodstream. You have a little protein called albumin that is kind of like shuttling it through the bloodstream. It goes to whatever cell that, you know, needs the energy and it goes to this little carnitine shuttle system, right? And so you're absolutely getting to actually beta oxidize is the term, and it goes to this little carnitine shuttle system. And so you're absolutely getting to actually beta-oxidize is the term, oxidize this fatty acid a little bit more efficiently. Did you feel anything when you took this today?

This is your first time taking? I haven't noticed necessarily feeling anything when taking carnitine or choline. I haven't acutely noticed anything during training. But it does... One thing I did notice is it does seem to over time,

not in one dosage, but it does seem to over time make me a little bit leaner or at least appear a little bit leaner. I know everyone's probably like, I'm going to get that. I think it really does. So I think, you know, some of the information of carnitine, like liberating fat, I think makes a lot of sense.

And think about like, this is when like the stuff that a lot of people these days look at as like bro science. This is where it actually isn't bro science it's where you can like use the timing and the uh use of like external supplements like non non-androgenic peds like carnitines choline's uh growth hormones stuff like that to actually like put you in a position where you can burn fat faster because like as a as a natural competitor you're probably you've probably heard a million times over like, oh, fasted cardio doesn't actually like do much more.

And it's like, no, not as a whole. But if you introduce something like a carnitine and choline with a growth hormone to both liberate more fatty acids quicker and then utilize those fatty acids quicker, you can burn fat faster in that particular context. Wait, did you just toss in growth hormone though? Yeah. Well, not for you, not for you, but as a whole. It's the same. It's really hard to get caught using growth hormone.

It is. Okay. But shush, but yeah. The only thing growth hormone is doing in that setting is literally – so the second that you inject growth hormone, it does cause lipolysis right so that it's just like you you know normally what we'll have to do that is epinephrine or some kind of cat like sympathetic base ligand right some kind of like something so let's say it's epinephrine so now epinephrine epinephrine did not have to do that right growth

hormone did so now we have a little bit less cost of lipolysis, if that makes sense. And Simo, we were talking about earlier about like the way that I did my water cut differently for this past meat prep. I was taking AM doses of growth hormone followed by like extended walks for that lipolytic, lipolysis effect, paired with all of the leaning into the parasympathetic nervous system state by staying relaxed the whole time. So I wasn't having any of those catecholamine dumps where it's like, I'm getting too excited. I'm getting too sympathetic. So I stayed down all week and maximize the rate at which any lipolysis was happening and that whole hypothalamic route to drop additional water weight. So, you Yeah, let's dive deeper into this water cut. I found it really fascinating.

You were talking about using some cold therapy. Yeah, so I guess I'll kick that off. It was your idea, so. And also maybe just tell us how much weight we're dealing with for the weight cut and the specifics of cutting for powerlifting meat. Yeah, I'll kind of let Joe get into like the actual weight and, you know, whatever. But the basic idea of it is like whenever you have an excessive amount of water or water attention.

When was this? By the way, sorry. This was the day of the meet? No. No. That was like a couple of, like two months before maybe. Oh, okay. Yeah.

But that's me walking around at like two, like just talking about the weight. Like I walk around at hovering between like 238 and 244 usually good thank you it was like nine percent body fat after the dexa that i got that done um but but yeah i'm i'm proud of i'm proud of it i'm fucking working hard it's a lot of muscle mass yeah on five foot five right but but uh but that's i walk that's my walk around weight walking, walk-around body fat percentage, and then I compete at the 100 kg category, which is 220.4 pounds. So in order to get there, I have to drop 20-plus pounds to make weight and then rehydrate over the course of 24 hours and compete at my maximal ability. And most people would say it's not possible when you're already that lean because what are you going to lose, right? Exactly.

Sorry for cutting you off. No, you're good. Yeah, no. Basically, any time that you have excessive water retention, that water that's there without getting like super deep into it, it's like someone's job to get rid of it. It's either going to be your kidney or your hypothalamus. And so instead of doing this like water cut, this like water sodium, you know, manipulation,

we lean into, hey, let's try to tip this like seesaw back toward this, you know, parasympathetic state and see how much, you know, water we can remove via this like hypothalamic route. And that's kind of the overarching theme of it. So he, we like, I call it like a cold cut, right? It's like, so he ended up doing like, you know, a little bit of cryotherapy and really just like a lot of meditation and mindfulness work. Um, started around like what? Two 44 ish. Yeah. Two 44. And then, uh, worked his way down to like two 30. And then, uh, from there he just sweat. Yep. So, okay. Can you tell us, tell us – I know you mentioned like most people go with the sodium. Water-sodium.

Water-sodium. Can you talk about like what that usually consists of and how the way you guys did this was so different? Yeah, you want to tackle that? Yeah, for sure. So like the typical water cut is preceded by a sodium and water load. is preceded by a sodium and water load. So if you essentially, your body is going to get used to whatever stimulus you provide it with. So if you normally drink like let's say a gallon and a half of water a day and then seven to ten days out from the competition,

you double your water intake to like over three gallons a day and pair it with sodium, you're going to not only retain a good amount of water, but your body is going to basically like, it's going to react with more like diuresis and more urination because you're over flooding your system with hydration. You don't need that much. And your body gets into the situation where this is what my normal is. This is what it means to be in homeostasis. So in order to have a proper water balance, my kidneys have to work harder to filter the water that I'm taking in and urinate more.

So in doing the water and sodium load, you are essentially overhydrating so that later in the week, let's say you're weighing in on Friday, you start the water load on Saturday, water and sodium load on Saturday. The next Wednesday, you remove all sodium, but you keep your water intake high and you take in distilled water. So in order, by doing that, you start to flush out all of the electrolytes that you have in your body. You're still urinating and having that diuresis happen at a very, very large rate.

But you're urinating more. You're peeing more. You're peeing more. You're flushing water out. And then on that Thursday, you essentially remove most of the water that you consume. Because your body is like expecting more water to come in. It keeps urinating, keeps flushing. Just inhaled my own spit. And then after doing that, you get to a point where now you have to sweat an additional weight out.

But it's after doing that, you're taxing your kidneys because you're placing the demand on the kidneys to cause this urination and this filtration to happen at a larger rate. And we talked about astragalus and like astragalus side things to support your kidneys and like bump up your filtration rate. But that can only go so far because you're still causing this systemic stress on your organs and your blood vessels and the filtration. So the reason that we did this was to basically, Jake had an idea, a theory that we could cause the similar amount of like water droppage without stressing the kidneys and without stressing the blood the vessels and essentially like get to the end goal without that systemic stress and that's why we did this and the whole idea i guess like what

came up with this idea or the need for the idea i should say is that one thing that um joe struggles with and anybody that's going to just have the amount of like brain and spine power that he has during a squat, he's got a massive squat, right? Every time he'd finish that squat, his hands would swell up, right? His hands and feet and he'd just kind of balloon up and get all this edema, which is always going to be caused by this like excessive sympathetic response, right? Like Mark talking about how good you are at causing damage to yourself when you're running. It's that. Right. And so we needed him to be able to have not super swelled up hands to be able to deadlift because you ought to be able to hold on to the deadlift.

So the idea was, hey, let's put less systemic stress on you. Let's make sure your hypothalamus is happy so you're not going to just swell up after you're done with the squat. And let's put you in a position where you can succeed for your deadlift. And so, you know, he went through a squat, like, as we're watching, all-time world record squat again for, like, the 17th time in a row. Fourth time in a row. And came in, you know, hit a 496 bench and then came and hit his deadlift without any swelling. And it worked out really well.

And no edema after the meet whatsoever. Like I was in the most healthy position I've ever been post-competition due to that approach. What did the cold therapy do specifically just kind of lower inflammation? No, yeah, that's a really good question. So what you're trying to do when you initiate the sweat is whenever you sweat and you need to be able to sweat, it's all these sympathetic ligands. You have this cost. So this first wave of sympathetic ligands hit and you can sweat really easy, right?

Like have you ever been in the sauna or like seen somebody in a weight cut and all of a sudden they're not sweating. They can sit in there. You can throw them in freaking lava at that point and it's like they're not going to sweat. And the only way to do that, to get them to sweat at that point is like step back, have them go to sleep, like get you know very parasympathetic state and uh you know they could go again after that but at that point it's like you're never going to get them to sweat so you do this little cold therapy stuff to uh make sure that we're not ever getting into this you

know sympathetic spot early yeah so let me ask you this too with all the cuts you've done and then doing this cut there was a big noticeable difference in your performance on the way this one happened a hundredfold yeah i i feel i felt the best i have ever felt on the competition like i i mentioned to uh mark and jake earlier like i wait normally with a 24-hour weigh-in like you you weigh in, you start to rehydrate after. And generally most of the time, anybody who does an appreciable cut is going to feel like shit for the rest of the day. And they need to go to bed that night. And then you'll wake up and be like, okay, I'm back. I feel good. Yeah. This entire cut, I was texting

Jake cause he, he was coming, he was traveling out like the day I was rehydrating. I was like, dude, I'm ready to go right now. Like if I needed to, I really think, obviously I'm not recommending this at all, but if someone were to incorporate some of these principles or these approaches for something like a two-hour weigh-in, it would be much smoother than any focus anyone could have on the action on actually like the kidney option, that pathway. So it was incredible. Like I'm very, very, the original plan for this meet was just to go, go in and get, get a total, like take two attempts on everything.

Like we talked about, just get a total, go to 42 and not even worry about cutting just to, just to get some data in regards to the training but what like 12 days out like 14 days out yeah it was like it's probably like two weeks out i was like wait i think we can pull this off he's like how much do you weigh and i'm like oh like 239 this morning and he's like i have an idea do you want to try something and i'm like sure you think it's gonna work and i'm like whatever. And it's just I've like I've drank the Kool-Aid hard enough that I – and Jake's helped me like through all the nerve damage and whatnot. And it's worked so well that it's like I trust him to get me there. So I was like if this is going to work and you think it's going to work and you want to explain it to me and he did.

And I'm like, OK, let's do it. Let's try it. And we did and i'm like okay let's do it let's try it and we did and it worked and i'm glad we did because now i feel like like we were talking about before we headed in here i'm uh the whole goal of training right now is to peel off a little bit more body fat percentage get a little bit leaner and then after like july or something get uh be well fed big and strong going into the american pro uh october 28th and uh use this same approach and put up even a bigger total. What's the idea behind being leaner as a power lifter? Is it to help you absorb more nutrients

when you go and work on getting bigger again? No, it's just so you can post some really nice pictures. Yeah, definitely that. Really, I'd just say it's the whole basis. While yes, mass moves mass, you can't contract fat. So if I can maximize my like lean tissue and be able to like – like we were talking about one of the goals of this like developmental phase is like more triceps, more hamstrings, more delts.

If I can get some pounds, some body fat percentage off and then allocate that which I've lost to lean tissue in those areas, that's going to help bump up my deadlift. That's going to help bump up my bench. And my squat is going to be my squat. So if I can put a little bit more pounds on my bench and deadlift through like some approaches like this, it could take a total from a total off like six attempts uh for uh 2069 which i got like a week and a half ago who knows what the total is after that and if i do like three attempts and run because this this was what like an eight week peak we didn't really devote a lot of i i opened to 826 and the heaviest weight i hit in training was 815 on squat so

it's like if we devote a little bit more time to a little bit harder of a peak, a little bit more aggressive, who knows what the top end is. And that's part of the reason I feel like after learning so much from Jake and approaching these things in such a different manner, I feel like a new lifter. I feel like I'm getting new gains again after being in this sport for like 15 years. So it's exciting. That's amazing. What do you guys think for the lifter or the athlete out there?

I guess before we switch gears, do you think that that protocol would work well for other sports? Would that protocol for that weight cut, would that work for MMA and stuff like that? Or would you utilize something different? I think it would just absolutely depend on the person. Like, and how far along the scale are you on this, like, you know, sympathetic, like imaginary scale? Because if it's somebody that's like, hey, you know, we're using a little extra gear, we're using a little extra like PEDs,

things like that, absolutely, you're going to be a little bit more like sympathetic because you need to be, right? Like that's what those drugs do. So it would depend on the individual. For the most part, I would say this would probably work better for men than it would for women just because we have more DHTs. We have more sympathetic ligands. We have more of this like sympathetic arousal for the most part. But it's just kind of an individual, you know, basis.

Power Project family, how's it going? Now, we've talked about blood work and getting your labs done on this podcast with many different guests, as that's super important for understanding what's going on underneath the hood. That's why we've been partnered with Merrick Health for such a long time now, owned by Derek from More Plates, More Dates. With Merrick Health, you can get yourself the Power Project panel, or you can select any specific labs you want to get. And after you get that done, you'll be able to work with one of Merrick's patient care coordinators,

where they'll help you understand what type of nutritional, lifestyle, hormonal, or other type of interventions you can utilize to help fix whatever might be going on underneath the hood. Merrick is your one-stop shop to make sure that everything is going well underneath the hood. Andrew, how can they get their blood work done? Yes, we have two options for you guys. Head over to merrickhealth.com slash powerproject. That's M-A-R-R-E-K health.com slash powerproject. There you guys will see the PowerProject panel that Nsema was just talking about.

And at checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT to save $101 off of that panel. Now, if you want to custom select your own panel, you guys can use promo code POWERPROJECT10 to save 10% off all labs. Again, that's at merrickhealth.com slash POWERPROJECT. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. What about some of the people that want to, like,

you know, ride out the natty line as hard as they can and, you know, they want to, you know, not take anything that's, you know, ride out the natty line as hard as they can. And, you know, they want to, you know, not take anything that's, you know, going to have them test positive for their sport. We've seen in jujitsu now there's been a bunch of guys who have been popped. And I think we're seeing more and more people, you know, failing drug tests and things like that. There's a lot on the line for people. And some people just simply don't want to take steroids, I guess you'd say.

But what do you guys think in terms of performance enhancement? How far can someone get really great results performance enhancement-wise without getting into the PEDs that are banned? Oh, yeah, absolutely. A thousand percent, yes. It's like really what you got to do is like take this individual and it's like where do you want to be, right? It's like do you want – whether it's like you know bjj martial arts whether it's like power lifting whether you know

whatever it is that you're doing it's like what you need to be able to do is look under the hood and say hey where am i lacking like my individual genetics where do i lack right and what specifically do i need to do and what specific adaptations do i need to make so I can be there, right? So if you want to be here, your roadmap to get there is going to be very different than someone else's. We're all starting in different places, different vehicles, different terrains, everything. So it's like you just have to be specific. Training is going to have to be different.

Nutrition is going to have to be different. But if you were to optimize training, nutrition nutrition, and everything like all these legal like PEDs, things like these, carnitines and whatever, or even glutathione can make a really big impact. You can go really, really, really far, really far, especially if it's not a strength sport. What does something like glutathione do? So glutathione, man, so many different things. Again, depends on the application. But it's like, you know, long story short, though, it's like you can train harder and recover faster, right? Like your ability to recover is going to be significantly helped.

And even for people who struggle with this, like what I like to call a two-fuel theory, which is like your ability to fold proteins using glucose and fatty acids at the same time, right? So like basically – What's a fold protein mean? To be able to take – so basically like whenever you're making anything in your cell, you have to make this protein. It's basically just a bunch of amino acids like it's stranded together and it's going

to be folded. Then it goes to your ribosomes and they get clipped off and it goes out to whatever it's going to be, whether it's an enzyme, a new muscle tissue, a new whatever, whatever. Everything you have to make. That's basically what your liver does, right? It's like it's a very hepatic process. But being able to pay for that because it has a cost, right? Being able to pay for that cost with glucose and fatty acids at the same time, that's where you're really making the most progress. That's the ability to adapt to anything.

This is where your allostatic load is really the biggest it can be. And that's like what we were talking about, about like using something like carnitine and choline because we always think about energy systems in terms of like little vacuums and it's like this one and then this one and then this one. But if we can optimize and make all of these happen at the most efficient pace at the same time and in synchronization with one another then you can really get to a point where the individual is like optimized and you're getting the most bang for your buck not out of not just out of the

supplementation that you're doing but also the training also the lifestyle also the diet and like were talking about in the gym, all these things compound in one another. So it's like, it's easy to say this to everyone and be like, oh, just do this, just do this. But it's not just a matter, at least like just someone who's like, because I coach a lot of beginners too. And it's like, in order to make someone understand like how all of these things compound in one another, it's like a little bit more make someone understand like how all of these things compound in one another, it's like a little bit more buy-in each time. Because like every time somebody does some, does like this one thing and they're like, oh, that did work. Then it's like, okay, they want to buy in a little bit more. And it's like, what more can I do? It's like, well, how about this?

And then this, and then ideally, if you get someone who's really, really, really wants to lean into it and be the absolute best that they can, whether they're natural or enhanced, then they get to a point where almost everything that they're doing is catered around the adaptations that they are wanting to make in the gym or for their particular goal. I like what you're saying there because, you know, we can get caught up on the idea that there's like a thing that we're going to take that's going to like progress us forward. But you might say,

lay down on the ground, put your feet up. And people are like, well, that doesn't really do anything. Yeah. And it's like, well, it can have a profound effect. It can help with inflammation. It can help circulation. If we can feed into circulation, well, then we're feeding into 90,000 other things that could be productive towards you becoming a better athlete.

But it's kind of hard. You're like, I'm going to sit up against the wall. I'm just going to have my feet up high on the wall. It seems stupid. But our mind gets so attached to the nuance of this new drug or this new peptide or new whatever thing is sexy to people. Yeah, and it's got to be less on the drug and more how do I apply this and how do I like look under the hood of my biology and know what I need to apply at the right time. Some of the craziest things I've ever done with like professional athletes has not been any PD at all. Sometimes it's like wear some toe spacers and do some mindfulness work, right?

Or it's like, hey, let's do some morning glutathione and, you know, let's do some – like go throw some med balls outside with a little MCT, you know, something like that. They're like, I just got off the phone with Jake Benson. He told me to wear toe spacers. They're like so disappointed. I know. And it's like sometimes it's like, well, I guess it's easy, so I'll do it. And then, you know, they text me a few days later.

It's like, oh, my gosh, my HRV went up here and like I'm feeling great. And like, you know. HRV. There we go. You know what? Let's listen. So like I've been noticing in the past I used to like, you know, I do work out every day. Really?

Yeah. Yeah. But like, you know, I have the Oura Ring and really yeah yeah but like you know i have the aura ring and my eight sleep mattress and they track the hrv pretty similarly right so i'd have some times where my hrv is a bit higher 80 90 but recently man for the past few months i've had just like perpetually low hrv i've even though i've felt great i've purposely taken certain days off of like maybe rolling or doing much to just see, will this go back up? And it's just been like 20, 25, 30, 19, 20.

And I'm just wondering, is that something that you think I need to pay attention to even though I feel fine? I don't feel fatigued. My performance is good. Body feels great. Or like what do you think? Yeah, I think it's a really nice biomarker to track. Yeah. It is important.

You know, you might feel really good now, but I think that's, you know, kind of the beginning of where things could start to, you know, something could cause an issue. Yeah. Now, why that HRV started tanking is really the question, right? It's like, you know, am I struggling to get parasympathetic after X? That's the thing for me. I'm generally pretty chill with everything. Like even like working out or jujitsu or whatever, I'm relaxed. He doesn't even usually make noise when he lifts.

Oh, weird. Yeah, I'm just like usually perpetually relaxed with everything. I just – I don't know. Yeah, I mean you can feel really Zen and really relaxed though and have like, be very sympathetic. In fact, I'm very quiet even when I'm doing like, you know,

750 pounds squat. There's a difference between like mentally parasympathetic and mentally relaxed and actually being like physiologically relaxed and, and pair at truly parasympathetic. Cause it's, it's not just like how you feel. It's also like, it's all, it's the other biomarkers. It's like your heart rate, like the, your blood pressure, uh, actually I think the big one might in your case might actually be like looking at respirations per minute too. Right. Um, cause like if those are going up, it's like, you know, do we have a little bit more metabolism in the

amygdala than we should be? That's a huge thing for me particularly. Like I need to consciously slow my breathing down, especially when I'm on like a podcast because it's so easy for me to do this same thing and keep talking, da-da-da-da-da. And then when I'm done, it's – fuck. It's like holy shit, you know, but just being conscious of stuff like that. Yeah. OK. So I'm going to mention this one more thing that I want to like try to make this HRV thing a bit broader. My respirations per minute, I breathe slow. Like that's, like that's one thing that we've been paying attention to and been talking about on the podcast for a long time, like nasal breathing and not, you know, being super hype in that way. So my respirations per minute are usually pretty low too. During jujitsu, I'm always nasal breathing. I don't get fatigued in that way because my breath is like pretty pretty good there too so i guess it's something we'll figure out but like what are some ways like what are ways that people can figure out how to de-stress like what

should they be paying attention to because you mentioned a few things there but maybe we can go deeper on a few yeah i think like uh man there's so many different ways to go like even doing like i was telling mark maybe some hot yoga could actually be like really important right it's like you know doing some heat therapy doing some cold therapy it's like doing some journaling doing some breathing drills like all those things are going to be there's a lot of girls in really tight pants in those classes

though okay wear tighter pants yeah make it a contest and wear tighter pants than me. See what I can do. Andrew likes it when I wear tight pants. Tighter and see-through.

Nice. The old wet white competition, right? I would say for myself, I feel like I'm pretty calm. I feel like I'm pretty chill, like in my own brain and mind when something happens. Not that I don't care about it, but I think I've had people in my life before tell me, it seems like you don't care much about stuff. Obviously, I care about people and I care about the things that are going on around me, but I've learned to develop a reinterpretation and to try to be a little calmer and have things, if something does happen, I try to interpret how I'm

going to react to that. And I try to react what I would consider to be in somewhat a rational way. However, there's still a lot of explosions going on in my brain all the time because, you know, I want to get better at this. I want to get better at that. Um, you know, I do put pressure on myself, not a, I don't think a crazy amount of pressure, but, um, I want to do better in business. I want to be a better dad. I want to be a better husband. And these things are, they're always there. You know, even just a couple of days ago, I got in my hot tub.

I'm just like looking up at the moon and just kind of getting this little zen mode and i was just thinking like i still need to be better like i just i've just had that thought like i still need to be i still need to be fucking better like my wife is awesome i need to be fucking better for her yeah and so you know you have these things i think they kind of they uh they pull on you and they can amplify some good positive things because then you line up a cascade of disciplines that hopefully head you in that direction. But then you're thinking, I got to do this. I got to do that. I got to do this. I got to do that.

So that's kind of – that happens to me a lot. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, there's a lot of things that could be just like that. You can even really make a case for looking at your training and your diet too, right? It's like maybe you're a little bit more sympathetic because you're trying to cause a little bit more lipolysis. Or maybe there's a little bit more glucocorticoids going on or whatnot. None of these things you really feel that much, right? It's like you just kind of don't feel tired, but you don't feel amped or anything.

But they're going on and they're happening. And that's causing stress on the heart, causing this lack of fluidity between this sympathetic and parasympathetic state, which is really what an HRV is reflective of. I think your intensity in jiu-jitsu has gone sky high, right? Like recently with the – not all the time, but with the guys guys you're rolling with, it's a big change there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. There's a change there. Mentally, though, like even though I'm going and rolling in that spot in San Jose, like I'm still afterwards, I don't feel stressed. Right. Afterwards, I can wind down fairly quickly. I'm not like hyped up for hours. Right. right?

So in that case, you might lean into the whole, like take a little, you know, morning glutathione on your days off and probably do a little bit of like to mindfulness work on those days too. And then like, you know, maybe what we've talked about,

I call it creatine day, but it's like maybe implement a creatine day where it's a little more like usually this is kind of like a relatively intense, but long rest kind of treat it like you're a sprinter, right? It's like one sprint. I was a sprinter in college and it's like you sprint, you walk back. Explains those legs. That's like the sprint. I was a sprinter in college. It's like you sprint, you walk back.

That explains those legs. That's like the only reason I have hamstrings. It's the only thing I've worked. 100 meter? 200 meter? I did one, two, four. Nice. But you sprint and it's like you just walk as slow as you possibly can on the way back, right?

And that's kind of what you're treating it like. It's like just do some med ball throws, do that kind of thing. I mean I can build something out for you real quick after this and but those kind of things it's like you know little glutathione some creatine days and all of a sudden those numbers will start you know flying up is there a glutathione that's not an injection that will do anything no i have to just i have to stop being a pussy like the l-carnitine thing the glutathione i just gotta i gotta use the just gotta use needles. You know, we actually have a really cool company that manufactures all this stuff for us. We have a glutathione.

So only ever get glutathione that's lyophilized. It means it comes in a powder. Like, I know you've used growth hormone. That's how growth hormone comes. Fuck you. That caught me off guard. But it comes in a powder. That'd be careful.

Joe's got a cramp. It's a powder you can inject. So it's a powder and you get a special... What? Yeah, don't play dumb with me. Thank you. Everybody on YouTube is just like... Fucking enteamer.

I knew it. Just kidding. At least we can rest our hat on the fact that he's ugly. Here we go. Here we go. But no, it's a powder and you get a reconstitution water. And this company has this reconstitution water that has a little bit of taurine in it. So it acts as a sulfur donor for this glutathione.

It just basically makes the glutathione more potent, right? And then you reconstitute it and you put it in the fridge. It's the only way to have glutathione. Every other kind you get, by the time it gets to you, it's garbage. It's already just pretty much broken down. If anyone listening to the podcast or you guys ever buy glutathione and it comes in a liquid already it's bunk so okay is it is it fairly foolproof like is the powder like a one like serving size for like a vial because i'm just thinking like if you have to measure

that out like it's gonna be they make make it super easy it's it's what? Glutathione transport backwater, GTB. And on the label it says like add 10 milliliters of this to this vial. This equates to this dosage. Right. And then from there it's like you would just have – like I would just tell you like, hey, you know, and see him take like 300 milligrams in the morning. Are you guys able to say where you get this stuff? It's better through biology. This is where we get –

It's his company. Oh, that's yours? OK. OK. Yeah. Cool. biology this is where we get it's his company oh that's your okay okay yeah cool so this is get that shit everything that you can that i in my opinion that i think is worth it that's not a uh banned substance i manufacture and we have through better through biology so we have things like that's like nectar neckers over there nectar is his product it's not there's nectar andAD+, glutathione. Data. Data. ATP. Yeah, synthesize ATP because people don't realize that they can actually like – you can synthesize cellular ATP for like pure energy now. Wow. And this is what I was talking about when we were talking about like the non-androgenic PEDs because like none of this is banned.

None of this is like a banned substance because it's how can you test for cellular energy? There's no possible way to do that. And what – but on my competition day, like most of the time for power lifters, the old school methodology is like test no ester, methyl trend, fucking halo like Skittles on the day of, you know. Brush your teeth with some, yeah, something. Yeah, like what meat day drugs don't count. And it's like that's the old school approach. Like I barely used any like actual like bumped up versions of androgens on the meat day. But I took multiple doses of nectar, ATP, and data. So, and got way more out of it. What are some of these other things? What's, we've heard a lot about NAD+. I know some people I think are utilizing for anti-aging purposes.

What are some of your thoughts on it? I think there's a lot of ways that you can use NAD+. I was just thinking, I have this little joke with Andy. You know, he's coming in. We're like, whenever you're too hydrogeny we'll use nad plus and it's like basically like the way that nad plus works is it works with your hydrogen ions right um so there's so many ways to use this too like you could actually take like a low dose nad plus something like um maybe 20 30 mg totally depends on the person that's probably more or less like ballpark

range and go do some kind of glycolytic session, right, where you're really trying to work on. Like a bodybuilding session maybe? Yeah, like a substrate session. It's like you come in and it's kind of this high rep, mostly machines. You're not doing like a ton of like heavy lifting. And it's like, you know, it's really cool because you can make a big bang for your buck, especially like if you're traveling. It's like, hey, I have 45 minutes to work out and I need to make this very effective. your buck, especially like if you're traveling, it's like, Hey, I have 45 minutes to work out and I need to make this very effective. Um, a little bit of NAD plus can absolutely, um, what's the

word? Like amplify, amplify. Yeah. That kind of situation. NAD plus would also go really well. Um, kind of like a glutathione, like the morning of a rest day. Um, it can give you that, that kind of effect too. But on that case, I'd probably go a little bit higher, maybe something like 60 to 100 mgs on the morning of a rest day and kind of take care of those hydrogens. And that's how I've used it because I don't need any help due to how efficiently I can utilize my own musculature and the damage that I can cause to myself due to my training age and just how – What do you mean by that damage?

You mentioned that earlier. What do you mean by that damage? You, you mentioned that earlier. And what do you mean by that? So like the better, the better you are at a particular technique or like putting force in, in a particular position. So like for instance, my squat, like I have,

I have not to toot my own horn, but I have like a really, really good technique. It's really repeatable. You have an all time world record. Yeah. And it's like, I'm very, I'm very, very strong and I'm very, very like precise in the way that I do it. Like my – I have a very, very – a knack for like my precision window, hitting my precision window where it's like I will put the most amount of force possible in this particular range of motion.

the most amount of force possible in this particular range of motion. But in doing so, like that's such a high demand on my body and on my physiology and on my biology. So it's – there's always – like Jake mentioned it before. There's always a debt to everything that we do. Even when we get really, really fantastic at something, there's still a debt that we're incurring by doing that particular thing. Like for example, on a squat, you can kind of wreck yourself with like two plates. Yes. Which for somebody else would scratch their head and be like, I don't understand how he got so much out of two plates, but you could probably induce a muscle hypertrophy

and things like that just because you're so connected. And because of that neuromuscular activation or the mind muscle connection or whatever term you want to use for it. Motor unit recruitment. Motor unit recruitment and it's just like like how you were saying you don't need much for your legs at this point i'm the same way like if i just transitioned to like the my health phase post power lifting i would probably not squat very much and really when i did train legs there wouldn't be much of a squat pattern because if I did as much as I would

like to, I would cause too much, like the damage would be redundant. So that's what I mean. Using something like an NAD plus in my context would just cause that damage to be much further along. And it's like, I could get into territory where it's like I'm overtraining or getting to a point where it's impossible to recover from. We're just like getting really glycolytic really quick. Basically like he's not going to have any oxygen. If there's no oxygen in the blood, you can't recycle these creatines. And it's like now you can't even lift that weight anyway. Yeah.

It's like getting into like whenever you would compete, you would come back and do your like the session back a week after where it's like, oh, we're going to do some sets of six, sets of 10, whatever. And you get like this crazy nasty pump after the first set. And you're like, how the fuck can I even do anything after that? That's like that – the result of that happening. Like you're too efficient and too turned on. With one rep.

Yeah. It's like the excessive motor unit recruitment. Yeah. It's like the excessive motor unit recruitment. Yeah. And that's why I use it on my rest days because for my particular context and probably for your own, like you can get more out of it that way. I got a question about – I got a question about Trent. Yeah, Trent.

You were kind of mentioning like it's – And SEMA was on Trent, right? I know. That we were talking about? No, he was asking you for a source off air. Oh, okay. Rest was – S for a source off air. Oh, okay. Transima. I'm shocked.

Are you? God damn it, man. You guys realize he could kill all of us at the same time? Probably. No, but he won't on air. It'd be kind of interesting. Okay, I need a bake at home. Okay, I'll stop.

I need a bake at home. Okay, I'll stop. The question is kind of in the realm of, you know, it's like a lot of people's go-to, right? It may be mask some things. Do you think it's a good drug like in terms of utilizing it for power lifting? And what are the things that people, people seem to be pretty reckless with it. And the amount that people used to use years and years ago seemed like people were using it more moderately kind of because the way that it came and now uh you know people make it in like 100 and 200 milligram dosages and people are blasting the fuck out of

it so what are some of your thoughts um well i think the way to think about trend is that when you the second that you inject trend trend isn't going to do much as far as these protein expressions that other drugs can do. Otherwise, you just use testosterone, right? The thing that makes Tren really special and different is that it's almost like changing the software in your brain, right? You're almost like completely – like normally you operate on Windows. Now you're going – you're literally on a completely different software. So you have, it actually hits your olfactory nerve, this little nasal nerve. And by law of locality, it actually pushes off onto the amygdala. And then through that, it actually

pushes, it has a little feedback loop with the amygdala to the hippocampus and then the hypothalamus. And because of that, now everything that you see, like your brain sees, like your hypothalamus is assessing in your body, like how much glucose, how much whatever, whatever's happening in your body, the perception that you see is now different, right? It's under a new lens because it's now biased towards this amygdala-driven environment that you're not used to. Yeah. So it's like it's going to drive glucocorticoids up, right, which is why no one's really hungry.

Everyone gets jacked on Tren, right? You take Tren, it's like, dude, I don't need to eat and I'm jacked. I'm not getting any weaker, right, Nsema? No. But yeah, kind of. True. This is true. But yeah, that's like it's a very amygdala-driven and there's no other – well, I guess methyltren.

But that's what makes it unique. Methyltren is different? Don't – What's the difference between methyltren and tren? Oh, okay. Sorry. That's my fault. I'm just kidding.

It's literally just like methylated tren, which means now it's orally available. And so it acts like really all orals are is like you basically make this little leaving group on the steroid. So now it can go into your stomach without being destroyed, go through a first bypass of the liver, and it doesn't get broken down. I kind of lost the word of what it's called. But then it comes through and gets a second bypass. But that first bypass of the liver is what it's called. But then it comes through and gets the second bypass. But that first bypass to the liver is what makes oral special. And so oral steroids, like using them long-term makes no sense.

Like using them for more than like even a week or two, there's not really a purpose. You can actually – it's like those have such acute effects and they kick in so quickly that it doesn't make sense to use them long-term because anything else you can mimic by just taking a different drug um when it comes to some of the things we've been mentioning before some of the things that are legal it's been my own experience utilizing a little bit of the stuff for running that it doesn't even need to be used every day right absolutely no yep you're completely correct so it it's kind of interesting that you can kind of just take it as you feel maybe you need it, right? And because it's not like

a sex hormone where it's like going to or just, it's not suppressive. It's not going to affect your own body's natural production of anything. It's not as if you, I don't want to say are making a commitment to taking it, but it's not like when you hop on testosterone. You can't just take it when you want.

It's like you need to stay on this because your testicles are not going to produce your own testosterone. When you come off, you need to understand that and approach it in that manner. With this, there's no – like you could take it one day a week and get an effect. Do you see any signs with any of the things that you guys mentioned from that website and what we talked about? Is there anything that you guys see in the future could be banned or would be banned or like are they are you able to test for these things um so like going through the things we just i mean like no like carnitine exists in your body right we have a carnitine shuttle system and every single cell you have or just about and then uh i mean like choline exists in your spine and

in your brain so it's like you can't test for that. And like acetylcholine comes from like the food you eat, so it's like. Yeah, it's like ATP just exists. Like you can't test for that. Like even data exists, right? It's like you can't test for that either. What's that one? Diosopropamine dichloracetate data.

It's a little bit more complicated one, but it works on what's called your PDKs, your pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase. And so it's going to just bias you to not recognize fatigue as quickly. So you can take something like data and – It's dumb. So like for example, your heart rate could be up and you could be exerting but you don't register that fatigue. It's more how much ATP that you are hydrolyzing at once is not recognized, right? Like it's not – like all these little AMPs and all these other things that come into your body, it's now not really being recognized as – so like it's something we actually use for the the tom platt squat it's

like you can get pretty far and it's like you don't really feel this like lactate buildup coming up anymore i guess most of it would be through like this lactase oh so it's like you can push pretty good for running uh it could be for the right person in the right setting. Sprinting. Sprinting, awesome. Like 800-meter? By far, the most I've ever seen it used is a 400 and 800-meter for sprinting. Do you think this is something that's probably being used by Olympic-level sprinters?

Because, again, it's not something that you'd have to test for. I always thought it would be. As I got further and further into like these professional sports, there was not many people actually knew about it. I'm sure there's some people because it's not like an unknown drug. But a lot of these things, like I don't think many people really know how to, like even though they exist, one, or that they can be used. And then two, like how do I even practically use this?

Like how do I even pick a dose? Because it's not just one of those things where it's like, oh, like caffeine works, 200 milligrams of caffeine. It's like with data, it's like what dose is going to work for this particular individual in what particular context? So it's much harder to apply it as a whole. But if you do understand it, that's why it's like I – learning from Jake and being as like integrated with this as I have been is why it's so exciting for me and I know it's exciting for you too because like I think about like what the fuck is things going to look like in five or ten years? Because like the level of intelligence and the level of education and then like a byproduct of that in application, it's like what happens when more people know about these things and can intellectually apply them it's like where where's the ceiling because i have no idea i don't think i don't think any sport has even close to been chopped into all the way which is nuts to say out loud because like think about some of the records not not just in powerlifting but like

usain bolt like what happens then it's like i i have no idea so yeah how much healthier do you because i don't know the type of stuff that maybe you used to do before me or before doing some of these things but now i'm assuming you gotta be feeling pretty fucking i feel amazing i feel like a new person like that's what i don't know if you saw you can pull this one up but like there's a reason after uh after i hit my opener deadlift like i I bawled my eyes out and I thanked him because like I literally cannot express enough verbal gratitude or anything for Jake because he never sells himself. But I genuinely think like he's one of if not like the most – like the smartest and most – just most practical person on the planet because of the way that he can think and the way that he can put puzzle pieces together and i'll always be i'll always be indebted to him because i feel like right now we're talking about how i have i feel like a new lifter it's

the next one after that where i'm crying and it's also not forget that he's dead lifted over 800 pounds yes yeah jake's fucking over there but but in this video i'm like i – I'm crying and I'm saying like – and I'm getting emotional right now. But it's like I was saying like seven years. It took me seven years and it's thanks to that guy because I would have kept approaching things with this is my hammer. This is the only tool that I have. And I'd probably – I probably would have either retired or hurt myself even further than I had before had I not interacted with them and I not only feel like a new power lifter I feel like a new person and I can pass on that knowledge to other people and like honestly change change the world not just the

sport because like we don't need to do this dumb shit that everybody thinks we have to do like the bodybuilders that I talked to in Vegas that are taking grams and grams of gear. It's like you don't fucking need to kill yourself through this sport to excel. I hit a 62-pound total PR after seven years being on a net like less than 800 milligrams of anabolics for six weeks as opposed to my previous experience where I would start a

meat cycle that like 15, 16 weeks out and be upwards of like two grams a year. And it was – the way that I look at it now and the way that a lot of people approach powerlifting or their own sports endeavors, it's as fucked up as it is to say it's a convoluted suicide attempt because people say, I'm willing to die for this. I'm willing to die for this, and it's not the fact that they're willing to die for this. They're in a way trying to kill themselves through this or give themselves a reason to die for something. I just feel like a new person, and I could never say thank you enough to that dude. So it's world different.

Like even after the meet, my resting heart rate was like down in the 70s and it's like zero edema. I feel good. I felt like I went and trained Monday after my meet. Like my normal experience is like I can't fucking move because I've caused so much damage to myself. So it's like miles ahead and hitting 62

pound total PRs on a very relaxed day so I'm like what happens when we like where's the ceiling I don't know that's why I'm so excited how could I not be excited about this stuff how old are you now 29 29 so like I mean we're you don't know where the ceiling is but how long more do you feel like you want to try and be competitive? Mid-30s. Mid-30s. That's what I was thinking. Like we were talking about this the other day because like I don't want to be the guy who's like going for my best when I'm like 40.

I want to be able to like have kids and relax and be healthy and transition more into like an educator leader role. And I know I am in one currently, but just a little bit – I don't want to be the guy that has to be forced to retire. I want to walk away on my own terms. So I'm thinking like 35, 36. I have a good couple of years left and it's – with as healthy as I am, like there's no reason not to have that many years left. Like before I started working with Jake and like being friends with him and talking to him in like 2020, I was thinking like that next meet, maybe the next two meets, I was going to retire afterwards.

I was at the end of my road because I didn't know what else to do. So like 35, 36 and then just be lean and strong-ish. I don't know. The whole dad plan where it's just a lot of activity and like three days of training a week and be like, I'm cool. Yeah, it seemed like your whole mindset has changed since I first met you, which I didn't really know you all that well back then. I don't know you a ton even now, but we know each other more than we did. And when I first met you, I remember you were competing.

You were in a contest, but I remember you were pretty amped and fired up. You just seem like you have a different aura around you nowadays. So it's really cool. Thank you. It must be something you worked on. Yeah, it is. And it's like I'm vocal. I've been in therapy since 2017 because because like I had I didn't have like a fucked up childhood. It's just like I come from a lot of struggle, like a lot of poverty. My mom was super sick. My dad and I like really had to really had to work hard to like make things work for a while and like just bounced around where I was living and whatnot.

and like just bounced around where I was living and whatnot. Didn't always know where like food was coming from and stuff. And it's like there's a lot of struggle there. And I kind of like carried – in addition, I attempted suicide when I was like 17 and was unsuccessful obviously. But just there was a lot of like – a lot of internal like both guilt and anger that I like used powerlifting as an outlet for. And like that's why I was so amped up and so like fiery all the time. And it's like I've been active in therapy and counseling and like mindfulness. I was talking to Chris before the podcast about how I've used like micro doses of psychedelics to like come

off of anti-anxiety meds and anti-depression medication and just – I've done a lot of self-work. Was that through like some care of a doctor or was that just your own – Like communication with a remote physician. This was like back in like 2017, 2018 before a lot of people before it was like like ketamine therapy and whatnot where it's like actually a thing uh but it was just like me exploring it and being like i need to figure this out or i'm going to kill myself type thing so and i did and it's like i i still go to therapy i still work on myself i i'm very very big on mindfulness like

jake has talked about like a a journal every day and that type of stuff. It takes a lot of work, but that's why I said thank you because I'm proud of it. I'm proud of the personal growth that I've made over however long it's taken. And it's like you called me after the meet and we're like, you're the king of perspective, you know, because it's like I've failed so many times and I've fallen short so many times that because I'm in the position where I'm in where it's like I've just learned so much and I haven't ever quit. I haven't ever resigned myself to just being like, OK, I'm done. There's always more I can learn. There's always more I can give.

There's always more I can do to become a better person. And eventually I'm going to hit like a wall where it's like I'm not going to be able to become a better person. And eventually I'm going to hit like a wall where it's like I'm not going to be able to become a better power lifter. But that doesn't mean I'm done becoming a better person. I'm done learning or growing or whatever. So it's big for me. It's growing up, man. Like we all go through it.

Yeah, and you were 300 pounds I think you mentioned to me when you were like 13? 13, 14, yeah. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just assume people know this shit. No, I was, yeah, well, because it's like I, super complicated, but like my, we were homeless for a second, like lived out of the car for like six months. My mom had a complete kidney failure, so she was on like five day a week dialysis ended up getting her life saved uh with a pancreas and kidney transplant she's still around so thankful

for it but just put our family into a lot of debt so it was like all this hard shit we didn't there was a lot of a period of time where it's like we didn't know where we were going to eat and like my dad would give me food and he would go to bed hungry and it was like this whole fucked up situation. But then when I actually got into a better situation, a lot of – I think like it's backed up by studies. I don't know. But I've heard it before. But like people who go from like poverty where they don't have enough food, they like develop some fucked up associations with food and I would just overeat. develop some fucked up associations with food and I would just overeat. I developed like this binging, binging habit where it was just like, I would just eat and eat and eat because I didn't

know like previously where my food would come from. So it was like, I need to, I need to eat. So I'm just going to slam food. And I, I got up to like two 90, 300 pounds. Uh, when I was like 14, I, my alpha weigh-ins for like football, I was like 298 freshman year of high school. And then over the course of high school, I began to – I joined the powerlifting club. I played football. I wrestled and I graduated high school at 169 pounds. Whoa. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. So I was the type of guy where it's like I'm going to lose all this weight and I'm going to be super jacked. And I lost all this weight and I was like I'm just fucking skinny. This sucks. I actually have to like eat and like train hard to do this. But then I'm back up to like 240 now at 5'5". And I've seen both ends of the spectrum.

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I'd like to shift gears a little bit. I know, again, the people have so much focus on the peptides and stuff, and it's great that you guys are super knowledgeable about it. And maybe we'll circle back at some point to supplements or something like that. But you guys train really fucking hard. You guys put in a lot of fucking work when you work out. lot of fucking work when you work out um what do you guys think is uh like what do you think uh is maybe like one of the most important things someone can do uh when they're starting some strength training and they're wanting to get a little stronger and just have a little bit more

muscle um literally just participation especially if you're just starting like don't worry about you know if you're picking the right, like just literally don't pick something stupid, right? Like don't, what's that, what's that old, like Russian or Eastern Europe, uh, squat. So yeah, don't do that. As long as you don't like, as long as you don't start with that, it's like, you literally just need to participate, right? Like participate, be with a friend, like learn the difference between like what's right and wrong. As far as like, you know, what's going to actually hurt you, but just participate, get there and learn to enjoy it. Like you don't have to, you don't have to squat three times a week. You don't have to do whatever, just get in and participate and figure out what you like and what you're good at.

I love that so much. Cause I think when people start, I think they feel like they have to do things that they saw other people do. I think everyone thinks they need to squat and they get in the squat rack and maybe they do. Maybe it's important to learn how to squat. But maybe it's also not the most important thing to start with. Like just literally start by fucking around. Get on some machines, try those out,

follow the little diagram on there or ask a friend or somebody that you know that does some lifting and just have fun with it. That way it can be repeatable. Yeah, exactly. Make it simple and participate and you'll be okay. There's no great, perfect way to start.

Yeah, because you and I both started when we were like 13, 14 years old, and it's like the only reason that I've made it this far is because I still enjoy it. So people that start this and they're like, what's the most optimal way to do this? What's the best way to do this? Or who's the guy that I have to copy to get me to where I am? It's like you're nobody except you. You need to do what you need to do to make it sustainable for you. Because I – it's so easy these days for people to kind of like fall into the whole –

like the whole trend thing where it's like, oh, this guy does it this way. This guy does it this way. And it's like, right, they do and it works for them. But like are you actually – are you going to enjoy yourself if you do this for a year? Or is it – it's just finding like what's important to the individual and just participating and figuring it out for yourself. There's so much value in that. Yeah, you don't even know – you don't know anything about your physiology or your own genetics. Like it really doesn't matter.

I think like hyper fixating on what's the perfect way to start or, or, you know, especially as a beginner, it's like, it's just come in and participate and have fun. And you're going to kind of figure out the rest. Once you kind of, like if you decide you want to be competitive and you really want to take this seriously and you know, you're kind of past that initial beginner phase and it's like okay you know like maybe hire a coach or or like kind of get a little bit more serious but

you can't even figure that out until you learn what you like and what you're good at yeah one thing we're seeing a lot of is just like really young guys that are very fucking strong yeah we pulled up this video of this 21 year old his name is dimitri something or whatever and he was benching 600 pounds like raw 605 ridiculous raw yeah that's insane i have no idea who that is that's crazy that's fine wild yeah yeah andrew went to look it up and then he found another 21 year old guy that was benching 600 pounds too what the hell's going on around here it's wild yeah well that's i've talked to um you i oh my god i won't say it, but a guy I know. Watch this.

Yo, you fuck. This is stupid. Chucking these weights around. Bar speed stays the same. I hate it already because it started with the whole like fucking. Flexing in the bathroom. All these other high school girls, just what's up, ladies. 405 smoked it easy.

495. That's dumb. Oh, just wait's up, ladies. 405 smoked it easy. That's dumb. Oh, just wait. That's more stupid. How big is he? 247, it says, I think, on there. That makes me feel bad. 605. Are you just trying to humble us, or what are we doing here?

Check out this other guy squatting 900 for reps. That's dumb. That's really dumb. It's okay, guys. He it's okay guys he's only 21 it's only 21 fine but but this is i was i was talking to another power lifter i you guys probably have no idea who he is but uh johnny kaufman he's another 22 year old who's like just he's he's uh he's a solid kid uh and he's just like he's the type of guy where it's like he's in the position that I was in when I was that age. But he has all – he has the wealth of information and he – there's all this new like data surrounding training, surrounding drugs, surrounding methodologies, surrounding mindset, surrounding lifestyle, blah, blah, blah, all of this.

And there are so many guys out there that are like getting into it at that age and they have access to all of this. So it's like if someone fucks around at the beginning and figures out, man, I really like this. I want to take this to the new level. They can do all of this stuff right. And it's like I see myself in some of those kids and I'm like, just like we said before, like where's the ceiling? Where's the fucking ceiling? Because it's like you're 20 years old. You have like 15 20 more

years to give and it's like what happens if you never get injured and you just keep steadily progressing because you're patient and doing it in the right way it's crazy to think about like i really do not know what the landscape of like sport in general is going to look like in 20 years from now and there's still really not much in powerlifting. No. I guess there's more like on the internet. There's more like via like Instagram and social media pumping yourself up and maybe getting some sponsors or something like that.

But there's not like a lot in powerlifting. So it makes you kind of wonder like what if there was $100,000 or $200,000 in a prize for one of the bigger competitions like what would that do right exactly and who knows like because i i this is kind of what we talked about like we were talking about the uspa and the wrpf stuff like the the wrpf has like they they have a history of like trying to do that, but it really seems like this past year they've been like really revitalized and they're really trying to like this is a competition where it's like the spectators are going to want to see like all these all-time world records broken in this in every flight at this meet but then also actually like head-to-head competition where like the weight

classes matter so it's i'm optimistic for powerlifting too it's been tracking like as drama filled and like ridiculous stuff has happened over this past year, I do think the entire USPA blow up and kind of the WRPF resurgence and they're willing to listen to people like me and like other vocal members of the community. I think powerlifting is going to get a little bit of that advancement too. So it's an exciting time to be a part of the sport. Like who wouldn't want to watch like a bunch of super juiced up guys lifting as much weight as possible though. It's pretty cool. Why is it not more popular?

Well because people talk about this was my whole argument to the WRPF and we'll see if it goes anywhere because I've been like doing a little bit of consulting work with them and I think I want like people say powerlifting isn't a spectator sport and it's not a spectator sport because of the amount of people that are at these goddamn

meets. If we could make a meet where it's just one flight and it lasts like two hours, I'd fuck, I'd watch the shit out of that, man. You know, I think anybody would, because like you watch a UFC fight guard, that's like three hours. Cause it's just three hours because it's just like bang bang bang bang same thing with a powerlifting meet if there could be some way to like make it more of a like not just a spectator event but a spectacle in general then it's like now we have a spectator sport and maybe not every competition should be like that but if the one like american pro or the the open whatever the fuck every year that's the one where the guys go to, great, cool. Then we put it on TV, make a bunch of money. I don't know.

I think head-to-head could be important. You know, like the bar weight starts at X amount of weight and people get to choose like when they want to start. You know, so the bar starts at like, I don't know, 600 pounds. choose when they want to start. The bar starts at like, I don't know, 600 pounds. If you want, because you squat a lot more than that, you can just wait. Then you would have a lot of people

actually going head-to-head. You saw five people try 600. One guy clearly made it. You're like, okay, that guy is ahead. Next guy clearly misses it. Then it goes up 50 pounds or something like that. Didn't we have this conversation? It needs something where people can recognize what the hell's going on see and people in the comments like tell me if this is a great idea because i think this is a great idea

but like the the last man squatting event or last man benching event like it's every there's 10 guys like 10 best squatters in the world or whatever like 220 and up and it's like bar bar weight starts at 500. Then everybody can choose, like, are we jumping a plate? Are we jumping a quarter? Who's okay with a plate? Everybody raises their hands. Okay, they do it again.

Who's okay with a plate? Only like six guys raise their hands, but four guys want a quarter. Okay, sorry, you got outvoted. You got to do a fucking plate. Hang on or get out, you know, and you just keep going like that and then incrementally increase. And as you keep taking attempts until someone until it's the last man squatting or benching or deadlifting, I think it's more of an exhibition event. But if there was some way to make those

like intermingled with the actual competitions or like an actual like maybe as an intermission or like an interim competition. be great and then you get down to the last maybe two or four people and now you get to pick specific weights yeah yes but now you're into like the teeth of it and like it would be hard to have to make eight attempts yeah you gotta make eight attempts to fucking beat this other guy it brings it brings a whole nother aspect to the whole thing you might have to be in shape exactly uh the conditioning like maybe the round robin it starts to fucking shrink down and you have less rest yep it's like take like how some people at like a competition you have to take a fourth attempt and you only

get like three minutes to rest same way like i can't imagine getting to a point where it's like me jordan wong and chad penson or something all in the 220 is going back and forth and it's like I've already hit like 700 720, 740, 760 780 and then it's like okay like am I good for 805 they want 800 but if I go 805 I win

and I'm like I gotta go 805 you know it's there's a great it's like a greater athletic demand strategically like you're allowed to use like your your say like knee wraps but like you wouldn't want to use them on all your attempts right you would have to and then if you got your knees wrapped once and then had to come back again quickly two minutes you would be dying yeah it would be so hard exactly so i think there's ways to make it fun something like that and doing stuff like that whether even if it is like a sanctioned competition or just some type of exhibition event.

I think that could lend a lot of power to the whole spectator aspect of powerlifting. Does Rogue Fitness, do they do anything with powerlifting? I know they did Strongman and stuff, and they seem like invested pretty good in that. Not really. But I'd be curious to talk to them as to why they wouldn't, especially after they bought out Ghost. Do you know Ghost? Yeah, they acquired them this past year and a half or so. Oh, yeah, yeah.

It's an equipment manufacturer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Ghost was huge in the powerlifting world. They blew up super quick and then got out just as quick because Tim Gristle, the owner, he did what he wanted to achieve and then was like, I'm okay. He's a friend of mine. But I'd be curious to see if Rogue would ever be interested in anything like that because I can't imagine with how big just strength sports are getting in general and how integrated fitness is into the general population.

I can't imagine they'd not want to be. So we did touch upon how much information is out. There's a lot of good information. Uh, what do you guys think is maybe missing, uh, in the strength community or missing in powerlifting? Um, what do you think some of the powerlifters are missing, uh, at the moment? Um, I would say just kind of going back to what I said earlier, assessing your own biology and saying like, Hey, where do I lack, right? Like what like things do I need in order to be strong, right? Whether that's like maybe I need more lactase resistance, right? It's like whenever you're taking a heavy one rep max, you're going to have a little

bit of hypoxia, right? And it's like what if you don't have the ability to resist that and you just can't grind through a lift? You really suck at that. It's like, well, and maybe you have plenty of creatine phosphates and you can store those really well. It's like, well, let's just not worry about your creatine phosphates and whatnot and let's really focus on your lactase resistance or whatnot.

But being able to assess like where am I lacking and then being able to move forward from there, that's probably what I would say. How do people assess some of that? Because I'm sure a lot of people don't know what you're talking about so that that's that's kind of what i was gonna say is like one this is this is where it's like me kind of selling it a little bit more this is why we're writing a book but it's it's it's like this is the point where it's like okay someone needs a little bit more lactase resistance they know they are really good at utilizing their creatine phosphate. That's just like what is creatine?

What is like that energy system leaning into? That's someone who's really, really explosive. The guy who hits the hole in the squat comes up and every single rep looks exactly the same speed until they don't. And then he comes up and just stops and dies. That's that guy. The person, if he's really, really good at that explosive power, how do you lean into the thing that he's not exactly good at? It's like that lactase resistance. That's give the person more of – like more opportunity to train in a hypoxic state, training in a glycolytic state where they have to like use that secondary and third energy system where it's not just explosive power. They develop and like advance this ability to contract through that strain.

So it's like giving someone more repetitions, giving someone a lot of repetitions on short rest with banded close grip, that particular thing. Like extreme tempo or something? Yes, anything where it's like you have to maintain this position and maintain this motor unit recruitment through an extended range of motion through an extended period of time so that's that's just understanding like what the stuff jake is saying means dumbed down to like the meathead version where it's literally like what are you good at are you an explosive lifter are you a technically proficient lifter who can grind really well are you someone who can do a a lot of reps? Are you someone who struggles with repetition? Someone who is like better at

lower repetitions? How efficient are you at utilizing your own musculature and your own build and identifying those things and then understanding if I am good at this and this and this, I will probably need to work on this and this in my training to help like make my strength stronger but bring my weaknesses up to match my strength because you you said it yourself strength is never a weakness you don't want to take away that explosive power from someone who's explosive but if you can give them an additional like fortification or ability to contract through like continue to contract through that initial explosion, then you're just going to set them up for greater success down the line.

Trevor Burrus I think that's kind of what's wrong with like the way we view research or we view drugs or protocols in general is like no one – well, I shouldn't say no one. I think the big thing that we're missing is we don't know – we're just kind of randomly using drugs. It's like, hey, this worked for thing that we're missing is we don't know. We're just kind of randomly using drugs. It's like, hey, this worked for somebody and we're building our whole like research or our protocols based on like what worked rather than coming back to the laws of biology. It's like, hey, if you can analyze and say like, hey, maybe at a meet – like you have like even different people at a meet. It's like I'm the kind of guy. It's like I wake'm the kind of guy, it's like, I wake up at five 30, I'm going to be go, go, go until like 9 PM. And I never really struggled to

have like these little, you know, energy gaps throughout the day. But you have some people, it's like, you get super pumped and they almost kind of like blow their load and squat. And then, you know, like deadlift comes around. It's like, man, I'm, I'm just like, I'm really tired. Right. It's like, so, you know, how do you fix that? It's like, what, what protocols can we implement? How can we even change your nutrition? Cause in that case, it's like, well, maybe you start, you wake up that day, you do some MCTs and you kind of have like a low-fat breakfast, do some PBO and you're purposely keeping that heart rate really nice and low. And then right before you come, you do a little bit of carbohydrates, do some meditation when you get there so you're not just getting this massive you know sympathetic response just by showing up and then you know right when you're done with squats it's like cool let's let's kind of get you outside let's get you away from all this let's make sure we're not just keep dumping all you know but point is it's like uh

if you can learn how to analyze your fault and be honest about it too right like uh that's where you're really going to make the right progress. Because even if you put in the wrong protocol, like you think you have this issue, if you can correctly identify the issue, even if you give the wrong protocol, you can always come back because it's just a science experiment at that point. My hypothesis is that I'll get better at lactase resistance if I implement this, right? And you can always come back to that and say, okay, you know, I still know I'm bad at lactase resistance, so it must have been the protocol, right? But you always got to come back to the laws of biology, not, hey, I did this and it worked, but I don't know why it worked.

It just worked. And then you try to do that and more, and then the next time you're like, well, that didn't work, so maybe I'll try more again. And it's like we kind of got to step back from that and then the next time you're like, well, that didn't work. So maybe I'll try more again. It's like we kind of got to step back from that. The same with like training too. It's like you can't just keep doing the same thing with training. I was going to say like because this is – the whole basis of what you're saying is people understanding that even though you may be like bad at something and like I'm an explosive lifter. I can't grind.

It doesn't mean that you can't grind. lifter. I can't grind. It doesn't mean that you can't grind. If you literally like look at just the laws of training, there's one of the rules, the specific adaptations to impose demand, the said principle. If you, your body is going to adapt to the specific stimulus that you demand from it. So if you make yourself contract through hypoxia more, like develop an ability to grind and supplement yourself with like the the diet training protocols whatever surrounding it to like feed into that adaptation your body will adapt like we like we're talking about the energy systems people think they we resign ourselves to like we're this is just how it is this is this is my little vacuum this is what i'm good at this is what I'm going to hang out with.

And that's not necessarily exactly what it is because you – if I went back in time and told Mark Bell who was squatting like more than 1,000 pounds on a regular basis, if I said, hey, you're going to run a marathon, you'd look at me and be like, you're fucking high. What are you talking about? You'd look at me and be like, you're fucking high. What are you talking about? But here you are because you approached the training in the manner that you did and you demanded particular responses from your body. And they may not have always been right, but you've known that you could change it and you could do it. So every time you've gone back to the drawing board and been like, OK, the training maybe was a little off. The stimulus was a little bit off. Let's just do it this way. And now you're looking at completing a marathon in two weeks. So yeah.

It's interesting to hear you guys break some of this stuff down. And then for me to have these thoughts in my head of like people that I've seen train in the past and it's so common to do what you're good at. It's so common to be like, Hey, I'm good at this. You just kind of always lean into that. That's where you're comfortable. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. But if you're trying to be that next level person, then I think you do need to evaluate where am I weak and how do I bring these weaknesses up? And also with my strengths, how do I make them flourish even more?

Like there's no reason you can't still examine those. But thinking of guys like Donnie Thompson, some of these people are so intuitive. Donnie Thompson, he was a power lifter for many, many years, and I think he squatted 1,300 pounds or something wild like that. First man to total

3,000 pounds? Yeah, he's unbelievable, and he's really smart with all kinds of stuff. He kind of uh created a lot of things like he didn't create body tempering necessarily but uh he gave a lot of attention to it and a lot of the stuff that you see uh a lot of people doing with uh you know rapping their you know their leg with a with a band and stuff yeah voodoo flossing and stuff like that he was doing these things years and years and years ago.

But what he would do on his dynamic effort day, on his dynamic effort day where we would do box squats and things like that, Donnie would do kettlebell front squats in between the sets. And he's a big man. I mean, see him on the screen right here. He's like every bit of like 350 or something like that. And to watch him work and do that uh at super training he did it he did that at our gym in the middle of the summer in sacramento i mean this guy could move like you wouldn't believe and his conditioning was awesome he did set after set so he's doing dynamic effort squats with no belt using five plates and in

between that he's doing kettlebell front squats yeah and it was just like holy shit but you know he's he was uh getting to his weak points he was like my conditioning is kind of my weak point he's like i'm plenty strong i'm plenty explosive that's not really something i need to hone in on a ton he's like i just need to be in better condition and by the time the contest runs around i'm going to be in in good enough shape to be able to pull off a pretty big deadlift at the end of the meet. Which makes a lot of sense, right? Because if you want to be able to express the strength that you actually have, you need to be able to be in a rested state, right? Like in between these three attempts, you take your opener and you take your second.

You have to be able to get control of your respirations and control of your heart rate. and you take your second, you have to be able to get control of your respirations and control of your heart rate. You have to bring them back to a comfortable spot where you can actually start recycling these creatine phosphates again. And you're never going to be able to max out in a glycolytic state, right? Like if you're still huffing and puffing or still shallow breathing, never got a chance to get these creatine phosphates back, right? It's like you didn't really express your full strength.

And if you can't do that, it's like you do need to work on your aerobic work. It's not like you have to be ready to go run a marathon or something, but we do need to be able to train those systems or you won't ever be able to actually express that strength. So doing aerobic work, uh, what, what are some ways you guys help people do this? But then also what are the passive things that you have people pay attention to? Like you mentioned, you pay attention to your breathing after you speak so that you're not, you know, doing that. So what, what do you guys do actively and passively to help people learn how to calm that down? Oh, that's a really good question. I think a really good way, um, that's kind of like pretty flawless is go do some really, really hard sprints on an assault bike and try to

get your heart, like get your breathing under control as quickly as you can. Right. It's like go from really, really hard to maybe just even even hop off go to some walking and force yourself to nasal breathe right it's like get control of that breathing um there i mean there are plenty of ways you can pretty much get as creative as you want but and you mentioned you said pbo earlier like i'm not sure a lot of people know what pbo is oh yeah parasympathetic meaning like calm being able to passively what I guess the actual definition would be able – like passively moving methyl groups without some kind of sympathetic ligand support. But basically like without needing to rely on your sympathetic nervous system, you can beta oxidize fatty acids. You need to be able to do that. If you can't do that, you're already in a hole.

And that's basically like getting yourself into a more relaxed state even while you are being active in some way. Like what you gave me like when we first started working together, it's like I – and it was obviously unique to me because like I had all of the nerve issues going on. But I would spend a huge amount of time on the assault bike getting my heart rate incredibly high and then making it a point to get off and just nasal breathe and bring my heart rate back down immediately and like a lot of pbo walking is what he called it where it was like and what I give to people now it's parasympathetic beta oxidative walking where you're essentially just walking as quick at a quick enough pace to like make yourself breathe hard but forcing yourself to control your respirations and control your nervous system.

It's like the way that I've described it to people is like it's active meditation even though if it isn't, it's not mindfulness or not meditation but you're forcibly controlling your nervous system and controlling your arousal state by nasal breathing, even when you're exerting yourself in some manner. So just that type of control and then the regulation of it, just being able to bring yourself back down. How long have you been thinking about this, both of you guys? And like, what is the, what has the transition been like for you now as an athlete? So I honestly, I didn't like, I had this stuff in my mind before prior to 2020, where it's like, I need my conditioning to be better. But it was just like, I didn't understand the biology behind it or like how to actually implement it. So that's why I'm so thankful for Jake and like him is like

mentorship and just this friendship, like teaching me how to do that. Cause it's not just for me. I have 60 clients. Like I've given this to all of the people that I work with. And there's a reason I have such a high client retention rate and I have such great success with my people because they're all – it works. But I just didn't really know how to apply it. And the biggest change for me as an athlete at this point is the fact that I feel like an athlete again because I can control my heart rate. I can control my respirations. And at this, at the meet that I did a week ago, it's like I normally I would, I do my squat. And like I said, I'd have to like lay down and be like, holy fuck, I'm going to die. Like I need to bring myself back down. I'm like, I can't,

oh my God, oh my God. But now even after that world record, I hit it and I could immediately be like, all right, I did it. Just bring myself back down. And it's like just more, just having a better HRV, honestly, and a better control and a sense for my own like arousal state. And then knowing that that's something that I struggle with or something that can be developed. So even on meet day, like I would listen to 432 hertz like white noise music just to bring myself back down. And even after this, super unique to me, but I went and got cryotherapy done after my squat attempt. We drove to a cryo spot, got it done real quick and came back on the same day just to make sure that I stayed not at that level of arousal all day. So just stuff like that. It's like things thinking outside the box that I

never would have before, but obviously it's, it's paid off dividends. So not just in my athletic performance, but in like my life and my health and my mental health. And I just, I feel great. So, yeah, I know we've thrown out the red meditation multiple times during the episode, but like sometimes when you mentioned those things, some people are like, Oh yeah,

meditation. Okay, well let's go to the other stuff. But how big of a deal do you think that application would be for a lifter? Uh, huge. Yeah.

It's like such a low hanging fruit. Um, it's honestly just for like general population, it's probably one of the best things a lot of people could implement. And it's not like you have to sit on the carpet and like meditate the traditional way. It's like it can literally be so many different things, right? But the idea is like we have to be mindful of our acute situation and be able to like kind of block these things out, right? Like we want to be distracted. Did you guys ever – what was that Disney movie where they had the – all the people in your head and they had the emotions?

I know what you're talking about. It had joy and anger. Joy, anger. Those are kind of like – yeah, it's one of the best ones. It's a really good one. It is good. Disney? Type in Disney.

It's a Pixar movie. It's a Pixar. It had Bing Bong. Oh, yeah, Bing Bong. You remember Bing Bong? Yeah. The red guy with the flame above his head. Yeah, I would be so mad if I could not type in it right now.

I can't remember. It's not. Type in Pixar. Inside Out. Inside Out. Yeah, thank you. I was like, we're not moving on. Yeah.

Great fun. You can almost. Never seen it. Almost. What's wrong with that? I haven't seen Out. Yeah, thank you. I was like, we're not moving on. Yeah. Great fun. You can almost like... Never seen it. Almost... What's wrong with that? I haven't seen it, yeah. I couldn't not figure out the reference at all. Dude, go watch it.

I'm down to check it out. If my son watches it, shit, dude, then it's anything better than fucking monster trucks on YouTube. I'm down. It's a great one. But you can almost think of like, if you've seen that movie, you have all these emotions

fighting for the attention is what the movie is it's like one gets to kind of control that's kind of like the cortices of your brain they're all trying to fight for this microphone of like hey I want to be the one that gets to make the decisions whether it's like your interior singlet or whether it's like your amygdala or whatever

everyone's trying to fight for attention we're just sitting here like, oh, this or that. I'm mad. I'm whatever. It's like being able to control that and give the attention to your prefrontal cortex or whatever and just, I'm here. I'm present. Thanks for it.

That's it. It's a great movie. I'd say top three Disney movie of all time. Wow. Okay. Yeah. Okay. It had a lot of good stuff in there.

It was really well thought out. Did you cry during it? No, I'm not much of a crier. I did. I did. I definitely did. You cried during Inside Out? Yeah.

Okay. I'm not going to say when because it'll ruin the movie. How did I miss this? It's a great one. It's absolutely phenomenal. I won't cry like in life, like movies. It's like,

they kill me. I cried during toy story three. Yeah. Dude. The volcano scene. Yeah. Coco. You ever see Coco?

Oh, dude. Every single time. Oh, you still haven't watched that. Oh, you did. Oh,

Coco is so good. The whole last 30 minutes. I'm like, yeah, it's so good. Oh whole last 30 minutes, I'm like, dude, it's so good, dog. That's a good one. But yeah, I mean that's the idea of meditation. It's like it can be done in so many ways and it's so helpful. It's being able to come to the moment.

It can be just as simple as like rub your fingers together and just like pay attention to the way it feels, right? Like that's the only thing you want to pay attention to is like how does this feel? It's like just pick one of the five senses, right, and just pay attention to it. It's like how does the grass feel on my legs right now? Try to last 30 seconds doing that. You know what I mean? It's tough. It can be tough.

Your brain just goes boop right to something else right away and you're like fuck. Yeah, it really is that hard. It's like just pay attention to the way things smell. Go through the senses a few times, you know but be be present at what's happening um it's it plays massive dividends it's probably one of the it sounds so silly but if like if you want to be able to perform more you need to learn how to do that do you guys have certain habits over like your phone and stuff just because like when you talk about this there you know there are so many ways we want to be stimulated in different ways.

You'll be watching something on your phone, then you'll have something else on the TV, and you won't realize how often you're constantly doing multiple things. So do you guys have habits around these things? Habits to avoid doing that? Avoid, or do you pay attention to that at all? Yeah, that's something I pretty actively do. I'm not really much of a TV person. I'm like, Joe will tell you, I'm really not much of a phone person either. I really like to stay away from stuff.

What I am is I'll be writing things down all the time. I'm like writing things down because I get all these random thoughts. But I do, yeah. I always try to make sure I'm being present at least whatever I'm trying to do. If a wife comes in and she's talking to me, I try to like stop, like be completely present with what I'm doing. Why is she yelling at me now? What did I do today? It's probably more like, hey, what thing does she want to buy right now?

But yeah, just trying to stay very present at what you're doing, right? Like I think a lot of people get frustrated because they have so many things to do. And instead of just like, okay, let's go down the list one at a time. It's like I'm going to try to like one-tenth do all of these at the same time. And it's like, well, I didn't get anything done. It's like you just got to be able to one, go through one at a time. Trying to do multiple things at once isn't you know really going to get you very far yeah and and for me like i like jake's much more limit much

less of a phone person than i am and it's like i've just kind of like i had previously gotten to the habit of like being the guy where it's on instagram it's like this is my entertainment or tiktok or whatever but i i'm consciously i i think about it and I try to limit myself to like one source of information at a time. But just knowing that it's still a thing that I struggle with, my phone is always on do not disturb except for Jake, his wife, my parents and Bree and that's it. In that order too. Sure. But basically like it's always on do not disturb so i don't i'm not tempted to pick it up and then i put timers for my apps on my phone because it's

like it's just too easy for me to like smoke some weed at night and just kind of be like what's going on you know but i have like a 30 minute timer for instagram and it's like i all of my client communication is on whatsapp and it's like Jake said, like portioning, portioning off, like this is the thing to hit here. This is the task. This is the task. This is the task and kind of portioning it out so that I'm spending this particular amount of time on Instagram, this particular amount of time or energy, like to go through my texts, which is like my personal life. And then to go through my WhatsApp, which is like, this is client work. Then I can allocate certain hours of the day or energy towards that client work. And it's just like one by one by one by one. So. Power Project family, your normal shoes

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order automatically. Again, vivobarefoot.com slash powerproject links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. What you got brewing over there, Andrew? Dude, a lot of stuff, but real quick, Joe, you had mentioned that at some point you'd want to have kids. There's a lot of people

that had abused PEDs that can't have kids now do you guys have like a protocol or a plan for when that day comes i have no idea i would ask that guy yeah i'd probably if if i were to do something like that because i truth be told i haven't like gotten any like fertility testing or anything but it's also like brie and i have also talked about adopting you know so it's just it's also an option there just because like, it's, I mean, I don't want to get too into like the, so like socioeconomic or just like societal stuff in genu, but it's like in general, but it's like, there's, I, I personally just based on my own like beliefs,

it's hard for me to justify like bringing another person into the world when there's like so many people that like don't, don't have people. And if we could like help someone like that it's like why not do that you know so i don't know yeah well jake i mean is there a protocol that you would recommend um you know off the top of my head it's kind of just back to what i feel like i keep saying it's like it depends on the person um because there's a lot of things that can cause infertility even for people you know who haven't been on peds And it can be like ROSs, reactive oxidative species. It can be like all sorts of issues. So I think the first thing would be like we've got to take an assessment of this person and figure out like why are we not fertile.

But single protocol, no, not particularly. I think it would just kind of depend okay let's just perk my ears because i'm just thinking like maybe somebody else listening would you know be interested in hearing that stuff but anyway um for the uh the nectar l-carnitine that sort of thing um i'm sorry i guess that has the l-carnitine already inside of it and i know it's going to be probably person dependent but as far as like dosages, cause like the, the bottle is I think 30 milliliters and it's, uh, I forgot how many milligrams per liter milliliter. Um, what is an effective dose that somebody can, you know, start with to where they might be able to fill something? Oh, that's a, that's a good question. So, um, with the, uh,

with the nectar, it's 300 milligrams of carnitine and 200 milligrams of choline. Again, it just kind of depends on the person. But if you've never tried anything like that, I would probably start with half a cc, half of a milliliter, and then go from there. Try it before some heavier lifting would be a really good chance to use it a little bit before, like, even studying. Like, whenever I have to do a lot of work and I really have to, like, you know, get my brain going, my go-to is always a milliliter of nectar, like 10 milligrams of Nupept, and maybe, like, 100 milligrams of caffeine, and that works every single time. And then with Nupept, I want to say I tried that one, like, nasal like administration thing like where i inhaled it um are you talking about like injectable new pepped or oral okay yep we talked we talked about we talked about that last podcast i remember

really okay you took it and you like had to do something with your car yeah no i helped i helped some random dude on the free light not the free on the road and I was like, I would never do that. I remember. That's why I was like, holy shit, they're talking about this and that. And then Joe, you had mentioned you could take this and then kind of not have any side effects. Can you take it too many

days in a row then? With carnitine. Yeah, this is something that I learned from Jake. The biggest outcome that you're going to have if you take too much is you're going to have diarrhea. You're going to poop yourself. You're just going to have bad poops. Okay. Yeah.

And I don't know. What is that? It's just like increased. Oh, it's like whenever you have to poop, you have a lot of carnitine that's involved in that through just moving that out. Okay. So how about how about before jujitsu i think that would be a great time to use it okay yeah yeah it's got me interested no and it's and it's just like it goes back to like what we were talking about because

it's like if you understand like what it's doing it then then like the timing and the dosages would make sense because it's like usually dose like half half a cc to a full cc suit easy you know but then it's like if you want to use it if you're looking for like the fat burning effects like in the morning before some fasted cardio absolutely if you're looking for some like the the exercise effects like doing it pre-workout sure you know you could even take some some people take it like around like we were talking about did we mention this like around deflux meals or like free meals? Yeah, you can actually use carnitine like post meals more for nutritional like fates. Yeah, stuff like that.

Growth hormone pre-meal? Post. Just kidding. To be honest, like – no, I'm not going to say this here. I was going to say growth hormone like pre-meal though can help like if you're just eating like whatever, like if it's a cheat meal, right? Yeah, that's what I was going to get into. If you ever like – Save it for the bonus episodes.

No, I won't go far into it. We'll just keep it really simple. But like a little bit of growth hormone, it's kind of the ultimate way to ensure you're not going to store body fat, right? Like if you have, it's – that's it. A couple people just swerved off the road trying to write it down. Yeah. Just because it like causes lipolysis immediately when you take it. You know, especially if you took a product.

So it's Andy's old product. It's called Max Uptake, but it has a little bit of glycerol monosteroid, which is a really cool ingredient to have if you're a drug addict at all. If you like drugs and feeling high, glycerol monosteroid. Shut the fuck up. Wait, is this legit? Yes. Because it makes the absorption of anything you take happen quicker.

So basically glycerol monosteroid activates what's called CYP enzymes. Are you familiar with CYPs? Nope. So basically whenever there's drug metabolism, the CYPs are what do the work. They're kind of like this king, the top of the hierarchy of like all your enzymes. Well, that's the way I like to think about it anyway, because they're the ones that aren't necessarily like, I guess necessary. Right. So it's kind of like libido. It's like one of the first things to go when you're like, you know, not keeping up with recovery and whatnot. So if you ever like take a little bit of glycerol monosterate and then take said psychoactive drug, it's going to kick in a lot harder. Wow. But anyway, um, if you did max uptake,

which has glycerol monosterate, it has, uh has some chromium, some berberine, some black pepper fruit extract, which is just like piperine. It's just a leaving group. I think that's it. I might be missing one or two there. I think that's it. But take that before a deflux with a little growth hormone. By deflux, I mean like a cheat meal.

It's kind of your best way to make sure you're not storing. Deflux is like dopamine fluxing meal. So it's like the free meal where you don't really care about the macronutrients. It's like this is just going to make me happy and alleviate psychological stress of dieting. The cool part of it actually is that – well, do you want to get in? I'll get into it. I think it's cool. Go.

So basically you have dopamine and the way it's broken down is what's important, right? So you have what's called cationol-O-methyltransferase and that's one of the ways it can be broken down obviously COMT for short so when you thank you uh but when it goes through this COMT and the base and enzymes they act in microseconds you can turn them on and off in microseconds right when it's COMP it becomes a more adrenaline like constituent where this is where you kind of feel like motivated a little bit amped up a little bit sweaty this is where you kind of feel like motivated, a little bit amped up, a little bit sweaty. This is where you're lifting hard and whatnot. But when you don't have the methyl donors or the demethylations to be able to keep up on this enzyme,

it basically gets worn out. And this is where you start to feel like if you've ever had those days where maybe you had this really fun day, and the next day you wake up, you're a little nauseated and just like a little like oh i just feel like that kind of hangover ish feeling like the kind of headache that's not a headache but it's like i just feel like gross it's like now dopamine's being broken down via these other ways now you're getting maybe like some ethylamines and some whatever, maybe some PEAs or something. And so this deflux meal is actually to provide these like things that you need to be able to restore these enzymes so that we're now fluxing, you know, actually breaking down dopamine, you know, the way that you would

ideally want to. It's kind of like if you ever have a lifter too who like they love to lift, they just love to lift and all of a sudden there's one day. Like, dude, the worst thing in the world sounds like going to the gym. It's like that's when you know that little enzyme is just like it's been worn out and you just can't quite keep up with basically demethylizing these little enzymes. Okay. Well, it's what – just personal anecdote again. But it's why like my free meals aren't like a refeed where it's like, oh, we focus on carbohydrates. It's like do something that you are going to enjoy.

Find something that you are going to really enjoy and like deflux with because it's so regenerative to like the shit going on in your brain which sets you up for better performance, better like psychology related to the entire thing like down the road. It's not so much about the nutrients themselves. It's about the brain chemistry that you get from it. The pleasure. Yeah. Not really just the fat and the carbohydrates from it or kind of what's actually paying that. But it does make sense. We also have like a G-flux, which is like more of a typical refeed.

Like a refeed, yeah. It's like, you know, it's filling all that. Glycogen flux. Mm-hmm. Yep. So what do you guys, do you guys do anything specific around sleep habits or take anything around sleep? Because we talk about that all the time, but is there anything extra you have people do or you think is important for people to do? I'm huge on nighttime routines.

So like Joe was already saying, like I'm really big on the journaling. It's like when you're done for the day, do some journaling. I love to go outside, do some like, you know, see literally just, it sounds silly, but go see the stars and the moon, do a little bit of some nasal breathing. And a little bit of journaling goes a long way. So the last thing you want is to be in bed and be like, oh man, this is the thing I got to do today. I can't forget that. It's like, hey, it's already written down. So what I actually do is like, I'll write down the things I need to do, how important it is that I do it tomorrow. And then how difficult it will be. And I rank them on, you know, a number scale and then it's just kind of at peace,

right? So like, oh, these are the things I have to do. It's done. I've acknowledged them. Um, and now I can, you know, kind of take that stress off. Uh. And then as far as like things you could take, like I really like ashwagandha. I'm really big, especially shodan ashwagandha. I think it's a really cool one. Is that a type or a brand? Oh, it's just a specific type. There's like KSM 66 and then shodan? Yeah, right.

KSM would be great too. It's not that important, but KSM is awesome. And that's just kind of blunting the glucocorticoids from being produced. Like the things that – glucocorticoids are just things that are going to – like cortisol. They're just going to break down things that are basically not glucose and turn them into glucose, right? Like amino acids or whatever. So you're making sure you're shutting that down. Maybe like a little bit of CBD or maybe some CBN.

But most of it I think should be done through like some mindfulness and through some habits. Like the same way that you would treat going to the gym where it's like I always do these things when I go to the gym. It's like that's what you should do at nighttime, right? Like I always do these things. Because you set yourself up for success in the gym but people don't really think about setting themselves up for success when they talk about like the restorative aspect. Yeah, you can't just take like, you know, a THC gummy and wait till it kicks in and then work your way up to bed, you know? Yeah. Do you guys pay any attention to light at all?

Is that something that you do? Do you use blockers, whatever? I like to just turn off like the overheads and just kind of make it like a dimmer setting, right? But yeah, I'm a big fan of it. to just turn off like the overheads and just kind of make it like a dimmer setting right um but yeah i'm a big fan of it i do that and and i also have uh like i these are blue light blocking lenses but i actually have like uh red tinted prescription lenses because i they're prescription it's not i don't just wear these but like i have red tinted ones that i wear in the evening usually just to like not just because it's not just for me and like we've talked about it before it's not just about like blocking blue light it's just like getting dimmer light in general yeah and

like a little darker just to like signal like hey it's time to wind down and chill so yeah and i like to get really cold before i go to bed yeah it's a really good one i have this uh it's one of those like thera ice like migraine cap things where you can like pull it down over your eyes. And just whenever I lay down, I like just pull it over my head and just kind of like get my head really cold. And then it's like, okay, I'm falling asleep. Did you have to stretch it out for a few weeks when you first got it? Yeah, a little snug at first. But honestly, like that's a great way to meditate is like if you force yourself to cover your eyes, that's a great way to meditate.

So you can't look at anything. You can't be on your phone. You can't be distracted. It's like it's probably one of the best ways for modern society to do that. Yeah, because people – and that's like going back to the whole meditation thing. I've talked to different people and they're like, oh, I meditate in a different way than you do. I don't like just sit here and it's like, well, relaxation isn't meditation. Like doing something that you enjoy isn't necessarily like the mindfulness that you're

needing to do. Cause people think like, oh, I'm relaxing. I'm on my phone. I'm relaxing. I'm doing this task. I'm doing this such and such. It's like, no, no, you're distracting yourself. Like when being present and like be like shutting off a sense where it's like you can't see, it forces you to like be present in that moment because you can't seek out that external distraction anywhere else. So anything else, Andrew?

No, that's it, man. Yeah, I did want to come up again, but you mentioned the THC gummies, right? A lot of people smoke weed.

I thought you were going to ask about LSD. Oh, we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about that later. But, um, when it does come to like weed, is there things that like people, cause a lot of people nowadays smoke a lot to try to fall asleep. It's, it's become super normal and it's not that it's bad, but is there things that people need to pay attention to when trying to use that at night? Does it affect sleep negatively, positive for some people? What do y'all, what are your thoughts? Um, it's just like anything, it's like anything in moderation, right? Like you don't want to have

to need anything to be able to fall asleep, right? You don't want to have to, if you have to take cannabis to fall asleep, it's a red flag, right? If you do it, you know, once in a while, yeah, you might block a little bit of like REM sleep and whatnot, but I think it's not the end of the world, right? It's like use it in moderation, absolutely. I would just lean more into the CBD and the CBN aspects of things and take the psychoactive effects of this THC out of it. Okay. Yeah, and same thing.

Just because I got into a habit over the past, not recently, it's been like six months but like previous to that i was doing like an edible or two every day and it was like i it was just what i did to relax you know and but then you get to the point where it's like you're actually like blunting some of that the restorative aspect of sleep and rest and like being in a parasympathetic state and like thc to a degree is like stimulatory even though it is like as a whole relaxing it is going to cause it's psychoactive so it's going to cause the heart rate to spike slightly and it's not even if you feel relaxed like we were talking about there's

a difference between like mental relaxation and actual like physiological relaxation it's not like an actual depressant yeah so so it's just like knowing why you're using it and when you're using it and when it's appropriate and when it isn't. Because like I just competed and I've taken a couple edibles since the meet. But like going into the – like it's just not a habit and I'll still like – I smoke. But it's not like I'm getting ripped every day. It's just like when I want to like start to wind down or i'm done with my work i'll hit my pen a little bit smoke a bowl whatever and then just hang out you know but but but that's it so okay both of your uh ladies are in prep right for they're both competing and

something coming up right how's that been pretty good yeah i'm kiara my wife she's uh competing this saturday at the Jay Cutler Desert Classic. It'll be her first show. And then, yeah, it's been a pretty fun prep. It's Kiara's first prep too, so she's getting good exposure to the bodybuilding world just because it's like Jake's coaching her and he knows so much and it's so different than anybody else. Because I know if she, she was,

could have potentially gone with some different coaches and there was recommendations of like T3 and Clinton, like immediately an Anabar. And it's like what you, you've put on like however much lean body mass over the course of like six months and lost like 8% body fat with the use of like damn near zero anabolic. So,

yeah. So she, yeah, she started to prep, prep, you know, 14, 16 weeks ago. She started weighing, she started at 164 pounds and, you know, she's competing this week and she's 159. So it's like her weight didn't go down. She built a lot of freaking tissue. It's really cool. And now she's with less anabolics.

Yep. I mean, we barely touched anything we uh we we had like let's see about 12 weeks out we used a little bit of some uh some npp at like a 10 milligram dose ran it for two weeks called it and then uh implemented on non-training days a really low dose of d-ball and it I got two to five milligrams of D-ball. Yeah. And we're pretty freaking sick. But yeah, I mean, typical is, you know, like typical is kind of like leaning into Anabar,

which I think is, you know, kind of a trash bodybuilding drug for women going into wellness, especially. It's like, it's a DHT. It's like, we don't need these hard superficial, you know, tissues. Um, but yeah, I mean, we just used a growth hormone insulin and like this carnitine nectar and glutathione and, um, worked out really well, but it's all about just like, you know, what physiological process am I kicking off here and how can I ride the momentum of it? Right. like how how do i build the things that i want to build yeah and brie and brie is either what like 10 weeks out or like 14 weeks out just depending on which show she wants to do she's kind of like we were talking

this morning because she originally was planning on doing one in june june 17th or something around there but but she's just kind of like, I don't want to have a timeline because it's her second season, and she did really, really well. She got fourth at USA's last year, but she just wants to bring a better package. So she's like, I don't want to have a timeline with it. I just want to do it when I'm ready. Smart.

That's the way to do it. Yeah, and that's kind of how she's approaching it. And Jake's coaching her, obviously, so they're it uh very differently than what she had done in the past but um she's still holding on to a lot of her strength because she's planning on getting right back into power lifting after um and that's that's one of the reasons this prep is so atypical from any other bodybuilding prep because brie has and and I don't want to speak for her, but like she's, uh, she's not lost a huge amount of weight, but she's gotten considerably leaner and like all of her biomarkers are like improving her HRV is up or heart rate is down everything. She's setting herself up for like the easiest route of fat loss to occur when the actual pedal

gets pressed down and just kind of like delaying that pedal pressing as long as possible because like we were talking about with the water cut you like want to hit the ground and bounce you want to like get into where you need to be and then get immediately out of it so that she can set herself up for the best power lifting performance because she's got fourth at USA's uh in the women's physique category last year. But then like what, 12, 14, 16 weeks after, I can't remember, she hit a 1388 total. And a 606 deadlift. And a 606 deadlift.

And again with like no angiogen. Yeah. I think she was on like three milligrams of test probe. Yeah. Like that's it. Legitimately it. Just as a truly an HRT dose. Yeah.

And that was after her last bodybuilding season. So she's weighing 167, and she's planning to do, if she's ready, the American Pro, the same one that I'm doing next year, and hopefully put more on top of that. But if it needs to be a later one, she's planning to get back into it too. So hopefully get a pro card and then some cool powerlifting performances this year. But we'll see.

Yeah, we've got some cool things coming on. I think both of our partners are killing it. What do their diets look like? So believe it or not, Chiara is still at about 200 grams of carbs on her trading days. She's still eating a lot. On her non-trading days, those carbohydrates go down. I think off the top of my head, it's something like about 90 to a hundred a day, but still eating a pretty considerable amount.

Um, and then, you know, I guess like, uh, in a nutshell, it's like, you know, first and last meals don't really have a ton of carbohydrates. The carbohydrates are kind of peri-workout. I really, I'm a really big fan of having intra workout uh carbs via this like uh hbcds these highly branched cyclic dextrins just like the you know really easy to to get into your bloodstream uh source of carbs and yeah cool and and same with brie like because he's obviously running her diet as well and she just they just modified it a little bit to like kind of lean into the the fat loss avenue a little bit so i'm interested to see how that's going to

affect her uh in what like that change happened like a couple of days ago so like two weeks from now probably going to be like looking at like the high 160s low 170s so it's it's going to be interesting but same thing peri-workout carbs like brie eats a lot of or had been eating a lot of red meat just for like the uh the like oxygen like the hemoglobin in her blood yeah just to like bump up her like o2 sat and stuff but stuff like that yeah hers will be a little bit different because brie is obviously you know very strong she's a phenomenal power like in my opinion like probably one of the craziest genetics i've seen on for a female power lifter ever so you obviously have to take a different approach than

someone like you know kiara who's in there obviously and you know two different she's going physique and kiara's going wellness so i have a little bit of a different approach there but we kind of lean into some actually almost like no carb days for brie and some fasted training while kiara it's like we just got to keep her full. You guys are writing a book together? Yeah. Plus Andy. And Andy too, yeah.

So, yeah. Who's behind? Who's got like some of their pages written and who's got to start? I think I'm probably leading the pack on that. You're pretty much done. Joe's like, I'm starting soon. I have stuff. I have ideas.

I got it in my head. Organize it. It's bumping. I know how you work. I recognize that, yeah. And it was really like – well, my whole thing is because I'm like – Jake and Andy are up here. Obviously, this is an audio medium, but I'm putting my hand really, really high. But like you guys are like up to a certain level and I'm like – I'm not at that level of intellect.

I'm at that level of explanation, but it's like I'm a little bit lower. But like my feedback or like my contribution to the book is a lot more like of the athletic anecdote and like being able to explain it to like i don't want to say layperson but like the people that are going to buy the book the the audience who's going to read it so as like we do that when we talk uh but i kind of needed their outlines first and then i'm going to formulate my build off of it and i have i know like i have some of my stuff written i like where you're going like they got to get their shit done first so you can react to it. Seriously, that's what it is. Yeah, let's go, Jake.

I'm all for it. I'm the voice box, bro. That's it. It should be like what? We're looking at May or June, I'm thinking. Yeah, I think about May is what we're looking at. I'm the type, though, that, man, I get an idea, and then it's like, cool, I'm not sleeping for the next three days, so I'm the type though that man i get an idea and then it's like cool i'm not sleeping for the next three days so i'm working on this thing when he sent me the his like outline first

he was like here i'm gonna send some stuff to run by and i'm like i'm thinking it's gonna be like a page or like a note and it's like this a giant fucking document and i'm like is this how far we're supposed to be because i'm not like oh shit fuck okay yeah but but it was good it's all great stuff but yeah it's gonna be cool yeah andrew take us on out of here buddy all righty thank you everybody for checking out today's episode please drop those comments down below there's tons of stuff to talk about so let's hear what you guys have to say uh hit that like button subscribe all that good stuff follow the podcast at mb power project all over the place my instagram is at i am andrew z and

sima where you at and we we'll pop up their prior podcast here so you guys will be able to see that. But at NsemaYinYing on Instagram, YouTube at NsemaYinYing on TikTok and Twitter. Discord's down below.

Joe Jake, where can people find you guys? And then the supplement company and all that good stuff. I am JoeSullivan underscore AOD on Instagram. My website is TheAODCollective.com.

It stands for Adapt or Die because obviously there's a lot of perseverance and continuing to just keep going even when things are stacked against you and eventually you do fucking win because I just did a 62 in total PR and I'm pumped up about it. So that's where you can find me. We're coming out with a book.

We're doing all this stuff. Jake, do your shit. At jakeyb underscore 43 we have our better through biology line which is you know better through biology dot com do you have an Instagram there too it's just better dot through dot

biology use use code sully10 for money off your order and then that next supplement line we're coming out with it's going to be called euphoria and it's actually got a cool little uh y surrounded because we're you know solving for x cool huh as long as you know what it means it's all that matters um what's what's the point of that supplement euphoria uh so that's gonna be that's a supplement line oh that's the line okay i thought it was a specific one yep so that's the one that's just gonna have it's gonna

be more you know just like powders and tablets or capsules or whatever so um yeah yep and and don't he does not don't reach out to him on instagram book him through a call he has a calumny in his thing don't send him messages if you, if you DM me, it's not going to happen. You know a little something about Kratom, and you said you were potentially making a product, I think, with Kratom. What are the positives and what are some of the negatives? What are some things that people should look out for? So with Kratom, I think the biggest thing you have to think about is it is a mostly gabanergic drug,

and there's some really cool things that Kratom can do. It can absolutely be used as a PED. It can absolutely be used. Man, there's so many ways to use something like Kratom. Because like a lot of times just it can be helpful to actually be a little bit relaxing. It can be helpful, you know, before a gym session, it can do a lot of things. But what I think should be known is with a gabinergic drug, it's going to follow a curve. Well, it kind kind of looks like a bell curve where if you take a small amount, it will be fairly relaxing. If you take a moderate amount, it's probably going to feel a little bit stimulating. If you take a very large amount, again, it's going to kind of go and become

like more of a sedating style thing. So use it accordingly, right? Like if you need to relax, just use a little bit, maybe something like a hundred to, you know, ish migs of kratom or something like that. If you want it to be stimulating, you want to go to the gym and you kind of want to alter this like limbic system interaction, maybe go a little bit more, maybe go into like that 500 to, you know, a gram even for kratom and you're going to get like a little bit of a stimulatory effect and probably be able to do things like hydrolyze more atp at once than you could have before so it can actually be a really really cool pd in that sense a lot of a lot of cool ways to use it negatives i mean i think like anything it's just uh should only use in moderation right like if you need it like if you

love that psychoactive effect um and you need it now to be able to do something, probably going too far. But other than that, I can't really think of too many negatives unless you took so much that you got constipated from it. That's a thing. Yeah, you can get constipated from much Kratom. Okay. And you were mentioning a product that's going to have Kratom, Nupep, and a couple other things in there, right?

Yep. We'll have a couple different products. Kratom, Nupep, and a couple other things in there, right? Yep. We'll have a couple different products. The one with Kratom is going to have actually a little bit of KSM, Ashwagandha, and some more kind of more like relaxing things. It will be called Zen, and that's going to be the thing that you can take and just kind of settle on down. So that will only have something like 75 megs of Kratom, just a very small amount, and kind of using some other things to potentiate that effect. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell.

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