Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell on Fitness in Fifteen Clubhouse

Episode Date: June 10, 2021

Back on Clubhouse today as we feature Mark Bell's guest appearance on the Fitness in Fifteen Clubhouse Club, a Club with over 2000 members bringing live 15 minute workouts to Clubhouse every single day with fitness professionals all over the world, from HIT Zuu Yoga Bodyweight and much much more Their Mission is to Encourage Better Health, Fitness, Well-being and Mindset to anyone and everyone! Please follow the awesome people behind Fitness in Fifteen on Clubhouse below! Ben Downton - @ben_downton Lynsey Treharne - @lynsyeysuzanne86 Fitness in Fifteen - @fitnessinfiftenn Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use ode "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

What's up, everybody? Welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project podcast, hosted by Mark Bell, co-hosted by Nseema Iyeng and myself, Andrew Zaragoza. It's been a hot minute since we've done something like this. In the past, we've published Mark's appearances on other people's platforms on our iTunes feed, our podcast feed, I should say. Went away from it, and we're coming back to it today. Mark is on the Fitness in 15 Clubhouse Club, a club where they have over 2,000 members bringing live 15-minute workouts to Clubhouse every single day. It's awesome. They're UK-based, so we're going to hear a lot of really amazing accents that Americans just happen to love for some weird reason. But anyway, they cover workouts from HIIT, zoo, yoga, body weight, and so much more. Their mission is to encourage better health, fitness, well-being, and mindset to anyone and everyone. And it was really cool because it was an open platform on Clubhouse where people that

were visiting the club could stand up and ask Mark questions. And they asked some really interesting questions. And really, Mark just had a blast blast and we got his final thoughts at the very end once we got off air. So make sure you guys stick around for that and that's it for me. Hope you guys enjoy this Clubhouse interview we'll say with Mark Bell and Fitness in 15. Catch you guys later nick mark how we doing i'm just going to bring you guys up to the stage you are a speaker now mark no way wait i'm in but mark how you doing i'm doing fantastic how are you really well man i'm just going to give you the uh the green bean where's andrew is he coming

all right right there i'm right here we're just just using Mark's account for everything. Oh, there's two of you in one. Fantastic. Brilliant. Okay, guys. One second. Just going to make Lindsay a moderator. So just want to welcome Lindsay as well. Guys say, Lindsay is the owner of 50 fitness in 15 and hosts this club. So I just wanted to say, just welcome Lindsay. This is Mark, Mark and Andrew talking under mark's profile so if you can hear two voices it's uh two have become one i love it i absolutely love it well thank you ben for taking the reins i was just wrapping up on our other room i'm just

inviting some people up on stage but i'm gonna let ben very much take the reins on this as i have just come from an hour and a half q a sleep room and i could do with a little bit of rest and um i know ben loves to talk so i'm going to leave it in your capable hands and i'll just be doing some of the pinging shout if you want me to do a reset but i'm looking forward to this one guys absolutely you ben absolutely now i just want to say a big thank you to mark and angie i tell you what i am a little bit starstruck at the moment mark i'm going to say i followed you for so many years you've been a hero of mine for so many years and it's a real honor to have you on so we want to make this as interactive as possible as i say you guys have been very kind and give us 45 minutes of your time so we just want to try and

get as many questions as we can great but i just thought to start mark those of you that may not know you those you that in the audience would love to hear about you your story and how you got to become slingshot the power project to where you are now as i say i know that you've been a professional wrestler powerlifter now you're doing great things in business and inspiring many many people so yeah i'll let you take the reins man and we'll just see if we can get some questions going. All right, here we go. So, yeah, it all started when some asshole kicked my New York Jets football into the woods.

And you can kind of cut to a rocky montage of me training. I started lifting when I was about 12, had two older brothers that were into lifting. My oldest brother was my childhood hero, and he was big into football and big into lifting weights. And so I followed in his footsteps and so did my brother, Chris. We've been a family that was way, way into lifting weights way back before it was cool. And not only were we into lifting weights, but we were also into powerlifting. The gym that I kind of grew up in was a powerlifting type facility. Although people didn't even call it powerlifting back then, people were just into being big and strong.

And there was none of this, no cardio equipment and things like that. People weren't talking about getting skinny. People weren't talking about getting ripped. They really just cared about your performance and they cared about lifting heavy ass stuff i started uh lifting at a very young age and was immediately a little bit better than some of my friends and i kind of recognized hey this is probably something that you should pursue and so by the time i was about 14 or so i started to compete i broke some state records broke some national records and, uh, just made me

feel good about myself. And I, I wasn't, uh, the best in the classroom. And so, uh, I had something to kind of lean on or something to fall back on that made me feel great about myself. Um, I played a lot of football. I did track, I did boxing. I tried to do everything I could to avoid powerlifting, but it was always there. It's the girlfriend that I never wanted that just kept coming back, trying to annoy me. And eventually I just gave up to it and surrendered to it and became a powerlifter. And eventually squatted 1,080, benched 854 pounds, and deadlifted 766. 1080 benched 854 pounds and deadlifted 766. Those are all equipped numbers where I wore a bench shirt,

a squat suit and things like that. Just so people get a grasp of, of the type of lifting I was doing. Cause they might think, man, those numbers are absolutely insane. They're still heavy, no matter how you slice it. But,

uh, it was equipped power lifting at the time. There was no raw power lifting. Uh, when I was coming through the ranks, it was just people just lifted and didn't really care what someone else, uh, wore. powerlifting at the time. There was no raw powerlifting when I was coming through the ranks. It was just people just lifted and didn't really care what someone else wore. Yeah, I did some professional wrestling for a while, and that's where I met people like John Cena, The Rock. I got to rub elbows with a lot of great individuals, and that kind of stuff helped me recognize that

there's many, many different levels of success, and there many many different levels of success and there's many different levels of uh genetics and and all those kinds of things and it's been helpful for me to have that past uh moving into the things that i do now and then also with professional wrestling you have to have the gift of gab and be able to talk in front of people and uh that was tremendous in my development of being able to speak. And once I got into powerlifting more as an adult, I was like, you know what? I need to film this stuff. I need to share this with people. People are going to think this is dope. And so I started a YouTube channel in 2007, probably about a year after YouTube even started.

And been on social media from the jump. And that is something that helped me to be known. And then also something that helped me to be known and then also something that helped me to be known as the film bigger stronger faster that my brother chris bell directed and uh people may know me from that or they may know me from my invention which is the slingshot a supportive upper body device for bench press push-ups and dips and now i have a complete line of stuff that behind that elbow sleeves, knee sleeves, hip circles, and so forth.

And I guess kind of the rest is history from there. So some people know me as a creator of some products. Some people know me as a power lifter and some people know me from the film bigger, stronger, faster. Awesome. Awesome.

I love it. I mean, I've, I've, I've followed you for quite a few years and obviously I know the success of slingshot. I mean, I buy your products as well and few years. And obviously, I know the success of Slingshot. I mean, I buy your products as well. And, you know, it's massive all around the world.

But what do you think was key for you to become so successful from just being, you know, a wrestler, a powerlifter? What do you think was key to get into where you are now in all aspects of life as well, not just business? I think a big key for just about anybody is confidence and consistency um when i was uh i think i had confidence from a having great parents and b um being physically capable of doing quite a bit. I was fairly athletic and able to mimic stuff that coaches would teach and things like that. So that gave me a lot of confidence. That made me feel good. I think people need to find stuff that makes them feel really good.

I know the school, the classroom, didn't make me feel very good. I was put into special classes, and, uh, I just kind of learned and pick things up a lot slower. I don't know if I had like attention deficit disorder. I don't know if that was invented at that time. I don't know if that was around at that time. And, um, for whatever reason, that was very difficult for me, but, uh, you know, that actually ended up being a huge attribute of mine, which I can now look back on and say, oh, my God, this has been a blessing of mine the entire time because I don't mind for things to take a long time because I kind of learn slowly anyway. And so even from some of the lifts and stuff people have seen me do, they might not recognize how slow and how cautious I am with a lot of the moves that I make.

There, there's not always a lot of thought to my moves, but there's a, it's definitely, I definitely like to take them just like you take steps in the gym, incremental progress over a really, really long period of time. So confidence and consistency have been the biggest factors.

And I think just, I think anyone that you look at that's successful would have that in their recipe, being confident and being consistent. The consistency will help with confidence, actually, because you'll actually be better. You know, having a skillset is, is really important. So anyone that's looking to like make money, anyone that's looking to be successful in any category, if you want to go as vertical as you possibly can in that category, then you must become a material expert. You must learn a lot. You must absorb a lot. And in my opinion,

the only way that I could figure out how to do that is to be consistent. You could read books, you could go to college, you could go to further schooling, you could go to a technical school, you could just get around people that are good in that particular thing, like jujitsu, you can get around jujitsu people, you want to bodybuild, you can get around bodybuilders, you want to powerlift, you can get around powerlifters. You could also go a different route and you could become a strength coach and you can learn a lot about the sport that you're in, or you can learn a lot about kinesiology, whatever the case is, you're going to have to be a material expert in some way, You're going to have to be a material expert in some way in order for you to be really much of anything in that particular field or thing that you're trying to do.

And the only way to get there is through consistency. Great. That's in ferocity, step by step. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Awesome, Mark. So just going to do a quick room reset. I'm just mindful that we've got you for 45 minutes we see we've got a few people in

the room some people up on stage which is excellent so guys this is fitness in 15 club the club that brings daily live workouts to clubhouse courage and good health fitness and mindset and well-being to everybody we're're very, very kindly and honoured to have Mark Bell, Andrew Zaragoza, aka The Power Project, on stage. So Mark's going to take some questions. Guys in the audience, if you want to ask Mark a question, please flash your mic. Anybody that's in the audience, please raise your hand.

Just make sure that you've got a bio, guys, just so we can see who you are, and we're happy to bring you up. So guys, has anybody got a question for Mark on stage? Anyone the audience please flash your mic anyone got any questions liz liz how you doing go for it liz it's all yours hi guys how you doing nice to meet you guys um i'm a weightlifter and i perform on the platform and i guess there's a number of people in here that do similar. What's your most memorable moment in a meet, be it good or bad, and how did you overcome it? My most memorable moment in a contest is bench press in 705. It's in the film Bigger, Stronger, Faster. There was a lot on the line. It's in the film Bigger, Stronger, Faster.

There was a lot on the line. You know, my brother's film, a documentary that ended up landing in movie theaters around the country. And there hasn't been a movie similar or since that time that has had quite the impact that Bigger, Stronger, Faster has had on the fitness community and on performance enhancing drugs in general. And so it was a huge honor to be part of that and to be going for this bench press in a contest and to be able to hit that bench press in that meet. And that's the way the movie ends. The movie ends with me benching 705, which is another honor. I mean, it's just really, really cool. But like you think about the circumstances leading up to all that and kind of the pressure that was at APF Senior Nationals, which is one of the biggest competitions in the world at the time. And it just felt amazing to come through on that particular day.

nine for nine that day. I made all my squats. I made all my benches. I made all my deadlifts. That has never happened in the history of Mark Bell competing on the platform with me having a career in powerlifting that spanned over the course of like 30 years nearly. So there was just like some magic in the room on that particular day. And that was an amazing moment. The other reason why that was an amazing moment. The other reason why that was important to me is I saw Ted RCD bench press 705 on a WWF airing of this like strength feat that Ted RCD did in benching 705. And Ted RCD was a professional wrestler and he was super jacked. And when I saw him do that, I was like, I want to fit.

I don't know what that is. Cause I was a young kid. I'm like, I don't know what that is, but I want to do that. Like whatever that guy just did and how this guy looks, he looks like a superhero. I'm like, I want to figure that out. I want to be jacked like that dude. And I want to be able to lift weights like that. So it was a huge moment for me. And the second part of the question, I don't think I really heard was able to hear exactly what she said um yeah whatever the moment

was do you think it was the added pressure from the movie that was pushing you forwards did you feel the anxiety and the pressure of performing um you did go nine for nine did you leave feeling that maybe there was some more in the tank? I don't know. What was the inevitable self talk after the event coming back down from it? Yeah. You know, I think, you know, fortunately for me,

especially at that age, I just, I wasn't, I wasn't anxious. I didn't have anxiety. There, there was some pressure to kind of like, you know,

be able to do that stuff. But I think the pressure was probably really helpful. You know, I think it actually really helped me a lot because, again, I talk about this quite often, but being prepared for stuff, you know, makes you less anxious. It's like, why do we have anxiety? I think we have anxiety because we're not fulfilling the things that we're supposed to do each and every day. We keep pushing them off. And then those things are still staring us in the face every day. These things that we've swept under the rug, we're a little fatter than we want to be. We're a little weaker than we want to be. And we're not really addressing these things. And when you address them, you take them head on, you start to learn more. And when you start to learn more, you start to be more and when you start to learn more you start to be more prepared so i felt extremely prepared for that competition the training that went into that uh was all dialed in the numbers that i selected on the platform that day uh they just all added up and they all ended up you know working out they're all things that i was definitely uh capable of but no i don't think i left anything on the platform because my last squat, I nearly died. My seven Oh five bench took me like 30 minutes. It seemed like I could, it took a long ass time to make that lift. Uh, and my, uh, my deadlifts for the day, like my last deadlift, I barely locked it out. And when I did lock it out,

my grip was starting to go, but I just got the down signal at the perfect time. And so everything kind of worked out. Uh, everything worked out great. I think the, uh, the head ref maybe gave me a little bit, almost like an early signal down. I don't think he made me like hold it. And, uh, so I got fortunate with, with that. And I just think it was, um, it was a magical day I I would kind of consider myself a a gamer in some ways like when it was on the line I always did really well and when it came to training I trained I trained hard but I also oftentimes uh used weights that would be way way lighter uh than a lot of my competition and way lighter than than most of my friends in the gym even and people would kind of talk trash and they would beat me in the gym and i'd smoke them on the platform so i always

really loved getting in competition it got me uh really excited awesome thanks for that um just a quick i've got a question for you mark actually um i want to ask you about your fuck your elbow video that's that um is quite famous on your content and the reason why i'm asking that actually is that i i believe as you know especially in social media there's a lot of information overload people talking about science this and this and i think it gets in the way of people actually just wanting to learn basic stuff and i think it can confuse people. And I think sometimes it can give people anxiety. So I liked your message with that.

Fuck your elbow. And the reason I wanted to ask you that, I just wanted you to explain that. And anyone in the audience might be able to reference that as well. So yeah, would you be able to explain that for us? Absolutely. You know,

it's a YouTube video. It was a response to somebody that was us. Absolutely. You know, it's a YouTube video. It was a response to somebody that was saying that I'm irresponsible because I mentioned in a video that people are utilizing their knowledge as an excuse. Sometimes science can, you know, you end up with analysis paralysis. Sometimes when you know a lot, you're like, you're like, okay, I'm going to go in the gym and I'm going to do some leg presses. But then you're like, uh, I know I did legs like two days ago and maybe I shouldn't even train. And then you start talking yourself out of all this stuff. Uh, and you're like, oh, well you actually gained more size resting than you do actually training.

And you just kind of get in your head about all this stuff. And you're like, well, leg presses aren't maybe quite as valuable as doing something like a hack squat, because you can recruit a higher percentage of muscle fibers in the quads. It just gets to be like, holy smokes, man, like, would you just please get to training, you know? And I don't think there's anything wrong with with having some evidence based stuff and having some science in there. But I think people conflate the two things like we can get a lot of great information from the science, but then a lot of times people will say, I only do evidence based

nutrition or I only do evidence based training. Well, to me, evidence based stuff would would include bro science. It would include the stuff that Michael Hearn shares. It would include the stuff that Phil Heath might share. It would include things from people that aren't just material experts on hypertrophy. I think we make mistakes when we look at these doctors and we're like, that guy ain't shit. Why the hell would I ever listen to him?

I think that's a mistake. But then also thinking that the guy that's super jacked is the material expert is probably a mistake. Thinking the guy that's super jacked is an idiot and that he's dumb is a big mistake. So why not kind of take the information from everywhere and utilize it? And in regards to the infamous fuck your elbow video, that was more, you know, just somebody coming at me saying, hey, I think you're irresponsible because

you do have to think about your central nervous system when you're training. And I took exception to that because I'm like, dude, like I've been training for, you don't think I know about the central nervous system. You don't think I understand the value of not over-training all the time. Like, of course, of course I do. But at the same time, if you're going to be great at anything, there's gotta be a roll of the dice here somewhere. Yeah. You cannot, you can't get away. Uh, you can't get away unscathed. Like there's going to be some scars. Like you're going to mess up. You're going to fail. Like failure is part of it. You're going to maybe potentially

tear something. You're going to maybe potentially tweak something. Um, but you're not going to be able just to lift, you know, 135 pounds every single time you go to the gym and think that that's going to start to result in some different response in your muscles. Your muscles will get used to it too quickly. And over time, you'll have to train some, you have to change some sort of stimulus. change some sort of stimulus. And when that, when that particular response was given to me, when someone was like, you know, I can't believe you say, you know, fuck your elbow. My response was that we are all, regardless of what you do in this world, regardless of what you do in life, you are going to end up in pain. You're going to end up with suffering. You are going to end up maybe in a wheelchair or maybe in a hospital bed. If we're our best, our best scenario is just to die in our sleep, right?

That's, that's like the only thing that you can think of. It's like the most peaceful way. So you just go to sleep one night and you just don't wake up. Other than that, you're going to die some horrific death. You're going to drive your car off a cliff. You're going to get into some crazy accident. You're going to have cancer. You're going to have a heart attack. You're going to fall and break a bone. And then you're in the hospital. Then you get an infection. Then you die. It doesn't matter if you're a good person or a bad person.

So my whole point was, look, dude, we can sit here and fight about the science of shit. We can talk about the central nervous system and all these different things. But while you're on this earth, you might as well be a bad motherfucker and you might as well put your best foot forward and do anything and everything that you possibly can to ensure that you might as well put your best foot forward and do anything and everything that you possibly can to ensure that you're going to be the best. And would that include you sitting there going through this rigorous testing and science and stuff like that? Or would you be better off just doing and learning from the doing that you're doing and continue to kind of build an arsenal, uh, build an arsenal of information that you have so you can continue to move forward. So you can continue to swing that ax each and every

single day and start to make a dent in that tree so you can finally knock it over. Uh, otherwise, I mean, I, I think you're, you're, you're wasting a lot of time. And I don't think time is very kind to us. We don't have tons of it. We have X amount of years that we're out of school. Here in the United States, it's mandatory that you go to school. So you're locked into a prison until you're 18 years old. You're institutionalized until at least you're 18. A lot of people end up going to college

and then from 25 to what, 50. So you got 25 years to like try to make the most of yourself, right? And you don't even have that because you have to find a job and you have to be tied to that 40 hours a week. So my whole point in sharing some of these messages, like, man, let's just think less. Let's make things a little think less. Let's make things a little more simple. Let's just go with what we know. There's a lot, we know a lot already. We already know a lot. There's no reason to go back and forth and try to have all these discussions about it. There's people who I've been doing and nothing has changed. Nothing has changed in strength training. You pick up weights and over a period of time, you pick up

more weight and your body responds to it and it gets stronger. The same thing goes for hypertrophy. Same thing goes with nutrition. What has changed in nutrition science? I think all of nutrition science personally, and this might be a short-sighted view of mine, but I think it's all garbage because nothing has changed. Nothing will change. Humans will never evolve to be able to eat peanut butter cups and Oreos. If they did, if we did, I would love to be around for those times, but we can eat meat and we can eat vegetables. We can eat fruit and we can do so in kind of large amounts and not have too much of a negative impact on ourselves. And those things actually are, they're physically kind of hard to overeat.

There's probably a reason for that. But anything outside of that, you know, now we're just kind of playing with stuff that's kind of man-made and not great for us. And those things should be eaten in very, very small moderation in my opinion. So a lot of the science stuff, I don't, I don't think there's really a ton of reasons to get too tied up in it. And there's definitely not any reason to be handcuffed by it,

to not allow you to make the progress that you want to make. Love it, Mark. Love that. And I agree on every single level. And I'd love to pick your brains and dive in a little bit more on that, but I'm very mindful of time. And I see we've got a few people in the room. So we've got Ben, Nick, Michael, Marco, Anthony, Jeanette's just joined.

And guys, if you want to ask a question, please flash your marks here, probably for about another 15, 20 minutes. So I want to try and get as much value as possible and answer as many questions as you can. So just a quick room reset. We've got Mark Bell, Andres Aragoza, a.k.a. The Power Project. And so Mark's very, very kindly coming on to give some Q&A on anything, fitness, life, mindset, well-being. So, yeah, guys, we've got about another 15 minutes. Has anybody got a question?

Anybody who's come up on stage has got anything to ask Mark at all while we're here? Please flash your mics. Anybody at all? Any questions? If not, we'll just… Beju's flashing. Beju, please, man, it's all yours. Oh, Ben, nice one.

Yeah, Mark, thank you for your insights. You know, a lot of things you said about there's nothing new in the world and i was thinking you know sometimes we we live in a society where people think oh i've got to know more i've got to know more to be successful i know you're talking in the context of you know health and bodybuilding etc but the principles you're talking about you could apply to anywhere completely also um um correlate with your arguments around sort of having you know time is very precious and you you you spend sort of 20 30 years of your first part of your life learning learning learning and then you spend the rest of your life unlearning it so it's that anomaly I only recently

got into fitness um last couple of years and before that was very much oh when I've got time I'll fit it in and I changed my mindset to, this is a non-negotiable now. So, you know, I'm not a bodybuilder or anything, but I do weights, I do bits and pieces. My question to you is this, is people have this notion around fitness that it's a, for some people it's like when I can fit it in. And for me, it's a non-negotiable. What do you think we need to change as a messaging society that people are growing up with? for me it's a non-negotiable what do you think we need to change as a message in society that people are growing up with with a non-negotiable looking

after yourself is non-negotiable yes it's okay to have the odd bad food yes it's okay not to um you know to indulge yourself but keeping fit is as important as you know sleep or anything it's a non-negotiable what do you think we need to change in terms of messages so that it gets through to people? That's me done. Thanks, Mark. Yeah, I think a major thing to look at is many folks probably would really benefit from just not looking at things as workouts. Not even looking at things as necessarily exercise, but looking at things as activity and or exercises.

So because people can very easily make that a part of their life. And I don't think there's there's really there's there's not an excuse. Excuses with going to the gym. I understand them and I get it. People not wanting to lift weights. I kind of get it. Maybe they just never gotten into it. So I can, I can see it. I can understand it. I do think that everyone should lift weights, but I also understand that not everyone is going to want to. I do think some type of resistance work is important. So running hills or walking hills or throwing a weight vest on and going for a walk,

you know, running in the sand or even walking on the sand. But I think for most people, I think they should really consider just getting in exercises and or just thinking about activity. And what I mean by that is like going for a walk. Maybe before you go to the, maybe before you go for a walk, maybe you do, I don't know, maybe do 50 reps of body weight squats onto a chair. Or maybe when you're on your walk, every time you see a bench, you say, you know what, I'm going to do 10 squats onto that. There's just no, I can't think of a person that can't incorporate that stuff into their life. And it might be easier.

Maybe every time someone uses the restroom, maybe one day, every time they use the restroom, they do pushups afterwards. Um, maybe on, maybe on the other days they do squats, uh, body weight squats. Um, we also have to kind of keep in mind, there's people that are kind of, um, physically handicapped, right? And there's people that are mentally handicapped as well. So there's people that have, there's people that have a lot of pain and there's people that have a lot of trauma. And so we need to introduce as many different ways of training to people that they can possibly think of. and get great exercise at home. But some people don't like to exercise at home, so they might have to have a different environment. Whatever the case is, we need to do the best job that we can.

The only way for this to really work and to have people in general feeling better and people doing better is for us, people that exercise and people that are into fitness to not judge, not judge other people on why they're not more like us, but encourage them to implement some of the stuff that we do in hopes that they can feel any bit of what we're feeling from it. Because you have made a decision to make it a non-negotiable part of your life. We can't inflect that onto somebody else. We can't we can't say, hey, man, this stuff is fucking powerful.

It's awesome. It changed my life. I know for a fact it's going to change your life as well. You know, come with me to the gym and that may work for some. your life as well. You know, come with me to the gym and that may work for some, but for the most, for most part, uh, you know, coercion never really works, you know, trying to force people to do stuff, uh, trying to implement like laws. Like we see it, these kinds of things happen all the time. Um, it's not a great way to get people to do stuff. You know, I think I would rather, I would rather have it be, uh, to where

anytime it's ever brought up where someone's frustrated with their weight, they can't get into a workout routine. You mentioned stuff to them in a way that is kindhearted and that is lighthearted. And, uh, when you say, Hey, well, you know, I know you used to be into riding your bike. You know, why don't you ride your bike anymore? They say, oh, you know, I kind of tore something in my hip, and I haven't been able to do that in a long time, and it kind of hurts. And then you might say, hey, well, what about walking? And this is where you kind of get into people saying the yeah buts, the yeah buts, the yeah buts.

But this is where you can also kind of mention to someone and say, I'm just trying to assist you. You kind of brought it up that you want to exercise more. What do you think would be some great ways for you to get an exercise, given the fact that your hip is banged up and you can't ride your bike anymore? Then you might start getting somewhere. Then they might say, hey, you know what? I used to swim all the time too. I say, oh, that would what? I used to swim all the time too. I say, oh, that would be great. Maybe you should join that gym up again that has a pool.

You start to kind of allow people to get to these conclusions kind of on your own. I think this is the way, if there is such a thing, I think this is a way to raise your children is to try to get them steered in a direction that they start coming to their own conclusions, but you did steer them in that direction on making a better choice between having a Pepsi versus a diet Pepsi versus having water type of thing. And so I think that's kind of all we can do to encourage people to, but I do think as a human being, I think it's very important, and I think it's very obvious that we're supposed to move, and we're supposed to, you know, not eat unhealthy each and every day, and we're not supposed to overeat all the time, but these are things that happen quite a bit. And I think we can walk other people through

this process of, Hey man, is this reasonable? Is it reasonable for you to figure out ways three or four times a week to have a diet plan that doesn't allow you to overeat? And is it reasonable for you to have a couple of days a week, maybe where you, you get to enjoy a couple of things that have been on your mind or a couple things that you really just love, whether it be alcohol or candy or ice cream or pizza or whatever. I think we can get to all those things in a reasonable way. So I think the panic becomes when you start to take stuff away from people. And I think people are, they might feel energized or they might feel excited about

when you add stuff to their day or add stuff to their life and say, hey, you know what would be great is if you did a couple 10 minute walks every day. It'd be great if you got in a couple servings of fruit. It'd be great if you got a couple servings of vegetables. It'd be great if you had at least two servings of meat every day. Hey, have you ever tried a protein shake? These are all add-ons. These are all things that you're adding to someone's diet and you're not subtracting. You never even mentioned like, dude, you can't have ice cream at night. You can't have pizza.

You just pour all this stuff into them that is things that could really be helpful, but you're trying to fill up their plate so much that they don't have room to do much else. They get a couple of 10 minute walks in the day. You recommended 35 to 45 minutes of strength training a day. They start to do that. And it's like, man, their day's pretty filled up.

The food recommendations that you gave to them are filling them up pretty well because people need to have their micronutrients accounted for and their macronutrients and their sleep intact. Sleep would be another thing to encourage people about because people are all screwed up. They're not sleeping.

They're on their phones too much and things like that. And so I think what we're trying to do is trying to have people in general understand that this is very reasonable for you to get to a point in your life where you're like, you know what? It's not negotiable. I'm not eating those tortilla chips. I'm not compromising my 7 a.m. workouts. I work out at 7 a.m., and I'm going to make the world adjust to me because I know how important that is for me to get that workout in.

Yeah, I hear you, Mark. I think, you know, listening to you 10 years ago, I was in that place whereby, no, no, you know, this is the way I do it. And then it's like you say, it's a switch in the mindset. So whether it's doing fitness or business, all right. So no, top man. Thanks, Mark. Great. Thanks, Belayju. Has anybody got any questions on stage we've got about 10 minutes if anybody's jeanette you see your mic flashing you got a

question for mark i have indeed lovely to meet you mark great conversation so far so um i'm massively into my training and like beija, it's part of my daily routine. I train most days. And at the moment, I'm struggling a little bit because I have a tear in my meniscus. Oh, no. In my knee. So I'm obviously having to be very careful. I'm trying to do all of the rehab stuff.

I'm under a great uh knee surgeon actually um but i'm trying to avoid the surgery if i can and hopefully get it better on its own in its own right but of course that takes time um and obviously you know the mental side of exercise for me is one of the major benefits uh because it's a great way to de-stress i get some of my best ideas when I'm training etc so I'm replacing as you were talking about earlier it resonated a lot with me because I'm trying to do the training that I can do with the injury that I have got so I'm doing a lot of upper body etc but I just wanted to hear from you if there are any other kind of tricks and tips how not to get crazily frustrated when you have an injury so you can't train to the same

intensity and you do have to you know still keep yourself going but of course not risk exacerbating the injury um at the same time as keeping the sort of mental well-being uh in tip-top shape so i'm jeanette and i'll pass the mic back but i'd love to hear your opinion, Mark. Yeah. Thank you for the question. I believe that, um, having like the greater skillset that you have, um, the greater understanding that you have of training, the more options that you'll have. And that's, that's great that you're asking this question because it's showing that you want to grow and that you want to gain further knowledge. So continue to ask questions. There's a lot of fitness apps out there. And so the fitness apps, following people on Instagram and things like that might encourage you to, you know, find some, like when your knee is hurt, it's kind of hard to do like, let's say

like a regular deadlift, but then a stiff leg deadlift is still something that you can do. You can't really do a leg extension all that well, but you can probably do a leg curl. Using a leg press is something that might kind of hurt your knee. But if you put your feet up high on the leg press, it kind of gets the hammies and butt more. Utilizing something like the hip circle, like the hip circle can give you a great workout. You can work sideways with it, forwards, backwards. You can also follow our buddy, Knees Over Toes, Ben Patrick, who's on Instagram and YouTube.

We did a podcast with him on My Power Project. You can check out that episode with Ben Patrick, Knees Over Toes guy. He has fantastic information on how to kind of rebuild the knee. And he's had many, many surgeries on his knees. Unfortunately, he had many, many problems with his knees. And nowadays he can like dunk a basketball and his knees are very strong. And so what I usually have people do that are hurt is I usually have them write down five things they can concentrate on, you know, and things that you can't do. Let's just not even really worry about them because they're just not an option at the

moment. And so, you know, the amount of exercises that you can do with a bum knee is still way off the charts. I mean, you could do a lot of exercising and you're just trying to find stuff that doesn't aggravate it. exercising and you're just trying to find stuff that doesn't aggravate it. But you can also get multiple benefits by finding things that not only don't aggravate it, but maybe things that might strengthen it. And you can kind of look some of these things up.

Again, Ben Patrick is one of the leading experts in this area, I think. You can look up something called a Peterson step-up. Um, you can look up something called a Peterson step up. Um, there are, uh, other exercises, um, such as walking backwards with a sled can be tremendous. Just a sled that has weight in it. And again, Ben Patrick, um, he's smart and he knows like not everyone, you know, has access to, you know, a sled that they can load plates on. And it's not always easy to use that kind of stuff. Use it outside. It's loud. And so he just recommends people get an old beat up backpack, throw some weight in there, attach a rope to it, and then put it on your lifting belt and walk backwards with it and do it like in a field or something like that.

So there's just so many options in terms of, uh, you know, even when we are hurt, even when we are banged up, um, but be patient with it and don't do, you know, a good rule of thumb in terms of injury and in terms of, I guess, just pain in general. I mean, I think anyone could use this at any time in the gym and it's, there's, I'll give you a couple good rules of thumb here. Number one is don't train above a pain level of three in terms of like discomfort and actual, uh, not like musc, muscular, uh, pain, not like, oh man, like, I don't know if I can do another rep type of stuff, but, um, more so just acute pain. You know, you got pain in your shoulder or elbow or knee should never be above a level of three. Notice I said the word never, right? Should never be above a pain level of three.

There's no reason. It's not any more beneficial to continue to do that exercise if it hurts that bad. It's going to cause more damage. It's going to cause more damage. Other things to keep in mind are that your first rep should look like, I'm sorry, your last rep should look like your first rep. And I believe that this is fairly true of all exercises almost all the time. Maybe 95 or 98% of your training should look that way. Your last rep of your last set should look like the first

rep of your first set. Your last rep of your last set should look like the first rep of your first set. Weight can dictate your reps and reps can dictate your weight, but they should be dictating each other for sure. Again, meaning like if I'm going to put 200 pounds on something or a hundred kilos, as you guys say, if I'm going to put about a hundred kilos on something, then I need to in my head associate a number of reps with that, that are reasonable for me to be able to do. And this is how we can avoid getting hurt in the first place. So,

um, hopefully all those things are helpful. There's also like a lot of other exercises you can do. Sometimes we tend to make fun of some of the stuff we see in gyms, but there's that ergonometer, ergonometer thing where you can just move your arms. You can also like hit like a heavy bag, um, just, you know, punching like a heavy bag um just you know punching like a heavy bag which just might be great release because of your frustrations with um you know uh the knee pain uh you can hit a speed bag which is just some fun exercise and you might be able to do something like an elliptical um you know don't sleep on those things that they're, they're still great forms of exercise. Um, and you can also kind of take this time to, as you pointed out, uh, you know, build up your upper body a bit, you know,

train your arms a little bit more, do more pushups. But if you're still trying to keep that heart rate elevated, maybe you're able to get on an elliptical piece for 30 seconds, go at it pretty hard, pop off of there and do some shoulder flies, go back to the elliptical, come back to the weights and do, you know, some curls and so forth and still get amazing workouts. I think you'll be surprised and shocked at how awesome the workouts can be, even though you're hampered with this injury. That is brilliant. Thank you, Mark. And yeah, loads of inspiration there. So thank you mark and uh yeah loads of inspiration there so thank you so much i really appreciate it and uh yeah thanks so much i'll pass it back great thanks janet and

thanks mark um i see we're almost coming to the end of the time now but just a final question for you mark what what's your goals? Have you achieved everything in your fitness career? What are you looking to do moving forward? Have you got anything that you want to do or achieve or any goals in terms of fitness or even business for that matter? I just want to continue to reach as many people as I possibly can, expand out and spread my wings more and reach as many people as possible. I'd like to help people that are obese and help people that are maybe head down the wrong path. Eventually, I'd like to get into, you know, figuring out some ways to help like families, really, children and things of that

nature. So that's, I want to be able to, like, I guess, serve and service more people with the knowledge that I have because I think the stuff that I preach, I think, is fairly reasonable to implement. And I have many different, like, stages and many different ways that people can do it. I'm not stuck on any one particular diet. So, um, I'm not married to any principle or concept necessarily, but I do have some ideas and concepts, uh, that I think when people implement them, uh, it can be something

that they can utilize with some consistency to get the results that they're looking for. Um, I like ketogenic diets. I like ketogenic diets. I like low-carb diets. I like intermittent fasting. But I'm also open-minded to allow people to pick a diet that's going to work well for them. And if it works and it helps to minimize somebody's body weight gain, it's helping to manage body weight, then I'm all for it

and supportive of it and try to be as positive as I can for all those individual people. But yeah, that's some of the next mission is to hone in and work on focusing in on that. Awesome, man.

I love that. I love that. I've got one more burning question for you, Mark, if you don't mind me asking just've got one more burning question for you mark if you don't mind me asking just based on what you said do you mind if i ask yes sir yeah so i work with people that are like looking to get into they're out of work so they're looking to get into work so i educate them and i do touch on fitness and also mental health and how they can optimize just being healthy but a lot of what they ask me is you know some of these people are you know they're insecure they're maybe overweight or underweight but they say to me I'm lost I don't know what to do I'm lost I don't know what to do what would advice would you give to somebody that is lost and

doesn't know what to do in general what would you give to somebody that is lost and doesn't know what to do in general? What would you say? I would say that, you know, it's as simple as asking. If you have questions and you want answers, all you got to do is ask. And so I think that that is a really, really important thing. I think sometimes people feel foolish in asking.

I think somebody who is lost and has like a drug addiction or somebody who's lost and, uh, is kind of just struggling in their life. Um, it's a really, really, uh, hard thing to do, even to go to like your best friend and to say, Hey man, like I suck. I'm really struggling.

I could use your help. Um, and you might be ashamed or embarrassed about whatever it is that you need help with. And you might have a question that you think is just so silly because it's so basic. And even for people that aren't like suffering necessarily, but you just kind of, you're not sure of what to do next. You don't know where to go. You don't know what the steps are. I think there's important things to know. And one thing to know is that nobody knows where they're going.

The meaning of life is something that is like unknowable. And so all of us can end up kind of thinking about that for a minute and going, oh, my God, that's fucking miserable. We don't know why we're here. You know, why am I here? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this with my kid? Or why am I thinking about doing this or that? Sometimes it doesn't make any sense, but actually there's a huge blessing in disguise because it gives us the autonomy, it gives us the freedom for each individual person to define what it means to them. And so it doesn't have to really have a lot of meaning or purpose behind it. It could be as simple as, I'm just going to take on each and every day the best that I possibly can,

and I would like to figure out ways of moving my family forward from where my previous generations were. I would like to just advance this family a couple inches forward. And that's like a, that gives, that now gives you meaning. And then how do you do that? You kind of work your way backwards from there. I think working your way backwards is a really important skill to learn. And you can kind of think of maybe you feel a little bit lost, but maybe you always wanted to be a chef or you wanted to be an artist or wanted to be this or that. Work your way backwards from there. What would it mean to do that? Who are other people that you know in your circle nowadays you know we used to have seven degrees of separation between people it was very hard to find material experts it was very hard to

gather information i guess you could go to like a library or you could potentially just have a mentor in your life and be very lucky but nowadays through the internet, um, all these people that are on the internet promoting themselves and promoting their other businesses, there, a lot of them are available to you to where you can ask questions to them. You could learn, okay, how did this guy, uh, how did this guy be able to do what he's, what he loves to do for a living? do what he loves to do for a living. Then you can start to maybe mimic that because in the beginning, you don't know how to do it. So you just copy other people as best you can. You copy their ideas, you copy their principles, and you don't even have any like thoughts or quotes or ideas or principles of

your own necessarily. You just kind of follow in someone else's footsteps. Oh, I want to be a photographer. Okay, well, I found a dude that's local. That's a photographer. Uh, would that guy love to get some free help? Hell yeah, he would imagine if you're like, yeah, man, I'd love to come on some shoots with you as long as you're not annoying. And as long as you're not, you know, acting too crazy or weird, I'm sure they would be down for it. I'm sure they'd be like, yeah, that's cool. You do it for free for a while. Then maybe you

develop a little bit of your own skillset and you're like, I think I could maybe, you know, start to do this for some other folks. And so I think anyone who's lost, I think the main key to the entire thing is to ask questions. You know, I think it's the Bible. In the Bible, it says, ask and you shall receive. big believer in that. All you got to do is ask. You want to, I mean, people that are millionaires, they want to share their, their story. Like they, uh, people that are jacked, they love talking about themselves being jacked and how they got there. most likely is not going to be someone who's shy talking about it. Hey man, how'd you become, how'd you become so successful? You know, with these coffee shops that you have, you think someone's going to be like, fuck you, dude.

They take it as a compliment. Maybe they don't have a ton of time to communicate with you, but you'll find people that, that will have plenty of time. They want to make time for you because they remember. They've been there themselves. We've all been walking around aimlessly. And I think there's some ages that I see very common where people are kind of walking around aimlessly. I think when we're young, because we're kind of stuck in school and because there's like a weird transitional phase from like

18 to like almost 25, when you're in between those ages, you can just chalk it up to being young. You can say, well, you know, what do you do for a living? And they kind of say, oh, I do this or that, but I eventually want to do that. And you can just chalk it up to being young that you're not doing the shit that you want to be doing. But you can only do that for so long. And then eventually, you know, you have to kind of become, you know, part of society. But it's very understandable to be lost. And there's a lot of people that feel lost. But when you feel lost, I think it's the most important thing to understand or know.

It doesn't matter who you're following. It doesn't matter who you're following. It doesn't matter who you're looking at. It doesn't matter if it's the Rock or it's the President of the United States. Everyone's a little bit lost. People don't know what tomorrow has. We can only assume what tomorrow has. We're all just trying to do our best. And so continue to ask questions.

Not only ask questions, but work on asking better questions over a period of time so you can get better answers and you can come up with solutions. I think every single thing that you're wondering about and every single problem that you may have in your life, they're all fairly solvable. fairly solvable. Maybe, you know, maybe not everything. Maybe you're not, you're never going to be, you're most likely never going to be problem free, but you can reduce all of your problems by continuing to investigate and continue to ask questions. Awesome, Mark. Awesome. Love that. Love that. And I think we'll leave it there, guys. I just we've run over by about 10 minutes. But Mark, Andrew, I just want to say a big thank you for coming on, coming on to club and doing this. It's been it's been really, really good. Really, really great answers. And it's been a pleasure to have you on. It's as I say, I remember there was a time when I was lost once and I had an injured knee and I thought, I just don't know what to do.

And I started picking up a barbell. I got into CrossFit and I started following you, Mark. And you've certainly given me a lot of inspiration over the years. And to be talking now and sharing a room with you and asking questions is, yeah, it's been great. And I'm really,

really appreciative. So guys, we're going to shut down the room. I just want to say thank you to Mark and Andrew. Thanks for doing this. Really, really grateful. Thanks for Lindsay for for coming on everybody that's been in the audience and ask questions and please follow mark please follow mark please follow the club and yeah guys you have a great day you have a great evening but once again mark andrew thank you so much it's been

a real real pleasure and i've enjoyed having you on thanks so much guys take care thank you so much appreciate it yeah appreciate you guys. Take care, everyone. Have a great evening. Thanks. Great evening. Actually, what are your thoughts on how that went?

I thought it was cool. Yeah, I thought they asked a lot of cool questions. It's always good to have different people asking different questions, and that they asked a lot of cool questions. Always good to have, you know, different people asking different questions. And that guy's a fan. You know, and that last question was an interesting one. I think when you are someone that is having problems, it's hard for the information to even land on you correctly. You know, I could send a video to somebody and say, hey, man, if you watch this, I really think it will help you because it helped me.

But I'm in a different spot than somebody else. And when I send it to them, they might not hear any of the message or they might misinterpret some of the message. Some of the message, you know, I could send something to somebody that says that shares a bunch of stories about the woman who wrote Harry Potter, the Star Wars story, the rock, you know, the Sylvester Stallone Rocky story. Like I could send somebody a bunch of this information and someone could misinterpret that, that like, I need to, I need to wait it out. I need to stick to my guns. My ideas are bad-ass and I know that they're going to work at some point. And it's like, well, maybe you didn't write Harry Potter. You know what I mean? Like maybe, maybe your idea is not that. And maybe my point in sending it was to just show that these people never gave up on themselves and they never gave up on these projects. And someone can kind of misinterpret that a different way and just, you know, think that

they're going to all of a sudden get spotted by somebody and something miraculously cool is going to happen for them. So I think that that last question was a tough one to really answer because it just depends on like the stages of life that you're in, whether you're even capable of like receiving the very question that you just you just ask something. How do I lose weight? And then when soon as somebody starts spitting out how much hard work or how much work there is to be done, you're immediately shutting it down. You're resistant to it because you're just not really ready for it. Yeah. I don't want to go on much longer, but I would say like, or I would

ask you, like, is it similar to like somebody trying to get on a, like, I want to lose weight, but all they eat is junk. And then you say, no, how about you try this? That's going to be really hard for them to just click over and start eating a little bit healthier. Right. So if they are in a bad spot, you give them some good advice. It's probably just not going to hit. It might take a while. working on incremental progress and trying to just be a little bit better, they say, oh, fuck it. I'm just not ready for that.

You know, I just, I'm not, that's not me. I'm not good at that. I, I'm, and then people get kind of negative self-talk and it just becomes a snowball

of, of kind of a self, uh, of negative self-talk. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll get out of here.

If you guys enjoyed that, um, I think it's called fitness 15. Um, I'll try to do any links down in the description below or, well, we'll get out of here. If you guys enjoyed that, I think it's called Fitness 15. I'll try to do any links down in the description below, or just pay attention to the intro. That will have all of the solid information. Please follow the podcast at MarkBell'sPowerProject on Instagram, at MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter.

My Twitter and Instagram is at IamAndrewZ. TikTok at TheAndrewZ. And make sure you guys are following Nsema at NsemaYinYang on TikTok. He is kind of going bananas on there. He's literally going to be famous because of TikTok. It's fucking crazy. He's going to be a TikToker. Yeah.

Yeah. Where are you at, Mark? I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. I'm on a TikTok as well. And that shit's blowing up because of my coach and sema um i think and sema has a few hundred thousand followers over there which is tricking outstanding um i think mine has kind of uh blown up to i don't have any of these actual platforms so i don't know but we film stuff for it every day and i know that it's growing and I appreciate it. And just sharing good information there.

That's quick and easy to digest to make sure you check that out. I'm also on Instagram at Mark Smiley bell, and you can check me out anywhere else you want at Mark Smiley bell strength. It's never a week this week. Just never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.