Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 189 - Progress is Slow, ECA STack, and Fixing Your Deadlift

Episode Date: March 12, 2019

Slow Motion is better than No Motion. Today we talked about making progress will take time, there are no shortcuts. We examined Nsima Inyang's progress in the gym and how NOT going heavy everyday has helped him pull more weight. Mark Bell Recalls the good o'l days of taking the ephedrine caffeine aspirin pre workout stack and his buddy not being able to breathe. We also dissected Andrew Zaragoza's deadlift and give tips on how you can make some gains of your own. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject  FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/  Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

I kicked Josh off the team the other day. I think he probably deserved it, though. He's been cheating on his diet a lot. I just went over to him and just said, that's it. You're out. I saw him today, though, in his pink shirt. He looks good. Oh, yeah.

He looks handsome, doesn't he? Yeah. Filling out the biceps. Maybe it was the cheat meal. Maybe. Cheat meals. Maybe he's DJ Webbing it. DJ Web always just would say he's on a plan

i was like what plan is this to be off your diet 80 of the time like i don't dj web is the funniest guy man at the arnold um after we had dinner we go into the shop i think i was picking up some lotion he's like let's get some ice cream i'm like uh i don't know if i want some he's like nah just eat it it's fine like okay i'll take some ice cream i'm like uh i don't know if i want some he's like nah just eat it it's fine like okay i'll take some ice cream and then he buys two for himself he gives one to smoky but he's just he that man he just eats he loves to eat well so it was good so i think this was after the first or no this had to have been the second night um you know we're we're out and everyone's at the bars you know like at the hotel you know everyone just likes to hang out you know, we're, we're out and everyone's at the bars, you know, like at the hotel, you know, everyone just likes to hang out there. Um, and we're walking around, we go into

the store to get water. And this is after that night that we had all that dessert at that restaurant. Yeah. We had a cake the size of that whole table. We went nuts. And then we passed by the, like the, like the little freezer. I'm like, all right, dude, like we don't drink, like we don't party. Like let's, all right, dude, let's do this. And so we,

we got more ice cream after all of that crap that we ate. So we got chocolate wasted. That was the last night, right? Uh, no. So the last night was the night that we hung out in the room and that's when you change your name. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But DJ actually had a really good poop story. Did he change his name before or after the sex? After. I thought it was during. It was life changing. I couldn't do that during.

It was intense. There was a lot of people in that room. So I think while you were taking a break. Yeah. Just running a train in there or what? training yeah all day you should have seen dj though on the last i think it was the last dinner that we had remember we got all those desserts right apparently and then everyone had a little bit of it but then everyone's talking and you just look at dj and dj's just over here with his spoon just like just still going at every single

little dessert and just eating it slowly. And then Jessica had ordered a salad and she's like, oh, this is gross. And she just kind of left it. And then as soon as she stood up, hey, give me that salad. And then Ryan was like,

I mean, you know, she might come back and eat it. And he's like, oh, okay. Any mouse jokes to Jessica about her salad? Ah, I totally missed it. That's right. No, I missed.

I forgot. We went to eat one day. We got lunch at Burgers and Brew in Sacramento. She ordered a salad, and there was a dead mouse in her salad. You're kidding. No, I swear to God. It was horrifying. It was probably like about six months ago or so.

Yeah, I haven't been there since, to say the least. First of all, you guys need to tell us these things. I know. We like burgers and brew. I know. So do I. Oh, my God. You ruined it for me.

You didn't even take a picture or anything? You're just like dead mouse now? No, you know what? Like, so. I can understand. It could hurt that business. Yeah. Yeah. So it's weird.

So I thought about it, but I was like, that's, that's like overkill. So, um, I mean, probably should have just to have like record of it, but I mean, they saw, I mean, there's no mistaking what happened. Right. They saw what happened. Plus, I've known the owners of that facility for a long time. So it was like it's probably an oversight, like an accident. I mean, clearly no one's trying to like give anybody that, you know, kind of shit.

And I think they got shut down for a few days and stuff like that. So I think they I think they got some sort of punishment for it and hopefully uh that never happens again anybody else but yeah one of the guys that i know that owns a restaurant he just said that uh you have to check everything that you get uh for stuff like that because of where stuff gets shipped from it usually comes from warehouses and even like vegetables and stuff will get bagged and it will get um you know and so you just have to check everything that you order whether it's like straws or paper plates or paper cups or anything disposable like it's possible that there's a mouse in there because it comes from a warehouse yeah so he's like the damn thing could have came from nearly anywhere you know so yeah it was just uh an unfortunate

situation but we uh a few of the guys in here tease her about it but i was there so i don't ever i don't ever actually mess with her about it because it was like it was it was uh tragic was like you get like ptsd from that from that kind of thing it was pretty uh pretty wild yeah there was um there's a sushi restaurant i think it was like blue nami or something there's multiple blue namis but a guy took a video and uh took a video of his fish and there are like these worms that were crawling around on it and he did post it up and it went viral for that that that specific location it was bad but the that that i mean that stuff gets you scared of eating out in general

because that's just not that spot. That happens in a bunch of different places. It's just like someone doesn't always mention it. We ran into at the Arnold. There's something I forgot to bring up on our last episode where we talked a lot about the Arnold, but so many things happened I kind of forgot. But I ran into Brian Aldrewrew I think that's how you say

his last name yeah and Brian's been a good friend he's somebody that's been here at super training he's been on the podcast before former strongman athlete now he runs his own gym and trains people and stuff and he works with many disabled kids and things like that he's a guy that like gives back you know he's a guy that he's a coach he's a strength coach. He's a guy that gives back. He's a coach. He's a strength coach, and he's a guy that cares about a lot of other people. Unfortunately, he's been very sick, and you see this kind of stuff happen quite a bit

with people that they care for other people so much sometimes they forget about their own health. And you see it a lot with moms and dads where Brian's actually sick, sick. He's not just like heavy or anything like that. But you see that a lot with people. They kind of forget about their health because they're so concerned about, you know, their kid going to school and their kid going to soccer practice and their kid doing A, B, and C. And then they forget about their kind of own nutrition.

They forget they get lost in everything else that everyone else is doing. Yeah. And Brian is that kind of guy, but unfortunately he's been very ill and he, they don't know what's wrong. He's had a lot of tests done. And, um, you know, I, so I, he was telling me, he's like, he said he vomits like 30 or 40 times nearly every day. He'll just be driving and he'll just like barf, you know, and he, he has all these,

um, digestion problems and things like that. And all the way to the point where he ends up getting like seizures and all kinds of crazy things was really sad. And I said, Brian, I said, you know, I said, I, you know, I know like not every single, but I know some of the best nutrition people in the world. I know some doctors that are really, really high level. And I think, you know, between some of these people I know, I said, I think, you know, at least one of them be able to help you. So he and I have been in contact and I've been kind of bouncing around. So first of all, I looked everything up on the Internet and was trying to find some stuff. It was kind of hard. It was pretty elusive to find information. But some of the stuff that I found led me to find, you know, the people, people that travel a lot or

military personnel can end up getting like really ill. They can get diseases and stuff from the, from the travel. And so I didn't remember whether he was in the military or not, but I asked him and he said, yeah, you know, he was in the military for a few years and he traveled and traveled the world. And I was like, okay, that fits the profile of what some of these other people are saying. And there's, who knows what the hell he has. It's hard to really just say flat out, but, um, there were some other cases of this and it seems like a growing thing. And I was like, man, I've never I've never heard that before in my life of people just, you know, vomiting all day long, really, you know. with some friends and asking different people some, some, for some information. And I contacted Joel Green and contacted my friend, Daniel Orego. Those are both people that have been on this podcast. Um, they had some suggestions they were, but most of the suggestions that they recommended were things that he kind of already tried, which was like fasting and, um, you know, really limiting his foods and things like that. He just can't hold anything down.

And so that I contacted Gabrielle Lyon, who's been on the podcast as well. And she's like, he's got a worm a hundred percent. She's like, I'll just tell you right now. I think he's, you know, and so, you know, I was like, holy shit. So I put her in contact with Brian and, you know, hopefully she's able to get him some testing and stuff. But she said there's only you can get a lot of tests done with this kind of stuff and have it. It doesn't show up. Nothing shows up. Yeah.

So it's it's really gross to think about. But it's one of those things where you just have no idea what's going on your body. And he's been tested for cancer and he's been tested for all these other things. And everyone's just kind of scratching their head. But when I hear that, when somebody tells me something like that, I'm always like, OK, that's a bunch of bullshit. Because nearly everything that's ever happened in medical history has kind of already happened to some degree. Right. There's some version of it. Some doctor has seen it or

knows something about it. And so I'm always thinking, okay, let's find a solution. Let's find somebody. And same thing with fitness and same thing with strength. There's always going to be somebody that has seen something before. Somebody might want to come back from a ACL tear and they want to squat a thousand pounds again. And one coach will say that's impossible. And there's, there'll be a coach that's seen that before and they'll say, bullshit, we can do that. Here's what we got to do. And so it's important that you find, you know, if you are sick or you have something going on like that, that you, you don't get as many tests as needed until you figure out what the hell's wrong.

I think with, in Brian's case, he was just so fed up with it. He's been sick for the last maybe about two years, and he's just been so upset by it. And it's been really impacting his day-to-day that I think – not that he's like given up, but I think he was just like, this is what I got. I got something wrong with me, and I don't know what's going on. And no one else seems to be able to figure it out. But luckily enough, we were able to get them, you know, squared away for now. Hopefully they can kind of figure out what is wrong and then they can treat them. But Gabrielle was saying that there's only like one doctor in the world that can even test for what he might have. And I was like, damn, that seems that seems crazy.

That seems wild, you know. And she was like, damn, that seems, that seems crazy. That seems wild, you know? And she was the only person like he did, like did he say that she was the only person to suggest that it was a worm of some kind? He's never heard that from any other doc. Correct. I had a friend like a long time ago, like not even too long ago. Her dad lost like 30 or some odd pounds in a six month period, even though he was eating all the same amount of food and even tried eating more. They found out it was because he had like some parasites in his system that he had to get rid of.

So it's a lot more common, I think. And I think, you know, as disgusting as it is to think about, I think a lot of us have that stuff in us and maybe it's not like active and maybe it's not harming us, but if you eat sushi and if you've traveled the world, the odds of you having something gross going on is probably pretty high or even just, you know, raw food, period, you know? Yeah. So it's a disgusting topic. Anyway, let's get on to something else. But it was, you know, it was good to be able to help a friend out like that. Brian was super appreciative, and like I said, hopefully we get him set in the right direction, and Gabrielle was really kind.

She's like, any friend of yours is a friend of mine. She's like, I'll treat him for free. So she's like, all you got to do is get his ass over here, and we'll look at him and figure everything else out. Shifting gears, we're going to talk today a little bit about training. I'm going to talk a little bit about the Natty professor's training and how he's mixing in some jujitsu and some fasting and ripping up a 725-pound deadlift. But before I get to that, this is something that we celebrate often here on this podcast,

but I haven't mentioned it in a while, but it's not because it hasn't happened. It's just because I haven't mentioned it in a while. My wife texts me this morning and she said, I'm not sure if it was the pizza last night or the sex this morning, but I had a great workout. Can I get a, Hey now. Awesome.

Good job. Yeah. What an amazing text, right? Does she listen to this? Not normally. Not normally. But she does know that I, like, I've mentioned on here a lot of times, like, I just randomly say, hey, you know, we had sex last night or we had sex today.

Because we're going on 20 years of marriage. Yeah, shoot. I mean, first of all, everyone should celebrate that all the time. It shouldn't be anybody. There's no reason to keep secrets around here. You might as well be happy about it. You might as well be excited about it, right? Yeah. But, you know, so she knows I talk about it on the podcast.

She's heard me say it, and she doesn't care. She's like, whatever. Okay, that's good. But you guys ate pizza last night? Yeah, we wow yeah okay see my son we're watching uh we're watching uh breaking bad and i was telling my wife i'm like you're just like this woman on this show you know whatever walter's wife yeah walter's wife oh no don't read us the worst character in that show i know i know that she she goes downhill a lot more than we're on like season two. Okay. So she's still all right.

Yeah. She's still all right. Right now she's just like a, she's kind of like just a helicopter mom at this point. Yeah. And so I'm teasing my wife and I'm saying, you're kind of like her, you know? And my son's laughing. My son's like, yeah, you are kind of like her. And then she said something about in the show the show she was said something about hey we're

gonna just order pizza tonight and uh he looked at my my son looked at my wife and he said that's something you never said before where you're just gonna order pizza tonight she's like all right we'll order pizza tonight and so we ordered pizza last night that was smart by jake yeah that's right yeah stephanie texts me she's like my God, I thought high-waisted pants were to like hide your waist. Cause she heard like high-waisted vagina pants. And I'm like, no, it's,

it's definitely that, but we're just joking and laughing at what Jesse says. But now she's all concerned. Like, Oh my gosh, this whole time. Like this whole time. Like,

yeah, sorry, babe. It's been on display. And by the way, thank you. Yeah. It's been on display. And by the way, thank you. Yeah. Hey, it's good for you. You get the view.

Yeah. Yeah, it's just like you just want to go up to some of these girls and just say thank you. Nope. That's not true. Appreciate that.

Thank you. Or like the Chappelle skit when he was walking around the city and he's like, he had stickers that said you had great boobs and he's like, you have great New York boobs and he would just like put it on girls.

I forgot that skit. I've seen like every skit on Chappelle, but I forgot that. Yeah, it was him. Him and him and Rogan just randomly got together and just walked around giving girls stickers that had great boobs. Wow. It's pretty funny. So maybe you have great high waisted vagina pants. Oh, Lord. Yeah. Oh, Lord.

Yeah. Oh, Jesus. So, Natty Professor, what's going on with these lifts you got going on? How are you able to, because I think you said you've lost about 12 to 15 pounds from last year, right? Yeah, from last year. I think maybe last year, was it 2018? I think I was around 260 to 262 last year. And the year before that, when I started jujitsu, I started jujitsu around 265.

265 has always been about like, I mean, not always, but for a few years of powerlifting, that was like my lifting weight. So that's where I performed the best. That's where I pulled 755. I mean, that's where I did my meet. I was like 265 to 267. It was harder for me to get heavier than that, but it like, it took a little bit of cutting to get lighter than that. So when I did jujitsu, I wasn't even necessarily trying to get lighter, but because like over time I started

off at three days a week that I wanted to continue to get better. So I went to four days, went to five sessions. And with all of those sessions, I started to drop weight because I mean, I was still trying to lift minimum three times a week while getting on all those sessions each week. And now it's six to eight. So I dropped that weight over that period of time. And then fasting made it a little bit easier because I started fasting, not necessarily for the benefit of the ease of having a caloric deficit. I started it mainly because I heard a lot of people mentioning how much more focused they felt. And like we've talked about, I was very food focused.

So I would always be thinking of my next meal during the day, right? Isn't it tough when you're hungry? Yeah, it is. Especially when you're trying to work. Like I have to work at a computer. I have a lot of like busy work I have to do at a computer in terms of programming. You're like, shit, I'm hungry.

Exactly. You just think about that next meal. I'd be eating like, you know, four good solid size meals a day. So I was like, let me try out this fasting thing to see if it's going to allow me. Because all of these people are saying I feel so much more focused. Right. And almost no matter how you do it, you got when you eat, you have, you know, takes you 15 to 20 minutes to eat it. You know, it's going to take some time to prep it.

Even if you meal prepped, that's still, it still might take hours to prep a bunch of meals. Yeah. And even if you cooked it that day, then your 15 minute eating window has now, you know, become an hour long thing because you cooked it and you ate it. And the energy, like you, you feel, you, you do feel a little bit tired after you eat because now you're digesting that food. So it even affects your energy too. You're slowed down and, and you always have this idea that you're just going to eat a little bit so you can continue onward, but you never do. You always overeat every time. Yeah. So, um, that's why I started that. And then when I did start doing the fasting, I still ate a decent amount of food. I made sure to eat a lot in my feeding windows, but I started to notice that I was getting leaner and leaner and leaner. And then I pretty much now stabilized around 242 to 250. I can I can have a range depending on my hydration on any certain day, you know, and that's where I am now. That's where I feel really good in

terms of my performance. I personally never did think that it would be possible for me to be able to perform at this level, being as lean as I currently am. I always thought that, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to always need a decent amount of body fat and not necessarily being really like really high in terms of body fat, but a decent amount to be able to actually, you know, lift and do jujitsu at the same time. But it's, I'm finding that I'm able to, you know, be leaner and leaner, uh, and perform well over time. Have you ever been fat? Uh, when I was younger, that, that, that time when I had to stop running because of my Ashkut slaughter, you got a little like chubby. Yes. I, I, I gained a lot of weight and that was partially because I was eating a lot of food

and partially because I wasn't running and I was working out a lot. So, I mean, I mentioned like I got up to around 200 by the time I was 16. That 200 was a lot of like muscle, but a lot of fat too. So when I started playing soccer again, I lost quite a bit of body fat,

probably went down to maybe 185. And that's where I started. I was in, I was in better shape. Pictures of you, even when you're just a teenager, maybe even before you even started actually like lifting, I think maybe you're just doing soccer or you may have started lifting shortly before that. But some pictures I've seen, you look pretty lean and you look like you've always had some muscle mass on you. Yeah. So there's a picture on my Instagram and it's from senior year of high school. That's, I was probably around, like, that's when I think I was like, I've reached my peak height. I was probably around 190 or something there. But that was after like, cause I, I played, I started playing soccer again when I was 16. So that was junior year. So after junior year is

when I lost that bit of weight again and senior year, was pretty lean again so um yeah I did have all that muscle but that's just because I started lifting when I was younger which I'm very fortunate that I was able to start so young because of be wrong, it seems to me like you lifted and then you learned a little bit about nutrition and then you were jacked and tan. and then you were jacked and tan. Do you think it's an advantage or a disadvantage, the fact that it came to you fairly quickly? Or did it not even come to you fairly quickly? Absolute advantage.

Absolute advantage. Because I always say that that injury was one of the best things that really ever happened to me. If I didn't get injured then, I wouldn't have gotten to the gym so young. And then if I didn't get into the gym so young, I wouldn't have had the development I have currently. That makes a lot of sense. So even though you're gifted some good genetics for lifting and good genetics for getting in shape and being big and lean and everything, you had this injury that still forced you to learn about lifting, still forced you to get up off your ass and not be fat. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because like, even when I went and I, my first year of college, when we, when I was playing soccer there and we did have, you know, the weight room stuff, I knew how to, you know, handle myself around, around a weight room. Whereas my teammates really

didn't know how to, and I was doing more stuff than the strength and conditioning coach over at the school had us do. And that's just because I was lucky enough to start lifting early at some cool people in my gym that I would like maybe stalk around without them realizing it and ask a few questions to learn like what to do in terms of lifting. Um, I was super lucky. Uh, it, it, it, it is harder when you, you know, you're, it's not impossible, but it's a little bit harder to push yourself when you're starting later in life. You have a job, you have all these other responsibilities. Now you want to start lifting. It's possible because lots of people have done it.

But you got to push yourself more. You know, I do. And if I didn't start, then I probably wouldn't be doing the work I am now. Was it your mom that kind of got you into lifting? Yeah. Yeah, we talked about this. It. It's because like when I got that injury, I got depressed. I wasn't active. So she had to find a way that would allow me to be active and do something that would have me get some energy out. And that was going to the gym because I couldn't run. And you were kind of angry and stuff too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Cause I couldn't run. I

wasn't going to soccer practice anymore. I wasn't able to, you know, play, play with all my friends that did. That's a great, that's a great message, you know, for people that are listening to the show that have kids. I mean, if you got a teenage son or daughter, that's got a little extra, a little extra energy, and maybe it's not always all positive, then, you know, get up, take them to a boxing class, take them to karate, take them to jujitsu, take them to go work out. Take them to something. Figure out a way for them to move. Maybe all you can do is get them to go on some walks and get them to ride their bike or something. But, man, movement will slow you down quite a bit, and it really does so much for your brain.

There's actually a lot of research that shows. So we always think we're going to go to the gym we're going to change our bodies and really the actual truth of it is you're going to go to the gym and you're going to change your mind what is kind of more more the truth of it i mean you're you're able to literally expand uh the cells in your brain from exercising and you're you're able to you're able to tap into, if you just look at, uh, the, uh, web, the, uh, YouTube channel, what I've learned has a really good, has a really good piece in there where it talks a lot about that. And so we know that energy expenditure in the gym can be

valuable, but we also know that it can possibly make up a smaller percentage than maybe we were, we're anticipating. I think that we're thinking we're going to go in the gym and we're going to kill it and we're going to get the body that we want. But we know, and we talk about it all the time here on this podcast, it takes a lot more than that. You know, they say it takes a village to raise a kid. Well, it takes a really, really crazy concerted effort to have the body that you want and to have the strength that you want. effort to have the body that you want and to have the strength that you want. And so it's not just what you do in the gym. The, uh, the diet is, is a huge part of it. The sleep is a huge part of it. The hydration is a huge part of it. That's when it starts to be, you're like, holy shit, you know, getting in shape is like a full-time job. Yeah. It's something that really, yeah, that really

take it really. Um, and for some people it might come a little bit more naturally. Yeah, that really take it really. And for some people, it might come a little bit more naturally. But at some point for every single person, it's going to take a more concentrated effort as you get older, as your body starts to kind of slow down. But, you know, so you were able to you were able to drop some of this weight. You were 260 and now you're what 240 something yeah ranging between like between 242 250 any given day and then uh kind of randomly you pulled that 725 deadlift recently yeah but what do you kind of contribute that strength to other than the SARMs and other than the trend the SARMs and the trend okay we just have to get that out of the way because that's what everybody's gonna say right not true by the way but sarms and trend now uh what do i contribute that through that strength too um well i mean obviously i did a lot of power lifting before i did a lot of lifting in general before uh in in terms of like the movements i really like doing i love the pen lay row and i

really do like dead lifting but i i really think that, especially when trying to attack two sports at the same time, and this is for anything, anybody that wants to like jujitsu and lifting or basketball and lifting mentioned volleyball and lifting. Um, and you really want to attack the other sport and do well at it. You need to learn when to, when you can, what days you can put your foot on the gas and what days you need to put your foot on the brakes. Um, especially when it comes to, you know, when you're in the gym, because I'm not feeling like that every single day. I'm not feeling like I can pull seven 25 every single day that I train. Uh, but on that day I came into the gym and I had an immense amount of energy. I don't even know why, because I rolled that morning. I did jujitsu that morning.

So I came to the gym that afternoon. I still felt really, really good. And as I was pulling, everything felt good. So I knew, okay, today I can test myself and see what I can do. And I did that. I pulled 725 on that day. And there are multiple days that I feel like that, but a lot of people ask me, how can I get stronger while, you know, getting better at jujitsu? That literally takes time because the first thing I think that's going to take precedence. And I think you can use this with almost any type of sport is number one, getting used to the way you'll be expending energy in that sport.

Okay. So I always talk about the way you're wasting it, not even wasting, but the way you're performing on the mats will get better over time. Your first few months in jujitsu, you're going to feel super sore and super tired every day after you finish, because all of those movements are different for you. You've not putting yourself, your body in those positions often. Um, and it's, it's, it's going to tax you a lot. So don't expect to be hitting PRS in the gym for the first few months that you start that new sport, whatever it is. Allow your body to get used to the movements and the positions that you're going to be putting yourself into. And then over time, you'll be able to start making progress in the gym again because your overall recovery is going to be better. recovery is going to be better. When you do get used to the demands of that specific new sport, then you could potentially start pushing yourself in the gym, whether that takes three months. For me, I think it took me six to seven months to get myself up to doing jujitsu five days a week.

And then after that, I was able to start seeing progress in the gym again. But initially, it was a regression in my lifts, getting used to jujitsu while I was still trying to lift, but I was feeling like crap every singleitsu while I was still trying to lift, but I was feeling like crap every single day that I was in the gym. And then as jujitsu and I wasn't wasting as much energy on the mats and I was recovering much better from the mats, I was able to come to the gym and start progressing again while I was also continuing to progress on the mats. So initially it's a give and take. Like it's not everyone wants, like we all want to get stronger while we're getting better at this other sport.

It's possible, but it's something that takes time. And like I said, you have to know when you've got to put your foot on the gas in the gym days that you can. You could feel it. And then days where you're not feeling as good. You've got to be smart on those days and literally just do what you can and, you know, just progress in that fashion. In, uh, in jujitsu and in the school that you go to, um, it's probably, it's probably, correct me if I'm wrong, I'm imagining that it's probably kind of hard to like overtrain, um, and really mess it up because you probably have some pretty sound coaching over there or are there guys over there that are still like reckless like you

might see some of the people here in in this gym like we have people that coach in here and we have people that will program in here but you're still kind of left to your own you know you're you can still like add whatever like no one's going to stop you, you know, just adding more weight. So I would imagine the way that just jujitsu works is like you can't really just randomly roll with a black belt and you can't really randomly do these things too intensely. But maybe I have the wrong perception of it. There's different factors. So I'll first talk about the gym so we can like we can have a reference point over training the gym very easy to do because if you're given

or you're doing a program you were like i'm gonna do everything on this program and you're gonna try to and you might lift too heavy of a load and injure yourself because that load was too heavy but you tried right and you failed and you injured, or you're just doing too much volume and you keep going and you can't recover. Or your percentages are slightly off. There's a bunch of different things. Yeah, exactly. So we know how we can overtrain in the gym. In jujitsu, it's kind of different because like in most schools, you'll have a portion of the class where you'll do drilling and the professor will teach something and you'll drill that. And then you have your a portion of the class where you'll do drilling and the professor will teach something and you'll drill that. And then you have your other portion of the class where you'll spar.

OK, and typically with newer individuals, when you spar, you know, you can take breaks between sparring sessions. You don't have to spar every single round. And most people don't. To your point of like rolling with the black belt. Some schools are different, but like, you know, in my school, usually the black belt will ask, you know, or let, you know, if they see a white belt, that's not rolling, they'll be like, let's roll. And they'll take it easy on that white belt. They'll let them work things, et cetera. So in, in, in that, in that essence, that's not how you'd, you'd, you'd overtrain on the mats. The way you'd overtrain, I would, I would say would be maybe doing too many sessions too quickly. So there are people that, you know, do take it step-by-step when they start. So they,

they initially start going three times a week, but then there are people who are like, I want to go five or six times a week and they can't really recover. But you know, even if you do that, you'll get yourself to a place where you can recover. But I do think it's kind of difficult, I'd say, to over-train during jiu-jitsu. The main type of injuries that are going to happen are injuries that happen from rolling with another individual. Maybe your partner, they held a kimura for too long or they did it too quick and they tore something. That doesn't happen often, by the way. But that can happen. Sometimes you're so new that you don't even know what you're in. Exactly.

You don't know when to tap. Like, I'm not sure what this guy. And then you're like, oh, whoops. And that's why also there are upper belts, because those generally a blue belt, purple belt, brown belt, black belt will know when to let go of something. Generally, if they have a hard head, maybe they won't. But generally they will. And then also you could injure yourself and i did this this is partially how i tore my meniscus um a black belt had me in a leg lock and i turned the wrong way and he still he he held it um it wasn't necessarily

his fault though because i turned the wrong way quickly okay and when i did that i felt something it got worse over time and my minute my meniscus initially tore kind of important for you to know that's, that's the wrong way to go. It's the wrong, exactly. It's the wrong way to go. Um, but in those situations, like, you know, if you don't know it, so those are things that can happen. Um, but it is, I'd say it is much harder to overtrain in jujitsu. And I also get asked often, you know, what is cardio that you would do to get better at jujitsu? I always just say, just do more jujitsu. So the reason why I don't take any breaks now and I don't necessarily need to take breaks on the mats at all is because in those sparring sessions, I don't stop sparring.

So we'll have maybe six to nine some days if we have more time, maybe 10 sparring sessions after class. And they're like six to eight minute rounds. And you have the choice to, you know, you can choose different partners and you have choices. You can also sit out for different rounds if you need to rest. Just don't stop rolling. That's what I would say to those individuals. Because when you're really, really tired and you're coming from a strength athlete background, us as strength athletes, when we get on the mats and do jujitsu, we want to push and use a lot of strength to do these things. But in situations where you're really, really tired, you can't and you don't have strength.

And then you have to start relying on bit easier for you because you can kind of, someone puts you in something, you can, you can bicep yourself out of an arm bar, which I've done before. Um, or you, you, you, you just do a lot of things because you're really strong, but you can't do that when you're tired. So, you know, a strength athlete doing this sport, you don't have to go on an assault bike or a treadmill or do anything else outside of, if you have the time, literally just roll more and continue rolling when you're tired. It's honestly kind of difficult to get injured unless like it's a partner situation or it's your fault for doing something wrong. been deadlifting? Have you been doing more like reps and stuff? And I know you, I know you mentioned the row, but people that are listening to this probably can't just do a row and then, and then get, you know, uh, whatever that percentage was of your max 90 something percent of your max. Yeah. Um, so how would somebody, you know, be able to, uh, you know, pick up some tips from this?

What are some things that you did like maybe with your deadlift? I know you said you haven't been squatting, so maybe I have been squatting much lighter. And so maybe that's contributed partly to because maybe your back is well rested. pound movements with my squat bench and my deadlift, but also my accessory movements, controlling the movement through ranges of motion with time. So I do tempo squats. So that would be like four or five seconds down, four or five seconds up with three 15 and more plates. And I've found personally that that's helped my knees out a lot rather than squatting heavier. Often. I do, I do pause deadlifts and tempo. So there was a long time ago when you told me to, you know, control my eccentric more. And I've made that a staple of deadlifting all throughout, no matter how heavy I deadlift, even if it's in the sixes, I always control the eccentric and I do a lot of pause deadlifts. Yeah. I think people miss, people tend to drop

their shoulders on a deadlift. It's hard, hard to explain. But a lot of times when – and I'm pretty guilty of this. But like as you go to come down in a deadlift, people just – they discontinue lowering their hips. Yeah. And they just like lower their upper body. They let the weight clank on the ground. And I think you're always better off just trying to – and it's hard. And it's going to reduce the amount of weight that you use significantly, especially in the beginning. Man, it might reduce the weight by weight that you use significantly, especially in the beginning.

Man, it might reduce the weight by 50 pounds or even 100 pounds at first. But you'll get used to it over a period of time. And I think you want to try to keep yourself connected to the bars the way that I try to look at it. And you want to kind of keep that constant tension. Almost the way a bodybuilder would keep the constant tension on a squat. builder would keep the constant tension on a squat they kind of get that um they get into that rhythm where they're they're just kind of like pumping a lot of blood into the legs yeah and it's very similar in that deadlift you want to try to keep yourself connected to the bar uh don't let the weights crash on the ground try to control them um pretend that the weights are fragile pretend that they're going to break you know if you drop them they're going to break. You know, if you drop them, they're going to break. So you just follow them down, stay tight with it, and then do, you know,

do your reps repeatedly. And they'll all start to look the same. You know, rep number five and rep number one will look the same. And that's where, you know, we get back into that topic of over training. If Encima says, you know, Mark, I think it'd be great for you to do three sets of five with this percentage of your max. Well, the percentage of the percentage that he may give me or associate to my strength, um, my five reps might look way different than whatever you had in mind for the way my five reps should look like. And this is why it's so important. And I, and I hate being like a technique monger, but it's important that you adhere to trying to do the lift the right way. Yeah. Like do the lift better and you'll be better. You'll be stronger. Trying just to add

weight is great. And, and occasionally kind of rolling the dice, so to speak, and having a dicey set of three, like I'm in favor of that. I'm in favor of like, I'm in favor of letting it go, turning up the music a little bit and having some intensity but what is that going to cost you you know can you afford to do that i've had andrew you know go nuts a couple times on on some on some sets uh of squats and things like that and where he's done you know he's maybe i said hey you know let's let's see what it looks like we do about 12 reps and he's gone on to do like 24 reps, right? Yeah.

And then I'd be like, okay, well, you kind of, you know, we've got like one accessory movement and then you're done because you just killed, absolutely killed yourself on the squat, which is great. I applaud that. But now we got to account for that because now you're dipping into your reserves. What is this? He's had lower back issues. What is this going to do to your lower back? What is this going to do to your lower back?

What is this going to do to your recovery? It's something you have to really think about. You're going to really roll the dice now. Well, now we have to think about this. And I think in our effort to get better, we're always just thinking, I just want to lift more. I just want to do more. But you could just simply lift the weight better and you'll be stronger.

And I think that's how you were able to do the 725 deadlift with ease because you've been practicing your form on these other movements. You slowed down the squat. So even though the weights are lighter, it's still not easy. It's difficult. I mean, you wouldn't show up if it was really easy. Like what would be the point in doing it? You're still creating a stimulus that's strengthening. You're still creating a stimulus that's probably good for your joints, your ligaments, your tendons.

You're still creating a stimulus that's probably good for hypertrophy, helping you keep your muscle mass, helping you stay lean. You're still creating, eliciting enough stimulus for your metabolism to burn some calories. And so for that reason, it is strengthening. It is something that's strengthening you. Now it's not a, you know, it's not a 622 squat, which is your best in knee sleeves, but it's a, you know, 405 or 365 with really good form, right? Yes. Yes. And okay. So you, you said some really, really big things that I don't want people to miss. Number one, when I first started controlling the eccentric on my deadlift, after you told me a few years back, my deadlift went down initially

for quite a few months. Depressing. It is. It sucks. It sucks. But if I didn't make that change to my deadlift, my deadlift would not be where, where it was then, where I got to 755 and where it is now. That, that was a big concept for me to understand. The second big thing you mentioned was having every single rep of every single set look the same. I still keep that principle with literally everything I do. And even when it comes to working with much heavier loads, I try to have that single look just as good as when I'm working with a 405 deadlift. I want my 725.

And in jiu-jitsu even, right? Your drills. Exactly. I want everything to look perfect. But the last thing is Mike O'Hearn. I'm mentioning Mike O'Hearn for a reason. He's- He just cranked out a baby.

He cranked out a baby. 10 pounds. Yeah. Yeah, congrats. His name is Titan. Uh-huh. Titan Maximus O'Hearn. How sick is that name? His name's really tight. Yeah.hearn oh that kid's gonna be a badass yeah yeah the teacher's like oh what's your name titan

that's dope like okay yeah yeah but the reason why i mentioned mike is every anyone can say anything they want to say you outangled him i did we could we did i did out angle him but also he's your supplier okay i've always been impressed with how mike controls the weight that he works with no matter what he does even his facial expression even his facial expression and because of how old he is and he's still able to lift with not not just the weights i i honestly like I do care about the weight he lifts, but I just admire the control he has over that. It's literally like he's lifting it with his brain. You know?

And so that's partially why like I started doing all of that. Like I don't, it's not everything that I do that's tempo, but I make it a big part of what I do because I have noticed that it's had a great effect on my elbows, my shoulders, my knees, the subluxation that I was talking to you about. And the subluxation is right before dislocation. This is happening in jujitsu a bit. My shoulder would slip out of place. It was totally dealt with by doing a lot of tempo work for my shoulder.

So that's a big concept of what I do now in terms of like lifting in jujitsu. I do a ton of tempo work. I still have days where I lift heavier and it's not as tempo focused, but it's a staple part of what I do because controlling that load, it helps a lot with your joints. It helps a lot with strengthening over time, but it takes patience and it takes working with lighter loads that you'd usually think are a joke. It's hard to find information on, but there's something that's called strength aerobics, which sounds like two opposites slammed together, right? But strength aerobics was talked about a lot by Yuri Vershansky. I hope I'm saying that name right. One of the godfathers of strength conditioning. And he talked about it quite a bit. And basically it was just the idea of just what you're talking about, just tempo lifting, very, very slow eccentric work. And for anybody that's ever had an injury that's listening right now, you ever had a shoulder

problem or an elbow or a knee, it doesn't really matter what it is. You could take any exercise and get about a six second descent going on, on any lift that you think is going to help the area. And it's, it's brutal. It is so, it is so taxing and so difficult to do. There's many variations of it as well, but strength aerobics specifically is usually done in a bodybuilding fashion. And what I mean by that is there's no pause at the bottom and there's no resting at the top. And there's, and you, you basically just want

to try to keep the weights moving the entire time. And it is so difficult, but any, anyone that's listening right now that's had a pec problem, that's had an elbow issue, just give it a shot, you know, try it out on a bench press. And the kind of weights that you're going to use, shit, 30% of your max maybe? I mean, it's going to be challenging. So if you bench 300 pounds, try it first. The first week you try it, try it with like 95 pounds. Try it with some chump change to get used to it, to give it a good try

and then if you wanted to actually transfer over i mean that's more rehabilitate rehabilitation type work if you wanted to transfer over into strength you're going to have to work up and start to use a little bit more weight yeah um but the cool thing about it is if you do a set of six reps that way the amount of time under tension that you get it's still enormous so you're still underneath that bar for a really long time so it's something that everyone should give it give a shot to and from a metabolic perspective you feel like you're dying i mean it costs you a lot it takes a lot of energy to lift that way and you can see us demonstrating us we're watching some of this on youtube here, lifting super slow. And man, is it boring. And it's boring. I mean, it's flat out boring to do five sets of five on a bench

press with 225 pounds is extremely boring for people, but it can get you strong. It's something that you should, you know, I've said this in seminars all the time. You're not going to get thrown in jail. We're not going to, no one's going to come up to you and uh and tell you you're lifting the wrong way by you doing a lift correctly like do don't be afraid to take have the strength to take weight off the bar have the strength to do the lift the right way and it's hard it's very difficult you get in a training session and your training partner's using four plates and you're like oh shit man i'll just use four plates. I wanted to do that so badly.

The other day I was lifting with Zach. But Zach is, you know, Zach is he's he's strong right now. And I just came off a meet. So my strength is a lot of times your strength goes up for the meet. You peak for the meet and then it comes back down a little bit. I'm coming back down and I'm about to head back up. I wanted to kick his ass. I wanted to do more weight than him, but I was like, no, the time to do more weight than him is in the meat.

Doing it right here, right now doesn't matter. I already benched more than him. So it doesn't, you know, what am I proving? And I'm just probably going to hurt myself. So there's no reason to roll the dice at that moment. I'd imagine that teaches or strengthens you mentally, right? To have to endure this long, slow process of a workout. It does sound terrible. Yeah.

No, it really does. We talked about dopamine on the podcast before. You're not getting that rush. You're like starving yourself away from it. You're like, this sucks. I want to do this and you're starving yourself away from uh something that you enjoy in in place of something that could potentially make you great and you're like man i can't stand watching this other guy

lift more weight than me but this is i mean we were making fun of in sema the other day he was doing his uh pen lay rows and he uh put two dimes on each side we're like dude just put on a quarter he's like nope like come on bro just put on that core he's like nope a question from instagram from bv toms uh how many times a week should you be deadlifting i think that totally first off depends on the type of deadlift you do the reason i say that is there you know you can do conventional, you do sumo. I do think there's a strength in both, but a trend that I've noticed with individuals that pull mainly with conventional, um, and a lot of the time it has to do with the way

they're pulling. They usually feel a lot of lower back stress. Uh, and the more they do conventional deadlift during the week, the more lower back stress they feel. And you can't, that's, it's not sustainable. deadlift during the week, the more lower back stress they feel. And you can't, that's, it's not sustainable. Uh, at least until you, uh, until you get to a point where it doesn't strain your lower back at all. Um, I could sumo deadlift three to four times a week and be okay because I don't feel strain in my back when I'm doing that. I don't even, it doesn't strain me much because

of my positioning. I'm able to get into a very upright torso. My hips are used to the stress of the sumo deadlift now. So I would say as many times as you can, where you can recover for the next week, whether that's one time each week or two times each week, you just need to make sure that you can recover from session to session, week to week. And then obviously you want to vary session to session. So if you do want to do a deadlift twice a week or build yourself to that, if you're doing it once a week currently, then maybe if you're deadlifting once a week right now, deadlift a second day with much lighter load, maybe for some speed work. That's exactly what I was going to ask because I was just like, you know, we have two bench days, basically one of them being speed day. So if it made sense to do a speed day on deadlift. And then on that second day, you could over time time you could build the intensity you do on that second day so that you build yourself to a point where you can deadlift with a decent intensity on both days

even though one day is going to end up being heavier than the other yeah yeah and then like you you could go there is a point where i was sumo deadlifting three times a week but i didn't feel too much stress with that partially again because it's a sumo deadlift for me. I can get into a good position with that. But personally, if I did that with conventional, my lower back would be fried. So I couldn't conventional deadlift three times a week, but I still added in once a week every now and then I'll be doing conventional. I think the main thing is you always have to think about like, what's next, you know? So if you can certainly train a deadlift multiple times a week there's not any problem with that at all um and i would say that that two is probably

a good number because three is fine but most people are not going to be able to handle deadlifting that many times a week especially if they're adding in squats and they're adding in bench now it just starts to get a little hectic and it might be a little too much. Two times a week sounds very reasonable. As he's mentioning, you can go light, heavy. You can even go light, medium, heavy and rotate those around. There's a lot of different ways that you can explore this. I know that James Smith and Chad Wesley Smith are guys that have implemented light, medium, heavy workouts where they do things three times a week, bench squat, deadlift three times a week. And they just rotate it around by going light, medium, and heavy.

That seems to work really well for a lot of people. But you have to always think about what's coming next. So if I'm going to deadlift three times a week, how long am I going to do that for? And what's that for? In my opinion, that would be you're working on your frequency. You're trying to maybe increase your work capacity. So with that being said, the objective during this block of deadlifting three times a week wouldn't be that you lift the most amount of weights that you've ever lifted before. The weights would probably be lighter. And maybe you're trying to get some extra volume in there and maybe you're just practicing,

you know, in jujitsu and in yoga and things like that. They call it a practice. They call it a school. You go to a school. He mentioned even having like a professor, right? You have like a teacher, you have like an instructor. But for some reason, when we, when we walk into a gym, everyone's IQ is instantly cut in half and no one's there to practice anything. It's not a practice. You're just lifting weights, bro. And it becomes so different than, than what it should be, but it should be a practice and it should be, it should be drills. You know, people that, that do drills and people that get the, the, the drills correct, they develop these skills and those skills can be applied to the game. But we don't think about lifting weights that way for some weird reason. But if you're going to deadlift three times a week, that's what you would be thinking of. You'd be thinking of I'm trying to acquire a skill. I really suck at deadlifting. I don't like my form. I don't like my positioning. It's just it just doesn't look the way that it should. And I'm going to work on it until I get it right, until I get it correct. But you're also not going to lift more weight until you get it correct. You're going to do it until it's the right way.

Once it's mastered and once it's the right way, now we can probably move into deadlifting twice a week, maybe even deadlifting only once a week. If you're going to deadlift as heavy as possible, then you probably only want to deadlift like once a week. deadlifting as heavy as possible. And, and if you're somebody that really does like to train heavy and intensely, um, then you're going to have to figure out, does the deadlift currently look the way that you want it to? And if it doesn't, that's when you're going to want to say, okay, man, I don't want to do this. I want to just deadlift 405 every week. But if you want to start deadlifting 505, you probably need to do something different. It's probably time to break up those deadlifts. Um, well, what do they call that? Uh, you want to spread out your fatigue. So take the intensity of going a hundred percent every day

and go 30% three times a week. That would still give you like around 90%, right? This is just a hypothetical situation. You don't have to actually only use 30% of your%, right? This is just a hypothetical situation. You don't have to actually only use 30% of your max, but it's just an example. You probably, even if you're practicing, you probably still want to use around 60% of your max to have it transfer over properly. But that's what you would want to do. You'd want to say, you know what, it doesn't look the way that it should. And so I'm going to practice it a lot. When I did my bodybuilding show, I had to practice posing. Um, I practiced it once a week for a little while.

And I was like, Oh, this is not looking the way it's supposed to. Then it was like three times a week. And it was like, I better do this a couple of times a day. Like I'm really bad at this. Yeah. And so I started working on it multiple times a day until, until I got it good enough for me to get on a stage and, and present and present what I presented and do the best job I possibly could. Yeah. I remember the three or four training blocks that I did deadlift three times a week. That was because I needed to increase my frequency to learn my hip position, to get better at finding out where to place my hips. Because for a lot of people, when they're pulling, they don't know when to actually begin their pool. That was my big issue. I'd sometimes begin pulling too low. I'd sometimes begin pulling too high. And it's, it's funny when I watch videos, like old YouTube videos of me

deadlifting at the old gym, you'll see my face. It's all effed up. And like, mom, I'm like, I'm getting all hype and stuff before my deadlift, just like I I had to use a lot of force to to to actually get that bar off the ground. So you're right. When I did deadlift three times a week, I did that mainly so that I had so much frequency that I was able to practice that movement as much as possible. If I'm only doing it once a week, I wouldn't get enough practice in. I wouldn't be able to actually do it enough to really get better at performing the lift. But then when I got to a point where my hips were snapping in the right spot every single time after that, I then decreased my frequency to deadlifting twice a week. And that was good enough. So that that's exactly what you mentioned right there. You think about like if we were going to like practice self-defense, let's say that you had a weapon, right? Well, it wouldn't be a great way to practice self-defense, let's say that you had a weapon, right?

Well, it wouldn't be a great way to practice self-defense if I've never practiced it before and we're going 100% and you're hitting me with a baseball bat or something, right? Like that wouldn't be a good way to do it. First of all, you would have probably something soft at first because we would not want to like hurt each other, right? And you'd say, all right, well, here's the different different holds here's the different positions to disarm this bat from me or knife or gun or whatever it might be and we would do it slow and we would drill it and drill it and drill it and you say okay well now we're using a real bat you know and now you got to really you know i'm going to actually swing this thing you got to really be paying attention but it would still be at 60 and then it would go to 70.

Same thing, right? Because you can't learn things that are extremely hard and extremely intense with full on intensity without doing it slowly first. I mean, you have to, you know, crawl before you walk and you have to walk before you run and you have to run before you can sprint. before you walk and you have to walk before you run and you have to run before you can sprint. I mean, these are all things that have been ingrained into our body forever. And so you're going to have to learn these things and take these steps slowly. And if you apply some of the things that Nseema is sharing today, he's talking about jujitsu, he's talking about lifting, he's talking about work, and he's talking about increasing these things over a period of time. You can apply that to anything that you have going on in your life right now i'm just thinking about maybe possibly adding another deadlift day for myself

because i do want to i want to hit a pretty big deadlift in the next by like summertime we'll say how long would somebody take the weight down and do like multiple, multiple deadlifts per week before they decide to test what they've been doing? So how long, like how long would a training block be? Like, yeah, you tell me. Okay. So, um, first off right now you're deadlifting once a week, right? Correct. How's it look like on that day? Is it generally like a day where you do X amount of work than you do a heavy pool or is, does it look different each week? Uh, it, it looks different every week, but lately it's been like a, like a heavy set of like three or I'll do a double and then I'll stick out a certain way

and then hit that for like five sets. Okay. So that, that, that's a heavier day. Yeah. I would say on your other day, uh, now it'd be kind of on your other day. I would suggest that you work on some potential pause deadlifts. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but make sure that you're working with the pause deadlifts that are pretty

dang light. So after every single set, you could do two or three more reps because especially as a conventional puller, pause deadlifts are rough on your back. And given that you have back issues, you don't want to do pause deadlifts with too heavy of a load where every single, every single set you're feeling super taxed because you won't recover before your next deadlift session. So that would be my suggestion specifically for you. Um, that would be really beneficial for you, especially since

sometimes you do lose, but I've seen your deadlift. Sometimes you do lose your position in your deadlift. And I've personally found that pause deadlifts, depending on where you pause for some people, if they lack lockout strength, it's good to pause at the knee and have a very strong, swift lockout. But for a lot of people who are having problems off the floor, the better place to pause is literally the inch that you break off the floor. That's what I worked on for a long time. Yeah, I'd lose position in my deadlift. Every time at the start, I'd lurch forward a little bit.

So I worked with like 315 initially where I'd break the floor and then I'd hold once the bar is like a few inches off the ground and I'd finish through lockout. And I slowly built that up. So nowadays I don't lose position in my deadlift at all. So this is my most recent one. I don't even remember the weight. 270, 295. Yeah. That looks pretty clean though.

I think your grip needs to come out a tiny bit too. Make a little bit more room for your legs. Your legs are getting bigger. Thanks. Legs are getting bigger. Thanks. Legs are getting a little thicker. You notice on every rep though, like since you don't come to a full stop, your second and your third rep.

They're always better. They're always better because you're starting with a higher hip position too. You're starting where you should start. Yeah. If you look at where you started your first rep, you started that rep like lower. Your hips were lower.

It's almost as if rep number two, three, four, and five are done as a partial range of motion lift. So it's almost as if somebody stuck mats underneath the plates, but they didn't really. You now have the proper tightness, and now all you're doing is shifting your hips back. You kind of see how that works? You're shifting your hips back away from the bar. It always feels way easier to do the second rep. I always say if I can pull it up once, I can get at least two. No matter what the weight is because of getting in the right position.

That's because when you're coming down, you're getting into the position you should be in. So a good idea would be to like when you do come down. I need to put my face up to the mic. Thanks. When you come down, like watch this again. Okay, you lost position on your first rep. Your hips came up. when you come down, like watch this again. Okay. You lost position on your first rep. Your hips came up when you come down.

I think Ed Cohn does this maintain tightness, even when you're on the ground and hold that position for a little bit and then do your second pool. So you can feel where that position is. And then what your, your goal is to try to get that positioning on your first rep. Yeah. That's where you should be.

And you're, and you're, you're not bouncing, bouncing, but you you're you're reflecting off the ground a little bit yeah you want to stay a little tighter than that so you don't so because if we get rid of that then it will be almost similar to everything is like the first rep so that's what we want to do we want a little bit you're it's a it good control. It's a good lift. It's actually a very good lift. Yeah. And you're not like accelerating downward, but a little tighter, probably a little slower, just a little more concentration, and almost like maybe kiss the ground or float the ground rather than bump the ground.

Okay. Yeah, I was definitely cheating by getting a little bit of oomph off the ground. I also think that having you deadlift with a mat or two underneath the plates would be a good idea. And also mixing that up with a deficit deadlift here and there. Deficit deadlift obviously would be quite a bit harder. With putting it on blocks or something, I will definitely have to go significantly lighter. I don't know what it is about that position. Well, that's because that's the spot where you tend to push forward a little bit.

Oh, okay. You tend to push the weight away from you a little bit. Okay. Yeah, and that's where I really feel my back. Especially off of the wagon wheels or something, that level is my back is like, oh, hey, what's up? That's the spot. And then that's when it's all over like i can't pull and because of that that would be a great area to right know

and understand like okay you know i normally can deadlift around 300 pounds for some reps but because this is more challenging i should probably only use like 225 to 250 range you know just know ahead of time it's like a close grip bench you know if your close grip bench Well, now you're going to probably use 50 pounds less or for some people a beltless movement. If you're gonna do like beltless squats, you're gonna just have this understanding of I'm probably going to use away a big concept of, of this whole thing. Um, the biggest concept is it's a give and take, like you want to get better at something. Uh, a lot of like, we usually want to do it immediately, but it's usually going to take a little bit of a back off, a little bit of a reevaluation, giving ourselves times to get a time to get better at it and then building up from it again. So like the deadlift might take a little bit of a rebuild. It's going to take an ego check. You're going to have to lower it a bit

and then you're going to have to move forward. Doing jujitsu and lifting, you know, your lifting is going to take a check. Okay. You're going to have to back off a little bit. That's not necessarily a problem, but you get used to the expenditure. You'll be able to start getting stronger again. If you try to take on too much at once uh injury can happen so you like that's why like mentioned you got to know when to put your foot on the gas no one no one to put your foot on the brake you got to be able to know how to handle yourself as an athlete and if you think about like what is an injury you know an injury is you um you got hurt right but there's a lot of ways to hurt yourself. Like overdoing something is a way of hurting yourself

because you're hurting your, you're limiting your progress. It's like you're trying to go forward and we're talking a lot about the things that you can afford to do. Well, I'm sure Nsema and just like anybody else wants to be bigger and leaner, right? Like even though he's already big and lean, who doesn't want to be bigger and leaner?

But if he got down, if he got down to like 5% body fat, that would be awesome. We'd be like, Hey man, you're shredded, but it might impact your jujitsu and it might potentially hurt your lifting. However, if it's done over a long period of time and it sort of naturally happens just because of your diet and just because of your training naturally i didn't even catch that if it just naturally happens uh then maybe it's something that's that's uh more achievable and more sustainable something you can actually live with but a lot of times if we start chasing after one thing way too hard then we might lose the other start chasing after jujitsu with everything that you have.

Well, I'm sure as you get closer to worlds, I'm sure your strength will probably still be good in here and you still have some goals and still have some things, but there's really not, there's really not a lot of great reasons to try a 755 deadlift the week that you're going to compete. There's really not a lot of great reasons to try a 755 deadlift the week that you're going to compete. Might be good to still be strong, but not a great time to try like a PR deadlift out of nowhere. As you're trying to chase after this thing, you're chasing down a dream, chasing down a goal. And you want to make sure that you obtain that goal and you don't want anything to kind of pull you away from that. So I like the message because you're sharing that you're chasing after multiple things, but you're putting the right amount of time and effort into each thing,

not killing yourself on any one thing. One of the guys that he trains here on the weekends, his name's Justin, he wants to pull 500. He's asking basically, so trying to pull 500 to pull 500, should he not try to pull 500. Uh, he's asking basically like, so trying to pull 500 to pull 500, like, should he not try to pull 500 to get there? What's the most, well,

I mean, who knows? We'll just pretend it's just under that. Just under 500. Um, the, the, the, the thing I would say is like,

don't, it's a, it's a hard one because there's a point when you're there, but whenever I've hit a PR, uh, at least a, it's a hard one because there's a point when you're there, but whenever I've hit a PR, uh, at least a majority of the time, I've always had more in the tank. But the thing is like, based on how my training's been going, I could already, I know that that number's there for me, even though I've never touched it before because of how I've built up my training up until that point.

So I would suggest if you feel it's a Hail Mary, I'd say don't, but it's, it's kind of hard because like, you know, I'm not telling you not to push yourself. I'm definitely not telling you not to push yourself. There are days where like, even if you don't know, you can absolutely know you can do it. You got to give it a shot. And if you fail, okay. You know what you got to work on. Right. Okay. I'm not saying don't fail, but I'm saying if like your best pulls for 50 and you know, you pulled that, it was really hard. Don't go for 500. If your best pull is 480 and it was kind of fast and maybe that 500 is kind of there and you want to give it a shot, give it a shot. But you know, just, just know the range, you know, know that, know that range

leading up to that lift. I think that's, that's that's super important yeah because i know mark in the past you've said you know uh if power lifters want to get better they should not power lift yeah basically yeah yeah i mean power lifting is is bench squat deadlift for one rep max right that's power lifting and so you know i think a really easy chunk of advice is to say hey you know what? Do sets of eight for two weeks. Do sets of six for two weeks. Do sets of three for two weeks. And then try a single. That's a hell for a power lifter.

Just, yeah, just, you know. It is. It's hard. It's really hard, you know. But a lot of times when you lift lighter and you really practice and practice and practice, that's when you'll get better. You can also, there's a lot, there's so many different techniques that you can utilize. For this person in particular, you could try like a reverse band deadlift, just a deadlift 500. You don't want to come in one day and do a reverse band deadlift and pick up 515.

Just to feel like a badass, just to feel like a tank. You'll feel like a million bucks and you'll know like okay well that's going to be manageable at some point it wasn't that it didn't feel that hard and the bands are helping me but they didn't do everything for me yeah um and even doing a partial range of motion you know picking something up out of a rack you know maybe you pick up 405 for a set of eight out of a rack and you're like shit man oh i've manhandled four plates for eight reps i could probably pull 500 off the ground just you want to figure out a way to give yourself a confidence boost and sometimes when you uh don't have a lot of lifting experience when you deadlift

405 for you know sets of five and you deadlift 455 for a few triples and stuff you still don't understand that you have that 500 pound deadlift in your back pocket so you might have to do some mess around with a couple things to trick himself but whatever the case is i agree with in sema a lot it's like it shouldn't be this like max max you know it shouldn't be this like uh 11 out of 10 you know it should be it should be a nine you know when he when he does go for it he should's, it's so much better for everyone to say, Hey man, it looked like you could have done like five 25 today. Yeah. That's funny. Uh, on Instagram, someone just said reps over five,

just kill me. Uh, it was funny. Cause when we were talking about the, um, the, uh, the treadmill and you're like, yeah, if you just put it at an incline and walk for like, you know, two, three minutes, you're going to really feel it. And Zach was zach was like oh my god are we running a marathon oh my gosh chill out one thing i want to say though um as far as the dual athlete thing is concerned uh stretch yo okay uh and i get a lot of flack from some people in the strength community for promoting stretching uh just because you know in strength sport there's a static stretching don't work you know there in strength sport there

is a massive benefit let's let's not like beat around it there's a massive benefit benefit to being very tight tightly bound um shoulders tight so you're not you know moving around the bench press uh having fairly sometimes tight hips so that you can reach a certain level of depth in the squat, but you don't go too low since you're over, you know, too mobile. But a majority of people in strength are not hypermobile. I'd say that the people that have the most risk of having a problem stretching and doing strength sports are those people who naturally have very, like they're just they're they actually have something called hypermobility where like they can just do all these crazy things they don't need to

stretch that often but stretching especially if you're doing something like jujitsu and lifting etc will make your life on the mat so much easier and to be perfectly honest like it's made my life in here so much easier too with executing a lot of my lifts first off i don't feel i mean and i'm not saying it's being having less pain i guess like things will always feel difficult but i don't think things necessarily and people may disagree with me on this be painful you know what i mean like like oh god that it. I don't think it has to be that way. And by just stretching a bit, it helps that go away. Like I have a lot of people tell me, Oh, I don't, I don't have to have a 30 minute, 40 minute warmup before I come into the gym because

I'm much more mobile and I can move better. And my lower back doesn't hurt every single day because of stretching. The LeBron James was on a podcast with his trainer recently. I know basketball is a much different sport, and I know we can't just apply things from basketball to lifting. But when I see a lot of these pro athletes and very, very high level trainers promoting something like static stretching, even though some of the research within the strength community doesn't support it, I don't give a fuck.

I'm going to stretch and I feel good doing it. I don't necessarily care that much. So stretching, I think, is very beneficial. Static stretching, maybe not right before you work out and come into the gym to do a heavy squat or deadlift. No. But afterwards in the evening, later on, later that day, it might be a good idea to do in terms of recovery. Not right before you lift. If you're a strength athlete, don't do it. No, don't, don't do a 30 minute static stretching gym before you, you do your lifts. Do like, you know, some, um, some dynamic mobility warmup or something, but stretch later on. It's not going to kill you. It'll probably help you feel better. I've noticed massive benefits. People that comment on stretching videos on YouTube that I make on YouTube, massive benefits.

Try it out. Give it a damn shot. Yeah. You know, I think a lot of, a lot of times the criticism comes from people that never even tried it. And it's like, you don't even really have a leg to stand on right now.

Now, if you tried it and you like blew out your back or something, then maybe, maybe you got an argument, you know, but most of the time it's like somebody who's trying to refer to some study and like most of these studies are bullshit anyway i i don't think i think even stretching before you were to do something i think it's fine and there's actually um a lot of a lot of athletes will stretch before they do

um like uh the um vertical jump test. They'll stretch certain muscles in order to be able to fire and be able to flex other muscles better. So it's like there's kind of a time and place for everything, and I think that static stretching, I don't know why anyone's ever been so critical of it, or even like calisthenics. These are basic movements that have been around forever. I don't

see anything wrong with uh toe touches and star jumps and burpees and like they're they're in a you know like a crab walk and like are all these movements all of a sudden bad because they're not cool and they don't require an expensive machine it's like no there's still great movements um body weight movements are very difficult, but stretching, I mean, it makes a lot of sense to me. You're making your muscles tight and now you're trying to lengthen them back out again, you know? Yeah. And it's like with anything, it's like, okay, you lift too much or you lift too heavy, you can injure yourself. You stretch too much and you go too deep or someone's pushing you

into a position, you could pull something. Like everything just takes a little bit of finesse and a little bit of knowing your limit on what you can do. So it's not like it's bad. It's just like, if you, if you're not doing something in a smart way, of course it could be bad. So like whenever I hear, Oh yeah, but you could pull this or, you know, someone said that that's not good. Cause you could pull this. Well then don't go that deep or don't go that far. Just like you shouldn't lift that heavy or you shouldn't lift that much yeah uh do you do anything while you're stretching because it's again one of those things like the uh strength aerobics that you're just talking about like it's it's kind of like it's it's pretty taxing on the mind because it's boring in my opinion so do you do anything to kind of like spruce it up to make it a little bit more

tolerable spruce it up yeah well i do i mean i do make stretching videos on youtube yeah yeah with music right and my soothing voice but um but i breathe like i focus mainly on just like breathing through my nasal breathing um and i kind of just honestly i kind of just use it as a as a meditation to be perfectly honest um it you know if you want to have your tv on or something while you're like that that's like that's a perfect time to just chill have something on you know what i mean you don't have to sit in a quiet room in darkness and the cold and you know it's too cold stretch be all weird yeah i think a lot of times too we're always looking at like exercise or stretching as this like thing and i know that the way that you usually do it, usually come into the gym

and usually go on the mats over there and usually like actually stretch it. It's something that you're like focused on, but it doesn't have to look the same way for everybody. And you can also just like, when you're watching TV at home, if you're like, hmm, I should stretch my hip and I'm going to do a couch stretch

while you're watching TV. Yeah. Go ahead and do it. Do three minutes on each side and then sit back down and be lazy it doesn't have to be a 20 minute session I think I think we're so attached to like if I don't do it all the time and it's not a half an hour that's the minimum requirement 30 minutes right yeah if I don't do it this way then it then it's not done the correct way and it doesn't mean anything it's like no it's still it's still a it's still a, it's still a form of stretching. It's, it's like the 10 minute walks. Like what about, uh, what about doing five minutes of stretching three times a

day? You could probably find a few minutes. Yeah. Sturette was, uh, the one Kelly Sturette was the one that kind of pointed out to me. He's like, you know, people very rarely get below parallel in, in the course of their day. He's like, and some people might go weeks and months without getting below parallel. He's like, even when you take a dump and even when you're sitting in your car and doing these things, your hips are still not below your knee. And he's like, people should just, when they're watching TV, just put their foot up on a high chair or put their foot up on the couch. He's like, that would put their knee above where their hip is.

That would be a stretch. He's like, but because they don't like, quote, unquote, feel a stretch, they just don't think it's valuable in any way. But he's like that could do so much for everyone's back and everyone's hips. So, I mean, it doesn't have to always – your exercise and all these different things that you're trying to do, it doesn't always have to be this like rigorous, intense, crazy thing. That's an hour long.

That's one of, that's one of the big things I hear in terms of people like, I don't have, I don't have the time to spend 30 minutes or whatever minutes stretching a day. You don't, it doesn't, like you said, it doesn't have to be that long. You could do break it up to sessions. You could do a short 10 minute thing, you know, while you're watching TV, like there's there, you do have, you have a lot of time. You, you have so much time to do it. You just, it's not important enough for some people that they feel that they want to spend the time

to do it. That's the thing. Well, that's important to, to, you should, you should place that burden on yourself and say it that way. You know, just, just say it that way. Say like, I'm not placing enough emphasis on this and I probably should. Yeah. And I'm going to. And then figure out where and when and how. In yoga, you know, we hold positions for three, four minutes at a time. Could you hold? I mean, I'm just trying to think of like the laziest way to do it, right?

So can you hold these positions and watch TV at the same time? Sure. Absolutely could. Kelly, I think he he did the 10 minute squat or something. Yeah, that's that's something that you just squat down, squat down 10 minutes, decompress the back. You know, you get a little bit of work in the Achilles and your hips. And it's if you could work into that, that you feel great afterwards. You feel like shit during.

But like, yeah. Heels, heels down or. Heels down. What do you mean? Yeah. You're trying to keep your heels down. Oh yeah. Kind of hard, but you can hold on to, I mean, I was just telling somebody the other day, like a couple of times a day, they should just pump out some squats, you know, they're

just like, do like 10 squats, just hold on to something because they were having a hard time hitting depth. And that's a form of stretching. That's a that's a movement. Right. That's, you know, this this idea of these like 10 minute walks, you can do 10 pushups every hour, every hour that you're awake. You know, I mean, there's a lot of options in terms of strength. There's a lot of options in terms of being more fit and being in better shape.

In terms of strength, there's a lot of options in terms of being more fit and being in better shape. And it doesn't, there's a book that's called, what is it? Shit, what is it called? It's called like, oh shit, I'm going to mess up the name of it. But it's something about don't run, just walk and something about eating bacon or something like that. But it's a really, it's a really great reference guide. And I actually based the war on carbs book, uh, off of just the way that this book was laid out and the way that it looked. And, um, the guy says you should never need any special clothing for exercise. He's like, you need to rethink the way that you think about exercise. He's like, if you're in pair of jeans and you're in work clothes, he's like, you should be able to get

in some form of exercise. He's like, and for me, it's jeans and you're in work clothes, he's like, you should be able to get in some form of exercise. He's like, and for me, it's just walking. Just go outside. Just go for a damn walk. He's like, yeah, sometimes it's hot. Sometimes you get a little sweaty because it's the summer or something like that. But he's like, you know, you don't you don't want to set up all these boundaries towards fitness and towards exercising because it's so easy to talk yourself out of it. You're like, well, I got to go home and get my,

I forgot to bring my clothes today. And it's like, well, now you're just, now you're just fishing for a bunch of, I've heard people even say, I've seen people leave the gym and go back to their house to get their pre-workout, to have their pre-workout and come back to the gym. It's like, that's wild.

Are you serious? Like you really need that for your workout? You can't just exercise. Yeah. What are you doing? Yeah. I never really thought that pre-workout is a barrier for some people because if they don't have it, they can't work out. That is pretty rough. Have you ever messed with pre-workout stuff? In the past? Yeah. Like when I was, when I was younger, I did. But the reason why I stopped taking pre-workout is because I was like, ah uh I don't want to have to need this to motivate me to get in the gym like you know caffeine's cool but like it's it's when I started being like oh god I'm starting to really need this isn't good

so I could put you know I have to take it off cold turkey and my workout suffered a little bit that was when I was like mainly doing the bodybuilding thing but then I got used to it how young people start on those pre-workouts and there's recklessly downing them left and right. I mean, they're kind of dangerous. They are, especially like, again, if first off, if you take too many and then you start stacking it, I did that. I haven't messed with any of that in a long time.

I did that for a few weeks when I was like 17, I stacked a few pre-workouts and it was just like, Ooh, yeah. Back, back in my day we had you had the good stuff yeah we did we had ephedrine and uh that wasn't the original jacked right uh yeah so yeah like it well maybe i'll check ephedrine's been illegal for a pretty long time that we used to get many things from the supermarket straight ephedrine just straight up ephedrine i mean straight up like uh you know like fucking crack basically it's speed wait many things like many things the they're white they're they're white little tiny uh pills that that were

like 25 milligram ephedrine tablets wow and me and my friend we would mix up uh we'd mix up these crazy like shakes before we'd work out we'd have like we'd mix in and we didn't know what dosage was in it because we like we would take two packets of many things which is like uh i don't know let's see 75 milligrams 150 milligrams of ephedrine how old were you freaking 17 or something and then we would throw no-dose in there and we'd mix it with a metric shake did he just say i never did any pre-workout no i just didn't i used to why i made pre-workout before they had it i made it myself i didn't know what it was called that's great mixture of drugs and cracking oh my god yeah yeah we used to and

then uh we throw aspen in there, cause it helps absorb it better. It was just fucking wild. Dude, like how are you not dead? Well, it's the old ECA stack. It's a, yeah.

Ephedrine, caffeine, and aspirin. Yeah. ECA. Jeez. Gotta get up your, on your ECAs.

I thought I was kind of wild. They used to be in, I think it was, maybe it was just called speed stack. I think maybe it was just a Speed Stack. I think maybe. It was just American bodybuilding, the Eagle one. I had that in there too. Do you remember?

That's amazing. But I never used to drink any of those things. I always used to just do the straight up ephedrine. Do you remember how you felt? Like, was your heart beating? I felt amazing. That just sounds so scary, bro. Oh, it's wild.

It's wild. The good old wild It's wild The good old days I don't know why they took that stuff off the market I mean look at you I don't know I'm fine We should bring that back For tomorrow's deadlifts So ephedrine disappeared And then that's when like

I think BSN came out with their pre-workout. They had one of the first pre-workouts going, and then there was a few other companies that kind of followed. And when that stuff came out, I was like, this stuff's garbage compared to the old ephedrine that we used to take. That's why you don't mess with it. Yeah, I'm like, I don't need any of that bullshit. Yeah, Ricardo on Instagram says that they still have that in uh in canada where you can get a fedrin like man i think you can get it on the internet the interwebs probably you can get that shipped yeah most likely that sounds good yeah uh yeah i just feel like with uh with the pre-workout

stuff it's sort of just like the the taste and the feeling and it becomes a ritual yeah because i think if you're taking it every day, that caffeine is probably not doing anything for you anyways, but it's just like, Oh, this, uh, well, some people just scoop it right into their mouth.

Yeah. There's that too. But I think it's just a face. It's just like, okay, now I have my, my pre-workout drink. So now it's go time.

Yeah. And then that's it. But I don't think it actually affects anybody. But like after a while, I don't think it really does anything. You don't feel, yeah, you,

yeah, you're already so used to it right yeah that's why they start taking more you know more and more caffeine it's generally caffeine but then there's also the beta some people like that feeling of that itch that feeling i hate the itch yeah did you ever put any beta alanine anything you took in pre-workouts or not i never i never uh i never messed with that but they do put like they put other stuff in there too like like B vitamins and stuff. The niacin, right?

Niacin. It makes your skin all flush and crazy. Yeah. I'm not a fan. I just like caffeine and coffee. Is that usually what you do for pre-workout now? It's just maybe a cup of coffee? I usually have that big mug, and today I just need to drink the whole thing, but usually that'll me like a few hours and I'll have some I'll finish it before I work out too so I'm usually I'm usually a little

bit caffeinated before I work out but I don't need to be I think some of it too is like almost like an insecurity like you're worried that if you're not like alert enough that you're not going to have a good workout I kind of worry about that sometimes with the podcast I'm like I should have a cup of coffee yeah that's why I gotta I gotta cup myself i'm sure the show would be the same either way it probably would be but like we should try it with those ecas talking 100 miles an hour start a business on the podcast the only thing i remember from that that was like well my friend my friend had some complications from it but i was always okay all i remember is getting like cotton mouth you know i remember my like i'd be like damn getting those like white things on the sides you're like fuck

that's what i remember but my friend was like man he's like i can't breathe actually i remember one day we like just like od'd and we had to leave the gym now now i'm starting to come back to me i was like dude i'm, I'm not feeling so good. He's like, me neither. I was like, let's get out of here. Let's go have a pizza. Yeah, we just took off. You know those cartoons that guys made for you where you guys have those massive eyes? I just pictured that when I think about that.

That'd be a great little cartoon. Oh, God. My brother would have some good stories on some of that stuff, too. You would just read about it in the magazine. So you just like go do it. And like there was not a lot of information. There was no internet. So, you know, Muscle Media 2000 would talk about how it's good to take this before you work out, fasted, and it'll help burn fat.

So I was like, oh, fucking cool. Let's try it. Muscle Media 2000? Yeah. What is that? That was Bill Phillips' magazine. Bill Phillips was a CEAS guy. Okay.

Yeah, he's the guy that brought creatine to the market and stuff like that back a million years ago. That magazine was great. The magazine had a lot of cutting-edge information. I mean, back 20-some-odd years ago, it had information about low-carb style diets. Fasting was a big thing even back then. There's somebody I'm working on getting on the podcast is the guy who wrote The Warrior Diet. Have you ever heard about The Warrior Diet? Yeah, I heard about that a long time ago.

Yeah. So he wrote a book probably 25 years ago talking about eating one meal a day. And everyone's like, this guy's an asshole. Everyone's doing that now. I know. ago talking about eating one meal a day and everyone's like this guy's an asshole everyone's doing that now I know now he's sitting back just twiddling his thumbs going okay okay yeah I'm an asshole yeah okay now you know now now everybody's like understanding it but yeah that that magazine really brought a lot of the top people to the forefront Charles Poliquin was a big part of it and that's where I got a lot of my information.

But I remember reading about this, you know, a Fedrin stack and how it like burns fat and gets you fired up for a workout. So I was like, sure, let's go do it. But like me and my friend were reckless with it.

Cause we were taking, we started taking it way too much. Cause you get used to it just like you do with caffeine. Yeah. Um, and it's a, a Fedrin is like a asthma medication. So probably a good idea.

Probably a good idea. They discontinued it. Crazy. I want to give a shout out to our boy, Mike O'Hearn. Congratulations on popping out a baby or congratulations to his wife rather for popping out a baby. Congratulations to them both, man. What a, what a really, really cool thing for both of them. And sorry, Mikey, but it ain't all about you anymore, buddy.

You're going to have to take a backseat to that baby. They had a 10-pound baby boy. Everybody seems to be healthy. And I'm just really excited for them. I issued a challenge to Mike O'Hearn. He and I can compete now to see who has the best dad bod. But I issued a challenge to him, and this will be a tough one for him. But he accepted the challenge, so I'm excited to see if he'll actually follow through with this.

He's supposed to make a post, I think, either today or tomorrow. And he's supposed to shut down his social media for about a week. I said, just enjoy the time with your wife and with your kid and take it all in. And if you want to take pictures and you could still do all that stuff, but just don't post anything. I said, you know, don't film anything in the gym. Just, just, just take, just take a moment, you know, take some, take some time off. And the reason why I bring this up and the reason why I've talked about this on this podcast before is I think a lot of our youth could really use some help. And I think a lot of people could

stop being so invested in the likes and in the comments and stop allowing these things to be damaging. I think social media is great. I've built my business off the internet, so I'm forever grateful that it exists. I'm forever grateful for the connections that I've made via social media. I probably wouldn't know Andrew. I probably wouldn't know you. Like it would just, we wouldn't know each other or at least it would have probably happened in some different way or some different circumstances. But the internet is a great thing. It's fantastic. But I do think it's a good thing for everybody to fast away from it, at least on occasion, even if it's just for a day or just for a few hours or whatever you can, whatever you can handle. So Mike is supposed to shut it down for a week. I hope he's able to do it. And I hope you guys follow his message and

I hope you kind of can understand and grasp it because I think it's something that could help a lot of people with their mental health. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.