Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 212 Live - UK Recap SARMageddon and IFBJJ Worlds Updates

Episode Date: May 17, 2019

The band is back together, Mark Bell, Nsima Iyang and Andrew Zaragoza fly solo today without a guest. The guys recap the past few weeks, Mark traveling, Nsima prepping for IFBJJ Worlds and Andrew's SARMageddon docuseries. That and Horse C*ck of course. Because why not. ➢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

Oh no. Sticky. Can this, I mean, will this guy hear it? Maybe? I hope so. Okay. Just making sure. All right.

The band is back together. Are we on the internet? We're on the internet. Yeah. Yay! There, see? That's the call that you make. You guys got that picture.

I bought that machine for us. That's right. To fix the crank and everything. That's a more modern one. Yeah. I'm going to move it today. So I'll help you guys out. Or I'll help Andrew out because I know you don't, you know. That's a more modern one. Yeah. I'm going to move it today. So I'll help you guys out or help Andrew out. Cause I know you don't,

you know, do any of that. So yeah, I, that's not his department. Yeah. I used to do stuff like that, but that thing's like 11,000 pounds.

We have, um, like a, send out the signal wheel. Oh, a cart. Yes. A cart.

Shows you how much we've done. We can't even say dolly right yeah it's got it's got four wheels and it moves heavy things makes it easier that'll work yeah right cart we were just kind of wrapping here a little bit about our boy Michael Michael

Hern Michael trend that guy's got to be on some SARMs right no no I believe in Mike oh yeah sure you do I believe in Mike. Oh, yeah. Sure you do. I believe in Mike. Because you're living the same goddamn life. Oh, my God.

All you guys got to stick together. You and John Cena and him are all having a big party behind the scenes, I'm sure. They all hang out and talk about cycles. Like, we got him, bro. They think I eat pizza all the time. Hey, man. He's always been big. I can't dispute it.

That's true. Yeah, maybe he takes creatine. Yeah, I take creatine. Everyone should take creatine. Maybe he's natty. Maybe it's creatine. I'm not sure. But he looks amazing, whatever the case is,

and he's trying to get down to 220, and so I've been helping him with that. And I was confused because he was like, yeah, I wanted, you know, to drop to two 20. And I thought he meant like, he wanted just to like way to 20, like kind of, uh, get that, get to that weight and be that weight for a little while. And I was like, I don't know how that's going to work. Cause you know, like percentage wise if he's like,

I've seen when he gets in really good shape and he'll be still like 240 maybe even sometimes as heavy as 250 and still be super lean so i'm like mathematically you know what the hell's gonna happen this guy he's gonna like lose everything he'll lose muscle and lose fat and lose water and i don't know how i'll be 220 but then he was like no i just want to like i don't mind if i do you know know, water manipulation to weigh 220. And I was like, oh, I was like, oh, okay. That's, well, that's different. Cause maybe we could do cardio and sauna and like getting all these weird tricks that George Lockhart did with me.

And maybe we can get him to 220. Oh yeah. He could probably go from like 230, 232 down to 220 without a problem. If he just cuts water. Yeah. You guys know how to do all that. Yeah. And he's, you know, he's still right now, he's still kind of holding holding like 240 but he's doing two hours of cardio every day but he's really tall though

he is tall yeah yeah i know and that's the thing too it's like you know his his body weight stuff is kind of deceiving you know so that is a factor and sema's fairly tall too i think i think you're maybe an inch or two taller than me at least. Right. Yeah. And then you're probably close to the same height as Mike, if he might have an inch on you or so. And that's another factor. You know, when you think about some of these people that we see on the internet and think about how big they are and you hear the body weight that they weigh, like in SEMA is a heavy guy. You know, I'm, I'm fairly heavy guy. weight that they weigh. I can see him as a heavy guy. You know, I'm, I'm fairly heavy guy. Mike is,

is sometimes he'll weigh like two 80. His, uh, kind of like quote unquote normal weight will be like two 80. Uh, if he's just kind of eating, not, not like eating whatever he wants. He never does that. Um, he never just like, well, he eats what he wants, but he, uh, eats very healthy. Sometimes backs off the cardio too, right? Yeah. Yeah yeah a lot of times he won't do any cardio for months on end um but i think you know a really key thing to learn from him and there's a great thing to learn from bodybuilding too is body builders aren't on the same diet year round you know they're not doing and the guy that was on the podcast yesterday he mentioned seasons having like a season and you don't really hear that you don't hear that being coached up that much but but you should have like an in-season, off-season, maybe even if you're just a regular person walking around. Maybe it's a good idea to go through a bulking phase, go through a cutting phase and have moments where you do cardio, have moments where you eat less and have moments where you don't do that shit. And definitely like there's going to be times of like more and less activity. Like when you're saying that there's times that Mike drops his cardio,

I could definitely see, you know, there being a time where, you know, instead of doing six, seven sessions of jujitsu a week, I'll drop down to four. And one of the big reasons I've been able to stay so lean right now is because I'm doing so much jujitsu. If I wasn't doing as much as I am right now, I wouldn't be as lean as I am because I don't do any other cardio outside of that. So when you said he does two hours of cardio a day, like I can't imagine just, I don't know if he just does it on a bike or a treadmill, but, um, I can't imagine doing that. It's a lot of cardio. He does. Um,

a lot of times he'll do, um, he, he's big's big on the stair climber, stair master deal. And then he's also big on treadmill. So he kind of goes, I think he mixes it up because two hours on a stair master would really kill you. So he probably does a half an hour of the stair stepper. So I know like even for a long time, when I first got to know him, he, he was doing that, um, you know, an hour just every morning. Like it was like the, you know, he just, I can't remember. I think he did it after workouts. I think now he splits it up. He's got some stuff at his house that he, uh, that he'll, he'll do it on, but he just has crazy discipline.

And, um, people want to take that away and they want to just say, oh, you know, he's on shit. And it's it's hard because he outwardly promotes that he's natural. And and so he may he may actually very well be natural. I don't I don't know his personal life that way. I do know him really well and I've known him for over 20 years, but I don't know what he does and doesn't do. Yeah. And it's just, you know, it's, but either way, whether even if he does take stuff, I mean, whenever he's had anybody go train with him,

he almost kicks everyone's ass all the time. I can't really remember or recall there being a time where I was like, oh my God, that guy just whooped up on him. He kills everybody he works out with. Like you said, you know, like when you watch him lift, it's like everything is controlled even when it comes to lifting super heavy loads he's not over here clanging and banging and just slamming weights around without any control he he has a lot of control when he does

that which is absolutely insane the other day when he posted this video right here he said am i doing these deadlifts right wait is he how much weight is that it's like four plates i think yeah might even be five. And that was like a reverse grip. Yeah, double overhand grip. No straps. No hook grip. Yeah.

One thing I remember when we were down in Venice, you and your brother both were just like, man, you've gotten by without any bumps or bruises. We all have something. We all are dealing with something. It's like you haven't had anything something we are dealing with something it's like you haven't had anything you know it's just like the longevity of this guy he literally hasn't been injured and he's 50 years old right so yeah it's insane and you know what that what i would attribute that to is his mindset because if you ask mike if he's ever been hurt he'll say well you know um he's like I've had some owies he calls it an owie you know what I mean that's just that's just O'Hearn that's just that's an O'Hearn thing

right there he goes he goes I've had I've had a lot of owies you know a lot of things that you know and it's like well with that kind of mindset of course you've never been hurt because he's not thinking oh man my elbow is really jacked up or my shoulder man i really tore it up it's yeah it's all screwed up you know he's not thinking i gotta take a couple weeks off he's thinking it's a boo-boo and uh you know what do you do with a boo-boo you put a band-aid on it and so his band-aid is to do different exercises exactly i brought uh ryan down there ryan soper down there with me one day as like a ringer because Mike just wasn't at his strongest. And we squatted the week before and he and I were going back and forth on some squats. He still kicked my ass.

He went up to like six plates or maybe it was five plates. He did five plates for some reps and stuff. And they were deep squats and stuff. Still impressive. And then Ryan Soper was he just got done with a meet or getting ready for a meet so i was like oh this would be kind of cool like if they work out together yeah mike uh looks ryan up and down this is at four in the morning he looks him up and down and we're we're hanging out by the squat rack and mike goes let's go leg press

mike mike knew this yeah yeah mike knew this is a selectorized uh ringer that we were going to bring into the bunch here yeah yeah oh man that's a lot of weight that they have stacked up on that thing oh yeah oh yeah we were leg pressing uh that day we shot over to the leg press and loaded that thing up and and mike wanted you to bring the weight all the way down to the bottom of of the uh of that's like where it where it goes to on the leg press and man it was uh it was brutal but ryan hung in there and brian did the same weight or ryan did the same weight but he uh he did less reps i think mike did like a set of 15 or something ryan got like a set of three or something like that still for

you know man for ryan to keep up with him yeah it, at all. It's so dope. No, if you can catch Mike on anything, then you achieve something. And Mike will go through a whole back workout, and then he'll do – we went through a whole chest workout, chest tricep workout, and then he finished a workout off with doing dips, and he did a set of 10, another set of 10, another set of 10. And he's like, all right, time to start working out. And he hangs like a couple 45s like start working out and he he uh you know hangs like a i don't know a couple 45s off his waist like 345s and does a few more sets of 10

yeah never misses reps forms never bad never misses meals you know he said he tributes a lot of things to like he doesn't you know he'll fast and think he'll mess with different techniques and stuff but anytime he has a scheduled meal he doesn't miss it he always eats it he and he's been doing that since he was you know pretty much 14 15 years old it's like 220 at 16 you know what i mean yeah and the just the thing to pay attention for mike is again like people are gonna laugh at this but like mike is goals for like when i'm like 50 you know what i mean because you don't see first off what everyone talks about sarcopenia you know and men they're like oh we're gonna lose a lot of muscle as you get older um and it's bound to happen and you were just saying the other day

you just don't think he believes that like he just he he doesn't believe that i feel like he's potentially stronger now than when he was in his 30s do you know or what do you think i would say that i would say that in a lot of ways he is stronger because he's probably more well-rounded now. He's definitely in better shape. I mean, he looks better. I mean, you go back and look at some of the older pictures of him, and he's just not nearly in the shape that he's in now.

So he's more well-rounded in terms of his physique, and he has more strength in some different areas. Now, he used to be able to bench more, and he used to be be able to bench more and he used to be able to like squat more and he's built like deadlift more but that's that's pretty one-dimensional right that's that's like one particular style of lifting that's power lifting and he loves power lifting but to be able to get on a um to a seated uh military press and do behind the neck presses with like three plates and then to be able to go over the incline bench and be able to press five plates and be able to lay down on a flat bench and reverse grip five plates and,

and so on. Right. It's just the list of things that just goes on and on. He's just absolutely it's amazing what he's done, but it's, it's all been through consistency, I guess is kind of the main point. And Mike does something better than a lot of,

than a lot of he does something better than a lot of, than a lot of, um, he does something better than, than what most people are able to do. And that's just to change goals, shift gears here and there and have times where he's like, you know what, I'm just going to get as big as I can. And he'll get for him, he'll get fat. And so, you know, while we're looking at him, we're still thinking he's like big and lean for him, he would still feel fat. So it wouldn't be any different than any of us that anyone who's listening to this show or any of us on this podcast today, it wouldn't be any different than any of us chubbing out and gaining 15 pounds of, uh, maybe gaining, I don't know, 10 pounds of muscle and 10 pounds of fat. We would still feel like we're kind of chubbing out too. Right. And, uh, but he has the discipline and the dedication to understand that that is for

something further down the road. That's for something in the future. And that takes a lot of guts to do that. That's not an easy thing to do. It's not, especially in an industry like this, where, you know, everyone wants you to be super lean all the time. I think the biggest thing to take away from him though, is that like, no matter what you may think of him, whether you think he's like natural, whether you think he's not just look at what he does, like look at his consistency. Like you mentioned,

look at his discipline, look at how long he's been doing it. And he's had patients doing all of this. He's just been consistently doing it day in and day out without skipping a day. Even Stan Efferding, like when he made that video, like fuck Mike O'Hearn, right?

He was talking about the consistency and the dedication to what he does. It's just like, no matter what you think, take that away and apply that to yourself. And whatever it is you're doing, you'll get to a pretty decent place. So according to this post, it says that's him at 21 years old. Yeah. And that muscle maturity at 21, that's absolutely insane. Okay. And then also the size you know like what he weighs right there that's the thing it's like that would be one thing if he weighed

220 210 but he's probably 250 or 240 you know so 236 right there on the screen think about this though 236 at 21 right now what he he pretty much looks close to the same. Yeah. More density and muscle tissue. But it's not like, you know, it's not like he's that much bigger. Right. Yeah. Stan Efferding attributes Mike O'Hearn with the worst before and after picture of all time. Because there's pictures of Mike O'Hearn at like 16 where he's like weighs 240 and he's pretty jacked. Oh, my God. Stan's like he's got the worst progression in the history of the sport.

Yeah. oh my god stands like he's got the worst progression in the history of uh the sport yeah i think what insuma said about you know the his mindset he probably actually truly does not believe that you know as he gets older he's going to deteriorate because i mean they're hopefully it's i don't think i brought it up but there has been studies where like they'll take a group of like elderly people and like hey we're going to pretend like it was 30 40 years ago i know what you're talking about yeah and so like so they changed the TV shows on the TV, all the magazines, newspapers. It's like, we just want you to reminisce and talk about everything that happened 40 years ago. And their blood markers got better.

They walked in with canes and stuff. And then by the time they were done, they were playing flag football. And it was just like, whoa, what happened? And it's like they took their mind there. So I think that probably has a lot to do with O'Hearn. The thing about all the noises that you start to make as you get older just to get up off the couch, you're like, I remember my dad doing that.

Why am I doing that? I don't need to make a grunt to get off the couch. Am I losing my mind here? But yeah, it seeps into your system and you don't even realize uh you know what a bitch you turn into but mike is he's super positive and um you know he'll when you train with him he'll make fun of you and he'll he'll talk a lot of trash and stuff but he's um he'll avoid the negativity you know if you if you say something that's like you know over the top i've seen him kind of just kind of turn away from it.

I think that he just he has like a force field around. He's like, I can't I can't mess with that. That's going to mess up my goals and I'm not going to be part of that. Yeah, no, he it just makes a lot of sense, you know, with with everything that he's doing. And even like I mentioned this on episodes in the past too you know in times where like you can't really lift as much you don't feel as good um i think for a lot of people too like when you're not you know doing something that allows you to be super active and you're not i guess being like the way that mike is consistent with that then there allows a lot of dark thoughts

can come in a lot of disbelief in whatever it is that you're doing can come in. And that would, I believe right now with the way my mind is, if I wasn't able to do some of the things I do, I can't be as positive as I typically am. And if you imagine like he's been doing that all his life, it makes sense why he blocks that stuff off. You just, you're not going to take him off his path. It's going to take a lot to do that. You know, people are listening and like, come on to take a lot to do that. You know, people are listening and like, come on, you really think he's natural? You know, I know people are always kind of asking that question. That's, that's what always hovers. Uh, that's what always looms over top of, I mean, I can say that I've never seen anybody that looks like that, that hasn't been in question, you know,

and I've never seen anybody like that, that I didn't pretty much automatically assume they're on stuff. So even though he's my friend and even though we're close and even though we know each other, I automatically assume he takes them. But it doesn't, it doesn't take away anything that the guy has ever done. He's still put in a body of work that is pretty much on match by anybody else. Yeah. And there's really not much anyone can do about that, regardless of whether you think he's on something or not on something.

And it's hard to say that as a friend, because it's like, why would I think a friend would be lying? You know, but I think that people maybe have their reasons. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I mean, you guys, I mean, you guys joked about the whole back and forth thing, but on, I think, both his channel and our channel, you guys talk about how you were just joking the whole back and forth thing but you on i think both his channel and our channel you talk

about how you were just joking the whole time and it kind of just oh yeah spun out of control but it was cool that you guys did that because i think a lot of people were like wait like is that real is that not real yeah like anytime like the two of you would show up at an expo like you could just kind of like see people like eyeballing looking around like are they gonna like what's gonna happen tension here yeah yeah reddit had a good time with that one i saw i bet you know reddit had a blast with that they were taking that seriously crazy well mike also has done a lot of martial arts and stuff too so i don't know what the hell would be coming out of his body you know i don't know what the hell he would be doing that's fine it probably wouldn't

be good yeah probably wouldn't end well for me you have have an Encema now. So you're okay. I'd be like, get him. And then, yeah. Who knows what Mike and I would choke you out. Yeah. One guy rips my ankle off. Another guy chokes me out. Yeah.

Yeah. You'll be fine. Anyway, he's trying to get to 220 and he's got like two more days to do it. I think he's still like 236 or something, but he'll, he'll get there. We'll get him there. We got him. We got him doing some water manipulation stuff and we'll stuff, and we'll kind of see what happens. Anyway, I kind of mentioned kind of in the mix of some of that changing goals, and then Seema and I were talking about how you got to change goals.

You do something for a while. You throw your hat into it. You try it out. Even like there are cases where sometimes you do something and it just doesn't work out the way that you thought or doesn't work out the way that you wanted. And you may have even somewhat failed at it. It didn't just go your way. And then, of course, you're going to automatically change course from there. But that's not even what we're talking about.

It's more like you try something out for a while. You get some of the result out of it that you wanted. And then you move away from it and maybe try something else. Or you kind of see how difficult something is. You get some of the reward out of it and you're like, the price that it's going to cost to go this extra mile, um, is now going to take three times the amount of time since I've already, since I've already come a long way to go one more mile is going to take me, um, you know, four or five years. And I don't know if I really care to spend that amount of time on that. I'd rather kind of move into something else. The other thing that happens too, is just sometimes just you, we have ADHD with our

like exercise and with the things that we like to do. And so sometimes you're like, Oh, I want to try that. Oh, that looks cool looks cool i want to try that and so you try some different things and we were talking specifically about in sema you know going from bodybuilding to powerlifting and then into um and into jiu-jitsu and it's not like it's not like you did bodybuilding and you felt like oh man like that's as far as i could ever take that I'm, I'm out. And it's not like you were a failure at it. You were good at it and you could still be very good at it, but you probably just wanted something a little different. Maybe you got a little bored of some of the dieting and you, uh, ended up kind of finding power. How did you, how did you kind of get into that progression of going from bodybuilding into powerlifting? Yeah. So I started doing like when

I was focusing on bodybuilding and lifting for bodybuilding, I was already doing a lot of the big three already in terms of gaining strength so I could get bigger. So I competed in 2013 and 2015 and I managed to get to worlds in 15. I was a pro at that point already. I got top five in the heavyweights, which was really, really dope at my first, you know, hitting foot worlds the first time after that I came to ST and then obviously training with everyone here got me wanting, you know, compete in powerlifting. So I was still doing powerlifting to just help me get bigger. Cause I knew that if I could get stronger, I could ideally put on more muscle tissue. And then from there I did, I did, you know, record breakers and that was awesome. But after record breakers for a while, I was training, and it was still cool, but I was like, I want to move more. I want to do something that allows me to use my body. And I was trying to figure out what exactly is it that I could figure out, and then that's when I found jiu-jitsu. But I still have the love of lifting.

You know what I mean? Like I feel like a lot of people are, or even myself at the time when I was focusing on bodybuilding, I think I was focused too much on bodybuilding rather than just enjoying the process of lifting every single day. And right now I just love lifting and doing different things every single day with lifting. But when it comes to the transition between all of those, um, it was just, it, it kind of went back to my athletic background of playing soccer. You know what I mean? I was moving a lot and I wasn't able to do all of that while doing powerlifting and while doing bodybuilding, but jujitsu allowed me to literally mix everything together, uh, while not really having to totally pull something back. Like I

don't have to stop doing powerlifting. I don't have to stop doing training like bodybuilding, but I can still do all of that and use my body in the way I want to use it with jujitsu. So it was just a, it was a natural progression, I guess. I think it's cool that you didn't get stuck, you know,

like a lot of people get stuck. Like you could, you know, you squatted, um, you know, around 630 pounds and deadlifted 755. And he's like, you could have said, okay, you squatted, you know, around 630 pounds and deadlifted 755. And it's like, you could have said, okay, that's it.

You know, and you think you missed a 402 bench. Yeah. You could have said, you know what, that, you know, I could do better because the lifts that you did make in that meet, you smashed them. They were fairly easy from what I remember. So you could have, you know, most power lifters would be like, okay, 650 next meter, 660 on the squat, you know, 420 bench and a, you know, maybe an 800 pound pull. And you could have gotten, I got stuck in that. You get stuck in the gears of the grinder, you know, and then you're, again, it's like, it may have taken you just a few months to really make a lot of great progress in powerlifting. Cause he, maybe, maybe you power lifted before and you did strength training and you mentioned

you did the big three, but maybe you didn't do it this way. And maybe you didn't do it, you know, with, uh, some other lifters. Yeah.

Focus. You didn't make it a main focus and have other lifters around that might tell you about your form or different weight, different training techniques and so on. But I think that sometimes it can end up being a mistake when you get so focused in and so honed in on the numbers and that's all you're obsessed about all the time. You also came across like an injury or two, right? With like your knee. So some things like set you back and maybe those things set you on a different path as well, right?

Yeah. The meniscus issue in my left knee. I mean, I've always had issues with my knee since I was young and I had a, I could slaughter that thing. So I had a meniscus issue. I had to get surgery on my left knee for them to scrape out. I think it was something called a bucket handle tear in my meniscus. So they scraped that out. Um, I was back to lifting in about seven or eight weeks. I was able to do upper body stuff right afterwards. But, um, like nowadays, I always feel something small in my knee when I squat really heavy. And I don't think that's what made me look for jujitsu. I was already trying to think of something to do like that allow me to do some fun cardio before that.

So that's how I came across jujitsu there. But yeah, as far as jujitsu is concerned, like when I went into my first class and I saw like what people were doing, I immediately just wanted to dive in somehow. I only started like with two days a week, but seeing how I was getting my, I was getting my butt beat, like literally every day of training by guys so much smaller than me. Um, I knew something that I could really happen. You out. They were tapping me out.

Like, yeah, they were tapping me away. I mean, I've always mentioned this, but there's this 150 pound black belt who tapped me out six times in six minutes i was getting tapped out by some he must say and he must have loved it oh he didn't show he loved it his name's nate and he's super stoic so the whole time he literally had no expression on his face he will he wasn't you know he was just like he's a black belt yeah he should he should kill you your white belt and not only your white belt it's like your first couple weeks there should destroy you you're right but I think Nate also wanted to

prove a point to me he really did because I mean I didn't I never had an ego or anything but when someone sees a big guy you know they and they're better at jujitsu they generally want to be like I can kick your ass yeah they want to show you hey like it doesn't really matter how big and strong you are. This is a skill.

It's a skill. Yeah. And if you're coming into here and you want to be here for the long haul, you better learn it. Otherwise, this is what every day is going to feel like and look like. Exactly. But the thing is, when I started jujitsu, like I have that same fire with jujitsu now that I did when I was competing in bodybuilding, when I was competing in powerlifting. It's like and when I was like playing soccer, like when I played soccer in college, my goal was to go towards and become a pro athlete. And for a while, that was a possibility until I got injured and I got injured.

I had to stop doing that. But now jujitsu, it's like I'm addicted to that sport. I know I want to get close to the top. I know I want to reach that peak. I know it's going to take a long time. But it's a new goal, and I want to do all of that while being really strong and really big. I want to try and meld all those things together, and right now it's working pretty well. In the heavyweight class, is there a limit? Ultra heavyweight.

The ultra heavyweights are just 220 and above. Just, yeah, 220 and above just yeah 220 oh and so that's and that's what you're in and you can weigh whatever you want you can weigh like 320 the guy who uh beat me at pans jason shirley was 320 former nfl linebacker um and the funny thing is i think i was the second or third lightest in my weight class at like 245 all the other guys were like pretty dang heavy so you know it's there's a lot of big boys in the ultra heavyweight class. Where do you think you can draw the line? Like where does it become like a diminishing return?

Like, you know, if somebody's rolling in, they're 450, obviously. They're 450 and 7 feet. Like, you know, that's the thing. I don't think there's a diminishing return because if you look at Jason, who's like 6'7", 320, right? It makes sense for him to hold that much weight. He probably gets to 300 but like you know it just depends on how big you are how tall you are you know so what is chad way he's probably 300 300 yeah chad's a lot of weight yeah he's a solid 300 too you know what i mean and he's he can move well he's athletic so um it was funny

when i was when i saw chad over at pans we were chad wesley smith by the way ladies and gentlemen that's what we're talking about chad wesley smith um he was saying that uh he's done so much competition in so many other sports but nothing made him as uh i don't even it wasn't it wasn't nervous but as psyched up as competing in jujitsu and it's probably just because of the person-to-person competition you, like this guy could take me out. You know what I mean? It's, uh, yeah, it's a martial art. So, yeah, there's, uh, there's been people I've written about stuff like this in the past. There's a book called, uh, blood in the cage. Um, oh man, I'm having trouble, trouble remembering the name of the, it will come to me at some point. Anyway, Blood in the Cage talks about how all sport is surrounded by individual.

They'll even call them. They'll say individual battles. And if we want to take, like, battle, we can say, like, individual fight. You know, in football, there's, you know, five offensive and five defensive linemen, basically, most of the time um depending on what defenses or whatever but like for the most part there's four or five on on every play and um there's individual fights going on you know they got the tackle and the guard and the and so on and they're they're like fighting each other right the the interesting part about that

is is like there's nothing more exciting than watching watching a one-on-one competition of two people battling each other and two people having an actual physical fight where there's less rules. Football, there's a lot of on what we're designed to do because now now we got a ball and you're trying to claim territory and you can look in history and like history the wars are fought over territories and wars are fought over like principles and i'm going to invade your space and that right and we take fighting it's kind of a similar thing like we're we're going to try to stand our ground right here and we're going to battle it out right here and we're going to see who's the best. And it's very clear cut. It's not a – and I guess like racing and stuff like that would be similar.

Like where you run against somebody or swim against somebody or bicycle against somebody or something like that. It's like I'm going against you and we're going to see who's the fastest. And in this case, you're going against you and we're going to see who's the fastest and in this case you're you're going against somebody and you're seeing who is uh and we don't really get that same competition in powerlifting we don't really see it that often but powerlifting is an individual sport but unfortunately like it's it's on the rare occasion where it happens where it's like really a battle at the end where it comes down to that last deadlift for somebody to win the meet. Or where it really is even seen as like a one-on-one competition because there's so many other people competing.

In this case, you got one person on one side of the mat, another person on the other side of the mat. It's very clear cut. In Blood in the Cage, they mentioned that, you know, you can have an NFL football game going on. Millions and millions of dollars are spent on the players that are on the field. There's 11 on each side. There's 22 players, and you stack up the amount of money that that would be. It would be astronomical. Two guys could be in the crowd and have a fight,

and now where does all the attention go? Now you could probably say the same thing at a UFC fight. If there's a fight in the crowd, people are going to pay attention to the amateurs because it's the unknown that we kind of like to see. you probably say the same thing at a UFC fight. If there's a fight in a crowd, people are going to pay attention to the amateurs. Cause, uh, it's, it's the unknown that we're, that we're,

that we kind of like to see like what's going to happen when these two people square off. But that's a little bit more barbaric and a little bit more archaic. And it's like, well, if one guy, if one guy is bigger and stronger, he's probably just going to kill the other guy.

Or if somebody is really skilled, they're going to just destroy the other guy. It kind of takes out the real element of uh of sport you know and mma has come so far where now you hear the crowd cheering for like jujitsu reversals and wrestling reversals and stuff and you know joe rogan a lot of these people have done a great job of explaining the sport to people so they can understand it pat mil Miletic, there you go. That's who it is. Blood in the cage.

Pat Miletic, one of the original people to like actually form together mixed martial arts. Really crazy. The guy that wrote this book, when he goes to Pat Miletic's gym, I think in Iowa, could be butchering some of this. But when he goes to his gym, they invite him into the ring. They say, Hey, get in the ring. And the guy's like, okay, this is just a journalist, not a, not a fighter or anything. And like, we're going to break your nose. And he's like, what? He's

like, yeah. He's like, that's, you know, you're in my gym. That's what we're going to do. We're going to break your nose. He's like, no, man. Like, I don't, I don't want my nose broken. They're like, we don't care what you want. Like you want to write about this sport you need to know about this sport pretty much everyone in here in here has been clocked in the nose or had their nose broken it's like that's what we're gonna do and i don't remember the outcome of it i think the guy just got out of the ring and they let him off the hook but i want to crap myself yeah yeah they're like yeah we're gonna we're gonna break your face buddy like because you need to experience this shit yeah thanks uh ashley for pointing out the uh the author of that one one listener on the live stream hooked it up nice yeah but you know the thing about like

setting up goals in terms of whatever your fitness journey is and the cool thing about power lifting is this it's i think that it's one of the more healthy ways in terms of competition and in terms of getting yourself towards your physical goal to have a goal to compete. Because when somebody thinks about, I've been like approached in the past many times where someone's like, I want to get in shape. I want to do a show, right? But sometimes doing the show isn't actually like getting stage lean or doing a show isn't really that healthy. And a lot of times you'll see first time competitors rebound and they rebound hard. Like they'll get lean and they'll, they'll get in shape.

And then when they start getting all that weight back, they gain a lot of fat back. Uh, but when, when you do powerlifting, you can get leaner and get, you can get stronger over time. And then it'll give you a goal in terms of, I have to do this competition. It'll, it'll give you something to drive yourself towards. You know, that's why I think powerlifting is kind of special in that case, because yeah, even if you're not always competing against somebody else, or sometimes you are competing against somebody in your weight class, it's a really great form of fitness to get yourself in shape and have a competitive goal.

Even jujitsu can fall in line with that too, because, you know, you're doing all this cardio work. It is a form of resistance training because you're working against an opponent. But you can spar at 100% because your opponent isn't going to punch you at 100%. They're going to choke. You can tap. They're going to pull you in an arm bar. You can tap.

You can do all this at 100% and be perfectly safe. And even at competition, it's relatively safe as a form of fitness so you might get out of there you might be kind of sore but chances are you're not going to break something you should be okay-ish right?

it's interesting with powerlifting how you're mentioning health and power thing they seem like almost polar opposites from where I came from if anybody's watched the West Side vs. the World, you'd have a good sense of like the way powerlifting used to be. And there's a lot of unhealthy practices and there's a lot of overusage of PEDs and a lot of overeating and just not just poor nutrition, poor sleep. It's just a, it's

just general lack of knowledge on what those other things, uh, what those other aspects of your life lifestyle can do for you. Uh, when you step foot on the platform, you know, sleeping better and eating better, um, and just living better and being just cleaner with everything could really help. And there's been guys who have practiced it. There's, there's been guys who've done it and done it at a high level and were able to get away from the sport and still be healthy. Um,

but a lot of them were, you know, just kind of overdoing it, but the, you're, you're a hundred percent correct. Power lifting can be done very healthy. And furthermore,

you can, I mean, there's, there's so many different ways to train, but you can go in the gym and you can do, uh, you can train very slowly, right? You can do tempo work. You can do five by fives with tempo work and improve for a competition. What other sport can you train slowly for? You can't really train slowly for tennis or golf or

jujitsu. I mean, I'm sure like in juj jujitsu we have you got drills and you got certain things like we're gonna agree like we're going 50 we're going slow mark now you're you're still messing that up dude no it's this way yeah and and we're gonna walk through it slowly right and then we're gonna go through faster paces but in power lifting you you can kind of there's so many different variations of how you can lift the style of lifting that you can do. You can do speed stuff and you can really sometimes wear out your joints really quickly. Or you can choose to go a slower route. There's so many different options. But I think when we had James Fitzgerald on the podcast the other day, we were kind of talking about how do we ride that line between we need to push really far.

that line, you know, between we need to push really far. Um, and we obviously need to push far enough so that we learn where to hold back on. Cause if you never push far enough, you'll never even learn where your limit is. So you do have to go to a limit or at least scratch it or get close to it. But in my opinion, and I, and I actually have never done this because I'm not smart enough and I love to like, just go nuts. You can do a lot of five by five stuff. You can do a lot of four sets of six and sets of three and even sets of one that are done at an expression. Well, I have done this before. You can do a heavy singles that are expressed in a way where someone goes, Holy crap, dude, that looked really easy. And you're like, yeah, that's my opener, my second attempt in the meet. And they're like, really? Wow. you should use a lot more weight but that's

power lifting can be done that way not only can it be done that way it should be done that way yeah a lot of people already doing it like that's just sub max nowadays you're seeing more yeah nowadays yeah like you can gain a lot of like you can gain strength actually forever with sub maximal training without always having to touch your max but mistake that even i made was i was like touching heavy singles you get too excited you get too excited you're like i feel great i want seven plates you know so it's it's it's really you can i don't know why you wouldn't be able to do powerlifting in a healthy way how do you control that with your uh clients do they they they probably get real, they're probably get real antsy and you're like,

look, man, I know this sounds weird, but we're not going to go over 400 pounds and you're going to pull five 50 and they're like, you know, and maybe they do go a little, a little heavier, like for one lift at one particular time. And they're like, I don't know, you know, but it's the assistance exercises. It's, it's how you're doing the deadlifts. It's also maybe you're having them doing, you know, sumo deadlifts with a slight pause as they lift the weight up off the ground, right? Yeah. So there's like pause deadlifts. There's deadlifts with controlled eccentrics. But the big thing is that when I program for literally everybody, I program with percentages, but I also use RPE.

You know what RPE is, right? Received exertion. So I don't like- So you have two gauges, basically. You have a percentage of 80%, but I also want to know what did that 80% feel like? Did it feel like a seven, eight, nine, or 10? Because I want it to feel like a seven. And if it's feeling like a nine, we got a problem. Lower the load. Exactly. So for example, it could be like a four by five at 80%. And I want that to be at RPE eight every single set. It's like rate of perceived exertion, right? Right. That means you have about two reps, maybe three left in the tank. If they get to their first set of what I programmed and they're like, oh God, this was a 10, then they just lower the load by 10 or 15 pounds.

So it's at that RPE. Like I'll expect it to be what I put in terms of percentages, but if it's not follow the RPE and lower the load, or if you're feeling really good and it was below the RPE, increase the load above what I gave you. But that's why I don't like pure RPE training, especially for like newer athletes, because like there's going to be a guy that's going to put weight on his back and they'll squat. They're like, Oh, this was a six, but it was like, you know, that was a 10. That means you can't do anymore. You got to stop there. Um, and that's just a really easy way of gauging yourself each day. If you know, if you do a load, let's say your typical deadlift max is 450, 450 pounds, right? But you do four 30 on the day and it feels like a ton of bricks.

Just lower the load a little bit. It's okay. You're just not feeling it on that day. And that's how you continue to make sure that you're training some maximally because certain days you can really push it and certain days you just got to back off. But the tendency of like every athlete is to want to push it hard every single day. Oh, how'd that feel? It felt great. Mark, how'd that last lift feel felt

great like well it looked like you were gonna die you turned like purple and black and like we were all very concerned about you and you looked like you're gonna die a couple times your knees were shaking that's not normal for your knees to shake during a squat so since when since hold on i'm just working really hard bro yeah you don't know but yeah that happened this morning i had to wait uh we were doing floor presses uh-huh and i just like every well i say every i don't know i'm pretty stupid so but uh i did a very big rookie mistake and i jumped too much and i'm like no i did fine and mark's like that needs to go down. I'm like, okay, my bad. It's that ego check, man. Sometimes you just got to lower whatever you're doing.

Yeah, and to his point, he went up to 225. He did 225 for three reps, which is great. Floor presses. Which is great because recently he's knocked out a 225 on a regular bench for a set of three, which a huge pr so congratulations on that making them gains i guess we're gonna get in a sarmageddon here in a second yeah well yeah so if people are following then then yeah they know so far it's been successful because that was actually when i started the whole thing that was one of the uh that was a big goal yeah i mean 25

because in my opinion like because i i've hit it you know i've hit it um i don't know like probably two three times period and then so did i think he should give us a speech would you like to start out thanking your mom and dad first and then i mean yeah i guess i could potentially thank the academy and uh executive producer and oh yeah yeah can't forget about the writers and all that but no so i had said like if i can rep 225 in my opinion repping would be at least three yeah triple because i feel like a double would be a double triple can still be called a triple but you know so but yeah i had just hit that so huge spoiler alert but yeah that's successful i'm not gonna spoil how much you

weigh though we're gonna keep that for later yeah Yeah. He weighs 700 pounds, by the way. Mark, you're killing the series right now. Yeah. So he, anyway, so he hit this weight. I mean, he did the lift and he could have done another set and maybe could have even added a little bit of weight. Like it looked like you had a little bit, a little left of the tank there. But no, it makes more sense

like hey let's let's go down and let's do this the right way it's a floor press and you're supposed to kind of you know uh drop the triceps onto the ground hold it for a half second or so and press it back up so let's you know let's always make sure we're doing the exercises the right way same thing with when you're dead lifting you know your coach if they just send out 85 percent to you and your 85 percent is a totally different perception of what the coach might have in mind when you're deadlifting, you know, your coach, if they just send out 85% to you and you're 85% is a totally different perception of what the coach might have in mind. Maybe you don't have video of it or, um, or maybe you do have video of it. And some video is not always an accurate account of how shaky and how shitty your lift actually looked or felt. Um, and if you don't

really, if not really analyzing the lift, then it's really going to be tough to make progress because the lift, in my opinion, your lift should be done pretty much for the large majority of the time. Let's say you're training for 16 weeks for a competition. Out of the 16 weeks, how many lifts should be broken? Maybe like two or three. You might have a miss or two. You might miss a rep because he went into the set like too quick or it could be a technique flaw. There could be a lot of things. But how many lifts should you miss?

How many lifts should you do with a rounded back? I mean, I would pile them all up and say like I would allow you about five, you know, and I really I would not like to see those five happen. But like I'm going to give you like a mulligan, you know, like a do-over, you know, I give you those five. So you got a little wiggle room. And obviously with a newer lifter, if somebody is new and they haven't really done a five by five and a squat with 225 ever before, they might not be used to the pace. They might. So, you know, someone who's newer might have more room for error but for the most part it's like man we don't want a lot of broken lifts we don't and it's it just takes time and patience towards that i think if you're a newer lifter it's really good to just have the outlook of first off yeah i don't want to fail any of my lifts um but also don't rush yourself and that's really hard to say because

you see so many people that are so strong but if you just give yourself just the time to get stronger and handle lifts that there's times where it'll be uncomfortable but for the most part we're like you're not shaking your form isn't breaking down your your form looks good on every single rep and every single set you'll be able to make progress consistently over time it's just that doesn't sound exciting no it's not sexy. It's not at all. No.

Yeah. And I think for me, the floor presses, I just haven't done them in so long. So my last set was, I mean, last set, best set, but it was definitely like everything was on point by then. Unfortunately, it just took me like five sets to get there because I'm just not used to it. Andrew and I were also talking today about diet, you know, and again, we're talking about, you know, changing goals and shifting gears and trying something different. So you might have a goal to get to a certain body weight. You know, I want to weigh this body

weight. Well, you start to get towards that body weight and now you always want to think of an exit strategy. You know, it's very similar to business. You know, what's, what's your business going to look like in five years? Where are you going to be in five years? Something that I, you know, teach a lot of people. I get a lot of messages from people that are upset, depressed. Um, they're pissed off at themselves that they're not making the progress that they want. They feel like they can't figure it out. They feel very stuck. And what I always say to people is like, let's, you know, let's first of all,

let's take a deep breath here for a second. Let's slow things down for a second. And let's look at where you were like two years ago. You know, are you further ahead or further behind? If you're further ahead than where you were two years ago, then congratulations, you should give yourself a pat on the back. That's great because we can continue that trend and we can continue.

And maybe your progress has been slow and maybe we can figure out ways to speeding it up. If you've been going backwards, if you ended up, you know, drinking and ended up getting in real depression and ended up gaining weight and you went backwards, let's just identify that and let's not kick ourselves while we're down. Let's just say, Hey, look, man, I, I messed up. I made some mistakes. I'm not happy. I'm not proud about it. Let's file it away and let's figure out what are some things that can kind of get us back on track. And then you have to start to kind of align, you know, some of your habits and some of your thoughts towards some of your goals. We talked earlier about Michael Hearn being able to block out some of that negative. And you want to start to think about

what am I, so what I'm currently doing, if I can, if we can agree upon the fact that you're not happy because you're not any further ahead than you were two years ago, or you're even further behind than you were two years ago, then we can both agree upon the fact that it sounds like the current things that you're doing and working on are not working well for you. This is not working. You're in a bad relationship. You're, you're have a bad relationship with food. You're drinking too much, whatever the thing is, there's something there, something's blocking you, something's stopping you. Could even just be your own negative thoughts about yourself, or it could be your job. It could be

literally anything. Could be your parents could, you know, it could be your job it could be literally anything could be your parents could you know there's a lot of things that kind of cock block us from getting getting what us getting what we want right and so then we start to agree and we start to now have a conversation okay well let's try to change some things let's let's set a goal and then you start to set a goal and it's like goals can be a real trap because if we get Andrew to rep 225 and he thinks he's at the mountaintop with 225 for reps, right? It's like, well, now he needs to change his goals. He needs to start to kind of focus in on something else. So Andrew's trying to achieve a certain body weight. Then we talked about, you know, how he

can kind of tighten things up as well, gave some recommendations and now he's going to try to follow that path for a little while but the entire time that you've been uh lifting with me and and doing some stuff even on your own over the last what year has it been yeah i mean it's about every every month every two months we're kind of reintroducing or or or bringing in something totally new diet-wise, right? Yeah. Yeah, because what Mark had told me essentially early on was like, okay, you're getting some momentum. You're getting some compliments.

Like, dude, whoa, what's going on here? He's like, when those start fading away, we'll tweak it. And that's what we've been doing over the past year. And, I mean, recently it's been like, well, what the hell are you doing? But, you know, so, yeah, it's been, I mean, we've gone through so many different types of diets too, not just like one thing or the other. We did carnivore, we did, you know, vertical, um, a little bit, a little bit more like high carb, high protein bodybuilder type diets.

I mean, I have my favorites and, but like Mark knows, I also get really tired of food too. So he's like, ah, you're looking a little sad. Let's change it up. So, you know, that's a really huge benefit for me to be here. Yeah. You know, there's this client that I had that messaged me the other day. He, we just started and he's trying to drop weight.

And his first week he dropped two pounds. He said, I only dropped two pounds. And I think someone on the podcast mentioned something like that the other day too. And I just laughed because it's like, when, when you're looking at that and it's like, you have this goal, this big goal of like losing this amount of weight or gaining this amount of muscle or gaining this amount of strength, you know, even if you're inching forward slowly, it's never good enough. I think, uh, I think Tony Robbins, I don't know if it was originally from him, but I heard this quote from him like I think last week. A lot of people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 10.

So this hypothetical person that you're talking about. I like that. That's great. That's a great quote. Seriously, it is. Because like if we think about so many people that are wanting to lose weight and let's say their first, what, eight months months they drop let's say it's only 15 pounds they drop 15 pounds you know that's 15 pounds lighter than you were like earlier this year that's a big win it might not be as much as you wanted but it's still a lot now we can just keep

improving i think you know we do want to have these mini goals but if we don't hit those goals but we still got close and we were still heading there. That's a massive win. Like that is an insane win. And we don't really, I don't think even myself, sometimes I don't give myself credit for some of the small wins I may have because it's not where I want to be, but it's still better than I was before, you know? So like you're much stronger than you were before. Like, did you think you'd be this strong at this point right now? Last year? Or like, did you think you'd be this strong at this point right now? No.

Last year? No. Yeah. You know, I said it in a video that has yet to surface, but I will definitely hit all these milestones with or without SARMs. However, being able to do it like in such a short time, like, whoa, like that's been huge. You know, also too, like just picture, we'll get into the SARMs a little bit here. Just picture if somebody gave you a pill, right, and said these pills are going to make you bigger.

And along with these pills making you bigger and stronger, I'd like you to start to, you know, really concentrate on that throughout the rest of everything you're doing. Your training, your sleep. I want you to take everything. Take the pill, but also take the pill that makes you make the right decision you know along with it you know swallow that too right yeah and it's like well that that's so the sarms clearly they're doing something i mean we i tony huge i think he uh had a lot of great information on the podcast uh the lady boys was was one of the my favorite parts of it actually but uh no he had a lot of great information.

He shared a lot of things. I believe they're fairly factual. I believe these things do work. I believe they do have a reaction in the body. I do believe they can make you stronger. I do believe they can help you gain some weight and help you lift some more weight. And I'm seeing that from you, but I don't think it's just that. I think you're probably getting 50% from them and you're probably getting the other 50% from your effort and from your lifestyle and from being, you know, being adapted to a lot

of these things for almost close to a year. You now have the mindset. You're, you're no longer the scrawny kid that, that maybe felt counted out or, or counted yourself out even now you're like, no, you know what? I can do this. Like I lift with Mark all the time. And, and even if Mark isn't here, I can do that too. I think that was a huge progression for you too. Yeah. You know, lifting with me, I think helped you, but being, having me kind of teach you, I'm like, Hey, look, you know, even if I'm not here, you need to make sure that you're not taking these jumps. Cause you're gonna get hurt. you're going to get jacked up, and then even when you went off on your own, you were awesome with it

and you were consistent with it and you knew, like, hey, I can't be messing around. And you were even antsy about it. You're like, man, these guys work out too slow. You didn't tell me about that. I thought that was great. Yeah, so the funny thing was I was talking to Mark about like, man, I don't know. These warm-ups, they're really long. And the way the setup is, we have to have like 18 guys on one bench. And it's like, dude, it's like 15 hours later.

All right, cool. Second set. And I laid out all these excuses. And he's just like, well, the answer is 4 a.m. I'll see you tomorrow all right i got nothing yeah you're right but yeah no um like so today uh we we benched with uh tom and jay and old me would have looked at them and been like oh well tom's been training a long time jay's bigger so uh they're they're gonna bench more than me. I'm going to have to pull weight off the bar soon. This is my turn.

I ended up matching on one of the accessory movements, but I ended up matching everything they did and then even hit more reps. Yeah. And that's just because I'm like, I know I got this. Like there's no question about it. Like I wanted to do more. But, you know, luckily Mark's there to be like, all right, and let's move on. But he's totally right.

Like training with him, like literally training, like it was training. You know, I had my training wheels with Mark. And then when he let me out on my own, there were days where, you know, Smokey's like, no, you need to go up. I'm like, okay, Smokey's telling me to go up. I know I need to stop. Yeah. You know what, Andrew? I'm curious.

If you can think back, right? Think back to a month, two months before you started, SARMs, was your habit in terms of consistent food intake, working out, was it as on point as it is now? been like a heavy heavy thing in like the comments right they're just like oh well you know now that you're you're you're doing all this you're gonna train way harder you're gonna you know everything's gonna be like intensified i'm like or is that a word intensified yeah it is now okay it is now cool and i'm like well yeah well no shit i mean i've never had eyes on me ever yeah so you think i'm just gonna sit here and like all right well i'm gonna take sarms and go on the couch and see if they work like so no so um but to answer your question um nothing was terrible like i made sure i got eight hours of sleep i always prep my food and i train almost every single day so but the difference is i want like today mark said we were done i went to the ghd machine sounds good hr and it sounds good um and i crossfitters called a ghd

yeah yeah so i went to that thing those bastards i get confused i don't know what the hell it's a glute ham raise it's ghr what's the d uh ghd yeah what is the ham dick yeah who put the d in glute ham raise i went on that thing yeah after we were done because i wanted to work my abs and so i'd hit three sets there and then i come back and mark's picked up some dumbbells and i'm like yeah let's keep going yeah and so we worked out more chest stuff and he ended up showing me how to like pose and flex which was really cool and i'm gonna try to keep doing that every day now too it's getting kind of it was getting a little weird to work out i ain't gonna lie you guys took your shirts off in front of the mirror and we're posing with each other well yeah so he he his shirt's always off

so yeah it's pretty cool but uh he's like here come over here you know put your hands together and flex and vote i'm like you know what i've got a little confidence right now i'm gonna go and pull my shirt off there we go and so yeah so, yeah. And somebody walked in and was like, oh, all right, cool. You have an audience. Yeah. You have trouble flexing your right arm, was it? Yeah, my right bicep. My left one, I can get the peak really good.

And it's my off arm. And then so my stronger arm, I just have a hard time, like, getting that nice peak going. Yeah, so I just kind of showed him how to kind of squeeze a dumbbell, flex with a dumbbell, and just took the dumbbell away from him, and then he was kind of able to still hold the peak on that. Yeah, and then the pectacles too. He showed me how to flex that up.

It was a lot of fun. I remember the first time I saw that on TV as a kid was Terry Crews doing his pecs. I think I was like 15. I was like, can I? They're not moving. When I was able to get a little bit of movement there, I think I was like 17. I was like, yeah. Peck popping.

Peck popping. Is that on like Friday after next, I'm assuming? I don't know which one. I just, I remember I saw Terry Crews on TV, you know, making his peck stance. And that in itself was motivating. Yeah. Shoot. You know, it's an interesting thing that we don't start there.

It's an interesting thing we don't start with flexing. Because it's like, you would figure like, let's say you're going to be you wanted to be a sprinter you figure that someone would teach you how to flex like your calves and your hamstrings but now you just run you know you don't you don't learn like i'm not saying like you need to be doing like this huge like bodybuilding course or anything but i think some bodybuilding would be great for everybody. And even just the flexing and posing of it sounds so strange, but, uh, learning how to just flex your left bicep, learning how to just flex your right pack, learning how to flex, not just your quad, but to take the individual muscles that are in the quad, you got four big muscles in there trying to figure out how to make each one kind of move around. You figure that's where we'd start

with our training, but we don't. And you know know when i was working with andrew today i was like you know you'd figure that this would be the first thing that we would go over but it ends up being kind of the last yeah i'm most sore from that like five minutes of posing than i am the whole workout that's i don't know why there's still somewhat of a differentiation between, I mean, I get why, but powerlifting and bodybuilding, you know what I mean?

Because powerlifter as, as a powerlifter, you should be doing all these movements to activate all of these different muscle groups. You, you should be doing that. That should be part of your training. There's going to be some times where that's going to be lower volume when

you're getting closer to a competition, but outside of competition, you should be working all these different muscle groups. You should be knowing how to activate them. They should be getting bigger. It doesn't make sense why there's still a, oh, that's bodybuilding training. No, that's powerlifting. It should just be part of powerlifting.

It's odd. I think sometimes when it comes to general fitness and when it comes to powerlifting, you know, when it comes to like general fitness and when it comes to powerlifting, you know, maybe kind of people are thinking like, I don't really have the muscle to like flex to really see the difference, you know? And so maybe that, maybe that's why they don't work on some of those things, but you're starting to see it more. You're starting to see it more and more. And you know, where it needs to show up more too is, um, you know, I think again, like general fitness, there's a lot of machines and things like that in the gym but there's still not enough people that understand like when i run into somebody

and they're like in their 60s and they lift like when we had dr davis here remember how like dr davis the uh former cardiologist um anyway he wrote some he wrote some really good books and stuff like that we had him on the show and he was fantastic but he was like in his 60s and he lifted he had a very simple routine he's like I go through some of the machines in the gym and he's like and I do sets of 10 he's like I get a pump I get a lot of blood in there he goes and I might finish off with some barbell stuff or some dumbbells or something like that he goes but it's pretty much the same, uh, you know, similar workout each time. And, um, I was just like, I was like, you know what, man? I was like, that's great. You're doing like resistance training and you're flexing the muscles and you're,

you're getting blood into the muscles. I'm like, I think, you know, in general fitness, you don't really hear that much about people kind of diving into some of that. And I'm talking about like, there's a lot of women that do like yoga and Pilates and, um, maybe they get into, you know, healthier eating and stuff, but they're not getting into the kind of the, the muscle building side of it, which I think is really important. And yoga can provide its own resistance and so can Pilates, but I don't think there's anything that can really match just going in a gym and getting some good resistance training in. There's still a, for some women, including my girlfriend, there's still some fear of getting really big. There's still some fear of putting on too much muscle,

even though that's not going to happen. You're going to have healthier joints. You're going to have an easier time moving around. You're not going to feel as much pain. You're just going to feel better altogether. It just should be a part of what people do on a daily basis. There's kind of this stigma that you're going to get too yoked. I did a MetCon yesterday, by the way.

Awful. Trying to get all in shape? What's going on here? Well, I just asked Kalipa to kind of throw one out to me, and he did, he gave me up-downs, I'm sorry, it was a push press, followed by trying to do them strict

for 10 to 15 reps. And, uh, whenever you start to break down, then you drop down and do, uh, 10 up downs, which is basically an up down.

It's basically just a, like a squat thrust, I guess you'd say, or a burpee without the jump, you know? Okay. The problem is, is I can't really do a squat thrust at the moment because I can't like just put my hands on the ground while my feet are on

the ground and then kick my feet back and then kick my feet back underneath me. You know, you should be able to like do that. You should be able to have the mobility and the strength to do that. But I just have to like drop down and like push my, I push my whole body weight back up. Like I snap back up, you know, which works out to be pretty fast timing wise it's pretty good but not very efficient for your uh you know for for how i was uh doing in the workout so i only use 95 pounds for the overhead press i suck at barbell overhead presses so i do the overhead press and i go through a set of like 15 i was like oh wow okay that felt really i felt insanely light. Like this might not be that bad. I do one set of the up-downs.

The 95 pounds feels like 225. Damn. Right away. Right away it just felt like somebody put bands on it or chains on it or something. It's like holy shit. That recovery needs work. Oh my God. Needs a lot of work.

And so what's amazing is like what I felt, you know, my felt pretty good my chest and stuff my breathing felt good but i was still trying to pace myself because i'm like i don't ever do any of this so i was just trying to recover whatever way i could but my my muscles were like blown up like they just they just i couldn't like i couldn't go any further so i had to like stop a few times and wait and i did this thing for a progression of four rounds, and then I timed it, and I ended up doing it in six minutes or something. Something like that, for a good athlete, should probably take three minutes. I was just like, oh, man, that's pretty crappy. Then my reps started going down. I started only being able to do six of each one.

I take that kind of thing as like, this is a starting point. I have never, I have never done that particular workout. Uh, amount of CrossFit workouts for me, uh, has been really low. I haven't done many of them. So I was like, and I've done some of them where I can do actually pretty good. Some of the stuff that Jason's prescribed in the past, um, you know, I was able to get through them pretty good, but I was like, well, this is clearly a weakness. This is something I could work on and really benefit from. And then today when we were benching, I was like, man, my shoulders are fried.

And I was like, oh, shit, it was that damn Metcon I did yesterday. You know, it's great that you're actually- Six minutes, though, by the way. Just a six-minute workout. Like, that's awesome, you know? You're doing something you're not good at in terms of lifting.

Like, you're not just sticking to a bench a squat or a deadlift or some of these other movements you're doing a segment of movements that you're not good at and you're looking to progress at that and a lot of people after we get a handle on what we what we like and what we're good at we don't step out of that stay there forever you just stay stagnant in that you don't you don't progress in any other direction than just getting a little bit better at these specific things over time so that's huge that's why i won't get to i know i know and we're still we're still getting to that we're still getting that i'm still working on that process but i didn't want to talk about it anymore because i'm not making it happen yet so we'll move on to the next one so what was it like over over pond? It was amazing, yeah.

Traveling overseas was really cool. It's always awesome to anytime I get a chance to travel with my wife and hang out with her. We didn't bring the kids on this trip, but the progression of where we are financially and how we can really just feel good about it. Just makes you feel good. You know, there's no other way to really put it. But we talked a lot about how happy we used to be, even just to go out period like just to go out to eat period we were pumped and we were like but you know we did it like once every other week yeah or maybe even once a month because like we just didn't have the money to do that kind of thing

plus we lived in los angeles things were a little bit more expensive and we were like yeah you know it's a little harder to get around in los angeles stuff traffic wise and things like that and we just appreciate it so much that we're able to go out you know differently and we still have a certain um like neither one of us like grew up rich or anything so we we still have a certain flavor and a certain taste for certain things and so sometimes we end up at like these really wild over-the-top restaurants and we're like we're laughing about it like this is like way too you know it's way overkill we don't even know what we're ordering you know we don't even know what we're getting you know getting some weird thing that's like duck fat from you know from some exclusive place and wherever the hell they're flying it in from or whatever

um but it's fun you know You know, it's just fun. And we've been together. It's going to be 19 years of marriage in August, and it's more fun to hang out with her now than it's ever been. So it's, you know, I think because the kids are older, you know, that helps a lot. There's still stresses with the children, obviously, all the time. That's just part of being a parent. It's just part of having a parent it's just part of

having them attached to your hip forever but um it's different it's different when they're really young and they they don't you know they're not listening to you or they're they're off like breaking something or whatever you know it's just more frustrating uh those times so from that perspective it was really good and then from a business perspective it was really good. And then from a business perspective, it was great too. I got to go to body power. The body power expo is, uh, one of the bigger expos they have over there. And, uh, it was in, uh, Birmingham. There ain't shit to do in Birmingham. So we stayed in, we stayed in London. Birmingham is like, it's kind of like industrial almost gray. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, yeah. Well, that's pretty much yeah all of england it just rains all the time pretty much yeah um another funny thing too was uh how hard it was to understand everybody

what do you mean like just the accents because they're speaking english right the accents yeah the accents were thick but a lot of scottish people there and a lot of irish people there as well and you know good luck trying to understand them holy shit is it hard and and like someone's blaring music across from us you know some douchebag company uh they had these just like super tight shirts or whatever and uh they're just blasting blasting music the whole time and i couldn't really hear anybody so i'm like i feel like such an idiot all i'm doing is like nodding my head and smiling the whole time i can't hear what anybody's i can't a lot of times i can't hear what the hell anybody's saying and i'm like is it because i'm getting old that i can't hear or is it just literally i cannot understand what

they're saying you know but the the pitch of of a lot of their voices um doesn't have a lot of bass in it right from what i've noticed from most of the people I talked to there. And the accent, the kind of combination, I wasn't able to always pick up what everybody was saying. But it's amazing to meet these people. And this kid right here, he was competing. And so I'm signing the shirt that he's about to wear to go do his lift. But each person kind of has their own story. And it's funny because the people will come up and they'll apologize. They're like, oh, man, I feel bad, but I'm taking up so much of your time.

And there's all these people waiting in line. I'm like, no, this is your time. I don't care if we talk for 90 minutes. Fuck everybody else. You got here. You happen to be in line. And we're talking now. And so just um, just

overwhelming too. You know, I, I don't really use that word very often, but to, to go to this booth and like turn the corner and it says Mark Bell slingshot and salt, you know, and it's, this is a different company. This is our vendor, uh, in the UK. And, um, they have things set up really nicely and they're all super excited and super proud of the, of the company and, and what they're doing. Um, and it was just, it was just great. And they, they, uh, they did a lot of work. They did a lot of work, uh, letting people know that I was going to be there and all that kind of stuff. And so what happened on the, um, so Saturday is kind of the big day. Friday is like more of an industry day where there's like more of the other companies are, are, are in there rather than like fans and

stuff. And so on the second day I was supposed to stay there until one, it got to be about 12, 1230 or so. And I was like, man, I, you know, I've gone through this line, you know, this huge line and it's like never, it's never ending. And I, you know, I got here, you know, this huge line and it's like never ending. And, you know, I got here, you know, right when it started and stuff. And so I was just like fizzling out. And it's never good to talk to fans when you're not like in the right mode, right frame of mind, you know, you don't want to be grumpy. And so I was like, I'm going to say bye to everybody and I'm going to get out of here. And so my wife and I, we took off. here and so my wife and i we took off and um you know as we're as we're exiting um we run to this kid who's like rounding the corner and the kid's like hustling you know he's like running and he's

like he's like sweating and stuff and he's like out of breath and he's he was wearing headphones he put the headphones down and he just started like he couldn't even talk like he tried to talk and he started like crying right crying right away. Aw. And, I mean, here's this big old kid. Look at the size of this guy, you know? He's, like, massive. Yeah, he's huge. He's, like, probably 21 or something like that.

Jeez. He starts talking and kind of, you know, sharing his story with me and Andy. And, yeah, it just got emotional. And Andy started crying. He just said how inspired he was. He listens to the podcast all the time. Yeah. He sees all the content that we put out. He's been following along since you know he's seen bigger stronger faster he's watched all the stuff we've done with brian shaw and head cone and and all that stuff and he

just he just said hey you know it's had a huge impact and he said i want you to really know that what you're doing is working he's like i hear that you always say you want to make the world a better place to lift he's like you're doing it you always say you want to make the world a better place to lift. He's like, you're doing it. And I was like, holy shit, I'm trying not to cry because he's crying and Andy's crying. So I'm about ready to start going too. But I just thought it was so cool. It was so awesome to run into him in that way. I mean, I'm about ready to go on a train to go back to or to go on a train to basically go to Paris. So like I'm out of there, out of there.

Yeah. And if I stayed at the booth, I wouldn there. Yeah. And, uh, if I stayed at the booth, I wouldn't have run into him because he wouldn't have made it because he would have been like in the back of the line. I still would have left anyway. So I just thought like, man, that's just a cool twist of fate, you know? And so I, uh, posted this, he posed, he posted something up on me and then I, I went to post something up and I actually took down the post originally because I was like, I wanted to add something to this post, and then I just kind of thought about it a little bit more.

I'm like, yeah, you know what? I'm going to invite this kid out here. I'm going to fly him out here to super training. Dang. That's what we're doing. We're flying him out from the U.K. to super training. That's crazy. What's his name?

His name is like Rob Plett or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember I saw his profile. He does like acting or something. it seems like a funny dude yeah he's a he's a huge kid yeah it's crazy into some strongman stuff and some power lifting and stuff like that and thor doesn't make him look like a baby because i've stood next to thor i've stood next to sha and they make me look like a child yeah so this is a big dude that's yeah whoa yeah yeah he doesn't look small it's insane but mark i was actually gonna i was wondering because massive have have you ever done

an episode with andy or not like oh yeah yeah we've done yeah we've done uh maybe one episode two episode two because i was gonna say man it, I mean, obviously we know what you guys have been able to build together, but it'd be so interesting, especially I think men and women in relationships would love to know like how you guys built like a shared vision to where you are now. Because you're over there, you know, you do this thing, you have a dinner. It's not a shared vision. It's my vision. It's your vision. Okay, your vision. But still, it's just like, it's super inspiring to see like-

The patents to show you. Yeah, you guys have been together for a long time, right? It's not like, you guys have been together for a long time. You have a great family. You're over here having dinner in France and doing all this stuff, a molded business. There has to be so much complexities there and understanding in terms of just your dynamic to make it all work it's it'd be really cool to hear and understand but yeah we should bring her back on the show for sure yeah there's a there's definitely a lot there's a lot to talk about and the cool thing

is is that you know for the most part she is like i guess the protector of like the brand and she's a protector of me so like whenever i you know i i run into all kinds of different situations where i might have opportunity to do something and you know before i can even finish my sentence she's always just like no not doing that and you know like sometimes it's something i might really want to do or you know i, I'm, you know, I, I, I don't know. I, I like to, I don't like to say no. Yeah. I don't really like, I don't really like to say no. And so, you know, I, I, I'll go to her and ask her and then, and I'll say, well, I, a person seems pretty cool. I don't know. You know, and she's like, no, you know, so she's kind of protective. Yeah.

She's protective of all that stuff. And then she's also, um, you know, she's kind of protective yeah she's protective of all that stuff and then she's also um you know she's also going to be the one that's thinking of the finances you know she'll think of she'll think of some resistance and some finances not like that's where her mind goes right away like automatically to block everything but if i like uh for example with the new space that we get i want to build out a studio in there um where we could do all i'll explain some other time where we can do all kinds of cool stuff yeah uh and so she's all for it you know and then she just processes it and then the next day she's like we need to talk about it further because we need to kind of like think about you know what

how crazy do you want this setup to be and what is it going to look like? And, um, you know, how much are we going to like put into it and how, and what can we get out of it? So she's always kind of thinking of a lot of that stuff, a lot of like checks and balances, pros and cons. Her main thing is like, how does this help? How does this hurt? You know, we've, we've been working in here, um, slingshot and the new slingshot allows you to handle a lot more weight, but it doesn't look like we're going to make it for the masses because I'm like the what this could do from a negative perspective far outweighs the positive. I do not want people to get hurt. You know, I the product is designed to avoid injury. The product's designed to allow you to train through injury. And as you start to make something more and more powerful, even the Mad Dog Slingshot can be fairly dangerous to somebody who's not advanced. is so strong that it's going to pull your elbows in. I've seen people snap their arms in, um, in bench shirts before because the bench shirt pulls their elbows in. So my worry is that, you know, somebody like me would order it and be like, Oh yeah, I'm going to use it.

But then I share it with my buddy when we're working out and then he snapped, like, I don't want people to get hurt. So she's like, she, she's quick to, to make the call, you know? So I'll say i'll say you know i just it just doesn't feel right and boom right away she's like nope no reason to make it okay next thing you know she's like on to the next thing yeah and and i have like emotional attachment to stuff because i here i was like working on this thing for a while you know and so she's able just to kind of compartmentalize it and be like no that ain't for us let's it. Yeah. When we were talking a couple months ago about having like regular, regular like scheduled seminars here at Super Training, you know, like, OK, like this weekend or not this weekend, but a couple of weeks from now, we're going to have one for squats, I think. Right. Like a squat seminar.

Yep. So like specific things. And so like I told Andy, like in the group meeting she's like we should do a business one and you should be one of the main hosts and she just kind of laughed it off but like i was being totally serious and she thought that it could have been a like a joke but i'm like i don't know i think maybe if mark can like kind of put that you know in her head or something to be like hey people would actually be interested in this shit i would i know right having having her and mark together like talking business would be huge yeah people

people really do need to hear from more women when it comes to that kind of stuff i believe um and i'm just from more people in general but like when i went to that leadership uh thing down in san diego there was um there was a few women that spoke and the perspective from the other side was great. Like, there were actually, like, two of my favorite speakers. I think there was maybe another woman or two in there, but two of my favorite speakers were both women, you know? And it's just a different perspective. They just have a different point of view. And amazing, too, that I think in both cases, I think both women have kids too so I'm like how did

they mean like yeah I mean you don't you don't just like hat you don't just like have a kid you know like it's this big process of being pregnant and then you know there's there's there's a long period of time where you're that you and that kid are are pretty attached especially as a mom so I'm like how the hell did they uh figure some of that out? But yeah, I think, I think there's a lot of women that could, uh, gain more from hearing from more women. I think the same thing with fitness, same thing with training. Like a lot of times the men are the quote unquote experts and there's not an, there's not enough, uh, material expert women and we're starting to see more. So that's, that's the good news. They're starting to be more people like, uh, Steph Cohen who are out there like teaching people and hopefully hopefully we

continue to see more because it's it's always it's harder to relate sometimes to the opposite sex and so hopefully we'll see more of that yeah i think uh who's coming tomorrow or who do we talk to tomorrow are we talking about that or no oh we're talking tomorrow yeah we're talking to make squats make squats i just didn't want to put it out there yeah it won't be live so it might not get posted tomorrow but that's fine yeah uh june 8th we're having a seminar here and it was originally supposed to be a squat seminar but it's a it's the first this is our first second saturday this is our first second saturday seminar we're gonna do several of them throughout the year and this one has none other than charles glass which i'm so yeah so excited to have him here he's just the godfather of bodybuilding himself he's gonna be instructing

the seminar he's gonna be instructing the seminar y'all better get out well i don't know who's gonna be able to come but i'm'm going to be at that one. That's insane. We might be able to save a spot for you. We'll see. Okay. It's going to be June 8th. It's here at Super Training Gym.

And it's from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m. It'll probably run long because I have a tendency to talk. And Charles talks pretty fast. So I don't know, you know, from his point of view, how long he'll talk. If you want more information, I'll just go to the Super Training Gym Instagram and you can see some information on it there. I don't know how you sign up or anything, but come check it out. You're going to enjoy it. If people want to go, they'll figure it out.

They'll figure it out. We'll figure it out. But yeah, I'd love to have Andy on the show show again so we'll uh we'll bring her in here yeah oh yeah and i think on a recent podcast someone had asked you about kids or possibly having more kids i think it was uh fitzgerald but you guys kind of had a new addition to the family right yeah we haven't talked about yeah we popped out a dog what's that been like and why so small by the way because it's so damn cute it's like this big yeah um so quinn has been like uh jake has always liked dogs and he's always wanted one um i'm pretty uncomfortable with animals so i i was like cool with him not having one, you know,

because, you know, Quinn was way too scared of them and she was like, definitely afraid of them. You know, she just, I don't know. She always thought they were going to do something to her. I used to have to pick her up all the time when she was little and we'd walk down the street and there'd be a dog. Didn't matter how cute or big or small or whatever the thing was. She was always terrified, you know? And so, um, it was never really an option. It was never really a conversation. But then Quinn started getting used to some of her friends' dogs and stuff like that. Oh, there she is. There's Daisy.

So Quinn started getting used to some of her friends' dogs and stuff like that. This dog is ridiculous. It's so silly. It's insane. And so Andy started kind of looking into these. It's called the teacup Maltese, right? Yeah. So she's showing me these Instagram clips of these teacup Maltese.

And she goes, look who follows this. Look who follows this teacup Maltese. And sure enough, it's the Natty Professor. And I was like, that's so hilarious. I was like, that's so hilarious i guess awesome so she's showing me all these pictures of these uh dogs and stuff and then it was like a week or two later she's like here's our dog and i was like i was like what do you mean she's like well this is the one that we're gonna get and i was like well how do you get it like and where does it come from and she's like they come it comes from china i'm like oh no is the dog gonna understand us if it is if you know is it gonna is it gonna speak chinese you know but uh yeah so

the dog it came it came from uh came from china and uh we've had the dog for almost two months now yeah and the the crazy thing is is you know it wasn't like I mean, it's it's I guess it's still like a puppy, but it wasn't like a tiny, tiny puppy like in the pictures. It was like a little little bit bigger, but it's still tiny. I mean, the thing only weighs like four or five pounds. It's really, really little. But the strength increase from the first day that we had it till now and how quick it is. decrease from the first day that we had it till now and how quick it is and it's insane because like i was like oh it's kind of cool like you know if i if i want to have the dog on the couch with me i can but the dog can't jump up on the couch and then sure enough like a month later there she is jumping on the couch jumping on the couch how much bigger is she gonna get because she's like what oh that's it that's it yeah that's crazy she's right about there i mean i you know i imagine

maybe she'll gain a pound or something yeah but uh honestly it's the that's crazy she's right about there i mean i you know i imagine maybe she'll gain a pound or something yeah but uh honestly it's the funniest thing seeing you and this tiny little dog you would not expect that but uh it's a cute it's a cute little sucker you know and um it's just it's just like a normal dog i didn't know how it would be because i thought it would be like uh i don't know i just i just assumed because it's so small that maybe it wouldn't be as smart as a regular dog or whatever maybe it didn't have the same size brain or something but i thought maybe it'd be like more like a cat or something but i mean it's a regular dog you come in the house and it comes flying up yeah but you know you're almost tripping over it all the time because it's always hovering around your feet and then she has these uh bursts

of energy uh you know kind of throughout the day where she wants to like attack your feet and then she has these uh bursts of energy uh you know kind of throughout the day where she wants to like attack your feet and all kinds of crazy shit like that i gotta ask you why do animals make you uncomfortable and like is there like a story to that or they're just like you just you know no there's not not a particular story i just um i don't know i just always like i've always been kind of uneasy around them and then then once you're on, if you're uneasy around a dog, especially kind of a bigger dog that wants to just play with you, they, like, sense it. And they, like, they want to, like, play with you even more or something. I think maybe they want to show you, like, hey, there's nothing to worry about. But they want to, like, jump on you and shit, you know?

So I'm always like, I don't know about that. I don't know what the hell that thing's going to do to me. Just probably an irrational fear almost. Yeah. No, I've never gotten like bit or like kicked by a horse or anything weird like that you know yeah no i mean i think it's it's normal i've heard of it before you know because it's like people you know they just like well oh when was the last time you actually had a conversation with the dog that said it wasn't

gonna bite you like you can't control it but yeah at the same time just like ah chill out man yeah dogs are great I love pups. Who let the dogs out? Yeah, I was going to say. Oh, my God. Who let the dogs out? I need to learn about this. Yeah. So while I was in Europe and while I was at the Body Power Expo,

last year a guy worked on me. He's a physio. He does physical therapy stuff. And so he worked on, I think, my elbow or something, you know. And this year when I went, I was actually hoping that I'd run into him again because I'm like, man, my neck hurts. I don't know what the hell I was doing when I was sleeping or whatever, but my neck was killing me. So I was like hoping that I'd run into him. So there's kind of some dead time.

It was just a dead time during the, during the expo. And sure enough, the guy comes out of nowhere and there he is, you know? And I was like, Oh, sick. You know? And, uh, he's like, Hey, you want to get worked on? I was like, yeah, actually I'm available now if you want, you know, if you want to do something. And he's like, sure. He's like, I'll take you with me. So I told the, um, some of the people that were at the slingshot booth, I said, why don't you guys come with me? And, um, one guy, uh, his name is Chris fellows. He worked, he works for them and he does filming and photography for them and stuff like that. And, uh, he, he's been a huge fan and he's, you know, he's all in on the company and everything.

And so he was, he was, uh, he was excited to be filming and everything's actually getting married the next day. And him and his wife, they tell me they're like hey you know um you know we can only be here for today because we want to be here tomorrow but you know we're getting married and i was like well you sound like you're bummed that you're getting married so you should be to be totally pumped that you're getting married but yeah they're trying to like let me down easy i was like hey you know that's that's awesome you're getting married but anyway i had them come with me to kind of film and get some pictures and stuff but i also wanted them to kind of experience uh what was about to happen because i knew we were going kind of like backstage and last year when i'm back went backstage

there was some other you know uh celebrity like influencers famous people if you will like mike rashid and simeon Panda and stuff like that. And so I went into this green room, and sure enough, I turned the corner, and there's Phil Heath, and there's Dana Lynn Bailey, and there's Rob Bailey, and there was a few others back there as well. And so I get worked on.

There's Phil Heath. I get so freaking jacked. He's so jacked. He's fired up, too. He's fired up. If he, if he hops back on stage this year, I think he'll be really hard to beat.

He's pretty, pretty excited. Um, yeah, there are, yeah, there's the Rob and Dana Lynn. And so,

you know, I get worked on for a little while and, uh, we get some shots of that. And, and then I just ended up talking to Rob and Dana Lynn and Phil Heath kind of in a, in a circle. And, uh, you know, my friends that I brought in there ear to ear smiling the entire time. They just, they're huge fans of fitness. They just couldn't believe that they were there. They were so pumped. Um, and I'm talking to Dana Lynn about, she had, she got robbed, rhabdo in her stomach from, uh stomach from uh doing a crossfit workout from doing sit-ups um and i'm and rob's you know making fun of me about my small dick truck my giant truck

that i got and uh he's like hey way to kill the environment nice small dick truck you know we're just all giving each other shit just talking trash yeah phil heath is talking about like psilocybin mushrooms and all kinds of crazy stuff because he lives in Colorado. But what my friends thought about that whole thing, they were really blown away because they just were like, you guys are just sitting there just having like regular conversation. He's like, I don't know what I thought would happen if people like that were talking. But he's like, it gave me some insight that it's like, oh, it's like regular people, I guess, you know? So he thought it was really cool.

But as Rob is making fun of my truck, so once one dick story gets whipped out, then more dick stories are to come, right? And so I mentioned horse cock. I mentioned how we talked about this mentioned horse cock i mentioned you know how we talked about this guy horse cock on our podcast before when uh scott mendelson was on the podcast i said i used to go to this gym la lifting club and i i'm like scott i know that you used to train i'm like what was the deal with the guy with the horse cock he's like he just had an enormous cock so i thought he had something wrong with him he's like no dude he just had a big well he's like what

what he had wrong with him is he had a giant dick, which is probably not a wrong thing. Good problem to have. Yeah, you're right. Right. I mean, it looked like a, he's wearing cargo shorts, which I don't know how your dick shows through on cargo shorts. Baggy ass cargo shorts, camouflage cargo shorts. I remember it specifically. And it looked like, what are those canisters

called everyone's walking around with the like the water things that people put the hydro hydro hydro flash yeah it looked like a hydro flash hanging out in his cargo shorts and he kept asking me and my brother if we wanted a spot on the bench and we're like no no and he was super nice too

but we're like we're good dude like we don't we don't want anything to do with that waving over your face yeah and mendelsohn was saying mendelsohn was saying it was so ridiculous that like everybody used to make him like show people all the time he's like hey like they would joke with the guy the guy would compete at 275 and like you just have somebody hold on to that thing you'll be in a 242 weight class but so i'm talking about this uh horse cock fellow to phil heath and rob and dana lynn everyone's laughing and we're all having a good time and stuff and then phil is like he goes man he goes i've seen some shit in bodybuilding man he's like it's wild he goes one year he goes this guy he goes he came out he goes and he goes

he goes i'm sitting there and i he goes i'm just trying to i'm just trying to like i'm trying to pay attention to like other things and i'm trying to block it out but his trunks are not fitting they're not they don't they don't fit in the front he's's like, you know what I mean? Like they're not – it doesn't work. He's like he's got something giant that wants to crawl out of there. And he's like you could almost see all his stuff. And he goes – and I have seen him at competitions before. And I know that he goes out there and like not only does he pose but he like dances. And then he starts showing me.

He's like, Phil, I'm going to like do this and I'm going to do that. And he starts doing like the splits and stuff. And Phil is is like i'm just like trying to look him in the face and i'm like good bro man you look good he goes for the next five years he goes this guy proceeds to do this he goes on stage and he gets out there to who let the dogs out and dances his ass off with his shit flopping around everywhere oh god this is i'm guessing this yeah this is this is some uh some shots some shots of this guy so once he told me he told me the guy's name and stuff and then so i ended up i ended up looking it up and then i i sent it to i sent it to phil and phil was uh he was laughing so hard and I was like, yeah, man, now I can't stop watching videos of this guy.

Now I'm, now I'm forever stuck, you know? He looks like a kind of guy who'd just be like, yeah, just let it hang out. But he said, he said some of these guys, I guess it maybe helps with the pump or something like that. Some of these guys will take like Cialis or something like that before they go on stage to get like their muscles to pump more or something like that some of these guys will take like sialis or something like that before they go on stage um to get like their muscles to pump more or something like that he goes oh yeah yeah he's going he's going all in and he goes this is so good i love the boots too yeah if you're not watching this on youtube you're really missing out. This is a well-choreographed posing routine.

I think this guy's name is Jesse Ferguson, I believe. Yeah. He's the bodybuilder. Who let the dogs out? Who? Who? Who? Who?

And so I told Phil, I said, hey, if you're ever about to go on stage and I hear, who let the dogs out, I'll know that it's over for you, right? He goes, hell yeah. That's so good. Oh, my God. Is this guy still competing he's doing the hey we can only hope right i'm just hoping i'm hoping that you get back into it and we see this at a show well i i was i've been i've been so inspired by these moves that i the next time i compete i'm gonna steal some of these. This is suspect, though, because I'm trying my hardest not to look at his dick. It's just like your eyes just get drawn down. It has its own gravitational pull.

That's impressive. I was just like, man, bodybuilding is crazy. So Phil Heath, the best part about it, he said, he's just sitting there shaking his head, we're all like dying laughing, you know? And he goes, he goes, you know what? I can never figure out. He goes, I don't know. He's still dancing.

Oh, this is who let the dogs out. It's when the song finally comes on. Now he's really going nuts. Oh my God. But wait, there's more. I love how he just ran to the other side of the stage to show everybody else. Like, hey, check this out. Oh, my God.

That he's barely flexing. Yeah. Yeah. Has he flexed the whole time? I mean, Phil Heath is like, dude, he's like, if I was on that judging panel, he's like, I would have just passed him through. Just give him his pro card. You don't have to keep seeing the same routine every year.

Like, oh, my God. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's so good. It's a year. Like, oh, my God. Wow. Wow, wow, wow. That's so good. It's a BBC right there. Oh, my gosh. Hey, there's no other way to go. You got to get that big black coffee in there.

Yeah. Oh, man. Dude. You're welcome, everybody. Yeah. Yep. God, I just feel so confused with myself. I don't i don't wow seamus about to go home and tell his girlfriend i think it's over i got feelings for somebody else he's gonna go look

this guy up oh oh man no that's that's too much for me buddy you got you know we gotta we gotta snap you back into reality here. You got Worlds coming up. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do have Worlds coming up. That's May 31st. Yeah, tickets and all that stuff is all good to go, and I'm just going to keep training until it happens. Jason's probably going to be competing there.

Chad's going to be competing there. So I'm just going to be focusing on my first match, and ideally I can roll with him again think you could bones jones the guy like can you um can you steal some of his powers and then like beat him at his own game i remember that's what he said he did to daniel cormier and i was like man that's cold but that is what he did he did have daniel cormier up against his cage the whole time took him down yeah took him down yeah yeah that's wild like to have that mindset like that he's just a freak no but you're talking about bones jones the other day and like it's just

crazy how how i guess just in control he seems every time he steps into the ring and then you're also mentioning how he just like goes with how he feels like he'll just maybe come out from certain practices because he knows he shouldn't do it um and he knows how to pace himself you know i think i'm getting a better hang of that now like i used to just like when it comes to training in jujitsu i used to just go as much as i could but now i'm like on days where i'm feeling like i need to back off a little bit i'm getting better at learning how to back off and i guess feel feel how i should be training for competition so are you curious to see if any of the other um sorry is it super heavy ultra ultra heavies if any of them start pulling guard now that that's not you're not worried about it at all that's i'm not i'm not worried about somebody pulling guard on me you know i'm gonna

pull guard regardless but even if they do then i'll just work on passing or i mean i'll just pass but most of the guys don't pull guard they go for takedowns so with that being said um i'm you know i'm i'm i have a decent guard at this point where i'm confident that it's going to be very difficult for anyone to pass once i pull you know nice so uh yeah man i'm nervous but that's always a good sign i know i've put in and i'm continuing to put in all the training that I can and all the training that I should. And it's got to go show it when it comes game day. Do you have it sometimes just like just out of the blue, just nerve,

just boom, they just dump on you out of nowhere. Do you have that sometimes? Not, not like all in a rush because I think about it so much. Like I'll go, I'll go into like the sauna or whatever afterwards. And I'll just like sit there for 30 minutes and I'll just think about it so much like i'll go i'll go into like the sauna or whatever afterwards and i'll just like sit there for 30 minutes and i'll just think about the match and think about those guys

i'm competing against and since i've been doing that type of stuff at that like yeah i am nervous still but it doesn't it's not something that i guess uh shocks me you know i'm i'm ready for what i'm about to go into at least i hope i am but i'm pretty sure i'm ready for what i'm about to go into at least i hope i am but i'm pretty sure i'm ready for what i'm about to go into yeah and uh like what are some of the things you're what are some of the things you're envisioning are you kind of walking yourself through the whole thing are you walking yourself like walking into the building and then you i imagine it's tournament style you have multiple matches and things like are you trying to envision all that are you trying to envision moves or yeah exactly well moves pretty much i envision my game because i've been to the

walter pyramid in my first year at worlds so i know what i know what that all looks like i know what the day is going to look like but i i pretty much envision the things that i'm going to do against my opponents like there's a specific type of game that i play i have a lot of different transitions in certain positions and i just imagine doing that against those guys. Like I know how big this individual is and compared to me. So I know how that feels. And Chad, I mean, hopefully I get to compete against Chad too. That'd be fun.

But I just envision what I'm going to do against these individuals with my game. And I just go over it over and over again. And the cool thing is that like some of the things that I think about when I go into training with my training partners, there are a few big guys that I roll with and I'll, I'll do the exact things that I was thinking about on the mats when I train. And that in itself is a confidence boost because now it's just like, it's continuing to cement that technique and it works really well.

Like we, we we've talked about visualization before visualizing game day in terms of powerlifting, the weights that you're going to be moving, the way you're going to move it, et cetera. And it really does make a big difference, but it has to be in congruence with training. You got to get that training in too. So I've been putting in what I need to put in

and we'll get in there on game day. Has anything changed, uh, in your training since, uh, your last competition kind of prepping for this or, or, uh, has there been any, you know, did you recognize any particular weakness, uh, in the last, uh, the last, uh, match that you had and, um, or has there just been some other just weaknesses that you've been working on or has there been anything in particular changed about your training changed about it uh well i mean when the pinky thing happened uh the main thing that i do is i do a guard that requires grip here and in training i've had to take these two fingers together so this finger isn't left

alone so i'm kind of gripping with these fingers so So I haven't been using a lot of my, my main game, um, during the past, like the initial few weeks of this injury, cause I couldn't grip well with this. Uh, but after the, after a few weeks where it's gotten better, like I feel like my grip with these three fingers has gotten better because now I've been playing my main game just with these three fingers and it's been going well. So I'm still training the way, or I'm still training the way or I'm still improving upon what I was doing in terms of the game, but I'm adding a few things in. And once I'm able to take this off, I think I should be able to take this off when Worlds comes. I think it'll be feel like it'll be like taking off a cast or a restraint, you know, it's just

on my pinky, but it makes a big difference. So yeah, I've just been improving upon what I've been doing in terms of my guard, consistently drilling that working with bigger opponents and uh i don't i don't take breaks on on sparring sessions that's a big thing like we'll have seven or eight sparring sessions and you can rest in between but i just don't take breaks because i want my cardio to be where it is or needs to be when tournament day comes to and i'm confident that also so cool and then will anything change with your lifting you know as you get closer like will you take like a week off of lifting or just a couple days or how will that work i'm not going to take uh like a week off or anything i'm still going to come in and get some sort of training and it just won't be as intense so it'll be like you know i'll still do some big movements but it

just won't be as heavy but i still want to get blood flowing and you know muscles moving I don't think it's necessary to have to take take off of lifting all together it doesn't make that big of a difference in terms of recovery if anything it's just going to help me to feel better when I do have to compete so now I'm not going to stop but I will lighten up some of my loads um and the training session will be a little bit easier than it usually is did you say it was like in Long Beach or something like that? SoCal. Yeah, Long Beach. And then is your girlfriend going with you or you have teammates going with you or something like that? No, she's going to be here.

I'm going to be going on my own. So yeah, that'll... I'm going to be going on my own. Hell yeah. What about your coach or anybody like that? Anybody from the gym? No, I don't know anyone else who's competing at Worlds this year. There were... I think there were a few guys competed last year, but no one's going to be competing this year in blue belts

or any other belts other than me, I think. So, yeah, I'm going to lone wolf it. Fuck, man, we'll have to go down and see them, dude. I was just thinking, I mean, if you can get me down there, I'll film, cover the whole thing. Yeah, we'll see. We'll talk about that. But yeah.

But yeah. Hell yeah. That's awesome. I'm super excited for you, man. I think it's cool. Me too. Me too. Brutal.

Jiu-Jitsu is brutal. Yeah. I mean, I don't think we've talked about your pinky on the podcast. What's going on with that? He tried to shove it up his butt and it didn't work out. That happened. Luckily, it did work out. But what actually happened that night was I was rolling with somebody and the tendon tore in here. So there's a picture on my Instagram of the pinky was stuck in this position. It's called mallet finger. It used to be that if I took this

off, the pinky would revert back and it would bend and i couldn't bend it back but now um it's staying where it is so now i can like bend it a little bit yeah i can bend it a little bit and it's not going back and it's uh it should be fully healed but i still have to keep this on when i roll for now and yeah there it is it was literally stuck in that position i try to lift it up and it wouldn't lift up so um yeah it's a little bit painful right now but it'll it'll be where it needs to be when i compete so how is your body weight ben because it does look like you're getting leaner but you're staying a similar body weight yeah man it's uh i'm right now i got my dexa scan gun and apparently i'm 7.8 percent and i would have not expected to be in the single digits

93 full of shit like i wouldn't have expected to be um this lean and this heavy like this what the last time i was close to this lean was when i was getting ready for my bodybuilding show and i did get leaner than i am now but but I was much lighter. So that in itself is a show that, you know, even like since then I've managed to put on a good amount of muscle, but I'm also maintaining that muscle while being lean and performing really well. You're still like 240 or something, right? I'm two, I would just weighed myself before I was 247.8. Oh damn.

Yeah. 247.8. So. And so I wrote on your Instagram, like, don't lose too much weight. Yeah. I'm really not trying to get, let myself get underneath 240. I'm not going to get underneath 240. There's no reason for that. Um, but I am really happy because like one of my big goals was to be able to maintain a, you know, a lean physique, be strong and be able to perform at the way I want to perform, you know, cause when I use this lean in the past, I felt tired and sluggish. My libido was tanked. Everything was bad. But I feel perfectly healthy right now. And I think the fasting stuff has a lot to do with it.

There's no research on it, but it really does make a difference for me personally. So yeah, it's doing well. Well, I think the fasting, we've talked about it many times on the podcast, but i think the fasting has just kept you closer to cleaner foods not that you're eating garbage before but you mentioned you'd snack and some things like that so i was eating some garbage i was eating some garbage yeah and like i mean i i'd imagine i'm probably at andrew i kind of pushed his uh thumbs together almost there at the bottom there yeah yeah well where what are you talking about just when you're doing the uh chest front pose there yeah i think like right are you talking about? Just when you were doing the chest front, chest pose there. Yeah.

I think like right now if I were to see biceps, he brought the forearm up to the bicep. Yeah. I didn't. I'm just, I'm kind of surprised still, you know, and it's just going to continue to improve as time goes by. But again, like I've mentioned this in the past, it's, I'm really just like happy and fortunate that I've had the opportunity to be able to obviously go into bodybuilding, train here in terms of powerlifting, and figure out a way to balance it with jiu-jitsu.

You got to do these without shorts next time. Without shorts on? Yeah. Just like do it like that guy? Jesse Ferguson, yeah. Yeah, you got a Ferguson. Really short trunks. That's some wide shoulders, dude.

You're off the team again. Forfibbing. At wide shoulders, dude. Yeah. You're off the team again. For fibbing. At Nsema Iyeng. Yeah. How do we spell all that? Nsema Iyeng. N-S-I-M-A-I-N-Y-A-N-G. Link in the description.

Just go from there. He used to be the Natty Professor, but something happened. I've gotten so... We're going to have a special edition on sarmageddon where he lost followers once he beat once he stopped being the net oh really no yeah seriously like my following started to go down after i changed my name wow but it's okay like i've gotten a lot of dms of people like are you not natty anymore i'm like no i just changed my name my instagram name to my actual name shout out to me for this picture you look like dexter jackson right there by the way that's all photo illusion i don't look that way in real

life um i didn't photoshop it i just took the image but yeah but it's like at an angle it's when i when i took it i'm like you look like a street fighter character look like a kuma about to just go nuts on somebody you do look insane right there but you know the funny thing about like social media rules you'll see it everywhere if you have natty in your name on social media you're automatically not natty by what everybody says yeah well i mean because you're painting a target on your back exactly so that's that's why i changed my name because i'm like okay i don't want everybody to just like you know only think about that i want them to just take in the content and learn something from it so So I'm gonna change my name to my name.

Yeah. But, and it's also the, I mean, if I put the natty, whatever, people are just going to think like, Oh,

he's just upset that everyone is bigger than him. When you do it, there's like, well, clearly he's on. Clearly he's on and he's trying to scream and act like he's not. So I just, I changed it to my name so I can let go of the drama.

I'm happy you changed it though. Cause I, it just seemed like it was bugging you for a little bit just i i don't want people to focus on the nattiness even though yeah but like i don't want you to focus on what you are yeah go to um go to dexter jackson's instagram you got to see this picture of him you know what's funny funny? It's MyOlympia08. I'm sorry, MrOlympia08. MrOlympia08. This is IG. Let me know which one.

Jesus, yeah. To the left with the hat on. Still go down more. To the left. This one? Yep. Dexter Jackson's insane. look at how fucking jack yeah he said that mesmerized yeah well look at the uh like the bicep brachialis you know what's in between the bicep and the tricep is that this guy right here yeah that's awesome the development is just insane and he's like 48 i'm pretty sure yeah he might even be older than that yeah he he's like the he's always the uh so listen to how listen to how funny this is so i'm in paris i'm with my wife we're in like this

lounge right and i i check out this picture of dexter jackson i just go fuck i was like he's so jacked and i show my wife and i go fuck fuck, I wish I was black. And I swear to God, before I was done with my sentence, she goes, yeah, I know. I was like, I'm not even going to say it.

I totally set myself up for that. You should have seen her face though. She was so happy. She's like, yeah, I know. I was like, oh, man. she's like yeah i know i was like oh man she's like that'd be great yeah i'm like oh fuck i wish i was black oh man dude oh look at his forearm looks like he's like implanted a baby in his i love that he's just chilling that's that's a cool thing it's like he's probably just i It looks like he's implanted a baby in his arm. I love that he's just chilling. That's a cool thing. He's probably just, I don't know, he just always looks like that.

He does. Freak. We've got to have him on the podcast. He'd be down. Goodness. At least I hope he'd be. He's another one of those individuals like, oh, whatever, he's on or whatever. But he's been lifting for such a long time.

He's still been at it. He looks great great it doesn't seem like he gets hurt you know oh man just looking at these pictures that golds and the people that we like either had on the podcast or just recognize it's kind of funny i don't know it's just weird everyone should add bodybuilding into their training that's just you just do it yeah That's one takeaway from today's podcast for sure. Hell yeah. And we're going to have Charles glass on the podcast coming up soon. I'm super excited about that. Tomorrow will be Meg squats,

even though it might not fall in line chronologically or whatever, but we're out of here. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later.