Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 231 Live - Matt and Jack Schweitzer

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

Matt Schweitzer is the Executive at Hopdoddy Burger Bar based out in Austin, Texas currently with 32 locations across 10 states. He was a former collegiate athlete playing football and baseball at a high level, and got into the restaurant business after college. He comes from an active family and is a crossfit athlete who is currently prepping for a crossfit competition. ➢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

Is this the right way? Hello? Hello? Oh yeah, there I am. Hmm. I do sound odd. I didn't realize that before. Really? No, I'm just kidding. Okay. No, I'm not. No, it is weird when you first hear your own voice. That's kind of where I'm at, man. It's really strange when you start to hear it. You're like, huh? I didn't realize I had a lisp. You have a lisp?

I didn't realize that until I heard myself on Chris's podcast. I was like, why are my S's sound so weird? What is wrong with me? I don't hear it though. Maybe I'm just... Maybe I'm making it up. We'll work on

catching it. We'll see. You guys are going to be like, oh, there it is. We'll work on catching it. We'll see. You guys are going to be like, oh, there it is. Be in the middle of something. This fucking guy over here. Think about all those people you beat up, too, over the years. I don't have a lisp. Like, fuck, man, they were right. I don't care what you say.

I don't have one. All those squats. Yeah, they knew all about it. That was a pretty good workout we got in this morning, huh? That was great. That was unlike anything I've ever done. We were here about 45 minutes to an hour. I'm like a diesel engine.

It takes me a while to get warm. I don't have this young, supple tissue like this guy, so I'm warming up. And Mark just walks in the gym, and he's like, let's start lifting. And the rack gets lifting rack gets loaded and we're like all right let's do this it's great plates it is yeah we're just going at it it was fun yeah we did some uh did some back stuff but you guys worked out yesterday right when you came in right yeah we uh we landed and uh chris was like what do you guys want to do you want to eat you want to train we're like let's let's go hit super training man strongest gym of the west let's go get after it so uh we came in and uh just kind of uh on the airplane actually we were just kind of writing out all the movements that we wanted to hit and uh we're like all right and kind of start

programming them up and uh andrew jumped in with us and yeah we got got a couple little um just a couple little little things in it was kind of nice got it you got an emom got a little amrap in and then did a little uh 21 15 9 complex kind of going down going up and it was it was terrible 21 15 9 i think of anything is really really hard it is i mean you could pick the most you pick the simplest exercises and it gets to be hard fast yeah and uh the thing with the thing when you do some of those movements too is it doesn't matter what kind of shape you're in um it doesn't matter if you're an absolute savage it doesn't matter if you're completely out of shape because the better shape you get in the more intensity you bring to the lift or the exercise of the movement and so it just smokes

you that much harder you know it's like there's no hiding from it you know wow um yeah it was fun it's been great it's been great out here training this great environment great atmosphere pretty easy to work hard in a gym where everybody's getting after it, you know. You guys, have you guys been lifting together your whole lives? How does that work? You know, you guys are brothers and you guys wrestle and beat the shit out of each other and lift and stuff like that together, or what's the deal? A lot of that. I would say that, like, I always wanted to kind of chase him and emulate what he was doing,

and we had a little bit of an age gap between us so I never got to train with him until recently but he had always kind of tried to train me and push me and in that way training for football or baseball or whatever the sport was so I kind of learned a lot from him in that way I remember when he was uh gosh he was like 14 years old and I was playing football and he was kind of getting into football and he came he's like hey i want to start lifting i want to start training i bet i still have the original picture we took of you and so we just started i mean he just started going doing all the same stuff i was doing and he's naturally extremely lean you know he's just a lankier

leaner guy and i remember the hardest thing for him was just keeping up on eating yeah you know when he was when he was but the thing that's crazy about him is he's really conditioned to eat. Like, he knows how to eat. Like, if it's time to put food down, like, you know, because even at a young age, he was like, I'm not hungry anymore. I don't want to eat anymore. I'm like, well, that's a shame because here's a protein shake. Yeah.

And like to this day, he can't really eat eggs. Yeah. Eggs are hard for me to eat because, that summer you were like hey man we're gonna get a training session in we're gonna do some hand-eye coordination some ball work and you know what last night's leftovers all you yeah and we eat last night's leftovers and then scramble it up well it wasn't even just that it was like i remember eating like three new yorks and some you know some potatoes and he was like how was that pretty good and he goes how about how about eight raw eggs how about that we just drink those and i would drink that and then go yak it up he's like yeah looks like you gotta drink it again yeah so now you're scarred because yeah so i mean i gotta eat eggs because

i know the nutritional value was high but i'm not really enjoying sorry i shouldn't try to bring you to breakfast this morning we so we trained together um i mean i kind of put him through a lot of just like you know bro stuff that i didn't really know what we were doing but we were probably getting good work in i mean we were kind of we were running hills and we were doing kind of you know entry level how did you find out about fitness and lifting and stuff um well both of our parents are really active our dad was a kind of a, he was a college football player. He was a, he ran track in college. He was a pole vaulter. He went to school for exercise physiology. Our mom to this day is still a personal trainer. She's a, she's done, you know,

group fitness stuff. She has personal training stuff. So our families, we've been involved in fitness our whole lives that we were really blessed. Our parents have a, there's like a pretty passable gym at our house. So kind of growing up, it was always like, Oh, where's mom and dad? Oh, they're in the gym. You know, like, that's awesome. Yeah. Like we have like, you know, pictures of, you know, my dad running half marathons with us and strollers. And my dad told me that just the other day when we were home, we broke our, we broke the concept too, but it's not cause we were like so strong.

It's because our dad bought like one of one of the original Concept 2s that had, like, I'm talking like a wood handle. Wow. And that was, like. It was Concept 1. Yeah. And I remember our dad told us that he bought it because when I was born, he's like, well, yeah, I needed to go to the gym,

so I just put you in the backpack and I just get on the rower and just start rowing. So it was just kind of in our family and kind of in our blood growing up. And then, you know, just watching videos and just trying to be like other just meathead idiots and just like, Oh, I think we should do this. Let's start, you know, bench pressing and stuff like that. We were just talking yesterday on the podcast. We were just doing a podcast amongst ourselves. And we're talking about how, when you're like seven or eight, you're following after that, like nine or 10 year old kid and want to be like him. Do you think it was beneficial to you to try to follow in your big brother's footsteps,

or was it in any way was it negative, trying to keep up with him maybe? I think for me it helped kind of get in my head that I could go harder because there's a lot of kids my age who are like, oh, you know, just do like the school workout and like PE or whatever, i'm like all right well i'm ready to like really turn it on it was like a warm-up i'd go back and like i got to chase him somehow he was bigger stronger faster always so i just wanted to you know do the extra work and so in that way i think that really helped me so are you able to keep up now you're able to beat him sometimes uh there's there's a couple things catch him here and there but i mean

he's strong man he's like you saw him today i mean he just he's got he's got some like weird stuff he's just like insanely good at like he shouldn't be really good at deadlift but he you know he out pulled me today a couple times and he's really good on the rower he's has a really weird uh strength to body mass ratio like for a guy that weighs too good at weird stuff yeah for a guy that weighs 210 like he He's good at weird stuff. Yeah. For a guy that weighs 210, like he's pretty good. You know, he's 210, 215. He's pretty good at like, you know, handstand pushups and a lot of ring work.

And I mean, he just cooks me in that stuff. Do you guys train differently? Like in terms of like powerlifting or whatever, do you do different stuff? Well, I'll tell you what I did. I'll tell you, and he can tell you his journey. I was like full just like athletic so i most of my strength training background's been kind of inside of the gym for football or baseball um played hockey growing up so just kind of a real sports specific

training and all the way through college and when i stopped that um i kind of got into crossfit so that's those are kind of the only modalities that i train okay he's a little bit different he actually followed like old old old school mark and got into power lifting and i don't know you tell them everything you've kind of done i mean i'll run it back and um so when i first started working out my my dad and brother were like hey let's get you on calisthenics let's make a a really strong foundation for you it's like push-ups dips pull-ups whatever it was air squats lunges but i want to lift and they're like but you got to be strong before you lift

because i was super super skinny and lean and um i did all that training and one of the early guys who work with ryan paul got us on isometric holding things to really get time and attention building the endurance without risking injury in athletics. What's this isometric thing, a machine? It's just like five-minute squats. Oh, just holding weights, okay. Like five-minute squat, five-minute lunge, that kind of stuff. Oh, yeah, this guy, we would train with this guy, and he would set milk crates up, and you'd get like a spread lunge, and you'd just dip down to where your knee bend

was below the parallel point of the milk crates. And you start the clock and be like, well, five minutes cumulative. And that was like the warm-up. And then you get – You push on something for five minutes? No, you just hold a lunge on top of milk crates in a split lunge. Just hold it for five minutes. And then once you get advanced at that –

Each leg. I love that. And you were able to do that? Well, you work up to it. Jesus. Once you get good at that, though, then you put a barbell I love that. Then you were able to do that. Yeah. You work up to it. Jesus. Once you get good at that though, then you put a barbell between your legs and you add five. And all of a sudden you're just that weirdo doing 30 second holds with like

two 25 between your legs. Yeah. It's weird. And so that all happened. And then I was like, ah, that would be really, that sounds like torture,

like literal torture. but your muscle endurance is crazy. Just try to stay a little bit closer to the mic here. Let's move it this way. Yeah, you just start out working. And then I was like, you know, I want to do something that I enjoy because that just hurts. So then I started getting into powerlifting. And, you know, I'm like 30 pounds lighter than I was when I was really powerlifting.

And that's when I started following you and just getting into, you know, the slingshot bench, you know. Then you're like, I need to get fat like this guy. And then, you know, he had this massive bench. And I was like, I got to do 400. The first time I did 400 was after doing, you know, a 12-week training block using the slingshot. And I got it. I remember the first time he showed me the original. He's got, like, the old-school slingshot, old-school gangster rap,

like probably Generation 1. I remember the first time he showed it to me, I was like, get that thing the hell out of here, man. We're not going to put this thing on. Just put the freaking weights on. And he's like, and then he shows up a couple weeks later, and I'm like, good Lord, this dude's throwing weights around. What's wrong with him? This shit works.

So, yeah, we've just always kind of been training different stuff. So I like stuff that's a little more like I like to mix cardio in. I like to try to do as many different things. He's just a big likes to feel good when he's lifting guy. Yeah, I mean, now I would say the main difference between him and I in training is he's CrossFit, and I would say I'm like cross-lift. You know, like I'll, I'll,

I'll get on the earth. I'll get in the assault bike. I'll get the cardio in when I want, but it's very much as kind of what I want to do is what I do that day. And I have to enjoy it or I just won't do it. He's so he's an, he's an intuitive lifter. Yeah.

Yeah. And like today we were talking about, you know, rep scheme and you're like, yeah, I'm just going to kind of go till it feels good. And I'm kind of the same way. I throw up somewhere in the bar and i feel good if i'm supposed to do it for five and i can do it for eight i'll do it for eight you know i do the same thing with the

weight on the bar you know i just keep going up and it's just all of a sudden doesn't because i'm not really following anything in particular i'm not uh competing uh anytime soon so i get a weight on there and yeah i'm always trying to go as heavy as I can handle. But once I start to go a certain weight, if my form starts to waver, I'm just like, well, that's just where the, where today is. That's just where it ended up. And so, you know, I, I have to sometimes pull myself back and say, okay, well you can just, that's the way it went for today. You can't add more weight. And I just got to kind of leave it, leave it at that. But I think a lot of people are pushing and they're trying to get that weight on there.

I'm like, I want to move the weight a certain way. You know, some of the stuff we talked about, like Mike O'Hearn trains and some of the stuff I was showing you guys today. It's like, look, man, if we move this weight a certain way, we don't really need weight on there. We weren't using a lot of weight on certain things, right? At the end, we were getting smoked with just that 45-pound plate, man. But you know what? Like you guys were all saying, both saying it felt good i mean the tension was good the body position was good and you know that that set probably cooked me just as much as when we had four plates and 25 on there you know so it's interesting how'd you uh how'd you guys uh so you you've been a fan for a long time and then

what was the progression of you running into like my brother? Because you're a fan of my brothers, right? Yeah. So this is like the crazy thing. And this is what I told. This is what I was telling Chris. Because this is kind of a weird story. It's a weird story.

So Bigger, Stronger, Faster comes out. And my brother was like, oh, yeah, the guy who made that video his brother is you know his brother's his power lifter he's a badass i find i'm like okay i don't really follow lifters whatever but at the time i was really and not not just at the time but i i was really an independent cinema i took a bunch of cinema classes in college as electives and our class went to the sundance film festival a couple times and you know chris was like you know bigger stronger faster came out he's bigger than life i mean it was like the independent movie of like you know i've tell him all the time is he's like a once in a generation director as far as independent cinema goes guy's amazing

so i was a huge fan of him and i remember actually our class at the sundance film festival did a whole presentation they did a whole deal on bigger stronger faster and we had to write a paper on it and wow we were like we're looking into ch Chris and everything. And so, you know, fast forward, you know, whatever it is, 10 years, kind of find the carnivore diet, you know, see Baker on Rogan, like a bunch of other people did. I'm a curious guy. So I'm, you know, trying to kind of reach out to Baker, you know, one thing leads to another, get in touch with him. We ended up chit chatting and, uh, he's like, we're talking and talking. And I'm like, Hey, you know, I see your friends with, uh, with Chris Bell. I was like, I'm a huge fan of his movies and stuff like that. Next time you run into him, just, you know, connect us or something.

I'd love to say what's up. Well, five minutes later, Dr. Baker links us up on email. And I, you know, Chris is like, Hey, what do you, you know, what are you doing? He's obviously super nice. Jovial guys like, Hey, what are you doing? I'm like, Oh, you know, is like hey what do you know what are you doing he's you know obviously super nice jovial guy's like hey what are you doing I'm like oh you know I'm out in Austin I'm working I work for Hopdoddy he's like no way I got it you know you got one of your guys restaurants is like next door to me I'm like dude I'll come down and we'll see you let's let's eat some meat and train and that's kind of how it started and then I remember yeah he I remember he called me he was all pumped like I met the Hopdoddy guy he kept telling me how good the burgers were yeah he's like this is gonna be amazing yeah and so then i call my brother i'm

like i'm like jack i'm gonna fly to cali i'm gonna go hang out with chris bell we're gonna eat and lift he's like no way i'm like yeah man it's gonna be great and so you know i was a while ago now and we just talk i talk all the time and train and it's good stuff and then you know it's just kind of funny you know like big brothers or big brother connection and you know, it's just kind of funny, you know, like big brothers or big brother connection. And, you know, you're following him kind of little brother connection. It's kind of funny. Sure. So. Yeah, that's an interesting spin.

How did you get into, you know, being like a how did you end up getting this position at Hopdoddy? Like were you cooking before or something like that? So, yeah, I when I when I was playing football in college and I kind of came to an end, um, I didn't really know what I wanted to do after I graduated and I moved to the mountains to be, you know, be a ski bum. And, uh, I ran out of money and I started lugging boxes. Um, kind of, and I'm in a mountain town. What happens is, is that, you know, the ski lodges, they'll have like, you'll serve, you know, thousands and thousands of people a day. you know, the ski lodges, they'll have like, you'll serve, you know, thousands and thousands of people a day. So semi trucks will back up at four in the morning and they'll unload pallets of frozen food. And you got to put them on a hand truck and ride them up the gondola and put them

away in the freezer. And I did that for a whole, a whole winter. And, uh, I was like, yeah, man, this sucks. And they were like, well, if you want to make more money, you got to cook. And I'm like, I'm not cooking. And they're like, well, you should cook if you want to make more money. So I did that. And then that kind of turned it, you know, one thing led to another. And I started cooking in a mountain town and then moved around a little bit and ended up opening my own restaurants back home. And I had a couple in San Francisco, had a couple in Arizona. Wait, like Hop Dotties?

No, no, no. This is totally different. This is my own restaurant. Okay. So I opened my own restaurants. And what kind of restaurants were those? They were all over. I had two classic American kind of gastropubs. I had like kind of an upscale Italian, kind of Italian influenced steakhouse. uh, we've, we're more spirits focused. So we did a lot of, uh, cane and agave stuff. So it was all like, uh, tequila, mezcal, sotol, cachaça, bacanora, really obscure esoteric spirits from

kind of Latin America, Mexico. Um, as part of a country bar down in San Francisco, um, and then kind of two other just kind of American, American food restaurants down there. Then I did a, another Mexican restaurant down in Arizona. Um, and then after all that, um, a guy that had kind of mentored me for a while, um, reached out to me and asked me if I wanted to, uh, to come down and take a position with, with hop daddy. There was a growing kind of sexy burger brand at the time. And, uh, I moved down to Austin two years ago. I think we had 15 units when I showed up and we have a 33 right now and a nine under construction and it's, it's been an amazing ride. And, uh, so yeah, I oversee all the food and beverage for the whole company. So I write the menus, uh, come up with all the specials, kind of oversee most of the training process for that,

do a lot of the hiring, do a lot of the evaluations, um, oversee a lot of the creative process for that, do a lot of the hiring, do a lot of the evaluations, oversee a lot of the creative process. And I've really just kind of been, been blessed to be on a really great team and kind of see this, this kind of growth rise, which has been fantastic for me as kind of the next stage of my career, kind of going from, you know, a budding entrepreneur and to kind of integrating into a large organization that's, that's growing. So it's been really, it's been a blessing. It's been amazing. Is that weird for you? Is it like unconventional compared to other jobs that you've had? I mean, it sounds like you had to be pretty buttoned up to have these restaurants.

I'm sure you got to be organized and stuff. Do you like that aspect of it? Do you like the aspect of being like, you know, going from being a meathead in the gym and throwing around some weight and then, you know, putting on your executive pants. Do you like doing that? Yeah. You know, it's funny because when I was the part that only people that know me really, really well would know this is when I moved to the mountains and first started cooking, I kind of stopped training. And I never really have time.

And when, you know, at that point, I was at this crossroads where there was really no option for me. It was like, I got to start making money. I got to start doing something. I graduated college. And so training and basically any semblance of a healthy lifestyle kind of went by the wayside. And then when you become an entrepreneur, I think I opened my first restaurant when I was 25. So, I mean, there was just no time for any of that. And so the unconventional part of what I do now is, is that going from an entrepreneur

to being part of a larger, larger organization, um, is maybe a little bit different. People usually do it the other way. They start with a large company and then they go break off on their own. But what being a part of a large company has really afforded me the ability to do is I just get to leverage great people around me. I get to be a part of a team. So not every single moving component is incumbent on me to move the needle. So it's actually freed me up a little bit to be able to kind of recommit to the gym and kind of come back and start training a bit more

and find a little bit better work-life balance. And so I absolutely love it. And, um, you know, one of the cool things, and it's not quite to the extent that you guys have here, obviously given the nature of our business, but our company's very, uh, young and progressive thinking and very health conscious. Chris met our CEO, you know, our CEO's like talk, tell him Chris, he's like, no, I can't eat right now. I'm on my, I'm on my 16 hour fast. And like, you know, he's, you know, drinking bulletproof coffee. And, um, you know, a lot of people in our office are, are, are very, uh, very health conscious. And it's, um, it's a cool company in a pretty cool city.

That's pretty aware of that stuff. So it's, it's fun. I like it a lot. A lot of times people say a great way to like burn through a lot of money is to open up a restaurant. Could I, I, I tell you tell you two things I'll tell everybody because being kind of- I mean, you better damn be passionate about it or have a really good idea, right? Yeah. So, I mean, being kind of the restaurant guy in my circle of people that I know, probably one week doesn't go by that I don't get a call from somebody being like, hey, I got a friend that really wants to talk to you about opening a restaurant. And I always tell people two things. No. Yeah. So after, after I say, absolutely not. I say, the first thing is

if you get it right, if you can nail it, it's an ATM machine. If you can't, it's a vacuum cleaner. And the second thing is, is, and then after I tell them that and they're like, okay, well, I think we're going to get it right. You know, we got a good idea. We got a good location. I'm like, you said every restauranteur. The second thing is, and I mean this wholeheartedly and dead seriously. If on your birthday, you're not willing to leave your family's dinner table, drive to the restaurant and clean human shit out of a urinal, then you shouldn't open a restaurant. Because those are the type of things that will be asked of you as a restaurant owner. And if you're not prepared to make that level of sacrifice, then don't do it because that's literally the stuff that'll happen. I mean,

at the worst time, the worst thing you can imagine will happen at the worst time and it'll happen over and over and over again. And you'll feel like the, you'll feel like the Israeli army, just constantly at war. You're just constantly at war against what's going on around you and it's a it's a it's amazingly rewarding it's incredibly fun um but you have to have a ton of great people around you and i think everybody likes the idea of like yeah it would be badass to own a place that i can invite all my friends to and like exactly think of that side of it and you're thinking yeah it's gonna like you're like inside the place like the place is packed all the time this is a money-making machine right here yeah it's uh it's funny because restaurants um cool restaurants fail to be cool unless they're a business and a

lot of restauranteurs fail to remember and to know that you're in the business of business so if your restaurant isn't making money it's not gonna be cool for very long because it's gonna go out of business you know um but you, but you, I mean, you're absolutely right. So many people are like, oh, you know, I just want this like small little wine list and maybe, you know, something for so and so. And I mean the telltale sign of somebody going down the rabbit holes were like, you know, I'd really love you to get with my wife. They've got some great ideas for menu items and you know, her sister-in-law is going to do great on the design. And I'm like, all right guys, I'm, I'm, we're, we're done here with this conversation. This is, this ceases to happen now.

You need to bring in professionals. Yeah. I mean, and, and there's people that are substantially probably better than me at this. I, I I've been really blessed to be in a position where I, like I said, I get to do, I I'm at that perfect intersection with Hopdoddy of the things that I like to do and the things that I'm good at crossover really well. Um, and so it's just, it's afforded me a bunch of great opportunities, like being able to meet people like, you know, Chris and come up and hang out and do stuff like this with you guys. Uh, we're in the middle of a menu rollout right now. We're, we're, we're changing the,

we're changing the menu and you know, nine States and all of our restaurants in two days. So, um, but, but again, one of the, when we set out to do a menu change and we set out to do broad scale changes like this, we try to develop such a great system and such a great process. We try to train people so well that this is literally what we talk about doing. We're like, hey, if we do our job right and we set our people up for success, we give them the tools that they need, the day we roll the menu out, we should all be on vacation because there shouldn't be any questions. We should have answered every question. We should have trained everybody properly. We should just be waiting for a phone to ring and it shouldn't ring because we should just, our job should just be done by then. So when you opened all those restaurants earlier before Hopdoddy, were these

like you did one that, that stopped and then the next one, because you mentioned like five. Yeah, I did. I did too. Um, then we moved on from those, did another one, um, bought another one, moved on from those and then down to San Francisco and then down to Arizona and then up to San Francisco. And do you still like, like right now with any of these restaurants, do you still own them? Did you sell them or just like sold a couple of them, closed a couple of them? Okay. I was, I was the, uh, I was the poster boy for a cool restaurant, not cool for long. Yeah. I was a poster boy for like, you know, you couldn't get her, you couldn't get a seat, you know, our place was packed. Food was amazing. Um, you know,

I fell into a lot of, um, you know, kind of pitfalls of, you know, either paying people too much, not paying people enough. Um, not being a great leader myself, not making the decisions that, not making the hard decisions that needed to be made in business. Being too social is a big rabbit hole. People go down when they own restaurants and bars and stuff like that too, right? Drinking too much and things like that and hanging out with employees too much and things like that, right? Unbelievably so. I mean, I think I probably- Because it's entertainment. It's food's entertainment, right? I probably single-handedly closed one of my restaurants because of that reason. I mean, and looking back on it, I could confidently say like, hey, as a 26-year-old young entrepreneur,

when you put music, food, cash, and booze in four walls with an immature leader, that's probably going to happen. I mean, you go to business school and you think you learn how to run business. I mean, you don't, they don't, but when you might know about business, but you don't know anything about leadership, you don't know anything about building a team. And I learned that the hard way in spades. Um, but I think it's, it all really ultimately kind of prepared me to be a better member of a team now. And I remember the whole time I was doing it by myself, right. Or the whole time when I was, you know, I was the chef, I was janitor, I was everything. And the whole time I was thinking, God, I would make the world's best sous chef. Like I would make the world's best number two, you know, like if somebody just called me and was like, Hey, just come in and just do this.

I was like, God, I think I'd be great at this. And then I kind of got lucky enough to be able to be in that situation where, um, you know, I'm, I'm able to kind of parlay the things that i'm decent at and make a career out of it and be able to train like a maniac spend more time with family hop daddy is uh primarily burgers right yeah and it's different because we uh we try to be as health conscious as we possibly can but um ultimately we just try to be um kind of as fanatical about quality as we can. So people are going to make the choices they want to make when they come to eat. Inherently, it's kind of an issue to serve milkshakes, french fries, and cheeseburgers and be healthy. But we just try to do it the best way that we can.

We try to source the meat. That's what people are looking for, though, too, right? I mean, there's some people that might want to eat like my brother and i without the bun or whatever right and there's other people that want to get after it and have the shake and the french fries with and have the whole experience right yeah absolutely oh what's this oh this is a new video what's the best thing you guys got oh man i think the dirtiest thing you got tell me the dirtiest thing the dirtiest thing we got is probably rolling out right now it's a uh it's called double double bacon jam um so it's two two 4.25 ounce patties with uh white and american cheese pickled mayonnaise tomato bacon jam and mustard grilled onions and it's delicious oh god that sounds good it's delicious that just made me really hungry yeah there's a there's a there's

our spot right there this is our original restaurant in South Congress. These guys got together and they wanted to open one burger restaurant. Actually, Nick Foles, Nick Foles' dad, Larry Foles, he's like the Steve Jobs of restauranteurs. The guy's unbelievably talented. Nick Foles, professional football player.

He was on the Eagles. Is he still on the Eagles? Jaguars now. So Larry Foles, his partner, they had two guys that worked for him. And these two guys that worked for him came, came to these guys basically and said, Hey,

we want to open a, want to open a burger restaurant. And they're like, Oh, okay, let's do it. And so they opened it on South Congress. Um,

you know, kind of the funky, weird, cool street in Austin, Texas. And they opened one and, uh, it just went off like gangbusters. And then they opened a couple more, a couple more, a couple more.

Guys have vegan burgers or turkey burgers over there? We've got turkey burgers. We serve bison, tuna, turkey, Kobe, regular beef. We serve the Impossible Burger. That's the vegan, well, that's the one with no meat, right? Yeah, it's like the no meat meat burger. So regular beef. We serve the Impossible Burger. That's the vegan. Well, that's one with no meat, right? Yeah, it's like the no meat meat burger.

And then we serve a kind of a house-made veggie patty. We bake all the buns fresh every day. We cut all the French fries fresh every day. We blanch them. We soak them. We cook them, fry them up. How do you get the meat? That's been kind of one of those things.

It's always kind of fluctuating. We always try to find. It's got to be hard, I'd imagine. imagine i mean especially as the company grows right so the first farm that we were the first farm that we were working with we definitely outgrew um they basically came to us and they're like hey you guys your trajectory is like think about like if mcdonald's needs like one extra pickle yeah you know like that's gonna wipe out the pickles across the country right french fries is actually the bigger problem because everybody wants this certain varietal of fry that is really, it's a light frying potato. Everybody wants Kennebec potatoes.

In-N-Out takes the lion's share of Kennebec potatoes available, period. So that's what people fight for. For the meat, we try to find really high quality producers and we just try to make sure that they can keep up with our growth and that, um, they're going to make sure that we don't have any stalls and distribution. So right now we're working with Creekstone farms. Um, they're actually, they're, they made the stakes that we were having last night. Um, so Creekstone does a really great, really great job. So we work with Creekstone farms, work with, uh, Mishima ranch.

I think they're actually in Northern California. They make a Kobe varietal and we take some of their fat trim and we fold it into the creek stone so we have a little bit more fat that we fold into our patty. But these guys all do a really good job. What's the diet like for you guys?

I mean the first diet we really did together was basic ketogenic diet. And then kind of saw that one through, did the carnivore diet for almost a year. And my friends thought I was nuts. I'm sure you saw the same thing. You guys probably, I mean, you probably get that too, though, right? I mean, when you, when you, when you literally, when you literally are just like, yeah, what

are you having today? I'm four rib eyes. Yeah. Right. So you did like pure carnivore, no carbs. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we did that for about a year.

We did the keto thing together for about a year. And I mean, we kind of oscillated everywhere from like fat kid, like dirty keto to where we're like, you know, making the guacamole and dipping the bacon in it, being like, this is so healthy, you know? And then, uh, and then, you know, we swung, we swung the pendulum all the way to the other side where we were just having like huge, you know, of marxist and big ass salads with like you know really limited protein um and then we were like hey man let's try this carnivore thing and that was great right i mean you you probably enjoyed it more than me more than me yeah i mean

i i have no problem eating four or five pounds of meat a day that's not it's not a big i just i just enjoy it but you know the same thing with training for me is at a certain point that's sound funny yeah it does right when you say it out loud you're like what are you gonna do today i want to eat a bunch of meat eat a couple cows every year yeah no big deal but at the same time like at the same thing with training i have to really enjoy it and at a certain point i was like you know there's other foods that i really enjoy. And to keep that healthy relationship, wanted to try and eat some other things. And we, you know, went vertical for a while and still kind of on that train. And the vertical diet's great, you know.

He makes it really easy with those pre-made meals to get. And they're satiating. You know, we talked about earlier you can make them as fast as you can eat them kind of thing. I think Stan does a really good job with the food that he puts together. Um, I kind of transitioned from carnivore. Um, Chris actually was like, he's like, dude, he's like, you're working out way too hard. You're already pretty lean. He's like, I think you're just killing your body. He's like, I think you need to find some carbs in your life. And at this time, mind you i i will full heart full fully admit and wholeheartedly

say like i was the biggest zealot offender i remember like when he was doing hardcore carnivore i would like walk by and he'd be like you know making a fruit smoothie and i'd be like what are you doing and he's like what are you talking about dude i'm like dude it's a game dude yeah i was like i was like what are you i was like what the fuck is your problem and he looked and i remember clear as day he just looks up at me from the blender and he's like yeah i don't think fresh blueberry is gonna make me fat dude and i was like all right well fuck this guy i don't know what he's doing but it chris so chris is like you're wrong yeah storm off chris is like you need to get some carbs in your life and i was petrified of him i mean i have

a very i have had a very unhealthy relationship with food. Um, and Chris was like, dude, you need carbs in your life. He's like, you know, I think you should try something, try something you can digest. He's like, clearly you're not metabolically broken. It's not going to hurt you. Maybe it's going to feel your training better. Maybe you're going to feel a little bit better. Cause he would, he was like my support group, right? Like I would be carnivore, carnivore, carnivore. And then like next thing you know, I'm calling Chris. I'm like, Chris, I just ate three blizzards, man. I don't know what the hell's going on. And Chris, Chris is like, dude, you're fine. You're fine. Just go train. So like, he kind of like urged me off it. And then, uh, Chris was, uh, he was gracious enough

to, um, kind of connect me with Lane actually, um, with Dr. Lane Norton. And, uh, I think I was one of the last people Lane like took on as kind of a consult guy. And so Lane was like, Hey man, here's the thing. Check out the science. Um, I'd already read Lane's book, which I, have you guys seen that read Lane's book, fat loss forever? And he was not, yeah. Unbelievable information. It's like a, it's like a nutritional science PhD, but like in a, like easily digestible book. So I talked to Lane, Lane kind of helped me set some macros up. And then I basically use those, use that macro nutrient platform. And, um, I just plug in all of Stan's food as best I can. Um, I've never felt better. I think, I think, I think Stan, the way Stan breaks it down and the way that his, his meals are kind of formulated,

I don't know if there's anything better. So do you like with the macros that you have right now, do you pretty much eat the same things every day? So you don't have to really count it every day. Like these are meals that you don't change. So you don't really need to track them anymore. Right. Um, so that's kind of where maybe what I do is a little bit different. I try to keep a backbone of the same meals every day. Um, but I do, I will say, you know, the critics out there probably, you know, people are probably going to eviscerate me for this. I probably lean a little bit more towards some of the flexible dieting practices and that, you know, like, no, not every day do I have three monster mashes, two oranges, 10 almonds and a thing of, you know, cranberry juice. But like, you know, I'll throw a quest bar in, but I'll just toss it into my macros. And then, you know, if I throw a quest bar in, I'll back out, you know.

Nothing sounds wild about that. A couple of eggs or whatever, you know, if anyone's getting mad, but you know what I'm saying? There's a lot of, I tell you what, for, for every carnivore person that is out there, which I think carnivore diets great for longevity and, you know, lean muscle, you know, um, like preservation keto diet is probably great for a lot of the neurotropic and fat loss kind of benefits gosh there are people out there that just absolutely want to string people up that are the calorie in calorie out flexible dieting people you're right i mean for every zealot out there there is about that the macro counting crowd and the in the calories in calories out

crowd those people that attack that group they're like so angry about it. And I think they just think that every, I think Lane made like two references about like, yeah, if you want a pop tart, have a pop tart sometime. And now like the entire calorie in calorie out crowd is just like these, you know, pop tart, you know, skittle eating, you know, fat people that want to, you know, pretend to be fat, pretend to be ripped. I don't, I don't get it. I think, you know, in the end, the message is actually kind of the same.

Like people are just trying to express how they feel about something that probably worked well for them. And they're excited and they want to share it. And they're like, no, this worked good for me. And they're not really maybe hearing the other point. I think on both sides or all sides, everyone's guilty of maybe oversimplifying everything and not understanding like the human condition is the hardest thing that we're trying to like battle against. And I mean, we still have racism, we still have wars, we still have hatred, we still

have, we still have awful things happen in this world and we always will. Those things will always exist. And so when it comes to like your nutrition, you know, you think, okay, well, if you just eat, you know, things that are natural, you kind of stay in that realm, then you should be okay. Or if you want to count the calories and you pay attention to what you're eating, you should be okay. But I think that the human condition is that, you know, we want to eat those French fries. We're very enticed. These things are attractive and sexy to us and they're advertised to us. And there's a lot of emotional attachment

to them. So we're not, it's not like we're a dog, you know, you're a dog, you can just feed it whatever you want. And, uh, but even our pets are fat because we've made poor choices with, with, uh, what we choose for them as well. And so I think that's the issue is that it gets oversimplified. Hey, just don't eat any carbs. But, but if I did have one message to give you and I'm, I'm speaking to the general public, not to people that are in fitness, I would probably tell you, you should look into reducing the amount of processed foods that you eat. I don't think anybody would argue that, right? You could get, you could get a vegetarian, you could get Dr. Baker, you could get Lane, you could get anybody, you could get lane you could get anybody you could get stan and i think across the board everybody would be like uh probably eat more protein right probably reduce

processed food and you know or stay away from something with a package so hard it's so hard for people to do but if like they could get rid of snacks and have uh you know some sort of nice protein source with each meal i i realize what that that is very life-altering, though. Like that is a huge life change. You have to prep your meals. There's a lot that goes into that. But if you were to eat some meat or some sort of protein source about three or four times a day and you didn't have snacks,

you would look forward to those protein sources three or four times a day. And you would, you know, by and large, probably be okay. And the ironic thing, too, is if you have that protein three or four times a day and you would, you know, by and large probably be okay. Well, and the ironic thing too is if you have those, if you have that protein three or four times a day, I mean, I'm not a scientist, but I know that everything I've, I've read and everything I've heard, I mean, everybody talks about, Hey, yeah, I mean, space your protein out, you know, have three or four meals with 50, you know, 45, 50 grams of protein. And to your point, if you're not, if you're not having that quest bar, that's, you know, 24 grams of protein, you just kind of, Hey, you know what, hold off and just, you know, have yourself a, you know,

piece of lean meat and some vegetables or some rice or whatever you want. And in that, that nutrient timing throughout the day is probably, you know, probably more beneficial and snacking throughout the day. People get upset about like a donut or something. I heard Jordan Syatt had some information on his Instagram the other day. Somebody was calling in saying, like, if I have a donut, if I have one donut every day, I'll get fat. And he's like, why do you think that? And the guy's like, well, donuts just aren't good for you. He goes, well, maybe that's true. But a donut is not necessarily going to make you fat.

But I think what most on the other side of it, people like myself who've been big before, I'm like a donut is a fucking giant pitfall. Hell yeah. And you have to have abstinence from it. I mean, it's almost like being an alcoholic or something. It's probably not as powerful as that, but it probably rivals it. I know for me, if I kind of call it flipping my taste buds inside out, if I flip them inside out and they're headed towards that direction, that's where I'm going. If I have ice cream, I'm going to want more ice cream. If I have pizza, I'm going to want more. It's just, it, it leads me down. It leads me personally down a bad path. So when I see other

people say that stuff, I'm like, you can't tell people that it's not going to work, man. Dude, I've been close to 300 pounds out of shape before too. So I'm the same way. I remember the second time I ever talked to Lane, actually, I was like, dude, I'm telling you. Cause he was like, Hey man, just make room in your macros for it. You know, very, you know, scientific and pragmatic about it. I was like, Lane, you don't get it, man. Like if I have too many, if I have an extra bite of a protein bar, like I'm, I'm, I'm in the car, I'm driving to the gas station. I'm looking for that Snickers. Yeah. And Lane, Lane just put it to me so well. And every time that, that, uh, every time I get an inkling, I hear his voice

in the back of my head he's like hey matt just because you get a flat tire doesn't mean you got to get out and slash all four he's like you know so you know time for a new car yeah exactly he's like hey just because just because you had one thing wrong doesn't mean you got to go you know hog wild the other way but i thought i heard you guys the other day and i thought you said it really well about tracking macros and stuff like that. Not everybody needs to do it. It probably doesn't.

It probably doesn't work for most people. But if you have ever done it for five days, you'll learn a lot about what fills you up, what caloric load comes with certain foods, what tastes good. You learn how to, you know, take food, like swap swap foods in swap foods out and kind of what fills you up what fuels you right you know i mean so no huge importance of it is to try to land on a number that would get you to where you want to go whether you're trying to lose or gain right i mean yeah because there's a lot of there's a lot of calculations you can make and you can go on these sites and you can figure it out and you can come up with some information but really the

ultimately just doing it would probably be the best and yeah because nobody has perfect information about like how many calories how many calories you need what's your bmr what's your tde all that stuff nobody so the ultimate goal obviously for everybody is just intuitive eating with steeped in the backbone of a little bit of knowledge right and that knowledge comes from hey what's a pro what know, what does the processed food make me feel like? What does the whole nutritious food made me feel like? How much of this can I eat or do I need to eat? I think all that stuff's just super relevant, you know? Yeah. I think the idea though of awareness is so important because like, again, Mark mentioned, like if he has some of these foods, right,

he knows how he's going to be with it over time. You'll start having more and more and more and making more room. And you even mentioned it with the protein bar. But at this point, do you still have any trigger type foods that you maybe just avoid or do you just make everything fit? I try to I try to avoid this stuff like a gosh, I was I can't remember the last time I went to a movie in a movie theater because I just, I'm telling you, man, like all that candy, all that popcorn sodas. I'm just like, I just want to sit there and do that. He was super fearful at my house of a perfect keto bar. He's like, they taste too good. I'm going to crush them.

Yeah. I try to make like got legit. His eyes like lit up. He's like, no, man, keep those away from me, Mark. That stuff's, I mean the, so I do try to avoid some of like some of those foods that like, cause they, they are, there's a lot of triggers for me and I, and I, I fully acknowledge that I have, um, or have had a pretty unhealthy relationship with it. I just, man, I'd like to eat.

I like to eat a lot. And I, I think maybe that's sometimes why sometimes the game for me in the macro counting, like how much food can I fit in those macros and how full can I get? know you probably don't talk about a little bit i know because like i mean i used to track a lot i don't track anymore because i'm at that point where i eat intuitively and i like yesterday hashtag jealous yeah no but yesterday i had an anniversary with my girl right we got some pizza we had some ice cream i ate a lot but it was like it was controlled like the thing for me is i know that i'm not i'm not going to have packaged food in my house. Yeah.

Because like we've talked about this. If I bought like, you know, those Nature Valley granola bars. Hell yeah. No, no. But legit, if I go buy those from Costco, even today, they'd be gone in six days. Yeah, man. Because I know that if it's in the cabinet, if I have one, I'll go. I'll come back and get a second, a third, a fourth, a fifth.

So if we have the awareness of what F's us up, then we can still navigate these waters. I think this is the definition of how you know if you've ever had an unhealthy relationship with food. And I told this to my workout partner at the gym the other day because he was like, bro, I think your calories are too low. And I was like, nah, man, you don't get it. And he was like, I think you need to go up a little bit. And I was like, oh, Ryan, let me ask you a question. Have you ever opened uh any any size have you ever opened a thing ice cream and set the and set the lid on the counter he was like what do you mean i was like i've never

done that i opened the lid the lid lid goes in the trash brother like it doesn't matter the size like ice cream gets open lid in the trash you know i was like a definition of unhealthy like you know what I'm saying? Just sit down with a giant spoon. Yeah, exactly. I'm like, well, this thing's going down, brother. He's like, okay, I guess I see what you're saying. I think a huge thing for people is to just have something to look forward to.

Yeah. You know, and you think about, you know, I mean, on a monthly basis, there's some sort of, there's some sort of holiday almost, right? There's always like, there's my kids, they have certain days off, you know, President's Day and he's like, we all need things and the teachers get the day off too, right? We all like need stuff to like look forward to. So I think that people that are listening to this diet and they're not sure what diet to land on, they're like, oh my my God. I think they may be intimidated and think they have to try to go the rest of their life and all of a sudden be super strict on everything. But you can take a day off.

You can take some time off. You can take – I've even had some really good advice from my friend Jesse Burdick. As I was coming down, I used to weigh 330 and I would lose 20 pounds or so. And then he would say, Hey, you know what, you know, go ahead and enjoy this weekend or whatever. And I'd be like, wait, the whole weekend, like I want to try, I was getting excited. I wanted to stay on track. I want to stay on point. And he goes, yeah, dude, he's like, at this point, he's like, you're not probably not going to. And every once in a while I would cause a ton of damage. And every once in a while, I wouldn't. And I would learn and I would continue to learn.

I would continue to try to make progress. But he would always try to give me something to look forward to. He said, you know, this Wednesday, just go eat a bunch of pasta or whatever it is that you like to find something that you love. Get it out of your system. Go eat pancakes tomorrow. And then at one point, which I couldn't believe, you know, I probably lost maybe about 40 pounds. He was like, uh, take next week off. And I was like, no man, like I can't do, I can't take the week off. And he's like, you'll, he goes, you're, he goes, you're such a pussy. He's like,

you're going to make it for like three days. And he's like, and you're not going to even want to cheat anymore. I was like, you're full of shit, dude. I was like, you give me a whole week. I'm going to go hog wild. I don't need it all. And,. And he was, he was right. I mean, I ate kind of bad for like two days and I didn't all of a sudden go real strict again. I was still eating like pizza and stuff, but just in like lower amounts. But taking that week off was, it was a huge mental break for me. And I'm like, okay, now I need to figure out and restarting, like restarting makes you stronger. Just like you would on a deadlift. You can tap your deadlifts off the ground or you can restart them. It's a different training stimulus.

They both work things a little differently. So you can keep that momentum and keep going forward if you want, or you can stop and start again. But once you have that power to stop and start again, then you're in control of your shit. He's a trigger for me because when we get together, we don't see each other often. He's blaming his fucking brother. We don't see each other often. He's blaming his fucking brother.

We don't see each other that often. This seems like a good guy, man. I don't know. He's a trigger for me. So when we get together, we just want to do everything. We're just like, let's lift everything. Let's eat everything. But he's wise beyond his years, man.

I remember, gosh, I was home maybe a year and a half, two years ago, and he's a very intuitive eater. Like, I think he's probably a lot like you. He's, and he's, but, but again, unlike Mark and I, he's never had problems with weight ever. So, you know, you're lucky, but I remember asking him one time, I was like, I remember he was eating something and I was like, what the hell are you doing, man? We're on the plan. Like we're supposed to be on the plan. What's going on? And he looks at, he just looks at me kind of that same like you know vein where hey man fruit's not gonna make me fat he's like hey man uh you ain't gonna get skinny from eating one salad you know you get fat

from eating one donut and i was like all right well you know i was just like wise beyond his years man just good as good knowledge but but like you were saying mark i think that sometimes the gen pop takes that mentality a little too far. And they're like, hey, one week of pizza every day, not that bad. Hey, I'm just going to carry the Sour Patch Kids around in my car. It's not going to be that. It's like, well, that might actually take you over the top. So I think it's just fun to play with.

I think the same stuff that you guys probably do try and try new stuff we're talking about liver today i'm really excited to go home and try incorporating a little bit more liver good shit yeah these guys got me on it man i mean i'm thinking about i mean i was asking them like you know does it move the needle you feel any different like you know when you really are ostensibly you're packing a bunch of these micro and macro nutrients into you. And does it feel better? Is it more satiating?

Is it more energizing? You know, I mean, really what I'm saying is you notice, you know, it's a better pump. You know, you know, better energy. You know, what do you. And Mark's like, yeah, just try for three weeks. I was like, all right, try to draw some up tonight. You know, it sounds fun. You just see if something's bullshit or not.

Yeah. Give it a whirl. I know for myself, once I started doing doing it that it's made dieting easier and it's like uh who out there doesn't want their diet to feel a little easier everybody i know that the sleep you know after talking to ron penna i've been really taking that super serious and that locked in the nutrition a lot easier like we have quest bars and all these things around i i love all that stuff um you know normally i would find myself at the end of a day like you know, ended up bringing a couple home with me and stuff, but I don't mess with it anymore. I, I feel really focused. I feel really in tune with stuff, but

it's again, too. I also will plan to like, have things to like, look forward to like, uh, next week I'm going to, or this weekend coming up, I'm going to New Jersey, spending some time with my family and while I'm on the East coast course, I gonna get some pizza yeah you know of course when i'm in that area i'm gonna get some pizza right i know i know my brother's totally offended over there he and i keep each other uh he and i keep each other in check with stuff too and it's motivating you know we work out together and stuff as well and um the food stuff i mean we're always talking we talk about nutrition all the time i can't't believe, uh, I can't believe how, so did you say you just started kind of really redialing in sleep? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Cause, uh, I was, I was given Andrew grief. I was like,

Hey, where's Encima? Get him out here, man. Let's get him. And he's like, Andrew's like, Hey man, that guy's a savage about his sleep. He's not going to move his schedule for anything. He needs his sleep. And then by head, I was i was thinking gosh how does he get along with mark because mark's because because because i know because i know that you're the guy that's up at like yeah you're up like wide awake like 3 a.m like driving to the gym like dead lifting by himself and i'm like i just i don't know how you hit it as such a savage like because before you maybe have been taking this seriously are you sleeping like four or five hours a night um well or were you going to bed really early? Yeah, so I've always taken the sleep seriously.

I just had a lot of trouble sleeping. And then I would kind of make excuses on why I wasn't working on it or why I wasn't trying to get to bed early enough. Because I was like, oh, I have trouble falling asleep anyway, so what's the difference? And then I was like, no, you need to treat it like training. And you need to force, to figure this out. And so it all actually started maybe about two years ago, a year and a half ago, I started just waking up earlier and waking up earlier, help set my clock and help set everything. I was tired by the time I got through a day. Um, and then, so the workouts that I was doing later in the day when I was working out at like two or three, um, I, you know, after being here and this is where I, you know,

work as well. And so when I get back home until like six, I would eat then boom, I'd end up in bed late, but I was still waking up early. I'd end up in bed late and it happened over and over and over and over and over again. And then I was like, I need to take better care of myself. I was getting sick a little bit here and there and stuff like that. And so I started, you know, uh, going to bed earlier and I started to create other disciplines around it. And once that happened, that's when everything clicked. I was like, Oh my God, this is amazing. This is creating so many other cool

disciplines for me that I just didn't have before where it's like eating or like getting up and starting the day, everything. I'm, I'm always like a day or two ahead whereas before i just i don't know i have a i kind of have a weird personality like i don't really fucking care about much of anything i i really you know now that i have kids and a wife and stuff obviously there's a lot more shit at stake there's a lot more things to like really care about but my wife will tell you like i i you couldn't make me care about. But my wife will tell you, like, I, you couldn't make me care about much of anything. I just didn't care about being somewhere on time. I didn't care about taxes. I didn't care that I had bad credit. I didn't care that I didn't have a license. I mean, I still, this day, don't care about certain things. I don't care how much this building

costs. I have no idea what this place costs. I don't know what our house costs. When we bought our house, the house that you guys went to today, never even looked at it we just bought it like there's i'm just weird that way i just don't give a fuck i don't care that much i guess that's what that's what it takes to get under a thousand pounds and start squatting it though you gotta have you gotta have a fucking screw loose well i try i i try to be as like even keel as i can i don't like to you know go up too high or down too low. Even if something really fucking cool happens, I don't like to really celebrate it.

Cause I'm like, all right, what's next? You know, let's, let's put up more points, you know, that was cool.

But that, you know, and when something's real low, I'm like, fuck that sucked. All right, let's move on. You know,

keep trying to go. Yeah, man. That's, I, I, I was, we were talking about that.

I'm, I've been struggling with sleep lately. I think I've, I think my, some of the maybe over tinkering with my diet has trying to go yeah that's i i i was talking about i'm i've been struggling with sleep lately i think i've i think my some of the maybe over tinkering with my diet has got me kind of coming out of he's uh eating lower fat right now oh really i'm like how low like well mark is advising it's potentially a bit low um i'm like below 60 grams oh yeah that'll hit you but my i keep his size it's it's a little excessive. How,

how long have you been doing it for? Well, I think I just moved him down because I was, I've just been trying, I was telling Mark, I'm trying to just cut, just lean out a little bit more for this competition we have coming up. Cause I got a bunch of gymnastics I have to do.

So I got my fat pretty low for the last like five or six weeks. And it's, I'm not, I'm not saying it is that, but I can say that is a variable that I've changed. And I'm just sleeping horribly, horribly. I mean, every night, like clockwork, around like three in the morning,

I'm dead asleep. And then I'm just up. I wonder if you just, I mean, why not just see what a day looks like where you have like two egg yolks? Yeah. You know, two whole eggs or something, you know? Yeah. Add that little time. I know, two whole eggs or something, you know. Yeah.

Add that little time. I mean, it's just a small serving. It could be that one little thing that helps you go to sleep a little bit better. The other thing, too, that can help you go to sleep, and I don't know what your schedule is, but again, where I started was just waking up a little earlier. So maybe you just try to wake up a half an hour earlier. You'll just be tired at the end. You know, at the end of the day,

you'll be tired until you have two or three or four day period where you're like, man, this sucks, but you'll get through it. And then you'll should be able to, the other thing I used to do that was really awful for me is I would, I wouldn't go to sleep.

I felt like I have, I feel like I have a sleep window. So if I go to bed, if I go to, if I get in my bed between eight and nine, it feels like a really good time slot. But if I miss that, I feel like I miss, I miss a window. Like if I try to go to bed at 11 and I, I always had a really, really hard time with that. And I never really knew that about myself. I just ignored it for many, many years. And

you know, 11 would turn into like one. And then that's like when I would actually fall asleep. And, you know, I wasn't up as early back then. So it was a little different. Plus, I was fucking fat, too. I had sleep apnea. So whatever rest I was getting, like, was probably just a lot of. Were you in my bed? Yeah.

How are you sleeping so good? You just militant about it just yeah just don't play around oh yeah it turns twice a day pretty much right pretty much but i don't like uh i train twice a day i sleep like crap yeah no but the thing is is like i don't have a set time where i have to get up so like if i go to sleep at 10 or 11 i will absolutely get those eight hours if i wake up earlier than that like i wake up at let's say I go to sleep at 10 and wake up at, I don't know, four or five, I'm going to go back to sleep. I don't say I don't have an alarm either. I don't do alarm clocks. So I just let my, I let myself, some people listen to this, like, I hate you, but yeah, I let myself wake up and it's usually

around eight hours. Like, boom, I'm up and I'm good. There's gotta be some science behind how much more beneficial it is to kind of gradually come out of sleep than it is to go from like a dead slumber to like some EDM music playing on your cell phone, like jolting you out of bed. Like, that can't be. Sometimes that'll happen to me and I'll wake up and my heart's like racing. I'm like, I don't think this is healthy. Heart attacks actually go up like a huge percentage when we um like the time change or whatever daylight savings daylight savings yeah that very for next day it goes up it goes up like 40 percent and most of them happen on like a monday yeah just like now you have a

responsibility to wake up there's some doctors out there that listen to this podcast like listen to these idiots talk about alarm clocks dude this is a well-known thing you know and i'm yeah word is up here just drinking protein shakes, talking about training. Like, yeah, I don't know. I don't think this alarm thing is helping me. Let me ask you this. Are your carbs super low too right now? No, no, no.

They're pretty high. I'm guessing that's the body weight or something, right? That's up with your performance? Yeah. I think because of the nature of CrossFit, I mean, this is like a pretty well-known thing. You need some carbs. Yes. I remember the workout that I was still doing the carnivore diet. of CrossFit, um, I mean, this is like a pretty well-known thing. You need some carbs. Um, I remember the workout that I was still doing the carnivore diet. It was a squat, clean burpee

toe to bar workout. And in the middle of the workout, not at the end, I was flat backed and my training partner who is an absolute savage, um, came over to me and was like, yeah, we need to talk about your diet, dude. And I was like, no, come on, man. Carbs are going to make me fat. Can't do it. And he's like, man, you're putting some volume in. You know the other thing I noticed when I put some carbs in,

and I don't have Dr. Andy Galpin's background to talk about this, but I do get body work done every single day. So I'll do a morning training session. Usually I'll have body work done, and then I'll train. That's'll train. You get done every day, every day. That's awesome. Yeah. I mean, I, I'm, I'm a freak about my, my rehab, but, um, I noticed some quality of my tissue got a lot better just like being hydrated and being a little bit more supple and kind of less tone in my tissue. Um, I, I work with these work with these guys inside of our gym, extraordinarily high, kind of like high-end performance guys.

They do kind of just this absolute next-level training, everything from respiratory training to they put tissue monitors on me. I don't know if you guys have heard of Moxi device. Yeah, so they put Moxis on you where it monitors oxygen in your tissue. Um, they put Neroxin monitors on the backs of my legs to kind of see which of my muscles are firing from like an EMG current kind of perspective. Do they, uh, along with like the tissue work, like the soft tissue massage type stuff, do they help stretch and stuff too? Um, so they'll do, they're not as much stretching, but they'll do a lot of, uh, what, what they will do is they'll have me use a respiratory device, an NX, and we'll stretch and we'll kind of move in different positions.

And the respiratory device gives you a cadence that you breathe in and out of. So you're breathing in and out of moving into positions. Oh, cool. But these guys use. Sounds awesome. It's really, I'll show you guys some videos, but these guys use this device called an Omega Wave. So I'll walk. Yeah, those are amazing.

So I'll walk in, but the thing that they do that's really cool is – That's Joel Jameson who knows how to get down with that shit. Yeah. The way we get – we're able to kind of train different modalities by using this device because we'll walk in and they'll measure – you're kind of looking at me like you're kind of interested. So I'll tell you. You put a sensor on your forehead, you put a sensor on your hand, and you have a sensor, a chest wrap. And, uh, yeah, there it is right there. And, uh, it measures your DC potential, your HRV. It measures your detox, your hormonal systems.

It measures your, uh, kind of your heart health, where your heart's at that day. And so these guys will literally after an Omega wave session, um, they'll either they'll program the workout that day, or they'll be like, well, your cardiac is a little bit taxed and fatigued right now, but your DC potential is really high. So this is a day we're going to lift heavy. Um, but we probably need to hit some body work first. How, how, uh, in line has that been in your experience? It's that machine does not lie. It'll even give you a metabolic, it'll even give you a metabolic rating. So if you go in under-fueled, they'll be like, well, your metabolic system's tanked today, and it doesn't look like you have any DC potential, so we're absolutely not going to lift, but we can do a progressive DSAT cardio session on the bike.

Have they done different things where maybe they don't tell you what the result is or they're trying to really see how true the thing is? I'm sure there's been a lot of research on it. I'm well aware of the Omega, Omega wave, but I'm asking, you know, in your own experience, uh, how they, have they ever asked you, you know, do you feel like lifting heavy today? And that doesn't match up with like the results of the test or whatever. They'll ask me stuff. Um, well, I feel like lifting heavy every day, just like, just like you do. Um, but, uh, there, there are days that I will, uh, I'll be like, yeah, I really want to go heavy. And they're like, dude, your DC potential is like negative 15. And so we'll do some body work and then I'll get up and then I'll sit there for a second. And I'm like, yeah,

I probably don't have it today. But the thing that's cool is, is with that device, um, you know, then we can go, we can go do other type of programming. These guys are amazing. Train Adapt Evolve in Austin. These guys, if you ever look them up, they train all kinds of guys all around the place. I know you're well aware of the technology, but these guys are – they've just got back from being overseas. They're working with a bunch of Premier League soccer teams. They're doing a bunch of consulting with those guys. Yeah, Joel jameson who used to train uh i think he still does he

trains mighty mouse johnson um he was a big proponent of like the omega wave and the hrv have you have you messed around with hrv stuff at all not at all the heart rate absolutely not heart rate variability stuff i'm not like against that just no yeah i think that would be i'm surprised i never even mentioned it to you. That would be something that you would dig. You would be like, oh, this is cool. It's kind of crazy though because the thing with HRV is like as I understand it, Mark's HRV might be a 95. Mine might be a 175, but that doesn't mean I have better HRV than Mark.

As I understand it, it's relative only to yourself. Yeah, it's relative to your own heart rate variability. Yeah, so if you went from a 95 to a 130, then it's like, hey, great. But we're not necessarily comparable. So anyways, back to the carbs. I think the carbs have really helped my tissue health. And I know they've helped my recovery. And I can definitely notice days where

I come in and if I'm, if I haven't titrated enough carbohydrate going into the workout and I get on the Omega wave, um, a lot of times my metabolic rating is really down. Um, and if I don't link days together, I can notice that, um, like my hormonal system will be really down in tank and that's typically not great for workouts. Yeah. Because sometimes I'm hitting two, maybe three sessions in a day with body work in between there. Yeah, and these guys are amazing on the table.

I mean, the amount of times that I've gone in there and they're like, I'll just walk in and they're like, well, you got a rib popped out, your sacrum's off, and, oh, yeah, we're going to need to line you up. You're like, what? I'm like, what are you talking about? And then they, like, you know, lift your arm above your head and, like, push right here. And I'm like, boom! You know?

But it is amazing. If, like, anybody that's listening that hasn't gotten body work done, like, by a true professional, I mean, I think it's a game changer. I mean, what it's done for mobility. Don grilled us on that, too. Yeah. Our buddy Ron Penna, he grilled us on that, too. He, like, gets mad at you. Like, he looks at you. He's like, have you gotten body work done?

You're like, uh. I mean, that soft tissue stuff, it really is unbelievable. And somebody that's, like, bound up. Like, you know, you and I are kind of a lot alike. Somebody that's really tight. Yeah. If you get some, like, you probably wouldn't be a great candidate for a ton of tissue work because you're very mobile but like guys like you and i you get it a couple times and you're tight enough that you hold a lot of times you know you get adjusted and you hold all right um guys

that are super mobile you know they kind of get adjusted we're like a two dollar steak we're really rough and like hard to rip apart they get they get up off the table the mobile guys like you know you probably doing all the jujitsu and everything you probably get up off the table and fall right back into the other position. They move one thing on me, I'm like, all right, I'm good to go, you know. But, yeah, I think that's – I was listening to Rich Froning the other day. He was talking about how, like, just recently he's gotten really into a lot of that body work and tissue work.

Isn't that crazy? All the times he's winning the games, he's just like, yeah, I got a little dry needling done or this or that. And it's like you look at the volume, that just goes to show you what an absolute freak savage that guy is. For some of those people, I think you'd have to be – they'd have to be really receptive to the technology for it to really be effective probably because they don't want something telling them something different, especially Rich Froning. He's pretty simple and he's a beast. Yeah, he's an animal. But the same thing, like the guy that I train with,

like my training partner, he did exactly what you were talking about. He would get on the Omega Wave, and he would just tell the guys, man, don't tell me. Just don't tell me what it says. Right. He just wouldn't want to know.

He'd be like, nah, I'm going to go hit this, but if you guys want to overlay the data, check stuff out, that's fine. But he's just like, nah, I don't need to need to know yeah like they just walk over and like hey you should do sets of six like fuck yeah well it turns out it turns out i'm into the set of 19 so what do you want to do um but yeah i i uh i've messed around with the carbs a little bit the protein keeping the protein high um you know i I think that's just a given. But that's one of those like table stakes.

I don't think anybody here is going to debate, right? Yeah. How much protein and how much higher to go? I mean, I think kind of depends on like what you're talking about, like which calculator you follow or, you know, it's just kind of what feels good for me. I eat about 275 grams a day, which is kind of a lot. That's a good amount. It's kind of a lot.

Yeah. I think when you start getting over 250, and I'll be honest about it, I mean, when5 grams a day, which is kind of a lot. That's a good amount. It's kind of a lot. Yeah. I think when you start getting over 250, and I'll be honest about it, I mean, when you get over 250, it's hard to chew that much. You're drinking some protein at that point, which our friend Dr. Baker would not be a huge fan of. Sorry, Sean. Yeah, I mean, I have a shake or something. That's kind of the only way I get that.

How do you get your protein? Because that's an enormous amount. So you have like some really lean forms of meat. Yeah. So I probably am like a pound, a pound or a pound and a half of like 96, four ground beef. I eat a couple of the, uh, a couple of vertical meals, but I use the bison that Stan makes, um, egg whites. Um, yeah, a little bit of tuna. Seafood is nice to kind of break it up a little bit. Tons of rice, sweet potatoes, spinach. And yeah, then I'll do a shake. I love that Stan is teaching people to eat more. God, isn't that great?

I just love that. I just think there's so many people that are so fearful. I know so many people that are counting their calories and they all seem to be on a similar caloric path and they're very scared to like eat over, you know, 1800 calories or 2000 calories. And I'm like, man, like you've been stuck in the same spot forever. I'd love to see just, just for a little while, just try to eat 2800 calories for a little bit and just see how you feel. And maybe you'll land on a different caloric intake and maybe, maybe you have a, maybe your metabolism has changed and maybe you're not feeding yourself

what you, what you should be. You know, I think a lot of people are doing that. Not, uh, not science backed comment, you know, PSA, Chris and I were talking yesterday or two, not yesterday, a couple of days ago. Um, it's funny when people talk about caloric load benefits and, uh, biggest meathead comment, maybe that I'm going to make today. Uh, if you look at, uh, people that are in the fasting camp, why people fast, if you look at people that, you know, are looking for, you know, caloric deficits, you're looking for people that are looking for cellular autophagy, like for people that are looking for better

insulin sensitivity. You look at people that are looking for better lean muscle mass. You look at for people that are doing anything and they're saying – and basically using dietary intervention for all that. Well, you could just train really hard. And basically all that stuff happens, right? Yeah. Like, you know, you want to improve all of those markers?

You want to create a caloric deficit? Train. You want to upregulate growth hormone? Train. You want to create a caloric deficit? Train. You know, you want to turn some cells over? Train. Yeah. to upregulate growth hormone? Train. You want to create a caloric deficit? Train. You want to turn some cells over? Train. I don't know. And so Stan's whole thing is like, hey, fuel and then train, which is so simple. That's what I love about it is he's providing people enough and maybe even then some, in some cases, to fuel their workouts.

And I think that we have been underselling the workout. I think one thing that makes Nsema so impressive is the fact that, you know, Andrew is mentioning how diehard he is to his sleep, but he's very diehard to the way that he trains. It's not like he's not going to come in here and just like, he's not going to tear the building apart. He's going to do what he's supposed to do for that particular day. And it's like, that's the discipline. That's the hard part. You know, a lot of us can be like a knucklehead here and there and roll the dice and be like, I want to try this. Yeah. It doesn't always make the most sense. That's not really the, that's not the best way to get ahead. You know, while I

realize that I also like to have fun and it's fun for me to kind of like mix things up. But also I mentioned, I've learned like, I'm not going to take what's not there. So if something's not there, I ain't going to go for it. Isn't it crazy how certain weights feel different on different days? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. You're probably too damn young and vibrant to feel that, but I'm telling you.

Wait, how old are you? 24. Oh, snap. Okay. No, but I feel that too. I mean, you get in there and 225 feels right, and then you just keep going. Man, sometimes I can tell when I'm picking the bar up off the rack what kind of day it's going to be. I'm not kidding.

When I'm picking the bar up and I'm walking it over to the squat cage, I'm like, it's going to be a rough one today. I can feel that sometimes. I'll pick up a 45, and you're like, oh, that seems like a 100-pound plate. Who doubled up the plates? Yeah, you're like, oh,'s not gonna you know work out great yeah sometimes it's just that way i mean and that's that's the importance of of paying attention to how many exercises you're doing and how hard you're you're going at it because if you those three extra things that you wanted to do on your way out the door that weren't really purposeful

or meaningful they may not bother you the next day but they could potentially bother you later in the week and you're not really paying attention to it. You're like, man, why does my grip suck today? Maybe you did some farmer's carries on Monday that you fucking forgot about. Yeah, maybe you smoked your forearms and it turns out gripping the door jamb or something on your car is going to hurt. Yeah, your shoulders, your elbows, all your smaller joints and stuff too, they can be compromised.

We're moving around a lot. Somebody else on this podcast, I can't remember who said it, but they're like, everyone at this table has lifted more weights than anyone in human history. Not pounds-wise necessarily, but the amount of repetitions that we do. We're trying to have, I guess this form of like artificial exercise because we used to do other shit we used to like dig ditches and stuff like carry rocks and build build shit but the amount of reps and the amount of weights that we handle is extremely excessive

you know it's it's not even i mean the yoke walks and the farmers carries and the shoulder presses and benches and squats and so on right it just goes on down the line we've done millions of reps probably yeah do you are you are you like power lift body build and uh kind of that jiu-jitsu yeah jiu-jitsu all-in-one kind of thing yeah like damn so the thing is like i'm not competing in power lifting right now we're competing in bodybuilding you got a 600 pound deadlift you're not competing in anything yeah but the thing is those are parts of the training you know what i mean like i i incorporate and i maintain those in my training because like i enjoy training that way and it helps jujitsu out like yeah it just it just works jits is the main goal and then everything else kind of competing yeah competing in jujitsu is the main thing um i

train jujitsu every day and i lift there are a few days during the week where i have double days you know where i have like um lifting like today is going to be a lifting than jujitsu day afterwards. So it just goes really well together. But that's why, like Mark mentioned, I just got to be smart about what I'm doing in the gym, because if I go too hard on one day, that's really going to affect my workout later on. Yeah, I think you just use one of those like fringe things that I'm sorry. I'm back up. Not one of those fringe things. fringe things that I've not, I'm sorry, let me back up. Not one of those fringe things. I think it's one of those things that like most people that are training really hard nowadays are either

getting into, want to get into, or have like one foot in. Yeah. Right. I feel like almost everybody that I run into at a gym is like either aspiring to get into jujitsu or is already doing it or is like, God, you know, I'm kind of going a couple of days a week. Gosh, I think that must just be a great workout. Some of the biggest savages I train with are like, yeah, I do jujitsu twice a week. You know, you mentioned you got pretty sore in the beginning, right? Yeah. That's the thing that like you, you adapt to it. Initially it was like the hardest thing ever.

Like every single day I was just like super, super sore. But when you get used to all the movements you do, cause you get like your body's being moved in all these different possessions that you haven't been put into but after a few months you just get used to that and it doesn't feel it's just like when you first start lifting i'm 100 convinced i would snap in half i watched i watched one yeah i watched my i watched the guy that i trained with do jujitsu and i think is it is it like an overtime where the person gets behind you basically you're sitting on the ground the person gets behind you and then they say like three two one go and like that's a drill you have a second to like get out of it yeah that that's one of the drills like so

i'm watching him do this and i'm like the guy is one dude is sitting on his butt and the other guy gets behind him and like a headlock and three two one go and the dude behind him yeah just rips back and i'm like okay i would literally snap in half. Like there's no chance. And the guy that, the guy that I train with is like, he's, he's, he's, he's made of something different, but he, uh, and I was like, how are you doing this? Like, it just looks intense, man. Yeah. No, like, but that's the thing. Like I've been noticing even these past few years, there are a lot of lifters and a lot of strength athletes that are starting to get into it and doing really, really well competing in it because the there's a, the subculture of jujitsu is all about, Oh, you don't, you know, you just

need technique. Right. But then you have these athletes that come in that are using technique and then they're messing people up because like they're already inherently strong, but now they're developing all that technique and stuff. So you would do well. Like, I don't know. No, you actually, you really would. Um, but it just takes, it takes time to get, you know, get used to the guy that I, the guy that I am, that I work out with. He's, uh, he's, he's 25, um, 26 CrossFit games. Athlete's been a couple of times. He's getting ready to go into the seals. He's an absolute freak. Probably one of the only guys I've ever met in my life that, uh, he'd snatch 260 pounds,

drop the bar, go run three miles, hop up on, hop up on the rings, do like, you know, 19 muscle ups, you know,

one of those guys, great, you know, guy doesn't get sore, great tissue, absolute savage. I went and watched him do jujitsu. He's hyper mobile.

Um, and he, he messes some people up and the dudes will get off the mat and they're like, I've never been somebody so strong. You're so heavy. And he's not a huge guy. I mean, he's, he's probably like six foot two 20, uh, absolute freak. But, uh, he, he just, he pretty much was like, I mean, I guess when you're 24, 25 and you've

already been to the games, you know, you've already been to CrossFit games and you've kind of gotten done regionals, everything. You're like, ah, I'm kind of over that. And that's kind of what he did. He's like, yeah, okay, CrossFit's cool, but I'm going to go kill some people in the seals and do jujitsu. So that's like what he does now. And he just crushes people. Just like you're talking about, like real mobile, real strong.

But I think he probably would admit he's still working on his technique. Yeah, no, it just takes time. But I'm curious, because you mentioned you're getting ready for a competition. What is the competition? Is it a games competition like CrossFit or is it something else? Yeah, it's a CrossFit competition. It's nothing insane. It's just, you know, in Austin, it's Austin is a fairly active city.

I mean, everybody's in pretty good shape. So I'm just getting ready for a local comp that we're doing in Austin. And it's, you know, like five events, one day guy, girl combo. Um, yeah. And the workouts are pretty intense and they're pretty demanding. Um, it's the, this workout, this, uh, series of workouts that we're doing is it's kind of geared to eliminate a lot of people, I think, from being a part of it because there's heavy weight demand, but there's also heavy gymnastics demand. Um, and most people that can move the weight sometimes can't do the gymnastics stuff or don't have the engine do a lot of the cardio stuff. Um, the, I've, I've showed these, I've showed both these guys videos. The, the gal that I'm partnered up with is, is probably the best athlete at our gym. Um, I mean, I can't keep up with her. Um, and I mean, I think I'm okay. Um, but she's, she's absolutely, she's an animal. I mean, there, there are, there are absolutely lifts, not pound for pound, literal lifts that like, I'm pretty sure she like

jerks more than me, you know? I mean, and she's, I weigh 240, you know? I mean, we did, we were testing some of the workouts of the day and like, know she rode 60 calories faster than i did at the end of the workout because i was just gassed out yeah you know like we were doing single we're doing single arm dumbbell snatches after we got off the assault bike she's doing the 55 pounds which most girls have a hard time picking up she's repping it out is she like heavier no no she's jacked she She's like five, 10 and jacked. And, uh, yeah, I mean, she's nuts and, uh, she's going to carry the team. Let's put it that way. She's going to carry us. Yeah. And why are you trying to get leaner? That's my question. Cause you're like, you're getting lean because the, one of the workouts, I was just telling Mark this,

one of the workouts opens with, um, you got to do 10 ring muscle ups to start the workout. um, you got to do 10 ring muscle ups to start the workout. So three, two, one go, you got to do 10. She'll bang out seven. I'm going to have to do 10. Not a lot of guys away 240 that are swinging from rings. Um, like the guy that I was talking about, that's going into the seals. He'll, he'll do 19 in a minute. Um, I'm going to struggle to get 10. So I'm in a, you know, in a, under a minute. So yeah, that's what I'm getting ready for right now. That makes sense. Okay.

Trying to keep that body weight down. So you're not so damn heavy. Trying to man. I mean, it's funny, right? It's funny. The reasons that people cut weight,

like you were trying to cut weight to do that, to do your bench, which I mean, that was, that was fun to watch. I'm trying to cut weight. Cause I just don't think like when you're two 40 and you're like hanging from stuff,

man, I get like my tendons and my elbows and like everything starts like pop and crack makes a huge difference a couple pounds unreal right i mean did you does it obviously makes a huge difference when you're benching and stuff like that too like you feel like 10 pound difference yeah yeah when you're lifting heavy like that yeah it makes a huge difference i mean just being like bloated you know it helps a lot you know just having a little extra body weight on you can help a lot i mean you can also just be jacked too right but um that's harder and then at my age it's like harder to like it's hard just to be like thick so it helps to um it helps to have like some carbohydrates or it helps to get a little puffy for a competition.

Yeah. I, uh, I think fueling for workouts like that is really challenging when you're going all day and you're going back to back to back to back to back. Um, it's an all day event, right? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, so you do a workout and the workout might only be 15 minutes, but then you got a little bit of a break and you're just trying to like roll out, stay warm, you know, get some, get some sodium back in you, get a little, you know, glucose, fructose kind of thing going and just kind of get ready to go.

And fueling for that's a real challenge. We were talking about some meat and you're a cook and let's give some people advice on what's some great ways we can prepare our food. You know, you were giving me some tips on the crock pot and, uh, you know, I pour bone broth in there and you say, Hey, another option is just to put the meat in, in the crock pot by itself. And the juices will draw out of it and it will be juicy and it'll taste really good, uh, without even, uh, putting any liquids in there. Right. Yeah. So I think like the crock pot deal, one of the ways I would cook it is I would take all the vegetables. You can put them in a pan.

Put them on a sheet pan, roast them off, get a little color on them while you're roasting them off. Take whatever you're tossing in the crock pot, put it on the grill, and just salt and pepper and just kind of sear it off. When those two things are done, kind of the roasted veggies come out and the big roast comes off the grill. Put the roasted veggies on the bottom in your crock pot and drop the kind of seared off meat. Sounds like you're going to start a crock pot restaurant. Yeah. Put the roasted meat on top and just cover it. And a lot of that kind of convection steam will help kind of break that meat down, pull some of the moisture out, and it'll start to cook in some of its own kind of its own juice.

That's really good. That's just for convenience by the way that's not the most optimal way to cook a steak yeah what are some of your favorite ways to prepare a steak and what's some of your favorite cuts um i am a ribeye guy um i haven't eaten a ribeye in so long because of the fat because it's fat yeah i wish it's like a giant stick of butter it is with some protein mixed in we're talking to our friend last night when we were at dinner, and he was like, how many calories do you think you're in? Because I immediately get labeled as the macro guy at the table.

He's like, how many calories do you think you're in? I'm like, you ate a 32-ounce T-bone. I don't know, probably 2,200 or something. He's like, no way. I'm like, dude, fatty cuts like that are like that are like one to one, like protein to fat. I like ribeyes a lot. The off cuts of meat that I like a lot, I do like flat iron steaks. I like steaks that are a little bit farther away from some of the inner organs.

I think sometimes the closer the organs get, the cut gets, it starts to taste a little bit metallic and almost irony. I think stuff like a, like hanger steak and, um, skirt steak, sometimes it can almost taste, uh, almost like a little bit of that blood can almost kind of taste some of that, which I'm not a huge fan of. I don't mind connective tissue. Like you would see like kind of eating some of that collagen and having a little bit of that chew is nice. Um, I think skirt steak's great on the grill. Um, each I think, has an optimal preparation, to be clear. I think that like multi-cut steaks, like we were talking last night, I think T-bones are great and there's a lot of deals on them all the time. But I think it's really hard to nail a good temperature on it because you're essentially trying to cook two different cuts of meat at the same temperature, right?

You're trying to cook a New York and a tenderloin essentially at the same temperature. And that's really hard to do. Um, so I like ribeyes in a pan with some butter. Um, I like skirt steaks on the grill. Um, uh, like a filet, I'd probably reverse sear. So I'd probably cook it really, really low, low, low, low in the oven and then pull it out and then finish it on the pan. um that's really that's really easy it's really fun um it's kind of like it's kind of like hillbilly cook it really low in the oven yeah so just take yeah so just take take the steak season it up put it on a like a resting grate on top of a sheet tray and pop it in the oven and that sounds fucking good bro i feel like such a peasant i just ribeye in the air fryer every single day. That's awesome. But the air fryer is great, though. I was literally just going to say, but

when we're at the house and we're cooking six, seven ribeyes a day, it's air fried. Okay. I don't feel so bad. I feel like a peasant. It makes karma pretty easy. You can just rack up a couple of steaks. Quick steak hack,

though. Next time you go to knock, knock some out in your air fryer, take your steak, toss it on a paper towel, season it liberally with more salt than you think you should let it sit there. Just chill. Go do something else, prep some other stuff, come back. And when you look at the steak, when the top of the steak looks like it's pooling with water, that is a good sign. What's happening is, is a lot of the moisture is getting pulled from the inside of the steak to the top. And so then what happens is the moisture hits the salt on top and kind of forms this brine. Okay. And then if you let it sit a little bit longer, that pooling water will actually dissipate, but it's not like evaporating. It's

going to suck back kind of into the meat. so you're kind of getting this like speed brine and you do that on both sides of the steak then pop it in the air fryer yeah game change that's what we want game change and also also this is like just some like old school that's a power bite yeah this is some old school like you know chefy chef in me that is like, it's so funny sometimes when I tell people, like, yeah, I'm a chef. And they look at me like, yeah, right. Yeah, never trust a chef that's not fat, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I never grill or see, like I always finish with pepper. Okay. Because I think pepper can take on a little bit of a burnt characteristic. So cook everything and then do fresh cracked pepper on top. Never, never, never crack pepper and then throw it on the steak or on the, on the grill. That's how I, that's how I roll. Um, other cuts of meat. I think that, uh, a lot of people are the same way that I think people are scared of like liver and kidney and that kind of thing. I think some people can be afraid of off cuts of meat, stuff like, um, stuff like neck and shin and, uh, like, um, cheeks. Yeah. All that stuff can be super tender, man. Some of the best, like

oxtail, like if you've ever been to a really good restaurant, they serve oxtail. That is like, I, I mean, I have received boxes of oxtail in our restaurants and cooked them. I mean, it is literally a tail cut up and it's delicious. It sounds odd. It does sound odd. But it does taste good. It's unreal. It tastes like braised short rib.

Yeah. You know, except for more tender. I grew up on oxtail. That was like a staple in my house. It's awesome, right? Short ribs are like, I mean, short ribs of any kind, whether it's like Colby style, where they're kind of cut down the side or whether they're, you know, bone in kind of big, thick pieces. I think short ribs are amazing. I think those are great to braise.

Braising meaning when you're cooking it low and slow, kind of covered in a pan, similar to a crock, pop it in an oven. I also, gosh, I think ground beef is really good. Yeah, I do too. I'll do anything. I mean, ground beef in a pan, throw some mustard on there and just kind of burn it a little bit. Let's go in on this because I feel like a lot of people eat ground beef and you're the guy to talk to. So what are your best simple ways of making ground beef tasty? Uh, or not even simple. It's just like it really good. I like the mustard. Yeah. The mustard. See, I've never heard of that before. Mustard fried. Hey,

so yeah. So, so like, yeah, exactly. So I just take that, so I just take that ground beef and toss it in your pan. Like what I'm talking about with the mustard, toss it in your pan. And kind of, you know, like one side of it will kind of start to get brown and the top still looks like it's undercooked. Hit it with some mustard and then flip it over and kind of toss it in. That's really tasty. Other ways I like to cook, I make, I do like a little blend of, uh, it's not anything like mind altering, but I do like, uh, granulated garlic, granulated

onion, paprika, cayenne, salt, pepper, mustard powder. I think that's really nice. If you had cumin into it, that'll make it taste a little bit like taco seasoning. Um, I think that's pretty tasty. I like, I like all that stuff. Other ways for ground beef to taste really good, I mean, really the only way you can cook ground beef is in a pan. I'm not a guy that adds extra fat to ground beef. I just don't think you need to, and that isn't a dietary preference. I just think any time you've got beef cooking and beef fat,

I think that's pretty tasty. I would cook a filet and tallow all day but you know that i think epic makes their uh their their beef tallow i'm gonna use that like butter on that stuff i mean it's okay it's good um what about um how do we know uh our meat's done you know how do we know we got it prepared the right way like uh you just uh push your finger on it type of deal so well done or i'm sorry well done medium or medium well medium rare so he's pointing to uh the chunky tissue so you go like a muscle so you go like this and you touch that. That's well done. Yep. That's mid-well. That's medium. That's rare.

Got it. And then he went from his pinky all the way to his index finger with the fingers connected. And as you get closer to your index finger, the tissue, the muscle, your thumb loosens up. And that's kind of the feel that you want. Yeah. You know, I think that a general, a general rule is to, you never want to stab or cut into your, you know, your whole meat when you're cooking it. Always let, you have to let it sit for a little while too, which is hard to do. It's the hardest thing to do, especially when you're, especially when you're a fat guy, like, you know, a perfect, like, like the restaurants, like the, we'll go get steaks at. It doesn't

matter as much with a burger, but a steak, it really doesn't matter a lot, right? So at one of my restaurants, we used to rest the steaks. This is going to sound really, well, back then it probably would have sounded really gross. Now it's going to sound really delicious. We would have, they're called ninth pans. We'd have a ninth pan of melted clarified butter. And most people rest steaks just like on a tray under a heat lamp. We would actually take the steaks and we would rest them inside warm butter.

So they would just sit there for like three minutes and then we'd pull them out and then we would season them with rock salt and then we would slice them. Wow. In a perfect world, you most likely would rest the steak as long as it's cooked.

That's usually a good rule of thumb. So if it takes 10 minutes to cook the steak, sometimes you can tent it, meaning like take some foil and just kind of put it over there a little bit, not too tight. Cause you don't want to keep cooking, but a 10 minute cook, 10 minute rest, usually the good best rule of thumb. But that's when you got to go do your 10 minute walk. Yeah, exactly. Admittedly, I can't tell you the last time I properly rested a steak then though, you know, so, um, yeah, you always have to to keep keep crunching on it yeah what about uh something to throw on the burger like cheese or something you got like some favorite cheeses or

favorite things that you throw on there spice her up a little bit yeah i uh for i'm so simple man i'm i'm like the most boring chef that's okay but um my favorite cheese on a burger well i tell you this is the fat guy i mean i put uh i put peanut butter on a burger wow i've never tried that i've heard of that before but i put peanut butter on a burger change your life peanut butter and bananas i'll do it right now peanut butter bananas what else the the patty yeah patty and some cheese we ran that special at hop daddy it's called the elvis burger we ran that peanut butter on a burger is pretty out there. It's pretty delicious. I'll do that. I mean,

peanut butter is delicious. It's our hamburger, so it makes sense. You'd actually probably be surprised how good... If you've got to find the right one, I wouldn't go get Smucker's. Peanut butter burger. I wouldn't get Smucker's Raspberry, but jam actually is not bad on a burger. You get some jam with a little arugula

and some mayo. It's actually probably, that'd be really tasty. I like if it's a, if I took a leaner cut of beef, like if I had a bison burger or I had something, some really like lean, lean ground beef, sometimes I'd like to kind of round that out with like either a really

briny cheese or a really fatty cheese. So like I'd do brie. Brie would be really nice on that i mean i think that's a pretty common yeah kind of combination you just make a cookbook about yeah i'm not that good but i make a meathead cookbook yeah dude all the recipes for meatheads um yeah i uh i like the most crazy thing i think i'd put on a burger sounds like peanut butter. Yeah. Peanut butter is pretty good,

man. I've never even heard of that until now. That's you got, you're going to, you're going to make a peanut butter burger tomorrow and you're going to tag me in it and you're going to be like, mind blown. And then you see me a few weeks later,

I'm 50 pounds overweight. Matt, Matt just put peanut butter on my burger. What's up with aged meats. What's up with that? Uh, I think there's a lot of debates out there. There's, you know, there's the, you know how there's like Tennessee barbecue and there's Texas barbecue and those

guys like viciously hate each other kind of thing. You know, one place uses smoke, one place uses mustard, one place uses, you know, wet rub, dry rub, kind of the same thing with aged meat. So aged meat there's, you know, wet aging and dry aging. I'm a wet age guy. I think the flavor is a little bit better. Dry aging, you're basically just trying to create a more condensed meat flavor. And it kind of makes sense, right? If the steak starts out this big and you dry age it, it's going to start to shrink. And then you're going to have to cut off some of the outside of it.

So you're going to get this really, really dense, really, really, really, really meaty flavor. Um, that is going to result in a lot of moisture being pulled out, but when you cook it, it's going to be a little bit more tender. You have to be really careful not to overcook dry aged meat, obviously. Um, bang for your buck. Is it worth it? If you're indulging, probably maybe, but I mean, in my book, i'd rather eat again i'm a volume guy i guess i'd rather eat you know four good ribeyes than you know one really crazy dry aged one i think they're um i don't get me wrong i think they're good i would probably only eat dry aged ribeye though just me right because of the fat that's in there it'll it'll cook up a little bit nicer and it just kind of tastes old right yeah right i mean it has a tiny bit of that there's also there's

also there's a window on dry aging too right and everybody's flavor profile there's a little bit different where you know if all three of us were to just run a control experiment of like hey i'm gonna dry age this beef you're gonna dry age this beef. You're going to dry age this beef. And we're all going to stop dry aging it at a certain point based on our flavor profile. It would come out very different. So the way that I, where I take the dry age to might be drastically different than where you take it to. So sometimes it's kind of a disappointment.

You go to a really, really nice restaurant and you're like, oh God, I just got the $150 dry aged tomahawk. And you're like, ah, it kind of, yeah, it was okay. It was good. Um, I don't know. I think that, uh, but sometimes you hit it and it's just right. And you're like, that's sweeter than you, you know, you're just like, that's unbelievable. What's it like tasting all these foods? Cause that's, I mean, I don't know if that's part of your job now, but it's probably part of your job at some point. Yeah. No. Um, yeah. Chris, Chris, I can't have any more fat. Exactly. Chris was at a taste. Oh, there it is. Chris. I can't have any more fat.

Exactly. Chris was at a taste. Oh, there it is. There's the Elvis burger right there. Oh, yeah. Got peanut butter. IPA peanut butter on there. Actually, we took beer and whipped it.

Have you got a peanut butter burger? No. You haven't even hooked him up? Hey, hook your brother up. He's only been to Austin a couple of times to come have Hobdoddy, but Chris. Yeah. He's got an egg on it too, or what? No, that's a been to austin a couple times to come have hobdoddy but uh chris yeah he's got an egg on it too or what no that's uh it's just uh banana bananas and mayonnaise on the bottom yeah um dude that's like a sundae and a burger all rolled into one life changing right there um tasting all the meat's pretty fun it's pretty cool cool. We get to meet a lot of different vendors.

Right now we're just, you know, we're happy with our vendors, but we're always tasting and looking at different stuff. Bacon's actually crazy right now. I know this is like a ruminant animal crowd around here, but there's a swine flu in China that took out, to give you perspective, they are putting down more hogs in China than we have in the United States.

Wow. So if you guys like bacon, I'd start buying it and freezing it now. Bacon shortage. I'm not joking. How about pork belly? Well, pork belly and bacon are the same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's going to be huge price spikes on that. I have pork belly? Well, pork belly and bacon are the same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's going to be huge price spikes on that. I have a question for you, actually. Andrew, have you heard of like, there's something I heard a few months ago where the, I don't know, the oversight of pork or whatever, those products, it's going to be less stringent, right? Have you heard about that or no? No, but what's it referring to? Do you know what I'm talking about right now? You know what? Wait, so they're just just give me some google search terms i could find they're not they're not going to be looking into the the humanity behind it or kind of the the feeding of it as much not just the feeding it's like um the sustainability let's just say that like the pork or the the bacon or the pork that you might get might not be as safe, let's just say, to eat.

I'm not sure what that is, though, because it was a few months ago, and I can't remember it. I wonder if this has anything to do with the same thing that we're talking about. Yeah, maybe it does. I'm wondering if you need to be more careful with that now. Talking about dry aging, actually, and now that we're kind of parlaying this into pork, what I will tell you is I would probably go out of my way for like really, really, really designer pork more than I would go out of my way for designer beef. And I don't really even like pork that much. What's designer beef? I mean.

Or pork. But you know what I'm saying? Like instead of dry aged. You mean like high end. I'm saying like there's this company back. I think they're based out of Oregon that we used to deal with at one of my restaurants, um, tails and trotters. And they, it was basically like, if you imagine like the Wagyu of pork, the last like eight

weeks they're alive, they like only feed them like macadamia nuts. And this pork is just insane, right? So you get the pork belly from it and the fat caps like this big. And sometimes with bacon and pork belly, you're talking about it really depends on amin that's expensive right that's why it's poor that's why the restaurant isn't there anymore man imagine buying the pork so but this is kind of where the butchery comes in because these guys would sell you the bacon and they almost wouldn't even care about the ribs because think about it when you there's a limited amount of meat on an animal or so when you're if you cut too deep into one muscle to make another muscle

bigger you're kind of you know like if you cut too much into the rib meat to get yourself more pork belly yeah these guys are this stuff's just insane um so like this kind of uh this looks really this kind of pork's insane or like Mangalitsa. If you guys ever come across that, um, any of this or hazelnut, I said, Mac nut, it's hazelnut. Um, so pork like that are really, really like Duroc farms or like heritage pork. Um, I think some of that stuff is you get a more nuanced kind of bang for your buck flavor when you go for something really high end. Um, the other thing that's really cool about pork is you can you can impart a little bit more

flavor into it meaning like you can brine it and do a little bit more to it than you can a steak a lot of times to deal with like no nitrates you know when some of the bacon has like no nitrates and things like yeah i mean we don't really i don't really worry about too much of that in in the kind of the commodity world that we play in. It cooks easier when it has the nitrates in it, it seems like. And it seems like it has a little more pop. It probably lasts a lot longer. That's probably the reason for the nitrates, right?

Yeah, it's all that stuff is just to kind of cure it. So there's that cured bacon, uncured bacon. And it's kind of the similar camp, right? Do you cure it? Do you smoke it? The stuff with that you just have to watch out for sometimes is the ratios but a lot of times you'll ruin the bacon before you'll make somebody sick with nitrates and that kind of thing so um you know i'm i've never really um we've we've made our own bacon many times and it's really really tasty i think it's cool when you make your own bacon you can control the thickness

of the cut yeah so you can get them like, you know, called like lardons. You can make big kind of thick hunks of it. Gives you a lardon. Yeah. Eat this bacon, it'll give you a lardon. Yeah. How do we make bacon steak? Remember that stuff, Mark? Yeah, that was at

shit, what was the name of that restaurant? It's got to be Morton's, right? Morton's area. Yeah, bacon steaks. Those were good. It's basically just pork belly, I believe. Yeah. Big old giant thick cut of bacon. Yeah, so we would take pork belly.

We would take pork belly like this, and we would take a dish, and we would like a pan, and we would submerge it in pork stock, and we would cover the top of the pan, and we would braise it. So you'd have the pork belly would be, you know,, the pans up here, the pork bellies right here. So this part right here would get braised really tender, like pull pork. And this part would not. And you, we, we braise it for about two hours and we would pull the, um, kind of the covering off and we would expose that top fat cap and it'd get really crispy and crunchy. We'd pull it out of there and we'd plate it like a pork belly steak. You'd have the top that would be like literal like chicharron crunchy.

And then as you kind of bite into it, it'd be like pulled pork tender, like this steaky, just deliciousness. That was pretty good. Dude. Man. You guys sound really good. Hey, so Chris and I talked about this a while ago. We need to get our boy Gavin up here, and we just need to throw down.

We just need to throw down at Super Training. Just have me and Gavin just start cooking and do a little cookout. Gavin, if you're listening, come up and visit. Let's cook. That would be awesome. Yeah, so that's that. My Monster Mash looks like bullshit now. All the food I cook now is just not up to par.

Is there a way to make spruce up monster mash that you guys use? I'd take all Stan's meals off the truck and just eat them. These guys love them. I think they're frigging delicious. I thought they did a good job too. Yeah, but two things that I'll add into them every now and again. This goes back to the hyper-palability and then kind of knowing your macros and that kind of thing. For a while, Coco Secret makes these coconut aminos.

It's basically like soy sauce, but it's without soy and it's gluten free. Frigging delicious, man. Unreal. So I'll put Coco Secret on there sometimes. There's not a huge caloric kind of load to it. I think there's like 10 calories per tablespoon or something like that. They have a teriyaki sauce. It's pretty good. That's like 60 calories or something like that. I like the Green Valley Organic Sour Cream. Sometimes I'll throw that on there. But again, you start throwing

a couple of tablespoons of that. It's got some fat in it. Next thing you know, you got 130 extra calories on there. And I'm like, yeah, i'd rather eat the two pints of blueberries you know so those make monster mash tastes really good um i honestly just salt the hell out of it yeah you know and then that that kind of just makes it so you know you don't overeat yeah stan did a good job with that it's uh basically just rice ground beef or bison and some beef tallow, I think, and then bone broth, I think, right? Yeah, he soaks the rice in bone broth. There's already Himalayan salt in there, I think. All the veggies are cooked in that.

Have you tried the actual vertical meals? Yeah, they're great. Yeah. The most recent one I had was with sweet potato. Yeah. And I couldn't understand what I was eating because I'm like, oh, this tastes way better than what like my normal like, you know, just meat and rice. Sweet potato and carrots sometimes are frozen there even.

It just depends on it. He's got a lot of different versions. It was like a really good texture thing too. You know, it was a little different. The Yukon Gold. Yeah, he turned me on to the Yukon Gold ones, man. You get the bison with the Yukon Gold. I mean, maybe it's just because I've been in like deprivation.

Maybe it's because I've been in deprivation from flavors like that for so long but man i took a bite of that i thought i was eating french fries i was like oh my god this is the best thing i've ever had the yukon gold one's really good he does the world's strongest mash one that's like 1200 calorie two bins you know yeah i mean i gotta eat a lot of calories to even try and maintain this like i mean i love thousand calorie lunch but the other thing it's cool if you make your own mash you can you can kind of make it as big or as small as you want you can and stan in efforts to make it you know render it more digestible he puts bone broth in there and there's some beef tallow so you can kind of control what's going in there a little bit better sometimes i'll use really i'll

use like 96 four ground beef that's got a little bit less fat a little bit more protein um like a pound of this stuff's like 100 grams of protein you know it's like 12 grams of fat 100 grams of protein you know 560 calories so you know you do do that a couple hundred grams of rice and it's delicious we cooked it with um bell peppers last night yeah i'd just add something different because i've been having Monster Mash so much. It's just like, let's change it up. A little palate fatigue? A little bit, yeah.

You've been doing egg yolks and oatmeal and stuff like that? I've been putting, well, I've done stuff like that before too, but I've been doing a lot of egg yolks lately. Just putting them right on, like using it like butter. of egg yolks lately yeah just putting them right on like using it like butter you know putting it on like uh ground beef and putting on steaks and um throwing it in my um it looks really disgusting when you throw it in like crock pot meat but it fucking tastes awesome danny vega has been doing that for a while just taking a hot bowl of meat and then just cracking a couple yolks in there and just kind of swirling it up and i think it kind of gets like it, it kind of cooks itself and kind of coagulates and makes a little sauce.

That looks kind of tasty. Egg whites aren't great when they're like that. Cause they're not like, they're not all the way cooked. Yeah. But the yolks are fucking delicious. Yeah. Get some big ass like duck yolks or something like that.

And do you separate the yolks? Do I? Yeah. Oh, uh, sometimes, yeah. Sometimes I just heave ho the egg white. Okay. You know, I feel bad about doing it. I'm Yeah. Oh, sometimes, yeah, sometimes I just heave-ho the egg white.

You know, I feel bad about doing it. I'm like, oh, there's protein like literally down the drain. This is going. See you. But from, you know, having Saladino on the podcast, and he was saying you can eat the whole egg raw. He just says it doesn't really taste very good. And then he also just mentioned that I guess the egg white can, rob your body of biotin or something like that.

So I was just like, ah, it doesn't taste good. And it's taking vitamins away from me, so fuck it. You know what's funny is when we make fresh pasta, when we use eggs, we literally just treat egg whites like water. Yeah. literally just treat egg whites like water yeah so instead of like when you make uh when you make sheeted pasta when you make um or rolled pasta like any noodle a really good bite is typically just egg yolk and flour but when you make like ravioli or um you know annuloti or capoletti or any of that stuff you gotta have a little bit more pliability of the dough so some people will put water in we'll just start using egg we'll just use egg whites so we use egg whites to replace with water because it kind of adds a little bit more of that elasticity to the dough

it tastes better too yeah so it's interesting that you're like yeah it's just like yeah it's like a water it's like yeah it's kind of how we use it in cooking it's like yeah it's just basically like that but uh i i eat i eat a ton of egg whites obviously i wish i could eat whole yolk maybe i'll start eating them now i'll start sleeping better man i remember when i when i was doing low fat to get ready for a show like when i got started getting leaner and low fat my libido tanked everything just sucked i i can't do low fat and feel good like and i've noticed i mean i don't know the scientific reason for it but I've noticed a trend on athletes that end up, they're having to diet down and lower their fat, especially on men. It really starts to affect them when they get into like the 50, 40 range.

So I just like, if they have to have carbs, I'll just decrease the carbs instead and keep the fats like maybe around 70 or whatever, and just take that hit to the carbs instead. And they, their mood, everything just feels much better. Yeah. I probably need to swap that up a little bit. I, uh, yeah, admittedly I might be dangerously low. Or you could just shift days. Like, you know, you could do days where you have slightly lower carbs and increase that fat, but keep the same calorie intake. That's what Mark was saying. Just kind of have a couple of days where you just kind of play with it a little bit and move it around. I know that low fat's really bad going that low is like not bad, but I guess it has some serious complications for women.

When they go, if they get into that amount of grams for their body weight, that can be pretty rough. But it's not like it's not rough for me, so maybe I need to change something up. So you're in Seattle, right? Yeah. You still going to school, stuff like that? Yeah, I just started. I just got into grad school for construction management. Finished up my bachelor's degree in landscape architecture and did a minor in architecture.

Congrats. Yeah, thanks. It's been a lot of fun. I started working as an apprentice carpenter for a high-end contractor and just to get some field experience. Honestly, just trying to kind of emulate what he did. Kind of start, learn the process from the beginning, hands-on, and hopefully moving towards the office side of things to learn the process from the beginning um hands-on and hopefully moving towards the opposite side of things to learn the structure of management and he echoes this a lot to me too

is becoming a great manager you have to you have to learn that from somewhere so that's just kind of what i'm trying to do and being a leader is something that you know i was like a captain football and that stuff and i feel like i'm a natural leader in a lot of ways but it's something that i definitely need a lot of development in but yeah that's what I'm kind of up to gotta be a savage to wake up at five every morning and go work out and then go put construction bags on and swing a hammer all day and then go sit in a classroom did you mention to me that you work with your dad um well we're doing some side projects just on our property doing some some cabin work he's been in the construction business for 40 years.

He can't even get in the union at the age of our dad entered. Our dad's boots on every day for 40 years in Seattle. Concrete guy. Just been pouring concrete and building suspension bridges our whole life. Heavy civil construction is pretty brutal, especially what it's kind of done to his body. He just got out of hip replacement, and he's been using MindBullet as a pain management. It's great.

When Chris was down in Austin, we had a little consult with my dad. Chris was like, here's what you're going to need to do. Here's what's going to happen. That's cool. And he's like, yeah, man. He's like, I'll send you on with some MindBullet. My dad just swears by it. He loves it.

Oh, that's great. He loves it. He's like a poster child for it. He's like, I want to fly Chris up. Come hang out. I'm like, Dad, I don't think Chris is going to come hang out with these dudes. That's great. But yeah, he loves it.

He says three or four of them in the morning, and he's just like four days off of hip surgery, just walking around, hanging out, feeling good. Yeah, man. We were doing demo the day before I came up here. And he's just rocking some Mind Bullet out there, stuff up and how the guy rock how the guy rolls man my sister and i were you know we were tearing apart this roof and my dad's out there picking up the cedar shaker and wheelbarrows and he just got a hip replacement done wow you know and he's he's a beast is he still lifting too he's big into uh yoga he's a big yoga guy but working on his movement

there you go yeah i mean he he's been doing years and years of lifting i think he just is like me and he just wants to do things he enjoys right yeah i think he might have gotten sick of training my bad you know like i think he just trained and trained and trained and i think he i think he rode himself pretty hard when he was training for marathons and stuff like that and i think he just got to the point where nothing really felt good i think his body kind of started to go on him a little bit and he did he tore his rotator cuff no surgery just kind of like rehabbed it had a hip replacement um but i mean the guy's 60 years old he still has handstand push-ups with a torn rotator yeah i mean i go home like yeah he's still kind of savage don't get me wrong but uh he just

he doesn't like he's not gonna go bang a bunch of plates around in the gym anymore but i mean there was a time for sure is your mom still lift every day yeah every every every time we uh every time we try to shit talk our mom for not doing something she'll just look at us and be like hey i've been doing this every day for 30 years so why don't you just back up all right whatever you want mom she's uh she's a savage puts in your place yeah she's she's the original lifter in the family for Hey, I've been doing this every day for 30 years, so why don't you just back up? All right, whatever you want, Mom. She's a savage. Puts you in your place.

Yeah, she's the original lifter in the family for sure. How are you guys going to reunite? You guys got to get back together. It sounds like you guys are super close. Got to get him to come down to Austin, but he's probably not going to. I'll probably. Well, you know, I've got a couple of things going on. It's not like I'm exactly free every day. You know, i've got grad

school and work and i'm working on some side projects and trying to study abroad but i'm also you know trying to keep up with this guy in the gym so i don't look like a fool you know yeah so i'm i'm trying to get down there in in august and make some time to do do some more brother time i think we try and do either he comes up to washington or i go down once a month or we meet up in california and have some fun together so yeah last down once a month or we meet up in California and have some fun together so yeah last time we're last time I met up I think we were in LA we try to get together and train and work out and do that kind of stuff it's all good though yeah it's great just like you and your brother yeah you got you guys you're lucky you get to train every day

any other siblings we got a sister yeah our sister uh she when we did chris's podcast she was extraordinarily uh disgruntled that we didn't mention her and this is this is a true story this is a true beat you guys up hey this is a true story we have a middle sister we're on a family chat and she goes hey great job on the podcast loved every minute of it love the fact that you guys didn't mention me and and my response in our family group text was we only mention people in the on on podcasts that can back squat their body weight and and at no exaggeration my sister walked out to the gym that we have at our house loaded the bar up with you know what we would well i walked i was we were facetiming my brother in

and i was like kelby we got we've got to go do this. We can't mention you. And she was like, let's go. We go out there, and she probably weighs like 130-something. She's throwing plates. She threw out 135. No warm-up. No warm-up.

Just hit it. Just boom. So good for her. So, Kelby, we love you. Hope you're listening. Good job squatting your body weight. Now she gets mentioned on podcasts. Now you get mentioned on podcasts.

Yeah, she's awesome. She trains every day, too. She jack programs for her every day. And she does, like, kind of a little... She does CrossFit modules. Yeah, it's like CrossFit boot camp. Well, she loves to go hard. She loves a good challenge.

And, you know, she's just like me. She wants to enjoy the things she's doing or she's not going to do it. So we take, you know, whatever her favorite like me. She wants to enjoy the things she's doing, or she's not going to do it. So we take, you know, whatever her favorite exercises are, program those up into some terrible numbers, and I set her loose, and she has a good time with it. I don't like doing the things that I like to do.

I only like to do the things I suck at. So he's the exact opposite. Yeah. But, yeah, I've got another sister. Matt said you've been a huge fan of mine for a long time. You got any questions now that we're here? Yeah, man. Face to face? What you got?

Dude, questions on training. How big of a disappointment am I in person? Just let everybody know. That's not a true question. He told me a while ago, he said he was following you when- I'm a lot shorter in person, right? He said he was following you when your website used to be howmuchyoubench.net. That's right.

Howmuchyoubench. Howmuchyoubench you bench.net i mean i don't know man i my way back my piloting thing i just blew myself up but what kept me really interested you ever compete you ever get on the platform no i you know i was training i was training for it and i hurt myself in prep for it and got super discouraged But what really kept me interested in you is how mobile you are in the space and how encouraging you are to people and to just keep going after things and to do little things every day. You don't have to deadlift 600 pounds to be in the gym. I mean, your message is great, and I've loved it the whole time.

Just get in the gym, put in the work, and I've loved your the whole time, you know, just getting the gym, put in the work, you know, and I've, I've, I've loved your products, you know, the, the, the slingshot helped me accomplish my goal of benching four Oh five. And now my goal is to, you know, get off the flat bench, hit four Oh five and do a freestanding handstand pushup. That's like the next thing I want to do. Um, in, in terms of, in terms of questions for you, you know, I don't know. I mean, I'd love to emulate kind of what you do. If I come to the gym and own a gym and, you know, do don't know. I mean, I'd love to emulate kind of what you do. If I come to the

gym and own a gym and, you know, do that for a lifestyle, that would be probably the coolest thing ever. Yeah. In my opinion. I mean, having a gym is, it's fun, you know, having this, uh, this environment, um, you know, it's, it's fun to come to work every day. It's fun to come into this building every day. And, um, this is an unconventional style gym since it's like free and everything. So it's, uh, it's, it's definitely since it's like free and everything. So it's definitely different. The business model is to like lose money, right? That's definitely a little different. But it's great having people here that want to help out.

People here have common goals. Everybody here wants – no one's here like uh being all grumpy and not helping each other out and you know the the men and women that train here might look a certain way but the second you ask them a question they'll they'll pop right into uh you know wanting to help you out so it's really cool from that perspective and i think any gym owner especially that owns like a box gym or kind of a smaller gym probably has a similar a similar feel you mentioned matt you know feeling probably has a similar, a similar feel. You mentioned Matt, you know, feeling like just a good connection with all the people that work here.

Cause everyone's like right on top of you guys when you walked in and stuff. It's contagious. Yeah. Why not? Why not be that way? Why not be positive? Why not be fun? I think that's what makes a gym. Like the gym, the gym that I train at back home, CrossFit Jakaru. I mean, I was, I traveled, I traveled when we started opening these restaurants, I traveled 185 days, one year, 185 days. Yeah. You know, that's insane. And, uh, so that's, so the reason I started CrossFit was cause my, you know, I basically started following CrossFit.com. Then when I got off the road, after we kind of got done with this crazy growth, I was like, I got to join a gym, man.

I, if I never did another CrossFit workout for the rest of my life, I would probably still go to the gym that I go to. Cause the community of. I, if I never did another CrossFit workout for the rest of my life, I would probably still go to the gym that I go to because the community of people there, the coaches, uh, the people who get to interact with every day, it actually reminds me a lot of here. Just how amazing the, just everybody's is super genuine. The community is amazing. You can just tell like everybody out there respects each other. They take good care of each other. Everybody seems like they look out for one another. There's general care for things um that's exactly how our community is back in austin i mean i there's so many people that our gym's done a really good job back home of uh they have a lot of notoriety it's a very competitive gym so a lot of people come to drop in and take take

class there but i think what most people find isn't that the athletes there are so remarkable or that the programming is so over the top it's't that the athletes there are so remarkable or that the programming is so over the top it's just that the people that are really genuine the people that really care and then they find a community people that just you know want to eat good look good and be jacked and you know train hard and then it's all all of a sudden it's all kind of fun you know so it's great it's kind of like here anything else Andrew um really quick you in and out it's like a religion for me and people people know that so they see that I'm like vulnerable

at times exactly well yep people it's like it's become like the cool thing to bag on in and out especially right in front of me but you had said every other restaurant tries to buy the

potatoes that they have like a monopoly on, right? Uh, I want to be really clear. I work, I work for, I work for Hopdoddy burger bar out of Austin, Texas, which I do love by the way. Okay. Um, I would probably get a Hopdoddy tattoo if I could. I love Hopdoddy, but let me be explicitly clear. I have been in the fine dining industry. I've been in the casual dining industry. I've been in the fast casual industry. I've been in the cocktail bar industry. In-N-Out Burger is an upper echelon, pinnacle, glistening example of excellence in regard to restaurant operations. everything that they do from their design to the socio, um, like psychological studies that go on for how people enter their building, how they go into the queuing line, where they wait, where they

pick their food up, the minimalist approach that they have. They stay in their lane. They do what they do and they execute every single day. They pay their people really well. They give their employees five, um, you know, more minimum wage. They give their employees paid time off 401k. Andrew's like, yeah, they have, they have, they have four things on the menu. They have three flavors of shakes. Um, their places are built, right? Their places are built easy to clean. I mean, if you look in their kitchen, it's like, that's where the napkin goes. That's where the French fry goes. That's the bin that the French fry bin comes out of and goes into there. I mean, everything is a science in there. You can watch their kitchen ramp up

as they get busier. Dudes will start punching fries. That's not for show. That's because they want their product that fresh. Like you're in a drive-in and you're seeing dudes punching fries. I mean, it's a symphony in there. I think that they are among the best operators in the business. They do what they do. They don't change. Yesterday was, or two days ago was national, um, like ice cream day. Did you know every other burger restaurant and burger chain around advertising the hell out of, oh, we've got this.

What did an outdo? Nothing. You want to know why they don't care? Cause there's a, cause there's a frigging line at every single in and out at noon and every place that they're in. You know, I think I couldn't say enough good things about in and out. Now I don't know. I don't know how they treat their people at the executive level. I don't know what their company morals are. I don't know any of that, but what I can tell you is from an outside observation, observation, those guys do it right. Question real quick to

add on this. You've had In-N-Out Burger, right? Of course. Have you had Five Guys Burger? Oh, yeah. Which one's better in your opinion? Oh, In-N-Out. Not even close. Are you serious? Not even close. Thank you. Wow. I'm sorry, man. See what I mean? I gotta deal with this stuff all the time, though. But Five Guys

tastes so much better. It's like I got a target on my back so much better yeah well my boys my boys nodding five guys hi yeah i don't know i think that but here's the other thing i'm a thin patty guy i like thin patties okay and i think in and out does something in their seasoning in and out to me has has has a trifecta of delicious in america they have sugary buns okay they have iceberg lettuce which provides the crunch and they have american cheese if you put those three things on a burger it's pretty hard to mess up and the fact that they slather it in that special sauce which god knows what kind of pixie dust unicorn tears is in that it's freaking delicious that shit's good man really good you throw that throw me a vat of that i probably eat my way out yeah that stuff's amazing yeah i mean

so i think uh i think five guys is a little more okay biggest problem with five guys i probably shouldn't be saying this biggest problem with five guys what's with the tinfoil wrapping i don't know yeah like by the time you burger you by the time you get your burger the whole thing's steamed out and it's like it's going to break apart in your hand like i picked the burger up my fingerprints go all the way through the bun and next thing i'm holding patty i'm like well this is a really great experience you know and then the paper bag that you get is just always just looks gross and greasy yeah i think in and out in and out i'm an in and out fan same. Five Guys does do a nice job. The thing I like about Five Guys is when you walk in,

you can see where their potatoes came from. That's pretty cool. Whether like your potatoes from Idaho today, potatoes from Washington, whatever it is. And I like the size fry they cut. Pretty thick. Yep. In-N-Out's better.

All right, strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch y'all later.