Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Power Project EP. 244 - How to Stay Consistent With Your Training

Episode Date: September 9, 2019

Today the guys at the Power Project Podcast are giving you tips on how you can stay consistent with training, all the way to competing. Subscribe to the Podcast on all platforms: ➢https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 15% off your order! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots 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

We are rolling. Oh, here we are. Hey, we were talking about perfect keto. Actually, so you guys know how much I mess around with my diet. I probably mess around with it too much. I probably sometimes switch it up so much that it doesn't even have a chance to work and I switch it into something else, but I get excited. Years ago, to lose weight in the first place, I did a lot of coffee with like MCT oil in it

and stuff like that. And I got into all kinds of kind of homemade concoctions. I'd throw protein in there and I'd throw MCT oil in there and different things. But, you know, it's really nice when you just kind of figure out something that tastes really good. And lately I've been messing around with the Perfect Keto MCT powder, around with the Perfect Keto MCT powder, which is really, really good. They have chocolate and they have vanilla. I'm still trying to work it out on which one's better, but they're both really good. And then on top of that, Perfect Keto also has collagen protein, which I forgot to bring some in for you, Andrew. They have a salted caramel one. They have unflavored. They have a variety of flavors. But MCT oil, for people that don't know, it's derived from coconut oil.

I think coconut oil is like 60% or 70% made up of medium chain triglycerides. And they just turn into ketones a little bit faster than maybe an omega-3 or omega-6 or any other type of fat. So that's kind of the advantage of doing it. But also when I've had these coffees that have fat in them, I've noticed that it makes fasting easier. And obviously it does because it's not really fasting, right? It's like you're throwing in some food. So anyone that wants to try it, it's a great way to fast. Just make sure that it's not a thousand calorie coffee

that you're having in the morning. So otherwise, it'll kind of negate some of the benefits of what you're trying to do. Yeah, and I'm actually about to tear into, what is it? Almond Butter Brownie Keto Bar. That's from Perfect Keto. I'm pretty excited because I haven't tried this one.

But if you guys want to give any of these products a go, you can head over to PerfectKeto.com slash PowerProject. Enter promo code PowerProject to get 15% off all Perfect Keto products. I thought you were going to say porno code. Porno. You've been messing around with the Piedmontese over there? Yeah. So, I mean, anybody that listens to this podcast, you guys know I got a really, really strong addiction to In-N-Out. Yeah, dude, I love going in.

Not the first time we heard this. Yeah, I love going to get the Flying Dutchman. I mean, obviously, it's not the healthiest thing because I can't be eating tons of cheese like that. But I finally found something that's, I'm totally honest right here, is better than a Flying Dutchman. I had Piedmontese's 85-15 hamburger patties. Threw them on the grill, threw a bunch of sharp cheddar all over it. Dude, it lit my face on fire.

I could not believe it. Yeah. I did get a little overzealous though. And I had two patties and I'm like, man, this was, this was kind of a lot, but I did the same thing for my fiance and my daughter. I gave them both two patties. Jasmine got through about like half of it. Same thing with Stephanie. They're like, I'm like, oh, is it not good? Like what's going on here? And both of them were like, we can't breathe.

It's just too much. So not only are they delicious, but like the servings that they give you are incredible like they're they're huge uh-huh yeah and i can't do it's so good i gave some to josh uh settlage not settle gate and uh same thing he's just like man i can't put my finger on it but this thing's delicious i'm like yeah it's amazing yeah like not greasy just full of flavor i'm so excited for those dude i hope i have some of those patties in the freezer. Yeah, you do. I do? Okay, good.

So you had the pre-made patties that we had? Yeah, yeah. They're already cut, ready to go. I'm excited, man. I'm excited for that. Yeah, I've had the patties as well, and I thought they were great. I realize this is an advertisement, so of course we're going to be excited about it, but this is really good meat.

I've been a meat eater for very very very long time and uh just down the street from my house is a is a market that carries all different kinds of meat but it has piedmontese they started carrying that probably about a year ago and before we even got into sort of any any deal with them uh i was already gravitating towards that and i quickly noticed how lean a lot of this stuff was. So I was like, this has got to taste like garbage being this lean. I didn't realize it until I got home. And I was looking at the New York strip that they had. And it had hardly any fat in it.

And then also the ribeye had less fat than a normal ribeye. And I was like, this probably isn't going to taste that good. But I was wrong. It tastes great. And I don't know why the ground beef is like amazing but it just is it's really good i can't wait for everybody to give it a try yeah if you guys want to get in on the fun uh head over to piedmontese.com that's p-i-e-d m-o-n-t-e-s-e.com uh head over there enter promo code power project at checkout and that's somehow

i don't know how they're even making money on this but they're gonna give you 25 off all uh everything they got there and then every order over 99 and more is going to get you free two-day shipping oh damn i'm hungry yeah you said something about in and out burger too i think yeah are we gonna go i mean dude i can still just cook up some more patties if you guys got some time. They're so good, dude. We might need to have a grill over here. Actually, that's not a bad idea. Why don't we have a grill here at the gym?

It's dangerous, though. We need it. We have everything but a grill. We'll get the grill and we'll get that red light and we can just stand in front of the grill naked. Grill naked. Perfect. Well, you have to be careful. You could just stand in front of the grill naked.

Grill naked. Perfect. Well, you'd have to be careful. Don't know how I know this, but there was a company called like Save Your Bacon. Oh. Because they wanted to- Save Your Sausage? Yeah. So it was just like a device that covered your junk so you can cook bacon naked.

Oh, that's great. It was called Save Your Bacon. Wait, what? I'll find it, but- What did they sell? did they sell the covering it was like a cover for your junk so it was like kind of you know an apron specifically for i see yeah for the wiener yeah get a tan but like you're okay no it was literally they said because like when you cook bacon you know how like you mentioned how you like uh roaming around naked so yeah maybe we can get this for

him yeah like no i'll use chip in let's see what i can find and sema what's going on with your taint lately i didn't know we were gonna talk about this anyway so um you know i'm really really really excited and and not yo this this ain't even an ad should i stand back no okay all right so for all my guys listening you know for you know i i i was a guy i had two clippers right one for my head one for my junk but the clipper that i used on my junk like i'd always be a little bit scared with it because every now and then i'd be going at and just be like a Nick and be like, ah, not again. Right? So I heard about this company called Manscaped and you've probably heard of it. Like they were on Shark Tank.

A lot of guys have heard of it, but I was on this guy Long Beach Griffey's page. He's this IG comedian. He had an ad for it. I'm like, that's a funny ad. Let me check it out. I purchased it and I used it and my God. Kind of life altering? It is life-changing i feel like a different man kind of walked in here did you notice that he walked in here a little different today a little

pep in his step yeah a little more aerodynamic yeah a little more aerodynamic wasn't so weighed down yeah like are you able to get like i mean it's gonna get weird but like the whole like sack and everything yes you you because i've tried and man one nick and you're just like yes like well i guess i don't have blood in my body because it's all there guess i'm gonna die yeah right no like i yeah that's why i don't i never even bothered like really you know i try to get close but yeah but not so close you can legit take this thing and just like you could you can just go and and it's it's perfect genius let me see like seriously man yeah man and um do yeah like i've never shit okay so okay this is a little bit more team i'm sorry people but like i've never shaved my taint before.

Because that's a sensitive area. Yeah, you got to be careful down there. You got to be careful down there. And with this, you can shave without nicks. Well, now you're going to have to keep up on it. Otherwise, it would get itchy or something. Yeah, we'll see. You might be kind of wiggling around a lot.

So that's from Manscaped? Manscaped. Yeah, this is not an ad. Yeah, they're not manscaped yeah this is not an ad they're not even a sponsor this is not an ad it's just such a great product i have to share it with all of you and like the ladies that are listening this is a great gift for your hubby this is a great gift for your son um i'm serious i'm serious you give it to your give it to your 10-year-old son. He's looking at it like, oh. Girlfriends, great gift for your boyfriends. There's the device.

Oh, wow. Looks like boxing. Looks like trunks, yeah. Interesting. I don't even know how I remembered. So there's a powerlifting meet going on today. Yes, there is. Currently. Sacramento. And our boy Lil powerlifting meet going on today. Yes, there is. Currently. In Sacramento.

And our boy Lil Smokey is lifting in it. He's going to kill it. Yeah, he's going to kill it. I can't wait to see what he gets on his bench. Yeah, he's been training. And I think that we're all always trying to just do our best. And so sometimes we attach competition to it or some sort of challenge. I know it's really popular in the fitness community to go into like a bodybuilding show,

set up a photo shoot. I've heard of people doing that many times before, but nothing really puts the pressure on quite like a competition because, you know, it's like, this is what I have. I have to do this set of stuff to get to this competition and to perform well. And the idea is that you're going to perform better than you did last time. And there's really a lot of times – I never really had this approach myself, although it was something I was always thinking about. A lot of people won't even compete unless they think they can do better.

Like they're just like, there's no reason for me to do them. Like a lot of people will drop out of competition. They'll start to prep for it and they kind of realize they're a little bit behind and they're like, I don't think I'm going to, I'm going to do the meat or maybe they end up with some bumps and bruises and they're going to be weaker than they were. But I've always just kind of thought it was just i needed to compete i need to get on the platform so i'd always just go through it and i've had my ups

i've had my downs but you know what are some of your thoughts on you know competing to like force yourself to do better versus just you know just training and trying to be strong can sometimes be hard yeah you know that's the thing for. Like I've personally always found that like competition brings out the best in me because like even for powerlifting, I was my strongest while I was getting ready for that specific competition. Like I didn't, I never hit anything close to 755 in terms of my deadlift. I never hit anything close to that 630 squat or the same thing for my bench. I never hit anything close to that 630 squat or the same thing for my bench. And it was because like I was doing everything to get myself ready for competition. So it made me my strongest for jujitsu when preparing for competition. It made me try to like even my first competitions, it made me focus in and really dive in and get better and increase my training frequency. And after that jujitsu competition, I kept that increased frequency because then it drove me to be like, okay, I want to do better

and better because I want to compete and continue to like improve. So it pushed me to that level. So I feel like competition or just having something to aim for can really, and I wonder for everyone, if it brings out the best in them, because like when I think when I'm outside of competition, I still do like training. I still like lifting, but there's a different type of focus that's there. It's it's I'll say this training's a little bit more, a little bit more enjoyable when you're not having to get ready for a competition. You're not so attached to anything. You're not so attached. Like even jujitsu, right? Like in jujitsu, when I'm getting ready for a

competition for months, I have to zone in on the specific game that I know this is like what I do in competition. Like this is my game. This is what I'm going to go for. So I stay away from doing a lot of different things that I'd usually like play with. But outside of competition, I play with a lot of different positions. There's no pressure. I just try new things because I know I'm not really getting ready for something right now so I can experiment. So there's that aspect to it too. Yeah. Sometimes the aspect of like not having so much to worry about, sometimes that can help you to have the training feel better, have it be more fun. But usually it's like, no, you know, here's the time. If I'm going to compete, here's the time to like double down and triple down on your strengths.

You know, maybe otherwise you're kind of working on your weaknesses. And obviously it's always wise to bring up some of those weak points. And it could pay huge dividends, but you don't have enough time a lot of times when you're prepping for a competition to really, you know, actually truly fix the weak points that you have because you're about to undergo some really heavy training and you are building strength. But like 12 weeks, you know, three months is really just, it's not that long. So you're going to basically be teaching your body how to deal with some of the weights that you're going to be lifting on the platform. And it's an adaptive process, and it could take a little while.

But usually it's not enough for you to think about, like, oh, I'm going to work on, like, my conditioning, and I've got to bring my biceps up. And you won't be able to really work on of those things uh while you're trying to train full blast for powerlifting because you'll be breaking yourself down too much yeah there's too many other things to uh to focus on one thing one thing that i think it does too is it sends a cascade of disciplines uh down the line so i think for myself i've noticed the you know the early morning wake up calls and and mine are pretty early but they don't have to be that early. But if you feel like you're having a hard time scheduling yourself, having a hard time being organized, one way to do it is to try to wake up earlier.

And waking up earlier isn't going to be the only thing that does it. What will do it is the cascade of disciplines that come with that. You will start to take responsibility for yourself more and you're going to be like, oh, it's 8.30. I got to be in bed by 9. And it just sets you up. And so for me, it makes me lay out my clothes for the next day, which are things I normally wouldn't do

because if I wake up at like 7 or something, it's like, well, I'm not in really any rush. And also I'm very like awake. So it doesn't matter as much. But like at three in the morning, the house is still pitch black. I can't see anything. I'm trying not to wake up my wife.

So I set my clothes up outside of my room. You know, there's these other disciplines that come along with that. And so same thing with getting ready for powerlifting meet. Maybe even the simple fact that you're just going to stay at a certain body weight is going to be something that's going to help you get to that next level because maybe you're always 185 pounds,

which is just a few pounds above that 181 weight class, and you want to compete at 198. Maybe it's just like, hey, you know what? Let's fill out this weight class a little bit. Let's get closer to that 198 pounds. Not an excuse to blow up and be fat, but you can have some freedom with your diet. But again, it's going to set forth a cascade of disciplines. You're going to have to be on point with your food. You're going to have to be on point with your food. You're going to have to be on point with your sleep. You have to be on point with so many more things.

If you're going to be doing a competition, you know, something I want to ask you, cause you, I know you have a lot of insight about this is one thing I hear a lot of power lifters say, especially newer power lifters. I want to compete,

but I don't know if I'm strong enough yet. Right. And we're talking about all these great things that competition can force you to do. But when do you think a powerlifter that's never competed before should think about competing? And should they even worry about like, oh, I can't bench 225 yet or 185 yet? Or like, what do you think they should think about heading into that? I think probably the main thing is just that they're going to feel good about it and that they feel like they're going to be participating in something.

And so a lot of times that would take having a coach because a coach is probably going to be the one that would push you into it. And you may not have otherwise done it so early on in your lifting career. You might be like, man, if I only go out there and deadlift 225, like there's not going to be other people there. Deadlift 225 probably at a powerlifting meet. That's actually not true. There, there's, there's a huge, uh, range of people that are at powerlifting meets, especially some of the local ones. Um, you'll see 10 year old kids all the way to, you know, 80 year old men or women lifting.

There's a huge range of people lifting at the competition. And so having anxiety over like the actual number that you perform, no one's really going to care. No one's really going to notice. And like, I can't even imagine a scenario where someone's like, oh man, I can't believe how light a weight that guy lifted. What a pussy or whatever. It's just not going to happen. People admire how brave people are to get on that platform and actually prove themselves in front of judges rather than just having this gym lift mentality.

But to try to really figure out when you should compete, I would imagine that you'd be lifting for a little while. You know, I don't think it's something where you've been just toying around with it for, you know, three months or six months. However, if you've had prior lifting experience and now you're, you know, in year two or three of your lifting and you just started powerlifting, then it would make more sense. But I would say, you know, probably not in like your freshman year, probably not in your first year of lifting. Um, but anything after that I think makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I think also, um, if you've got like gym partners or something, one thing is like, if you're someone who's near

to powerlifting, right. Uh, but maybe in the past, you know, that competition drives you. Um, Because something that I've seen a lot is like a lot of people, like they want to do bodybuilding shows or they want to do a powerlifting meet as a goal. You know what I mean? And they want to set it up soon. So, you know, setting up like, whatever, maybe like a mock meet for yourself, maybe a few friends at your gym that you guys are going to do. And it's going to be fairly conservative, but it gives you something to aim for before you head towards a power lifting meet, right? If you know, you're not necessarily ready for me, at least it'll still simulate that type of,

I guess, challenge for yourself. Um, and it'll, it'll still get you in that position of, okay, you know what? I got to get ready for this because we all set this up together. It's like three or four or five people. Um, and it can get you ready for something without having to actually get ready for powerlifting me. Cause maybe that's, you're not ready to take that step yet. Um, that could be really powerful for somebody. Yeah. My, my cousin, um, he's hopped in on some of the, uh, the competitions that we've had, the, uh, ST classic that we have, he's hopped in on it, um, you years in a row and you know he wouldn't he wouldn't really like call himself a power lifter but if you compete in power lifting if he stepped on the platform one time you're a power lifter yeah same thing with bodybuilding you you know there's a lot

it's actually kind of interesting because people that power lift recreationally that don't get on the platform um they're probably not going to really say they're a power lifter because they know like powerlifting doesn't work that way they'd say okay well what's your numbers and then you'd be like i'll never compete then you're like you're not a power lifter right yeah bodybuilding though everybody always claims they're a bodybuilder like oh kind of lifting do you do i'm kind of more into like bodybuilding now you're like oh you crossfit or do you do this or that they're like no i'm a bodybuilder they don't really say they're a bodybuilder necessarily but they're fairly comfortable with uh kind of using that using that terminology meanwhile they would never in many years compete in bodybuilding because it's

it's super hard unless you're if you're naturally a naturally leaner person, then maybe it wouldn't be too bad. But a bodybuilding thing is a tall order. There's a lot of things that need to get in place for that. But I think, you know, the main thing with all this is the competition is a great thing for you to force yourself into some uncomfortable territory that you probably otherwise you just wouldn't do. And it's a good way to force yourself to get better at something in a short period of time. Yeah. One awesome thing that happened after I competed for the first time, just finished my first lift, and then Ryan Spencer came up to me. He was judging at the time, but he chased me down.

He shook my hand. He's like, hey, congratulations. you're officially a power lifter now and it kind of hit i always got i got a little emotional because i'm like oh my gosh like finally um but also another thing is um like if you do have a good coach or even a training partner but getting somebody who's going to be your handler um that really like mark saying that he was going to help me out at the power lifting me. I was like, okay. So even if I have zero experience, I, I, even if I don't know where I'm supposed to be, he's going to know what I should be doing. He's going to know like when I should start warming up and when, you know, cause I didn't

know when I was supposed to do all that. But by having somebody there to take care of like the, uh, the, the thinking part and stuff, it was huge. It was such a big help. That's a great point. You think about someone's like, hey, man, why don't you run this like 5K? You're like, man, that's the last thing I want to do. Come on, dude.

It's for a charity. And then they finally end it with, dude, I'm just going to do it with you. Like if you're going to walk or run or like whatever combination of stuff, let's just grab a couple of us and let's just go do it. It's way different, right? It's like a way different thing. You got someone kind of guiding you through something. And, um, you know, I think that you kind of need that encouragement in competition. It's nice to have somebody, uh, by your side. And especially with the lifting part of it, it's like, you're not really sure. Like, even though you could be told a million times what's supposed to happen, it always feels and looks so much different than what you pictured in your head and to have someone there

you know kind of picking your attempts for you and stuff can really help yeah yeah that was huge because again i don't like and then just everything when you're supposed to even tell them will you i i didn't know anything so it was huge having somebody there for me how would you say because like you know they're when you people start competing, they do their first competition. Some people get like competition fever, like they'll do their first one. And this is, I think, physique athletes, it's even tougher. But they do that first competition. And then a few months later, they find the closest competition because they want to hold on to that feeling.

Like powerlifters tell me about this quite a bit. Like, you know, like they get excited to hit the platform. So they find another meet what six weeks later, eight weeks later, and then they find another meet, but it doesn't give them much time to like develop. So what do you think like is a good time range for a lot of people? If you're going to give like a general idea. Yeah, I do think a newer lifter,

a newer lifter that has just started powerlifting, I think they should be getting on the platform fairly frequently. But that, you know, frequency could be two, three and maybe four times a year. So that's still not like that's not crazy, but I don't I don't think there's really a good reason to do much more than that. Okay. I do think that something that's helped me a lot was to do bench only meets as well. You know, some people, they're kind of frowned upon sometimes, but bench only meets are just going into a meet. For some reason, you can't really just go to a meet and squat. I'm not sure why, but like you can, you can bench or you can bench and deadlift but you you know otherwise

you're doing all three i guess just weird it's a it's a weird thing yeah um but what i've noticed from doing the bench only meets was that i built you know i built my bench up a lot and i was able to really learn and this is also geared powerlifting that I'm talking about. So the geared powerlifting was just so much different. But a bench-only contest, really, you can just do it while you're training. You could just kind of account for it in your training. You don't have to take like a week off or anything. It's like your heavy day. It could just be your heavy day, but it's a competition

and something that needs to be treated a little bit differently than what you do, uh, in the gym. But I, I competed very often. Um, but it wasn't for that long, you know, it was kind of a shotgun approach. Um, I want to say I competed like about eight times, uh, in the course of about eight months maybe. Like I competed a lot. You said some of those were bench only, right? Some of them were bench only, yeah. Okay.

It was also around the time I was going towards single ply lifting. So I went from double to single ply lifting. I actually competed in around December, like early December. I competed one week and did my first 2,500-pound total in multi-ply gear. And then the next week, I competed in single-ply gear, and I did an 8-10 bench, which was the biggest bench in single ply gear and I did a, um, an eight, 10 bench, which was the biggest bench in single ply gear at the time for a full meat power lifter. I broke the USPF, uh, record the all-time record. And what's really cool about that is that the record is still there and it'll probably never be broken because people don't really compete in the USPF anymore because the USPF split off and

basically turned into the USPA. And so there's a lot less people in the USPF because the uspf split off and basically turned into the uspa and so there's a lot less people in the uspf it's like on the east coast but it's really rare yeah and people don't lift in powerlifting gear anymore so it meant a lot to me because that was uh ed cone had records in the uspf and and some of the people i admired growing up had records there and so i always thought that was cool. I had the all-time bench record and I had the total record in the 308 weight class. And then I think maybe about a month later, I competed again. And what that did is it really prepped me.

It really prepared me. It was like a lot of fighters talk about going into like a camp. It almost felt like a camp because I was, I was like always prepping and always getting ready for something. Yeah. And I had to be like super sharp, you know, like these fighters, when they have these camps, they'll bring in other high level fighters. And that's kind of what it felt like to me.

It was like, you know, each competition that I was at, it's like people were kind of gunning for me and I had to try to do better and I had to up my game and I didn't have a lot of, I didn't have a ton of time to plan some strategy, but I did have some time in between the competition. So like the two, the two I'm mentioning, like they were back to back, but the, uh, the next competition that I competed in after I broke some of those records and single ply was the Los Angeles fit expo. So it was like, there was like four to six weeks, uh, in there.

And that, that was fun. And, and I competed out at the year before the Los Angeles fit expo and did a bench only me. And I did, uh, I think I did my first 800 pound bench.

I can't remember all the different shit and how it happened, but I did an 800 pound bench. My brother, Mike was there with me and and that was really cool, and that was really special to me. And the next year he died. So when I broke the all-time record in the USPF, my brother died like the next morning.

That's when I got the phone call from my dad, and it was horrific. And so what I remember was I went to the gym on Sunday because I'm a meathead. I competed on Saturday. Went to the gym on Sunday and I'm like dead. My eyes are bloodshot and I still lifted. I always thought that was important.

Just go. Just get yourself back in the gym just kind of so you can say you did it just from a mental standpoint. And then my brother died, and I was like just – I don't know. I just didn't feel like I knew what was going on. I was like this is crazy. It didn't really sink in.

It didn't really hit me. And I remember reaching out to my buddy Jesse Burdick, and we got got in some conversation and it wasn't more than just a few minutes later that we were talking about the gym. And it wasn't like we were planning strategy for like when I'm going to compete next, but he was like, dude, he goes, do me a favor. You know, get around some friends and get around some friends that are smart. You know, don't drink. Don't, you know, it's like, this is a, you know, a tough time, you know, and you, a drink can turn into many drinks. And my brother had a drug and alcohol addiction and stuff. So I was like, nah, man, I'm, I think I'm clear headed enough. I'm not, you know, I'm not looking to

like, you know, drown my sorrows or anything. I, I feel okay. I'll get around some friends. I'll take your advice. He's like, but don't train. And I was like, okay. He's like, no, no, no. He's like, it just promised me that you won't go to the gym. I was like, wow. And I was like, okay, I won't go to the gym. He's like, dude, he goes, you know, you're going to go in there and you're gonna fuck yourself up. Cause your mind's going to be in other places, you know? And, um, he goes, give yourself just a couple of days off and then you can kind of get back, you can get back to it. And so that's what I did. I took, you know, I don't know, five days off. And of course, after the fifth day, I'm like itching to get back in there. And I go back in there and sure enough, my mind's in other places

and I go to do a deadlift and I tear my bicep. And before I did that, I had a conversation with Jesse. I said, you know what? I think I'm going to do the Los Angeles Fit Expo. It's supposed to be a lot bigger this year, and I would love to dedicate that meet to my brother. It gives me something to do. He goes, you know what? I think that's a great plan. It keeps your mind off things and gives you something else to do. And here's some footage of it here.

And so I went back into the gym, was was all fired up and went to pull a 765 rack pull and i did like two reps with i was just cruising i was going nuts with the weight on that particular day and uh as i went to um do like a third rep the weight got out in front of me a little bit and i tore my bicep and um you, you can see, I have like a thing on my elbow there cause my bicep was all jacked up. Yeah. So I did all the training for the competition and I, I wasn't able to even deadlift at all. And, um, you know, I think the heaviest deadlift I picked up was about four Oh five and that

was about a week out from the competition. And I was like, yeah, I think I'm good to go. And so the preparation or not preparation, but the decision I made was just to say, I said, screw it. You know, my bench is strong. My squat is strong. And I was like, I'll just, I'll just hope for the best on game day and hope that there's some possible way that I can do a, um, that I can do a deadlift that, you know, at the end of the meet to, to be able to

win. And so I, uh, ended up, you know, with a, just a cheap opening attempt, uh, deadlift and then, uh, moved on to like a seven 15 or something deadlift. And that actually won the meet. But what really won the meet was when I went to bench, which you'll probably see here in a minute. Um, I'm not sure if it's part of this footage, but I did an eight, 10 bench. And I remember walking past Charles Bailey, who was, uh, one of the stronger lifters in the, in the world at that time. He was kind of the favorite to win this meet. He just looked at me and said, the meat's over. He's like, everybody can just go home. And I would just remember being like, he's right, man, the meat is over. All I gotta do is, you know, hit a halfway decent deadlift and, uh, I can just remember being like, he's right, man, the meat is over. All I got to do is,

you know, hit a halfway decent deadlift and I can get out of here, you know, with a victory for my big bro. So, you know, having, just having, you know, putting myself in all that, it allowed me to, you know, as I've been saying lately, lift through it, right? It's allowed, it made me, it forced me to put my mind somewhere else and rather sit around and cry about my brother's death it was like my brother's the one that started all this shit he's the one that got me into this in the first place and how cool would it be to honor him by continuing uh to lift so you know setting yourself up for a competition i couldn't quite get that weight uh all the way down you see how crazy the bench shirts are, how tight they are.

But you get the idea of like, and the reason why we talk so much about fitness, the reason why we talk so much about lifting is it's way more serious of a thing than just like, oh, yeah, I think I'm going to go do that. Sometimes you're doing it for some pretty crazy ulterior motives that maybe somebody doesn't know about. Sometimes it's just about being leaner. Sometimes it's just about being leaner sometimes it's just about being stronger but sometimes it's about doing stuff for yourself from a mental standpoint here's the here's the eight ten bench got that old crew with me got one there and I think big Roy

might have been with me on that day Trestistan Scholl with the – Tristan Scholl lifting off for me. Gordon Santee, he's still – Oh, that's Tristan? He still judges competitions. Here's that 8-10 bench, a little bit crazy. Yeah. Oh, Juan's hair is brown. Wow.

Yeah. And I think right here I walked past Charles Bailey. Where is he? There he is. Yep. He just said, it's over. He sat down next to me. Oh, man.

That's crazy. You know what? When you said that, Jesse said, don't lift right after that happened. That was really good advice because to be perfectly honest, I would have. My immediate thing would be go to the gym and just go yeah i wouldn't think that yeah and he just meant for a couple days you know he he knew i was gonna you know go into the gym but like he just i think he was picturing me trying to like squat heavy weight and be all hardcore and try to suppress everything like give yourself a couple

days you know go ahead and be sad about it go Go ahead and cry about it. Go ahead and talk to some people about it. And then go from there. And it's great to have a friend like that. And Jesse was even like, hey, man, maybe you need to go get some help. Maybe you need to go see a therapist or something, which I didn't do. But I was open to it. And I was like, yeah. And I have been a therapist before.

And I think that everyone's always so close-minded to it. And it's like, man, what that can do for you. And it's so simple. Like all a therapist really does, they have you say something. And after you say it, they sort of repeat it back to you. Like am I – have you ever done that before? I've gone to a therapist. Yeah. No, I have not. But I know what you're talking about. Yeah. like am i understand have you ever done that before i've gone to a therapy yeah no i have

not but i know what you're talking yeah so all they'll really do is they'll just repeat what you said you know like if let's say let's say you had a problem with somebody in here and you're like man i don't know what this is this is really stressing me out like it's issue with this person right and you see you get with a therapist they'll say okay in sema um you're upset with this person. You feel that they're cocky. And you feel that they, every time you come into the gym, you feel that they're disrespectful to you. Once you hear somebody repeat that back to you, kind of start to go, oh my God, like that's a little bit of irrational thought on my part. I could probably do better,

you know, it just gets you kind of thinking that way. So anyway, that's a little off topic. No, I have a friend that's done that for me. Like he's older than me quite a bit, but he's done that for me. Yeah, it could be just a friend that does that for you. Yeah, but like he's very in tune with that type of stuff. So like he'd repeat stuff back to me and make me think logically about certain things

I may have not been so logical about, you know? Like that's pretty much what they do. Yeah, it gets you to kind of look at something from a different, uh, different perspective, right? Yeah. You know, for, for all the people that are listening to this, I've never competed before. I know that they're probably going to want to go compete now. But one thing that I think is super important too, is, uh, make sure like, yeah, you'll set that meet up and you have that goal and now you're driven towards it and you're amped up and you're training towards it and everything's in line, but you got to try and set up a goal afterwards. Um, and it doesn't need to be like, you need to set up another meet,

like right after that, but like have an idea of what you're going to do after, because, uh, those, those post-meet blues can hit hard, like, especially right after all that excitement's gone and you don't know what's coming next. A lot of people just kind of fall off in terms of training because they hit their high and now it's going down and then they just don't feel it anymore. You have to learn to feel good about all of it and learn that there's ups and downs in life. It sucks because you go from squatting like 600 and then 500 feels heavy. You know, I don't really understand, you know, what happened. I, I just, it wasn't that long ago. Sometimes it's only like three weeks.

Some of it's just mental too. You probably could get under a big weight again. But it's the training. You trained a very specific way to get a very specific result and you're not doing that anymore. It would be too time consuming to try to do it forever. And then plus your body would just kind of wear out at some point. That's the way, you know, peaking and getting prepped for a competition works. You're going to be at your best or at least theoretically be at your best for that particular day. And sometimes it's only

for like a select few hours, especially when it comes to like bodybuilding. Yeah. Like how bodybuilding it's like, it's like, yeah, three minutes or two minutes on that stage. Yeah. It's not very, it's not very long. And then you eat a donut and your body doesn't look the same, right? Some people grow and they sometimes will look a little bit better than they did on stage. But for the most part, your peak condition, if you have a coach that knows how to help you or you know how to help yourself it's just uh it's not gonna last very long but i love what you said is like have another goal have something else uh set up because uh how hard is it to just be like i don't really know what i'm gonna do do next. Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. Like, for example,

bodybuilding, you know, after you step on stage, you're super lean, you do your show, whatever results you get afterwards, if you don't have any other goals, you might like, like you were mentioning this before, if you don't have any other goals, you might just balloon up and gain a bunch of weight. Right. But maybe you should have a goal to, okay, I'm going to gain some weight, but let's just look to gain maybe 10 to 15 pounds and keep it there post-show. Just hold it there, you know, and maybe don't sign up, especially for physique athletes. It might be a good idea not to compete for a while because like both powerlifting and bodybuilding have these two ideas that are the same. For a powerlifting peak, it's tough training leading up to getting to the platform. You get on the platform and then you taper off

from there. Training gets a little bit easier. Bodybuilding, it's a tough diet. It's a really just like tough few weeks or 12, 16 weeks. You hit the stage and then you become a little bit more lenient. But it's meant to be a small period of time. You're not meant to be doing that for forever. So you gotta, you gotta give yourself time to do something else. Uh, whether it be with like after, after competing in powerlifting, you switch up some movements, you do some front squatting, maybe you have some different goals for your lifts in the gym. And then maybe for bodybuilding, maybe you have some, uh, some goals in terms of maybe gaining a little bit of strength and not gaining too much weight.

But it's a good idea to have these things set up so that, I mean, they're smaller goals and maybe they're not as substantial as hitting the stage or hitting the platform. But they give you something to aim towards so you're not aimless and you just fall off the wagon. You know, you mentioned a lot of really good things there. fall off the wagon you know you mentioned a lot of really good things there and i think it's it's rare to see people like want to grow anymore like usually people are trying to like strip down usually people are trying to like lose weight usually people are trying to like lean out and how cool is it to be like hey after this i'm going to be doing this next and i think for a power lifter, in a lot of cases, it would be good after a competition is over to start to think about the weight class

that you're going to be in next. Or even if you're not, even if you know you're not going to compete for a while, how about just using that for motivation? Let's say you're 275 and you're just tired of being that big. You don't want to be that big anymore. You can start to think to yourself, you know what, I'm going to, I'm going to start to work my way down to about 250. I'm I'll be within striking distance of that 242 class. The focus right now is not so much on being strong. The focus is going to shift towards seeing, uh, you know, see if I can lean out, see if I can get some body weight off me. And you can make a decision that way. And another way you can make a decision is to say, you know, if you're a bodybuilder and you get done with a show, say like, I got lean for that show. That was great. I would love to see what everything would look like. Imagine if I went to that show

next year with an extra five pounds of muscle on me. And that's where you would, you know, bulk up again, not an excuse. And if you're powered up during you going, you know, if you're trying to gain weight towards a certain weight class, it's not an excuse to, you know, really fatten up. It's, it's, uh, it does give you more freedom in your diet, which can be nice. Maybe you can have some drinks here and there. Maybe you can enjoy, have a little bit more freedom. However, this is a time to still keep some discipline in there and just work on getting bigger. Yeah. The dreamers bulk, that's what people call it. Dream the like bulking and just getting that big is actually really detrimental. Like I think there's, there's been a lot of research done. Like after you get to a

certain set point in terms of your body fat, every new pound gained, a majority of that is going to be fat versus being muscle. So there's really no reason for even doing a really, I guess, just intense bulk. But it is possible to bulk while still, you don't need to maintain your six pack or anything, but maintaining some level of leanness. And what I do actually like about what you mentioned in terms of power lifting and going down a weight class is you don't have to be like, yeah, weight moves weight, but you don't have to be really, really overweight to be strong. You know, that's a really good goal. Like let's say, yeah, you did compete 275. It's a really good goal to want to compete in 242, but see how strong can I be at that lighter weight? Maybe I, maybe you could be stronger. A lot of people with enough time in training could

end up being potentially stronger at that lighter weight class with enough time than they were. And then if they did go back to 275, they'd be even stronger then. But well, there's different strengths, right? Like when we're talking about strength, especially in this scenario, we're talking about your performance in the gym and your performance on the platform right but you know what if you did make a decision to uh drop some lbs as a power lifter and you competed at 275 for a long time and now you're you know now you're in a 220 class it's like okay it's obvious that you you probably you know aren't still lifting the same weights uh but maybe you're able to do a lot of other stuff so like to me that's like that still

counts as strength um and you can you can you know uh look at movements that are easier to see strength in like push-ups and dips and pull-ups and these weighted exercises or body weight exercises obviously you're going to rock them out pretty good when you've lost a significant amount of weight running jumping all those kinds of things are going to be easier but just maybe your day-to-day feels better maybe you just feel better so it's like when i see those comments sometimes on my instagram and people are like man man, doesn't it feel, you know, different to be, you know, not as strong and, and you're weaker now. Like you're, you know, you're not, not, and it's weird because I'm like, man, I feel, I feel so strong. Like I can't even express to you. Like I feel way stronger than I've ever felt before. And I'm not talking about

like the actual lifting of the weights, but just in general, my energy every day. I always feel like I have really good energy. It's really rare for me to be, although I will occasionally get tired here and there, but it's like that might happen. I might be tired like once a month for like two hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, most part, I got a lot of energy. I feel really good.

I feel powerful. I feel like if I needed to like sprint, I could. I mean, I don't know if I'm going to be very fast,. I feel really good. I feel powerful. I feel, I feel like if I needed to like sprint, I could, I mean, I don't know if I'm going to be very fast, but I feel healthy. I feel, I feel really good. So, um, there's kind of some different levels of strength. And I think some of the big boys out there that are thinking about dropping weight that are so worried about the strength, don't really worry about the strength too much. Your actual like bench, your actual squat, your actual deadlift, it's definitely possible that they go down,

especially if you lose 20 pounds, 40 pounds, start to really lose a lot of weight. Odds of them going down are pretty good. The chances of you being able to regain some strength in those exercises is also really good. And then the chances that you're just going to feel better in general and be able to perform day-to-day tasks better that's going to be increased a lot you know quality of life just be better that's that's what i'm curious to ask you about because like versus like when you

were 330 um you know you mentioned your energy levels etc but the way you feel like your joints and all that type of stuff i know there's a general amount of like, you're going to get a little bit beat up with training, especially when you're getting ready for a meet. Especially being a powerlifter in general. But how much of that do you think is actually like an excuse? Or you're just saying, oh, you know, this is just, I'm a powerlifter. I feel this is just how we feel.

My lower back's a little bit like this. My knees are like this. Do you think that that's just that that is part of it or should you be feeling pretty good? Like, yeah, maybe a little bit, but should you be feeling pretty good majority of the time while being a powerlifter? I think that that like that should be the goal. Yeah. Right. Oh, it certainly should be. I think it's a forgotten element of fitness altogether, not just in powerlifting, but fitness should make you feel good and it should make you feel better. And that's been a big goal of mine more recently because I really like training a lot. And a lot of times I have a tendency to overdo it or do some shit that doesn't make sense. And I know it doesn't make sense, but still,

I sometimes want to do it. But now I have more of a mindset of like, I'm not doing something unless I think it's going to make me feel better. So I like won't even do it the other day. You know, I did like 15 sets of squats, but it was just because everything was feeling so good. And I started off super light when I'm talking about 15 sets, I started counting my sets with two plates because I did three sets with two plates and three sets with two 75 and

three sets with three plates and so on. And I just really took my time to like warm up. I really took my time to kind of get in the groove for the day and it felt awesome. But I've been powerlifting for 30 years and my knees don't hurt. My elbows don't hurt. My shoulders don't hurt. Yeah, I've I can do all them them i can do all the powerlifting movements um you know i feel i feel awesome and so you know i think another thing that people are missing out

on big time and there's so much to do with recovery nowadays um we got the red light we got uh we know how important we we know how important sleep is we know how important sleep is. We know how important just kind of self-care, like maybe like a hot tub or a sauna, cold showers. There's a lot of therapies. There's a lot of supplements that are geared towards recovery, branch chain amino acids. And there's a lot of stuff that people do to recover.

And it's like, man, we could really save a lot of time and we'd probably save a lot of stuff that people do to recover. And it's like, man, we could really save a lot of time and we probably save a lot of effort if you just fucking train better. Yeah. Like if you were just a little smarter with your training, if you just, you know, Ben Smith, he's been to the CrossFit Games 10 or 11 years in a row. Something just ridiculous. Really, really high level athlete and somebody i hold in high regard he said right when he's when he's training even though something might be like programmed something might be in there for him to do he says right when he's about to be like i you know i could go a little bit more i could do a little bit more he I could do a little bit more. He leaves the gym. That's all dude.

How strong is that discipline? Like people forget, man, that's a discipline. That's a discipline to stop yourself cold when you know full well that that's the next move that you want to make. And that's, that's huge. And I tell, I have said this so many times and I think people tune it out cause it's not fancy, but I think I've said before, some of the strongest things I've ever seen people in here do is lower the weight. Take that 45 off and put a 25 on, take the 25 off, put a 10 on. Anytime it's sketchy, anytime it's iffy and see me, you want a 10 or a 25 and you go, 10, put the 10 on, no more discussion, put the 10 on, lock more discussion, put the 10 on,

lock the collars in. Can't change it. The way it's on there, be smart. You know, back in, um, when you were like,

you know, heavier or whatever, right? Fatter. We can fatter. What? Okay. Oh,

obviously maybe you would have changed that. What do you think you, you would have maybe adjusted to still allow yourself to reach that level? Because obviously, like all the feats that you've done in powerlifting, what do you think you could have done to be able to do those better? And still maybe achieve what you were talking about right now in terms of feeling good. What do you think would have needed to be changed? do you think would have needed to be changed? Yeah. So like, you know, um, I had, I had some levels of pain back then, you know, with certain things, like I remember my elbow would flare up here and there. I know, fuck your elbow. Um, my knee would flare up here and there, but I really do think that it was, that it was part of it. I also learned over a period of time, like, and I heard a lot of the power that there's saying all the things that you were talking about in terms of, you know, I'm getting ready for power to me. I know things are going to be great. Um, I know things are

going to be great because I'm super beat up. Right. I got to a point where I never felt that anymore. I got to a point where I learned like, no, this, that's not a good way to do it. And what I started doing is I started cutting out. I did a crazy amount of accessory work when I was in like the off season, which I really didn't have one cause I, I competed fairly often. But when I just didn't have a contest in sight, I did a lot of assistance exercises. But when I just didn't have a contest in sight, I did a lot of assistance exercises. And then as soon as it was kind of like game time to do a powerlifting meet, I cut out almost all of them. Because what is negatively impacting your elbow?

Everything, right? Every movement, a bench, a squat, and deadlift, they're all negatively impacting your shoulder integrity, your elbow joint, your wrist. And then let's just dive into it even deeper. What about a seated row? What about a lat pulldown? What about a tricep pushdown? We can curl. they can look at any exercise now we're like oh shit well they all start to negatively impact so i would get done

with the main movement and i would grab like 20 pound dumbbells and i would do like lateral raises and curls really really lightweight something that i know that's not going to negatively impact uh my joints and that's the way i did a lot of stuff back then so i did a really good job when it came to that stuff um where i sometimes messed up was sometimes i'd go for it too often you know from one training session to the next because it was like scheduled and i and i just forced it but i learned from that as well and then the biggest problem I had with my lifting career was just I just didn't sleep.

I had a good four or five-year span where I was just not doing great with sleep, but I would try to make up for it with a nap here or there, or I'd try to make up for it by training. I didn't train as early as I train now. So looking back at it, if I could have changed anything to do better, I could have stayed in better shape. I think that actually would have helped because I would have been in better condition.

I could have recovered from the workouts a little bit faster. I'm not saying I should have stayed really lean or anything, but I could have stayed in better shape. And then I think staying in better shape would have helped me sleep better. Okay. That's huge right there. I think it would make a huge difference yeah yeah um one thing that i'm starting to like well i haven't been doing this well i have been doing this a lot recently

someone just sent me a dm saying uh you know when we think a lot about lifting right people wonder about rest days etc um and. Um, and I don't necessarily think like, I think there are rest days, but I think those days, if you have, if you can and you have the time, you can still head into the gym and just do some like very light work, still get some blood flowing, still do that. You don't need to lift heavy, but I don't have any, I guess, days where I'm not doing something anymore. I think that you can still make a lot of progress, stay injury free, but just maybe two of your days or even maybe three of your days that you're in the gym or doing whatever in terms of fitness, just have those be much lighter,

lower intensity days and they can help your recovery, but you're not just doing nothing on that day. I think that's better than just sitting around and not doing anything at all. I think a scheduled day off might be wise for somebody that feels like they're really in there tearing it up all the time. You're right. So for that one, that kind of, not one person, but that type of person that is just like, you know what, I'm too dense. I know if I go, I'm going to annihilate myself. Then that might be a decent reason on why you shouldn't go or why you should look for something different. Maybe get out on your bike or maybe go for a walk or maybe just do something different.

You're still exercising. For you, it might be jiu-jitsu. And I think what I've been doing lately is just saying like rather than saying like I have a day off, I'm like I'm just going to go for like a longer walk. It's just – it's nice to have something every day, have some form of movement. The human body was designed to move. And so you can – I like what Nassim is saying too is you can lift every day. I've done that a lot. I've done that very often, but if you're in there and you're doing six or seven exercises

every day, that's probably not in your best interest for you to really grow and become like what you're looking for. If you're somebody that likes to do two or three exercises or maybe four, you could probably get in there every day and probably, you know, just be like, I'm going to train some shoulders. Like there's always stuff to work on. You were doing some of those rear del exercises yesterday. And it's like, how great would a workout like that be where you superset that with some rotator cuff work and maybe finish up with some tricep work, get a little pump. And I mean, look, lifting does so much for your brain too.

I talk a lot about the 10 10 minute walks and stuff like that. And you know what I feel it does for me in terms of, in terms of my brain and how I feel a 10 minute pump, you know, go in there and get a 10 minute pump. It makes you feel so good. You get that burn going. It's almost like, uh, it feels like a rush of endorphins going into your brain. It really does. And you know what? Like, I'm so happy that like, we've been talking about 10 minute walks or you've been talking about 10 minute walks on this show for so long because in the past,

like I hear it, I'd be like, yeah, it's cool. But I never really did it much. But now I like look forward to walking every single day because like I get to like think so much. It makes like,

I think of new things every time I go on these walks, just new ideas come and I just feel so good. And then when I actually need to do something or get to work afterwards, I feel so like driven towards actually doing that because of that walk. We just talked about this in the last episode, but I'm happy that I look forward to walking these days.

Anybody that has a job and they're, you know, feel tired middle of the day, they just ate a big old lunch. Maybe it's something that they shouldn't have eaten. Get outside and go for a walk. You can feel totally shot. A walk, in my opinion, will feel better than a cup of coffee. Um, what, yeah, what it does for you feel so good. Now, if it's like cold and rainy hours, I'm kind of, I kind of suck, but, if it's cold and rainy out or something, it might kind of suck. But if the sun's out, we're here in Northern California. The sun's kind of always out for us.

And you get that warmth on your skin. You feel it. It's something that if someone would have talked to me about it 10 years ago, I would have been like, get the fuck out of here. I'm not 70 years old i'm not going for a walk you asshole i don't need to actually use my legs no it's it's yeah it's something that can help make you feel better something that can kind of uh wake you up what you got over there andrew uh not too much i've been a little woozy though oh yeah that's why i had to run out oh did you uh why why you feel a little woozy though. Oh. Yeah, that's why I had to run out. Oh, man.

Why are you feeling a little woozy? Did you have to take a dump? Yeah. Oh, my God. I was holding it for too long. Yeah. Well, you could have tried a butt plug. Well, I had to pull it out too. I think that might space things out a little bit.

Maybe it messed things up a little bit more. And Seema, you know what? I'm curious about this. that might space things out a little bit. Maybe it messed things up a little bit more. Yeah. But, um, and SEMA, you know, I'm curious about this. So like what, what time do you usually go to bed?

Um, it's usually between 10 30 late. Now my late time is like 11 30. I try to always be in bed before midnight these days. I used to be like months ago. I used to like, there'd be some nights where I'd go to bed around like 12, 12 30 or something. But I, now I really don't want to have to get work done late anymore. I try to be in bed early because nowadays I'm always up at like 645, 655. That's the time I see on the clock every morning. So, yeah. let's say a couple shifts happen in your day, a couple things happen in your day, and you get to bed at 1230 and you wake up at 730. And let's say it happens two days in a row

or something. How do you deal with that? Because I think a lot of people, they deal with this bouncing off these competitions and they deal with this on their off days. They love the discipline of the whole thing, right? They love the discipline of the whole thing right they love the discipline they love the grind right but we all get like we'll get kind of thrown out of it every once in a while and you're talking about like when you come off a competition how you're you know a few weeks later you're not as strong how does somebody be okay with that how do you be okay with um you, you had a couple of days that were just off your schedules off your eatings off. Like, how do you, how do you talk to yourself? How do you say in SEMA, dude, like this is totally fine. So I think for me, the fitness stuff is easier. Like even

not, not being getting ready for a jujitsu competition. Like let's talk about currently, I'm not currently, there's no competition coming up that I'm absolutely getting ready for, but I know how like jujitsu makes me feel in terms of training afterwards. I know how much I enjoy it. So it's, um, I don't, I don't like, I mean, I enjoy the process of just training the process, just going there and doing that. I enjoy the process of just coming in and lifting, even if I'm not, you know, going up to 600 or something in terms of my deadlift, I just like doing those movements. Um, so I've fallen in love with like just training itself that I think it makes it easier, you know, like, yeah, when I'm getting ready for competition, it's cool that I can get so focused, but outside of that, which is a majority of my training is not getting ready for

competition. I mean, I enjoy that a lot. So I don't know if that answers your question. Your focused but outside of that which is a majority of my training is not getting ready for competition i mean i enjoy that a lot so i don't know if that answers your question your question was like if you fall off how do you get back on the horse um i know for food like like if it's something like where maybe i didn't eat something great the day before or let's like the other day i think we went to trader joe's and we had some of those uh maple cookies or something and they're pretty damn sugary but like what happens with me when i have something sugary is that i start to crave more sugary things i literally just try to get back to where i was the next day like i know that happened i don't think too much about it um i just don't get you don't get too like down about it i don't get down about it because i know that like literally things happen every single day some things that aren't ideal it doesn't really make much sense for me to dwell on that or or let

it try or let it spiral that would be the worst thing to just let things get worse and worse so just go back on what i was doing before. Cause what I was doing before was working. I felt good. Let's just keep it going, you know? Um, but yeah, dwelling on it, I try not to dwell on it at all. Yeah. I think that's my main point too, is I think you just have to kind of like ride some things out and kind of recognize there's time and place for everything. There's, there should be a time and place for you to have some cookies, you know, and there should be a time and place for your, uh to not be as strong as it normally is and there should be a time and place for your squat to come back there should be a time and place for you to be kicking ass on pull-ups there should be a time and place where it's maybe not as good i think it's okay and you just need to be

okay with it because i i have a lot of friends that you know we do these early morning workouts and some of them get super excited and i think they want to try to do them every day. And I'm like, look, man, like I understand why. Cause, cause now you're on the other side of it and you love the discipline of it. And I've mentioned those kinds of cascaded disciplines that happen, you know, once you start training that early, but let's just use it as a thing. Like's that's that's cool for us to do here and there and it toughens us up but if we do it every day we're gonna be dying you know and we're gonna be making you know i i have a family sean who works out with me in the uh morning too he's got kids and it's like it kind of sucks to your family if you're in bed by 7 p.m all the time and it's just

um it can infiltrate a lot of other aspects of your life. So it's like, well, there's no reason to be that regimented all the time on everything. So we come in two or three days a week early. The other days, you know, still on the weekend, we're here at like 7.30, which is pretty early for some people on the weekend.

So, but it's a matter of like, you know, just being okay with some of it. You're going to be strong sometimes. You're going to be a little flatter sometimes. You're going to be a little fatter sometimes. You're going to be a little vainier sometimes. You're going to just go through all these processes. So anyone that gets too bummed about it,

you got to really start to put your energy into something else, something more positive. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like fasting too. I don't fast every single day of the week. Like I could, but that's just like too much. You know what I mean? It's good to have some days where not that like you just go crazy in terms of food, but you just, you just don't fast.

You just eat, go about your day. It's not a big deal. Just go on to the next one. I think that's important too about fasting is like if you're getting in the habit of doing a lot of fasts, start to pay attention to your behavior two and three and four days later. Are cravings starting to kind of nail you out of nowhere where you're like, I don't know what this is. Why am I having these urges? Maybe the restriction was too hard and now your body's trying to – your body's like – human body is intelligent, man.

It's going to be like, dude, you owe us. You better eat, man. And your body might mention it a little bit here and there. And then by the end of two weeks of you not treating it the way that you should, your body's like, no, we're doing this, man. And there you are, drowning your sorrows in a bucket of ice cream. Oh, man. No, that's super true.

Do you guys find that if you do fast one day, don't fast the next day, is it like that next day, is it a little bit harder to get back to? You mean get back to fasting? Like just get back to like not being hungry while you're fasting. No, I haven't really noticed too many difficulties with shifting back and forth between. I do sometimes, like, there's been some periods where I take a few days off of fasting, and then when I go to fast again, I'm a little bit, it feels like I'm a little bit hungrier than normal, and it feels like the urges kick in a little bit more. But the thing that I love about fasting is how black and white it is.

It's like the cheat is if you eat, you know? Yeah. And the only time I've eaten during that is like a couple times I just didn't feel great. And I was just like, it was just my stomach was bugging me. And I don't know what happened, but my stomach was bothering me. And I was like, I should probably just eat something. And so I did. And I was fine.

Yeah. No, I haven't. I noticed that in the beginning when I first started like implementing fasting into the diet, like when I wouldn't fast, the next day would be tougher. I don't notice that anymore. And the really cool thing that I've found is that like on the days that I choose to eat, it's like it's because, OK, like my body feels like, OK, dude, you should just eat something today, just eat something throughout this day. And it just feels better to do that.

And then there are some days where I just don't feel like I need to do that at all. So you're right. The body is super intelligent. Like it's not even that I make the choice the next day I'm going to eat. It's like I wake up and I'm like, good idea, eat today. It's just like you should. It's something you need to do. So, yeah, the body just knows. Like you just know what you got to do.

While we're on this topic of fasting, this guy said, Mark, I saw your post back in May about how Americans eat way too much. They eat way too often. You talked about obesity and you talked about how you think that if people only ate twice a day, it might be a pretty good fix for them, even if they didn't really change too many things about the food that they ate. And I think from what he's talking about, from what I recall, is I still did have suggestions towards fairly healthy foods. But I was kind of thinking along the lines of like, if you ate twice a day, you would probably value the food that you're eating a little bit more.

And if you ate like steak and rice and potatoes, you're still going to be eating less than you normally would if you only eat twice a day in this scenario. And I also mentioned something effective. I think if you were to eat like once or twice a day that you're probably going to eat like 75 i'm sorry about 25 percent less uh than you normally would and these are all just like hypotheticals i don't know what people are going to do but i would imagine that you'd stuff yourself pretty good with those two meals and you would feel pretty comfortable and as a result of it being less overall food you'd probably start to lose weight so this guy said um that he did that and he lost 100 pounds. When did he start this?

He said in May. May, June, July, August. Whoa, dude. But I think that he must have been on a diet for that. Okay, yeah, yeah. I think overall he lost 100 pounds. But wild, you know. He just said that that had the hugest impact on him.

And it's like, sometimes it's just this one thing. And, you know, on this podcast, what if that one thing for somebody was us talking about, you know, intermittent fasting? Or what if that one thing was us talking about 10 minute walks? Like, I always think that all of this should always start with movement first. You know, you always start with movement because I think the diet thing is so hard for everybody.

And obviously we want to impact what you're doing at home too because then you're not going to see the results of everything that you're doing in the gym. But at the same time, I think we can recognize, man, we can all put our hands up and say, man, I agree. It's hard not to eat pizza. We can all understand our hands up and say, man, I agree. Like it's hard not to eat pizza. Yeah. Like we can all understand that. Right. I think, uh, the, the really cool thing about him though. Uh, and I think it's, it's something that a lot of people can, can take from that is that with a lot of these changes that come from, uh, like to lose weight or lose body fat,

a lot of these changes happen because of just better food habits. Not even that, like you're counting your macros or you're doing something super complex or you're adding in all these different micronutrients into your food, even though over time it's going to be good to do that. The biggest thing could just be, like he said, just eating two meals a day, having the habit of just eating two meals a day and not eating much in between. Right. Or yeah, taking, taking walks during the day, getting better sleep like these are habits. These aren't complex things. But if you can implement simple habits like two large meals each day, taking multiple walks each day, you're probably going to be able to drop a good amount of body fat. And then that is going to cascade like we've talked about into a lot of other different beneficial habits. That's going to allow you to push that more.

Right. You know, so those small steps, those small additional habits are going to make the biggest difference. With when you usually fast, you normally eat like twice, right? Yeah.

Usually twice, sometimes once, but you'd like nowadays it's, it'll be maybe two meals. Your eating window is probably like four hours or something. Four to eight, four to eight. So if it's, if it's four hours, it's one big meal, but if it's a six to eight, then I'll get in two meals. Yeah. And that's working great.

Like I like not having, or most days I don't eat way too late anymore. And I like that cause I can, it, my sleep's a little bit better with that. But yeah, I like that. It's a really interesting thing. I think that because my sleep's a little bit better with that. But, yeah, I like that. It's a really interesting thing. I think that, you know, we talk about it so much. And I apologize if you're like, I can't handle it anymore. We get it. But I'd love for people just to give it a shot, give it a try.

I think if some people listening to the show, you know, were to try a meal at, uh, you know, somewhere between two, it depends on when you go to bed around three or 4 PM, have a meal and then have another meal, you know, around seven or eight and then shut it down. If you'd like to try to, you know, have your fast, um, start a little earlier, uh, before, before you go to bed, uh, then you could kind of just shift those time domains a little bit but it feels really good to kind of have for a while i was doing kind of basically just two meals and that felt really good i would sometimes eat something small before i'd leave here to head home or sometimes i would just get home at like three i would have a meal and then

i'd eat again at like five so i'd eat at three and then five. And like that felt awesome. Yeah, man. And I felt so full and so satisfied too. And again, I was still probably eating a lot less overall food, but I was eating stuff that was really healthy and it just felt really good. Yeah. And one thing that like, I guess this is, this is more so just my, my opinion now. Back in the day when I used to eat like what, six or seven meals a day, right?

Six or seven small meals a day. I couldn't imagine like even doing something like that now and enjoying it. Like that just seems so weird to me. Like having to eat six meals and having all like, it just doesn't, I would not enjoy that lifestyle at all. You know what I mean? And what it just like, there's so many other things to do, but I'm worrying about this next little meal. Or maybe if it's prepared, I'm just taking a break to eat and then moving back to something else. So like, it's just, I don't know, just that access to consistent eating. I don't know if it's always the best idea. I know everyone's going to do different things. And if you, if you eat like a good amount of calories or not too many,

you can still keep the weight off or keep your body fat low if you have six meals. But just the lifestyle of that is not a, I don't, I don't dig it. Something that makes a lot of sense to me is that, you know, you're gonna, you basically, we all end up sleeping, you know know at our home every day right uh some exceptions you travel right um and so sometimes like if you travel you may not have the opportunity to cook you might not you might not be in a place that you can cook at you might be in a hotel or something like that right but for the most part when you're home think about just eating when you're home only right um and having that be your option if you have a standard kind of like nine to five.

Now, if you work from home, that might be a little bit tougher, but it kind of a cool thing. Like when your work's done, when you get home from work, your reward is like now it's time to eat. And I think it's a great thing where you're like, shit, man, I get to kind of like get after it. Now, what I would just warn you against is just that you might want to eat something before you even leave your office because you might be in like a frenzy, and or you might shop on your way home, which is just not great. You're going to end up with a lot of shit in your cart

that you didn't plan on. But I think the other thing that this does, by reducing the overall amount of times that you eat, it's a great way to trap yourself into just eating less. So I talked a lot about low carbs on here many, many times. I think that you end up in a little bit of a lower carb situation. If you're trying to fulfill some of your micronutrients and some of your macronutrients, you might eat rice, you might eat potatoes, you might have steak, you might have some veggies. But if you just think in real basic terms of like just normal, healthy nutrition, we're not talking about carnivore, we're not talking about keto.

You know, there's a lot of things we can disagree on. And then hopefully we can find some middle ground in agreeing with, you know, most meals should have some form of protein. You know, we should probably have some starches. Like as much as I like low carb style diets, I think that having some starches is a good thing. It's fine. Vegetables. I don't think vegetables are killing people. I think that having some starches is a good thing. It's fine. Vegetables. I don't think vegetables are killing people. I think vegetables are okay. They may bother some people's stomach, but in general, I think vegetables are a great idea. And some fruit. So it's like the diet that you laid out the other day where you were like, yeah, I eat like meat, I eat potatoes. And the stuff that you mentioned, I was like, yeah, that all sounds

extremely healthy. It's all stuff that kind of like comes, comes from the earth, comes from this planet. And if you get to chow down on that, when you get home from work, it's actually kind of awesome. It's super satisfying. It's super satisfying, but that's the thing you should also, it does, but like, yeah, you should have a plan for like yeah you should have a plan for that you should have a plan for that meal that you're gonna have um and i think it's also super easy though like to have a plan for that if it's only like one or two meals i think one reason why people a lot of people find that this so difficult or eating so difficult or getting a good eating schedule is because they're thinking of so many different meals that they need to make okay so then or maybe they'll press stressful yeah maybe they'll prep the same meal meals that they need to make. Okay. So then, or maybe they'll press stressful.

Yeah. Maybe they'll prep the same meal for all six meals to make it easy. But a lot of people are like, I can't eat healthy because they're thinking of, they usually eat five meals. It's like, what am I, what healthy things am I going to eat for five meals a day?

But if you only think about one or two meals, that's going to be a healthy meal. That's a lot easier than spreading it throughout your whole day couldn't have said it better that's 100 correct you got less decisions to make yeah so therefore it's easier i mean it really it really truly is and and again like i just love the fact that you get to kind of stuff yourself normally in most diet situations and especially with the six meals a day type of deal it's uh you're kind of stuff yourself normally in most diet situations and especially with the six meals a day type of deal it's uh you're kind of eating throughout the day you're not going to really

ever feel all that full you know in this case you get to you get to kind of load up and be like oh man that feels pretty good but i do agree too i love that you said still have a plan for that you know still kind of like know what you're going to cook you could also when you cook these meals just cook with just cook a certain amount of it so that way you know you don't have such a surplus but it's one you just have to cook once a day you know like i can't really think of too many people that don't have time to cook about once a day i mean that's sounds plenty reasonable i can understand if you don't have time to cook four or five times a day. But to spend some time, throw your steak in a cast iron and throw it in the oven. And 30 minutes later or 20 minutes later, it's done. I mean, it's not that hard.

It's not. It's not. Honestly, yeah, when I started doing the whole fasting thing and minimizing my meals, before that, would like prep meals on other days because I was eating more frequently never had to prep since right never had to prep at all and that's such a weight lifted like I know that like I'm not working a nine to five or anything but even though I wasn't because I was eating so many meals a day free before like yeah I'd have food prep for other days beforehand I did not like that but like now i still eating great amount of great amounts of food but since it's just single meals it's much

easier to deal with and i mean i can imagine if it's easier for me than someone who has to work a job or someone who has kids to deal with etc that's got to be so much easier for them i don't meal prep either you know what fuck it it does make everything a lot easier if you're not carrying around all the food and stuff and meal prepping is great because you do have the food right there and it makes you think like that's my option and it could save people some

time and some money but you really want to save some time and money just don't eat that's all the time we got for today. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.