Mark Bell's Power Project - Mark Bell's Saturday School EP. 32 - How To Embrace Something NEW

Episode Date: June 5, 2021

Change is difficult, but it is something we all must face, unless we are ok with not progressing in life. How do we embrace something new? Mark Bell teaches us today that we must keep an open mind in order to embrace it. Let us know what you thought of today's Saturday School! Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Eat Rite Foods: http://eatritefoods.com/ Use ode "POWERPROJECT25" for 25% off your first order, then code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off every order after! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Actually, my sleep has been pretty good lately. My sleep was good. And then my son got his next round of shots. So he had not a reaction, but his body got hot and he got a fever. And he had a hard time sleeping. So I had a hard time sleeping. The only cure for that fever is more cowbell. Exactly.

Or more Tren. Is that what he got the vaccine for? He got the Tren vaccine. Yeah, we went... He's going around, you know? Got the same cycle as... No, I don't want to say that. That would have been mean.

Michael Hearn's son? I was going to say that. Mini Titan? Yeah, but... Oh, come on i'm gonna say he's still natty at least he's not on any um he's not on any actual steroids he's just mk677 and carterine at the moment is my understanding so my thing was what if it is a natural steroid like what if it's like it's because trend like okay maybe it's not natural

but like what if it's like an organic compound you mean like what if your body already produces it and you're just trying to optimize it yeah you know just like something like testosterone maybe just a little dab here and there come on people why is everyone so upset i love steroids i'll be on and off for the rest of my life i said said it in Bigger, Stronger, Faster, and I still stick by it. They're amazing. Oh. Should we just talk about steroids? Just forget the whole topic. I'm down.

I mean, everyone else will be down. I know. People love them. Well, I mean, come on. I think you and I both agree. They're awesome. They are awesome. They're helpful, you know? I think in and I both agree they're awesome They are awesome They're helpful you know And I think in terms of like What we're seeing with

Hormone replacement therapy I think will be more And more common I think at the moment People don't really know where to go It's not as bad As the black cable box From years ago but It's almost as bad like remember you had Somebody get a hook up with that black cable box And you get all the pay's almost as bad like remember you had like somebody would

get a hookup with that black cable box and you get all the pay-per-views and the showtime and the hbo but no one ever really knew who they got it from and they wouldn't really say and you had to just be in the know to like find out how to get it and then i remember so i've said this on on air before but my aunt had one and i just like dad can't why can't we get one oh you can't get one because they're illegal and you know the cops find you whatever like you're going to jail and so thinking about it like back then was like yeah they probably have like everyone's like cable connection and they can see like like whoa like this tv is getting way more than it's supposed to but thinking about it now they probably had no freaking

way how to track that sort of thing because there was like no internet yeah so it's like how would they even how would they know and you're like dad is like is your sister like she some part of fucking gang that i don't know about or something like what the hell like she seems like a just she's a teacher or whatever yeah yeah she seems like a, just she's a teacher or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. She seems like a real straight shooter. Yeah. Seemed like everything's cool. Like she just happens to have a black box cause she likes to get free HBO and some free pay-per-view here and there.

Like, so watch some boxing. We would watch all the Mike Tyson fights over there. We're drinking some Coke zero. So we're sorry about if we're burping too much over here. It's funny. I was recently talking about a family gathering we had. And my cousin was there.

And she was the first person like a couple years ago. Like I'm just burping up a storm. To me, it's the exact same thing as exhaling. It's just something I do. I don't even like, do you have to think about breathing? No. Do I think about burping? No.

do you have to think about breathing no do i think about burping no one of the reasons why and one of the reasons why i control farts is because like i control farts you know like i i make them like make a certain sound you know so i i when i'm around other people i hold them back because i'm like this is i can make this really cool sound but it's at a very inappropriate time and then also i know you know the aftermath could be deadly sometimes. You don't know what you're cooking down there all the time. Right, right. You can sometimes guess, you know, you can make an educated guess when your stomach feels a certain way on how bad

it's going to stink, but you can't always tell. But a burp is normally fairly innocent. So, you know, you're just like, when I burp, I do the same thing as when I fart, except for I just, there's no holding back. I just like randomly burping, like while I'm talking to somebody. I don't know why, but. And then I like kind of just, I, for some reason, want to make it as loud as possible as if it's some sort of like mating call type thing or something. It's a contest.

Yeah. So when I burped in front of my cousin she was like appalled and i'm like whoa like what the fuck like what's wrong and she's like how could you like oh my gosh like we're at the table and i'm like what i literally had no idea what was her deal like did i i don't know dude like did i accidentally like spit on something like what what's your problem and she's just like your burp and i'm like oh oh, what? Like, what do you mean? Even then I was still confused, but at least I knew.

Yeah, I guess it is gas at the table. So you're like, I get it, but we're splitting hairs over here. And then, you know, and I will usually do the thing where like,

you kind of blow it out the side of your mouth and up. So you're not blowing it at somebody's face. Cause that's pretty bad. And then also if you do eat something and then you burp it up, you just like oh like that was my my bad everybody i had wienerschnitzel that's yeah that can be really bad if you had pesto anything with like pesto in it garlic um yeah peppers and onions spicy things yeah peppers peppers linger for a really long time. Anyway, peeps,

I think we're going to talk today about embracing new things. You guys want to hear more about like performance enhancing drugs. We could talk about that in a future episode and maybe kind of discuss, you know, reasons on why someone might consider them and so forth. But I think just in the future, we're going to see more and more of these hormone optimization places popping up where people are going to be able to get more help. I hope that that's true because like I said, at the moment, it's kind of hard to find information

out on it and we'll dive into it in a future podcast. We just had Jeff Whitmer on the podcast and him and his dad spoke quite a bit about it, so there's tons of information on that podcast. Go and check that one out when you have an opportunity. It was episode number... Five-something. I don't know. Five-twenty. In the five-twenties, you'll see it. Jeff Whitmer. Yeah, Jeff and Dr. Michael Whitmer. Yeah, it was great, because there's a lot of people that are suffering out there. There's a lot of people that are like... When I say suffering, I'm not talking about they have like life-threatening disease. I'm just saying like they are, they're stuck, you know, they're stuck with where they're at. They're trying to make some changes and they're putting their best foot forward, but a little, they could use a little pep in their step. they could use a little pep in their step and um you know there are i think some people think oh man it's cheating when you go that route you know but um i can say from firsthand experience

you know i've done it both ways and i i did it the the quote-unquote right way for many many years and that felt good um but when i switched over and started taking some stuff, it exponentially, just quite simply and quite frankly, just felt a whole lot better. I mean, a lot better. Like when I trained, I felt enhanced. I felt better. I felt stronger. I felt like I could kind of run through a brick wall. And I think that's originally what you think you're going to feel like when you train. I think you think you're going to kind of turn into a superhero. I mean, that's originally what you think you're going to feel like when you train. I think you think you're going to kind of turn into a superhero. I mean, that's sometimes what you see in those superhero movies. The guy's scrawny, gets picked on, and he goes through some training or he falls into a vat of chocolate, no, a vat of chemicals and turns into, you know, whatever he turns into, gamma rays or whatever.

And he turns into the Hulk, turns all jacked. I think that we think that we're going to train for a bit, and that it's going to help us no longer feel like we're being isolated or picked out for any one thing in particular, and then we're going to be able to kind of fight off stuff easier, or just feel more comfortable in our own skin. It doesn't really work that way. It's much more complicated than that. It takes a long time. It takes a lot of training. It takes a lot of planning. It takes nutrition. It takes sleep.

And man, imagine if you could take literally a shot in the arm about once a week to enhance that, you know, sounds like a really great idea. But at the same time, if you're 16 years old, But at the same time, if you're 16 years old, you know, maybe it makes sense to wait and things like that. So, yeah, but for everyone else, they just maybe be open minded and embrace what could be coming. And that's kind of what today's episode is about, embracing new things. And so this came from it just goes back to the Doug Brignoli episode. Very not controversial, but eye-opening. A lot of people either loved it or thought it was complete BS.

Even amongst ourselves talking with Nsema and yourself, I loved a lot of what he had to say. It was the first time I had heard almost anything. I've never heard anything like it, I should say. But had I looked at some of the comments and you know been like oh shit they're right like somebody was like oh I just got done watching a rip it oh podcast or one he was on where he basically said isolated movements are useless and it's all about compound movements and this podcast was recommended right after watch this and now i'm really confused and i'm like dude i totally get it even talking to nsema and he's just like i get what he's saying but i'm not going to give up compound movements um you still need to do

this and that and that and this so had i listened to some of the the negative comments had i even just put a little bit more weight into what nsema was saying, somebody I look up to, I might not have been willing to try some of these Brignoli movements the way I have been doing. The cool thing was I was doing something similar beforehand. I wasn't really messing with the barbell just because I'm kind of trying to repair my back and not be under a bar. Kind of trying to repair my back and not be under a bar. But then finding this information and training this way, I feel better. And had I not just been open-minded and tried to embrace this new idea of training, who knows where I would be? Hopefully not hurt.

I'd probably be fine, but maybe I wouldn't have been making as much progress as I have been. And again, there's that. There's the TRT you just talked about. So I wanted to kind of just have a discussion about being more open-minded and being willing to embrace new things. You, you are running right now and, you know, you can go in and talk about the progression there. But, I mean, when I first met you, I mean, shit, I posted a video recently of you and Nsema real nice and thick. And it's like, hey, thick mark, do you ever think that you'll be, you know, running? Like literally like, you know, going out for a jog instead of lifting? You might have been like, hell no.

But you've kind of taken that on and you've really embraced it and you've gotten really good at running and so you know how did that come to be and like what's the progression there with your um with your jogging i've found that you know through my own personal experiences that being open-minded has been extremely helpful to me um in many, many aspects of my life, all the way to the point of understanding why one person would be into something over myself thinking that it's ridiculous. For example, you know, now that I am more open-minded, there's nothing sounds all that ridiculous to me, right? But let's say skydiving, like I'm not that adventurous, you know what I mean? So skydiving, like I don't

really see myself doing it, but if someone told me about it and someone said, Hey, we, you know, I got a great instructor and here's what we do and here's how it works. And it's someone that knows what they're doing. I'd be like, yeah, okay. That's out of my normal comfort zone. And I'm not into necessarily just doing shit because it's uncomfortable. But I am open-minded enough to recognize that that could be a cool experience. And if I'm kind of like, I'm only kind of afraid of heights. I'm not like definitely afraid of heights.

But you saw from the VR that I did. I was just going to ask it, like I got pretty freaked out. Right. So yeah, jumping out of a plane would, I could pee my pants, you know, like I, I'm a little skittish. Like I get scared around like big animals. I always think they're going to like, fuck me up. And like, I don't know.

I've just, I've always been that way. Um, I can get uncomfortable in some of these situations, but I'm also in recognition of, hey, like, you know, embracing these fears might really help me to be able to follow through with my dreams in other areas, you know, and that's a quote of mine

where I talk about that often. I think that's one of the things that we're trying to do in this lifetime is we are trying to, not necessarily trying to embrace your fears, but I think that we have to embrace our fears. The things that you can't do, quote unquote, can't do are the things that you probably must do. I'm not very flexible. Therefore, I should stretch.

I don't have great stamina. Therefore, I should probably do things that work on my stamina, work on my endurance. My heart is probably pretty damn powerful in some regards when it comes to lifting weights. It's probably quite used to pumping for that kind of thing, but it's probably not used to pumping for something like running. So let's be open-minded to that. And maybe when we're open-minded to these other things, maybe when we venture off into something else, we could put more points on the scoreboard, but in a completely different category. So let's say you put up points on a scoreboard every single day for fitness, but then you end up being a little bit of an idiot because you're not putting

up points on the scoreboard anywhere else. You're not testing yourself intellectually, intellectually perfect word to not be able to say, right? You're not testing yourself, you know, in ways that, you know, challenge your mind, right? Um, you're not testing yourself in ways that, um, you know, might challenge, uh, your relationships and different, you know, different things like that. You're just putting in time and effort into your fitness all the time. And you're not recognizing that, uh, your relationship at home is suffering because you're at the gym for four hours. So this Instagram post that you have that you reached 5% body fat and did a squat with 500 pounds for three reps. While that's extremely impressive to be that lean and to be able to handle those kinds of weights,

that's really cool. Meanwhile, you're falling apart in other areas, maybe quite simply just because you weren't open-minded in some areas to reflect and to kind of look into, hey, you know what? Like that's probably not reasonable for me to work out for four hours every day. That's something that I've worked on a lot over the years. And it's actually something that I learned from, uh, from an attorney that we had early on with slingshot is he said, it's not a, like a law abiding word necessarily, but he's like, sometimes you can just tell some, you can just ask somebody, Hey dude, like, is that reasonable? You know? And in the case of

somebody like taking you to court or something like sometimes people don't really care what's reasonable, but I think that, you know, um, most people can understand what that means. Like, dude, you're kind of being, you're kind of being ridiculous. Being open-minded has helped me in so many different ways. It's hard to kind of put into words. But here's something that I've recognized is I've recognized that you don't want to allow your truths and your beliefs, your truths and your beliefs to impede and get in the way of your growth, of your ability to obtain more knowledge. Knowledge creation is one of the most important things that you will ever come across. The most important thing to work on in this lifetime is your mind. What you think

about the different thoughts that enter your brain every single day. We don't always have control over the actual thoughts that enter our brain, but we have control over how we think about those thoughts and understanding that when we think about truth, there's your truth, there's the truth, and then there's someone else's truth. So there's three different truths that we have to go through. And when somebody is speaking, as I'm speaking right now, you're like, is this true for me? You might be thinking half of what I'm saying is bullshit, but if you keep an open mind, you might be able to grab a couple things from me. Even if you don't like me, it

doesn't matter if you like me, you don't like me, or you're indifferent, you can still grab stuff from me that may be useful. I can still grab some stuff from you that may be useful. The weird thing about the actual truth is that we'll never know that. It's very hard to have an absolute truth in just about anything. Some people might say, well, there's some truths to like math and there's some truth to science. And if this if I drop this pen, it's going to fall. But then if you get into like talking like Neil deGrasse Tyson, he might explain something totally different that you're just like, I don't know what's going on anymore. But working on your mindset, having an open mind, having an understanding of that person may weigh 400 pounds right now and you might not be understanding of it because maybe you're not empathetic and maybe you don't understand just where that person is at in their life. This person may drink too much all the time, maybe because you're not having a good understanding of where they're at, at their life in this time, at this time. You yourself, even though you may have worked on yourself and you may have improved yourself, if you're being honest with yourself, you have been at, there's been situations in your life where you've kind of been stuck and you had

a fixed mindset. You didn't have a game-winning mindset. You didn't have a mindset that's going to commit to doing whatever is necessary within reason to come up with a victory. And I think the only way that you can continue to improve and continue to move forward and continue to make progress is by having an open mind and saying, you know what? I'm going to grab some knowledge from over what, I'm going to grab some knowledge from over here. I'm going to grab some knowledge from over there. This guy's got great information.

That guy's got great information. I'm going to piece it together with some of my current beliefs, some of the things that I already feel are somewhat true for me, because those things should not be ignored. Those things should not be ignored. The things that you already feel are fairly true for you. They should be examined a little bit. They should be challenged, but you definitely don't want to ignore them. So, you know, as you're kind of, you know, walking through this process, it can get confusing because there's kind of a lot of different things to, there's a lot of different things to think about. And when I started to think about, um, changing things up and exercising and doing things different, I started to think about

what do I want to look like in the next 10 years? I was like, I would like to, as much as I hate to say it now, cause I don't necessarily want to be smaller now, but that is where I want to kind of move to. Eventually I'd like to be, I don't know, 210 pounds. Like that's my fighting weight. Like that's what I weighed mostly through like high school. So that's kind of what I'm looking to do. And I'm just thinking like, well, what did I used to do? Well, what did I do when I weighed 210? I used to box for boxing. I used to run. I used to do some track. I played football. I had a lot of movement back then. I wasn't just into powerlifting.

So I'm like, well, I don't really, at the moment, I don't really have a desire to do boxing, but I'm always out on a walk. And then one day, kind of Forrest Gump style, the walk started to turn into running. of Forrest Gump style, the walk started to turn into running. And next thing I know, I went from a walk run where I only ran a little bit. Like when I say a little bit, I might only ran for like 15 seconds at a time, sometimes even less. Um, and then it turned into a run walk and then it turned into like just going for like a flat out run. I think that's where our boy Matt Vincent is right now. I think he is running pretty frequently, which is pretty awesome after having a knee replacement surgery. But yeah, being open-minded can help lead to a lot of cool things. Help put you in some new positions

and new spots. I don't know what running will lead to, but maybe it will lead to something cool. Yeah. And then, you know, here's where you see like the it's very apparent in like nutrition and in the diet space. Somebody will buy into a certain philosophy, a diet philosophy, and they will take the information. use lane norton because that you know his his uh followers seem to be very vocal when it comes to somebody promoting a different style diet that will just tag him left and right um not i mean i'm not i'm a fan of lane norton i'm i make everything fit my macros as well but it's not my identity and i think that's where things get weird is people will do the research and like yep that's it that's that's my diet or that's my whatever, my training philosophy, and it becomes their identity. But do you think that being

somewhat just for, let's say a day, being closed-minded to research everything there is on that one subject, one philosophy to kind of gain the knowledge that's that you feel is necessary to make a proper decision on whether or not you're gonna take just this one bit or you can take the whole bit yeah and you know just to clarify a lot of this first of all I have been guilty plenty of times of being narrow-minded, you know, and yeah, like, that mindset can kind of help, because sometimes you do spend more time somewhere, because you're like, fuck all this other stuff. You kind of filter out

some of the noise, right? You can focus. Yeah. You know, life seems to be fairly short, but you do have, you know, I mean, everyone ends up with a different like lifespan, I guess. I guess what I'm trying to think about here is like, you know, with a, with a race horse, you know, they, they put the blinders on and they, those blinders, if they're not on the horse will actually die like the horse when it's racing it will like fall out of its line because it can't focus and hone in it sees the other horses around him and he might start racing somebody else's race he's doing things that aren't

fit for him which happens to humans all the time we're we're running races that we're not fit for right and uh we tend to lose focus. And so getting single-minded and getting narrow-minded and putting some blinders on and focusing in and honing in on stuff can be really useful. But I guess what I'm saying is in the interim, when you have downtime, not when you're in the race, you know, you don't want to change your squat uh beliefs at a powerlifting meet like that's not a good time to take advice from the dude in the back about like pointing your toes out you know unless you've never competed before and that guy's you know has some knowledge for you but even then i would say that's not a great time to explore that you know it's a better time to explore that in practice a better time to look into that um it's a better time to explore that in practice, a better time to look into that.

It's a better time to look at that in your practice. But back to what you said about the identity is I don't think it's a great thing. You know, when I. It's a weird way of wording it. But I'll just say it this way. Cause it's truthful in my own truth. It's my truth, bro. It's my truth,

bro. When I helped make pop, bake powerlifting more popular, um, many years ago with all the different stuff from super training dot TV. Oh yeah. Um, I,

I took on an identity, but I didn't take on the same identity, the identity that everybody was used to in power lifting. You always had the metal music on. You always saw like flaming graphics and guys head, butting the bar. I had some of that because I get fired up for, for,

for lift. And we had some of our guys cranking some ACDC and stuff, but we were a little unconventional. You know, you had our boy, Tristan Scholl, smoking cigarettes in between sets, wearing a cowboy hat. You had me and Jesse Burdick always like literally dicking around with, you know, dirty jokes and messing around and having a good time. We were unconventional. We had a lot of, we showed a lot of people laughing. We showed a lot of people messing around in the gym because I always wanted the cameras to continue running. I'm like, no, no, no, this isn't a clip of a guy squatting 900 pounds. This is it. Let's talk more about the journey of how the guy got there to 900

pounds, but keep the camera running because something's funny and something stupid is going to happen after the guy makes the lift. Yeah. Real quick. What was the reaction when you started showing footage of Stan Efferding? Yeah, that, that was, that kind of stuff is what I'm talking about. Unconventional stuff that wasn't really seen before. Um, I think at that time i mean not that everyone

necessarily thought uh but people were attached to this idea that if you were a power lifter you had to be big and fat yeah you know so talk about opening up your mind not only that not only did that open up your mind it also kind of slapped you across the face because you're like okay what's up now fatso like this guy's got no body fat on him his legs are skinny he has striations in his in his abs you know he's he's a professional bodybuilder he's not just some bodybuilder he's a fucking pro oh and by the way he started this powerlifting journey in his like as old as i am right now 44 years old and he broke all-time world records at like 46 40 you know like it just doesn't make any sense it's complete

andrew you look completely stunned he's he's five or six years older than you are or maybe even more than you are right now that's when you put it that like. I want to say I knew he was older, but when you put it that way just now, holy shit. Think about it. We know what a mutant in SEMA is. Right. But can he even do that? I would never put anything past in SEMA. Yeah, if he just thought about it, he could do it by next week.

Yeah, if he thought about it it he could do it by next week yeah if he thought about it he could he could handle nearly anything but that that order for him to for him to for him in 20 years from now 20 years from now when he's done with his jujitsu career or when he's whatever the master just jujitsu or whatever 20 20 years from now, for him to hop into powerlifting and to break all time raw world records, it would just be really, really difficult. If again, I would never put anything past the guy, especially when it comes to anything physical and the guy is a beast and we have nothing but admiration for him, but that would be a very difficult task, even for somebody with that genetic, uh, skillset. And just back on this point of like being open-minded,

I think at the time people were kind of shocked by that, but the only way for Stan to get people's attention, the only way for people, the only way for people to buy into what he was doing was for people to actually see him like literally break the all time world records. And he did, he backed it up.

Like he talked a lot of shit. He came in and we shot videos of him and he talked about Ben white and how he was going to smack him around and kick his ass. And, um, you know, in, in lifting,

not physically, they don't not trying to fight each other or anything like that. Um, and he did he was able to you know put together some totals that not only were beating somebody like ben white who's an extremely strong bodybuilder but they beat all-time world records that were previously put up by long-term lifetime power lif. So it made people rethink everything that they were doing with powerlifting because they're like, wait a second, maybe our focus, maybe having these

blinders on, focusing so much on just powerlifting, maybe that actually doesn't really make that much sense. If I just always hone in and focus on getting strong on the bench, I always hone in and focus on getting strong on squat and deadlift. Maybe I'd be better off actually being a little bit more fit, having a healthier body, being able to get better sleep, looking a little bit better, having my body be healthier overall, carrying around more muscle mass than I am fat. And, uh, you know, being able to constantly kind of recomp the body. And now you see that in powerlifting.

And I think that Stan had a huge impact on that. Larry wheels obviously had an impact. I think Eric Lillibridge had an impact on that. I think even like Michael Hearn, who's, you know, more on the bodybuilding side, I think a lot of those guys promoting strength and promoting, um, that it's cool to be, it's cool to not only be strong, but to look like you lift. I think those things were, were massive. And then people were like, Oh yeah, it can be done that way. Well, I think it just reminds everybody like why they picked up a barbell for the first time.

It was somebody picked on me. Somebody said I was, you know, fat or too skinny, or I wanted to impress a chick. So that's kind of usually how it goes. And then, then when they see the power lifting, Oh yeah,

that is sick to be strong. And then they see like, again, Michael Hearns, like, damn, he's strong and he's jacked. That's actually what I want instead.

When, uh, we started filming a lot of this stuff, you know, and documenting what the power, what our power lifters were doing, I wanted to show everybody that we're on the same side as each other. You know, one thing I recognized in power lifting right away was that there was really no attention for the women. Like there just wasn't like, it just wasn't a big emphasis on what the women were doing. So we started a pro-am for women.

And then luckily Laura Phelps took that on later on. And I don't know if she still runs it, but she ran it for a good four or five years. You know, women and strength and women, and I guess they get more credit in like fitness, right? Because it's sexualized.

And so of course, right. But when it comes to powerlifting, you just it just always kind of got brushed off to the side it was like we're gonna have this competition and then it's gonna be super sick you know day two is gonna be pro and it's gonna be the best lifters in the world and they're gonna get cash you know but it was always just men it was like women would lift on one day and teenagers or whatever and then it was like the dudes would

lift the next day and i was like that doesn then it was like the dudes would lift the next day. And I was like, that doesn't, that seems kind of screwed up. I'm like, these women seem like they're really just unbelievably strong. So let's kind of put some focus on that. And let's, um, let's show people what these women are capable of doing. Another thing that I did to kind of help, um, just showcase different things in And powerlifting was, I made a CrossFit category. In addition to that, we had raw single ply, multi-ply, like most federations didn't have that. But the federation that I went with, the reason why I went with them, I went with the Southern

Powerlifting Federation, which is a story that's not important necessarily, but like, why would, you know, you'd be in California and you go with the Southern Powerlifting Federation. It was simple because they offered the most opportunity for people to lift. If somebody wanted to lift raw, they could. You got to keep in mind 10 years ago, there was not raw categories in powerlifting. If you lifted, you just lifted amongst whoever was wearing powerlifting gear as well. And so if you benched 315 and someone else benched 600 that was in a bench shirt, it was like tough luck. You got blown away, you know? And I didn't, I didn't like that. I didn't think that was, I didn't think that was great. Um, I thought that if we,

if we have, if we put a little more emphasis on females, if we put a little bit emphasis on there's many different forms of powerlifting, and we just say, hey, anyone can come into this. We don't really care what you wear, but you're going to go into your own category. It might open things up for people to be more open-minded to get on the platform in the first place. And it might make this damn sport that I love, which is kind of boring. It might help make it a little bit more exciting. When I opened things up and had a CrossFit category, people were really frustrated because they were like, why is there a CrossFit category? And that was so simple. It was just the fact that

there was a lot of CrossFit boxes popping up around the country. You didn't have to necessarily do anything crazy to prove that you were a CrossFitter you didn't have to like come in there and do fran or anything but it was just kind of the honor system and we wanted to allow people that were doing crossfit just a honest competition that they can go to where they don't have to compete with veteran powerlifters that will just completely smoke them because a powerlifter that would be um strong in a weight class of uh guys that are um pretty high level to crossfit at crossfit like would be like someone like jason kalipa who could maybe deadlift like 550 maybe he can bench he can bench around 315 he could squat around 405 those numbers for a power lif, for a seasoned power lifter, those numbers wouldn't cut it.

Like he just would not be able to compete. So I was like, well, these men and women, they do cleans, they do snatches, they run miles, they do these crazy CrossFit workouts. So they don't focus on power lifting, but how cool would it be to offer power lifting to them? So now they can kind of pop in here. And people were just, people were really pissy about it. But in the end, it gave powerlifting more exposure. And so, again, there's another kind of case of just, hey, you know, be a little bit more open-minded. Maybe we can find something else here. There's no reason to get mad about it.

That's cool. I didn't really know that or maybe I just didn't pay attention to that. get mad about it that's cool i didn't i didn't really know that or maybe i just didn't pay attention to that but that's a freaking genius idea to bring more people to powerlifting earlier you said something about skydiving and it just made me want to ask you which one is scarier skydiving or bungee jumping um both of them are scary but i have bungee jump before oh you have yeah oh yeah um when i was younger i didn't care as much about any of that stuff um some of my friends have told me like it has to do with being a dad i had other friends that have told me that it has to do with like getting big but i don't know i don't know if it equates to that but like you know i did get up to

like 330 pounds and when i got to be like 300 I remember I was like pretty scared to get on a plane. I just started getting worried. I was going to get trapped places because I was like, because I was like larger. I mean, just picture if you grew like five inches, you know, he's just like, you'd be like, shit, man, I don't fit anywhere. So weird. Yeah. And that's kind of what

happened you know my shoulders were wider i was just a bigger person and uh yeah it kind of made me panicky like everything else seemed smaller which it was because i was bigger you know can i get a hay now so it was uh yeah it was weird but yeah i have i have, I have, I have bungee jumped before. I think, you know, the most important, like one of the more important things here is just be unconventional. You know, we talk about being made of something different and people have heard the Steve Jobs quote of think different. We heard Andrei Milatovich talk about think less, you know, but actually, if you think less,

you'll be thinking differently because most people think too much. But beyond conventional, and when someone's doing something a certain way to say, I kind of wonder what the opposite of that is, you know, I wonder, like, let's say you're struggling right now and you're having a really hard time losing weight. What if you were to say, I wonder what the opposite of this would look like? Like what's, it'll help you point out all the errors, right? You should be able to kind of look at yourself and reflect on the things that you're not doing correctly. If you are applying some unconventional thought to it and you're just thinking like,

what would the opposite of me self-sabotaging myself every day and me continuing to weigh over 300 pounds, what do other people do? There's some people that have shown that they can go from weighing 350 down to being 250. What's common amongst those people? What do they do? I think you can kind of walk yourself through some of those things and just think to yourself, well, at the moment,

maybe it's not necessarily that you're not open-minded, but you're stuck on these habits. But maybe if you're more open-minded, maybe you'll be able to investigate other diets and maybe you'll land on a diet that will work better for you than things you've tried previously. Maybe currently you're like, I ain't trying intermittent fasting because I'm a big guy. And if I fast, I know that I'm going to die.

And I know, or if I know that if I don't eat carbs or if I start weighing stuff, man, I heard people tell me that's a slippery slope because then you start cheating. Just, just give it a, give it a go, you know, just, just start it, you know, just, uh, do it for a day. You know, don't, don't try it. Don't, don't think about, don't think about you might, or don't try it.

Just actually do it and see like, just some of the stuff that i work on um when it comes to like making the steak shake um when it comes to making some new products that i'm working on at the moment i just went on amazon and ordered a bunch of like uh cocoa a bunch of uh stevia a bunch of allulose a bunch of erythritol xylitol anything at all you know i i ordered like you know uh all kinds of stuff just to like like i'm gonna figure out these fucking flavors myself like i have people that work on the flavors for me and they're formulators and they know what they're doing but who better to try to make something than someone who knows nothing about it? Like it's, it's actually like you end up, this is a weird way to word it, but you end up being so dumb that, that you're numb to the

concepts that somebody else would believe that they're already bought into. No, no, no, you don't do it that way. That's not the way you do flavoring. And it's like, fuck you. This is the way that I do flavoring. You know, like you've seen me do Smelly's Kitchen before. And one of my main things with Smelly's Kitchen is there's no rules. Like I'm just trying to make this taste good for my palate. I know the ingredients that work for my palate. I know the way to cook that works well for me. If I'm trying to cook for other people, I might have to start to follow some other rules. I might have to start to think about it a little bit more and say, ah, you know, most people probably don't like that

much salt. Most people probably don't like that much butter or whatever it is. Uh, maybe some people don't even like those cuts of steak or whatever. Now I got to start to think about it more, but if I'm making stuff for myself, you know, and that's when I'm putting together these like recipes and making a steak shake and these different things, there's something, there's like these little tiny, I can't really say what they are because they're part of the products, but there's these little tiny tricks that I figured out myself that helped us make these products that didn't come from, you know, I'm not the kind of person that's just going to like randomly like white label stuff. You know, we're going through like a rigorous process. We're tasting this stuff over and over

again. We're trying to, we're working on making it better. We're adding expenses to the products that doesn't make any sense because the product already sold out. But here I am working on like, no, it needs to be better. It needs to have more of this. It needs to be more like that. And that's unconventional thought. And that's being, you know, open-minded to, you know, pushing the envelope. Like, don't worry about what anybody else has ever done before. Let's focus in on doing things that are unconventional in our own way. And if I hear stuff along the way from Ron Pena or Andy Frisella or these other people that have executed really well and they're giants in the supplement industry,

then fuck yeah, I'm going to listen to some of that. I'm going to be open-minded to some of those things, but I'm honed in and focused on a lot of the things I'm working on as well. Yeah. I don't know the exact saying, but it's something along the lines of the nail that sticks out gets hammered. All right. If somebody has some unconventional thoughts or processes or philosophies or whatever, they want to go against the grain, they're going to receive some backlash. How do you advise people to just how to deal with that sort of thing? I think, um, I think you have to look at criticism in multiple ways. Sometimes you have to look at criticism and say, um, I don't think they understand me that well.

I don't think they understand what I'm trying to do that well. But then secondly, I think you have to be open and honest about why they don't understand what you're trying to do. It could very well be that your idea is stupid. You know, there's a possibility that it's not great. There's a possibility that the criticism they have for you.

Now, if someone's just like, if you post a picture and you're like, hey, I just, you know, I sewed this thing together like this. I made these gloves for motorcycles or for shooting my new gun. And the first comment is that looks dumb. That's not a that's not a that's not a legitimate criticism that can be helpful in any way um it's not even worth engaging in in any way it's just somebody just literally just trying to shoot down what you said if someone um if someone was to say oh my god i had the same handgun, I had the same problem, I wonder what it'd be like if the gloves were more like this.

Now you got some, you know, or you have a family member who's like, hey man, you sure, like family members have weird ways of wording things sometimes. Hey man, you sure you're going to go with that? But maybe they have a legitimate question about it. Maybe they're not trying to just knock you down. So be open-minded and be looking for stuff and be open-minded enough to recognize that, as we say many times on this show, hurt people hurt people. If someone's trying to hurt you because you have a cool idea or you're trying to do something new or different,

you're trying a new job, you're trying a new diet. And somebody's trying to shoot that down. The next question is, why are they trying to shoot this down? You don't have to even ask them about it, but you can sit there and think about it for a second. And when you respond to them, I mean, you could crush people really bad you could say wow that's interesting I I I was kind of expecting that you would be a little more supportive they'll be like huh you know or you could just ignore I usually just ignore I usually ignore that stuff for me I have concepts that have been that have worked but i'm also open-minded enough i think sometimes um to recognize that yeah i could still be more optimal things could still be better

so i mean you've given me suggestions and sema's giving me suggestions um we all give each other we all share stuff and sometimes i can implement it and it works great and other times i'm like that doesn't work for right now but that is a good criticism i'm gonna keep track of that we should be like um just small example let's get together a website like we've been talking about a website we've been talking about selling stuff on the power project for probably we probably mentioned it, nearly two years ago. We haven't done anything with it yet. We're still working on it. You know what I mean? Like just little things like that. And I recognize the value of that, but I also don't want to just

dive into something, have something that is like half-hearted. I want to make sure that we can actually do it. You know, I can make, I want to make sure that we're actually headed in the right direction. And we actually are. We have a company that has done the Slingshot website. They just finished the Within You website. The next website to work on is the Power Project website. So some of these things, they take a little while to implement, but I don't think there's really a lot of good reasons to sit around and fight with people about these things. Sometimes you might have to defend yourself a little bit.

But I think really what I'm after, what I'm trying to work on is let's, let's be on the same side, you know, let's, let's work on, and I'm guilty of being like the war on carbs guy of saying like, Hey man, you don't need to count calories. The word need is the word need is an interesting word. That's, you know's in that narrative right there where it doesn't really make any sense to communicate that to people. Some people may need to count calories. That may be the most effective strategy for them to maintain their body weight the way that they want or for them to lose body weight the way that they want or for them to gain body weight the way that they want. So it's not useful for me to mention that at all, even though I personally don't choose to count calories. What's more useful to me is if someone says, hey man, you know, I'm really struggling. I've been counting calories. Here's what I've been doing. What do you think I should do? It doesn't do me any good to bash some of their current beliefs.

What would probably be the most helpful is say, hey, man, join the club. A lot of people have a hard time getting lean. And I don't know if you know about these other diets, but there's like a keto diet. There's a carnivore diet. There is there's a way to utilize protein leveraging. There's a way to utilize these, all these other things. And they all do what you're working on when you count your calories. They all basically are nixing out calories from your current situation, from your current diet regimen. regimen. But maybe you have to reevaluate the way that you're counting these calories. Maybe you're ending up... Compliance is the science, right? And so you have to find... When people say you have to find something that works for you, I don't necessarily believe that there's any diets that don't work for any particular people. I think all diets work for everybody.

I think the problem sometimes is that people don't want to follow that particular diet. So that's what they're trying to communicate. I tried keto. It didn't work for me. They probably mean I utilized a ketogenic diet for a while. I don't love to eat that amount of fat. Therefore, I had to bow out. I thought it was disgusting. You know, I barely even like to eat meat and the carnivore diet didn't work great for me. All that makes total sense. However, again, I would say that if I put a person on a ketogenic diet, any person,

and we equated for calories and we equated for the amount of protein that they ate, we could get them to lose weight. Each person is different. If someone is obese, yes, they could have hormones that are a little bit in the way of them making progress. And so you might have to tweak the calories a little bit more. way of them making progress. And so you might have to tweak the calories a little bit more. They might need a tiny bit less than someone of a similar body weight because their body is, their metabolism, their body is just kind of a little bit inefficient at burning body fat, but it doesn't mean that they can't lose weight. We could put that same person on a Mediterranean diet. We can put that same person on a very high carb diet.

Does that person respond differently than other people to the same diets? Yes, of course they do. But it doesn't mean that they can't lose weight. Again, I'll repeat. I think all diets work for everybody. Literally, they work for everybody. If you can comply to them, if you can utilize them for a while. And when I mean comply to the diet, I'm referring to figuring out some sort of energy balance, figuring out a way. hone in on the energy balance because I hone in on making good food choices, which in the end is the same thing as way. Like I just don't, I don't happen to weigh my food. I don't happen to track my food, but what do I do? I weigh myself.

I look in the mirror every two, three weeks. I take measurements. Are these measurements heading in the right direction? If they're not, you know, the scale, the scale is a way to measure. Like I, you know, instead of weighing my food each time or part, you know, partitioning it out into different things in my fridge or into different Tupperware, I just choose to weigh myself if i am trending downward i'm 235 one day a couple days later i'm 233 a couple days later i'm you know 230 a couple

days later i'm 229 a couple days later i'm 230 a couple days later i'm 227, like it's gonna go, it goes in weird patterns like that, right? Then I know that things are going the right way. If I have two or three days that were kind of off plan or I just overate, the scale goes from 231, starts going 233, 235, 230, it's like, whoa, like hey, let's, you gotta get back to eating a little bit less or figuring out something a little bit different. Maybe having leaner sources of protein for a minute.

That's how I do those things. But having an open mind, there's no, it doesn't help you to get married to any one principle idea. It's just hurtful. You do what I like to call, and our buddy Daniel Orego has pointed out before, you challenge your own progression. All I'm trying to do is get people to open up their ears. I would like for people to listen to the messages that I have.

If I'm going to get people to listen to the messages that I have, it's not helpful for me to say something degrading to somebody. It's not helpful for me to say something really negative. It's not helpful for me to sit here and talk about politics. There are two, I'm an open person, so I don't mind saying almost like whatever, but those things are too inflammatory and it gets people to shut down. Oh my God, I can't believe that he believes that. Now I'm not, right? But if you're, hopefully we're all on the same side, which is the side of trying to assist and help people to fight each and every day to figure out ways of controlling their

diet, controlling their habits with their nutrition. That's all I'm trying to do. And if we can put aside some of our other differences on what race we are, what our beliefs are with our religion, what our beliefs are with this or that, then that would be great. But a lot of times we all struggle, not all, a lot of times many of us struggle struggle with that. And so therefore those are topics that aren't great to talk about because then people go and they shrink down their brain and they're like, Nope, crazy person. Can't believe, can't believe he believes in that. Can't believe he's supportive of John Cena who's sitting right here on the, on the podcast, that kind of stuff, you know? And so I am, uh,

even though I did have a race to zero followers for a while, and even though I still kind of, you know, I still kind of would love to just assist people to get over the hump on that and have a mindset that is strong enough to not be pulled one way or the other and utilize social media as a platform, as a testing ground to test your, the strength of your body, mind, and spirit every single time you go on there. Like see if you can not get triggered by anything. See if you could not end up, you know, posting something negative. You know, if you're going on there to like check stuff out, like question yourself a little, what are you looking for? Are you looking at like friends that you hate?

Doesn't make any sense. Are you sitting there with your significant other and being like, Hey, look at, you know, this effing person again is, you know, can you believe that? Right. And you get in this, like, it's just, just shut it off, you know, leave something nice, uh, hit the like button or, or get the hell out of there before you end up, um, just kind of being part of that, that whole mess. And, uh, you know, I, I think it would be helpful if, uh, you know, all the way from Lane Norton, all the way to Paul Saladino,

all the way through to Stan Efferding, to myself, to Jay Cutler, to anybody talking about nutrition and some of these, uh, concepts, it'd be helpful for all of us to be more on the same side. Cause all that we're trying to, um, I heard, hear Greg Doucette getting all kinds of flack all the time. Like, I just, I see that guy as being pretty helpful. Yes. I understand that people might, uh, not like how excited and fired up he is all the time. Maybe he's not everybody's cup of tea because he's loud. And I, I think he's entertaining.

Um, and I also just don't take life so seriously. So I think he's funny, but again, like, let's just all be on the same side, Greg Doucette has the ability to help millions of people, he's able to draw a lot of attention, more plates, more dates, that guy's got the ability to get a lot of people to listen to him, I'm all for it, some of the people that we had on the podcast that we've had some disagreements with. Most of those people are really helping a lot of people. The recent doctor that we had on, we didn't agree with, you know, some of the stuff that he said. And it kind of got a little frustrating at times because he challenged his own progression.

And he was open-minded in so many other areas. And we were like, why isn't he a little bit more open-minded in this one spot? It would have been nice, but he just wasn't, but that's okay. A lot of times people that move the needle and people that change the world are uncompromising. And it's kind of a tough way to end the show because we are talking about being open-minded,

but the people that are uncompromising are people that usually have different different ways of thinking all together almost like an elon musk one hell of a saturday school mark it's not even saturday bro i know we well by the time people hear this it'll be saturday so technically right now it is saturday even though it's still friday i'm pretty upset with you right now uh-ohoh, what'd I do? You won't tell me about this fucking futuristic thing that you're able to do. You got a flux capacitor or something. You're always talking about the future

like, oh, this is going to happen with these people. I thought we were friends. We are. Not anymore. But second, I still can't tell you about the flux capacitor and, you know, how it needs blinker fluid to run. And I forgot how many gigawatts that actually equates to, but. It's a lot.

It is a lot. It's like a lightning strike. You share everything else with me. Bit. It's bit and game. Awesome, dude. Thank you for that, though. I appreciate appreciate it i think the class will appreciate it as well dude we should delete that part about your aunt i don't want her getting thrown in jail for the black box oh yeah i think she's okay yeah she should be fine there's got to be a uh what's it

a statute of limitations i don't even know if i've said that right yeah whatever that term is i hate when you find out you can't say a word it's ah dude i'm the worst i was um so i can see him as like full bore on tiktok right now and they're like you got to create your own personal account you got to get on it and somebody took my freaking my my handle i am andrew z someone took it so i can do at i am Andrew underscore Z. And he's like, no, I don't like that shit. I'm like, yeah, because I don't like it either. Cause I don't say underscore correctly.

I say good now, but like I said it incorrectly for like my whole life. And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to do that. Cause yeah, no, it's too much. It is too much. Yeah. All right. Well, let's get on out of here, huh? I will.

Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's Saturday School. Links to all kinds of cool shit down in the description below, as well as the podcast show notes. If you guys like this episode, please make sure you let us know. At MarkBell'sPowerProject on Instagram. At MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter is at Iam andrew z and tiktok at the andrew z because that person took my son of a yes yeah like hit that person up in the comments and be like give him back his screen name or handle i always get shit for calling it a screen name too like you're so old it's like fuck relax bro yeah chill out where you at mark i'm all over the place

i'm on tiktok i'm on instagram i'm on twitter i'm on all that stuff i'm at mark smelly bell strength is never a weakness weakness never strength catch you guys later thank you for listening to saturday school make sure you share this out catch you later