Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 616 - The Most Talked About Man In Fitness, Knees Over Toes Guy Ben Patrick

Episode Date: October 27, 2021

Ben Patrick, aka Knees Over Toes Guy is back on the podcast after hosting a seminar here at The Super Training Gym. Ben had three major knee surgeries before he was 18 which unfortunately forced him to stop pursuing a career in basketball. He started working on building healthy knees in his early 20's and now has "bullet proof" knees and is able to do some amazing athletic feats. He founded the Athletic Truth Group and has helped create over 2,000 successful knee rehab stories and is revolutionizing the way we look at exercise movement. Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢Magic Spoon Cereal: Visit https://www.magicspoon.com/powerproject to automatically save $5 off a variety pack! ➢8 Sleep: Visit https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro! ➢Marek Health: https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT15 for 15% off ALL LABS! Also check out the Power Project Panel: https://marekhealth.com/powerproject Use code POWERPROJECT for $101 off! ➢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 $150 Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Subscribe to the Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb 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 ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Project family, I want all of you guys to look good when you work out. You see, I have a problem. I don't like things that aren't quality, and if they're not quality, I don't take care of them. And the awesome thing is that we partner with Viore clothing. Now, the cool thing about Viore is that it's apparel that I almost feel guilty wearing in the gym. But the great thing, and the reason why I love Viore is that number one, the clothes feel, look, and fit amazing. One, the clothes feel, look, and fit amazing. But number two, even though they're super high quality, they don't break the freaking bank, right? So you can get super high quality clothing and not go into debt trying to get it.

Andrew, please tell the people how to get it. On top of that, we're going to give you guys an awesome deal with 20% off your first order. Head over to Viori.com. That's V-U-O-R-I.com slash Power Project and you'll receive 20% off your first order automatically. No code needed. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Head over there right now. What's up, Power Project? My name is Allie and I'm here to welcome back Ben Patrick, aka Knees Over Toes Guy. You may have seen him across social media dunking, sissy squatting, or doing full-range Nordic curls. For those who don't know, Ben was in severe knee and shin pain and had three major surgeries before he was 18.

He pushed through all of his pain until he was no longer able to do what he really loved, which was play basketball. In his early 20s, he dedicated himself to learn the best training methods to get him back in the game. He was highly influenced by the late Charles Poliquin and credits his work as to what inspired him to create his training methods. Ben founded his company ATG several years back to bring greater success to the local athletes in Clearwater. He was training top-level athletes and was at the peak of his career when the pandemic hit. He soon realized that it was impossible to keep bringing athletes into the gym, and that's when he shifted all of his programs to an online platform.

Since moving his business mostly online, he has only gained more traction. It is safe to say that Ben has revolutionized the knee game with 2,303 and counting knee success stories. Please enjoy this episode with Ben Patrick. What do you got over there, Andrew? Hey, we're rolling. We're rolling. Yeah, I forgot my headphones outside.

Cheers for an amazing seminar. I'll hit you guys with the root beer over here. You killed it, man. That was fucking amazing. Great job, Ben. That was awesome. Thank you guys so much for having me. We're doing a little mind bullet shot right here.

But isn't it Sober October, Mark? It was Sober October. Bring on the fucking strippers and the cocaine and line them up. And let's go. He made it. He made it. I missed it. I've got Ben Patrick knees over toes guy here.

We did an awesome seminar today or we did awesome seminars today. Yeah, that was really fucking spectacular and amazing. What is going on? Ben Patrick? Man, we just finished the seminar. We just coached like hundreds plus people. You have some amazing coaches, by the way.

ATG has some amazing coaches. Yeah, we'll have all the footage. And I think from that, we can put out probably the most helpful regression videos on YouTube. You know what I mean? I think a lot of videos could be made from what we just did. There was a lot of different folks in there today. There were some people that were advanced. I saw some people pulling off some fucking like Ninja Warrior type shit in there today. And then I saw some folks that really were struggling just to bend the knee just a bit.

What do you think is important for people that maybe didn't get to experience a seminar, haven't seen some of your work before? What are some of the most important things for somebody to know just to get started? Like, what does it take? Well, I learned a lot today just from, you know, having to connect and teach that many people all at once. And I'm just going to move this microphone a little bit better spot so you don't have to move around too much. I thought you'd be good. Yeah. move this microphone a little bit better spot so you don't have to move around too much i thought should be good yeah and um and yeah about about 30 of my like coaches around the world came

um coaching people one-on-one so i got to really have a nice bird's eye view and it was a realization just thinking about you know more common lifts that people think about so bench squat deadlift these are common lifts people think about and a coach, the first time you're learning deadlift, they're not just going to have you try to max out without attention on your form, you know, and they're going to use a weight that you can handle with the right form. So I do think that my mission going forward has to be taking the things that I learned that helped me, that I've had to use the abilities that I have to get people to even look at what I'm doing, but now figure out a way that, you know,

how do I keep people looking at, how do I keep it entertaining enough, but show them how I got there. And it's no different than a deadlift. These are all movements that you can teach and you can get someone into at their level, you know, but people aren't often connecting the dot and they're thinking of, they're thinking of the knee as something that you either have some magic trick exercise that works in one session or it doesn't. And in fact, with the knee, we're talking, it's going to take actually in terms of the result, the results will be even slower than a deadlift because the deadlift is going to have more muscles involved. Now we get into the knee and the result, the results will be even slower than a deadlift because the deadlift is going to have more muscles involved.

Now we get into the knee and the tendon and the ligament. It takes longer time to adapt. So effectively teaching that, how does the process actually work of getting more capable joints and getting people to understand that these are just fundamental movements. And that's where I feel like the backward walking and the backward sled is a good entrance point. But to realize that all the movements are along that style, that you can start doing it. You think someone can just simply walk backwards without any resistance and that could be something that could be beneficial to the knee?

It does seem like it's the most common starting point that someone can do. Someone can walk, they can probably walk backwards at some level. I've even started showing like what my parents do. They're 64, 67 is they'll go out somewhere and one of them will be walking backwards and the other one will be standing to the side of them, holding the hand, walking forwards. So you don't have to worry if you have the proprioception and the stability, you know what I mean? And so one, you make sure of a safe air and one person can walk backwards, the other can hold the hand. But now if we think of that,

and then if we get that comparison to a deadlift. So you have a power lifter putting up a deadlift weight that to most people would be like unthinkable, right? But then you can teach a beginner how to deadlift with proper form. So if we look at my parents, how they walk backwards, that would be a starting point. But then you saw us out here adding weight to a sled going backwards at pretty high speeds and

stuff. Well, that's not like your progressed level. Right. So I understand anyone, anyone can sprint or anyone that can run can figure out a way to sprint, but not everyone's going to look like Usain Bolt. Not everyone's going to be able to produce that amount of power and force. Right. You could teach someone to bench press. Not everyone's going to bench press as much as you bench pressed. You know what I mean? But that's a common lift that people understand that.

You know what I mean? People understand and they see the weights you do and they see how amazing that is, but they're not thinking that they don't have the ability to bench press you know what i mean but with when it comes to a lot of joint movements you know there's such a disconnect between rehab and exercise so i'm gonna have to keep educating that it's like you actually can do those movements at some level they can be part of your arsenal you know we had john hack here yesterday and at the end of his workout he came in and i don't know if you saw he was doing the backwards sled work and he was he was like done afterwards he had to get so we had to give him some electrolytes but for let's say power through specifically right what are some of the movements that you think

like because the whole atg system has a lot of movements but if you were to segment four to five potential movements that you think any power lifter can just add into their program and start trying to progress those movements to help with explosive strain, what do you think those movements would be? So it's so perfect for powerlifting because powerlifting, they're already understanding form and progressive overload and, and getting strong. And so they're already putting in so much work that we can fill some of these gaps, you know, and then you're just creating like a superhuman, you know what I mean?

And I do think that the backward sled is the simplest one. So for a power lifter, you know, okay, I talked about my parents holding hands and doing the backward walking. That may help keep them healthy for walking you know maybe going downstairs stuff like that for a power lifter then to be handled be able to handle those weights over time what's like almost the opposite of powerlifting well backward sled for high repetitions getting blood flow when you when you walk backward like your knee goes over your toe you're doing hundreds of repetitions. Yeah, and you're digging toe first.

Like when you go to step backward and you push your toe, you're going toe first into the ground. So you're hitting into some nooks and crannies there that you're not doing with the squat and the deadlift. So powerlifters often feel really good by doing a 10-minute backward walk with resistance at a level they can handle. Where did this entire thing come from, knees over toes? Like we were taught, we've had you on the show before, but we were taught that, you know, especially when you're squatting, as it pertains to like a heavy weight, it's really not a great idea, some people think, to not have your knee travel past your toe.

So how did you start to come to some of these conclusions? Well, if we trace it all the way back, okay, we know that in Asia, they've walked backwards for thousands of years. We know that much. And it's actually like a saying from there, that like 100 steps backwards is worth 1,000 steps forwards.

So it's like part of a, you know, a Chinese saying. And it was simply passed down from generation to generation. So we don't know like exactly where exactly where that came from. But it was passed down from generation to generation. So we know that's been used for thousands of years. And that's very low level of knees over toes training. And they found to be very successful for preventing degenerative issues. Then exercise itself,

when you start to look into the history, they're getting into the late 1800s. There was kind of movements almost like along the lines of gymnastics and stuff. Where the idea of, because at a certain point, we weren't thinking about fitness. We were out in the field working.

Movement, right gymnastics slash calisthenic right so eventually there came like almost like a like a movement of the idea of like almost exercise you know what i mean like like mostly we're just getting ready for war like prepare like you know what i mean so there was war and farming and so like most of us would have had to actually have a pretty physical lifestyle like i don't think a farmer would have been like, now let me get my exercise in at the end of the day. Like, they're done. They did their exercise. So, there was a lot of, you know, free body movement at that time.

And it was mostly body weight based. Like, there's even, like, for example, there's a picture of a Nordic hamstring curl dating back to 1880. Excuse me? Yeah. Nordic? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. even like for example there's a picture of a nordic hamstring curl dating back to 1880 excuse me yeah yeah yeah wow yeah my my nordic hamstring curl tutorial on youtube um it starts by showing a picture of that like it was originally and who knows how long they were using there's a picture of it in a book from 1880 okay so if you only have your own body you end up working a lot of different areas you're not really thinking about like don't do this or don't do that. So as weights became popular and lifting weights and like, for example, we can just look at it like in powerlifting. Has anyone ever set a record going rock bottom, knees over toes?

I don't think so. I've never seen, you know what I mean? bottom knees over toes i don't think so i've never seen you know what i mean so you're gonna have to gravitate to do things to succeed at what you're trying to do so for a power lifter trying to train your squat knees over toes you're on a track that like i don't think anyone's ever succeeded that way you know then for an olympic weightlifter though because you have to catch the bar it's basically you explode the bar up and now the lower you can drop the more room you have to catch that bar see if you can bring up shane hammond squat thousand pound squat um there there have been some power lifters that kind of use that rock bottom thing but like most of the time it's it's

very very rare um and even so even if when they do drop in those positions a lot of times they're not you know aggressively like shoving their knees over their toes but i think for the most part and we'll get to it in a minute but well let's watch this insane squat done by um one of the all-time great American Olympic lifters, Shane Hammond. Wow. Yo, don't blink. Wow. But if you rewind it one more time. Very deep.

If you smash it, it's super deep. If you rewind it one more time, you'll kind of notice he does push the hips back, and it's a low bar squat. And so it still kind of falls in line with what you said. I mean, his knees travel forward. They're not traveling past the toes, though, just to kind of prove your point further. In that Olympic position, when he was down and doing snatches and things like that, his knees are – that's fucking crazy. His knees are definitely way over his toes.

Yeah. So those would be two different sports, and the knee angles would be very different. So you just kind of get into a situation in life where I just think it's a fundamental mistake if you say, this is right and that's wrong, when people are clearly succeeding at two different things. So if your knee is going to be in life, say, going downstairs, and you are going to be doing a bunch of other training, and now you're not doing anything for your knees or your toes, then you might wind up, I've seen people, like pretty strong people, but there's pain going down the stairs. So, okay, I wasn't in powerlifting, I was in basketball.

Your knees are over your toes, like like every time you try to jump like for example like there's for for like a two-footed jump in the nfl there's no such thing as a 40-inch vertical without knees over toes it's and there's and i want to add there's no squat in there either like you're not trying to squat down to the floor exactly i think we make any sense i think we've almost and look this is at the end of a long day you know hopefully i don't like say something too wild like i think we've almost i think the more we've tried to you have shirts that say like think less i think we've thought ourself to like a dumber level oh where it's just like like good like you train for power thing like that that's fucking awesome like that's great that's your sport like and this is basketball and this is olympic weightlifting and so i'm just trying to

create a system that would be used as accessory for any of those. You know what I mean? What I do in my training is not enough volume to have the muscle mass that both of you have. So anything I'm doing, you could add, like, to what you're doing. I do it so then I can play basketball without pain, heading toward a different life with my kid, that I know I'm not just going to be doomed to be the dad on the sidelines. I can, you know, I can be there with him and be active, you know? So I do think that the whole system of fitness does need a non competitive system where the idea is just to help people do what they want to do without pain.

So whether you're a powerlifter or Olympic weightlifter, if someone has a knee pain, you know, I think they're going to enjoy the backward sled, for example. It's not like you should be telling them how they should do the lift. They should have an expert coach in that lift. I don't know if you're aware of this, but you have a really amazing ability to connect the dots from starting backwards. So it's interesting that you talk often about walking backwards and backwards sled dragging because everything that you do and everything that you established is kind of backwards. The knees aren't supposed to go over the toes.

It's very dangerous. And you're like, well, maybe for some circumstances, the knees over toes isn't a great idea. Maybe in the case of you're lifting weights and you're doing a squat and you're squatting as much weight as possible. That's already proven that it's not advantageous to be knees over toes. The powerlifting squat, the top powerlifters are lifting more weights. And so they're proving that if the goal is to lift the most weight, well then, you know, it's right there on the tape what they're doing.

You know what I mean? If you want to have a more vibrant knee and you want to have a knee that has better longevity and has better joint and just health integrity in general it sounds like it's a good idea to investigate shoving the knee over the toe yeah when when you bend a joint all the way you simulate you stimulate to the body to send synovial fluid to the area to bring nutrients to the area your body assumes you're using that joint and i mean if you just look across the amount of messages i get now on youtube from places where because a lot of people seem to be on youtube in like all kinds of countries yeah and places where the elderly everyone like you sit down in a deep squat you know what i mean but in america like we have chairs like you won't go to starbucks and see

people like down in a deep squat and so so many people there, they're older people. Sure, they're still going to have problems, but they're older people are fascinated, like how broken down other older people are all over the world. So like, I'm sorry, but like a deep squat is like a natural human position. That doesn't mean the idea is to abuse that, but a full knee bend with the knee over toe, these are natural human positions, but it doesn't mean that you then try to change the form of a powerlifter squat, but it means that a powerlifter could identify which accessory exercises make them feel better. You'll like this. This is said by Steve Jobs. You can't connect the dots moving forward. You can only connect the dots once you look back, and that's when everything will appear in the right sequencing to you, and you go, it must have been that way the whole time.

Yeah, you're right, and that's, I think, my contributions are not forward advancements. They're backward advancements. The things like the reverse step-ups, they really can scale to any level. It's just like a fundamental. they really can scale to any level. It's just like a fundamental. So we're really just identifying. I don't really want to coach something unless it's like a natural human movement

and then try to make that scalable. But it has to be said that the majority of people struggling in life that I've talked to about any issue that they're struggling with, they think that success is a sort of instant gratification thing you know that they're entitled that just by saying i participated in blah it should equal blah you know oh i did

that business course didn't work for me like that that instant gratification entitled type attitude would directly lead you to think no knees over toes ever that's a hard position so we're going to avoid it. But it's really like the things you're weakest at and worst at and stuff like that. That's where you have the room to grow. But of course, there's more short term risk if you try to force into it. But long term, you're shooting yourself in the foot long term if you take your weaknesses and then you avoid them. So it's very natural to see how no knees over toes could have spread in a sort of instant gratification.

You know, don't face our weaknesses, not long-term approach world. First thing is that, like you mentioned, honestly, all the stuff that you're doing within that we were doing in the gym, any sport, any athlete in any sport can take this and benefit in their sport from jujitsu, basketball, powerlifting, whatever, grappling, any sport can take any of this stuff any of these movements progress them slowly and progress with it but you know we had joel seaman on the podcast and the cool thing is that when we were you know we were talking back and forth because joel has said like you know this is the ideal joint angle and or the 90 degrees the ideal joint angle right and when we were talking to him it, it was cool to understand some of his concepts or make a lot of sense when you work with a lot of professional athletes,

right? Who need to get in and out and maybe they need to work with heavy loads, maybe squatting all the way down with 500 pounds wouldn't be ideal, but maybe going to a 90 degree joint angle is, um, but he did mention something that we talked about. He mentioned how, like if you go to those deep joint

angles too often it would lead to degradation right but that's only within the context of an athlete maybe trying to progress it too quickly you know if we look at too quickly exactly if we look at your progressions if you progress it with no pain slowly over time no athlete's going to get injured with that yeah and life is supposed to be with challenges things can still happen but we look at certain percentages out there in sports and and the 90 degree angle thing is actually that's not new that's actually like how guys have been training in sports for a long time now yeah you know and so like is 90 degree angle like the optimal position or whatever like well maybe for strength it might be the optimal position to be that our body is strongest in.

But now if we create an imbalance, now we're not stimulating certain parts. So I think the whole range of motion is important, meaning someone could criticize Joel for, you know, working on the 90 degree angle. But how much stuff did we do today that was less than 90 degree angle? Yeah. Someone could laugh at me. 100 reps. We did 100 reps. That's just pulses.

15 degree angle. Yeah. That's less than 90 degree angle. But we also then did full bend. So, I mean, there's just no advantage to being weak in an area. And the 90-degree angle is probably the most overused section of strength. Think how we line up for a deadlift. Think how we get into a squat.

So the 90-degree area is used a lot. And so most people have a lot of potential to really get new stimulation for the tendons and gradually build up stronger ligaments by working sort of the end ranges. Can you explain that a little bit? Because we've had people where we've mentioned that and we've talked about that, but people don't understand why is it not just working the muscle? Why is it working the tendons and the ligaments and strengthening those over time? Because many people don't think that you can really strengthen those.

They think that after they start to degrade, they're just going to get worse as you get older yeah so if we think about um the achilles is the biggest tendon in our body and when we get into calf work where the knee is more bent now and the load is now like on the achilles well you now also end up with more load on that soleus muscle, that lower, deeper calf muscle. And I mean, there's a, there's a brilliant study from 2019. Well, I don't know if brilliant is the right word, but it makes it really clear that people weaker at extending that foot have more Achilles tendonitis and stuff. So, and not, not just at extending the foot, but then within weakness, extending the foot, weakness, extending the foot, but then within weakness extending the foot.

Weakness extending the foot in like a bent knee rather than a straight-legged position. So like when you now start to load that knee over toe and load the calf, now that weight is like going into the Achilles. Meaning there is load on our muscles, tendons, ligaments when we're doing just about anything and if you now go into like a much deeper position or something like that you're now going to put it's like if someone who had like tendonitis they would feel the pain in those areas you know you reach it's like someone with tendonitis they reach the knee over toe they're going to feel pain in that area now if they sit back into like a 90 degree position not letting the over toe they might be able to keep the pressure more on the muscles. So there does simply have to be like when you go into these more quote unquote, extreme sort of ranges, there's then more, your muscle can only go so far. And so

there's more pull on the tendons and the ligaments. So it's just sort of a stimulus thing, you still feel the muscle, but you're now stimulating more into the tendons and the ligaments. But then we need to be strong in those areas to be protected. So someone could probably take, someone who, you know, has really deeply studied muscles, tendons, ligaments, could probably do some fantastic stuff to see, you know, which exercises work which things. fantastic stuff to see you know which exercises work which things but yeah if you just sit back you know on a squat you are going to be winding up using more muscle than if you just reach your knees forward and like oh my knee hurts there right so so scaling those qualities because in sport and life we wind up in those positions so we can build those up and then the very tendon can develop and grow

and there's been some stuff they didn't even have a name for it but there's even like pictures in the study of people doing reverse step-ups like exactly like we were coaching today they didn't have a name for it it was just like step down off the box this way you know what i mean and now there's been like the peterson step up and the pauliquin step up and now they yeah and well my name happens to be patrick it kind of works out it kind of works out you got three but the point is that they found that that like the patellar tendon would actually regenerate and grow and strengthen so it's almost like if you said like here's probably a a simple way to think about like what would put pressure on your tendons or ligaments think about your body like what movements would hurt you know what i mean yeah um because

when someone says oh my knee hurts they're not talking about their their quad muscles hurting you know i mean they're usually talking about their quad tendon their patellar tendon or they had oh i had my mcl or my acl or this or that so yeah it's almost like you're thinking what shit hurts your body and And then how do we scale that back to a level that doesn't hurt your body? And then we get stronger at that. I mean, that's really, if you just scratched everything I rambled about for the last five minutes and took that statement, that would almost be a simple way of thinking about it. You know what I mean? Yes.

Like what would hurt your joints? Like what would hurt your shoulder, your elbow, your this, your that? And then, and then how do we scale that down to a level that doesn't hurt and then train it and that's actually there's a lot of physical therapists really understand that concept so actually quite a few of the people here today who were you know um were so appreciative of this stuff are physical therapists because they they duplicate this data and they're able they're using it they're using at ATG with amazing results with their patients because they understand how to apply it. So ATG doesn't work or not work. Everything we do out there can work or could not work depending on how it's applied. And that's probably the simplest way to explain it.

It's like we're taking the things that hurt and then finding the level that doesn't. I think there's something very simple that people can think about is there's a risk reward factor, you know, with everything. But there's a reason why it's called risk to reward in life in general. You don't really get the reward without at least some risk. And so while we want to encourage people to move pain-free, we want to encourage people to get better ranges of motion, you're doing so in a fashion as if you were to be putting your mother or your grandmother through a training session. You're not trying to white knuckle these things. You're not trying to, there's actually a bunch of individuals today that were doing the

Astrograss split squat. And I went over to them and I just put my hand on their shoulder and I said, relax your neck, you know? And then I said, okay, hold on a second. Just let's have you start the exercise over. Okay. I want you to breathe. I want you to breathe.

I want you to concentrate on just really relaxing. I said you were wincing through your face a lot. You actually had some good movement there. It was a great movement pattern. But when you got to a place of discomfort, you went, you know, and it looked like you were taking a poop. And when you clench up the old butthole like that, it's not, that's not a great way to demonstrate how, how mobile you can be. And so smart.

I heard in SEMA talk about before, which I have not thought about before, but I know about kind of relaxing the face, but relaxing the eyes. I was like, Oh, that's a, that's a really awesome cue. And so I told the guys,

you know, relax your eyes and just, and he went to get in position again and he moved quite a bit further and he was like, wow, that's really making a, and it's just sometimes that encouragement to people. But just having those tools can allow you to take these little extra risks that will give you that little extra reward. The hard part sometimes is, is like, how iffy do we want this to get?

And I do think that Joel Seidman brings up a lot of really interesting points. It is really important for people to understand if you don't work on mobility that often or that much or at all, and you go to do an Olympic lifting style squat and you're a person who's tight like myself, you are giving up position. But the question now is giving up position for what? You know, are you just on a slant board with no weight? Because my God, if that throws you off and that gets you hurt then you got some you have a lot of uh current issues that need to be addressed you're just not a very healthy person

life is going to be pretty risky life is going to be risky everything's going to be kind of hurting right and it's unfortunate for people that can't move in those positions but you most likely can do a lot of these things with a 20 pound dumbbell, a 40 pound, a 60 pound kettlebell. Most of what we were doing was body weight today. Yeah. And we're all doing body weight. And the sleds even reduce, it's almost like negative body, like that heavy forward sled drive.

You can't move without your knee going over your toe, but you kind of get to lean your weight against it. It's slow. Yeah, it's exactly right. And that's, we complimented joel seedman's coaching of how you know how much he gets guys to control the weights he's getting guys to control heavy weights i'm not trying to compete against him or compete against anyone the movements we did today are just trying to fill that gap in the system of how do we improve at those areas we stink at and there's a risk involved in doing

anything but when we do that how much does that reduce our risk going forward for the long term so i do i always believe there's a solution and as i explained uh and i saw you explain the same exact thing uh today you want your uh ability like your current ability to demonstrate strength or mobility to be able to move upward, but your performance is not ramming and slamming up against that. You are continually elevating yourself. You're continually elevating your capacity. You have a larger capacity, but for the most part, you don't really ever go to full capacity. There's usually not a lot of great reasons. You're not going to get the training stimulus even that you're looking for.

When you think about some of the greatest sprinters and some of the greatest explosive athletes that we've ever seen, and even a lot of powerlifters, it's really rare for them to go above their capacity. You want to develop an incredible work capacity, work beneath that, occasionally brush up close to it and say, oh, that was maybe a little too much, but luckily I got the rep or lucky I was able to do that thing. That is how you improve. And I think that it's hard to be composed. It's hard to kind of stay in your lane and relax and just let that happen that way. That's a great way of putting it with the capacity.

And it makes me think of the backward sled, which we've talked to death. But it's like the idea with that is that sure people have got people can reduce pain in a session of doing it but that's not that's not the purpose of it you know i've done over 100 miles of it which now i got to start keeping track again it's probably getting close to 200 miles um that's capacity of knees over toes. You know what I mean? Yeah. You're trying to build on these capacities, and then you're going to find all of a sudden things that maybe to someone else looks really difficult is actually quite easy for you,

but that's no different than anything else you try to get good at. You know what I mean? Yeah. Back in February when I started doing this stuff, right? When I started with the tippy alice raises, first off, I wanted to move to the tib bar, but doing the reps on the wall, that itself was like, I didn't have the capacity to be able to do 50 reps without having to stop.

Andrew Hooperman came into and did a podcast with us and he was mentioning, oh, my back's hurting. But you know, I realized whenever I do tib work, my lower back pain goes away. Usually when I have back pain, when I do some tib work my lower back pain goes away usually when i have back pain when i do some tib work my back pain goes away so i wanted to ask you because when he said that i was like oh shit so he's he's doing that tip stuff so like what like first off i feel like that's one of the most under it's most underused things that you brought to my attention why should people start paying attention to the tibs and how can it make a difference for them athletically but you brought up such a good point which is that my whole philosophy is not to like

spot treat the knee i think we're trying to work everything and so if someone had a really weak tibialis then just by the nature of it if you just thought about if you thought about walking and then like you flexed your toes up for a second you see your tibialis flexing if the tibialis was weak, you're going to feel it. Let that foot, boom. Now the knee, the hip, it's got to go somewhere. And so not only is there no advantage to being weak, there's definitely not an advantage to being weak coming from the ground up,

like weak feet, weak ankles, weak tibs, weak calves, you know what I mean? So depending on what someone's doing, what their past sports were, we could have extreme imbalances. We could have strong calves but weak tibs. Or there's all kinds of imbalances we could have that we've been through. And so, no, it's not, the way I think about hip pain

is not by what exact exercise we're gonna use for the hip. Maybe that's gonna be involved in it. But like every program I do, we're trying to hit all these areas. We just't want to have any weak links when you eliminate all your weak links things tend to feel a lot better and then you don't have to be i mean you guys are gonna have to explain to me the think less thing but i've seen a lot of those shirts around here and think less but like people who are thinking too much about why the heck they have their pain. Yet meanwhile, they got a bunch of weak links that they're just not putting the work on.

They're not putting the capacity. I mean, that's a really good word, capacity. I'm going to use that a lot. Your results with these ATG unorthodox things come from the work you put in for your capacity on them. Building up that capacity. Not just the fact that you can show something extreme. And I think you guys got to see a lot of guys could do some of this extreme stuff. Like it's very impressive to see these coaches have been doing it for a few years, but that's what people,

that's what gets the views on social media. So I'm kind of stuck in this world that now I can show what I'm capable of, but it's built on all this basic capacity stuff. It's not built for maxing out on that stuff you know then when it's time and the camera's on you need to do something but that's no different than throwing down a dunk and now you're landing you know in awkward position your knee is in a super tough way i mean landing from jumps is like huge impact like if you watch like russell westbrook he's one of the most aggressive nba players and he dunks so aggressively that he's still kind of running in the air. So he doesn't just land.

He's not just landing. He's landing one leg first. Imagine if you went in for your strength training session and the coach said, okay, depth jump, super proven exercise, so we're going to do a 40-inch box depth jump on one leg. You're going to land, right? That would destroy some people. You could create patellar tendonitis.

But look at he's able to do that. And so that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to put in the capacity that whatever that thing is in life that you're doing, you're not going to have that quote unquote freak injury or the chronic pain that you can't even sleep through the night. I mean, I don't care if someone can do one of these, you know, I don't care what someone can show off about. There's not, that's not the goal. That's not what it's for. However, we're in the world where that tends to get more views. So that's, that's kind of the challenge going forward is I have to effectively teach better. So this is, I mean, just spending time with you here, just on chit chatting right now on the podcast has given me lots of different ideas, you know, of how to explain this stuff.

And capacity is one of them that's not being discussed with knees over toes training. The best results come from actually the simplest, most enjoyable exercises that you get into, that you love doing, that it's fun to do, and building up a large capacity of those. Hi, Project Familia. How's it going? Now, if you are part of Fitness fitness youtube you have most definitely heard of trt or testosterone replacement therapy now there are a lot of clinics out there that will go ahead and they'll give everybody the same exact plan which is not safe because we are all different people that's why we here at the power project have partnered with merrick health merrick health

is owned by more dates more dates or derrick for more plates more dates and the great thing about them is that they take every single patient, they test them, they figure out what exact plan will work for them, and they give them the exact dosages and plan that's going to be specific to them. You must check them out. Andrew, tell the people how to get it. Absolutely. So you guys got to head over to MerrickHealth.com. That's M-A-R-R-E-K-Health.com. And if you are considering something like TRT, you can actually fill out a questionnaire. You can tell them your symptoms and they're not just

going to be like, oh, you're tired. Cool. Here you go. No, you're going to hop on the phone with actual client care coordinator. And then from there, they're going to tell you which labs that you're going to need to actually do and get to figure out where your levels are. And then when it comes to paying for those labs, if you're talking to them on the phone, you can just mention PowerProject 15. Or if you do the manual checkout, you can enter promo code PowerProject15, and that'll save you 15% off all of these labs. So really, and Seema said this is like the absolute best way to go about it. And it really is. This is the premium telehealth TRT clinic. Links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes head over there right now. Why, uh, so many reps by a hundred

repetitions trying to kill us because we're newbies at it. You wouldn't, you wouldn't build a gymnast without putting in the reps, you know? So then the answer, uh, from a technical standpoint is to reduce the intensity, reduce the, you don't have a lot of resistance when you're doing a hundred repetitions something i i find i find all these things be super fascinating about you and the way that you deliver your message and i don't i don't know if people really understand because you don't talk in a sciencey way which is much appreciated but you know i i think that people might not understand the nuances to some of the stuff that you're sharing. A hundred repetitions of only moving a couple of inches is providing a great stimulus because the volume is still really high.

The intensity is low. But because the work is not over a great distance, it's not like we're doing a burpee you think about how much distance the body travels when you do a burpee and what's all involved in that exercise it's actually a brilliant movement for that reason and cost you a lot of energy but when we're moving in a much shorter rhythmic fashion you are getting so much like you're using it as a weapon like we're going to pump this area. You said to me last time you were here, let's get such a pump that you can't even like figure out how to hurt yourself, which is amazing. Like I have so many, we get so many questions about elbow pain and knee pain.

And I'm not saying that any of this is going to totally fix you or totally 100% out of the gate work for you. But what I will say for sure is it will mitigate whatever pain you have in your elbow or whatever pain you have in your knee. Do a ton of reps of like a band tricep pushdown. Great point. That one right there. Do a fucking ton of them. Short little range of motion.

That's what I've been using to fix my 64 year old dad's we're talking 30 years of elbow tendonitis from painting so many walls i was getting uh you know that was part of my journey is uh you know 10 years ago i was painting walls not a trainer not playing basketball trying to figure out how to play basketball without my knees hurting when i watch my dad with this elbow pain for so long if someone has ever experienced that something as simple as a band tricep extension where the tension is really just at the end there you know what i mean so and you can get this elbow pain for so long. If someone has ever experienced that, something as simple as a band tricep extension, where the tension is really just at the end there. You know what I mean?

So, and you can get a lot of repetitions and get that blood in. You move, when you move further, you use less weight typically. When you move less, you can use higher, you can use higher repetitions. You know, when somebody does like a full squat, again, there's a certain amount of volume.

If in SEMA and I were both squatting and he's going as low as his body can handle and I'm going as low as my body can handle and we're both using 315 pounds, he would get better results because he's jacked. But he would get better results because he's moving further and so people sometimes don't understand that the the the actual distance that you move is part of this volume and intensity and overall workload equation as well you know i want to know if you could explain the uh the ideas of short uh short range and long range yeah because you talk about that a lot but i don't think some people know what that means that was perfect that mark brought up like the band tricep extension so this is something like we could all go experience right now and do like do a hundred you know band try so if you look at the band and you look at your moving hand where does it get tougher at that end when the tricep is is in a shortened position now it it's just like, I like doing dips nice and deep.

That shit is quote unquote fixed my elbow shoulder pains is actually where I can do dips, like ass to grass dips where my bicep closes my forearm. But I put a public video of that on YouTube two weeks ago and I took it down quickly.

Because I realized it's a whole new education process. So many people were slamming for it. How's that fixing my knee? Well, they were saying that's going to destroy elbows. That's going to destroy shoulders. Even though that got rid of my shoulder and elbow pain. But that's

the long range. And now if you think, I don't know if you ever did ring push-ups or something. Now if you ever did like, like ring pushups or something. Now, if you walk out further, my mom is 67 and she loves her ring pushups because she's walking. I mean, she's quite literally about what we're looking at right here. I've trained so many old ladies in person. And so it was upsetting, but I realized I had to communicate it better that I'm doing the same thing now taking the elbow through a long range that is huge for bulletproofing and getting over chronic pains but for the short term to get the blood plump and get the the process started something like that band so if you think a band

tricep extension where's it hardest in that short range but now a dip when the people see me go real deep that's now getting into a longer range it doesn't mean the exercise is an absolute like meaning you might still have tension at different parts but the point is that okay a super deep push-up or a super deep dip or something like that would be considered a long range exercise whereas then the band tricep extension would be a short range and so really it's about understanding both of those and then understanding that those long range, like imagine if someone on a pushup could only go a few inches, they couldn't go all the way down. How protected do you think their shoulder and elbow is going to be? Right? So, so for bulletproofing, that is part of is how do we get to be able to handle those long ranges pain free, but the short range can really help us get into it the backward sled the band tricep extension those are short range exercises the super deep push-up or or um ass to grass split squat those are long range exercises that tend to scare people but yet those ones actually is what

really gets a deeper level of synovial fluid all the way into the joint itself but the short range can pump it up and get that process started get the tendon healing so that we can even handle the long range without pain but a just a half rep push-up that mid-range that's where we're like most over trained in that mid-range that's where the muscle is going to be like most engaged so if someone someone with elbow pain this would be like a general one but someone someone with elbow pain did a lot of like half rep push-ups, like half rep on dumbbell. All of it's like right here. So the tension's not really at the top, not really at the bottom.

If they were to open up and regress push-ups and really open up and then regress, you know, like band, tricep extensions, or, you know, even there's like you're working on this row thing where you're really engaging, you know, at there's like, like you're working on this, this row thing where you're really engaging, you know, at that, that end position, you're now just, you're filling in the weak links. So at the end of the day, you just want, most people in pain have some serious, like weak links there. So again, I think, and I think that's why it doesn't take fancy terminology to explain that stuff is that, you know, if you're in pain in these different areas and you have

weak links that you can't get into, like that's how you're going to get out of the pain. That's how you're going to improve whether, and I think the short range, long range helps kind of simplify that rather than having to get too fancy on like what's occurring in the tendon names and the ligament names and all this stuff. Most of us spend most of our time in the mid range and less time in the short range and the long range. I just want to point out quickly that bands are really great in a sense, like in the case of the banded tricep pushdown, completely unloaded, you have zero, you know, nothing is giving you any sort of resistance, doesn't hurt at all. And then it progresses as you push downward towards the floor.

It goes from zero pounds to five pounds to 20 and so on. And maybe at lockout, maybe you have 80 or 100, depending on the type of band that you get. And so for people that have injuries, this is an amazing way to work through an injury. You have individuals at the seminar who are also using the Infinity Band that we have here at markboslingshot.com.

I'm buying those up, by the way. I'm buying those up, and I'm actually adding it to my program, and I'm not fucking around. Like, this is like— And you're doing a leg curl with it, so you have zero resistance, no knee pain, even if your knee does bug you. Everyone can start that. Everyone can start that. And that's a short range, right? It gets tougher as your knee flexes to work that hamstring.

And that we have to credit Louis Simmons at Westside for, you know, and I don't know if he just came up with it or whatever, but I think he sure as heck popularized that. Louis Simmons came up with the bands, and do you know the story on that? I don't. All right, well, here we go. Story time. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So are you aware of the story on that i don't all right well here we go story awesome

so are you aware of the name dick hartzell at all yeah yeah oh yeah okay so dick hartzell uh he owned a company called jump stretch that's right dick hartzell used to he used to be kind of like uh like a like a pt he would help people with like physical therapy. He had unorthodox things. We got to credit this man with a lot of things. So the wrapping of a joint where you wrap it for a while and then you kind of move your body around. Like voodoo flossing. Like voodoo flossing. So he initiated that. As far as I know.

That concept, yeah. That's the first time I ever saw it, you know, 20 years ago, maybe even longer. I think he used to do similar stuff like that on the ankle as well. Yeah. Yeah. He actually, I think even online there's a video of him doing it to my ankle at the Arnold. I don't remember when it was, but I remember it felt like magic when he did it to me. So Louie, he doesn't care about basketball.

Louie was a big football fan, and he loves powerlifting, and he loves fighting and stuff. But somebody at one point said, you should go check out this basketball guy. He talks a lot about force production and being able to accelerate at a really crazy rate. And Dick Hartzell, in his older years, would lay down on the ground, take a band, and he would take his leg, and boom, he'd he'd put his leg up like right next to his head.

I remember. I know exactly what you're talking about. He could move like crazy. He could demo this stuff. Oh, he would demo shit and he would jump like a madman. And you're like, he's just like a little old man, you know, he looked fit, but you weren't expecting anything like that to go on. And you're like, oh my God.

And so Louie actually went to one of these seminars, which is amazing because, again, it's really important that you have a white belt mentality. No matter how far advanced you think you are, there's always more shit to learn. Louie at the time already had 900-pound squatters and so on, right? But he thought, hey, I should go to this seminar. He went to the seminar. He saw Dick Hartzell. He saw these bands. hey, I should go to this seminar.

He went to the seminar. He saw Dick Hartzell. He saw these bands. And he thought to himself, I could attach those bands to a bar. I could actually do a lot of my favorite movements, bodybuilding movements and movements to get a lot of blood flow and help with restoration and help recover.

The restoration stuff came from Dick Hartzell as well, but Louie was the one that kind of took it and put it on the bar. He's doing the exact kind of work we're talking about. How good would that fucking feel? I think we have to create a new mindset on this shit. YouTube makes it seem like one person and opinions and this and that. If we want to be the best we can be, we've got to have an open mind and be learning from everyone and taking the best pieces and then ourselves being the best coach we can be.

Not criticizing or debating someone else. From Joel Seidman, I got incredible attention to controlling what he's doing. Look at this now. Dick Hartzell, it starts here. It's so genius with the stuff we're talking about.

There's a couch stretch laying on the ground that he just popped into. Louis was smart enough not to have ego that he wasn't doing it but to actually look be looking at how could that how could he become an even better coach from doing that so i'll say right now like like i'm not perfect my eyes are open i'm gonna keep getting better i don't have to criticize anyone else to make that happen and i'm gonna say this i like first off love that you do that because man there are a lot of individuals that they have great things that they're talking about but then it seems to me to be perfectly honest when i pay attention to this stuff then i hear them shit talk somebody else who has some great stuff going on i'm like

why do you have to try to tear down what they're doing when you guys can just maybe marry some fucking ideas yeah is it that difficult you know i'm actually curious about this though ben um because i think a lot of things like you've talked about the feet and i haven't like where do you think people can start working on things with their feet and especially within basketball because like i see basketball shoes right and they seem really padded you know i i mean maybe you could explain why that's necessary for the sport but a lot of athletes seem to be using shoes and footwear that's making their feet weaker because they can't get in contact with the ground

so what do you think athletes are missing on as far as like their actual foot strength and maybe the things that they're wearing on their feet as far as performance is concerned so we'll take this in order of importance okay so the shoe definitely a factor that i think needs to improve but it wouldn't be the highest i would put on importance the highest i would put on importance is realizing that your feet have muscles in them your feet have tendons in them they're going to have to be trained if you're training the rest of your body you're gonna have to train your feet to keep up so they don't wind up being a weak link and so within foot training and again this is just like my opinion i think there's two pretty important things and you saw we were doing a calf raise where you get like really into actually your big toe like bending

right so that's that's pretty awesome because someone would start that right now okay but the other thing that i think we really have to popularize, and the guy who – so Louie also, I think, really got the sleds going. You know, I think Charles Poliquin learned about the sleds from Louie, and then Joe DeFranco learned about the sleds from Poliquin and Louie. And Joe DeFranco called an H-A-S-D, a heavy-ass sled drag. Now, DeFranco and I have become friends now. And so he's educated me that like for the beginner. So the heavy ass sled drag where you're dragging a super heavy

sled, you actually need a little more body awareness and like should probably have a coach get you into that. But a heavy ass sled drive. So I like that I can still call it just an HASD. A heavy ass sled drive. Everyone who came here today did that isn't that pretty cool yeah so when you take an exercise where everyone can get into it and have a killer workout from it with no learning curve now we're talking like that's how we change the world like do i think it would change the world for basketball players for their coaches to have heavy ass sled set up that they're not trying to move fast, that the weight is enough that it slows them down.

And from the footage today, if people see the amount of toe and ankle bend, all of a sudden we get to throw out a lot of the arguments of should we have ankle mobility or should we not have ankle mobility? Well, go ahead and try to move a heavy sled. Your big toe is going to be bending and strengthening. Your ankle is going to be bending and strengthening your ankle is going to be bending and strengthening and so for basketball players just starting with but i think it's literally every human yeah we need stronger feet we need more mobile feet but we

don't need we don't need more flexible but weaker feet and we don't necessarily need stronger but stiffer feet they can't we need holy crap now from one movement and hasd which i would call the number one movement for feet but i already went over We need, holy crap, now from one movement and H-A-S-D, which I would call the number one movement for feet. But I already went over, there's a body weight alternative. So you don't have a sled, you can still start training F-H-L calf raise, flexor hallucis longus, which is a muscle that starts in our big toe. So with just a wall, so everyone listening to this can already start doing F-H-L calf raises. That's the second step when I'm trying to rebuild knees is actually getting the big toe bending, getting the calf stronger. And then we need to popularize because it's literally cheaper than a treadmill to get a heavy sled. And part of our whole, you know, part of my whole career is dedicated to making Charles

Poliquin's genius turn that, you know, certain things from him into super accessible things. And he was so detailed, but people would ask him, you know, if you could only have one piece of equipment, what'd you have? Sled. So that heavy forward sled drive, which we did a ton of form coaching on, and what was the number one form coaching thing that you heard me just shouting and shouting? Feet, feet, feet, feet, feet. If all you do is think about strong feet, because you could kind of pigeon toe in or you could kind of let it crush your ankle and have a weak ankle and let your ass fly up.

Basically, if you just think about a strong foot and try to move a heavy sled that slows you down, you'd have a low impact exercise that gets unbelievable cardio work capacity. You can't even move it without your knee going over your toe. Andrew, seem to be bringing up some clips of the dude that played for the Steelers, James Harrison, pushing a sled, just so people can get a good visual of that. That would represent, like what we were talking about, the king of it versus the capacity of it.

So we were probably using somewhere like a medium. Oh, yeah. And his coach is Ian Denny. Also a Charles Poliquin disciple. Yep, absolutely. So, look at that. So this is so awesome because basketball players can also be getting

stronger. Basketball players can be getting stronger glutes, stronger legs, and stronger feet. And basketball players, I know from working on them, they often, those feet can barely bend, and they're in a lot of pain in their feet. A lot of pain. So you're going to look at that. It's no coincidence that James has the greatest play in the history of the Super Bowl. He's got like this sick ass interception

that he takes for attention look at his knee over his toe we're talking way but look at the foot look at the foot bending yeah this is the movement i think that humans need to add to the regimen you know why because this past week i also had my 64 year old dad doing it and winning with it he loves that shit it's really helped his feet. He can hike better. So my dad does one-day backward sled and one-day forward sled. I'm working on a program with him right now two days a week just for longevity. Since you've been here, I drag the sled probably four or five days a week.

I've always been a huge proponent of the sled. I trained at Westside Barbell. I was mentored by Louie Simmons, so i've known about it for a long time yeah um but when you started introducing me to a bunch of exercises some of which i have never done before the sled was the least complex thing for me to adopt to be able to do on a regular basis and the uh tibialis raises and so i was like, well, those two things, I mean, it just doesn't make any sense for me not to do them. And I actually enjoy them a lot.

And the sled, I'm getting a lot of activity. I'm partially getting in my steps in for the day. And it feels great. And you don't need to, we're showing some excessive crazy stuff. You don't need to push these big boy weights. For elderly, holy crap, is that important for society, for elderly. Like elderly, but not that. You see that? Yes.

And that's where the disconnect is. Right. And that's what my mission is. And that needs to be common knowledge, that elderly need to be doing HESDs. No joke. I don't know how to describe it, but it's slow. It's completely safe. I'm just trying to reference it in something similar, but it's very, completely safe. Like there's, I'm just trying to reference it in something similar,

but it's, it's very, very safe. I'm not saying you can't hurt yourself with it. It's hard to hurt yourself. Yeah. It would be very difficult. Yeah.

And the amount of benefit you get from that one movement. You'd have to be trying to hurt yourself with those. If you tried to, if you tried to run anybody listening, you try to run with a sled or try to push one of those things as fast as you can you will most likely hurt yourself if you're not conditioned for you intentionally have people do it slowly today exactly so you want to use enough weight that it does slow you down that you're leaning all your weight against it so it's actually i mean it's almost like if you think about um

like a powerlifter going for a maximum squat, right? That squat's trying to kill them. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? The weight of it. Sled. It's just sitting there. Worst thing that happens, it wouldn't move, you know? And your body is bearing down on it.

You know what I mean? So I feel like there's something to that in terms of how risky it is. You know what I mean? And that's why we felt confident. Most of the stuff we did today was body weight. Only there we loaded that mother up. Isn't that interesting? But we knew we could do that, and no one got hurt.

No one I've ever been coaching on sleds has got hurt. But I think I had to coach every single person to think about their feet when doing it. I had a setback. I was doing a lot of your stuff, and I was following a lot of it. I could have, admittedly, I could have done more things. know, I was doing a lot of your stuff and I was following a lot of it. I could have, you know, admittedly, I could have done more things. One thing I do find really interesting is that you usually tell people to train these areas and to train these exercises way less frequently than somebody might think would be prescribed. A lot of times you're like, hey, one or two times a week is fine.

of times you're like hey one or two times a week is fine yeah but anyway i was i was training and doing some running and my shin slash knee started giving me some problems and just like one day it just got super shitty and i was like oh my god i don't know what the hell i did you and i had some conversation we went back and forth and you said hey remember you know you need to be really kind to it i was like excited i was like he's going to give me all his exercises. I'm going to do them every day, and I'm going to fix it as quick as I can. And you were like, hey, just stick with the basics. Don't overdo it. Anyway, fast forward a couple of handful of weeks,

and I pretty much run almost every single day. I probably run five, six days a week, you know, former 330 pound power lifter. It's not a lot of running. Sometimes it's a decent amount, but it's not a lot of running, but I'm out there running all the time. My knees feel fine. I had a friend tell me that, you know, if I was going to run on hard surfaces that I was no doubt going to get fucked up and maybe he's right, maybe down the line I will. But for right now, I feel great. I've never had more energy.

I've never felt better. I do still have, and I want to work on it and communicate with you more about it. I do still have just a little bit of pain in my knee. It's a little preventative for me wanting to get froggy and do certain kinds of things. But other than that, I feel fucking amazing. That's awesome.

Yeah, and we were working on some of the stuff today. We were just looking at the big picture of it. We were working on that slow single leg back extension, going back and giving the tension there, that short range with the, it's called the infinity loop, or was it? Yeah. Yeah. So, and that thing, I think the reason i didn't like getting into that with

the band is i didn't find it that comfortable and the band would kind of flip around like a regular band like those jump like a jump stretch band or you know whatever we call it on your skin and stuff right but then the infinity band today was it's so comfortable right um that that makes a huge difference so yeah and that's if you think about what we're trying to do, your muscles, you can kind of, they can recover faster. So I think people often think that when it comes to knees over toes stuff, this kind of stuff, that's going to be some, like, do this all the time or whatever. Your muscles recover faster than what? Your tendons and ligaments. Tendons and ligaments, exactly.

So if we just want to be honest with what we're trying to improve, then yeah, we have to be pretty gentle with it. Not crazy. Like so many of the stuff that people get hyped up about, I do it like once a week. You know what I mean? As part of a well-rounded thing, letting that thing recover. And I think people are wanting to hear, just do this one thing every day. And it's more about creating your long-term, your full long-term plan. Like you mentioned the stuff that you gravitated and actually were using is stuff you liked doing, you know? So I think that's how someone's gonna get the best results in the long-term is gradually building those capacities, finding, you know, the ways they can get into it. So yeah, that's why like today we're working at other angles of getting in and around that.

So now you're kind of adding to your arsenal that you could spread out, have a full schedule. But I think we'd be, maybe there would be some shocking quick cases, but we'd be dishonest with the process of what we're trying to improve if we tried to just go at it with a shotgun super frequently and stuff.

Can you tell us about some of the benefits of Nordic hamstring curls? Because when you came here in February, I wasn't able to do like I was able to do a rep. It's kind of dirty. But since I've been progressing those and I work through the progressions that you, you know, you've outlined, like I can hop into a dead sprint. A hundred percent. I don't feel in danger at all. It's like it's given me so much resiliency.

It's crazy. So can you tell us how that movement can be beneficial for athletes that are looking to progress it over time? Yeah. I'm so glad you brought up that one because that one actually has had a bunch of studies done on it and has stood up to the test. You know what I mean? That even your most scientific literature, you know what I mean, type person, that exercise many physiotherapists think is like like the best exercise to protect your knee but it even has studies showing like 50 reduction of hamstring injury yeah right that is a long range exercise so i was just talking about with mark about and

and if they bring up visuals this it's such a simple learning point to realize that with the the infinity loop when you hug it in with the hamstring and you pull it in in a simple learning point to realize that with the the infinity loop when you hug it in with the hamstring and you pull it in in a in a hamstring curl the toughest part there is the easiest part of the nordic so the nordic before you've started lowering there's no tension yet then as you lower down and it gets close it gets into that longer range so now you're putting you know extreme tension through that longer range that's usually like how we get hurt you know yeah and so so but that's a bulletproofing exercise and so many people fortunately that one has had so much literature on it but tons of people say

like oh i tried that once and i couldn't walk for a week or see you know i mean but that's the kind of person honestly is gonna have a really hard time in life. You know what I mean? If they think that that's like how you get somewhere in life. And so I think that's such a good movement because I think that sheds some light on why. I mean, they got footage today, but the amount of people who came in today and told me how this like changed their life or prevented them having a knee surge or something. It's unbelievable. Like, I'm going to ride high the rest of the year. The amount of people that came up to me and had like, you know, practically choking up, you know what I mean? We're able to cancel a knee surgery or something like, like, like

extreme stuff, but they tended to be the people you could tell they like, they really understood the process of what was going on. And I think that because the Nordic hamstring curl is so studied and understood, and it's clearly a long range exercise. It just fits in and explains the, like, you know what my system is going after. It's going after a system of short range to pump areas and long range to bulletproof areas with regression so that those long range scary things

aren't so scary. So yeah, Nordic, absolutely proven. It's putting you where you're weakest and where you'd have the most difficulty and actually when when mark and i worked on it in march remember i didn't have you do short range and today we did and the short range felt great right yeah so there's not pressure on someone to go into the long range but you would have an understanding that if mark wanted to go out and

like full-on sprint well there's gonna be some risk in sprinting and the better he is at a Nordic, the less risk there's been in sprinting, but getting into a Nordic, there's going to be some risk in that, but he can use the short range to mitigate that risk, to get more blood and healing to the area and then gradually progress. And that's what we were doing as well today for people is then showing them, you know, how the Nordic itself scales and just, just work slowly on the way down, push your way back up, and put that little money in the bank towards the resiliency. But that concept, look, if that concept works for one area of the body, what do you think the rest of your body, you know what I mean,

somehow works differently, you know what I mean? Yeah. The way that muscles and tendons and ligaments work. So I think the fact that Nordic has been so studied is just a really good indicator of why we're getting all these results. Kind of in line with that, a lot of people, like I've mentioned the seated good morning that you talk about. And a lot of people see those movements like the Jefferson Crow. Scary shit. It scares the hell out of them.

Can you talk about why those movements can actually be safe on the lower back? Because people feel that if you move into that range, it automatically is unsafe for your lower back. Why is that actually helping the lower back in the long run? I think the lower back needs a podcast in itself. Because I think the lower back is one of the most misunderstood areas that people are kind of like, knock on wood, I had a certain adjustment, or I tried tried some this or I tried some that.

So it does follow some of the other principles, but other areas are easier. Like our wrist is like our ankle, right? Wrist, ankle, they like, they do similar function. Elbows and knees, really similar. Hips now get into into these rotations and shoulders. So I feel like hips and shoulders actually get even more confused. And now your spine's in between and people are just like knocking on wood. You know what I mean?

That they haven't hurt their back. But a lot of people are also suffering with really bad chronic pain for the back. They can't sleep. So we had a guy come here today. And so he thought that because of all the stuff we're doing the joints he thought i'm gonna go to ben and see if he has some advice for my back he's getting an he's getting an mri on his back tomorrow i mean like he's in that much pain he was dead lifting like six months ago probably you know bad form this you know the same same old

stories and but crap it's a better idea to be strong than to go through life with no muscle tissue, you know what I mean? But the point is, you know, probably went too far with bad form on a deadlift, and since that point, it's just gotten really bad for him. Okay? And all I want to say about that is that I said,

okay, and I took him right over to do an exercise. And he was able to do it with no pain. And we got on a back extension machine, and I let him have his back relax all the way. And that's in the family of Jefferson curl. Jefferson curl would go towards more elite levels of that. We also use very light weights. I can actually do heavy weights in it now, but I got there on the capacity. And I only did the heavy weight because it gets a ton of views, but you haven't seen me do it recently. Like I'm, I'm trying to just help people. So what I put on social media is just

calculated what I have to reach some people. I have to, so, but have you seen me do a heavy Jefferson curl and forever? No, but I've done it. I just haven't posted it. You know, some of my, some of my most, my, my social media growth has actually slowed down since I stopped posting freaky shit that I can do. But you guys saw me today. I can still do the freaky shit. Yeah. So the point is that a Jefferson curl looks scary,

but so, you know, bending down to pick up a pencil, we start people on the Jefferson curl with absolutely no weight. And then they hold like, you know, five pounds or this or that. And we only try to get to 25% of of their body weight and we don't even make them

go past that because if you can't bend down to get something a quarter of your weight like certain objects you can't pick up like with the square back like just based on the nature of it look at strong men like having to pick up like a ball or something they're going like knees over toes and rounded back but the farther we go into these extreme ranges yes there is more risk so something like a jefferson curl someone shouldn't go like mess with but with the back extension it's a pretty light amount of tension you know and it's pretty cool that they're in like old gyms and that it holds your form in for you let go down and relax jefferson curl takes a lot of form attention this net so with the back extension. Go down and relax. Jefferson curl takes a lot of form attention, this and that.

So with the back extension, you go down and relax at the bottom and it takes no effort, no form coaching. You know what I mean? Just relax. And then gradually go up until that back is straight. And what keeps it really simple is if you can squeeze your glutes together, there's tension on the back. What's that position there?

That's the short range. When we go down and relax, what's that? That's the long range. And then we go go up and then we gradually take a foot out now all the load is on one side and then you do a rep you relax down you come back up and then you slowly put the other foot in take the foot out then do a rep on the other side so now we're working the back in the long range in the short range we're able to get some balance between sides. Our hamstring, our glute all connects. We're able to, you know, people are often, it's almost like if you took all the different ideas,

oh, like the back, you got to get this, you got to get, we're getting a lot in one movement now. That's in like every gym is these simple 45 degree back extensions. But when I see people doing back extensions in gyms, they're just bouncing around. So it's how you do it. I've never gone into a gym and seen someone doing the back extension the way that i'm talking about and so here's a guy who's having an mri on his back tomorrow it's so bad and can't sleep through the night and this and that and he's able to get into what i think is the number one back exercise on day one that's pretty cool

with the first time and he's able to get a great burn in the muscles but with that what's so cool about that equipment we're able to get the long range and the short range and balance sides in a single movement so i would put that into that family of like heavy forward you know heavy ass sled drives of like you know if it's done right it's pretty dang simple the risk is very low the reward is super high so i think i think that correctly and maybe correct isn't even the right word but maybe um um learning how to patiently dominate a back extension and and patiently dominate getting that that foot and knee over toe with the hasd those are two things that i have to to push and popularize a lot more when you can you bring up

a jefferson curl sure and then as i do that though when you're saying relax at the bottom that would destroy me the only part of the back extension that doesn't hurt is the flexing and like holding in the middle because everything is tight if i relax anything in my back it's like a very dangerous spot for me i wish we got him on film earlier um because there's there's still ways to regress it and you're putting rather than so like andrew and i've been talking and we were going to work on his back today we haven't had a chance yet and so he was kind of at a point where he was told like, you can't lift for like X amount of time. Okay. I think that's a death wish. Okay. I think it's one of the worst things that's ever happened in like exercise science is when people get these blanket statements. A recommendation from Stuart McGill, by the way, just to kind of give people

reference of like, it doesn't matter who you are. Not everybody knows everything. And the recommendation from Stuart McGill could be good information, but I would have to agree. There was another gentleman that came to me too, with a back thing. And I immediately showed him the Jefferson deadlift. I was like, what are you doing for your back? He's like, I had not really much because it hurts. And he said he was doing lunges and other, I was like, that's great. You're doing these other exercises. But, and we did talk earlier about, uh, you know, uh, working around the area, but sometimes in the, in the case of something like the lower back, it's like, well, let's figure out a way to address it so we can pump a ton of blood into it. And I just had him, he was only holding a 15 pound weight.

Um, rounding your back by the way, is totally safe. It's totally fine. Rounding your back, by the way, is totally safe. It's totally fine. Where the mistake is being made is that when you go to set up on a heavy deadlift, your back can round. There are individuals that break world records with a slightly rounded back. The thing is, is that you can't continuously lose and give up more position as you do the lift. That is a great way to eventually at some point probably have your luck run out and hurt yourself. Great advice.

I don't think people quite know what you're saying is that you start with a certain posture and then as you go, the muscles are not capable and now the back rounds. Yeah, you don't want to turn into like a fishing rod. Where some power lifters, they know how to start from a certain position and they explode from there and they're also these they're also breaking world records the amount of capacity they've built up for that you know what i mean they're professional exactly so it's the same thing as you know to michael jordan his knee was like way over his toe you you know, but that doesn't mean like forcing it. I mean, anyways, it's, you're right.

You could probably, if you took just a blanket thing and you had people like just start rounding the back and exercising the muscles, you know what I mean? As a blanket thing, you'd probably get far better results than just giving blanket advice of don't move the area. But with that back extension, and for Andrew, we'll go out and work on it here, right? Because it's so controlled, you don't have to stand in balance, you don't have to hold weight,

anything like that. Because it's so controlled, like he said, like there was a part of it that he could do or something like that. Yeah, as long as I have tension on it, I can almost do anything.

It's just sometimes it's impossible. Exactly. And so we could use that to start building tension in the areas he could handle and and that was one that i also thanks to my fragile dad you know he loves the back extension but i told him i said dad go in there and do one rep tonight no joke so my my dad built up his back by going and doing one back extension kid you not and then like like i made it like then rest the next day. And then he did like two or something like that.

But we can find those areas and then actually like give you a thorough workout. And that's where I just see that long term. I see that if you look at really broad statistics, when we just completely avoid problems and like don't put in the work, you cannot expect the result from that. You're going to have to put in the work, you cannot expect the result from that. You're gonna have to put in the work. You know what I mean? I firmly believe you can't cheat the grind when it comes to trying to build up an area of your body. And so when it comes to the back, for example,

we have to find those zones that you can work and then we have to give you a workout. And I'm not kidding, the amount of people I've had who were like back pain was like ruining their dang life. And that simple building to the single-legged style, because i think that also partly prevents us from trying to go too heavy because now instead of progressing from two legs to weight we're progressing from two legs to one leg so i think it just forces us to take more time and i think our i think most of us kind of have some jacked up imbalances too so i think there could be something to that yeah so the amount of people

i had who said like i said like nothing else worked for me and that worked it's high enough that we sure as heck need to popularize it and work it more and get more fragile people using it and find you could you could change millions of lives my back has never been as fucked up as yours okay um and that's why i'm knees over toes guy. You know, it doesn't matter how good I am at the back because I'll never know to the core of me unless it's from people like you doing it. You know what I mean? So that should be your mission is, and it doesn't mean to only try that thing, but I think it's good timing to say, okay, let's look at this simple old back extension that anyone could get in front of their TV. And if you're like me and you don't own a TV, well, then you save the money for the back extension right there. And so I think we should really get in on that back extension and find what can you do on that and get that workout in and see if we can get a breakthrough in.

And then when I was working with that guy, I then showed how directly from that same piece of equipment, the other area our back gets effed up is those quadratus lumborum muscles that are not the lower ab, not the lower back, in between the two. And so many of our back injuries have come not on a straight line in life, but getting into any kind. It's one of those muscles that most people have never trained, and they're not stretching and strengthening the QLs. And so you do it and you realize you're like a total newbie at it. Now imagine building up pecs, lats, glutes, all these areas, but still having the same QLs you did when you were 18 and you benched 95 pounds. That's where we get into trouble. It's like our own weakest links.

And so right from that same equipment, and I did this and I demoed it, unfortunately, someone was filming. But basically, when it comes to your back with that one piece of equipment, we can actually work in every direction, mastering our own body weight. Now, depending on demands you want to go into, like how you had that guy start holding weight, he probably deadlifts, right? He's probably like, so I think there's going to be a bridge between what I'm talking about and deadlifting. And I think some clues are going to be left by tommy cono you know what i'm talking about absolutely yeah okay tommy cono in his book you can see him doing what i'm doing right there with like hundreds of pounds okay and tommy cono's longevity was unparalleled

he's the most successful american weightlifter of all time. Right. Okay. And he did an intentionally rounded back deadlift. But, again, that's just going into an area where it's going to scare people off. But don't get scared off by that. Get interested in the genius and the success that came from that and then figure out how to apply that at your level. And to me, that's my passion for the back extension. The back extension is just making it more accessible for people to get those bulletproof bags. Yeah, and Seema, you're going to dig Tommy Kono, I'm telling you.

So if we take Tommy Kono, most successful American Olympic weightlifter of all time, well, the guy was successful. We have to be willing to look at the genius of others. He's like over 100 years old or something, right? He was known for great longevity, that's for sure. And he firmly believed in intentionally training this rounded back deadlift. I want to say he might even be like local. I don't know.

Maybe I'm making that up. I think you would have a lot of fun looking into Tommy Kono. And, you know, the point is just that the back extension for me makes it accessible for people to get stronger and more mobile backs and go get a workout it's kind of like so now we've got you know like like the backwards sled the hasd the back extension these are things that if you learn how to do them you can literally get anyone into it and benefiting you know elderly or for me i swear by it because it helps me for like top end speed and one foot jumping because not just the burst, but now you're getting strong. I worked Mark on it today, and see how you rack up a lot of time under tension

with the back in that short range. And that's what I'm thinking for Andrew. Andrew might have to be working a lot more short range at first, but maybe he finds that if he puts his hands on it and keeps tension, maybe he can go a little deeper and then an inch deep. But I'm telling you, the way you bridge that is not by avoiding the area. And that tends to make things decay further. If you don't get blood to the area, it's not going to get better.

Yeah. If you want a short-term problem, try to blast it too hard. If you want to create a long-term disaster, just avoid a problem completely. You know what I mean? So I think with that back extension, I think we can get Andrew gradually facing and confronting his back and actually building it up and working it and strengthening it because it's going to build muscle there too. I mean, that gives me something to look forward to.

Student McGill gave me way more than just don't do anything, but his thing was you can walk, walk you can do the mcgill big three he's like and that's all you do until you can until you can feel no pain from that then you can start lifting but then there's a progression for that and i mean it's it's really hard for me not to lift so it's what you just said about like take the genius of that yeah but what you just said was like you know if you want to have a really bad issue blast it if you want to have like you know a worse issue don't do anything and that's what i saw and i'm just like dude i i can't not touch weights like it's just it's a part of me that's fucking impossible you still have pain doing the big three yes okay yeah just doing the movements yeah but

but this i believe could help bridge that gap meaning i'm not saying to not do the big three i'm not saying to not do the big three but I'm not saying to not do the big three. But I'm telling you, like, I don't. I would also say maybe, like, not lifting is maybe that's still a good recommendation. Because who says you have to lift? You have to figure out how to get blood to the area. And maybe don't deadlift. Right.

But maybe, you know, like, there's probably. Maybe it's a six-pound kettlebell. There's probably a lot you could do. And now with the back extension, you actually can be working your back at an area that you're there. Like, you're not going to get into trouble. Like, you can control where you're going with it. You know what I mean? You can start working the ranges that you can do and gradually building up that way.

And that would actually directly potentiate you to get back into something like deadlifts. Like, you're actually getting your back, you know, into those positions. So, he's probably right to not be deadlifting. But even then, that would be a subject that someone could speak on much better than me because I don't deadlift. Like part of what I do is I just do this shit so that I know what is occurring from this stuff.

And perhaps, you know, an excellent deadlifting coach could even be scaling something. Perhaps it's like, you know, using an elevated trap bar. I don't I'm just again, this is not my opinion. I'm just saying that perhaps a specific deadlifting coach has a lot of success with back cases at what kind of deadlifting could be doing in the meantime. But I think in my zone, in getting into these short and long ranges, how do we get in there? How do we rebalance?

That's my zone right there. And so I think the back extension, I think you should dive in. You should keep me posted. You should figure out a protocol. You can help a lot of people. If you can figure your shit out, you can help a lot of people.

Yeah, and I've tried a lot of things and that's one I haven't, so I'm really looking forward to that. And that's why i've been liking the biomechanics stuff that i learned recently is like i'm able to train and not really hurt anything but i'm not getting better yeah and then as far as like and this will be the end of it but like you know doing like it's sort of like sitting around waiting for something to happen as opposed to going out and making it happen that's how i feel with like doing just like these warm-up movements all day long hoping that it gets better versus doing something like with the back extension where

it's like no like i have a task today yep and that's what i'm going to go out and do and then i'll get better and measure and see your progress exactly it's very hard when you don't have any way to like measure and see your progress and then you go and then you go fuck yeah i did i went i did three today i did five you know what i mean And then what does that do to your hormones and stuff, which is the very thing that then helps get you even more gains, you know? So yeah, I'm excited for you to dive into the back extension. dad like basically my dad's like the stubborn guy that you can't get to try any exercise and that has been the best thing i'm telling you like i'm phase two of my career phase one of my career i think actually like i owe a lot to my mom because she was very willing to try stuff you know what i mean and now my mom's 67 and i like i posted videos like she's sprinting okay my mom is sprinting at 67 but at 64 she was struggling to get out of bed. Her hip was so bad. And so if her

hip was that bad already at 64, like I was worried about her, you know what I mean? And that had a lot to do with the regressions that we use now on, on split squats and stuff like that. And now she has like a great split squat and her hips are great and she can sprint. So yeah, phase one of my career, thanks to my mom, phase two of my career is going to be because we can all relate to my dad. Where it's like we'd rather not even mess with it than go get hurt doing something. People, please make sure you listen to the first episode that we did with Ben where we just covered tons of stuff. I want to ask you this question and maybe Encima's got like one more, but I know we're really getting kind of pressed for time. Tell me about your wife.

Like, she's involved in a lot of the videos. And like, was this something that was talked about early on in your relationship? Like, I don't know how long you've been doing the kind of like the knees over toes stuff and how long you've been married and so forth. I got to get my wife on a podcast. It's going to be a lot more entertaining than me because because we i mean we went to elementary school together what yeah seven eight nine years old then i didn't see her for like 10 years and she went off to school and um i like saw her in a cafe just started hitting on her, got rejected. I got rejected a couple of times. Anyways, eventually she went out on a date with me. Ben, what the hell position is this?

Wow. This seated good morning never looked so awesome. You know, some decisions weren't the best. Okay. And I really think I need to popularize the back extension a lot more than that. You know, like what makes me good is that i'm gonna look at me back in march i'm gonna look at me yesterday and i'm gonna be like i can get a lot better than that guy you know because i'm not gonna be spending my time trying to justify

what i did yeah there's no ego tips could be bigger i mean you could have bigger tips so so my wife so we started dating i was 19 so she's been with me through this whole thing. She's been with me when I was icing my knees four times a day. And she's with me through like all the experiments and trying to get there. And I remember like going to a basketball court and she was so unimpressed. It was like the most demoralizing thing. Like I couldn't dunk. Like she, like, but she still believed in me the whole time.

You know, and it might even seem like a cliche thing, but not just having people around you who pat you on the back or whatever and say you can do it, but people that are as crazy as you are to really actually believe you can do it, you know? And that's a special thing to have someone around you actually believe. She, she always believed in me. Like she was believing that I was going to years out of high school that I was somehow going to get a college basketball scholarship and stuff like that.

She always believed in it. And so she got to see the whole evolution and how it like gradually turned into then fixing my knees and then being able to jump high and then and then, you know, helping others with it. Why is she part of the videos? Well, for one thing, she was a competitive figure skater growing up that's what like attracted us to each other initially is just the fact that even dating back to when we were nine years old we were both crazy at we were the only like kids at our little school in our little town who like i was trying to be a basketball player she was trying to be a figure skater we were both like super dedicated by nine years old or something so i mean for a chick to be like super dedicated

sport by nine years old like she understands me just on a different level that i don't think someone could if they hadn't been like dedicated towards something like that but anyways so um so we've always also wanted her to like be getting back into skating and stuff and recently she's like getting back into skating and she looks unbelievable out there and i think that's something cool like like like mark you have power lifting but like what about my wife who was like figure skating was a huge part of her life. And now 10 years go by without skating. You know what I mean? How happy she was to see her back on the ice and not just back on the ice, but not in pain, able to move her body and skate and this and

that. Like, you know, we have to commend ourselves for that. You know what I mean? Like, you know, even if I'm not playing in a pro basketball game, I have to commend ourselves for that you know what i mean like you know even if i'm not playing in a pro basketball game i have to commend myself and be able to experience that joy of playing with my friends and i got to play with my friends the other weekend elevate pull-up jumper game winner no one cares you know what i mean but it's like you know we're all just running our own lives and like that felt really good for me and so for her that was kind of the initial thing is after having the baby and stuff was like, we want to like, like get her back in shape to actually land the best figure jump of her life.

What's the engagement like having her on there as well? Are people inspired? Cause I noticed a lot more than me. I know. I noticed a lot of times she's doing a scaled version, which she probably doesn't need, especially being a figure skater, but it helps people connect the dots. The saying yeah i mean the the analytics have just

been so much better when i'm showing something but then she's showing like the lowest level of it because i think that basically your chance of educating that person the average person okay if you're even listening to this you're probably not the average person you know what i mean but the average person i probably have five seconds to educate them. So like the opening thing they see, that really helped my channel like blast off was actually getting my wife in the videos. And now she's raising our kids.

Like I wish it was more consistent or this or that, but we're like, we're not gonna give up on it. We're gonna keep training together. She's gonna keep skating. And we're gonna keep showing, you know, with the two of us, boom, right onto the screen. The exercises have different levels. She involved as a business.

It looks like a lot of times you're outside your home. She's more involved in the business than me, basically. So like she is the, like the bad-ass business biatch, you know, like, like she turns my ideas and drive into like a strong business like some of the things you shared with me which we're not allowed to talk about so um so yeah so it's and we're we're so different that it's actually like kind of perfect because all my weakest links are her strongest links and probably vice versa and so it's like like i I realized that like we're almost never both wrong about something. Like if I'm wrong about something,

it's usually something in her skillset and she's like right about it. Oh shit. Like, you know, thank God. So yeah, that's, that's how we work.

She's, she's doing the hard phone calls and setting up, you know, the bad-ass insurance and talking to lawyers and doing, you know what I mean? And like, and doing the, you know,

the taxes and this and that. And like, she's, um, and doing, you know what I mean? And like, and doing the, you know, the taxes, and this and that, and like she's, and funny enough, she loves that, she loves business. And I hated business, and it's why I became a really good trainer, because if you hate business, and you suck at business, and you wanna like survive, you better be getting like serious results. And that was like, my strategy was like,

I was just gonna try to result my way, you know, to success, and not care about the business, and not care about social media. She's the one who that was like, my strategy is like, I was just going to try to results my way, you know, to success and not care about the business and not care about social media. She's the one who told me like, you need to post on Tik TOK, you know, and this was like, when I wasn't even on Tik TOK and not that, I mean, and semen knows my Tik TOK sucks, but I still have good, he tries to give me tips on it. Um, and seem as killing on Tik TOK and he's a genius. And, but I have over 400,000 followers there because she, you know, told me to post on TikTok. Like she, she's a like much better business mind. Do you find yourself kind of like loving her more every day?

Like, are you kind of like taken back and like, cause sometimes- I love her more now than I did 10 years ago. Yeah, right? Like, and sometimes you take it for granted, like the great things that she's doing and the relationship, but every once in a while, like hits you, you're like, damn, that's like, this is like beyond, like it's beyond special. Yeah, I couldn't, I mean, not that every relationship has to go that way,

but I couldn't have more respect for the fact that she's like dove in and so great for my business. You know, it's like, that's so cool, you know, filled in my weakest links, dives into those videos, you know what I mean? And that's nothing, her diving into the videos and then, you know,

not to mention she's like, you know, doing hard phone calls while breastfeeding at the same time. You know? I love it. Yeah.

Got something, buddy? I think that's a beautiful place right there. That's a beautiful place. How about you and your wife? Yeah, I love my wife. I fucking can't stand her. Andrew,

take us all out of here, buddy. Awesome. Thank you guys so much for checking out today's episode. If you made it this far, then you obviously got some value out of it. So please hit that like button and yeah,

give us a shout out in the comments. Please follow the podcast at Mark Bell's Power Project on Instagram at MB Power Project on TikTok and Twitter. My Instagram and Twitter's at IamAndrewZ

at TheAndrewZ on TikTok. And Seema, where are you at? Yeah, guys, make sure to go check out Ben's stuff. It's changed my knees and my life. So, check it out.

Adam Seema, ending on Instagram and YouTube. Adam Seema, yin-yang on TikTok and Twitter. Ben? Knees over toes, guy. Just Google it. Go ahead. Yo, I got to give some props to our buddy. These cookies.

Cutting edge keto. From our boy, Brian. He did a fantastic job. These things are absolutely delicious. 100 calories each. What's the website? Oh, here we go. You got something on there?

Very delishy. The website. Probably cuttingedgeketo.com. Probably maybe on this card. Is it on the card? Probably got to be on the card. Brian, it better be on the card. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Cuttingedgeketolc.com. There you go. And he probably, he should have social media. But CuttingEdgeKetoLLC.com. Yo, he gave me some of these to me one day. He gave me six. So actually six or seven. I ate one.

And the cool thing is like he makes it, you know, the packaging is pretty hard to open. I ate all of them at once. I couldn't save any for the next day. So just understand that these taste so good that. The cookies are small too. So if you're trying to count your calories and stuff like that, I don't know the exact stats, but a hundred calories.

Yeah. A hundred calories. Yeah. The peanut butter one has like 150. You get to try one Ben. Delicious. Yeah. They're freaking great.

They're amazing. Is it up to me now? I'm out of here. Yeah. Shout out to Mark bringing all of us together. Yeah. What an amazing time. That was, that was freaking awesome.

Very motivating, inspiring to do more seminars. So look for that to come pretty soon. And I do love my wife very much. I was just messing around. She was running the show today, too. I was really impressed to see her in action. You're a lucky mother. I am.

I am very lucky, very fortunate. Something that I learned long ago, which might sound extremely corny, but I think for people that are in it, that are in love, that have been in love for a long time, I think a great question you can ask yourself each day is how can I love this person more? How can I help provide more for this person and more for my family? It's not an easy thing to figure out how to always dump more into those areas. But I've personally found that putting more time and more love into other people is, as you're doing very often, is a great way to not be in your own head. And when you're in your own head, sometimes the thoughts that you start to think are kind of dark and it starts to take you down maybe the wrong path.

And so if you feel like you're in that space, simply invest some time in other people, figure out a way that you can help them. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. We are out of here. Catch you guys later.