Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 617 - Make Exercise Look Easy

Episode Date: November 2, 2021

Today we’re talking about NOT wearing it on your face. The grunting, the crazy Fitness Faces you make in the gym don’t help you make the lift. Instead be calm, make it look easy and don’t be theatrical about it. Today we talk about the benefits of not grimacing when lifting some heavy ass weight. 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

So by the time people hear this, I think you'll be in another country, Mark. Oh, my God. Yeah. Really? I think so. That sounds scary. Are you sending me somewhere? Dude, you're supposed to be grinding all the time.

What are you doing? Grinding. Going to another country. I'll be grinding, but it'll be a different way. Hey, this is a family show. It's a family-friendly podcast. Plus, your son listens. Does he?

No. Sometimes. Is that really? That's great. I just meant I was going to be working hard no matter where I'm at. I don't know what you guys were thinking. I don't know what I was thinking either, but what I do know is I wish... Well, I remember from...

Well, maybe I don't want to bring it up. I don't understand what's going on. What? An open box is an empty box. If it ain't full, it's empty. So we've been... I've been monitoring in SEMA over the past... Well, this whole week

and he got so nervous he ran out. And I put it on social media, like what elite nutrition looks like. Yeah. And he was eating, so Fair Life with Magic Spoon cereal. Keep talking. My pants are going down. Dipping a Legendary Foods tasty pastry in all of it. Wow. Bruh. And I i'm like what are you doing

i'm the one who finished all the cinnamon flavor i'm the one who finished all the peanut butter i'm about to be the one to finish all the chocolate magics dude come save some for the rest yeah well yeah what happened you better be eating yo it just tastes hella good and it's even it's really nice to eat on dry like it's like a snack it is really good yeah just like yeah even without any milk just kind of uh just keep it on keep it on hand for a little snack that has high high protein and low net carbohydrate only four net carbohydrate per serving i think it's got like 13 depending on the box yeah grams of protein yeah pretty sick even if you were to eat the box it's not horrible in terms of macros. I'm not telling you guys to do that.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Is the box designed that you can actually eat it? The actual box? I think you could. They should work on that. I mean, that would really be magic, right? Damn it, Mark.

Yeah, you are on to something. Crumple it up, throw it in there. I know everyone's been getting, I'm getting so many DMs about Fair Life. I don't care, guys. It's old news. I know everyone's been getting, I'm getting so many DMs about Fairlife. I don't care, guys. It's old news.

But Fairlife milk or protein with Magic Spoon cereal, protein bomb, man. Yeah, it's protein on protein. Protein on protein. It's so good. Yeah. Mark, did it pass the kids' test? My kids like it, too. Yeah.

Yeah. That's huge. That's how you know something's good, because kids don't care about macros. They don't care about whether or not something has protein. They just want to know whether or not does it taste good. My wife's been like, I don't know about this. And then every time I turn around, she's munching on it. She's like, I don't know about this magic spoon stuff.

She's like, I don't know. It doesn't taste the same as regular cereal. I'm like, you need to give it a minute. It's not supposed to taste the exact same as regular cereal. It's its own thing. It's its own category. But once she got used to it, she's like, I do like this. Let me also say this, though, because a lot of people are like – Can you save me some?

Yeah, I'll save you some. Thank you. A lot of people are like, oh, it doesn't taste like regular cereal. Number one, regular cereal, my guys, my people. Let's just be real about that. That shit ain't good for you. The amount of sugar, it tastes great because it's literally a a freaking bowl of pure sugar cinnamon toast crunch the taste you can see which is so good it's too good it is

literally too tasty yeah that's why you get like kind of addicted to that shit this is really good and once you get used to like the good taste of it you're like oh this is actually really good and it's good for me remember that it's really good and it's good for you yeah and it's like hey man i know you like mac and cheese but it ain't good for you you, you're like, oh, this is actually really good. And it's good for me. Remember that. It's really good and it's good for you. Yeah, and it's like, hey, man, I know you like mac and cheese, but it ain't good for you. You know, you need to kind of reel it in sometimes a little bit and you need to just accept that sometimes healthier options are just going to taste a little bit different. But I'm enjoying the taste of this and mixing it with a protein shake and some of those different things are awesome, too.

Yeah. I don't think you want any right now. I don't know if you're fasting or not. Not anymore. I'm going to dump some right here. I got a little arsenal of it right there. So I experienced the maple flavor, and that is my number one flavor thus far. They're all really good, but maple is really good.

The cinnamon. Guys, I just got to try the cinnamon. Cinnamon is really good. I still love the peanut butter. Peanut butter is still my favorite. But the cinnamon versus maple, I don't know. It's a tie for me. Yeah.

Shout out to the listeners because they were the ones that recommended cinnamon. So we got on that shit and it is incredible. Yeah. And if you guys want to save $5 off a variety pack, head over to magicspoon.com slash power project. No code needed. I'm just laughing at these guys. I'll save you some, Andrew.

Thank you. Maybe I'll just go steal another box but uh yeah no code needed you guys will save five dollars off that variety pack uh when you go to magic spoon.com slash power project there'll be a banner across the top kind of confirming that you're getting five bucks off uh links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes you guys are going to enjoy it just like these prone men right now we're both chewing so angie you gotta check the conversation man yeah i really am pumped for today's topic though because i remember you know when i first started lifting with mark i'd come in and be like ah like my shoulder hurts and we'd bench or something and every time i'd come off the bench i'd be like ah like my shoulder and then mark just was like hey all that grimacing and rubbing your shoulder ain't gonna do shit

for your shoulder so stop doing it i was like sorry okay yeah and that but it made a lot of sense and then uh watching uh him and you lift with michael hearn same thing like hey don't wear it on your face so that's what i tell a lot of people to do now like don't wear it on your face let's make it look easy and you know it took me a long time to figure out what the hell, like, this was all about. But once I started practicing it, I don't know, it just made a lot of sense when you actually put it in practice. The idea of being strong in as many different things as you can handle is pretty sick. You know, and you think about maybe the things that you're not really strong at at the moment. Maybe there were certain things that you're kind of, I guess, weak with, you know, that you haven't built up resilience towards.

But take some of the lessons you learned in the gym. Try to figure out ways to reinterpret some of the pain and maybe even like interpret it so differently that you don't even recognize it as pain anymore. So this is just a stimulus. And this stimulus is awesome. The interpretation thing you mentioned there, because we're going to get into more stuff here. But after Andrew just said that, make it look easy. And then you're mentioning the interpretation. Your physical reaction to something can show how you actually feel about it, right?

So if you're doing something that maybe it is a heavy deadlift, maybe technically that's 500, 600, 700 pound deadlift for you is heavy. But if you make it look easy, meaning you're not wearing it on your face, you're not grimacing, maybe you're not having to get crazy for the deadlift, and you just make it look easy and you go and do it. Like what I found is that by making things look easy, not only do they look easy to the viewer, they actually feel easy for me, the lifter or the practitioner of whatever it is that I'm doing. Um, that's why like, you know, I started relaxing my, like I, I, first off I

started doing this because I had the book on becoming a supple lecker by Kelly Sturette. And in his book, he talked about, I think he maybe was talking about the couch stretch or something like that. Right. When you start doing these types of movements, it's weird. It feels, feels tough, especially if you don't have that mobility. And Kelly always says, don't wear the pain face, right? Don't do it.

And what you find is that when you actually relax your face, it's easier to breathe. It's easier to breathe. It's easier to move into deeper positions. And that relaxing of the face and just calming that down will make movements easier and will make them easier to execute. Even from just like a range of motion standpoint, you know, it's going to be very difficult to move into a nice full range of motion that your body is very accepting of when you're wincing and when you've got your butthole clenched as hard as you can. I mean, I freaking said so amazingly by Ed Cohen was relax your taint, which sounds like the silliest cue of all time. But I mean, you have to relax literally everything. And anyone that's ever done yoga or that's listened to some meditation type stuff, you know, off of your phone or something like that, you'll realize that a lot of times instructor, they'll start to walk you through the things to relax. And you're like, why in the fuck is that tight?

They'll tell you like, relax your big toe. And you're like, why is my big toe curled down like this? What am I doing? Like, I'm trying to relax in this yoga class. And here I am like bearing down on everything, you know, relax your abdominals, relax your chest. And you're like, ah, and it just kind of helps you to kind of realign and recognize maybe there's better ways doing this. During the seminar that we had with Ben Patrick, there was a gentleman, he was doing some, doing the ass to grass split squat.

And he was getting in pretty good position for it. It was impressive. But I noticed, I saw kind of a wincing in his face. And I saw like around the eyes was tight. And then that was causing the jaw to be tight. And then all the way down. And I mainly saw it first in his neck. That's where you'll see it first.

And I saw like a vein popping out. He wasn't going crazy or nothing. But I saw a vein there. And I saw kind of a neck flex. And I'm like, well, he's stretching his lower body. Like, why is his neck so tight? You know, but it's a new range of motion for him. It was different for him.

So I put my hand on his shoulder and I said, hey, let's breathe into this. Let's work on this. And so he took a breath. I said, no, let's go in and out of the nose. Let's really control it. I was like, if you need to, you can close your eyes, you know? And I said, just really try to relax. I was like, relax your neck, relax your chin, relax your jaw, relax your eyes. And then he went, ah, and he just went into this perfect position. He gained a bunch of inches on his mobility right then and there.

And I didn't do anything. I didn't help him gain more mobility necessarily. But I gave him an opportunity to lean into something different because his body was so tense and so tight and so resistant to it. And, guys, we realize that when you're doing a big lift, when you're doing a big squat, a big deadlift, you've got to tighten up. Like there are certain areas that need to be braced that need to be tight, right? You can still do this while not having the, it'd be super strenuous everywhere. What you said there, when he had like, you know, the, the veins in his neck and he was like, right. How hard is it to do something that's strenuous? Like, like let's say that you're trying to build motivation to go work out every single day. And in all these workout montage

videos, you see like a lot of bodybuilders and powerlifters, the things that you see that look kind of dope and that amp you up, our lifters grunting really hard, like, right. Getting amped up for a lift, screaming before lift going, it's hardcore and it's cool but can you do that five days a week like real talk can you build up the the necessary energy to do that shit five days a week i couldn't that's too fucking strenuous that's too stressful well and maybe you can right maybe you can work up the energy to do it five days a week but for how long uh-huh and then how many of those are going to be bad workouts? I don't know about you guys, but like I don't, my workouts,

they might vary in intensity, but I don't really have bad workouts anymore. Every time I train, it feels like it was a worthwhile endeavor. It feels like it was, it feels like it was worth something. Sometimes, like I said, some days I get more and some days I get less, but because I'm not like white knuckling it and I'm not trying so hard to get so much out of this one day, the intensity of the day can be spread out more throughout the week. I actually noticed what you've been doing with Owen and that's been amazing watching him lift. And I said, is your lifting kind of similar every day? And he's like, no, it's quite a bit different. And I said, well, that's not what I meant, but I meant like

principle wise, it's the same. And he's like, oh yeah, yeah. It's like in principle, it's pretty much the exact same every day. Cause he's mentioning how he's doing like a wide variety of exercises. But what I meant by, is it similar every day? He's doing a wide variety of exercises kind of in a shortened period of time. There's not a lot of rest in between sets. And what it does is it allows him to get in here and get good training sessions in. This is in SEMA Help Them program. He's getting good quality training.

This is a guy that we have here that is a videographer for us who's 19 years old who just got into fitness. And it's been amazing watching his transformation happen so fast. I don't know what the fuck's going on with this kid yeah he's changing quick it's it's unbelievable but the point is is that he's not doing so much so intensely every day where it's like you should probably take two three days off then get yourself all fired up get pre-workout in and get your favorite song on and you know go, go in here, guns blazing and just crush it again and then take another day off and then, you know, go back and forth. He's getting into it pretty much every single day and spreading out that intensity and spreading out that fatigue.

So you don't have to clinch down so hard on your every single day. What if somebody right now, they're maybe typing it out before we can even answer it but uh what if somebody feels like they have to have that like intensity that like they got to watch ct fletcher on the way to the gym and then because that's what they're using for a little bit of motivation to kind of push through a solid workout because without that maybe the workout will be kind of like like aaisical, just kind of like going through the motions. But when they do get that dose of motivation, then they go extra hard. Bring it.

Bring it, but do it sparingly. Do it when it's necessary. When I played football, probably the only thing that I was ever really good at was making other people think that I wasn't super aggressive at certain times and then bam being super aggressive out of nowhere and having them go what the fuck I thought this dude was just kind of patty cake in here and there you know but and I'm sure jiu-jitsu is the same like you hit people with these pulses don't think for one second that in SEMA like we don't show a lot of clips of in SEMA grappling but don't think for one second that he's not the intensity at which he would be able to bring you down and the intensity that you're going to go after someone's leg. Once you decided that that's in your best interest to do that or defend yourself or whatever it is, it's going to

be at an intensity level that most people are not, not going to have any understanding on how to deal with. They're going to, what the, wow. Okay. I say now, you know, now what do I do other than, I guess, maybe tap out. So it's not like the intensity isn't good. And if you came in here and trained with me, or you trained with Nsema, you trained with Andrew, it's not like the intensity isn't there. There's some good intensity, but you're going to kind of be picking and choosing your spots. You're not always going to be bringing it. You're not always going to be bringing it. You're not always going to be going 100%. I do think we have the luxury, at least for Nsema and I, we've been training for so long

to maybe we could throttle things back quite a bit. We also have those experiences. So we already know what those feel like. And if you're young, we understand you want to express yourself and you really do want to kind of overload and go for it here and there. But I would say like 90% of your training should be done in these states where you're really just getting in. It's about the work that you're getting in. It's not necessarily hard work. It's just work. And it's work that your body is adapting to on the go. So some of it might feel more challenging than it did last week.

But it's not exponentially so much more challenging to where it's like, this is brutal. I can't handle it. And then you're not recovering. Then you're not sleeping. And you're causing a lot of negatives. You want your workouts to be a net positive. Most of the time, in most cases, not all the time and in all cases, but most of the time when you leave the gym, you want to say that workout helped me.

I feel better. I feel stronger rather than you just feel completely wiped out. And you're like, I don't know when the next time I'm getting it back in there, it's going to be, there is a concept. Andrew said, make it look easy.

And there is, there is a concept of like not stressing out your nervous system, uh, because physically it may be extremely demanding physically, but mentally, you know, if you're not having to mentally hype yourself up or, or take a lot of pre-workout or use a lot of smelling salt or, you know, do a lot of things that are going to hype this up before, you know, getting your body going, you're going to be able to do it longer. That's why like, like the thing that I think about when I do a lot of this is like, I'm going to do very hard things, but I'm going to do things that make it feel less stressful. They're, they're physically difficult to do.

Right. But by relaxing my face, it feels less stressful. By breathing, it literally feels, by having control of my breathing through my nose, it feels less stressful. And I'm able to do it for a longer period of time, for consistent days on end, because literally I don't feel as stressed because of it. But when you're new to trying to do this stuff, like when you first started lifting, and there was this video. I was pulling it up because you mentioned pulling up a CT Fletcher workout video. One of my workout videos that I'd pull up before lifting when I was younger was this video from Simply Shredded, and it was called Train Like Hell. If you all want to go watch it, go check that video out. See if you can pull some of it up for a second.

Actually, Andrew, pull it up. I love stuff like that. And people that are listening are like, yeah, what about the Fuck Your Elbow video? And like, yeah, people are like, what about bringing it here and there in your training? Yeah, yeah. But that video, I would watch that video. Let me know which one it is. Train Like Hell.

That top one? Right there, yeah. Yeah, we will hear it a little bit yeah i'm already fired up i love this kind of shit by the way yeah oh shit i'm getting goosebumps right now fuck i remember this, man. Yeah. It gets better. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty sick. I want to say the movements that I'm watching people do right here are not insanely challenging,

although I'm starting to see people lift a little bit more weight. But it was somebody hitting a heavy bag, somebody doing a farmer's carry, somebody doing, like, axe chops and things like that. And the intensity isn't, completely wild yeah but it was it was yeah i was doing body building training and like this shit like this when i was a teenager this shit got me amped up man like it got me a little hype but um like i think having to need to pull up less is something that that allows me to do it more consistently so like like, for example, people ask if I use pre-workout. I really don't.

I used to use pre-workout a lot and I got to a point where I'd have to take multiple scoops. I was mixing up pre-workouts. But the fucked up thing was that after a certain period of time, on a day I didn't have my pre-workout, I didn't feel motivated to go train. And then I needed something to bring that up within me. That's why I made sure to, I slowly cut that out and started relaxing my face, started controlling my breathing. And even though I can do hard things, I can do them more consistently because they literally don't feel hard up here because I'm controlling the way I interpret the stress by relaxing my face and by getting better at breathing to slow

everything down. One other thing I'll mention, which is, which is I think a physical manifestation of what we're talking about here. When you go into a cold plunge, it's shocking, right? And the immediate thing you want to do is,

and if you keep doing that, your heart rate's going to stay elevated. But if you control your breathing, once you get into a cold plunge, I had my Apple Watch on, my heart rate went up to 130, then immediately started slowing down to 60 by controlling my breathing and relaxing my face. There are not, I think it's a fallacy that things are supposed to be done 100%. Things are supposed to be done 100 percent. Things are supposed to be done 110 percent. And yes, you should do things to like the best of your capabilities. But it doesn't mean that you're doing things always to the most of your capabilities. You're not expressing the absolute maximum of what you're truly capable of. I would imagine for you in jujitsu, especially with the people you train with, you don't always seem to have an opportunity to do that because there's younger people,

there's newer people, there's people of different body weight and you got to work on different strategies, I would imagine. And especially just kind of like where you're elevating your game to, I mean, let's just be quite honest, you're 240 pounds and you're a fucking monster. So like, I'd imagine you have to, you have to like moderate that a lot, but ask that of any high level individual, whether it's a high level sprinter, uh, someone who's high level, um, at running, uh, Zach bitter, like Zach bitter, what's Zach bitters. Like his, his biggest problem in training is how to figure out how to mitigate not going full bore, not going full bore not going full

blast um when we had our buddy on that has a world record in the speed golf of his name alludes to me for a second yeah there we go brad kern when we had brad kern on brad's like my watch goes ding ding ding and he goes like it pisses me off because he's not allowed to be uh out of this um heart rate out of this specific heart rate. So there's no areas of life where going 100% or 110% actually truly benefits you the way that you might think it would. Maybe in emergency situations, maybe that would be it. But we can't learn and we can't grow. You know, you don't learn.

And we can't grow. You know, you don't learn. When you take classes, when you're in school, there's probably a reason why when you're young, you have multiple classes. Each class lasts about 45 minutes or so because you can't really learn a lot more about a subject. You know, imagine if they had you there for six or eight hours and it was all like intense and, you know, you're like short circuit. Anyone who's ever been to a seminar knows exactly what i'm talking about your brain's like whoa like i can't even believe it's like 10 hours three days in a row and you don't remember shit from that so there's never scenarios like that now i know people like well what about the jay cutler videos and what about what about ct and

what about these things those are those are videos that are for a specific thing that are, that is done over a specific period of time to reach the absolute maximum result that someone could possibly reach. And the clips that you're seeing are representing a very small percentage of what that person's doing. I watched a video the other day of Jay Cutler, and I don't even know this part of the story. Not only did Jay Cutler, Jay Cutler, fuck me, that guy's such a badass. He is.

Jay Cutler lost the Olympia, I think five times in a row, right? And he was able to crack through and and beat ronnie coleman the greatest bodybuilder of all time but not only did that happen he slipped up he was doing well he had a great body he was kicking ass he thought he was on top and then dexter jackson came in and fucking brought it to him and kicked his ass. And the conversation quickly flipped around. I was like, Oh, Jay's a new guy.

Oh, now he's, now he's out, you know? And Dexter Jackson was the guy and people were like, Jay Cutler's not going to be able to come back. He tore his bicep. He had all these things happening.

And the montage video is, is fucking amazing. Cause you're watching him. He's training with Hany Rambod and they build one of the freakiest physiques ever seen on stage at a bodybuilding show. And Jay Cutler comes back with a vengeance and he is victorious and it's fucking sick. Again, the video footage that you see when he's going through this intensity is still representing a small percentage of the training. And I know that Jay Cutler is very intense, but still trust me on the fact that when he's doing his leg workouts, that he's not going in the gym and the first thing he's doing is maxing out. It's a warmup. He gets to these progressive weights. And then even the way that a bodybuilder trains, it's specific to the point where there's not a ton

of rest involved. And so it's a lot of mind over matter type stuff where the intensity of it becomes the volume of the exercise and the mental barrier and challenge of it. But he's still not doing the absolute maximum he can do every single day. Otherwise, he would not be able to recover from it. Power Project family, if you watch and listen to this podcast, my assumption is that you're probably the kind of guy or girl who doesn't just like to wear your gym clothes in the gym. But listen up, you can't be wearing those and one shorts at a wedding. Okay, buddy, you can't do that. That's why we partner with the ori clothing because not only are their clothes suitable

for the gym so you can have the most comfortable and amazing workouts, but you can also wear them to the store, to the wedding, to dinner, anywhere. And you're just going to be looking so good. Andrew, how can the people get it? Yes. Step your game up right now. Head over to viore.com slash power project. That's V-U-O-R-I dot com slash PowerProject.

And when you do, you'll receive 20% off your first order. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Let's get back to the podcast. No, he absolutely wouldn't be able to break up with it. Jeez. You got that baby face right there, man. That's insane. Yeah, he was a phenom i think that people don't really realize

how how young he was uh coming up and coming through the ranks he started out so young and just oh that's why that's why so many people really uh admire him and like him a lot and plus he's got a just awesome personality yeah still one of the best that I've ever met in this whole industry. Yeah. You know, like when you were mentioning the jujitsu thing, uh, when training, even, even when working with like, I guess, uh, someone who's a really skilled black belt, um, in my head, I have a concept when sparring that I want to use the least amount of energy to the least amount of energy to tap anyone I work with. So it helps because then it allows me, number one, if I'm working with a blue belt or a white blue or purple belt or something, I'm still focusing on using the least amount of stress to get to the end goal,

which is tapping my opponent, which actually makes me be slicker and smoother. But if I was like coming out, I'm like, I'm a fuck you up. I'm a blast you. Right. I'd get to the same end point of beating them. But the amount of stress that I probably put myself on the amount of energy I had to expend because I may have been forcing a lot of things that didn't need to be forced is way more.

It's way more stressful. And it's hard to pull that out all the time. But if I have a concept in my head of like. I'm going to do the least to beat you. It always feels so much easier. And it's always a much smoother experience for both parties. Because they're safe. I'm safe.

And I'm getting better at technique. And doing what I'm doing. Doing what I need to do more efficiently. Did you have to do. I mean. Oops. Did you do that early on though? Because I'm just imagining again, anybody who's just starting out,

they're just like, dude, I can't be calm doing jujitsu. Oh, no, dude. The big things that helped me was Patrick McKeown learning about nasal breathing and applying that. And one thing that I think is really important to mention here is that, for example, when I was learning how to do nasal breathing or focusing on nasal breathing, not only was I doing that during my workouts in the gym during jujitsu, but I was taping my mouth and doing that when I slept, right? Because by nasal breathing, when sleeping, that actually helped me to be more aware of doing it during the day. If I spent eight hours a night, not nasal breathing,

breathing through my mouth, it'd be much harder for me to do it during exercise and working out. But I think that also if an individual starts relaxing their face in the gym, it's not going to be the easiest thing because you're used to grimacing when you're doing heavy loads. But if you start learning how to relax your face, it's going to become more intuitive. Breathing through your nose, it's going to become more intuitive. That will honestly make it easier for you to relax on your day-to-day. Because to be honest, there are a lot of stresses that happen with family, etc. But physically, they're not maybe as stressful as the gym. And if the gym is something that it's not a stress for you, it's actually easy for you.

It's one of the easiest things of your day. A lot of other things are going to become easy for you, too. You're also not sweating it when it's time to go to the gym. And Andrew, I understand your point, but I still think like optimal is optimal. And it doesn't really matter whether you're talking about someone that's brand new to it or someone that's been doing it for a long time. Maybe where things might get a little weird is like intermediate, like when you're in the middle. Like when you're in the middle, you might have to try to figure out how to have a breakthrough and so therefore i can understand a good argument of like yeah like if you're a runner you're probably gonna hurt your ankle or

your hamstring at some point because you are trying to keep up with the guy next to you like those things are naturally going to happen that competition level is going to bring out something some of the best in you and some of the worst in you. Like you should stay in your own lane and probably not focus on the guy next to you and run your time or however you want to put it. But there's a method in training that has been well studied and many people have utilized it. It's called – I believe it's called the Mathetone method. You'd have to look some of it up. But anyway, it's just somebody's last name that got created the system. And basically it's in reference to staying within a heart range, staying within a healthy range to allow you to

be able to expand upon being able to gain more endurance. Now there's, you would think that other aspects of training work way differently than this, but they really don't. You know, when you are going as hard as possible, or when you're doing something that seems quite the opposite of like building stamina or endurance, something like sprinting, it actually is weird how we just still end up with similar protocols. Now they are different percentage wise, but it still doesn't mean that you go to 95% all the time. I've said this many times on the show. World-class sprinters, the best sprinters in the world, they run their best times usually at the Olympics and they don't mess with it any other time. So like in eight years,

Hussein Bolt, his best times are at the Olympic games and they're not even really truly his best times are at the Olympic Games and his and they're not even really truly his best times because if you remember he like walked across the finish line I want to note something there if you pull up Usain Bolt yeah watch their faces when they're running man like if you look at it like while going on an all-out sprint breaking a world record look at his fucking face and there might be there there might be uh some distortion of his face when he gets to a certain point of the race if the guy next to him like there there might be a little bit of that but again the majority of what you're going to see is is people being a little bit more relaxed um one of the greatest ways to cause harm to your body is to overdo shit and end up with like doms or end up with uh

a lot of people end up with heart issues that love to do triathlons and stuff because they're redlining their heart um the the entire time we've had guests on the show that have talked about nasal breathing and all the way to the point where we've had people say that you should do a lot not even a lot of your training through nasal breathing. You should only train, like, this is where things get to be debatable because I would say, well, you know, it's probably good to push past that occasionally. And also from a mental standpoint, that restriction kind of feels like not so fun because you do want to let loose every once in a while.

feels like not so fun because you do want to let loose every once in a while. But point noted is that, fuck, man, maybe that's super effective. And maybe, how about this? How about just for a month or a few weeks you try to train and say, I'm going to see if I can not wince or make a noise while I'm lifting and just breathe through my nose and see what – that's just a different – it's a different training stimulus. I want to see if I can do four sets of 15 reps, dumbbell bench press mixed with some kettlebell swings

back and forth for seven minutes, very little rest, see how many rounds I can get done. If I need to breathe and take a break in between i'm going to do so but i'm only going to practice nasal breathing i'm not going to make one i'm not going to try my best not to make a face that's a new challenge that's a new challenge try to relax throughout the whole movement i want to make sure when i do my swings that i get good range of motion well maybe the weights that you use are different than the weights that you used to use absolutely and you know if some grunts or whatever come out involuntarily, it happens.

Because, like, for example, if I do a rough set of, like, Nordics, my mouth opens and, like, shit comes out of my mouth because it just, like, literally I can't do that while staying still. I remember with Michael Hearn. Do you remember that shit? I think about that every day yeah there was we were doing some shit where i was just like first time i heard in semen that's where was the end of the fucking set i was just like oh but it was like even had like a little high pitch to it also it was i was like is he okay i've never heard him make a sound like especially like that during lifting because like and it was involuntary i wasn't purposefully

making a sound for like you know trying to hype everyone up or whatever that shit just came out of me because it needed to come out so if it needs to come out let it out but try to do like it should even get to a point where it's not that you're trying to do something and and make it not look stressful for me since i've been doing it long, I'm not trying to keep my face relaxed. My face is just relaxed. I'm not trying to breathe through my nose. I just breathe through my nose. That's what happens after you do it for a while.

It just becomes what you do, not something you are now trying to do. Go to a place where people are well-trained or well-conditioned in anything and start to observe them. You're going to have different people handle things different ways. But when John Hack was here, he podcasted with us, and he just kind of strolled into the gym.

He asked for a certain music to be on here and there, but he didn't really care. And if the music wasn't on, he would have lifted all the same. It is nice to get a little boost from some of that, but I didn't see see he didn't bark or make one noise or like i didn't see him like slap chalk on himself or ask anybody to hit him in the back no smelling salts this is one of the strongest guys to ever live casually benched 540 after squatting 700 pounds and he's got like a torn quad or something.

And also when he deadlifted nearly 900 pounds at the end of a competition to do the biggest total in the history of the 198 pound weight class, which also broke the record for the 220 pound weight class and the 242 pound weight class uh he did that he did that 898 pound dead lift with i think he had two slightly torn quads and again like yeah like his face turns red as he's like handling the weight at the top i'm sure there's some little bit of noise that happened with that lift most weight he's ever lifted puts the weight down and he's like, yeah. And like, that's kind of the end of it. And he like walks off. And this is a lifelong journey to do like 1100 kilo total or whatever the fuck.

It's just like, it's just disgusting. You know, you're watching it happen. But if you're his training partner or your training partner is a little stronger than you, the greatest thing that you can do is to continually work on staying in your lane and continually working on making sure that you get a similar amount of work that the guy that's better than you gets in, but not the similar amount of weights. You might have to do an extra set. You might have to do an extra rep, but nothing forced.

Just it's, you know, in football, they say, take what the defense gives you. And you're probably doing similar maneuvers in jujitsu. Like, okay, the guy's super resilient to this. I don't know what the fuck his problem is. He won't let me get this. Like, okay, this other thing's like wide open. I'm going to go for that. You don't have to really always be so forceful.

And you'll find that when you learn this skill set of not trying to force everything, things will just start to come easier. And all the other goals that you had, the goal of being leaner, the goal of like just kind of wanting more energy throughout the day, like all these other goals, they'll start to fall into place. Your diet, everything will be easier when you're not like forcing these workouts and forcing your strength. I think it falls into what you talk about all the time, equanimity. Like, it's like you just unperturbed with everything. Like, and it's not, it's, it's, it's impossible to be unperturbed with everything. There are going to be things that gets you, but the more you can like lifting shouldn't

be one of the things that stresses you out. Yo, like it really shouldn't be fit like the stuff that you're trying to do for your fitness the hobbies of the physical hobbies that you enjoy these should be things that bring you joy like if you ever like i used to watch a lot of soccer when i played soccer and if you ever watch guys like messier ronaldo play soccer or ronaldinho i think is a better example he's a brazilian dude he doesn't play anymore. But dude always just looks happy and graceful on the field. He never looks like he's forcing anything.

Like he's just doing things with such just pure just – it's beautiful the way he does it. Like you can't say anything else other than that. That's just beautiful, swift, graceful movement. Kind of want to replicate that in the gym. Like that's the place you want to get to. And in a practical sense, if you guys are like, how well y'all are talking about this, how can we apply it? Start with just first off paying attention to your face. And secondly, start paying attention to your breathing. Okay. Start nasal breathing. We talk about it all the time, but try breathing through your nose, through your workout. And if you get to a point in cardio wise where you're, it's so strenuous or you have to open your mouth, okay, then you can open your mouth.

But keep a majority of the things, majority of your workout through your nose because that's going to help slow your that were utilized to make their athletes insanely strong, the Bulgarian system, even like even Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, anything that you look at and that's kind of written out on paper, you're not going to find anywhere in the literature that references that you have to kill yourself to do any of it. It's all kind of like mathematical. Perlipin's chart, which is a chart still utilized today for people to get as strong as possible. It lists out the reps and sets and overall volume that you need to get stronger. Everything is just a mathematical accumulation that you build up.

The only requirement is just like a lot of, I guess you'd say, and once you get to this point, the interesting thing is you wouldn't even consider it to be resilience, but maybe in the beginning you would. You just have to be able to demonstrate that you're going to be consistent with something for a long time. So it's just – it's literally – it's just going to take time for you to get good at that thing because the time requirement – the reason why there's such a time requirement to it is because you have to get acclimated to it. And different people are going to respond differently in different ways and it might take one person longer to acclimate versus another person. But there is no shortcut to it. It just is a mathematical equation.

You're five by five that you're super, you have tons of anxiety about this week. It doesn't really make sense to have a lot of anxiety over it. What that shows me is that your percentage is a little bit too high. Because it should be a fairly simple mathematical equation. Your five by five, your 25th rep of your last, your last rep of your last set should look fairly similar to your first rep of your first set. That is a Charles Poliquin quote. And I think that that is the very definition of what we're talking about here today.

That is the very definition of what we're talking about here today. And if you can figure out a way to get – imagine getting through all your five-by-fives and your three sets of three and as you get close to a powerlifting meet. Imagine the reserve that you're going to feel you have when it comes your turn to do your third attempt squat. squat, you know, you're now going to feel like really empowered and you're going to be like, I wonder what it's going to be like when I unleash my absolute full capacity. When I actually take this thing to the end, we had a, we had, we had a, we had a, yeah, yeah. Well, it's very, very similar to that. Edging. Yeah. It. Well, it's very similar to that. Edging. Yeah.

It's a lot of edging in your training. That's exactly what it is. I'm trying to think of the lifter that came out here. I always want to say Klokoff, but it's not Klokoff. It's Misha. I know. Oh, Cold Mind. Misha Mikhail Kokilev.

Yeah, that's a different guy. That's a different guy. Okay. Different lifter. Mikhail, but yeah, Cold Mind. Misha Mikhail Kokilev. Yeah, that's a different guy. That's a different guy. Okay. Different lifter. Mikhail, but yeah, Cold Mind, that works too. But Mikhail Kokilev talked a lot about like, you're just teasing everything the whole time. And he deadlifted over 900 pounds. And when he was asked about like what he did in his training, he did sets of three and sets of six.

And he said he was so mad. He was irritable. This is kind of the same way you would get if you were doing that to yourself in a sexual way. He did it months on end, right? Anyway, the point is when he got to the competition, he was able to lift way more than he ever expected. And when he did do the lift, it still wasn't his absolute maximum. It looked like he could still handle even more.

You want to build that accumulation up and you want to have it explode on game day. Just busting nuts all over the platform. We always somehow get here. By the way, guys, if you haven't already, got y'all gotta go listen

our episode that we had with anna lemke because it's out now go listen to that she we talked a lot about like different addiction food drugs porn all that good stuff and um it's it was an amazing episode i learned a lot from it so go listen that too. Let's see if we can bring up that clip. I don't think we brought up that clip yet of GSP where his coach tells him, hey, man, you need to breathe and basically shut the fuck up and listen to me. It's a short one, so here we go. Oh, yeah. Let's get that breathing under control, Mr. St. Pierre. I don't care. I don't care i don't care george hey look at me this is where champions are made you understand me nothing matters now hit him with your groin you got my mentality i love that the cool thing is i've heard george saint pierre talk about number one he talked about fasting a

lot he's mentioned how he wished he did that when he was actually fighting because he focuses better The cool thing is I've heard George St. Pierre talk about, number one, he talked about fasting a lot. He's mentioned how he wished he did that when he was actually fighting because he focuses better. But he's also talked about nasal breathing. He's talked a lot about nasal breathing and how important it is to him as a fighter in trying to be calm in training and in combat. So if this guy's trying to focus on that in combat, can you try to do that in the gym? And what kind of benefit can that bring you? Coaching is really, really dope. And what's the coach's name in this one?

That's Jackson. Winkle John. Forgot his first name. This specific coach? Oh, no, this one was Jackson. Greg Jackson? Greg Jackson. There you go. Yeah, sorry.

Everyone's like, you pieces of shit. How do you not know? These are the greatest coaches of all time. We know. We know. We know. And one of them's been on this podcast, so calm down. I know.

And we're not – yeah, we don't know what the hell their names are sometimes because we're not like super steeped in UFC and fighting, although we love it and have tons of respect for it. The point is, is when George St. Pierre, when he sits on the stool in between rounds, the coach already knows that he's disturbed and he's disrupted and he's been moved off of his normal pattern. And before George even says anything to him, he's like, let's get our breathing under control. Because he's recognizing like, man, the chest is moving and it's a bunch of different ways. And like, what's this,

who's this frantic George St. Pierre athlete that's coming at me? This is not the normal guy that I'm training with, that's laughing, that's having a good time, that's kicking the shit out of people. Something is a little different. And so right away, he refers to his breathing. And I love the fact that he's telling him, hey, I recognize something's off.

Get your breathing, get your shit together. George St. Pierre's response is, I better tell my coach I got a really cool excuse. And he's like, I think I tore my groin. And he's like, I don't care. It doesn't mean that he doesn't like actually literally care. Of course he cares about the health of his friend and the health of his – the guy that he's training. But it's just not helpful or useful in that moment. That's not going to be anything that's going to – you're not going to be able to go over to the other fighter and say, just so you know uh george you know he tore his groin so if you don't mind you know maybe you don't go after the championship

belt you know so harshly in this next round and maybe you could kind of just let him score some points so he can win like there's not going to be a scenario where that's going to happen so he tells him he doesn't care and then he kind of tells him what to focus on so i think that that is great recognition by a coach in focusing in on the thing that matters most is how do we calm you down? How do we get you ready for the next round? Absolutely. And when you mentioned frantic,

again, there's no situation where it's helpful to be frantic. Maybe unless, you know, those, those, those situations here of mothers picking up cars off their kids like that, you know,

maybe an emergency. Right. Yeah. Like something like picking up cars off their kids like that. So, you know, maybe an emergency, right? Yeah. Like something like you got to move really quickly. Right. But, but typically, you know, again, I, I think the best scenario I can go to, we talked about this with Anna Hooverman's talked about this before, um, situation in life where you can train this a bit. It's not just in the gym, but like we talked about taking cold showers, slowing down your

breathing to calm down because your body doesn't like that it doesn't like it so it's like you train your body to calm down a cold plunge you train your body to calm down in a really physically uncomfortable stressful situation you can do that makes it easier to do that when you're doing more stressful things yeah but even in that situation i know like the picking up of the car thing is like different but like if like your house was on fire and you're running around frantically you're right you're not gonna no like if you stay calm so like yeah it definitely spills over everywhere else it does you're right um what about the recent scenario of the uh guys trying to hold up that uh convenience store you guys see that clip? Oh, where he fucking KOs them?

Yeah. Yeah. So the two guys came in and then. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Two guys came into the convenience store and the guy that was in there happened to be like, I think a Marine or Navy SEAL or something like that.

Someone who's trained and he's holding a bag because it looked like he was maybe the customer. He looked like he was like maybe shop somewhere else or something. And he had some like goods in his hand. He's like waiting in line to purchase more stuff at this convenience store. He notices these two kids like coming in and he turns his attention over to them. And he sees like first of all the guy is like – his assessment of the gun is like rather than, holy motherfucking shit, it's a gun. He's like, that isn't really how you hold a gun if you're trained.

And so he is totally calm, both hands down to his side, and then he just acts upon it right away. But he didn't freak out at all. I mean, when they slowed it down it was kind of like unbelievable but also too you'll you'll notice and this is what i said earlier about kind of picking your shot take taking your time and and knowing like where and when to explode into stuff and where and when to bring up the intensity once it was time to go he fucking went and he when when they interviewed him he's like i'm just an old man you know he's like he's not old by any means but he just means like i'm out of shape yeah and uh so he he's not like tremendously fit or anything

but he's also not he doesn't look like he's out of shape either it's like somewhere strong in the middle he looks yeah he looks very strong but he exploded with everything he had in that moment when when it was necessary and not before or not you know not after that's what we're talking about you fucking just jumped right into that shit unfortunately they found out that those those uh guys that were holding up that store were super young i think it was like 14 year old kid or something like that man but yo you come in with a gun, you're going to get fucking smoked. It was those Island Boys.

Have you seen that video? No. You haven't seen that video? No. You of all people? I don't know what you're talking about. Oh my god. These guys have gotten so popular. I'm going to have to look it up now. The Island Boys? One second. Because I'm an Island Boy. You haven't seen it. Heard it. No.

These fuck. Okay. Hold on. I have to find this now. Because everyone knows exactly what I'm talking about. I'm starting to feel like you and Mark, man. Yeah, you're not aware of shit. Yeah.

Yeah. We got social media now. It's going to take me a minute. Damn it. I'm stuck in the 90s, though though even my music is like all 90s music it really is i'm the majority of it listen to mostly so this is gonna be really funny man um i do listen to like rap and stuff like when i'm getting ready to work out or i didn't i didn't say i didn't imply that no no no no no i'm going somewhere with this i'm going somewhere with this

like like pop smoking that type of stuff but i I'm listening to that stuff. Like before I'm about to maybe go do some jujitsu or maybe work out or something like that. Right. Outside of that, I've been listening to like Cranberries Radio on Spotify. Y'all know the Cranberries are this 90s band. I listen to just like a lot of like really chill happy music that's you like music a lot though right i like music a lot you're you you've been uh playing the piano and yeah messing around the guitar yeah yeah from time is it yours your mom into it too did she kind of encourage you in some of that oh yeah yeah she sings my mom's a really good singer. That's dope. But yeah, my music taste is very... If you look at me, the things you hear me listen to, you'd be like, is this a white girl's playbook? I'm not talking about Taylor Swift or anything like that, yo, but I'm just saying it's not... There might be some of that mixed in.

Nah, not Taylor Swift. I might have no audio, though. Fuck. It's killing me that I can't hear this. My phone is crazy. Andrew's just wonderful watching you struggling right now for some reason. Look at him scramble. Oh, guys. Guys, comment for Andrew's struggles right now towards the end of this podcast.

Why can't I hear it? Oh, maybe YouTube. Here we go. Yo, for real, what happened to my fucking... Oh, right, here we go. Check it out. Oh, wow. I'm a just island boy.

I'm a just island boy. Are these? No. Dude, I'm telling you. I'm surprised TikTok isn't going fucking berserk for this. It probably is. I just haven't seen it. No.

No. and fucking berserk for this it probably is i just haven't seen it no no what are these guys about what are they doing they're just i have no idea some white boys that are dreaded their hair and they're trying to do like an island accent okay so everyone so everyone started making fun of them but naturally the way the internet is so disgusting they're now getting like sponsorship deals and all kinds of shit because i'm an island boy i'm gonna download this shit I missed some of your... Turn it off. That's just fire, son. Gone. Those boys are great. Dude. Oh. Jeez. Dude, it goes Tupac, Biggie, Eminem, these guys.

Island boys. What the fuck, man? So, hey, fuck what we just said. Let everything disturb you, including that video. I saw it. I got so... That's wrong. I was entertained. And then as I... Did i did you make it all in and out it would

have gone in though but but it's a cylinder that you have to get something inside another another rim job yeah uh i forgot oh so i saw it and i was like laughing at it i'm like no way this is real i'm like those are like fake tattoos like nope it's all real and then my first thought was like somebody's gonna give them a lot of money to do some kind of ad like the cash me outside girl that's exactly what it is right yeah y'all remember when like she turned 18 and like her she made a million dollars or something like that you gotta imagine the motherfuckers that signed up to that only fans account y'all are creep You're like, I can't wait till she gets to 18, yo. You did the Birdman thing perfect.

What? Oh, just a bunch of island boys. Oh. Oh. Alright. Relax when you're fucking lifting. Do the best you can. We're not saying to do it all the time and to practice it with every single thing that you do.

But it could be something that you work on. It could just be another strategy that you utilize when you're lifting. And maybe at first, just see if you can do it in some of your warm-ups. Great place to start with it. Andrew, take us on out of here, buddy. I will, and I'm going to go have some Magic Spoon spoon after this so that way I'm not eating it on microphone uh if you guys want to head over to magicspoon.com slash power project to pick up your variety pack for five bucks off and please follow the podcast at mark bells power project on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram

and twitter is at i am andrew z at the andrew z on tiktok and sima where you at and see me ending on instagram and youtube and see meema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. And guys, make sure to go back to some of the episodes that we've done recently. We had Gregory Set, we had Andrew Hooper, we had Anna Lemke, we had John Hack. You motherfuckers got to catch up. You really do. You really do. You got to catch up.

And you got to catch up and stay on top of all the social media stuff that we're pumping out. Through the Power Project, through your Instagram, through your TikTok, through my Instagram, my TikTok. There's a lot of stuff to keep up with, but you guys got to figure out a way to keep up. I'm at Mark Smiley Bell. Strength is never weak. This week is never straight. Catch y'all later.