Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 644 - How To Not Get Injured STupidly...

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

Live for the first time in a long time and it felt so good. Today we're talking about how to avoid injuries and what to do if you have a nagging injury. Special perks for our listeners below! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for free shipping and two free meals + a Kooler Sport when you order 16 meals or more! ➢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 POWERPROJECT10 for 10% 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

But it was good, huh? I liked it a lot, but all the movies, they always go too long for me. It's probably just because I'm old. People probably couldn't consume enough Spider-Man, so they probably didn't mind that I did. Yeah. We won't ruin anything. The movies end, and then they end again, and they end again. I'm like, it was over a while ago.

Did you watch the post-credits scenes? Yeah. You did? Yeah, you have to stay for the post-credits scenes. Why do they do that, though? Because it's like— I get it. I'm a fan of all the Marvel movies,

but at the same time I'm like, fuck, we got to watch all. Can we just, can you guys just get to it right now and then do all the credits? Because nobody's reading the names. I think it just maybe shows who's a real fan. You know what I mean?

Because some people, you see, you watch and you're like, you see the credits and then you're like, who's going to leave? Who doesn't realize? Was the crowd fired up when you went? Oh, super fired up. There were people screaming when certain things happened in the movie people

got super excited that was cool but i won't say because andrew hasn't seen it yet and i didn't know and i think we're live we don't want to get people pissed off at us people should go people should go check it out that's true yeah you know check that out eventually but for sure watching the matrix tonight oh god i can't wait yeah yeah i told you to check that out it's good i told some of my homies that i was going to go to the theater and watch it with them and i still will but it came out on hbo so i was like i need to see this now you know how about that when someone watches something without you does that happen in your household andrew yeah uh with my daughter jasmine i'm just like did you watch this like no okay and then she'll start to

point something out that hasn't happened yet and i thought you didn't watch it oh and then she just like kind of grins a little bit she hasn't done it in a long time but that's pretty when she was younger she would do it all the time dude my wife is a like tv junkie and she watches everything i don't know even know how she i just don't even understand how she has the hours in the day. Because her productivity level is like up here, dude. Yeah, and she's able to like leave it on

while she's like totally doing something different. That's the shit I can't do. And she'll be like, oh, this was amazing. And then I'm like, aren't we supposed to watch it together? That does suck, yeah.

Yeah, like she left me in the dust, leaves me in the dust all the time. That ain't fair. Yeah, so A-OK, Mark. So there is, so just like Instagram stories, YouTube has stories. Just like Reels, YouTube has shorts. What's the time limit on that video, though? Is that two minutes?

I don't know. I think it has to be under one minute. Under one minute. Because if it's over a minute, it turns into a regular YouTube video. One has to be shot horizontal, one has to be shot diagonally, and one has to be shot vertical, right? Diagonal. Nobody fucks with diagonal. Yeah.

Well, I'm going to. Fuck everybody. It has to be next because it's best of both worlds. Yep. And then you have regular uploads, anything above a minute. And then you have live feeds feeds which is what we're doing right now what and then you have premieres which is like kind of honeydicking people into thinking it's a live feed but it's actually a pre-recorded thing that you get to watch together oh you

shouldn't have said that now the audience knows what about honey pussy can we change the it's honey potting yeah honey dick i don't know it's honey dicking sounds funny but yeah people do think i mean i do like honey yeah so you might trick me with it you know it's more than once even who knows pull me once but yeah so the but the premiere is like i I thought it was kind of like a known thing that it's not live, but people will ask questions as if it is live. And it's like, bruh, like it's a premiere, not a live.

And then of course, everyone gets upset that, you know, it's, it's a premiere. They got bamboozled. Yeah. What about, what's the difference between reels and the regular stuff that you post on Instagram? I don't know because I haven't been on Instagram and seemingly you'll have to help me out. I'm wearing my sweatshirt backwards. Nice.

It's a fashion statement. I haven't been on Instagram in a long time and I posted something just as a post and every time I go back to it, it looks like a reel now. Like everything looks the exact same. I can't tell the difference between what's what. Instagram's trying to become TikTok. But a reel, a reel is Instagram's combat for TikTok. It's under one minute. You can put music on it.

And your reels will generally get more views than normal videos. And there's less content to it or less of a write-up. You can write on it, but there's less usually, right? It's less. It's literally set up to look like TikTok. And it's set up to have the ability to potentially go viral

if it's good like a TikTok. Like there's an IG Reels. If you go on Instagram, you can go to the Reels and all you're going to be seeing is Reels through your feed. And it kind of is very similar to working like TikTok.

Yeah, because I'm like, I think I'll throw this up in Reels. I'm like, I think I'll throw stuff in Reels. I'm like, I don't know what that means, though. All right, now I got a little bit better idea. And you can set stuff up in Reels very similar to all the stuff, all the features you can use on TikTok. You can write on the screen and put music to it and do whatever. Exactly.

Exactly. Which one has the best interface? App-wise? Yeah. Shit. Like, which one has the best interface? App-wise? Yeah. Shit. Like, which one's the easiest to create content for? Ooh. Well, I mean, honestly, TikTok's very easy because it's short-form content.

It's meant to be shorter. Depends on what you do. But both of them, if you create content on IG Reels, you can reuse that on TikTok. And the same thing, if you use it on TikTok, you can use it on IG Reels. So I think TikTok's a great starting place for anyone who's trying to make some content and then put it on IG. Then work your way up to putting it on YouTube. Boom, chaka, boom, boom. You're good to go.

Does your content get suppressed, though, if you're just saving a file or whatever? Take the watermark off. It's the watermark, right? It's the watermark. Okay. Yeah, the watermark that TikTokiktok has um will ig will be like nah fuck you and they won't like push it out so take the watermark off or just save the video before you post it and you're good to go i know we'd be talking about social media interesting

stuff my instagram's been popping pretty good lately it has been popping yeah it's been going yeah i think maybe it's some of the TikTok-ing and some of the power project that we're doing. I think some of the running. I think people are digging the running. Yeah, it's all kind of linking together. Yeah, it's been kind of interesting because I've tried other stuff in the past and sometimes people

don't dig it. You know, I also like, I have like a weird thing where I want to like give people good content. I want to give them good information, but I don't always want to give people like what they're used to seeing or what they want. Even. Yeah.

I know that I could post stuff about food kind of all day long and it will always do really well or cooking. But I just, some stuff I just like, even like going to Metallica with my wife, it's like, I just, we took a couple pictures here and there and stuff, but it's more just for us.

I don't always want to share that stuff. And then the same thing with stuff with the kids. The kids, I have to let them know, I'm not using this for anything. I just want the memory to pop up a year or two from now. Hopefully, they'll thank me when they're older that we have some pictures of A, B, or C, but who knows. But I don't always like to share all that shit all the time. Oh yeah. Yeah. I actually just picked up a, uh, sick ass, really old ass camera. Um, and when I say really old, it's still very digital. It's, it's like, uh, it was part of Fuji films, like second round of cameras, um,

uh, of newer cameras, sorry. But that it's so cool because I went, I went to take prints or to get prints done for a really big, awesome Christmas present. And I realized that all, everything that was being printed was all off of a camera, not off of the phone. Everything on the phone just kind of stayed on the phone. So I wanted an actual camp.

I wanted an actual camera. It an actual camera as dick just it was i wanted that camera to take pictures but you know there's no internet on this this camera right so all these photos they're just for us and i think that's super important a little chilly over there huh i like it back of my head's cold so i'm switching to a beanie it's cold in here it's like 59 degrees freezing like i had my sweatshirt off for the beginning of the podcast i'm like nah actually you know what that's not a good idea yeah new studio is fucking cold yeah yeah we spent a lot of money on a lot of things except for the heat i hope does it get hot in here in the summer uh let's hope so oh hopefully let's see if it does. Not too hot. We do have climate control somewhere, but we haven't messed with it at all yet.

You gotta ask the guy. And I'm supposed to bring in a heater, but let's face it, I'll keep forgetting it. You will. Anyway, we're talking today about injuries and how you guys can get more injured during your workouts since I know how much we all love getting hurt. Now, you know what? When you get hurt, unfortunately, you're really reduced to like a whole lot of nothing sometimes,

you know, depending on how badly you've gotten hurt. I know for myself with some like tweaks in the back and things like that, I mean, yes, there's still stuff you can do in the gym, but if the injury is painful when you're like not even really doing anything, it's probably not the best idea to try to push forward and go to the gym, even though you could kind of say, hey, like focus on some of the stuff that you can do. But if you're still in pain, you want to take your time. But main focus of today is how to just avoid it altogether in the first place. main focus of today is how to just avoid it altogether in the first place. I want to first off say that I don't really believe that you can avoid all tweaks all the time. I think they

sometimes, they happen like for reasons that we can't always have like a diagnostic like record of, you know, you maybe you slept a little bit weird and then maybe you went to go in the gym and you went to just put a 45 pound plate went to go in the gym and you went to just put a 45 pound plate on the side of the bar and you're like, what's that? Like something weird happened to your neck or your back. And you're like, uh, so there are weird things like that, that I don't know how much control that we have over those things. But I will also say that the more conscious you are of all the movements that you do throughout the day, and even just the way you're laying down to watch TV or the way that you're looking at your phone and the way that you're lifting, these are all really important things. I think we know about

the gym. We know. We're not supposed to really round our back a ton for a lot of exercises. We kind of know some general rules, brace yourself, things like that. But it's when we're out of the gym where we kind of take it for granted, we get in and out of the car and we do stuff where we're not really thinking. And maybe we're kind of in a rush and we didn't like, we didn't think like, oh, maybe I got out of the car awkwardly. Maybe that slightly tweaked my knee. And then maybe when I went to go squat that day, I blamed it on the squat, but I was really kind of already previously jacked up beforehand. Yeah. And one of the big things is just like, I think Ben Patrick kind of put it pretty well when he talks about his programming, right? And his programming, the knees over toe stuff,

it puts a lot of people in positions that they're not used to being in and working within ranges of motion within their knee that they're not used to touching, right? So his big concept is just like avoid pain, right? And it's interesting because when you look at that concept and you try to push it towards lifting, bodybuilding and powerlifting, there's throughout those sports, there's been kind of a culture of the harder it is, the better it is, or you should be working through struggle. You should be working through some pain here and there. And it makes me wonder, because a majority of individuals

that are doing both of these things are doing it recreationally. They're doing it because maybe they want to get stronger for themselves and feel better. They're not like a professional powerlifter making money, nor are they a professional bodybuilder making money, right? But they're still putting their body on the line doing certain things, you know? So it's like, if you do avoid pain, like it's like on a day that you're doing some shoulder pressing and for some

reason your shoulder's feeling iffy and you're just a guy that's trying to grow, maybe you don't follow your program so strictly that day and increase the load. Maybe you just back off of it and you feel good. But most people, because they're like, I'm trying to grow, I'm trying to get bigger, they're going to push that weight. That's something I used to do. But I think that I could have avoided many injuries, many tweaks by just following what my body was obviously telling me. Don't increase the load today. Or don't add some weight to that because your lower back, it's a little bit iffy but because i was like oh no this is on the program this is what i'm supposed to do stuck to it i regretted it a little bit later i think some uh examples of some stuff that you can try to do like if you were to go do a workout and you're gonna do something for

your shoulders and the front of your shoulder hurts. Maybe move on to another exercise and you're like, oh, shit, that same spot still hurts. You're still trying to do shoulders. First of all, you can just work some different muscles for the day. Maybe you can do back and maybe that doesn't hurt. Maybe you can train your biceps, your triceps. Maybe you can just shift gears completely. Or maybe you can still work your shoulder, but you're doing things like shrugs and rear delt work and working your shoulders and the area around the shoulder just in a different way. Maybe you're like, oh, maybe it is time for me to start to do some of those stupid rotator cuff exercises that I've been meaning to do forever.

Maybe it's a good time to even just say, well, I wonder how I got hurt in the first place. Maybe it's because my neck and my chest is always tight and it's always kind of pulling my shoulders forward maybe the shoulders hurt because I'm always on my phone and again I'm rounded forward uh all the time then I went in the gym and I went to do a bench press where the shoulder has to really kind of open up for you to be able to express full range of motion and full power and everything. And maybe you tweaked your shoulder that way. So if you were to take a shoulder exercises, maybe the front hurts,

maybe do something for the back, maybe the back hurts, maybe do something for the front. And you can apply that to any, any other muscle group. You go to do a squat and your knees and tremendous amounts of pain. Could you still do some leg curls? Could you drag the sled forward?

Like, could you do things that are a little bit more hamstring dominant? Could you deadlift? You know, sometimes you can deadlift. Sometimes the pain in your knee's too much to even do a deadlift. Could you do a partial range of motion deadlift? Could you do a stiff-legged deadlift? Maybe the knee is so bad that you can't even be on your leg. You can't just have any weight on your leg. Well, you could still go over and utilize some of the utility benches in the gym, and

you can sit down and do shoulder work and bicep work and do as many things lying down or sitting down as you can possibly think of. So there's always options to kind of look into other things once you kind of identify like something's kind of screwed up. And there's one big theme that actually falls in line with that. If something, if your knee does feel like it hurts a little bit before you're doing a workout,

maybe your elbow's a little bit sore or something or your, your tricep, yeah, your elbow doesn't feel that great. Matt Wedding, when we went over to his gym a few years ago, we were at Ludus Magnus, he talked about like doing a hundred rep tricep press downs or something like that.

You know what I mean? To drive blood into that area before bench pressing. Because, you know, and Ben Patrick talks about doing partial range of motion. I forgot, VMO, not VMO squats, but partial range of motion. You're driving into the knees to drive blood into that area. And you get a massive pump in your quad and your knee. And I don't know if he said this or you said this, but it's like getting a pump in that area protects the area a bit.

So if you think about this, if your shoulder is feeling kind of wonky, use some lighter load and maybe see if you can drive a pump to that area because it's going to feel much more comfortable. I notice this a lot for myself with dips. Dips is a movement that I've been progressing a lot recently, but if I do dips kind of cold and it's like my elbows, everything doesn't feel that great. If I get a bit of a pump in my shoulder, a bit of a pump in my triceps, I can knock out as many dips as I want. It's like night and day. So one of those, a big concept that you can take from this that's going to be super beneficial for you is before doing a certain movement, try to drive blood to that area if it's feeling uncomfortable or just try to drive blood to that area in general before you put the work into that movement.

As that, I mean, more blood into that area is also more awareness of what's going on there, but it'll also be more protected before you do whatever you're about to do. You can utilize partial range of motion for stuff like that too. So if your knee hurts, do some very, very short squats and take your time with it. And what you'll notice is that once you kind of get a pump,

as Nseema's pointing out, you're now a little bit protected. There's a lot of blood flow in there. There's a huge difference between having your back be really tight. You know, sometimes we wake up, maybe you ran the day before, maybe you lifted the day before, or maybe you're sick. I don't know if you guys ever experienced that. When you're sick, your back is just super stiff and tight, and you're like, what in the hell is going on? If you do a couple reps of like good mornings or something that will pump some blood into your back, no matter how small the range of motion is, you know, keeping in mind Ben Patrick, you know, zero pain.

You're trying to do something that has zero pain. So maybe your range of motion is just really, really small. But once you get blood into that area, it's going to literally warm up. you get blood into that area, it's going to literally warm up. And I would bet that somebody that's struggling to even bend forward and just touch their knees, they'll be able to sink down much, much lower than that once you got a warmup. So, and that applies to all parts of the body, whether it's your shoulder or any joint, you're going to find you're going to be able to have more range of motion and not always, you can't always knock you're going to be able to have more range of motion. And not always, you can't always knock all the pain out, but you can usually get rid of a lot of it.

If you were to do some squats for the day and you're just trying to figure out, like that is an annoying thing about doing leg training is that it is kind of hard to pump blood into the knee area. It's like if your elbow hurts, we know how to get blood into the triceps and biceps really easy because everyone's done these bro pump workouts forever, right? When it comes to the knee, it's like kind of harder because you're like, well, a leg extension actually kind of even hurts. Short-range VMO pulses. There we go.

Absolutely. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, yeah, little tiny movements, sometimes just done on one leg. If that one leg is hurt, then you might have to use both legs. You can do a terminal knee extension, a TKE, I believe it's called. There's all kinds of stuff that you can do. But again, the point is, is like try to find stuff that will promote putting a lot of blood into that area. And those are techniques and methods you can not only just use just for warmups in hopes

that you're able to actually do the exercise that you want to do for the day, but it's great for rehabilitation and great for prehab. Yeah. One thing I've noticed, and I think it's something that the powerlifters in the audience may not want to do this, but I think that all the bodybuilders or all the individuals who are lifting to just get stronger and get bigger in the audience are going to benefit from this. Increasing your working range of motion. And when I say range of motion, I don't mean just sitting and stretching, but the range of motion that you can work with under load, increasing that over time, your body will probably feel better. But I've found that like a lot of people have mentioned like, I don't need to warm up as much

before I get going to the gym. Now, when I say your working range of motion, for example, when doing something like a shoulder press, a lot of people will shoulder press, they'll come right here, they'll come back up and they'll stay within that range. To increase your working range of motion on any movement that you do in the gym, just slowly and don't focus on pushing the load too much. But with whatever movement you're doing, try to work within your fullest range of motion and push it a little bit in each training session. Don't push it to a place where you're like, oh, this feels unsafe or unstable. Push it a little bit in each training session. Don't push it to a place where you're like, oh, this feels unsafe or unstable.

Just push it to a place that you haven't gone to before and that you can still create some force and come out. This also means that you should probably limit the amount of load that you use because if you're not used to shoulder pressing down here, then you're not going to use 90 pounds with that even though you could use 90 pounds right here. So maybe use something like 40 or 50 pounds and come down here, slowly see how it feels. Because what you're doing is now you're increasing the range of motion that you can create a good amount of force. And by doing that, you're going to find that over time, you'll be able to get stronger within that range of motion. And you'll have more control over those ranges so that if you ever do hit those ranges with heavier loads, you're not unprotected. What happens to a lot of people is sometimes they're squatting and they get into, let's say it's a little bit heavy and they squat a little bit fast and they reach a range of motion that they're not used to going into. Their body goes into a bad position because they're not used to

that position and they pull something, they tweak something, they're doing shoulder presses, they come too far down or they're doing incline presses and they come too far down. And then something in their chest just moves the wrong way or their shoulder moves the wrong way because they're not used to being pushed or working in that range of motion. But if you have control within there, you'll find that you won't be getting as many tweaks when you do move in there. An example of that is not just Ben Patrick. Mike O'Hearn does a lot of that type of stuff. He can work with the leg squats, leg presses, et cetera, all these movements. You look at his range of motion.

I believe that's one of the big reasons why he has such longevity within this because everything he's doing, he's not only able to move a lot of load, but he's also able to move a lot of load in these crazy large ranges of motion and he has power within those positions yeah i remember watching him deadlift with you guys and i was telling mark i'm like dude he's so big but it looks like he's literally getting under the fucking bar it's like it turns into a ball dude he like yeah this is the way he's set up which is you know if you looked at it like from a power lifters perspective you'd be like oh that that's so incomprehensible inefficient yeah and it's like no but there he goes he's you know outlifting everybody it's fucking insane but we do have a question because we are live for the

first time in a long time so thank you everybody on the live uh chat right now that's kind of uh hanging out with us today uh please hit the like button uh so that way more people can see this right now but uh from yeah from pb he was just asking about just stretching in general like you know if you guys can talk about that like do you guys even bother like do you do it before after or anything like that i don't do a lot of stretching but now that i've been running it's like i feel like i have to in order to kind of like open up my uh rusty gate that I have going on over here and be able to, my rusty trombone. I was going to say that sounds sexual. Yeah.

I never understood why rusty trombone was sexual, by the way. I don't know. I'm going to Urban Dictionary it, man. Please, Urban Dictionary it. I mean, I know what it means, but it's, it's, yeah, it's interesting, interesting term. Anyway, what I wanted to mention also kind of off of what Nsema was saying is that I was saying earlier use these tiny ranges of motion. I didn't mean that you had to stay in those range of motions forever. But you want to use a small range of motion to then be able to do a larger range of motion later.

And so when you do your squat warm-ups sometimes, if other people are watching you, they might be like, that's not a squat. What are you doing? But just take your time with it. What you'll find is that even with squatting, you know, the bar and 135 pounds and not even going close to parallel, staying a couple inches above parallel, get a little bit of pump in the legs. And you're going to notice that your efficiency and the way that you move for the day is going to be way better. And you're going to also, when you get kind of potentially squished into a position that your body's not used to, you'll be able to work yourself into that range of motion, pull yourself into that range of motion yourself. It's just something really important for people to keep in mind when it comes to strength training and powerlifting. As Nsema's pointing out, you should have these working full range of motion movements. You should be able to move yourself into those ranges of motion by yourself without the weight squishing you into those positions.

However, it might take you a little bit. That's okay. You might have to warm up and take your time. it might take you a little bit and that's okay. You might have to warm up and take your time. But I don't do a lot of stretching, but all I could ever say about stretching is like, I don't, I don't see how it's ever going to hurt or hinder. I know there's some people who are like static stretching, you know, before I think people get way carried away with it. It all, it's all about context and when and how and why you're doing something. Could you potentially stretch, do an entire stretching workout for 45 minutes of your

upper body when you're training your lower body for the day? Yeah, you sure could. How, how is that going to have some sort of negative impact on the stretch reflex or whatever? But I think a lot of that stuff, uh, has just overcomplicated the fact that many of us should pay some attention to stretching and having good workable ranges of motion. Yeah, and on a note of the range of motion thing you mentioned on, short range of motion. Yeah, I totally got what you're saying because it's funny when you think about getting a pump. When you're trying to purposefully get a bicep pump or a tricep pump, I'm literally working within tricep pump. I'm working within your really fast bicep pump. I'm working here. It's like,

you're literally trying to just pump as much blood as you can into that muscle group. And it's typically easier done with a short range of motion. Um, but as far as stretching is concerned, yeah, like I'll do a few stretches or whatever before I start a workout, some very short stuff post-workout, I'll still do a few stretches, a little bit of mobility stuff. But I've been working a lot on using load to push me into positions. And when I say push me into positions,

I more so mean like, for example, a real full-range squat on my back, a high-bar squat, right? When you're doing anything like that and you're trying to reach new ranges of motion, number one, when you do it with load, it's more beneficial and more helpful for you because that load, yeah, it does help you get a little bit deeper, but now you're resisting against that when you're coming out. So the change in terms of your mobility is actually more permanent because you're using load and your muscles are contracting out of those positions.

And you want to do this with like probably lighter weight if you haven't really done it much before. Absolutely. Yeah, you're not trying to do this like if you're doing this with a shoulder press or like when I do incline presses, I'm coming all the way down here. When you're doing those movements, you don't want to use the weight that you're typically used to using because you're not used to working within those ranges of motion. But over time, you'll slowly be able to increase the weight that you're typically used to using because you're not used to working within those ranges of motion. But over time, you'll slowly be able to increase the weight that you're doing in those ranges of

motion because you're going to be getting stronger. So you're going to be getting stronger, but not only that, with a larger range of motion, you're going to stimulate more muscle fibers. So you might even get bigger using lighter load. And your body is going to overall feel better because now you have access to a lot of different positions that you're never able to get into. But not just access to them because you're stretching, but access with strength and control. And that yields a big benefit. But I still do static stretching. I still, like, a lot of people still do those Smooth Panther videos and they're still getting benefit of it.

So I still think it's useful. But, you know, people like Ben Patrick does no static stretching and he's very like, he's adamant about that. Most of the reason why he's so mobile is he does all the movements he does with a large range of motion and good control. So you can get a lot of those benefits, a majority of those benefits, if you do what we're talking about here, which is large ranges of motion, light load, control. I have to take a poop and I want you guys to let me know if you can hear it out here. Okay.

Okay. I'm going to do my best. All right. All right. So let's make sure we hear Mark's and see if we can hear Mark's poop. Got it. Well, so I can give you the urban dictionary definition of a rusty trombone. A rusty trombone.

And it's exactly what I remember. It was not based on experience, but based on what I was told. So rusty trombone, this is from urban dictionary.com. When a guy gets a rim job and a hand job at the same time from one person, looks like the giver is playing a trombone with a quote, rusty brown mouthpiece used in a sentence carol introduced bob to a rusty trombone when she stuck her tongue in his ass and tugged on his cock so visually so if you know butts in your face and then you're playing the trombone that sounds like you feel amazing trombone it sounds like it feel great ain't nothingombone. It sounds like it'd feel great. Ain't nothing wrong with that. I remember Tristan Schull at the old Super Trading was like,

man, you haven't lived until. He was something else. You haven't lived until. All right, so for all the men in the audience, apparently we got a little spotty spot in our booty holes. And there's this guy, T-Shaw. Prostate. Prostate, yeah, yeah.

Is it your prostate? I believe so. i think andrew yeah was that on um the movie road trip uh they they go to a sperm bank to donate and uh the guy that plays stifler he played the exact same character in this movie too yeah he tries to like hook up with the nurse or whatever and she puts on a you know glove and then she milks his prostate and so he's like really confused i think they cut this part out of the movie uh-huh but he was like does this mean i'm gay like what does this mean because he was like very interested in getting just trying to get all aspects of your sexual pleasure that's

yeah yeah but i've always said like after treston told me that that was like 2016 2015 he's like you gotta have a girl stick your finger in your butt i'm like only when i'm married because that i can't have any woman in these streets saying i stuck my finger up his butt like i can't just be letting that be out there my wife's gonna do that and if i like it we're keeping it in the game if i don't then we don't keep it in the game that's all i'm saving my booty holes v card for marriage seriously i'm serious like i'm keeping my booty hole virginity y'all think this is a joke i'm being perfectly real um but this is a mature manly conversation yeah we got something up there as men and we got it we got a venture with it we'll learn more about it yeah pretty soon coming up probably with oh we hear it we're sick of shit we just heard something all right but back

on track a little bit here okay let's hear it so north side yeg was just there goes mark was just asking uh what do you guys think uh as far bodybuilding, as far as healthy for you being, or sorry, I've read that totally wrong. Basically, which one's healthier for you as an athlete, bodybuilding or being an endurance athlete like triathlons and running marathons and that sort of thing? Yeah, keys. I guess I'll start this one. I think, you know, I think anything, the safety is more so how deep do you take it. You mentioned this one day when we were talking about bodybuilding. Because if bodybuilding is a very healthy thing to do for every athlete in every sport, actually, if they do an aspect of bodybuilding, which is just building muscle in certain areas, that builds your tendon strength.

And overall, you'll just become a more resilient individual because you have more muscle on your frame. But now, do you want to be a bodybuilder and take it to the pro level? When you start doing that, it can start becoming a little bit potentially, you're doing a lot of volume, you're more at risk. And the same thing when it comes to endurance athletes. Running isn't bad. Running is very helpful. But when you take it to the endurance stage, it could be something that can hamper your potential gains in other areas in terms of the amount of muscle you can build. If you're just talking general, I would yield towards bodybuilding. But I would honestly, I'd yield towards bodybuilding. But I'd say that if you just do both at a middle capacity, bodybuilding just to try to build muscle and running like you are right now to build more endurance, I think that's a very healthy mix.

But you don't have to take one over the edge. Yeah, I think with running, if you really push your heart rate a lot often, it has been shown to be fairly detrimental. So that would be the, you know, but it's also it takes a hell of an athlete to be able to get their heart rate up to like 180 and just ride that shit out. We had someone on the show that was talking about how their heart rate was just jacked and they were just plowing right through it. I don't think it was Zach Bitter, but it was some athlete like that that we had on the show. Was it Ross Edgley? It may have been. It was just wild.

We were like, what? That sounds fucking crazy. So there is a danger to being too extreme, but I think a little bit of endurance would be great for any bodybuilder, powerlifter, crossfitter, jiu-jitsu practitioner. It's good for anyone to explore. Just as I would also say it's great for people to explore lifting some weights, throwing around some weights.

So a combination of both. Why not utilize a little bit of both? Jay Cutler and there's a handful of others. I can't think of them all right now, but there's a handful of others that have taken the disciplines of bodybuilding like Jay Cutler. I believe last I checked, he still does, I think 45 minutes, three times a week on the Stairmaster. He's just like, it's part of what I like to do and it's simple enough for me. He's like, I don't really want to run and I don't want to do these other things. So he's like, but that's hard.

45 minutes a couple times a week. And I think he has the thing going pretty quick. He's not like just on there just messing around. I think he's getting a good workout in. So mixing all that stuff together, I think is, is the key. And then there also could be time periods where you shift some stuff out. Maybe in SEMA for the next couple of weeks wants to work on getting strong and maybe he puts a focus on it, but then maybe there's a competition coming up again for jujitsu. And he's like, well, that's fun. You know, doing some of the, a 700-pound deadlift is cool, but I don't necessarily need that.

I need to focus more on getting more time on the mat. Yeah, absolutely. I think we can take a lot from – you can take a lot from CrossFitters, man. I know people were doing CrossFit before. It was called CrossFit. It was just different modalities of training, right? So you did weight – like triathletes, right? That was before crossfitters, but building those skills to a reasonable level in those areas will just allow

you to be a healthier athlete. I won't say more, well, actually more resilient too, but your ability to run a mile without, actually you said you ran 40 something minutes the other day without stopping. I think I did like 10 laps. 10 laps. Around the track, two and a half miles or something. I've never run that far before. And this is the interesting thing. Like, okay, there are going to be people that hear that from you.

You're not losing muscle right now. But then there's going to be the few people in the audience that are like, it's because of TRT. Well, no. Because there's a lot of other bodybuilders I know that are also building their running skill. But they're continuing to lift weights. They're not losing any muscle. It's just how far are you taking it? Is it seeping into your progress in terms of what you're doing in the gym? Are you getting massively weak or are you feeling super fatigued with all the running you're doing? Or does it give you a level of fatigue here, but you're still able to perform in the gym? If you are, right, chances are you're continuing to gain muscle. you're continuing to get stronger, you're going to be perfectly fine.

But now you're a little bit healthier. You're much healthier. It's also putting – there's this kind of concept of when you give people ideas, you try to present the ideas so it's in somewhat of a box. Because if you just tell someone to do something and you leave it up to them to be as creative as they'd like, it would be difficult for them to interpret something so vague and be able to deliver it back to you kind of the way that you were thinking. So you box things up. This is like a principle of just like communication in general. But even with communicating with yourself, it's helpful to put things – I'm not saying to put limitations on stuff.

I'm saying to kind of box things up so that you can be more efficient. And that's exactly what running has done. It has kind of automatically made my workouts more efficient because I'm like I don't really want to be in here for a long time. Like there's no reason for me to, you know, waste time in here. So I'm either doing this kind of workout, this kind of workout, or this kind of workout. And then I just say, all right, which one is going to be? And then I'll just start going to do that one thing. And more recently, I brought deadlifts back in. I brought squats back in. And as my shoulder starts to feel a little bit better, I'll bring in some more bench pressing.

So the workouts will be short and sweet, and they kind of automatically got a nice push, and the workouts got scheduled just by adding something else in because there's only so much time in a day. So I better be efficient or I'm not going to have an opportunity to lift at all. Absolutely. to lift at all. Absolutely. Also, I guess something else we have to mention as far as not getting injured is respect all weights. Respect everything you're doing.

Andrew had a great story. But before that, like, man, I tweaked my back. It was earlier this year. Oh, yeah. I remember that. Yeah. It was stupid. It was really stupid.

I was just, you know, I was getting ready, I was doing some deadlifts, and I was just kind of rushing through my warm-up, you know, rushing through my plate, two plates, three plates, four plates, or whatever, and at two plates, I think it was 225, I tweaked my back. I was lifting it, and I come

halfway up, and it's just like, I just felt a little movement in my spine. I'm like, alright, that's going to feel that bitch, right? And it was just a, you know, I just felt a little movement in my spine. I'm like, all right, that's, that's going to, I'm going to feel that bitch. Right. And it was because I wasn't treating it like I did, like when I get to a top, you know, six or whatever, I wasn't treating it like that. I also didn't do what we were talking about at the beginning of the podcast. I just didn't get a lot of blood in that area.

I just went in cold. Typically I'm pretty good with that, but it's just one of those things where you shouldn't take the risk. You should just spend the extra time, warm that area up, do just some movement. I should have maybe done more reps with 135, maybe done 10, 15 reps with 135, get a good feeling, get a good pump there, and then move up. I would have been perfectly fine if I did that. Take your time with shit i was just gonna ask um but how do you get a lot of blood into the lower back because that's really where i know i'm fucked up but like where i hear a lot of people kind of mention you know like oh

it's the lower back it's i don't know maybe there's mid and upper back injuries but it's almost always the lower back how do we how do we protect our lower back? Lots of ways to get a good pump going in the lower back. You got, you know, things like a 45 degree, any sort of back extension piece would be great. Utilizing a band and doing some good mornings. If the range of motion on any of this stuff hurts, you know, just figure out different ways of rigging stuff up. When it comes to a band, you can actually hook a band to like a post or a pole somewhere and it could be, you know, a couple feet away from you. It can be a kind of on an angle and you could do good mornings that way. If you can't bend, sometimes you can't bend even far enough if you really hurt

your back to even just loop the damn band around like in the back of your neck and stuff like that um dumbbells you know dumbbell deadlifts like i don't know why people don't do more of those but those are fucking awesome they are and the weight gets to stay right next to you so you can actually kind of do like a hybrid deadlift slash squat type of movement um something that i have found that actually is really beneficial is to, I'll sit on a bench, kind of like in a box squat position. You know, the feet are out a little bit wide. And then from there, I'll just actually kind of shoot my butt up in the air. And then I'm, now I'm in a good morning position. And then I'll good morning myself up.

Because sometimes, like, if I come in here first thing in the morning, uh, and it's a colder day, me like thinking about like getting under the squat bar and all that stuff, it's just, I'm not going to have good feedback from that. I could go and do it, but I'm going to be like wincing and making weird faces and shit. And so I'd rather figure out like, okay, let me spend a little bit of time doing something else and I'll be warm enough. figure out like okay let me spend a little bit of time doing something else and i'll be warm enough um but back to the lower back stuff like that exercise right there uh helped me to kind of warm up my lower back um just grabbing a a plate even a 10 pound plate and just moving in a like kind of

some sort of deadlift fashion with it would be uh good and just there's a lot of different machines that you can utilize. And let's not forget about the big three, you know, from Stuart McGill. Those are fantastic. Things like planks and bird dogs and side planks and stuff like that are all fantastic. I was thinking of a – first off, I was thinking of a bacon thing you mentioned, but we'll talk about that later. Yeah, bacon burger. Yeah, but there's two movements I actually oddly like I know it's not a lower back movement but the

seated mid back row the seated row I like actually doing that and what I'll usually do is I'll usually try to lean back a little bit and actually I'll lean into my lower back and I'll row like this I'll try to contract my lower back and I'll row like this and I try I'll try to contract my lower back when doing it um so I'll like on a seated row most people are

seated here or they're sometimes leaning forward I'll lean into my back so it feels it feels like I'm contracting it and I'll row into it continuously I get a really good pump my lower back doing that and something with no weight but you'll look kind of interesting in your gym doing it, is the supermans. You guys know those supermans on the ground where you go like that and you come up. Those are tough. They're tough. Great exercise. Exactly. When you get up from that, you're going to feel, again, you're going to feel a lot of activation in your lower back. And another one is the, I don't know what Doug Brignoli calls it, but it's those, do you know what they're called? I don't know what they're called, but yeah, that's, I do try to do them, but like my back is so fucked up. I can't even do them. Some people feel like a lack of activation with that. Like that's when

you really have to pay attention. Yeah. Um, he recommends it doing two ways. You can sit like at the end of a box and basically you can hold either a dumbbell or no weight and you're basically doing what you're doing on the row. But you're just holding the weight right here, and you're forward, and then you're up. But what I found that helped me was actually just like putting my butt high up on like the pad over here or just on the wall. And then kind of doing it that way where you're down, kind of letting yourself go a little bit, and then really bringing everything back up. It does work. Like I said, it hurts me, so I haven't been able to do it. So that's why I was trying to figure out some other ways to get bringing everything back up. It does work. Like I said, it hurts me,

so I haven't been able to do it. So that's why I was trying to figure out some other ways to get some blood back there. What you said about the row is amazing. That is unbelievable. I totally forgot about upper body exercises, but the fastest way to warm yourself up is through your upper body. And a great way to ensure that you have warmed up any body part is just to get your overall body temperature up. So you could potentially use the Assault bike and just go on there and go at a pace that's reasonable when you first start. And then maybe every 30 seconds, maybe you push hard for like five.

You're just warming up. You're just trying to get the body moving. And then another thing, this was kind of a weird one that I found can really help pump a lot of blood into you. You don't really feel it pumping blood into your lower back, but I've noticed that my lower back feels way better after doing it, and that's leg extensions. I'm not sure why. I don't know what the deal is. I'm not sure if it's just because your heart's like, hey, we got to get blood down towards that lower half down there.

Let's send it that way. Do two, three sets of leg extensions and get your legs burning like a motherfucker. Have them burn pretty good. Do maybe a couple drop sets or something like that. For me, I noticed that right away my back is loosened up a little bit yeah yeah i was gonna say my son is really good at doing those supermans when he's on the ground he fucking he freaks out that shit's tough and then also what really fires up my back in a bad way but i could definitely see like it would be a good back pump is just changing his diapers

holy shit because you're just like right here and you're trying to like make sure he doesn't fall off the thing, trying to make sure you don't get shit everywhere. It's a, it's terrible. I like doing the dishes. Yeah. Doing the dishes is really bad too.

That's more painful though. While you were talking, Mark, I was thinking, cause I was starting to get hungry and you were mentioning that you had those, um, you had those patties that had bacon inside of them.

I was just like, when I get home, because I have the hot patty sitting out right now. Oh, fatty patties. I think I'm going to go to the store. I'm going to purchase some bacon, and I'm going to wrap it around the patties, and then I'm going to cook it. You mad, man.

Yeah, because like, oh, fuck. After you said that, I was just like, I need to implement some bacon into my burgers and not just put it on top. I'm going to chef it up, man. It's going to be awesome. Pete Montese has some of the greatest stuff ever. They really do, though. I'm so pumped.

They don't have the bacon and ground beef burger, but maybe not yet. Maybe we'll work on it with them to make it. They just have some ridiculous stuff. That standing rib roast, like my brother has been talking, like we ate it at Thanksgiving. And then right away, as soon as Thanksgiving was over, like we need it for Christmas and we need it for New Year's. And like we're all fired up and excited about it.

Yeah. But the best, I believe the best ribs that you'll ever have are also from Piedmontese. So if you're someone that likes ribs or if you're somebody that doesn't like ribs and you're like, I don't get enough meat every time I have ribs, get some ribs from Piedmontese. They're fucking huge. And they're just unbelievable. They are so, god damn, I get excited talking about it. They're so good.

It is so good. Yeah, literally. talking about it. It's so good. It is so good. Yeah, literally, I feel like, as far as companies that have been able to work

with Piedmontese, we've been working them for a while now. And we're just so happy that we've been able to get on them. Because when you compare their meat to a lot of others,

there's not, in terms of macros, in terms of like, yeah, it's like, they got them cows right. And we help blow them up too like uh me and my brother and and being part of this podcast has been huge the bovette stakes and stuff like that it's like we really screwed up because can't even barely get them anymore

my dad's all mad about it my dad's like he's like like actually he's really mad he's like pounding his fist on my counter the other day he's like those damn bovettes he's like he's like like actually he's really mad he's like pounding his fist on my counter the other day he's like those damn bovets he's like i keep waiting i keep checking the site and they're not there he's like i don't know what's going on with that dude my son's like hey my son loves the bovets too like yeah those are his because they're like i don't do they're all the meats really tender but for some reason those ones like we're able to like really like peel it off and then give it to him and he gets super fired up. It's like the coolest thing ever.

Like just being able to see him eat steak. But yeah, we wouldn't steer you guys wrong. Uh, you guys have to have to go get some Piedmontese beef as soon as possible. Um, yeah, just,

it's amazing. So head over to piedmontese.com. That's P I E D M O N T E Sese.com. That's P-I-E-D-M-O-N-T-E-S-E.com. And at checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 25% off your entire order. That's crazy. And then if your order is $150 or more, you get free two-day shipping. Again, Piedmontese.com, promo code POWERPROJECT. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes.

Let's switch gears just a little bit. Still talking about injuries, but let's kind of talk upstream and downstream. If you have an injury in a particular area, like let's say your shoulder bothers you a lot, there's a lot of utility. It can be really, really helpful to

do something like work on your grip, which might be something that you're not even it's just like not registering with you that your fingers and your forearm and even like certain parts of the bicep and tricep, they all have to do certain things when you hold a good weight in your hand. Everything has to contract. And so when your shoulder hurts, it's good to work your biceps. It's good to work your triceps.

It's good to work your biceps. It's good to work your triceps. It's good to work your grip. And then also you can start to say, okay, well, you know, again, the front of my shoulder hurts. Maybe there's some stuff I can do for the back. Maybe there's another thing that's interesting too, is sometimes you have incredible pain in the front of your shoulder and it will hurt. Like when you go to bench press, you'll feel it as you come down about three quarters of the way. You're like,, my God, that sucks. What you'll notice, though, is that you can go and do a row, and it's almost the same exact motion. And there's no pain because there's not the same amount of, like, stress on the shoulder. So maybe you can mimic the movement that you're looking to go and do again by getting in some good range of motion via doing some other type

of exercises. And again, you know, kind of thinking of the knee, if the knee hurts a lot and you can't do any sort of extending of the knee, you actually might not, might be looking at it the wrong way. You actually can do some extension of the knee because every time you do a leg curl, your leg would straighten and your leg would bend just in the very same way. Now, it's not working the same muscles, but it's a way I noticed for myself having knee tendonitis in my right knee for 7,000 years that some leg curls really help that issue to dissipate before my workouts. Absolutely. And, you know, you talked about the grip, but let's also talk about the feet a little bit.

A lot of injuries can probably be caused because of- I'd rub your feet, by the way, just so you know. I care about you that much. Thank you. No, I'd rub all your feet in here, man. I've been told I give good foot massages. God, that would be great for all three of us just to sit down like this. Sit in a circle and just-

Rub each other's feet. I'm too ticklish. You are? Yeah. I'm a little ticklish, too, but I would, you know, I'd still give it up. Man up for us, man. My cankles, though, always have huge knots in my ankles. Yeah.

That shit feels great. Sometimes it, like, sends a shocking pain all the way up to like my hip though like it's pretty bad i don't know why what else do you want us to we want to keep working our way up yeah you could just follow the calves follow the like the shock wave all the way through it goes right to my just kidding right to the anus oh well you know what let me when he went to the bathroom oh yeah that went down oh the rusty trombone i heard that the rusty trombone i'll get back to what i was talking about feet after this but man i was gassy it wasn't even that much like poop it was just like oh yeah but man that felt so good i was really like knotted up i think

we heard you fart in there i think we heard you fart in there um can't wait for susan brant to come on to the show because you want to read what a rusty trombone is one more time. You know what it is. I lost it. Basically getting a rim job while getting a tug job. Yeah. So you know Treston Schell. Oh, I thought it was a little different than that.

Oh, what'd you think it was? I thought it was getting a blow job after anal. No. Because that sounds a little more rusty to me. Oh! Yeah. No. Oh! No, because it simulates like you're

playing a trombone yeah i thought it was atm that's dirty nope nope it's uh it has to happen at the same time to be officially a rusty trombone trust the show uh at the old super trading. He was talking about how he's like, yeah, I love getting my booty eaten and sometimes my lady will stick her finger in it. And I was just like,

Tristan, he's like, don't knock it until you try it and see. I'm like, you know what? Because he said there's a spot up there. You know what I mean?

I was like, all right, well, when I get married, I'm going to have my wife do that at least once because, you know, I'm not going to do that before I'm married. Cause I can't have people in these streets saying they stuck their finger on my butt.

Yeah. You don't want people running around town. Yeah. But, but, but there's all kinds of crazy shit about it. You don't want your booty hole to be a hoe. Yeah. Yeah. I'm keeping my booty hole virginity.

Um, but I just, uh, yeah. What do you think about? We got issues, yo. Hey man, whatever feels good. Go for it. You know? I can't wait for us to dive into, like, I can't wait for season to come because I'm going to learn a lot about you.

We're going to learn a lot about you. There's not much more to know. I'm a dirtbag. All dudes are, right? I think so. Yeah, we're all just fucking filthy yeah this is true but the feet the feet need to be really strong um because like especially with like the shoes that you wear and it's if you don't walk a lot um most people have really weird not even weird it's normal

nowadays to have your feet kind of crunched in because of the shoes you wear smashed together all smashed together but the problem with that is that fucks with your force production. Now you're thinking of trying to produce force through your feet when you're squatting, when you're deadlifting, even when you're benching and trying to create leg drive. The force you create isn't as good. So number one, doing something like wearing actually flat, more so maybe some minimal shoes, feels uncomfortable initially, right?

But it will help your feet get stronger over time, right? And then secondly, doing things like I've been loving doing more sled work because that's been one thing that really allows you to really produce force through your feet and strengthen your feet more than a lot of other movements that you're going to try to do in the gym. If you can get yourself a sled that you really push, heavy sled pushes, you don't even have to run with it. Just walk and push, create force through the feet.

That'll strengthen the feet, which will then have really good upstream effects on your knees, glutes, that lower back, all those things. Yeah, I think, I want to say, maybe I saw Shannon Penna, Ron Penna's wife. She posted about the yoga toe thing. Oh, yeah, I got some of those.

And I think, you know, sometimes maybe it's a little inconvenient to, like, pop those things on and stuff. But our feet really are compromised. They really are smashed together. And if you're looking at your feet and your pinky toe has become, like, best friends with the other toe next to it and they're all, like, hugging up on each other, best friends with the other toe next to it and they're all like hugging up on each other you might want to look into something like that to get the toes to kind of relax a little bit and just figure out ways of maybe getting out of your shoes a little bit more for some training it's like i feel kind of uncomfortable pushing the sled without anything because like we have the turf and it just is like kind of it's almost like kind of slippery at a certain point. But you want to try to find

as many different training methods as you can where you don't have your shoes on. Yeah. If possible. And they don't sponsor us. I'm going to let you guys know about them. That company, Vivo, their shoes. They got great shoes, yeah.

Their barefoot shoes, their training shoes, I think they're called the Primus Lights or whatever. Very good. I have some of their hiking shoes. I purchased these, by the way, guys. Like I purchased these shoes. Their think they're called the Primus lights or whatever. Very good. I have some of their hiking shoes. I purchased these by the way, guys, like I purchased these shoes. Um,

they're hiking shoes. Good. But the thing is, is that they're wide, uh, and they have a minimal soul. So your feet are feeling everything and doing the work rather than, you know,

a lot of these shoes that, you know, have a, have a lot, they're super comfortable. They're, they're super padded, but they're also narrow.

Like I can't wear narrow shoes without a level of discomfort these days, you know? So that's why all the shoes I usually wear, even when I wear my frickin' Crocs,

they're great because they're wide. And I don't understand how Vivo, those shoes, they don't look like clown shoes the way some other

like barefoot shoes do. Yeah, where they're wider, yeah. They somehow look, I don't know, they look normal. Still aesthetic. Yeah, where they're wider, yeah. They somehow look normal. Still aesthetic. Yeah, they still look good. And I forgot, there's another brand. I think it's called Xero.

Yeah, spelled with an X, yeah. X-E-R-O. I saw a guy, Jason Lane, he does a lot of the KOT stuff and breathing stuff. But those shoes also look pretty good, too. These are two companies that have barefoot shoes that actually look good. There's a lot of other companies that make barefoot shoes and you're just like, I don't want to be seen in public with those on.

But Vivo and Xero, great shoes. You guys should check them out. Yeah, to look more aesthetic, a lot of times a shoe comes in super narrow. And if you ever like, I mean, just flip your shoe over and look at the bottom of it and look at the bottom of your foot they don't look the same at all like you're like that just doesn't like

mathematically like there's no scenario where that would work out unless you had like really really tiny skinny feet or something if you're real petite maybe yeah yeah and you look like and this is another thing you look at like um indigenous people's feet like you were showing me that picture from that one guy. Yeah. Doing those squats. Yeah. And his feet, you do a double take on the feet because you're like, those are hands, I think.

They look like freaking hands. That's how our feet are supposed to be. Our feet are supposed to be able to, like, we don't have to be able to do all the things that we do dexterity with our hands. But our feet should be able to spread, grip, grab. Like, we're supposed to be able to have pretty powerful feet, but most of us, because of the shoes we've worn over the years, most Americans don't have strong feet, and that's probably leading to a lot of lower back issues, knee injuries, et cetera. And you could reverse that if you start taking care of them and strengthening them.

So I got so many questions about shin splints. Since I started running, people have tons of questions about it. I'm like, I don't have any issue with it. You know, I've been training. Tib raises, right? Yeah, tib raises. You know, luckily for me, I did a lot of the knees over toes stuff, you know, well before I started running.

And then even before I ran into Ben Patrick, I've been doing things like dragging the sled and I've been doing a lot of activities that not necessarily work like the tibialis in particular, but things that like inadvertently would work your whole entire like lower leg. And just being an athlete too. I think that sometimes, because I was an athlete so long ago that people kind of probably forget, but when I was a kid, I did a lot of stuff and it required a lot of change of direction. And there's a lot of, uh, a lot of strengthening of the ankles and of the feet and of your shins and calves, uh, whenever you're doing pretty much any sport where you're

like running and moving around. So anyway, um, to think about injuries in terms of upstream, downstream stuff, and it's been really beneficial for me to do some tibialis work. I don't really mess with – I see that we have the individual one. That one lit my foot. I like it. That one lit me up the other day. Yeah. It's like – what is it called?

It's like a tip braze machine or something? It's a single leg tip bar, but it's from the Home Gym Guys. Let's see. Yeah, it's from the Home Gym Guys. It's a pretty cool product. And man, it doesn't take much weight to fatigue you on an exercise like that. Yeah, yeah. Guys, check out the Home Gym Guys on Instagram.

You can grab that single leg tip bar. It's not super expensive. Yeah, yeah. Guys, check out the Home Gym Guys on Instagram. You can grab that single leg tip bar. It's not super expensive. But the great thing about it is that with the single leg tip bar, with the dual leg, I found that when I was doing the single leg, one of my tips is a little bit weaker than the other. But with the one that you do with both legs, I was compensating with one of my legs that was stronger and pumping out those reps when my other one fatigued. So the single leg allows you to strengthen both tibs

to the same, like, you know, you'll have one that's weaker. So it'll, it'll work that out for you. Um, again, it's, I'm, I've been loving it because it's been super helpful for my knee. Uh, I don't like, I mean, I don't run as much as Mark does, but as I've been adding running into my routine, I'm not getting any type of shin discomfort. And I was doing some really deep squatting the other day and really driving my knees over my toes. And I know that the tip strengthening that I've been doing has actually been super helpful for helping me to be able to drive into that position. I'll show you what I'm talking about. Yeah, you can actually do like a tibialis raise as you're doing a squat. Yeah.

It's kind of a weird thing, but it's almost like you're mentally, you're trying to like lift your toes, but you don't have to really lift them. You just try to lift them as you're going down. It will flex that bottom part of your foot and you'll feel your knees bend like way easier. And you know how we were talking about greater ranges of motion or being strong within greater ranges of motion. Think about what's, what you're doing with the tibialis bar, the single leg tibialis bars, um, getting your ankle into that deep position and moving yourself back. But now it's with load. So what this is going to allow, it's going to allow for you when you're squatting and you're, you, you lack that ankle mobility. You're actually able to move into

deeper positions because you have more ankle mobility because you've been strengthening it with the tibialis raises. Tibialis raises move your ankle within those ranges with load. So now you're going to be able to move in and out of those ranges in an easier motion, which might not be, for a lot of people, ankle mobility is a limiting factor in terms of their squat. So this will help increase your ankle mobility and also ankle strength. Another thing that could help prevent injuries. Oh, I noticed when I was using that machine that it was like forcing my foot forward and I was getting a stretch in the tibialis, but also getting a stretch. I could even feel it in the back of my, almost like Achilles as you're doing the range of motion.

So it felt really good. On top of that, you know, there's that, that exercise, you know, if you're, if you're not into like purchasing a bunch of stuff, you can also just lean up against the wall. There's plenty of videos of, uh, Ben Patrick, uh, demonstrating him just leaning up against the wall, just put your butt up against the wall and just raise, raise your toes up. And you do that like 20 times. And next thing you know, your shins are on fire. Do a couple sets of that and you'll get some pretty good response out of it. More recently, I bought some ankle weights and I've been doing, I know we have like the monkey foot thing as well and you can hook a dumbbell to it.

I got some ankle weights and I just utilized them the other day and did a bunch of different stuff. Just did some leg raises, did some kind of like kickback type of deal, type of thing. And all that stuff, it's just getting like a lot of blood into areas where maybe you don't really work individually or even independently. And it just felt really good. So if you have a knee problem and you start to go upstream and downstream, it's like, well, we start with the feet and then you work your way up into the hip if you're working all those things the odds of you being able to fix yourself and to start to feel a lot better are going to be massively increased plus if you keep all those areas strong then when if you're doing a sport especially

something like jiu-jitsu it's going to be you'll be a lot more resilient to injury that stretch sounds like it would feel amazing but it does feel good yeah the one thing that i noticed when we were doing well when i was doing i don't know if you guys are still doing but like the 10 minute squats just like the the prolonged squats my my tibs and my ankles would be like they would probably be the most fatigued out of everything and i just accredited it to just trying to balance myself, but it could be just because of weak tibs. Yeah. Cause when you're in a squatting position,

your, your tib is now activated. You're tibial, like, cause when you bring your toes towards your body, you're activating your tibs. Well, when you're squatting,

you're bringing your knees over your toes, which activates your tibialis, right? And if you have weak tibs, that position is going to be very uncomfortable for you to sit in and then you're going to have to come out of it. So a lot of people, when they're sitting in a squat position for a long period of time, one of the things is like, ooh, my ankle and my tibs are feeling fried. But yeah, that's why, yeah, the tib bar is severely underrated and it's a piece of equipment

that if you have a garage gym or if you want to take it to your gym or even if you just want to do it at home and have a few plates that you use at home with, it's something that you should have. Yeah. When you're watching TV. Yeah. When we went on that extremely vigorous short run a while back when we were trying to catch up to that guy that's always jogging around the area my tibs were shot dude i had shin splints and all that shit i was dude i was like really can't believe how sore i am like the next day like we ran like half a lap i don't even know what it was but like i remember i was pretty torched after that quick little run yeah like wow i am just not healthy that's a piece of equipment that's going to help a lot of people's knees.

A lot of people's knees and a lot of people's ankles. That one thing. You got to give it a shot then. Yeah. Yeah. Want to take us on out of here, Andrew? Sure thing. Before we do, y'all, step up your clothing game.

Ah, yes. We partnered with a really cool clothing brand, Viore Clothing. I went on a shopping spree. Oh, you did? I did. I bought a lot of Christmas presents. Nice. There we go.

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saying that you're going to receive 20% off. Links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. And I'll go ahead and just wrap things up. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode. If you guys are still here on the live chat, please hit that like button if you guys are digging today's episode.

And if you're catching it after the live feed, please hit that like button if you guys appreciate anything that was said today. i'll leave a comment down in the comment section below let us know what you guys liked the most and 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 i've been talking a lot about halo shit on twitter so if you guys are into video games hit me up there it's been a lot of fun because Halo's been amazing. And Seema,

where are you at? I'm Seema Enyang on Instagram and YouTube and Seema Enyang on TikTok and Twitter, Mark. I'm wearing the Viore, I think they're jeans, but I don't know what they call them

on their website, but they're super nice. They're kind of- I think that's the Meta Pants, M-E-T-A-N-A. Yeah. They're kind of- That's my shit.

They're kind of like maroonish, I guess I would say. They're super comfortable. They're also like really lightweight. Like, I guess I would say. They're super comfortable. They're also like really lightweight. I mean, I wouldn't normally try to like run in these, but if I just forgot my normal stuff, I could go for a run in them. It's nice to have jeans that have like some four-way stretch. I know there's a lot of companies that make that nowadays,

but these are comfortable. I think they look good. They're also not like some of the jeans nowadays are like just insanely tight. And like, I don't mind like wearing a little tight here and there, but like, you know, I don't want to show everything all the time, you know? So anyway, I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch y'all later. Bye.