Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 672 - Knees Over Toes Guy & Mr. 1nf1n1ty: Keys To Longevity And Keeping A Young Body

Episode Date: February 4, 2022

Today we are joined by Ben Patrick aka Knees Over Toes Guy and Derek Williams aka Mr. 1nf1n1ty!! Ben is the CEO and founder of the ATG, Athletic Truth Group. Ben had struggled with knee and shin pain for years during his basketball career. After several surgeries, Ben dedicated himself to researching and discovering the best methods to recover from his injuries. Derek is a former professional basketball player that was also plagued with injuries and felt there was something missing in the fitness industry. After researching and discovering methods for longevity, Derek is more athletic at 43 years old than he's ever been his whole life. Ben and Derek have been learning from each other and both have similar training philosophies. ATG For Life book: https://amzn.to/3HueQIz Knee Ability Zero book: https://amzn.to/3sdIqM9 Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://eatlegendary.com Use Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢Bubs Naturals: https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢Vertical Diet Meals: https://verticaldiet.com/ Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% off your first order! ➢Vuori Performance Apparel: Visit https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order! ➢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! ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code POWER 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 00:00 - Episode Preview 01:33 - BubsNaturals.com Code: PowerProject to save 20% off 02:31 - Best natural athletes don’t need to diet 04:28 - Mr. 1nf1n1ty’s diet for longevity 09:27 - Pain is your body asking for help 13:51 - How Ben Patrick eats 17:15 - Performing at a high level while fasted 19:45 - Mr. 1nf1n1ty origin story 26:15 - Only NOW exists 28:05 - Pain is the ultimate mentor 30:32 - Ben thought he was a loser at age 20 33:24 - How not to feel like a loser 35:31 - How Ben didn’t lose belief in himself 38:23 - How Mr. 1nf1n1ty found mentors 40:19 - Parents’ belief in their kids goes a LONG way 43:04 - Connecting with teenage sons 47:49 - How can parents filter out mind viruses? 53:05 - How Mark learned to deflect 59:16 - Does Mark still experience fear? 1:02:25 - How Ben stays motivated, appreciative & excited 1:12:21 - 7 Steps for training for longevity 1:17:24 - How long has Mr. 1nf1n1ty been p

Relying on your own body to come up with the answers to lean you in the right direction of what's going to be right for you And that's exactly what ben has done with his knees. I being would not be knees over toes guys He didn't go through hell. I thought it was a failure in life at age 20 Failure at life. Wow. Derek's 43. We just put out a book together If you're in your 20s or your 30s or whatever you have time you're not like You you're not because you're 30 or whatever years old or 35 years old you have time to make shifts and meet the right people what do

you think helped you not lose belief in yourself because it sounds like you've thought you were a loser your knees were banged up um it seemed like everything was just like nothing was going to come true for you out of any of the things that you wanted to do. I just want to be an example. You know, I want to be an example for my sons. And I want them to have somebody that they respect and look up to. Kids are going to be kids. They're going to be like, oh, you can't do that because you're not this, you're not that.

So how do you keep their belief alive? And how do you block out all the noise? Mark sent me one of his favorite hamstring exercises, that dumbbell. That thing is golden, that sort of dumbbell RDL where the intention is not necessarily the weight, but the length. That quality, when you can strengthen through length, through the

stretch, it appears to be exponential for reducing injuries. That's the exciting thing. How old are you? I'm 29. I turn 30 in September. Yeah, you're going to be one of the best. I mean, you already are one of the best all-around athletes on the planet. Everything you say just completely checked out to be wrong. Power Project Family, how's it going?

Now, on this podcast, Mark Andrew and I, we talk about fasting a lot. We talk about the ketogenic diet and a lot of different types of diets. But Bubz Naturals has a product. They have the collagen protein, which is amazing. They have these apple cider vinegar gummies, which are like crack, but they have these MCT oil powder packets that I've never used to do this, but in the morning I'll wake up and I'll put it in coffee. And the smoothness, number one, in terms of the mixing is amazing, but the consistency of my energy through the day because of the MCT oil powder is peak. Andrew, how's your experience with that?

Yeah, no, that's exactly it. It's like the best way to start the day. You're satiated, you're energized, and you're just ready to crush the day. So if you guys want to get in on this MCT oil powder, head over to bubsnaturals.com and at checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your entire order. Again, bubsnaturals, promo code POWERP code power project to save 20 off your entire order

again bubs natural's promo code power project to save 20 off links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes we're talking about um athletes and we're talking about the importance not even just athletes but just people in general the importance of diet and what it could potentially improve um we were watching uh donna her the coach, Donaher Death Squad, and he was kind of saying that he didn't think that nutrition mattered that much because of what he's seen. You know, he's seen so many of his athletes be great without adhering to a particular protocol, but there could be some flaws in that. Yeah. I mean, I've lived as a terrible athlete, and now, at least for my sport, what people would call a freak athlete.

So what I noticed is that the best natural athletes didn't ever have a need to diet. So it's kind of associating the greatest genetic freaks with less good diets. And then the guys who naturally aren't as athletic are trying to get there. So there's no doubt that your nutrition is going to affect your body. And could that athlete be even better? Sure, they could. But why change something if you don't need to change it? That's always the thing about trying to figure out what's optimal.

I remember at Westside Barbell, they used to say they did some surveys of the guys, which who knows how the guys filled them out and stuff like that. They probably didn't care. But Dave Tate surveyed them to see how much protein they ate and to see how often they ate. And the numbers were terrible. These are 300-pound dudes squatting over 1,000 pounds, bench pressing over 800 pounds. And it was rare for anybody to have eaten more than about 150 grams of protein in a day. And then their carbs, they didn't really have any.

They didn't even know how many. They didn't know a lot of stuff. You would figure they would know. They would have a lot of information on what they did, but they at least knew approximately how much meat they ate. So they were able to say, yeah, I think I eat about this much. I eat like two burgers a day or something. But their diets were horrific,

but that doesn't mean that having a horrific diet is going to make you a great power lifter yeah and actually i'm curious about this mr infinity what's your actual name though derrick okay i want people to understand i call you all the time and it says mr infinity people can't know his real identity no i'm rather than that but i think that you'd have really good insight on this because like you look like you're 26 how old are you actually i'm 43 i'll be 44 this year you're 44 this year so i'm curious like what is your take on like number one nutrition for athletes but then also how do you think it affects longevity because obviously if people look up

videos on your instagram they look at the things that you're doing with your single arm hangs and all this crazy shit at 43 years old, you're moving like a guy in his mid-20s. So how big of a deal do you think it is for an elite-level athlete and for yourself? It's funny, man. One thing I do not talk a lot about is diet and nutrition because so many people have so – it's almost religious for a lot of people, man.

You know, and so many people, when they learn something, they hold on to it. Like it's almost so, so really I try to stay away from that conversation, man. But I'll talk about it here if you guys want to. But I just learned over my life, man, everybody is at a different consciousness level, man. And depending on where you're at consciously, it kind of like correlates to where you, where

your diet is at, you know? Um, so for me personally, all I can do is talk for myself because everybody's different. Everybody's body's different. Everybody comes from a different climate. Everybody's background, different ancestrally. So, um, and everybody in, in food in general is so much money involved in it and and it's so much marketing involved everybody is wants to like sell their products and say my diet is better and then you need this and you need that and it's so it's so convoluted you know and um me i i just i try to

like ben said yesterday man the future is unwritten. As we go along, we are creating a future as we go. And all three of you guys, y'all on the leading edge of creation right now. And I feel like I try to tune into my intuition, my consciousness as much as I can for me to know what to eat, when to eat, and how to eat. And I know that's a lot to say. I'm trying to, like, almost avoid the question. I'm like, slow to eat, and how to eat. And I know that's a lot to say. I'm trying to almost avoid the question. I'm like, slow it in, man. But, I mean, for longevity, man,

you got to be conscious about what you put in your body. You can't be walking around eating starches and going to McDonald's and eating a lot of toxic foods and think that you're going to be able to think clearly, think your body is going to have the output that you want. You know, you got to be conscious. And I'm not saying you got to have a perfect diet. And I'm not saying that when you're young, like I'm thinking when we was all young, we

probably could eat whatever we wanted and get out there and hoop and jump and flip, you know. But man, that shit adds up, man. You'll meet like a compound interest either way back or forward is going to add up. So that's kind of my avoiding the question. So you pretty much stay away from processed foods. You stay away from processed foods

is the big thing that I heard there, right? Yeah, for me, I could talk about my personal diet. Yeah, I'm curious. Yeah, so I do intermittent fasting. Yeah, yeah. So I do intermittent fasting. Okay. I try not to eat a lot.

I'm not saying I don't eat, but I mean, I eat whatever. But I try not to eat a lot of processed foods. Try to stay away from a lot of starches. You know, that didn't really work for my body. What does fasting help you with? For you, personally. Fasting helps me, just to be think clear. My body's not busy digesting foods, man.

All that blood I can use to be thinking, you know, because a lot of times when you're digesting, when your body's all constantly digesting foods and that blood, your blood got to go somewhere. The blood's going here and we got a second brain in our gut. So it's going to be down there in our gut. Like, you know what I'm saying? So fasting helps me just think clearly, be better, more athletic, just get dialed in, you know? And I got two sons. I work.

I run three businesses. I got a gym. You got two sons? Yeah, I got two. I got a 19- to 16-year-old. And so I don't got time to be thinking about food all day. You know what I'm saying? And I go out and get nature and deep breathing and meditation and i feel like people can't sell those so they're not marketed but

to me those are form of those that's nutrition when i'm going out like when mark you doing your walks man it's it's 99.9 of what's going on we can't even see and so there's things in the air that we picking up when you're breathing you know i'm saying so and so i i try to tap in and tune into those um those subtle energies i like to say so yeah i know y'all looking at me crazy as fuck right now it seemed to push me into a corner right now i'm fighting out right now everything you said just completely checked out to be wrong. What's your education background? Basketball player.

I have a college degree from Indiana University, just a communications degree. And then just the self-taught, man. You know what I mean? Pretty much self-taught. Yeah, I mean, I think you can see that the life experiences, I think, are outshining the education that you probably had because of what you, the stuff that you just said was very intuitive. Like, and it was awesome. And it's stuff that resonates with me a lot.

Most of what everything is made up of is space. It's not made up of stuff. It's not made up of things. You know, The atmosphere, the universe, space itself, I mean, it's enormous. So I find that line of thinking to be really fascinating. But what I also find fascinating, when you said intuition, how you're kind of like, you're, I guess, relying on your own body to come up with the answers to lean you in the right direction of what's going to be right for you. And that's exactly what Ben has done with his knees. You know, he probably cried a lot, probably complained a lot, probably was really frustrated, probably a dark time in your life.

I mean, I sometimes don't think people understand when your health is compromised, especially towards something that you really, truly love and enjoy. towards something that you really truly love and enjoy, depression, anxiety, all kinds of things can kind of seep in at those times because you place such high value on playing a game like basketball or something like that. And when those things are taken away from you, it's really hard. But in that case, your health is compromised, right? Your knees hurt. So when your knees hurt and you have all that pain, it's harder to think more clearly. If you're eating cupcakes and donuts and snacks and processed foods often, and you're also getting overweight, you're not what you used to be.

You haven't run in a long time. You haven't sprinted in a long time. Your body doesn't work the same way. Maybe you tweaked your knee or your back or whatever it might be. Just on this downward trajectory and then how are you supposed to have intuition at that point like you obviously at that point you don't know what's a good you don't know what's good for you if you did you would like work towards making a change if you clean up your diet you start to eat foods that are more natural it's

a lot easier to be more in tune with what your body's trying to speak to you because your body is trying to yell at you and the whole time that you dealt with your knees for many many years your body kept telling you over and over again dude you have all the answers inside you somewhere you better figure this shit out yourself yeah um someone told me once that it's like your body's giving you a communication, you know? And so are you shutting it up or are you listening to it? And so it can be like that with your knee. So if your response to the knee pain is ice, painkiller,

you know what I mean? Avoid it. So you're, it's almost, you're, you're telling your body to shut up and numb it. Yeah. And I think it's, I think it's similar with the food.

Now I can verify that, um, Derek is insanely disciplined with his diet and where we actually connected is because we would see each other play and pick up basketball or something like that this was 10 years ago when i would like try to get playing hurt my knee i was fat you know a little knock nady you're good enough but then we would see each other at like the health food store. Oh, wait.

So he's been the most health conscious guy I know about what he puts in his body. And I would know because even once we were working out together, it was like we'd be like, yeah, talking about diet or whatever. Like, oh, yeah, I had a cheap meal. He'd be like, yeah, me too. He'd be like, yeah, I had like an almond flour cookie last night. I'd be like, I had like an almond flour cookie last night i'd be like i had like pizza and ice cream and so and so i know that he's yeah he's the most conscious i've seen about what he puts in his body so any feedback his body's giving him yeah he's pretty in tune with that and he gets

sunlight every day you know what i mean um those are the two things i can verify is he doesn't put junk into his body get gets sunlight every day. I've never actually seen him eat, though. Is this man quite literally living off of air? He's living off the stuff we can't see. None of my friends have either, my mom and dad. No one has actually seen him eat. We just know that he's not putting any junk into his body.

So for me, that was a major... It's who you surround yourself with. Do you use some intermittent fasting too? Or do you just kind of end up there because you work all day? I'll give you mine. So Derek's was like 15 minutes, and we actually didn't establish anything that he eats. Mine will go 30 seconds of exactly what I eat. I do this. I do a, it's called strong

coffee. It's like 15 grams of collagen protein and it's only 120 milligram of caffeine. So it's like we had the creator on the show, right? He told me to say hi. Yeah. And so I have one or two scoops of that in the morning. That way I don't want to have to stop and eat breakfast. I don't want to wait. That thing's instant. I'm lazy. I want to just get working. You know what I mean?

And so that's what I do in the morning. And then we go pretty hard in the morning because we film, we work out. Yeah. And we'll have guests come in. And so once that finishes, I actually go to like a local place and I get a steak and eggs. I either do that or I get like a rotisserie chicken.

One of those two. Because either way, either the rotisserie chicken, I can just grab it, go home, or the steak and eggs, I can sit there and then be like catching up on my mess, like start scripting for the next day.

I'm always planned for each day. So the instant coffee with 15 to 30 gram collagen protein, 10 ounce steak with three eggs or a whole rotisserie, but it's from the health food store. So it's not like that huge rotisserie. It's like a medium size rotisserie with paleo. Have you seen that paleo hot sauce?

Paleo something hot sauce. It's pretty good. They put some honey in there. It's actually kind of like a sweet. It's not that spicy. And then- it's i forget what that's called too yeah paleo chef i believe it's called okay and then for dinner what i do my strategy with dinner is whatever like the protein is whether we're eating out or ordering in or cooking at home or some i just have two servings of the protein which makes me less likely to crave the starches

i don't do any starches. And then I like to study and see what's the seasonal fruit, and I'll pound like a plate for like a king of fruit. That's like my dessert every night. That's smart. And I'll pound fruit for dessert. But you focus on like what season is like this season for this fruit, and that's the fruit you use. Right, so right now oranges, kiwis, pe pears and they taste so good because they're in season so right now you actually have like a lot

of citrus pears kiwis um and i'm just like a king just you know delicious yeah now whatever the vegetable is whatever you know whatever having if i'm craving it i'll have some of it so it's not like i always have vegetables but it's not like I don't have any vegetables there's that whole debate going on right now about whether you should or whether they're harmful and I can see both sides so I'm just like I have some vegetables in there but that's it wasn't 30 seconds but there's literally everything I eat

and what I do is I don't cheat in my diet at all I went the whole last year. There was no cheat meal ever. And I've rolled into this year. I love it. I don't want to go back. And I know I'll have to with my kid. You know what I mean?

A couple years, yeah. Kid, Dad, you want to go for ice cream after the game? Just made my first basket. You know what I mean? I'm going to go have ice cream. You say, no, son. We're celebrating steak. We're going over to Mark's house.

That's right. So I'm preparing for that because I need to not have it on an addiction basis. I don't want to fall back in, you know what I mean? An interesting thing, though, like number one, when it comes to the fasting thing and the focus, I agree with you guys both massively on that. I notice like when I'm fasting, even when I'm doing martial arts or when I'm working, I can just zone in on what I'm doing much easier. So that makes so much sense. But I'm curious because both of you guys are basketball players. So when you guys do pick up basketball or whatever, do you have anything before you play?

Do you have electrolytes? Do you have anything before you play? Are you going into this cardiovascularly, like, intensive game fasted? Yeah. I remember Ben used to say, man, this is probably years ago. He's like, I want to play hungry. I want to play hungry. Literally.

You know? Yeah, and I felt. I was like, all right, we're about to play hungry then. You know? So we don't. I don't. You know, I might get some tea. Like, I'm big on this yerba mate tea.

Oh, yeah, I like yerba mate. Yeah, yeah. I do yerba mate tea. That gives me a little buzz. And I feel better light, man. Like, I tell my 19-year-old son, man, go out there on the football field, play hungry, and the less you got to digest, man, the more that blood is on your limbs and faster and quicker and jumping.

Like, you know what I'm saying? And he led the state in receiving yards this year. Shout out to Juan Williams. Yeah, and he's going D1 football. He's a good kid, too. He's a hard worker. Yeah, yeah. I'm thankful for my son. Thank you, man. Yeah, he's going D1 football. He's a good kid, too. He's a hard worker. Yeah, I'm thankful for my son. Thank you, baby.

Yeah, he's a grateful kid. He's a faithful kid. I wanted to say that about his diet, man. His diet, man. So much for a diet program. Then I've never seen this guy not with a 15-pack.

Just put a mirror right here because that's Derek. But that's who you surround yourself with. Yeah. So I can't not have a six pack next to him. So this is

the cool thing though because a lot of powerlifters and bodybuilders are listening. These are athletes that typically they're like, before I hit the gym, I'm going to eat like two or three hours beforehand. I know it's a different type of sport, but the fact that you guys are doing such an intense sport fasted, people it's good to realize outside of that, you're eating a lot.

Like maybe – I don't know what time you guys eat, but what do you eat? You eat a substantial amount that keeps – gets you ready to perform the next day. It's not like you're now on an empty stomach literally. You're working from the calories you had the night before. And that's what I do too because people are like, how do you do that fast? Well, I ate. I still ate last night right

so I can still perform the next day and it's cool that you guys are doing that same thing and performing at a high level and it's not like a typical bro set where you're burning

like a couple hundred calories or playing basketball for a couple hours and really burning some calories yeah but you and Mark would be better

like I wouldn't try to judge that for a powerlifter or a bodybuilder of course Mr. Infinity yes sir love saying it Yeah, yeah. But you and Mark would be better. Like, I wouldn't try to judge that for a powerlifter or a bodybuilder. Of course, yeah. Mr. Infinity. Yes, sir. Love saying it. Yeah.

And if you could get a little bit closer to the mic too, Derek. Yeah, no problem. Thank you. What were you doing before you ran into Ben? That's a good question, man. Obviously, man, I had my kids, man. I was raising them. Went through, man, I went through a lot in my life, man.

And me and Ben had probably been knowing each other for maybe like, I don't know, it's been time goes so fast. Over 10. Over 10 years. Yeah, we started like, by Ben's side, we started off just kind of playing a pickup game and running each other at this health food store. And then, so I was a, played basketball overseas. I was in Norway for quite some time. And then had like a little rollercoaster ride of a life and ended up in Florida. And then I was a PE teacher, man, just bouncing around.

Rollercoaster of a life. What does that mean? You just didn't feel like you had direction at that time? Or was there something else going on? Yeah, man, I don't know how deep y'all want to get into this. We have time. We got time. We got time. We got time, man.

We're unveiling your story, bro. Okay. Whatever you're comfortable with. Yeah, so I don't want to take over the conversation, but, man, I just went through a lot. I had two sons. After I played professional basketball, I came back home, and my son's mother took him down to Florida, and it was a little rough, so she wouldn't let me see him.

So I just kind of stayed in my car for just six months because I was like, man, I got to raise my son because I didn't have a father. My father didn't have a father, so I was like, man, fuck it. I'm just going to figure it out. I'm going to go to Florida and figure it out. And so I just kind of worked at it, just delivered pizzas. You know what I'm saying? I stayed in my car until I figured it out i'm gonna go to florida figure it out and so i just kind of like worked at uh uh just delivered pizzas you know i'm saying stayed in my car until i figured it out and then uh and then she got she got a husband and and then just got just this this this craziness i got ended up getting locked up a couple times because i have i suspended my license because i couldn't pay

child support so it just it was just a rocky road, man. You know what I'm saying? And then I luckily got a PE teaching job. You know what I mean? I always trained basketball players on the side because that's one thing I could always do is, like, people see me play on the court and be like, man, can you train my son? So I always kind of did that for a little extra money. But, yeah, man, that's really it man and then um i was a p teacher um before when before i started working with being an atg and this is maybe like five six years ago

when i started with atg so um was able to eventually get with my son start start start uh being a father like i wanted to be she uh she changed my son's names of 1 and 11. And my son's mother ended up changing their names. So I had to go fight to that. And then luckily she changed them back to 1 and 11. And so, yeah, man, like I said, I don't want to take over your podcast, man. But it's a long story, man. Like I went through a lot, man.

So I feel like my attention was always good, you know? And I feel like that's why I'm here today. Your intention or attention? Intention. Intention, okay. It was always, and I never had bad intentions. So I feel like that's why God allowed Ben to come into my universe, you guys to come into my universe, and things to happen, man, so I can kind of get back on the upswing of life you know what i'm saying so you just weren't like doing things that were maybe

optimal towards you uh being able to progress forward rather than like you you weren't like necessarily doing anything negative though either right what you mean well you were just saying like you didn't have bad intentions so your intentions were good but you just uh maybe i just didn't have a role model in my life, man. I had money when I came back from overseas playing basketball, and I just blew it on going out, bought a new car, bought a house, and just like, just a fool, man. Like, you know what I'm saying?

So I just didn't know. I just didn't know. So I just had to just take, you know, as you grow and you just learn, you learn what not to do, and you just work your way up, you know what I mean? Consciously, you know, that's why I say being conscious of being awareness is so important. You know what I'm saying? I have, I have a more of an awareness of cause and effect, you know, cause and effect is real.

So what was the pivot point that has allowed you to become a teacher? Um, just, just opportunity. Somebody was like, just gave me an opportunity to be a PE teacher. I was like, man. They asked me if I wanted to teach. I was like, man, I'll do PE, but that's about it. But, yeah, I had fun with it. I was in one of the roughest schools in St. Pete, a little middle school.

But it was fun, man, hanging out with all these little rough kids. But, yeah, Bay Point. I don't know if you heard of Bay Point. Sound to me like that may have been something that changed your life, like learning that you could coach and you could teach. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I always, like, I feel like I always had that in me to be able to, I always want to see people do well.

I always want to, like, inspire and help people. And, like, when i'm around you man i want you to max out i don't care who you are you know i'm saying so that i think that's just like innately in me you know what i'm saying yeah but i appreciate you saying that more yeah you can't help but like smile when we see you like you're just like oh shit it's mr infinity but you know as if somebody gets you know arrested thrown in jail like that's kind of like they have that stick or that stamp on them a little stigma like people say like oh i can't get a job because i have this on my record so how did you pick yourself up was it just somebody that gave you

an opportunity at that middle school or did you do anything else to i don't know i guess try to like cement and let people know like no i'm a good dude. I just happened to be. Yeah, man. I mean, I didn't do nothing bad against you. I had a suspended license, and my son's mother, I mean, my son's mother's husband at the time had a connection with the police force, so they intentionally was seeking me out to kind of just keep, like, they just kept, because I didn't keep up with the child support, so they just kind of kept. Every time I was riding, they knew how to find me. You know what I'm saying? It was more,

it wasn't like I was out here doing nothing crazy, but, but yeah. So, but to answer your question, man, I feel like, I just feel like,

man, the universe, like, man, I'm feeling like a lot of stuff that goes on out here, man, we can't see. And I,

and I feel like we got, we got things working for us that we can't see too. And I feel like, I'm telling you, like a lot of stuff that goes on out here, man, we can't see. And I feel like we got things working for us that we can't see, too. And I feel like, I mean, I'm protected by a lot, you know, and I'm just thankful. You know what I'm saying? I'm just thankful. One thing I find pretty amazing, though, I think a lot of people are going to, like, get a lot from what things you just talked about. You're 43 right now. You're doing a lot of cool shit right now at 43 years old. That's starkly different than the story that you're talking about when you were younger.

Like I can't even – like knowing you, I can't like imagine those situations because of how – like the stuff you can do in the gym, the stuff you're teaching people with Ben and the individual you are right now, the fact that you've gone through all of that and you're here doing this right now, that's fucking sick. And that's inspiring as hell. You know what I mean? And I think that could also help people understand, like, if you're in your 20s or your 30s or whatever, you have time. You're not like you're not because you're 30 or whatever years old or 35 years old.

You have time to make shifts and meet the right people to spur you into the direction of the person that you ideally want to be. That's sick. That's so true, man. You learn from struggle, man. Yeah. Like, Ben would not be knees over toes, guys. He didn't go through hell. Like, I'm sure he went through a lot to be who he is today.

You know what I mean? You guys the same, man. You don't, I mean, the further you go down, the higher you go up. And it's just like, man, you got to go through it. You know what I'm saying? And I'm going to continue to go through it. I'm going to continue to fight and learn and grow. You know what I'm saying?

That's how we built. So I appreciate you saying that for real. And I hope people are inspired because, man, time really is like, it's just a man-made concept, man. It's not affecting you. It only now exists, man. And so once you understand that, man, like, understand you're creating your reality right now. Like, you know what I'm saying? You're always at the leading edge of creation.

You know what I'm saying? And I keep telling myself, man, like, you know, I can do it. You know what I'm saying? Because, I mean, I still get knocked over the head with life, you know? But, yeah. I think pain is, is like the ultimate mentor. What do you think of that, Ben? Well, it definitely makes you appreciate, you know, when you're not, you know?

So if I hadn't, you know, been through stuff, yeah, there wouldn't be an ease over toes guy. You know what I mean? I wouldn't be passionate about teaching people to do backward sled you know so i don't know why that is but in derrick's case i mean you you won man like i got emotional just i didn't know any of that stuff and uh just the idea of like not being able to be with my kid you know that gets me pretty emotional to think about. Yeah, whatever. I can't watch stuff on TV. I would have done something bad. You know, like the fact that you got through that, and I never would have guessed that

because he has a great relationship with his kids, two amazing kids, one of them's going on D1 scholarship. But I see them. They work hard. They're super respectful. They are not normal kids. You know what I mean? Like that's the lottery we all want normal kids. You know what I mean? Like that's the lottery we all want to win.

You know what I mean? Is our kids being respectful and having integrity and purpose and drive. And he's with his kids now. So you won. Thank you, man. Thank you. Yeah, Payne, I think it's a great teacher. You know, it gives us a lot of wisdom. Thank you, man. And you hear it time and time again about parents that they lose opportunities to be around their children or they get distant from them, but then they come back later on. Life is, it can be short and

certain things happen sometimes, but it's also can be long. Like if you're staying healthy, it's a long life and you may have wronged a bunch of people or you might've done a lot of wrong or people may have wronged you but if you can just figure out a way to hang in there the best you can and to try to start to learn from any mistakes that you made or some of the people around you have made uh over a period of time you can start to head in the right direction and your story could end up like mr infinity's thank you man i think it's all about perspective you know yeah it's all about perspective how you because you can, it's all about perspective. Because you can spin any situation how you want to, man. I just choose to be grateful, you know what I mean?

And now you're trying to be, we talked about, he's trying to be a role model for his kids, you know what I mean, and how he didn't have that. So he didn't have that role model. I went through struggles, but I was lucky enough to have that. Both my parents in their own ways were, you know my parents, they're unbelievable role models for me. So whatever stuff I went through had the right role models.

So I was able, as Mark said, to learn from it. And that's, to me, whatever is coming in at you in life, if you then learn how to handle that, now you get more powerful to help other people. So it sounds to me like now Derek gets to teach and help a lot of other people. I thought I was a failure in life at age 20. Failure at life. Derek's 43. We just put out a book together. So his first big book. And right now it's number two on amazon y'all said something like yeah so jesus yeah atg for life we'll link it below who knows what he will go on to accomplish we were just using in there something that he's you know boom he got a sample

whipped up and he's 43 so it for me thinking i was a failure at 20, it would have been nice to see this podcast. Why do you think you thought that? Why did you think you were a loser at 20? Well, I wanted to be a basketball player. Didn't get any recruitment out of high school. So boom, you have to go to college. So I was a failure. No college recruitment.

Gnarly knee history. I couldn't even go to school my senior year. I was on a walker. Let's say that it's 20 years from now or 18 years from now, and your son's on his way to – he's been thinking about college, but he's not getting accepted to college. He's bummed. What would you tell him? I don't know how to answer that exactly because I'm actually educating

my kid. So I have an article. It's not, it's not public. I'll put it out public after this so you guys can read it, but I've actually written up exactly. I'm going to educate my own kid. And just like how our program, like what we do in the gym is online, I'm putting it online. and just like how our program, like what we do in the gym is online, I'm putting it online. So this gives me some time. He's one.

This gives me time to get it accredited. I'm already working on getting it, like, so that's accredited. Let's go. I can't have him. There's certain things about it. There's levels to this game. It depends on a different level.

And it'll be, the curriculum will go out this summer. It'll just be a free website the first couple years because I don't know what service people are going to need. And so anyone can follow the journey of what I'm setting up for my kid, just learning from the things I went through so that there is no such thing as graduating thinking you're already a failure. So hopefully he'll be in a very different –

I guess that was my main point. Your expectations of yourself were – not that they were like too high. They were just a little delusional. Like going to college and not going to college doesn't determine whether you're a winner or a loser. It will feel that way when you put all of your value into like I have to go to college. I have to get a Division I scholarship. These are things that must happen because that's what I've seen other people do, and that's how they're successful.

So that's going to be my determining factor for success. But we know what a horrible recipe that can be, having somebody else's measures of success be our own. It's like a huge problem. So I hope people just kind of understand that. I think the easiest way to not feel like a loser is to not ever really think about it in the first place. However, if you're kicked in the balls enough

when you're young and the odds are stacked against you, you will probably feel like a loser at some point. What about you? I mean, you are the hardest working guy that I know over time. Like I work hard right now, but like you've been, you know what I mean? Hardest working guy now. Never seen you actually say, as Derek said, like with intentions, never actually seen like a bad intention out of you.

You know what I mean? extended like with intentions never actually seen like a bad intention out of you you know what i mean um so somewhere along the lines you found something you were interested in and you let that drive you so i think if you put if you have the right mentors around you you saw from the moment i came here the first time since then i was like i want you to be my mentor you know what i mean and you've been sending me stuff ever since. But you saw my frame of mind was, wow, this is a good mentor. Wow, Derek, I need you to be my training partner. You know what I mean?

So as a go-to, people can find mentors, as Derek and I say, who are achieving the results you want to achieve. And on top of that, then maybe before that, find something you're interested in and then find mentors within that. And that kind of thinking totally changed my life. What do you think helped you not lose belief in yourself? Because it sounds like you thought you were a loser,

your knees were banged up. It seemed like everything was just, like nothing was going to come true for you out of any of the things that you wanted to do. What did you hold on to? Were you like, I'm smart or I'm fast or there's some skill set or something that kept you to be resilient? I knew I was pretty skilled at basketball. So if I could somehow figure out how to get my body able to play, able to be athletic.

I think that's really important, though, because I think that sometimes people, they don't work, they don't work on a skill. And if you work on a skill and you think that you even developed one, even if you didn't develop one to the level that you really wanted to, you still have a skillset that allows you to believe in yourself a little bit more than the next person probably. Yeah. But honestly, what jumped to my mind is the simple fact that my parents, they weren't telling me to get a plan B. I mean, I had no business still trying to get a basketball scholarship. My whole story is that I actually ran out of eligibility. I was too old.

But I was actually succeeding. I got a D1 scholarship at 23 years old. I've never heard of that happening. But my parents, I was sitting at the dinner table with my dad last week, and he admitted to me that he genuinely did not think it was possible for me to dunk even though I still thought this program you know what I mean you know what it's

like when you're searching for that perfect program and finally some stuff broke through he never thought I would dunk but he actually never told that to me never told it to my mom my parents never they would still make me work hard so I was out of high school I was working hard but they never told me to my mom my parents never they would still make me work hard so i was out of high school i was working hard but they never told me you're not gonna be a basketball player

and my wife is the same way i think my wife believed in me more than i did and so i was very fortunate to have people like that around me not every parent is gonna let you still be you know thinking you're gonna be a basketball player when it doesn't make any sense yeah and and actually when derrick and i started working together first thing he was like the world needs to know about this you know I was like really he he he beat that into me the world needs to know about what's happening in this gym um so Derek believing in my you know professional stuff my wife still thinks I'm like could beat Michael Jordan in his prime one-on-one. She genuinely, she, she would somehow he'll get lucky.

Like she actually believes in me to that degree. And then my parents were amazing enough not to have their judgment. I think my mom also believed I could do anything too, but my dad never thought I would dunk a basketball. But he never told me that. So that was, I can't take full credit for that. Why didn't I, you asked me, why didn't I give up on myself?

Did I have some inner belief in myself? Clearly, the people around me did. What about for yourself? Did you have a mentor or something to hold on to that allowed you to just continue to pursue like heading in the right direction? Yeah, I'd definitely answer that. But one thing I can say about Ben, man,

Ben, once he has a vision in his mind, it's going to happen. It might take a year, five years, 10 years, but I feel like he's not going to stop. It might take a year, five years, 10 years, but I feel like he's not going to stop. He's like a pit bull. He's not going to let go until it happens.

You know what I'm saying? And that's, I love being around people like that. You know what I mean? Being played basketball together for the first time forever.

We always used to play on opposite teams, but it was nice because I know, you know when you got a partner that's known, they're going to bring it with you.

You know what I'm saying? So that's just like, I just wanted to say that, man, about Ben. Like ever since I've known him, 18, 19, 20, he's always like just, you could tell he got a vision. You know what I mean? And people know like in our area, Clearwater, for five, 10 years, people knew Ben. They didn't know it was going to be knees over toe guy, but they knew Ben was going to be successful, man. You know what I'm saying?

And he hasn't even started yet. But, yeah. Appreciate that. But for me, man, I'm telling you, I had a hard knock life, man. My city, where I'm from, if I go back today, everybody's doing the same thing in the same bars, in the same clubs, in the same, like, and it's like talking about the same sports, same chicks, like, you know what I'm saying? So it was a blessing for me to be able to leave.

And then I just looked up people, man. Like, Ben is one of my mentors. Like, now you guys are mentors. So I did seek out, I read a lot of books. Just like, I just read a lot, man. I just had to reach outside of myself just to kind of to find mentors, but not close proximity, man.

I learned a lot of what not to do, I tell you that. Yeah. You know, the cool things on the podcast, like past few months, we've been talking a lot about like belief and belief in oneself. Because like we noticed like when people say, oh, I can't do something or it's not possible for somebody to do something. We also noticed that it's also that affects that individual's belief system for themselves. They naturally put a cap on their ability to do certain things just because they lack like they don't believe others can do it.

So immediately they don't believe others can do it. So immediately they don't think they can. And what you were talking about with your dad, I think is super powerful because it just shows how big of a difference a parent's belief system in their child can have on the outcomes and the belief that child has in themselves. Like that's one thing I didn't have a dad either. My dad wasn't there. He's in Nigeria right now. We have contact via WhatsApp, but I had a mother that massively believed in me and just massively didn't didn't try to chime in she wasn't telling me i was talented or anything like that but every time i worked at something and got good at something i had success with something she would praise the fuck out of that and she

would just continue to put down like you work at this you get it you're good like that's the thing that's why at this point my belief system's rock solid it doesn't matter what the fuck anybody tells me because of her and that's like that's that that's huge number one if you're an individual you can find that for yourself you can have that self-belief but getting around other people like me getting here to super training back in 2015 getting around a bunch of lifters that were stronger than me and better than me i i ended up coming here and i was strong, but I wasn't the strongest in the gym anymore. And I immediately started getting much stronger because I had great people around me, great mentors around me that could take a look at what I was doing and lead me in the right

direction. And I was also somebody that started reading a lot of books and shit because I didn't have necessarily somebody there. I had my mother, but I seeked out information. I seeked out books. I seeked out people because I'm just like, if I can't find this here, I will find it somewhere else.

Yeah. So your mother kind of planted that self-belief in yourself. Oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah. It was crazy. She was good at her job, man. Awesome, man. Shout out to my mom, too, man.

I can't leave her out. She did show me love, though. Ben's got a great mom, too, man. So man. Shout out to my mom too man. I can't leave her out. She did show me love. Ben's got a great mom too man. So that's important. I'm sure you got a good mom too though. Sorry. Hardest worker I know is my mom. No offense. Am I lying? It's crazy. I'm telling you

man. We see her doing all the knees over toes stuff too. She's a trooper. But behind the scenes she runs the customer service of my business. I've offered her a million times. She'll wear 18 hours a day, man. She doesn't like taking days off.

She's like 60-something now, right? Ever. Holidays. 67. So I let her do it she wants and I make sure I pay her well, but she just wants to keep grinding. Unbelievable. You got some teenage kids.

So what do you think has been some keys for you guys to have a successful relationship? I mean, there's a lot that goes into that, right? There's a lot. But I feel like, man, that's another thing that keeps me wanting to be athletic and be in shape. You know, I just like that's's our, that's our time to like bond. We always play basketball, playing 21, shooting around, sprint, man. Me and my son's always out on the track trying to, I'm trying to race him. He can beat me now, man, but he can't beat me in basketball yet. But, but just, just, just out there in the beach throwing a football,

man. Just, and like I told Ben, I just want to be an example. You know, I want to be an example for my sons, and I want them to have somebody that they respect and look up to. So just being there, you know, and not judging them and just being grateful for them and just kind of letting them grow and evolve how they want to. You know, I never – my oldest son's a football player, and I'm not the football player. You know, I don't my oldest son's a football player, and I'm not the football player.

You know, I said, I don't know how he picked it up. You know, I honestly wish he wouldn't, but it is what it is. But he just, I didn't say you can't, can't. I never pushed him to football. He just ended up doing that. And my youngest is a hell of a basketball player. He'll be really good. But they just got to work.

And like I said, like, you can't tell kids um what they should do man i feel like i just gotta be an example you know i feel like they're gonna watch you more than you talk to them you know i'm so i never try to be like oh you gotta do this you gotta be this i'm just like man like listen you see your dad if he i mean if you want if you want to be successful you see if you don't then you then you can go down that path too. But, yeah, just keep it real, man. I just keep it real with my sons all day. What about you, Mark?

I heard you got an 18-year-old son. How do you keep that bond going? Yeah, my son just turned 18. I think two of the biggest things for me is just to spend time with my kids, so to just be there. Another huge thing is just I believe in like incorporating stuff into your lifestyle rather than having things be like a side thing or separate from anything. So if I have, you know, not so much anymore, but when my kids were younger, they would just go with me to places. You know, if I had a business meeting or something, we would make it like a family trip and we would go and visit, you know, whomever it was.

And they might not have necessarily went to the actual meeting with me, although we've done that before too. They've actually come with me. I obviously made sure it was appropriate because some meetings just doesn't make sense to have like a four-year-old kid with you, you know. But wherever I could, I tried to make sure that it like matched up with whatever I was doing. Whenever I went and did like a seminar or something, somebody wants me to do a seminar in San Diego or something, my first thought is, I don't really want to go to San Diego, but my kids probably do. So let's tell the kids, hey, we're going to go to San Diego.

We'll make this trip, you know, kind of work with my wife and the kids and everything. And we'll figure out a way to make it like a family vacation rather than just me going down there and teaching some people some stuff. And people getting a good experience from that, that's cool. But I'd rather have a good experience with my family and to have my kids, you know, involved in it. And that way everybody knows everybody better. Like, oh, I'm going to L.A. to meet. Like, oh, I'm going to LA to meet Ben. You know, I'm going to Florida to hang out with Ben and Mr. Infinity. It's like, doesn't sound like some shady,

doesn't sound like some shady ass shit that I'm up to. My wife would assume that if I'm hanging out with Mr. Infinity and knees over toes, that I'm just training all day. Like, you know what I mean? So- Or saving the universe. Yeah, exactly. And and then last part last

piece of the puzzle i think it's just encouragement like everyone just needs encouragement like kids they just kids especially they just need encouragement obviously you don't have to like um you don't have to tell them bullshit stuff but you point out the things they are doing well you point out the things um that you find are good qualities in them. Like with my son, I have continually always, or the most, the best that I can, I've tried to encourage him to be like a free thinker, you know, for him to think about the stuff that you're taught in school. When they teach you something about science, they teach you something about history, think about it.

It's like a perspective, right? That's taught, it's been taught for years, but there's probably a whole nother story behind it or there's stuff that you haven't heard. So be inquisitive, search for it, seek it out. You said seek, you said search. I wrote it down because I was like, that's dope because that's what this is all about.

You want answers? You want to try to change your life forever? Just keep asking questions and you'll get there. What about, like, how do the dads on the podcast filter or block out some of the, well, I guess in SEMA for your pups, this will work too. Yeah, I'll talk about my dogs. SEMA's a daddy sometimes. Yeah, I will. This will be.

I love this because this is training for me this is training for me like when i become a dad i got some great guys i got the answer yeah so i'll give an example of like a like a literal physical like thing that's happening so my son turned one everyone's like oh he's gotta have a smash cake he's got he's never had sweets his whole life i can literally say that because he's only one years old. His first birthday comes around and I'm like sick. There's no cake. And then all of a sudden somebody brings one out. There's like, he doesn't know what to do with it.

So they put his finger in the frosting and then put it in his mouth and he fucking hated it. I was so happy. Happened again. We're watching the Niner game. There's some, some brownies. I was like, oh, he's got to try. He's got to try. Like, no, he doesn't.

No, he doesn't. But then, you know, I can only be on defense for so for so long and plus i don't want to be a dick and everyone wants it and i'm the only one that doesn't uh he tries it he hates it here yes cool we survived again i turn my back and there's someone else trying to put it in his mouth and he hated it again so i was happy about that now that's just like a physical thing but i'm talking about like the mental side and sema uh talks about a mind virus all the time. You know, people put that cap like he explained. Kids are going to be kids.

They're going to be, oh, you can't do that because you're not this, you're not that. So how do you keep their belief alive? And like, how do you block out all the noise? You got three dads up there. Come on. I had one word, but it's more, I only have a one-year-old. But it's off Derek's, we talk about this concept a lot, is live it. So you can't control what your kid thinks.

You can't control what other people are inputting. But if you live it, your kid is going to be more likely to take the data being come in and be able to think and choose the right path. I think that's the best we can do is live it. Yeah, you want your family to trust in you. So when you make a statement or you make a decision and they see the way that you react to external things and they see it at least work halfway decently, they have no choice but to be like, that seems to be a good route. You know, I've explained this situation before. We were in New York City and we were trying to go somewhere and we had like flight canceled and then we tried to get a car.

And there was just like, I don't know, just these huge things. So I was just like, hey, let's just all like go on a walk. So we walked for like two hours. We just walked all over the place, and we had a great time. And then when there was a car ready for transportation, we were able to get a rental car. But my son saw my wife's reaction, which she's more reactionary. She was pretty mad.

She got herself kind of flustered. And I've been this way for a while because I've learned how to have this skill set to deflect things that other people might find to be really stressful. And I was able just to grab my kid and say, hey, let's go for a walk. Mom's going to talk to these people, let her do her thing and get that stuff off her chest. And then we came back around and we just, we had an awesome time and it was like no big deal but if your kid repeatedly sees you making good decisions and repeatedly sees you

acting specific ways in otherwise stressful situations you know they're gonna that's gonna rub off on them big time last week i saw jerek's kid go into the gym by himself start sledding on the weekend he's a good looking kid d scholarship. He could be out on a boat. We're by the beach. Yeah. So on the weekend, and then I saw him later that weekend doing yard work. So he's doing sledding and yard work on his own. You know what I mean?

But he sees Derek sled. Derek does it every day. He probably hasn't seen you too many times say, man, I'm too tired to hit the sled. Have you ever done that? He always asks me, hey, you want to do this? You want to go sled? And I'm always like, I'm always up for it.

And also, man, to answer your question too, like, you got to communicate, talk to your kids, have casual, real conversations, and you got to let them mess up. I mean, they're not going to be perfect. They going to eat ice cream you know i mean they're going to they're going to you know my son like uh i tell him man i tell him i keep it real with him all the time man like 1 000 and and he always tries it though he always puts his feet in the fire and it comes back like damn you already did tell me you did tell me like you know what i'm saying i'm never drinking again dad i'm never gonna smoke again like whatever like you know i'm saying but they have to experience life you know i mean they have to they have to

experience you know i mean we had experience when you can tell them they listen to you i'm telling when you're talking to your kids they do listen but they might they might try to you know i mean test the waters you know so but you got to have faith in your relationship. You know, I feel like my sons know, like, it's their life. You know what I'm saying? It's y'all life. You know what I mean? At the end of the day, it's y'all life, you know.

I can set an example. I can talk to you. But, I mean, you're going to have to deal with the effects, I mean, of your choices. But, yeah, and I was going to ask you, Mark, man, you said you learned this skill of being able to deflect this energy. Like what is that skill and how did you learn it, if you don't mind me asking? I just kept searching for it. You know, I would communicate with so many people about nutrition, and I would tell them this works really, really well, and it works for a lot of people, not just myself,

and people lose weight every single time, and then they weren't able to follow through on it. And I was always kind of confused. I'm like, well, what's stopping them from at least following this 70% to 80% of the time? Because if they at least did that, they would be able to lose some weight. And it kind of turned out it's just they weren't able to mitigate stress in their life. The stress that was in their life, they viewed as being like a negative interpretation of stress.

And we know that not all stress is a negative interpretation. Who better to talk about that than the knees over toes guy who was in tons of pain for a long time. He actually did the exact opposite of what we were told to do with our knees. You know, it's like, that sounds like it would hurt really bad. So I just started kind of searching and seeking out stuff on YouTube and just found more and more and more information about your mindset being a huge factor in all of these things. The example I usually give is like death, you know, having somebody die in your family.

It's like really, it can be super sad. Mainly for me, it's more sad because how sad it is for everybody else around me. For me, I'm usually fine. I mean, I can get sad for sure and I can get upset and get frustrated and all the same things as everybody else. But it's really, really rare.

Like I choose different modes of interpretation based on the inputs that are coming in. So I just recognize the input that comes in doesn't have to be a thing that triggers an exact response every time. I get to choose the response. And the response isn't like just some random thing that's on a wheel. It's not like, and see what it lands on. Oh, I'm pissed, you know, and I'm sad. You know, I can just, no matter what the input is, I can choose happiness every single time. I can choose happiness every single time.

And so as I started discovering that more and more, it gave me like a euphoria each day. And I almost, almost like a psychedelic experience in some weird way where I would feel just incredible because I was like, I feel really protected. I feel really secure. I feel insulated against anything that's happening on the outside. And so as much as I try to teach it to other people, I know there's some people listening, but it's usually the stuff that is least viewed, least commented on stuff because I think there's people that aren't in a good spot in their life for it to land on them properly, for them to absorb the information.

You know, like we talk about David Goggins. Sometimes if you listen to David Goggins out of nowhere, you're like, man, this dude is yelling at me. This is heavy. Like I don't dig it. It just depends on where you're at in your life, whether you can even accept the information and do anything with it. A lot of that is like a lot of stoic philosophy, right?

Like if someone wants to learn about some of this stuff, a lot of that is based in stoic philosophy correct yeah so if any of you guys are interested like just andrew is big into that you have uh what the daily meditations book for marcus yeah yeah the um i always forget what it's called but like my son's footprint is you know printed in there like that's his name is aurelius you know yeah inspired by marcus aurelius but yeah like that that's when Mark showed me that stuff, I mean, it changed my life. It changed my mindset.

We just put out a podcast recently. My mom was diagnosed with cancer and I'm pretty sure it's safe to say out of everyone in my family, I was the most even keel person out of everybody. Everyone was like, oh, we have to really celebrate Christmas this year. I was like, whoa, we're not talking that way.

This isn't the last Christmas. We're going to celebrate multiple Christmases after this. And a lot of that comes from the stoicism and control what you can control and what you can't doesn't matter, but they kind of both don't matter anyways. So it's like, yeah, a lot of that stuff helps a ton. Yeah, there's things you can control. So that's great a ton yeah there's things you can control so that's great because that means there's things you can do about it and there's things that you can't control and that's great too because you know there ain't shit you can do about it exactly yeah

so you know you just kind of it just it just makes your life a lot easier uh it's almost this similar to the skill set of being able to lift and being able to train and being able to run and having like conditioning, if we were to put people through – if Andrew picked – if all of us picked workouts for like one person to do in a given day, we would totally crush them, right? Because it would be so much different input coming in. They don't know what to do with any of those inputs. know what to do with any of those inputs um but if if we all just kept working out together doing different exercises that each one of us likes to do we would be totally fine because we exercise all the time we have a skill set to handle that particular stress we know how to interpret it and our body you know fortunately knows what to do with that type of language so it works out for us yeah it's called the daily stoke i can't believe i can't remember it yeah i have the book too

people don't understand when you're on a podcast, it's like sometimes your brain just all of a sudden forgets the most important shit. So it's your book? No, no, it's Ryan Holiday. Oh, okay. Yeah, it's an amazing, just a daily thing. Like when my son was still baking,

I'd read him like a page every day. It's super easy to read. So I highly recommend it. Yeah, and I think it's super powerful. I started getting into that a few years ago too. And one of the big things that people kind of get wrong when they think of the word stoic, they think of an individual that doesn't feel emotion. No, we're not talking about being an emotionless robot that goes through life like feeling nothing.

No, you feel everything. You're just not a reactionary. You don't react to that with emotion. You take it in. You understand what's going on you analyze you act but you don't need to react based on emotion which is how a lot of people get themselves into trouble especially guys yeah they call it a knee-jerk reaction uh-huh do you ever um mark do you ever still experience any like um any fears or any like um doubts or misbeliefs within yourself or is that philosophy one that you're able to kind of like block those things

out when you say you feel like you insulated? I would say that, you know, if you're not experiencing any type of fear, then that's probably not a great place to be. I think you, you kind of want to like, quote unquote, make yourself a little bit scared here and there.

I think that's healthy. More recently I started taking up some yoga. I've been stretching more recently. My shoulders are starting to feel better so I'm going to get back into jiu-jitsu. It's not like jiu-jitsu scares me, but it's new. It's different

for me. Also, I guess there is a little bit of fear because I'm like, I can start to think real negatively. Well, you're not that flexible. Like, why are you doing this sport? What are you trying to do? What are you trying to? But if I don't poke around with that, then I don't know. I have no idea what opportunity could be sitting right there for me. Maybe it is something that maybe I really love it.

Maybe it's something that I do more often than lifting. Like, who the hell knows? Maybe it's, you know, or maybe it's not for me. But at least I find out. I figure it out. So I think, you know, not being scared of stuff probably isn't great. But rather than think of things being scared, I just think of, like, excitement. Like, I'm excited for this.

I've heard Nsema talk about that before. Rather than think, like, oh, man, I'm really scared to go against this opponent, I'm super excited to go against this opponent. That's what that feeling is. And I'm going to keep that as positive energy. I'm not going to have that take my endurance and my strength and my skill set away from me because it can do that when i was uh doing when i was a professional wrestler i had an opportunity to wrestle um in front of probably like 20 000 people and the first time that i did it my legs were gone they were they were just i was blown up they call it being blown up i was i couldn't i could barely move in the ring anymore and i conditioned myself for it for a long time. I trained for it.

Back then I was doing like interval sprints and I was exercising really hard. But I got so up in my head that the blood flow, like everything was in like my stomach. There was nothing in my legs. My legs felt completely numb. And I went to do like a particular move and I could barely get my feet off the ground and I was like wow I'm like what the fuck was that and then I calmed down during the match I calmed down and one of the veteran guys was like oh I noticed about three minutes in he's like you you calmed down and got your breath I think I said I don't think I was breathing I think I was holding

my breath the whole time so there you go you know There's a scenario, right? Like where if I just did that the next day, the next night, I would have already been acclimated enough to have a much better performance. It just had to do with my interpretation of what was going on. That's real. Being scared.

Yeah, I think that's what Ben says a lot too, man. You like to put yourself in environments that's going to stretch you sometimes, right? Basically. Yeah, I have, on this whole subject we've been covering, I have two things I do, and I think it's similar to what we're talking about. So I keep two different notes in my phone that I refer to often.

One of the notes has my big goals. I find I need something to get me excited. I've seen an approach of have low expectations, don't set big goals. I get where they're coming from, but the happiest people I see, I've never seen Mark having a bad day. I don't know what's going on in his life, but I'm the same. You ever see me show up to the gym having a bad day? Ever.

Thousands of times I've never had a bad day. But having big goals gets me excited but the other list is very different the other list is the things that I look at that I remind myself dang I'm really appreciative for that I'm really appreciative for that

and that's one thing about me it could be a stake or it could be the simplest things. And you would think I'm the poorest guy in the world. I'm so appreciative for it. But I see that as well with certain people. I don't know, gave Joe Rogan a book. So appreciative.

And you guys are the same way. So I feel like you have two different lists. Your big goals. And that really gets you excited. That gives you something to the same way. So I feel like you have two different lists. Your big goals. And that really gets you excited. That gives you something to be nervous about. Something to be excited in the morning when you get up. If I'm not excited for my goals, I don't know if I can be really happy. If I don't have something that's a big enough goal that gets me excited.

But I also can't lose sight of the things I'm appreciative for. So that's a list of people and things. Just this morning, Derek and I were using Mark Shake straps going backward on the sled. Now, we go backward sled every day. Some days in our program, we go forward and backward. Some days, we just go backward. And so I already was experimenting with this for the days we just go backward. we do that on upper body day so even upper body day we start by going backward with the sled so adding this i'm going okay now we're getting a big thing for us is grip strength for longevity now i'm getting

my grip i'm getting my upper back strength i'm getting my legs and i told derek man if i like if i could only do that i'd be a happy guy the rest of my life i could work on different businesses go drag a sled backward with these straps my body would last a long time i'd be a happy guy like i'd be happy if that was all i could do was that i'd be a happy guy so that's one of my things on my appreciation is the fact that i know that i can just go to the gym and i can sled and that gets my cardio and strength and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I have more on that list for me. Doing a deep squat is something I'm super appreciative for.

So I have more on that list. Some of these are mentors that people would never guess. And because I have that list, I will occasionally reach out to these people out of nowhere and just say, man, I'm so grateful for X, Y, Z. But this is really real for me. But if I don't have that list, we forget so much of the stuff that we really appreciate. But at the same time,

my goals are like way too big to even talk about in public. Do you see what I mean? You sound like a crazy person. Right, exactly. Oh, my kid's education? Sure, I'll just make my own education system, put online, hopefully millions of people will do my education system. Totally crazy goal. Hopefully millions of people will do my education system.

Totally crazy goal. Those kind of big goals get me fired up. They make me a better person. They make me work harder. They make me stabilize. But I don't, any success I've had, I've actually gotten more appreciative, not less. So I'm more appreciative. When I go get that steak and eggs after my workout, I go to the tin can.

You know that place? Yeah, I know. All right. I'm in there with the old people at the diner. That's my special time. I'm scripting. I'm more appreciative for that steak and eggs than I was when I was 19 with messed up knees going to the same place eating steak and eggs. I'm more appreciative now for that same exact steak and eggs.

It tastes better. And so every day is kind of like that for me. I think it's simple. Everyone can have an appreciation for their own body. Like there might be a bunch of things that you don't like about your body or like maybe you don't like the way that your body looks or whatever the case is. Maybe you're pissed because your knees hurt. Maybe you're pissed because your back hurts. maybe you're pissed because your knees hurt, maybe you're pissed because your back hurts, but think about how many trillions of cells that you have and how many things are going right for your body

or how many things have to go right for your body just for you to make it through a day. You still got your taste buds, you still got your smell, you still got your eyesight, you got your breathing. And all these things, we just take them all for granted, but they're completely automatic. The greatest things that we learn are pretty much automatic. Like you don't have to teach yourself how to learn how to talk. It's just you just are just observing and you just learn it. You know, as long as you have like, I guess, a healthy brain.

The movement patterns that we do and stuff, these are all things that you just observe and you start doing them yourself and You run your body through it. And the greatest things in life are also free. You know, a hug, telling someone how much you appreciate them, telling yourself how much you appreciate some of the shit that you've done with yourself or, yeah, a relationship with somebody. So there's – I know that sometimes people feel like everything's, like, really stacked against them, and I understand where that can come from. But, man, it's just sometimes cool that your heart's beating. And when you take away, honestly, the focus from yourself, because what you were mentioning there, there's something really cool that you mentioned within your gratitude thing that I hope a lot of people pay attention to.

Andrew Huberman, we had him on the podcast a few times but he did an episode on gratitude and he was talking about like when i've thought of gratitude in the past because i i every day i think about the things i'm grateful for and it does make me feel good and it takes the focus off of myself because i realize all the things that i have and not all the things i don't have but something i didn't really do often and i do it randomly, but what Andrew talked about was one of the greatest things you can do for your gratitude is actually having a story and thinking of a person that maybe they've done something for you or whatever, you're grateful for them for some reason and quite literally sending them a message or sending them something and telling them, hey, I'm so grateful that I have you on my life because you've done this, this, this, and this.

Number one, that does something for you as the individual doing that because now you realize something that you're grateful for, but it impacts that person even more than it impacts you. The person that's now receiving that gratitude, it's something that if you're the recipient of it, that level of receiving gratitude is actually extremely beneficial for that person too. And it's something that he talked about in that podcast. I'm like, wow, I haven't really heard anybody really talk about that. But the fact that I don't know if you, you, you looked into that, it sounds like this is something that you've been doing. I love Huberman. I want to meet up. I'm going to be meeting up with him soon, but I actually didn't know that. Yeah. But yeah. So

my list, it's an active list. Meaning, so when I go look at that list, it's like I'm grateful to go do the sled and I go do the sled or I find someone from that list and I write to them. So it's not just something I think about. I keep the lists up to date of the goals and the appreciation. And the appreciation list,

I go actively send my wife a message or something. And like you said, it really makes a difference. And we all think those things and we feel those things, but to then take the action and do it has a big impact. Yeah. And then do you reflect on that list every single day? Like, I'm curious, like, because I'm personally trying to get into journaling

and doing like a gratitude thing every day, but like, I just, it's just not in my habit, like daily tasks and stuff. So it's just, it's hard to fit another thing in. So I'm just curious, like how often do you reflect back on that list? Probably every few days. Okay.

You know, and I'm an efficiency guy. So I love the idea of people writing what their grades, what their grades. I just keep the list up. Yeah. I just keep the list and I can go to it or I can add someone to it or I can add something to it

or I can keep it up to date and maybe every few days. But maybe it would be twice a day and one day. It kind of depends what you're going through in life. Yeah. Yeah. And then Mark, he put me on to Jim Rohn. Is that how you pronounce it?

Rohn? He has a really famous speech where he opens it up by saying, how hard is it to get out of bed when you're not putting in 100%? He's like, you hear that alarm going off? It's like, well, I'm not putting in 100% so I could easily hit the snooze button. It's like, but how easy is it to get out of bed when you are putting in 100%? It's like you're getting up before that alarm even goes off.

And for me personally, I feel like having that, because I'll remember shit throughout the day. I'm like, oh, fuck, that's right. Ben's coming in. But if I woke up knowing that right out the gate, yeah, dude, I would be fired up instantly instead of, I don't know, a couple hours later, I'm like, oh, yeah, that's right.

Today's going to be an awesome day. So that's something I want to practice. Love it. Yeah, gratitude is huge, man. Today's going to be an awesome day. So that's something I want to practice. Love it. Yeah, gratitude is huge, man. I got a little slogan, man. I got T-shirts made up. It's called Win the Now. You know what I mean?

Because, like, you know, you hear me say only now exists, man. You got to focus on the now, win the moment. I got to price it 0.0001, like compound interest, you know. So one thing, man, every day's the first one in the gym always inspiring always motivating other people like not like you said when you when you always thinking about yourself self self your universe shrinks you know i'm saying and when you give in when you gratitude when you're showing appreciation your universe expands like you know i'm saying so that's one thing about being he's always always like today. He had those straps, man.

He couldn't stop talking about those straps. How can we market these? How can we get there? Where's the link? I got to get these on my. I'm telling you, he was like, but he's like, that's his universe. Like, he wants to expand and help and like grow. Like, you know what I'm saying?

So, yeah, that's my tip, man. And well, because we wanted to break down longevity, Derek and I have seven steps, which you can say almost in a phrase. And that's why I got fired up about these. The seven steps for training for longevity. And does he still pull up clips on here? Yeah,

I can. Absolutely. Yeah. Just tell me what you need. We made this, Derek and I made this as my last Instagram post to keep it really simple. So you can just see the seven steps. And the idea is if you start training from your feet and ankles, really gets that circulation

going the right way. And that's what a sled does. And if you apply pressure rather than avoiding, if you apply pressure at a pain-free level, and this sled allows us to do that, and at least as much backward as forward. That's it right there. Yeah, so this was me asking Derek. Oh, yeah, sorry to hear. I want to be like you when I'm 43, right? And so a lot of my ideas, Mark Bell knows,

Louis Simmons, Charles Poliquin, all these ideas, the brilliance is there but seeing derrick in action and seeing the deviations he made specifically to how he wanted to train not just the idea being there but for example that we sled every day and we do it at least as much backward as forward so that's our one two three out of the seven point list start from the toes and feet apply pressure from the ground up at your pain-free level, at least as much backward as forward. And then we use these regressions to restore full range of motion, which you've got to have for your joint to get the nutrients in there.

And we like to strengthen through a full range of motion where you get a stretch as well. So there's the full bend on the joint, but there's also like a full stretch. Mark sent me one of his favorite hamstring exercises, that dumbbell. That thing is golden, that sort of dumbbell RDL where the intention is not necessarily the weight, but the length. That quality, when you can strengthen through length, through the stretch, it appears to be exponential for reducing injuries. Not just like stretch plus strength, not just 2 reduction like 4x reduction and then if you leave

no weak links so that's something we get Derek's um low ab strap might as well call it the reverse squat strap yeah I was way too fired up about that uh-huh you know the reverse squat you have did you you didn't bring that in oh we're gonna make videos don make videos. Don't worry. We're going to make great videos. Yeah. But I was so fired up about that because it allows you to train a weak link. And that exercise in general, we like to leave no weak links. But the seventh one is finishing with the hand and fingers. And at our original gym before COVID, we had all kinds of grip stuff.

And you can weave this into a workout. You can finish. I leave a crush gripper and a finger expander in my car so when i finish sessions i finish with the hand and finger and derek's done a lot of research on that on longevity so then using this where it has this thick my my grip right now is tired out from using these on the sled and when you and because this is elastic which i've never seen anything like that uh and these are affordable you're never going to see me fired up about some super expensive product i like

stuff that anyone can get their hands on and i'm trying to rip it apart so you know how weak most people are between our shoulder blades and i i work it's the nature of it i spend so much time on the computer so the fact that i can train from the ground up and be working that step seven of longevity, finish with the hands and fingers. So I'm strengthening my grip, fixing weak links at the same time. So by doing a backwards sled with that, we're essentially getting, and if you consider, yeah, so we're getting five out of our seven steps for longevity with one exercise. So that's why I would rank using these, gripping them, putting enough weight on the sled that it's challenging not just your legs,

but your grip, trying to expand it as you're doing it. You're getting your backward sled. I would rate that the number one longevity exercise. So I got super fired up. I already sent to my staff and to all 600 plus ATG coaches around the world, I already instantly sent video this morning

of like, okay, on the Tuesday and Friday sessions where I suggest getting straps, thick grip, you know. Use whatever you can. These are affordable and the elastic component allows you to work between the shoulder blades

where we're like all weak. It is what it is. It's the best product for the job but use what you have. Get something with the thickest grip you can, and now you're working all that stuff from the ground up, your backward sled, and getting your grip at the same time. So that was kind of a segue

from the subjects we were talking about and being appreciative. And so I'm like, yeah, we need to get a million of these out there. So my mind thinks in terms of big goals, but I also was telling him, man, I'd be grateful if all I could do was drag a sled backward and working my grip and my upper back at the same time. It would solve, my body would last a long time. So it's those two lists for me. Big goals, appreciation.

And yeah, that one video shows the seven we're talking about, and we'll break down some cool videos too. How long have you been playing basketball for, Mr. Infinity? How long have you been like an athlete, I guess? Probably my whole life, honestly, man, as far as playing basketball since three, four, five years old. Yeah, I played high school. I was like all state. I was all state in college.

I mean high school and then played D1 in a school called IUPUI. And then I went to, like I said, played in basketball in Norway. So pretty much played for my whole life. And I think what's big for longevity is just continuing, never stopping. One thing, like when I go home, when I see, I think as long as you're just continually staying consistent and never stopping, I feel like that's key to longevity, man. Just never stopping.

Yeah, I mean, with the 10-minute walks and stuff like that, just trying to encourage people just to keep moving in some way. Your body adapts, man. Your body's so adaptable. Yeah. Thanks for pulling it up, bro. Yeah. I was just, I mean, I'm looking at, this is just one of many, but like. He's not a bodybuilder yet.

43. Jesus Christ. What's that? That chest. You're not a bodybuilder, but you got a bodybuilder chest. Yeah. I mean, we talk about goals. I'm just like, shit.

I've said it since I've been working here that I know when I hit 40, I'll be in the best shape of my life. But like every single day, I'm in the best shape of my life. But like, shit, I mean, if I can look anywhere near that at 43 or 50, whatever, it doesn't matter. Like that's inspirational, man. So I'm loving this right now. Yeah.

Thank you, man. I appreciate it. I appreciate it. Yeah. Pat Rodger, family. How's it going? We talk about sleep all the time on this podcast. That's why we partnered with Eight Sleep Mattresses. Now, this mattress is the Tesla of sleep. It's the Tesla of

beds. Its technology tracks your heart rate, your heart rate variability. It changes its own temperature based off the way you sleep so that you get better sleep every single night. It is quite literally insane. Check them out. Andrew, how did they get it? Yes. And before I do that, I wanted to let you guys know that you can actually set the bed to wake you up silently. I know that sounds weird, but actually the bed starts vibrating around your head and it doesn't wake up the entire household the way my phone used to do back in the day. So now I just kind of have the bed wake me up silently and it's amazing. You guys got to head over to eight sleep.com slash power project. That's E I G H T sleep.com slash power project. When you guys go

there, you'll see a banner across the top saying that you're going to receive $150 off automatically. So again, that's eight sleep.com slash power project to receive $150 off your pod pro cover or your pod pro cover and mattress combo links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Let's get back to the podcast. And Ben, how long have you been playing basketball for as well? Yeah, I think I was four when I started playing. So I think sometimes people think we hear, like you guys are saying not to stop, and you're saying you did it for a long time.

What about something like an overuse injury? Do you think it's like a fallacy, like that you end up with an overuse injury, or is this like an inefficiency and weakness more so than an overuse issue? Both. It's a math equation. So a jump is X amount of force, right? You can measure that stuff. Well, how many times are you jumping in a game?

How many games are you playing? So now how much protection you have relative to that. So you could get more bulletproofed up. You could also play more sensibly. But when you're in the sport, you don't have a choice. You're subject of what the coach is saying. So there's things like that. I think for both of us,

that's one of the deep drives behind the sled training because we know that it makes you healthier, but you can give athletes that, okay, you've been screwing up. Hit the line. No, hit the sled because of the overuse aspect. So we can change team sports for the better with those overuse injuries

by using the sled as punishment rather than more of the same running or whatever it is. So it's a math equation. How much are you going to go after that activity? How much protection do you have for it? Overuse is a real thing, man. Before this training philosophy, man, my body was kind of broken down, man.

I had a lot of knee tendinitis, my ankle, my feet, my hips. When I played college basketball, I had to get cortisone shots in my hip just to kind of get through my senior season. And my hips were so out of balance. Like, literally before every basketball game, so I wouldn't feel pain, I would go to the hospital, get a cortisone shot, play the game, and just, and so, so yeah, man, overuse and just, like, lack of knowledge, and I think that's what you guys are spreading, man, a lot of just awareness and knowledge, man, knowledge. People just lack knowledge, and so the more we can just, like, disseminate this just awareness and knowledge, man, knowledge. People just lack knowledge.

And so the more we can just like disseminate this information out there, the better, you know. So, yeah. So I feel like overuse is a real thing. But those seven steps, man, that Ben just said will go a long way. I mean, it may seem simple, but they go a long way of getting the full range of motion, but they go a long way of getting those full range of motion, continue to keep your body agile and adapted to those ranges is key, you know, because I never had those ranges.

I think, you know, some of the stuff that you guys are saying and some of the stuff that we see online, like, to me, a lot of it is very similar. Like some of the stuff that's shared by like Joel Seidman. I know that people think that that guy is on the complete opposite end of what you guys talk about. And I can understand why because you see he does like a half squat or quarter squat or something like that in comparison to what you guys do. But most of what I see that you guys are showing or what you're demonstrating usually is done with like hardly any resistance. Like there's not a lot of weight. Now these exercises are still really hard,

like a Nordic or something like that. It still requires a lot of strength. And even some of the exercises where you're doing more full range of motion. And I've seen you wear a weight vest and I've seen you hold kettlebells and I've seen you do lots of stuff where there is weight. And for the given exercise, it is challenging, but for the given exercise, it is challenging. But it's not like you're asking anybody to squat like three plates with their heels elevated on a slant board and squatting down.

So when I look at a lot of this stuff, I'm like, oh, Ben is saying something very similar to some of these guys over here. And some of the stuff I heard years ago from Kelly Surrett, that falls in line with some of these other principles. And I realize there's some gray area where people disagree and things like that. But I just want to make it clear to people that a lot of the exercise that you guys are showing where there's this kind of full range of motion, you're not really asking people to do anything that they're not prepared to do. And I just want to finish by saying this as well. I think that sometimes people, when they see the program that you guys are putting forward,

I think they want to try everything under the sun. They want to get to it right away. And you can do more harm than good if you're not careful because you probably have never done a lot of these things before. You probably never addressed some of this. So if you're somebody that's looking to get into doing some of these things, in my opinion, you don't need a lot of weight. It's great to have progression. It's great to work on being stronger at the movement. That will probably mean that you're more proficient at

it. But in addition to that, just pick like one or two things to do. Do them a couple times a week, but really pay attention to how your body is feeling in response to it. Yeah, that's why we use the sled every day. The sled allows you to get that heavy ego output, the hormones going at your level. We have six plates in there on the sled right now for the backward. That's where we're more likely to load up. And then it's obsessive attention on the quality of movement and building up on the perfect rep. So you're chasing the perfect rep before you're chasing the load. And then I'm being sensible about what I put out online. So I actually do some pretty impressive weights on a lot of this stuff, but I have to know

that people online are going to try the impressive weight before they achieve the perfect rep. And if you understand how muscles, tendons, and ligaments work, we're actually growing and building tendon and ligament. But that process takes longer. You get more. Once you understand this inverse relationship on just a conceptual level that you think with it

and you realize that muscles get blood flow more easily and they can grow more. But tendons do get some blood flow and can grow, but ligaments that muscles get blood flow more easily and they can grow more. But tendons do get some blood flow and can grow, but ligaments get even less blood flow. But all of this can grow and tendons and ligaments can hypertrophy, but it takes longer. So if you're seeing full range of motion exercises, you're looking at a longer progression. motion exercises, you're looking at a longer progression. And in some cases, it can affect the muscles like we've seen now with the VMO, which helps have less knee pain. That gets emphasized most when you're at 140 degrees. It's almost like when you're at full bend, it's almost exclusively VMO to get out of it. So if you're now bouncing out of the bottom, at what point are you actually

loading the muscle? So when we do these exercises, it's a different thought with the bottom. At what point are you actually loading the muscle? So when we do these exercises, it's a different thought with the weights. The weight may not be as impressive as you could do if you were bouncing out of the bottom. So the level of coaching detail in our program is insane because of understanding the science of what we're trying to do. Then you see someone at the pinnacle, you would look at Tom Platz, who we talk about, and he has the most muscular legs of all time, or up there. I'm not going to debate. That's not the purpose of the anytime you say the greatest. Yeah. Okay. He's up there. Some of the most muscular legs of all time. And he embraced those full ranges of motion. But in his teens, he was in an Olympic weightlifting gym. So it's not like he just jumped. It's not like he spent a bunch of time in one range with super heavy loads and then tried to jump the same loads to a full range of motion. And you see, Mark really touched on this. Joel Seidman, Kelly Strett, knees over toes guy, whatever it is, you're going to see common denominators and you're going to see that

the greatest coaches don't leave any weak links. And that's one reason I have tremendous respect for Louis Simmons. Because he was a powerlifting coach, but if you really dig into the data, you see that he was innovating certain solutions for full knee bend. He innovated the reverse hyper, which trains really like a different area than a squat and a deadlift. And those are the things, those are

things I look for. And I see that the best coaches are not leaving any weak links, mastering the full chain. So we tend to use the sled for the partial ranges of motion, which gets the blood flow and the loading and the strength to then be able to get into deeper ranges of motion. But we only do like across our weekly schedule we do most exercises like once a week maybe twice a week but the sled we do every day you see what i mean so the sled you can recover faster but these other things we're putting in the stimulus with the best form we can we're trying to get measurably stronger over time but we're not over training those things because they take time to recover so hopefully that kind of explains that the sled is

something that i have ever since that you guys have been talking about it so much, every single workout, even if, like yesterday, I had to do something quick and my knee was feeling a little wonky, so I just needed to come to the gym. I only had 20 minutes because I had to go to jujitsu a little bit later. So I was like, okay, I did some backwards forward sled, did some tib, 20 minutes, and I was out. My knee was feeling great. When I do that, the sled is something also consistently.

Every single time I hit the gym, I always hit the sled now, and it has paid dividends for my performance. It's one of those things that I wish more gyms had sleds. You guys have been talking about it so much. If more gyms had sleds, people would be able to reap some benefits from that. But it gives you the most bang for your buck. Yeah, but all three of you are getting to the most important part of this

is that there is no button you get to just sign off and sell your body and live the rest of your life in the clouds. It's still going. You gotta keep putting one foot in front of the other. You're not just going to have this magical feeling 24-7. And the way that you actually feel better is by moving, is the motion. So find those things.

We're never telling anyone what to think. We're just supplying solutions. Oh, it's going well for you? Awesome. If something else is going well for you, awesome. So that's the finishing touch that when someone really gets that, like we've been standing here for a couple hours, I can't wait to go get some motion because I understand that my body is not just going to float through the next 50 years of my life. And I can actually move my body to a younger body. And that's what they found with the idea of pressure is that actually a body with more pressure upon it.

with more pressure upon it, and this really justifies why sometimes you'll see powerlifters who actually have really good health benefits from certain aspects, is that a body with more pressure ages biologically younger. You want to get younger? The four of us don't need to go sit on a couch right now.

That'll actually make us older. Do you see what I mean? If we want to get younger, if we want to feel better, we actually have to go move to do that. But I definitely didn't think that way for most of my life. I thought the way you were younger was to preserve the body by not using certain things.

You know what I mean? By avoiding things. So I think that's kind of – to me, that's like the finishing touch of longevity that Derek was saying is that keep going. He was saying keep going. One thing about me, I never stopped. Yeah. There's a price to pay with comfort, just having too much of it. And we're sitting where we no longer are lying on the floor.

Like when you go to sleep, you have a bed that's specific for that. And, you know, if, uh, if you just didn't have furniture, um, we would probably, and if we kind of live the way that we used to, um, then we wouldn't have to like make up so many different exercises for us to do, but our bodies don't move the same ways that they used to. Um, we used to do all these movements. So just talking to your wife about it, you might go in the woods and you might, uh, kill an animal and you might pull it out by walking backwards with it. And then squat by the fire and eat it. Absolutely, yeah, because there's no chairs. You're either squatting and how long are you going to squat for?

Maybe just a couple minutes and then you're going to sit down with your legs crossed and then you're going to be on your knees and then you're going to be standing up again. And so we don't do that anymore. We don't do that enough. be standing up again. And so you, we don't do that anymore. We don't do that enough. And so now it's like, you got to figure out, okay, I'm going to pull this sled backwards and I'm going to do all these other exercises to try to make the knee more resilient and make the area stronger. And I like what you're saying about the ligaments and tendons. Cause I think that that's kind of stuff that just doesn't get talked about enough. And Louie Simmons, again, he was like,

look, you got to do like 50 to 75 reps in a row to kind of get to those ligaments and tendons. I was always like, what the hell? That's a lot of reps. It's wild though, but it works. That kind of explains some of the sled though. So we don't, in our gym, when people visit us, we do eight round trips

and that ends up being about 100 meters forward, 100 meter backward. But we actually increase intensity as the sets go so we're under we're trying to um train that blood flow and whatever at a deeper level so it's yeah chalk up another one for louis and the guy's just such a genius there's video of a 330 pound guy doing nordic hamstring curls in his gym he made it yep it's called the poor and unfortunately it'd be way too hard to find but i can send you the video um in my chat with all those atg coaches we use that every now and then um because louis made a poor man's it it's just a nordic bench and he's got a guy they were betting him like 20 bucks and he did 10 uh nordics at 330 pounds. Yeah. So that, yeah.

That's insane. Yeah. So that would represent, I mean, these conversations could go on forever, but that would represent something that there's some degree of measurement there. So I guess that's what Derek and I are trying to do is actually take some of these qualities, but then bring them to certain measurements, meaning maybe you feel like crap after sitting at your nine to five but if you can you know bend over and palm the floor with your flexibility versus if you couldn't even touch your toes and that's just one thing it doesn't mean that that one thing fixes everything it's just an example that you can

put in the work and achieve certain measurables the same way you can put in the work and achieve certain bench presses and squats and deadlifts. And that powerlifting mentality is actually correct. You learn how to put in the work over time for measurable changes. And that's just what we're trying to do with things that relate to mobility and longevity and things like that is put in the work, find safe measurements over time. So we're obsessive on that measurement side too, with that, you know, we're looking at that reverse squat and how many people can do half body weight for 20 reps. Um, so yeah, these are, these are things you

work towards over time. You keep working towards, does it mean everything is great? Um, maybe not all the time, but it's better than it was. And we have to give ourselves credit that we don't, we haven't all been through a natural life. We weren't all, you know, I was icing my knees and having surgeries, not dragging, you know, animals backward and sitting around with my knees. I probably went 10 years without ever bending my knees all the way, not knowing what a disaster. And you know, in basketball players, probably most of us go years and years without ever bending our knees all the way

because it's too painful because we build up so much trauma in the area. And now that makes these super degraded conditions. The amount of basketball players now in their 40s who are struggling so bad, meaning guys who used to play, it's brutal. Guys reaching out every day,

man, I'm on my seventh surgery. I got to do something different. I've seen 13 14 knee surgeries and some of these guys were great nba players reaching out so um yeah it's it's unfortunate but that's why big goals and appreciation we're fired up we have solutions that's why do you like are you saying that one of the reasons that does happen because there are many reasons why this can happen, but one of the reasons is the avoidance of that range over time? Big time. Yeah. Because you're playing basketball for so many years. You build up that trauma, so then you think it hurts to do full range of motion. There's no kinds of education, zero education on how we can get there, how we can regress it, how we can get into it

and restore that. But that is what we would be doing naturally in life. We'd be giving those joints some bending. So we have to acknowledge ourselves and give ourselves credit, not be hard on ourselves. Okay, we're in pain, this, that, the other, back pain or knee pain, all this stuff adding up. But we haven't all just lived ideal lives. So let's give ourselves some credit and work on it and improve it. If we can even improve it, to me that's worth going for. One of the big issues I think is that strength coaches don't have the knowledge to do anything other than strength train with weights. That would be your go-to.

If I was a strength and conditioning coach, I would go and I would take a certification class and course and they would talk about lifting weights. Now, I'm sure there would be some stuff about like isometrics and body weight stuff, but that stuff is always like swept under the rug. That's PT, right? It's a warm-up maybe. Yeah, it's a warm-up. It's for after you're thinking, I got this basketball player and he can't squat below parallel because he's 6'8 and he just leans forward and he's got knee pain. He's complaining about that. A coach will be like, all right, we'll just reduce the weight.

But that's not really a good solution. A better solution is how do we get you moving in the longest range of motion possible that's still safe? Maybe for that athlete, maybe they have to hold on to something um as they go down so not all their weight is uh in that deep squat position right don't you have people do that sometimes huge trick for that is holding dumbbells and reaching them out in front of you right counterbalance yeah that's something we've been using lately with our buddies who are 6'8 with no knee cartilage left. But they finish sessions because of the sled and these tricks for regression.

They finish sessions going, oh my God, I never thought the rest of my life I would bend my knees like I just did without pain. But you have to get into those positions, right? Exactly. But it's not, those things aren't taught. Knowledge moves fast. Training, diet, these kind of things.

This is – we're still in the newbie stages. Yeah. So it's no one's fault, but the educational system built up on textbooks. It takes 20, 30 years to change a textbook. That was one of the big things Charles Poliquin got into me is to be relentlessly pursuing knowledge, but to realize that a textbook, it's doing its best job, but for the entire system to change, it's going to take like 20, 30 years.

And that's if you're lucky that the data gets in. So sometimes a piece of data is entered, which actually is found to be false, but now you can't even change the previous data. Like with the VMO, they did a whole study and determined that you can't preferentially train the VMO, but they actually never tested below 90 degrees. So they did all kinds of foot positionings

and all kinds of stuff. Then much more recently now, they did one and they actually tested full bend and they found that you definitely preferentially train the VMO when you're coming out of a full bend. But that is not, if you go look at the textbooks, that's not there. And now how long will that take to change that and who's going to change that? So making your knowledge base, understanding that textbooks are there, but again, it goes back to the mentor thing of people are achieving the results you want. This is what we do.

People like us, we're on the cutting edge. We're putting out the data in real time. Just that trick with the dumbbells to reach out in front. That doesn't say that in any textbook. Elevate the heels, reach the dumbbells out in front. Don't even start that until you've been backward, which is a shorter range, and on the forward sled, you notice how you get into that medium range, you bend more. So for leg days, we don't just go back,

we go backward and forward. Now you're getting the short and the medium range. And now you're regressing the full range. Boom. Magic happens that date. I just said, boom. Now people are changing their lives with that, but that's going to take 20, 30 years to be in a textbook. Yeah. It's important that people understand like some of the stuff that you ask people to do and some of the stuff I see you guys working with people. Sometimes they'll just do something as simple as put their foot up on a box and drive their knee forward because they don't have the ability to do the ATG split squat or they don't have the ability to have their entire body weight down in a super low squat position.

For some people that have had knee problems in the past, like that's way too much, or maybe they have a hip issue, you can simply take one foot, put it up on like a chair, bend your knee forward as far as you can handle, and then over time work on bending that more and more and more and see if at some point you can start to work towards having some improvements, right? Yeah, and the sled does build tendon. It doesn't seem to get as much to ligament. You seem to need the full bend to get to ligament.

But finding that sled helps get the circulation in there. Now you can handle a little bit more, put some tricks in, get more bend, do it on a sensible schedule, and now science is in your favor. Those things can change. One of the biggest knee issues that happens to a lot of athletes is meniscal tear um and many people i know did not choose to go the surgery route and they actually ended up being pretty okay um but what have you seen because i've actually gotten a few people because ask that specific question about meniscus mentioned you're going to be here so they're wondering, like, do you think surgery is necessary

or is a meniscus something that somebody can recover from over time by doing some of this work? I've had that question a lot. I wrote an article just about that question. So verbally, I have to, you know, choose my words carefully, but I'm also not running from any subjects. And the first thing is understanding what the meniscus is and it's like a rubbery shock absorber in your knee shock absorption and the

degree of the tear only indicates how much blood flow it's going to take for it to heal on its own so if you have no methods of getting blood flow in your training and improving your shock absorption hello the sled things of that nature um then yeah you may have to do something to get it to heal so there has been studies on things like that um which look like it can heal both ways you could have surgery and you can heal and some people heal naturally. So it's at least good to know that there are studies showing that from any meniscus tears, you can heal naturally. You might, if you know that your meniscus is torn and you have that data, well, based on that, you might want to find out with your doctor how far the tear is. So you know, is that something that's going to be more likely to heal quickly or not?

But if you're then just going to avoid your legs, not get circulation, not improve the shock absorption, then I feel like that could be tricky to get it to heal, you know, based on that data. And maybe even nutritionally, you know, that could add up. What kind of circulation can you get from the nutrients? what kind of circulation can you get from the nutrients so if you can get blood flow to it and you know the tear is not too deep it's definitely a fact that tons of people have reached out and have done it naturally um i'm lucky because my my two knees are completely different one was a total mess all kind of tears didn't do any surgeries because that was after i already went through surgeries to the top middle and lower side of the other knee so so i've been on both sides of meniscus tear so one was done surgically the other wasn't they're both fine now so i don't think

someone at least has to be like too freaked out you don't feel any difference in one knee versus the other the knee that was cut into in the knee that wasn't? I would say the difference is that they both made me have to figure out certain things. The left one with partially artificial kneecap, I struggled with stiffness. So it made me really figure out stiffness. Super excited tomorrow having Kelly's Tourette here. Something like flossing for someone who has stiffness could totally change your life. I'll have Derek comment on flossing to then get into it. What do you think about that?

For some people we've seen, I mean, we've worked so many miracles with people in person by using the flossing to then get into it. It's incredible, man. To answer your question, too, I've seen a lot. We've dealt with a lot of athletes, man. A lot of high-level athletes.

They come in with some severe injuries and like like ben said man um like circulation blood flow oxygen and and finding ways to to push blood flow oxygen to that area and flossing has been like a miracle worker for a lot of my athletes you know um so and i know you and i didn't even know that guy um this is the one that originated that yeah that's that's that's incredible but because i learned it from ben and i had like i said when i first met ben my knees were just damaged so um flossing has helped but just by just creating that blood flow oxygen and circulation in that area. And what else I was going to say, in the ATG program, man,

and we get a lot, a lot of testimonies from people that had these tears and had been able to regress to progress. And as ATG has all these athletes just kind of like start at their level and slowly progress, man, we've seen a lot of miracles happen to our athletes. Just for people that don't know what flossing is, it's basically just you're taking a band and you're just wrapping the area up and you're kind of doing like occlusion training almost. And let's say that you did something to your calf or something like that or your knee, you would wrap the area. Usually with the knee, you don't always wrap the entire knee because you've got to be really careful if you're messing with some of the just structure of the front of the knee.

You've got to be cautious of that. But Kelly will wrap up or he'll wrap down. Yeah, if this was a knee, we kind of wrap down the patellar tendon, wrap down the quad tendon, so like two separate bands. And then it's done as like a treatment. However, I'm really excited to have Kelly do a definitive video tomorrow.

I hope he'll do it. And then we can make you YouTube's number one video on that from the source, showing you how to do it. And something simple, if you just walk with the sled while that thing's wrapped, you're just going to get a crazy amount of blood in there.

Yeah, and I haven't done the sled version. I've only used it where you wrap both sides and then you essentially do squats with it to restore the range. But I think there could be much further applications. And then, so I was was mentioning so for my left knee this was an example of something that i experimented with to help it give her over the hump so ultimately it was the full range of motion stuff that got my left knee back because it was

so stiff but for the right knee then it was the sled concept of actually putting in that stability so with the sled in the full range you have stability and you have full range. So it was never, for my knees, it was never one thing that fixed them because if one thing, it had to be the combination because my two knees were different. So one knee would be doing good. So in my trials over the years,

oh, there we go, that's good. Is this him? That's him. So you could imagine in my my trial sometimes one knee would be doing better and then the other knee would be doing and so i found it took that balance of having the sled and the full range of motion um the way that they're wrapping uh for people that can't see um hopefully you can follow along on youtube when we get a video up yeah but uh the flossing is done a very similar to the way an Olympic lifter wraps their knees

where there's a space around the patella tendon they're wrapping from the bottom and they wrap upward but they just kind of leave the patella tendon kind of just out there because if you go across it it's not going to feel very good

that shit's going to hurt so you want to be kind of cautious of that. Yeah, so it's actually still kind of common sense and intuitive in that massage has been around and been used for thousands of years, but it's hard to massage a joint. So essentially with the floss band, it creates a compression so that then when you bend it, it kind of soothes it out and it opens up a jammed area.

And that's the trick. A joint can become a really jammed area, especially for modern life. So if someone's now had a surgery on top of that, that's just an example of something that could help open it up for someone to then get into more range. So I don't floss anymore. I haven't for years other than when it's to do a demo video. But that's an example of something super affordable to get. If you haven't used them, they're not like other bands. You do have to get floss bands.

People have maybe mentioned something about tire inner tubes or something, but considering how cheap they are, I would just get some floss bands. And, yeah, it'll be super exciting to have Kelly break it down. You guys were talking about the grip and then the hand spreaders. How long have you been doing that? Because I've seen people

mess with that, but not something within a program. We do sled every workout. And we used to do sled on Fridays. Strongman finished out the week with Strongman. But I saw Derek doing sled every workout. Yeah. And we used to do sled on Fridays. Like Strongman finished out the week with Strongman. But I saw Derek doing sled like every day. And we would often use a backward sled protocol for 30 days for people as like knee rehab.

But we gradually realized like it just makes everyone's progress better. That's quite frankly the sled is what allowed my mom and dad to love working out. But we also started, you wouldn't leave the gym. We would have like a grip of the day. And so this would range all kinds of different grip tools. So you wouldn't, you start the session from the ground up with the sled, but you don't leave the gym until you finish,

you know, with the hands and fingers. So a crush gripper and a finger expander are simply the two simplest ones someone could get. So, okay, right now I have in the program on leg day, I leave it in my car, but I don't finish until I take a set to failure on each hand. And the next day on upper body day, well, I just reverse the flaw like that.

So that'd be something super simple, but Derek could break down like why that relates. Yeah. Yeah, so grip, man, grip has been like correlated to vitality and longevity. Actually, like as people get aged, their grip gets weak. And so by strengthening your grip, you're able to let off almost like a chemical and tell your entire body to become stronger and more resilient.

And so I feel like that's a big reason why we put that into the program for just maybe just longevity purposes and just have an overall body there's so many benefits actually he wrote an article about uh the benefits of um just having grip grip driven training training grip so um just like for like any sport like grip strength will give you an extra edge for basketball for football for any sport you do um grip is important so uh so yeah like that picture of you doing the single arm hang and i think you also had a weight in your hand when you were doing that like and that's grip like i do a hang i do actually i've been doing hangs

every day for seven minutes seven minutes a day every day for seven minutes for the past for the past maybe maybe six months now it's like it's on my like Ben has a list I got a list I got a list that I gotta do every day

like I was in there doing my pushups it's just something simple like every day I had to 100 pushups like 100 ab wheels like just some simple stuff

just to kind of I just make sure that I know that I if I cause sometimes you get so busy in your life

I might miss a workout but if I know I got this and then I got my ATG workout then I know I'm gonna sometimes you get so busy in your life, I might miss a workout. But if I know I got this and then I got my ATG workout, then I know I'm going to get it done. So it's just, it's more like, it's just a habit.

Yeah. Charles Poliquin believes that the stronger the grip, the stronger you get everywhere. Yeah. And so for me as a basketball player, I'm looking and going, okay,

I want to have like a body built to fly, you know? So how do I, how do I have my upper body in a way that I actually have like an advantage on the court, um, but not being like heavy from the top down, you know, I have the whole rest of my life to build upper body. It's not like I'm choosing saying that this is the exact ideal amount of muscle mass to have. I'm actually, this year I'm actually starting to gain some muscle mass. I want to build a better all-around physique.

But the grip has always given me something that if I can know that at least pound for pound I'm going to have a stronger grip than anyone on the court,

I think it's a big, big difference. Yeah. Going on Amazon and getting that right now. I have a question. You said seven minutes. So you're not,

you're not holding for seven minutes, right? You're doing like maybe two minutes each? two minutes I do like my longest is like three thirty three minutes and thirty seconds and then

that's a long time that's still with one hand or two two two definitely sometimes sometimes on Instagram

man you get stronger when the camera's on right so you just you get twenty percent stronger when the camera's on I don't know get 20% stronger when the camera's on. I don't know, man. I bet you could hold yourself up there for five or six minutes

if you really wanted to. Look at that. The money's on the table. But also the fact that you do it every day. It's crazy because remember that day that we were just holding the grip in the gym? You felt that the next day, right? He's doing seven-minute holds every day.

Jesus. It's the way our body is designed. Our body is designed to adapt. Yeah, to grip and to hold stuff and to adapt. I mean, strongman athletes, they talk about training their grip every day because there are so many strongman athletes that have a previous history of doing construction. We had a guy a few weeks ago who is a bricklayer. He shook my hand.

He totally crushed it. And I was like, what do you do for a living? He's like, I'm a bricklayer. I've been doing it for 30 years. I was like, well, that makes sense. So having a strong grip is really important. I think it just also signals to your body

that you still got a lot of life left in you because it must mean that you must be using your hands. Because if you're not using them, they're not going to be strong for no reason right there's something to that and you do have to open up your fingers you know the the spreaders that you guys are talking about that's important because every single thing that you do in the gym everything from a from a squat to a uh to a bench press doesn't matter what it is you're usually squeezing the bar and and you're because of that you're, you're usually squeezing the bar. And,

and you're, because of that, you're, you're flexing kind of the inside of your forearm and you want to get those extensor muscles to, to work. And that can help alleviate some elbow pain. And because now you're balancing out that other side,

it's like, how often do you open up your hands? I mean, these are things that are advised for people that are older that have like arthritis and stuff. But why not do it before you ever have arthritis so maybe you don't ever have to mess with it? That's kind of what we think is that, and it may not be a popular way of thinking, but you almost find the gems for longevity. And you just found the trick to how a normal person could win a gold medal or something like that in a sport.

So that's what we do i you know the sled was a breakthrough for derek and a breakthrough for my parents i do it every day in the program and and doing it backward was a breakthrough for my knees so we're looking at rehab elderly blah blah rehab that wound up being every day i'm asked how did you make your jump transformation how did you make your jump, how did you make your jump transformation? How did you make your jump transformation? How did you make your jump transformation if you don't lift heavy? I'll bet my legs think I've lifted really heavy from all that sled work.

And it doesn't mean that I can't lift heavy, but there's no doubt that the sled is gentler. You can teach. I was teaching it to my neighbor in LA at my apartment. I'm up there. I noticed he would go start using it himself. Okay. I don't know if an 82 year old with no exercise experience is going to be able to go get under a squat rack and know what to do. Yeah. So we look for these kinds of things, the, you know, the grip, the sled, these sorts of things, the outliers for longevity might be how a normal person could find out their true athletic potential.

There's a lot of weird things to train. There's your neck. There's your hands. There's your feet. And these are things that like usually like if you're to measure someone's neck strength, like Charles Poliquin talked about this, if you're to measure someone's neck strength, they're almost always the strongest person in the room.

I forget how they measure it. I forget exactly what they do. We've been working on it. I bet that's true, man. Yeah, it's fascinating. I mean, you think someone with a stronger neck might also have a bigger neck and they're probably going to be pretty strong. Yeah. What do you think is the best way to train that? I went into high school, 92 pounds.

So any muscle I built, it wasn't going to grow in places i didn't train you know what i mean so plenty of weak links one of my last weak links left relative for myself is that i've been typing you know bajillion words for a few years so we've started working the neck now we have one of those iron necks iron neck so it's not like in the program because we're still figuring out what do we tell people exactly but so maybe you two could actually help us out with, for someone like me, a pencil neck who works at the computer. What do I put in the ATG program? I kind of think one of the best things you can do is like a farmer's carry.

I was thinking heavy carry. Oh, wow. Some sort of heavy carry, whether it's – and the weight on your back too I think is significant too, like a yoke carry. Those are a little more – those are a little trickier because they're just a little bit more dangerous. But a farmer's carry is legit. That's a super tough question. What does my mom do? Would she just do a loaded carry just at her level?

Yeah, yeah. So you guys are big into the sled stuff. Now you've got to start getting into the weighted carry stuff. Whatever way you can carry something, I'll show you today. That's a good idea. Whatever way you can carry a med ball, carry a heavy backpack, carry your baby back and forth, and whatever the hell it is, carry stuff. Pick stuff up.

When I was younger, what I would just do at my gym was I would just grab the heaviest dumbbells I could find and walk paces back and forth in the gym. I was mainly doing that for my traps. I noticed my traps and my neck just started to pull just because I was just walking around like that. I'd do just intermittent shrugs and walk back with the heaviest thing that I could carry.

Great advice. Grip and neck in one movement. Great advice. Also, people need to look up more. Everyone's on their phone. When you walk, not only just look straight forward with your head neutral, but look up. Direct train. Is that something we can directly train? You mean like the neck?

I'm just saying, I don't know if it's realistic for me and a lot of other people to do that as much. So is there a way? Come on, bro. It's not reasonable for people to look at the fucking stars. Not so much that, folks. Let's go. Get away from your phone for a second. I probably didn't word that for people to look at the fucking stars. Not so much that, folks. Let's go. Get away from your phone for a second. I probably didn't word that right.

But something like the Iron Neck. We've been using that and working it. The Iron Neck, I think, is a great tool. That's a fantastic one. A less expensive one would be to use an exercise ball and to put the back of your head on an exercise ball. First of all, if you're your head on an exercise ball first of all if you're sitting down an exercise ball you roll yourself out to just when the back of your head is on the exercise ball

and just do like a bridge um just keep your neck real neutral just don't allow your neck to to uh bend forward but you're um you're actually pushing you're pushing your chin into like your throat. And that was a really, really good, a really amazing neck exercise and also a posture exercise. When you get up from that, if you did it for like 30 seconds or a minute, depending on how long you can do it for, you'll just feel your posture is like reset. And it's something that's been used for some years now for people to potentiate their strength before they go and do certain exercises. Wow. So it's something that could potentially allow you to be a little bit stronger because it's supposed to help tap into the – I don't know how true it is, but it's supposed to kind of tap into your central nervous system. But just give it a shot. It's the easiest exercise to do, I think.

There you go. That's great advice. Thank you. give it a shot it's the easiest exercise to do i think and there's also a great advice thank you there's also like if you have an exercise band heavy enough one you could literally wrap around a pole put your head through yeah and bring like literally that motion that you're doing is like i think it's super important is to if we kind of bring the chin uh like you're trying to do a sexy double chin look you know you're trying to bring your chin to your throat i think it's a really important movement because our head is like it's forward and it's down and we're looking at our food or our feet. It's one of those modern phone problems. That's all we're really trying to solve with ATG.

We're not trying to be a sport. We're trying to solve modern problems. And this is one of the last ones and figuring out how to scale it to something that my mom will do, my dad will do. So this is a lot of good options for us to work on things. But if somebody has an iron neck, that thing is so useful. Oh, yeah. I really like it. Just putting it on, but it's so fucking useful.

How often do you guys isolate grip and neck in your training? Do you just kind of work it in? Is there a specific protocol you guys use? I think there's so much grabbing of weights that we don't, I personally don't actively really think about grip a lot. However, I will deadlift and I will do farmer's carry. So I would say

that would be my direct grip training. But direct grip training is amazing. And to train it to some extent the way that you're doing almost every day, it's a great idea and I think that you can mix things up quite a bit with its style because we have

we'll show you guys some cool shit in the gym like the rolling thunder the thing is amazing for some grip work it's fun yeah we would throw it on the cable machine so that it was easier to set the weights for people but I think it sounds to me like the carries are king um obviously someone

having a gripper and expander in their car is a little easier but you don't get the full benefits of something like a carry for the neck and anyone can do a weighted carry exactly how old or how young no i think i think that's what i'm realizing on this is actually that a carry doesn't it does you know um just like strength training just like a sled doesn't mean you're in a strongman competition my mom does the sled without weight on it but she could also do a carry at her own level so I think that I think that's really good stuff somebody could carry a 10 pound dumbbell on one hand you know just in one hand and and walk and then they can do X amount of feet and then they can switch the other hand. That might be a way actually to sort of regress it a bit.

If you do it one handed, it's almost harder, but you wouldn't have to load as much weight. And you know what I mean? So to kind of... People can do distance rather than weight too. I think that's what I would do is the one arm version because I can safely get get a more fragile person into that but still get a lot out of it. Bingo. Thank you. Also, just because in semen I don't spend a lot of time doing certain movements doesn't mean there's not a lot of utility in just doing something like old-fashioned shrugs.

Shrugs are great. You want to just totally annihilate yourself one day when you're done with a workout. Go and grab whatever dumbbells you want. They don't have to be super heavy. Do as many, like literally as many reps as you can of shrugs. You could take 30 pounds, and I swear to you, it will feel like 200-pound dumbbells. Your grip, everything just gets toasted.

So just try it at the end of a workout it's like it's wild and you get this crazy pump it feels really good doing it on a cable machine is really fun too

because you can even do less weight but it always has tension going and then you can change the angle yeah right your upper lip

you're like yo Adrian you guys make a snarl face too yeah if you're getting carrying slash shrugging motion plus this, then over the next 10 years, I'll come in here at 40 and have better posture than now.

But it's about no neck Patrick over here. Not like that. I'm just talking about just better, more natural posture, the way I should have before typing so much. So, yeah, we're going to, we're going to work on those, integrate them into the program. That's what we're looking for. Those, those simple things that add up over time. And I can't remember what guest it was, but they were just kind of basically laying down

on a bench and then they grabbed a lightweight and they were just like, we're holding it. And then they were just kind of tilting this way. I, is it Julian? I don't recall who it was, but it was somebody we filmed extra content with. Julian Balting this way. Was it Julian? I don't recall who it was. But it was somebody we filmed extra content with. Julian Baldy, yeah. Oh, really? Yeah. He came here?

Yeah, he came over here. Yeah, right. He came down here. We did a video with Next. Joey's strong as hell. Joey's a freak. He's a freak. He's a bar guy.

Yeah, he was one of our original ATG clients. Yeah, super savage mentality. But yeah, there's a ton of next stuff and finding those ones that are really easy to get going. And that's why the shrug thing. You can do this in your car. Yeah. You can just

take the back of your head and just push it into your seat while you're driving. Just do it for I don't know, do it for like 30 seconds. Get a little pressure there. And then increase the tension and try to go pretty hard with it, whatever that means for you. And then try to hold onto that for like 30 seconds.

Do it at every red light. Dude, you'll be shocked. You'll feel that shit. Yeah. You know, we haven't talked too much about it, but like you were talking about the grip and the fingers and how it can maybe affect the elbows, because I can see that.

How about, I mean, is there anything new as far as lower back that you've been messing with? Because obviously stronger feet and that can actually have a good effect on your lower back. But what about people that are just, they need to strengthen that specific area i mean louis simmons you're looking at the reverse hyper right now i'm a fan of figuring out how to master any back extension machine just because okay my mom and dad have a back a 45 degree back extension at home they got for like 150 bucks

i can't necessarily tell them to put a couple thousand dollar reverse hyper. Now, maybe that would be good advice to actually make them get a reverse hyper in their living room. I'm just comparing here. I think it's more about mastering how to do back extensions regardless of what kind of back extension your gym has and understanding to build up the muscles along your spine, realizing that you not only have a lower back, but you have a mid back. So that seems to be a huge thing that you could just be, you know, beating your head against the wall with the

lower back. But then if the mid back, if the thoracic, so we, we directly train the thoracic. For example, Derek can do, we could go out there and he could do an exercise for the thoracic that 99% of people are physically not weak enough right there in the mid-back. They will fail. We'll go do it. Your arms are like this. So say you go on a 45-degree back extension. So you go on a 45-degree back extension. Can you actually raise and hold your arms there in line with your body with 10% of your body weight each hand?

10% of your weight each hand. And can you do that 10 times? And he'll go out there and show you can do it. 99% of people can't do that. They'll try to cheat to bring the elbow in, which is less leverage. So you're coming like this? It's a weakness.

No, you're just going here and going back down. Weakness in the mid-back? So your arms are at 45-degree angle, not 90, 45-degree angle. So it really winds up being the strength. Like by the end, you're lit up along your spine. Just on fire. Yeah. And then if you're looking, okay, you have the lower back

and you have the mid-back, but also the amount of sitting we do in those hip flexors. So to me, if someone said, boom, guns to your head, you can only do one exercise for your low back, I would say ATG split squat. The one where you actually lengthen and stretch out your hip flexors. That sets you up for success in your back. I don't know no matter how much I train my spine if my hip flexors are shortened.

When you talk about shortened or lengthened, you're not talking about just a static stretch or something like that. You're actually talking about the way you change that the best is actually by loading the tissues through a stretch position over time. You can actually lengthen out the area. So if my hip flexors are shortened, I don't know how my back would do. If I can just have lengthened out hip flexors, then probably every motion I'm doing, I'm able to, I'm able to actually use, you know, the muscles better. Now you add on to that something to actually give some strength to the lower back. And then you add on the mid-back. You put split squat back extension, full range of motion split squat back extension and trap three raise because it's like third row of traps.

You put those three together, you got a killer back recipe that most people will fail. Meaning they will measurably have shortened hip flexors and measurably have weak and stiff thoracic spine leaving. So now, okay, hip flexors, thoracic spine. Oh, now I wonder why my back is jacked. And you also find there's more incidents of shoulder surgeries and back surgeries in people where that thoracic is jacked up. When your hips are short, you can be almost 100% positive

that your hamstrings are going to be crazy tight because now you're kind of swooped like this. And once you go to like bend, it's just going to load everything right in your hamstrings and you're going to feel like they're going to just explode on you. What cues do you guys use for like the mind-muscle connection with the back extension? Because if I get on there, I have a really hard time even feeling anything in my back. You know, I've have some back issues, but like when I get on there, I feel my glutes and my hamstrings. That's like almost exclusively it.

Maybe upper back if I'm like, you know, trying to like I just bring in my scaps, you know, like that. I can feel that. But my lower back, I don't feel like it's even doing anything. I mean, for you, probably be good to test this, this mid back, cause then you could be on the back extension and be working the mid back at the same time. Probably good to check those hip flexors. So if someone's, if someone's beating at the back and that doesn't seem to be solving it, probably good idea to check the other ones also just improving range and reps meaning um it's going to take some time but most people can't put just a 45 degree bar on their back and do 20 back extensions but guys like dimitri

klokov and olympic with their they like if you try three sets of 20 or something on the the back extension and then over time you start adding load to that you start to feel the muscles more from building it up that's why julian was such a freak because he did a 275 pound back extension some 275. He went viral on that. And, you know, more power to him. He's one of the mentally savagest. But I also taught. Julian's the kind of guy that I've given so many rides home. And he's from Italy and ended up playing high school football in our town.

And when he really started lifting weights was at our gym. So we've made some crazily mentally tough dudes over the years. That's led. Remember when he did a butcher outside? Me and Julia was on the same team against somebody else, man. Me and Julia, we probably should be dead right now. We went so hard outside, like 100 degrees. But Julia was like, ah, ah, ah. Do you remember his IG?

Just type in Julian Baldydy it'll pop up yeah but he is literally one of those guys that like the his his mentality like that's why people think people see his transformation like this guy's all the drugs like not y'all just don't realize this man's work ethic works and he's insane in the best way possible his focus work ethic is on there you that's yeah that's our ATG dumbbells

right there but um damn yeah yeah there's probably he was really strong

on a bunch of shit you'll probably see yeah he should feature man he should feature that back extension but maybe he

it's in his reels or something but either way he's strong he should we got to give him an instagram lesson that um yeah you have to have up what you're known for so him doing back extensions went viral i don't know if he this is just a squat but either either way um front squat oh fuck it's reverse, but fuck that. But he lifts super hard.

But if you can see the back extension, yeah, it's probably the heaviest back extension that people have seen. So it's gone viral on sports. Oh, I see one. There's one. I see one. It's 192. Okay, yeah.

Let's see that one. Let's see that one. Okay, yep. So he's getting it on. I like he picks it up from the floor. There's the good old Valor back extension. That's from our town, that company. And that's what we use.

I tried to find the one that all the time comes on. Here it is. That whole piece doesn't just break. Yeah. Jeez, man. Andrew, I think if you were to do a 45- degree back raise with a PVC pipe and you just held it out like you're trying to do like a snatch or something like that

I think your back would just go on fire and I think if you paused it rather than like really did a ton of reps that's something I did want to ask you about like directly Marcus because like if I do full range,

I get some back pain, but I get nothing, nothing, nothing, a little something in the middle, and then nothing, nothing. So if I just... The reason why I discovered this is because changing my son's diaper, I get lit up doing that.

I feel that. If you just went on there and tried to hold for 30 seconds with your arms out, either in front or above you, you would die. Yeah, I'll give it above you, you would die. Your back will just blow, most likely.

I would do something to open up the hip flexors first, do the back extension, and then finish with the thoracic, and you'll probably be lit up. That's actually what I was going to ask you, Andrew. How often do you do work that lengthens your hip flexor? Because I see you do a lot of direct back stuff, but do you do anything that puts you in massive hip extension? Putting them on blast well I'm happy to say that for the past week I've done it every single day yeah that's just because my go-to coach Gary Scheffler that's a part of my

daily and night so I do it twice a day so I do it daily and nightly the routine that when you guys were all in the gym like oh I got some time so I I did the whole thing and you know in that moment but yeah it's like um a minute each side is what it's supposed to be today i did a little bit quicker but yeah i'm doing that twice a day right now i bet you'll feel a noticeable difference you aren't doing that much before this week i'm just curious of course not so i think like this like that hip flexor thing because when ben mentioned that hip flexor like that's kind of like you the short hip flexor yeah once you do that that's the hip flexor, that's kind of like you, the short hip flexor. Once you do that. That's the way the podcast world works, dude.

I get an idea or I hear an idea, I should say, and I get some advice, and then it just kind of keeps getting cemented as more and more people come on. And of course, I'm going to respect and take your advice. So I'm excited, dude. I'm a little bit hurt right now. I can only be bit hurt right now. My bad. Yeah.

I can only be so stoic sometimes. You've been telling them for months now. After the three-hour mark. I showed Andrew the couch stretch. At least I knew. I knew. I knew. God damn it, I know. I don't know.

Hey, this is what I told them. It hurts, man. You know, sometimes things just like they actually hurt. I'm telling you, man. Yeah. Look, if you... It's like like the parents been telling you something and then someone cool comes and tells you they're like i'll do what they do what i what i what i told uh what i told the go to guys i was just like look you guys came on the podcast at the perfect time

because had you come when i was 12 years in pain i would have been like oh that's cool i'll try it and i would have gave up like 15 years in pain but 15 years in pain? I'm like, that's where I draw the line. I'm all in. Back pain? My lower back, yeah. Low back? Okay, whatever. You'll know so much, though, to help other people.

That's right. You know, just think from everything you've been through, by figuring that out, it's the blessing. Mr. Infinity, are you out of pain? I am. Like I told you, I was telling Ben. You had tendonitis in your knee when you were young. Does that pop up at all or is it pretty good?

Man, I feel 100%. I was telling Ben, we just did a podcast yesterday. I can literally hop out the bed and go play a full game of basketball. Well, we were just playing together. And that's something you can't fake. You can't fake what you look like on the court. Yeah. He's one of the quickest guys out there. And that's something you can't fake. You can't fake what you look like on the court. You're either hot.

He's one of the quickest guys out there. That's the thing. You lose that bounciness, that agility. He was on my team way too easy. We decided this Sunday we're going opposite team, so I'll update you. But last time he was opposite team, his team beat me. Went down to the last point. This is just a random play.

Unfortunately, we don't have. We'll put up more highlights, but his agility is crazy. Like you can't fake that because you actually have to get into your knees. So he gets low on defense too. You can't fake defense. You can be a good offensive player hobbling around, but to get low on defense and stuff. But I feel good, man. i feel like i feel like i like

i got there sprint with my sons play basketball like i mean i think that's the beauty to me when they say i know it's cliche health is wealth man but i really truly feel like that's i'm i feel blessed and grateful man to be able to just get out there so man kudos to knees over toes guy but what about you? How you feeling, Mark, man? You feel healthy? I'm feeling really good, yeah. I just had like a random shoulder thing that creeped up on me.

I don't know what the hell I did or how it happened. I actually think I may have done something pushing the sled because it's the only thing I can think of. I just had a – Were the arms like out? It was just like heavy. My arms were like tucked in. Yeah, sometimes when you go super heavy, you can tweak a little bit.

Yeah, it almost felt like I separated my shoulder, but I don't remember having anything happen. I just woke up with some pain in my shoulder. Running is giving me like these little like owies here and there. Nothing to really like sideline me or anything. I'm still able to do it, but just like little calf things and little things here and there. My body's just not me or anything. I'm still able to do it, but just little calf things and little things here and there.

My body's just not used to it. How much do you run? You just start it? Yeah. I run about three miles or so every other day, something like that. I'm just kind of getting rolling with it. That's super impressive. It is impressive. I've been feeling good. I feel amazing. I'm in here training every day

and everything feels awesome except for that one shoulder thing, but that's even getting better. Yeah, but honestly, that's crazy impressive. Go ahead and look at your top 10 distance runners or top 10 runners, and you're not going to see someone with muscle mass. So if you have muscle mass and the ability to run, I'd say you're doing phenomenal. Yeah, man.

What about you, Nathie? How are you feeling? Oh, say you're doing phenomenal. Yeah, man. What about you, what are you feeling? Oh, dude. I'm just massively excited, man. I'm just massively excited because we get people like you and a bunch of other people that come on the podcast. I'm always adding things in

and this is the most, even though I'm not focused on my powerlifting numbers or where those were, but this is the most explosive and probably the strongest and resilient my body has felt in my athletic career. And it's just funny because I'm not moving those types of loads that you'd see on a barbell,

but the fact that my body feels so resilient and I'm so springy and I can just move, and I'm continuing to progress, that's the exciting thing. How old are you? I'm 29. I turned 30 in September. Yeah, you're going to be one of the best. I mean, you already are

one of the best all-around athletes on the planet. I mean, I've looked in... Yeah, I'm serious. I'm dead serious. I don't know about that, but I appreciate that.

I've worked with a lot of athletes and even guys who make, you know, who have made hundreds of millions of dollars. What makes him a little different, you think? No weak links.

No weak links. Mobile, quick, strong. You see what strong you see that's tough to have all those factors and with at the ankle the knee the hip the spine the elbow i mean so to find someone with that few weak links that much strength at every area and mobility um i mean don't you think you could go like if you had to you could go in a pro mma fight i feel like i mean i feel like i could train for that i mean it's not something that i want to do but it's something that i could do that's why i like jujitsu though because jujitsu is like dipping my toe into the well not my toe but just like it's in martial arts i'm massively like addicted

to it and i can scratch that itch without having to get punched in the face no but i think what's your goal which is really cool oh my goal jujitsu is like to uh compete and wreck at like the top belt levels so like i'm a purple belt right now i have to get to brown and black and i want to world a world championship as a black belt that's so cool but the cool thing again is you know it's one of those sports where number one with all the things that you guys are talking about as i get older because this goal goal will only probably be able to be realized between the ages for me from 33 to 40, right? But if I can continue building these skills in the weight room, and I've been lucky enough to have been training for a long time, which a lot of jujitsu athletes, they haven't been able to have a lot of weight training for most of their career. I can focus on jujitsu, get stronger with this stuff, continue to be able to compete with younger guys into my late 30s

and be able to potentially realize that, be able to realize that goal. So that's what's exciting about all this because you're 30, but this is probably the best athletically you've been, right? Oh, yeah. It's not even close. That's why it's – I can't – my favorite part of the week is our stupid little weekend pickup game that we set up. We take it serious and stuff, but it's so fun

being able to put out your best performance. But you're saying with the longevity thing, that's unique too, because that's what I noticed with Derek on the court, is he has so much basketball wisdom, it's very hard to beat him whatever team he's on. It doesn't really matter who's on the other team, because he has all that basketball wisdom, but still can move his body around so it's like it's not supposed

to go that way you know that's why with you it could be geez when you're like 35 think how scary good you'll be yeah well that's when i think my prime might be honestly but it's it's great with all this stuff you guys are giving us because a lot of athletes powerlifters bodybuilders etc you don't have to do everything here but if if you add certain things in, sled is easy to add in. There's a lot of these small movements that are easy to add in that can help with athletic longevity. You could stick in your sport for a few more years if you just add in a few things. You guys ever heard of basketball? Basketball.

No, I think Khabib does it. Can you maybe try to look it up? It's tackle basketball. Oh, my God. Full contact basketball where you're just like jacking each other up. Is it a new sport? Just trying to kill each other. It's just like done by the – I think he's Russian, right?

Khabib Nagumanov. Yeah, yeah, Nagumanov. I've never heard of it, but that's cool, yeah. Yeah, basketball. Is it on trampoline? I used to have somebody like that back in my day. Well, that one looks fucking dope. Yeah, it might cool yeah yeah trampoline is it is it on trampoline i used to have somebody like that well that one looks fucking dope yeah it might be on a trampoline i'm not sure if this is it or this is just something else that we should be doing i think that's just trampoline

basketball that's not i actually know that guy okay are you really yeah i'm helping his brother with his knee let me see if i could find it then because it basket brawl wasn't oh my god i think i found you guys uh you guys getting fights on the court of course yeah oh they're like they're like fuck dribbling imagine retiring that would be this is how they're like fighting for position he's just standing there go shoot shoot the ball. Oh, shit. Oh, my God. This is boxing, MMA, and basketball. Oh, man. Football all in one.

Come on, ref. Wow, it looks crazy. This has got to be a comedy right here. Andrew, is this in Russia? This is not. Oh, dang. God. And one?

I don't know. I mean, I don't want to judge a book but they kind of all look Russian right yeah it's definitely this is a Russian thing whatever's done he like pinned the guy like off off to the side

I wonder if he got points for that anyway this is going to be the next progression of basketball so you guys better be ready yeah I'm good I'm about to retire I need to he's like

I'm a toast program for a basket brawl you're like I'm good you guys get into it on the court because like you mentioned it, it's intense. Like,

so you guys get pissy at each other? I mean, it's intense. I mean, yeah. I mean, we go hard,

but we have that thing where Still the respect factor. Yeah, exactly. Just like how we do fitness. We believe strongly in stuff. We work really hard at stuff, but it's never going to, it's never going to go over our respect for other people.

That's the king thing for us is that our respect for each other. That's what's so cool. So you might think in your head, I hope he blows out a hamstring, but you're not thinking. I hope he dies. You're not thinking that far. Let me adjust this program a little bit. He starts limping down the court a little bit.

But it's intense, man. We can hate each other on the court but after the game then we're back loving each other you know what I'm saying yeah there's a fundamental there that even if we disagreed on a call

even if he hits the game winner on my team you know what I mean there's a fundamental there that as soon as it's done I'm going over saying damn good job you know what I mean it's so good when you play against each other a lot

and you learn like what frustrates the other person like what trash talking kind of works. You just find the things that really bug people and you just keep doing them over and over again and see if you can make them snap. What's your sport, man? What's your sport, Mark? Man, I just love lifting weights.

That's pretty much me. I always loved football growing up as a kid and I still like watching football. I'm nuts about fitness. Always lifting and always just trying to figure out new and better ways of doing stuff. Any goals, like fitness goals right now? I don't really have any particular, I guess, large goal. I'm always working on improving my physique,

trying to make that like more well-rounded, make it better, dial it in. And I'm always, well, more recently I'm just starting to work on mobility, flexibility. I just have never really focused in on that.

And, uh, so I'm, I'm working on some of that and just trying trying to figure out how to be more optimal, how to allow my body to be as optimal as possible, being able to recover from workouts. As I mentioned earlier, I talked about being able to mitigate stress and be able to handle stress. I like to be able to do a workout that's really hard, difficult,

multiple workouts, maybe multiple times a day, and just have it like have almost zero negative impact on me. That kind of stuff. Like those are some of my just kind of immediate goals. And I would like to run a six minute mile, but I'm just, I don't really care when that happens. Like that could be like two, three years. Like I don't care how long it takes because when I do it, I want to be able to do it with proficiency and I don't really care when that happens. That could be two, three years. I don't care how long it takes because when I do it, I want to be able to do it with proficiency and I don't want it to be this all-out sprint

where it's 105% of my max. I want it to be 90% of my max, that kind of thing. Just trying to optimize everything. Absolutely, yeah. I'm not a huge, I do write stuff down a little bit here and there, but I don't really set a lot of goals.

I just like to, I'm a person of action. I just like to take action and do stuff, do stuff, do stuff. And then once I'm doing something for long enough, then I start to kind of make goals that I feel are appropriate. That way I'm not forcing myself to do anything too soon. I don't mind things taking a really long time. That's how we do it too. We don't, what's your measure, you know, what's your goal that it's not, there's not a certain weight I'm trying to hit. You know what I mean? It's, it's every movement. It's getting a little bit, it's

just optimizing things in the way that you train, the way that you move. So I think sometimes it's getting a little bit it's just optimizing things in the way that you train the way that you move um so i think sometimes it's better that way when you're doing it in the now you know you're because you could also try to go for some specific goal and then leave out so many important factors or get worse form in the attempt to get there that to me that gets into sport you know which is awesome. But the fitness, that's that personal sport that all of us can have. And so I actually think that maybe the healthiest way to do it is to be going for that all-around optimization of what intuitively feels right for you rather than just setting some arbitrary. Like I have no fitness goals for the year. But my body is getting optimized. It's the best I've performed on the court.

I enjoy every workout. I look forward to every workout. But there's no lift this much, you know, that I'm trying to do this year or something like that. Just all around optimize. Yeah, I agree, man. I try to just, I train just to feel good. Yeah, I just want to feel good. Yeah, but

it seems like, it seems like you're a visionary though, Mark. It seems like you got to like, you like to create this big operation here and to like have all these products and to have this gym and to be so successful

where you are with your body and podcast, et cetera. It seems like you got to have not necessarily a goal, but you seem like you just,

you had to have some type of vision, right? Or no? Yeah. You need a target, right? Yeah. I mean, you can to have some type of vision, right? Or no? Yeah, you need a target, right? Yeah. I mean, you can't hit something that you can't see. So I've always had a goal to try to get this business all under one roof and look a lot the way that it does.

And so once I was already in business, that's when I started to set forth that goal. That's my point is that I wasn't like dreaming something up that would never happen. I was dreaming up something as I was getting closer to some of my goals. So once I created the slingshot, once I started to sell them, and once I started to recognize, oh, like, this is, like, this is a thing, you know? Okay, well, now I need a warehouse. All right, well, my goal is to not only have a warehouse, but it'd be cool if I had a gym in the warehouse. Oh, man, it'd be cool if I had, like, a media team to help showcase the products that we

have, because, but it wasn't until after I got into stuff that I recognized other things like I when I created the slingshot I thought to myself I was like all right I'm going to make a lot of products and then that will tell my story and people will be attracted to the many different great products that I have that's the way it worked out in my brain and so I was like well to be like 70 30 like 70% towards making good products that are affordable for people. And then 30% will be like marketing. And then as I've been doing it longer, I'm like, oh my God, like first and foremost, the product itself actually doesn't really matter that much. Unfortunately, the product does not have to be amazing. It has to be something, but the marketing of the product is actually huge.

So over a period of time, I was like, okay, well, it has to be more like 50-50, if not anything even being more slanted towards, because the innovation of the product, while it is important, it's not the most important thing. It's the perception of the product that is the most important thing. You's the perception of the product that is the most important thing. You can't have a hunk of shit because then people will recognize this thing's crappy.

So you do need a good product. But over the years, I kind of came to this balance of recognizing that it needs to be more like 50-50. I need to have good products, put a lot of effort into having good products, and I need really good marketing to share with people why they might need these products. Otherwise, they don't know I exist. You know, Ben, I want to ask you something real quick because I've noticed this about the way you go about things, and it's something that I appreciate massively when you started sharing the information with us and other people.

Whenever you talk about the things that you do or the processes within your training program, you're never an individual that's like, this is the right way to do things. You're never like, this is the only way to go about training the knee. Talk about Joel Seidman. Immediately when we talked about Joel Seidman, when when we talked about joel seedman i think we did it on air you didn't go and say this is what joel is doing wrong instead he went and you said this is what i like about what joel's doing and then he went to talk about and this is what i do you didn't go and say this is where joe's wrong or this is what i disagree with this is why he's shit you went and talked about the reasons and the things that this guy is doing

pretty fucking good. And it's pretty great about his training program. The same with every, like other people that we've, we've talked about, right? You go into, Oh,

this is a cool thing. This is a cool thing. This is a cool thing. And number, first off, I wish more people within fitness, instead of trying to tear out other, tear down other people's training protocols

and training programs, they instead could maybe find something that they dig from it and maybe take away. But I'm curious why and when did you realize that that is the way you should be going about things? Because there are coaches that you've talked about that you look up to who they don't necessarily even go about that themselves that's not the way they go about things you hear them talk shit about other training protocols other training programs the way other people do things even though those people are at a good place

you don't do that first off super appreciate that second ATG when I made it I wasn't trying to attach it to one thing I was trying to attach it to one thing. I was trying to take the genius of all kinds of areas. So I might even use things from someone who might hate me.

So that was right off the bat. That was my vision of ATG, Athletic Truth Group, was just taking gems that help people from all kinds of different areas. So by nature, that is my nature. Also happened to, you know, that is my nature also happened to, you know, uh, internally, I like when I show up and people are like friendly and stuff like that. And so it sounds like way too simple, but it's just, I want things to be friendlier out there. So if I'm going to then go into those games of hating on people, I don't feel better at the end of that.

I only feel bad those times I'm mean. And I don't want to be living in a world like that. So over time, it definitely became my number one fitness belief was that my fitness belief was not as important as respecting people. So that's just something that's become really important to me. And if I can leave any kind of mark, it's not even going to be making someone go back over the sled. It's going to be respecting them, even if they don't want to do that. You know? Um, I think that's the only way we're going to, as a society, you know, move forward. Yeah. So, but I really appreciate that.

Yeah. I just want to show, I just want to, I want to show up and be in a friendly world. I want to log on on social media and be in a friendly world. It's really that simple. You guys are the same way. Mark sheds light on so many people with so many different opinions. So I also do, in terms of my mental mentors, I try to surround myself with people like that. So I've got it good with people like Mark in my corner

and even within ATG. I've never heard Derek hate on anyone ever. And Keegan Smith, Australian, he's the same way. We just want to be able to raise our families, be in friendly environments, help people. So I think a lot of people out there probably feel that way and maybe you just got to kind of get some other mentors around you that feel that way because it is easy to get sucked into that

and start getting into that fight and hating on people. But do you feel better at the end of that? Because I feel like crap after that. It's really helpful, I think, to encourage people to do some of the exercises that you're talking about because you're not necessarily saying, like, if you don't follow the whole program, it ain't going to work. And it's not. You're just saying, look, find something that you like to do out of some of the things that I offer. What you said earlier actually was really awesome about pulling the sled backwards. So there's a thing that could help potentially with the tendon ligament growth.

But we also need to figure out, because you can overload with the sled, you can get some weight on there. And then also taking your body through ranges of motion. And maybe those, for that particular person, maybe those are unweighted. But it's like those are two simple things that anyone can carry. It doesn't matter if they're a boxer. It doesn't matter if they're a football player. It doesn't matter if they like doing cleans and jerks and whatever other movements that other people love to do, powerlifting-wise or anything else. It's like find some time to do both of those things occasionally and make sure your knees are healthy.

Pretty simple. Yep. both of those things, occasionally, make sure your knees are healthy. Pretty simple. Yep. What do you guys think,

for both of you, the bigger demon, I'll say, trying to discover or figure out why people's, like, or how to correct people's knee pain or getting them to believe that they can reverse their knee pain?

Oh, I mean, showing it, you know, and showing simple things they can go try and see if it actually works for them. I think, I don't think it, you know, and showing simple things they can go try and see if it actually works for them. I think, I don't think it has to be a leap of faith. Yeah, I think people, I think that's why,

that's why people, so many people are responding to being these overtold guys, why he has a million followers, because he's leading from the front. And like I was telling Insima, you got so many people in this space that are just trying to sell a product, trying to sell a program,

talking. Now, I hate, not only hate, but Ben leads and he shows you. So automatically, that's inspiring and giving people belief

for like, oh man, this guy. And he shows you where he came from. I was 19. I had a 19 vertical to a 42 inch vertical and and I had

these three or four knee surgeries so automatically everybody's just drawn to that you know so uh and the same with me man like people see me as at 43 and they're like man I'm 30 and my knees hurt or my back hurts and that and that automatically if i can imagine if i was 30 saw 43 i'll be like that would immediately give me a belief like man if he can do what i can do and i think that's what that's what motivates me and that's why i started seeing his approach to the atg system and things that he would identify and want to do more and then i so the same process of being sold on something and then trying it i've lived that in reverse by watching him at 43 where sunday

we're trying to do dunks but what's the best thing derrick can do to get someone to want to do sled training dunk when he's 50 live it like like prove you know go live it and prove it but in the pud right there's nothing he can there's literally nothing he could say that will get more people to try doing sled training which paul Paul Quinn wrote a book about it. Louis Simmons is probably, yeah, Paul Quinn has a book just on sled where he goes, yeah, where he goes of all kinds of gems too with the sled.

Right? That didn't get sexy enough. You know what I mean? That's what we're out here living and bleeding and trying to prove it. But there's nothing that he could say that would work better than seeing him, like if he can be as quick as he is now on the court at 50,

it'll look like one of those videos where the guy dresses up, you know, holding his real life. Is that Kyrie Irving? I don't know. But like seriously, like if he can play basketball like he is now when he's 50, that'll get more people to try a sled than anything he could say. I just want to say like one of the things that makes the sled so effective for people that maybe have doubts about it, they're not quite sure,

is it's primarily all concentric training. There's not an eccentric component to it. It's also not going to load your spine. So you're not taking weights and putting them on your back like you might with a squat. Not that that's necessarily inherently unhealthy. No, it's good in dosages. Yeah, it's good in dosages for sure. And you mentioned that earlier with the longevity study of just having like pressure.

Definitely makes a lot of sense. Basically, it's a message to your body like, hey, we're still doing shit. You better still be awake down there. So it is helpful. like hey we're still doing shit yeah you better still you better still be awake down there so it is helpful but um you can do a lot of exercises with the sled it's primarily concentric work that doesn't mean you're not going to get sore at all it doesn't mean that there's no eccentric work to it but it's primarily all concentric stuff and so people that are looking to rehab just about anything your shoulder your knee you can get on there and figure out with different straps and handles,

you can do all kinds of exercises on there. Yeah, so true. And we don't sell slaves. Does it bum you out? Unfortunately. Does it bum you out when you see people getting knee surgery? I mean, I've been through it,

so I know they'll come out of it. Sick. So I don't even have, go ahead and get the knee surgery, honestly. What you eating over there in SEMA? I'm hungry, man. Dig in on your Pop-Tarts. Are we going to taste test this?

Tasty pastry. I even muted your mic and it still was like getting picked up by everything. Shout out tasty pastry. So this is 20 grams of protein, 5 carbs, so it's not a break in my diet, I guess. Only like 170 calories? It's going to be a delicious break. It's incredible. So this is 20 grams of protein, five carbs. So it's not a break in my diet, I guess.

Only like 170 calories? It's going to be a delicious break. It's incredible. Good. I can just eat this in peace. Not off the fence. Hey, Mark, how do you guys handle criticism or handle all the hate? Like social media, it can be a monster sometimes. So do you just, how do you guys deal with that?

I think, you know, some things to think about. Why are you laughing? When we're talking about. Mark's the goat with that shit. We're talking about like fighting, you know, or being mean to somebody. You know, how is it, I like to try to think about stuff like, how does this help? How does this hurt?

Like, how is it helpful? Like, is it helpful at all for Ben or for you to be calling out another fitness person saying my program's the best? Like, how does that serve and help the people? Like, think about the original reason why you got into doing all this in the first place. That's nothing to do with fighting with me and Nsema about proper squat technique. That's like the furthest removed thing. You originally want to help people, right?

So I think sometimes we've got to look at stuff through that lens. And secondly, I think when it comes to these comments that you see, most of the time it has to do with what's going on in that person's particular life and doesn't have that much to do with you it has to do with they're like frustrated about something and what you just posted came in their eyeline you know they saw it on social media at a time where they just think it's wrong they think what you're doing is incorrect. And I think that most of the time, most people are trying to do their best. And there's these little times where every once in a while we won't do our best and we'll slip and we'll say something mean to somebody or something that's not. And it's in an effort to, like, draw attention.

I think people want to draw attention to themselves because they want to feel significant. They want to feel smart. So somebody will make a comment and say, oh, my God, you idiot. I can't believe you just told people not to eat vegetables. What that guy is trying to claim is that he found something that is valuable that he would like to share with people, but he doesn't know how to communicate it. And he's getting mad and frustrated at me about it. And I probably don't really have that much to do with it. Or sometimes there's some people that follow

just to kind of get frustrated. I'm sure there's people that follow you guys that are in, you know, they don't believe in a lot of the stuff that you do. And so they're waiting for you to say the wrong thing, for you to call the muscle in the stuff that you do. And so they're waiting for you to say the wrong thing, for you to call the muscle in the knee the wrong thing. They're waiting for you to fuck

up and be like, see, like I told you, Ben doesn't know that much of the science, man. Look at that. I'm not going to trust. And then what do they do? They throw out everything that you say and for some reason there's no longer any reason to listen to anything that you said when you may have said something wrong.

I mean, we all say wrong stuff. We all say things that we end up later on. We disagree with our own thoughts and things like that, right? That happens all the time. And so people like getting on social media and disagreeing with you, I think there's a couple ways of handling it. One is to try to kill people with kindness. If you just say, hey, sorry, I'm just doing the best job I can. Catch you later or whatever.

There's that kind of stuff. Trying to explain something to somebody sometimes can be helpful depending on what they said. I mean, if they said something really irrational, then it's like, well, you just got to ignore it. And I think the third thing is to really just keep plowing forward. You know, for me, like at this point, like the Slingshot and some of the stuff that I made with Slingshot, it's so old that I'm six or seven products into the supplement company that I have. So I don't feel

like I have the time to slow down and be like, hey, man, I'm sorry that post hurt your feelings. Let's talk about your feelings. I feel I don't have time for that. I am working on trying to be as productive as possible and always trying to work on the next thing. In my household, my wife takes care of a lot of stuff, just like you were mentioning your wife does. And even just something like, I mean, my wife will do all kinds of stuff. She was taking stuff to the dump the other day because we're selling a house and she cleared out the house.

And she's like, I'll just do it myself. And I was like, well, I'll go with you. I'll help you. she's like, I'll just do it myself. And I was like, well, I'll go with you. I'll help you. She's like, nah, she's like, you need to just stay you and you need to do your, your,

your shit your way. I know, I know. But so she has that much support for me because she knows that it's not great for me to be tied up in that way. So if I'm thinking about some comment that somebody made on social media, it just, it ties me up the wrong way. And it's'm thinking about some comment that somebody made on social media, it just, it ties me up the wrong way

and it's not, it's just not productive. Yeah. So what'd you think about the tasty pastry, Ben? I mean, it's, he inhaled it.

Oh, did you finish it? Yeah, I did it quick. He don't play around with food, man. I like to eat. I like to eat. Oh, wait, we just saw you

eat something too. Hey. No, I'm talking about him. We actually saw like to eat. Oh, wait. We just saw you eat something, too. Hey. No, I'm talking about here. We actually saw him eat something. Oh, a bite. A bite. I mean, I was forced. We didn't get to see it.

There's no doubt it tastes really good. Yeah. Legendary foods. Yeah. So you guys can head over to, so I don't mess it up, eatlegendary.com and make sure you guys use promo code PowerProject to receive 20% off your entire order. Seriously, Taste Pastry, it's like 170 calories, 20 grams of protein. It's freaking delicious.

It doesn't taste like a health food. It's not even close. I will challenge you guys. Put it up against like pretty much any protein bar and it's going to have similar or better macros and it's definitely going to taste better. So again, eatlegendaryfoods.com or eatlegendary.com. Promo code POWERPROJECT to save 20% off. Links to them

down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Andrew, want to take us out of here, buddy? Sure thing. I think we crushed it. Thank you guys for checking out today's episode. Please make sure you guys drop a comment down below. We know we don't um we don't beg for subscribers or anything like that we just bring you guys amazing content amazing guests so if you guys aren't entertained by now i mean come on so drop us a subscription a subscribe whatever and uh let us

know what you guys think about today's episode and please make sure you follow the podcast at mark wells power project on instagram at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram and twitter is at i am Project on TikTok and Twitter my Instagram and Twitter is at I am Andrew Z and Seema where can people find you? I'm Seema Inyang on Instagram and YouTube

and Seema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter Derek and Ben News of a Toast Guy Mr. Affinity with the ones check out our book ATG for Life

yeah we'll link that down we'll link it down in the description as well as the podcast show notes thank you so much I'm at Mark Smelly Bell strength is never a weakness weakness is never a strength catch you guys later peace Yeah, we'll link it down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. Thank you so much. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never a weakness.

Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later. Peace. Appreciate you. Bye.