Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 680 - Steve Bake & Matt Wiedemer: The Strongest Powerlifter You've Never Heard Of

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Let's get Steve to at least 10k followers on IG! Follow him here: https://www.instagram.com/yougotbaked/ Steve is the strongest Powerlifter you haven't heard of. He is currently 2nd ranked raw powerlifter of all time at 308lbs and is determined to claim the number one spot. He is a great guy with true farm boy strength. Matt Wiedemer is a Coach, Trainer and founder of Beat Personalized Training. He has been devoted to the field of strength and conditioning, and human performance for more than 20 years. He works with all types of athletes from Jon Jones to Steve Bake to average Soccer Moms and Dads. Matt also trained under world-renowned powerlifter and strength coach Louie Simmons at Westside Barbell. Follow Matt on IG: https://www.instagram.com/beattrainer/ Beat Personal Training: https://beatpersonaltraining.com/ Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 15% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢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 #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Project Family, how's it going? Now, a lot of you guys are lifters, athletes. You're serious about the gym, and we are too. And that's why we've been using Slingshot products for years, all right? You have the original Slingshot, obviously the glittery pink hip circle, which is my personal favorite. But if you don't like that, then you have the normal hip circle that's used to warm up the hips. But on the website, they have tons of equipment, knee sleeves, elbow sleeves, the gangster wraps right there. So you need to go check them out. And Andrew, can you tell him more about it? Yes, if you guys know Mark Bell,

then you know all about his powerlifting career. And one thing he's always said is, protect yourself before you wreck yourself. And you guys can protect yourself right now by heading over to markbellslingshot.com and at checkout, enter promo code POWERPROJECT for 15% off your entire order. Links to them down in the description

as well as the podcast show notes. All right, we got some interesting guests on the show today. Really excited to be here with Matt Watt. I got that right, right? Yeah, I forgot the second T is silent. There it is. Whitmer. Yeah.

I finally nailed that. A strength coach from Cincinnati. We're going to talk to him in depth about Westside Barbell and a lot of awesome stuff that he's done with a lot of athletes over the years. And then we got this mutant power lifter here, Steve Bake. And we also have

Stan the Rhino Effering. I'll leave the rest to you guys. Holy shit. We're just trying to have some fun over here. I don't know. We're just playing on the fact of over here I don't know we're just

playing on the fact of how big this guy is how fucking large it's it's insane why is he so why are you so big what happened well I think

oh you met him yeah eat a lot of food lift heavy I've done it for almost 20 years now how much did he weigh when you guys met you said

you're about 215, right? Yeah. Yeah. 215, 220. Yeah, pushing a prowler out my parking lot. Jesus. How many years ago was this? I don't know.

15? Oh, wow. 15 years ago, yeah. And now we're talking about like 370 pounds? Yeah, 370. Something like that? Yeah, 390 when he competes, yeah. What is the deal with you guys?

Because there's a lot of unconventional training going on from the whole group. What in the fuck is going on? Because most of the time when you see a big power lifter like this, they kind of stick to bench squat, deadlift, kind of heavier lifts. And then I believe, is it John? Am I getting that right? Jimmy. Jimmy, I'm sorry.

And then I believe, is it John? Am I getting that right? Am I? Jimmy. Jimmy. I'm sorry. Jimmy was in the gym, and he was talking about how he, like, runs on a treadmill for five minutes, and in between he squats 315 for reps.

Yeah. But, big man, you do some stuff like that here and there too, right? And then you were in there doing some crazy deadlifts and stuff like that. What's the deal with the way that you guys train? Well, I think we always say we're agnostic, right? I love it. One thing early, I was telling telling mark i started out like an olympic lifting and i remember my first coach no matter what he would do it's like hey coach uh this kid over here benches 315 you know back in high school he'd be like well can he clean it you know like so olympic lifting was

like everything i bought in and then when i was about 19 i went to west side barbell and then everything became good mornings and rack pulls and box squats. And you should never free squat. Never work your legs. Why would you ever work your legs? It's all, you know, hips and back, hips and back, and hamstring, posterior chain. And then over the years, I've been really fortunate, and I always seek out. Like, I'll never – I spent, like, six days with Donnie Thompson, or I'll go out and visit the Lula Bridges or Ed Cohen or whoever.

Whoever's good, I'd learn. And you learn over time that there's not one way. And the other thing you learn is everything works, but nothing works forever. So how you start out, you know, we talk about this like beginners. You can start out with like, you know, I was like looking at Owen. I bet Owen could go a five by five on Monday on squats and on Wednesday go up 10 pounds and do the same workout and Friday. If we ask Steve, hey, what's today? Friday. So if we said, hey, Monday, go ahead and squat 950.

You know, there's no way. And then Wednesday we'll go 975. It'll be easy. Right. So over time, you just learn a lot. You try to pick out what's going to work. And I think you're always just trying to build whatever you're not doing good at or whatever you're weak at. So that's kind of – and I think Ohio's got a lot of crazy guys.

We talked about like Louie Simmons, John Perillo. There's a lot of kooks in Ohio. I guess we don't have enough to do. Yeah, John Perillo. I haven't heard that name in forever. When I was looking up some stuff on Steve, I started to see some things from John Perillo. And John Perillo made MCT oil popular. He

brought that to the masses and then he had a supplement company and I guess he has his own gym at this point. Yeah, he has a gym. He doesn't really... He trains some of you guys? He trains you? Yeah, he trains me and Jimmy. That's about it. And then what kind of training methodology is he following?

100-rep sets, forced reps, everything slow. Probably something you can barely do three times. He'll expect you to do 20. Right. He's all about building that Golgi tendon reflex. He's big on the Golgi tendon. What is that about? So basically, your Golgi tendon is what?

It's an inhibitor, right? It's to protect you. So when you hear the story about the woman picked up the car to save her baby, her Golgi tendon was shut off and she was able to use all her strength. So John's really big thing is increasing the threshold. So he'll have you do a lot of forced reps. We do a lot on the belt squat. His belt squat is really unique.

But really slow reps. I mean he had me do – just to give you a reference, like I squat. His belt squat is really unique, but really slow reps. I mean he had me do – just to give you a reference, like I squat 630 in a belt, no knee reps, and he had me doing 800 of real weight. There are four 200-pound plates between my legs. Holy shit. And I have got like two spotters, so he has a slide pull and two people on each arm, one person behind me. And you're like, John, I don't think I'm doing anything. They're like lifting you up. He's like, no, no, no, you're doing good.

And so it's kind of fun, but out there training. It's tough. Or then he'll have you go from that to 100 rep sets. So again, I don't have one person I follow exclusively, and I think Steve's kind of the same way. We just kind of take bits and pieces of what works. I think the truth about some of this is that nobody really knows, right? We think we know so much, and there's so much research on sets of three and sets of five.

We have some good information about time under tension, a set lasting 45 seconds, a set lasting a minute. We've got information on some of these things, sets that are done very quickly, sets that are done with bands and chains and with a lot of force and a lot of velocity, but we don't really know what happens when you do 100 reps or 300 reps. Or what if you did 1,000 reps?

What if you squatted 135 every minute on the minute for two hours straight? Who has the research for that? Who has the information for that? And so sometimes I think it's wise just to lean towards the stuff that we like, the things that are challenging, the things that kind of just seem like they kind of perk our interest. And as you said, everything works, but it's just not going to work forever. So why not experiment? Why not explore? And I think – don't you think, Mark, like we've all had this?

Like you've got a bunch of equipment in your gym. And I think all of us – I bought so much equipment. I might have you be – I bought a lot of stuff. I imagine – It sounds like you got a collection going. Yeah, and I've got rid of a lot of stuff too. But every time I think like this is it, like I remember we got know we got a certain belt squat it's like guys this is the and when you start out the pump's unreal and you're and then like four weeks and you're like i don't feel it as much or you know i'm not making progress

and i think it's just you know again everything works nothing works forever you gotta find a new stimulus a new way to grow um that's why when you go to a new gym and you try a new leg press or a new hack squat or whatever the machine might be that's why you fall in love with it because it's new. It's almost like relationships, right? Like the new girl is always better than the old. You're like, wow, this girl. No, she's different. It's like, oh, no.

Just like the last one. But it's kind of the same idea. I'm really curious about this because a lot of lifters are probably listening. Probably first off, they don't understand your background um because before i get on to what i wanted to ask you can you talk to them about kind of like your background as far as lifting and athletics and some of the things that you were doing outside of lifting and some of the things that you're still doing now as far as your capacity and high reps cardio etc um, when I first started lifting, the idea was just lift as heavy as I could for as many reps as I could.

Like, you know, bodybuilders used to train. Farm for a living, so there's a lot of physical activity there. And I don't know. It was just a lot of work. The reason I was asking is some of the things you were telling me, like, for example, you did a mile. What was it that you did? It was a burpee mile.

Burpee mile. Yeah. Burpee mile. Broad jump. Yeah. 17 and a half football field trips. And that took you two hours. And how much did you weigh when you did that?

I was about 285, 290. Oh, you're really light though. He's in sixth grade. This is crazy. You're like 370 right now and you're a crazy in shape 370. The cool thing that I'm noticing is that a lot of lifters,

they'll go into the gym, they'll do their workout, they'll leave, they'll go home, they'll relax, they'll recover. You work out, then you still have the capacity to go and you do work, you do physical labor, you sleep, you go back to the gym, do another hard workout, go back, do labor.

And I'm wondering, how can people somewhat reverse engineer that into themselves? How can people build that capacity? Let's say you're super fucking strong, but you don't have the fitness that you you have how can we reverse engineer that i think conditioning plays a big role into powerlifting i think it's overlooked uh you know i go to meet i don't get tired at a meet you know that's the easy day compared to training so yeah let's talk to it going about this and you're kind of going through this now i think we all start out well the rest of us start out skinny and we want to get big. Everything's focused on a gallon of milk a day and we're bulking up.

You lose athleticism over time. Remember that, we talked about that discus store. I used to train him. The one that we always talk about could jump off his knees with 275. That was my guy and I would train with him. I could stand with my back to a reverse hyper and 180 jump on it. That was one of our drills. I don't know if I could jump on a hyper with a trampoline now.

But it goes so quickly. And, Seema, you make a great point. I think we get so focused on getting bigger and stronger. So that would be my advice to young lifters. Don't lose your athleticism. Everybody talks about periodization. They have a hypertrophy period or a strength block or a peaking block. I think more than ever you should make sure you're doing an athleticism block.

It doesn't mean, look, you're athletic. I always tell, like, we had a group of runners that would come to our gym. We'd give them lifting for their marathon running. They would always say, like, how does this compare to what you guys do? I said, well, your lifting will impress us as much as our running will impress you. But you're lifting to support your running, so you don't have to become a gymnast. But I think even with the advance of CrossFit, we used to laugh. Not me, but a lot of people would laugh at the CrossFitters.

And now you kind of say, like, they're pretty strong. All that stuff didn't really kill their strength. And it doesn't mean I think you should be a – I don't think Steve should be out doing muscle-ups and swimming a mile before he squats. But having some sort of athletic base, I think, will, one, keep you healthy longer. And, two, I think it does help your powerlifting. More explosive.

How do you come up with – It's about building the base. Yeah. How do you end up coming up with some of these things, Steve? Is it something that you guys talk over or you just think of weird like the burpee broad jump that was i heard of that somewhere it was like uh one of the world's toughest workouts or something like that like that sounds great we gave it a whirl you know what nobody talks about with all these methods you know like people talk about sport specificity so what is it's you know an activity

estimation direction duration and velocity of a sporting movement i look at things a little different though for all the lifters i mean you had andre melena chivin here i've talked to eddie An activity estimator is direction, duration, and velocity of a sporting movement. I look at things a little different, though. For all the lifters, I mean, you had Andre Milanoch even here. I've talked to Eddie Cohen. I remember Chad Wesley Smith. I think all the guys have come through here. George Lehman had his deadlift program. All different, right?

Baby Slayer. That was his nickname. All different. One thing I figured out, they all are about three and a half to four pounds per inch of body weight at about 12 to 18% body fat with good technique and relatively healthy. So however you think you can get there, that's your end goal. Because like I was even looking at Stan at his best,

I did the math. He was four pounds per inch. It was about two 85 when he was competing. Right now he's probably about 3.4. He would still be a really good lifter today, but he wouldn't be the best. Steve is 5.2 pounds per inch on his body. So, if you look

at all these great lifters like Dan Green or Kevin Oak or Ed Cohen, you go back to like Pacifico, Jimmy Cash, Ohio guys, Marv Phillips, it was a Doug Furness lift with Eddie. All those guys are jacked. You've been saying forever, they're muscular. uh, Jimmy Cash, Ohio guys, um, Mar Phillips. Um, it was a Doug for nest lift with Eddie. All those guys are jacked.

You know, you've been saying forever, they're muscular. So it really comes down to if you want to get really good at powerlifting, you need to be at three and a half to four pounds per inch. And the taller you are, the higher that number has got to be. You got to put on some, some real muscle mass to be good at this.

And so then however you get there, whether you like high intensity, you like HIIT training, you like a Chad Wesley Smith or Eric Tomlitt, a lot of volume. It's got to fit your personality. Think about Louie's system fits Louie. I mean, he contradicts himself within a sentence, right? It's like, you've got to train fast. You've got to be gotta be efficient you're like what percentage am i supposed to use yeah for speed work i said speed strength not strength speak yeah i know and you're like wait huh yeah he always catches you

on like some little tidbit like that's explosive strength you're like well which but whatever it is that fits his personality right one minute you're like you said he would catch you like tell you to do something like a week later like why are you doing that yeah he'd get all pissed off yeah so that fits his person i think a guy's like chad wesley smith to me like it's kind of like i love the guy but he can put me to sleep with his videos he's very methodical he wants more of a set program yeah that fits his personality it's perfect like it's three sets of six it's 72 and a half percent. It's like that fits him. Right. Louie doesn't want to do Louie's like,

well, we, you know, like, so it's just, you got to fit your personality. So Steve's pretty intense. Steve likes to work hard. He's a farmer.

He likes to push. I mean, sometimes with him, we just had this talk. Like I think some of his extra workouts are actually probably too much, too much. Because I always say like your extra conditioning, um,

if it pulls you back, if you, you know, like Louie always talk about extra workouts or you're talking about conditioning. If you're conditioning, you walk into squat and you're like, oh, my God, my legs are shot from the prowler. Then you overdid the prowler. Steve, what do those workouts look like, those extra workouts that we're talking about? A lot of sled work, prowler every Saturday, speed work every week I lift six days a week

you probably don't ever work out kind of like a normal person you probably go pretty nuts almost every time it's 100% every time yeah so with all that being said you mentioned six workouts a week and you're working on top of that

what can lifters because there's so many things that lifters can add in With all that being said, you mentioned six workouts a week and you're working on top of that. What can lifters, because there's so many things that lifters can add in, right? Like we've talked about sleds. A funny thing that you mentioned CrossFit and running like five minutes in between sets, right? We had Chris Hinshaw in the gym, right? And he talked exactly about that. He's like, for us, in between your sets of movements, maybe go take a run around the gym, come back and do another set. That's going to be something that can increase your capacity. With all of these options, if a lifter and a lot of lifters have shit capacity, right?

Yeah. What are the beginning steps to building some level? Something simple, easy. This conversation is really good because this is what happens, in my opinion, in all things in life. One, if you can't measure it don't do it so like you know like i hate the foot ladder so if i offend anybody i don't care the foot ladder if you're coaching the foot ladder i would recommend you stop because you can't progress you don't you know they never time it they never progress it you so you know like in a foot ladder

drill i assume they're trying to make athletes quicker. So if you can't even measure it, then how do you know if it's improving your 40? So that's why I always think strength coaches get outperformed by like powerlifting coaches who help an athlete. Because as powerlifters or strength athletes, we have to measure everything. So if Steve does front squats and then he goes back, like let's say we did front squats for the next four weeks and then we came back in six weeks and he tested his squat. If his front squat went up 50 pounds but he squats 875, front squats didn't work for him. If he squats 1,000, it's like let's do more front squats. So you have to measure.

If things aren't measurable, don't do them. And I think that's why strength athletes are good because we measure our weight. We measure how much we lift. And then you just got to constantly assess it. So kind of start working backwards. And that's why I say like what is your end goal? So it would be three and a half pounds to four pounds of mass per inch. And then what do you want to – are you a strong man or are you a power lifter?

And then start picking things and just assess them. You know, like if he's doing the prowler and his squats go up, then that's good. And measure it, you know, because there's going to be an optimal range. Like he's kind of gone over that optimal range a little bit, we think. Yeah. We think. We're going to find out. But yeah, I think just measuring things. So like if you walk with a sled, let's say like that's a good one to start with.

Let's say I'm going to walk with the sled the day after I do squats. Then start with, you know, I'm going to walk with two plates for a certain, either go for distance or time or both, you know, measure how far you go in a certain amount of time or how long it takes you to go a certain amount of distance and just start gradually progressing that. And then you'll look and see, do my squats go up? Do my deadlifts go up? Do I feel better? What's my body weight? And then the nice thing is you should have indicators. Everything's like builders and indicators and testers.

And so we all have them. One time you benched, what, 585? Somewhere in there. I just took a page from the Rhino's book. He said that if somebody says something higher than what you did, you say yeah something like that but if he would have said like 572 572 i would say no 578 585 i'll take it i'll drink to that as a lifter you would probably know quickly like where you are you wouldn't just have to go max your bench you could say i know by this exercise by my body weight i could never bench set at this body weight

you would have indicators right away where you know where you were. And I think like even like, you know, we're working with John Jones. I said, that was the first thing I said, we got to get some measurables because I think with fighters even, that sports a little behind on conditioning because you should know, hey, when I fought Vito Rebelford, I could broad jump this. I had a vertical of this. I weighed this.

The more things you have to indicate where you are, the less you have to test it. You know, like I don't have to go deadlift to know where my deadlift is because you can go based off, you know, glute hams, good mornings, some other exercises, your body weight, how things feel. As you grow as a lifter, you should be able to know those things without actually having a max. And I think having more indicators in measuring things is really the biggest thing. So coming back to your original question, I would measure your weight, your distance, and your time. And I'm really curious about this because both Stan, Stan started off in bodybuilding.

Yeah. Steve, it sounds like you started off doing as heavy as you can for as many reps as possible. So you're moving a lot of volume. So inadvertently, even though you're doing that, you are doing bodybuilding because of all of the volume. Like you're gaining muscle pretty fast. A lot of young guys and women, when they see powerlifting, let's say they're a new strength athlete

and they haven't even built volume up. They just go straight into lifting heavy loads, right? And they haven't built a base of muscle. We had Andre Milanoch even said, when we had him on the podcast, he was like, you should spend your first three years volume training build a capacity for volume so that now when you go and you try to lift heavy you you don't break yourself right yeah so if a lifter is getting into this and be like i want a power lift but they don't have anything

on their frame should they focus on bodybuilding or should they find a way to focus on bodybuilding and i think i put like a couple of programs we recommend are like starting strength, which is great because it is starting strength. Five, three, one with Jim Wendler programs like that. I think early on you should touch the main lifts. I would do less lifts and I would do it more frequently. So like we had a kid, we've done this a million times. We had a kid at our gym.

I think he was 16 first day he squats you know like 95 or 10 it was ugly i had to hold his heels down i'm like keep you know he's trying to come up and i'm like keep him down i had to hold him physically hold him down so we just benched and squat and then a lot upper back monday wednesday friday and i think he ended up putting 180 pounds on his squat in a year now again same thing and we would do, it was like everybody's like, what percentages? A beginner doesn't need percents because rapidly your max is changing. So we would say if you can do 10, then the next workout you can go up. If you got eight, you had to keep that weight until you could get 10.

You could never fall below six. He put on 180. Could you imagine putting 180 in? But all he did was squat, bench, and upper back. Then when that started to plateau, we added in deadlift and overhead press and did the same thing. So then it became like Monday would be squat, bench. Wednesday was deadlift, overhead press.

Then it was squat, bench. Then the next week would be deadlift, overhead press, squat, bench. So we just rotated like that. And then eventually he plateaued out on that. And that takes you to like an intermediate lifter which means now you have a weak spot you know i love when guys like i'm working my weak spot like full body were there accessories in there by the way or was it just upper back like pull-ups and rows okay that was it and he got big he got stronger uh we had him drinking a gallon of milk a day we had him you know his his uh assignment was to eat a frozen pizza.

His parents didn't have a ton of money. So we said, you get a frozen pizza every night. And kind of the J.M. Blakely, put olive oil on it. Do whatever you got to do. More calories per bite. And this is what I mean by – Pace back and forth and treat it like a training session. Make sure that whole pie is gone.

That's right. You miss those days a little bit, yeah. But this is what I mean by everybody's so convicted in their ways, and I guess they should be, but I look at it different. The more naturally gifted you are for something, the less you need to do. So for example, we all have a body part that we, not to tease them, like Stan's calves. Stan does calves three days a week religiously. The only body part I have that looks good are my calves. And everybody's like, what do you do for your calves? I don't do, like the secret's calves. Stan does calves three days a week religiously. The only body part I have that looks good are my calves.

And everybody's like, what do you do for your calves? I don't do, like the secret's out, I don't do, I've never done a calf raise. I do a lot of glued ham calf raises, but that's it. Everybody's like, what do you do for your calves? First thing everybody asks me, I don't do anything. So is that the program then? You know, we all know somebody who can eat what they want and they're ripped. And so it's like, oh, dieting's stupid.

I eat what I want. Well're ripped. And so it's like, oh, dieting is stupid. I eat what I want. Well, it's stupid for you. But the rest of us have to do either keto or carnivore or vertical or whatever it is we do. So the more – like I looked at – when Chad Wesley Smith came out to our gym, his knees are bigger than my hips. Yeah. Yeah, he's huge. So it's funny when he's like, all you need to build a squat is a squat rack. It's like, maybe you.

Right. But for the rest of us, maybe we need some belt squats. Maybe we need some hack squats. I want to touch upon this a little bit because I think what's missing, I love what you said early about lift light, but lift frequently. And I think for some kids or somebody that's new, they go in the gym

and they lift, they do a set of 10. And a lot of times, I mean, I've had my nephews and nieces and I've had a bunch of family members come in and they go to do something and the eight or nine-year-old kid will say, oh, that was easy. And it's like, well, let's try to do it

with kind of correct form and then let's see what happens when you do like 12 reps. So I really like that idea of like, let's actually do the exercise the right way or work on that over a period of time. The frequency is going to drive the amount of volume and the amount of exposure that person's getting to that exercise. Over a period of time, the person will get neurologically more efficient at the movement.

So there'll be a spike in strength just from that alone, not necessarily just them getting stronger, but they're just getting better at the movement. But if you ride it out for long enough, now they're actually getting stronger. And in your case, you're talking about allowing the athlete to grow as well, to put some size better at the movement, but if you ride it out for long enough, now they're actually getting stronger. And in your case, you're talking about allowing the athlete to grow as well, to put some size on, so an introduction of calories, that's a lost thing that people forget. It's like we need to have, if you're going to make yourself stronger, you can't make something out of nothing, so you need calories. You're going to have to, at minimum uh meet your maintenance level of

calories and in most cases especially a young kid is going to have to go uh over it but what i wanted to mention was when it comes to benching squatting deadlifting all great exercises but you what makes them great is also what makes them uh not so awesome in a lot of cases so what makes them great is the fact that they lend themselves, they allow themselves, they allow you, the lifter, to lift the most amount of weight,

to lift 405 pounds on a squat, right? Yeah. If you're new, you can't lift that amount of weight. So how do you get that amount of volume in? And you do so with assistance exercise. That's right.

You do so with some of that upper back work you were talking about. Yes. So that was a great point. Chad Wesley Smith might not have to really focus in on leg extensions or doing hack squats, right? Yeah. But a lot of other people will because a larger muscle oftentimes can be a stronger muscle because it can help with absorption and protection, leverages, things of that nature. So I think sometimes we're missing out on the fact that those assistance movements can really carry young lifters very far because if we can make bigger lats, it'll be easier to make a bigger bench. If we have bigger lats, it'll be easier to have a bigger deadlift.

If we have bigger lats, bigger upper back, it's going to be a lot easier to place that 500 pounds on our back for a squat. 100%, yeah. And I think like you make a great – I have another trainer, and we had a kid come in. He wasn't a kid. He was in his 20s. And he couldn't – I mean you always hear this.

Like I couldn't bench the bar. He couldn't do the bar more than seven times. And he was not small. He was like 180. He was kind of a chubby guy, but 180-pound chubby guy. And he worked out with our head trainer. And I remember I i said good luck yeah and he made him do like ungodly amounts of like put i mean it was like i called it the karate

kid workouts he'd be like dude 20 push-ups when you can't get 20 you know stand up and do 50 band pull apart and be like i mean i'm not exaggerating be like farmers walk out of the gym like i don't know if that we're covered on liability. He's down the street pulling a band and carrying weights. The first time he benched, he got 185 for seven. It was to Mark's point. I said to my trainer, I said, why did you do that?

It was really smart. He goes, what's he going to do? If he can do the bar for seven, let's go for eight. He goes, it's just stupid. You're not touching a bar until you're up to speed. That's another way to do it. You're right. But you had to work hard at the end of the day and he wasn't doing like one rep maxes and he certainly wasn't doing a board press with the bar and a two

and a half. And then doing another day where he took a broomstick and a chain and did eight triples, you know? So you have to, that's why we had another gal, like here's a good example. Everybody knows like speed work,

right? So, you know, we got a point eight meters a second, eight doubles or five by five or, you know, 25 lists at 65, 75 percent, whatever it is. We had a girl, a woman, she's 53. She's a nurse. You know, all my people are natural. So, you know, we can't like pull that.

I think they are. Yeah. The comment section is about to go crazy about what you just said right there. They're going to burn you now. I hope you understand this, but let's go. Well, I train normal people, and we'll talk about that in the business thing. But most of my people now are like, mom does. But it's funny.

We'll take them to Laura Phelps' meet. I mean, we took like 12. I actually have a venture capital guy. He's 66 years old. He almost got kicked out of a meet because he was so mad he missed his squat. He kicked a chair. I was like, dude, you got to calm down. He's my you got my friend tom donnelly's a great guy but it's so funny um i was like of all the people i mean guys look like steve tattoos i was like who's

gonna get kicked out like the you know right right venture capital guy but we take these you know we get people really to fall in love with powerlifting because it's a great sport for adults so anyway this woman like a lot of people she could do do like, you know, 200 pounds for 10 and max 205. I'm like, we got to find a way to turn you on. So speed squat,

nothing worked. And I'm like, well, we have a pretty sophisticated speed program. It's actually, we guarantee 20% faster in six weeks

on speed training. Independently tested, clinically proven. So I said, let's put her on the, let's run her. We need, she needs to learn to move.

She went from 205, I sound like Louie, don't I? Like, I'm a 205. She went from 205 to 235 in a meet, and it took sprinting. But this is kind of my point. I'm agnostic. I will do whatever it takes. I mean, I told Mark, if you come to our gym, we got all sorts of stuff because it's like I got to find the thing that will work for you or for you. for you. Everybody's going to need a different, might need a different trick.

You mentioned sprinting. And Stan told us a little bit about what you've done in terms of sprinting and how you innovated that. And you obviously want to hear about that. But if a lifter hears that and they're like, ooh, sprinting. And then they go try and sprint. And then they pull their hand because they don't know how to fucking sprint, let alone run. How do people build themselves into, if it's even good for them to sprint, how do they build themselves into that? Well, they would start slow, obviously.

And again, her sprinting would impress a sprinter as much as maybe – well, actually, sprinters can lift pretty good. But you're sprinting to help your powerlifting. So you don't sprint to the point that it's deleterious to your powerlifting. So start slow. I saw Mark probably add some resistance, like a sled or something. But with that, sometimes somebody just needs to learn how to activate really quickly. So they call it rate of force development, right? So fast people turn everything on much faster.

So if you're trying to get a lifter to lift more explosively that might do the trick you know some some people it doesn't but some people don't need it i mean that's why i always say like somebody there's always somebody out there like i'm sure my body weight comment somebody's gonna be like my cousin's roommate in florida benched 400 at 180 it's like great you know like spud web played in the nba i bet the rest of the five seven guys are not making it right you know there's four guys under six feet in the history of the NBA, so I would say you probably need to be at least 6'2 to play in the NBA. I would say you need to be big to power lift.

So maybe the first thing with a sprint would be to figure out a way to slow it down. So what do we got? We got a hill. Sleds and hills, yeah. Yeah, sleds, hills. Or backwards even. Right. Yeah, or start with jumps.

I was going to show you. You were mentioning backwards or backpedaling. Yeah, you know, it's funny. How does that transfer over into being able to run fast forward? Well, because we overwork going forward. Every sport goes backwards, but we never train it. In our study, so the study was done at Children's Hospital. You mean backwards.

Every sport goes backwards. Yeah, sorry. Exactly. So our study was done at Cincinnati Children's Hospital. And it wasn't me with the stopwatch. It was them. And they used, I think, I don't know the exact number. I won't misquote.

It was a number of athletes. And we averaged 20% faster in six weeks. But they also did a, you know, they do a double blind. Our athletes had a 40% reduction in ACL tears over the next five years. Because I think it's because we do a lot of back pedals. And we do a lot of Nordic hamstring curls. That's part of our program. And Nordic hamstring curls are the only exercise proven to reduce ACL tears.

Now, I'm curious about that, too. What is the treadmill that you use specifically? Yeah. What is that? Because most gyms don't have that. Yeah, we have a specialty made. It's a pretty big deal. What's special about it?

Well, one, it's big. Have you ever been on a treadmill at a regular gym? Speed trip? Oh, regular. Yeah. I mean, I can't even imagine. He likes to bounce. But they're just uncomfortable.

I don't know if you ever ran on a treadmill. They're uncomfortable. I have, and it's not good. They're like, if you weigh over 180, they're terrible. They're pretty narrow sometimes, yeah. And I'm sure they do that for home, you know, for home gyms, they probably do it because they want safe space. Commercial gyms probably want to get as many as they can in there.

So I get it. But for us, we're looking for performance. We've got a lot of, like we've had NFL guys in there. So, I mean, like we even had like, he's an ex-NFL guy, but Rocky Boyman, I don't know if you remember him, he played for the Titans and the Colts. But, I mean, he came in and he in and those big guys fill it up real quick. But we had that, and then we'll do

it goes up to 25 miles an hour. So here's what I like about overspeed. I still don't mark this. Number one, velocity. So that's key. So everybody talks about speed. You can either measure it in miles per hour or velocity, meters a second, right? So the fastest guy ever is Bolt. He's running 12.5 meters a second. Most field sport athletes are at least 10 meters a second so in miles per hour we're

looking at 20 bolts up to like 27 and a half it's insane but like top nfl guys like they're in the low 20 miles per hour you see it now they have that uh camp oh yeah they show the amazon thing tracks yeah all that stuff yeah it's pretty cool in it And we had a girl from Dayton, she plays at soccer at Dayton, she got over 20 on the field because they had it there. Wow. So it does translate. But what I like about it is, again, I'm really big on measurements, and I hate wasted efforts.

If most people go to sprint, so I was telling Mark, if his son came out, or if Mark went out to sprint, and Mark sprints 50 meters and I'm like, Mark, your arms are swinging in. Get them tighter and relax. Like most people are too tight when they sprint. If you hear noise, it's bad.

Most sprinters, if you watch them on TV, their eyeballs, their face is bouncing. It's just so loose. Your whole jaw, mouth is relaxed. Yeah, if you hear that grunting like in Stan's Hotel. But if you hear any of that, you got to stop it immediately. But if somebody runs 50 meters, it's like you're way too tight. Your arms are crossing.

That's a wasted effort. And they got a bad pattern after that. Whereas on the treadmill, I can be right next to them. We're spotting right there live. We put a mirror up. Some people like it. Some people don't, but I like it

because then they can see it and they're like, relax. Arms in front of you. Stay loose. So no wasted reps we coach them right away i love filming our first session because from the first run to the last we basically fix people's form in one workout number two i can control volume and intensity because if a kid runs if you tell a kid to run 65 that's tough it's like hey run this 100 but

run it at 65 and they're not used to running maybe yeah especially right yeah even if i mean what's that even? Even like for us, and I'm a pretty experienced coach, like if you said run 65%, it's like, you know, I don't know. I'm like this. Like, what's that mean?

So if I want to control volume and intensity, I can control it 100% because they're sprinting on the treadmill. I can set the exact speed. Number two is that you're going zero to however fast. If I have them running at 20 miles an hour, there's no buildup. You're at zero to 20 at 20 miles an hour, there's no buildup. You're at zero to 20 now.

Whereas everything else, there's a buildup. So it really teaches acceleration because you've got to go now. And then there's also the fear factor. I tell Mark, we spot every run, but there is something. I mean, when you stayed over that treadmill and you kind of – it's humming at 20 miles an hour. Stan, you've seen it. I mean, it's like – when 20 miles an hour is like –

and you know you've got to jump on it. I mean, it's like jumping off a cliff hour is like, and you know you've got to jump on it. I mean, it's like jumping off a cliff. You're like, why would I do this? Yeah, I think I've seen you guys with John Jones on there, right? 100%, yeah. He went from 16 miles an hour to 20 in six weeks. Wow. That's insane.

What's over speed? Like what is that referring to? So they're running faster than they normally could, and that's what I mean by that. So we're taking you to a place you've never been before. How does it get you there? How do you run faster than you really can? Just what I mean. So if you think about it, if you're used to running 18, I'm going to put you at 19.

I see. And the other thing is we could go up – So the treadmill is – It's going faster, yeah. And you've got to just figure out a way to move your feet. Basically, yeah. And then how many – how long are you able to hold that for? Well, that's the nice thing about it.

We can increase speed, acceleration, and capacity. So if you think about a 100-meter dash, the fastest guy might not always win because it's who can get to top speed first. Deaccelerate the least, right? And who deaccelerates the least. So the longer I can accelerate and the slower I can deaccelerate. Like let's say we race and you run 23 miles an hour and I run 25, so I assume I'm going to beat you. But you get to 23 faster and you hold it longer, you might actually beat me.

And so we can increase capacity. The other thing we do is you think about it. No one ever works the hip flexors concentrically, but you do. You're doing it now with those reverse squats. But everything in the weight room, you never work the hip flexors concentrically. We raise that up to 40 degrees even. And when most people run up a hill, you inherently lean forward, so you shorten your stride and shorten your hip flexors concentrically. We raise that up to 40 degrees even. And when most people run up a hill, you inherently lean forward. So you shorten your stride and shorten your hip flexors.

But because we can spot you, they're actually running up the hill and they're holding their position. So now think about your hip flexors are working like crazy. You said 40 degrees? Yeah. It's insane. Holy shit. Like a lot of times they go 15, right?

Yes. Yeah. 15 is a lot. So if we can go up to 20, 30, 40 degrees, now you're running, but you've got to go with the hill. You don't run into the hill, if that makes sense. A lot of people lean over

and when they lean over, you can see that with John. What about some of these treadmills can take weight off people a little bit too, right? Yes. But that's more therapeutic?

That's more therapeutic. We really don't do that. The one thing – see here, see John going backwards. He actually thought this was the best one. He liked this one the best. And these kneeling jumps for hip speed and power. When he started, he couldn't jump off his knees, period. No weight.

Really? Whoa, you mean like no weight? He couldn't? Yeah. Is it because of the extra weight? Because he's had great movement ability. Yeah, I think he was – he had gained the weight. Really? Whoa, you mean like no weight he couldn't? Yeah. Is it because of the extra weight? Because he's had great movement ability. Yeah, I think he had gained the weight, but kind of like we talked about, he had focused on. Oh, he's running really well.

Look at that. Shit. Yeah, he changed overnight. His broad jump went up 10 inches in about eight weeks. Let's see here. He actually came up with this one. He said, can i freestyle that's one thing about being a coach too i think um some coaches get so into their method i try to

listen to the athlete you know like with steve um steve asked for some help on this i mean i said you don't need a lot of help i'll give you some tips but you know maybe a pair down but i would never sit there and tell steve like oh that's wrong you know he just squatted 935 or 925 i mean what do i know you know i don't have 935 in my back so like with john he's 15 and 0 in title fights i'm not going to tell him oh no we're not we're only doing my methods so john want to get on there and do some uh some of the he said can i freestyle for a little bit i said yeah so we worked into his program yeah and i know that his knee was bothering him quite a bit so to see him moving like that that's amazing and then plus now he's heavier. Yeah, he's faster now than he was in his previous life. He's what, 30 pounds heavier, right?

Yeah. That's amazing. But I think it comes back to what Nsemo says. How do you just, I think it's hard. Like, you know, in anything we do, everything comes at us. And in this information age, it's like, I think we're all a little compulsive. We love to train. We love these ideas. And it's like, oh,'re all a little compulsive. We love to train. We love these ideas.

And it's like, oh, I want to try this. And I've got to do this. I've got to do calf raises. I've got to do seated. I've got to get my soleus for seated. I've got to get gastro for standing. And then I've got to do some speed work. I've got to get hypertrophy.

And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa. You get overwhelmed with ideas. Don't forget the rotator cuffs. Yeah. So you get so overwhelmed with ideas. And that's why I say, well, just measure it. And then start like, all right, what am I doing? And then what can you handle?

Like, so how much can you put in? And I do that at work. You know, I get overwhelmed with like, I don't know if you get this owning a company. I'll just say, hold on, we got to slow down because everybody's got an idea. Like we should market this. We should do this. We should do more Facebook ads. And you're like, well, I mean, I just get overwhelmed.

So then I just have to say what actually works. How do we know it works? And then just start paring it down. And how do you measure it? Steve, do you just, like when you go to the gym, do you just like pick certain things, certain things kind of call to you? Or do you follow some of the advice from John Perillo? Are you trading information with Matt or with Stan or something like that?

Or with your training partner, Jimmy? Yeah, I usually don't decide what I'm doing until I go in the gym that day. Going by how you feel yeah how long has it been that way forever that is good that is infuriating to a lot of people i rotate a lot of bars yeah what about when you were young did you like you know write stuff down and really pay attention like i did 275 this week and next week i want to do 285 that kind of thing yeah i used to write stuff down all the time. I got away from it. I don't do it anymore.

But I used to be real faithful about writing everything down. I think it's important when you're starting, though. And Seema's talked about this many times, I think, for people that are trying to lose weight, that are really frustrated, that have never been able to figure it out. It's a good idea to track your calories for a little while. It's not going to hurt you to understand how many calories you're eating, to get a base idea and go, oh, wow, I thought I was, they say to eat one gram of protein

per pound of body weight. I thought I was hitting that, and it turns out I was only doing half of that, right? It turns out I'm eating double the amount of fat and double the amount of carbs. And so now you can kind of change pace. But so now you don't really write stuff down. You kind of go by feel.

What's the training split look like? Is there specific days for specific lifts type things? Yeah, he's kind of doing a conjugate right now. Yeah, like Sunday would be like max effort chest. Tuesday would be speed squats and sled pulls. Or I'm sorry, Monday. Tuesday would be back. Wednesday's speed bench, arms.

Thursday's off, Friday, legs. Saturday, prowler. What's a speed bench day look like? Like what kind of weights? So you're using bands and chains and stuff like that? I use bands, yeah. And are you able to keep the weights? Jimmy's going to, you know, he's over there.

He's going to be checking on this. Are you able to keep the weights modest on those days or you get too fired up too carried away i usually don't do anything over 315 with bands yeah try to keep it light and you know speed day it's not supposed to be heavy right bar supposed to move fast you are you trying to move the weight as if it's you know 600 pounds fast as I can. He's pretty explosive. Yeah, we saw that today when he did 225 pounds on the bench there for, I don't know, 70-something reps. 71 reps. Steve, I'm really curious about this.

I might be guessing incorrectly, but for some reason it seems like you're not an athlete who's actually dealt with a lot of injuries. Am I right or wrong about that? I've had a few. I've had a few. I've had a a torn bicep i need to get my shoulder fixed now yeah but you know i've had little injuries but nothing major do you when you work with like really heavy loads do you uh how often is it that you fail heavy lifts um in training i'm just not very often not very often as humble as i can say that yeah yeah so that means like are you pretty good at like picking what to do on a certain day like you

even though you you know he's mentioned that you guys like you sometimes overwork yourself you don't ever work with something you know that you're not able to move right yeah has that been that way for a long time or more recently um been that way for a while okay you know if i can break my pr by five pounds that's good enough for me yeah you crushed i think it was 805 today and then you went up and uh i think the next or i'm sorry the lift before 805 was a little bit slower then you corrected yourself with 805 you got your knees wrapped by andre milano chip which was a little different for you you mentioned a lot of times you wrap your own knees and stuff so there's a little adjustment there and then um i think we went to like around

9 45s on each side and i asked you like you want another plate and you kind of laughed you're like no like i'm gonna go with a quarter uh those decisions are hard to make you know like the things that you can do versus the things that you probably should do. Oftentimes, that's right where we get hurt. It's like, yeah, I want to hit this extra plate because we're filming this and because we're making

a thing of this today, but you still ended up with a really good squat for today. You hit a 9.35 squat, right? Yeah. 9.25. 9.25 squat. Wow. He didn't take the stand approach. The anti-stand approach. And then like next week when you train,

I know that you're mentioning these max effort workouts. What will the next max effort workout for your lower body look like? Will it be maybe like a deadlift or a variation of a squat or something like that? It'll be a deadlift. I deadlift and squat the same week every week. I'm also curious because as far as your total is concerned, I don't know where it puts you as far as rankings and all time, but what are the goals for powerlifting and do you have goals for strongman?

Because seeing as you said you've worked on a farm, you have the ability to move really fucking well, you have amazing capacity, 370 pounds, you seem like somebody who would also demolish in the pro strongman circuit. Is that even something you've thought about doing? I've had a lot of people ask me that question. I don't think I have an answer for it right now.

I don't know what I want to do after I get done powerlifting. What does getting done done powerlifting. What does getting done with powerlifting look like? Being number one? Gotcha. What's your total now? Sorry, Andrew. No, go ahead.

Total 2,400. I'm 14th right now, all time. In 308, I was second behind Lily Bridge. I had the highest total in the world in 2019 at 308. And then how do those lifts break down? I know you squatted over 1,000, right? What's your best squat? In a meet is 9, but I've squatted 1,000 in the gym.

Bench, 645 in a meet, and deadlift at 855. So you'll need everything to kind of come together on one day. Got to have that perfect day. Plus maybe a little extra spice on top because the all-time world record is 26. 06. 26.06 by Daniel Bell. Yeah, that's a tall order. It is. How are you maintaining your mobility?

As silly as it sounds, I mean, I'm impressed by everything that you've been doing today, but the first thing that I saw where I was like, oh, he's different, was you squatted an empty bar and you had perfect form on that. Normally, I see a lot of big power lifters that are a little stuck, right? They need to actually add a lot of weight to get crunched down into that hole. He's talking about me and Stan. I am talking exactly about these two gentlemen right here. Usually the bar is the hardest set. Yeah, so I'm just curious. I't know like what what's going on there like because you

like in sema said you move extremely well for anybody let alone somebody this big i think it's i think it just relates back to you know box jumps prowler sleds just constantly doing something your farm work yeah yeah why why do you think that no one knows who the fuck you are first time i saw you was the lifting vault video yeah yeah yeah i didn't even know that was being put out there well his social media manager over here was telling me he was uh mentioning that steve was mentioning to me that he didn't even know that he had the biggest total like in the world for a period of time. Someone sent him a screen capture of it. He's like, oh, that's pretty nice.

How neat. Yeah, how neat. As I go chase some more chickens on the farm. Right. Better chase that chicken. I've never been big on social media. I do my talking on the platform. media. I just do my talking on the platform. I need to get

videos of you carrying buckets and picking up cows and shit like that, I guess. The original Samson. What kind of farm are you managing? Is this a family thing that's been going on for years? Yeah, I'm actually

the fifth generation. Grain, a lot of soybeans, corn, raised sweet corn in the summer. Cattle? Chickens? No, I got a couple hundred chickens. I sell eggs, but we don't have any cattle.

What's the hard part with that? Is there still a lot of manual labor? I mean, I live out in a country area. It's really rare for me to see people i just i see like big ass fucking tractors and i see a lot of machines but i don't see that many people yeah it's not nearly as manual as it used to be you know with my dad when he was growing up but uh it's still it's still work for sure up early type thing yeah and you've been doing that since you were a kid is like are you up at

like four o'clock in the morning that kind of thing not quite four maybe your dad's up then huh yeah 15 yeah yeah what about um so it's funny because like a lot of power lifters are going to be listening and they're going to want that one takeaway or like that one gem and they're going to adjust their workouts and stuff but uh one thing that we're always talking about and you can't see it but the shirt i'm wearing today just simply says think less so i'd imagine throughout your whole power lifting journey your career you probably haven't had to really adjust much right you just go in and you squat right have you ever i don't know is there anything that you had to adjust to really be like oh i did that like like mark talks about all the time you know

his squat went from nine something working with cali stirret to turn his toes in and then now he's over a thousand thousand eighty it wasn't anything been similar to where you're like oh that did actually help or are you just still like now i'm just gonna go lift heavy no i mean there's been a couple things numerous things yeah i can't name, but yeah, I've tweaked a lot of things throughout the career of doing it. Yeah. Absolutely. And then, Matt, so as a coach, though,

once you get into these high numbers, you can't really, like, I mean, what do you do if somebody's at that point? Where can you start to break down to be like, we need to start addressing this and that? Yeah, I mean mean today we saw like just a simple cue driving your head into the bar harder right because if you notice on the one where you didn't do well he kind of went like this yeah the bar moved on him a bit yep yeah and so i just said hey when you get in there your first thought should be drive back like so

steve's got insanely strong legs i mean if you watch him we should do like a leg press video with him your leg press is insane when you go out to you watch him, we should do like a leg press video with him. Your leg press is insane. When you go out to John's. Yeah. That's a heck of a leg press. Oh, my God. He's got a race. Only one in the world.

But so he's going to drive with his legs really well. For him, it's just a matter of like remind him to, it's not like you're weak. It's just drive that bar back. So sometimes it's just little tips. Yeah, and you know this from working with some of the best in the world, from seeing John Jones, from seeing this guy and what he's capable of doing. I think we make the mistake sometimes in thinking that we don't have anything to offer

because you're like, well, no one really knows about lifting these weights. I remember when Eric Spoto was around, Eric would actually get pretty nervous about certain weights and certain things. And I said, hey, man, don't worry about it. I don't know about lifting these weights and no one else in the world knows about bench pressing these weights that you're about to bench press, but I do know how to get people stronger. And I was like, and so does that guy. And I pointed to Stan and it just calmed him down and put him at ease on the

day that he hit his all time. Well, I think about it like, you know, number one, you gotta, I was fortunate for the young age I was working at d1 school so i always say respect the athletes because i remember um there's a guy named jim sweeney played for the pittsburgh steelers and our and then pittsburgh the facilities were aligned and um my my boss buddy morris trained him and uh one of my first coaches got him joe collins and so jim sweeney would do close stance safety squat bar squats, no box. He was strong. He's like – I mean like NFL offensive lineman, played 10 years in the league. Kind of like Bill Aikyub, but taller.

Just a big, strong guy. I think he did like five plates for 10 on the safety bar with a close stance. And my buddy Joe said, could you imagine Louie in here telling him like, that's all wrong. You need to squat wide. You need to box squat. Out wide. And he just made the point. He said, look, you need to squat wide you need a box spot out wide and and he just made

the point he said look you need to respect that guy for 10 years in a row he's prepared himself and successfully played in the nfl and it was a great lesson because you go i was like you know when when i went to john i said you're 15 and oh we're not gonna and we're not here to like salvage you you know you're not like two eight, and we're here to rescue you. We're just here to add some value. That being said, Mark makes a great point. Every great athlete's had a coach, right? So we agree that, let's say, in our generation, Tiger Woods is the best golfer ever, right?

At least in our generation. He had a coach who wasn't even on the PGA Tour. So did that coach say, like, I can't golf like Tiger? No, he had the confidence to say, I can actually coach say like, I can't golf like Tiger. No, he had the confidence to say, I can actually make you better. I can give you some tips. Um,

Tom Brady, I think his coach is, uh, Alex Guerrero. Who've like, you know, couldn't lift his way up. Wait,

he's not strong, but it never touched the NFL field, but he had the confidence to say, I can make you better. And he did. Um, so you don't have to necessarily be, um, the greatest to be the great coach.

Bill Belichick never played football. I don't even think he played college. So you can add value. One thing you said in the gym I think is really relevant too is you talked about how well you should know the people that you're working with. 100%. Yeah. If people don't believe in you, like if people don't always say, you know, if they don't know that you care, they don't care what you know. Right.

And I really believe that. You have to really get invested in the people you work with, you know, like whether it's employees, trainers, whoever. And then everybody ticks different, you know. Everybody has different motivations. Everybody has different things that work for them, cues. You know, some people like the hype. You remember Chuck Vogelpolder. Dave Tate, we talked about, he had to calm them down.

You don't need to slap them. You need to actually stay calmer. Some guys need a kick in the ass. It's kind of reading your audience and knowing your audience and how you're coaching. Some guys want to be yelled. Sometimes you got to know when to play that card. Sometimes you do need to yell.

Sometimes they need to hug. It all changes. I get told I train the wrong way all the time. Who else does that? Oh, lots of people. But I said, I'll keep sticking with what I'm doing.

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Yeah. and get back to this podcast. Brave people, shit. I wanted to go back to when you gave the example of the lady that you had sprint. So is there a formula or some very obvious indicators? Because, again, thinking about people listening, they're just like, well, shit, I'm going to go start sprinting to help my squat, my deadlift, my bench, whatever it may be. Is that just like a broad statement you can just say for everybody? That's a very broad statement.

Okay. So with her, we have a lot of special equipment. So I have a resisted treadmill as well that measures power, and it measures it in meters per second. So if I could set it to six seconds, and we have records. Chuck Bondarcher chuck the throwing coach used to call it the web you know it's that's a good thing for everybody to have like some sort of indicators in all directions so like a conditioning indicator an explosive indicator a

strength indicator because the further if you go too far in one direction you distort the web right so like we talked about this, Mark was talking about they get too into training heavy for athletes. So if you had like Randy Moss and you're like, Randy Moss, you can't bench. It's like, well, he's doing pretty good. Everything, if you look, the NFL does a nice job of this. They kind of know how strong somebody should be.

Like if you're a receiver, we know how long you should bench, 225. We know how fast you should be. We know how fast you should be. We know how high you should jump. So the NFL has done a nice job of this. I think in powerlifting we do a pretty good job, but you could just start creating little criteria for yourself.

So you could have one thing you use to test your conditioning, and it needs to be optimal, not maximal. Because again, if you're a powerlifter, Steve doesn't need to run a four-minute mile. He doesn't need to run a mile. But maybe he knows I do the prowler.

He does know. He could tell you like I do the prowler with this much weight for this distance. He knows what he should do. And if that falls too low, he's out of shape. If it gets too good, which is kind of where he's at now almost, it's almost wearing him down. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So with this one, for example, we knew she started out,

it was a really low number, like 12 meters in six seconds or something really low. And we got it up to like 18 or something like that. But it was just something to measure that she got better. Now, I don't know if getting her to 20

would have made her squat 250. We don't know that. But at least we had something to push and we had a measurable improvement in explosive speed. I would advise lifters to really not worry about sprinting,

especially when it comes to running. What I would maybe hone in on is being able to go from if currently all you can do is walk, then work on a jog. If all you can do is jog, then work on a jog. If all you can do is jog, then work on a run. If all you can do is run, or if you have the capacity to run, you probably have the capacity to do some sort of half-assed sprint

and going up a hill or something like that. And I would peel it back a bit because you're not trying to be a sprinter. You're trying to have it enhance other aspects of your life and other aspects of your training. So with that said, could you get really good hamstring recruitment, calf recruitment

from running a hill and you're just doing it at like a 7 out of 10? And you do multiple. And let's go back to the frequency. Let's see if we can get some frequency, a little bit of consistency. And now you're also adding in, you know, and Sima and I were playing around with the sled yesterday.

And of course, like we started with two plates and, you know, next thing we know we had five plates and he, he kind of took off with one and I just was like, Hey, you know, just be, it's new, you know, be careful, you know? So anytime anything's new be insanely cautious. I mean, if you anything's new, be insanely cautious. I'm talking about insanely cautious. If you're changing your foot stance, if you're changing your shoes, the stronger you are for this guy, for me to interrupt him during a squat

and say, hey, let's go an inch and a half out on each side. It's like, holy shit. That would be when the workout's done. Hey, Steve, have you ever tried this before, going out a little wider? Or have you ever tried going a little closer or pointing your toes out a little bit more? Let's see how that – let's see what that feels like with two plates. Like let's go with like 20% of your max. So I didn't do a good job of answering his question.

So this comes back to what we talked about. Everybody's different. So like for Steve is 370 pounds. When he competes, he's closer to 390 versus somebody who's a 120-pound woman, right? So, yeah, like Steve sprinting could end badly. So maybe if I wanted to get Steve more explosive, which he does box jumps, we'd add box jumps or a broad jump. Something that's lower tax that we could say, boy, this is not the case. But if Steve were slow.

Steve's thinking, fuck that. I could go sprint right now. I could see it in his face. You're not alone. You could feel it coming off of him. I know, right? Yeah, that would be the next podcast. Always got one good sprint in me.

What happened to that Steve Bate guy? Well. That would be the next podcast. He tried sprinting. But you can use any metric. You just have to be consistent with it. So with John Jones, for example, he came out. I was like, well, how do you measure your explosiveness?

He goes, I don't know. No one had measured. I said, let's get a broad jump. I would prefer a vertical jump, but we didn't have a vertical jump measure. So I said, well, let's use a broad jump. He's not a professional broad jumper. And I know a ton of guys who could out broad jump him. I don't know anybody that could beat him in a fight.

All I was trying to do is get him more explosive, and I wanted something to test it against so that when he's jumping off his knees, I don't want him to jump off his knees just to make a YouTube video. I want him to jump off his knees to make him more explosive. And the broad jump was my tester. So every couple weeks, we broad jump him. If it was getting better, I knew I was doing the right things.

If it wasn't, I would have to reevaluate. So for a power lifter, for example, if Steve box, for someone like Steve, it might be a box jump, which is pretty easy on your body. I might have a box jump. And then if his squat went up, I would kind of look at like, okay, well, how high did his box jump get relative to his improvement in squat for the person I'm talking about? Sprinting seemed to be the logical choice because I needed her to move way faster. But it doesn't mean I would have everybody sprint. Got it. And then, so you said you worked with a lot of moms and dads and stuff.

And you like to work with things that you can measure. What about something like technique? Because there's some people that may, like if you guys all watch me bench press, you would have some kind of something to tell me about my technique just because I'm not as experienced as you guys. Is there a way to measure that or is it just going back straight to the numbers?

I think technique 1,000 percent – I talked to your Chris about this. Technique is determined by your anthropology and your strength. So like we talk about if a guy bends over in the squat. Well, one, if you have long femurs, like everybody, if you look at the Chinese weightlifters, they squat straight up and down. Well, their femurs are like this long. I mean, they're little midgets. The weightlifters are, not all of them, but the weightlifters are.

We're not allowed to laugh at that. You're signing on with that if you laugh. Your signature. If you take somebody like KK, RIP for KK. He had those long femurs, so he leaned over when he squatted. He leaned over when he deadlifted, right? A lot of female athletes, they'll lean forward. They got longer limbs.

So what's the right technique? Well, you can't change your anthropology. The next thing you can change is your strength. So like Louie and I used to talk about to press a bar in a straight – he wants you to press it in a straight line. Well, you better have lots of triceps to do that. If you're stronger in your chest, like Stan would kind of do this, but he has more chest and shoulders.

So when you have – for his case, when you have a max bench, so Stan's benching 606, he's not going to think like, oh, Louie wants me to push the straight line. Or when somebody's doing a max squat, if they're back stronger, they're going to lean. You're going to put the load where you want it. So technique to me sometimes drives me nuts because I always use this analogy like everybody, nope, can you dunk?

Maybe you can. Nowadays, probably. Okay. So these three can't dunk. We get the concept. It's like if somebody was like, hey, we're going to give you the technique. Mark, you just – it's like I get it. I can't – my vertical jump.

Bend down and yeah. Yeah, I just can't do it. So a lot of times technique is determined by your strength. So like even Andre said. Yeah, your technique's going to look like shit with 315 on a squat if you can only squat 225, right? So they act like it's, you know, sometimes

in powerlifting it's become this, like, you know, like this physiology class, like, oh, you've got to keep your strength. Like, I'd love to keep my sternum up with 700 pounds. It's heavy. One time at Westside I I was doing good mornings, and Louie put some insane weight on the bar,

came back in the morning. I just started, Rob Fuzzler picks me up. And Louie's like, it's the best heavyweight sport. You shouldn't go that low. I was like, well, I was going to go a lot lower if Rob hadn't grabbed me. It wasn't my intent to go that low. But he had like 600 pounds on the bar.

He's probably 180 pounds doing good mornings. With what you mentioned as far as the anthropology thing, I'm just curious. Is there anything that you think powerlifters who are interested in figuring out what good form looks like for them, what resources can they look at? Because what you mentioned there about long femurs, there are a lot of long femur powerlifters who are trying to squat in a way that's not advantageous, but they don't know it. They just see that looks like a good squat. Let me do it with my body, not realizing. Also, Steve over here is not short. He's got a longer femur, shorter legs, so he squats more upright.

You know, you look at even Stan. I think that's why Stan probably had to go so wide because he's a little longer, you know. Stan is a cheater. Yeah, that's right. But, yeah, I think you Stan is a cheater. Yeah, that's right. But yeah, I think you got to build models. Like if whenever, you know, even like I trained a lot of Bengals for one time and worked with pro athletes too.

But, you know, so like if you're a 5'9 sprinter, like a Dennis Mitchell type guy, if somebody comes in their 5'9 and they say, I want to run in the Olympics, then you kind of like, I should look at Dennis Mitchell who was like a silver medalist in the Olympics. If you're, I wouldn't try to get you to run like Bolt. Bolt 6'5". You kind of got to pick your model. Stan worked with some sprinters at the University of Oregon, and he talked about they got way faster,

and then they got too big, and they started pulling hamstrings. And that's what I mean by optimal. So Stan trained them. They started lifting, squats, cleans, doing less running. They got way faster. And they probably got in love with it and then they go oh wait i got too big you know so it's that optimal range so you should start to look at people who kind of fit your mold i mean if you're not um you know five five you

should not look at you know sean frankel as a model right all right you're six two you should probably look at somebody who's like six two yeah". Yeah. And along with that, we were talking about what just like things that lifters should be able to do to increase their capacities. I wonder if you don't think that this if you think that there's nothing too general here or there's not a suggestion here, that's fine. But I'm curious,

do you think that there are minimum levels of abilities that a lifter should have to be able to have good longevity within the sport? What are the things that they have to be able to have good longevity within the sport? Like what are the things that they should just be able to do that most aren't doing? Well, I mean, we've seen guys, I mean, remember at Westside, even Dave Tate said, I mean, like, I remember going to pit with Louie and Dave Tate and like Dave Tate walking, like from the gym to, I forget where we were going. It was like, is he going to like, another CPR? I mean, it's frightening how bad some of those guys get.

I mean, I think he should be at least able to walk a mile in 10 minutes. I mean, something simple like that. I mean, I think he should be able to pull a sled for a quarter mile pretty easily. You know, two plates for a quarter mile or maybe half your body weight for a quarter mile, stuff like that. That should be easy. It really should be. I think if somebody could set up some standards that like as a power lifter, you should still be able to do this along with being very strong. Well, you know what's funny?

I've talked to Stan about this. I wish we would pull him out because we'd get his opinion on it. But I watched him kind of from afar when he was training with you. And I said, you know, his best meet I thought was the first one where he squat 854 with no knee wraps. I got a lot of reasons for this. Okay. Well, maybe you'll know better than I would.

But I said from afar, you know, like he got into like the squatting every other week and bench every other week, incline every other week. And I said that worked because he had done so much volume preceding that first meet. And I said I didn't think he got a lot better after that. And I think that comes back to all that work is helpful. Now, when you peak for something, then you peak. But I would stay general. Even like Andre Malenche was saying, he didn't go heavy very often. It was a lot of reps.

I think you need to stay general. Andre had the same peaking. I would say I averaged. I've helped a handful of guys. They average 80 to 100 pounds on their squat. And my guys, I would say, average – I've helped like a handful of guys. They average 80 to 100 pounds on their squat. My guys I would say are in the 600. I've had at least five guys go from 600 to 710 weeks. The number one thing they tell me, they've all tried Westside.

They're like, Westside didn't work for me. Then I said, well, try it this way. They're like, the speed days are 10 times harder. When I did it, like speed day was nothing. They're like – I did way more volume doing what you asked me to do. It doesn't mean it, like speed day was nothing. And they're like, and I did way more volume doing what you asked me to do. And it doesn't mean I'm like a guru or anything.

I'm just saying that's very true. We had three guys in the last couple of years. One went from 515 to 615. One went from six and a quarter to 700. Another went six and a quarter to 700. All in 10 weeks. All totally drug free, raw.

No gear or anything like that. But the biggest difference is I make them work a lot harder. But the peaking, I asked Andre what he did. The peaking's identical. I think the end is, you know,

like I got a buddy who's a golf pro, totally unrelated. And I was, I was, one of my clients has taken me out on like a golf trip. I'm like, you gotta help me. I don't want to look stupid.

And he said, look, all this other stuff doesn't matter. The impact position, all pros get to this position. So how they get back, how they, but they all end up here. And it's funny, I think lifting is the same way. It's like, here's the final

product. Here's the important part. Everything before it, a lot of people have different methods. Stan told me, you can validate this. He said, I did not touch a barbell with Flex Wheeler. He said, when I went to Mark's, I did 405 for five.

It felt awful. But then he finished with 850, 854. So the ending was the same. Yeah, I think one of the reasons

why Stan's kind of first meet was the best and why some of the other stuff took a little longer and he had to work a little harder for it

and he still ended up breaking multiple all-time world records that were around for 30 years or more. John Cole and some other legends, he was able to knock off the all-time world record list, which was really remarkable. But I think one, I think you got to remember that Stan was like in his 40s coming into it. And I hate to use age as any sort of – but lifting age, like it does have a factor. It's totally a factor. For him to do what he did at those ages, like I haven't seen anybody else do that before.

And it's just really rare. I mean, it's kind of unbelievable. So it's at the end of his, he got his pro card in bodybuilding. That was a dream for him. He came to me and he just ended up, you know, hitting some of these just fucking crazy weights. But a few other things that happened, too, is I think once he started

hitting some of these numbers, then you have a lot of people giving you a lot of information. Yeah. And so I think you have a tendency to get distracted, and he would kind of follow some stuff from the Lillibridges, from Ed Cohen, and from myself, where it's probably better off just kind of putting your eggs in one basket and saying, like, this is the method.

This is kind of what I'm – and you've run into that as a coach where now the guy's got six or seven people. That was from my perspective. And then also I just think that he was reaching his absolute limit of what he could lift. For sure. I think everyone always wants to say you could always lift more, you could always lift more. I think the 900-pound squat that he did in my gym and some of the lifts that he did on the platform,

I think those were kind of the upper end of what his body was capable of doing. Because I've actually never seen anybody more meticulous than Stan. I mean, he was dialed in on everything, just like a bodybuilder would do. You know, bodybuilders, they don't give up any slack in anything because they know it's a 24-7 process. He took that same mentality into powerlifting, and his diet, his sleep, his training, everything was dialed in, and he wouldn't sacrifice stuff. He would not spend extra time in the gym doing leg curls and leg extensions when he knew the most important thing for him to do was to get the hell out of the gym, get some food in his body, and start to work on recovery. Let's skip my counter. I think that's how it should end, but do you think the volume leading up with the bodybuilding was a good break?

Absolutely. No, I think that that is what made Stan Efferding, Stan Efferding was all that bodybuilding. I think people confuse it and they say Stan was able to do both at the same time. It only looked like he did both at the same time. He actually did them separately. Look at how fucking jacked I am in this video. Holy shit, I'm shredded. That's funny. 17 raw eggs.

But yeah, Stan did it before the liver king. Where's the liver king at? This did it yeah before the liver king where's liver king at this is Stan inventing inventing the liver king right here that's crazy so round Mark who are you motivated by

Steve like when you're watching some of these other lifters that are out there right now who kind of inspires you to keep pushing the weights that you're pushing. Not a lifter.

It's my dad. That's my driving force. And your dad, he's not too fond of your lifting. No, he's not. He just thinks you're a big pussy? What's his deal? He's just a no-nonsense kind of guy. He's old school.

You're wasting your time lifting those weights. What are you doing? Pretty much. And then you told him you're coming to California. He must have just lost his son. He must have been like, fuck this. He said, what are you going out there for? I said, to work out, and he just lost it. He's like, man, he's never coming back. He's probably

going to end up bodybuilding or something. He probably don't even know what that is. Nor would he care he doesn't lift he just has been kind of big and strong kind of uh just from kind of the farm work remember that was that um who was the guy that was real big lineman got busted for juice when his dad liked that oh i'm not sure the farmer uh he played for the packers was it uh at water was it tony mandridge no yeah man oh yeah i think his dad was a farmer and he said he like loaded Farmer, he played for the Packers. Was it? Atwater. Was it Tony Mandridge? No.

Yeah, Mandridge. Oh, yeah. I think his dad was a farmer. He said he loaded up 405 on the bench and he went in there. Never lifted. Wow. Yeah, something like that. Someone that had farm strength.

What do you think, because I know that people are going to kind of harp on your background. And what do you think is something that really carried over into some of the success that you're having and lifting because when insima was asking you kind of like what's the next goal you definitively said to be number one and you haven't said one other thing on the show where you were that definitive about anything but that in particular you were like i want to be number one does that come from some of the work ethic of growing up on a farm and the things that you were responsible for when you're young yeah it does for sure um i just got the desire to win i won't stop until i do and no matter what i lift it won't be good enough for me you know you know it's funny you're saying about like sticking with one coach and like

not overthinking things there was two studies I remember that you said that reminded me. One is they took a lot of these Olympic athletes, and they were looking for the common denominator. And the one thing was they stuck with one coach the longest time. So we get a lot of teenage athletes, and the ones that do the best just stick with us, whereas the ones that do the worst are called program hoppers. And it's like, oh, we're trying this. We're trying this. And you do a little bit

of everything and a whole lot of nothing and then the other one that stuck with me is there was a study with these shot putters and one group got a coach and the other group got a tape measure and the guys with the tape measure outperformed one of the coaches because they just had you know just throw further

throw further that's kind of like Steve just lift more don't overthink it you know Matt what because we've You know, it was just throw further, throw further. That's kind of like Steve's just lift more. Don't overthink it. You know, Matt, what, um, cause we've had a lot of people on and some people that are coaches that come on are very just like about what they do and their thing is the way it should be done. Or there's a lot of, you know, but you mentioned how you were agnostic, right?

You started working with people when you were like 19 years old. Was there a phase where you got comfortable with what you knew and you were like, this is good? Or have you always been someone who's – Yeah. I mean, I was an Olympic lifting – I remember when I was 19 and I was strength coaching. I was like, man, if I could get like – at the time, I think it was like – I forget who the top basketball player was. I'm like, I could make those guys so much better. I was like, man, if I could get like at the time, I think it was like, I forget who the top basketball player was. I'm like, I could make those guys so much better.

I had them cleaning and snatching. Like I know I could make them better. And then, you know, like when I got to Westside, it's like, this is it. And they all worked. I mean, you could see like I jumped higher, ran faster. They all worked. But then the longer you go, and then I think, yeah, I'm an all-in guy.

I'm very compulsive at times early in my life, you know, so you go through like, you know, all the ACDC phase or like, this is the best or you're like,

you're in there hip hop, you're like, yes, hip hop's the best or whatever it is, but then as you go on, you just, there's not one way.

It just has to make sense. That's to me, I look at somebody, I keep coming back to building something. So it's, it's like a common sense thing. So if you see somebody that's like six foot one 80 and they say, I want to be a great power lifter.

It's like, great. You need a lot of hypertrophy. Steve doesn't need a hypertrophy. You know, that wouldn't be a big priority. 19 inch forearms. He's doing okay.

So everybody's got something different. And then once you see what they need, then it's, it's like, I'll use any tool. I don't care. And that's why I different. And then once you see what they need, then it's like I'll use any tool. I don't care. And that's why I keep buying stuff for my gym. People are like, you buy more stuff. But it's because I want more solutions. You know, like if all you have is a hammer, when you go to fix something,

you're going to use a hammer. You know, if you have a whole two blocks, you'll probably be more successful. And I don't want to ever be stuck in one thing where this is the only method I'm going to use. And the only thing I always ask my trainers, I said, you better, if I walk in or if like, I always look at like Buddy Morris was like my lifting dad a little bit. So I'm like, if Buddy Morris were to walk in my gym, I said, you better be able to defend what you're doing to Buddy Morris.

So if you have some client doing something, I don't care what it is, but just have a reason. It better make sense. But there's a lot of ways. I mean, I don't care what it is, but just have a reason. It better make sense. But there's a lot of ways. I mean, I just keep going back to all the people. Think of all the people who have walked through, like, on this podcast. I mean, it's countless. Remember, every one of them, like, when they're hot, like, everybody,

like, leapfrogs. Like, I'm going to do the Pete Rubish deadlift program. I'm going to do the, you know, Chad Wesley Smith squat program. And what you realize is everything works. Nothing works forever. You see a lot of these guys phase out. They're not around anymore. So you got to learn sometimes from what people do wrong too.

I saw that. Like here's a good one. I had a guy who was stuck at – we had a big group of lifters at our gym at one time. And they were all kind of plateaued. I just bought this gym. I come in. There's a group of power lifters in the gym besides the regular clients. And they went to this meet in August. They did the Mike Ferguson's pro-am and they like did terrible, you know, like the best lifter got six and a quarter, but they all, they were like, we're so stuck on our squats. And they, I think they were doing, they were doing like five, three, one or

something. I said, let's try something different. So I wrote out a three-day-a-week squat program. So they all averaged 80 pounds in 10 weeks. They went and did Laura Phelps meat. It was all raw, all drug-free. I think one guy wore like knee wraps. That's it. Average increase was 80 pounds.

So my one guy went from 625, and it was an ugly 625, probably shouldn't have passed, to 700, and it was like 700, man, we should have gone like 720. So he's excited. He's like, oh, I'm going to run it back. So he does another meet. He gets like 710. The 710 was like a grinder,

questionable depth. He does it again. I think he gets like 720. This was an ugly 720, and he ends up hurting his knee. And then you realize in hindsight, it's like you should have, after those three-day-a-week squat programs, got the hell away from squats. But you went to the well too often. So even this program that I wrote out that everybody was like, you know, like he's like, we should do a YouTube video. I'm like, this program is so good.

It's like it worked. That's what you needed at that time. video and like this program is so good. It's like it worked. That's what you needed at that time. But also as he got stronger, you're talking about going to the limits of your strength, you can't squat three days a week because now your five by five is like 550 or whatever it was. Your weights are going up.

You need more recovery. And it was just a shot in the arm when he needed it. But although – so was it a great squat? And that's why we write about, Stan, I have a powerlifting book, and we talk about, you know, I write that in there. Like if you're at this level, you know, like if you're maybe like a 400-pound squatter, yeah, here are some three-day-a-week, here are some high-frequency squat programs. It might shoot you up to four or five or six, even seven. But once you hit a certain number, you know, like everybody talks about,

Stan squatted every other day or every other week. It's like, well, he was 280 and jacked. And he was squatting like 800 for doubles, right? You were there. I mean, I wasn't. But he's pulling 800 for doubles or 700 for reps. You squat 315 for like a single. And if you don't squat for 14 days, I promise you're not going to get anywhere.

So it's just that comes back to everybody wants like, you know, you keep saying like, what's the standard? And the standard changes. But that's why I go to the body weight. You should be getting up to about three and a half, four pounds per inch. So, you know, if you're six foot, you need to be about 280 if you want to be a great powerlifter. be a great powerlifter. Now, when people hear that too, the body weight and gaining size, I'm curious how fast it took you to like what you were weight in your first meet, how long ago was that? And then how you gain size?

Because a lot of people, when they hear the size you're talking about, they're like, well, I'm just going to scarf down as much food as possible and gain weight. But a lot of that's just going to be fat. Right. No, I say you got to be like 12 to 18%. You can't get too fat. Gotcha. Yeah. Muscle doesn't, or to be like 12% to 18%. Yeah. You can't get too fat. Gotcha. Yeah, muscle doesn't – or fat doesn't flex and neither does bone, right?

Mm-hmm. So at some point to be really strong and competitive. I mean, like I look at Kevin Oak. I mean, that guy is huge. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And what's he like? Do 220, 242s?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, 220 a lot of times, yeah. I mean, he's huge. So it's like you want to compete against – Dan Green, yeah. So if – and those guys are what, six foot tall? Probably somewhere in there, yeah. Five, ten, six feet?

I mean, these are big guys. So if you're 5'10", you're like, I'm 195. I want to bench five. It's probably not going to happen. It's probably not realistic. It's definitely going to be more difficult. Can I add on to what you asked me about driving force? It would definitely have to be the power station gym where I train uh plays a big role in how i think and what i believe in and all the guys that

you know come before me uh and i respect a lot of them uh looked up to them uh seeing what they did when i was younger and just always pushed me to want to be more. There's a bunch of powerlifters in that gym? Powerlifters, Brian Bendel, Jimmy Gross, Russ Clear, Ryan Presley, Mike Ferguson, the owner, just numerous people that I've looked up to. Is it one of those places that when you go in there when you're young, you're a little bit nervous? Oh, scared to death for sure when I walked in there. I don't belong here. Exactly. Hopefully nobody sees me. that guy's nose is bleeding and then someone hit him yeah then someone comes up and they're usually like pretty nice like hey kid

how you doing yeah rich franklin trains there oh nice you know just hearing the stories about everybody i just always wanted to be the best to come through those doors have you always been that way even when you were younger like you know you said yeah you won't be satisfied with like anything as far as your lifts like you'll never be satisfied with how much you lift yeah have you kind of have you always been that way though um no probably not just about lifting cool okay i just feel like i could always do more yeah how was your first meet very I know I'm very first beat. Um, I think the first meet I ever did was a push pool.

I benched like five 25 and pulled seven 65. I think pathetic bummer. Yeah. Terrible. God damn. Can't win them all. By the way, this is another thing I always think about is there's always like a one lift

specialist. It's like, I'm doing his program. And I always think if they're programming so good, you lift specialist. It's like, I'm doing his program. And I always think if they're programming so good, you know, some guy pulls nine, but it's like they benched three 85 and squat, you know,

500. It's like, well then why are, why are there other lifts so bad? That comes back to like some, you know, I wouldn't always follow the best. Right.

Like, you know, somebody like the calf thing, let's come back to stupid. I've never done a calf race. People ask, what do you do for calves? There's probably somebody with skinny calves or average calves that work to get out.

They would know way more than I would. It's my first meets. I always competed in 275. Okay. Steve, is there anything that you saw your dad do, or is there some sort of thing that your dad says, something that is kind of instilled in you that you try to carry on or follow uh nothing that he's really said just you know he had a tough life growing up uh just watching him you know on a daily basis

that's cool yeah watch him day in and day out just uh kicking ass and being having that old man strength. Yeah. Matt, we had Corey Schlesinger on yesterday. And the reason why Mark and I were so sore is because Corey was talking about, you know how we sled forwards and backwards? We push, right? Well, he was like, well, you guys should probably start doing that to the side. With lifting, it's all these single plane movements.

And a lot of lifters are stuck within that. It made me wonder, as far as lifters are concerned uh what are some suggestions for movements outside of the direct plane that they can work because i think that that's probably a big weakness i'm probably for the sled and you guys are finding that out but because it's concentric only so it's not you're not going to get sore from it like when i was young and uh the way i made money when i was a kid was i had like a truck and i threw the sled in the back of my truck. But some of the local bodybuilders, they would actually pay me to train them, and that's what I would do. I'd hit them with the sled a lot of times when they were sore.

They'd feel better. I've worked out guys hard, especially athletes who are like, I've got to play tomorrow. I'm going to be so sore. And then like 20 minutes later, like, actually, I feel better. And you get that huge quad pump, you know, when you go backwards, but the same thing, going side to side. It's a really low-risk way to get better. It's the that huge quad pump, you know, when you go backwards, but the same thing, going side to side. It's a really low risk way to get better.

It's the best way I could say it. So like Mark mentioned Jay Schroeder having guys jump off the roof. That is a high risk way to get somebody better. And the other thing, I do respect a lot of strength coaches who work in a professional setting because, and we saw this, like you probably saw this at Westside. I mean, there's some guys who didn't make it. Like he was soft. But if you hurt an athlete, you're fired.

Like if you work at a college or a pro. So you have to get – you got to find a way to get the most bang for your buck with the lowest risk. And the sled is like foolproof. I've never seen somebody get hurt on a sled. So to your point, lateral walks, stepovers, backwards, forward, crab walks, where you're bent over, those will light your legs up like

crazy. Yeah. And you'll get stronger for it. And you'll have zero risk of injury. The risk of overtraining is pretty low. I mean, you can push that sled really hard and within 20 minutes you feel totally recovered. So I would say

the sled, if you're pinning me down, that's probably the best one. Yeah, we were doing some of those walks today, the one that you were showing me earlier. And Seem and I did a few extra sets of it and it's brutal. But then you feel like totally normal in 20 minutes. Yeah, we were sore from

yesterday just because we got excited and we overdid it. Yeah. We always pull the sled before we speed squat. Yeah. On this podcast, we always say that we have a white belt mentality. So we'll have various guests. And then we never assume that we know damn near anything. So we'll pick and choose some of the things that we can apply um, that we can apply to our own training and stuff. Um, but it's all, we're always learning something. So for you,

where do you go to, to maybe pick up a few new things in there? You, you mentioned a lot about like buying equipment and that sort of thing, but like, what about like just education? Like, are you, are you following any other coaches or like, what do you do for that sort of thing to acquire more knowledge that's great um well we my trainers kind of um you ever see back to school with rodney dangerfield it's been a hot minute but i remember i am i'm rodney dangerfield so i pay for all my guys to get certified and they get a new certification every six months to a year but then they got to present on it so you know he's like having everybody do his homework but there's a little bit of that. But I learned a lot from my trainers. I think you learn one thing.

We make all our trainers do. We'll talk about this in the, you know, the business part, but we make all our trainers compete. I think competing teaches you a lot because you're like, you learn how to squat pain-free with your knee. If you can squat, like, you know, Mark squat, what, 10 80 to squat 10 80, whether you're in gear or not, you had to do that perfectly. Just like you squatting 935, I would feel very safe with you teaching one of my athletes to squat. I would feel more, you know, like it's easier to dial back.

Like I'd have a race car driver. All that stuff in like rear view mirrors and paddle shifts come from race cars, and then it dials back to us. So I think you always got to be pushing, and then I think that's where we talk about like our curiosity. You're talking about curiosity. If you ask me, I like Dan Path for speed training. Charlie Francis is the all-time best to me.

I mean, Charlie Francis is unbelievable. He was so far ahead of his time. I still listen to Louie Simmons all the time. I think he's great. Ed Cohen I talk to frequently. I know he's not new, but some of the stuff's good. I love Bondarchuk, Tudor Bampa. They're all great resources.

Some of those names, like when we interview trainers, I'm always alarmed. I'm not a big follower. I don't have like – not to knock anybody, but I have not a huge Instagram. I guess Ohio guys, we don't care about Instagram or something. To me, there's like a lot of guys. Number one, nobody's like, no, Christopher Columbus doesn't exist. Everything's been done before.

Even I remember Louie, I was like, I got this plyo swing, and then I looked up in super training, and there's a video or a picture. I love him. He showed you it. He did invent it. He made it.

Brought it to the masses. Brought it to the masses, yeah. So I think one thing that bothers me with coaches now is they're all trying to be like the guru on the hill or the inventor. You know, and it's like, you know, somebody – I read an article. I sent it to Stan. It was – if you ever read like the tight slacks of – what's that guy's name? It's an old powerlifting guy. I can't remember.

Anyway, he's used to write for the powerlifting before Powerlifting USA. And I pull up all his old stuff. And he had won this guy from California was talking about, as your weights get heavier, start alternating squats and deadlifts. Stan figured that out on his own.

But you see the Lillibridge, they say the Lillibridge method, squat every other week. It's been done before. And it's not to knock anybody who's disp on his own, but you see the Lillibridge, they say the Lillibridge Method Squad every other week. It's been done before, and it's not to knock anybody who's dispensing the information, but I think now, I like the old books a lot. I read Larry Pacifico's stuff. I love Tudor Bampa. I love Thomas Kurtz. He's a great author.

But you can learn from everybody. To your point, you learn from everybody. Is that Rodney Dangerfield? It's a great movie. Was that a, that Rodney Dangerfield? Oh, it's a great movie. Was that the one where he jumps on the, the diving board a bunch of times? The triple linden.

Yes, that's correct. Okay. I just want to make sure. Back to school. Yep. Yeah. I'll tell you,

it was another one. One of my favorite movies ever. You know what I went up a couple of years ago and retook his course is Dick Hartzell. Oh yeah. Yeah. The jump stretch guy, jump man.

Yeah. And because I just thought I need a refresher and you know, yeah. Yeah, the jump stretch guy, Jumpman. Yeah. And because I just thought I need a refresher and, you know, sometimes. Voodoo flossing before it was a thing. Yeah. And stretching with the bands and all. I mean. Yeah. He was, or he is very, was very ahead of his time for sure.

Yeah. So it's, you know, you had to go to something like YMCA in Youngstown, Ohio, but it was fine. It was fun. And I think more hands-on. I'm a hands-on. I'm not real smart. You guys probably figured this out by the end of this podcast. But I have to do things.

I don't know about you guys. I can't. If you just say, here's what you do. I've run on my treadmill. I've done all that stuff because I have to feel it. And I think it's important because when I see Steve, I'm like, hey,, you got pushing that bar harder. I I've done it not with the same way, but I've done it. I've pushed myself at least to be able to say that. And I think when an athlete sprinting,

and then you also know with strength coaches, one thing, I think not enough of them lift and people go, well, we're not power lifters. I said, well, you're doing the power lifts frequently. So you should probably be better at teaching them. And being a power lifter teaches you sometimes, you shouldn't be doing that with your athletes because your athletes are going to be trash, but you never lifted heavy. So, you know, it's like you got to know what it feels like. So you get these idiot coaches going like, get your mind right.

It's like, no, your athlete's going to be wrecked for three days. You should try that before you have them do it. It drives me nuts. But we do a lot of work like we do at Xavier College. We do some work with them and try to get out and meet as many people as possible. I'll drive up to Chicago to squat with Ed Cohen

just so I can get that experience. That's easier for me to learn if he touches me and shows me what to do versus him telling me over the phone or something. That's how I learn. We saw you do 225 today for 70 something reps. We heard that you did a 315

bench for like 40 reps. What are some of the other crazy things we know about the burpee broad jump mile? I've done 500 for 13 on flat bench. What about the 100 rep squat? When I was 270, I squatted

my body weight 100 reps without racking it. That's by far the hardest thing I've ever done. I was going to say, that's probably the worst. That was for sure. You barf everywhere? I didn't puke, but my legs were on fire. Jimmy was mentioning to me that you'll

do certain things. You'll just be on a leg press and you'll be there for two or three hours. Yeah, that's usually when we train with John Perillo. He pushes us hard. Again, I've said this before, but I think it's going to be really amazing, your powerlifting career, because you are an extremely healthy power lifter at your weight. And it's like a lot of guys, it's like they're, okay, they have a spurt and then they're done.

But you, it seems like you're, because you're so healthy at 40, if you keep your trajectory, you're just going to keep getting strong. Like anyone who's going to be able to be amazing, they have to be able to be in it for a long period of time. You know, they can't break down and you're not going to fucking break down. It's a marathon, not a sprint yeah what about uh i i i couldn't do a whole podcast without asking you like what a day of eating looks like like so i i don't i don't know if you track or anything like that but like do you know how many calories you're eating or i

guess you can just tell us what like a day of eating looks like usually between like 65 to 8,000 calories. Yeah. I eat a lot of food. A lot of red meat. There you go. Yeah. Rice. Yeah. Just simple things.

Just the basics. Yeah. Damn. Do you have any prep food or do you all cook it all yourself? I usually cook it all myself. Yeah. I'm not big on the whole prepping food thing. I feel it. I wanted not big on the whole prepping food thing. I feel it.

I wanted to ask you actually, Matt. You mentioned the Nordic hamstring curl for athletes preventing, first off, ACL tears, but also hamstring pulls. That's a movement that when people try, it's a hard movement to do. How do you have people progress themselves into being able to actually do a successful

Nordic? I bought Louie's machine, the inverse curl. The inverse curl? Yes. If you don't have machine, the inverse curl. The inverse curl? Yes. I mean, if you don't have access to the inverse curl, I'd probably use bands. I don't like the push because I don't like the thing, I don't like the Hatfield squat either for that reason. I don't like anything where you can't measure. Like if you're doing a Hatfield squat

and you, like how much did you tug, right? So if you go up the next week, it's like, well, did I tug more or did my legs get stronger? And I feel like the Nordic hamstring curl, they got the same thing. They push themselves up, it's like, well, I tug more, do my legs get stronger? And I feel like the Nordic hamstring curl, they got the same thing. They push themselves up and it's like, well, do I push harder? Do I get my hamstring stronger? So I would probably use a band so you hold somebody down. Yeah, the

inverse curl. I do like the inverse curl. Yeah, it's got a weight counterbalance weight to it. Yeah, it's a great machine. The big thing with glued hams and inverse curls, though, is that you don't stick your butt back. You have to push your hips forward. The other thing I'd say with athletes, I'm always real big on

you've got to make it somehow yours. If I'm doing that inverse curl, I think about locking a deadlift out. For me, because I lift more than I'm an athlete now. Pulling your hips and really squeezing like you're doing a deadlift. If I were a fighter, I might think of a double leg takedown or something like that.

You got to make it yours. Yeah. And I think that's important with athletes. Any of these exercises, you know, if you go up on something, that's what I, I would see that a lot. Like, you know, like somebody's like, good morning. You know, like if your good morning is up at like 700 and you squat six, then maybe it's time to stop doing good mornings. And I see this all the time. Stan and I were at a gym in Vegas, and we were laughing.

This kid's doing a leg press, and he's doing like half reps, and he probably looks like he's half the size of me. And I just – and Stan's like shaking his head at him. And I just kind of nice. I'm like, man, that's a big leg press. He's like, I know. He's like, I got the strength. I just don't have the size. And I'm sitting there thinking, look at this kid.

If I could do more in an exercise than Steve, I'm probably doing it wrong. So you should have that in mind and look around you. So if I go in, I'm like, man, I can out tricep pushdown Steve. I bet I'm doing it wrong. Because I bench four. he benches six. So I think those things. 45. Like with you.

Well, 435, you're doing that. But so I look at like a lot of, I look at a lot of stuff. The other thing is with like young lifters, we're talking to them, I guess. I'm not used to talking to this many people. Get your ego. No one cares. Like I, Stan came out,

Stan and, uh, Stan and Louie were out at my gym. So a couple of my guys came out and one guy like, he hurt his back. I'm like, why, why were you doing that?

He's like, cause I think he wanted to do like a four or five for 10. He's like, yeah, I hurt my back. He goes, I knew I shouldn't have been doing it. And I go like,

did you think Stan Efferding or Louie Simmons was going to drive home and be like, do you think Stan was going to call Ed Cohen? You won't believe this. I saw a 200 pound guy squat 405 for, it wasn't nine, he got 10. You just stay, let's focus on you and

getting better. Nobody's going to leave here and be like, I'm sure Mark's not going to drive home tonight and tell tell his wife, like this guy was doing good mornings with three plates, sets of six. It was on, you're going to forget about it. You're going to go home. So when I see people doing dumb extra, like you're only hurting yourself. You're not sacrificing for something bigger.

Nobody cares. Yeah. I've been saying that for years in here. I used to tell people that every week, week because people would come out of the woodwork to try to lift more than me on a particular exercise. Right. I was like, I trained at Westside for a year, and I've seen people like – I've seen the gym riot against each other over a fucking bench shirt. You know what I mean? So whatever the hell you think you're going to do today, it's not going to surprise me, and it's not going to probably wow me.

I've seen a lot of lifters lift crazy stuff, and I've seen a lot of female lifters lift weights. Laura Phelps. Yeah, Laura Phelps getting up off a box faster than someone can get out of a chair with 700 pounds. This doesn't make any sense. That kind of shit's going to be impressive. But I think oftentimes we're trying to impress one another, and we're trying to impress ourselves even. Our own ego kind of stands in the way, and then we get excited about a particular exercise.

Next thing you know, we're hurt. When it comes to something like dumbbells, what kind of weights do you mess around with doing some dumbbells, what kind of weights do you mess around with, you know, doing some dumbbells? Stan has that kind of legendary video of doing the 215-pound dumbbells here at Super Training. Yeah, ours too, wasn't it? Mm-hmm. Ours go up to 200 at the power station,

so I've grabbed them a few times. How many reps can you get with those suckers? I've hit the 200s for 20 on the lat. Jesus. That's good. Yeah yeah this is actually i'm curious to see what about like something like a curl like how much weight can you curl any idea i don't uh don't really mess with it i don't mess with curls and you're jumping in this video with what 100 pounds in your hands yeah onto a box that's what 24 inches high 36 inches high that no that one's 20 20 yeah around 20 yeah around 20 i just don't even understand how some of this stuff comes to be

like you're a big dude like most of the time a big guy would look at that and just not even attempt it does some of this come to be because of like some of the people that train at this gym is it because of john perilla is because matt's influence influence? Is it Jimmy that's being a crazy son of a bitch behind the scenes making you do stuff? I think it's because I don't see any other powerlifters training that way. You just want to do something different. Yeah. You know, Ohio has a big history with, like, Larry Pacifico and Jimmy Cash. I mean, Don Reinhold trained at Larry's gym.

So I think there's a lot of – Don Reinhold is one of the strongest humans ever. He had some all-time world records in powerlifting for a long time and was a really talented strongman competitor. And a member of John Black's health world up in Cleveland. So I think Ohio's got a really rich history that drives all of us a little bit. There's a huge influence. Ain't shit else to do there and it's freezing. Yeah, exactly.

Especially in Monroe, right? Yeah. How about movement in general? I know we've been talking about a lot of different types of movements, but Mark's been doing a lot of different things to move better. Andrew's been doing a lot of things from the go-to guys for just being able to move better, walk better, et cetera. doing a lot of things from the go-to guys for just being able to move better, walk better, et cetera. Are there any suggestions you have for athletes?

They probably have mobility limitations. What can they do to move better? I think the best thing, like I hope every young person, I don't know if we had this information when we were young, but I hope young people now are kind of taking account of this where you've got guys like Stan or like Mark. Mark's been ungodly strong and big and muscular and jacked. And then later he had to rebuild yourself. And I think if you were – I would guess if you're going to do it over, you probably would have maintained your mobility this whole time versus –

it's like I always tell people, what's the best way to get in shape? It's like don't get out of shape. Right. So for all the young people out there that are early in their powerlifting career or just getting started, just maintain it. And I think maintaining goes such a long way. You know, if you would just maintain it with some basic,

uh, there's tons of guys out there like, you know, the, um, um, Joe, or Rooney,

Martin Rooney. Remember him? He doesn't get any love anymore. He was awesome. Like the Marini Grade 8, I still use all those. Those are fantastic. Yeah, part of the Parisi Speed School, and I think he went on to do some of his own stuff as well, right?

Yeah, he was fantastic. Look at Martin Rooney's stuff. He was amazing. I mean, and now you've got Kelly Starlett and Dick Hartzell. I mean, look up his old – I don't know what he's got out on. I love looking up stuff from Dick Hartzell because he seems so crazy. Like you'll see him with like bands. Well, he doesn't seem crazy.

That's because he – Yeah, yeah. He'll hook bands all over the place because he's like the rubber band guy. He's the one that created the bands that we have in the gym. Those bands that are from Elite, like they couldn't keep them in stock years ago. And Louie and Dave Tate and stuff, they just were like, we've got to figure out how to make these because Dick Hartzell couldn't figure out how to keep them in stock. But there he is. Remember we were just talking about this ankle flexion the other day and look at what a great tool that is to be able to move your ankle that way.

He stopped me at the Arnold one year, and I didn't even know him. He didn't know me. He just stopped me because he was working a booth and he had a bunch of bands. And he's like, young man, what's bothering you today? I was like, I don't know. I'm good. He's like, no.

He's like, you're a big guy. Something's got to hurt. And I was like, my ankle hurts. And then he put my ankle in traction and had me do all these things. And I got up. With that thin band? Yeah, he did a voodoo floss wrap. And he had me walk around a little bit.

I felt way better. And he pulls a mini band on it? It made a huge difference. Yeah, it's awesome. The guy's a goddamn genius. He's fantastic. He actually, Youngstown State had a really nice football program. And that was where Jim Trestle was before he was at Ohio State.

All they do is bands. They do no free weights. I don't know if they still do, but they squat with bands. All they're lifting is bands. And Louie went to a seminar that Dick Hartzell was doing. That's where he came up with the idea of throwing bands on the side of the bar. Yeah. Now this guy is

still doing well. Do you know? Is he still around? Yeah, he went to a seminar. He was up in – he holds at the YMCA. If you – I forget how I got his number, but you can look up Dick Hartzell and you can get a hold of him. You probably have to send him a letter. Dear Dick Hartzell. Might be a telegraph. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Before we go – Look at his ankle mobility. Yeah, that's crazy. You remember how he would stretch and he puts his palms right on the floor? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He. Look at his ankle mobility. Yeah, that's crazy. You remember how he would stretch, and he puts his palms right on the floor? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. He's insanely mobile. Yeah.

Before we got on air, Stan was telling us about how you got thrown into the fire at, like, 19 years old to warm up an entire team, and you kind of froze up. 100%. Yeah, I choked. Can you re-say that story here? Can you re-say that story here? So Buddy Morris said, I'm going to hire you at Cleveland. And I'd been up there a bunch, and it was like relaxed. It was before the season, off-season.

Guys were coming in, work out. It was like working out normal. And then there was like some problem with hiring me. And he's like, I quit my job. I'm like, dude, I'm like waiting on you. So literally he calls me. He's like, all right, you're I'm like, dude, I'm like waiting on you. So literally he calls me. He's like, all right, you're in. Come up now.

I'm in Cincinnati. I'm like, now? He's like, yep, go. So I come up. I drive up, and this guy named Kern was Bobby – or Bobby Monaco is the equipment manager. He's like, I'm broke, and I'm 19. He's like, get him some – I was thinking I was – I just graduated college. I was 19.

He goes, get him some clothes. So they take I was, I just graduated college. I was 19. He goes, give him some clothes. So they take me a lot, like get me my Cleveland Brown gear. And then he like comes out on the field and he goes, uh, all right, lead dynamic warmup. And it was before they make cuts.

And I got like a hundred guys out there, 80 guys out there. And I just, and then he, uh, he took over from me. He's like, you do that again. What's dynamic.

I mean, I just, I'm, and he's like, next time, like do it or you're done. I was like, got it. But I froze, I just – and he's like, next time, like, do it or you're done. I was like, got it. But I froze, totally choked.

You didn't have any information from them? Like you couldn't put them through any sort of warm-up or you just made some weird shit up? I mean, you got the – no, it wasn't – it was like the whole coaching staff. So it would be like – it would be like if I grabbed her right now and said, hey, real quick, Mark, host the Oscars. You probably could, but like – Yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. You're just like, hey, Skip.

No, I'd probably barf. I'd probably get up on stage and throw up. Yeah, so I remember he's like, that's it. That's your last lesson. That was your first warning. So I think it's funny because a lot of times, like all of – No, it's a great lesson to learn. Be prepared.

Yeah, and I think – I don't know how many employees you have or in this day and age you have to change your thinking. But I laugh when young people are like, I would have loved to trade at Westside. It's like you would have hated it. You would have made – you would have cried. I remember Gritter, like – I remember like a foreign guy came and like a conversation like this and some guy – and like Gritter like just – He ripped a kid's shirt off when I was in there. This kid was like 15 years old the kid's wearing a Michigan shirt

and it had like a little hole on it and he's like what is this and I don't think he really meant to do it but then it kind of ripped and I think he thought it was funny and just ripped the whole thing off and Louie's like Ritter he's like getting the fuck out of here he's like what are you doing and then he got the kid a west side shirt or whatever but

I remember like this foreign guy I'm talking to louis like we're talking and gritter's like and he screams at the guy and then the guy couldn't get off the box with like a plate and then he's like his central nervous system couldn't handle it and it's like this guy had like flown from finland to meet louis simmons and that was like that was the welcome wagon oh that's great and so I just laugh so these young people are like

I'd love to work the place is really around the edges yeah but even the Browns there was a guy named I can picture his face Barry Stokes

and he was an offensive lineman and he fucked with me constantly and a bit I mean he's like you know like the Odoils and the

Adam Sandler Odoil rules so he's this big redhead guy. And I remember, like, I'd go to eat. Like, I knew he was going to do it. Like, so if I put my – you know, he would try to, like, do that, like, when you're going to eat. And I'm like – and he had a black belt in jiu-jitsu. And so it's like, I'm going to have to stand up for myself.

And I'm going to have to either, like, fight him and get – I ass kicked and get fired. Because they're not going to be like, oh, the intern strength coach. That's great. And I'm like, because they're not going to be like, oh, the intern strength coach, that's great. And I'm like, man, this is going to suck. And then fortunately, I had, see, this is why you always got to be prepared. I showed him some Dick Hartzell stretches and he loved me and he was nice to me

the rest of the time. But I just remember like when that guy, who's got Hayes? He probably just wanted you to like just stand up for yourself a bit, right? I don't know. I remember the guy who got Hayes with the Dolphins. I remember thinking like,

I had no sympathy for you. You were like a player. I can't remember, but yeah. It's like, I don't remember. Like, you should have

stayed up for yourself. You're a player. I knew I was like, if I hit this guy, I'm getting my ass kicked and I'm getting fired. At least you would have kept your job

if you stood up for yourself. Yeah. But yeah, some of these plays are rough. So it's funny when people are like, I would have loved to do that. It's like, you get mad if somebody doesn't like your picture on social media.

Your feelings hurt. It would have been rough for you. Last night was really rough, wasn't it? Oh, yeah. Very much so. Do you remember a guy named Mickey Tate by chance? I don't believe so. Maybe I remember Bob Cole.

Mickey Tate was walking around, and he wouldn't sit all the way on the box and relax. And Bob Cole's running. This is the kind of stuff that just fights over. Not sitting on the box the right way. So I'm 19. I'm probably like Owen. And Bob Cole's around the monolift, and he's like, you sit on the box.

And Mickey Tate's like, I squatted 854, drug-free, not like the rest of you punks. And Bob Cole's face is like twitching. And then Mickey Tate's like, I'm going to talk to him. I'm like, don't talk to me. Because I don't want to. You stay over there. foreign drug free not like the rest of you punks and bob cole's face is like twitching and then mickey tate's like i'm gonna talk to him like don't talk to me because i don't like i want like you stay over there i don't want to get he's about to get a plate on the side of his head i mean it was wild back then were you around when jl was there yeah the old hosers yeah yeah we yeah talk to him and you can tell like you know mark know, Mark had mentioned some things that he, you know, he was pretty hotheaded back then.

He's great now. He's fun to talk to now. Yeah. He had those big traps. He's a big boy too, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to ask, so at 19, interning with the Cleveland Browns.

I was with the Pittsburgh at 19. Okay, sorry. How can younger coaches, I don't want to say get lucky, but like how can they put, I don't know, do things to get in better situations to where they can get opportunities like that? It's really hard. Well, here's, here's what I say about young people. Like embrace, you know, I got an ex-wife, two dogs, two kids,

two like businesses. So for me to take this trip, even I got to like make sure the dogs are taken care of. My kids are like, like my ex-wife, can you watch the kids and get everything covered? I mean when you're young, there's a part of that time in your life. You're probably broke and you're miserable, but you should embrace it right now because when you get older, you have kids and mortgages. You're broke, but you have no responsibility. Embrace it. So it's funny.

I was going to talk about this in the business talk. But like I hear words – the internet is good and bad, right? So there's a lot of phrases out there. I hear people like, know your worth, know your worth. Like, well, sometimes knowing your worth is you're not that valuable. And it doesn't mean you're not, you shouldn't be respected, but you're not, your worth is your worth, right? And so I think for young people, go work for free. Like you got to grind. Like everybody would love to be Mark Bell right now.

I bet they don't see what – I bet there is hell to pay for what you had to build here. Is that right? I mean to create Slingshot and I'm sure you've been – I'm sure there's legal issues and you have to get lawyers and I'm sure to – It's a giant pan, yes. And the end result is great. Right. But to get, you know, like, you know, your worth is sometimes,

yeah, you're not, you're young and you're not that experienced and you're not that valuable. So go act accordingly and embrace it, you know, live in a crappy apartment and work 15 hours a day. If you don't love it. I mean,

Mark and I were talking about this. I can see you. I mean, if you don't love being in a gym, you shouldn't get in this business. And I really mean that, you know, like you don't have to in a gym, you shouldn't get in this business. And I really mean that. You know, like, you don't have to be here, right? But you're here all day.

I mean, I don't have to. I don't train any. No, it's to my detriment. I'm here way too long, way too much. But I'm not going anywhere else. I don't train anyone. I go out and train John Jones. That's about it.

But I haven't trained anybody in years. My trainers do all my training. But I'm in the gym all the time, hanging out, helping people. I absolutely love it. So if you don't have that mentality, you're not all in,

it's probably not a good business for you because you could probably make more money doing something else, be an investment banker or be a real estate. I don't know. But every young professional, I can tell you, you're going to work a whole bunch for a whole

little, like, you know, it's just the way it is. You're going to work a whole bunch for very little and you should learn that early. But if you're passionate and you have faith in what you're doing, then you're probably going to get there. So like a lot of these internships were unpaid. I drove to West, people – you think your dad. My dad thought I was nuts. I was in college driving to Westside Barbell three days a week, an hour and a half, three days a week to work out.

My parents were like, well, you can work. There's 40 million gyms down here. It's like you don't get it. But that – They don't have a monolift. Right. that they don't have a monolift that's right

right but here's what's funny is you know what's the old saying like opportunity and preparation meet

when luck happens or whatever I never had a plan like I'm going to go to the University of Pittsburgh I just knew I wanted to get better

at lifting so I drove to Columbus and then that got me to the University of Pittsburgh and then that got me to Cleveland and part of the reason I opened a gym was I just didn't want to have a normal job got me to the University of Pittsburgh and then that got me to Cleveland. And part of the reason I opened a gym was I just didn't want to like have a normal job. I want to keep training.

And so then it's like, well, I'll go open my own gym. And then – but everything kind of came out of my passion for this and my drive to get better and wanting to do good. There was never a promise at the end. Like, hey, if you do this, you'll have a gym that's really successful and you'll make a lot of money and you. You know, there was never a promise at the end. Like, hey, if you do this, you'll have a gym that's really successful and you'll make a lot of money and you'll have a house. Like, that was never – when I created my gyms, honestly, there were no gyms like mine. Our gyms are all 5,000 square foot, all personal training.

No gym membership. We don't sell supplements. It's just personal training. They didn't exist. So we didn't have proof of concept to go off of. I just knew I couldn't afford to build a big box gym. You can't compete with them. I knew I couldn't compete with the big box gyms in terms of like a sauna and – I'm not building that.

Daycare and all that shit. Yeah, I just said I'll have small. My first gym was 900 square feet. I had two racks. I keep one now in my house just because it's like sentimental. Two racks of hyper, glued ham. I had the first plyo swing ever sold, which was a piece of junk, honestly. Never be the first to buy Louis stuff.

It's going to take a while. Oh, my God. Somebody got like pinned it and I almost got sued. Oh, my God. It's like the inch game like snaps somebody with a band. Oh, Jesus. But anyway, we had a plyo swing, dumbbells, and I

built out of that. Now we do over a million dollars in sales out of 5,000 square feet. That's awesome. Incredible. I think it's the same for you. You didn't know at 21. If I was to, and I should actually just do this one day, should figure out

how many hours I put in versus the amount of money I've made. It would be really, really low, the amount of money I got paid per hour. It would be really fucking low. Depressingly low. Yeah. I put a lot of time into this stuff. Andrew, take us on out of here. Sure thing.

Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Please make sure you guys like today's episode and comment something about whatever you guys heard today and then links to everything will be down below where you can find everyone on social

media. But I want to get I want to get Steve to like at least 10,000 followers within the next like week or two. I like I want that

shit to happen because this guy this man is putting out some incredible videos that you guys are not watching and that's bullshit. So yeah, again,

and also make sure you guys follow the podcast and that's bullshit so yeah again uh and also make sure you guys follow the podcast at mark bells power project on instagram and uh at mb power project on tiktok and twitter my instagram and twitter is at i'm andrew z and sema where can people find you y'all don't fucking realize how big these men this man's hands and forearms are no joke when i shook his hand today i'm like no no sir i have to get further in there yeah it's like i i i grabbed like his fingernail and i'm like i'm sorry sir i apologize for my weak ass handshake let me redo it please and he obliged and it was very nice i didn't see my ending on instagram youtube and see me getting on tiktok and twitter matt

and steve where can people find you guys uh go to uh beat personal training on instagram or um Go to Beat Personal Training on Instagram or Beat Trader is my personal handle. You got baked on Instagram. That's amazing. We've got, again, 10,000 within the next two weeks. Let's go. Let's go for it. I see one of the main movements you do for deadlift looks to be like a rack pull.

Is that right? How often are you using that? Not too often. It's not a staple. It's just a tester sometimes. A lot of people are amazed at deadlifting. Is there anything in particular that you've incorporated that you really like that you think has really helped? Because you deadlifted, what, 865 or something in a competition? 855.

I pulled 865 in the gym. And that was just 1,000-something on a rack. 1,035. 1,035. 725 for rows. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn't even talk about this. You got rows in different area codes over here. This is fucking insane.

Look at that. You know, a very interesting thing is Kaler Woolham, he also talked about doing like, it's a penlay-ish type row, but with really heavy weight. He was doing like 500-something pounds. He just did that for some 35 for four it's more jesus john perlow had me start doing those and uh take a wider grip and pull into your chest and send them into your stomach yeah and did that give you a lot of benefit uh yeah yeah yeah they were working

anything else you've been doing that you really like that you really think is increasing the deadlift or is just kind of maybe accumulation of a lot of other things? Probably accumulation of a lot of things. I like speed pulls for deadlift, deficit deads, things like that. So a lot of just straight up kind of west side stuff. Yeah. What's a speed pull look like? And are you switching up your stance a little bit or is it conventional all the time?

Conventional all the time. Yeah. I take a pretty narrow stance. Eight sets of two, 10 sets of two. Yeah. Sometimes 10 sets of one. But yeah, usually twos. Awesome.

Thank you guys so much for your time today. Really appreciate it. It's fun. Thank you. I'm at Mark Smelly Bell. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.