Mark Bell's Power Project - MBPP EP. 689 - Brian Henesey, Inventor Of The Best Squat Machine You’ve NEVER Heard Of, The SquatMAX MD

Episode Date: March 10, 2022

Brian Henesey is a former NFL Running Back for the Arizona Cardinals. Brian developed a unique belt squat machine, the SquatMAX MD, which came from wanting to simulate a barbell squat that not only felt like one, but had studies done that prove it is just as effective as a traditional barbell squat. For more info and to purchase a Squat Max MD Belt squat: https://www.squatmax-md.com/ Follow SquatMax MD on IG: https://www.instagram.com/squatmaxmd/ For more info and to purchase a Henny Attachment: https://www.thehenny.com/ Follow The Henny Attachment on IG: https://www.instagram.com/hennyattachment/ 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 Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ 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 Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ https://www.breakthebar.com/learn-more ➢YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/NsimaInyang ➢Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/?hl=en ➢TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nsimayinyang?lang=en Follow Andrew Zaragoza on all platforms ➢ https://direct.me/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

Power Project family, I hope you guys are doing well today. I want to give you guys a quick piece of fitness equipment lifting history. The hip circle that you see before you is actually the first hip circle ever. All right? There were no booty bands before the hip circle, which is pretty interesting. That's why you see it in gyms like The Rock. We've seen Kim K using it on Instagram. It is the OG.

But that's also why we have the slingshots, gangster wraps, knee sleeves, elbow sleeves, everything that you're going to need in the gym so that you can protect yourself before you wreck yourself. So, Andrew, you can tell the people how to get it. Yeah. You guys got to head over to markbellslingshot.com. Load up a hip circle, some elbow sleeves, some knee sleeves, all up in your cart. And you guys can use promo code power project to save 15% off all of it. Again, markbellslingshot.com links to them down in the description, as well as the podcast show notes. Do you have a card? A football card? Nope. You had to play three years to get that. Oh!

You missed the cutoff! What? You played two years in the NFL, right? Yes. Shit, dude. I didn't know that was a real thing. Damn. And for the pension, you also need three years. Oh! Son of a... They just keep stabbing you over and over again. That's fucked. Ooh, I wonder

were you in any Madden football games? Too early on. No, it was 94, right? Yeah, it wasn't Madden, but there was whoever preceded that, because I remember my nephew was able to pick me as a picker. Oh, that's awesome. Sega Sports was really popular back then, so it might have been on NFL Football 94 I had that game.

You're like, how could my awareness be 34? Do Madden games not allow you to play as like, like old NFL teams and stuff? Yeah, they do. But like, it's like only certain ones.

Yeah. Like legendary teams. Yeah. Okay. Like Superbowl winning teams, I guess. Gotcha. Yeah.

And, and players that actually could play. Hey man, your story is amazing though. Yeah. How did this come to be? How did you make it in the NFL, especially as a running back? And players that actually could play. Hey, man, your story's amazing, though. Yeah. How did this come to be? How did you make it in the NFL, especially as a running back, as a guy who's 5'8"? We'll call it 5'9".

Yeah, my story's a pretty unique one. I had graduated from Bucknell, was the all-time leading rusher. But as a 5'9 white guy from Bucknell and we were one and nine my senior year there was no one that interested in me so I actually spent three years trying to get an NFL tryout after I graduated I took a job working in pharmaceutical industry right out of school but I kept training and telling myself that I'm going to get an opportunity. Another year would go by, no opportunity. It got so bad, I actually had a free agent tryout one time at Rutgers University in New Jersey. This is my luck.

I had a lot of bad luck along the way before I finally got the good luck. There was like a 24-inch snowstorm that was occurring the day of this free agent tryout. And the Rutgers bubble actually collapsed. So the tryout was canceled. I was so pissed off. I lived in Philadelphia. They closed the New Jersey turnpike, but I was so pissed off I was driving home. And I was actually getting stuck in the snow.

True story. I had like a 1978 Chrysler rear wheel drive. I had getting stuck in the snow. True story. I had like a 1978 Chrysler rear wheel drive. I had a dumbbell on the back. So when I would get stuck on the turnpike, I'd put the dumbbell on the gas pedal. I'd push the car and then I'd have to chase it down New Jersey turnpike once I got it going again. So the writing was on the wall, like, hey kid, you better give it up and move on with your life. But then Buddy Ryan got hired in Arizona. And growing up in Philadelphia, I knew his mentality, that his camps were like wars of attrition. So I'd start sending him faxes and trying to contact him. No answer.

Fax machine. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I'm dating ourselves here uh but i said screw it i called up the arizona cardinals i said i was with federal express i have a person-to-person delivery which was a thing back then uh which i wanted to make sure he was in town and the plan was the camp in the parking lot until i got to meet him and get and get a tryout. So it's pretty crazy, right? Swear to God, somehow I pulled this off. I had some game film in my suitcase, and I thought they were going to call the cops because I was literally sitting in the lobby

like six, seven hours. The defensive coordinator at the time, Ronnie Jones, I sort of remembered my strength coach knew him somehow. So I asked for Ronnie Jones and I said, hey, I played for Jeff Connors, who was the strength coach. And first thing he did is I'll give these tapes and we'll look at them. Meaning he went back and said,

Jeff, who the fuck's sitting in the lobby here? Says he knows you. This guy, Brian Hennessy. And fortunately, Ronnie said, he, who the fuck's sitting in the lobby here says he knows you? This guy, Brian Hennessey. And fortunately, Ronnie said he has some physical attributes. He hasn't played football in three years, but if it's still Brian Hennessey, it may be worth a look. Somehow, they say come back the next day. I couldn't believe it. It finally happened.

Three years of trying to get a tryout. The receptionist says, buddy, Ryan wants to see you. So I'm getting goosebumps here thinking about it right so i go back to his office i figure he's going to say just like the eagles and other teams like we looked at your film we can't help you but he's like we actually liked your film and this blew my mind he had one of my faxes that i sent like six months before so whatever you say about buddy, Ryan was a crazy man. The facts that he would keep some random kids facts was impressive to me. So they took me out on the field and I, you know, I ran a four or five, nine and did some good things. And they signed me

to a contract, you know, calling home to your parents and saying, first of all, they thought I went to the New Jersey shore for the weekend. They had no idea I was sitting camping. And so I had to, this was February. So he's like, I want you to start practicing. They had like off-season practices. So I flew home real quick and came back. And the chances of making the team were slim to none, obviously. And then I started hitting everybody in camp going full speed.

And somehow there was a lot of tribulations. I don't want to get into them all, but like a week before camp, my older brother was home from the Air Force, and he passed away. They're not sure what happened. He was out drinking, doing partying like you did when you came home. They found him in a local canal. So I'm like, maybe this isn't meant to be. But I put on his dog tags tags and I actually went to camp

and amazing things started happening, like catching balls. And the first preseason game, who's going to put in Rudy? They started calling me Rudy because that was a big movie back then. And Buddy called everybody by their number. So for me, he didn't call me number 39.

He even called me Rudy, which was a good good sign that he knew I existed but the first preseason game he gave me 10 carries against the San Francisco 49ers who went on to win the Super Bowl that year in 94 and I had like 60 yards and the crowd was the crowd would chant Rudy it was it was pretty amazing experience so somehow I made made the team after this this long journey but hopefully we can talk about it was fitness that gave me that. My performance enhancement was lifting. Like lifting gave me the confidence that I can compete with anyone.

So we often talk about what lifting. It wasn't just the physical part of it. For me, it was always my advantage. I knew I was going to be stronger than any other running back, or even if I wasn't, I thought I was. And that's, that's more important than,

than actuality sometimes. What did the people at home think? Like when this happened and you, you like, you made a team and then like, probably haters probably didn't even believe it. They're probably like, he's full of shit.

There's no way he made a team. And then you're getting these rushing attempts against the 49ers. Like people must have gone berserk like when you went back home at some point. Yeah, I mean, it became in 94, there wasn't so much social media. It became such a story in New York Times, LA Times, Inside Edition, you remember that show? ESPN, right? Yeah, ESPN, CNN.

This true story, a company, literary company owned by Sylvester Stallone at the time, purchased my movie rights. I guess I needed to score some touchdowns in the Super Bowl. It didn't go that way, but it was literally a dream.

You thought, is this really happening? And I grew up in Philadelphia. You were naming, when we were talking earlier, like Seth Joyner. But yeah, Rocky, we can definitely, that was kind of my, we all watched the same movies in the 70s. But I'm playing with Andre Waters, Seth Joyner,

guys that I was four or five years ago in high school, six years ago in high school, I was watching play for the Eagles. So it was an amazing experience. When you got there, you mentioned that lifting is one of the things that got you through a lot of things. So when you were playing,

how like how much strength training was actually involved when you were playing in the NFL, like versus what you did when you were younger? That's a great question. There was a lot of movement towards Nautilus and Hammer strength machines in the 90s. So a lot of players trying to avoid injury weren't doing some of the heavy squatting and some of the power lifting that they probably did. Now, that's not everyone. You had the Bill Romanowski's of the heavy squatting and some of the power lifting that they probably did. Now, that's not everyone. You know, you had the Bill Romanowski's of the world.

I remember walking in from summer camp the following year with Eagles. He had 550 on the squat board doing sets of 12 after two a days. Jeez. Yeah. He might have had some additional juice inside that body, but I was amazed. But you also mentioned, mentioned like you mentioned about you're like at 10 years old something happened but you had pain all the way up to when you were playing in college too right yeah i actually i was struck i hopped on a paperboards bike little

punk that i was growing up in philly and i was hit by a car my mom told me god punished me for that one and i didn't know at that time but that was the beginning of my back problems from age 10. So in college every year, my back would usually go out. To put it in perspective, our big high school rivalry in high school, my back actually went out and I actually got, this sounds like Texas football. This doesn't sound like suburban Philly here. I was getting cortisone injections

in the guidance counselor office in my back so I could play on Saturday. So the back would always, even when I finally got my chance to play against the Steelers on Sunday night football that first year with the Cardinals, I had never returned kickoffs. And Buddy said, hey, let's put Rudy in a return kickoff.

So I'm like, shit. I didn't do that in high school or college. So I was the poor kicker. His leg was ready to fall off. I'm like Greg Davis at the time. I'm like, I need to catch 100 kicks because I'm not dropping this ball. I would be fine once I got it, but I wanted to make sure I caught it. But, of course, I was catching so many balls.

My back goes out on Wednesday. And when my back went out, I couldn't walk. And this game was on Sunday night. So as we talk about my squat max and my belt squat, there's two things that we all have things that we focus on in training. Low back, unfortunately, became a big thing, a big proponent of what I, if I consider myself an expert in fitness, low back and getting faster. That's kind of my two pet projects for my whole life. That's an incredible story. How did you start to like tinker around with fitness so much to where you maybe started to get an idea that, I don't know,

maybe that you're like innovative, like, cause it's, it's kind of a hard jump, right? Like we, like everyone loves to lift and I invented some products myself and there was, I don't really know if I ever thought I was like innovative or creative until I got way further down the road until I lifted for a very long time. And then I was just mesmerized by all the different ways that you can exercise and all the different versions of strength. And as I started to kind of become more of a tinkerer, I was like, ah, you know what? I think this is a pretty good idea. How did that happen for you? Yeah. It's strange because- You want to adjust your headset? Is it bugging you, falling off a little bit?

Yeah. So for me, when I got cut by the Eagles after I was done playing in 95, I went and worked in the pharmaceutical industry as a clinical researcher for 16 years. But getting back to my training, I was the kid just like you were the kid. I was walking around with those crazy shoes that were going to help me jump. Oh, yeah, jump shoes. If you pull those up, Andrew, those are sick. You ever see them in SEMA? I've seen them after you guys have mentioned it.

I was too young for that shit. Imagine how high you could jump if you had some. For reals. But you know how some people do over speed where they now have- Yeah, treadmills and stuff. Yeah. These are great. Oh, my God.

They still sell them? Oh, yeah. That's them. True story. They're giving them away Oh my God. They still sell them. Oh yeah. That's them. Uh, true story. They're giving them away 160 bucks. You could jump higher. Well,

I, I, I was that kid cause you know, I didn't have athleticism. I was, I like to say I wasn't blue chip. I just had a big chip. If that makes sense to you guys.

Yeah. So my, my grandfather was a professional boxer and my dad was a street fighter. So, you know, dad would get drunk and do one-handed push-ups. So, fitness was part of my life early on. And then, you know, other kids, you know, thousands of years ago, kids might have read Greek mythology. We watched Rocky and see how we can get stronger and slay slay our opponent but yeah fitness was my everything true story I would get towed my buddy would drive I would attach the back of his

car with a rope and he would go 17 18 miles per hour and pull me faster than I can run obviously this is on asphalt in the parking lot so if if I went down, I had some problems. So I threw everything at, what's nice is I know there's so much information for kids on Instagram. For me, it was actually nice because you could put things into the equation, trial and error. Now I'd be probably the kid that everything that I see works. So I would never have established. I have something that I now use in my gym called the speed maximization algorithm. And I have seven or eight indicators that I developed in that time when I was

trying to make it to the NFL. So when I got cut, I went in pharmaceutical industry, but I was like Michael Myers and Halloween. When, when am I going to get out and work in a gym? So my wife, we, we did well enough in the, in the, in the pharmaceutical industry, but I was like Michael Myers in Halloween. When am I going to get out and work in a gym? So my wife, we did well enough in the industry that I said, Caroline, my daughter's nine, my son's seven. I'm opening up a gym.

These kids, not just my kids, all kids need to know how fitness can help them. And this population of kids do a lot of organized sports, but they're so sedentary that, and Seema and I were talking, part of the things that I learned, I was a roofer in the summer. And I took pride in that because I would lift at five o'clock and do all my bents and squat, but just a rotational, I love tearing off roofs. I wasn't trying to learn to be a roofer. I just wanted the physical part of it. I would carry two bundles of shingles. They're 85 pounds each on one shoulder. So that's 170 pounds, and I'd go up a ladder 50, 60 times.

Part of my back problems probably got worse. I always put it on my right side. I should have put it on my left side. But, yeah, so that part of it didn't come when I started tinkering. I opened up a gym, I guess it's 11 years ago, after I left my day job as a pharmaceutical researcher. Much better paying job that was than opening up a gym. But that was my chance to, let me see if some of the stuff that I believe, like even something like a step up. Now everyone's lunge, lunge-centric.

Believe me, if you have one exercise to get an athlete faster, it's a step-up. Why do you believe that? Oh, there we go. Well, number one, it's because we didn't have organized strength coaches. At Bucknell, my first year, we didn't have a strength coach.

Jeff Connors came in my second year, and he had to start doing step-ups again the timing was funky back then I ran I had the fastest 40 time I ran like a 4-4-5 on on a special track but it was the step-ups that gave me that instant feedback see now there's so much noise you don't get to put some of the things in it's all the same musical notes it's how you organize them but back then then, I could, let me throw step ups in and actually do it for three months and see what happens.

With any sort of weight or particular heights? How did you do it? Mix it up? Mix it up, but holding two dumbbells and stepping as fast as possible, which now everyone is looking at,

it's not just about. And do you think there's a benefit of coming downward as well or how did you do the downward part? Now that I have, I didn't know it back then, but yeah. Like a lot of calf work and stuff, right? Yeah, and just that you have to hinge. The big part of acceleration is one thing,

but you have to decelerate as well. And then we'll talk about how some of my products came, but that's a hard thing to teach. You can't teach in your weight room. Trying to teach a kid, if you're trying to change direction, you got to load that posterior chain to be able to put the brakes on

and everybody wants to just quad it. So that's where, and one of the first things I opened up when I opened up my gym is thinking about my daughter. I got all the good new toys, right? I remember I was Michael Myers waiting to get out. And when my wife said, go ahead, go play in the gym and hide. You know, I got the reverse hyper. I got, you know, I probably got

$30,000, $40,000 of nice equipment, but I wasn't thrilled with some of the pieces. So knowing my own back issues and how important squat was for me, that's where my initial tinkering, my initial patent came. It was SquatMax. And what was important to me because of my back issues, I had to frequently use machines. I knew it had to be something that wasn't anchored, that something wasn't fixed. Because if you're not working the stabilizers, you're not building athleticism. So that's where my squat max was born. I just, I wanted to keep it perfectly centered,

but I didn't want to make it fixed. And that was one of my first tinkerings that now 10 years I'm sitting here because some of the greatest power lifters have discovered it, not based on my marketing skills, but just because it's a pretty good product for building athletic strength. Yeah. Andrew, let's bring up that clip from Instagram from Squat University who has, I don't know,

2 million followers on his, we're just going to play this clip here so you guys can kind of see the quality of this product. And Sema and I and Andrew as well and my brother have been using the product here in the gym at Super Training. And I absolutely love it. Fell in love with it right away. Experienced no pain. I'm excited because I took a month off of lifting any real heavy weight, especially for lower body.

Well, now I'm going to crank it back up again because of you. So I appreciate it. It seems like an awesome, awesome product. Yeah, let's check this out. So I appreciate it. It seems like an awesome, awesome product. Yeah, let's check this out. I want to talk about my favorite belt squat machine that some of the strongest squatters in the world use,

like Brian Carroll, Blaine Sumner, and Ray Williams. You see, when you squat with a barbell, gravity pulls straight down on the bar, which creates load on your spine. Based on the length of the moment arm and the amount of weight you are lifting, the loads on the spine, including shear, compression, and torque, can increase. The unique design of the SquatMax MD isn't anchored to a point in front of you, but instead floats underneath you. This makes the line of pull straight down, making it similar to a barbell squat. Pulling your hips towards the ground rather than getting smushed towards the ground or squished towards the ground. Rather than on top of the back or chest, there is less load on the spine. So whether you have a narrow stance with a more upright chest or a wider stance with a more forward

angled chest, the line of drive is the same, straight down. This means an athlete dealing with back pain that is made worse with squatting can often use this device to maintain their strength and fitness while they rehab. Aside from injury rehab, let's now hear how Brian Carroll used this belt squat machine in his training to set an all-time world record 1,300-pound squat recently. Being someone that has a history of back injury, I know just how important it is for positioning and technique, especially concerning the squat. And the SquatMax had a great deal with my ability to take my training volume

and my capacity so much higher than I could in the past. I'm able to utilize this apparatus two times per week, once heavy on my squat day after I do my main barbell squats, and secondarily after my deadlift where I can work light. Because it taxes my lower back and knees so little, I can use this two times a week with no damage to my body. As someone who's been around the sport for over 21 years, I can tell you that I've tried every belt squat apparatus out there. And some are good, but none of them compare to the SquatMax md and that's because the line of drive is straight up

and down there's so little shearing on the knee or the lower back and it's a completely natural movement it's like night and day compared to the other apparatuses that have levers and pulleys that actually track go ahead and pause it and take away from the benefit of a belt squat we can maybe you can kind of scrub through that a little bit more, see where they have Ray and some of the other guys using the product. But I wanted to comment. It's important for people to understand. We're not just trying to hawk something to you guys.

We're not trying to pitch something to you guys. This is a great product, and you came in with it. I didn't really know much about it. I saw it on Ed Cohn's Instagram, I think, a while back. I don't know how you got in with it. I didn't really know much about it. I saw it on Ed Cohn's Instagram, I think a while back. I don't know how you got in contact with us, but you basically FedExed us again, like you did with pro football. And I think you maybe got ahold of my brother and had some communication with him. And then this thing just shows up at the gym and you brought it in and we tried it out and we just happened to really like it. But what I want to point out is the other belt squats that are out there,

they have an attachment on a lot of them that has like an arm attached to it that comes out like sideways. And then there's weights, you know, stacked in various different ways depending on the belt squat. But your machine, it's like an original belt squat. Like back in the day when they did belt squats, they had a belt, and then it would just have an attachment that had weights that would hang down between your legs.

Yeah. And that's exactly what this machine is. So no offense to anybody else that has belt squats. Some of my great friends have belt squats. They make good products. But this one, I don't feel any pain whatsoever. I noticed a lot of pain, uh, mainly from the belt back in the day, but you also created a belt that works really well. Um, and on, on the other machines, you know, all I had access to was the, was, uh, these other types of belts that kind of

hit your hips, uh, in a weird way. And then again, the weight is like kind of pulling you in a slightly different way. And I think you mentioned having some discomfort as well, right? Absolutely. So I've used a bunch of different types of belt squats too. And when you had me hop on from the first squat I did, when I came up, I'm like, I want to jump. That was my sensation. Like I want to literally jump out of the hole because it's like it, there's no pain at all anywhere.

And it just felt extremely natural. And it wasn't a crazy amount of weight either. I was using it banded. And you mentioned that some of the greater powerlifters, they don't do that with bands, but for athletes, like not just for powerlifters, but for athletes in general, this is so good because a lot of athletes have limiting factors in terms of pain in their knees, pain in their back, and they can't do a squatting motion. But when I did this one, it didn't compare to any other belt squat machine that I've used. And again, there's no hate to other

belt squat machines, but this is very different and very unique. Yeah. And one thing I'll add to that as somebody who doesn't have as much experience lifting as everybody else does here. But like for me getting into a belt squat, I thought that was just like, oh, this is part of the game. Like it's supposed to kind of hurt, you know, like it's supposed to be a little bit uncomfortable. And when I got into yours yesterday, like I was just like, oh shit, this one doesn't feel like the other ones. So again, like I don't have as much experience, but I could definitely see the difference right away. Now, you had some studies done on this thing too, right? Yeah, that was the main thing for me as we talked about. Exercise was the reason I made it to the NFL. So when I opened up this gym, anything that I created, I really wanted to know not because I had a dream that I'd be sitting here with, standing here with you guys trying to market this thing. It was, I'm going to

put my own daughter on there. If this isn't working to glute max and a glute mead, and she tears her ACL, and I could have had her on a better machine because that's, that's the way this was created. You know, like I said, I, I, I contacted, One of the first things I did was contact after I created it and put a patent. Fortunately, I patented it. I sent letters to every college that does research studies on exercise science. And I wanted to know it worked like a back squat because if it didn't, I'm not going to pursue it. So that was one of the key things. I'm not going to pursue it.

So that was one of the key things, like two years into the process, a local university, Widener School of Physical Therapy, came out and actually did an EMG study, and it was shown similar to an actual barbell squat. So I'm like, great, now I know that, because I felt I was short-changed. One of the things,

because I was always working around a back issue, I remember my good friend, strength coach, he's like, we got a Smith machine. This is 1990, probably the worst Smith machine there was. I'm like, hallelujah, this is going to be great. It's not going to hurt my back. First fucking rep, my back went out. So in my mind, I will never make a fixed machine because if you have to conform to the machine,

first of all, you're not going to build athletic ability because you're not working your stabilizers. But if you're conforming, you're going to potentially get hurt. So that's how the SquatMax came. I was lucky that I came up with that guide rod. So it's not fixed to the guide rod, but it keeps it perfectly centered and lets you get into your natural movement.

And like you said, it's pulling down on the hips instead of at a certain point pulling in on the back a little bit so that that was really exciting to me and then we were playing around yesterday because it is a free weight over the years i come up with a way to make mess with the moment arm make it more glute dominant or and all this was cool as i was telling insima yesterday i i i had high school girls who would have these impressive, you know, pronounced VMOs, and then they would go off on their college scholarship to play volleyball or whatever sport. And they'd come home on that first freshman year at winter break. I'm like, what the hell happened to your VMO? And they're like, they only back squat.

And I'm like, could this thing really? Again, I don't want back squat. And I'm like, could this thing really, again, I don't want to get into the debate. I know the VMO is innervated by the same, all the quad muscles. People keep talking about that, but we had been on and like, there's still research that people are like,

you can't isolate the VMO motherfuckers. You can isolate the VMO. Well, what's been cool about this is the research went when they, the most recent study, they, they went against different belt squat designs and the barbell squat, and it was 30, 40% more VMO activity.

That's cool. Yeah, and so it's pretty cool when you think something and then you can actually prove it. And I was a research scientist for 15, 16 years. I saw drugs that I thought were going to cure the world, and then we got them first in a man, and there were adverse events. It didn't it didn't

work like you planned so for me again this the i was the first belt squat to ever have a published research study why is that not not because of marketing because my own catholic guilt i want this shit to work right i got a confession to make it's like my belt squat. You mentioned, well, hopefully we can pull up the other stuff on that video, but you mentioned how the interesting thing about the way your belt squat works is that it does pull down on the lower back. And you mentioned that that was one of the reasons why a lot of your lower back pain went away.

I mean, you probably did a lot of other things, but is that part of that reason? Yeah, I mean, what else can it be? I hurt my spinal cord 17, 18 years ago. So when I tell you, I had something called cauda equina syndrome. It's one in a million, one in 500,000 people have this happen. So statistics sometimes work for me

when I show up at a guy's door to play in the NFL or sometimes to get the injury. But yeah, I had called it Aquinas Syndrome. And I had literally, I had gotten an injection like a day before. I'm like, motherfucking anesthesiologist must hit a nerve. But my disc had exploded to a point where the spinal cord ends. There's a whole important ending of nerves. It's almost like the fuse box.

If you don't get surgery within 24 hours, you're screwed. I went 72 hours because I had hurt my back so much. Like I had the numbness in my ass, my penis. Yeah. I should have known, but I didn't know because, and I went 72 hours. I lost control of my bladder. If you watch me walk when I'm tired, you'll see a little foot drop. Like I had completely lost my abductor. And people don't realize when we're talking about like squat max and glute med. Like when I lost my abductor before they finally took me to the hospital, my poor wife, I went in to take a leak and I fell back and split my head open because I was getting paralyzed. And yeah, so that's-

You're an amazing person. I love people like you. You're all heart. What gave you this kind of belief in yourself? Is it all centered around lifting and it just kind of built up over time? Or is it, you mentioned your dad was a street fighter, I think you said. Like, where's this,

because it seems like you have a really good, strong belief in yourself. Yeah, again, I'm fortunate that we have parents that actually inspired the ability. I tell people all the time, I wasn't that good of an athlete, but my dad thought I was. So he only went to third grade.

My mom maybe went to eighth grade. I grew up in a blue-collar part of town. But I think I'm the youngest, too. I know you're the youngest, right? Get your ass kicked, yeah. I was just pissed off. I was walking around the park. I went for a walk in Sacramentoramento and i i don't go

to dog parks but it said uh big dogs only small dogs only so i'm the small dog that wants to get in with the big dogs uh so yeah i think it was having somebody you know give you confidence and you know if i didn't my sister was five foot tall and she went on to play college basketball division one and she was an all-american so i saw her get a scholarship i'm like shit that's going to beat rufin uh so you know sports became very important to me i started playing football at six um but i think the fitness was my x factor without running into you know watching the rocky movies and again my dad my grandfather was a boxer so push-ups and some of the early indication of, first of all, you had to be tough, right?

In my neighborhood, that's another thing kids miss. Like I remember being 10 years old, walking down the street and must've looked wrong at a kid. He said, what are you looking at? The old thing, not much or whatever I said. And next thing I'm being chased down the street, running around cars.

Better be fast or strong or something. One of the ways I train some of my suburban kids in my gym is putting a circle, creating a circle, and having someone chase you around a circle because that's what I claim that helped me learn to play on the edges of my foot. There was a lot of wild dogs

that were pissed off that I can't tell you how many times I was running away from a dog trying, trying to go around the car to get away. Sounds like a Disney Channel movie. You can't make this stuff up, but that tinkering that I was able to try to recreate, what did I do? But yeah, that inner drive, I think it's, I've been fortunate to have people, my strength coaches that believed in me. But fitness was, that took me over the top. How did your parents treat you? Like when something happened, when you faced adversity,

did they coddle you? Did they give you a lot of love? Or was your dad, because he was a street fighter, was he like, hey, fucking figure it out yourself? Yeah, it was probably both. But you had someone believing in you. Like, I actually thought I was a good basketball player, and if I see film of my shot, shit was horrible.

But he never told me that. I'm also curious, tinkering, right? You've, like, from the squat max and the other, I don't know what that. The Henny attachment. The Henny attachment. You created a lot of really cool stuff. Were you always drinking your stuff when you were a kid? Because most, like even me, I have, maybe there's something in the back of my head.

I don't think I'm going to invent anything, right? But did you always do that? Was that something for you? When it came to fitness, yes. When it came to fitness. Yeah, because like we all, you know, I should have been studying hard for Calc or whatever. But I remember sitting in a biology class at Bucknell, which is a pretty hard academic, and I'm figuring out my bench routine. So when you're passionate about something, like we all are, that drives tinkering.

And if I was born a blue chip athlete, probably wouldn't have tinkered as much. But going back to those ugly shoes we saw, I wanted to try to find every edge. Bucknell's Ivy League, right? It's basically an Ivy League. I don't want to insult the Ivy League, but it's the Patriot League, like Cornell, Bucknell. But it's not an easy school to get into. You need a 1400 SAT, 1500 SAT for a lot of those guys that are going there.

So you've got a pretty powerful brain in there. Yeah. I do and I don't. We'll say it for you. It's okay. But like, you know, when you were mentioning that you worked as a clinical researcher for 15 years, you keep, we keep saying that pretty fast, but it's just like you worked as a clinical fucking researcher for 15 years. That means that you, obviously you're super fucking smart. It definitely helped me pursue studies and think differently because it's a regulated industry.

So that's why it definitely influenced the way I approach squat max. But I'll tell you the God honest truth. If I could ever write a book, me working in a Fortune 500 company, I should have been fired so many times. Let me put that on like i'm gonna tell you i'm gonna tell you shit you're gonna you're gonna say this guy has a lot of stories let's hear it this is this is the kind of stuff that went on i'm talking about getting drunk and i would jitterbug dance when i was a kid i flipped my ceo and she didn't want to get flipped she was

like five five probably 200 pounds at the time i ended up parking her on on the on the dance floor skirt overhead every every picture going on but true story my competitiveness i'm working at yf which was purchased by pfizer i had this kid um came from some nigerian came from came from some money though he was like a prince he's lying that's a thing he was driving a bmw no it's still a scam yeah but listen he just needed you to wire a little bit like eddie murphy but he was a phd but here's here's just to show you the mindset i never i always should have been in a gym this this paid well but i should have been in a gym i used to run hundreds at lunchtime i was probably 35 i was a director like you know he said brian you're not fast i'm faster than you i said motherfucker we're racing right here right now so you know you got statisticians hiding inside the

cubes i set up a line we i set up a 20 yard dash this is fortune 500 company we're running running you know i got one of the one of poor and she's going to say, set, go. I raced this poor kid, and he reported it to me, so I should have been fired anyway because you can't be racing a guy that reports anything. I have to do his reviews. And I see the vice president. They like me because of my NFL story.

I see her look out the door like, and she just shut the door. She didn't want to go. So I race this motherfucker right down the hallway and the school's shaking. I wanted to race and shut him up. But yeah, that's the kind of stuff, like, I was there and I did some good things. Like, I would travel to Brazil. I did a lot

of international clinical trials. But my heart was, like I said, waiting. When can I go back to doing something that I really love? And when my kids got that age, I really wanted to mentor because there were enough influencers in my life that told me I was good enough to keep going. So that was the main part of the gym. It wasn't expected to become a strength equipment company. But the products were, again, I didn't market SquatMax for five years.

Just so you know how SquatMax got its first shot, Vanilla Grill of Blaine Sumner. I mean, I don't know how he found me because I only have like 400 followers at this time on my SquatMax. Blaine Sumner, one of the greatest heavyweight powerlifters of all time. Yeah.

Just an absolute monster. And, you know, he's an engineer by training. He found it somehow. If you need to find a needle in a haystack, he's probably our guy. He's like, hey, I'm not sure how that thing works. But because people don't understand it, it's not anchored.

So it's amazing how much he used that. You know, he had that big squat at the Arnold like two years ago and actually broke his back. But I mean, that's him saying this. I never paid these guys a dime. He's huge. I've never met these guys. Let's read this. This is the best belt squat that I've ever used.

It is the only belt squat where the weight travels free, not anchored by one point. So it's most natural and specific to squatting and presents less shear and stress on the back, which we all felt, especially Andrew. Yeah, and it's like, wait, I can get a huge benefit training my legs without it hurting my back. And also there's no component of, for some people, like I was squatting for years and years,

my elbows, my shoulders, everything started to hurt, just getting in position for squats. So this eliminates all that. You can just have your hands out in front of you if you'd like. Or what I also like is you can hold on to those handles if you want and get a little assistance and kind of guide yourself down gradually. Yeah, and you guys know, I mean, with biomechanics, Doug Brignoli and sissy squats, like I've still been able to work my legs and I've been able to do very, like I've been making progress despite not being able to move, which I'm forever grateful for him showing me some of that stuff. But the stimulus that I'm not getting with the sissy squat is of course I'm not, I still not, I'm still not going to have a barbell on my back, but that feeling of having the weight on you, volume

and just having like, I don't want to say bone crushing, but like, you you know we talk about bone density and how important that is i feel like i'm not getting that when i'm just doing sissy squats although my legs are looking great i'm loving that but like i just feel like with this i felt the weight on me but i didn't feel pain and so i'm just like this is special i'm like i'm really excited to keep using it. The check is in the mail, guys. I appreciate this. I want to go back to the step up for a second because I think some of what you touched upon

was really brilliant there. What recommendation would you have? Somebody's listening right now. They got a little bit of experience in the gym. They've been training a couple of years. They do want to get a little faster, maybe a little stronger. Where would they start?

Like if Nsema and I just wanted to start messing around, I mean, I know he's a beast, but where would I start at 45 going on a, you know, doing some step-ups? I think an 18-inch box,

you know, holding two 35s, one in each hand, and not worrying about stability if we're trying to build that acceleration. Staying on the same leg the entire time? I step off and on. I'll do eight with my right and then eight with my left, but I'm trying to step as fast as I can.

And then there's different iterations I have. One of my first success stories as a trainer, I don't know why Raul Banez had just got let go by the Phillies. He was 40 years old. He came into my gym. I wanted him to join the podcast. One day, you'll love him. He's a fitness fanatic. He came into my gym. He had just come off a bad year. He's 40 years old phillies let him go and he should have punched me in the face and left but he said i don't i don't feel explosive i want to get faster so i timed him in a 20 yard dash this is hand time don't it's not electronic time but he ran a 285

and i basically said hey raul you're slow as a school girl but i can get you faster he'll tell he'll just tell this to this day. That's awesome. Yeah, just some highlights from Raul Ibanez in case people don't recognize, because when you said that yesterday, I was like, oh, I remember him. Well, this is going to blow your mind. Three months,

we only had three months before the season, the Yankees ended up signing him and giving him a chance, and he went off in New York at all these clutch home runs, but he went from a 2.85 him a chance. And he went off in New York, had all these clutch home runs. But he went from a 285 to a 259. And what his issue was, we did the step ups, we did everything. The year before, he did everything time under tension, slow. And he had had a sports hernia.

So his proprioception, when you do classic single leg work, like a step up, you're getting that hip musculature, that lateral hip musculature. And so his feet, he could only do like five or six pull-ups. He could do a 500-pound trap bar. So I know relative body strength doesn't sound, he's been with every top trainer in the world. He's like, relative body strength. And you call me a school girl. Get the fuck out of here. No.

He stayed with me, went off. The belt squad he called the fountain of youth soon as he started using it just like and seen was saying he said within a week walking up the steps he felt like he had air in his tires and so all this is building true story so his thing was relative body strength and and and getting his proprioception back which that's part of my system that i created for for athleticism the following year he went to seattle at 41 he tied the major league record for most home runs by someone over 40 41 or old or 29 home runs yeah and the greatest compliment i got is he flew me out for a game with my family

the gen i don't think they call him general manager what did they call the the person in charge of baseball well i'm not sure what they're called. Commissioner? Commissioner. No, no, of a team. I think it's a general manager. We'll call it general manager. But he said. I think it's called manager.

Yeah, you're talking about the head coach. Not the manager in the dugout, like the guy that signs people. Oh, probably GM. Yeah, GM. Yeah, GM. So he says to me, hey, what the hell did you do at Raul? We timed him home to first, and he had the same time that he had as a rookie at 41.

So I can't make that up. It was like a 4-1, whatever it was from the left side, which isn't the fastest guy in the world, but it's the same as he was as a rookie. So he's been a big proponent. He used it underneath the Yankees dugout. You guys, those Yankee fans listening, this is all over. That's it right there. They had

him pinch hit for A-Rod in the championship series. That's the pinch hit. He had used squat max under the dugout right before he hit that home run. When he was DH, he would use it because he felt so acclimated. Everything was turned on. That's a big deal in baseball because you're not super active all the time in baseball.

Sometimes you're sitting on the bench. Yeah, you're sitting on the bench for the whole game. In New York, that time of year is 40 degrees. But he would go down and do it with the band, do 10 fast reps before a warm-up because he felt it dynamically stretch his hip flexors and that decompression of the spine. I can't make this up. If call him he will confirm this man i'm so pumped not just for myself but for all the other athletes who by hearing this seeing squat universities video because like like yeah we're talking about this right now right but ed cone blaine sumner scott

university they're like this is the best belt squat once other athletes start experiencing it and once like like let's say basketball players 6'9 6'11 guys try squatting on that thing imagine that shit they're able to start working with load and squat to depth without any type of pain it is crazy like i'm really just like it's gonna change a lot of people it kind of reminds me of like pulling the sled like when i when i pull the sled because i i do understand that like not everyone's going to love fitness the way that we love it. And I do understand that some of this stuff hurts. Like you go in the gym and it's kind of like, it can be like aggravating. Like it can be annoying, you know, for some people. Certain machines and certain fitting into certain machines and lifting certain way. And then a lot of people

just don't really know how to lift. And they certainly don't know how to squat. And there's like so much time that it takes to learn how to squat. But your product is you put the belt on and you just go to move. You do what you would think would be a squat and you're squatting. And I think, you know, you could adjust the feet a little bit and move around a little bit and kind of find what feels best for you. But it reminds me of the sled in that sense where there's just zero pain.

It's the sled is just like a version of advanced walking. Yeah. You know, and this is a way to get some weight on you in a way that's not overly aggressive or difficult. I think about kids, too. Like you've been having kids on this for the longest time, but like young athletes, right? That let's just say like, I don't know if they have any issues squatting or whatever but young athletes on this too their development it's it's wild what's this yeah no just eddie coming on a toilet no no do you guys want to want volume sure okay let's hear it let me stop oh we might see ed this weekend well actually this is going to come

after the arnold so we probably saw him. He looked great. This thing is awesome. He looked great. It's completely free, so your body works way more naturally. And you can do a perfect box walk because it keeps tension on everything, so you don't actually relax. Hopefully, I don't kill myself on this because I'm just trying. Oh, he moves so fast. And that had both his roots replaced?

I believe so. Go ahead and pause it again if you don't mind. What I like about that, too, is that you have that attachment to where you could have a kind of like a box squat. It can be set up like a box squat, which I think is really smart. Some people need a guide. They need to know like how low to go so you can use it like a traditional box squat and you can push your butt way back

and you can sit way back into it or you can do like more like a touch and go or you can simply remove the box as well, right? Or the thing that you have there to sit on. Yeah, it's been great. Even I have an 82-year-old client that uses it just being able to set the depth so that, because I know if I keep him at 19 inches high,

he's not going to irritate any joints. And what's been cool, that study to show how active the VMO was, those athletes only went to parallel. So it's a different moment arm. You know, they went real deep squats, and to be able to give VMO, like I'm thinking to your brother, I'm praying that it gets his VMO stronger. And then he can start going, you know, start doing other stuff, you know,

going a little bit more forward and different things. But yeah, I've been, been real lucky. Like I said, this, this, this thing sat five years with research studies and no one knew about it. Thankfully, Blaine Sommer found it. And it's amazing that, you know that powerlifters are competing. Once it gets out there, even The Rock's cousin, the stuntmen are so beat up,

having guys like the Samoan stuntman say, this is the best leg exercise. But you hit a nail on the head. I was concerned. Does this thing work because it feels so good? But Stu McGill actually explained, it de-stresses the joints because it's perfectly centered because that was my fear. Does this thing work because it feels too good?

And then you saw the EMG study, and now I have 10 years of vertical jump that and different things because sometimes I'll have people just use the bell squats. Some people just use traditional barbell squats. It's effective. But that was one of my fears. I'm like, how the hell can this thing be working if it feels this good? But Raul Bane has explained it perfectly. He's like every rep, he hits the barrel of the bat.

Because, you know, it's not a half inch out in front of you. It's always perfectly centered. So there's not that, you know what I mean? Because that was a big thing for me. If I was so flexing intolerant, I couldn't even deadlift even in high school and college because as soon as I got out a little bit in front of me, the back would act up. Yeah, and it kind of tractions your back a little bit when you're just standing there. Yeah.

The pull towards the ground kind of feels nice on your lower back. I haven't showed you this yet. I'll send you. We were talking about this. You do a diagonal chop with this. So when you chop up, that load's pulling straight down. So I actually get some adjustments from doing a chop on it. Chiropractic.

You know what I mean? Because as you chop up, you're pulling away from your body and that's pulling straight down on the hips so they're stretching out like your lats and everything as it's pulling down on you yeah like that's got to feel incredible because you're getting from both ends yeah we we can get as nerdy as you want but you mentioned the moment arm depending on how the attachment is on the um on the what does the center I don't know what you would call that yeah I stole it off of Kabuki, but I came up with this thing called the transformer pin.

What's cool about this, this was also researched. I knew as soon as I tried it, I put that pin that lets me hook up in the back of the main loading pin. I'm like, shit, my glutes are on fire. Then when they did the research study, there was 40% more glute activity from using this hookup. And then the front, which blew my mind, is rectus femoris is a tough thing to get.

You don't get rectus femoris from a squat. So the front hookup point, it was off the charts on fire, rectus fem. So my son's a punter. He's a college punter. When he uses the belt squat we we do the front hookup point just to get to be able to work that muscle dynamically can you go into that a little bit more because i have an idea why that is it was over my head too because

i'm a i'm a toxicologist by background the the really powerful researcher uh colleen gulick who did she actually there's actually a video on why it actually changes the moment arm because every belt squat not squat max so much but you're pulled forward so you can't get you can't get vertical shin so because that the weight's not your back behind the weight you get more vertical shin so it increases the moment arm uh to the posterior chain yeah i couldn't i couldn't i i mean i'm i'm not the expert moment arms i couldn't figure out but that's that's i'll have to send you that video no absolutely i'd like to see it but from what i could see right away because again just like you said with squats you know we can't get the right degree of angle to get that the vmo

activation just with a regular barbell squat but when you change that attachment your knees are like trans they're they're being pushed a little bit more forward so you're getting so much more of the correct degree than you would on a normal squat so that's why when you get down into it a little bit further your vmos do get lit up and i felt that like after the first rep it was so nice yeah i mean like i said it's it's it's been really cool to have a you know um say you feel something working and then actually the hypothesis gets proved proven by actual science well that's a new one for the industry because a lot of obviously exercise they're not saying, let's do a research study because it's not regulated. It costs time.

They just put the equipment on the market and say, hey, it does this. Well, for me, like I said earlier, if you're my athlete and it's something I'm putting you on, I want to know that it's giving you the best chance to maybe not blow out an ACL or give you an extra step in your vertical. So it's always, I think the best you kind of ask, like fitness is personal for me because it was my way to get, get out of the frigging neighborhood and play college football. And then, you know, have a good career and then circle back and get back to the gym before I die here. Power Project family, how's it going? Now we have partnered with Stan Efferding, the Stan Efferding. If you don't know who he is, you better go check it out. But he owns Vertical Meals, which we eat and we love.

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some of these real monsters lifting on this machine. You know, you've got Blaine Sumner and Ray Williams. What kind of weights? What's the world record on this thing? What kind of weights people have been hitting on this? They don't hold the

handles, you know, Optimus Prime and Vanilla Gorilla. 550 for five reps. they don't hold the handles, Optimus Prime and the vanilla gorilla. 550 for five reps, and this is when they're hitting 1,100, 1,200, whatever they're doing as astronomical numbers. 550 is a tough five. And obviously, if you hold the handles, they love it not holding the handles because they feel the neural drive coming out of the bottom.

There's actually a little bit more translation to what they need to achieve. But yeah, if you go to parallel and you're not holding the handles, what I've seen, say you're a 700-pound squatter, it's usually about 60%. 55% to 60% if you're doing a correct squat. So you think 400 pounds would probably challenge you as a 700-pound squatter for five reps. That's awesome. You earlier mentioned, I don't know if it was your algorithm for speed. Is that something that you want to talk about, or is it like a James secret? No, I have seven indicators.

I'll try to, I mean, I thought I was going to go after this, but I can barely get my squat max to sell. I don't know how much more. I might be a two-hit wonder here, but feel free to ask me. Yeah. So yeah, what is it? What can athletes, what should they add in to get faster? That's a great question.

I have, I created a baseline evaluation form. So my coaches, when this is someone that's, whether you're Raul Banez, it's 39, or you're a 14-year-old soccer player, relative body strength, proprioception in your feet. Like, I'll literally have a kid, can you stand on the ball of your foot on one foot and hold it for 10 seconds? I'm just giving you a sample. I've just got to try it now. Like you just gave me a challenge. I've got to do it. But yeah, so there's, I have seven or eight indicators, everything.

And, and, you know, um, what, what does the ball, like when you say that, like, for example, what, what are you looking for when a person goes onto the ball of their foot and they're like trying to balance? What's the indication there? I have my seven indicators. That one would be lower body. It's kind of proprioception of your feet. Awareness, yeah. I'm down to true story.

I've done this for 10 years. I can bring any soccer team in and and I don't even time them, and I'll tell the coach and the parents. I'll tell them who the three fastest kids are just from pull-ups. Just from pull-ups? Yep. What do you mean? Relative body strength.

Oh, relative body strength. Strength relative to their body weight. And it seems ridiculous, but I did a lot of pull-ups because my dad was a boxer. We talked. Some of the Bucknell running backs, they were benching a little bit more than me. I'm still not happy about it. But I got more athletic over the four years because I was roofing.

I would always do pull-ups and certain relative body strength things. So you were asking how I came up with this. This was my, because I didn't have all the distraction of Instagram. Let me try this. This was the seven attributes that I built. And so when I opened up my gym, it's improved now 10 years into the gym. So now I'm looking at how many steps they take in five yards. There's other things that go into it, but it works.

And speed's one of the hardest things to get athletes faster. But yeah, I mean, Raleigh-Lobine is a perfect example. At 39, you go from a 285 to a 259 in three months. A 10th is hard to get, believe me. And I have a lot of baseball players that have to run the 60. So I've had so much success, you know, because if you don't get under seven seconds, you have a hard time playing college, Division I college baseball.

And a 60 sucks because you have to, it's such a long race. So you have to, you know, that top speed is hard to train. Acceleration, I can fix 40s and 20s and 30s. But top speed has been a challenge for me. And that Henny attachment, which we started to play with, that's helping me with top end speed because there's two exercises that I can show you just because you're more of pulling the ground. And there's one thing you use with a yoke bar that almost is exactly like the muscles used in top end speed. I'll have to show that to you. So there's a lot of hidden.

The Henny attachment has a lot of ways to build athleticism and I came up with that because even trying to teach a girl to be able to stop, to decelerate I'll lose my voice trying to get them to hip hinge when they're stopping. Do we have any videos that we can pull up of the Henny attachment on his

Instagram? I want to ask you do you think like what do you think, like, what do you think the reason is for, like, a pull-up? Like, I understand the relative strength thing, but focusing on pull-ups may not necessarily make you faster. Or do you think that pull-ups can actually, like, improving your pull-ups can actually make you faster?

Or do you think it's because of the change of maybe body composition? Like, maybe somebody's getting in a little bit better shape. They're getting a little bit leaner. They're doing other training as well, building more muscle mass. And if you have, which sounds counterintuitive, but if you have a little bit more muscle, you're going to be stronger, which will help make you faster. I don't claim that it's kind of what came first, the chicken or the egg here. I don't fucking know, but I know that, like my daughter, I was telling her and seeing my daughter, she had 150 goals in high school, the most ever scored in her league.

Wow. And she did it in three years because the coach had her playing defense. That's another thing. But my goal was, you know, she's 150 pounds. If she could do five or six pull-ups at that weight, I mean, most girls can't do six pull-ups at that weight, I mean, most girls can't do a pull-up, but it's just, there's been a direct correlation for me in my athletic pursuits, like maintaining pull-ups and we do a lot of bear crawls and relative body strength things, but I don't know the exact answer, but maybe there's no

correlation, but there is, I haven't seen it fail yet. Like I can pick the three fastest kids on every team just from pull-ups. You know, I, there's something there. I couldn't explain it either, but when I think of fast athletes, those athletes can all do a good amount of pull-ups. Like I'm trying to think of all the fast athletes through my head. They can all do a good, good amount of pull-ups. They can move their own body weight through space. It makes a ton of sense. Yeah. But I guess I'm just kind of asking, yeah, like, you know, like somebody just working on pull-ups. I don't know if that would assist much.

But I think it's like a, I think it's a multifactorial thing. Because your body, like if you're training somebody and they haven't really trained much before and they lose five pounds of body fat, like the pull-up's going to get easier and plus they're training in. Things like that. And you have a starting point, right? Right. If someone does 20 pull-ups and they're slow as shit, I now can check that off. It gives us something.

Like when someone comes in to work out for me, like after a baseline, I can say, I want this person working on relative body strength. Or someone, maybe they need to get two times like uh your absolute strength is still important i think two times your body weight and squat to maximize your speed and acceleration i didn't you know back when we were doing i was trying to do three times my body weight which it helped me mentally but it may not i might have been better off putting that energy into so like like we do something called a King Deadlift, which is just a skater. That for the people that struggle on balance and proprioception.

But yeah, I mean, I've got it down to such a pretty good science. It's, you know, there's not a lot of studies on it. It's just my own personal data. What's the King Deadlift? It's, you know, it's basically, it's named after Ian King. It's just a skater squat. Oh, okay. But it's one of the best things because lunges, you're not really on a single leg. They really fire up that glute, you know, the hip stabilizers, the lateral hip muscle.

You got to truly be on a single leg. When this coach put step up in at my college, I would get pushed out of bounds sometimes and go out of bounds. As soon as I added single leg, now I'd get pushed and I'd stay in bounds. So when he added step up, I even added more. Is that it? That's squat max. Yeah, that's squat max. And now you see the circus acts.

No worries. You might want to get some eye wash. The Henny attachment is a separate Instagram. If that's what we're looking for. Oh, the Henny attachment? Okay. Okay. Yeah, I'm big time now.

I got three Instagram accounts. I'm 52. I don't know how to do anything. And then you wonder why I'm floundering as a marketer. It's okay. Henny. Yeah, Ian King had a lot of great principles. He's from, I haven't heard that name in a long time.

Yeah, the King deadlift. I remember that. It's actually like just makes your hamstrings go on fire completely. Yeah. It blows you up. You get sore. You're amazed that you're so sore, even your glute. And I believe that's like you're doing like a single leg deadlift,

and you've got to keep the other leg in line with the other leg, right? Like you don't kick the other leg back, right? Is that how you do it? It's literally, I think skater, like it's a real big hinge. You're hinging way back. But the key to it is having your knees travel over your toes. So that's the only way to maintain balance in there. So some of these, you know, like I said, everyone has the same musical notes.

It's how we arrange them. So some things that are going good on training, it's, you know, there's not one size fits all, but how you organize the notes. I'm not saying what I'm doing with my athletes is the best, but at least I have a kid comes in and needs to get faster. Okay, where do I start? I have two indicators. Relative body strength stinks. Your feet, you run around with flat tires. You're not going to be fast.

So that's some of the stuff that I know you're doing with Ben Patrick. So it all starts to, you start to compare notes, and you get to, you might get there differently, but you might get to similar spots by different things. How do you help people avoid a hamstring pull? Because when you're trying to go fast, that's the first thing that goes on a lot of folks. I made this mistake in my career. Too many athletes don't train speed year-round.

Now they play one sport, these kids. Even if you trained at my gym, we're doing speed twice a week year round. Not a lot of volume, but you're running at top end speed. You can't duplicate sprinting in a weight room. And I made that mistake. I was so into building my biceps some years. And I would. But that's why, like, I made sure that in my program, all the stuff that I screwed up like using Smith machines,

that's why I had to create squat max. Now I can do a max effort squat and a rate limiting factor is not going to be someone's back. Don't put the bodybuilding in there. You need to show some kind of athletic move. I was just asking in SEMA, I was like, can you do curls on that thing? Is this what you made the Henny attachment for?

Is that why your biceps look like that? The real reason. You know, I got to say though, this this henny attachment when we were doing the what would that press be called like a one-arm press or whatever where you had the yeah the the uh weight on one side i need this one right here yeah oh my god that lit up my obliques um and it's it's so awesome it's so great like the type of guests that we get on and how things just start to be echoed by each individual because cory slessinger just came on he's the director of performance for the suns actually i think he'd fucking love your squat max um but he

was talking to us about how most athletes in lifting they only literally work in a single plane they're not getting rotational movement they're not getting lateral movement and you do that on your first rep your your obliques light up like nothing else that i've really ever felt it's it's it's insane and you were doing that by the way with with 45 and you were just talking to mark and i you're just talking to a super casual like this is how you do it and then i get on it i'm like just like oh like I can't breathe you know and it showed me how vulnerable I am because I was able to do it my right side like this is I mean it was not easy it was a quarter and I was struggling I was sweating but then he's like and he could he told me right away what side hurts the most he could see it and so we switch it to the other side he's

like this is going to challenge you a little bit and sure enough I couldn't even get it out like it was really difficult it took a lot more effort to actually get it out there so it showed me how imbalanced i am yeah that's how this stuff i i didn't come up with this it's i'm more of a feel guy i have to feel but it you you're all my bells are ringing because rotational is a key component for every one of my athletes because once that that keeps you limber like if if you lose that and part of i had the sophomore jinx uh in college after a great freshman year and one of the things i did differently was i i wasn't doing enough athletic stuff i i was chasing i wanted to have the most reps on the bench press and i i didn't roof that summer because I wanted to focus on lifting. But by not chopping tar and moving rotationally, I lost athleticism. So it's pretty cool.

That's what's cool about it. The Henny's Omni Directional like Squat Max. Yeah. So I love cables and I love bands. But the third degree of tension is controlling left to right. And whether it's hypertrophy or whether it's athleticism, if you don't have to stabilize, I call it pretend muscles. And I couldn't do all the Olympic lifts.

The reverse squat. Like, and that's, it feels different when using the Henny attachment. Yeah. I watch you guys and I wanted to, that's why I did this last week in my garage. But I was telling Mark, you see how I'm connecting into two spots? So, because we're all asymmetry, we all have asymmetry. You're not going to fix that. But when you're pulling with both legs, pulling, you have to pull the same weight instead of,

so the one side, my left side was really dragging. So I had to have that mind muscle to try to pull evenly when I was doing that. And because that's not fixed, I have to control. That's omnidirectional. So that's a much better, to me, we don't have to use machines. We don't have to use fixed machines. The Henny is that middle ground, and you can do it in athletic, like a horizontal movement. You're in a different body position picking up linebacker than you are with an Olympic lift.

So you really have to dig you have a lot of positive shin angle using using the henny so this is this would have made up for my the years when i wasn't doing enough athletic stuff i could have did it in the weight room and for these kids they're so sedentary i got to create ways to improve athleticism in the three times i see them a week. Ooh. Yeah. You know, the interesting thing is like, um, as I was using the Henny attachment, it just made me think a lot of, uh, one of the guests that we talked to Joel Seidman, he, he does a lot of off weight type, off weight type movements. He does a lot of movements where athletes are doing something.

He's quite literally tapping them on one side to make, like make it somewhat in balance and people are, we're looking at his exercise and his exercise like oh this is bullshit laughing or whatever but there is a lot of literally athletic benefit to the stuff that he's doing and that people don't really think about because they see all the wild stuff you know but this he'd love this attachment too actually yeah there's some things you have to to build complete athleticism because again everything's organized sports like i was running from kids trying to beat me up dogs chasing me yeah we played so much more tag and chase so you could learn to stop and start so that's a lot of what i'm trying to bring back to the kids i train because i know they're missing chapters in their development that that i had

maybe it wouldn't make a difference, but I don't want to leave any stone unturned, so to speak. Why do you got to keep showing arms? Because that's all I care about. I'm excited to try that too. Can you find, if you see me doing a yoke bar, that's the one I really wanted to show. We'll find it right now.

Because it's for top-end speed. I never had anything work my entire posterior chain. So let me just stop. It's going to be hard to find. It's a while back. Okay. I'll keep digging then. Andrew, I sent you a bunch of videos, some of the stuff that we were doing today.

And I sent you the King deadlift and stuff like that. Oh, okay. So people can kind of get a visual. Thank you. Visual for some of that. How did you come up with this strap? This Henny attachment it it again i've been at the gym trying to get kids more athletic i think like i alluded to earlier i lose my voice telling a female athlete you gotta hip hinge to decelerate but as soon as i if i do a row out in front because that's a horizontal force, if they don't activate their posterior chain,

it pulls them over. So they learn from, this is actually teaching athletic principles where like, goddamn old guy with a CTE screaming again. They shut me off. But this teaches them if they don't have proper shin angle,

you get knocked over. Or if you're not loading the posterior chain, you can't resist getting pulled over so it's it it was the it was needed in my gym and again when i hurt my back and i had to use hammer strength machines it's fixed if the coach would have had this i could have went and did a pressing movement that i had to stabilize so like i said i have 82 year old guy that you can actually walk the weight out. Even if he's doing a shoulder press,

he can walk the weight out because he's not going to be able to, you know, clean up the dumbbells or the barbell. So this is a good middle ground for all demographics. It's not just for athleticism. It's for quality of life and maintaining, you know, you don't want your 80-year-old grandfather, a fall is going to kill him, a broken hip is going to kill him.

So this is a way to increase, for all demographics, athleticism. But originally it was because I train athletic performance, it was to get him in athletic positions and where you're actually standing and have to stabilize the weight. You know, I think one thing, when we mentioned like athleticism, I think that's just synonymous with good movement. You know, like that's a big thing that we've been focusing on, just like things to that we can just move better because as you get older, I mean, I just want the older population

that's listening, if you're 50, 60, 70, when we're saying athleticism, when you get older, you want to be able to move better. You want to be able to move well, because you'll see a lot of stiff bodybuilders and stiff powerlifters walking around. You can just tell they're walking around in pain and they don't move well. And that's not going to be good as you get older. But as you get older and you have good movement, which a lot of this stuff, it promotes good movement, you're going to be much better in the long run than just doing a single plane bench press

or a row or any of those movements. They're good. Don't get me wrong. I love those movements. But this adds that good movement to the equation. I love you because Kabuki strength, a couple of months ago, he's like something about movement is medicine.

And no, good movement, it is, it can be, but good movement is better medicine. And that's kind of, I had that thought a few months ago. So I do have some CTE. That's one of the reasons I left the pharmaceutical industry. You know, I started playing football at five my i was the alpha male trying to run everybody over so i'm having some brain like my executive function got a little funky i had 20 people reporting to me and i'm like how how can i screw up the gym hun let me i'm managing myself but i'm finding ways to screw that up too but yeah so i forget some good thoughts but that

that's a great good medicine is better medicine. Good movement is better medicine for sure. Is there anything to treat CTE? Are you trying to do anything in particular to maybe assist with it? I don't know what would, if there is any treatment for it. No, I just tell my kids and my wife, make sure you do the autopsy because I want them to know I was an asshole for a reason. And I want to know that, because I have had some issues with it. I tried Adderall.

And you've had issues with anger? Yeah, yeah. I mean, see, this was before. And is that abnormal for you? Yeah. Sorry to hear that. Yeah. At 29, before this all was announced, at 29, I started before this all was announced at 29, I started having these massive migraines

and I had a lot of CAT scans. I'm like, it doesn't run in my family, but I think that was the beginning of my, you know, my brain's starting to die here. Uh, so I mean, I'm not, I'm, I'm, I'm don't feel sorry for me. I'm, I'm very happy with my life. But if I, like keeping yourself occupied, it is the best thing you can do. Yeah, and fitness, obviously. I'm doing the walks just like you and Chris, like getting that blood

going has been helpful. I would encourage you to get rid of those Snickers bars. When I went to see Eddie Cohn in Chicago, I brought him Mellow Cups and he still tried the machine. Of course. Mellow Cups? What are Mellow Cups?

See, they're not out here out west. They're from Altoona, Pennsylvania. I'm going to send you a little batch of them. Actually, please do. I'm going to message you. I don't, but I'm always down to try a new candy. I'm always down to try a new candy. I'm going to send it to you. It's a joke

with my good friend who was my first strength coach. I tend to eat them every day. I tell them I'm losing weight from it. Well, how do you manage to stay in such great shape then? Because you're talking about

eating Snickers bars or whatever, but you're lean. Your veins are popping out for no reason during the podcast. What's going on? I think it's total calories, right?

I mean, it's like I walk four miles a day. Oh, very nice. I can't run. When I had this spinal cord issue, walk four miles a day. Oh, very nice. I can't run. When I had the spinal cord issue, I can show you after the bug is my calf muscle, I lost. It never came back. The muscle's dead.

It's one of the muscles didn't come back. So I can't sprint. I can't, like, I'm jealous. I see you jogging in the morning. If I jog, I'm i'm gonna pull calf muscle just because it frustrates me because i'd be the guy playing one-on-one basketball if i could but the spinal cord issue did leave some so the weight room became more of my pros act so the henny lets me do some explosive things i'm like it's not it's almost like i'm doing something

that i would be doing that makes the videos that I've seen you do on, on the squat max, like Instagram. And like, for example, you were showing us that movement in the gym, all the more impressive because we were struggling and you're doing that with a dead calf. Yeah.

But I wasn't using it in that exercise, but still it's like, it's there. It's still there holding, but you do a lot of these things really well. Um, I think that's just, uh, uh, that just shows how honestly developed you are everywhere else. When we walk out and I fall off the curb and I'm laying in the driveway, you'll change your story.

Thank you, though. Does the NFL have any recourse for someone like yourself? have any uh like recourse for you know someone like yourself like is there i know like probably for like the real high level players maybe there is and the guys have been there for a long time or yeah there's a law i mean there's law said i didn't play long enough but be honest with you i feel bad because again it's it's they found that it's if you played football for 20 years competitive football right i started at five but i wouldn't trade that if i don't play football i don't get to college yeah i don't you know get a good job and i can actually probably retire at 55 because my wife and i did well enough so i have no regrets for it but but you hit the nail on head like i turned the blinker on when i was turning third i'm like

i'm ready to kill somebody right and it was, once the symptoms came out, you saw it. It was exactly what was happening to me from the beginning all the way to right now. So I'm doing pretty good, though. No complaints. Did you deal with depression as well? Yeah. I mean, I'm real. And then still now, or?

Pretty good right now. That's good. Yeah, that's brutal. I actually kind of think that that's some of what my brother suffered from. He played football and stuff for years and years, and he was a professional wrestler. And I don't know. He was always a little different from the time he was young.

He was the kid that would get up to bat at baseball, and he would just aggressively be in this awesome stance where you're like, that fucking kid's going to smash the hell out of the ball. He was kind of like that anyway. But just things got worse and worse over the years. And he tried to self-medicate and things like that. And so I think that's kind of what ultimately led

to things falling apart for him. Yeah. I mean, I believe it having feel-health bad. And it's definitely, if he was that alpha male kid and doing everything, like literally we were coached by guys who were 19 years old. So because I could run people over and the other tough kid, we literally hit heads, fall on our butt, and we do that 20, 30 times a practice. Every week starting at age five, I was that alpha male.

But believe me, if I couldn't use my head, I would have no chance of making an NFL team these days because the head was very, you know, I tried to run everybody over. Oh, it was like a thing, like how marked up your helmet was. Yeah, exactly. That was so prideful because you played a team with red helmets and you had white, like you're so excited to see those red marks. Yeah, if your helmet didn't have red marks on it, you didn't play.

I forgot all about that. That means you didn't do shit. Yeah, they want like that. That was a badge of honor. Yeah, they call them stick marks. You wanted as many as possible. Yeah. And they had some of those drills like where you lay on your back.

What was that one? Is that a nutcracker? Well, Oklahoma. Yeah, that's the one we did every night. You'd run up in one-on-one and drop. that a nutcracker? Well, Oklahoma. But yeah, that's the one we did every night. You'd run up in one-on-one and drop. Yeah, nutcracker. You would both lay down on your back, and then you would get up as fast as you can

and just smash each other, basically. What's the Oklahoma drill? I kind of forget what that one was. Isn't that the one where you're in the middle? Or is that bowl in the ring? Oh, yeah. There's a lot of stupid ones. This keeps getting better and better. Yeah, bowl in in the ring you got one guy in the middle and anyone can just randomly charge

at the person in this giant circle like you might have like 40 players around you you got to turn you got to chop your feet the whole time coach will blow the whistle this is oklahoma oh yeah oklahoma drill yep yep and so like this isn't that bad when it's like this yeah um but sometimes there's like a linebacker there too yeah it's one-on-one what was it the bull what what was it uh bull in the ring yeah bull in the ring like football or something about probably but yeah man and you know and the other thing too like so i think you know if you kind of think about it i mean like we we do know that you know ramming our heads together is not healthy. And we know that boxing and stuff is not healthy.

But I don't think we really understood that it could lead to depression and it could lead to anger issues and things like that. So I just think things would have been different if we'd known about these things for longer periods of time. But the other thing that's really dumb about football is like when the season starts and when they, uh, are practicing and doing two a days, they're outside at like 4 PM and it's like 105 degrees outside. And so now we have a lot more information about dehydration, you know, dehydration, uh, can really, uh, help amplify, uh amplify CTE and, or I'm sorry, brain,

brain, brain injuries. So imagine, you know, even just during these practices, if they were shaded or if the season started a little bit later and athletes were taught to hydrate and do some of those things, like maybe it could help prevent just a little,

just a little bit of that stuff. Yeah. But for me, thank God, my Buddy Ryan had the most physical camp. As a free agent, that was kind of backfired when I got cut by the Eagles eventually. They brought in Ray Rose from San Francisco, so there was no physical practices. So as a free agent, you have no chance of making the team because everybody looks good in shorts. So for me, it was actually a benefit that every day there was a fist fight in practice you know so it's good and bad that was your area of

expertise yeah exactly i like it and you got a couple more clips over there yeah let's try to dig through them i'm sorry i had to text them to you but it's all right so well this is ton away just kind of on here um yeah that that's i mean that's amazing to me where he says this is the best leg machine i've ever used that's a that's a guy that knows fitness of old football player and stuntman yeah he's been around forever and he's he's been lifting um he actually more recently uh got a lot leaner too so props to him but and then i still couldn't find it but here's an example of the king is that is that the way you do it? Yeah. Very similar.

I see his knee going a little bit forward. Do you use dumbbells with this? Yeah. Dumbbells, yeah. Depending where you're on the program, we start with two and then we'll go to one. If someone has hip internal rotation issues, we'll have them reach to that outside front leg. You'll like it. This is an awesome exercise. I'm not sure what this is.

Yeah, this is my assistant coach. I made him try out 700 pounds of band tension one day, and he took one for the team. So how did you actually make some of these things? Do you weld and stuff like that too, or no? It's been a challenge. Do you draw? Can you draw?

No, I'm an idiot. Yeah, I can't draw or anything either. Oh, and some of my patents, my son, thankfully, he can draw. He would draw it. But I use a fabricator in Pennsylvania to make T-parts. So it's been a struggle to come up with what I've come up with, believe me. So it must drive you a little crazy, right? Because you're thinking about these things,

you have them in your head, you know how they're supposed to look and how they're supposed to function, but then you got to try to figure out how to communicate that somehow to somebody. It's a different language, right? Because I don't know metal and I don't, you know what I mean? So yeah, so it hasn't been a quick, easy process for sure.

Wow. What about at your gym? Is there just all kinds of, because like these are, these are what we referred to today are some inventions that you actually have for sale, but there's probably a lot of weird,

interesting, unique stuff at your gym that's different that just maybe isn't like as marketable maybe. Yeah, I mean, just some of the things we do for speed training, like I mentioned, like making kids chase each other around the circle, because trying to get on the edges of your feet are so important.

I mean, I think, you know, I have all the squat racks, all the, you know, it's a pretty good playground. Good setup.

For the rest of us. But I, I definitely am not a traditional where, you know, we're not doing a lot of Olympic lifting. We're not doing a lot of traditional deadlifting. I mean, I use a trap bar. Squat max has been a big – that's how I have my female athletes deadlift because there's more glute activity.

And because they start to pull directly under you, there's no chance. Even if they're off an inch, they're still under their body. So I have been lucky without not having back injuries. And, you know, we've had a good run of we get the job done. But obviously we're teaching kids how to squat properly because they're going to go off and play Division I. And I don't want some strength coach, you know, having them do an exercise where they get hurt.

So that's been really cool. A lot of my kids start with me in eighth grade, and kids that are now playing minor league baseball are still training with me to start it with me in eighth grade. So we're 10 years out now. So some of our classes are four years of high school, four years of college, and now chasing their dreams of playing pro

or Olympics, whatever they're doing. So you can deadlift off the machine too and you can do... Hip thrust off the machine. Yeah, hip thrust. Hip thrust. A few years ago, Garage Gym Reviews did a review of my machine, and he said it doesn't have as much utility as the cable, I guess, because you couldn't do tricep pushdown. So I said, screw you.

I'll do hip thrust and seal rows and sell for $2,000. Three of those machines would cost about $7,000. So I added some utility for them. Wow. Can you go back to that? Yeah. Do you see how that load conforms to his body? Wait till you see it from the side.

You'll see that plate actually tip up. See it tipping up? That load is conforming to him instead of him conforming to a machine. So these machines that are fixed they're they're eventually wait to see all the hip replacements from the hip thrust in like 20 years there's not enough data my wife would like if i got good at that movement get it i'm going but there's a lot of it's like so multifunctional like i had i would have never i mean yeah i i obviously have no experience with it but you're

i'm seeing a lot of videos where people are doing rows and stuff on it you're doing a 45 degree back raise that's what i'm saying i'm like how is this but that's just a different attachment right where the uh that's the same that we use for the rows did you do you have can you pull up the seal row i played football without a helmet so don't don't ask if you see some of this stuff no worries um because i don't think look at this this of this stuff. No, no worries. Because I don't think we've got... Look at this. This is right... I mean, it's such a convenient way to do it.

Oh, wow. Yeah. That's sick. Yeah, so those holes in your platform, that's what they're for. Those additional holes. But it even has a rack for the barbell, too. So it just makes it super convenient.

Dude, this is a really great multifunctional piece of equipment. That's Raul Baez. That's from the Seattle Times. They did a big article on us out there. That was his gym, an amazing setup he had out there. I worked for CrossFit for a few years years and I did these powerlifting certification courses. And I went around the country for multiple years trying to teach people how to squat. The reason why I say try is because I wasn't very successful because it's very hard to get people to squat.

And when I was messing with, oh yeah, we're watching a video of a guy doing split squats, right? That's an NFL player, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. guy doing split squats, right? That's an NFL player, yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. But as I was going around the country teaching people how to squat, there was something that I just did not realize would be a huge factor. It wasn't necessarily, especially because these were CrossFit people, they were already fairly fit, they were already in shape, they're all fairly young too. I did not realize how much dysfunction is in the upper body when it comes to squatting. I swear, probably 90% of the dysfunction I saw in squats happened in the upper body from the

kind of belly button upward. I would just see people kind of holding the bar weird and they'd be hunched forward, a lot of internal rotation of the shoulders. Just a lot of bending real far forward on their squats and not being able to express a nice Olympic squat where you're just straight up and down. And I did not see that coming because I was like, well, I'm a big fat power lifter, so of course I'm going to move a little funky. But these people, they're probably going to be able to move wonderfully. So again, your product and belt squatting in general is eliminating that whole entire procedure of trying to figure out, okay, I got to get my chest up. Okay, I got to brace my stomach. And you have to do all these different things just to be able to perform a squat properly. With that machine, hook it to your hips hips get your feet set up and you're

ready to go yeah i agree with you i i was i struggled as well as that person trying to get get my arms in the right spot so i was never i was if there's hyper mobile people i think it's related to getting hit by a car i was hypo mobile i always struggled with with certain movements oh putting his leg up on the second platform was huge for the hip thrust right there because the range of motion wow what a reverse hyper off of it nice wow can you do a step up off of it did you figure that out yet yeah what i'm coming up with is i'm going to create a a what's going to be perfect for it is also a plyo box. Oh, nice. Just like the seat, it'd be just a little soft and wider.

And you could have one plyo box that could go from 24 to 48 inches every inch. Man. Well, I think when we're done here today, it would be great if you have some extra time to show us some of these different setups and we can get some footage of it. Because I think it would be really great for a lot of people to us some of these different setups and we can get some footage of it because I think it would be really great for a lot of people to see some of that. See, that's Bobby. This is one of the things I'm proud of. He just recently bought a SquatMax.

Bobby Lashley? Bobby Lashley. And he wrote a comment. He says, like, potato chips, he can't stop. He does it three times a week. That's how much he loves it. You see the way he's squatting, though? The explosion off the bottom? That's exactly how I feel. When you go down there, you want to explode the fuck out of the hole. Because it's vertical.

There's no interruption to the path. You're creating vertical force into the ground. Shaking the world. Look at that. There's some women that are getting really turned on by this video. Hey, now. I mean, yeah. Hey, not just the women.

No, not you. You're going to say it. Yeah, so many different things you could do with this bad boy. This is sick. Hey, see that girl? That's the first deadlift we ever did on it. That's nine years ago. Yeah, I'd like to try that.

Yeah, it's... That looks awesome. And with the bands, you can imagine how much glute you're getting when she's – And I'd imagine it can probably pull you down pretty far, right? Yeah. And then again, with the center of gravity pulling it straight down, like the worst part about a deadlift is that it's out in front of you.

I think that's like 2012, so that's an early model. That's great. Well, and the technique, again, I know that you're you're coaching these folks and and uh you're working them through everything so of course they're going to have good form but it just seems easier to have form uh better form with this particular like it's almost like if i was to tell someone hey uh let's have you deadlift a kettlebell because you can stand right over top of it and deadlifting it you know wouldn't be that hard you might have to make a correction here and there but uh doing regular deadlifts is like it takes decades to figure out how to deadlift properly and who wants i couldn't deadlift but who

wants to have bruised shins if you play a sport we're already getting bruised so this has been great because like you said there's no bar interference there's no there's no bar interference. There's no pain other than. I love the band attachment. Oh, that's my favorite. This week. This week. This is great. Listen to this. This is CT.

Listen to this. Oh, no. CT Fletcher. Don't give CT Fletcher weapons like this. This is the greatest thing I ever listened. Hold on one second. CT. I tried this thing for the first time.

Man, I just tried this thing for the first time, and they call it the SquatMax MD. But I think they should think about renaming it the SquatMax MF. This thing is a motherfucker. I made it now. Yeah. But as a clinical researcher, you know, he's coming back from a heart

transplant. I really think he hasn't done legs in so many years. I told him if he was my brother as a former researcher, this is what I would want him on because he's working the stabilizer, so he's getting that athleticism. Obviously, there's no pressure on his thoracic cavity, his back.

I'm hoping he uses this a couple days a week and get his legs strong again. That's almost bringing a tear to my eye. I know how swollen his legs get and stuff. So that is really great to see him. Damn, he's like doing below parallel. That is so sick. Look at him moving on this, man. That is great.

I'm going to get my dad on that machine. Yeah, this is his first set. So it's a natural movement, right? There's no fiddling. It almost takes you where you need to go. See that with the college Division I football player right there to the left? This says it all, Mark. And then I can leave it at that.

He's at Miami now, this coach. Sound necessary? Sorry. Yeah, let me coach. Sound necessary. Yeah. Let me just click it on. This is the most power. He's used. This is very powerful and it's so simple. It's not Stu McGill.

This will do is this will help the resistance go vertical up and down. And it's pulling down on the hip instead of in on the back. We're able to purchase. This is the best belt squat on the planet. This is for somebody that cannot put a bar on their back. So Coach Horton's in this. The weight is dropping straight down, and it's different from most machines because the machines will work on a hinge, and they'll pull you in,

wrenching your low back. And what this will do is this will help the resistance go vertical up and down, and it's pulling down on the hip instead of in on the back so that's that says it all i mean that's how it got here it wasn't again i didn't come up with this hey let me get rich on creating a belt squad it was can we get people more athletic can it actually do do good things for your back and luckily it took a lot of years, but it's finally starting to take off. And I appreciate so much you guys staying all this time with me. It's awesome.

Yeah, thank you for your time today. Really appreciate it. How much does it cost? Where can people get it? Where can people find out more information about you? The base model is $1,560. That includes the seat. Um, the, the base model is 1560. That includes the seat.

Um, some of those attachments that you guys sold, like the seal row, obviously they're, they're add-ons, but fully loaded to be able to do seal rows and hip thrusts. It's, it's like 1899. Wow. So that's affordable for this type of like use and this it's affordable. Yeah. I mean, for college settings that the belts, you're not going to probably use those other exercises, but for a garage gym owner.

But the main for belt squats in the seat is 1560. And it's all made in Pennsylvania by my guys that make Jeep parts. We've gotten pretty good at it. And the other product is thehenny.com. Not many people know about the Henny yet. I'm thrilled to be here with you guys because I already know it doesn't matter

how good a device is, if you don't market it, if you don't, like seven years ago, Garage Gym Reviews said, hey, can I see your SquatMax? I'm like, I don't have time to give this, but now if I had known,

so I'm hoping the Henny, I'm going to try to market it a little bit better. And if it doesn't do well, I know it can help a lot of people. That was the real reason why this stuff was developed. This was my midlife crisis to hide in a gym. I didn't know I'd be flying to California to meet you guys, but it's been a thrill. I appreciate it. Yeah, thank you so much. And where can people find you on Instagram?

Me personally? Yeah, yeah. Or just like, how do you get me on Instagram? SquatmaxMD is Instagram. It's TheHennyAttachment on Instagram. MygymsoverachieveSS. With my bumbled brain, I can't keep all

this, but I have three websites that I screw up every day as well we'll link them down in the description podcast show so people can can find it

for sure I appreciate it alright Andrew take us on out of here sure thing and then before I was just thinking you know like

for the price like I know people that will either sign up or stay signed up at a gym if they get like a reverse hyper or if they get

like a nice seal row or if they wish they could get a belt squat in their gym and it's like dude like you can get all of it now that's that's pretty sick uh but thank you everybody for checking out today's episode we sincerely appreciate it uh please like today's episode and comment something down below comment what you guys found uh fascinating about today's uh conversation and let us know what you guys think about the squat max md we would really appreciate that and turn on all those bell notifications so you guys don't miss another episode follow the podcast at mark wells power project on instagram at mb power project on

tiktok and twitter my instagram and twitter is at i am andrew z and sema where can people find you um yeah guys if you're listening on the audio side come on youtube leave a comment and uh yo this thing is not hype this this is the real deal so if you can get your hands on this or you can get your gym owner to get this piece of equipment fucking get at it and see me ending on instagram youtube and see me yin yang on tiktok and twitter mark i'm at mark smelly bell strength is never weakness weakness never strength catch you guys later bye