Mark Bell's Power Project - Necessary Habits for GOOD Fitness ft. James Smith | Power Bite

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey everybody, welcome back to Mark Bell's Power Project podcast. If you guys don't know who the host is by now, what are you doing with your life? But just in case this is your first time around, this podcast of course is hosted by Mark Bell, co-hosted by Nsuma Iyeng and myself, Andrew Zaragoza. This is a Power Byte. A Power Byte is just a shortened podcast episode highlighting a short segment or a short, you know, just a couple of back and forths, we'll say from a full length podcast. And during the initial lockdown, we didn't slow down one bit. We'd podcasted every single day, sometimes twice on Sunday, literally. And this was a really cool podcast that we feel you guys maybe could have possibly overlooked, especially the topic that we're going to

Starting point is 00:00:42 highlight. This goes back all the way to episode 383 with James Smith. James Smith is considered the, or he has a nickname of like the Gordon Ramsey of fitness. He kind of just tells it like it is and says, you know, like, hey, if you don't like the way, you know, I am on social media, then you're just not going to like who I am, you know, off of social media. Therefore that kind of filters some of his clients that he does, you know does sign up or all that good stuff. But anyways, on this episode, James Smith is going to talk about the necessary habits for good fitness. Again, if you guys know somebody that can really utilize this information, but they don't have the time or want to invest all the time in a full length

Starting point is 00:01:20 podcast, you guys can send them this short clip and help them get on their way. If you guys like what James Smith is talking about, please let us know. Hit us up on Instagram at MB Power Project. Hit us up on Twitter at MB Power Project. We're on LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, all over the place. We're really easy. We're really accessible. So please do reach out to us and let us know what you guys think. And ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy the show with James Smith. How are you enjoying uh body weight exercises at home do you know what i i'm i can imagine right now that i'm surrounded by people that all uh appreciate my standpoint on this where if you have equipment at home you've got a suspension trainer or tix you can make a workout but when i see people jumping around uh you know to time or to workouts and

Starting point is 00:02:07 suddenly every trainer i'm not sure if this is the same in america but in the uk everyone free workout join me we're gonna do 300 crunches and you know loads of jump squats uh for me i've actually started running which is probably one of the uh one of the things that i've been portrayed as anti-running i'm not anti-running i'm just pro resistance training and you get to the point where you're so strongly trying to say to people resistance training is your way forward high protein diet resistance training you're not going to go back that you do become anti-hit and anti-running but yeah i've um i've become a full on strava wanker i've even got a garmin now to time my running times. I'm ashamed to say it

Starting point is 00:02:46 out loud, but that's where I'm at the moment. Do you think maybe it was a little problematic how connected people were to the gym or do you think that's a healthy thing? I mean, for people to be taken out of gyms just for a handful of weeks really hasn't been that long. Do you think people should be able to handle this a little easier or do you think, or are you finding it a pain in the ass yourself? Sounds like you just switched to like some running. So that doesn't sound like it's that big of a deal to you.

Starting point is 00:03:14 It's for me, the mentality I've developed and I'm certainly probably certainly not the best trained in this live here, but going to the gym is a mental thing as well, where you pack your bag, you time your pre-workout if you're having one, you go there, that hour there is not for emails. It's not for anything apart from your working sets, rest, get in, get out. And if you don't accomplish all the sets you want, it kind of eats away at you. And the same way that when we select

Starting point is 00:03:40 cafes to go to, can I have a coffee, do my emails, I'm going to work on this strategy, do this presentation. We've had all avenues taken away from us, which means that we all suddenly have to accomplish all these things from home. And it's the adapting part that's quite tough. People could say in the same sense, we're reliant on our gyms as we're reliant on our coffee shops. So it's one of those things that I think in the future, if this is going to be a recurring theme with COVID and other viral disease, we do need to potentially have a little box at home with equipment that we can use to resistance train. And we should have a coffee machine at home so we can get work done. But yeah, I think we've all certainly realized how dependent we are on these things and how important it not just the gym is for our mental health, but having that routine.

Starting point is 00:04:24 important in not just the gym is for our mental health but having that routine because leaving the house getting away from your kids even getting away from your friends is quite a really important part of everyday routine in life is there anything you're enjoying about running that's different from lifting or do you hate it i can get my step count done in an impressive time so i bought a playstation as soon as the country got locked down, I was like, that's it, call of duty. I'm getting a PlayStation. And to go out for an hour and come back and hit my 10,000 steps, I feel accomplished. So even though I'm there at 4pm playing PlayStation, I'm laying there going, yeah, but don't worry, I've hit my steps today. So running is the best way to get your steps done in a short period of time. Have you always had a step goal for yourself?

Starting point is 00:05:04 I think like a step goal is one of the coolest things where people can get more, uh, I guess, uh, build a habit of being less sedentary without having it like exercise, just building that habit. And have you always had a step goal for yourself or did you develop that because of quarantine? I think, um, it's something that I really like to establish, uh, into my clients. And then I felt like a bit of a fraud giving out the information. I'm sure we're all guilty of not taking our own advice, especially with training where we're like, you need to dial back your training to your client.

Starting point is 00:05:32 And then you realize that you're over-trained and you're sore and you're doing way too much volume. So after a while, I was like, you know what, James, you should take your own advice here. But in a bid where I'm not anti-cardio,

Starting point is 00:05:44 but I am pro step step count i am pro people being active and rather than saying to people you know you must park really far away from the shops you must take the stairs you must do this you give them a step count to work towards and suddenly they do it themselves and it sounds pretty bad to treat your clients like like children but i've done that for years where you know if you're in a room with a child and you're like do not go through that door they'll do it they'll go through it straight away but if you kind of give them the freedom with a with an over pinning principle of look it's just 10 000 steps a day they will become proactive they will

Starting point is 00:06:18 walk more and without the word cardio coming into question they're almost upping their own anyway and it is a bit different to athletes to normal people but then again i found some of my clients do go out jogging on their own prerogative if i set them a step count but for me it's one of those things that especially when dieting when reducing calories people then realize they go james has told me my steps are going to reduce when i cut my calories and then i realize it myself some days i'm like i'm knackered and well-trained. I look, I've done 3000 steps.

Starting point is 00:06:47 I'm like, Oh my God, I must, I'm going to have to go for a walk. But, um, I'm very fortunate to be in Sydney where we've got amazing coastals and nice places to go for walks.

Starting point is 00:06:56 Um, but with people at the moment, they can, they can work their hardest to get their steps up in their house. And even cleaning, I find if I, uh, make sure I've got my iPhone on me or my Garmin watch when i potter around the house folding clothes and get stepped

Starting point is 00:07:08 on what go ahead what are some other uh like i guess basic habits that you think people should have as far as their fitness is concerned something simple like getting steps in on like a lot of us don't think about that so what are some other basic things that you really don't think a lot of people are thinking about when it does come to keeping body fat off, losing fat, etc.? Sleep, for me, is something I've only really realized in the last few years, how important sleep is. And being a busy personal trainer on the floor, I was having a coffee at 4 or 5 p.m., and it never really occurred to me why I couldn't fall asleep. I set myself quite strict bedtimes. I've even developed a bit of sleep stress where if I know I'm not going to get adequate sleep,

Starting point is 00:07:52 it's already in my head for the next day. Hold on, I'm going to have to dial back and probably not accomplish as much as before. But with my clients now, sleep is a huge underpinning principle. And in periods where I know that my sleep is going to be disrupted i almost give myself the the break away from training or seeking progressive fat loss or whenever i'm cutting weight for a comp i train brazilian jiu-jitsu i will have to go sober for three or four weeks before to ensure that my sleep is good enough to ensure that i can actually cut my calories. Because without the sleep, I can't cut calories. And without giving up alcohol, I can't get the adequate sleep. So it's kind of this knock-on effect that goes throughout.

Starting point is 00:08:33 And again, I find that if I focus on my sleep, then my alcohol intake is reduced as a byproduct. Whereas if someone said, don't drink alcohol, they'd be like, no, it's part of my life. I need my gin and tonics and my beers. So I think sleep-like steps is that kind of overpinning principle that creates good habits underneath. You have a lot of people misunderstand your message sometimes because you are joking around a lot and you're having a lot of fun. Are people sometimes thinking that you're serious? There's one video where you show the best exercise is to burn fat,

Starting point is 00:09:03 but you continually, after every exercise you show, you mentioned like eat less and move more, I think every single time. Are some people like, wait, those aren't the best exercises. Like are people misunderstanding your message a lot of times and kind of getting confused, even though you're just having a good time? I think, yeah, it is. You can be very easily misunderstood and a lot of people can not quite get the approach that you're going with but i think that in the in the industry we're in we

Starting point is 00:09:32 don't need a hundred percent of people to almost we don't need a hundred percent of people to enjoy our message and the sarcasm there will bring a lot of enjoyment to a lot of other people that do understand it but i intentionally like to be polarizing. And I've said this openly before that if I was to be sarcastic or give someone incredibly tough love, the people who I repel, I don't think would make good clients. And I'd only end up refunding them a few weeks down the line when they're getting annoyed with the way it works. And you kind of bring the people that are going to be good clients closer.

Starting point is 00:10:04 And even if it means that I have several thousand also sarcastic clients, they will enjoy it. Whereas the people that don't understand the sarcasm, I'm just going to grind on them eventually. And I'm just going to annoy them. And yeah, it's almost a way for me to wean people out of the funnel before they make it to the stage of being a client. And similar, if you bring this into a dating context, on a first or second date, sometimes you drop some hints about your intentions to gauge your reaction. And then sometimes they'll be like, I'm looking for something serious. And you're like, I'm so glad we've clarified this so early on in the first date, so that you don't

Starting point is 00:10:41 end up going into a second. So I see these videos being very much like that. So people, uh, are well aware of what kind of message I'm putting across because if they don't like mine, there are plenty of other people that they'll get on with.

Mark Bell's Power Project - Necessary Habits for GOOD Fitness ft. James Smith | Power Bite

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