Mark Bell's Power Project - Our Biggest Health & Fitness Changes from 2022 || MBPP Ep. 862

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

In this Podcast Episode, Mark Bell, Nsima Inyang, and Andrew Zaragoza talk about some of the things they learned in 2022 and how they've used them to evolve and advance to become better athletes. New Power Project Website: https://powerproject.live Join The Power Project Discord: https://discord.gg/yYzthQX5qN Subscribe to the new Power Project Clips Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC5Df31rlDXm0EJAcKsq1SUw Special perks for our listeners below! ➢https://hostagetape.com/powerproject Free shipping and free bedside tin! ➢https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!! ➢Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1 Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM ➢https://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/powerproject Code: POWER20 for 20% off Vivo Barefoot shoes! ➢https://markbellslingshot.com/ Code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off site wide including Within You supplements! ➢https://mindbullet.com/ Code POWERPROJECT for 20% off! ➢https://bubsnaturals.com Use code POWERPROJECT for 20% of your next order! ➢https://vuoriclothing.com/powerproject to automatically save 20% off your first order at Vuori! ➢https://www.eightsleep.com/powerproject to automatically save $150 off the Pod Pro at 8 Sleep! ➢https://marekhealth.com Use code POWERPROJECT10 for 10% off ALL LABS at Marek Health! 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://www.PowerProject.live ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢https://www.tiktok.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 #FitnessPodcast #markbellspowerproject

Did you hit it from the back? Oh, my God. Actually, from the front. From the front? Yeah, the back won't. That's the way the Lord intended. From the back? From the front.

Good old classic missionary. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, since we started, they're holding on. Yeah, people are getting all weird. Trying all these different positions. You're going to hurt yourself. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Fucking sex injuries. You got to be careful. I'm Joel Kaplan. Hey, Thank you. Oh, to keep it going. I knew we were going to start there. Let me feel these. Oh, weenie ring.

Johnny cock rings. Open up. He was a great attorney. There we go. All right. You see, one thing that annoys me about okay first off if you're listening yeah what we have in our hands from dr joe clapton these are called erection rings yes yeah the silicone oh yeah these aren't gonna break no i've had

experiences where it's like busted but these are you broke he flexed i mean i shouldn't be surprised i felt kind of powerful when it happened too because i looked i was like wait where is it it broke in half you're like fuck yeah that cock rings nothing to me i got a pretty good one there i got a story yeah let's go so for any anyone that knows what a nuva ring is is that the one my wife's gonna be so embarrassed so it's a it's a birth control ring that a woman can stick up there and it just hangs out and it's just birth control yeah one of the first couple of nights doing our thing and i looked down like a fucking ring toss it's just swinging on my junk and i'm like oh i was like babe sorry your your ring and she's like huh i was like just swinging on my junk and i'm like oh i was like babe sorry

you're you're ringing and she's like huh i was like your rings on my penis and she's just like oh you know you stood up you're like yeah look what i have done it was probably my proudest moment ever it's like really amazing dug that thing out of there because it's supposed to like get so far up there that like nobody can feel it except you. I felt it and ripped that shit out cause I didn't like it. Shovel your way down. You're fucking curving up for a dick.

Yeah. Like get over here. Y'all remember Mortal Kombat Scorpion? Get over here. Yeah. Let's go, Andrew. I'mion? Get over here. Yeah. Let's go, Andrew. I'm proud. I was happy.

That makes me, I'm pumped for you. She was happy. Nice moves. You ever have like a hair that somehow is like completely wrapped around your dick? You're like, well, how in the fuck did this happen? Every morning. Every morning I'm showering. It's like wrapped around multiple times times like a noose or something like

what the fuck's going on are you trying to kill me this hair gets stuck in y'all asses of course oh yeah i'll be showering i'm just like whoop like just just hair just rides my shit and i just find multiple it feels really really weird kind of feels i mean it kind of feels kind of good but it's also slightly just weird if you if you pull it too fast though it's like like like you know like floss you know like it's gonna burn you it'll potentially cut connected to like lint or something it's got an anchor crusty and whatever the hell's going on yeah i don't know what the fuck you got going you gotta go to a doctor for that shit you got crust just building up down there that's a problem earth's crust yeah you know. Yeah, you know, crust, cum, I don't know. It's just one layer of stuff. Whatever it might be.

Beautiful way to start today's podcast. Or like a long hair on your own head is really, like on the top of your regular head is really weird too. And you can't seem to get it off. It runs away. Something there and you can't get it. Once you get it though, it feels amazing. Yeah, but those are the things that you're just constantly like swiping, grabbing, like where the fuck is it? Then you grab it and it get it, though, it feels amazing. Yeah, but those are things that you're just constantly swiping, grabbing, like, where the fuck is it?

Then you grab it, and it's like, oh, it does feel good. Let's put these on top of my coffee. See if your girl wants to play some ring toss. Oh, but for sure put those things on before you get too excited. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I didn't really understand that concept. I thought I had enough time. And so I was just sitting there like trying to like pry this thing.

And I'm like, oh, like I did. Like, ow! But guys, you guys can get this from Kaplan or you can get them from Amazon. The Amazon ones are kind of finicky, but these are great. I actually love using those. Yeah. Just being real. I don't need one of those it's because you're just i don't need one of those uh you know pumps or whatever

but yeah got a question for you guys do they work the pumps yeah the pump yeah of course they do i think we have enough confirmation of that at this point yeah i haven't used mine in a while just being real but you just pump it and pump it and pump it and pump it. Okay. Honestly, for everyone who has purchased a pump, please follow the guidelines. Do not go over the red line on that pump because you're not supposed to pump it too high. Grab that book right there. It's in the middle slot.

The pump guide? Yeah. So when you get it, you'll get a pump guide. And hanging upside down is advanced techniques that Nsema does. Don't try that. No. Because he needs to get extra blood flow, and there's just not enough unless you're upside down. Exactly.

But please, just be safe out here, boys. Be safe out here. Anyway, shifting gears, let's see if we can bring up that clip of Bumstead showing the squats. I thought it was pretty cool. Where did it go? There it is. He's kind of showing, like, people always have questions about stance, so he was talking about squat stance. All right, so not the CB4 video, okay.

Mm-hmm. Is it narrow stance or a wide stance? It's super easy. All you have to do is start narrow, pull your knee straight up in front of your body, and if you get stuck at, like, 90 degrees or a little bit over, then you probably shouldn't be squatting in a narrow stance. But if you can pull your knee all the way up and touch your chest, deeper than 90 degrees, then you're Look at those pants. Sheesh. Look how easy he did that. How easy did that?

Personally, for me, it doesn't matter because I'm fucking awesome. I'm God. That's all there is to it. I find it funny because I don't even think he was trying to sell a copy. He was just like, I can do both. But for all of you guys, you might have to do both. You will find that you can't. For you amateurs. Oh, don't okay we we got to come back to this but this past week and a half or two weeks has been kind of crazy and as far as

basketball and soccer because soccer obviously had messy in the world cup right that was insane that world cup came was probably the best world cup came of all time but then y'all i don't even watch basketball but do you have you guys know about this guy luca donchich i don't think so yeah his he had a oh yeah he's 23 years old um i think the the what who are they playing who was uh the one where he like the magic in the middle he's on the denver um no he's on magic he's on the magic no no no He's on the Denver. No, he's on Magic. He's on the Magic. No.

No, he's on the team with the horse. The Dallas Mavericks. I knew it was a team with a D, but I was like, he's not on the Nuggets. That doesn't make any sense. All right, so Luke is on the Dallas Mavericks. And he had a 60-20-10 game. It's never been done. 60-21.

It was literally magical. 60 points,-10 game. It's never been done. 60-21. It was literally magical. 60 points, 21 rebounds? Yeah, 20 rebounds, 10 assists. Yeah, 60-20-10.

But what happened was at the very end of the game, to tie it up, he had to score or he had to miss a free throw. Then at literally the last two seconds, he caught the ball midair,

tossed it while midair at the, at the buzzer and tied the game, then proceeded to score six more points and win the game. It was literally like, it, it, it was insane. It's probably one of the craziest games of,

of like basketball I've ever seen highlights of. Cause I didn't see the full game. Dude. And so athletic. It's fucking crazy. Here it is. No, it's not.

It's coming up. Or it'll come. Wait, I'm having. Oh, it's gotta be here somewhere. But guys in this podcast, we're going to,

okay. Is this, I don't know. Let's see. No, this is overtime dog. I missed it then. Anyway,

fuck it. Unfortunate. We'll find that at some point but in this podcast pretty much what we were going to get into was this year's been crazy what about that dude that took like 12 steps across the court janice antetokounmpo what the hell yeah man what's going on with that guy janice is insane oh oh watch this okay okay we got to rewind well you got to see like the whole setup this guy i mean again this is like nba 2k shit right here but watch this finish mark i think it's amazing how fucking big these rebound in and the foul all right it's 15.4 seconds like what is this guy like

six nine or something luca's probably like six six six seven okay okay watch boom boom oh my god last second he ties up the game and then they proceed to win like i think someone did the stats to that kind of like in one stroke you know you missed it and jumped and shot he scored nine points in the last 33 seconds of the game to tie it up and then went into overtime and won it it's i think they did statistics of like the amount of times uh this has literally never happened but there have been 13 000 instances or more than 13 000 instances where a game like this has happened where like they've a team has been down by nine and they've never been able to win so this is like the only time someone's ever been able to do that and he's 23 years old that's nuts yeah i didn't know he was 23 years old yeah

and how fucked up is it that the kings are finally doing really good and i'm like not paying And he's 23 years old. That's nuts. I didn't know he was 23. 23 years old, yeah. And how fucked up is it that the Kings are finally doing really good, and I'm not paying attention anymore? That's cool. After years of watching them play like shit. Well, you're doing jiu-jitsu, and you're killing it. You don't have time to pay attention. I know. I don't have time, but it sucks.

You're making your own story. You got your own record. Yeah. You're not worried about the Kings being over 500 for the first time in 20 years even longer um that guy that we're just showing what was his name again um luke donchich he uh you know it's like how much weight room time does that guy you know does that guy look like a does he look like a big weight room guy like i'm sure he exercises a bunch outside of just playing basketball but there's so many other factors that come into play uh when you're talking about Does he look like a big weight room guy? Like I'm sure he exercises a bunch outside of just playing basketball.

But there's so many other factors that come into play when you're talking about athleticism. And I think something that we can kind of start to discuss today, we can get into some of the things that we found. But we can also maybe for a moment just talk about, you know, do we think there's like some detriment to strength training? And if so, like what would be the detriment? I was watching something that Paul check, I sent you guys a clip of Paul check yesterday. And Paul was talking about how, you know, working particular muscles, like doing stuff in isolation over periods of time without other movement can potentially cause someone to get tight. And when you get tight in those areas, you end up with a lot of, you'll end up with a lot of

restriction a lot of times, and this isn't always, but you'll end up with a lot of restriction. And you may also end up with areas that you'll need to work out via like myofascial release. And then people try to stretch these areas and they can be difficult and tricky to stretch. Range of motion alone is probably not going to solve a lot of people's problems when their back is in a lot of pain or their shoulders in a lot of pain. Stretching can help every once in a while. It completely helps somebody and alleviates the tension and pressure that they have. But it can kind of get complicated because the lifting that we're doing can be great. But I think sometimes we're like, if you were to think about just something like a bench press,

you're asking yourself a lot of times for men that have just a reasonable amount of strength, they might be able to do their body weight for five to 10 reps on a bench press. They weigh 200 pounds. They might be able to bench press their own body weight for a handful of reps. Sounds reasonable, but that's kind of a lot. That's a lot of extra weight on you. You know, if you weigh 200 pounds and you're squatting 200 pounds, again, that's kind of a lot of extra weight. Picture like if you were trying to run with like a 200 pound weight vest, you'd be like, oh my God, I would never even entertain that because I would hurt myself. And so sometimes some of these things that we do in be like, oh my God, I would never even entertain that because I would hurt myself. And so sometimes some of these things

that we do in the gym, for some reason, we don't really recognize that even though they can be super beneficial, maybe there's some negatives to it. And maybe we don't really have to experience any of the negatives if we mix in some other stuff and we're just cautious what we're doing. Absolutely.

The big thing too, that's kind of been a big shift this year was kind of not stopping doing those movements totally. But I've definitely decreased my frequency of doing squatting, benching, deadlifting. And I've kind of opted in for movements that would allow me to get into deeper ranges of motion and maybe incorporate my full body into the movement more so. Because for example, you can squat 400 something pounds and you can squat to depth, but if that's the only thing you're focusing on, it impacts the spine. So you're having this spinal shit going on where you're doing that um yeah you're moving a lot of load but it doesn't allow you to necessarily move better if that's the main thing you're focusing on a big shift has been like doing more stuff with dumbbells kettlebells cables that have allowed me to like move into deeper ranges of motion more awkward type of positions and what i've found is

that for like my ability to move in those ranges of motion without like, uh, like in jujitsu or in running, my body has felt better. My body hasn't felt nearly as stiff. Um, I have freedom of movement in all types of ranges now, just because I still do those movements here and there, but I have transitioned into allowing myself to get into weirder ranges with a lot of other different things. And these are things that me in the past, if I saw somebody doing this in the gym, I would have said this person probably doesn't know what they're doing. You know what I mean? Or this person's that, that's like weird functional training.

That doesn't make sense. Why don't they just do compound movements? I'd have been the guy to say that. But after experiencing it and doing it for a while and seeing the changes it's brought me with my ability to move and the way I feel, I don't know if,

I guess, you know, I don't know if I've been training the best way for so many years. Maybe for bodybuilding and powerlifting, that was great.

But for jujitsu, running, being able to move better, sprint, run, jump, roll, there's better ways to go about it. And we've talked on this podcast many times before about having a capacity. You should probably have a capacity to do certain things. So if you currently cannot squat your own body weight or deadlift your own body weight,

it might be something to investigate. Well, how do you investigate it or how do you look into it? How do you work on it? Well, you'll probably have to work on it in a way that's going to take you much longer if you're doing jujitsu simultaneously or doing another sport simultaneously. It might take you longer because you have another sport that you have to think about. So your five by five with 185 pounds on a deadlift followed by some RDLs, followed by some step ups, followed by some farmer's carries, all in relation to trying to make this lift a little stronger, this deadlift, that might be a little too much for you. You might have to, you deadlift maybe once a week or maybe even once every other week,

but you're addressing the deadlift throughout the week via some other exercises. You know, Louie Simmons conjugate system, Westside barbell type stuff might make a lot of sense there. Things like kettlebell swings are going to, even though, you know, three sets of 12 of a kettlebell swing, you're thinking like, how in the world is that going to help me to deadlift more weight? Well, your lower back will have more capacity. Your work capacity is increased. You'll be able to recover from your workouts a little bit easier. When you do get sore or do a lot of work on a particular deadlift day, you'll be able to kind of just swipe it off your shoulder like it's not a big deal because your work capacity is improved.

So if you're somebody that's trying to get stronger while simultaneously doing something else, you can still do it. It just might take you a little longer. And then Seema, what was the reason for your departure from some of the movements, the way that you were doing the movements? some of the movements, the way that you were doing the movements, like, uh, for example, if you did, um, a deadlift workout, that was an kind of old school, uh, in SEMA deadlift workout, where you maybe did a three by three or something like that. What, what effects would that style of training have on your jujitsu? And if it had any negatives, were there things that you did that, I don't know,

assisted you through that process to make it not be such a negative? You know, one thing I think is I don't think that I realized how stiff I felt with certain things. Do you remember when you started doing some FP stuff and you were taking a look at my lower back and you were telling me, if you can, you want to try to get more movement there. Like you want to loosen this area up. In my head, I was like, but my lower back

moves just fine. But up until that point, every now and then, like every few months, I'd end up tweaking a little something in my lower back in the same exact spot over time. And it was somewhat infuriating because I'd be feeling good. I'd be rolling good. Tweak, tweak, tweak, right? It would heal up in maybe a week. I'd go back to doing my lifts. They'd be strong. I'd be good.

But that little tweak kept happening. I'd be good. But that little tweak kept happening. And it wasn't until I started doing more things like Jefferson curls, seated good mornings, doing things that would allow me to just have a lot of bend and movement with that lower back with load that I then started, it kind of opened up an ability for me to just quickly bend, come back, do things explosively in those, I guess what most people in strength would say, that's a dangerous position for your lower back. It wasn't until I started venturing into that, lifting with that and doing things almost explosively from those positions where I started to be like, wow, like even though I was, I was flexible and it's not like I was super stiff, I still had this much more capacity in that area, right? So for me,

instead of like just doing a deadlift workout where I like, maybe I do deadlifts at 70% or something, and then I moved to something else that that's rigid. I'll do some deadlifts, maybe not with the barbell, I might do some kettlebell stuff, or maybe I'll do a barbell deadlift, but I'll then use the cable to stretch me out. I'll do things like, you know, I'll do rows in different positions, but I'll allow my arm to come all the way out and I'll come all the way back. And I might allow myself to like bend out my lower back when doing rows and I'll increase that load. But I use the cables to pull my body into really long positions. And then using strength in those long positions, I'll bring myself back.

And the main goal, and the thing that I think has helped me the most this year with my overall movement has been using weight, using weight to stretch, you know, because now it's not just that you're stretching yourself or you're doing PNF or doing any of those movements, just normal stretches. You're using load to pull

your body into really long, disadvantageous positions. And then your body is strong enough to bring that back. So it's stretching, but, and it's causing physical change. And I think it actually causes that change faster. But now you're getting stronger at the same time. So I think the big shift has just been not focusing on, okay, this is the right form for a squat. Sometimes I'll do squat with a barbell but in a horse stance. So I'll have my legs super wide almost in like a deadlift stance and I'll squat as low as I can with a moderate load but moving in and out of that position,

my body is comfortable where it's like, okay, you can do 185 with a super wide position. Your adductors are strong enough. Your glutes are strong enough. Everything is strong enough to go in and out of those positions safely. And that translates really well into athletic movement versus just doing a low bar squat, multiple reps the same way all the time. I think for the listeners that are like, well, I don't really care about jiu-jitsu or I don't care about running or I don't care about doing anything else. I just love to lift.

I would still challenge you to examine how you move on a day-to-day basis and what's it like when you drop something on the ground? What's it like when you put your shoes on? What's it like when you get out of your car? car, are there areas in your day where you're maybe like you're just so accustomed to it that you don't even realize how compromised you may be because you may have just accepted these movement patterns. You may have accepted the fact that you're going to move slow from Tuesday to Thursday because you deadlift on Monday. But it doesn't have to really be that way.

It may have to be that way. It may make some sense if you're getting ready for a competition, there might be a time where, hey, you got to be like a little beat up here and there. But for the most part, I think of someone like John Hack and some of these guys that have really pushed the boundaries. And these guys are, you know, they have great genetics and stuff like that, but they have prepared their bodies to adapt and be able to adopt the type of training that they're doing. And when we had him here and we saw him walking around and moving around, like it's not like he was crazy mobile or anything, but he didn't seem to be in lots of pain. He didn't seem to be in lots of pain he didn't seem to be like uh didn't seem to be like suffering so if you have to like you know grab a hold of your bed and and fucking squeeze

the squeeze the sheets just to like reach down like grab some socks that are on the fucking ground you know i just want you to kind of think about like well maybe maybe there's a better way maybe there's a better route maybe Maybe there's a better route. Maybe rather than eliminating the exercises altogether, maybe you can start to try some of the things that we've introduced on this show. And I know for myself, probably the most transformative thing of 2022 for me and even moving forward is to get your head over your foot when you're walking in your gait, when you get your head over your foot when you're walking in your gate, when you get your head over your foot, when you're walking and when you're running. Occasionally it's something I'll get stuck and I'll kind of forget what I'm doing or I'll kind of lose sight of it or lose track of

it. But when I go back to it, it tends to relax me. It tends to propel me forward more so than I thought. I didn't have any, I never had any previous awareness of this at all until David Weck brought it up to me. Do you know if like your old walking footage, were you walking differently? I don't know. Well, David Weck, you know, he says, don't get caught in the middle. And that's something that really stuck with me too. Don't get caught in the middle. He's like, if you're in the middle, you're going to get hurt. something that really stuck with me too don't get caught in the middle he's like if you're in the middle you're going to get hurt and thinking about like lifting and um just movement in general like andrew knows this one getting your kid out of their car seat the car seat is like way out like

if you ever tried to get groceries sometimes out of something out of somewhere in your car yeah and there's like something else in the way and you got to kind of like you know get this package or this box and then you have to kind of lift it and there's like space between you and your hips are back and stuff it's like all it's like all lower back it's a it's a it's a funny position to be in but you're literally kind of stuck in the middle and some of the things i've been learning with uh functional patterns some of the things from goda and just having more body awareness and being able to feel my body better when i go to do something like that i'm like what else can i engage to pick this up now it sounds kind of silly because it's a box that weighs 12 pounds or something like that

like it's not something super heavy or if it's you know in andrew's case if it's his kid, it's not like his kid weighs 700 pounds or anything, but it's heavy. Right. And so you have to, uh, I'm thinking like, shit, I can actually, to, to get this package, I could actually squeeze my, my, uh, my pecs together. I can flex my pecs and then I can kind of pick it up. Um, or I can lower a shoulder and then kind of pick it up from there. So my walk has definitely changed quite a bit. More swag these days. Yeah, I have a little bit longer of a gait. That's something that you don't want to try to force or push. But I didn't know anything about the shoulders. I didn't realize your shoulders should be going up and down.

You won't see it much. You won't notice it much on somebody, but your shoulder will lower and raise as you go back and forth. And when you're running, you'll see this in every, every person that runs, you'll, you'll see some, especially those that move fast. So for me, it's been a huge improvement and it's been monumental, but I think one of the reasons why I was stuck and not moving that way previously was because all of my focus was just on lifting weights and trying to lift more weight. So I'm not blaming lifting weights on anything. I love lifting weights.

It will always be part of my life. Power lifting, bodybuilding, all these things will always be a part of my life. power lifting, bodybuilding, all these things will always be a part of my life. However, how do we, how do we do it and how do we do it for a long time without it really having hardly any negative effects on us to where we, we look healthy, we move healthy, where you're like, fuck man, did that guy really just deadlift 700 the other day for some reps? And now he's totally, he's totally fine. Now he's in this fucking jujitsu class tearing people up. You're like, what? Or whatever it might be. For me, the weights aren't that big,

but I ran eight miles yesterday. Half of it was hills. I ran on the beach for four miles. I ran hills for four miles. And it was fucking easy. It was really easy. It felt incredible and i ran today and i did sprints while i was running and that felt good too a minute uh

intervals you know probably running three or four hundred meters each time yeah it's a lot of work what concepts come to like your mind that you would you know because if you're focusing on powerlifting keep focusing on powerlifting i'm not telling you know, because if you're focusing on powerlifting, keep focusing on powerlifting. I'm not telling you to switch. Or if you're focusing on bodybuilding, keep focusing on bodybuilding. But what, what kind of, what would you suggest to somebody to add into their routine or into the way they lift, uh, that will help them not have to sacrifice the way they move, uh, for gaining a lot of muscle or getting a lot of strength. Because when we think about it, we spend a certain amount of time in the gym, but then

we have life. So we have to bend down and tie our shoes. We have to move around and do things. And I think most people would like to be able to do all those things while feeling really good, rather than feeling like they're locked inside of their body and they can't do something because their body doesn't feel good enough to do it. I don't like restriction. I don't think it's a good place to be. So if you can't just randomly pop down into a squat and just hang out down there at the bottom for more than like 60 seconds, then you overdid something. And also you might be in a place where you're already compromised and you might have to work on this for a while.

Like for one person, they may have to work on getting down to the bottom of a squat for like months or maybe even years to some extent. But I want people to think about restriction. And this is easy thing to think about when you're talking about like the cold plunge. Like I don't want to get in there. Why? Well, it's fucking cold. Well, what's cold? Cold is kind of as big a deal as you make it out to be in your head, you know? But it can be restrictive. I don't want to go outside because it's raining.

It's like, well, okay. It's like, it's wet, you know? It kind of sucks, right? But I think there's things that we're trapped. We're trapped inside of our own body, and our body becomes a little bit of a prison because we're a prisoner to the pain that we have. And we don't want to do this. We don't want to do that. I know some people who've talked about depression, and their hygiene falls off. They're like, I haven't showered as much as normal.

I haven't taken care of myself as much. I'm not brushing my hair and my teeth. And it's sad. It's a sad thing that can happen to people. But it's because the thoughts in their head have started to take over and they don't want to do even the simplest task because they kind of don't feel like it.

What about when pain gets a hold of you? Like pain is really Andrew with your back I mean you must be over there thinking of all kinds of stuff right now I mean maybe sex with your wife maybe like all these things that you're normally excited about or pumped about go outside play with your kids um uh throw around football at Thanksgiving or um having people over I really don't want to have a bunch of people over the house because then I got to clean the house and fucking back hurts and like you're grumpy and grouchy. And it's just like it could be a big cascade of stuff. So I would really like to help people.

I'd like to help more people get out of pain. And I think I think there's there's a bunch of different things you can do. Number one is to question the style of training that you're doing. Like if you're in pain right now, something that you're doing is not working correctly. Something that you're doing is not working correctly. Something maybe went, quote unquote, like haywire in your training. That can happen. And if you're fighting like you guys are, well, fuck.

You guys can, you know, someone can smash their head into your lip and you split, you know, I mean, there's like certain things that are like, they're kind of accidents, right? Yeah. So those things aside, most of the, when you're training in a weight room, it's a very, very controllable environment. And that's why you'll hear so many strength coaches say, my whole goal is just not to get anybody hurt,

which isn't really actually the truth. Their goal is to make their players more resilient and more savages so they have less restriction on getting hurt. They don't mind fucking diving into the pile to knock the ball loose because they're not thinking about their shoulder kind of hurts or their neck kind of hurts because of the style of training that you, you chose to do. What's going through your mind, Andrew? Um, well, kind of with the theme of like this podcast of talking about stuff that we've been kind of switching up when it comes to pain, something I've been pondering and trying to figure

out how to formulate, but for myself and I think for some people some people, I had to become basically a different person. And Seema's been working with me as far as like the words I use. Mark, you've been working with me with like, what can you do? So like even with stuff that I got going on right now with jujitsu, like even the way I text and tell people what's going on. In the past, I'd be like, dude, I'm so wrecked. This is going to be a long time before i figure out you know how to get over this that's changed too and now are you a little excited by that like when you wake up and your fucking hands hurt and your forearms

are you kind of like that was a lot of work but that's like that feels awesome yeah well i mean we we all you know we go to the gym and we talk shit about like killing it and da da da but like here i am like actually play like i was joking with charlie zamora about this i'm like yeah it's play fighting to the death like we're literally trying to play fight and kill each other but we all agree that when i hit that you know hit your shoulder tap you then you're gonna stop and that's like a mutual respect hey you're gonna stop killing me right yeah yeah like right right um but yeah no you wake up and you feel like man i actually i did something you know i did some really cool stuff but again like the way i text and tell people now it's like oh yeah like i'm feeling it today like i'm gonna work on this now or whatever it may be uh you were just talking about walking before um we met the guys from GODA, I walked

differently. So, I'm speaking differently. I'm walking differently. Before I met Doug Brignoli, I was working out differently. So, a lot of these things, if you go back a year and a half ago, I would speak differently. I would walk differently. I'd sleep differently. I'd eat differently. So, it's like, okay, what did you do to get out of pain? It's like, I literally became a new person. So that might seem dramatic, but it's like, well, okay, so if your workouts are hurting you right now, maybe not forever, but you might have to work out differently for a little bit and then go back to what you love. Or you might, something like that happened to me, you might discover something else that you love more than squat bench dead. You know, again, I was never really good at those things. So it's different in my case. But I became a different person the way I speak, the way I feel, the way I wake up in the morning. It's no longer, let's see what's going to hurt today.

It's like I just jump out of bed and then, you know, address things later, but it's no longer like a depressing, like the sky was always gray when I was in pain. Now it's like, dude, I can't wait to get outside and beat the sun and then watch the sun come up, you know, like things like that. So again, it's something that I want to formulate a little bit better, but in my opinion from, well, I guess for my experience, in order for me to get out of pain, I had to become a new person. I had to completely change. I think myofascial release is like really, really important. Um, you know, Jason Kalipa has talked about this. He wrote a book about it in his, uh, I think it's Amrap mentality book. Um, he talks about just you know taking your phone and going to the app where there's a uh like a stopwatch on there just hit and start and then just five five or ten minutes

you designate to something um and i think the something that the something that i i think just about anyone can benefit from is myofascial release and I I just never really I don't know if I knew how important it was I would do it here and there but I I didn't uh prescribe to it like long enough um in terms of its frequency and in terms of how like long I was taking on on a particular muscle or area. I had a little something going on with my neck. My neck is still stiff from it, which my neck doesn't need to be any stiffer than it already is.

And I had to work through it last week, and it was really painful to dig a softball in there. I've set the softball up in a doorway, in a door jam, and then pushed myself into the ball while the ball's digging into my back. It was crazy. And he's moving my neck around. But I did that. I set a timer on my phone. And I did like six minutes or four minutes on each side.

I got some relief from it. I did it again a day later. I did it again a day later and it started to get better and better. So I see, uh, and SEMA always has the, uh, the sew right with them. We utilize a lot of tools. We have the pivot, we have lacrosse balls right now. We're on the Nobosu balls. We're jamming our feet. A myofascial release for the feet is really imperative. got something andrew if you look this up i think it's called like an eight roller uh i got it off of rogue fitness and it was kind of a roll the dice i was like i don't know what the fuck this is it's not that little butt plug thing you got back there oh wow hey oh yeah yeah oh, you shouldn't show anybody.

It's weird that they made the one side kind of brownish. They also made sure that you could take that off just like that. And Seema, look at that fucking thing. What is that? You just slide anything through it? Roll recovery R8 for those who are listening. Dude, it's a fucking death trap. It's like a bear trap.

And I put that on my legs and i and i go like this i go wait andrew andrew let's see other photos of it being used i don't see how it's used oh you just stick your you can stick anything in it dude it's it's it's unbelievable so it has handles and you just like roll it on it's completely unbelievable because you can actually like it just squeezes it it's it's hard to kind of use because it squeezes you so hard but you can also like you can you can have one side like really pushing down on something i use it a lot on my calves yeah as a runner it's uh so wait so it like gives both sides pressure so you it's like you're clamping yourself it's a lot of pressure from both sides and the

little rollers have these like ridges on them they dig right into you but anyway myofascial release stuff it's not comfortable but i think it will help a lot of people and in most cases like whenever i uh text message uh chris kadowski who we've had on the podcast he's worked he's put his hands on all of us before, and he's the one that contributed massively to us rubbing our butts on everything in the gym. These things have been transformative. And I'm like, Chris, my friend has a problem with their foot right here. He's like, oh, the control center for your toes is in your shin. And it sounds kind of funny. It sounds kind of silly. But everybody knows that when you squeeze your forearm, the inside of your forearm,

that your pinky and your ring finger kind of start to, well, they start to move around a little bit. The same thing happens in the shin. And the body is connected all the way through on all this stuff. So if you can get some myofascial release, you can look it up. I highly recommend Functional Patterns. They have like a 10-week program.

I want to say it's like 100-something bucks. So there is a little bit of a cost associated with it. They not only give you exercises, but they take you through every myofascial release, muscular thing you can think of. And I think even just for that, it's worth the payment. I will also say though, Kelly Sturett's book on becoming a supple leopard still thank god that created as well still like this book if you can get this too he has a bunch of things for different uh myofascial release on different parts of your body um and it's still a great book for that same thing with chris gadowski's book the back pain bible he has a bunch

of things in there but yeah fp has that stirret's book still has a lot of stuff in there that's super useful and you know when you're saying andrew that you had to kind of become a different person right um i think that also required you doing things that you didn't immediately enjoy you know what i mean i think it was steven presfield who was on here i don't know if we were talking about that with him on the podcast or if it was in one of his books. But he did mention how like, I mean, actually, it wasn't. He didn't like every aspect of writing.

Oh, yeah. But he knew what the outcome. He knew that the outcome. He actually said he didn't like writing. Didn't like writing. And that still bothers me. But he knew the outcome. It's like Michael Jordan being like, eh, basketball.

Steffi Cohen said she didn't like powerlifting. Remember that on the podcast? Yeah. She didn't like powerlifting. Remember that on the podcast? Yeah. She didn't like powerlifting. Killed everybody. Killed everyone. But the thing is, is like, you know,

we're not doing everything that we do. We don't enjoy all of it. We do, and I enjoy a lot of it. I ain't gonna lie about that. But you're probably not gonna enjoy

everything that we're telling you to try to do. Like, I don't like sucking dick. Yeah, but it's... But it's a fucking gift. At the end, at the at the end when you like everything releases and you got all that you know what this is a joke that we have taken too far we have taken this joke too far take it like a half step further i'm gonna see my cock ring as i talk to you guys about this real quick so as i saying, how come no one takes us seriously? That'd be the goal. That'd be the goal in 2023.

You take it more seriously. You know what? You know, one thing that I think is honestly kind of cool about like how we've progressed dog is like, I think we, if we look at podcasts years ago, I don't know. I had more of a stick up my ass.

Like I was more reserved. I think we were all a little bit more reserved and like, look at us now. Like what the fuck? We don't know. I had more of a stick up my ass. I was more reserved. I think we were all a little bit more reserved. And like, look at us now. Like, what the fuck? We don't give a fuck. And I love it. I really love it. It's great.

We're having fun. We're having fun. But you got to do some of this shit that you don't enjoy so that you feel better afterwards. And you might grow to not only enjoy what you're doing you might learn to really love it you might learn to really really um you know for me with running i think most people can really relate they're like i hate running most people just say you know right away like i hate it i don't know if i ever really hated it but i certainly wasn't very good at it and if i tried to run even more than like i don't know know, 100 yards, if I ran like 200 or 300 yards, it would be hard.

I'd be out of breath. My legs would start to burn. I'm like, I had enough. That was far enough. That's like 30 seconds worth of, you know, 30 or 40 seconds worth of running. And I'd just be like, that's not good. And I would just kind of label myself as not being good at it. I'm not good at this at all.

But then with a little effort over time starts to turn into something also the rewording i'm not good at this yet that's the big deal and also like it's like you're not good at it compared to like what are you comparing to and why are you comparing like you're saying bolt yeah if you haven't if you haven't spent any time i think that's what we do though i think we're like you know like oh man i gotta go out and do some sprints and then you you watch the video and you're like i don't sprint like that you're like what was that like what i don't you know ben the bounce just jumped from like 30 feet and he was fine so i'm gonna try it too remember when you're a kid and you go out and like shoot some hoops,

like you always, like I always felt like, you know, I play basketball or football, play football. I felt like Jerry Rice play basketball and you go under the hoop and you try to do a layup like Jordan. You felt like you moved similar,

you know, and someone was to show you a video. You're like, Oh, that is interesting. Do you think, but like, since kids can pick up languages

we can pick up movements as kids a lot better too right and then that eventually kind of starts to fade as we get older i don't believe that i know i mean in in general like it it appears that that's what happens right just like when people get older they get weaker like that appears to happen it doesn't necessarily mean it's going to happen to us. Yeah, some of it is. I mean, there's like, you know, you go the Andrew Huberman route and you really like study this stuff. You'll find a lot of information that probably points to it's a good idea to learn shit as a kid. But the real basics of it is just because you're kind of a clean slate. As an adult, sometimes you're not much of a, you're like a dirty slate.

Dirty slate. Dirty slate. You have a lot of preconceived notions on what you can do and who you are. And you go to a gym and you're 5'10 and you're 170 and you're like a little skinny fat and you kind of look around and you see like everybody that you see is like way better than you, more so just because of your

like mindset. There's other people there that aren't in nearly as good a shape as even that. But you're thinking like everyone knows what they're doing. I don't know what I'm doing. So it makes it a little harder for you to learn just probably because of what your brain is kind of wrapped up in. But I was watching some people. It was actually really cool. I love seeing like parents do shit with their kids. It's just awesome. I saw this kid surfing with his dad.

There's no one on the beach. It's raining. It's cold. and surfing with his dad. You know, there's no one on the beach. It's raining. It's cold. And here's this dad and this kid just out there, like, you know, surfing.

And they're just, I don't even know what they're, I don't even know what it's called, but they were just like standing on the board and like going out towards the waves, you know, and they kept sliding, you know, as they were doing it. And I was watching the kid like trying to learn from the dad. And he was like starting to pick it up and looked like they were having a lot of fun. And I saw this because I was running back and forth a bunch of times. I saw them several times. And so I think sometimes like as a kid, like you have less reservations.

You're not as scared. Somebody might have previously have bad experiences with the ocean. So they might be like, I can't do sharks and shit, though. Right. But as I was watching him do that, I was like, I think I could figure that out. Whereas like, I don't know, a year ago I would have been like, nope, I'm just going to get hurt. You know, I would have negative preconceived notions of what it would look like for me. But what I think is a good challenge for people is, you know, if you're to say that's not for me or I'm not good at that, then the next question would be why. And it's probably just because you have no exposure

to it. Whether it's speaking a different language or whether it's writing, reading, you just have a low level of exposure to it. And maybe possibly for you, you could have been dealt a bad card in that situation. It's possible where you need to do a little bit more work than the next guy, but you can't change the card that you were dealt originally, but you can trade it in over time if you fucking put in work. So I think those are all things kind of think about as you're trying to learn or pick up new things. Yeah.

One of the, the hardest things is to explain to somebody is, um, like you're in pain right now. And the first couple of things that you try, not only are they probably not going to work, but you're going to end up feeling worse. And it's, it's so hard to, to get anybody to like even take that first step. Cause it's like, well, that didn't work. Uh, that made me feel worse. So I'm not going to ever try that again. Like, cause there's been times where like, well, that didn't work. That made me feel worse. So I'm not going to ever try that again. Like, cause there's been times where like Mark, you'll have me try something with some of those medicine balls. And then the next day I can barely walk or whatever.

But then eventually I find something else and I'm like, oh wait, but that actually worked. But if I gave up, I wouldn't be able to figure out what actually did happen. Like what did work? Same thing with like the go to stuff at first was like very, very difficult. I'm like, I don't understand how this is going to stuff at first was like very very difficult i'm like i don't understand how this is going to work but then like after a couple sets i'm like

okay it makes sense now but if i didn't understand that and i didn't have the same um i don't know it just if i didn't keep trying i wouldn't been able to find answers and it's very difficult to relay that message power project family how's it going now we talk about sleep all the time on the podcast because it's one of the biggest things that helps you with your health and fitness, your recovery, your muscle gain, your fat loss, everything. That's why we've partnered with Eight Sleep for such a long time now, because the technology behind the mattress allows you to track your heart rate, the amount of times it takes you

to fall asleep, your tosses and turns, your heart rate variability. It changes its temperature through the night based off how you sleep, but not only yourself, but maybe your partner on the other side of the bed it is an amazing mattress andrew how can they learn more yes head over to eight sleep.com slash power project that's eight spelled out e-i-g-h-t sleep.com slash power project along with more information you guys will actually save 150 off of your entire order automatically links to them down in the description as well as the podcast show notes. You know what's really cool?

Every single one of our bodies have gotten younger this year. All of us. Definitely. You're doing fucking jujitsu and rowing with people three times a week. Yeah. You're feeling a little bit of stuff,

but your body's changing and adapting to all the new movements you're doing. Absolutely. But you have gotten younger because a year ago, fucking hell, you'd be fucking do something

and your back would go and you'd be like, fuck, this happened again, right? Yeah. Your body's gotten younger. You are running tens of miles every single – well, actually, almost every single day. And you've been running every day for 160, 170 something days now. I think we're at like 131. Okay, day 131.

But you've been running every single day. 600 miles. 600 miles. A year – not even a year ago. Like months ago and last year, this would not have been a thing. We couldn't – I don't know if you could have imagined that you'd be doing this and you announced it, but you're getting ready for the Boston Marathon soon.

All of our, me, like I'm watching shit as far as, okay, there's this submission called the electric chair that we were drilling in class the other day. Oh my God, I want to see this. The electric chair is a submission where you can like, the way you tap the person is by literally, their legs are going into such a high split that they tap because of the pressure in their hips. We were drilling it in class.

Oh, my God. And my partner was trying to do it to me. And I was just like, I don't feel it. And he kept like pulling my legs farther and farther apart. And I was like, I don't feel it. Is that supposed to hurt? And then exactly. And then he's like, maybe it's because I'm not as tall as you.

So I had another. There was a larger guy that did it to me. And I was like, I don't feel it because now I have so much mobility and strength through the hips that I can't get submitted by the electric chair. And my body is feeling so much better than, yeah, that didn't hurt. I didn't have to tap to that. I was actually able to just, he kept pushing my leg up and I didn't submit because I've become more mobile and more strong in those positions. Oh, Jesus. Now you see the internal rotation of the hip there? Yeah. Yeah. But my body's gotten younger this year.

So the reason why I'm saying this is because when you do see this research like, oh yeah, most people will be losing muscle as they get older and their hormones will get worse as they get older and this happens. All of this is based off of people who are doing average things and have average habits, right? They're not working on it. They're not working on it. And the advantage of being a kid is that you may not have to really work on it because you're probably already mobile when you're a kid and some of those things.

Absolutely. But as an adult, I think it'd be- You can get better. You can get better and it's a disservice to yourself because I used to have the kind of mindset of like, oh, this person's been at this since they were younger or this person's been doing this since they've been younger. So they have an advantage. And I've heard that touted by a lot of really smart people.

And I'm not saying they're wrong, but I've realized as an adult with all the new things that all of us have been able to get better at, I've realized that no, it's not kids. It's just the shit that you focus on. It's literally just the shit that you focus on and try to get better at and actually spend time to get better at. You can get better at it just like a kid. Just like a kid. You think about there's so many different perspectives and ways of looking at it. You growing up without your dad there, that could be viewed as really negative.

dad there that could be viewed as really negative, but you could also be like kind of grateful that I didn't develop negative habits that I see some of my friends have with anger, alcohol, things like that, that they may be picked up from their dad, you know? Um, so it's, it's all a perspective thing. It's hard to kind of, it's hard to just kind of say that, you know, it's hard. It's not an easy thing to do necessarily. Um, it's easy. It's really easy to think about somebody else's background and think that they had it easier than you. It came easier to them. They got it faster than you. They, they were able to, you know, have a really successful business at a really young age. And it was because they, they knew some great people that helped them raise money and they were able to sell their company for $100 million. And that's the excuse in your head. But none of it

really – it's not helpful. It's not helpful towards you becoming better. I think it's a stop. It's a period instead of a question mark, a period at the end of the sentence. Well, that guy had a bunch of investors or his mom and dad invested in him and so he made all this money. He didn't have to work, period, rather than saying, that's really cool. I wonder how he got those investments. He even got some investments from his own family, which that's not always easy to juggle. He's even got some investments from his own family, which that's not always easy to juggle. I'm going to ask him a question, a couple of questions about that because I have an uncle who's got money who I want to hit up for a business that I want to start up. I mean, you could completely flip it upside down. The other thing, I'm not 130 pounds and so I'm not a runner. And there's a lot of great runners that are probably, you know, between the body weight of 100 male runners that are probably between 140 and like 170.

170 is probably like where some of it kind of tops out in terms of the, well, I don't even know. But in terms of the great runners that maybe run marathons, let's say. But how many marathon runners have the experience of being 330 pounds? How many marathon runners have the experience of squatting 1,000 pounds? How many people have the experience of having their body loaded up with that much weight? are big advantages for me. Maybe because I sucked at running, well, because I didn't do it when I was young. Maybe that's a huge advantage because I don't have as many miles on my body. There's some people that get into lifting way later and you're like, your knees don't bother you or this or that. Like their joints and shit aren't worn out

because they didn't spend a bunch of time fucking themselves up previously so it's it's easy to just say oh that person's got genetics or they got it easy because they did steroids so they got it easy because of a or b or c yep you know their dad owned a gym when they were young and so now they're in good you know whatever whatever whatever the thing is you could fill in the blank on all that uh or or you can have it more open-ended and just say, that's cool, man. I wonder how they did that. I'm going to start to ask them some questions.

Yeah. There is an advantage of starting things a little later though. You know, like I see some people that start lifting maybe in their 20s. But like you said, they don't have the mileage on their knees. They don't have the mileage on their back and stuff. And then they start building better habits than some guys did because they started lifting when they were super young. So then, yeah, you start a little later. You have to develop a little bit.

You don't have the same development. But 10 years from now, because you've been doing everything in a better, healthier way, you might be better off than the guy who's been doing it since he was 13 years old. You know what I mean? are often the guy who's been doing it since he was 13 years old. You know what I mean? The instincts that some people have, too, are really interesting because they come with a different perspective because they have a completely different background. I think the great Raider, Howie Long, he played at University of Villanova.

I think he just walked onto the football field, and he's like 6'5", and like 270. He's in great shape. They're like, yep, you're on the team we'll figure out something for you he ends up being a Hall of Fame defensive end and he was like I went to the Raiders and as a rookie

they started telling me about these plays that they're running and I'm like yeah sounds good I'm just going to run after the fucking quarterbacks I have no idea what anyone's talking about and he was athletic and he made it work and he screwed up here and there but he he made it work uh christian akoye is another guy that comes to mind when you think about like he wasn't a football player um he didn't know anything nightmare yeah he didn't know anything about football and uh he would the linemen and stuff

would be like he would just make us laugh so hard in the huddle because he would like tell us what we're going to do and we're like that's not really part of the play but sure you know and uh one of the guys uh was saying that he's like lineman be prepared for the cutback and they're like i don't even know what that means but he's like you know at 265 pounds or whatever he was he ran one way and decided just to you know go go the complete opposite direction and he he ran like a motherfucker so you know i think uh starting a career um you know starting something different that you're not used to you're going to probably come into those things with a fresh mindset and you might have creative ideas on how you're going to do something and someone might say that's not the way we do it. Like, you can't do that in skateboarding. You can't do that in downhill skiing.

You know, you can't do that in this. You can't do that in that. And someone's going to say, well, watch me. I think I can do it that way. And if they think they can, they might be able to. That's some real water boy stuff with Howie Long. You know, just like, I'm just going to go get the ball. Like, that's all I know.

I say that I started very late. I started lifting at like 27 years old. The car has very little miles, but the car was already kind of used and beat up when it started. It's having to build up instead of the other way of not maybe breaking down as bad. But as far as what you're saying,

Mark, Mark, yeah, there were ideas I had, but I had zero confidence in following through with them. And now, like I said, after learning like the Bregnoli stuff and like just everything we've been doing that everyone will be like, that's not optimal or that's not proven or so-and-so did it, just do it that way. It's like, I'm pretty, and then of course, you know, the stuff that happened the past couple of years, I'm going to kind of question

a little bit of everything and then just try it out for myself because like I spent too much time, you know, thinking about what other people thought about a certain workout or whatever. And now I'm just like, nah, you know what? Fuck what fuck everyone like i'm gonna do it this way what you got uh you know i mean i i like okay you remember that uh that funny thing i made about jpg coaching in terms of that that back row like i showed that long range row where you pull and you turn your body in so your lat stretches out more when you do a row and a bunch of people were tagging him right and we made that funny skit okay a few months later he made a video of the same exact row really it was like he made the video the same exact row and i was like cool i saw it a few days ago no he did it which doesn't matter it doesn't matter i'm just curious a movement's a movement it's it's one of his

recent videos but when he was talking about he's like and you feel this great stretch in the lat and then i saw the comments of people who were just like, wow, this feels great. This is awesome. I was just like, you motherfuckers. Like, it's good. No, it's a good thing. I think overall it's a good thing. Yeah, but they had to wait for their favorite influencer

to give it the okay. There's that, but I do think it's good that people are starting to get out of the optimal shit. I think that is so good because, again, the gym has all these different implements. That you can use in whatever way you feel fit.

As long as your body is staying safe. Do you lift before Jiu Jitsu or after Jiu Jitsu? Who cares? Do you cold plunge before or after you run Mark? Yeah. You try to just do it whenever you can. I'm so happy that there are more people. That are getting out of this. That's not optimal. This isn't optimal. there are more people that are getting out of this.

That's not optimal. This isn't optimal. It's more optimal for this, this, this, and this. Because there's so many different ways to use your body in the gym. And it's kind of dumb, in my opinion, to just focus on doing things a single way. You know, like we were talking earlier about what can lifters do to increase their ability in the gym, their ability to move. Let's say that you're doing a dumbbell bench press and you're typically doing that.

Maybe your first two or three sets you do with the heavy load like you usually would. And then you go with 50% or 70% of that load and you go all the way down and let that whole shit stretch out for a set or two. That's a way that with all of your movements, you can get the benefits of moving with a limited range and a high intensity and then lightening the load and then moving into the deepest range that your body can handle safely so that you can handle strength with all of those ranges and you're not

getting the weight of any of your progress it's just it's good to see people are getting out of that fucking optimal mindset shit because i think you can just yeah i think you can also make things kind of simple too like you could do a bunch of stuff for your chest and you're like well that kind of like tightens everything up and that like flexes the muscles a certain way but let me do a movement like dips you know where i can really get the get that kind of bottom stretch where i can really move my my body in these different positions well let me try uh you mentioned dumbbell bench press. Well, let me try one-arm, single-arm dumbbell bench press. And maybe you hold the other one at your chest as you're pressing the other one and you're kind of rotating. I mean there's all kinds of different ways you can do it.

Maybe you're kind of pretending. You're kind of like throwing punches. Whereas again, like maybe years ago you would think that stuff is weird and corny and doesn't have like a good basis for anything. But if we're trying to have like longevity and feel good about ourselves, not feel good about ourselves, but have our bodies feel good and we're thinking about like – if you're trying to think about anything that is maybe optimal, what I think we're preaching here is for you to open up the playbook and really try and examine a bunch of stuff. If you currently don't really play a sport and you mainly just lift over time, you may get yourself in a position where you're tight because you're lifting in the

similar planes all the time. You don't have to overthink any of this stuff, but if you simply try other movements, such as dragging a sled forward and backward, figuring out some movement where you can move sideways. Maybe you do some old football drills or old drills that you used to do in baseball. Maybe you occasionally throw a baseball or throw a football. Those are all athletic maneuvers. And when it comes to the gym, maybe you just think about things that are done in some sort of twisting or rotational movements. You start to get just a small amount of that. Maybe two or three movements of that a week I think could be really helpful rather than you just solely focusing in on a curl and just focusing on a bench and just focusing in

on like a row. And furthermore, even when you are doing some standard movements, can you make them a little unconventional just by having a small change in there? So when you're doing your curls, could you be on one foot? You're doing your overhead presses, could you do it with one foot in front of the other? You know, how can you change these exercises a little bit just to switch them exercise a little bit um just to switch them up a little bit and just get some different patterns going in your body would you guys say even something as simple as keeping your mouth closed during those workouts is enough change that can be that can be a really big change concentrating on your breathing

uh could be massive for some people especially in the context of like a set you might find that you hurt yourself a lot less um if you are breathing erratically and you're doing you know the stack on a on a seated row that's a way that's a way to you know get after it and that's a way to like do something but i would rather see somebody control their breathing more so that the ribs and everything and the low back and everything stays healthy. And you're in a little bit of a more controlled manner, controlled fashion. So, yeah, exploring the breathing side of things I think is important too. You know, one thing that I think is super beneficial, and we'll get to something else after this, but I was just thinking when you were talking about breathing.

When I went and I rolled with Mason and Jason over in San Jose, when I was rolling with Mason and this other guy, Benji, towards the end of the roll, my mouth started to open. And then I rolled with them a few times, and I was like, I'm actually breathing through my mouth a bit right now because the pace was pushed. breathing through my mouth a bit right now because the pace was pushed. And the only way that was, I was able to get pushed was by putting myself in a training environment that actually pushed me, that I was, I was with people that pushed me to another level. And I was just thinking like, you know, for, for anyone listening that first off super training's free, right? So if you're trying to get into a training environment where there might be some people stronger than you, or that you can get some different stuff in, come in Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sundays, open gym. But if you're trying to get yourself to another level, you might have to change the setting of where you are and change the setting of where you're training because that's huge.

Like when we had Steven Pressfield on, his whole book, Put Your Ass Where Your Heart Wants To Be. Like all the changes that have happened. I know I can definitely think of myself and you, a big changes for us happened when we changed the places where we were, when we put ourself in front of different, in different places where opportunity came and that same shit probably happened with you too, right? It's, it's huge. And those changes will continue to happen as you continue to put yourself in places that will push you to another level. Um,'m noticing that right now. And it's huge. It's like, you know, this whole time when I'm training normally, I don't get pushed that much with a lot of people I train with. But there are a few people that push me. And now I'm in a different setting where I'm training with really high level people. And I'm now getting pushed again. And I know that I'm getting to

another level of what I'm currently doing. And that is a big fucking deal. So whatever you're doing, try to think, what can I do right now to change and progress what I'm doing? Can I do it on my own? Can I add stuff to my training or do I need to find a different environment that I can get to a different level? Because that's a very, very big deal. It might be a very, very obvious and simple, easy answer. And if it is, please use that answer. But what makes you want to reach another level as far as like your jujitsu? Like a lot of people would be like, oh, I'm really good here. I'm just going to keep rolling and fucking tying people up into pretzels at my local gym, my local school.

And if I can time people up into pretzels at my local gym, my local school, it's working. Whatever it may be, lifting, fucking playing video games and stuff. Once people get good and they keep dominating, they enjoy that. And then when somebody else comes along that messes them up, it's like, well, it's not as fun anymore. But you are seeking out better competition. It's not as fun anymore, but you are seeking out better competition and you were purposefully putting yourself in more difficult positions and situations because you want to, I'm assuming, get better. But what is the actual like mindset behind all that? Because there's a lot of people that are seeking comfort, not discomfort right now. Yeah.

Well, I mean, like when I started training at Super Training, it was back in 2015 and Mark invited me here. And I didn't like, I knew it was free, but it was after he invited me here when we met at the LA Fit Expo that I started training here. And then I wasn't the strongest guy in the gym, but I very quickly got stronger because I was then surrounded by people who helped me get better because they had different amounts of knowledge or different tips and mark was able to mark mike um fucking what uh marcus right all those different people were able to give me tools that helped me to be able to improve very quickly right so even though like where i train currently uh there are a few people that push me a bit but i know it's not pushing me to the point where like, if I want to be able to complete, compete with top level brown belts and top level black belts, when I get my black belt, I have to have some time training with top level black belts. I need to understand what that pace, what the difference between me and them is. And the only way to do it isn't just to try to simulate it in my training. I can simulate it to an extent. Like I do a lot of specific training

where I'll have training partners start in a mount, start on my back, start in an advantageous position where now either they submit me and we restart or I can escape and we continue rolling until I tap them. But even specific training, a lot of the times, isn't enough. But by going there and training with like, training with Mason and training with like training the mason and training with other guys over there um i have the goal of competing at the top level in terms of brown and

black belt so the best way for me to understand what i'm dealing with is by putting myself in those training situations right um and i just like i knew that is a necessary step and a necessary thing to do even cassio my coach has like, he's been encouraging me to like, that's why I go to a bunch of different schools in the area and try to find different people who might be able to push me because I know that like if I'm going to be trying to compete at that level, I got to try and find people who are close to or at that level and improve with them.

Yeah. They talk differently and have different ideas too when they come from different schools. Right. Yeah, they talk differently and have different ideas too when they come from different schools, right? Yeah. And they also, they might have pretty high goals too. And you might think, shit, that guy's talking about like winning, that guy wants to be, you know, a champion too. And I feel like, you know, I rolled with him

and I feel like I'm maybe on par with him or better than him. Maybe that's possible for me too. It puts stuff in your head where you're like, oh, shit. Or you think maybe I'm not as far away from that as I thought. I think I'm kind of close. Or you'll get encouragement or sometimes you'll get shit to work on. People will say, hey, man, if you really want to pursue this, you're a little bit off in terms of these you know three or four things i think you should really work on them you're not in good enough shape

because when you get to the top level these guys can really go or whatever it might be but now you at least have a game plan yeah i'm lucky map absolutely i'm lucky in that sense that like that school is it's only what two and a half hours away right um because like we were able to train together in the gi and i was able to see okay like like first off the intensity that he brought initially i was like huh people don't roll like this right like at the schools i've gone to no one has brought this type of intensity so then as we rolled more and more i was like okay i can add more in i can i can push this i can push this and i started to push we were able to go back and forth. I'm like, okay, so I'm not far off. Like it, it, it, it kind of, I guess, rolling with him and going to continue to roll over there with him and other guys there. Um, first off, I'm going to be able

to improve at a faster rate because I'm around stronger people. Um, but also right now that gave me a huge confidence boost because I didn't get wrecked. Like, I didn't get wrecked. You know what I mean? That means I'm close to where I'm looking to try to be. I'm sure there's also other things to think about, too, as people kind of climb the ladder in that field. How do you get good, intense training? You know, how much good, intense training can you have? How much good intense training can you have?

Could we do this every day? Or is that like, am I going to just be way too demolished because the intensity is high? Or those guys probably know a lot of those things. They'll probably say, hey, Monday and Friday, we're going to fucking go at it pretty good. But we got a couple other days we're just working on you know the techniques and stuff like that you know one thing i think is like you know how you heard like john jones has talked about like oh yeah he'd watch things and then like he said download download people's information i really think that like we can all do that because like you you've uh i think joe dispensa and there's a bunch of people who've like done that free throw research where there's like a group of people who visualize free throws people

who are practicing free throws every day and a group of people who like i don't know there was another thing but the people who were visualizing free throws did just almost as good as the people who were continuously physically practicing free throws and like i watch i watch so much jujitsu and I've noticed that like I can watch certain things and then I can go do them. But it's not because I have some super talents go watch and do. I think it's just because like, I think most people can look at something and then if they try to do it, you can figure out what your body's lacking. Right. And that's why we talk so much about like trying to have no bodily restriction, right? No bodily restriction and then having strength. Because if you think about this, if your body isn't restricted in any way, really, like if you can get into a bunch of different

positions and your body's strong there, then what can your body not do? Your body is only limited by what your mind can think it can do at that point. It's not limited by any type of physical restriction. So if you watch somebody do something, there should be no reason that you can't do some form of it if you have minimal bodily restriction, which is why we talk about this so much. And that's what I noticed. Like by minimizing restriction in my body, I can duplicate the things that I see. Even when you were a white belt, you were able to duplicate stuff? No, because I didn't have the knowledge. like i could i could i could drill things and start to understand them but when you get to a certain point where you understand jujitsu like you understand the foundational concepts and your body feels

good because you pretty much don't have much restriction anymore there shouldn't be anything that you can't see drill and, and do to an extent. You can do some version of it. We talked about that all the time here. But people talk about kids being able to do that. But then you see some of these athletes who are like, oh, yeah, I do that all the time. But I don't think these athletes are anomalies. I just think that these athletes, again, we talk about this all the time.

I just don't think that they've lost that mindset that they can do that. And most people have lost the mindset that they can do that remember uh american idol yeah those people didn't have a lot of uh inhibition and restriction holding them back on on what they thought was good and it's like are they mimicking somebody singing are they mimicking a song hey man they're still fucking doing it they're still doing it And you're sitting over there in the corner with your arms folded, not participating. So you're criticizing William Hung or whoever that has a funny song.

But again, they're actually doing it. They are mimicking something they heard and that's their own version of it. And so I think it's hard to, it's hard to get yourself out of your own way sometimes to be able to do something that someone's showing you. But I think there's a couple of things going on. I think number one, I think a lot of times people get overcoached. Number two, I think people want to be overcoached so they keep looking at their coach and they keep asking questions. I remember seeing-

Because they think too much. Yeah. Thinking way too much. Gotta think less. I've had people deadlift and then they'll come to the top of the deadlift and they'll look at me. I'm off to the side watching them from the side. And I'm like, first of all, don't turn your neck that way while you're deadlifting. Probably not a great idea. But don't really worry about what you like. Don't worry about my critique or criticism. Like just move the weight.

You're not going to learn it today anyway. Like it's a complex movement to do at 2.5 speed or with any sort of like weight on the bar. at 2.5 speed or with any sort of like weight on the bar. So it's not going to, you know, what we're working on today is not going to actually happen today. We're going to make a little bit of progress, a little bit of inroad towards what you want to do. But there's actually,

it's like a kind of impossible for you to actually learn it today. And I was telling you guys about that book, like the inner game of tennis, where the guy talks about coaching people and how he learned just basically shut the fuck up when he's coaching people and allow them to do stuff and allow them to really feel. So when you're going through exercises and when you're trying to do particular movements, it's a really good idea to like try to go inside and learn what it is you're feeling. You know, when you go for that arm bar or when you go for a run and you're trying to remember what someone shared with you about a particular way of running or a particular thing to do, then start to feel what's inside your body and the movement pattern. And then you might be like, I think that's what they're talking about.

I think I'm – shit, I think I'm there. Like what is that? What am I feeling? Is my toe going inwards? Is my heel going outwards? Is my arm – if I'm running, is my arm coming across my body or is it going straight? Am I bringing my arm back? Is my chest up? Is my chest down? What was that feeling?

You know, it's sometimes difficult to identify, especially in something like golf or if you ever hit a baseball. If you ever smashed a baseball pretty good, you're like, if you're not great at baseball, you're like, wait, wait, wait, what did I, what did I, what happened? That thing just sailed pretty good and I don't feel like I did much. But you're like, man, that, wait, what did I, what did I, what happened? That thing just sailed pretty good. And I don't feel like I did much, but you're, you're like, man, that was, can I mimic that again? And if you're, if you're good, you can mimic it a bunch of times, but if you're new, you're not sure exactly what happened, but try to keep playing it in your head over and over again about how it's supposed to feel. What is this? And then when that, when you get that feeling in, that's like real learning and that's really powerful. And you might even feel an emotion connected to it.

When you start to get stuff like that, you might get goosebumps. You might be emotional. Like for me, it gets me like fired up. I'm like, I think I discovered something new. And I feel like I got to go tell a bunch of people about it. I'm all pumped up and fired up. So that's been some of my experience with that yeah for me it definitely changed this year but with all the shit that we've learned this year i don't think you guys changed at all but it was your diet right you guys are still meat-based you're still fairly low carb for the most part uh one or two definitely not but like but i'm saying in general like for me i went from very high carb low fat to two meals a day with a lot of fat, you know, and that was just through like self-discovery.

But yeah, you guys haven't wavered off that at all for the, I mean, for the past five years. But something I've noticed with diet, you know, especially since I've been running so much, you know, that just, it just doesn't fucking matter at a certain point. You know, it's like I can just relax and eat a fucking sandwich here and there or eat some pizza. Just I need to be careful that like fat Mark doesn't take over and I, you know, run the Boston Marathon weighing 260. It'd be fun to see. Yeah. Yeah, we'll figure that out at some other time. And then at the finish line, you just squat like 800 pounds.

That would be. You know, it would be hard to do much of anything after a big run like that yeah it's like it's like you have to bang your wife when you get right when you get done with this race it's like i that's gonna be tough man let me let me fuel up for a while yeah that would be i know but no but imagine all like your legs are probably gonna be really swollen. So all that blood flow and then just throw on some knee wraps. Use the cock ring.

Use the cock ring, knee wraps. Erection. A squat suit. You'd probably be able to, I don't know, squat your body weight pretty easily. I think so. But what I have noticed, though, is having a little bit of freedom in the diet, it's a little bit of a trap, too, because I've mentioned this many times before. When you take up room and take up real estate in your stomach, you're kind of doing a double negative. You ate the sandwich or you ate some chips or whatever the fuck it is you ate. You took up some room for more valuable food that can go more towards your goal.

And that was going to be kind of a double positive go more towards your goal. And that was going to be kind of a double positive. It was going to be something that was going to be filling. It's going to be something that's satiating, satisfying, giving you the nutrients that you need. Instead, you replaced it with something that is probably not all that nutrient dense. It might have a decent amount of calories associated with it. It probably won't really fill you up that much. And it will also probably make you hungrier for more bullshit later on. So that's how people get into these like snacky patterns and they get into these patterns of like really not having good meals. And just a really simple

thing for people to do from a nutritional standpoint is when you're hungry, eat like 30 or 40 grams of protein. Every time that you get yourself hungry, eat 30 or 40 grams of protein every time that you get you get yourself hungry eat 30 or 40 grams of protein that will that should slow you down and and uh enough in your tracks to where it's difficult for you to go outside of that too much did you guys watch any of the videos uh did you actually i know andrew watched the videos i sent you guys in the group chat about the show limitless but did you watch any of the videos i said i didn't have a chance to see that no did you see the one I showed about the Ethiopian fasting people?

I don't think you sent that one. I sent you guys a video because there's this show with Chris Hemsworth called Limitless. Oh, yeah, I've seen the show. You've seen the show. Did you see the episode on fasting? Okay, did you see when those that 76-year-old Ethiopian man fasted for four days with prayer with his family and walked for four days

to this group and they all prayed? They like walked to a church and stuff like that yeah yeah just part of their lifestyle i sent you guys i sent you a video and i was like look at this old man fasting for four days jay feldman's a pussy jay feldman's not a pussy okay i said that to the boys as a joke but but a little bit behind the scenes look right there a little behind the scenes man i just like god damn i think people are just too attached to eating so often sometimes and i get it i get you know you gotta feel yourself i think some of those people might be like you guys fast and you got access to all that food they're they might think that too but some of those actually those people aren't necessarily starving.

It's not like they're in a place where they don't have access to food. They have access to food, but like I said, my grandmother, a lot of my family has fasted for religious reasons. It's just a practice. It's not a stressful thing. It's just what you do. But here, we look at it as like oh you're losing energy you're causing stress you're you're stressing yourself out it's like gross I'm nuts yeah it doesn't have to be so stressful like joking but it doesn't need to

be so stressful I'll just I don't know when when we were when I was watching that I'm just like god this is so normal in so many other places well the world. Well, and I think that same guy, he like hunted and like killed like a fox or a rabbit or something, right? That was the Maasai. Bow and arrow? Yeah, yeah. He was, yeah, that was some of those Maasai people. He was talking about how like, you know, because of the increased stress, you're a little bit focused and it's beneficial for hunting. But that show Limitless, I think was pretty cool to watch some of it because I haven't finished the whole thing because it's just like we've been doing all this shit

we've been focusing on breathing we've been doing cold we've been doing straight like we've been doing all this shit and everybody that's been listening has probably been doing some of the same shit too so everyone's ahead of the game have you guys seen that I think he maybe Scottish or Irish guy

talking about cold plunging he was talking about cold plunging. He was talking about it for, to help with, he was, he was suicidal and he was like, I know cold is like, people don't like it,

but this really changed my life. He's got like video after video of him. Just he's like super fired up. He's like right in front of the camera and he's kind of like just yelling. But I think, you know, we talk about some of these things and I think sometimes people think that they are, I don't know, some of these things are hard to incorporate into your life or whatever it might be, but they can really change your life a lot. Even something like myofascial release, there's a lot of people in a lot of pain. And I believe that myofascial release is a,

it's not going to solve every problem out there, but it will solve a lot of them. It will solve a lot of problems for a lot of people. And so I'd love to see more people just kind of poke around and try some of these things. And as you try them, I mean, I can think of 10 people that I know personally that would benefit a ton from cold therapy. Absolutely.

It would fucking change, it would change their life if they could commit benefit a ton from cold therapy. Absolutely. It would fucking change, it would change their life if they could commit just a little bit to it. And but at the same time, they're not going to, like, I know that they, I know that they just won't, they won't embrace it. I don't even know if they'll try it. It's uncomfortable. It's very uncomfortable, you know? And it's natural to not want to do things that you don't find comfortable or that you can. I think there's a lot of reasons that you can create not to get into something cold. I'm not even talking about getting a cold plunge, peeps. I'm just talking about taking a cold shower. There's a lot of things you can tell yourself not to and reasons you can tell yourself why you shouldn't. But that's why we just, we're about trying to do things that you do find a little bit uncomfortable and you don't enjoy immediately because we do know that on the other side of that is going to be growth on the other side of that's going to be growth i think one thing we talked about it had been this podcast but 2022 was also kind of like the year of the feet for us like real talk i was uh i was taking a video down on my feet because

i'm just like god they've never been so veiny and thick and muscular and tension-y. Like, even the tendons are all rippling and shit. So veiny. My feet are, like, that has been the biggest change on my body this year. I can picture the guy across from you in jiu-jitsu, like, doing this to his eyes, seeing your feet. And then he just tells the ref, like, no, no, no, I'm out. He taps before he even fights. He sees the veins in your feet. You're just, like, you're watching from the stands at the top.

And then his opponent is just like yelling, looking at the ref, pointing at his feet like, that ain't legal. Like just trying to make up some excuse to like fucking cancel. Violent feet. But dude, you know what's been pretty cool? I think we've all turned into grams this year in a way. Because now I've found that I've noticed it from you two also. Like you two will observe people's feet people that come in when they take off their shoes we all now just look

at their feet see what you're packing so weird what you're packing down there nose up in the air not listening to anything this person has to say they don't know anything about their feet their feet are so their toes are so close together like. They're probably a mess. Well, I want to ask you guys first. What changes have you guys noticed with the way you move, with the way you do things because of your feet? Or has it been hype for you both? So with this little ball that I'm digging into my foot from the Nibosu thing, the Nibosu ball, I recommend everybody go and get it. It's amazing. It's a blue ball with spikes on amazon

you can get it nero ball on amazon narrow ball you have to kind of like kick the thing open somehow because it's like it isn't possible not easy to separate so you got to stick your heels on it and then you end up with a dome type shape that you can press uh your feet into a bunch and there's a lot of different shit you can do on it. And then it has a tiny little black ball, which is hard and does all kinds of crazy stuff to your feet. I have a friend and her foot is bothering her a lot when she's running. Her pinky toe on the side, on the foot that hurts,

her pinky toe is very like retracted. It's like just kind of like, it's like chilling back in like the socket almost. Almost like it got jammed in there, you know? And I'm kind of looking at her feet and her pinky toe on the other side is very kind of normal looking. This other one's jammed up.

So I was like, let's have you, you know, roll your feet out, you know? I was like, try this ball, you know? So he takes the ball, she's rolling on her feet, not noticing anything. I'm like, you feel anything in there that feels, you know, like kind of hurts, but halfway feels good too, you know? And she's like, no. She tries the other foot, doesn't feel much. Then we try to dome with the ball in half. She doesn't feel much with that. Then we get the black ball and she's kind of rubbing the black ball. She's standing on it. She's rubbing it on the bottom of her foot. And she's kind of rubbing the black ball. She's standing on it.

She's rubbing it on the bottom of her foot. And then she starts to feel it. And her pinky toe, where it's shortened, the pinky toe is sticking outward and the pinky toe is like moving. Whoa. And she's like, I don't think my pinky toe like ever moves. So, again, your little control centers for these, you know, for the tendons and ligaments and some of the stuff in the feet. They're in other spots. You know, they're not, they're not maybe where they, where you think they might be, but she's rolling on the spot and she's like, holy shit. She's like, I didn't really realize that my foot hurts right there. She kept pointing to the top of her foot. She's like, as my pains in the top of my foot. And I was like, I guess that's possible. Like could be like a

tendon or something, but I probably on the bottom of your foot. It probably has something to do with your shoes. And I've told her about her shoes like eight months ago. I'm like, you need better shoes. Your feet need to move around better. So as her pinky toe is moving around like that, I'm like, does your toe, do you think it has the ability to move around like that when you're in your shoe? She's like, no way. She's like, like because my she showed me her shoes and they're they're too closed off at the end to allow that foot to move at all so the stuff that we have been messing with with our feet has been amazing it's been really transformative and for me mashing and smashing the feet has been huge i um i probably use a cold plunge like two or three times a day. Cause like the amount of running that I'm doing, my right foot is taking a little bit

more abuse than the left. And so I will mash on the ball a lot. I'll use the, uh, cold plunge a lot. Um, and it's been, it's been awesome, but I have to like, kind of like pay attention to my feet probably more so than I've ever had to before. So even at home, I have to kind of put slippers on here and there because like I don't I don't want my feet going through a bunchressed i would say via the toe spacers and via the cold therapy um that fucking roller thing is helping a lot because it gets into the uh whatever the fuck those things are called on the side of your legs your

perineals or whatever the fuck they're called uh the calves the shins um rolling all that stuff out has been really uh it's been really beneficial and you know getting the right shoes and all that shit has been really helpful yeah yeah for me it's uh first and foremost just the awareness you know i've i never paid attention to my feet i never paid attention to my shoes um i would feel my feet hurting at the end of whether it be a like a photo shoot or a flight or something a long day of walking at the mall just a long day of walking at the mall and they would just be like oh like they're just tired like tired feet that's that's totally normal

but like i mentioned before um walking on those uh yellow like bumpy patches on the sidewalks and stuff yeah um especially like right in front of walmart they have like a long strip with shoes those that walking on that used to hurt like i used to actually feel that and be like now i can walk on that thing barefoot if i wanted to if it wasn't uh gross but um the so the awareness like recognizing like oh my feet feel this way for a reason it's not just because feet get tired feet get hurt like i can actually address this and i can fix the the toe splay and you know kind of get some strength back in there yeah but uh the the overall strength of my feet and the fact

that they're they're not just things at the bottom of my feet that hurt all the time because one that's not normal and you know two they were just extremely weak so i couldn't walk in my kitchen without being like ow ow ow like you know this floor is hard i have to go find some slippers yeah like that's crazy to me now dumb yeah it's so insane but like i'm pretty sure there's other people that feel that way where there's like oh i want the the memory foam slippers because they're super squishy and comfortable uh-huh i was that person too that'd be just look for the thickest pad that i can you know walk on and now it's like nice and soft yeah my feet feel good yeah and i was like but the the memory foam like it did shit i couldn't remember anything you know it's terrible for my memory so it didn't work out that way but my feet are getting stronger and

then uh a lot of the stuff that we've been doing has definitely led to an awesome introductory to jiu-jitsu. Because if I had the same weak feet, oh, man, it'd be such a hard transition. Now, the tops of my feet have gotten wrecked because of mat burn, which was like the grossest thing ever. My feet the first day of jiu-jitsu they were so bad but the bottoms and my toes and everything have been in good shape because of all the stuff we've been working on here's another thing that's happened like when i've been running every once in a while my i'll just step into like a hole or something and my ankle will go like it's fucking crazy and i'm like that shit would have taken me out before.

But my feet and my ankles and my calves are, like, more resilient. They're a little bit more mobile. So that's not an issue. And then also I've told you guys I'll do some stuff for my feet before I go to bed. And even by my pillow, I know this sounds silly, but I've mentioned this a million times before. By my bed, I have a pillow. pillow i know this sounds silly but i mentioned this a million times before by my bed i have a pillow and when i get up to use the bathroom i actually step on the pillow a couple times before i walk because it gets my it's like a cat it's like you know a cat that's like kind of

circling digging and going to the bathroom but it allows me to walk a lot easier when i when i go to use the restroom just because like my weight is dispersed on my feet again. And I, I feel okay to, to walk, but, uh, rolling the feet out at night has been huge for me being able to like walk a lot better in the morning. And I never even realized that like my, it was mainly in my ankles. I thought it was like, I don't know, my back being tight, my body being tight. It was all on my fucking feet yeah yeah no i felt the ankle stuff from waking up um but andrew from what you're saying man i think like because you just started jujitsu this year all the things that you did like you mentioned it kind of helped you prepare for it i think that's like anybody who's been doing some of this stuff

with you and with us that has now wanted to start jujitsu it's like it's a great time it is a great time to start because like your feet are going to be able to better handle all the barefoot stuff that you're going to be doing. If you've been following along with a lot of the range of motion and mobility stuff that we've been doing too, your body's maybe a little bit loose, a little bit more limber. So now if you start, there's less hurdles for you to get over. Because I mean, like one thing, a big thing that I've realized is like now that my feet are stronger they're doing more like i not like i had a crazy amount of pain but everything my knees

my back all these things feel even better because everything from the bottom is just moving better you know what i mean and so many people are now fixing that base it will allow everything else that you're trying to do upstream to progress a little bit faster it's not hype i always see those comments of people saying oh this whole foot thing is hype and then some fucking coaches on instagram saying the feet aren't that big of a deal i'm just like honestly to the coaches i'm gonna give you a little fuck you just a small fuck you in love it's a love it's a it's a fuck you but i love you um and that's the people are saying it's hype stay doing your shit keep keep keep doing your same shit it's okay we'll keep we'll keep moving forward it's okay you can uh it's okay it is okay you can stay where you are move backwards if you

feel like it uh stay stupid it is it is your priority good for you we'd have so many more downloads if you just always spoke that way should i speak like this my friend yeah uh okay i'll do stay stupid it is your prerogative good for you we'd have so many more downloads if you just always spoke that way should I speak like this my friend yeah okay I'll do this for you I don't know why it's just it works

but I'll use the car analogy like always you can build the dopest car with the sickest engine but if you're driving around on flat tires you ain't gonna be able to do shit with it

very good so weak feet are like flat tires have fun fun with that i think i feel like what i'm gonna do is so that it sounds nicer i'm just gonna diss people in an african accent then they can't get mad well he's not from this country he's not from this country but he's also like an engineer in something very very smart that he's been going to school for since he was like what like eight i'm a doctor a doctor of the art from the university of the united states yeah of america i'll watch that yeah oh man what's up my uh brother was brother was showing him some stuff in the gym. And I think it's really easy to get caught in the patterns of utilizing the movements, the techniques, the things you're familiar with to keep you being the person that you've always been or to try to make you more of that person. But I would like to challenge people to be more like work on. You could still work on that because that feels comfortable and that feels good work on something to become completely slightly or at least slightly

different than what you've been before so maybe you are working on exercises in the gym that are unconventional or maybe now you're actually power lifting because maybe you've done a lot of single leg and single arm and kettlebell stuff and you've done a lot of single leg and single arm and kettlebell stuff. And you've done a lot of like stuff that'd be labeled like foo-foo stuff. And now you want to actually, you know, lift barbells and things like that. Just you never tried any bodybuilding. Like fucking throw some of that in the mix. And, you know, be willing to explore some of this stuff.

As I was showing my brother some things he's like man even just trying this movement it was just like um it's just like a really small step up I was having him do on the weck deck and um he's like this kind of hurts my feet and I'm like well what have you been doing for your feet and he hasn't been doing anything for his feet so I was like I need to get you one of those neibosu balls. He has some other stuff that he could use too. But that's what you'll find a lot of times with people. When you dig into them a little bit and say, what are you?

Okay, that's interesting. Your knee hurts really bad. Did you try any myofascial release on the shin? Some people don't know anything about it, right? So that's one thing. But if you know about it and you're not doing anything, I'd love to encourage you to start. Did you hurt your lower leg? You have access to a voodoo floss band. Can you figure out a way to get your feet up on a wall for five minutes a day like what are you doing for the injury or the problem that you have they're usually solvable it could

start with you know listening to a podcast it could start with uh listening to some shit on youtube do some searches you have a injury to your elbow look shit up you'll find stuff you'd be like oh maybe I have tendonitis. Maybe I got that. Well, let me look up a bunch of shit on tendonitis. Start to become an expert in some of these areas. Why not? You don't need to go to the doctor necessarily. Sometimes, I mean, sometimes you've fucked yourself up and you might need to, but a lot of the times you're going to be able to solve your own problem. You'll be able to solve your own problem way better a lot of times than the doctor is going to be when it's just the surface area, gym training, small issues that

you might have, not like real serious medical issues. Yeah. Another thing that I think's like been, and I think all of this stuff has been somewhat of a practice for us for years anyway, but I think this year, at least for this year, for me, more than anything, this has become even more of a practice because at home I have a slant board like in the corner that I can just literally go and sit in a squat on so I can get some deep knee bending while just chilling in the living room with the dogs and my girl. You do that a lot when you're on your laptop here at the gym. And a lot of times you'll open up the back door and get the sunlight in when the sun's

out. Yeah. And if I'm working, I'll put my foot up on a box like kador showed and i'll just like get this deep hip flexion the balls breathe a bit yeah the balls breathe a bit but like like now more than ever even the this this little nero ball again you guys can get the nero ball on amazon for 25 30 bucks it's cheap um but like this is causing all of us to just smash our feet more. Like we, if you guys go back and watch all of our podcasts this year, everyone's fidgeting, we're fidgeting more and we're, we're not trying to burn more calories, but naturally what's happening is we're burning more calories because we're doing all these little movements. All of this has become literally we're micro dosing all the time. It's almost like we're getting an exercise or working out all the time, and we're not even trying to do it. So this is something that everybody can do. We're not even trying to be big.

We just happen to be over 230. We're not even trying. But I think it's so sick because, like, Steven Pressfield talked about the practice. Bill Maeda, when he came on, he's like, it's a practice. It's just like this has just become a part of our lives and it's all the stuff we do anyone can implement that into their lives too and it can become a part of their life soup with without intruding on other things that you may like to do I like found something in my foot when we were talking with Steven Pressfield and then like he looked at me he stopped talking and I was like didn't have anything to say and I

and luckily I think you said something I looked over at he stopped talking, and I was like, didn't have anything to say. And luckily, I think you said something. I looked over at you and you said something. I was like, whew. I found this little thing in my foot and I was like, oh, that feels so good. Dig right there. And I'm like, what did he just say? I don't know what I wanted to ask him. Like I'm back in school again.

Like not paying attention. Yeah. Yeah. Take us on out of here, attention. Yeah. Yeah. Man. Take us on out of here, Andrew. All righty. Thank you, everybody, for checking out today's episode. Make sure you stick around for Smelly's tip before we get out of here.

It's the end of 2022 by the time this comes out. January 1st. It'll be the first-ish. Yeah, it'll be the first because New Year's Day is the 30th, so it'll be the second. Yeah, it'll be the second. So anyway, thank you, you everybody for another incredible year uh a lot of shits happened this year that i never ever would have uh guessed so really appreciate all of you uh so if you guys can please drop some comments down below let us know what you guys think about the stuff that we covered today and then maybe something else that you guys learned on the podcast uh this year we'd love to hear that and

maybe we can uh kind of revisit that stuff again this year, next year. Whatever year it is when you're currently listening to it, that's the year that I'm talking about. Yeah, and make sure you guys subscribe if you guys are not subscribed already. And follow the podcast at MBPowerProject on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. My Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter is at IamAndrewZ. And Seema, where are you at? Power Sandals still there. We have some pairs left.

So if you haven't gotten yours, get it because people are digging it. And if you have your parasendal, post that shit up. Let's see what you're looking like when you're wearing them in the gym or out on a run or whatever. I don't see any on YouTube. I don't see me yin-yang on TikTok and Twitter, Mark. People are asking me quite a bit about how to start running and kind of how to start anything. It's like you got to just kind of start doing it. But my main suggestion is to walk and is to just jog very, very lightly. Get your body used to

your own body weight. Your own body weight is ending up on one foot. And I prefer if you can find some stairs or some hills to just, you can walk the stairs kind of aggressively, kind of fast, rather than like trying to really run them or to even jog them. Just do them slowly. Work on that head over foot. It happens very naturally, especially when you're going up a hill or when you're going upstairs. And if you're going to work on jogging, I would suggest that you jog for about 30 seconds and then walk for about a minute, jog 30 seconds and walk about a minute. And if that seems too difficult, um, jog for 15 seconds and walk for a minute and a half, like whatever way you got to figure it out, maybe do five or six sets of that five or six minutes. Uh, you got maybe five or six minutes of total kind of work time.

And then over time, you know, progress yourself from there. But start way, way easier than you think that you need to. That way you can increase the intensity as you do it over time. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.