Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 105 - Bodybuilding Show Wrap Up

Episode Date: August 31, 2018

Mark Bell was given the task to go from fat Powerlifter to Jacked and Tan Bodybuilder and enter his first Bodybuilding Contest. Not only was Mark able to make the transformation, but he took first place in Masters Bodybuilding Class. Rewatch the live stream: https://youtu.be/h3CPOFeujjs ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

I just took some mind bullet. Uh-oh. Do you know about that? Mm-hmm. I know a thing or two, about a thing or two, about mind bullet. You know, I decided on my way here today, I was listening to a song. It's by a guy named Eminem. Mm-hmm.

Ever heard of him? Yeah. He melts in your mouth but not in your hands. That's a different Eminem. That's the fat guy in you coming out again. Yeah, it's rearing its ugly head again, isn't it? But he had a great statement.

And I say I have to agree with him. He said in the song, these goddamn food stamps don't buy diapers. And I can see the frustration. But it actually made me think about the quote quite a bit. As I was driving down the street, you you know sometimes when you listen to music like this uh you know you hear all the different words and i don't know sometimes just hits you differently at different times for different reasons but it made me think like these goddamn

food stamps don't buy diapers is, is a really funny thing. And it actually is a huge problem with people's mindsets. And here's, here's why I think it's, I think it's problematic. It's because of course, food stamps don't buy you diapers. Diapers are not food.

Right. But the problem is, is that you should be thankful that there's fucking food stamps in the first place to pay for your broke ass right and so rather than like oh man like i wish i wish i could get more with these food stamps or you know this is you know this is all i got you really can't you really can't complain about all that you have. All that you got is all that you got. And you hear people complain about it all the time. They complain about the government.

They complain about the gym that they train at. They complain about their girlfriend. It's like, you don't need to have that fucking girlfriend. You don't. With, and some of these things, you can choose to have them or not have them. You can go to a different gym. You can try a different location. You can try working with a different coach or different trainer. Um, and some of these things that you're just stuck with, um, the summer happens every year. Uh, the winter happens every year

and you hear the same complaints every single time. It's amazing here in Northern California, how many fires there are, right? Right. There's fires and there's droughts every single year that I've lived here. I've lived in Northern California, uh, for probably about 15 years now. And without fail every year, it's a giant ass surprise that there's fires.

There's these out of control fires. It's really dry here. We're going to have a drought. It happens every year. Why is everybody so surprised? Yeah. They get, I mean, obviously it's scary. It is, you know, you can, shit happens.

It's a tragedy when fucking someone's house goes on fire. Right. But exactly. happens like a tragedy when fucking someone's house goes right but exactly like it's uh yeah everyone's just shocked and just so dramatic but it's like well you know it's gonna happen right like yeah i mean this this kind of shit happens damn food stamps don't stop fires exactly and they're not gonna buy any goddamn diapers either. I just, uh, you know, it's, it's, uh, just sometimes frustrating. And I, and I, you know, I'm guilty of all these things too. I complain a lot. I complain a lot more than I would, I would like, uh, to admit, but, you know,

certain areas of my life where I'm stronger, I do a lot less complaining. And so, um, the more that you can kind of internalize and try to make sense and be positive, some of these things, uh, the better off you're going to be, uh, you know, you know, going through this, uh, bodybuilding show and going through a lot of this, you know, staying positive was, uh, a big part of it. and all the way to the point where you got to say stay so positive that you have to kind of lie to yourself each and every day because you don't want to do a lot of the things that you're asked to do now you have to take a step back from that too though and say whose decision was this and uh, let's backtrack a second. What am I actually complaining about?

Let's try to figure that out. Because when you start to break that down, then we start to get into, wow, you're really complaining about nothing. You have the ability to go to the gym three times in one day. Like you have such a cushy ass life to the point where you can, uh, do 90 minutes of cardio a day and, and lift for an hour. Those are all, all the, all the things that you love to do. And you, you get to eat a lot of these foods that are going towards all your goals anyway they're going towards gaining muscle they're going towards losing body fat these are all things that you agreed they're all things i signed up for when i first started

lifting weights when i was 12 they're all things i always wanted so when you take a step back and you look at it and go oh wow like maybe maybe it was just kind of shut up and get through this because this is what I wanted to do. This is like a dream come true. Like even just forget about the actual bodybuilding show and forget about some of the powerlifting accolades and stuff. Just doing it, just going into the gym. That's always been my dream that's always been the thing that's got me most excited was to go to the gym and have improvements happen from one week to the next from one day to the next from one month to the next from one year to the next and to see like oh shit like my arms got bigger oh my god my legs got bigger i can't

believe you know i used to squat 275 now i'm squatting 315 like this is awesome and uh the excitement i had for all that so sometimes when you find yourself in these uh bitchy moods you know try to think of the things uh that you're actually complaining about try to break it down a little bit make some sense of it does it really make sense that you are uh that you're complaining and most of the time it doesn't and most make sense that you are, uh, that you're complaining? And most of the time it doesn't. And most of the time you can kind of talk yourself into more of a positive frame of mind. Yeah. Or if it's the, uh, um, like the frustrations coming from someone else doing something that you, that pissed you off that you're complaining about. I think really putting

yourself in someone else's shoes is huge, in relationships yeah perspective is yeah perspective is critical you know and um if you you know if you went to tell somebody you're excited and you're like uh like andrew benched uh 215 this morning and it and that's a 10 pound pr he benched 205 two three weeks ago and at that time that was like a 10 pound PR. He benched 205 two, three weeks ago. And at that time that was like a 10 or 15 pound PR. He's been on fire on the bench press. And something that everyone should just think about is if Andrew is going to share that information with you, why is he sharing it with you? He's sharing it with you because he's excited about it, which is normal right he did something new he did something different um he's been trying he's been working at this thing and uh it's very clear they got better at it and so therefore he's going

to come and tell you about it why can't people just take the time to say, holy shit, man, that's great. Like you should get energy from that as the person that's hearing the message. When somebody says, Hey,

you're not going to believe what my son did the other day. You know, he scaled this wall at this gymnastics thing. And it was, it was so cool. Why can't the other person, you know, not only be excited for that person, but also you should be able to draw energy't the other person you know not only be excited for that person but also you

should be able to draw energy from the other person being pumped and the other person being excited you should be able to feel that you should be able to kind of pick up on that just like you get driven down with people yeah who are telling you oh man my my my fucking car i gotta take it in again and fucking the job so yeah the brakes went out and i don't have enough money in my account and fucking uber driver dropped me off in the wrong spot like you're just like man like that shit storm you know it hits you like that because that's all you ever see and we all know we all know people like that and we want to try to avoid avoid that as much as we can but on the flip side the the appropriate time to tell somebody uh something that you're excited about is not when they're sharing something they're excited about

you want to hold that for some other time and all you want to do is just give them a fucking pat on the back to say hey you know what that's freaking's great. Good job. I know you've been working really hard at that. That's awesome. Yeah. It's not hard to do. Even if you're not that into it, even if you don't like the person that much, it's still not hard to do.

It's not that much to ask. And it just, what I want people to think about is that when you hurt somebody, you have to really think about it because you're not going to get away with it. You're not going to hurt somebody and get away with it. If you hurt somebody,

it's going to come back on you 10 times worse at some point. So Andrew comes up, says, I benched 215 this morning and I just take a giant shit on him and say, yeah, but you bounced off your chest. Your ass came off the bench. Check out this first place medal.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Well, I did a bodybuilding show and I got first place, right? Like when you, um, you know, when you throw stones at somebody else, you know, if there's, you got to understand that they're going to come back at you and there's just not, it's not worth it. It's just easier. It's easier in the long run to be positive uh now from a standpoint of uh like mental fatigue and just us as human beings yes it's a lot easier to be negative it's easy to be negative it's easy

to be down dumps it's easy to complain and that's why we do it oh man it's too hot in this room oh man i you know i can't believe oh man all we have is the cowboys and redskins game on but i wanted to watch a giant like you're only complaining about all the shit that you don't have those are all very normal things to do and they're all very easy things to do but it's a shitty way to it's a shitty way to live your life you're only focused on the things that you don't have or the things that you uh can't get uh you go to a restaurant and they serve you your favorite thing but they don't have the particular french fries that you want they're not the particular pretzel that you want i love i'm a huge fan of pretzels we'll get to

that in a minute no truffle butter yeah what kind of place is this yeah exactly and and and then you're frustrated over that one thing the whole time well what about uh what about restaurants that you go to that you know take a long time you know that every time you go there it takes a long time you go and for some reason you're expecting a different result, which is the definition of insanity to expect a different result. And, uh, the same fucking thing keeps happening over and over again.

You should understand that the same thing's going to happen. The restaurant that takes a long time is going to always take a long time. You could perhaps try a different approach. You could say, Hey, you know, wifey family members, when we go in, we're going in with a game plan. And when we sit down, we're not just going to order our drinks.

We're going to order our damn food and we're going to be prepped and we're going to tell them everything that we want because this place takes a thousand years. There's things that you can do to kind of safeguard your life against some of these external things that annoy you. You don't have to let them bring you down. Now, I know today we're talking about the bodybuilding show, but a lot of these things are related to each other because it all ends up being responsibility of yourself. It's the person, when you're complaining complaining you really need to stop take a step back figure out exactly what is the problem the problem is you the problem is you're being a bitch and you're complaining about shit that you don't have you're complaining about circumstances that are out of your control they're not even in your hands and so it doesn't actually make

any sense it's not even actually based in any real rational thought. These complaints that you have, they're not warranted. They don't go along with anything. They don't make sense. Sometimes we complain and it actually makes sense because maybe you were expecting somebody to do something and they didn't get it done. Maybe somebody told you that they were going to meet you somewhere and they didn't get it done uh maybe somebody told you that they were going to meet you somewhere and they didn't like there's these things where you're like ah like that's annoying i don't know why that didn't happen but and again you got to go back and you

got to make sure did i do everything that's weird i i told andrew i was going to meet him at this coffee shop andrew always calls or texts or something if he's going to be late or if something happened so you got to kind of backtrack on that and say this is really odd like what happened like maybe he's in traffic or maybe something strange happened right but you can you can foolproof yourself against all these things when it comes to getting in these enormous amounts of training that I did for this show, when it comes to, uh, being highly dedicated on a entire another level, uh, for this bodybuilding show, when it came to the food and it came to all the things that, that it took to get all this done, I could set things up for myself, um, in a really positive way. And I can set things up

to where, um, all I have to do is get up to bat and make sure I'm warmed up. And I just wait for the fastball to come across the plate. And I knocked that bitch out of the park every time, or I can make the scenario 10 times worse and I cannot be prepared. I could not know who's pitching. I cannot know if it's a lefty or a righty. I could not have an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of my opponents, which is just your day. And when you're facing each and every day and you don't know what the fuck's going on you're in a lot of trouble and you know what you should know what's going on because yesterday is probably going to play out the same way as tomorrow every day is similar in some way

uh one of my favorite people to listen to is a guy named Jim Rohn I talk about him all the time R-O-H-N look him up on YouTube you can watch endless hours of Jim Rohn and you can become by starting to listen to him today you can be successful in six months I'm convinced of that this guy is on fire the stuff that he says is out of this world and he's a one of a kind speaker. But Jim Rohn has kind of made some of these statements as well, where he talks about the seasons. You know, these seasons are going to come. There's four seasons every year. The summer comes along. The winter comes along. The fall comes along. The spring comes along. He also talked about how in the 80s, somebody came up to him and they said jim you know you get around the world you meet some of the best people uh in the world you've made some really high level people

and uh we got a question for you he's like okay he's like with all your travels and everything like what do you think the 90s are going to be like and he's like oh he goes yeah i do travel i do run into a lot of people. And, um, he's like the nineties, it'll probably be more of the same. The nineties will probably be a lot like the eighties. The tide is going to go out and it's going to come back in. When you drive through Los Angeles, there's going to be traffic. When you go to certain restaurants and it takes a long time, it'll probably always be, he just kind of pointed out all these things are, they're probably going to be similar. Your day is going to be similar. And so how could you be so stupid to mess up your day?

You know, the reason why a lot of men and women that bodybuild wake up at five o'clock or four o'clock is because you get yourself to a point where you're like, I don't care about time anymore. I need to just take a certain amount of time just to get all my stuff done. Whatever amount of time that means, that's how long it's going to take. How long does it take you to work out? It takes however long it takes. If I'm training chest, it's going to take me however long it takes me to build up my chest. Before I did the show, when I was standing here with Hany, he said I had to build up my upper chest. So the chest needed more work. It needed more attention than normal.

And so therefore, what do I got to do, I got to double down on that, right? How long is it going to take you to do chest? How long is it going to take you to do your workout? I can't tell you. I don't know because I'm going to be here until it's fucking done. However long, however long that might be. I can't tell you how long it's going to take me, but it's going to take me however long is necessary for me to make the progress that I need to make.

Because I'm behind. And only had eight weeks to prep for this stuff. And so there is no question of time. When you talk to Jerry Rice, you talk to LeBron James. LeBron, how long is it going to take you to bring up your three-pointers to where they're like Steph Curry? He's not going to be able to give me an answer. You can just say, well, you might say, Hey, you know what? I don't need to worry about that. I'm a different athlete than him. And I'm not, that's not, that's not where I'm going to put my concern, you know, but he also may say, Hey man, you know what? Steph Curry is, best three-point shooter in the history of the NBA.

It's going to take me however long it's going to take me to even try to make up any kind of ground on him. And that's what champions do. How long is it going to take you to stretch before your workout or before an event or before this? It's going to take me whatever amount of time I got to take to get it done. That's how long it's going to take. whatever amount of time I got to take to get it done. That's how long it's going to take.

Same with the meal prep. If you start to add up all these things that I did in preparation for this show. And again, I want everybody to understand that I'm not sitting here thinking this is some great sacrifice. I have it in perspective of what this was and of what this is to me i i have a full understanding of of of what this show was and and i i understand all these things i'm not i'm not sitting here saying hey hey look at what i did i'm not that's not what this is about i'm giving you guys examples of what it took for me to get into the shape that I got into. So, Hani told me in the beginning, we started with 20 minutes of cardio, and we did three times a week.

You start to add it up, 20, 40, 60. Okay, an hour of cardio. Not a huge deal. We're going to train six days a week. We'll have one lifting day off. I didn't really take that advice. I think I took two days off for the entire prep. I just shotgun right through everything. Cause I felt pretty good every day. Um, so training was actually seven days a week. Lifting was seven days a week. I picked a

different body part every single day. Um, sometimes I'd double up on biceps, triceps, or sometimes I might do back and biceps, but for the most part, it was like back chest quads, hammies, back chest, quads, hammies, repeat is just, you know, with biceps and triceps or whatever thrown in the middle. It was just a on repeat the whole time, but the cardio sessions started to go up and up and up. And they went from being, uh, 20 minutes a pop to being 30 minutes a pop. Now it's 30, 60, 90 minutes a week. Then he was like, okay, uh, we need to start to increase that even more, and you need to do it every day. And so then it became 30 minutes, and then I just started doing 45 minutes, because I was like, well, I want to try to get ahead of what he's talking about.

So while I was in Malibu for a month, I started doing 45-minute training sessions every time I went to the gym. And I coupled that with my trips to Gold's Gym where I was training with Michael Hearn. Something else that happened, you know, kind of along the way, and it's a giant list of things that happened, but I never stopped doing everything else that I do. I never stopped being a dad. I never stopped, I never stopped, you know, being with my wife. I never stopped a lot of these other things that I do. I never stopped slingshot. I never stopped a lot of other correspondence I have for other businesses that I'm messing with and starting. I just kept chugging along. So during this process, we worked on getting every product that we have IPF approval.

We also, during this process, and we're still working through some of the kinks, getting all of our products on Amazon Prime. several new products, including the X-Sleeve, which is sitting right in front of me, which has the grippy inserts on the top and bottom so it's anti-slip. It won't slip, it won't move. And it also has a denim covering, which is the first of its kind. We also created a lot of new apparel. I created an entire new product that has nothing to do with, which is not even just a new product. That's a new company altogether. Um, I interviewed Hap Thor Bjornsson. I interviewed Michael Hearn. Uh, I interviewed, um, Stone Cold Steve Austin. And some of these people I interviewed for our podcast and some of these people I interviewed for our movie that we're working on

a nutrition movie that's gonna change the world in my opinion when you guys see this you're not gonna really uh even believe the impact that it's gonna have I can't wait you know it's gonna be a long time before that comes out but we're working we're working our asses off on that too so I never stopped anything so what did that mean? That meant I got to wake up at 3 45 AM and I got to get my ass, uh, cooking some food or eating what I prepped the night before. A lot of supplementation went on during this time period, because when you do bodybuilding, the foods that you eat are not nutrient dense, which, you know, if I had more time to diet down, I probably would have had more nutrient dense foods, but I didn't have

the time to really pour into it. Um, I didn't have not the time, but the, I didn't have 12 weeks or 16 weeks. I had eight and a half weeks or whatever it turned out to be. Anyway, when you're eating egg whites, uh, you're not getting a lot of vitamins and minerals. And so therefore I replaced it with a lot of, um, just supplements, magnesium, zinc, potassium, calcium. Um, you know, you kind of name it and I took it. Um, and on top of it, top of that, I, I used our own slingshot protein, which is a hydrolyzed whey protein. And just a lot of food, a lot of chicken, a lot of rice, a lot of asparagus, a lot of spinach, Brussels sprouts, broccoli. Pretty much anything goes when it came to the vegetable side of things, carrots, kale, uh, things like that. And then when it

came to meat, I mentioned chicken, uh, white fish, halibut, cod, um, yellowtail, huge fan of that. Um, and, uh, salmon, quite a bit of salmon steak for a little while, had a bit of salmon. Steak, for a little while had a rotation of steak, salmon, and chicken, and egg whites. That was just every day, steak, chicken, salmon, and egg whites. An interesting thing that happened, I'll tell you the carbs in a second. An interesting thing that happened in this bodybuilding process, and I already knew about this and stuff too, because I've just been involved and been doing all this shit for such a long time. Um, but the, the meals and the meal timing, uh, there's certain things that start to happen that you, that you no longer accept. So breakfast, lunch, and dinner, at least here in the United States, it actually doesn't make any sense.

It's just based on tradition. There's actually no physiological need to eat pancakes in the morning. Actually, most people don't know this, but there's not really a physiological need for carbohydrates, period. Human beings can live just fine without eating them. And there's going to be trace carbohydrates in a lot of the foods that we eat anyway. But even without that, the human body will make its own sugar through its own process. May not be the healthiest thing, but you don't actually need carbohydrates.

But more importantly, back to this meal timing thing. You don't have to eat a burrito at lunch or a sandwich or soup. That's always a thing. Half a sandwich and a thing of soup for lunch, right? And you don't have to have spaghetti meatballs at dinner or pizza or whatever it might be. You can eat whatever the hell you want whenever you want. You can wake up first thing in the morning and eat salmon. Now, somebody might think that's disgusting, but really, why do you actually think it's disgusting? The reason why you think it's disgusting is not really based in any sort of real truth. It's just what you've been taught

and what you've been trained. And it's, again, it's not a physiological thing. It's just a mental thing of maybe you don't feel like eating salmon when you wake up, but you could eat steak. You could, you can eat eggs. You see people eat eggs all the time, but you can also eat your damn eggs for dinner. You can, you can have breakfast for dinner. You can do, there's all kinds of different combinations of things that you can do. And when you start to get into performance and that's all you care about, that's what you really start to, that's probably the biggest change is that A, there's no snacks. And B, it's regardless of the time, you're just eating because it's time to eat. what uh whoever the hell made up eating pancakes french toasts and uh whatever the hell else um you know people eat for uh for breakfast so a lot of that changed the carbohydrates that i was able

to eat during this prep uh were from rice um some trace from trace carbs from vegetables, but it was mainly rice. Um, potatoes could be any kind of potatoes and, um, uh, oats. So a lot of oatmeal and now that was pretty much it. That was pretty much the, the way the diet, um, broke down. I had 350 grams of protein every day. I had, uh, uh, about 150 grams of carbs. Um, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. Um, and then fats were about 75 grams, uh, to 65 grams a day. And all these things got moved around and altered as I went through. There wasn't a lot of cheats. There were a few here and there. Everybody asks about steroids.

You know, people want to know so much about steroids. A couple of things. Number one is that where I came from training-wise when Hani was here was probably the most under-trained I've been in a long time. And also, um, I didn't really have a goal at that time, which is rare for me. I always have some sort of goal, but I was kind of in between doing certain things and I was messing around with some running. And, uh, I think the running was too stressful. It either messed with my, uh, my lungs or my solar plexus or whatever you want to call it.

And, uh, I don't know, I was just, I was in pain and so I couldn't lift the way I wanted to lift. I kept trying to lift and then I kept having these, uh, setbacks. Uh, at the time too, I was really weak. I just, I didn't have a lot of strength. I didn't have, at that time, I didn't have a, a period of time where I was really looking to get stronger. I didn't have a strength block going on just yet. I was also still coming off of losing a lot of weight. That was the goal. I was trying to lose weight.

I didn't really care about how I lost it. I just wanted to continue to lose weight. At some point, for me anyway, I got kind of skinny fat. Um, but I was still, I was still in good shape. I was still lean, uh, but nothing like you see in some of these pictures that were showing over here and nothing like saw in the, uh, the bodybuilding show, but between the diet and between the cardio and, you know, between the lifting, those three things in combination with the supplementation, keeping myself hydrated, sleeping properly, and performance enhancing drugs. As you guys know, I'm not afraid to talk about those. They're part of it. It was part of it. I made a decision when I was 25 years old to mess with them. And, uh, I never looked

back. I don't feel bad about the decision. Um, it's just, uh, some people choose to do them and some people don't, uh, Arnold Schwarzenegger chose to do them and he had a great career. And, uh, you know, I always saw things like that, and those were the people I was attracted to. I was not attracted to seeing somebody be anything less than what was possible to be. So when I saw professional wrestlers and I saw pro bodybuilders, I was like, wow, this is fascinating. This is really cool. How do these guys get so big and jacked like this? And I always wanted to find out more about it.

So prior to, Hany, when you were, quote, skinny fat for you, which is, that's crazy. I wish I was skinny fat like that. But were you taking anything different than post, like, decision of doing the bodybuilding show? of doing the bodybuilding show? At that time, I just wasn't on hardly anything because I get stuff prescribed by a doctor. And so I take testosterone. And not only was I taking a lot less than what he prescribed, I just kind of stopped taking it all together for a while

because, again, I've been taking stuff stuff for 20, since I was 25, um, on and off, you know, I come off stuff here and there, but I've been taking stuff for a long time. And those of you don't know, there's needles involved,

there's oil involved and the shots hurt and it gets to be annoying. And sometimes you're just like, fuck it. And for me, I didn't compete for a while. So I was like, Oh, there's not really much going on and I don't really care. And so, um, a lot of crazy things happen, you know, when, when you do that, because

you actually become a little bit weaker than you were even before you ever touched anything, because, and this is part of the reason why people don't uh why some people choose to never even do them in the first place is because uh they can potentially make you worse off than you were before you ever took them does that come back though like or do we not know uh if it can yeah i mean it it can i mean you can if you came off them for a while, then yeah, it would. And I've had that happen before too. When I had Quinn, you know, I was off him for about two years and, uh, yeah, my strength started to come back, you know, still able to, still able to squat bench and deadlift pretty heavy. Um, but initially the drop was like,

whoa, you know, it started to go way down because your body weight goes down. And you're also at risk of injury because your body's going through a lot of crazy changes. But then your natural testosterone starts to kick back in and everything's kind of back to normal. But as many people know, powerlifters utilize performance enhancing drugs and bodybuilders do as well. And they usually pick different things. Powerlifters are going to take things that make them big and strong and regardless of whether they're bloated or real big and heavy or not. And maybe a bodybuilder might use some of those similar things, um, in an off season to get really big. Um, there's not a ton of reason to talk about all the different names of them just because

there's so many, but, you know, typically in powerlifting, you'll see people use testosterone, they'll use Deca, they'll use Diana ball. And, uh, for some people people it sounds like i'm just speaking another language and for some of you understanding what i'm saying uh i don't know why these recipes are the way they are but this is what people have done for a long time um and then when it comes to uh bodybuilding you want to take things that don't cause as like in powerlifting, you don't really care if you produce, if you take something that makes you produce estrogen because estrogen will get you bigger as well. In bodybuilding, it's kind of a, it's kind of a problem because

it can make you hold water and it can make you look, it can, you look, you're not going to be as defined. So in bodybuilding, you hear people talk about trend, trend balloon. There's different forms of trend balloon, masteron, there's windstroll. There's all these different things that are like hardening tools. Now, here's where things get out of control. These hardening tools don't do anything for you if you're not doing anything. So that's where I think people are kind of misled.

They just think that you can just take the stuff and you can just kind of close your eyes and that some crazy things are going to start happening to your body. And that's definitely not the case. People that take stuff train really hard and people that don't take stuff train really hard. I've also seen people that are natural that train like shit and don't train hard. And I've also seen people that take stuff and they throw it away.

They're wasting their money because they're not putting their time in. and they throw it away they're wasting their money because they're not they're not putting their time in and so when it comes to that kind of thing i don't know what the literature would show in terms of if steroids do anything to like turn on the psychology of your brain to want to be more successful i don't think that they do um uh it's my understanding they really don't do anything for your central nervous system. So everybody makes a big deal about how much stronger they can make you. And of course they can make you stronger, but they make you stronger normally by just making you bigger. Which, let's get that straight, if you were just bigger anyway, you would be stronger. So you don't necessarily need a steroid to make you stronger, because you could simply just get bigger or simply have hypertrophy to the muscle and you could be stronger.

Now, obviously they speed up that process. You know, if you take steroids, they can add 10 or 15 pounds to your body. They can add 20 pounds to your body. But what do you do after you've already been taking them? You've already been taking them you've already been taking them you already showed your the best you already showed your best hand right you already gained 20 pounds you don't get another 20 pounds you don't get to pull out more steroids and gain another 20 pounds yeah it doesn't really work that way when you and when uh we had branch on the uh the podcast and you know i kind of asked

him like well what do steroids do blah blah and you guys were like oh it's just gonna add 20 to 30 pounds to a person right and i'm thinking well shit let's see i'm one okay so i can be 210 yeah like that would completely change my body it would but you're right after that it's like fuck where do i go from there right kind of willing to find out but you know when you guys you made it sound like you know it's only 20 or you know 20 30 right but for my body type i would be a different person yeah oh no you well it it turns anybody in a different person i mean yeah uh no it makes you it makes you gain it can make you gain uh i shouldn't say make you it can help you gain a lot of weight.

Um, but also it should be noted that this doesn't happen like out of nowhere. Now, sometimes people get like newbie gains when they first hop on stuff. Right. And they might gain 18 pounds and they gain 20 pounds, but that's not really going to be a look that that's going to be kind of a shitty look. You know, like if I was just like, Hey man, let's just fucking get gnarly with it. And let's, you know, let's get you on all this shit. Yeah.

It wouldn't look good. Like people would be like, what, what are you doing? You know, you'd be walking around with imaginary lat syndrome. Like you'd have to, you'd have to say, okay, look, the goal of this cycle is to gain like six pounds. Because if we gain six pounds in, in, in three months, that's still going to look fucking impressive. But if we try to gain 15 or 20 in three months, you're just going to look bloated and you're just going to look like you swallowed a fucking turkey. And your arms will be bigger and you'll have some veins but like you won't really you'll look weird i mean we know people that kind of look like that where you're

like what's up with this dude man why is this guy yeah why is this guy so puffy and sweaty and red all the time so i mean that's it's uh it's still a strategic thing and um you know i i don't know anything else. This is the way I always chose to compete. This is the way a lot of the heroes and people I've looked up to have chose to compete. And so it's all that I know. But people are looking for the magic pill. So here we go.

I'm going to give it to you. I took Masteron. I took Trenbolone. And I took Sustanon to prepare for this bodybuilding show. Are you guys happy now? That's what I took sustenance to prepare for this bodybuilding show. Are you guys happy now? That's what I took. And I took, um, I took a shot every other day and I don't know how much I took because, uh, I'm just not a, I'm not a numbers guy.

So I didn't sit there and like, uh, measure it out every single time that I took the exact amounts of, of a, B or C. every single time that I took the exact amounts of, of A, B, or C. Uh, but I, uh, I mixed enough, but mixed it up enough and took enough stuff to, uh, make it work. Um, I took less stuff than I did in my powerlifting career. When I was powerlifting, uh, I took, I took more stuff, um, in the past. And, you know, I do get asked a lot about steroids. People ask me a lot about, um, you know, they'll say,

oh, you know, I'm 25 and, you know, I want to, want to be bigger. And a lot, you know,

they're basically asking like for permission, you know, they're asking for permission to, you know, Hey, should I, should I give him a shot? And,

um, I, when somebody asked me like in person, I almost always talk people out of it because there's really, um, it's a life decision. It's a life decision. And there's a lot of things that you got to check out first, uh, before you go down that path, who else lives with you? Who else lives in your household?

You know, you still living with mom and dad and, uh, you know, this would be a huge shock that their kid is, uh, taking illegal drugs. Um, probably not a great idea.

Uh, you're going to talk to your wife or girlfriend about it. You know, like, um, I know guys that chose not to, and they, you know,

told their wife they were on creatine, which is not a good, not a good route to go. Um, Andy has known about it since, uh, well, you know told their wife they were on creatine which is not a good not a good route to go um andy has known about it since uh well you know when i met andy i was i wasn't on anything you know so she's been around for the whole process she's been there uh the whole time and you know when i had the decision years and years ago to to do it it. I was like, well, you know, I was like, you know, I'm doing this pro wrestling thing and I'm, uh, you know, I'm working hard and I'm, I'm doing good, but I just, I just need to be bigger at the time. I weighed like 205 and I was like, well, if I was

like two 30 or two 20 and a little bit leaner and stuff, i make the difference i'm looking for and you know then i would maybe be able to be a professional wrestler so i gave it a go i got in really good shape i went from like i every time when it's natural every time i went above like 210 i would get kind of fat it was hard for me to maintain anything uh uh, above that, but I would be sometimes between 215 and 220. But once I started creeping up over that 215 mark, sometimes a 210 mark, depending, um, yeah, I just would start to, uh, you know, um, not look as lean, not look as good. And so I just couldn't at the time, I didn't have enough knowledge. I don't think either to really figure it out. And I think with just more knowledge, I would have been able to figure it out, uh, without ever, uh, messing with stuff. But before I ever took anything, um, I had abs before I ever took anything. Um, you know, I was fast, I was athletic. It was, you know, a lot of things I could do when I was at Westside Barbell before I ever took anything.

I did a 500 pound floor press, which is, you know, a bench press where you're laying on the floor, your elbows touch the ground and you press the weight back up. So it wasn't like, um, it wasn't like I wasn't able to do shit, uh, without it. Um, I was strong and I was, um, you know, still heading in a good direction. I think I pulled 635. Um, and, uh, I did so in a meet, I think I pulled 633 when 198, I actually competed at 198 at one point. Um, but all that was before I ever, before I ever dabbled in anything. um as a side note um the uh the dark side came about when i met uh the first time the dark side came about we call it the dark side i don't know why it's just we that's what we call it it's more powerful yeah it's cool yeah yeah it's more powerful the dark side came about um

uh soon after i'll just leave it at that soon after, uh, meeting our boy, big will. And, uh, you know, that, that was, you know, that was something where it was like, I kind of wanted to do them. And, uh, you know, he and I had some conversations about it and then I kind of just messed around with it back then. And at that time I didn't like it at that time i was like you know what this isn't for me i did it for a little while actually didn't really notice that great of results off of it um i was like i'm just gonna stick to my training and stick to my eating and i'm not really gonna mess around this stuff anymore and so i stopped and then i you know ended up going back to it like maybe a year or two later once Once I got, uh, kind of deeper into pro wrestling is when I started to mess with it more.

And then, um, you know, I, I, I think the pro wrestling thing was kind of like, uh, my way of saying like that I want to do them, but I didn't want to say that I wanted to do them just for lifting purposes. So the wrestling was like a nice excuse, but really I just wanted to do them to, to power lift ultimately. That's what, that's kind of what it came down to. And then the rest is kind of history from there. You know, um, I took them, I did what I did. I pushed things as hard as I could. I always tried to put in the best possible effort that I could. Um, at the end of every single day for this bodybuilding show, uh, I answered the same question I always answered, uh, all throughout my powerlifting career. And that

was, Hey, did you do everything today that you possibly could to be better? I checked everything off the list and felt like I did. And, uh, I had an awesome time doing it. The challenge of the bodybuilding show was was awesome um it was very very difficult and very intrusive and uh and and just it was fucking different you know because it's a 24-hour process uh of uh the nutrition the sleep and trying to get everything in every day and so it could be frustrating at times, but if I was able to sleep, then I was able to set everything else up every single time. So really the sleep was the huge part.

If I wasn't able to get six, seven, eight hours of sleep, the whole day would be pushed back and I'd be super frustrated. Cause I'm like, Oh my God, it's, it's one o'clock. And I only did one workout. be pushed back and i'd be super frustrated because i'm like oh my god it's it's one o'clock and i only did one workout i got two more to do and i got a podcast and i got this and i got that and i'm like shit man i'm gonna be and as you guys saw on hustlemania uh which we posted yesterday um there i was finishing a workout at 10 o'clock after going to uh going to sushi so you know I just again I did what I had to do I feel like I put everything I could into it I don't have any

desire at the moment to do another bodybuilding show so I'm retiring from the sport just win one and call it a day yeah just one yeah yeah going out on top. Yeah. Um, how much, uh, steroid advice did Michael Trent give you? Or is that who gave you the cycle? He, uh, yeah, he provided them for me. Yeah. Um, as far as the training goes, I got a lot of questions about the training too. And people kept asking about like, you know, who designed the training and who, you know, I, I've been training for a long time and I got no problem sitting here telling you that most of the people that you

know are coaches, I can smoke most their asses. I've, I've been doing this for a long time. So I, I don't, I don't feel like I am even cocky saying that I just have coached a lot of people. I've worked with a lot of people. I've seen bodybuilding techniques over the years and I, I know powerlifting really well, obviously. And I just, I've, I did a lot of the arrangement and programming myself. Hani Rambod, uh, helped me with some things and showed me some stuff when it came to the actual, uh, some different movements and stuff. I learned a lot from Michael Hearn. Um, but I learned a lot from just people over the years. Don't forget what the power project is all about and what we're all about here at super training gym.

We're all about rubbing elbows with people that are more knowledgeable than we are and people that are material experts in a lot of different things. And so I've had Jake Cutler, we had Phil Heath. Um, we've had, you know, every top bodybuilder that you can think of. We, we've rubbed elbows with them along with, uh, guys like Brian Shaw, who doesn't lack any muscle mass, staying efforting. Um, list goes on and on of people that we've, uh, communicated with and I'll communicate, communicate with anybody, you know, to try to try to get better.

And, um, that's pretty much that. And the show, the show was fun i i came in third in two different classes uh so a weird thing happened i went to weigh in and uh i was trying to do classic physique which is where you wear these like short uh crossfit girly Oh, that's what that was. I know. I know. This whole thing is very gay. Bodybuilding is very strange. Someone asked if it was a light switch in your banana hammock there.

It looks like a very, very small light switch. Yeah. You know, I don't know what's going on with these banana hammocks, but they were not very roomy. They just kind of like, they're pretty tight. And then honey, like kept hiking mine up and I'm like, I don't know what. Like a wedgie or like a. It was like a front wedgie. Yeah.

It was like a front wedgie. It's like pulling it up in the front. I'm like, that is not a, first of all, it's not a very good look. And secondly, it's not very comfortable, but Hey, you know what? You do what you gotta do. Right. Yeah. I guess.

But, uh, yeah, I mean, it was, um, so I came in, so I went to, I went to weigh in and the guy's like, Oh my God. He's like, you're 30 pounds overweight. And, uh, I was just laughing. I was like, Oh, that's awesome. I was like, I don't know what that means, but did I win? Yeah. I'm like, that's hilarious. And, uh, the guy's like, no, no, I was just laughing. I was like, oh, that's awesome. I was like, I don't know what that means, but did I win? Yeah. I'm like, that's hilarious. And, uh, the guy's like, no, no, it's not hilarious.

You can't compete. And I'm like, well, I think I'm signed up for bodybuilding and stuff too. So I'm like, I can't be too fat for bodybuilding. Am I? Yeah. And he's like, no, no, no. He's like, it's not about being too fat. He's like, you're too heavy.

And I'm like, but okay, but I can bodybuild. Right. And he's like, yeah. And so they were trying to figure it out but i guess for what i signed up for there's like a height and weight requirement for the class um and i was supposed to be for my height i was supposed to be 205 and i weighed in at 235 uh that was another question i got a lot of was yeah you're on stage how much did you weigh on stage and everybody kept saying i was going to be a little bitch on stage. They were saying I was going to weigh like 210 and stuff, but I weighed 230.

I'm a big boy over here. I'm not messing around. You squat 1,000 pounds and your body never wants to lose weight. It's all in the glutes. Yeah. I could probably be dead for 10 years and I'll probably still weigh 230 pounds. Look at that. That's a rump roaster right there.

That was a giant. Yeah. I, you know, all this training, the ass never went anywhere. It just kept getting bigger and bigger. I don't know. I don't know what was going on with that. You could sell so much fit tea. That's right.

Um, and you know, I did these two different categories. And so I finished third in the board short category, I'll call it. And then in the bodybuilding show, I finished second, um, in the overall bodybuilding. And I finished, uh, first in the master's, uh, bodybuilding, but the guy that I got beat by, um, you know, everyone always complained. There was like, ah, the guy wasn't any better. The guy was, the guy was better. I mean, he, he, he looked awesome. I got to give the guy credit.

Uh, he's here local and I hope he comes into the gym. I hope it comes into super training, but was it this guy right here? Yeah. Yeah. He looks awesome. I mean, he's, he's very, very lean, but you can also tell like the guy's been doing the sport for a while. The guy's, if you can see how deeply etched his stomach is,

you can see the refinement of his legs. And I remember when he was just standing there, I saw him when he went up and did his routine by himself. And he looked like a thoroughbred. I mean, he looked fucking awesome. I was like, shit, okay. We didn't see that many other guys like that at the show. There wasn't that many high-level people like that.

And that's part of the reason why Hany had me do the show in the first place. You know, it was because it's a small show. He wanted me to kind of build some confidence. You know, and Hany, I don't know, you know, what his plans are for me. I don't know if he wants me to do another show or, or what he thinks. I'm not going to say that I'll, I would never do another bodybuilding show. I did have a great time with it. Um, and there's definitely more that I can, there's more that I can do with it, but I don't really see the point in doing another show i mean um even if i was to

compete again let's just say the same time next year or even in six months uh let's say i was able to put on five more pounds of muscle and be leaner get some striations in the quads and in the glutes and some different things uh i don't know what difference it would really make for me. Um, you know, I, I don't know. Uh, I, I don't, I don't really see how that would turn into anything more. I mean, the point of this whole thing was to show people that, um, you know, you can make some changes and you can make some changes today and you can make some, if you're willing to work at it you're willing to hunt it down and work your ass off you can become and you can do anything that you want it's just going to take a shit ton of consistency and that's all that this was this was me taking on

some of the information that honey gave me and me just actually going through man, getting it done day in and day out the best possible way that I could. There's, there was nothing, there's nothing more to it than that. It's not, uh, and, and that's one thing I learned about bodybuilding that I really like is that, uh, I can take any, any person that works for us right now currently, and I can take anyone that works for us, male or female, and they can go in the gym and work out with me and they can do the exact same workout that I did. They're going to use different weight. Um, they might not like it. They might not come back the next day because it's hard to do daily.

Yeah. But, um, they can all do it. And that's, that's unique. That. But they can all do it. And that's unique. Yeah. That's unique about this sport, bodybuilding, you know? You're absolutely right. That's what's been fun about me training with you is our strength levels are significantly different, but we're still, I mean, we're killing each other. Yeah.

It's been so much fun. Yeah. It's just really a lot of yelling for each other and trying to figure out how to spot the guy can be confusing because that takes some time to figure out because like the experience showed with that yeah well it takes a long time to understand the more you help the guy that the more it actually fucking hurts him uh which which is what you want because you want the guy to contract as hard as he can. And so if you try to just think about this, if you were just in a seated position and you just tried to flex your chest as hard as you possibly could,

um, you could flex your chest really hard. Now, if you got a little bit of resistance, you could flex your chest that much harder. Yeah. And so that's kind of the point when you're on some of these machines, your training partner is going to grab the handle or grab some of the weight and he is going to intentionally uh you know pull the machine

hard enough so that you can contract harder than normal and you're only getting uh chunks of the weight at different parts of the lift there's a lot of different ways you can do it you can work just the eccentric or you can work just the concept i mean there's just there's a lot of different ways you can do it. You can work just the eccentric or you can work just the concept. I mean, there's just, there's a lot of different things you can do, but basically when you're, when you're bodybuilding, um,

we're trying to handle some sort of intensity. We're trying to get some sort of volume. Remember the intensity is not, you know, you turning up a song, uh, that has a lot of cuss words in it. The intensity has to do with the amount of weight

that's on the bar. So the intensity always matters. It doesn't mean you always have to lift heavy, but intensity is a factor. The time under tension is crucial for hypertrophy as well. Getting a pump is a big part of it because what you're really trying to do too, in terms of

bodybuilding, you're trying to dump a lot of nutrients into these muscle cells. And so if you kind of think about, um, I mean, all, all the different foods that you eat are going to kind of end up showing up in the body that you're building. Right. Um, but the carbohydrates in particular, uh, they're, they're kind of, you know, if you're, let's, if you're, let's say you want to build up your chest. You can specifically train your chest twice a week and surrounding that workout, you could eat carbohydrates and you could strategically bring up the strength and the look of your chest in a really short period of time. That's essentially what I did going through this training cycle. period of time. That's essentially what I did going through this, uh, training cycle. Um, I always had some pecs there, but they weren't really developed, uh, the way that they look now. And a lot of it was just, was through some of the nutrition and through the training,

but I did it every day. And if you trained with us, even just for one day, you would get an idea. It would sink in. You'd go, Ooh, okay, now I get it. Now, now I'm able to kind of see, you know, how some of this works. I don't know, did you see any, just anywhere online, anyone saying that, because I know we joked around about, like, you know, Mark Bell, you're too fat to be a bodybuilder. You don't have the body for it. Did you see any of those, and did you use any of that for fuel during your workouts?

Like, because, I mean, shit, you were grinding like 24-7. You had to have something burning deep down inside you. Yeah, you know, the only thing that I use for when it comes to stuff like that is just I just feel like I haven't done anything yet. You know, I just feel like, you know, the mission, the goal is to make the world a better place to lift the mission and if you watch bigger stronger faster my brother mike in the movie he says i got something inside that i want to share with the whole world and i don't know what it is you know and i i feel like i do know what it is and i feel like it's my mission to to to try to let the world know like the bell brothers got shit to say and we want to really try to make a huge impact on people's lives and we want to try to apply you know we want to try to uh share knowledge with people we want people to learn

learn from us and learn the things that that we have and so when it comes to those kinds of things i can draw upon a lot of motivation when it comes to that because i can look at that and say you know what you haven't done shit yet like you've been you've been working hard you've been doing a lot of things but in the grand scheme of things you haven't done shit yet. You've been working hard. You've been doing a lot of things, but in the grand scheme of things, you haven't done anything yet. When it came to bodybuilding, I can think about all the bodybuilders that came before me, and I can think about all the people that I admired over the years, and I can think to myself, you're not shit compared to some of these people, and you're entering a sport that you know nothing about and what a disservice it would be to all those people that you always

looked up to your whole life to go in there and go half-ass it. You know, I'm a huge Dorian Yates fan back in the day when he did those blood and guts workouts. I had the book, I had the VHS tape. I, I loved all the stuff that came from Mike Menser and his high intensity workouts. I had the book, I had the VHS tape. I, I loved all the stuff that came from Mike Menser and his high intensity workouts. And I have all this knowledge. I know all these things. So why, why would I piss them away? How could I, right? Like, it doesn't make any sense at all. And so I also wanted to show people, not like I wanted us to like stick it to people because, um, I, I've gotten over, I'm, I'm too old for that. I've gotten over that.

You know, I think that, um, I don't have to do that anymore. You know, that's happening to people on a daily basis. Anyway, I don't have to say shit, you know, people, people get the picture. Um, you know, there's been other people from this gym that have tried bodybuilding shows, and it didn't work out so good for them. Put my picture next to their picture. Obviously, I'm not talking about Stan Efferty. He did some pretty good things in bodybuilding.

But I wanted to have something that when I looked back on it, I could say, uh, regardless of what the, what the, regardless of how I actually looked, I put everything into it that I could. Um, I would say there was like two occasions where I ate things that were a little bit, uh, off of what I should have eaten, but there was never a breakdown of meat and like ice cream, you know, an ice cream bar, Snickers bar. Um, towards the end, I learned a lot about myself cause honey, uh, brought in more carbohydrates and things like that. And, uh, that actually made me really hungry and I overate a little bit, but he was encouraging me to, to bring in more carbs cause he wanted me to be big and full

on stage. And, um, I was happy with, I was happy with, I mean, I was happy with everything. I'm happy with the way everything turned out. So, um, but the, just the pure motivation is like, um, you're, you're a fully capable human being of being better every day. I've never actually met anybody, you know, going to seminars, going to all these different events that either I have participated in or have been on the other end of going to seminars and listening to guys like Louie Simmons talk and listening to guys like Dave Tate. Louie Simmons talk and listening to guys like Dave Tate, I've never been to one seminar or one event where I've ever seen somebody that doesn't possess the ability to be successful in life. But yet there's a lot of people, uh, that squandered away. They, they have the tools, but they don't do anything with it. And so I always think that's kind of like the worst thing. that's kind of like the worst thing and uh you know if i if i set out to do a set of like bent over rows or something as silly as it might seem i'm gonna bent over row the best way that i

freaking can i'm gonna try i'm gonna try even if and and it's as simple as maybe like you're not always there you know maybe you're not always in that frame of mind of like i'm gonna kick the fucking shit out of this today maybe you're just not like that's a possibility definitely a possibility you're not always gonna be like on right yeah but can you just work a little harder than you did the day before like i don't i just think i don't think that's too much to ask yeah you had said that there was a couple times, I think two or three times during this whole process where you had an out-of-body experience

where you're just floating around like, where the fuck am I? What was that like? That was really weird. Chris Griffin is our drone handler over here at Slingshot. He loves whipping that fucking drone out and uh he shot a video a while back of me going on like a 10 minute walk uh out by the old gym oh yeah and uh it's like a handheld it's me holding the the phone so you get some of that look and then

he followed me and then he droned it as well so he got like these three different images or three three different angles and uh there was it happened twice but it happened at the very end when i was uh dieting down for the show i think it was a thursday honey had me really depleted i the 75 grams of fat thing I, the 75 grams of fat thing, he took the 75 grams of fat and he just took all the fat away from me. And, uh, my fat probably went from 75 grams to like 30, you know, or maybe even less. I don't know. It's just like trace fats, whatever the fuck is in like yellow tail, whatever's in a halib, which is not much, and whatever is in chicken breast and things like that.

So it was just, it was horrible. But it worked. It got me leaner. I got leaner and leaner and leaner and leaner. And I had a lot of these really intense cardio sessions, which kind of sounds funny. The cardio sessions were, they were 45 minutes a clip. I had to do them twice a day. So I had to do them for 90 minutes, the last 10 to 14 days of getting ready for the show. Um, and I was just depleted. I was just fucking dying.

And I got done with a workout on a Thursday and, uh, let's see, I did my cardio in the morning. I got my normal food in, uh, food started to taste gross, uh, at that point. Like literally I, it was the first time when I was like, wow, okay. I'm, you know, I got four more days of this, but I'm kind of done. Like, I don't want to eat any of this shit anymore. Um, and that's when i switched over to just eating just the yellowtail because it was the only thing i could even stomach for a minute there um but anyway yeah i'm just i'm just uh depleted and kind of defeated in

some ways um i've never in my life have ever felt a lack of motivation i always feel pretty good i always feel pretty up i always feel excited to do things i'm a fairly like even keel person my energy doesn't like run real hot and my energy doesn't run real low um but i always have reserve to go and do like like i could go in the gym right now and go work out for an hour even though we already trained just because like i don't i don't get too upset about stuff i don't get too frazzled i don't get too mad i don't get too sad i'll get too depressed i never i never go too far one way so i i think because of that i always have energy and i always because i always have energy like enough energy supply. I always have like motive. I always feel like doing things,

but in this case, I didn't feel like doing shit. And when I look at that video of that drone, I almost feel like I had an out-of-body experience of watching myself walk down the street. And, uh, it was five 30 in the morning and I'm walking to, my friend tammy's gym in um in davis and uh i'd walk to her gym her gym it probably takes me about 20 minutes to walk to it 15 20 minutes and it's a good walk there and back i figured it's just like extra cardio and uh you know i'd go on and get on the treadmill and stuff like that, or the stair master. And yeah, the, just towards the end, as the show got closer, I just, it was just so hard for me to take like the next step. Like you would think that I was in like Antarctica or something like that with a fucking polar

bear chasing me or something. I mean, I just, I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to like, I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to, like, uh, I didn't want to, uh, I was just like kind of done. And I was like, wow, well, this is really weird. And I'm like, uh, I'm like, are you like, like I'm analyzing, I'm like, are you upset about something? Like I'm having a conversation with myself and I'm like, no inventory. Yeah. I'm like, no, I'm not, I'm not upset. Like inventory yeah i'm like no i'm not i'm not upset like kids are healthy i'm healthy wife's healthy the gym's healthy the business is healthy parents are healthy i'm like no i'm pretty grateful like

things are pretty good but i just did not want to like walk i didn't want to go to the gym and i'm like wow this is this is, uh, this sucks. So that day I, I pushed through that day pretty hard. I, uh, took a bunch of my mind bullet, which, uh, we'll get to that some other point. I'll explain that to you guys some other time, but I took a bunch of Kratom and, uh, Kratom has always kind of helped take the edge off a little bit, help relax me a little bit. And it just kind of lifts my spirits a little bit. And so, you know, later that day I got into the gym, you and I trained together. We had a good session, but that was just like a fully loaded day. I've had meetings. We had a bunch of shit going on. Um, we've been prepping for

all these different events that we have coming up here at super training gym by the way october 6th we have a seminar here at super training gym and it's first come first serve it's only for like 50 people so you guys just heard it first yeah and you're gonna want to you're gonna want to keep checking in and try to find out about it but um you're gonna want to do any and everything you can to be there because we are going to actually put everyone through the ring. We're going to put people through an actual workout and, uh, you guys are going to get to learn firsthand from super training. It's going to be me, Hayden bow, as well as Steph Cohen. And, uh, we're going to show people how to lift and along with all the members of super

training gym. And so we're going to show people how to lift, show you a good time. But yeah, I just had this crazy thing going on that day. It's a busy, busy day. And I sat in and they showed me a bunch of different apparel. As we've been going through some new stuff with apparel. And I had my like post-workout shake. And I was just like, hmm.

I'm like, I'm really cold. And the AC was on. So I was like, maybe it's just the AC. So I put on a hoodie and all this stuff, but then I kind of had a hot, cold thing going on. I'm like, Oh my God, I am. If I'm getting sick, I'm going to blow my fucking brains out. I don't know how I'm going to be able to deal with that. You know?

So I'm like, okay, stop thinking about being sick. Otherwise you're going to get sick. you know so i'm like okay stop thinking about being sick otherwise you're gonna get sick so i drove home and uh was just not not feeling good my stomach was killing me i didn't know what was going on and um turns out you know i just i just hit a wall that was all it was i laid down and my legs were all swollen um it was like it was almost like i got my ass kicked like somebody just fucking came up and beat beat my ass or something my uh my soul felt like it wasn't there i felt like i feel like fucking hollow yeah and uh yeah i did sit around and kind of analyze it i'm like what is this like i i've never i never really felt this way before like even when my brother died it was i wasn't

like oh i'm not gonna do do any. I was never. Yeah. I've never in my life ever felt that way. So I was like, what the fuck is this? And even getting and people that have gotten ready for bodybuilding shows, they've said it before here on the show. But sex drive, wham, gone. Just fucking out the goddamn window. As soon as you start training that much, you do not give a fuck about that shit at all. It is wild.

It is crazy. That is definitely not something that's ever happened to me before, too. But weird little things happen, too. I noticed I kept knocking shit over and fumbling stuff and then having to pick it up again. Then I'd drop it again. My body was just like, dude, this ain't working. You need to switch it up again then i drop it again like my body was just like dude this is this ain't working you need to switch it up so yeah uh i talked to honey i let him know he's like okay he's like we'll add carbs back in tomorrow you'll be all right so laid down i actually put my feet up

to try to help get some of the swelling out of the legs um and the next day I felt a little bit better, ate some carbs and, uh, things started to heal up. Things started to get better, but even the days following the show, um, and it wasn't anything surrounding the actual show. It was just, it was just the overtraining. I went on walks with my wife in Bodega and, you know we had we had an amazing time up there but i told her i was like i was like this sucks because i know that we want to come here and do all these things but i'm like i just do not feel like i just yeah i don't want to walk i'm not in pain and uh there's nothing wrong with me i just i just am letting you know that like this isn't fun for me because I just don't feel like walking.

She's like, oh, that's okay. She's like, no big deal. We'll just walk over here. So we did a short walk. Um,

and then for one of the other walks that we did, we actually drove the car to where we were going to walk more. And, uh, so, you know, the wife's always good with that stuff. She said,

honey, don't worry. You know, who cares? She's like, don't even worry about it. Not a big deal. She's like, we're still going to get to see all the same scenery.

We're still going to the beach. We're still going to have fun. She's like, you know, she does a good job of kind of taking that pressure away from me because I'm always like, I got to do it. I got to do it. Yeah. And she does a good job of kind of pulling that away. And we still end up having a great time still ended up doing all the things that i wanted to do but uh you know now i feel i feel great yeah so it's just a few

days removed from that and my body weight you know on so the lowest i was during this whole thing was 220 and that was after a bunch of cardio so i'm very depleted and a lot of water lost and everything else. And for the most part, the heaviest I would be was around 235. Anytime he gave me carbs, I'd be like 235. But when I came back, I was 250. So I was 230 most of the time. And 226, 228, things like that in the morning. And I went, boom, just spiked just, just right up to, and it, you know, first went to 240 and then 245 and then boom, 250.

So that's kind of where I'm at right now. And, um, I'm not concerned about it. I'm not worried about it at all. I feel really good. I feel strong. I just need to be careful. I don't do anything stupid with handling too heavy a weight yeah it's been a challenge trying to tell you to slow down but it's like oh well um when you were power lifting you had aches and pains and your elbows and just everything was kind of just it hurts uh how was everything during, this whole bodybuilding prep?

You know, I feel amazing. And, uh, I actually, uh, want to do a seminar here at the gym, uh, with just our team. And I want to show everybody some of the stuff that you and I've been doing because, um, you and I talked about this before, all the shoulder works and stuff, things that we've done. Um, it can be very restorative things that we've done um it can be very restorative for people it can it can be a form of restoration and help people heal you know we were working out with emilio today and his elbow uh hurt a lot of times when you power lift and uh you know you get a bench workout and uh the, the bench workout is, uh, six sets of four reps with 85% of your max, and you have an elbow injury, six sets of four reps with

85% of your max. And then the next movement after that is, uh, inclined dumbbell presses go as heavy as you can for four sets of 12. The next exercise after that is a heavy dumbbell tricep extensions. Uh, you know, five sets of five, you know, go, go as heavy as you can, you know, because if you have big, strong triceps, you're going to have a big, strong bench because you're going to be able to lock those benches out. Right. And so a lot of these things, they're not, I don't know. It's, uh, that, that is one way of doing it. And that has worked for a lot of people.

But it also has ended a lot of people's careers early. And in mine prematurely. Like I fucking hate that I wasn't able to do what I wanted to do. And it was mainly just because I would force it. You know, I was like, no, this is the way that has to be done. It has to be done this way. You go through these workouts this way. And you bench you do a b and c and then you you have to smash the shit out of your triceps because that's that's the way it works well now i know

that it doesn't have to really be that way because i feel really fucking strong right now um i'm just gonna say it so that way I can just go do it. But I think that I'll bench over 500 pounds before, let's see. Yeah. I'll bench over 500 pounds before Halloween. So that'll, that'll happen. That'll, that'll, that'll be, that'll be in the books. I, you know, and, and also to like, if I'm, if I'm short of that and I'm not in, in, in, uh, I'm not close to that. I'm not dumb enough to fuck myself up again. So I, I, you know, I won't overreach, but I think that I just feel really strong.

And with what we've been doing and hitting things from so many different angles, um, the incline benching, uh, the shoulder presses, uh, all these different things, um, I think are really, are, are really, uh, helping a lot. So I feel healthier. I feel stronger. I feel better than I ever have. Um, I'm, you know, in the best shape of my life. Um, I think mentally, physically, everything's cooking. I think the one, there's one trap that I need to really just be very careful of. And the one trap is, uh, is just not allowing the things that I'm doing to run me and just me just run through them as things that I'm doing, you know, and not, not allow them to take over.

I can't allow, uh, you know, any one thing that I'm doing to take over and pull away from the things I'm doing with my family and these other things. So that's the only thing. But when I say it's the only thing, it's the largest thing that's on my plate and it's the hardest thing to deal with. I have been doing a little bit better job of uh of saying no to certain things i've been a little bit more grounded i've been trying not to bounce around travel too much uh been trying to keep things more in-house here um and trying to keep things a little less stressful trying to do more things with the team you know we went to the movies the other day. Like just, you know, there's got to be more stuff like that. Just for everybody, you know.

But we as a group and as a team can't ever allow this business to run us. Like we run Slingshot and we dictate how it goes. And that's it. We can't let it, we can let these things uh steer us in these other directions because we it's our job to be creative it's our job to add value to it all the time um rather than just hunkering down and sitting here and working and not um developing the company further yeah uh now do you see yourself doing any more cardio sessions the way you were or maybe not the way you were, but still implementing it?

So for sure. And that'll be hard to like restart. So I was actually thinking like, man, next week I should, but I think that I should be doing those stairs probably, um, uh, like once or twice a week. Um, and maybe,

maybe I should look into something a little different. Maybe I should look into some sprints. Maybe I should actually go run some stairs or go run some hills. Cause I actually really, I really like doing that. I fucking love to sprint Hills. I don't use the dumbest thing. Cause it's like the worst, you know, it fucking kills kills. Yeah. I didn't mind the, uh, the stair. I fucking love to sprint hills. It's the dumbest thing because it's like the worst. You know, it fucking kills you.

It kills, yeah. I didn't mind the stair. I mean, I didn't love it, but I think if you hit me up to do the Stairmaster, like, I'm down. Oh, there you go. It wasn't too bad because, you know, the impact's low. You can focus on, like, something like listening to an audiobook or something. Right. on like something like listening to an audio book or something right which i i i really like that because you can it's hard for me to sit down and spend you know half an hour listening to something

without feeling like a piece of shit for not doing other other things right but if i'm on the stairmaster it's like no it's time to just you know zone out yeah it probably is the you know one of the few times and and music and podcasts and things they is the you know one of the few times and and music and podcasts and things they're probably you know one of the few things you can actually kind of multitask you know if you're truly trying to learn from those things it's like you might need to try to take notes which can be difficult if you're really you know plugging away at your cardio but you know i know andy frisella and my brother and I know a lot of people, they'll get on something, they'll get on a bike, like a stationary bike, or they'll get on a treadmill, and they just move. They don't care what the speed is, they just move.

And then they're answering emails and texting and things like that. Oh, that's hard. Which I think is, um, which I think is okay. Like if that's, you know, if it, if it feels okay to you, then it's fine. But I also think that you need to recognize that that's a little bit different style of workout than, uh, you know, you listening to some upbeat music or somebody motivational and, uh, you kind of like getting after it and like sweating, you know, I, I was kidding around, but I, I think it makes a lot of sense. I mean, you, when you do your like sweating, you know, I, I was kidding around, but I, I think it makes a lot of sense. I mean, you, when you do your cardio sessions, you should be, in my opinion, you should

be like dripping sweat. And I was talking about sweaty shins. That's a good indication. If your legs are like wet and sweaty, it's a good indication that you're, you're pushing hard enough. Um, it takes a while to do that. Like it takes like 20, 30 minutes to even get to that. So you have to be on there for a while, but, uh, for now, for me, I I've been walking and, um, hopefully tonight I get an opportunity to walk with my son and my dad. I haven't done that in a little bit, but now that we're back on that school schedule, um, I think I can start doing that again. So, uh, the things that were great about the bodybuilding show and, uh, there's things, there's, there's things that will, I will probably carry on from that one show.

I'll probably carry it through, through everything I do through the rest of my life. Um, a few things. um a few things number one is there's no there's not a good reason to uh to not do some cardio um year round doesn't mean you have to do a lot but you should do some um as you guys know i've been a huge proponent of the 10 minute walk that'll obviously stay there but i'm talking about just old school steady state body, bodybuilding, cardio. There's absolutely no reason why that can't be a part of everyone's routine. And there's not a reason why it shouldn't be. I mean, it's, it provides a lot of value.

You don't have to do it every day, but it should be in there somewhere. Some of you guys should be doing 20 minutes, 20 minutes, three times a week is, is, is more than enough. And, uh, if you just want to kind of go for the low hanging fruit, do, do it, do it, uh, do it once or twice a week, you know, and if you're somebody that, uh, is, um, you know, just really hates it, put it, put it somewhere that makes the most sense to you. Maybe doing it before your workout will piss you off more because, uh, you want to just get to your weights, but maybe that's the, maybe say, you know what you didn't eat. You don't even earn weights until you do this for 20, 30 minutes. And your cardio session doesn't have to be,

uh, anything too crazy. You can throw some headphones on, get outside, go for a walk. Just make sure you're not walking like a pussy. Like walk, you know, walk with some purpose. Walk like Stone Cold Steve Austin or Vince McMahon when he would walk to the ring. You know, walk with some vigor and walk with a little bit of a step. The other thing I was going to say is the bodybuilding thingbuilding thing, the, uh, eating so many times a day, that was huge. That was, that was a huge lesson for me. So I'm not gonna, you know, uh, just bash on whatever it is that I'm not currently doing, but in my opinion, intermittent fasting, um, it has its place and it can help to kind of burn

off the hunger hormone that a lot of us have and some of those really sharp cravings that a lot of people get when they get heavy and when people become insulin resistant from eating too much sugar. But intermittent fasting is not great for building muscle and there'll be people that refute it and they'll say oh there's a study and there's this and it's like yeah we we know we know buddy and we know that you can build muscle on keto or whatever but these studies are they're kind of dumb they're kind of. And the greatest analogy that was brought to our attention on this podcast is just, I'll always go back to Stan Efferding saying, you know, when you go in the empire state building, you can use the stairs

or you can use the elevator. It's your choice. The elevator represents you eating frequent meals and you being efficient and you eating carbohydrates and the stairs represent you doing like ketogenic diet and you doing intermittent fasting. Now, again, keto and intermittent fasting, those things are great for weight loss. I'm not just I'm not really talking about that, but I'm talking about if you are a power lifter and you want to be as strong as possible, keto and intermittent fasting do not make sense. If you are shifting your mindset for powerlifting because you really want to lose weight and that's the focus, then a ketogenic diet, intermittent fasting, all the things I wrote in the war on

carbs, I'm very passionate about those things. And I think they could really, really help you. They could change your life. If anyone who's ever struggled to stay on a diet, every time they go on a diet, they always end up coming back off it. The war on carbs would be something that you're going to want to check out because it can, it can be really beneficial. It's a short, easy guide, very easy to follow. And, um, I think it can help a lot of people, but to think there's nowhere in that book where I say, when you do this diet, you are going to be so strong and you're going to dominate powerlifting. You're going to dominate as a bodybuilder. It does not work that way. It can help.

And I've used it with a lot of the people that work here and a lot of the people in the gym to shift them into being prepared to go into a diet because it can teach you a lot of things like andrew you know what man just let's just get rid of sugar buddy let's just get rid of car let's get rid of all this crap and you've done that i don't think you i never hear you really talking much about eating sugar no yeah it's not not my jam you know fries uh pizza just i guess starchy stuff i didn't even know that's what that was. But Jessica Smith was like, oh, you like starchy foods. Like, I guess. I don't know what that means.

I just know I like crunchy fries and stuff. She said it like that to you? She talked down to you like that? Yeah. Oh, you like starchy stuff. I was sitting down. She was standing up. She looked right down at me.

I'm like, jeez. Wow. And she's like six foot three. I know. So she was towering at me. I'm like, geez. Wow. And she's like six foot three. That's what I know. So it was, she was towering over me, but, uh, we have HR, we have an HR department. I think I might have to, uh, in the anonymous box, you know, like write a note, but, uh, as far as sweets, no, that it's not really my jam. Um, the other day you told me to go get dessert and like, I didn't even really want to go. And my girlfriend was like, no, no, we got to go.

And like, I didn't even know what to do. I'm like, what do people do when they get dessert? So I ended up getting ice cream, which was actually pretty good. Right. But like, I don't need it anymore. You know, like I'm good. Right. So no, I, but as far as carbs, yeah.

Like, uh, I really want bread. Like I even asked you about sourdough bread and you're like, not yet, fucker. Okay. But yeah, the only carbs I take now is just like rice from chicken and rice. Other than that, it's. The problem with giving people stuff usually is that, you know, you give somebody an inch, it'll take a mile. So if you're like, hey man man, like, what about some peanut butter?

Like, just, you know, cut right to a scene of you just devouring an entire jar of peanut butter. You know, that's what happens to a lot of people. With M&Ms inside of it. Yeah. Chocolate syrup. Yeah, getting all weird. And so that's what happens a lot of times. But like, you know, it's when we let our defenses down where it's like, eh, that's okay.

And the next thing you know, everything's all fucked up. Like, ah, he said it's okay to have some sourdough. But he did say not to put butter on it. And then you're like, ah, well, the butter's not going to hurt. And then you're just. It's healthy fats. Yeah then you're just healthy fats yeah you're just talk your way into it you're just sliding downhill fast um what the fuck was i gonna say um anyway yeah a lot of these a lot of these things from bodybuilding i'm gonna take

and i'm gonna utilize uh for for forever you know and and the frequent meals, I think is something that can really help a lot of people, um, eat just the act of eating six times a day. I think it helped, uh, our general population a lot. I know it's not the most convenient thing. I think the general population adding some protein, uh, into their, into their daily routine, uh, could really help, uh, a lot as well. But yeah, I mean, the disciplines, uh, of bodybuilding is, is brutal, you know, and it's, I commend all the men and women that compete in it. And, uh, for years I've always made fun of it, but you know, it was always just, it was always me just fucking poking around. Just, I understand that it takes a lot to do it um but now that i actually went up there and did it uh you know i have a whole new respect for it and um i'm still going to continue to do it so i'm not necessarily i don't really care that much about competing and

getting up on the stage again um although that is probably the best way to get the leanest because you're up there in front of people and you're like, you're posing and flexing and like, it'd be embarrassing to not, uh, be as lean as you can be. But, uh, you know, I'd still like to work on bringing up my biceps. I think my back could be a little bit better. I honestly, I don't want to be like one of these upper body dudes, but I don't care that much about my legs. I think they'll continue to still grow. Yeah. Because of the kind of training that we do.

And I never really, I never really honed in on them a ton. So yeah, you know, I'd like to bring those up too, but it'd be nice to get the biceps a little fuller, build up the back a little bit. It's all stuff we're working on.

That sounds like fun. It's great. Yeah. It is a lot of fun yeah so that's cool that you're gonna keep the uh the same um trend going not trend same trend um but yeah going back to the show it looked like uh you were pretty chill on stage like you weren't taking it too serious but you know like you were kind of having like you recognized how weird it was that you were on stage yeah like everybody uh you know they're like a 180 turn and you're like looking around like me like which way do i go so that that was really cool to see because like i mean i was pretty nervous that day like i didn't know what the hell was gonna happen uh the first time you went on stage i almost lost my voice i was like oh shit i have like i don't know how many more different

groups you're going up so i gotta pace myself but so that was really cool to see man i'm really proud of everything you accomplished um people are going nuts on instagram on youtube right now on the comment section everyone's just like saying what inspiration it was. Um, my thing was, it's like, well, well now what fuckers like a thousand 80 squat, you know, now doing a bodybuilding show, like you're not, you're not the fat guy anymore. You're not a small, you've never been a small guy. So I think that's a, like, it's, it's seriously awesome accomplishment. And I was, like I said, dude, I was so proud to be a part of, you know, the training sessions and everything. Probably the coolest thing I've ever been a part of, you know, one of them for sure.

So thanks for allowing me to tag along. Thank you. Yeah, it was, it was great having it, you know, help me through it because, you know, you know, doing it by myself, you know, would have probably just wouldn't have really been possible, you know, to, to push with that kind of intensity. I don't think would have really probably just wouldn't really been possible you know to to push with that kind of intensity i don't think would have really been possible and a lot of it started to kind of morph into what it morphed into you know when i came back from malibu because i was like you know you and i were already training together a little bit at that point but it was more like

you know what i i really need i really need andrew like I can't, I can't lift what I need him to be here. Like we got to figure this out. Like whatever the schedule works out to be, uh, you know, we need each other. Like you're going to get a lot out of it. I'm going to get a lot out of it. And that's why, you know, a lot of times I'll text you or send you like a voice message or something and I'll say, Hey man, thanks. You know, cause it's, uh, it's important. You know, I, I need, I need that kind of support. I need that kind of help. Um, our team is, you know, second to none. We got a really good squad here of people that, that just understand,

you know, like I, I'm not above anything. I, I'm not like, I'm not above like going to get some water or fucking sweeping something up or, but, but I, I think everybody has the understanding of Mark's already done a lot of those things, you know, for many,

many years, let's just have him focus on being himself and kicking ass. And it's cool that you guys put everything else aside for that, because you understand that that, you understand that that mission is important to the company it's not like it's not like i'm just some rich guy who has these weird goals where you guys are shuffling around to try to figure out how to make me happy and i hope that's not the case it's more like um it's more like you guys recognize what it does

for other people yeah and you're like if he can just be more of himself, then people are going to continue to get fired up. Yeah. Yeah. So it works. It works out really well. What did you have post show food wise? Oh, after the show, you might be able to pull up a picture because I think you snapped the picture. My brother-in-law brought brought me uh the de vere's um i love going to de vere's i went there last night

and uh got their uh pretzel but um i'm a huge pretzel fan i'll i'm gonna write that down we're gonna talk about this goddamn pretzel thing in a minute because it really probably doesn't make that much sense but because i don't know pretzels are good but they're yeah i don't know but there's a lot there's a lot to talk about there but um so yeah de vere's is a restaurant in sacramento and in davis and uh they got a burger there on a pretzel bun it's a uh bacon cheese i think it's just a bacon cheeseburger on a pretzel bun and it's fucking fantastic good it's really good like uh henry devere uh is is a friend of mine a friend of the family and he and his brothers uh have this uh pub and they have they get great food they got a lot of weird stuff there like shepherd's pie

and all these weird things where you're like what the fuck is that but everything they have tastes really good and uh anyway so um my brother-in-law's like what do you want to have after the show my brother-in-law is a foodie he loves to cook uh he loves he loves to uh he loves to to make people happy by fucking getting them good foods. And he's in the wine and alcohol industry. And so he knows people at these different restaurants and stuff. So he went and got this cheeseburger on a pretzel bun for me from the restaurant and hand-delivered it. And I wish I could have ate it like right then but i i had to kind of wait till i got home which was actually so much better though because

uh and this is how you know like uh place has good food uh when when the owner henry he's kind of fat or he is fat he's not kind of fat he's very very fat. That's the type of person you want to be getting food from, though. Yeah. Yeah, you know he has a full understanding of how to make these foods delicious, right? He's not messing around. He's not messing around at all. And the burger was like individually wrapped. So it was wrapped.

It was a cheeseburger. But the cheeseburger was wrapped in tinfoil with like a little piece of like paper around it. And then the bun was wrapped separately the tomatoes were wrapped separately and the onions were wrapped like everything's wrapped separately i'm like that's awesome this is a true fat guy he understands if he puts everything together it's gonna be all wet and it's gonna ruin the fucking pretzel bun yeah and so he he just knew exactly how to do it. And so I got home and I was like, man, this is kind of weird. It's all separate.

Yeah. But, uh, I threw it in my little toaster oven, got everything nice and warm, uh, through some, uh, primal kitchen mayo on there. I love that shit. And, uh, I went to town on that goddamn thing and it was, it was amazing. That's what I was really craving. Um, I wasn't craving anything too crazy, but it was mainly was amazing that's what i was really craving um i wasn't craving anything too crazy but it's mainly just that because uh i just didn't have any opportunity to eat any fat for a while so i was like god damn can somebody get me a burger around here

that's what i was really uh looking forward to doing so my brother-in-law delivered it to me and there's the result look at the face i'm I'm so pumped. You're so excited. I'm like, shit. That was cool. That's a life hack right there to individually wrap everything to keep it fresh. I know. It was amazing. This guy that we're going to have

on tomorrow, for those of you that are listening now, you need to tune in tomorrow as well. We got my boy Joel on tomorrow and, uh, he's going to break down some shit that I think, I think at some point you guys are just going to be like, fuck this guy, man. He doesn't know what he's talking about because the stuff that he does is so, uh, it different that you're just not going to really, like, understand a lot of it. But, you know, you guys have heard, his name is Joel Green.

And he has a website. I think it's called, like, Veep. V-E-E-P dot com. And I'm not sure. I forget what time he said he gets in. But we'll make you guys aware. I don't want to look through it now because I don't want to be distracted. But anyway, you guys are aware that like Stan Efferding has talked about eating a carrot every day.

And you're aware that certain foods can do certain things. They have certain properties to them that could yield certain results. If you remember, we had George Lockhart on the podcast and George Lockhart said that when you have dextrose and you have fructose, you can actually multiply the amount of carbohydrates that your body can handle post workout. So if you take fruit juice, let's say orange juice, and you take dextrose, which a lot of times there's dextrose in, from what I recall anyway, so some of this might be wrong, but I think Gatorade has dextrose in it. But by taking in these two things in combination, you can handle a little bit more carbohydrates per hour or whatever it is.

And then if you add caffeine to it, there's been studies that show that that helps as well. Helps you handle the carbohydrates, helps get the carbohydrates into the muscle cells at a faster rate than if you just had dextrose by itself or if you just had fructose by itself. And so there's these things that happen in the body and there's things that these certain foods can do for us uh that can help us well joel green um the word hack has been utilized these biohacks and body hacks have been utilized too much by too many people that don't really know the score they don't actually really truly know what's going on but this fucking guy does and when you guys hear some of the stuff that he has to say um i think you're going to be blown away and that's that's a diet i've shifted to i'm doing

some stuff with him right now he's going to work with me for the next four weeks on um i'm just kind of healing healing the mind, spirit of what I just went through. Not like what I just went through was some sort of crazy traumatic thing. Cause honey didn't make me do anything that crazy. He'd make me do anything that nuts, but we have to counteract a lot of the things that happen. And the reason why I just brought his name up is because I was thinking about that cheeseburger from Devere's and how, you know, all through our lives, there's this reward system, right? And we've learned, I guess, in more recent times, we've learned, hey, maybe that reward system is not so great. But I never heard anybody talk about, like, intentionally using the reward system as a reward and, and just, and, and, and knowing and understanding that it's

a reward. So Joel for tonight, he told me he has me on like, I do a keto style diet, or we'll just say low carb. It's not really keto. I do a low carb style diet every other day. In between that, I'm having some carbohydrates, which are the same carbohydrates I had on my bodybuilding diet, which was rice, potatoes, and oats. And so on the keto style day, what he wants me to do is throughout the day, just to have some small meals, not overeat, and just kind of graze throughout the day and, and get through the day with low amounts of protein, not a lot of, not a lot of, uh, very low carbohydrates and modest,

moderate amounts of fat. And then he said at night you get to have a big ass grilled cheese sandwich. And so that happens to be tonight. So when I get out of here, I get to go, I get to go nod down a big old grilled cheese sandwich. And so why a grilled cheese sandwich? We're going to talk about a lot more tomorrow.

He'll, he'll break it all down for you. But what he, what he said to me was it's part of the reward system. He's like, you haven't been rewarded for a while, you know, for some of the stuff that you did. And he's like, and we're going to utilize this over the next couple weeks just to calm everything down so if you just think about it in its simplest form like maybe that'll reduce stress a little bit maybe it's like hey andrew you did a fucking great job and let's just say that you like it let's just say you you like whiskey right and i'm like here's a fucking shot of whiskey dude let's just fucking relax or give you a hit of whatever shit that you like you know i mean like give you some kratom right like it could be could be whatever but it's that reward system and when you think about it in those

terms like oh well shit maybe that just kind of makes you relax maybe that gets rid of some stress that you may have had so um i'm really excited'm really excited to have Joel on the podcast tomorrow. And then we got, uh, we got Jason Kalipa coming in, coming up. We have, um, Zach Bitter, who Zach Bitter utilizes a ketogenic style diet. And he's like an ultra marathoner type guy. He actually is from Sacramento. Um, we missed his time that he lived here. He, he moved

i think to colorado or something like that but um we have him coming out here we'll also be doing more stuff with brian shaw don't know if we'll have time to get him on the podcast but that's always a possibility maybe we'll just at the very least run through a quickie with him because he's always fun to have on uh right now as we speak we got my boy uh ryan soper he's out in las vegas filming uh stand ryan on efforting talking to stan about his uh meal prep company that he's been developing the vertical diet and then stan is hosting a like a deadlift party and he's got some real savages out there supposed to be a couple guys that maybe deadlift over 900 pounds and uh that's something really cool and something i've always wanted to have here at super training out there. It's supposed to be a couple guys that maybe deadlift over 900 pounds.

That's something really cool and something I've always wanted to have here at Super Training, here at Slingshot. I have not really talked about it a ton, but I've always wanted to develop our own media team, and we have. We've had a media team for a while now, but the media team is going to start to become its own separate entity. It's going to become its own separate thing from everything else that we do. And so with Ryan going out and doing this event with Stan Efferding is actually a big deal because this is going to be the first of many things to come. We're going to send some of you guys, we'll send you guys out to Florida to go film shit with Steffi Cohen. We'll send you guys out to Florida to go film shit with Steffi Cohen.

We'll send you, you know, and now that we have, you know, four full-time employees, we have a little bit more leeway on shooting people over to different spots. But I'm really excited about that because now we can go do profiles on different athletes. We can just cover interesting people that we think have something to say and something to add to either the YouTube channel or something that we want to just promote. And, um, I'm really, really fucking excited about that. We, there's some things I got to work out in terms of like trying to figure out a name for it and stuff like that. But you guys have all done a great job of being proactive and, having a lot of energy in the company and uh you

know you're the one that kind of came to me about the podcast and now you're the podcast engineer you're still our our main our main dog when it comes to uh photography and stuff like that too and so you got it you're wearing a lot of hats chris griffin's wearing a lot of hats with a lot of youtube stuff um but chris will of hats with a lot of the YouTube stuff But Chris will probably shift him over into doing more commercial stuff Ryan might you know kind of be? Leading some of the YouTube stuff for the YouTube channel And then we got our boy Terrell who just kind of we get to push him around for a couple months

This is new beat the shit out of him for a little while yeah uh make sure he's built to last but uh i'm really i'm just i i'm more excited about that than i have been excited about anything in a long time because uh you know when i first started this company this is the one thing i didn't i didn't know but luckily i understood it because i was already filming a lot of things. You know, I filmed a few thousand videos just off of my phone. But this is a media-driven company. You know, the products are important, and we put a lot of time and effort into them, and we work really hard on them.

But, you know, when I invented the slingshot, I didn't really understand or foresee that the only way to sell slingshots was going to be via what I kind of been doing from the beginning, but I didn't understand, uh, how large that would have to be. And I just don't see, I think it's going to make us fucking unstoppable. That's what I'm trying to say. It's going to be, it's going to make a huge difference because now we can start to integrate commercials and we can start to have more informative content about a squad or deadlift, all the original shit that people always love.

We could still do a lot of that stuff and there'll be enough fucking awesome shit for everybody. Yeah. Dude, we've talked about this months ago about how you want to ship people out you want to build this fucking epic team yeah and i think with the four of us that you have well that we have now i mean we can totally accomplish anything which is very exciting yeah it's kind of it's kind of scary in a way right that was my next thing when we were talking about the photo shoot that we wanted to do coming up and i'm i'm just like i've of scary in a way, right? That was my next thing. We were talking about the photo shoot that we wanted to do coming up,

and I'm just like, I've never been in a position to where it's like anything goes. I was like, ooh, I got to step back and really, really, really think about where I want to take this. But you're right. Yeah, it's a little nerve-wracking thinking about what is going to come, but, I mean, in time time we'll be ready for it and whatever the fuck happens it's going to be awesome yeah i was even thinking of like maybe even setting up another type of studio or kind of getting with some of you guys and we'll uh sit around and share some different ideas obviously the podcast is always going to be a big deal

but um just getting people in different settings sometimes maybe we're sitting down maybe we're uh you know just in a different if you're in a different environment, it has got a different feel to it. Maybe different stories come out, different things come out. So that's what we're looking to do, man. Yeah. Somebody had asked when you were talking about all the sleep during your contest prep, did you use any sleep aids?

You know what? I really didn't – well, I shouldn't say that. I'm sorry. contest prep, did you use any sleep aids? You know what? I really didn't. Well, I shouldn't say that. I'm sorry. So something that I've been implementing a lot of was these strips that I put over my mouth. You guys may have seen some pictures of me wearing them. It just keeps your mouth shut.

A lot of us open our mouth when we sleep. I tend to end up, uh, drooling all over the goddamn place. And so, uh, I use these strips. They work great. I want to say they might be called like Sona or no, I'm getting the name wrong. Um, anyway, uh, I I'm having a hard time remembering the name of them, but I got them off Amazon. You can just look it up. It's just a strip. You put it over your mouth.

It's just like, it's like taping your mouth shut. Sounds ridiculous. Um, there's science behind it. I mean, just Google it, like look it up,

like just look up what it means, you know, to sleep with your mouth taped shut. Uh, I guess the short answer and, and I'm going to butcher this cause I don't retain information like this that well. But from what I recall, it's about producing more CO2 than it is taking in oxygen. And so when you breathe through your nose, you produce more CO2, which is supposed to be just healthier for you, period.

nose, you produce more CO2, which is supposed to be just healthier for you, period. There's also some indication, too, that you turn on different systems by breathing through your mouth or breathing through your nose. So the most relaxed state that we have is to breathe through our nose, breathe in and out through our nose. And it turns on other systems in the body when you start to breathe through your mouth so uh a lot of times your heart rate can be lower if you're just uh breathing through your nose there's even some evidence too that it might be good for training um not necessarily like heavy intense lifting but just uh light um light cardio sessions and stuff. I've done cardio sessions with the mouth taped shut too.

You get a lot of people looking at you weird, but those are challenging. It's actually very hard because you start to breathe hard. The first thing you want to do is open your mouth. That was a huge thing for me sleep-wise. Also, Kratom is a really weird thing. You know, if I take, and, and this is a product that we have, uh, coming out very soon, it's called Mind Bullet. And it's been sitting here on this table for a while. And you can see the kind of wacky logo that we got there, but Mind Bullet is Kratom. And, uh, I've been utilizing kratom for the last year and a half

i will take about three or four of them in the morning to kind of spike me kind of wake me up make me more alert i've talked about this many times how sometimes uh herbs like this can take you to places that you otherwise can't get to in your brain. Um, and so it's a product that I love. And so that, that's why I stand behind it. And that's why I created it. Uh, I would not bring it to the general public if I didn't think it had value. Now where it's interesting is to go to sleep. You can also take it now. Now I never noticed taking it and then being like, boom, I'm out cold. I never had, I never had that, uh, feeling. Um, but it just will take the edge off a little bit. So if I'm going to have it, uh, before bed,

I usually just have like one or two, uh, in the morning when I want to feel a little bit more ramped up, I'll have like three or four. The key to the product though, is, is to have it on an empty stomach. I got to say that I don't notice much from it. Uh, when to have it on an empty stomach i gotta say that i i don't notice much from it uh when i have it with food especially if i have a lot of food and it might be a long time before it hits me it's like it's hard to tell when it's going to hit you when you got food yeah but when you don't have food it takes about 20 30 minutes to hit you have you tried it with like taking it with like orange juice or something citrusy or acidic-y? I haven't messed with that, but I've heard people say that that's effective.

And you can also do it with like a seltzer water or something that's got some bubbles in it like that. Have you tried that? No, not yet. I just, I've heard of it and I've just, I've never bothered. Yeah. Yeah. So this is a product that we've been working working on and uh probably be out in the next uh two three weeks right josh yeah we've been odds yeah we've been uh slaving away we've been slaving

away at some other products too that i'm excited about but uh anyway anything else on the body building uh yeah did you have any crazy blowouts with all the food you're eating you know this uh the last couple days you know i've been shitting my fucking brains out it's been it's been amazing i um this is really weird i i haven't like actually wiped my ass with toilet paper in a long time because i either have access to my weird toilet that has the like bidet thing on it or I, or I got baby wipes, you know? And, um, you know, I think I've, I've dropped a deuce or two in, in, in the, in the gym here.

Um, but you know, just like, just like, just like not a big blowout, just a normal one. And yeah, you know, wipe for that or whatever. And I've been fine. But like over the last couple days i've been just shitting like i don't know four or five six times a day and uh joel who's helping me with this diet he's laughing he's like this is great he's like it's perfect he's like that's how many times a day baby shit and he's like you're right on track man this is gonna be perfect oh man i can't wait to talk to him because I shit like two, three times before I even get here at like six in the morning.

Yeah. And I used to be like that. I used to be like that. I probably still shit twice a day anyway. Yeah, I used to be terrible. But what's weird is with me, and you probably do the same thing but like um it's almost like when you throw up like you you throw up and then and then you're like oh shit wow i got all that out thank god and then 10 minutes go by and you're like holy fuck i gotta throw up

again that happens to me with shitting all the time yeah absolutely it's like and and a lot comes out sometimes both times you know i'm like what, what the fuck's going on in there, you know? Yeah, that's what I try to explain. I'm like, I know I just, I pooped twice, but you don't understand, the second one was equally as much as the first one. So, I mean, it wasn't like I was just, like, playing around in there. Like, it was some serious business. It's really weird, too, because you, like, I think it takes hours to poop, you know? Like, it takes, like, I've heard, like, six've heard like six or eight hours i think to like actually shit out unless you're like maybe

really sick right yeah i but it but it seems like so instant because you just took a bite of something you're like oh my god i got shit you get that that deep stomach growl like yeah and you think it's you think it's the food that you just swallowed. You're like, something ain't right with that food. Cause I got shit right away. Yeah. Well,

that's good. But during like the whole, like time you were prepped or getting ready for the show, everything was pretty normal. Cause you're eating too clean anyways. Right. Like for anything to explode. Yeah.

Everything was pretty, everything was pretty normal. Cool. Um, but yeah, like this weekend was rough you know and i i was like oh man we we don't have any baby wipes and we don't have we don't have our my special my special toilet seat yeah and uh so it's been rough back there

and on top of it it's been rough back there it's been very it's been well it's been very rough because of what i'm about to say so when you're doing all these things you build up a lot of pressure and so at some point while i was flexing i think i because when you flex if you hold your breath and you and you take these shallow breaths you can make your veins pop out more and more well i gave myself a fucking hemorrhoid so Ah. So that's been irritated and now I'm just, I'm falling apart.

And I've had them before from like squatting. Yeah. I blew out my ass before and it's awful. It's awful. I got all kinds of problems. Oh my gosh.

I know. That's all I got. I just want to real quick shout out to Chris Borbell. Hey. A Leaf of Faith, his Kratom documentary is now on Netflix.

It just went up, I think, this week. It's a fucking awesome documentary on an awesome all-natural plant, whatever you want to call it, that's changing people's lives. And if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Everyone's got Netflix. If you don't

have Netflix, fucking steal someone's password and watch it. Because it's awesome. But that's all Iflix if you don't have netflix fucking steal someone's password and watch it because it's awesome but that's all i got for you mark hell yeah make sure you check that shit out um i think that's it oh just the last thing on this pretzel ah yeah goddamn pretzel um yeah i don't know why i've always loved pretzels. I like bagels too, for some reason. And I used to, as a kid, just eat a bagel, just plain with nothing on it. Do you remember like bagels being a part of a healthy breakfast? Oh yeah, I know. Yeah, I know.

And then you find out they got like 50 grams of carbs in them or whatever. But, uh, like a salted bagel, just a bagel with some salt on it. I love that shit. But pretzels for some reason. Um, and it sucks too, because sometimes you get a shitty pretzel, but like, I'm talking about a big, uh, soft pretzel that you get from like a street vendor or a restaurant. Um, the street vendor ones aren't as good. You go to a good like pub or good restaurant and you get a mean ass pretzel and they're they're freaking amazing.

But when I tell people that's my favorite food, they're always like they're always so weirded out. They're like, how could that be your favorite food? That and some cheese or some fucking honey mustard. That's some weird like German Nazi mustard that they have. That's got like some spicy shit in it. But that does look pretty good though yeah well that place is amazing that's devere's and that had a great big ass grilled cheese sandwich yeah there we go i remember going like in uh like junior high going to the mall and

getting a hot pretzel with like the nacho cheese that shit was good oh so you remember we were talking the other day about nachos yeah Yeah. And how like fuck they are? Yeah. Andy and I went and saw that like Muppet movie the other day. That movie was amazing, by the way. Really, really terrible movie, but it was fun and funny to watch. But Andy was like, let's get nachos. And I was like, eh, all right.

Nachos always suck because they're good for like three minutes and they just fucking fall apart and get soggy and everything else. Yeah. Well, these were, they were just like, you know, regular tortilla chips, but then it was like tons of salsa, sour cream, guacamole, and cheese all just like dumped on top of everything. But like when you get nachos at the movie theater all you want is fucking tortilla chips and that cheap uh cheese sauce yeah yeah like so we were

like what the fuck is this and we're trying to eat it and it's like making so much noise and you can't see anything and so like i'm trying to dig like a fork into it and like flip it over but then i'm like flicking all this shit all over her. And it's just going all over the floor and everything. And I'm trying to like dig in. And I got like sour cream on me. And she's got all kinds of shit on her. I was like, man, this does.

But we weren't giving up on it either. We're like, we want the nacho taste now that it's here. Now that we're trying to eat it. Bummer. I'm like, man, we need it. But it just wasn't working uh dj our boy dj said what's up yeah what's up man yeah he was with you during the uh the whole backstage thing at the show too right that's fucking awesome him being there yeah he was

there helping me get in and out of my posing trunks all right guys strength is never a weakness weakness is never strength catch y'all later