Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 114 - Jesse Burdick

Episode Date: September 18, 2018

Mega Mind is back in the building! The dynamic duo that is Mark Bell and Jesse Burdick are back together again today to hit up another Power Project Podcast. ➢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

insert. Wait, what? Hey, wordplay. What you got back there? What's going on with this color of yours? You're kind of like a pinkish hue. I got so sunburned the other day. Did you really? What happened?

I went to the girls, had their first softball, like another softball tournament. And it was on a beach? No, it was just in the... You know how it goes. In those things, there's just, like, 17 fields. They just clear-cut everything. So there's no trees, there's no shade, there's no anything.

We're supposed to go, like... Fantastic if you have allergies. And the wind's blowing, it's great. It's beautiful. They were supposed to have a game about every, like, 90 minutes or so, and then we would have a break of 90 minutes. So you'd... Like, I can kind of sit there for a while and not be a problem.

But two other teams dropped out, so they had three games in a row. I just picture you sweating so bad at this thing. Oh, it's awful. So I'm sitting there, and then two games in, I kind of turn to Katie. I was like, I really should have put on sunscreen. She's like, oh, my God. My neck was purple. It was so bad. She's like, let me spray you right now. I was like, oh my God. Like my neck was purple. It was so bad.

She's like, let me spray you right now. I was like, the damage is done. We're just going to go ahead and ride this out and hope for the best afterwards. I'm not going to, can't change, you know, can't change direction now. The skin cancer's settled in. It has.

It's everything. It's not going to get any worse. Let's say that. Oh my God. What you been up to? What's been going on? Not much, man. Just hanging out, just getting ready for record breakers.

Slingshot record breakers. Slingshot record breakers this year. I'm excited for that. You were just hammering out a bunch of stuff with the team, getting everything all ready for that. Yeah, it's been really fun getting up here to get some work done. And just look forward to that and some other cool projects that are in the works. You know, just making sure that we continue each year with Record Breakers to get a little bit better and better. Yeah.

You know, so, you know, we've had a couple of different sponsors before. Now you're kind of headline sponsor and we're just working on making sure that no other meet around is going to kind of be able to hang with not only the quality of the meat, the quality of the lifters, but just the lifter experience and the, you know, viewers experience as well. Not only in person, but also, you know, live stream as well. Yeah. And how the lifters getting treated and everything, you know, some of these, there's a lot of, a lot of people put on some good meats around the country. a lot of people put on uh some good meets around the country and um you know you and i have always just kind of been like hey let's just kind of take note of how some of these things go what it looks like and uh rather than just people randomly saying hey that was a good meet because nobody died let's have it actually be a good contest that's fun right and that doesn't have a lot of

bs surrounding it which sometimes is unavoidable but But you do the best job you can to make sure everything is fun, make sure the lifters are treated correctly, and make sure that the lifters feel like professionals. Right. Whether they are or not. They feel like they're part of something. That's what people want to do, is they want to feel like they're part of something great, they're part of something really cool. Right. And that's what we want to do is they want to feel like they're part of something great they're part of something really cool right and that's you know what we're trying to do and every year you know we always kind of um you know get together and kind of take a look back and say you know what do we do well this time what can we do better next time and try and put it all together and do everything

that we can to take those steps towards making things better every year, um, you know, on, on all, on all fronts, you know, you know, the in-person in lifter experience and also kind of the viewer experience online as well. So it's just a matter of, you know, one step in front of the other and making sure you get constant feedback. And when you do that, do get that feedback, try and act upon it as much as you can. Uh, Jeremy Avilaila somebody that you've been training for a long time had a really huge breakout contest and it's um of no surprise right you know you and i both have seen how strong he is and you've been coaching him for a long time and you've been seeing him day in and day out for for a while now and um you know he's bagged himself up here and there he's had great performances on the platform.

He's lifted some heavyweights in the gym, but he really put everything together in this last contest, squatting 804 pounds, which those of you that have seen Jeremy before, he does not look like a squatter by any means. I mean, this guy is jacked. This guy is all muscle, but he doesn't have the leg development that you would think you know a lot of times these guys that squat 800 pounds have very very like i'll just say kind of overdeveloped uh quads hammies i mean big calves i mean this is a very thin looking guy squatted over 800 pounds benched around 430 420 i think he did 434 I think is what we did. Yeah, so over 430 pounds. And then went on to deadlift 886 pounds, right? Yeah, 887. I mean, that's an unbelievable total. Was it at 220?

At 220, weighing, I want to say... 205 or something. Weighing 217.4. The only reason I know that and that it's important is that he, while doing all that, became the lightest raw lifter to ever total 2,100 pounds. Wow. Yeah. So he totaled, I think, 2,137 at 217.4.6, which put him top three all-time deadlift, top four, all time, total top of all time Wilkes. Um, and he became the lightest person to, um, total 2100.

What, what makes him so different? I mean, I, I, I recognize that, you know, Jeremy, if you're listening to this, uh, we're going to do some bashing on you a little bit, but, uh, all, all in, uh, all in good fun and all in good spirit. Cause we love you. But, uh, Jeremy is, he's just a different kind of person period, but like what separates him out with his lifting? Like what have you been able to put your finger on? Like, what the hell is this?

Um, you know, we've kind of talked about it a little bit where I think there's just like, um, a fear and pain tolerance that is not everybody has. You know, when he'll just like just put whatever is on the bar, I'll do it. Like, OK, cool. That's you. You can say that and you can want to say that because it kind of sounds tough. But to really just be like, I don't give a shit what's on the bar. It's like I'm just going to murder this thing.

He has that aspect to him, and he just seems to not, he can kind of turn on, or he has a different gear, turn something on, whatever you want to say, that just allows him to, you know, it doesn't matter what's on the bar sometimes. Because it looks effortless. It looks like it's not there. He doesn't look like he's in pain doing it. It doesn't look like it's hard. He just kind of either turns on or turns off, whatever it is. And that ability to do so is certainly special. But he's just a really good athlete. Very, very fast kid. He was a football player

for a while there. But he can jump and run really, really quick. um so not your typical meathead anybody's ever met jeremy i mean he's wearing like a ripped up beavis and butthead shirt uh most guys that are jacked you know gonna wear a little tighter shirt right you know maybe gonna wear some shorter shorts reveal the quads and hammies and stuff a little bit and gonna you know kind of fit the part of being a meathead, but he, he certainly doesn't fit the bill for your typical meathead. He kind of looks like a guy that you would see at like a punk rock concert or something, or somebody you

would smash into in a mosh pit or something. And you're like, Oh my God, that guy's, that guy's pretty damn strong. Right. He doesn't have the kind of the typical look of some of the power lifters and some of the bodybuilders out there. Yeah. He, um, he kind of blurs things really, really interestingly, but yeah, he's not, um, not a prototypical look to him one way or the other. And, um, you know, he, he just, he just really likes to lift and it's just something that he's really good at. He knows he's really good at it and, um, he wants to continue to be good at it. So he's willing to work for it and work hard and put in the time that he needs to um but you know what he's he goes in and out of being looking like he could be the the best power lifter of all time and then you know um

looking like he could be headed back to rehab at any time yeah Yeah. And I only say that because of, you know, some of his inconsistencies in action. So, you know, when he's on, there's nobody that can touch him. And he's one of those people where, you know, most of the time his worst enemy is himself. You know, if he can get out of his own way, and that's, you know, a lot of stuff that I, you know, I'm really, really happy that I have him in person.

If he was a distance client, I think it would be a much different scenario but I think you know that he's when he's there I can kind of help him get out of his own way and do do the things that he kind of really needed to do I remember lifting with him and Kyle Kingsbury and I I knew that you know I knew I was outmatched I mean I already knew how strong how strong Jeremy was but he was kind of just coming onto the scene at that point. His strength wasn't, uh, uh, you know, it wasn't so far beyond mine that I was willing to like, just give into him right away. But it just kind of happened automatically because, uh,

as we were working up with weight and as we were lifting and everything, uh, he started to, you know, do what I barely did for a single, started to do it for sets of three and then, you know, added another play and it just got worse and worse from there. And it's like, oh my God. And I remember Kingsbury just kind of being really taken back. And he was like, what, you know, Kyle's somebody that you trained and you worked with for a long time too. And Kyle's really strong.

And Kyle's seen you know a lot of some of the best athletes in the world you can argue right but kyle was like i don't understand what's going on here what do you you mentioned him having the ability like turn something else on in your expertise with all the different people that you worked with over the years and all the different people that we've seen uh lifting world record weights do you think he's got some sort of connection to his nervous system that's just maybe different than everybody else? Yeah, I do think that there's something to it.

And I don't know, like I said, I don't know if it's turning on or turning off, whatever is kind of going on in his head or in his body, but there's certainly something that he has that not a lot of other people have. Smokey, did you bring in a grilled cheese sandwich? That smells wonderful. That does smell really good. It does. That's not grilled cheese, though.

I think it's just steak and rice. You're just obsessed with grilled cheese. I'm just fat. Grill me a cheese. I sent you a picture of the grilled cheese sandwich that I ate. That looked good. It was really good. You ate one today?

No, this was Saturday. Saturday or? Yeah, Saturday. Normal grilled cheese? You didn't do anything special to it? I had a barbecue bacon cheeseburger before it. And then I ate a grilled cheese sandwich after. Hold on.

Let me explain some of the science behind that. The barbecue sauce raises. Hang with me here for a minute. Sure, you got it. You know the science behind a lot of this. So the barbecue sauce spikes the insulin levels, right? Oh, this is like a John Anderson scientific thing, right? Yeah, what was it?

Ice cream? A gallon of ice cream? No, a pound of bacon. A pound of bacon chased by some ice cream or the other way around, and they negate each other somehow. Oh, the fat, it slows down the absorption of the... What was I saying?

He's the best. And mid-sentence, he's like... John, you can't... It doesn't work that way. You can't just... Did he ever acknowledge it? No. In his world, no.

I think the best story was with Terry, his wife, girlfriend, when they were at a family function and he ate a whole chicken and then just walked into the bathroom. They were in some small cottage or something. Goes into the bathroom

where everyone... They're just a small room away. There's just a door separating them. The bathroom was part of the kitchen. Right. Oh, no. Yeah. And I just, everyone had to like leave the house.

And he's like, what? What happened? Where did everybody go? Like, John, you just ruined this whole house. Everyone's got a weak stomach around here.

Exactly. That guy's a savage. But anyways, yeah, continue the barbecue cheeseburger to grilled cheese sandwich explanation. Well, it raises the insulin levels, and then barbecue sauce has a tremendous amount of sodium in it. So you're getting this influx of carbohydrates, but the sodium and the insulin spike together are launching the barbecue sauce into the muscle cells.

Launching. Barbecue sauce launching ability. Got it. You're going to see, we're going to see this somewhere at the Arnold on like a protein thing. Right. Like barbecue sauce launching ability. Under normal circumstances, this could be a negative thing because your glycogen stores could fill up too much in the muscles and then you could have some spillover and start

to look kind of fat and flabby, right? Don't want that. But not in this case. This where andrew is a genius he filled everything back up by getting the grilled cheese sandwich because he slowed down the absorption so throughout the rest of that day and throughout the next of that night and all the way into the next morning that glycogen is being stored in the muscles and that's why it looks so jacked they notice the shirt is clearly tighter yep around the pecs and around the shoulders than normal so basically this is and that's why it looks so jacked. You notice the shirt is clearly tighter around the pecs and around the shoulders than normal. That's just basic nutrient partitioning is what you went over.

Yeah, 101. And nutrition timing. Instead of berberine and alpha-lipoic acid, he went with grilled cheese. I should have known. I should have known. Why shoot up a bunch of insulin, which could be really dangerous, when you can have a grilled cheese sandwich?

It's called science, bro. Yeah. The sourdough is important, too, but I don't want to get into the science. It's fermented bread. It's good for your stomach. See? Sourdough. Yep.

That's why I had sourdough. Didn't mess up my stomach at all. No, not at all. So there wasn't anything special about the grilled cheese, though? It was just regular cheese? Yeah, it was just amazing because I haven't had a grilled cheese sandwich in, I don't know, a really long time. Was it American cheese? Cheddar cheese?

I believe it was cheddar. All right. Yeah. You got to get that combination. Cheddar. I don't remember. I used the combination when I made one the other day. Cheddar cheese, Munster cheese, and American cheese.

Sounds great. Oh, no, not American cheese. Monterey Jack. I think your wife would kick you in the balls if you had American cheese. Sounds great. Oh, no, not American cheese. Monterey Jacks. I think your wife would kick you in the balls if you had American cheese in the house. The kids eat American cheese. Do they? Yeah, I don't know.

That's amazing. I kind of like American. I grew up eating American cheese. Me too, but now kind of- So American. The texture is really off. It's more of like a cheese jello of sorts. It's pretty rough.

Pretty rough. But it melts amazingly. Yeah, it's just like somebody made like heavy cream, like extra cold or something weird. Something.

It's not, yeah. And it just kind of, it melts like in your fingers basically if you're trying to put it on a sandwich. It starts to... And those single wraps are about one of the

hardest things to ever open. Oh, that. No, we don't have that. we don't have we don't have whatever that is that's american cheese no i know but we don't have that we don't have that uh craft american yeah what is that singles we don't have weird processed cheese that's what i was talking about now we got like fancy boar's head that's what i'm talking about that's what i was talking about. That's what I was talking about. Your wife wouldn't allow that in the house. Yeah. You know, we don't have the individually wrapped where, where that one thing always folds off and you got to eat it. You got to eat it.

Cause like, you're not going to put that on the sandwich and save it for later. You got to eat it right then. Right. They should just make them without corners. Yeah. Now I haven't had weird processed cheese like that in a while, unless it's been like melted for like dipping purposes. I don't know if they even do that.

Like a Velveeta cheese. That's more of a Velveeta. There you go. Yeah, we've talked about. We've talked about cheese. We think we're grossing him out of eating his steak and rice talking about Velveeta. We've talked about Velveeta before, and it's like some weird chemical, right? I don't think it's real at all.

There's no naturally occurring anything in Velveeta, I don't believe. Anyway. Back to what we were talking about. The Velveeta mine somewhere in South America. Oh, a Velveeta farm? It's got to be next to what, Walden Farms? Delicious. Yeah, where they grow that pancake syrup.

That's great. And honey mustard and Asian sauce and whatever else. Basically, we were talking about a chemical plant in South America. Yeah. Yeah. Nobody knows what that stuff's made out of. It's amazing. You got any idea what that stuff is?

I don't know what the hell it's made out of. Yeah. It is interesting that they chose to call it something farms. It sounds natural. Who owns that company? Who owns the farm? Walden? Yeah.

Mr. Walden? Mr. Walden. Just a guess. He hated calories, so he decided. he decided oh my god that stuff is strange though but it does taste good it does the chocolate syrup's pretty good the pancake syrup's pretty good i think is that the one with the really high um like sugar alcohols and everything it just doesn't say anything on the label just says it has nothing in it all right because i know a couple of those are just bad news for... Oh, yeah, your butthole?

Yeah, bad news for the butthole. For your butthole? I would assume most people's buttholes, but mine in particular, for sure. You think most people just deny it and plow right through it? I honestly think that people don't understand that that's not a healthy thing, and that it's kind of normal, and people are like, yeah, I got diarrhea. What would you do instead of sugar alcohol? Just regular alcohol.

I really don't know. I mean, I think. Like if you really wanted like syrup or something, would you just have honey? I'd just have syrup. Or just have syrup. Yeah, absolutely. Just regular syrup.

I mean. Who cares? Yeah. I think, you know, at this point having eaten so well for so long, you know, kind of the sweet stuff that like like, I think you and I, like, a little sweet goes a long way. I couldn't drench, you know, I couldn't drench my pancakes or anything in something and be able to finish them. I think it'd just be overkill. Remember the one time we went, what was that?

We went to Chili's or whatever with Katie. And we got that, like, lava cake something or other. And both of us almost died of insulin shock. And she was laughing at us. Went into a diabetic coma. Yeah. But she ate both of our halves that we couldn't finish. Yeah.

That hurt. I think there are just certain people who are able to do that. You, you, uh, you warned me. Zero. Zero of everything. That's fantastic. It's water. Fiber.

None. Zero percent of everything. But I think they get away with it because of the label you know because of like the label claims or whatever right well it's yeah oh it does have cellulose in it that's what it says gel yeah yellow cellulose is a fiber that your body like doesn't freaking digest or whatever so i guess it doesn't sucralose and xantham yeah so i guess i guess it doesn't have calories has sucralose and xanthan. Yeah. So I guess, I guess it doesn't have calories, but maybe at some point it does. Depending on how much, how much, uh, how much you eat.

It's got a patent and it's from New Jersey. There you go. Walden Farms, Inc. Linden, New Jersey. That's just probably where they make it. That's, I think that's where the chemical plant is that kind of has the same, um, they do all the scents. Remember, have you, were you ever on the New Jersey Turnpike

where there's like that chemical plant that does the- New Jersey just stinks. Well, it just smells bad in general. But they have the, well, they used to. They have the license to do all the Calvin Klein perfumes. And then they also do all the McDonald's perfumes. So one time in the same, you could drive on the same turnpike and smell

like CK1 or whatever it is, but then you could also smell like bacon double cheeseburger. Because the meat that McDonald's has is so terrible that they have to press in a smell to it, so it gives it, it's got zero taste. So they have this thing that they press the scent into, and that's the thing that gives it taste.

So there's a plant in New Jersey that does that. I would bet that's probably the same thing. It's all the same thing. Yeah. That's weird. It's, yeah. It's that low grade. We were talking about Jeremy and his outstanding performance.

Yeah, and then we got onto grilled cheese. And we were showing some old videos of him lifting with a Mexican wrestling mask. Yes. I thought you weren't supposed to reveal their identities. uh, Mexican wrestling mask. Yes. With, uh. I thought you weren't supposed to reveal their identities. With Dr. With Dr. Deadlift.

Dr. Deadlift. Taylor Wollum. And, uh, they were going back and forth and having a, a deadlift battle. And, uh, part of the reason why I asked them to wear those masks is cause like at the time, nobody knew who they were. Yeah. You know, and, and with Jeremy, he's still, uh, getting his name out there. Dr.

Deadlift has deadlifted over 900 pounds and, and um he's getting a lot of awareness on social media jeremy's getting a lot of awareness now on social media but for a long time these guys were pulling big weights lifting these huge weights sacrificing their bodies and i was just like man this is crazy that people don't know who these guys are i think at this time kaylor had the 198 world all-time world record and people still didn't know who he was. They had no clue. So we had them have this crazy battle. Is there anything different that Jeremy does in training than some other people that you have in their training?

Yeah, he doesn't show up half the time and leaves halfway through sometimes. Like I said, when he's on... Sounds like Ocho Cinco. When he's on, he's about as good as it gets. And when he's off, he's about as off as it kind of gets. So this meet, I was really, really pleased with how the meet went. I mean, for a number of different reasons. But when he works hard, he works really hard, but there was a time about five weeks prior where he tried to deadlift four, four or five and he couldn't do it.

Jeez. And he told me, he was just like, yeah, I'm gonna probably just tell Dan that I don't really know what's going to go on. I don't know what's going to happen, whatever. And, um, you know, knowing Jeremy and, you know, being able to get to work with him for a while, you know, it's half of it might be in his head, but there's still a decent possibility that half of it might actually be real and he's hurt and he can't do it.

Once he settled down and got into a little bit of a groove with training, it makes a lot of sense. His body really likes to be, as much as he doesn't like to be regulated and have a lot of things in order, his body really responds well to that. So, like, he made the joke, like, man, this whole, you know, sleep apnea mask that I'm, you know, trying to force him to wear now, it's really fucking with my sleep schedule. I'm going to bed at 11 and waking up at 7. I'm totally screwed up now. totally screwed up now.

So usually he just kind of rolls in at the crack of noon, you know, probably grabbed a beef jerky stick and, you know, a monster from 7-Eleven and that's how he kind of starts his day. And then he comes to the gym and does whatever he... And he's got a shitload of muscle on him too. A ton, a ton, yeah. I don't know if, I don't think he's ever had his body fat kind of taken, but the guy's got somehow

an eight pack on his back. I've never seen anyone's back look quite like that that shit's really weird when he posts like stuff on instagram of him doing uh like pull-ups or something like that it's like what the hell is coming out of his back yeah it's uh it's again kind of just a unique structure and just a unique build i mean aside you know kind of joking aside we know we know he's different and we, uh, and we laugh because,

uh, just people that have been around Jeremy just know, uh, like ADHD times a million, right? Yes. Um, but is there still something there that like,

is there some sort of drive that, uh, that you've seen from other people that have world records or is he just like, we didn't really see that from Eric Spoto, uh, let's say, right. really see that from Eric Spoto. Uh, let's say, right. Right.

Um, Eric Spoto was different. Eric Spoto kind of just went to the beat of his own drum, which is totally fine. You don't have to act or be like anybody else. There's a good shot of that back. You don't have to act or be like anybody else. You'd be your own person.

And that's the way some people roll. But do you think he has some sort of burning desire in himself to, to show people like, I'm not a fuck up. I was, you know, I was addicted to drugs. I did have these problems, but I'm not that same person anymore. Absolutely. And I think it's, it's very important for him to prove that not only to other people, but to himself. And, um, but I think there's, you know, a lot of people who have these issues and, um, have that sort of kind of a makeup. who have these issues and have that sort of kind of a makeup,

it's an everyday battle. It's not a, I'm going to prove to you on this day, SummerSlam, I'm going to prove it to you. So he could use it as a positive here and there, but it ends up being a thing that torments him for his lifestyle, period, right? Yeah, I think it weighs heavily on him because I think if he feels like he didn't get a meal in or he didn't lift as well, then it's just, well, I'm fucked now. I'm done.

I'm screwed. It's over. I quit. I can't do anything right. And it just goes way downhill for him. So it's an everyday battle. And that's why, again, trying to get him regulated and get him on a schedule for any normal set of things. It's insane.

Bodybuilders don't have a stomach like that even. Here he's just messing around. It's unbelievable. He has and he wants to prove that, but it is a battle in his head that I think he goes through every day. I try and relieve as much of that as I can by just saying, Hey, man, just get here. I'll take care of the rest. I just need you to show up. And, um, you know, there are days where he can just show up and

he can do it. And then there's some other days where he just, he just can't get out of his own way. You know what I mean? It starts by, you know, his alarm clock doesn't go off and then they don't have his favorite monster at seven 11 and then it takes him an extra 10 minutes he misses an exit he does whatever he does and then by the time he gets there it's yeah it's pretty much over before it started at some times now you've dealt with people like this before right um and i certainly have too you know my own one of my own family members you had one of your own family members who had some uh problems i guess you'd say just functioning uh outside of uh you know or just functioning in normal day-to-day life right yeah um how has that

helped you deal with some of these people because you had like andy zavala over the years and you've had some of these other kind of troubled people but you've taken them in and you turned in you know a situation that was very negative and turned it into something very positive, and now here these guys are, you know, breaking world records, hitting these big lifts, and then also just being able to change their life kind of through the consistency of lifting. Well, I think that's it right there. You know, I mean, the gym has been, you know, I'd say for you too,

it's, you know, the gym is salvation. You know what I mean? It's a safe place. It doesn't have to be real life. You can kind of get away from things, and that was the gym is salvation you know i mean it's a it's a safe place it's um it doesn't have to be real life you can kind of get away from things and um that was the gym for me you know what i mean it saved my life a number of different times and in a number of different ways you know the gym that i have you know at csa gym is uh that's what i aim for it to be i i want people to be able to come there and be themselves and you know and, and allow themselves to, you know, express themselves physically in one way or the other.

And I think it's a really powerful thing when someone starts to lift and starts to lift heavy. Because, you know, there's a consistency aspect that has to be there. So they're starting to, you know, create some really, really good habits. And then there's some challenges that you overcome. And then you realize, hey, I can do more than I did yesterday or the week before or whatever it is. And as small of a PR or whatever it is, when you really kind of look at real life, you're like, you know what? I did that. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to get a job, talk to this girl or whatever it ends up being,

you know, the gym can kind of act as a way for them to kind of almost relate to real life opposed in a new, interesting way, because there's so many aspects of the gym with the consistency, discipline, you know, overcoming thing, going through hardships, coming back, injuries, all this other stuff. You can really kind of relate a lot of that to life and going outside your comfort zone sure exactly and then it's just like hey man you know whatever life throws at you you can kind of it it's not the best parallel but if you can relate it back to the gym it's an experience you've had overcome and you know kind of overcame excuse me and kind of gone past it and gotten through things it's a really good lesson to learn and you can kind of

apply that elsewhere. So, you know, with the gym, that's what I aim for. And with guys like Jeremy, that was when he'd cut to 198 for last year's, uh, boss of bosses meet. I mean, we're checking out some of these pictures on Instagram. It looks like he's holding his dick right there. I don't know what he's doing, but I think it's a towel, but yeah, on Instagram. Looks like he's holding his dick right there. I don't know what he's doing. I think it's a towel, but yeah. I hope it's a towel. It's an insane picture and to be that lean without a focus of it's not like the guy does, it looks like he does sit-ups 24-7, but I'm sure he probably has never even done a sit-up, even though you've advised him

to do them, I'm sure, to make his core stronger and things like that, but yeah, it's unbelievable. Yeah, so I mean, with people like Zavala or people like Jeremy, you know, I know the power that the gym can have. And all that I can, you know, I can't make them get there. I can't force them. I can't yell at them. I can't do anything there. I just, you know, with those guys, like, hey, man, this is, you're cool here.

You're safe. It's good. It's good. You can just do whatever. You can be yourself. There's no judgment. There's no anything. You know, you get here.

I'll help you get to whatever goals that I can help you out with. And if there's anything else I can help you out along the way, then I'm in for that too. And, you know, I've been lucky to have a couple of people who have kind of taken to that and you know um you know it's really kind of helped change their lives and help move them move them forward in a positive way and there's some other people that it didn't and you know the i'm always heartbroken over the people that i can't help and i remember those people a lot more than the people than the successes um but you know it is you can only do so much and you know with with someone like Andy, with someone like Jeremy, it's just like, hey, man, show up. I'll take care of the rest.

And that's the way that you have to kind of do it because they need to want to be there. They need to see the value of it. And then once they do that and then they start building some good habits and, you know, having some success, then it can really roll and really turn into what we know the gym can be for some people. Do the other lifters sometimes look at what Jeremy's doing or what some of the other people are doing, and maybe they're like, shit, man, maybe I need to miss my alarm, or maybe I need to miss a day, too. Do they ever want to kind of copy what he's doing because he is so strong? No, because it doesn't make any sense. They just know that he's—

They just know— They just know. It's his own set of rules. It is. And, I mean, we call it Tiff science because my tiny Tiff does something similar where she just comes in and she hits a lift that's, you know, she tripled her all-time max. I got a pee break. Go. You can keep going.

I'm going to go? Okay. So something like Tiff does something that, it just doesn't make any sense really. But she's able to do it just because she can. And no one's going to say like, oh man, I should probably stay out all night and only eat beef jerky and drink Rockstars and come into the gym and I'll be stronger. You know, a lot, most,

most people are educated enough to know that that's not real life. Right. That's kind of TIFF science. That's Jeremy science. That's whatever you want to end up calling it. They're just crazy enough or talented enough or just enough of a freak of nature that they don't have to somehow, for whatever reason, they don't follow the same rules as, you know, most people do. I'd imagine Jeremy's warmups probably non-existent either. A hundred percent.

Yeah. Non-existent. Yes. I was talking to Mark about that the other day. He's like, yeah, some of my biggest lifts happened when I just walked in and just lifted. Yeah, I mean, there is something to that where it's just like turn it on and kind of go. But, you know, what I've been trying to do with Jeremy is, and with Tiffany as well, is force them to work out or do some sort of warm-up before they get into their main session

because for Jeremy, it's an injury into their main session. Because for Jeremy, it's an injury proofing thing. And for Tiffany, it's more of just getting some more volume into her squat because for whatever reason, if she doesn't squat all the time, her squat really starts to, to go down for whatever reason.

So she's squatting really, really often. Um, and you know, it's got a purpose separate from Jeremy's. Jeremy's is, I'm just trying to make sure, trying to get his pretty much his ham, and you know, it, it's got a purpose separate from Jeremy's. Jeremy's is, I'm just trying to make, trying to get his pretty much his hamstring,

you know, some, you know, full of blood before we do anything else. And, you know, trying to lift the way that he does, he lifts so violently that he has to be warmed up. Those muscles,

those muscles just have to fire. And if they don't, we're just keep putting them at risk of injury and we've been dealing with that for like two years you know mark said that this is you know this has been a while coming you know he's been capable of this for a while it's just you know he gets bit by one thing or the other so forcing them to warm up has been helpful and then we just kind of got to devise a way to keep him doing that or keep him entertained. So he does some accessory work.

Like the, the video you showed earlier is like, you know, I have to tell people like, Hey, if you do, if you do some accessory work, drag Jeremy with you or make him do this stuff with you.

You know, Tiffany is actually really good. And he's in horrible shape. Yeah. Like you think he would be like fit or something, but he literally, what the guy can do is, you know, he he can he can lift

heavy shit really explosively but if you have him try anything else at least without practicing it he's not any good at it at all rep work is not his friend whatsoever i mean i i uh did some lifting with him in uh santa rosa um just two weeks ago and he couldn't breathe the whole time and what we were doing was not hard we were were going through a back routine and it, you know, we were, we were lifting, you know,

hard and everything, but it wasn't, it wasn't that difficult. I'm like, Oh my God, this guy's going to have a heart attack from, uh, doing some supersets or some back work.

Yeah. That's, I mean, but that's what he needs. And I mean, the, the, the craziest thing is if he would do that for about three weeks,

he would be, he would acclimate to it and he would, he would just be so much better off for it. He just grows and is able to lift in a way that, you know, I don't know if I've really ever seen at this, you know, to this moment. Yeah. Imagine if he was able to do, concentrate on that for a little bit, concentrate on some food, concentrate on some sleep. And if he weighed 250. Well, that's the, this is the first time. I mean, what are we talking about here, right?

Yeah, I mean, he trained consistently at about 230, anywhere between 228 and 235, depending on how much he ate kind of the day before. And then heading into the meet, we just had him, basically my advice was, hey, for this next week, can you stop eating like an asshole and limit your 7-Eleven to once a day? And he went from 235 to 217.

So that'll tell you how much awfulness that he was eating. And that's just pretty much how it was. That was his water cut. That was his weight cut for the meat. He had a couple of messages like, hey, what did Jeremy do to get down to 217? Cut back on his 7-Eleven? Look, I don't want to answer this to 217? I was like, look, don't, this is, I can't, I don't want to answer this for you because the end, it doesn't make any sense.

He ate less junk food and gained a bunch of weight. Right. Like, wait, what? Yeah. It's, it doesn't make a ton of sense, but this is the first meet he was really heavy at. So, um, you know, trying to keep him consistently that heavy is going to be a goal. And then we just figure out what to do afterwards. You coach a lot of people to world records, help a lot of people to world records, but then directly in your own gym have helped people to world records as well. What are some of the differences between those athletes that you see versus maybe somebody else

that's a little bit more middle of the road and they kind of stay there? I really do think it's, I mean, a lot of it, and this isn't a secret it's, you know, outside of the gym, you know, the, those people, whether they work hard or not inside the gym, you know, I think everyone's got a decent amount of capability to it. The recovery aspect of things, you know, taking care of yourself outside of the gym, but also kind of the mental aspects, the mental sides of it, where, you know, where

someone like Jeremy, you know, at boss bosses, you know, I always try and like, Hey, what do you think for a second? It's like, I don't care. Just put whatever on, I trust you. Hey, that's a lot on me, but it's also one of those things where thankfully enough, Jeremy doesn't understand kilos. Um, but they say that all the time. I mean, I know I've helped you at meets and you're like, I don't want to know what you put on. Like, okay, cool. And now lifting, you know, Mark Bell, 400 kilos. You're like, fuck, I didn't want to hear that.

I did not want to know what that is. He has no idea. He's like, ah, Jesse said I can do this. So like, do I lift now? Is that cool? Do I lift now? Is that cool? So there's a mental aspect of things or a mental preparation of things where these people just, they click into, you know, the zone, if you want to call it, whatever it is, where they're just dialed in and nothing can kind of pull them out, you know, no matter what it is. And they just execute at a level that is at a perfect level.

You know, they're going to hit these astronomical weights, um, that no one's ever lifted before, or very few people have lifted before and make it look easy. And, um, that's, that's so, you know, like I'm, you know, I'm going to have to grind anything out to, you know, to, to get a PR and it's going to take an extra four seconds where those, you know, a couple of the people that I get to work with, it's just, uh, it's dead. It's gone. And you're like, damn it. I should have put 20 more kilos on the bar.

Uh, but, but it just doesn't even make sense that they were able to do, you know, like, like Jeremy, like before he squatted 804, I think the biggest squat that he did in the gym was 727, which was, which was his opener. So it did, it's like, well, that went really well. I guess we'll put some more weight on the bar and you're like, shit, look at that. Not bad. All right. We'll just add some more, I suppose. So, um, you know, there's just a, it's that fearlessness. It's that almost mild recklessness. Um, you know, just being kind of a, a savage and just going out there and having this belief in yourself that you can lift whatever it is, no matter what it is or what the situation is.

They don't care. They're like, I'm just going to do this. It doesn't matter. Once they have themselves convinced, that's what it is. So it's more of a mental thing and taking care of themselves outside of the gym. That's going to really separate the middle of the road to the really the really really

special people have you ever seen anybody uh in your experience all the different people you worked with over the years some short some fat some tall some skinny some this some that some old some young yeah um all the way from uh our buddy mark that you've been working with for a long time who uh was diabetic and has having a really hard time even picking up, I think, a plate off the ground. All the way to some of these world record holders. Have you ever met anybody that doesn't possess the ability to get better, get stronger? Not yet. Everyone can.

One way or the other. That's the beauty and that's the horror show about kind of lifting. Like you can have a wonderful day and everything there, but there's another, there's a one kilo plate or there's a half a kilo plate staring you in the face saying, you didn't put me on the bar though. And there's always going to be one more thing you can do. And, you know, there's different qualities of strength, you know, maximal strength, strength endurance, et cetera. So there's a, you know, Shout out to our boy Mark Wilson. Last name just popped in my head. So, um, you know, people are going to be able to, you know, improve range of motion, make something look better, make a squat look better,

you know, lift more weight, lift a weight for more reps. There's always a way to do it. And, um, you know, no matter what way you slice it and I, you know, I'm getting to work with, you know, a bunch of high school kids and I have, um, a couple more special clients, you know, one with, um, some cerebral palsy at this point, uh, who will actually be lifting at the meat, which is going to be really, really cool. I'm really, really pumped for him. And that's going to be really something kind of special. And, you know, I just got to hope I don't cry too much in front of him, you know, so he doesn't freak out.

I'm so proud. I know. I know. I'll be crying with you, buddy. We'll cry on each other's shoulder. Yeah, it's a deal. But yeah, I mean, if you apply yourself, there's always a way, you know, no matter what kind of condition you're in or what's going on, you know, there's always a way to get better.

You know, there's some way to get better. It's just about, like I said, man, if you show up, you know, um, we can take care of the rest. People have this kind of, this preset thing in their body and their system or in their brain, probably more so than anything. Uh, let's just say that you, uh, started prescribing some running for your lifters, right? Oh my God. Say, uh, you know, I talked to Vlad and, uh, Vlad squatted, uh, you know, 1200 pounds or whatever. And, uh, and 1100 pounds in, uh, knee wraps and has the all time world record. And, you know, he mentioned to me that he does some boxing, he does some running. I think it'd be great for some of us to run. So you get a group of people to run, you know, but you get a couple of people who say, I can't run.

And that's where we run into some issues. As soon as people kind of throw up that blockade, maybe somebody does have some sort of outstanding injury that is not allowing them to perform any of this stuff. But I think a lot of us need to pause for a second when we say, I can't. And we need to rethink what we're actually saying. say I can't and we need to rethink what we're actually saying. Um, maybe you can't deliver what the person's asking you to deliver, uh, at a high intensity or make it look pretty or make it look good. Uh, but maybe the conversation isn't that you can't run. Maybe the conversation is that, Hey, you know what, Jesse, uh, kind of embarrassed. And he said, you know, we all got to run a mile. I really struggle with running. So is it okay if I do like a little bit of like a run walk or even for today, if I just walk, because I don't know, like running might make me sore for two months. Yeah.

Right. It's a different conversation than starting out by saying I can't. And we talk about getting stronger. It's actually pretty rare that somebody, that somebody will see that in themselves where they'll say i i don't i don't think i can get any stronger but they still will say i don't i don't think i can do that they'll see somebody deadlift maybe and maybe it's their first time deadlifting yeah i you know i should i've look man i've hurt my back a lot i can't do that well you okay well how do we do we have information that tells us that you can't do it is your hand

paralyzed you're not going to be able to pick the weight up it's going to fall out of your hand uh is there something you can't bend down to the bar and reach the bar i mean we've seen all kinds of limitations in the people we've helped over the years but the important thing for people to understand is that you can you can do it and it, it might take a while. It might not look like the way everybody else is lifting. It might not look like the way everybody else is running, but over a period of time, you can figure it out. Right. And I mean, a good coach makes a big difference. It's true. And I think, you know, that's why everyone has a different style. And that's why I thought, you know, one of the things that you said that, you know, has really resonated

with me for a long time is like, you know, if you're going to try and mimic someone, they should be similar to your build, tall, height, weight-wise. Where if you're going to try and look at the way that Benedict Magnuson deadlifts and just do what he does. It's not, it's probably never going to work. So, I mean, people's comparisons are just so wild where they want to look like the best in the world. But picture Smokey's like right now he's on YouTube looking up Jay Cutler. He's like, I got to find someone that looks exactly like me. Oh, there you go. Jay Cutler and his prime. There we go.

Um, but you know, if people kind of just accept the fact that they may not look like that now, but maybe they can look like that later on, you know, there's always a way to accomplish something. Or even just looking at somebody saying like, yeah, like I got really long legs. You can watch someone else lift and they got long legs too. Figure out how they do it. Or you got long ass arms you have a just crazy bench stroke right then you see somebody else they just did 500 pounds for five reps with this long ass bench stroke well maybe that's somebody that you should maybe pay attention to some of the stuff they're doing i think like you were touching on it a lot of it is all mental there's these weird barriers

i mean i remember when the 1100 pound barrier in gear got broken by Steve Goggins, and then the 1,000-pound bench got broken by Gene Reichschlag, and then the 1,000-pound deadlift got taken away by Andy Bolton. We were there. We were there, baby. We were. We were there for the 1,100-pound squat, too. We were.

But, I mean, after that, everyone was like, oh, I can squat 1,100 pounds, or, oh, i can bench a thousand pounds no big deal you're like wait like what was the difference between yesterday and today like somebody did it so i believe i can do it too right so i mean if you also have some of those examples in the gym or whatever it is that happened like i have a girl who's gonna be um i think she's lifting next weekend in Chicago. She's going through the meat prep for the first time. And the meat prep is just terrible. She's like, I feel terrible. I'm going to quit. This is awful. I'm like, look, that means you're going to have a good meat. Just

trust me on this. You're getting kind of over-trained. You're accumulating fatigue. When we pull all this volume out, the intensity is going to come back up and you're going to be able to be there and you're going to crush some stuff once you get there. She's depressed and she's talking to literally everyone and everyone's like, I've gone through the same thing. You're going to have a great meet. Don't worry about it. Just focus in on, just believe, trust in the process, trust in the process. So to have a gang of lifters, to have a bunch of people around who have gone through, maybe not exactly what you're going through or anything along those lines it it helps out a lot because people can be like yeah i did the same thing don't worry about it it's all good so i mean that was you know jeremy was like look five five weeks

before my meet i told jesse that i wanted to quit like everything like i was i was ready to quit everything and she's like huh right it's like yeah it's just just the way it goes just there's some differences too like uh if you have, that's really holding you back. Sure. Then that might be a problem because somewhere in the training, something may have went a little overboard and you might inflame something. And now we got to figure out how do we make you feel a little bit better? Do we need to miss a session or train a little differently for a week or two?

Uh, so we can regain some of this. And then some of it's just flat out fatigue, which if it's fatigue, then you'll probably take a week off or so before the contest comes around. And hopefully, uh, hopefully everything will come together. Usually I think it does, as long as it's a, you know, accumulation of fatigue and not injury, there's, um, there's light at the end of the tunnel, not another train. Right. You mentioned, uh, there being many different types of strength and you

mentioned there's always like an extra rep or some extra weight in there that's your training philosophy in a nutshell because you have people do a lot of different movements um you know one week they might use a safety squat bar the next week they might use a camber bar and uh they might box squat for two weeks in a row then they might do a regular squat and you got some people and obviously we're talking about the conjugate system some of the stuff uh brought to everybody's attention by louis simmons west side barbell the strongest gym that ever existed and a lot of these principles uh are things that jesse and i utilized in our powerlifting careers and jesse still, utilizes it today with a lot of the athletes.

People get really, uh, like apprehensive when they're not doing the same movement. Like, oh man, like if I do a three board press one week and then I do a floor press the next, and then I do an incline bench the week after when I get to that fourth week,

I'm worried the weight's going to crush me because i'm not going to have the strength or the movement pattern or or just i might just like for i've heard people say this they kind of forget how to do the lift right i hear it more with the squat it's more so than anything else but um and there's people that have these uh you know real real concerns what have you seen and utilizing the method like let's about, we obviously, we already know some of the strengths. Where do you feel some of the weaknesses lie? In kind of the conjugate programming? Yeah. I think the, we, some of the, I think what happens a lot of times with conjugate, I think people need to understand, you know, kind of drift, drift through kind of the history of kind of the

conjugate system where it was a Russian Olympic lifting program to start. Oh, we can't talk about the Russian. That was, that was taken. They got our president in office. They got, they got everything.

Um, which was taken by Louie and, and morphed into a, um, a program for geared power lifters. And now, you know, since power lifting is really kind of switched from geared power lifting to

raw power lifting, you know, you really have to look at this stuff through kind of switched from geared powerlifting to raw powerlifting, you really have to look at this stuff through kind of a filter. A lot of the stuff that made sense, that one of the variations in a suit, on a box, or boards in a shirt, they can't apply to raw lifting. So we can't take those. We can't train as heavy of a percentage. You have to go lighter. You need to do more sets, more reps when you're doing raw.

That's something you and I really came to the conclusion of. When we get in our squat suit, and if we did a squat that was 900 pounds, it was close to parallel, we kind of knew, yeah, we can take that into competition. We most likely can replicate replicate or something close to it right there's really no reason for us to roll the dice and do another set because if we do another set could wipe us out contest is getting a little too close we handled 850 on the set before that's plenty heavy enough right and then we handled 900 for the main set and and we're out we're done assistance exercise right yeah so i mean in in level, the intensity is so high and the intensity is, you know, heightened even further because of the equipment. You know,

if you can, if you can squat 600 pounds raw, say you put on a suit and you can squat 900 pounds, you know, that's, you know, central nervous system is, is, you know, buzzing, going crazy. And you really can't push that because the risk to reward ratio is really tipped, you know, against you. It's not in your favor at that point so um you know the the super high intensity stuff starts to disappear a little bit the higher volume higher frequency starts to start to come about and i think you know there there there does need to be a little bit less of a pool of exercises that you pull from okay so maybe like instead of having, you know, like at Westside maybe they used, let's just say,

30 or so for lower body, for the squat, right? Maybe now you're using like eight, ten or something. I mean, the reason why the box squat was so prevalent was it mimicked being in a suit so much. So this was a way to be in your suit without being in your suit. But if you're not going to wear a suit, you probably shouldn't box squat all the time.

Right. Right. And I mean, it, a raw squat looks, a raw free squat looks a lot different than a suited, you know, like a multiply suited squat does. So those two are just very, very different movements. It's also multiple ways to box squat too.

I mean, we can kind of release the hips and we can sit on the box and do a standard kind of West side barbell, Louie Simmons, uh, I'm going to compete in gear squat or dynamic effort squat to kind of get into the hips, the hamstrings, the glutes a little bit more, or we can just do kind of like a touch and go squat, which is. With a stand efforting. Yeah. We're trying to find the proper depth or we're trying to lean of like a touch and go squat, which is... With a stand efforting. Yeah, we're trying to find the proper depth, or we're trying to lean forward into it on purpose,

or maybe we're trying to get into the quads. Just the other day, we had a bodybuilder here who was squatted very, very upright. And when you watch somebody squat really, really upright, it's like, okay, if I'm trying to mimic that, and I'm trying to get into my quads, what would that look like if I tried to squat exactly like him and for me that would mean i would have to squat into a pretty high box i'd have to drive the knees forward i don't have the mobility at some point i'm going to sandwich forward right i'm going to squish forward and

you've seen it a million times you can't even handle it anymore you're like i don't want to see this shit one more time and kill myself but But as you're squatting down, different people are going to have different limitations. So you can use the box or something like that too, where you can squat to a different depth. Maybe you have a lifter who's terrified to squat three plates. Well, hey, we're going to have you squat onto this box. It's going to be like five inches high and you're going to handle three plates. Makes them feel like freaking Superman. Yep.

And it's just for the moment. And yes, it's high, but we accomplished something. We got you to get over that mental barrier of lifting, lifting those weights. Yeah. And I think, you know, that's something that, you know, using those tools and using, also using something like a slingshot and boards, it allows you to kind of break past these, these things all the time. And I always think about, um, you know, always think about the barrier side of things with Amadeo,

who pulled like 595 and five meets in a row. But anytime he put 600 on the bar, he couldn't do it. He got allergic to it. So then we put 635 on the bar, and he pulled an empty bar. Sometimes people just get obsessed with what's on the bar. I think for Andrew's sake, we should point out that he's Mexican as well. He is. Taco truck. So who knows what's wrong the bar. I think for Andrew's sake, we should point out that he's Mexican as well. He is. Taco truck. So who knows what's wrong with him.

Yes. But, you know, I mean, there are those boundaries. And if you can use something to kind of get people over that, then that's great. I think something else that happens in conjugate a lot of times is, you know, kind of the dynamic effort stuff where you're supposed to be, you know, practicing perfectly and producing, you know, practicing perfectly and producing,

you know, force and, um, practicing your craft goes just way too heavy and people kind of bastardize that and they throw way too much stuff on there and they're taking three or four minutes breaks and things of that nature. I mean, a true dynamic smoking a cigarette in between a lot.

Trust and show. Yeah. Um, you know, if you look back to the early West Side videos, I mean, they were trying to run people out of their group four or five at a time, and they were literally pushing you out of the way to get underneath that bar. Well, you and I used to try to kill each other. Yeah, but I mean, those are some of the most productive

squat sessions we ever had. Yeah. And I mean, that's what that should be. It's about putting yourself under a different kind of, you know, demand and, uh, you know, trying to execute perfectly underneath those conditions. And I think people just take those percentages and say, ah, this is too light. Like, yeah, it's 50%. It's supposed to be light.

Do it perfectly with 60 seconds rest in between 15 times. Let me know how you feel afterwards. Right. And that's what that should be. I think people take that and they turn this practice that, you know, it's supposedly, you know, kind of perfecting your craft, so to speak. And they turn it into something that is, you know, just bastardized out of control. Doesn't look like anything and ends up being nonproductive.

It's not too different from other sports. You know, there's other situations, uh, in other sports where maybe you're working on like precision. Sure. You're working on like accuracy. You're slowing things down. Maybe in basketball, you're just out shooting by yourself and you're working on like free throws and there's no one else on the court. There's no one to know, no one playing defense. There's nobody, uh, you can work on particular foot movements and patterns and fadeaways and these different things without all the other distractions and sometimes with your lifting uh you sometimes just need to flat out practice right you sometimes just need to like get a feel for the weight if you are a newer lifter and it feels like you don't have the lift

down the way that you want to or the way that you see other people uh do a lift if you feel like it's off and you don't have a good coach around you simply just lower the weight to the point where you can actually think as you're lifting right which might be really light i mean now we're talking 20 or 30 you might be really lightweight uh let's say you can squat three plates maybe there's just a 45 on each side or maybe even just 95 pounds on the bar three plates maybe there's just a 45 on each side or maybe even just 95 pounds on the bar get that weight on there and talk to yourself as you're doing the lift think about the cues that you maybe heard me say or jesse say uh in a seminar or ed cohen or stan whoever find somebody follow some of the principles some of the rules and as you're squatting down

you know rather than thinking don't fart or rather than thinking about don't fart, don't fart, don't fart, or rather than thinking about like not dying because the weight is so heavy and you're not sure like whether you're going to tip to one side or blow out your knee. Like when you get heavy weights on there, a lot of times that's all you're thinking about. Like I'm going to get hurt. This is pain. You're on racket. You're like, this is painful. And I don't know about any of this. Right. I don't really know how this is going to go, but I got a lot of people watching me. So I'm just going to pretend I know what I'm doing. Here we go.

Yeah. For me, it's, uh, whenever it's a heavy weight, like if it's, if we do go to 25 or more or whatever for a squat, I'll just forget a lot of the cues and just like, don't die. You know, like, and I fuck everything up. Self-preservation. Exactly. Yeah. Instead of like pulling myself down, I'll just dive and can't die. And I fuck everything up. Self-preservation. Exactly, yeah. Instead of like pulling myself down, I'll just dive and can't figure out why I can't push myself out of the hole. Yeah, you fell all the way from the top and just collapsed.

Knees come in, shoulders go forward. You're like, whoa, what happened on that? You're like, I don't know, man. But it wasn't a good idea. But you take those weights down and you have a cadence, you know, maybe slow down the movement pattern a little bit. Have weights on that are light enough to where you can talk to yourself and you can try to figure out how does this feel. Right. Okay.

They said to drive the knees out. Oh, shit. Like maybe you're even squatting in front of a mirror. Right. You're thinking, oh, crap. You know, my right knee is caving in for some reason. Well, with ninety five pounds in your back, when you can squat three fifteen, you can very easily push out both knees and you can think about it. OK, now I need to push out both knees. I need to sit back. OK, my chest has to come up.

Oh, shit. My or even video. Have somebody else watch it. There's a lot of ways we can analyze all this. You go back, you watch the video and like, man, my elbows are really high and I'm really pitched forward in that squad. That doesn't look right. Well, now we can work on it again and we can work on it again. The other great thing about that is it does,

that's not going to cost you anything. The only thing that's going to cost you is a little bit of a time investment, right? But you're not going to be so sore. You're not going to get sore. You're not going to get tired. Uh, it's fun. It's not going to get sore. You're not going to get tired. It's fun.

It's a way to move around. You can think about it as a little bit of stretching or something like that. And it's just something you can get a lot out of because a lot of these movements, sometimes they feel foreign to us. They feel really weird, right? I know. We've had a conversation which was very strange. We've had the same dream and woke up at the same spot in the same dream where we bench pressing in our dreams i mean that's kind of one of those things where it needs to be so ingrained that you can bench press in your dream and you you're set up right and you

end up you know trying to press something out and you hit your wife or your girlfriend you're like what are you doing i had a big bench in my dream and i hit it and it was perfect so let's go back to sleep so about that that. Speedbench. Just read about dreaming and, you know, whatever, the same. So I got really excited for this. Sorry, because I read it this morning. So in the Matthew Walker book, they'd run a test. Oh, this is about the learning thing with Matthew?

The sleep book. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So they had some, they had, you know, whatever, those like neurological like sensor things all over the head. Sick ass hats, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're like, okay, squeeze your left hand, squeeze your right hand. Do that over and over and over.

So they measure all the wavelengths and everything. So then when they got into deep sleep sleep like do that again while you're dreaming and they were able to like cue them up like move your eyes to the left squeeze your left hand squeeze your right hand they didn't actually move but their brain showed that it did the exact same things when they were awake so i instantly started thinking like oh fuck 225 bench please dream about a 225 bench so my brain knows what the hell is gonna happen yeah in that i don't want to ruin the book for you or anybody else but what's amazing about at the end these aliens yeah man yeah this is all fake but what's really interesting is they had to um they had to actually shorten a lot of that out because they would it's almost like a cadence

it's like a bop bop bop bop bop-bop, and that's kind of how it fires in your brain. But it was sped up by like 10 times. So all they heard was this Oh, shit. So then they're just like, God, what is that? And then they just,

they slowed it down and slowed it down and then they were able to see like, oh my God, you're learning at like a 10 times clip as you normally would.

So that's why the whole, you know, sleep on it. Yeah. Let me sleep on it type of thing. You're actually going to think about it and your brain will actually think about it and figure it out.

They'll solve the problem for you. I think it was, was it Edison? He talked about Edison a lot and that's what he would do. He would try and fall asleep, but he would have like steel balls and they would hit the floor and wake him up and he would have the answer to these intense,

like universal physicist type of questions and be able to kind of answer them. Yeah, he would sleep with them in his hand while sitting down and when they dropped, he would just wake up and write everything on his mind. That he remembered. Yeah, and he would think about the problem until he fell asleep and then those would drop

and he would wake up and he would have the answer. He'd be like, oh, there you go. It's back when like Tesla and Edison were in like a battle rap battle they were battling for ideas for sick ideas now we got besos and musk going back each each guy's got to have a rocket bigger than the other if you know what i'm saying colonizing mars no oh oh oh wait no. I get it. I don't know. Yeah. A lot of that stuff from, uh, Matthew Walker's is really amazing. Some of the stuff he shared on, uh, Joe Rogan's podcast. Um, and it's a lot of stuff that you just said, but it was, it was insane. It was something like about, and you know, who knows, you know, I don't have the ability to, uh, uh,

be able to digest, uh, studies and I don't know what a good, I don't have the ability to be able to digest studies. And I don't know what a good, I wouldn't know a good study if it hit me in the face. I don't know any of this stuff. But like just based off of some of the studies that he was pulling and some of the information he was sharing, he's basically saying some of the effect of that you could start a workout out better. Let's say it's like, it be power lifting but you know something that is uh a little bit uh more movement based and not so much strength based because strength we would just think okay well we got it he said 60 better i'm gonna load the bar up 60 more it's not it's

not in reference to that it's in reference to coordination and things like that and kind of skill acquisition so if you think about you're doing like jujitsu, well, jujitsu can be really complicated. You're like, okay, last time Jesse had me here and then I needed to roll. No, wait, that's the wrong way. Okay. I need to roll this way. Well, basically if you get proper amount of sleep, you can start your next workout X percentage. I think they said it was like something like 40%, uh, better than if you

didn't have the proper sleep. So you, I mean, you're learning your ability to remember, you know, sometimes people say, I can't remember names, but maybe that maybe they have hard time with these like little things that they always talk about or always say, uh, because they're not getting proper sleep. Right. And they're not And they're not ever associating that back. Supposedly, we dream about a lot of these things. And it all plays back in our head, which is just, I find that fascinating. The whole thing is fascinating. I know you went over this on the Joe Rogan podcast,

but the whole becoming a doctor and you have to do your, uh, your, your internship or your, what is it? Your clinical hours? Uh, yeah.

Yeah. Um, your residency, residency and how that all, do you remember that? Yeah. That was amazing. That,

that blew my mind because he, he goes over, you know, kind of the whole drowsy driving aspect of things. And then this was also when I was supposed to have my surgery and I was just like, man, there's like 80% of a chance that this guy's going to screw up if he has less than six hours of sleep before he touches me.

Like I got to make sure that this, I want to be in the middle of the day, not the first one. I want him to warm up on somebody first. How was your night, doc? Yeah. How'd you sleep last night? You do good. Warm up.

Yeah. Just warm up on that guy over there and then come and hit me when you got a couple of, you know, a little bit more coffee in you. You don't want the Jeremy Avila of surgeons. I don't want the Jeremy Avila of surgeons because he's going to try and operate on me with like a Slim Jim. Like the beef jerky stick, not the thing you break into cars with. No warm up. Smoky.

Oh my God. The beard. So back to some of the conjugate stuff we were talking about. beard um so back to some of the conjugate stuff we were talking about um we were talking about some of the weaknesses of it you know some of the weaknesses of it may be because people were trying to uh take some louis simmons information from the geared power lifting world and we're just trying to go one-to-one ratio apply it boom right over to uh raw lifting and for some people that didn't work uh we did see it work amazing for Stan Efferding.

Right. You know, and, and that could be the training age and some different things. And maybe he didn't need a set after set after set. Well,

I think he, you know, that's excellent. I think he is a, he, he's a, he's a special person, but also he,

you know, he bodybuilded for a very, very long time. And he body, body builded, body builded, write that down. That's a time. Bodybuilded. Bodybuilded. Write that down. That's his shirt.

Bodybuilded. Bodybuilded. For a long, long time. So he had an exorbitant amount of reps underneath him. So he already had the practice. And he already, like, I remember the first couple of times that Stan was squatting. You were like, how the hell do I fix this guy?

I was like, what's to fix? He's going to squat whatever the hell he wants. Don't try and do anything. Just let him keep doing what he's doing just keep loading the bar up and just kind of you know play with a couple of you know a couple of things with the with the bars and some bands and chains try and slow them up speed them you know you know it was amazing because like you know yeah you know i've helped a lot of people over the years you know you have people try a closer stance or wider stance and a lot of times it doesn't really make that big of a difference right you're like how'd that feel and sometimes

mentally because you were the one to tell them hey try a wider grip or try this they say they feel better but you didn't really notice anything all that different with stan i was like hey let's um you know i kind of you know a lot of us are squatting you know wider why don't we see what that looks like because you're tall kind of long legs long legs. And he squatted wider and it was like, bam. It's like, holy crap. I've never seen a, you know, anything make that big of a difference that quickly. So yeah, he was, uh, he was definitely a real mutant, but for most people, they're probably going to need a little bit more sets. A lot of times West side max effort work. Uh, sometimes we're looking at um you know louis really wanted one set one set of max and he wanted usually max weight which is a daily max which is just whatever

your max is for the day it could be quite a bit less than the last time you did it it could be quite a bit more than last time you did it but the point is you're trying to handle a weight that's heavy that taps into your nervous system right And so for some of the raw lifters, they may have to adapt and they may have to change things a little bit, add in a few more sets. Maybe they take smaller jumps. Is that how you do it with some of your athletes? More sets? Yeah, we try and do kind of both and all. Very rarely do I put a maximum one on the board for the

athletes at CSA and also the distance athletes you know we do a lot of max you know threes and fives and then we'll always do kind of back offsets and you know I think we started kind of the the 80% back offsets you know when we when we were working with each other and working with some people because people were taking huge jumps plate plate plate plate, plate, quarter, one, and then they're done. Like, bro, you didn't do any work there. You got to go back down and try and get some more reps in you.

So I try and preach to people to try and take small jumps and get yourself warmed up and get everything primed to kind of get up to that weight. And also to remind them that it is training. You know, like it doesn't necessarily matter what you do today. If you're fatigued and you fatigue yourself in the warmups and maybe you don't hit

the biggest three or five, it really doesn't matter. This is going to tax you in a different way and it's going to make you better down the line. I remember Constantine KK would always talk about, you know, oh, I did sets of 10, like all the way up until he did a max single. Like, about you know oh i did sets of 10 like all the way up until he did a max single like holy cow you just said a 10 with 85 of percent of your best max

that's ridiculous right and they did a single and then he was like okay good i'm i'm done i mean if we tried to do sets of 10 that'd be just ridiculous but that's a different way to train and then we we invented the cheat method which was basically do like 10 or 15 for the first couple and then kind of go single, single, single, single, single, and then go ahead and hit your rep max or, you know, kind of that max three or five or whatever it is. Cheat code. Cheat code. And then kind of come back underneath and then try and add a little bit more of, you

know, kind of the work sets after that. So you can see the people who do take their time and really kind of get things underneath there because their form and their technique, you know, is better. And again, it's just coming back to the whole hard work thing. I mean, that's, it's not easy to take, it's not always easy to take a 10 or a 10.5 as opposed to a quarter plate jump, especially if you're in a group of people, you're all going to be in a competitive atmosphere and kind of go from there. So I actually think personally that that's the best thing that, um, conjugate has really ever did is, you know, set the tone and put an atmosphere in

an air of competition all the time in the gym. So I think that that's what, um, that's, what's really kind of separated that aspect of it. And I mean, people who are doing it alone in a, you know, in their garage or in a, um, you know, commercial gym, they're missing that aspect of it. And, you know, they, it's hard to kind of find that extra, that extra gear to do that. So, I mean, I think, um, well, it's not impossible, you know, to training partners are always awesome and training partners with something like a conjugate, you know, um, type of program is, uh, you know, is paramount in my opinion. Yeah. People that are bored of their training and they want to try something new and try something

different. I think it's a great way to, to, uh, to have something new and something different around because you get to do different exercises often. You get to try new and different things. And I think people sometimes are so concerned about the train. They're so worried that they're going to take a step backwards. But sometimes you need to kind of go a little bit backwards or go a little bit lateral in order to keep progressing forward. Because if you can find something that allows you to continue to train and if you can figure out a way to feel good, feel healthy without having pain in your knee or pain in your hip or whatever

it might be. Whatever way you can figure that out, if you can be around longer, you'll probably be stronger, right? You've got to hang in there. You don't want to train expensive. You want to train cheap. If you can find these little things that just like any sort of straight bar tricep extensions, like destroy my, destroy my elbows to the point that I can't squat the next day and I can't bench

the next time a bench workout comes along. But if I do a million band tricep extensions, I'm getting the growth that I need to, the stimulation into the muscles that I need to, and I'm able to squat and bench, you know, the next day. So, um, you know, kind of finding those cheap little exercises that are going to get things done without blasting you and not allowing you to train the next day. You know, that's, those are the key little, those are the magic little kind of bullets that you can kind of find that are laying around there. And I think that that's kind of a, that's what conjugate to me is really great at is finding things that mimic, um, a movement, but in a way that, um, costs you a little bit less on, you know, costs a little bit of wear and cost less on the wear and tear side of things. I remember, uh, Rick Husey, he used to say big lift, little lift, you know, you hit a big, you hit a big lift, you know, you, you blew it out and you got a big PR on your squat. Maybe on the next workout, when it's time

to bench, maybe you work on like, not necessarily just benching less, but maybe your bench workout just looks different. Right. So if you, you know, handled a PR squat or some sort of PR squat movement, maybe when it's time to bench press, maybe that's where you do try something a little different as your main movement. Maybe that's when you do dumbbells. Maybe that's when you switch to incline bench or something like that. I think a lot of people don't understand your, your squat can hurt your bench. Totally. Your bench can hurt your squat. Your deadlift can hurt your bench. Your deadlift can hurt your squat. They can all hurt each other. Yep. And we kind of don't realize it like uh i've heard people say many

times like oh my elbows don't ever hurt when i squat right um but it can still or they maybe they don't feel like they hurt when they're dead lifting right well yeah because maybe they're just not in a position to where they're actually uh getting compromised that's causing pain but are they getting twisted and are they getting moved in some weird positions? Are you handling large amounts of weight that way? Um, maybe you don't feel it when you do like a row because maybe the way the row is set up, um, or, or a pull-up, but maybe your biceps are kind of taken over that movement. And so you're not feeling it, but when your triceps go to take over a similar movement pattern, now your elbows on fire and you're like, shit, man, what do I do?

And you can't kind of figure it out. You're like, I'm trying to balance everything out. And that's where maybe using a different bar might come into play, right? Absolutely. I was talking to Smokey about it earlier, about Sean at our gym. He's having a great training cycle.

Is he really fat right now? That guy gets pretty fat. He does. He gets pretty big. He gets fluffy. I'm proud of him. He eats well. He just got like a great training cycle. Is he really fat right now? That guy gets pretty fat. He does. He gets pretty big. He gets fluffy. I'm proud of him. He eats well. He just got like a new grill, too.

He benched like five or so in training, didn't he? Yeah, he benched five. Did he do any meat yet? No, not yet. He's getting there. He's getting there. Awesome. But one of the biggest challenges is his squat.

His low bar squat destroys his wrist, destroys his elbows. Yeah. So as we're heading into where I think we're 10 weeks out of record breakers at this point, which he's going to be doing. I was like, okay, hey man, we got to kind of prepare for the fact that your elbows and your wrists are going to hurt. So anytime that it says straight bar. Remember, this happens every time. Exactly. And it was, I was like, hey, you have elbow sleeves, right?

He's like, yeah. I was like, let's put them on for the squat. Let's put on some wrist straps for the squat. Let's try and make sure we minimize the damage because we're 10 weeks out. We can't accumulate four weeks of damage and then you limp into the meat. You know, let's do everything we can to minimize things as we're kind of going through

and, you know, turning our dynamic effort, you know, days on Friday, maybe he just uses the belt squat or something along those lines to keep him healthy. So he can keep training, can peek into the meat and then ultimately can compete healthy once the meat comes. Because if your elbows are hurting going into a squat, they're really going to hurt after the squat, and they're really going to hurt your bench press.

It hurts like crazy. Yeah. You always said that your bench was the worst thing for your deadlift. Oh, yeah. Well, I was also benching in a bench shirt, so it compromised everything. But a lot of people don't understand that, you know, the arch that you have when you're benching, I'm not going to say that it's bad for your back,

but it is a weird position to be in. It's a weird position to try to hold. It certainly doesn't feel like just a natural, ordinary position that you would otherwise be in, right? It's an exaggerated position. And it can put a lot of stress on your lower back that's why i've always wore a belt uh when i bench i don't have pain when i bench my back doesn't hurt when i bench but it's to make sure that my back doesn't get all jacked up right uh for those other lifts and also too like why not use knowledge why Why not? Why not use some knowledge

that you obtain over the years and say, Oh, you know what? You know, those bodybuilders that do the weird benches with their feet up, you know, or, or Adrian Larson or some of these people, they, they, they do these, uh, different styles of benches, uh, to have different results. You know, Adrian Larson, he has whatever you want to call it, a disability, and he's not able to get his legs on the ground, and so therefore he developed really strong arms, and therefore he's got the Larson press, and he shares that with a lot of other people, and people try a variation of the Larson press,

but a Larson press or a floor press or just having your feet up like a bodybuilder can just take all the stress off your lower back. So if you hurt your back deadlifting or squatting, or you, you know, you tweaked somehow take two or three weeks or a month, take a month and don't put your feet on the ground on the bench. Is it going to hurt your bench? No, it's going to help your bench. Right.

Now you might have to pay attention to the weight that you use because now everything's going to be different. You can't use the same percentages. You got to be careful. You don't hurt your shoulder, your elbow. I've seen that. now everything's going to be different. You can't use the same percentages. You got to be careful you don't hurt your shoulder, your elbow. But it's still going to be hard. I've seen that happen many times before, but you're going to save your back. Your back's going to recover, and now you'll be back to lifting whatever you lifted before and then some.

Yep. I think Vinny DeCenzo did that for a long time. He called it the chair press. He put his legs up on the chair, and He had to do that for a long time. I don't know if it was an injury or what it was. I think it was a knee. He would have his legs up. He even did it in a shirt. He was benching really, really big weight

in a shirt with his legs up, which is just horrifying to think of if you've ever been in a bench shirt. That's just the stability and balance. It has to be wobbly. On a good day, a bench shirt feels, you know, wobbly and about, but it's going to fall out of your hands at all times, let alone not having your legs on the ground too.

You got something over there? I was just wondering if you guys watched anything from Mr. Olympia this weekend. We have a new Mr. O. We do. I know. It's crazy. Yeah, Sean Roden. He toppled the champ, and it was impressive.

It was amazing. I mean, Sean Roden came in diced up. Phil Heath didn't look as lean as he's looked in previous Olympias. I don't know if there was an injury or something happened, but you got to give it to Sean Roden. He came in, and he looked looked awesome and he's the champ. Yep. It's, you know, I think we always kind of see this, you know,

the torch will somewhat get passed, you know, it'll get passed back and forth. And then it, you know, finally, you know, exchange his hands for a while. And, you know, I think it's one of those things, again, kind of like, oh, nobody can beat Phil. Nobody can beat Jay. Nobody can beat Ronnie or anything along those lines.

And somebody comes out and does. And then, you know, unfortunately for that champion, unless they're going to double down on their efforts, usually everyone can kind of start to come back and surpass him. And we hope for Phil's sake that he's able to come back and get over whatever hamstrung him getting into the contest, because it's pretty clear if we look at all of his other, his past shows that something wasn't right. There was something either he changed or there was something going on. And, um,

you know, if he's able to fix that, I'm sure he can get into the shape, but I mean, now, you know, Sean Roden's going to go ahead and kind of build upon that as, you know,

as we go. So it's going to be one of those things where, um, it's going to be, it's going to go ahead and kind of build upon that as, you know, as we go. So it's going to be one of those things where it's going to be, it's going to be really, really interesting as we go. What a crazy, it's such a crazy sport, you know, and I, you know, I did the one bodybuilding show, so I don't, I don't know anything about bodybuilding, to be totally honest. I just, it's hard to, you know, you look at from one guy to the next, it's hard to understand why one guy beats another sometimes when, when you don't know, you look at from one guy to the next, it's hard to understand why one guy beats another sometimes when, when you don't know when you're not a bodybuilder yourself or, or, um,

you haven't, you know, seen this, uh, this level of competition. I mean, look at these guys, they both look enormous. They both look amazing. I would say that like the only thing that I can see that stands out is, uh, Phil Heath, uh, His chest looks a little bit better, but Sean Roden looks leaner. Yes. Through the midsection, it looks like Phil is just not as cut up as he normally has been. And Sean's legs just look so much bigger,

especially when he was walking from side to side. They're just so much more massive. But good for him. And I think that Phil's a champion, he works really, really hard. And I think, you know, hopefully he takes that as a challenge and comes back and he's better off for it. Because I know Sean's, it's a whole bigger, it's a whole different thing when, you know, someone's trying to, who's always going to give you their best and want to try and take something away from you. And that's, you know, that's when the real champions are kind of revealed. I guess what some of this comes down to, too, the way they get judged,

is they get judged on specific poses. And so when they start to kind of add it up at the end of the day, it's like, okay, this guy won this pose. Right. Well, I don't even know how they actually score it, but I know that they go by particular poses. And so you can kind of out pose somebody. You can look better in these particular poses, which it's hard to say, like, how much better do you actually look than the other guy on a regular basis?

It's kind of hard to figure out, you know? Yeah. And I mean, you know, even them standing next to each other, you can barely see, you can see a little bit through Phil's midsection, but I mean, primarily they, they both look insane. They look nuts. Look at their lats just hanging down yep and uh yeah it's just it's a it's a crazy sport one thing that i really enjoyed about uh doing doing some bodybuilding and one thing that i you see how he's striated through his insane like his hip flexors is has striations jesus christ uh one thing i i really enjoyed and i i really uh recommend that that everyone should participate in in some way i'm not even saying to necessarily get on stage uh but getting on stage is kind of the the thing that makes you go in so deep right um i think, I think that most people, if they tried a bodybuilding

diet and they did a bodybuilding workout and, or bodybuilding workouts along with bodybuilding diet, and they did some cardio and they were able to push it for two or three weeks. First of all, you'd see a drastic change in your body. But secondly, you would come to the realization of, oh my God, I'm normally only about 60% in. I do about 60 or 70% of the work and I thought I was working my ass off. It is wild. It is really a wild thing. And I don't know how these guys do it. I don't know.

You know, Sean Roden, I know him a tiny bit from Gold's Gym. He's always very nice to me, and we have some decent conversation. And luckily for us here at Slingshot, he rocks some of the products and things like that. But I see a lot of pictures of him and his kid and stuff like that. I'm like, I don't know. At that level, I don't know how these guys work any of that in. I really don't. It's that time-consuming of that in. Right. I really don't. Like it's, it's, uh, it's that time consuming of a sport.

It's, it's remarkable. Yeah. I think, and I mean, I think so many people want to be, you know, a bodybuilder,

uh, but they don't quite understand. They think like, Oh, the three sets of 10 or whatever it ends up being that that's going to get them there. But the reality of the situation is, is,

you know, having to do three or four workouts a day. Um, is, you know, having to do three or four workouts a day, um, and, you know, really try and take the time and build those things up. It's a huge departure from what people think that they're doing when they actually see them going through it or they're actually drug through, um, a workout. Um, you know, it's, it's a, it's a whole different ball game. Yeah. And that stuff with you in Malibu with O'Hearn. I was like, okay, sweet. We did some biceps. Now we're going to actually really get into that. That was the bicep warm-up.

I was like, oh man. Four different exercises of five sets each was the warm-up for our biceps. Got it. Check. It kind of makes you feel like you weren't working hard before. Absolutely. Powerlifting is a different style of workout. And I think what happens though, and this happens in every sport, is that the sport itself promotes laziness in some way or promotes complaining in some way or promotes bad body positioning and bad body posture. I'm not talking about

during the actual lift. I'm talking about like just just like shitty behavior, like behavior that's not conducive towards the best possible workout. And if we were to go to MMA gym and we watch these guys actually work out and watched a whole day we could sit there and take notes on what looks shitty right now we're gonna get punched in the face if we're like hey man like you guys need to be more upbeat and you need right but it's the culture i'm not saying it's just mma it's all when you played baseball there's a lot of dicking around that goes on right there's a lot of stuff some of the stuff when you're having fun sometimes that's necessary to the structure of how everything works. And it's going to be necessary for the way everyone's brain works.

Right. But this thing of like, oh, man, you know, my shoulder, you know, a guy rubbing his shoulder, telling him about how bad his shoulder hurts. You're like, no shit. We play baseball. Right. All of our shoulders. Oh, my elbow. Yeah, of course your elbow.

Everyone's elbow is killing them. This isn't helping anything. Right. Oh, my elbow. Yeah, of course your elbow. Everyone's elbow is killing them. This isn't helping anything, right? And you're going to have some of this, you know, some of this happen when you do bodybuilding, powerlifting. And it's from me switching and going over and now seeing my team work out, I can kind of see some of that behavior.

I can kind of see what some of these guys are doing, taking too long in between sets. And just these little things where you're like, man, that really adds up, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It'd be nice if that wasn't there, but it kind of is just part of the way things go. Right. I mean, I think, you know, there's, you know, people who are, you know, putting out this, uh, expectation or, you know, go, you got to spend 20 hours a week in the gym to, to

really do it. That's not true. You know, you're, you're spending 20 hours in the gym a week because you like being there because that's what you want to do. But I mean, yeah, your shoulder hurts, your back hurts, your knee hurts. You know, you're you're spending 20 hours in the gym a week because you like being there, because that's what you want to do. But I mean, yeah, your shoulder hurts, your back hurts, your knee hurts. You know, what did you expect? I think the best quote was something that Max Ada told me when Abujaev was talking to one of his lifters who, you know, had a an elbow injury. And he came up to him one day and he's like, coach, this is a Bulgarian athlete going to his Bulgarian coach, Ivan Abujayev. Coach, I don't know about today, man.

My elbow hurts. And Abujayev said, if you're a faggot, your asshole would hurt. He's like, you're an Olympic lifter. Your elbows are just going to hurt. That's just it, man. And I mean, that's just as brutal as fuck your elbow. But I mean, it's the goddamn truth. Like, what did you think you were going to get into here?

We're trying to lift maximal weights at maximal speeds and throw it over your head. You think that like, this is going to be like, man, that was awesome. Like, no, it sucks, dude. Like the whole thing, it hurts. There's nothing that always feels, you know, the accomplishment is what feels great about it. Getting through everything, not so much. When I asked Max, I said, I said, you know, what do you think of all these people doing the squat every day program? He's like, I did it for 11 years.

What do you want to know about it? Right. Like, wait, what happened? Squat every day for how long? But what's amazing about him is you want to talk about just having, you know, a motor pattern ingrained and you know what I mean? Like that guy could trip, fall out of bed and squat 600. Oh God.

Like, like he does it just so casually and there's zero thinking, you know, Andrew's trying to think his way and he thinks his way out of squatting where Max can do it. You know, there could just be a bar somewhere in the, in the, while he's showering, like, oh, I'll squat this. And it just, without without even thinking about it he'll be able to squat six under the shower and it's just something that you know he's he's drilled himself into and uh you know he'll tell you that that was the worst thing he's ever done you know he could barely walk barely move you know every day and you know that was the american version of the bulgarian squat every day program and then when he got the Bulgarian version of it, it was twice as bad.

So, I mean, you know, talk about putting yourself through the ringer. That's a real way to do it. Brutality. Yeah. That's kind of like what I've been telling people about taking photographs. I don't have to think about capturing an image. I just, you know, put my camera up and I capture it. But when it comes to a squat it's step one two three and

now be strong if i can just let's go be strong right now then it's gonna you know it'll click but bring a lot of times back to jeremy i actually try and get him to not think so the more the more he does think the more he fucks things up so i mean if he can just go on autopilot and you know just be singing a song or whatever he's doing like while he's squatting he's he's so much better off opposed to like, Hey, Jeremy, I want you to concentrate on doing this, this, and this. Like, Jeremy, I want you to forget everything and just kind of go nuts and just, you know, come back up at the bar. Oh, okay.

It's like, try and forget, try not to think. A lot of times when I'm trying to coach somebody or, you know, yell something or whatever, most of the time, it's just words of encouragement. Sure. Come on, you can do this. Pat on the back. It's, it's all those kinds of things. Let's go, let's do it.

You know, today's your day, big day, like just whatever the hell is going to rile them up, you know, just trying to make them understand, uh, the focus of the day and, and just getting them excited, you know, and, and they're already excited. So it's not a huge deal, but it's just, you're, you're being verbal. Yeah. Um, and you're giving them feedback. They get the feedback. They hear your voice.

They hear you yelling. They know that you're excited about it. You're telling them you think they can make it now. Maybe they're getting a little bit more confidence, but I'm not going to really talk about, you know, driving the knee out when you have a max weight on there. Now, when you're warming up, that might be where I'm talking about that a lot more. Hey, you got to sit back by that last set. You know, when I see somebody going through a workout, unless they're doing something

really dangerous, um, if it's, if it's a heavier weight, I really won't say anything until later. I'll say, Hey, you know, I watched your last set and I noticed your right foot was pointed out a lot compared to your left. Didn't want to say anything while you're training right because that might be the way you squatted for the last five weeks and i may not have gotten a chance to see that or you could have been squatting that way your whole life right you know maybe you're a little off center or maybe you you're squatting a little different but i think a lot of times these people are just kind of

shouting these cues not knowing uh you know back you, you know, sit back or whatever this is. Not really knowing, A, what it means. And I mean, I always do the same thing. I let people go through a squat workout and say, okay, cool. This is what happens. So we're going to address it via these accessory exercises. I remember Janet used to bench with like one forefinger on the ring over here and ring finger on the ring on her left side or whatever it was. And whenever you would try and move it back, her bench press would go down 40 pounds.

And you're like, you know what? Never mind. Just do it that way. If your goal is to squat, bench, and deadlift, you know, some heavy stuff, whatever works is what's going to work for you. And we'll try and fix the rest afterwards. Yeah, benching like insanely crooked. But the other thing, too, is like you got to know your lifter, you know.

So if the lifter gets all hyped and they get all crazy and you see the missile lift, well, now we have experience. Now we've seen what that lifter looks like when they get out of their mind and it wasn't effective. So now when they get up to the bar, rather than saying, hey, let's go, motherfucker, you can do this, now you're saying, hey, you got to get a nice deep breath of air. You got to hold tight. Hang in there.

Let's make this lift. Something to kind of calm them down. Hey, you know how to squat. Let's do it. Let's do it right now. Yeah. You know, take a big breath of air. Push into your belt.

Maybe now you're actually giving them a cue because now it takes them and it eases their mind okay all i got to do is focus in on what he said and i'll make the lift rather than being ah you know going all crazy and stuff like that that's just uh that's experience and you know good coaching for there for sure yeah uh we were just talking about the olympia earlier uh jesse you were telling us how the uh the first show that you guys ever did was the Olympia. Can you tell people a little bit about that? Oh, for Slingshot? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I think the first show that I remember where we were doing a lot of product and everything was the Arnold that year. I want to say that we were as Power Magazine at the Olympia, and we were demoing the slingshot, but not for sale. So the first time that it was for sale was at the Arnold Classic, and Mark was like, hey, man, can you come and help me? That was really great to have you at the Olympia. It would be really cool if you were here for this one too. I said, sure, and flew myself out there. We got there, stayed at the sweet micro hotel right next to the, um, next to the airport, had a, uh, a sweet geo Metro, I believe to kind of drive around,

parked about four blocks away. Uh, all of us had two giant pieces of luggage, uh, to wheel into the, um, to the show. So we didn't have to have anybody sneaking all that contraband all the contraband in the union work. Yeah. And then we set up, you know, we had, uh,

we basically moved the folding table out of the way. Um, I think we may have had one banner, maybe a banner. And it was just in front of the, um, in front of the table. I think the first show,

I don't think we even had a banner. Yeah. Yeah. And then, um, we had a bench in there with, uh, I want to say it was only 315, maybe 405. And it was, I don't really remember a ton between there because Mark would just get them into the booth. I would put a slingshot on them, put them on the bench, put a bar in their hands. They would try it.

I would take the thing off, give it to Andy. She would take them over there and it to andy she would take them over there and and kind of try and sell it and then repeat times you know i don't even know how many we sold as many as we could that whole day and then you know on the way home we stopped at wendy's and then um you know everybody passed out and we woke up and we kind of did it again and the reason i told that story was today you know, was just to kind of talk about, you know, give some perspective to some of the newer Slingshot and Power employees here. Just to kind of talk about, you know, sometimes people walk into a situation and not understand the work that got people to the current situation. And, you know, it's a far cry from some of the shows that we get to do now, you know, where we get to have our own hotel,

where we get to have our own hotel room. Go to some crazy restaurant, spend a few thousand bucks, eat whatever the fuck we want. Exactly. And, you know, where we have, you know, I don't know, what, 10 times the booth space at this point? Oh, yeah. Right?

And, you know, we have, you know, nobody knew who the hell we were. No one could find us. You know, now people are seeking us out, you know, when I was like our main sales person, cause we just didn't have a lot, you know, a lot of team or anything with us.

So I, I would go out into the crowd and say, Hey, you want to try this out? Or maybe I was already wearing it and I w I was kind of like, you know, showing people kind of what it does or just walking up to people cold. Not,

I don't know them. They don't know me. They don't, they don't recognize me from anything. Cause I wasn to people cold. Not, I don't know them. They don't know me. They don't, they don't recognize me from anything. Cause I wasn't anybody yet. And, uh, just, you know, trying to get, gain attention. Or sometimes I would just yell like bench heavy with no pain, come in the booth, check it out. And somebody else would be bench pressing and then they'd kind of see that and they'd kind of look. And then I'd get their attention and say, Hey man, you got to try this out, man.

This is going to help your bench. Or we would try and put them like in the middle of the aisle and force, you know, force a crowd to kind of look and then i'd get their attention say hey man you got to try this out man this is going to help your bench or we would try and put them like in the middle of the aisle and force you know force a crowd to kind of happen and i remember getting yelled at by andy all the time because i would go out into the crowd and give away the power magazines and try and point people to the booth say you can't give those all away like we're running out already you can't do that i'm like oh we're just trying to get people in there you know and um it's certainly a far cry but you know those are you know some cool memories because of, you know, you know, getting to kind of look back on, on things to where we are now, you know, really seeing a lot of progress and really seeing the growth and everything. It's, you know, it's pretty amazing.

Um, but you know, just because you see someone who's successful and you may not know the whole, you, you're not ever going to really know the whole story and, um, you don't know what it took to get here. Right. And, um, you know, that's all I was trying to, to lend to people is, you know, a little bit more perspective on, you know, some of the journey that only I was kind of along with for, for a good while there, you know, and, um, you know, I'm one of the last man standing at this point who's, who has been around for that long. And the reason I've been around for that long is, you know, I'm willing to, you know, work hard and be consistent and, and always kind of be around and not, you know, gain too much of an ego and think it's about me. You know, it's about things that are bigger than me. And it's about, you know, helping,

you know, my brother and, you know, you know, people that I love and, um, helping them, you know, succeed and knowing that that's going to come around, you know, my way and help me succeed. And, you know, it, it's come true 100% of the time. And, you know, just being able to even sit down and talk to some of the Slingshot employees and, you know, share that experience and share those stories was, uh, was really cool. You know, I've, I've spoken in front of hundreds of people and, you know, CEOs and boardrooms. And this is the, this was the one speech this morning that really, really stressed me out more than anything.

And I, and I told Mark and I told Andy and they kind of laughed at it, but I mean, you ask, ask Katie, dude, I've been not sleeping this whole week because you know what, this is, it's so important to me. You know what I mean? It's the one thing that I, that I don't want to fuck up that, you know, I want to make sure that, uh, you know, it, it means a lot to me to, to share that story and, um, to, to be here and to have gone through it. You know, it's something, um, some, I wouldn't trade for anything in the whole wide world. It's, it's, it's been a awesome ride. It's been the

coolest. That's, you know, part of the reason why, you know, when I'm on here, I'll talk about, Part of the reason why, you know, when I'm on here, I'll talk about, you know, you have to go through certain things in order to earn certain things. Sure. You know, life, you can't, you can't purchase things that you want in life without having the money for it. And what I mean by that is I'm not talking about like, there's a thing called the credit card. So of course you can, right? We both abused that situation. But I'm talking about with life.

Yeah. You know, you can't, you can't pay for things that you haven't earned yet. Um, and you, you have, you have to pay the price first. You pay the price first and then you get the prize. And it's not like my life was horrible and I treached through something horrific, so I never want to paint that picture. It was all a lot of fun, but it was all a learning process. It was all a growing process. And when you're learning and growing, it can be very painful.

You learn certain things, certain ways. And luckily for me, I had Jesse around. Luckily for me, I had my wife around. And so the steps were always methodical. You know, and that's why I talk all the time about, you know, one foot in front of the other. It sounds so ridiculous to say it, but literally that's all it is. It's one foot in front of the other. Your head is down. If you pick your head up and keep looking at the horizon and keep looking at what's ahead maybe you're missing some of the steps along the way and it's important that you don't trip it's important that you don't get sidetracked it's important that you don't look down another path

it's important that you just keep walking forward you just keep coming forward uh all the time like uh like an old mike tyson fight and you're putting the pressure you're putting the pressure on the day every day and i heard a thing that dana dana white the other day talking about how life's going to kick you in the face and it's ready to kick you in the face every single day when you wake up well why not just take it to life you know why not just you know have your guard up and be fucking ready be ready to go when it's time to wake up you're gonna have days where you don't feel like doing a lot of these things but if you can figure out a way to get one foot in front of the other you can get enough momentum and you can get to a point in your life where you

don't have to do a lot of the things that you don't want to do and what can you know kind of bring it full circle and i think it's a great place to kind of stop is when i was on my way over here your dad came out of the house and i got to go give him a big hug and you know just check in with him and see how he's doing and the first and the first thing that he said he wanted to tell me about you know he's been going to the gym every day you know and savage he's awesome and but what he said is it's like you know what i really one word stuck out for me it's consistency you know and i preach that to all my you know he's an accountant so he you know preaches that to everyone when they're dealing with their fiscal situation

and he goes i could be consistent and then you know you told him i was like the one way is you just got to go in there six o'clock because that's going to be the only time that you're going to be super free and everything's going to be there just be consistent because i can be consistent that's what i've done with my whole life that's what i preach you know and it was really interesting because it was something i said on the podcast he said sparked him in the first place and he said that he said you mentioned about like i was talking about him and i was talking about how strong he is and i'm like well why is it somebody like that can be so strong in one area but he can't walk by a bowl of potato chips without without throwing away his diet like he might have already had a conscious thought.

And my dad's really smart. Might've had a conscious thought of, I need to make some changes. I don't want my blood pressure to be high. And, you know, maybe he doesn't want to be like ripped, but just be healthier period, right? So he talks about being on a diet. Then boom, 15 seconds later,

when it's time to eat potato chips, he's eating potato chips, right? And now he's not doing that anymore. But he looks great and just super proud of him. I told him that, and you know, it was always good to see him and give him a chips, he's eating potato chips. Now he's not doing that anymore. He looks great. I'm just super proud of him. I told him that. It was always good to see him and give him a hug. That was pretty great. He's awesome. I love him.

Anywho, as we wrap this bitch up, that was the first time we didn't go to the Olympia in many, many years. We will be at the Los Angeles Fit Expo. We will be at the Arnold Classic. I think Big Jesse over here will be at the los angeles fit expo we will be at the arnold classic i think big jesse over here will be with me for all these uh events and it's been amazing having jesse with me uh along this uh journey um i've learned a lot from him as well as you know he's talking about

learning a lot from us and you know the feeling is mutual i've learned a lot from him one thing that i learned from him that i would never be able to do a lot of the things that i'm doing now and it was just uh your act of saying hey man just tell me what you need you know like just tell me tell me what you tell me what you need and at first i was like well i can't really tell you what i need because like you know we're both dudes and like you're gonna punch me in the face uh i mean without ever really saying that that's kind of what was going on in my head i was like i can't really like i can't like boss him around or whatever i i don't i don't pay him anything it doesn't make any sense i can't really do that and and as we kept moving forward he'd always say

no no no just no tell tell me what you need you know just he would reassure me all the time like no tell me what you need me to do so i can do it so i can get it done so you don't have other shit to worry about so that everything in the booth or everything over here runs productively and without that it would be really hard to be in charge and it'd be hard to be a leader today and to be able to do all the things that i do now without having that background of just having the freedom of him saying, hey, just tell me what you need. After a while, I started to recognize that, you know what? A lot of people just want to know what you need. You tell them what you need to do and they help you with it and shit gets done. Yep. And that's it. That's the secret.

All right. Where can people find you, Jesse Burdick? Jesse Burdick online, anywhere, on all Instagrams, powerod.com, and at CSA Gym pretty much all the time that I'm not here. Jesse and I are joining forces on something that's going to be amazing that you're all going to love and has to do a lot with Power Magazine moving to a digital platform. and it has to do a lot with Power Magazine moving to a digital platform. We'll give you more information as we know it because we don't know it all yet, but we've got a lot of things ironed out and a lot of things are going to be really exciting. Strength is never a weakness.

Weakness is never a strength. See you all later.