Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 142 - You Possess The Ability to be a Winner

Episode Date: November 15, 2018

Everyone possesses the ability to get STronger. Everyone possesses the ability to improve their lives. Everyone possesses the ability to be a winner, but how come they're not? Today Mark Bell is dishing out some motivation and updating everyone on the Get Less FattereST Diet. By time you are downloading this, the promo code discussed on the show will have run out. ➢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

Ready to roll? We're rolling. Oh my god, we're live. Hey! Hey everybody. Hey. Anyone that's jumping on this bitch early is gonna get a little treat and I'll mention that in just a second. But first things first, I'm Mark Bell. I'm your host. I'm joined today by my boy, Andrew Zaragoza. What it do? Did I say that right? Yeah, that's the first time you said it right. Oh. Maybe I put a little Latino heat in there. Yeah, did you have anything spicy today? I did, actually. Actually, last night I had some jalapenos. Oh, well, there you go. And it wore off. Yeah, it wore off pretty quick, didn't it?

Yeah. Turned into a white boy pretty quick. Yeah, it'll be fine. Andrew and I have been doing this podcast for how long, Andrew? Since January, February. technically like march 1st there you go since march 1st and uh it used to be called mark bell's power cast used to do that with jim mcd and i was also joined by another co-host named silent mike who some of you guys are aware of we ain't doing that anymore we've shifted gears we're doing something different, and it's just Andrew and I. And we've been plowing through a lot of podcasts.

We've had a lot of great guests. We've had a lot of awesome powerlifters, bodybuilders, crossfitters, doctors, all kinds of people, people that are way smarter than us, right? Way smarter. Everyone comes in here talking about reading all the time. Lots of reading. Why so much reading? So much research.

Yeah. I don't know who has time for all that. People research all kinds of stuff. Yeah. I mean, we have very little time because of the podcast, but I would imagine everyone else podcasts and doesn't have time for research. But apparently nobody podcasts as much as we do. Well, Ron Penna, I think, is like the busiest person I know, kind of. But then he recites all kinds of books.

Like, where does he find the time? Or Daniel Arrigo. Yeah. These guys are so smart, but then they read so much. Well, like Joey was saying, she was reading a book and she got through like a cup of coffee

and I was like, how many pages did you get through? She's like, I don't know, like 50 something. Yeah, she's reading David Goggin's new book. Sounds amazing. But yeah, she gave us a recap of the entire thing. The whole thing. And I'm like, how long't know, like 50-something. Yeah, she's reading David Goggin's new book. It sounds amazing. But yeah, she gave us a recap of the entire thing. The whole thing.

And I'm like, how long have you been reading this? Oh, just this morning. 50 pages. Like, dude. Would she go to some special reading school? That's what I'm saying. Like, it doesn't make sense to me. She has superpowers.

That and people who can poop really fast. Yeah, like, I know. That's amazing. Like, I remember I used to work with a guy who'd be like, you know, like 4.55. And it's like, dude, we're about to clock out and leave. He's like, I gotta go to the bathroom. I can't hold it. Like, you're not gonna make it back.

Like, you're gonna get in trouble for clocking out late. Yeah, 5.03. And he'd be back at like 4.57. I'm like, oh, you didn't go? He's like, no, I did. It was really bad. I'm like, that... I can't go? He's like, no, I did. It was really bad. I'm like, I can't trust you. Do you travel at the speed of light? Yeah. Either you didn't poop or you're a terrorist.

Yeah. One of the two. It's got to be one or the other. Yeah. But yeah, we've been doing this podcast for a little bit. Been having a lot of fun. We've had a lot of great guests. And we're going to continue to have a lot of great guests.

A lot of times we just kick it like this and do this format. For today, anyone who's listening live, type in poop20, right? That's because of all the poop stories that we have on the show. Type in poop20 at markbellslingshot.com and get 20% off. The deal will expire sometime later on today today i'm not even going to tell you when but it's going to expire so while you're listening to this live you should be shopping that's the way we're going to try to work this thing pick out another window and start shopping and start buying yourself a slingshot type in poop 20 and get 20 off uh on everything on markbell slingshot.com we have a lot of new apparel. We got slingshots and strong sleeves and X sleeves and all kinds of stuff.

So go check out all the different stuff you can buy over there and get to it. Yeah. I know we have Black Friday and the traditional sale days, but we almost never do any kind of sales. I know we do power. It's just spatial for you guys. Yeah, because the community that's kind of behind the live know we do it's just spatial for you guys yeah because i mean the the community that's like kind of behind the live streams has been just it's been awesome so this is kind of like our way of saying thank you guys for always checking in appreciate it i see you guys commenting

but i see a poop emoji like it's it's amazing like and this is so this is our way of giving back to you guys and saying thank you people love the poop. Also, we're also filming something else. Like, we're always doing things simultaneously here at Super Training Gym. We had an awesome workout this morning with Jimbo Cooper. I didn't even ask him why his name was Jimbo. I never even got to the bottom of that. But his name is Anthony something, right? Yeah.

Sorry, I was about to. Did you say why? Well, because I'm like, I seen seen him and then i seen on the screen anthony cooper i was like who's anthony cooper because i see this other guy who's supposed to be jimbo cooper and then so joey was like so did you just one day decide your name was going to be jimbo and he's like yeah in his soft little beautiful voice yeah yeah i know he doesn't he doesn't uh doesn't speak doesn't speak a whole lie he's pretty quiet right yeah no he has a very soft beautiful voice i'm getting some pretty good questions coming in over here i'm going to answer some of these too all right so we're filming

something else we're filming for uh operation get less fatterest which is on my facebook page you're going to want to also check that out i've taken you guys through uh stop being so fat diet which is a diet that i came up with a few years ago that's part of the jacked and tan book that you guys will see sometime in 2019 i know i know i know i've been working on it it's taken me a long time uh because i can't read so if i can't read how am i supposed to be able to write right so uh working on that getting through that and i taught you guys about uh you know this diet of stop being so damn fat basically it was just a list of uh healthy foods just to push you in the right direction no grains and no um no sugars then we moved in the vertical diet which is a diet promoted by stan efforting created by stan

efforting and has fantastic information uh onVerticalDiet.com. You can check out anything from Stan Efferding. Check out his Instagram. He always has information about the vertical diet. It's a great diet. I've utilized it many different times in my life, and I like it a lot. I've been using it before it ever had a name because Stan and I have been in communication for a long time.

Many, many successful world record holding power lifters have used it. Some bodybuilders have used it as well. So it might be something that you want to check into because it really with diet, it's about finding what's going to feel right for you. When you say what works for you, I'm not talking about metabolically, but I'm talking about, uh, psychologically, what's going to work for you psychologically. If I start getting in this conversation with you about fasting and you never fasted before, and you feel like you're going to die every time you try to fast for more than six hours. Well, any, uh, any diet that utilizes fasting is probably not going to be great for you. Anytime you ever restrict carbs and you just have a pounding headache, then maybe that's not going to be a great diet for you.

And on that same topic, the diet that we're moving into next is the war on carbs. And again, all this started out of, you know, starting back a few weeks ago, I decided, you know what, people get fat during the holidays. They tend to fluff up. They tend to get too heavy. They tend to enjoy, you know, grandma's cooking and their aunt's meatballs and everything else, right? So let's combat that. Let's counterbalance that. Let's set in action something that will not allow that to happen. And so here we are.

Operation Get Less Fatterist. And I was going to have it uh kind of go until about thanksgiving but now it will probably go on for quite a bit longer we'll probably uh ride it all the way into christmas and who knows maybe right all right into the new year um so what we're doing right now is the war on carbs it's a no carb diet when is there a cheat meal there's not one when you read when you read my book the warbs, there's not a planned cheat meal. And that's deliberate. It's because I want to see how long you can stick it out for.

Now, this is not like a battle of attrition. You're not trying to make it 190 days without a carb or anything like that. There's still room for some trace carbohydrates. I advise people to eat vegetables. Even some fruit can be allowed here and there. But for the most part, you're staying away from all carbohydrates. You're increasing your fats. And protein-wise, you know, I've never been a fan of like a true ketogenic diet. So this isn't even full keto. That's why it's called

the war on carbs, because this is more about kicking carbs out of your life than it is about worrying about whether you're in ketosis or not. The benefits of being in ketosis really just kind of tells you that your fat ratios are very high and that your body's producing ketones. Ketones are basically a form of fractionated fat. It's sometimes referred to as the fourth macronutrient. So macronutrient wise, we've got three of them. We've got carbohydrates, protein, and fats. And then the fourth one, which some people believe is the fourth macronutrient, would be ketones. And alcohol is actually somewhere, I don't know, falls somewhere in that. Alcohol yields some energy as well so

it falls into that category some people argue that ketones are better for the brain and people get into all these you know people just get into these conversations about what diet's the best and this and that well i've always liked a low carb diet but i don't think it's necessarily better than any other diet. However, it works out better for me because it's a way for me to easily manage my caloric intake, which is a very important thing when you're trying to be jacked and tans, very important thing when you're trying to be shredded. And so I've used the diet many times over to help me manipulate my calories. Let's not make mistake about it. That's what we're doing.

Could you potentially eat more calories, you know, if you're eating healthier foods than if you're not? Yeah, I'm sure over time you could probably prove that if we had some studies to, if we had money to kind of look at a study that would show us, you know, some of these things. And if we could come to that conclusion, I think it's the conclusions already been made. It's already obvious that it does seem like that because you're not insulting your metabolism enough. You're not wearing down your metabolism enough that you could, if you stick with clean choices, that it's not, um, it's not that you can't gain fat that way. It's just that it'd be a little bit harder, but in my opinion, what makes it harder is the fact that

you just simply do not want to eat and crush these foods the same way that you want to crush ho-hos and bagels with cream cheese and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pizza and ice cream and all these other things right so basically the diet we shifted into is the war on carbs you can buy the book you can go to markbellslingshot.com and you can check that out. Or you don't even need to buy the book. You can actually just go on YouTube and type in war on carbs. You'll find tons of information where I've talked about this diet many, many times. But it really is very simple.

Just kick those carbohydrates out of your life. And when you kick those carbohydrates out of your life, slam the door on them. Tell them not to come back. They're not wanted in your house anymore. As you're doing that, you're going to have to have some energy source. And you're going to have to not feel like crap. And so in order to not feel like crap, we need to eat large amounts of fat. Now, you don't have to have a party where you're dumping oil all over everything, including your nipples.

I mean, I'm trying to stay on point here. Sorry. You know, you don't have to have a party where you're eating all these crazy oils and all this stuff. You can add, you can cook with some oil. You can use some coconut oil, olive oil. Some people believe that MCT oil turns into ketones faster. So some people like that as an energy source. That's, um, you know, and the same thing is true with the coconut oil, or at least appears to be that way.

But really none of these things matter that much. The main thing that matters is don't eat the carbs and keep the fat high. Um, grass fed beef, like we can get into all these conversations, but that's not my fight. That's not my battle. I'm not here to try to preach to you about organic food and grass-fed food and all these different things. I do try to purchase things that are grass-fed. I do try to purchase things that are organic. It's something that I believe in and I don't mind putting my money towards, but don't feel like that you have to have that in order to make the best gains. When I didn't have money, I was not able to, to go that route. So I made, I made do with what was in front of me. And sometimes that meant like

eating, you know, tuna out of a can or whatever, whatever the case was, um, do what you need to do and do what falls in line with your current lifestyle. And that's the point of trying all these different diets out. And I hope that you guys are learning that I'm not trying to, uh, overly promote anything. Yes. It would be great if I sold some more books, but I don't really give a shit about that. I, I really, truly, honestly want to make the world a better place to lift. And that's what this attempt is about. Um, if we were to sit here and try to figure out how many, how much time, energy, and money goes into this podcast, goes into these videos that I make, goes into the free gym that I have,

you guys would see even after, uh, this pretty long-term period of success with the slingshot business, I'd probably still be in the red for, uh, the amount of hours that get put into it. Or at least my dollars per hour would be very, very low. Might be making a buck an hour if I'm lucky. Anyway, everything has turned out great with Operation Get Less Fatter. There's a lot of people on the Facebook feed, so make sure you're checking that out. There's probably about 2,000 people in there. They're kind of policing each other. They're helping answer questions. We're trying to get over there too, to answer a lot of your questions. And I'm trying to do my best to hop on there

along with some of our staff members to, uh, to help you guys, um, just, uh, to go over some foods, like in terms of meat, you can have any form of meat that you want. If you're going to have chicken, it's better that the chicken has skin on it. It's best if the chicken isn't fried. We don't want fried stuff. We don't want breaded stuff. Um, little things I've done, you know, over a period of time to, uh, little things that I've done over a period of time to try to stay on the diet is to have, you know, fatty foods that, uh, really just taste awesome, such as like Buffalo wings and things like that. But I make those at my own house. I don't go and to, uh, Buffalo wild wings or, or, uh, places like that where these things are gonna be fried in these crappy, crappy oils. Um, carbohydrates, there's none. So there's really, there's really

not anything to choose from there. You can have some vegetables, um, have at it with the vegetables. Don't worry about glycemic index and whatever. Eat your vegetables, go ahead and have them, especially if you digest them well, want to eat them. There's some really great things that happen with vegetables. They ferment in your stomach and it causes a kind of chain reaction of a lot of just healthy things that are good for your gut. And, uh, I I'm a believer in that. Um, fermentation of that, of vegetables can turn into something called butyrate. Butyrate is really good for your triglycerides. It's also good for your cholesterol. There's more and more information coming out all the time about butyrate. And when you hear more about it in about a year or two, when other people catch up, you can say you heard it here first on the power project.

Another form of butyrate is to get it through grass fed butter or ghee. Those are other really good resources for that. You can even supplement with it, which I've been experimenting with lately, but have no information for you yet because I only just started. So I don't have a lot of good info. Any form of meat is good. You got vegetables. And then in terms of the fats, you can use various oils, just avoid vegetable oils. You can eat nuts, almonds, cashews, avocados. You can look into some of the Primal Kitchen stuff from Mark Sisson. There's a lot of great products out there right now that you can utilize to advance, uh, your keto habits, your low carb lifestyle. Um, I recently bought some, uh, cave shake, uh, products.

That's a, that's a really good product. I think it tastes good. Some people don't like the flavor of coconut has coconut milk in it. So maybe not everybody loves that, but I think it tastes good some people don't like the flavor of coconut it has coconut milk in it maybe not everybody loves that but I enjoy it they've created a good product I don't mind using some of these products because it helps me stay on the diet

so that's something to think about there's other people that make keto cookies and these different things you don't want to make it a habit to eat those things all the time, but they can be part of your regimen or routine. Uh, just if you're really having a hard time getting momentum and staying on the diet and all that kind of stuff. So that's that for the war on carbs. I'm going to move into another topic here today and, uh, spin and spit a

little, uh, motivation to you guys. Just some things I've been thinking about and I'm highly influenced and impacted by a lot of other things. I listen to a lot of YouTube videos. I listen to podcasts and I try to draw information from many different spots. But one thing I like to actually do is to pull information from kind of

tried and true resources. And when I say tried and true resources, I'm basically saying I like to listen to older people, people that have kind of been there before. So the people that I'm listening to, they're not 20 years old. They're not 25 years old. They're not 30 years old. They're not even my age. They're much older. A lot of the people I listened to, because you kind of almost need that grandpa figure, the grandma figure to, uh, to kind of guide you through what's going on in today's world. Now it seems crazy because you might think these people are out of touch, but the principles and ideas that a lot of these people have created have been around forever. And there's reasons

on why these things have been around forever. Um, just, uh, before I move on to some of that, I just wanted to say, we have, uh, Dr. Bo Hightower coming in pretty soon. If you haven't seen what he's capable of doing, please go on YouTube and please check him out. The guy is a savage, does some really amazing stuff. Chiropractor, really high level body worker, I guess you could call him. Works with a lot of high level athletes and just high level individuals. And it's been helping people with their, with shoulder injuries and what they thought was permanent loss of range of motion in these different, um, uh, in the shoulder or knee or in the hip. And he's just been on fire lately. And you'll see how many views this

guy has. Uh, but, uh, really, really excited to have Bo Hightower, Sean Frankel. We are going to have Sean Frankel on the podcast. Also YouTube him, you young bucks out there that think Larry wheels is something you young bucks out there that think some of the lifting that's going on right now is outrageous. You want to see some outrageous lifting, check out Sean Frankel. And I know that he did it in powerlifting gear, but I will never forget. I saw Sean Frankel in the warmup room, smash a 500 pound bench. Like it's like it was an empty barbellbell he just ate that thing for breakfast and chucked it up like it was nothing and then proceeded to throw on a bench shirt and bench around 900 pounds in the meat guy's an absolute savage and then we also have a an awesome matchup that we're going

to do i guess stealing a page from joe rogan we have lane norton dr lane norton going against another doctor have these doctors fight it out on the podcast and we will also have dr baker mr carnivore pants so we got flexible dieting versus carnivore and it's going to be it's going to be great because i dr baker with as smart as he is he's so passionate about the carnivore diet that he tends to, he tends to make some very big claims. And, uh, I'm not even saying those claims aren't true. I'm just saying it's going to be interesting to hear Lane Norton dissect some of those claims. And it's gonna be really cool to hear those two go back and forth. So here we go. Oh, my mom's on the, on here. Hi mama. What's up?

You know, I'm always going to be a sucker for my mom i'm always going to be a mama's boy and i know you guys have heard me talk a lot about my dad on here before my mom has always uh has always been in the wings my mom has always been in the background but um equally my mom has always been there for every single thing I ever did. Professional wrestling, playing baseball as a kid, uh, you know, getting into track or getting into this or getting into that. My mom was always there, uh, for everything. We're watching this, uh, cool video of Sean Frankel back in the day, lifting for big iron

gym, blasting out those, uh, those big squats. But, you know, my parents, and I always like to share this with everybody. My parents are a, uh, my mom said, hi, Andrew. Hi, Rosemary. My parents are, are, um, so influential on my life. It's, it's hard to even put into words. Um, but, uh, in, uh, communicating with, uh, Joey, as she's going through this book, this David Goggins book, uh, you know, this guy was abused a lot as a, as a child and went through a lot of crazy things in his household. And his, his household was not a fun place to grow up in. And I will never claim that I know what that means, but I do, uh, empathize with that. claim that I know what that means, but I do, uh, empathize with that. Um, I, I, I'm not going to claim to, to really truly understand what it would be like to have my mom and dad hit me rather than

give me a hug and kiss every time. I mean, we were hugged and kissed so much. We would run away from my parents. You know, I remember, you know, I remember that rather than them like, you know, I remember that rather than them, like, you know, beating the crap out of us or whatever. The anyway, so as I as I kind of progress into some of this stuff, you know, keep in mind that maybe because, you know, I've said this in the past. I have been very, very rich before I ever became wealthy. And a lot of that has to do with my family, my upbringing, my cousins, my uncles, my mom, my dad, my brothers. We just have, we're just, I'm just fortunate. That's what happened. That's my life story. And maybe I started out ahead of some other people because they didn't start out with that. Maybe I started out ahead of some other people because they didn't start out with that. But there's some things that I believe to be true.

And these are things that I kind of have come up with over the years and some things I've been thinking about a little bit deeper as of late. And there are also some things that I gathered listening to some different people. You guys heard me talk many times about listening to Jim Rohn. and there's a lot of other resources where I pull these things from, so I don't want to make it seem like that I completely made all this up just out of my own head. Some of this has been influenced by other things, just like you guys might be influenced by listening to a song that might trigger you to think of something else, something nostalgic or something that may happen in the future. That's what my experiences are with my own personal development and trying to work on bettering myself all the time.

If you're watching this on Instagram, that's not a bad spot to watch it. But if you want to hear it a lot more clear and you want to be able to hear Andrew making fun of me and stuff in between, then go check us out on powerproject.live on YouTube. And you can also check us out on my Facebook page. But if these two things are true, then why is it that there's so many people spinning their wheels? There's so many people not in the position that they want to be in. people not in the position that they want to be in. Um, and I wouldn't, I wouldn't bring this up if I heard people, uh, if I heard that people were, that everybody was really happy and truly felt great about themselves and truly felt great about where they are in their lives. I'm only bringing this up. I think sometimes people have the wrong idea. They think that I'm,

that I'm trying to make people do stuff that they don't want to do. I might share a message about getting leaner or getting stronger. And somebody might be like, dude, I'm pretty happy with my fitness level. Well, maybe I'm not speaking to you. I'm talking about a lot of people that are frustrated. They're tired of being fat. They don't want to be fat anymore. They don't want to be weak anymore. They want to be significant. They want to be substantial. They want to mean something to somebody. They want to be worth something. They don't want to be, they're sick and tired of being worthless. I actually, probably on a weekly basis, I will write down in some form that I'm tired of being a loser. And that's actually like a, a, a

saying from Rocky. I'm tired of being a loser. Like the scene in Rocky means so much to me at the end of Rocky 1 that I might end up on Thanksgiving Day, end up getting a divorce and going to see Creed 2. My wife doesn't want me to go see Creed 2, but I love Rocky so much I might just try to sneak out of the house and go see it. Just go on a 10-minute walk. Yeah. It was. Yeah. I think he said he went on.

I don't know where he went. He said he went on a 10 minute walk. But, you know, in Rocky, in Rocky one, he's sitting on the bed and he's with Adrian. And it's my favorite scene in all of Rocky because Rocky is scared. He's scared about his future. He's scared about this fight with Creed. He did all this training. They showed all the montages.

They showed everything. But as my professional wrestling coach said, eventually the bell has to ring. And what my professional wrestling coach meant by that was eventually you have to perform. Eventually it's go time. And I think a lot of people are scared of that. A lot of people are fearful of that. And because of that, people tend to hide in a shell or they create these walls around themselves to where they don't ever have to hear the bell ring.

It's never go time for them. They don't have to worry about that. And the reason that I think that happens is because people get hurt so often. And I'm going to dive into some of this. So here we go. So if these things are true, if these following things are true, you've heard me say this a million times probably by now, and you're probably tired of it.

I say that everyone possesses the ability to get better. Everyone possesses the ability to be better than they were yesterday. Even someone who's a paraplegic possesses the ability to be better than they were yesterday. Even someone who's a paraplegic possesses the ability to be better than they were yesterday. Even somebody with mental limitations. Um, I myself have, have, have been in that position. I, you know, kind of grew up thinking I was dumb, even though mom and dad were always right there for me to assure me that, uh, I was only a little bit dumber than everybody else.

Now my parents, my parents were always right there for me to assure me that I was only a little bit dumber than everybody else. No, my parents, my parents were always amazing with that. And they always assured me, look, you just learn differently. There's nothing, absolutely nothing wrong with you.

You, you are a perfectly healthy person and look at how good you are in the gym. Like, look at how good you are lifting weights. Like, why don't you kind of focus in on some of the cool things that you're good at rather than focus in on, uh, some of these things that you're just not great at. And it's not a big deal if you're not great at it, because no one is great at everything. Nobody's perfect. But if we all possess the ability to get better and we all possess the ability to make progress and, uh, to me, success is defined by progress, just having progress. And happiness

is a separate thing from all that. So I don't want anybody to get any of that twisted and we can get into that as well. But if these things are true, if the following things are true, then how come everyone's not a somebody? How come everybody's not able to get to where they want to get to? So here's some of my thoughts on some of this. So we know that it's true that everybody wants to be somebody. Right? We also know that this is true. And this is my belief anyway.

Winners are made and they are not born. Winners are made. They're created and they are not born. Winners are made. They're created. They are not born. Michael Jordan, LeBron James, Brett Favre, Peyton Manning. Go down the list. Go down the list. Just go down the list and you will quickly see that winners, they are not born.

Winners are made. You're not just born to be a winner out of nowhere. Now, you might be born a winner because you might have a family that has a winning mindset and it's like, well, crap, you're never going to lose now because everybody in the whole family has a spirit about them that is positive, that is strong, that has good fundamentals and understands that it's important to go out and win every day. Why is it important to go out and win every day? Because life's a lot more fun when you're kicking ass.

Life's a lot more fun when you're making progress. Just think about those days in the gym when you didn't make any progress, how bad that makes it. It makes you feel like crap. You're like, man, I've, shit, I've been working pretty hard. Like that kind of sucks. Or you get on the scale and you weigh more and you've been busting your butt dieting and doing cardio. And you're like, what? How does that make any sense? Right? It's important to understand too, that winners end up making a lot of mistakes and winners go through the same heartache as losers do. But if these two things are true, if winners are made and not born, and if everybody wants to be somebody, why isn't everyone putting up points

on the scoreboard? Reason number one, in my opinion, and kind of before you start to come to some of this realization, it's important that we all understand. We all realize that we, that one person is not better than another. I think that's an important thing to understand. We're all fallible. Um, we are, we are people that make a lot of mistakes. None of us is perfect. And beyond that, not only are none of us perfect, but we are all kind of equally worthless in some ways. And what I mean by that is just by some of the decisions you can make, man, you could go from hero to zero in a second. man you could go from hero to zero in a second to become a hero to become somebody that people look up to could take decades but it can all flounder it can all go away in a second in a

heartbeat you make one bad choice one bad decision um you treat somebody the wrong way you cheat on your spouse uh you know there's all kinds of scenarios. You get into a fight and bash someone's head in or what, right? There's, there's all these things that all of a sudden, whoop, that guy's different than I thought you steal something. I mean, these are things that these are a big deal. These are things that are a big deal and everybody's been guilty of at least having their brain go down some of this road.

It's because, uh, we it's because we're not perfect. So the reasons why I think that people aren't winning and why people are getting stuck, why you hear a lot of people say, oh man, I wish I could do that, or I wish I could be like him, or I wish I could be like her. Well, you could be. we know that you could be. Um, I mean, the first thing is not to focus in on what other people are doing, but there's two reasons why you're not getting to where you want to get to. And it's because reason number one is because you're getting beat down by

life. You're getting your ass kicked by life. Somebody told you somewhere that you're not good enough. You're not strong enough. You're not tall enough. You're too skinny. You're too short. You're too fat. You're too this. You're too that. You can't do that if you're black. You can't do that if you're Asian. You can't do that if you're Mexican. You can't do that if you're white. All these things, right? They accumulate accumulate and at first you're like what that ain't true give me a break but then it happens time and time again and you're not getting the reinforcement that you need to understand that you possess the ability to be a winner you as a child you wanted to be an nfl. The first team that you try out for, they're like, oh my God, quarterback. Like, man, you're way too big and fat to be a quarterback.

This is my own story, by the way, in case you're not, in case you're not paying attention. Um, right. And so these things will start to beat you down and you're like, oh, okay, well maybe, all right, well, I'm not a quarterback. Maybe I can be a receiver, a running back running back nope too big and fat for that too and then you end up as a lineman you end up getting pushed into these things that you didn't want to get pushed into but at some point you put your hands up and you say you know what everybody else is right uh for myself in my football career i i could have tim tebowed it um i could have tebowed the situation and said you know what you're absolutely wrong i'm a

quarterback and if you're not going to allow me to be quarterback i will retire and that's what he did he's the he's one of the greatest uh uh college football quarterbacks in the history of all of football. And, you know, he was not an NFL style quarterback, but they were like, oh, outside linebacker, defensive end. This guy's so big and strong, he'd make a sick linebacker. And he was like, no, this is what I'm doing. Because his head, his mindset is very powerful and very strong. And he wasn't allowing anybody to beat him down. set is very powerful and very strong and he wasn't allowing anybody to beat him down so you have a kid tries out for the football team has hopes and dreams of being the next tom brady and somebody

says oh man you're you're not not you there's no chance uh look man you know you're not only gonna not be quarterback but uh this doesn't even look like you got what it takes to make the team then you're like okay well let me figure out something else i'm i'm okay at you know like let me try something else like that wasn't a good experience with football but maybe i can try this thing over here like i'm pretty good at like uh drawing you know and maybe you have a different style and and you you know produce some artwork and people look at it and they go oh my god like your artwork's terrible. And maybe the first time you hear that, maybe that won't deter you from your task.

But what if you hear it five times, six times? What if you, coming out of high school, you try to go to some art shows and you try to sell your pieces and people are like, wow, that's not, they don't buy your stuff. They're not into it. You're posting it on Instagram. You're posting on social media. And no one's really agreeing that this thing that you thought was great, that you created

was worth anything. These people think it's worthless. And so therefore you place a lot of value into that. And you think you're worthless. You think your idea is worthless. I've been there before with the slingshot. People told me it was worthless. I bought into it for a while.

So the thing was shelved for a long time. And the idea didn't forge forward again until my brother died. It had to be a tragic, there had to be this crazy thing to happen to kind of spark everything and to say, you know what? to kind of spark everything and to say, you know what? You better take on your brother's attitude of, I don't give a flying F about what your thoughts are of me. I'm going to go to the beat of my own drum. And if you don't like it, I'm going to punch you in the face.

That's the way my brother was. My brother fought. My brother fought. I'm trying to just make sure it's accurate. Yes, it's accurate. My brother fought every single person that he ever, uh, that he ever like truly knew. Um, you know, me, my brother, Chris, my dad, my mom. I mean, I'm talking mentally and physically like this guy, he would fight anybody at any time. And I think, I think, I think somewhere, you know, somewhere in him, he would fight anybody at any time. And I think somewhere in him, he... Sorry, Mom.

I think somewhere in him, I think he loved it. I think he loved beating people's ass. But I took on that kind of persona and said, you know what? I'm going to... Okay, he's gone. That sucks. That's tragic. And I hate it.

I hate every second of it. It's really emotional for me and my family. But I'm going to take some of the cool characteristics that he had and I'm going to utilize them to my advantage. And I'm also going to pay attention to some of the things that kind of got him in trouble and kind of torched him. And I'm not going to go down that path. So my brother was aggressive. He was strong. He liked to fight. He was going to

always stand up for not only himself, but his friends. And that's something that I could still be better at. I could still be better at standing up for myself. I could still be better at standing up for my friends, but that's something that I kind of almost was forced into, uh, when he, when he passed on, but there's absolutely no reason for any of us to take shit from anybody. When you're trying to do something and you're trying to turn a corner, don't let other people beat you down. I know it's hard. I know it's tough, but maybe that coach that said that you're not good at throwing those passes, maybe he's wrong or maybe he's right. But what are you going to do? Cry about it? Why not not practice more why not work on it more

um you know you've heard the story of michael jordan was cut from his basketball team michael jordan was not born a winner lebron james was not born a winner these people have these extraordinary skill sets and and michael jordan is 6'6 and lebron james is 6'8 and you might go oh man like man genetically wow they were, they were just built to do it. Like, holy crap, right? Well, yeah, okay. They, they, you're right. That's a really good point.

They are making do with what they got and maybe the roll of the dice for them was a lot better roll of the dice than what most of us get because they have a body, they have a frame that they can go out and kick the crap out of everybody and it's going to be very difficult for anybody to hang with them it's gonna be difficult for anybody to keep up with them but they're the ones staying

in shape they're the ones practicing you hear hear the stories all the time about kobe bryant after the game everybody hated kobe bryant career, except for some of the Lakers fans that loved the Lakers. People pretty much hated him. But you couldn't deny how good he was. He'd stay after every game and work on threes and work on free throws and all this.

Just, he was crazy. He was crazy. He was nuts. He was nuts about it. He was crazy about being the best and he wasn't going to let people's view of him knock him down. The other thing that I think that ends up slowing people down is that they make bad, not even slow people down,

but just really deter people from getting to where they want to be. And it's this idea of, or not even an idea, it's just bad of, or not even idea, it's just bad decisions, bad choices. And there's so many bad choices that you can make. It's almost overwhelming. You can make so many bad decisions each and every day that throw you out of loop, that throw you off of what you're doing. You can, but you have control over so many of these things. You have control over what time you go to bed. You have control over what time you wake up. You basically already at least halfway know what your schedule looks like almost all the time.

But meanwhile, here you are late to everything all the time. Meanwhile, here you are unprepared for the day. You left the house quick and you didn't bring a jacket and you know that the work that you're doing is outside. It's like, how is that even possible? How is something like that possible? You're a construction worker. You work outside. You didn't bring a coat and it's freezing outside. You know, these things that we end up doing, we all make mistakes, right? There's going to be things that happen. But for a loser, these things happen all the time. They happen nonstop.

And you're not waking up and understanding that this is a huge problem and it needs to be fixed because you don't have any responsibility or you don't want to handle any responsibility. And a lot of that falls back to the other thing that I said, is that you tried a couple things. You tried some stuff at some point and you got hammered for it. You got smashed for it. You got pounded for it. And nobody was there to help you pick up the pieces. And so you have a bad you have a bad relationship with trying to be successful you have a bad relationship with trying much of anything and so you stay in your own corner you stay in your own lane you cower in the corner and you

and you don't fight back because last time you tried to fight back it got you burned so i think you a lot of people will make these uh crappy decisions and after they have gotten uh so beat down from society and so beat down from from all these different things they just try to figure out okay well shit i'm not that good at that i'm not that good at that how do i get like let me try to figure out how to get some friends i'm not good at baseball so i don't have baseball friends i'm not good at football so i ain't got football friends i'm not good at lifting weights So I don't have baseball friends. I'm not good at football. So I ain't got football friends. I'm not good at lifting weights. So I ain't got any friends from the gym. You're, you're, you're really stuck and you're like, okay, well, like, uh, I don't want to live my life in isolation. Um, you know, maybe I'll try to go, go like, I'll try to find out about like, is there a party to go to or is there something to do like as you're

you know growing up right and then maybe you end up drinking maybe you end up smoking weed maybe end up doing this or doing that and you end up without even trying without even trying you know you weren't trying to go down a path that would lead to anything bad you were not trying to even be negative but you got the crap beat out of you by life things Things piled up on you and you listen to people. People kept telling you ain't good enough. And you're like, yeah, well, maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm going to go hang out over here. And then people are on you all day long about doing your homework and doing these other

things. Or even if you're older, people are on you about your job, but you really don't care. Well, you don't place any value on it because you don't want to try any harder because anytime you've ever tried anything in your life, you never got a pat on the back. No one ever said, hey, man, that was a good job. No one ever recognized you before. So you're like, I'm also just stay over here and be invisible. It's easier.

I don't have to go through all this pain. Yeah. But what did you say the other day? It was pretty awesome. It was a quote from somebody, but you had basically said ducking hurts also. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can try to get out of the way of pain, but it's coming your way anyway.

And you might as well face it. You might as well hit it head on rather than trying to duck out of the way of it. It's something that you, it's like the fires out here right now, the smoke outside. You can't escape it. You can't escape it. It's just there, you know? And sometimes some of these things that come at us in life, you can't get away from them. And when you're trying to make it and you're trying to be somebody and you're trying to

put points up on the scoreboard, these things will happen to you. And there's going to be people that don't want you to succeed. It's going to feel like more people don't want you to succeed than want you to succeed that's probably the case because people are assholes yeah and even if they're not trying to be assholes it might be your family yeah we're trying to protect you yeah they're trying to protect you that they'd hate to see you stick your neck out and be like heartbroken from something yeah but and then like you know how often do we see the, the, the person who's unprepared showing up late or whatever, looking at the other person that is prepared, like, man, that guy just gets lucky.

If I, if I caught that break, man, oh, that I'd be so cool. But that stuff never happens to me and they never know why. Right. And that same person that seems to have all the luck seems to also have the hottest girlfriend. It also seems to have the highest paying job. He also seems to have, right. And it's like, oh my God, he's got, he's like, man, he's got it made. He's got it made.

And like, man, I'm, I'm just, you know, I'm just, you know, I, I gotta, uh, you know, I'm different than him. I gotta really grind it out over here. If I'm going to get anything in life, I gotta really work for it. I'm not, not going to be able to, uh, look at like when we lifted with Michael Hearn, right? Is lifting weights just as hard for him as it is for us? Pretty much. I mean, you know, he's got, I'm sure he's got some great genetics behind him, but like,

even if we are to take, even if we're to take percentages and we're like, Mike, you do 70% of your max, we're going to do 70% of ours. We're not even trying to lift with him. We're not trying to move the same weights as him. Maybe he even gives us a 10% cushion because he's Michael Hearn, right? Maybe lifting those heavier weights came easier to him. I think that's pretty obvious because he's a stud. Like that's just what happens, right?

He was always good at football. He's always good at martial arts. He's always pretty good at all these things, right? That's, that's pretty easy to understand. He has a good body frame. He has an athletic body. He's, he's an athletic person, but even if we were to scale it and to say, Hey, you know, you take this, you take this, you take this 70% all, all around when I went versus when you went versus when he went, he'd still make it look easier than what we did. Yeah. And, and you know, a lot. Yeah. Okay. We understand that there's, there's some genetic component to it. He definitely is a big boy, uh, whatever you want to say, drugs or whatever. That's not the topic right now. Um, but he's still going to make it look easier and why is he going to make it look easier because he has the experience

he already worked through it he told me like when we were lifting he's like yeah the whole like making faces thing he's like i got over that like about 10 years ago what do you mean making faces making faces when you lift you know being like know, and doing all the crazy screaming and stuff. And he was teasing because he still will make a face here and there. He'll still make a grunt here and there. Um, but he, he just, he has learned over a period of time that it's, it's, uh, you know, better for him to like, make it look easy to make it feel easy. And it's, it's this kind of mental capacity of, you know, when things are going to be really hard, uh, that's when I'm going to be in my element. That's when I'm going to enjoy it the most right now, he's doing a bunch of fasting. And he said, like he fast at the end of the week. And I was like, let me guess at the end of the week,

probably your hardest workouts. He goes, yeah, I'm traveling a lot. And so the, at the end of the week, um, the end of the week, he's like, the end of the week is when I'm traveling. And while I'm traveling, he's like, that's always the hardest time. That's always when I want to eat. So I'm just crushing all these habits. So he's like, so I'll just fast from Friday to Monday. I'm like, whoa. Right. But that's what a, that's what a winner will do. A winner will lean into it. They'll say, this is the hardest thing that there is. Think about yourself. Think about yourself right now. Think about the things that you do, the mistakes that you make. What time of day do you make them? Cause it's probably around the same time every day, probably around eight 30 at night. When the day has kicked the crap out of

you, you're stressed out from work. Somebody at work was an asshole to you. It's got you all stirred up. You went to someone higher up than them. They didn't care. Your boss doesn't care. It doesn't look like you're going to get a Christmas bonus. All this stuff is just weighing on you and eating you alive.

And your wife's like, hey, I made some cake. And boom, both arms are down that that cake comes in and knocks your ass out and deters you from every goal that you already talked about to yourself you had it all set up you were going to not eat any carbs until thanksgiving you were had it all planned out and then the second uh, the second that something snuck in there at the right time, you got smashed by it. And instead of that, you can say, you know what, just, this is just a rule for me. I ain't eating nothing past seven o'clock because at eight o'clock or eight 30, every night, nine o'clock, I always eat ice cream. I always eat a candy bar. I always like I'm craving something.

So, all right, well, seven o'clock is when I'm going to shut it down and I'm going to go to bed at 830. That's going to be my new snack, sleep. That's great. My new snack will be a pillow. How do we market that though? Sounds delicious, doesn't it? Like a big old marshmallow. What you were saying about O'Hehern and lifting a certain way like even

if we scaled it down for you know someone like me or whatever it it would be silly for me to be like mike you're just lucky right that you lifted the exact same way basically yeah it just doesn't make any sense when you put it in like a simple term as as just lifting yeah he's he's prepared yeah he's prepared for it. And it, you're right. Actually, you're making a really good point because in lifting, it's very clear and it's very obvious.

Right. And it's like, well, shit, Mike is huge. And obviously like that took a long time to develop all that. So in a lifting perspective, you really wouldn't say you're lucky.

Right. You really don't really hear that in lifting ever because everybody kind of already can already knows and everyone can see but in other things in in life somebody's got a nice car man that guy's so lucky look at that guy look at that girl man they're so lucky how'd they how'd they you know how did they how'd they do that like what is you know what is that going on it's an interesting thing. It's so clear when you're talking about lifting that this is a, this is a huge accumulation. Now, sometimes people with their money, yeah, sometimes they're born into it, right?

Born into it or otherwise, we all got to figure out how to make a living. We all have to figure out. I think, I don't think we all have to figure it out, but I think that we all would like to figure out how to have more financial freedom, how to, you know, um, I'll tell you like, you know, where I'm at in my life. And this took a long time to get here, but like just walking through the mall and being like, I could go into any store right now and buy anything that I want. I can go into any store that I want and I could buy anything that I want. You're like, holy shit, that's cool. Like if I just walk out of the house and I just have my wallet and I can go do almost

any, like within reason, you know, there's some people that are way past, right? There's some people that are, that can literally do anything that they want um but it i'm gonna tell you right now and people hate talking about money but that is an amazing feeling that feels so good you know maybe for you or maybe for the next person it might start at a smaller thing like when you go out to dinner my wife and i talk about this all the time uh recently as a team we went to ella i have no idea what that even cost i never even looked i never even looked at it but i mean that's that's insane to think that i never even looked at it because when we used to go out to eat and we would go with some friends or something we'd be like man we

better check our like you know better check our account like i don't know that i don't know that card's gonna get uh rejected or whatever you know not a like a woe is me but we had to do that last night we went to costco to try to get more keto-ish food because that's what i keep telling stephanie i'm like i'm not going full-on keto i'm just going keto-ish i'm kind of getting close yeah and i was like how are we doing on money? She's like, I don't know. I'm like, can we check? And sure enough, we had to, like, it was an emergency transfer of funds. Right, right. But even, like, I mean, but so beyond that, like, I remember having to go to In-N-Out as I'm waiting in line checking this bank account. Oh, shit. Check the other bank account.

Like, nope. Like, well, we're buying In-N-Out on a credit card because I'm in the drive-thru. And I'm not not gonna say no i thought about being like oh i forgot my wallet because a little secret right in and out will let you still get the food when you say i forgot my wallet oh like i promise cheat code i promise i'll come back oh and they'll be like okay cool but i thought about doing that never did it so i've i've In-N-Out and other groceries on my credit card before just due to like, oh, shit, bad situation. Yeah. I mean, it's crazy to think like we'd go out and, you know, if we were with friends or something or even just ourselves. I mean, it didn't really matter where it was.

But, I mean, that didn't really matter where it was. But I mean, that'll happen for, that'll happen for you. That'll happen for the listeners of this show where that'll keep getting scaled up and it should happen and you deserve for it to happen, but you have to work for it and you can't be a pussy. You got to be strong. You got to be tough. You got to be able to add value. You got to be able to add value to other people's lives.

You got to be able to add value. You got to be able to add value to other people's lives. You got to be able to add value in the business that you're in. One easy way, one very easy way is just to always be excited, just to always be happy, just to always seem pumped up, just to not be negative, just to not be a jerk. That's not super easy to do, but it doesn't really require a skill. Not asking you to read a bunch of crap, not asking you to go through a bunch of crap. But all you got to do is, you know, Andrew does photography, right? And he takes great pictures. We're very fortunate he takes awesome pictures. And he's worked very hard to get into that position but even if his pictures

improved if he was a dick all the time i'd be like man like everyone seems to get along but like what's the deal with him like what's his thing i don't understand like so it's kind of rude to everybody and like that's just doesn't seem like it's working you're right so it's like that that could be a one one thing that could really uh be a slam dunk for you is just to be when you're you're trying to always figure out a way how do i increase you know my value how do i provide more value how can i be better how can i deliver a better product that's what i'm'm thinking of with the products that we create here. How do I create a better product? How do I give people, how do I provide more value for people?

How do I make things awesome? How do I make things better? And if you sit down and think about that for yourself, what does that look like? And if you're only working all the time, you actually really won't be able to think about that. So you have to, there's got to be a spot, there's got to be a slot for you where you take a few hours every month, a few hours every month. Maybe it's only 30 minutes here, 30 minutes there. to go to a coffee shop. You don't have to go to a coffee shop, but I like to kind of be somewhat like, I guess, uh, isolated, but you know, out where there's some noise and some other things going on. You got to sit down and you got to really think about these things. How am I going to get better? How am I going to improve my position? I love to do this when I'm driving, like it drives me nuts to be in a lane that has four, four cars.

And when there's a lane right next to it, that's got three, you know, unless I'm, unless I'm drifting off, like I'm going pole position style and I'm, I'm, I'm creeping on everybody and I'm zigzagging through traffic, which they've done studies and it shows that you don't even get anywhere faster. Right. But I can't, I, I'm not a, I'm not an ass rider. I won't, I won't get right up on people's uh tailgate and stuff right on their bumper but i uh because i just don't think that's safe so i don't drive that way but i will shift uh lanes all the time to try to advance myself i'm like how do i get ahead how do i get further ahead i want to be i want to make that next light i want to get i want to get through i want want to get to the next thing that I'm doing.

Pole position. That's a classic. Old school video game. Yeah. Yeah. Well, arcade game. But it's important for people to understand that, you know, the one thing to truly embrace is that, is that you as a person are very flawed.

You make a lot of mistakes. And then once you kind of embrace that, anytime something comes up, you can say, nope, that was my fault. Nope, that was my fault. Nope, that was my fault. Nope, that was me. That was me. That was my fault. That situation happened because of me.

And it doesn't matter what it is. Even, even this morning, there was some miscommunication about like what time working out, who we're working out with. We had Jimbo Cooper come in. He benched a 550 pounds raw, 550 pounds raw. The guy's a stud. And then he proceeded to go 585 and a slingshot and then up to 635. Uh, awesome, awesome strength. But, you know, he lived with us at seven o'clock in the morning and I was kind of hoping that we had media here, but I never

really said like, I never truly said it. I can just admit it. And then also too, even if I did say it, I tend to forget things sometimes. And I'm aware of that. That's what I just, I just mentioned that. Realize that you're a fallible person. You're going to of that. That's what I just, I just mentioned that realize that you're a fallible person. You're going to make mistakes. You're going to screw things up. So rather than like, you know, yelling at everybody about it. First of all, I understand the fact that there's a possibility that I forgot about it. Number two is I know for a fact that I didn't communicate very well about it. I almost didn't realize the weight of it until he was here Because I didn't know him before I saw him lift this weekend

And then I didn't really think about it until last night And I was going to text everybody Then I was like, ah, everybody knows I think it's on the calendar I think it's all good I think there'll be someone there And it worked out fine Emilio was able to film Andrew got some really good photos and stuff.

Um, but it could have been a lot better. Why could it have been a lot better? It could have been a lot better if I communicated better. If I, if I told everybody, if I said, Hey, you know what? This guy's an animal. We need to make sure we get video of him. He'll probably be in here around seven o'clock. Let's make sure get video let's make sure we get photos andrew can you do the photos chris can you do the filming boom done right smoky can you put it on the board make sure that we get this done and make sure we get the shots that we want over with and it's actually really simple to do that and it doesn't it doesn't um that doesn't require any real skill either but i think a lot of times somebody that's losing somebody that's falling behind somebody that is uh not

making their payments on their car somebody that's not paying their taxes somebody that's just you we all know that person who's just you're just like ah would you please just fix shit and just start moving forward like it'd be great but you're always sliding backwards instead can we just have you start to can you just start to kind of creep forward you know there's there's that person that we all know that's kind of in that position and you're hoping you're hoping that they start creeping forward but winners fail all the time too it's not just people that lose winners suffer too winners go through tough times michael jordan has been through a lot of heartache just because he wins you know just because he used to win at basketball all the time doesn't mean that

other things in his life aren't hard it also doesn't mean that he didn't fail a million times in basketball it doesn't mean as many times as we saw him cry in like rejoicing a victory and and holding up a trophy he probably cried thousands of times more than that from losing. He's probably gone through a lot of crap to try to overcome certain things to be as strong as he was in the first place. So if pain is coming your way anyway, things are going to hurt no matter what you do. You can faint and you can juke and you can jive and you can duck and you can do all these things, but pain is still coming your way. Why not have some action towards how you're going to figure out how to make things better? Because there's going to be a lot of shit that happens and some things are completely

out of your control, but there's also a ton of things that are in your control that you could take care of and you could handle very easily. But the problem, the problem always starts with the person that you see in the mirror. And there's, there's a saying that's been around for a long time. They say 10% of life is what happens to you. And 90% of it is your attitude towards it. 90% of it, 90% of it. So 10% of the things that happen in life, which I would just assume are like the actions of other people and death. All right. It's like, what else is there? Um, those things, I can't really do anything about that, that, you know, that's, that happened. And then that's, you know, I heard a horrible story this morning about a friend of a friend.

They have they're pregnant and they have cancer and the odds of them making it through the pregnancy is low. And the child has to be cared for. And it's like, oh, my God. Like, what? What in the world? Right. But so that's obviously that's about as brutal as it gets. I can't think, I mean, I want to just cry thinking about it.

And I don't even know this person directly. What a horrifying thing to have happen, right? But, somebody has to think and say, okay, well, who's going to take care of this kid, right? Who's going to take care of this kid, right? Who's going to provide for this kid? And somebody has to swoop in with enough guts to be able to step up to the plate, to handle that situation. And who's going to be that person? That's going to be a person that's going to be a winner. That's going to be somebody that's going to be tough enough to handle the situations. They've been through things in their life to where they have proven that they can

handle stuff and that they don't fall behind on stuff because how the hell else would anybody else be able to step up to anything like that? And you take these situations that happen to you and you look at you look at how bad some things could truly be. And then it's really just a matter of how you interpret it. Your mind is as happy as you want it to be. Your mind is as happy as you want it to be. Your mind is as happy as you make it up to be. I mean, just think about that. That's an old quote from Abraham Lincoln has been around for forever. You're as happy as you make up your mind to be like, that is the simplest thing. I'm okay. I'm, I'm going to be, I'm going to be in a good mood today. Like today's

awesome. And you wake up that way and you're like, Oh, I'm going to smile. The first 10 people that say hi to me, I'm going to hold the door for people. Uh, I'm going to buy a cup of coffee for the guy that's behind me. Uh, right. Like, you're just going to like, I'm just going to be a little different today. I'm going to see if I'm going to see if I could kind of change this pattern that I have. I'm normally all grumpy and I'm normally a bitch and, uh, I'm going to see if I could kind of change this pattern that I have. I'm normally all grumpy and I'm normally a bitch and I'm going to make some changes. What about if they have somebody in their ear, like a doctor saying, oh, you have chronic

depression? Oh man. Yeah. You know, those are, those are all things that are, that are very real. It's insane to, it's insane to kind of say depression is in your head right it's insane to say hey being bipolar is in your head but guess what it is it's just as in your head as anything else and that's not a heartless way of saying it but you have to also understand there's plenty of people that function really well with with severe depression there's plenty of people that function really well with, with severe depression. There's plenty of people that function really well that are clinically bipolar. There's plenty of people

that function with all kinds of disorder in their life and disorders and health issues that are able to still thrive. Uh, you might have somebody who's got all these ailments, but they're still able to, uh, you know, perform their job and they're still able to, uh, you know, perform their job and they're still able to do all these things. Somebody who has depression, um, you know, that is something that if you feel like you do have chronic depression and that you do suffer from that, you most likely are going to have to try to see somebody for that or start to communicate with people around you about it because how could you get to try to just pull yourself out of the slump without an education on it probably would be very difficult even if you went to somebody and said hey you know what there's millions of

other people that are like you you might go oh shit well that's a breath of fresh air okay there's millions of other people that are like me okay i. I thought I was, I thought I was losing my mind. I thought I was losing my way. Um, and so I think that, you know, trying to figure out ways of getting help. And then also what are some things that you can control that might be positive for you? What are, I always think back to like, what, what's some stuff that you used to like to do? Did you used to like to play basketball? Because maybe you should go shoot some hoops. Um, did you used to like what what's some stuff that you used to like to do did you used to like to play basketball because maybe you should go shoot some hoops um did you used to like play video games maybe you should play some video games like some what's something that you used to really truly love to do ride your bike um go for a hike any of these things if you used to love to do it the odds

of you still enjoying it quite a bit is probably pretty high. Yeah, do all the stuff that you did as a kid. Yeah, try to, honestly. Because that was when you weren't listening to anybody telling you anything anyways, right? You had amazing hopes and dreams as a kid. You were going to be the richest guy on the block, you know? You were going to have the coolest car. You were going to have the coolest stuff. You were going to have the coolest stuff. You were going to be a football player, a basketball player.

If you're just tuning in, if you're catching us live, you can go to markbellslingshot.com, type in poop20, and you'll get 20% off of every single thing on the website at markbellslingshot.com. We've got slingshots. We've got hip circles. We have a lot of awesome apparel. We've been working on that really hard.

We have knee sleeves, elbow sleeves, wrist wraps, basically anything that you need to mummify to get through a workout. We got belts. Anything you need to mummify to get through a workout, we have all that stuff so you're not dying when you're doing your workouts. Our boy, I think his name is Brandon. He just said that he got a hip circle using our promo code today. So he took advantage.

Oh, he's smart. Yeah. I'm pretty sure his name's Brandon. You know what? Um, we don't talk about the products a ton on this show, but you know, I wanted to, we've been talking about it a lot in here recently about the sports sleeve. So we make a lot of different types of sleeves we make the strong sleeves which everybody knows those are very strong very durable sleeves that actually

assist you through the lift a little bit they actually give you a little bit of pop at the bottom of your lift they we make them for the elbows we make them for the knees and they give you a little boost with your lift but they're very tight and they can sometimes, uh, take a little bit of time to get them on. Um, we also have, uh, slingshot knee sleeves. The slingshot knee sleeves are seven millimeters. So are the strong sleeves. And they're just kind of a step back from the strong sleeves. In addition to that, we also make the sports sleeves, which is an elbow sleeve and knee sleeve that we've created that is thinner, a lot easier to get on, a lot easier to get on and off.

And a lot of the guys and girls in the gym are really enjoying them because of how simple they are to get on and off for one. And also, they don't assist you at all so while it's great to have assistance with something like the x sleeves which are going to give you a real big pop out of the bottom of the squat because of of what they're made out of because the stiffness of the product the sport sleeves aren't going to give you much of anything what they're going to do is they're going to provide some warmth they're going to provide some compression and they're just going to give

you some real gentle assistance, but it's not going to help you lift more weight, which for the particular training period that you're going through, maybe it's a good idea to switch things up and not always have something that's so supportive. So it's almost the idea of having a mad dog slingshot. In addition to having the reactive slingshot. You got different things for different times. I know before I ever owned this company, I used to own different length of knee wraps. I used to own different length of wrist wraps because when I was doing accessory work, I didn't need a 36 inch wrap. accessory work, I didn't need a 36 inch wrap, but when I was bench pressing, I'd use a 36 inch wrap. I didn't need these crazy long, strong knee wraps to hit up a squat. I only need the shorter one. So like, even when I was doing my, I was doing my sets of eight or sets of 10, I would wear a different style of knee wrap. I didn't have to wear one. It was so crazy. So this idea of these, uh, of these sports sleeves kind of came

about so that you we could have sleeves that are also for other movements other than just squatting whereas the strong sleeves are primarily mainly for some big lifts uh heavy cleans heavy snatches heavy squats things like that and so um again if you go to the website, type in poop20markbellslingshot.com, 20% off everything on the website. And I got to get my mom some sport knee sleeves. She just came out of nowhere and texted me. She's like, oh, I joined a gym and it's been awesome. I'm like, that's amazing. That's great.

Way to go, Ma. That's great. You know, those little changes end up making a big difference and it ends up, uh, ends up kind of changing the dynamics of the entire household. Yeah. Which is, which is huge. You know, you're, I know you've said that you're, you know, you're trying to help your dad with some stuff and it can be very, um, all that can be very, all that can be very

difficult. And so it's like, man, how do we figure this out? Well, if one person started lifting, lifting, same thing happened with my parents. You know, I got my mom who has hung on to, you know, follow her diet. And my dad who has hung on to follow his training. Now my dad is doing both. He's dieting and training and he's losing weight and he's feeling great. My mom has not turned a corner quite enough yet.

She's still in a lot of pain. So we're still working on that. But it won't be long. It won't be long before we get her moving. It won't be long before we get her walking around and doing some of the things that she loves to do. And so, yeah, it can really change the dynamics of what's going on in the household. When was the last time you wore knee wraps?

I don't think I've ever seen you wear them. Yeah, I don't really wear knee wraps anymore.'t think i've ever seen you wear them uh yeah i don't really wear i don't really wear knee wraps anymore it's been a while uh somebody said um yeah it's been like probably a year or so um somebody except for for testing them um somebody said this podcast has been nothing but life-changing for me hey that, that's from Dave Stanley. Thanks, Dave. Yeah. You know, we get that a lot and, um, we should probably shout you guys out more. We, I, I appreciate that so much. Um, we, we're just trying, you know, we're, we're working hard. We're doing the best we can. I try to come up with concepts. Andrew tries to come up with concepts.

Um, we are, we're working hard to get guests here. Um to come up with concepts. Andrew tries to come up with concepts. We're working hard to get guests here. A lot of podcasts aren't going to pay anything to get a guest anywhere. But we try to help the guests out with travel if we can. And then we also try to help them with hotel. A lot of people just understand the value of being on the Power Project as well. So that works project as well. So that, uh, works out really well. But for those of you that are fans that have had your life changed by this podcast and that really enjoy it, we're going to start to, uh, sell some of these products. We

got some, uh, just some simple stuff we're going to start out with. It's not an attempt to try to make, uh, millions and millions of dollars. It's just, uh, having something that you guys can further show your support. We do appreciate it. I know that a lot of you guys would love to have a power project mug or a power project sweatshirt or hat or t-shirt. And so, um,

it'll take us a little while to get our, get our momentum going, but it won't be long, probably be a month or two, uh, before we start having some, some stuff for you guys to, uh,

to check out. And I'm super excited for that. Yeah. And it'll be more just like to kind of show your colors. probably be a month or two uh before we start having some some stuff for you guys to uh to check out and i'm super excited for that yeah it'll be more just like to kind of show your colors like show that you're part of the power project crew because yeah i mean everybody on the uh the live chat you guys know who you are you guys are the shit man i i love like i i very in a cheesy way told everybody that like one of the best things of my day is coming in here and talking with everybody on the live chat on YouTube. Love this shit. It's fucking awesome. And anybody that has reached out, unless I just somehow missed you, but I think I've gone back to everybody on like everything.

Questions about the podcast. I had a guy hit me up about his photography or videography and because he he related to that story what i told where like i just i burnt myself out and crashed my car yeah he's like dude i feel like i'm going the same way and so i i responded to him and i'm gonna probably like everybody that i talked to i end up just hanging out with them like through like dms and stuff that's great it's kind of the coolest thing on like ever this guy says, relentlessly, Ty, he says, awesome and amazing podcast. Thank you so much for applicable information. Easy for me to say.

And our listeners are smart. They say big words like that. I don't know how to use that word. I don't remember ever saying that word ever before in my life, so it was kind of hard. I don't think I've ever said it before. Let's see. I'm trying to read some of these as we crank through. Somebody said, anyone know if this podcast on Spotify or where I can find it?

Well, he can't hear me right now because I'm not plugged in. Just tell him iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play. iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, YouTube. Yeah. Those of you that don't have YouTube Red, you should get it Stitcher, Google Play. iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, YouTube. Those of you that don't have YouTube Red, you should get it. Because YouTube Red's awesome. And you can listen to, and I don't know if YouTube's changed at all, but you can listen to your YouTube while you're doing a lot of other things and it won't shut off.

It stays on the whole time. Or you can just download episodes. That's what our homeboy Bobby from Jersey. Yeah. That's what he does. He said he got YouTube red specifically to download our episodes. It's awesome. That's fucking awesome.

He was at the, uh, the record breakers meet also. Oh, I didn't even see him there. I didn't know. I didn't know he showed up over there. Uh,

it's yeah, it's everywhere. You can listen to podcasts. Somebody else filled in for me x sleeves and non-grippy x sleeves yep yep we have both i don't know what i don't know if there's a question there uh can you use the poop discount in the store in the store at the gym sure why not but there is a time limit on it there's a time limit on it yeah you'd have to come here today which you'd have to come here today,

which you'd have to come here with the next hour or so because the store won't be anybody here to sell you anything, I don't think. Let's see. This guy's sending me a pair so I can try them. Trying to get through some of these questions over here. Check my profile. No chance. Let's see. We got a question question when you do squats for reps should you go ass to grass still focus on going past parallel for strength i think you should

switch it up you know yeah poop 20 is the code that's correct switch it up you know um squat to different depths uh deadlift from different angles, squat from different angles, mix things up. But if the main goal is strength, you really only have to break parallel in a contest. So that's what you should probably be practicing a little bit more of. But you can also kind of do an Olympic squat and put your butt on the ground.

Let's see. Best exercise to strengthen the serratus to fix the winged scapula uh you know some of that stuff just gets to be too complicated i would just say you know try to make sure you're lifting with the best form you can possibly lift with um that kind of winged out shoulder thing i don't know if you're going to be able to just to fix it completely through just exercises i would say you know try to look some stuff up on youtube for stretches for that area and maybe look up some information on how to strengthen that area just on youtube uh what'sonic rabbit. He asked when we're doing another slingshot bench press contest. That's in February at the ST classic.

I just realized he can't hear me. Damn it. Oh, what's February? The slingshot ST classic. Oh yeah. ST classic is February. That's right.

You inspired me to do a 20 minute walk. Yeah. You know, I'm talking every day about those 10 minute walks why not just start your day every day and just pick a pick you know it can be before you eat or after you eat pick a pick a spot and uh freaking go for a walk every morning go for a walk every night uh when will you be conducting another slingshot bench press contest? Yeah, that was the one. Oh, yeah.

Cyclonic Rabbit. What's up, Cyclonic Rabbit? You bench press 900 pounds. I have. I have bench pressed 900 pounds. In training, not full range of motion, in a bench shirt.

I cheated. Eduardo, he has a question about his lower back. He said it cramps up when he's benching. He's assuming that he's not setting about his lower back. He said it cramps up when he's benching. He's assuming that he's not setting up his shoulder blades correctly. Yeah, you know, so first of all, it's kind of hard to see, you know, without visually seeing you bench press,

but you don't want to really arch your lower back. You're just trying to arch the upper and mid back, and you're kind of trying to leave your lower back by itself. I would a I would suggest wearing a belt. B, I would try to do some foam rolling on your back and really try to open up, maybe get over a exercise ball and try to open up your hips, you know, your hips and your, your stomach mainly, but you have to really, uh, get into opening up your hip flexors, which you could do a couch stretch for that. And, uh, that will have, should help open you up and should help you keep, keep from being so tied down to how tight your hips are that your back cramps up. In my opinion, that's where a lot of that starts.

A lot of lower back health almost always is related to your hips and not necessarily your lower back because your lower back doesn't really. It just does. It doesn't have it doesn't have a lot of the components that need to be like super mobile and things like that. But you want to have some mobility through your hips and some mobility. Usually your hips are pulling on your lower back. I guess is what I'm trying to say. It's either your hips or some mobility. Usually your hips are pulling on your lower back, I guess is what I'm trying to say. It's either your hips or your hamstrings. So stretch those things out

and that should really help a lot. What about just benching with his feet up for a couple days? Like just to still get the bench working but without hurting. Yeah, or do a floor press. Either one of those will work really well. Floor press.

Yeah, that's basically the only thing I could do when my back was really bad i fell in love with those this guy says i disagree with your view on circuit training as a muscle building option there are metabolic reasons and capillary density is also adaptation intensity and weights depend on exercise selection. I'm not sure exactly what he's talking about, 100%. But, you know, you can't always just take, you know, the certain things that I say in a five-minute clip and always go around and apply it to different things. we always go around and apply it to different things. I think what you might be referring to is I am body. So bodybuilders build up the biggest and largest muscles. They,

they, they build themselves up bigger and leaner than anybody else does on the planet. And they do so with bodybuilding methods. Now they may use some circuit training here and there to help boost some growth hormone levels and do some different things. And they may go back and forth on exercises to get a pump a certain way. But in my view, in my opinion, what I see from a lot of gyms, a lot of CrossFit gyms, and a lot of gyms that try to mimic CrossFit is too much

bouncing around from too many different things. Um, when you start to do that, I personally feel that it kind of confuses the body, confuses the system a little bit. And if you're going back and forth between double unders and high rep deadlifts and push presses, um, that can be a great workout for your heart. And it may, uh, it may help show some, um, it's, it might help show some muscle and stuff, but it's not a great way to really, truly build muscle. Um, you're probably working on other things when you're, when you're training like that. So, but it really just depends, you know, it really just, it truly depends. just depends you know it really just it truly depends another question it's another i think bad question yeah it's uh sciatic pain in a uh this guy's gym partner it has a terrible sciatic issue it's starting to run down into his leg and it's making it really hard for him to squat

is there any way to alleviate that pain focus on what you can do and don't worry about things you can't you know just try to keep moving um right now squatting is not your priority your priority is to feel better so you know uh move around keep keep moving around and you know i wouldn't i wouldn't get caught up on the squat if it's i mean it's shit if it's think think about what you just said you know it's hurting your back and the pain's running down your leg i mean it doesn't sound great right so we got to kind of rethink you know what it is we're doing focus in on the things you can do in the gym uh discard the things that you can't for now and over a period of time you should be able to get back to some of those things that you love anything to dissipate the pain not really uh movement is going to probably be the most beneficial so um things

like dead lifting and stuff like that can help a lot things like uh some dead lifts with some dumbbells and stuff um would help a lot but just i wouldn't I wouldn't try to like do like a deadlift workout. Like you're only like doing a deadlift motion to work the lower back. Forty five degree back raise, reverse hyperextension. Some of these things can be beneficial. Leg presses kind of kind of help stretch you out a little bit. But you're going to have to use really, really light weights on these things. You can't you can't you can't go jumping in with some uh big ass weights let's see uh something said i don't sometimes i don't know

what you guys are trying to say but this guy basically i think he's asking me about like loose skin did i have loose skin no no you know when i was big and fat i think some people will say oh yeah i've you know that was awesome when you're big and fat so you was big and fat i think some people will say oh yeah i've you know that was awesome when you're big and fat so you're big and fat like me that's like no i was never big and fat like you i i was a different a different fatness i just had a fat face um yeah there's some you know i had a little bit of a stomach and things like that but it wasn't like um i didn't have a big distended, uh, stomach. I didn't have a huge stomach. I never like my, uh, stomach never really protruded out over like my belt line.

I never had it. I never had like a gut. Um, I had a big, like kind of just like manly looking, uh, belly, I guess you'd say. But, um, I was never really like, I was never sloppy fat. I was like a kind of a more of a solid fat, probably looked a little bit like Marcus does Filipino thunder. And so when I lost weight, there was really nowhere for me to have like saggy skin. Now, if I lost, if I lost more and got down to like two 10 or something, maybe we'd start to see some of that happen. But, um, I know it's a tremendous amount of weight to lose, but the extra weight that I had on was a lot of extra muscle in addition to a lot of extra fat.

So it was a lot of extra everything going on at that point. Our buddy, Ducky Williams, he's kind of been on the comeback. He just posted something on Instagram, and then Stan Effering reposted it. So that was pretty cool to see one of our listeners get reposted by Stan. And it was just kind of like came full circle when I saw that. But, uh,

he was asking, um, best exercise to increase lat strength, just to stability for his bench, just for stability on his bench. Uh, different forms of bench pressing is going to be, you know, the best thing to stabilize your body for the bench press.

You know, I don't like to do those correlations like that because I just think they're, I don't know, I don't think it's a great idea. Just train your back, you know know like just training your back is training your back and training your bench is training your bench um you could do like dumbbell presses uh flat dumbbell presses and you can do like a machine press where you're actually trying to flare the lats out on purpose but not let the shoulder come forward and not let the shoulder go up um but that's that's probably the best way to like feel your back

is to just do some dumbbell presses. Do them with your palms facing each other, facing inward towards each other and press very deliberately through your chest and try to press very deliberately through the back of your body, your upper back, your lat muscles. And I think you would notice

some pretty good benefit from that. Um, but trying to correlate a back movement to your bench press, um, doesn't really make a ton of sense. One movement that you can do is kind of a pullover, um, with, with, from a cable machine, um, that can kind of help you get a feel for what it's like to take weights out of the rack you can kind of you know you're doing that uh pull over type movement that can help a little bit um and then front raises are great incline front raises can be really great um kind of for your back your upper back and shoulder area but you can see i'm trying to work my way through like talking about it because it doesn't uh i don't really like the way way that some of it even sounds.

I don't like to correlate those things that way. I hate, you know, I absolutely hate when people say, you know, oh, the way that you missed your lift, it looks like you have weak rhomboids. And it's like, come on, dude. How the hell, you know, how the hell do I know where my rhomboid is? You know, I don't even know what you're talking about. Yeah. how the hell do I know what my rock where my rhomboid is you know I don't even know what you're talking about you know yeah so uh JC3000 something asked something cool on Instagram I'll let you handle that over there but on this side somebody was asking about basically high bar versus low bar um says he's not a great high bar squatter but can do 30% less low bar and the reason why I'm really interested um is because you just barely introduced me into low bar. And the only reason why I'm really interested, um, is because you just barely introduced

me into low bar squatting and I couldn't even, I was so shocked at how much easier the weight felt. Um, so he's just asking, should he avoid moving the bar? I guess that's what he's asking. I was supposed to just avoid them. Um, yeah, the low bar, high bar stuff is like, just put the bar where you can and uh you know work on getting a better feel for that and you know work your way through that process i you know feel like it's best for me to kind of keep the bar high so that's where i keep it it is

limiting in terms of my strength but i'm no longer competitive power lifter if you're putting the bar lower and you're weaker then uh i wouldn't worry about it for the moment. Just keep lifting and don't worry about it too much. But you also may want to play around with your stance a little bit. But there's no cheat codes into any of this. Sometimes somebody puts the bar low and they feel better like Andrew did. And sometimes they don't. But Andrew also kind of feels like he's going to fall over.

So we don't really know if it's actually better for him or not. Yeah, because I didn't go super heavy or anything, but it felt like the weight was just going to roll right off my back, and you're like, don't worry, it's not going anywhere. I'm like, okay, sorry. Because I guess this person's also tall and lengthy, kind of like me. This guy says jc 30 000 7th he says uh you know if you try lots of diets and they don't work to lose weight and then uh one that does work stops working

oh man he's it's a loaded one uh what do you do when the others haven't worked previously um normally it's just some tweaking, you know. So it sounds to me like you've done kind of a handful of diets. I would say like whatever diets worked for you, if it has a previous history of working for you, I doubt that it's really stopped working for you. You need to start working back for it. for you, um, you need to start working back for it. And there, there could be a position, there could be a time when you, uh, times where you're eating not enough. Uh, there could be times where you're eating too much. Um, remember if you're not in a caloric deficit, um, caloric deficit is normally under normal circumstances means you're losing weight. So if you stop losing weight, you're not in a caloric deficit.

Just kind of by definition. So that's something to think about. Something's off if you're not losing weight. It doesn't really mean necessarily to just eat less and less, but you might have to figure out a different route to spend your calories. Still on that bone broth? Yep, I still drink that bone broth. Somebody said I'm awesome. Thank you. you said somebody had a good question over here i'm not sure which guy you

said yeah it was the one that you had seen just basically because he was talking about it seemed like he said diets didn't work for him but i think he you know one thing you can also add since he can't hear me is just being honest with himself yeah yeah you got to be honest with yourself no matter what diet you're trying yeah because he could be following the diet to a T except for, you know, that whatever the cookie that he had in between lunch and dinner or, you know, whatever, whatever it is that he just decided to ignore to, so he can say he's following his diet to a T. To kind of wrap things up for today, you know, where we started with all this for the day and um you know again i i just like to uh since andrew and i have kind of started doing this uh i guess

we're we're going to be coming up to our year anniversary in march you said march right yeah january february yeah somewhere in february either late february or early march or maybe early february it's crazy because it seems like we've been doing this for so long. And I have done a lot of podcasts before. But the podcast name used to be Mark Bell's Powercast. It's now Mark Bell's Power Project. And Andrew and I have been doing this. It's probably really going to start to be almost daily.

We're just going to do them as many times as we can. And we hope you like the format and if there's different things you want to see you know just let us know but those of you that are not aware of my history um i have been a powerlifter since i was 12 years old i broke some world records over the years i squatted 1080 i bench pressed 854 pounds and deadlifted 766 pounds that was uh in multi-ply powerlifting back when that was the only thing on the scene i then have since uh kind of moved on to do some other things i also before i retired from powerlifting i bench pressed 578 pounds raw in competition at 275 and i also bench pressed 545 in this 242 pound weight class uh those are things

that i bring up because i think it's important that you guys know that i have done some stuff before i have put up points on the scoreboard before and um uh just to kind of let you guys know who i am i'm a dad um i have two children my son my, Jake, who's 14. My daughter, Quinn, who's 11. And my beautiful wife, Andy. We live in Davis, California and have a wonderful home there. And I love the area. It's a beautiful area. just happy to come in here and do this every day. And the stuff that I'm trying to share with you guys, um, is, is only to try to help. That's, that's the only mission behind any of it. And we may tell you about some sales and we may tell you to go to markbellslingshot.com, uh, for certain things. Um, because we, we love promoting our company. It's, it's what we work for. It's what we work towards and it's what keeps the lights on in this building, which makes this podcast possible and which makes the gym here in West Sacramento, California, free. long format, have people listen, have people ask questions, have people become fans of the show.

In addition to being a dad, in addition to being a power lifter, I still power lift. I still bench press, squat, and deadlift. I more recently did a bodybuilding show. I have no desire to do another bodybuilding show anytime soon, but I'm staying in shape. I'm staying lean all while still powerlifting. I love lifting heavy weights, and I'll probably always want to lift heavier than I should, and that's just probably the way I'll be until the day I'm not here anymore. But in addition to some of those things, I've also written a book called The War on Carbs. I'm also an author. In addition to that, I am a three-time patent holder.

I have two patents on the slingshot and another patent for knee sleeves. So I am, in my opinion, more so than anything else, I'm an inventor. That's one of the things that I have always been drawn to. I've always been drawn to creation. I've always been drawn into making things. And I love the challenge of business. And I love owning Slingshot as a business. And there's some other things we're about to get into coming up really soon, which I'm really excited about.

about. But the main thing, my main source of income is through the sale of slingshots and other products that help and assist and guide you through your lifting because lifting is painful. Lifting has a high barrier of entry into it. And a lot of times it's just not fun because you're in pain. And so I've created elbow sleeves and knee sleeves and slingshots. The slingshot is a supportive upper body device for bench press, push-ups, and dips. It helps alleviate pain in your shoulders and in your elbows and in your pecs. If you ever tore a shoulder muscle, if you ever tore a rotator cuff, if you ever torn your tricep or hurt your elbow or torn your pec, the slingshot is designed specifically for you by somebody that has torn his pack many times over. So I love the challenge of business and I love trying to make this company

more profitable, trying to make this company more valuable to the fans, to the customers, to the people that are out there. And we will not rest until we continue to make better products for you guys, products that work really well on the platform, products that stand up to the training, products that can handle the abuse. And we are going to continue to work towards making the world a better place to lift in every possible way that we can. Thank you guys so much for listening. If you like what you're hearing, if you like listening to this podcast, if what we shared

today about being a winner and about how you can make and create yourself into a winner and how you have to stop listening to the bullshit people will tell you. If you like some of what we shared today, please leave us a comment on iTunes. Please share this with other people. That's the price of admission is to share this with other people. That's the price of admission is to share this with other people. I said it twice. I said it twice to make a point.

I want you guys to share this. Don't keep it a secret. Don't keep it as your secret weapon. Don't keep it in your back pocket tell other people about it and tell other people that it's important that they come listen because they can really strongly improve their life they can make some great advances and again all i'm trying to do is help people i'm sharing a message uh that comes from my heart. From my brain. And it's a message that's delivered out to you guys. Simply just to help.

I'm not an expert in anything necessarily. I just have been around. I'm 42 years old. I've been around. I've been around a lot of training. I've been around a lot of happiness. I've been around a lot of success. But I've also been around a lot of down times.

I've been around a lot of death. And I've been around a lot of success, but I've also been around a lot of down times. I've been around a lot of death and I've been around a lot of shitty situations. So I can share a lot with you guys here on Mark Bell's power project. Thank you guys for listening. Strength is never weakness. Weakness never strength. Catch you guys later.